Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. M Hey, evenyone that this
Speaker 1: is Garrison Davis from It could happen here. For this
Speaker 1: week of episodes, the team has put together a sepastoral
Speaker 1: group of episodes, all focused on the broad topic of
Speaker 1: the escalating war on trans people. We'll cover historical background,
Speaker 1: the international turf movement, and all the new anti trans
Speaker 1: legislation trying to be made into law here in the
Speaker 1: United States. We won't have time to cover everything. It's
Speaker 1: only five episodes, but we were tried to cram more
Speaker 1: stuff in, and you know it's it's we don't want
Speaker 1: to make episodes all like two or three hours, So
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll we'll cover all these topics more in
Speaker 1: the future, but we tried to create five episodes here
Speaker 1: that kind of cover a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: our bases. Also, we've we've tried not to make the
Speaker 1: episodes super depressing, because yeah, it's five episodes based on
Speaker 1: a kind of upsetting topic. So we try to keep
Speaker 1: them more information based and throwing in some jokes here
Speaker 1: and there, you know, but it is still not a fun,
Speaker 1: fun topic, so to keep keep that in mind. But
Speaker 1: we've tried to try to space things out and not
Speaker 1: make them too long or not too depressing. So, without
Speaker 1: further ado, here is episode one of the War on
Speaker 1: trans People. Welcome to It could Happen here, a podcast
Speaker 1: about things falling apart and in in the case of
Speaker 1: this week, getting very angry at people doing really shitty things,
Speaker 1: um to a specific subset of the population. All right, Gary,
Speaker 1: isn't that every week? Well no, sometimes we talk about
Speaker 1: other stuff like three D printed guns, but that ties
Speaker 1: in Garrison take it from here. I'm done for the week. Yes,
Speaker 1: So welcome to can happen here? We're talking about Well,
Speaker 1: one of the big it could happens here is yeah
Speaker 1: in in in relation to the ongoing war on queer
Speaker 1: people in general. Um and how yeah that sure seems
Speaker 1: to be like it's happening, so here here, right now.
Speaker 1: But but before we get to the actual right now points,
Speaker 1: I still I do want to do want to do
Speaker 1: a little bit of background on how it's kind of
Speaker 1: gotten to this point in the past few decades and
Speaker 1: the variously precursors to the current moment that has seemed
Speaker 1: to be really focused on trans people specifically, but for
Speaker 1: a long time, a lot of the focus was on
Speaker 1: protecting quote unquote the sanctity of marriage, which was one
Speaker 1: of the one of the big, one of the big
Speaker 1: talking points. And to help us talk about this fun
Speaker 1: and engaging topic, I asked on Karen and Eve from
Speaker 1: the Kitchen Table Cult podcast to assist us in this
Speaker 1: horrible endeavor. Greetings, and I'm sorry, Yes we are. We
Speaker 1: are gays who grew up in that universe, so as
Speaker 1: as as was I, as was probably a few other
Speaker 1: people of this this call. Uh yeah, we we all
Speaker 1: we all have varying experiences growing up in the evangelical movement.
Speaker 1: Um well also realizing huh, maybe we are not straight
Speaker 1: and orsist children. So yeah, but we're gonna, we're gonna,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about the kind of the escalating
Speaker 1: war and gay marriage and how that kind of moves
Speaker 1: over to trans people at a certain point. Um, and
Speaker 1: specifically talking about kind of the combination of religion and politics,
Speaker 1: because this is this is something I've discussed before on
Speaker 1: my two part Focus on the Family episode, and this
Speaker 1: really is going to tie into a lot of that
Speaker 1: stuff because it's a lot of the same people. But
Speaker 1: I would love for everyone else to kind of fill
Speaker 1: in the gaps where I have stuff missing, because I
Speaker 1: definitely have a a good, good point on the Family
Speaker 1: Research Council kind of side of things, and I would
Speaker 1: love for people to fill in the gaps on the
Speaker 1: other other kind of stuff. But yeah, we're gonna start
Speaker 1: off for talking about Family Research Council, um and that
Speaker 1: whole kind of side of things, because I mean they, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: Josh Tugger is coming up. Don't both research and families,
Speaker 1: So this seems unproblematic. I'm gonna just mute things from
Speaker 1: now on, and yeah, you guys continue in terms of
Speaker 1: all of the save the children rhetoric. Yes, Josh Josh
Speaker 1: Dogger will be coming up, so yeah, but I do
Speaker 1: want to actually open up with a quote from Mike Rosebush,
Speaker 1: who was the vice president of Focus on the family
Speaker 1: from thousand four UM and then a few years ago
Speaker 1: he came out as as gay and as a surprise
Speaker 1: so called affirming like Christian who like loves Jesus and
Speaker 1: endorses rights for gay people. He left, he left, got
Speaker 1: fired from focus on the family EC side or say
Speaker 1: side B. Does he is he in favor of the
Speaker 1: celibacy model or is he a show with marriage? He
Speaker 1: seems to be excited about fucking okay, so it is
Speaker 1: definitely the better side. But I want to start off
Speaker 1: with by by him just to kind of set the
Speaker 1: stage for how this type of thing kind of really
Speaker 1: got got started, for combining, you know, the evangelical kind
Speaker 1: of biblical worldview with political organizing. So anyway, I'm going
Speaker 1: to read a quote here, quote Dobson even more so
Speaker 1: than focused on the family, and that's a that's James Dobson,
Speaker 1: by the way, Um, Dobson even more so than focus
Speaker 1: on the family as an organization, strongly encouraged all evangelicals
Speaker 1: to support and express their values in the public arena.
Speaker 1: As background, before about nineteen seventy, evangelicals often confined themselves
Speaker 1: within their own like cloistored communities. Political development was viewed
Speaker 1: as a secular enterprise and suspect at best, and this
Speaker 1: change during the Dobson era, He and others encouraged evangelicals
Speaker 1: to learn and apply the Biblical worldview. The evangelical person
Speaker 1: was coached in applying the apologetics debate method in publicly
Speaker 1: sharing the Biblical worldview. Voting in every local and national
Speaker 1: election became seen as a Christians duty. So at Focus
Speaker 1: I learned that the evangelical leaders like Dr Dobson considered
Speaker 1: the Republican Party to be the political machine best equipped
Speaker 1: to endorse a Biblical worldview. In delated harmony, Republican Party
Speaker 1: strategists salivated to win elections by securing the evangelical vote.
Speaker 1: Thus a mutual agreement was formed. The plan became that
Speaker 1: evangelical leaders would introduce a hot button issue onto ballots
Speaker 1: at every local and state election. Evangelical ministers would provide
Speaker 1: voting guides on how to influence evangelicals to vote for
Speaker 1: the only correct Christian choice, in turn the elector cand
Speaker 1: in turn that elected Republican Canada when champion the corresponding
Speaker 1: Biblical worldview. And this strategy worked, and what was the
Speaker 1: most reliable hot button to place on the local and
Speaker 1: state of voting ballots, something that would ensure evangelicals in
Speaker 1: mass to show up to vote the up anti gay
Speaker 1: rights bills. Gay rights were viewed by evangelicals as a
Speaker 1: threat to the Biblical family and society in general. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's kind of how I want to open up in
Speaker 1: terms of kind of the shift in like the seventies
Speaker 1: and eighties and especially in the nineties, from kind of
Speaker 1: evangelicals being pretty divorced from political mainstream action to them
Speaker 1: becoming a crucial part of the Republican machine, and this
Speaker 1: kind of circle that completes itself at this at this
Speaker 1: like at this point afterwards, because yeah, this combined with
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of save the children rhetoric and like
Speaker 1: saving the family, like like the unit of the family
Speaker 1: as a sacred thing to protect. It's really like that
Speaker 1: that idea really carries over now into into into the
Speaker 1: trans stuff because obviously they kind of lost a lot
Speaker 1: of this to they wanted to do on gay marriage
Speaker 1: after a long, a long fight, you know, decades and decades,
Speaker 1: but it's still the same core idea at the heart
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, I just want to put an evergreen
Speaker 1: footnote on all of that and say thanks and fuck
Speaker 1: you to finish laughly for getting us down that road. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was like blame can definitely be passed around like
Speaker 1: originates there, Like I mean like before all of that,
Speaker 1: like the Evangelical Church was not even united on the
Speaker 1: idea of abortion being bad. Like like we have come
Speaker 1: so far to merging these these universes in this really
Speaker 1: sucked up little marriage that they got going on. No,
Speaker 1: and and you can't you cannot divorce the ideas of
Speaker 1: like the escalating war against abortion and then also like
Speaker 1: with the save the children, like protect the family idea, right,
Speaker 1: these these are the these are the same issues. Like
Speaker 1: these these do go together in terms of people, you know,
Speaker 1: making this like fake version of the family that they
Speaker 1: are swearing to protect, whether that be from gay people,
Speaker 1: or that be from you know, women's bodily autonomy or
Speaker 1: you know women's rights or like fifth like feminism. All
Speaker 1: of it's in the same is in the same package.
Speaker 1: It's like that meme of like two pictures and PAMs
Speaker 1: like these are the same picture. It's the same exact
Speaker 1: rhetoric and it's just like re skin slightly too for
Speaker 1: whatever topic of the day. The The other other big
Speaker 1: thing I want to mention before I get into Family
Speaker 1: Research Council UM is the two thousand and four book
Speaker 1: A Marriage Under Fire, Bye Bye by Dr James Dobson,
Speaker 1: which was definitely one of the one of the other
Speaker 1: kind of key points in escalating these idea of the
Speaker 1: culture war UM. And you know that that type of
Speaker 1: that type of like more like almost like tactical rhetoric.
Speaker 1: It's all yeah, it's it's It was definitely it was
Speaker 1: definitely turning point at the same time when Fireproof came out.
Speaker 1: Oh I think so, Yeah, it happened close. Yeah. Fireproof
Speaker 1: and all that came out between two thousand and four
Speaker 1: and two thousand and six seven, so that was all
Speaker 1: around the same time period because they were losing, like
Speaker 1: you said earlier, they were losing the battle against it, right,
Speaker 1: because that was that was around the time Queer I
Speaker 1: was coming out. That was when they were starting to
Speaker 1: get nervous that maybe they could not stop this particular
Speaker 1: like like forward slide. But yeah, like on the back
Speaker 1: cover of their Robert you have something to say. No,
Speaker 1: I was just thinking back to that period of time
Speaker 1: when it it seemed positive progress in that regard seemed
Speaker 1: inevitable and unstoppable. Yeah, I think the note on martial
Speaker 1: language as used for this is really important here, Like
Speaker 1: this is a battle, it is under fire, Like that's
Speaker 1: that is something that was definitely on that point. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna read a little bit of the back cover
Speaker 1: of a Marriage under Fire. Here we go. In this
Speaker 1: succinct analysis of the issue, Dr James Dobson presents a
Speaker 1: compelling case against the legalization of marriage between homosexuals. At
Speaker 1: the dire ramifications our nation could face. Same sex marriage
Speaker 1: will destroy the fundamental principles of marriage, parenthood and gender.
Speaker 1: Families will be increasingly unstable as their definition expands to
Speaker 1: incorporate multiple moms or dad's in quotation marks. Legalization of
Speaker 1: gay marriages will lead to polygamy and other alternatives to
Speaker 1: one man, one woman unions. The divorce rate will be higher,
Speaker 1: making our children less safe. Marriage Underfire provides the foundations
Speaker 1: of a battle plan for the preservation of traditional values
Speaker 1: in our nation. Our response cannot be clearer. The well
Speaker 1: being of the family and thus our nation hangs in
Speaker 1: the balance. Now the time to speak out in defensive
Speaker 1: marriage and the American family. So yeah, it is particularly
Speaker 1: the battle plan, right. You know. One thing I really
Speaker 1: loved during this time was the like libertarian Christian response
Speaker 1: to this kind of conversation where they're just like or
Speaker 1: we could just you know, not have marriage each tied
Speaker 1: to the state at all. You know, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: do remember that this is the like, this is the
Speaker 1: backup plan for like, okay, if like if marriage you know,
Speaker 1: gay marriage goes forward, then we can just like do
Speaker 1: that if we want to, you know, just like completely eliminated. No, absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: I absolutely remember that that type of rhetoric. Even even yea,
Speaker 1: even around when like the Supreme Court cases we're going forward,
Speaker 1: they were like really set on like this is like
Speaker 1: you know, last resort. We have to fixture that makes
Speaker 1: sure that it like like like church marriage is just
Speaker 1: completely separate, which even then that still is the case,
Speaker 1: and like like a lot of places, like churches is
Speaker 1: still in a lot of states like reserve the right
Speaker 1: to uh not people, um, and you can only you
Speaker 1: can do it through the courts, but not through the church.
Speaker 1: There's also the subtext in that that I think should
Speaker 1: be unpacked, which is that the multimum moms and Dad's
Speaker 1: kind of image that's given is not a signal of
Speaker 1: like the non traditional family being bad, but more of
Speaker 1: a There was this myth that was pushed really hard
Speaker 1: in the conversion therapy circuit that like if you didn't
Speaker 1: have a good father figure, you were going to be gay.
Speaker 1: You're you know, if you didn't have a good relationship
Speaker 1: with your mom, you're going to be gay. So like
Speaker 1: having this as like this, these coded statements in there
Speaker 1: are giving the clue of like we're trying to stop
Speaker 1: the cycle. We're trying to not create more gay kids. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's why this is important. Yeah, I was reading
Speaker 1: a lot earlier today from the Heritage Foundation because I
Speaker 1: remember them being a key start. It was so bad,
Speaker 1: and their whole thing was like you have to have
Speaker 1: a mother and a father otherwise everything is terrible. And
Speaker 1: then you get gay kids, and that also lights like
Speaker 1: goes into the whole other theory that was like well,
Speaker 1: which I think Robertson either made up or repeated. Um,
Speaker 1: it was like, well, people who are gay were abused
Speaker 1: as children. Yeah, that is that is definitely when I
Speaker 1: mean then of course all these all these evangelicals are
Speaker 1: also all like beating their kids, were abusing your child
Speaker 1: because they were gay or because I mean I was
Speaker 1: and I am, But I don't think. Yeah, the related
Speaker 1: in the sense that you being gay is is the
Speaker 1: is the one of the triggers for the parents, but
Speaker 1: it's not the cause of relationship runs the opposite direction.
Speaker 1: Rights exactly. We are gonna take a break and hear
Speaker 1: from all of our lovely sponsors who don't support child abuse.
Speaker 1: Probably well, I mean unless it's unless it's which which
Speaker 1: does you know does run that island off the coast
Speaker 1: of Indonesia where you can hunt children for sport? But
Speaker 1: we prefer not to see that is I don't think, Robert,
Speaker 1: I think you have to bleep that. No, Garrison, We're
Speaker 1: not going to bleep an ad. That's what sponsors this
Speaker 1: show is child hunting island, which you cannot say that
Speaker 1: is designed to do every week more gay kids. Um, well,
Speaker 1: it's designed to make happier billionaires. Yeah, there's nothing. There's
Speaker 1: nothing Elon Musk gloves more than hunting children on his
Speaker 1: at a private island reserve off the coast of Indonesia.
Speaker 1: And and like Elon Musk, you two can hunt children
Speaker 1: if you bube anyway, here's here's yet. Yes, we are
Speaker 1: we are back, and now we're gonna we're gonna move
Speaker 1: on to probably the most unfun portion of the show today.
Speaker 1: Um f r C. The Family Research Council. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: actually talk about like what they are and what they
Speaker 1: did and how they're kind of important in the evolution
Speaker 1: of rhetoric and various other stuff. So yeah, Family Research
Speaker 1: Council emerged from a nineteen eighty White House conference on
Speaker 1: families that James Dobson kind of co led with the
Speaker 1: President of the United States. So that's fun. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he he met and prayed with a group of
Speaker 1: like eight Christian leaders at a Washington, d c. Hotel,
Speaker 1: ultimately leading to the creation of the Family Research Council UM,
Speaker 1: under the direction of a Gerald region Er. That's how
Speaker 1: that's then, that's how I'm gonna say it. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say his name because he doesn't respect so
Speaker 1: I'm not going to google it. Um and it uh it.
Speaker 1: It became a division to focus on the family, and
Speaker 1: like the late eighties under Gary Bowyer. Um. And the
Speaker 1: reason there's a who bunch of like complicated like tax
Speaker 1: stuff because focused on the family can't get too political
Speaker 1: because then middle like sacrifice their tax taxing extempt status.
Speaker 1: So there's a whole bunch of really shady stuff happening
Speaker 1: in between Family Research Council and focused on the family
Speaker 1: proper not doing any lobbying. Yeah, in terms of like
Speaker 1: who runs what and like what cross over there is
Speaker 1: with like the leadership. They're basically the same organization, but
Speaker 1: they are like legally separate and kind of have different
Speaker 1: like operating strategies. Um, but they really are, like to
Speaker 1: be fair, lots of words to do this, this is
Speaker 1: not unusual. No, it's it's it's not unusual, but like
Speaker 1: it's important to that. Like they basically are like like
Speaker 1: they're they're very late, like they are like like sibling organizations.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is uh, this is uh the Gary
Speaker 1: boy or the guy who took over in the late
Speaker 1: eighties of what it was. Also the was the under
Speaker 1: Secretary of Education and Domestic Policy advisor to President Reagan. UM.
Speaker 1: So again already like fully fully tied into like the
Speaker 1: Republican machine. So m Boyer brought in several anti LGBT
Speaker 1: researchers who pumped out like defamatory material about queer people. UM.
Speaker 1: Robert Knight was a longtime conservative writer and journalist and
Speaker 1: the kind of major propagandist against lgbt Q rights. He
Speaker 1: served as the f f r c S Director of
Speaker 1: Cultural Affairers in the nineties up into the early two thousand's.
Speaker 1: Um While working there, he wrote, along with some Focus
Speaker 1: on the Family editors, a booklet called the the Homosexual
Speaker 1: Behavior and Pedophilia. This is a very very very common
Speaker 1: thread and all their stuff is that gay people were
Speaker 1: abused as kids and gay people therefore are like wired
Speaker 1: to also abuse kids, Like it's part of this cycle
Speaker 1: that they like coopit a whole bunch of research on it,
Speaker 1: that they misrepresented that all of the researchers who did
Speaker 1: the actual stuff was like, no, you're totally wrong. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's there's there's I talk I talked about this
Speaker 1: a little a little bit and more in depth than
Speaker 1: the focus on the family episodes for for bastards in
Speaker 1: terms of like they actually research they used, Um, but
Speaker 1: yeah it is uh. In the what one of the
Speaker 1: remarkable claims inside the booklet was was the a search
Speaker 1: and that quote. One of the primary goals of the
Speaker 1: homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent
Speaker 1: laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the profits of
Speaker 1: a new sexual order. So that's uh, that's great profits.
Speaker 1: F I T S that iss P E P H
Speaker 1: Y s pH is just libertarianism then basically yeah, basically yes, um, yes,
Speaker 1: the for some reason, you cannot find this pamphlet on
Speaker 1: the f FRC website today. Um. Yeah. So Boya left
Speaker 1: the group UM, and then FARC had two presidents UM
Speaker 1: and emerge and one of the most one of them
Speaker 1: kind of resulted in becoming the most powerful religious right
Speaker 1: lobbying group in the country with tons of tons of
Speaker 1: policy researchers and writers UM, and a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of like email like email lists and like physical
Speaker 1: mailing us was a big part of their political organizing.
Speaker 1: You know, Eve and Karen we have talked before about
Speaker 1: the effective power of the rights mailing lists in terms
Speaker 1: of getting political change. Yeah. Um. Kenneth Conners was a
Speaker 1: Florida attorney and a leader in the pro life movement.
Speaker 1: He served as president in the early two thousand's. During
Speaker 1: his kind of tenure, um f r c's agenda focused
Speaker 1: mostly on abortion and then also a traditional marriage of
Speaker 1: other stuff. Was like religious liberty, which means Christian supremacy,
Speaker 1: not actual religious liberty. Um. And then like uh, like
Speaker 1: protecting parents rights right, protecting like parental choice, um, which
Speaker 1: we'll we'll talk, we'll talk like how do they define
Speaker 1: traditional marriage? Is this involving like dowries and land transfers
Speaker 1: and treaties. I believe they just I believe they want
Speaker 1: one man and then one woman and the woman doesn't
Speaker 1: really need to actually want it, but as long as
Speaker 1: the man wants it, then it's fine. Um. And are
Speaker 1: they like the Catholics where they believe it has to
Speaker 1: be for the purposes of procreation? Um? I mean they're
Speaker 1: they're part of the mainstream evangelicals. Like there's definitely there's
Speaker 1: like the court of Idea. So yeah, like they are
Speaker 1: they are, they are for that. But it's I know,
Speaker 1: it's it is. It's it's a very like patriarchal thing. Um.
Speaker 1: And it depends things dumb here, but like the because
Speaker 1: these are these are important distinctions that need it depends
Speaker 1: on congregation to congregation, right, Like like the kind of
Speaker 1: the stuff that I grew up with wasn't super focused
Speaker 1: on tons of on having tons of kids actually, um.
Speaker 1: In fact that they kind of prefer just keeping it
Speaker 1: capped off at two kids, because you know, the more
Speaker 1: kids you had, the less loyal you were to the
Speaker 1: church because you had to focus more on your kids. Actually,
Speaker 1: so it does, it does. It does really depend on
Speaker 1: congregation to congregation. I think Family Research Council tried to
Speaker 1: keep themselves open to lots of interpretations, so blets people
Speaker 1: call the glom onto their stuff, so they didn't get
Speaker 1: like super specific around the rule of child rearing. And
Speaker 1: that's anything it's important to note around that. This time,
Speaker 1: or a little before it was when John Paul's Theology
Speaker 1: the Body was coming out, which is this tone um
Speaker 1: that's basically getting into like why you know, the death
Speaker 1: penalty you would be bad and why abortion is bad,
Speaker 1: and it's all this like sanctity of the body and
Speaker 1: the body existing and then like the sanctity of sex
Speaker 1: as for the purposes appropriation that was in the in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere at this time. That was definitely a key
Speaker 1: point is that sex is just for making kids. Like
Speaker 1: that is definitely like a big, a big part of it,
Speaker 1: which like they don't actually really believe, but they say right,
Speaker 1: because like if you look at all of like the
Speaker 1: all of the extra like the people like all like
Speaker 1: these leaders like are not like faithful to their wives
Speaker 1: by anything. Not an accidental side effect of kids at
Speaker 1: the point. No, Yeah, but I think it is, like
Speaker 1: it is interesting, like the amount of stuff that's aund
Speaker 1: like parental choice and like parent rights, which will come
Speaker 1: up over the course of the next episodes of the series.
Speaker 1: I'm right now writing episodes about the current like a
Speaker 1: book bannings going across the country and a lot of
Speaker 1: those tied to liked like parents rights over their children, um,
Speaker 1: like they decide what their children gets to read. So
Speaker 1: it's all stuff I've never heard of that before in
Speaker 1: my life. That's definitely not also tied up with a
Speaker 1: bunch of the stuff happening in Florida right now, it's
Speaker 1: definitely not definitely related to Mike Ferris at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now, yeah, I mean really like yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: this is sort of what we're getting at, is that
Speaker 1: the modern anti trend stuff is they're just playing all
Speaker 1: of the sort of greatest chance of the antipa stuff
Speaker 1: like the bathroom and the stuff. Yeah, I don't worry.
Speaker 1: I'm planning to tie this up in a nice in
Speaker 1: a nice little bow ahead of you. Just give me
Speaker 1: like fifteen minutes and I'll do it. So um yeah
Speaker 1: up next we're talking starting to two US and three
Speaker 1: they change leaders again and this is where they really
Speaker 1: have evolved into their current form with Tony Perkins, who
Speaker 1: became president of the Family Family Research Council into US
Speaker 1: prior prior to that, he serves two terms as a
Speaker 1: Louisiana state representative in the nineties and even even even
Speaker 1: when he was president of Family Research Counselor, he served
Speaker 1: to two years as state representative. He's also a former
Speaker 1: police officer UM and a television news reporter. So overall
Speaker 1: just sounds like a quite quite the dude. Um yeah
Speaker 1: he he. He authored a whole bunch of you know,
Speaker 1: like all these guys right in, tons of like Christian
Speaker 1: books they get published by like weird Christian publishers. Um.
Speaker 1: He also served as the senior pastor of a of
Speaker 1: a church in Maryland UM called the Hope Christian Church.
Speaker 1: He uh and he was. He was a leader of
Speaker 1: an effort by white and black religious right preachers to
Speaker 1: work together against LGBT equality, specifically like in like the
Speaker 1: East Coast in the South. That's where there's so there's
Speaker 1: a there's a like cross organizing between historically black churches.
Speaker 1: Of course not all of them, but like the Perkins
Speaker 1: really tried to like reach out on that front to
Speaker 1: get like that coalition going, which was kind of unique
Speaker 1: at the time. So yeah, a big part of FARC
Speaker 1: strategy is to pound home the false claimed that queer
Speaker 1: people are more likely to sectually abused children other than
Speaker 1: heterosexual people. Um, this is uh, yeah, this is not
Speaker 1: not scientifically true. You can look up like stats and
Speaker 1: you can look up you can look up like the
Speaker 1: American Psychology Association has a lot of research on this
Speaker 1: topic because it was such a big point in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands that people had to like talk about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we is all that's like one of these things
Speaker 1: that like was a myth, you know, ambiently as a
Speaker 1: scare tactic and a slippery slope fallacy. But I think
Speaker 1: there's also it has its roots in a particular misunderstanding
Speaker 1: of Romans too, which is the passage that most people
Speaker 1: point to as their anti gay rhetoric. And the context
Speaker 1: of that is like most like centrist and liberal like
Speaker 1: biblical scholars will agree that that passage was more about
Speaker 1: the pedophilia that was happening in the Roman Empire and
Speaker 1: speaking out against that um and not specifically against like
Speaker 1: consulting adults even even even even like the Old even
Speaker 1: even in the Old Testament to a lot of new
Speaker 1: people going into the actual translations of stuff, and like
Speaker 1: even like Leviticus um, it is definitely pointing towards it
Speaker 1: being about specifically like fathers not abusing their like like
Speaker 1: you know, like pre pubescent like sons who are like
Speaker 1: more like androgynous, Like it is specifically targeted like this
Speaker 1: type of idea, it's not it's not against like gay
Speaker 1: men who are like adults. Yeah, there's there's this theological
Speaker 1: conversation on the right that was happening that kind of
Speaker 1: was like trying to account for that historical context and
Speaker 1: was like it's both. Clearly it's both because they go together,
Speaker 1: right and obviously, like we have to find a way
Speaker 1: to justify demonizing gay people in order to protect the
Speaker 1: san city of marriage, so we have still save the
Speaker 1: children and multiple children. So Perkins has continued to defend
Speaker 1: the kind of game and his pedophiles idea. Um. He
Speaker 1: had a he had a televised debate on MSNBC into
Speaker 1: in two US in ten about this, UM, so like yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I mean, that is like twelve years ago at
Speaker 1: this point, but still two US and ten feels much
Speaker 1: more recent than stuff you know, talking about like the
Speaker 1: late nineties. Um, yeah, debating with the Southern Poverty Law Center,
Speaker 1: like on the issue of that now. Yeah. Yeah. So.
Speaker 1: Some other anti LGBT kind of propagandists at uh f
Speaker 1: RC includes Peter Sprigg, who joined into US in one UM.
Speaker 1: He authored the brochure called a Top ten Myths about Homosexuality,
Speaker 1: which was pretty popular around the time. UM. Such claims
Speaker 1: inside the book conclude that like X, gay therapy or
Speaker 1: conversion therapy were sexual oritation can be change, UM, lgbt
Speaker 1: V LGBTQ people are mentally ill because being lgbt Q
Speaker 1: makes you ill, and that the sexual abuse of boys
Speaker 1: by adult men is more common than consensual sex between
Speaker 1: adult men, which is not obviously not true. That is
Speaker 1: quite I have questions, that is quite so many questions.
Speaker 1: That is quite quite. The stat um and like Springs,
Speaker 1: sources are a mixture of like junk science is stewed
Speaker 1: by groups that support conversion therapy UM and also legitimate science,
Speaker 1: quota out of context or cherry picked, which is a
Speaker 1: long used tactic by anti gay kind of groups. The
Speaker 1: bolster their bolster like their claims and their general like rhetoric. Right,
Speaker 1: if you mix in like a hint of truth, it
Speaker 1: can make all of your outrageous stuff seem more like legible. Um,
Speaker 1: we knew that from the screw Tape Letters. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: one of what one of one of his better books.
Speaker 1: I actually enjoy the screw Tape Letters. I think it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty fucking funny. It's good, but also like just
Speaker 1: so like an easter egg for those who know what
Speaker 1: we're talking about, Like he was extremely kinky carry on. Anyway,
Speaker 1: one of the main researchers they kind of misused research
Speaker 1: for was Juith Stacey, who was like since issued lots
Speaker 1: of public statements condemning the condemning what you know, Family
Speaker 1: Research Council advocates for, and has endlessly requested that anti
Speaker 1: gay groups to stop mr misrepresenting her work. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna jump forward to two US and eight, uh,
Speaker 1: because this is this is of course, the election of
Speaker 1: Obama has really kind of frightened a lot of people.
Speaker 1: This is when Dobson sent out that letter detailing like
Speaker 1: what a post Obama future could be, in which he
Speaker 1: included gay marriage as a part of like the dystopian
Speaker 1: night mare. He was imagining, this is the future that
Speaker 1: gay people want. Yeah, an interesting it was just an
Speaker 1: interesting thing on spring Here he was, he was he
Speaker 1: was on MSNBC again, which I mean, maybe we should stop,
Speaker 1: maybe we should stop inviting these people onto new his channels,
Speaker 1: But anyway, um Springs responding, Springue responded to a question
Speaker 1: about allowing non American same sex partners um of American
Speaker 1: citizens to immigrate into the States by saying I would
Speaker 1: prefer that we export homosexuals from the United States rather
Speaker 1: than import to them UM and saying I think there
Speaker 1: would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior
Speaker 1: um and then when asked, so should we outlaw gay behavior,
Speaker 1: Spruce said yes, so yeah. It's it's like it's very
Speaker 1: much a clear kind of mask off thing is that
Speaker 1: they just don't they just don't want it around at all.
Speaker 1: And an idea I'm going to tie this kind of
Speaker 1: more towards towards the end of the series with the
Speaker 1: trans stuff. Is like the idea of queerness has like
Speaker 1: a contagion. Um, these people having to like the brutality
Speaker 1: is justified in their own heads because they it's like
Speaker 1: this idea that queerness can spread and it can infect children,
Speaker 1: so you have to you have to contain it, and
Speaker 1: any action taken against it is justified because it's like
Speaker 1: you're containing a virus, and it's like this is really
Speaker 1: what kind of makes them feel so justified and righteous
Speaker 1: in every action they do. So yeah, including out including
Speaker 1: outlaw and gay gay people could have you know, exporting
Speaker 1: them from the United States, you know, a blatantly fascist idea.
Speaker 1: So yeah, um uh I. F ARC also worked unsuccessfully
Speaker 1: to continue they don't ask, don't tell policy. Um, this
Speaker 1: was up until like two US and ten, So that
Speaker 1: was that was a bit definitely another thing that they
Speaker 1: tried to focus on. But the slide, you know, the
Speaker 1: progressive side, actually was happening around that time. You know
Speaker 1: something interesting about that, yeah earlier today Yeah oh yeah,
Speaker 1: So I was again looking at Heritage Foundation because that
Speaker 1: was the Heritage Foundation was like my big kind of
Speaker 1: go to when I was growing up in the nineties
Speaker 1: and two thousands and doing speech and debate and apologetics.
Speaker 1: Campaign all that ship and um, I was like, well,
Speaker 1: what was their take on Donuts Don't Tell? And they
Speaker 1: in the early nineties, we're very very against it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in ninety three they had like this paper published and
Speaker 1: they were very against it because they were like, well,
Speaker 1: then you won't then you'll still have gay people in
Speaker 1: the military. Yeah, absolutely in the military. Yes, they're like,
Speaker 1: they will. There will be like, it will be bad
Speaker 1: for the unit cohesion, there will be sexual abuse, as
Speaker 1: if that wasn't already happening. There will be like all
Speaker 1: of these terrible things happening in the military that couldn't
Speaker 1: possibly happen, couldn't possibly be happening otherwise, it will like
Speaker 1: we can combat effectiveness is the line that Family Research
Speaker 1: Council used. Yeah. Yeah, So there was definitely a shift
Speaker 1: in like the nineties where a lot of these evangelical
Speaker 1: groups were against Donuts Don't Tell because yeah, it's still
Speaker 1: allowed gay people and just that they didn't say anything.
Speaker 1: But then as they saw progress happening there like Okay,
Speaker 1: this is better than nothing like this, this is better
Speaker 1: than them being openly gay, So they kind of switched
Speaker 1: gears towards UM which is you know, they're just like
Speaker 1: grasping at anything they can. Um, I think, what's time
Speaker 1: for another break and then we will kind of finish
Speaker 1: this off with some other not fun information. But yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's do let's let's do let's let's do
Speaker 1: it at. Let's let's see, let's see what our our
Speaker 1: lovely sponsors at has to say. Well, this big thing
Speaker 1: is trying to get volunteers together to raid it's child
Speaker 1: hunting island off the coast of Indonesia, a counter raid. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can. You can volunteer to go fight in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: or you can volunteer to help take down it's child
Speaker 1: hunting island so that you can run it. You know,
Speaker 1: it would be fun to have all of the food
Speaker 1: delivery services have their own private militias that take the world.
Speaker 1: We're moving towards garrison. I mean the post office already
Speaker 1: does so, right, not the companies. Yeah, yeah, arm everybody.
Speaker 1: Everything should be a military. That's the whatever podcast this is,
Speaker 1: and we're back and we are still talking about my
Speaker 1: favorite topic, which is the Family Research Council. During the
Speaker 1: twelve election cycle, they donated about two two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to eighty federal Republican candidates UM, saying that they're using
Speaker 1: the money to UH to strategically be used to support
Speaker 1: pro family candidates and pro family issues and elections and
Speaker 1: valid incentives across the country. Yeah, so this is just
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of you know, keep keep the
Speaker 1: keep keep the pro pro family angle in mind. You know,
Speaker 1: this is that they continuously were always donating money to
Speaker 1: two US and twelve was the highest one on on
Speaker 1: record UM and I think I don't think they've even
Speaker 1: matched that since then. It was it was pretty high
Speaker 1: because that was that was Obama's second term. So they
Speaker 1: were definitely like trying to really really organize, right because
Speaker 1: this this this is like right but right before when
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court was going to be ruling on gay
Speaker 1: marriage as well, so of course which digit didn't get finalist,
Speaker 1: but they were starting to hear cases. We're gonna let's go,
Speaker 1: We're going to kind of briefly go back to to UH.
Speaker 1: To James Dobson here, reference of people are people who
Speaker 1: do not listen to the behind the bastards once. He's
Speaker 1: an evangelical Christian author and self proclaimed psychologist who who
Speaker 1: if you if you don't know who James Dobson is,
Speaker 1: please preserve your innocence and just quit, like, just go
Speaker 1: enjoy it. I don't know now forever now, I just
Speaker 1: don't know, God I do. I do love the idea
Speaker 1: of a self proclaimed psychologist. That's that's that's the energy
Speaker 1: child psychologists, just like I know what kids need. They
Speaker 1: need to be on Hunting Island, you know. And and
Speaker 1: this guy doesn't even believe in like child's about Like no,
Speaker 1: he doesn't held development. But also you do know that
Speaker 1: I'm getting a PhD in para psychology, right, I know, Garrison,
Speaker 1: We're paying for it. This podcast is going to have
Speaker 1: the highest rate of doctors of any podcast on the
Speaker 1: internet other than the one that our friend does. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I will be happy to be invited back onto Cova's
Speaker 1: podcast as a doctor in para psychology. I think I'll
Speaker 1: be able to offer some really unique insights. Okay, Anyway,
Speaker 1: Dobson founded Focus of Family in nineteen seventy seven, which
Speaker 1: is unfortunate because he could have just watched Star Wars,
Speaker 1: but instead he that is that is a key part
Speaker 1: of this ideology. Um, yeah, he was. He's he's a
Speaker 1: founding He's a founding member of several um T lgbt
Speaker 1: hit groups, UM Family Research councilor being one of them,
Speaker 1: also a lot. He is a founder of Alliance Defending Freedom. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he got he got, he got two under
Speaker 1: his belt. Um. The the organization, which is now based
Speaker 1: in Arizona, became a very powerful kind of fundraising behemouth
Speaker 1: dedicated to fighting so called marriage like marriage equality for
Speaker 1: for queer people and trans inclusive nondiscrimination protections. Um and
Speaker 1: with a big part of the thing that they were
Speaker 1: fighting for was enshrining a quote right to discriminate against
Speaker 1: LGBTQ people in state laws, which is, you know, all
Speaker 1: the stuff around like you know what if a baker
Speaker 1: is forced to bake a cake for you know, all
Speaker 1: of this nonsense is what so that that that is
Speaker 1: so like that that that is that that is Dobson
Speaker 1: He started that kind of thing. Yeah, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna now have a little fun though, because when
Speaker 1: we want to jump ahead a little bit just to
Speaker 1: kind of get the rhetoric kind of nailed down on
Speaker 1: what on what kind of house stuff we we're gonna
Speaker 1: start shifting towards the trans stuff at this point. Um.
Speaker 1: But um, after after the Supreme Court ruling for nationwide
Speaker 1: kind of marriage equality. Um Dobson has had this had
Speaker 1: this beautiful, beautiful quote. I had this black cloud over
Speaker 1: me on June twenty six when that decision was handed
Speaker 1: down and I was contemplating this foreboding. This black clowd
Speaker 1: to hit me like a ton of bricks. The decision
Speaker 1: was not really about gay marriage. It's not. It's about
Speaker 1: everything else. It's about the entire culture war. It's about
Speaker 1: it's about control of the public schools, and it's about
Speaker 1: what's happening in universities. It's about the economy, and it's
Speaker 1: about what businesses, and it's about the military, and it's
Speaker 1: about medicine. It's about everything. We lost the entire culture
Speaker 1: war without one decision. The gay marriage thing was just
Speaker 1: a part of it. But it's going to touch every dimension.
Speaker 1: So I wish that was true. But in terms of yes,
Speaker 1: in terms of kind of how this gets expanded to
Speaker 1: like businesses, schools, universities, medicine. I just love the histrionics
Speaker 1: that they started kind of focusing on in terms of like, well,
Speaker 1: we lost this culture war. I guess we got to
Speaker 1: move on to the next one, which is you know,
Speaker 1: the even more freakish thing, which is, oh, kids wanting
Speaker 1: to kids realizing that may be they have a different
Speaker 1: views on gender. So that's the next kind of like
Speaker 1: rotating target, that that that they that they move moved towards.
Speaker 1: So yeah. Um. Earlier that year, Dobson laid laid bare
Speaker 1: his his fundamental confusion on what it means to be
Speaker 1: a LGBT um. He claimed on his radio show that
Speaker 1: being bisexual meant that you have orgies, should mean not
Speaker 1: yes yes um. He also blamed uh in two US twelve.
Speaker 1: He also blamed the two US in twelve Sandy Hook
Speaker 1: massacre on a queer people because because they should the
Speaker 1: nation turned turned their back on God. It allowed it
Speaker 1: allowed judgments to fall on us, which is why I
Speaker 1: said that happened. That's one of the interesting splits in
Speaker 1: the right between the people who think it's fake and
Speaker 1: the people who thought it was queer people's fault. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's is there. Yeah, they've all come back together now,
Speaker 1: But it was it was a real it was a
Speaker 1: real split. And one of one of the other great
Speaker 1: things about Dobson is so after my Behind the Bastard's
Speaker 1: episodes on Dobson, like literally, like the day after it dropped.
Speaker 1: I found this extra little disturbing nugget of info about him,
Speaker 1: um in a in an old blog post titled is
Speaker 1: my child Becoming homosexual? Dobson recommends Dobson recommends things that
Speaker 1: a father can do to help his child fix homosexual
Speaker 1: symptoms fix sorry, including taking your child into the shower
Speaker 1: with you to compare penises of Yeah, it is not good.
Speaker 1: I will I will quote from I will quote from
Speaker 1: the blog. Um. The boy's father has to do his part.
Speaker 1: He needs to mirror and affirm his son's male nous.
Speaker 1: He can play rough and tumble games with his son
Speaker 1: in ways that are decidedly different from the games he
Speaker 1: would play with a little girl. He can help us
Speaker 1: and learn how to throw and catch a ball. He
Speaker 1: can teach him to hown a square put in peg
Speaker 1: into a square hole. He could even take his son
Speaker 1: into the shower with him where a boy couldn't help.
Speaker 1: Notice that dad has a fetus just like his holy bigger.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, this reminds me of so that is
Speaker 1: a quote by Dr Jim Stuffson, psychologist. Oh my god. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's nothing nothing at all to uh, hey,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Dabbs, how's your son? Yeah, that's good. How are you?
Speaker 1: Are you talking nothing at all? To kind of interrogate there,
Speaker 1: Um yeah, m hm. The other thing that I really love,
Speaker 1: and by love, I mean don't live, um, is that
Speaker 1: like the only gay people who exist are gay boys.
Speaker 1: Yeahs and by people don't exist at all. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a really interesting thing. It's because it's about
Speaker 1: why would Uh, it's about if it happens to a woman,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, well, they're a woman anyway, They're already
Speaker 1: not as good as men. I guess it kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense that they would do that. Um, if it
Speaker 1: happens to a guy, you're like, well, obviously, like why
Speaker 1: would you do that? You're part of the patriarchy. Why
Speaker 1: would you, Like you're supposed to exert power over women?
Speaker 1: What is wrong with you for not wanting that? Like
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of other like patriarchal stuff going on,
Speaker 1: and like why they focused on that Also because they
Speaker 1: undeniably find lesbians attractives, like they can't like they can't
Speaker 1: help but find it hot. So they definitely focus it
Speaker 1: more on gay men because they find that more gross
Speaker 1: because it is like a defiance of patriarchy in like
Speaker 1: a different way you but stuff. Yeah, and of course,
Speaker 1: but um well and I think also this is the
Speaker 1: same reason why transmisogyny becomes such a huge sort of
Speaker 1: driver fanti transmove because you know, I mean you see
Speaker 1: this a lot also with we see with non Christian
Speaker 1: like transforms too. But like the ultimate sin you can
Speaker 1: commit if if if you if you're a person is
Speaker 1: if like, yeah, the ultimate sin you can commit against
Speaker 1: sort of the family is having someone who being born
Speaker 1: and being seen as a man and then you know,
Speaker 1: becoming a woman a woman, and that's like that's you
Speaker 1: know that, that's that's what trans misogyny is, right, It's
Speaker 1: it's about it's it's the specific kind of trans sexist
Speaker 1: trans sexism that you get when you do that, when
Speaker 1: you specifically like you know, in in these people's eyes,
Speaker 1: it's like you give up being a man and become
Speaker 1: a woman. And these they go ballistic over this because
Speaker 1: it's you know, like it's it's it's it's it's rejection
Speaker 1: to patriarchal power. And then you know, and they have
Speaker 1: to do all of this sort of like incredible pathologizing
Speaker 1: to explain why this would happen and ignore just like
Speaker 1: this person was always a woman. That's you know, also
Speaker 1: like it's it's a condemnation of your misogyny, in your
Speaker 1: misogynistic behavior to like go join you know, the victims
Speaker 1: of our hate. So like it has all of these
Speaker 1: these layers here. Yeah, and it's gonna we're gonna get
Speaker 1: like right right right into trend stuff now because yeah,
Speaker 1: in Supreme Court ruling making the same sexual marriage illegal
Speaker 1: throughout the United States, which sent LGBT anti LGBT hate
Speaker 1: groups into a furious reaction. Um, Family Family Research Council
Speaker 1: was no exception, and it started working in tandem with
Speaker 1: other groups to support so called kind of religious liberty,
Speaker 1: you know, laws which allowed people who object to same
Speaker 1: sex to same sex like couples and just you know,
Speaker 1: queerness in general, to to deny goods and services to
Speaker 1: same sex couples and just you know, queer people in general.
Speaker 1: It is it is very like nonspecific um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: also in Family Research Council faced its own set of scandals.
Speaker 1: Referring to a friend of the pod Josh jugger Um
Speaker 1: was executive who was executive director of the Family Research
Speaker 1: Council action um political arm of the organization. It was
Speaker 1: obviously revealed that he had molested several save the babies
Speaker 1: to your hard drive, several children And yeah, I had
Speaker 1: a lot of had a lot of children on his
Speaker 1: hard drives so much that like even like the FBI
Speaker 1: was kind of surprised how much he had. Like when
Speaker 1: when when the FBI is surprised on how much child
Speaker 1: porn you have, You're like, quite, yeah, you are? You
Speaker 1: are when you surprised them? Have you have you read
Speaker 1: his his appeal? I have not read. It's basically making
Speaker 1: it out to be like there was this other guy
Speaker 1: who had access to that computer. Was his name Josh Tucker. No,
Speaker 1: it's deciding, you're just like he's just like somebody else
Speaker 1: probably did it. It wasn't me. Yeah. So he resigned
Speaker 1: from Family Research Council after posting a brief message on
Speaker 1: his website saying that he resigned after events public. I
Speaker 1: think he resigned for a Family Research Council because of
Speaker 1: the Ashley Madison Yes, well, yeah, he resigned. Listing listed
Speaker 1: listing concerning events as the recent he stopped Ashley Madison
Speaker 1: accounts got hacked and leaked and it was revealing his
Speaker 1: email was also on there. Yes, yeah, yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like that's what we kicked it off. But that was
Speaker 1: around the time that was he didn't get Yeah, his
Speaker 1: sister's case got released to the press. It is it
Speaker 1: is frustrating, how Yeah. Definitely the actually Madison thing was
Speaker 1: seen as more of a moral failing than molestian children
Speaker 1: um and having tons of child porn. That was definitely
Speaker 1: like within like the church and within within the kind
Speaker 1: of the whole like like church like network. The actually
Speaker 1: Madison thing was seen as much more of a kind
Speaker 1: of like an egregious sin. Well, because that's infidelity and
Speaker 1: that's just like that destroys the entire you know, nuclear family,
Speaker 1: whereas molesting your siblings is just boys doing waste stuff. See,
Speaker 1: I I grew up a boy, and I never I
Speaker 1: never did that. I kind of whether they never did
Speaker 1: that either. So anyway, uh, any real boys right in
Speaker 1: and let us know this back to back to Perkins
Speaker 1: um the Perkins was elected head chair of the U
Speaker 1: S Commission on International Religious Freedom um IN, which was
Speaker 1: an independent, bipartisan and federal government entity established by US
Speaker 1: Congress to monitor, analyze, and report on threats to religious freedom.
Speaker 1: So who sponsored that fucking bill? That's a good question. Uh.
Speaker 1: Over the course of this time, he continued to work
Speaker 1: at the Family Research Council as well UM, including the
Speaker 1: annual Family Research un SOL sponsored UH Values Voter Summit
Speaker 1: been to those which featured President Trump as a speaker
Speaker 1: UM as well as Healthy Human Services Secretary Alexaser. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this was the first time a sitting Health and Human
Speaker 1: Services secretary was addressed, like gave an address at at
Speaker 1: the gathering UM so. Also at VVS the Values Voter Summit,
Speaker 1: they featured an anti trans panel that illustrated the anti
Speaker 1: lgbt Q rights shift to kind of storytelling as a
Speaker 1: way to further marginalized trans people's and like next year,
Speaker 1: oh god, the the panel hosted like a multiple kind
Speaker 1: of anti transactivists. Um Lynn Mager was there. Um two
Speaker 1: of Maker's children in entify his trans and they no
Speaker 1: longer speak to her. Um. Andre van Mole, the co
Speaker 1: chairman Anti lgbt Hate group of the American College of
Speaker 1: Ediatricians Committee on Adolescent Sexuality, used to use like suico
Speaker 1: scientific claims, telling the audience that the that that dissidence
Speaker 1: from gender dysphoria is the norm, calling that they use
Speaker 1: this weird problematic study that LEMPT, like that limpt trans
Speaker 1: kids together with non trans kids to study this idea
Speaker 1: of gender identity. It's a whole bunch of like the
Speaker 1: same like you know how like they were like over
Speaker 1: two thousands they were they were misusing like research to
Speaker 1: say like, oh, look, how all of these gay people
Speaker 1: are all also all pedophiles. Also they have sex with
Speaker 1: kids more often than adults. Like what, No, it's it's
Speaker 1: the same, It's this, it's the same type of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: They also me the false claim that the majority of
Speaker 1: trans kids are also like a diagnosed with autism um,
Speaker 1: which makes it easier for them to be recruited into
Speaker 1: being transgender because they can be tricked because they're autistic.
Speaker 1: You can collect them all. This is like the they
Speaker 1: then diagram of autism causema vaccines is causing trans kids.
Speaker 1: Also also the idea that like trans affirming care causes
Speaker 1: or dysphoria, which causes more suicide, as opposed to the
Speaker 1: scientific reasoning that affirming care causes less dysphoria, which causes
Speaker 1: less suicide. Um, you know, a whole bunch of a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of nonsense stuff feature. You can't expect a
Speaker 1: group that will not acknowledge the fact that having access
Speaker 1: to birth control as a way to prevent abortions would
Speaker 1: acknowledge any of this is real either. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: mean The Pedal also featured Cathy Grace Duncan from from
Speaker 1: the Portland, Oregon based Portland Fellowship, which states that it
Speaker 1: offers a freedom to people from homosexuality. UM. Duncan claims
Speaker 1: that she detransitioned and is proof that transitioning is always
Speaker 1: wrong because that she de transitions. That means it's proof
Speaker 1: for everybody that everybody should yes, because trans people are
Speaker 1: a monolith. Yeah, we're talking more about We're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking more about, um, the sort of how how people
Speaker 1: who do transition get weaponized against trans people. And again
Speaker 1: I also I also need to point out, like you
Speaker 1: just immediately that like most people who do transition, detransition
Speaker 1: because they are under immense social pressure too, because society
Speaker 1: is normously transphobic. And then there are a small number
Speaker 1: of people who do treat who do treat de transition
Speaker 1: because it's not for them and good for them. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they get a very various small minority of those people
Speaker 1: basically get used by people who don't care about them.
Speaker 1: Other people get gender firming surgeries and change their minds
Speaker 1: about it later. There's this whole movement of you know,
Speaker 1: women who are getting their breast implants removed. What's the difference.
Speaker 1: It's the same picture, Yeah, same picture. Sure. Another really
Speaker 1: fun another fun thing I do at least once a
Speaker 1: year as I go onto the focus on the Family
Speaker 1: and Family Research Council websites and that look at look
Speaker 1: at their entire like queer section. That's really interesting because
Speaker 1: like all of them around like gay people like is
Speaker 1: is my kid gay? What to do? What to do
Speaker 1: with my kids? Gay? Is my is my kids showing
Speaker 1: gay symptoms? Like all the stuff, and then post it's
Speaker 1: all like a gender issue, you know, the cult of
Speaker 1: people trying to get your kid to become trans? Is
Speaker 1: my kid trans? Why is my kid dressing up in
Speaker 1: girls clothes? It's like it's it's such a it's such
Speaker 1: an immediate shift to know if your kid is texing
Speaker 1: transhit all of this homosexual like fear stuff to immediately
Speaker 1: being scared about, like the agenda identity kind of movement,
Speaker 1: and like the cult of transgenderism. Um, yeah, it is,
Speaker 1: it is. It is such a stark, stark change. Heritage
Speaker 1: Foundation website is the same. I licked up when they
Speaker 1: added their gender page, and it was in twenty seven, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: That was when they started going after trans things that
Speaker 1: the only thing was like, oh well, it's actually okay
Speaker 1: that there's a pay gap between men and women. In seventeen,
Speaker 1: they were like trans From eighteen, you see a massive
Speaker 1: explosion in all of these in all of these like
Speaker 1: stuff about trans and like trans science, whether it be
Speaker 1: like the whether it be like the answers in Genesis,
Speaker 1: whether it be focused with the family, whether it be
Speaker 1: because the Heritage Foundation, all of this stuff. You can watch,
Speaker 1: you watch an immediate shift in the type of stuff
Speaker 1: that they start talking about. I will just say I
Speaker 1: am a little glad they're doing it, not for reasons
Speaker 1: you think, but because this means that they're their kids
Speaker 1: growing up like we grew up, who know that this
Speaker 1: is an option now? Whereas like that is true, we
Speaker 1: didn't know that it was an option until we got out.
Speaker 1: Yeah is it's yeah, But you can see the kind
Speaker 1: of the switch and stuff. There's a in the in
Speaker 1: a family Research Council pamphlet written by Peter Sprague called
Speaker 1: how to Respond to the LGBTQ Movement Publish. People with
Speaker 1: gender dysphoria or transgender identities are more likely than the
Speaker 1: general population to engage in high risk behaviors, which may
Speaker 1: contribute to psychological disorders or both. The suicide exists among
Speaker 1: those who have already received gender resignment surgery, which exists
Speaker 1: to a siddle tendencies results in an underlying pathology. The
Speaker 1: same people write the script of euphor you but yeah,
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff around like Tom Perkins, Peter Sprig.
Speaker 1: If you just look at all of this stuff, it's um,
Speaker 1: this is such a such an explosion. Uh. Tony Perkins
Speaker 1: wrote a pamphlet called I Have a Girl Brain but
Speaker 1: a boy body, um for for for a Virginia kindergarteners
Speaker 1: like a transgender story thing that he was doing around
Speaker 1: thing For years. Lgbt Q activists wanted to keep the
Speaker 1: goal of luring children into sexual confusion under wraps. But
Speaker 1: now that they've hood winked a lot of the country
Speaker 1: on their agenda, these extremists no longer have to hide.
Speaker 1: In fact, they're increasingly bold and even boastful about their
Speaker 1: real intentions of recruiting kids. So in terms of like
Speaker 1: again it's it's it is and it is an infection.
Speaker 1: It's a contagion that they're trying to like infect or
Speaker 1: recruit children. Um and again, all of that kind of
Speaker 1: rhetoric is in a post like in a in like
Speaker 1: a in a pamphlet call you know about about trans
Speaker 1: about being trans thaying I have a girl brain but
Speaker 1: in a boy body. It's like the fact that they
Speaker 1: the Fredwick is happening, it is going to it's gonna
Speaker 1: convince kids that they fall prey to it. Like it's
Speaker 1: this whole, this whole thing that is such a such
Speaker 1: a marked kind of change. Um. You can read, you know.
Speaker 1: The other titles include stuff like the regressive cult of Transgenderism. Um,
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff talking about our country understands
Speaker 1: that scientology is a cult, but we don't seem to
Speaker 1: understand is how the much, how much the transition, how
Speaker 1: much the transgender movement mirrors cults like scientology. It's it's
Speaker 1: all of it's all of the same, it's all of
Speaker 1: the same stuff. And the transgender cult is a cult.
Speaker 1: It's the best cult I've been in yet rates like
Speaker 1: I I feel like we need to nobody will give
Speaker 1: me sh I can. I can stop doing my weekly
Speaker 1: injections whenever I want to, and you won't. You won't
Speaker 1: lose your friends, No, I will not. So anyway, not
Speaker 1: at any point, that was kind of the bulk of
Speaker 1: stuff I had gathered around, specifically talking about kind of
Speaker 1: family family, we uch council and how you know, the
Speaker 1: change happened around from all of the stuff around you know,
Speaker 1: protecting marriage equality, protecting you know, the psychety of marriage
Speaker 1: to changing It's like it's the same save the children rhetoric,
Speaker 1: but now shifted over to gender issues, I mean, the
Speaker 1: window because they can't win on the gay issue anymore,
Speaker 1: so they've just got to keep pushing in that direction.
Speaker 1: But it's the same organizing forces. It's the same organizations,
Speaker 1: it's the same mailing lists, it's the same pamphlets, it's
Speaker 1: the same writers, right, it's all the people who wrote
Speaker 1: all the same stuff, just moving it over to trans things.
Speaker 1: So I just wanted to kind of lay this groundwork
Speaker 1: for us when we when we talk about kind of
Speaker 1: the ongoing legislative fight against trans people in these next
Speaker 1: few episodes. I just wanted to kind of lay this
Speaker 1: out for an example of talking about Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: really just you know, there was all these fears around
Speaker 1: you know, gay people in the change rooms, gay people
Speaker 1: in the bathrooms just gets shifted over to trans people
Speaker 1: in change rooms, trans people in the bathrooms. It's just this,
Speaker 1: it's the just moving. It's just this like this running
Speaker 1: of the clock that just shifts it over to the
Speaker 1: transgender o' clock. I don't know what before, but it's
Speaker 1: easier to like to pull parental. Right, stuff is on
Speaker 1: the rise in the in this community as a talking point,
Speaker 1: and it's always easier to pull that in with trans
Speaker 1: issues than it is with gay issues. Yes, well I
Speaker 1: think that we are running out of time. But even Curan,
Speaker 1: where can people find you online? Our podcast is the
Speaker 1: Kitchen Table Cults. You can find it at Kitchen Table
Speaker 1: cult dot com. Um our handle on Twitter is kitchen
Speaker 1: could Pod. I'm at blue Pep Boy on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: I'm at even Underscore at ginger um. I would also recommend, like,
Speaker 1: if you want to have a like you know, trans
Speaker 1: authors take on the transition. The novel De transition Baby
Speaker 1: is out there, It exists, is again one person's takes.
Speaker 1: It's not a monolithic thing, but it's a it's a
Speaker 1: good novel. Um. And then if you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about the effects of the deconversion therapy universe, UM,
Speaker 1: Gary Conley's book Boy Race is fucking great. Yep, agreed. Um.
Speaker 1: I always want to thank you both for coming on
Speaker 1: to talk about again one of one of the most
Speaker 1: fun topics. Our favorite people near and dear to near
Speaker 1: and dear to all of our hearts with featuring friends
Speaker 1: of the pod James Dobson and his urge to take
Speaker 1: his kids in the shower with them to compare penises,
Speaker 1: and our good friend Josh Dogger. Um, Save save the children.
Speaker 1: Not like that? That all right, that's the That's the episode.
Speaker 1: Welcome Deck could happen here a podcast about the war
Speaker 1: against trans people. I'm your host, Christopher Wong. In February,
Speaker 1: a camp of indigenous and ecological protesters attempting to stop
Speaker 1: the Thacker past lithium mine in Nevada was thrown into
Speaker 1: chaos over an unexpected issue, transphobia. Two of the camp activists,
Speaker 1: including a man who had volunteered to act as an
Speaker 1: attorney for the group, revealed to be members of another
Speaker 1: organization called Deep Green Resistance or DGR. Nominally, Deep Green
Speaker 1: Resistance is an ecological organization dedicated to destroying industrial society
Speaker 1: to preserve the environment through promoting the destruction of dams
Speaker 1: and other infrastructure. Deep Green Resistance found little success on
Speaker 1: this front, but they have been much more successful in
Speaker 1: spreading the other core of their ideology, miligiant, ruthless and
Speaker 1: fanatical transphobia. When the Indigenous protesters at Thacker Pass discovered
Speaker 1: the twos membership in DGR and the result in transphobia,
Speaker 1: they were furious. Falk the DGR lawyer who had offered
Speaker 1: to represent the protesters, was kicked off the case, and
Speaker 1: the presence of the two d g R members was
Speaker 1: used by Lithium America as a weapon against the protesters.
Speaker 1: This is a familiar cycle for Deep Green Resistance. Soon
Speaker 1: afterwards founding in two thousand eleven, the group fully embraced
Speaker 1: radical feminism, staking out a position in an old debate
Speaker 1: inside the feminist movement raging since the nineteen seventies over
Speaker 1: whether trans women are in fact women. These feminists, I
Speaker 1: used the term loosely here became known as trans exclusionary.
Speaker 1: Radical feminists or turfs through heroes were people like Janis Raymond,
Speaker 1: author of the vehemently transphobics Greed the Transsexual Empire. Raymond,
Speaker 1: whose BaFL influence will return to next episode, was largely
Speaker 1: ran out of the mainstream American feminist movement with the
Speaker 1: rest of her turf companions. A similar fate would befall
Speaker 1: Deep Green Resistance. Ecological activists in groups like Earth First,
Speaker 1: Green Peace, the i w W, and the Broader Green
Speaker 1: Anarchist Movement. Cists and trans alike ran d g R
Speaker 1: out of the ecological left for the transphobia, and waged
Speaker 1: an incredibly successful no platforming campaign against d g r's founders,
Speaker 1: Derek jens in In Leary Keith. Driven from the left
Speaker 1: so thoroughly they were reduced to slinking into protest camps
Speaker 1: in secret, only to be expelled upon discovery. Members of
Speaker 1: Deep Groom Resistance moved right and increasingly to other countries
Speaker 1: to seek an audience for the transphobic bile. Leary Keith
Speaker 1: founded a turf organization called the Women's Liberation Front or WOLF.
Speaker 1: More on them later. This brings us a turf extraordinaire,
Speaker 1: Jennifer Billock Black could have been a member of Deep
Speaker 1: Groom Resistance in charge of booking appearances for Derrick Jensen.
Speaker 1: The success of indow platform in campaign waged by the
Speaker 1: left confessor that trans people were secretly backed by a
Speaker 1: conspiracy of billionaires. This idea spread like wildfire across the UK,
Speaker 1: and as well discussed next episode Mexico. To understand what
Speaker 1: happened in the UK, we spoke with Krista Peterson, a
Speaker 1: graduate student at USC who, at significant personal cost, confronted
Speaker 1: the rise and spread of transphobia and the English speaking world. Krista,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show and thank you for joining us. Hi,
Speaker 1: thank you. I guess wanted to start with Jennifer Billick
Speaker 1: and talking a bit about how how she sort of
Speaker 1: moved into increasingly increasingly transpoblic territory and I guess how
Speaker 1: she started moving into the sort of follow the money
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories that she's been peddling for the past several
Speaker 1: years now. Yeah, So I give you her narrative of
Speaker 1: this UM, which is that in two thousand thirteen, I
Speaker 1: think she was supposed to be on a panel UM
Speaker 1: about big trans people UM that was canceled because of
Speaker 1: pushback UM and then because of that, she thought what
Speaker 1: is the big force behind this and then got into
Speaker 1: it from there. UM. But she has really I think
Speaker 1: you know that Deep Green Resistance was kind of into
Speaker 1: UM focusing on trans people for a while. UM, but
Speaker 1: she really has gone from an environmental activist as someone
Speaker 1: who's just solely focused on dreads people. It's basically all
Speaker 1: she is ever talking about. UM, and she's kind of
Speaker 1: she started as opposing this kind of existential threat UM
Speaker 1: that was real, which was ecological destruction to collagon UM,
Speaker 1: and she has kind of maintained that tenor in the
Speaker 1: shift where now she's portraying this as an existential threat,
Speaker 1: but instead of climate change, it's transpeople. So the way
Speaker 1: she got into the money UM, she's just a very prolific,
Speaker 1: kind of at home researcher UM, and she kind of
Speaker 1: had this anti corporate mindset going in from her background,
Speaker 1: and she she produces a lot of research. There's not
Speaker 1: that many people in the gender critical movement probably producing
Speaker 1: a lot of original content, and so when someone is
Speaker 1: there's really they can get a lot of uptake from that. UM.
Speaker 1: Her mate her saying was it actually a federalist article
Speaker 1: about who are the rich white men institutionalizing transgender ideology. Um,
Speaker 1: and just by being a pretty big platform. I think
Speaker 1: that got some big initial distribution, and I think that
Speaker 1: was how people initially started seeing her kind of beyond
Speaker 1: the deep green resistance type audience. Yeah. No, I mean
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that that's been very interesting
Speaker 1: to be studying this is that you see this a lot.
Speaker 1: You see a lot of people who we're sort of
Speaker 1: run out of left by their transphobia, like pivoting really
Speaker 1: hard right and then using right wing media platforms and
Speaker 1: using sort of also writing political backing to start pushing
Speaker 1: this stuff. And I think, yeah, Bill looks interesting example
Speaker 1: to me, because yeah, she acs you're talking a bit
Speaker 1: about this moreman, she has this weird because she she
Speaker 1: has too weird and goal she has the weird trans
Speaker 1: humanism angle, and then she has this like incredibly like
Speaker 1: when becomes like an increasingly anti semitic angle. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: where she so she's following the money is the original thing?
Speaker 1: Where she follows the money too, is um, trans rights
Speaker 1: are a conspiracy to usher and trans humanism. Um. So
Speaker 1: her thing is she often says transgender is an ad
Speaker 1: campaign for trans humanism. This is a quote. To get
Speaker 1: people comfortable with actual emerging with machines slash air ai,
Speaker 1: there must be a complete dissociation for biological reality. So
Speaker 1: you see this a lot with conspiracy theories, I think,
Speaker 1: where you have this kind of like metaphorical goal, right,
Speaker 1: where it's all about getting people to dissociate from their bodies.
Speaker 1: It's like not very clear what that looks like when
Speaker 1: an actual causal level. Yeah, but that's that's the big goal, right, um,
Speaker 1: and then they need a big goal. It's there's kind
Speaker 1: of this mysterious part of this supposed conspiracy UM that
Speaker 1: is trans rights, which is like what is this for? Right?
Speaker 1: They lots of people now are accepting that there's like
Speaker 1: this big dark money push behind it, um, which raises
Speaker 1: the question why what what is this doing? Um? And
Speaker 1: the answers are kind of cookie right, So this one
Speaker 1: has caught on more than I would have expected. It's
Speaker 1: really weird. So they kind of walk into it slowly, right.
Speaker 1: They start off and it's they think there's something weird
Speaker 1: with trans rights, and they have it's very common for
Speaker 1: them to think that their opponents don't really believe their beliefs. Um,
Speaker 1: something is up and for some reason all these people
Speaker 1: are supporting trans rights. What they know it's bad that
Speaker 1: you need you need something to go in there to
Speaker 1: played why. And this is a narrative that fits with
Speaker 1: Billick's worldview. You know, you can see how some with
Speaker 1: her background would get here. It's kind of unusual for
Speaker 1: all these ladies from the UK now to believe that
Speaker 1: trans people are trans human conspiracy, but they needed something
Speaker 1: to go there as the goal they picked it up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I guess we should get into Mom's net
Speaker 1: a little bit because most that's a really weird, like
Speaker 1: specifically UK thing that I don't know if there's like
Speaker 1: there's not really an American equivalent to it, Like I
Speaker 1: guess it's like it's like it's like what if you
Speaker 1: took the worst parts of Facebook ends next door? I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about like what Mom's
Speaker 1: Net is and how this stuff sorted sorted seeping into it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this is part of this bigger question, which is
Speaker 1: like why in the UK has taken off so much
Speaker 1: in the way it has a big part of that
Speaker 1: story is moms That, which is a website for moms
Speaker 1: um to ask kind of parenting questions UM, and it's
Speaker 1: really widely used, I think, especially among this kind of
Speaker 1: like white, upper middle class educated population. A lot of
Speaker 1: people are on moms and it's kind of a trusted
Speaker 1: website for a lot of familial type things like advice
Speaker 1: about what to do when your kid has life, things
Speaker 1: like that, and Moms has become just like the main
Speaker 1: infection point I think in the gender critical movement that okay,
Speaker 1: with why it happens more generally, you have to look
Speaker 1: at it as kind of part of this global resurgence
Speaker 1: and fascism around the same time period. It's like the
Speaker 1: mids on UM, you know, like the most obvious instances
Speaker 1: of that have the kind of traditional fascist targets and ideals. UM.
Speaker 1: I think what's essential is this kind of logic that
Speaker 1: you really see in the gender critical movement also, which
Speaker 1: as you have this kind of background climate of anxiety
Speaker 1: and fear, then you get this narrative that's minorities are
Speaker 1: rising up against you. You've lost something, your identity used
Speaker 1: to give you a special status, and now they're taking
Speaker 1: it from you and you have to fight back. UM.
Speaker 1: And it's how they've kind of switched out, like what
Speaker 1: the big identity is who the minorities are, what the
Speaker 1: special status is with this more feminist thing. But it
Speaker 1: really does have that kind of internal logic in the
Speaker 1: same way. Um, And I think you just had this
Speaker 1: kind of moment globally where you have the kind of
Speaker 1: background emotional state that was ripe for fascism in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, and then this ideology was just infectious
Speaker 1: in that way. And then in Mom's night it was
Speaker 1: able to catch um and it really provided run it
Speaker 1: with this place where really grow uh into this kind
Speaker 1: of a waal demographic group or a kind of fascist moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there's there's there's an interesting I
Speaker 1: think there's The other interesting thing to me about it
Speaker 1: is like, I don't know, I've been thinking about this
Speaker 1: a lot in terms of, yeah, why why specifically the
Speaker 1: UK and why the US doesn't have this? And I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I mean, I guess one one
Speaker 1: explanation for it partly is like the US is so
Speaker 1: much more religious than the UK is and a lot
Speaker 1: of these people sort of would have been evangelicals in
Speaker 1: like in the US. But but yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: months that angles interesting to me in that it really
Speaker 1: seems like because there's so few people publishing anything that's
Speaker 1: even remotely tangible, like a very very small number of
Speaker 1: actors were able to very quickly radicalize people. And I think,
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I think it's interesting that like
Speaker 1: like people like Jesse gall like I think, wind up
Speaker 1: being much more influential in the UK than they are
Speaker 1: in the U s even so they're getting sort of
Speaker 1: published in these US publications because there's sort of I
Speaker 1: don't know, I guess there's there's this like hunger for
Speaker 1: it on Mom's naight, like for for anything that sort
Speaker 1: of supports his world view in a way that there's
Speaker 1: kind of wasn't in the US. I think part of why,
Speaker 1: like the y UK question, there's some part of it
Speaker 1: that's just kind of by chance moms that existed was
Speaker 1: a place where it could really take off. But I
Speaker 1: think also to some extent, like you're aldic to think
Speaker 1: kind of part of the relevant group in the US
Speaker 1: is like a little more inoculated against this stuff. I
Speaker 1: mean that it doesn't really have the same initial appeal
Speaker 1: among women who would like to contrue construe themselves as
Speaker 1: feminists because many many Americans see anti trend stuff and
Speaker 1: immediately um connected to like the religious right, So it
Speaker 1: doesn't you don't really get the initial way into it
Speaker 1: where you know, you come across this thing presenting transpeople
Speaker 1: as encroaching on your space and taking something from you,
Speaker 1: and for us, we see that and it's like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: bathroom bill laws really just had this a few years
Speaker 1: ago and it was this right wing religious thing. We
Speaker 1: know what this is. The UK has kind of had
Speaker 1: a more prominent turf act division for a little while
Speaker 1: in that Julie Bendel kind of long ben a thing there,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't really catching in the same way it
Speaker 1: is now really caught. Yeah, I guess, I mean, what
Speaker 1: are the other things that I was talking I had
Speaker 1: an interesting conversation that sadly didn't wind up getting recorded,
Speaker 1: but I was talking with some Mexican feminists, like trans
Speaker 1: feminist about this, and one of the things they were
Speaker 1: saying was the way like talking about the way like
Speaker 1: intersectionality is a framework and the fact that there was
Speaker 1: there was an incredibly strong black feminist current in the
Speaker 1: US insulated like the main line of of American feminism
Speaker 1: from this stuff in a way that didn't really happen
Speaker 1: in the UK because like the black feminist movement there
Speaker 1: is just not as strong and not as sort of mainstream,
Speaker 1: and that has this knock on effect. I guess we're
Speaker 1: like you get you know, without an intersectionality framework, is
Speaker 1: it's easier to have this sort of like totalizing like
Speaker 1: identity of like the woman as like a thing that's
Speaker 1: just one object that you can like pin down to
Speaker 1: biological barkers, instead of having to sort of like look
Speaker 1: at all of the different actual relations that are going on. Yes,
Speaker 1: so my read on them is that most of them
Speaker 1: are not really we're not pre existing feminists. There are
Speaker 1: not people who are very interested in women's rights. And
Speaker 1: then kind of took this turn and my pressures that
Speaker 1: they're largely people who really started identifying as feminists once
Speaker 1: that that could be a guys to kind of taking
Speaker 1: things out on trans people. Um, and I think probably
Speaker 1: why it was able to get so big on Mom's Net.
Speaker 1: So eventually the women's rights for my Mom's Net, which
Speaker 1: is just one of those subboards, in addition to all
Speaker 1: the childcare stuff, just became almost all anti trans stuff.
Speaker 1: And so that is partially this stuff was popular, but
Speaker 1: I also I think that you know, normal mainstream feminist
Speaker 1: stuff wasn't as popular and they weren't getting a lot
Speaker 1: of engagement on normal important feminist issues, um, and instead
Speaker 1: this was what their user base was really going for.
Speaker 1: It's really striking, I think how those exceptions, um. But
Speaker 1: in general, the big gender critical people talk very very
Speaker 1: little about all feminist issues, like this is the thing
Speaker 1: they care about always all the time. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: definitely a pattern. What turfs. So it's like yeah, once once,
Speaker 1: once you're a turf, like this is the only thing
Speaker 1: you care about, Like don't you don't do Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess like one of one of the we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about this in the next episode, but one of
Speaker 1: the sort of big like flagship things in in like
Speaker 1: with the UK and Ireland, was like a bunch of
Speaker 1: the Turfs getting extremely mad at the at at these end,
Speaker 1: at the at the pro like at the pro abortion
Speaker 1: activists in UH in Ireland because they weren't being Turfs,
Speaker 1: and so the other the Turfs were like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: we're gonna like try to sabotage this, the actual feminist
Speaker 1: movement trying to get access to abortions because we're turfs
Speaker 1: and they're not. Yeah, they could be really devidictive against
Speaker 1: women who they say are like selling out women's rights
Speaker 1: by focusing on anything other than the tiny present of
Speaker 1: the population that is trans is v one issue you're
Speaker 1: allowed to focus on and if you say, like no,
Speaker 1: please please leave us alone, we're focusing on something else.
Speaker 1: Really do not think that wom I guess the everything
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask about was because I think the
Speaker 1: everything that happened in the UK that only really started
Speaker 1: happening in the US like pretty recently, and even then
Speaker 1: was kind of like it was an event in like
Speaker 1: a way that I don't know how much it was
Speaker 1: in the UK. Is the extent to which like people
Speaker 1: like J. K Rowling and like the sort of the
Speaker 1: sort of mainstream of British famous people and like the
Speaker 1: British British journalists stuff like that like like start started
Speaker 1: rallying around this stuff. Yeah, this is It's been wild
Speaker 1: for me seeing I don't think super highly of the
Speaker 1: American media, but seeing how much worse the British media
Speaker 1: is really will they just have been publishing stuff things
Speaker 1: like The Times of London have been the worst, with
Speaker 1: more conservative Eletto especially bad. But even you know, like
Speaker 1: the Guardian was in some BBC since some uh, these
Speaker 1: things are just kind of like demonstrably false coverage of
Speaker 1: transmit stuff that just gives a lot of credence to
Speaker 1: this transphobic movement. UM. It's kind of this like near
Speaker 1: blackout of in serious consideration of what trans people are
Speaker 1: experiencing UM and what their actual position on this stuff is.
Speaker 1: It's just really grim. I think I think part of
Speaker 1: it is maybe that moms that did have this reach
Speaker 1: to a lot of people who are like professionals. Their
Speaker 1: audience is pretty professional, and it was it's kind of
Speaker 1: trusted website where this guy normalized a lot. The last
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to talk about before UM we go
Speaker 1: to break is do you want to talk about Kathleen
Speaker 1: Stock and that whole thing a little bit? Yes, Okay,
Speaker 1: Also we should talk about um we should connect Billick too.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah, yeah, we should. We should do that first. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that is there was, you know moms that started UM.
Speaker 1: I think the initial narrative was kind of trans people
Speaker 1: are being really unreasonable, they're really demanding, they're infringing on
Speaker 1: our status. This is the thing that was more localized
Speaker 1: about this group that was easy to cast as unreasonable, um,
Speaker 1: and they were able to take kind of a victim's
Speaker 1: stance relative to them. And then it just kind of
Speaker 1: kept estialating, right, it just kind of fiction it too,
Speaker 1: more and more of this kind of content, and then
Speaker 1: eventually there, Yeah, there really was a great site, this
Speaker 1: kind of anti trans content, and it just got increasingly conspiratorial.
Speaker 1: I think so people at this point, I think almost
Speaker 1: everyone in the gender court movement thinks that there's dark
Speaker 1: money behind trans rights. They think it's like some kind
Speaker 1: of AstroTurf movement for who knows what. Lots of them
Speaker 1: will say the goal is like selling you know, hormones
Speaker 1: and surgery to people. What it's funding, you know, a
Speaker 1: global conspiracy. It's like pretty expensive and how it's like
Speaker 1: the most plausible way to get an audience for this
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Um. But Jennifer Billick is what a
Speaker 1: relatively few people get doing this kind of deep research. Um.
Speaker 1: And so it's just kind of kind of the kind
Speaker 1: of thing they were looking for. And they have pretty
Speaker 1: minimal bullshit filters about what they're willing to see. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just pretty rare that they we'll see a source
Speaker 1: that seems to be on their side and be like, no,
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with us UM. And so she increasingly
Speaker 1: got fans and a lot of people hear her stuff secondhand.
Speaker 1: I think they're not directivating her, but people are repeating
Speaker 1: her on so much of her stuff now is part
Speaker 1: of the just the background of this movement. Like there's
Speaker 1: this woman, Martin rothblatt Um who's it's kind of a
Speaker 1: random rich woman who was she was involved in kind
Speaker 1: of early trans rights activism UM, and I kind of
Speaker 1: moved on and got interested in trans humanism stuff instead.
Speaker 1: She's like kind of a stratulating um and she is
Speaker 1: interested in trans humanism stuff and rich um and is
Speaker 1: not the architect of the Transferts movement. But now you know,
Speaker 1: they just all I think that this person has central
Speaker 1: role UM and when you see them talking about her,
Speaker 1: it is Jennifer Billick's influence. And they just don't have
Speaker 1: they're they just don't have many defenses against kind of
Speaker 1: increasingly radicalized stuff. And when I started kind of looking
Speaker 1: into Jennifer and I started seeing her and get you know,
Speaker 1: when you see people talking about a conspiracy of people
Speaker 1: like George Soros, Jennifer Printsker Jewish. Roth Blatt is also Jewish.
Speaker 1: There there's a red flag and in conspiracy spaces just
Speaker 1: kind of tends towards anti Semitism if you're not on
Speaker 1: the lookout for and if you're not defend against it.
Speaker 1: And billicks not and she has gotten increasingly into anti
Speaker 1: Semitic side of things, um, up to the point where
Speaker 1: she was boosting Heath Woods, who is just a Nazi
Speaker 1: his content that was largely inspired by her work UM
Speaker 1: about the Jews behind the transgender movement UM and just
Speaker 1: taking kind of going from its kind of non explicit
Speaker 1: anti Semitic conspiracy theory where you have this group of
Speaker 1: people who happened to be largely filled with Jewish people
Speaker 1: kind of orchestrating this global conspiracy to explicitly naming the
Speaker 1: Jew and saying no, this is a Jewish movement um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and she just like followed it all the way. UM.
Speaker 1: And there was some I started making a big deal
Speaker 1: about this, you know, there was some pushback from the
Speaker 1: general critical movement UM, but largely and they think I'm
Speaker 1: like a bad faith acting right on the enemy. It's
Speaker 1: they're not gonna take anything I say really seriously. Um,
Speaker 1: but also it was really struck by how some of
Speaker 1: them were arguing with me about this Keith Woods video
Speaker 1: that was, you know, about how this was just a
Speaker 1: Jewish pot and why the Jewish religion would inspire uses
Speaker 1: do something like this, and they say, no, this is
Speaker 1: an anti Semitic there's nothing you know, it's just it's
Speaker 1: very interesting it's about Judaism, because they already believed all
Speaker 1: the background stuff, right, they thought that there was in
Speaker 1: fact this conspiracy that's populated by people who happened to
Speaker 1: be Jewish, and so then when you take the explicit step,
Speaker 1: it's they're like, well, yeah, there's an interesting question, right,
Speaker 1: why are all these people Jewish interest going all the way.
Speaker 1: But it's just and yeah, it's just in general, the
Speaker 1: movement is just really not have good defenses against this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff at all. And yeah, this kind of
Speaker 1: conspiratorial stuff will take you there if you don't have
Speaker 1: defenses against it. It's just a very old road that
Speaker 1: comes in exactly that direction that is ready for you
Speaker 1: if you start getting into this stuff and aren't watching
Speaker 1: out for it. Yeah, all right, so lets let's let's
Speaker 1: let's let's let's talk about Kathleen Stock philosophies horror child.
Speaker 1: Oh no, so I need not just Kathleen, but you have.
Speaker 1: One of the things that is noteworthy about the movement
Speaker 1: I think is you have these this unusual prominence of academics,
Speaker 1: one of them being Kathleen Stock, maybe the most prominent
Speaker 1: being Kathleen Stock UM, but also like Rosa Freeman and
Speaker 1: Selena's hod and you have this kind of academic face
Speaker 1: of it. And it's very interesting I think how that
Speaker 1: works UM, and that these people are in generally not
Speaker 1: doing kind of substantive research on anything related to this UM. Instead,
Speaker 1: what I see is, you know, stuff starts out in
Speaker 1: the community. UM. It's like on mom's dad, it's on Twitter,
Speaker 1: and then Kathleen Stock picks it up, right, She is
Speaker 1: getting her stuff kind of from mom's dad and stuff,
Speaker 1: and then just legitimizing it. Right. It's like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is what these fancy professors think. And then centrally their
Speaker 1: role is claiming that there are all these serious issues
Speaker 1: on the basis of their academic status UM and saying
Speaker 1: that trans people aren't willing to discuss it. You know,
Speaker 1: trans people are shutting down debate, they're being silenced, and
Speaker 1: it gives it this legitimacy that the movement I think
Speaker 1: really capitalizes on. Yeah, which I think with Stock in particular.
Speaker 1: You know there part part of what's happening is like
Speaker 1: the anti transsequent kind of like moves between different conservative
Speaker 1: panics and so like like the bottom one, they're on
Speaker 1: the stay of the children panic. But when Stock was
Speaker 1: sort of like getting big and you can see this
Speaker 1: with the end of a career arc uh She'll get
Speaker 1: to in a second. But she was big on the
Speaker 1: whole sort of like like conservative callus canceled, like college
Speaker 1: free speech crisis, like can I guess sort of cancer
Speaker 1: culture also, But yeah, she was really big on the
Speaker 1: on the whole, like, yeah, the conservatives are being silence
Speaker 1: or like not even sort of like I think she
Speaker 1: was kind of doing the like liberal centrist thing, but
Speaker 1: but she was. Yeah, she she was doing all these
Speaker 1: censorship claims and then turning around and just actually censor people. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gave a talk at Sussex cathletex University that I
Speaker 1: believe she tried to have canceled. Come on. It was
Speaker 1: just kind of interesting rix. I. Initially this talk was
Speaker 1: kind of scheduled as a protest at the same time
Speaker 1: as one of her as talks she was going to
Speaker 1: give on a related topic, um, and then she canceled
Speaker 1: her talk. So I thought she might come to mind, right,
Speaker 1: like free to bay, like ask me questions, and I
Speaker 1: was like okay, but of course she didn't, right Instead, See,
Speaker 1: I tried to just get it shut down. But I
Speaker 1: think this is Yeah, it's one kind of the cancel
Speaker 1: culture thing is kind of one element, but I think
Speaker 1: it's really central and a lot of their stuff, um,
Speaker 1: and that the kind of in the background of other
Speaker 1: stuff is like you know, somehow the consensus has been controlled,
Speaker 1: and like it's the result of like the truth not
Speaker 1: being heard and people not considering all these important things
Speaker 1: that they need to consider, kind of from care for
Speaker 1: trans youth too, you know, trans woman being able to
Speaker 1: use the bathroom. Kind of across all this, they're running
Speaker 1: this narrative that the truth has been silenced and you know,
Speaker 1: trans people are being unreasonable and have shut it down.
Speaker 1: I think that is like pretty foundational. And the other
Speaker 1: overall narrative they've built, yeah, and and it and you
Speaker 1: see this as like this is one of the ways
Speaker 1: they try to I guess rest the batchful of authority
Speaker 1: back from literally every actual medical group who all agree
Speaker 1: that you should actually let kids transition and you should
Speaker 1: let adults transition, and that this is in fact good
Speaker 1: and like a thing that medically is is like and
Speaker 1: then like I said, yeah, I mean this isn't this
Speaker 1: is a huge deal. But so, like Catholt Sog is
Speaker 1: a philosopher, right, and so she started off her first
Speaker 1: thing was, like, something is a funt in academic philosophy.
Speaker 1: You know, academic philosophers aren't debating whether trans women or
Speaker 1: women in the way that they should. This idea that
Speaker 1: the debates being silenced in philosophy, you know, like doesn't
Speaker 1: have really important consequences. I think the idea that like
Speaker 1: all of mainstream research on trans healthcare and like what
Speaker 1: is in the good in the best interests of trans
Speaker 1: kids being able to diligitimize that is really serious, right,
Speaker 1: that it just has these tremendous consequences. I think they've
Speaker 1: been able to be pretty effective on that too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's been really scary in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: because you see like the arguments of these people pioneered
Speaker 1: and the sort of the techniques and the groups that
Speaker 1: they're part of like wind up being core parts of
Speaker 1: the anti trans push in both the UK and the US.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's extremely scary. It's really scary. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just awful, like these are these are
Speaker 1: children and for them to become the focus of this
Speaker 1: kind of hate movement is just horrifying. And it's m
Speaker 1: just offen. The you know, the history of healthcare for
Speaker 1: general conforming kids is really grim, and its like they
Speaker 1: are just pushing to kind of go back there, and
Speaker 1: it's just ghastly. It's really horrifying to see. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess I think that's a that's a good point. We
Speaker 1: can Okay, this is probably should probably be the second
Speaker 1: AD break, But yeah, do you know what else is
Speaker 1: horrifying ads? And we're back? Um what one of the
Speaker 1: scariest parts I think of what was happening in the
Speaker 1: UK was the extent to which I mean not just
Speaker 1: mainstream British media gets involved in this, but I mean
Speaker 1: literally the BBC, which is which is the you know this,
Speaker 1: this is this is the state media organization right starts
Speaker 1: to just push unbelievably transphobic articles out as just regular contents. Um.
Speaker 1: I think I think the probably the most famous one
Speaker 1: is Yeah, in in October, BBC publishes this article that's
Speaker 1: called We're being pressured into sex by some trans women.
Speaker 1: That is just an just just an absolutely appalling display
Speaker 1: of of transphobia. Um. Yeah, can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that? And yeah, So the this article was
Speaker 1: framed around the question is a lesbian transphobic if she
Speaker 1: does not want to have sex with trans women? Some
Speaker 1: lesbians say they are increasingly being pressured and coerced into
Speaker 1: accepting trans women as partners. Um. And so the the
Speaker 1: over arching perspective in the piece that you get is
Speaker 1: that this is a significant problem among lesbians. They're experiencing
Speaker 1: sexual pressure from trans women. Um. The kind of reporting
Speaker 1: strategy that the reporter used was, you know, just soliciting
Speaker 1: this one kind of particular narrative from lesbians who said
Speaker 1: that they had had these kind of experiences with trans women. Um.
Speaker 1: The people who are quoted in the article who aren't
Speaker 1: anonymous are general critical people, right, They're like Rose of Don,
Speaker 1: Debbie Hayden. And then there's these anonymous women who we
Speaker 1: don't know who they are. Um, but it's not they
Speaker 1: didn't go and approach you know, normal mainstream lesbian activists
Speaker 1: or lesbian organizations to see like what they were experiencing
Speaker 1: the community, Right, there's kind of no perspective just from
Speaker 1: any kind of mainstream lesbian or relations at all. That
Speaker 1: that was one of the things that like sort of
Speaker 1: haunting about this, Like this journalist is working on this
Speaker 1: for age, like I think it was like and like
Speaker 1: like she was specifically trying to find this people, these
Speaker 1: people like people who like had to experienced a specific
Speaker 1: thing and like no normal but she couldn't find normal
Speaker 1: people because it's not a thing. And so she she
Speaker 1: after like many many years, she was able to find
Speaker 1: like a couple of examples, like a few examples and
Speaker 1: mostly from yeah, just open transpops. And the article is
Speaker 1: just like so conceptually sloppy that it doesn't distinguish, you know,
Speaker 1: theoretical discourse about whether you know, it's transphobic to just
Speaker 1: say out of hand you never date a trans woman.
Speaker 1: It doesn't distinguish this from sexual abuse. It just kind
Speaker 1: of takes for granted that they're just saying in kind
Speaker 1: of an abstract theoretical contact um that's some's like just
Speaker 1: saying that you won't ever sleep with a trans woman
Speaker 1: saying that that is transphobic is itself treated as akin
Speaker 1: to pressuring someone into sex, right like that. Yeah, journalism
Speaker 1: that doesn't distinguish between just a conversation about sexual issues
Speaker 1: and sexual abuse is just disastrous. There's just something serious
Speaker 1: about this piece, and it's just kind of throughout it
Speaker 1: it's just yeah, like like one of other things about
Speaker 1: this is so they found like a survey, right, the
Speaker 1: journalists went looking for a survey about like like what
Speaker 1: percentage of lesbians have like encountered this encountered this pressure,
Speaker 1: and the only thing they could find was, well, okay,
Speaker 1: the only thing they could find that would like support
Speaker 1: their actual claim was this this poll from this group
Speaker 1: called get Out the l which is just like a
Speaker 1: group that whose entire purpose is just being anti trans
Speaker 1: people and trying to get rid of them. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it was just it was just like it was it
Speaker 1: was like a Twitter poll, right, it was it was
Speaker 1: like they're they're they're publishing as as statistical evidence for
Speaker 1: their claim a Twitter poll from a from a turf
Speaker 1: group and trying to like claim this is serious journalism,
Speaker 1: and it's just yeah, I mean so literally, on the
Speaker 1: page of the statistic they cite in this report. The
Speaker 1: report approvingly cites Janice Raymond saying about all trans sexuals
Speaker 1: rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to
Speaker 1: an artifact. And so like, are we talking about metaphors
Speaker 1: here or are we talking about social abuse? It's just
Speaker 1: sick And so what of the people who was interviewed
Speaker 1: in this um was Lily Cade, who was an adult
Speaker 1: performer and again throughout this just a trans woman saying
Speaker 1: that the way someone is reading her in a sexual
Speaker 1: context is transphobic, is itself treated as sexually abusive? Um?
Speaker 1: So Lilly Cade, you know, she refused to think initially
Speaker 1: she refused to be in a scene with a trans woman.
Speaker 1: The later on also refused to m shoot a transpmant
Speaker 1: at all, um when she was working as a producer. Um.
Speaker 1: So they kind of get a quote from Lily you know,
Speaker 1: saying something about women being pressured into sex by trans woman.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that Lily Cade was pushed out
Speaker 1: of the adult industry because she's like a serial rapist. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is there source on whether this is problem
Speaker 1: for assist woman is herself as this woman who is
Speaker 1: a serial rapist, right, And they're using this person to
Speaker 1: portray trans woman is the victimizers, and it's just so grim. Yeah,
Speaker 1: most of it is just like haunting. Like one of
Speaker 1: the other things that came out was like part of
Speaker 1: the stories that they said that like no prominent trans
Speaker 1: women would speak with them for the story, and then
Speaker 1: a prominent trans woman was like, no, you guys interviewed me,
Speaker 1: and that didn't include it in the article. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: this was one of the people who literally Kate had
Speaker 1: had a conflict with, was Chelsea powe Um, another woman
Speaker 1: important who had asked if Lily Um she could work
Speaker 1: really his company, and Lily said no because she was trans.
Speaker 1: So they talked Chelsea was is it reasonably prominent person um?
Speaker 1: And they interviewed her, didn't include her in the article.
Speaker 1: She says that she told them that Lily had this
Speaker 1: predatory past. They also didn't say anything about that. And
Speaker 1: so we have the situation where we have this person
Speaker 1: who is this this woman who the author has been
Speaker 1: told is a serial sexual predator being presented as kind
Speaker 1: of an authority on women's sexual victimization supposedly by trans woman.
Speaker 1: She is the victimized and not only is she a
Speaker 1: serial sexual predator. But she's like specifically attacked people in bathrooms.
Speaker 1: But she's like the famous fearmongering transphobic thing is that
Speaker 1: trans people are going to attack you in the bathroom
Speaker 1: in the venus, your sources attack people in bathrooms, And
Speaker 1: there's just very little interest like how women are actually
Speaker 1: victimized and by who. Yeah, and I think like that
Speaker 1: that's amused to disturbing party. She's like, this isn't just
Speaker 1: like a negligency of reporting. Think here, this is just malice.
Speaker 1: Like if you are told anything, it's like it's not
Speaker 1: it's not like it was hard to like find out
Speaker 1: that that you know, it's okay, so someone someone tells
Speaker 1: you that someone else is an abusive, right, it's like okay,
Speaker 1: Like maybe you're a journalist, maybe you're going to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I should check this out. Like Lily Cage assaulted so
Speaker 1: many people and like rape so many people that like
Speaker 1: just scrolling through Twitter, I found multiple people who have
Speaker 1: been abused by her, Like this was this was not
Speaker 1: something that was like like she she'd admitted it in public.
Speaker 1: This is not something that was hard to find right,
Speaker 1: And and I just want to underline that, which is
Speaker 1: that Billy Kay. After these accusations really got going, she
Speaker 1: did like publicly and she did not deny, and then
Speaker 1: she retired from porn. Yeah, and and and you know,
Speaker 1: and this is something like the BBC does this, They
Speaker 1: do this weird backtracking at this article comes out and
Speaker 1: everyone gets exurely mad at them. But they refused to
Speaker 1: release the like the tape of the interview they had
Speaker 1: to with Chelsea Poe, which you know, would have proved
Speaker 1: that Chelsea Pope did in fact tell them that Lilli
Speaker 1: k was a rapist, and they published the story anyways,
Speaker 1: and there's there's so much of this stuff was like yeah,
Speaker 1: like the they the way they backtrack about it, the
Speaker 1: way that also like so the two places where this thing,
Speaker 1: the story ran was the BBC in Britain and they
Speaker 1: syndicated it out to Brazil and a few of the
Speaker 1: places that were like that are incredibly transphobic, and it
Speaker 1: ran like and just like right in Brazil, like ran
Speaker 1: as a bunch of mainstream news headlines like where like
Speaker 1: news stories and in the major newspapers like ran this
Speaker 1: and it was I don't know, like there there's there's
Speaker 1: there's this extent to which yeah, like you're watching British
Speaker 1: state media decide that they actively just want to go
Speaker 1: to war on trans people and they literally just do
Speaker 1: not care that like they are, you know, publishing little rapists.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, I just just the BBC's policy now
Speaker 1: is when we interview those responsible for ani social behavioral crime,
Speaker 1: it made us to cause distress to victims, and we
Speaker 1: should contact victims and advise them of our plans. You
Speaker 1: know what a viewing criminals. Care must be taken to
Speaker 1: minimize potential of stress this may cause to victims of
Speaker 1: the crime. They they didn't see Lily as this applying
Speaker 1: to her, right, This is uh, this woman who they
Speaker 1: have been told is a sexual predator. You can find
Speaker 1: this information. I found it pretty quickly, all of these
Speaker 1: victims talking about it, her acknowledging it, and they didn't
Speaker 1: identify this this woman as a predator with victims who
Speaker 1: would be like very plausibly upset by seeing their rapists
Speaker 1: treated as an authority. Sexual abuse, right, and this is
Speaker 1: kind of pervasive, I think in the gender critical movement
Speaker 1: right where if any of you are out there, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you're thinking women can't be rapists. Rape requires a penis,
Speaker 1: which is in the Okay, it's kind of a you know,
Speaker 1: most fem is considered this a pretty reactionary way to
Speaker 1: define rape, where it has to be um penetration with
Speaker 1: a penis, and this isn't reflective of you know, how
Speaker 1: women experience sexual assault that it's just kind of totally
Speaker 1: other category UM. And most countries feminism consider it quite
Speaker 1: important that you don't kind of treat this as this
Speaker 1: like categorically different offense UM. But the general curtal really
Speaker 1: pushes this perspective where it is literally impossible for women
Speaker 1: to commit ray, you know. And this is they think
Speaker 1: that when they a brief period where they thought that
Speaker 1: they had identified like that every rape that was recorded
Speaker 1: as committed by a woman was trans woman because they
Speaker 1: thought that it required apenis and they thought it that
Speaker 1: was the only way it's possible and so you can
Speaker 1: actually be convicted of it if you were aiding and abetting.
Speaker 1: I think they thought that they had all these this
Speaker 1: and they just have this overall perspective where it is
Speaker 1: literally impossible for you know, they say a woman meaning
Speaker 1: the assist woman to commit a sexual offense, and into
Speaker 1: this they create cover for sis woman predators like it
Speaker 1: creates this context where that their victimization just disappears. People
Speaker 1: can't even acknowledge it. And yeah, and like I think
Speaker 1: like the the extent to which this whole movement is
Speaker 1: built on violence and it is built any and there
Speaker 1: are so many people that the that the general critical
Speaker 1: people work with who are abusers. There are you know,
Speaker 1: And I like, I want to come back to the
Speaker 1: last piece of the Lily Kid thing, which is that
Speaker 1: after this article came out, the BBC initially basically didn't
Speaker 1: do anything right even that to the rape out. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then literally Kay published one of like one of
Speaker 1: the most transphobic things I've ever encountered in my life,
Speaker 1: like a a just this it gets called a manifesto,
Speaker 1: Like I don't think like a manifesto. It was terrified. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like she she's she she's explicitly like like like name
Speaker 1: specific trans women that she wants lynched. Like there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff about the people she wants raped. She
Speaker 1: wants like she wants all trans people to die. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a bunch of there's like really racist stuff.
Speaker 1: There's like I mean, it's it's it's just it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it is a document that calls for genocide, and
Speaker 1: the part where it's calling for genocide probably isn't like
Speaker 1: line for Lyne the most disturbing part of it because
Speaker 1: the individual threats are like so graphic. And I was
Speaker 1: terrified when i've I was the person who you know,
Speaker 1: initially dug up the sexual abuse allegations. And when I
Speaker 1: did it, I knew it would kind of it would
Speaker 1: throw a match into her life. I thought that they
Speaker 1: hadn't you know, they were there, they were visible, you
Speaker 1: could find them. But when it had happened, she had
Speaker 1: not really been in the mainstream I and so I
Speaker 1: knew if this got uptake, it would make it bigger.
Speaker 1: And what had it? And then you know, this woman
Speaker 1: is posting this terrifying manifest It read like, yeah, she
Speaker 1: shooting someone now. It was just so it was just terrified.
Speaker 1: It was like something to be written, you know, immediately
Speaker 1: before someone goes to shoot someone. It was not until
Speaker 1: she's tweeting it and tagging the BBC in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like that that finally, like one of the most
Speaker 1: disturbing things I've ever read in my life. Like that
Speaker 1: was fine. Lead the thing with the BBC was like, Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe we should do something about this. It was just
Speaker 1: so so little, right, this is they took her out
Speaker 1: of the article. Um, they added an update and says
Speaker 1: we have updated this article published last week to remove
Speaker 1: a contribution from one individual in light of comments she
Speaker 1: has published on a blog post in recent days which
Speaker 1: we have been able to verify. We acknowledge that an
Speaker 1: admission of inappropriate behavior by the same contributor should have
Speaker 1: been included in the original article. So this is you know,
Speaker 1: they just kind of erased her, right, So they didn't
Speaker 1: acknowledge that they had included this person in the article
Speaker 1: who just published this genocidal ran. Right, So one of
Speaker 1: their sources is the person who is advocating for killing
Speaker 1: trans people. That is important, right, That is pretty to
Speaker 1: this narrative they're pushing. And they also are not saying,
Speaker 1: you know, they should have we acknowledged that an admission
Speaker 1: of inappropriate behavior should have been included in the original article.
Speaker 1: It really changes the overall narrative of the article. Right,
Speaker 1: if you acknowledge this sis woman is a serial, right,
Speaker 1: the overall picture is like six women are at risk
Speaker 1: from trans women and it's a reality check. Right to
Speaker 1: hear no, in fact, this woman who were presenting as
Speaker 1: like victimized is one of the women who's preying on people,
Speaker 1: and she's not a trans woman. And it's just they just,
Speaker 1: you know, even after this, responded in a way that
Speaker 1: protected the narrative of the piece, right, they were they
Speaker 1: weren't going to let in anything that acknowledge this. The
Speaker 1: people they're finding with this position are transphobic, this person
Speaker 1: was very and that it just says they've removed the
Speaker 1: contribution in light of comments she has published. What kind
Speaker 1: of what are they about? And it's serious, right, it's
Speaker 1: serious and naughty knowledge that one of their sources is
Speaker 1: a violent transfer. Yeah, this is how I found out
Speaker 1: that she was alive. Also them saying that they had
Speaker 1: been able to verify it before that, I had been like,
Speaker 1: she's not very online in a lot of cases. Um,
Speaker 1: so I was really what, I didn't know how long
Speaker 1: it was going to be before you know, there's confirmation
Speaker 1: that like in fact that like Kate had not just
Speaker 1: shot someone and herself. This was it was just really
Speaker 1: it's manifest. It was terrified. I don't know, it's just awful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think you know, one of the things that
Speaker 1: that's happening here is you get to see there's a
Speaker 1: couple of like there's a couple there's like layers at
Speaker 1: which this stuff operates. So you have, you know, you
Speaker 1: have your BBC running diligitimization, right, but then you have
Speaker 1: the stuff beneath it, which is just appritly genocidal, and
Speaker 1: I think, you know, and sometimes like with the Lily Kid,
Speaker 1: like if you're going to be a turf really kid
Speaker 1: kind of blew it right because like you can't like
Speaker 1: okay like that. You can be really really transphobic in
Speaker 1: a lot of in a lot of ways, but like
Speaker 1: you know, actively calling people to get lynched is a
Speaker 1: thing that like even like transphobs are are normally like wait,
Speaker 1: what why are you? Yeah? Yeah, but but I don't
Speaker 1: think like that. The mainstream church movement is not in
Speaker 1: a place where you can do stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: in some ways, I think, you know, the stuff that's
Speaker 1: more moderate is more dangerous. The last thing I want
Speaker 1: to talk about is a document called the Decoration on
Speaker 1: Women's Sex Based Rights, which was put together by a
Speaker 1: bunch of turf activists, fairly prominently featuring arch Australian turf,
Speaker 1: Sheila Jeffreys. But yeah, can you can you talk a
Speaker 1: bit about like what this is and yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is a document that basically all of the gender critical
Speaker 1: organizations and which you people have signed. I mean, it
Speaker 1: is extreme, right. It calls for trans women to be
Speaker 1: banned from all women's spaces, including toilets, which you know,
Speaker 1: if if we can't go to the bathroom, they can't
Speaker 1: participate in society. Right, It's just like a basic need
Speaker 1: people to have to exist in public um. And that
Speaker 1: it bands all. It has to ban all internationally recommended
Speaker 1: healthcare for trans children. UM. It has still legally protect
Speaker 1: deliberate miss gendering um, which would you know, allow you
Speaker 1: to be m just treat it with such hostility at work,
Speaker 1: just in public. This is a just kind of a
Speaker 1: threat assault on trans people's ability to exist with dignity
Speaker 1: and society just live normal lives. And you know a
Speaker 1: lot of general critical people will say will portray themselves,
Speaker 1: you know as only opposing advances for trends rights, you know,
Speaker 1: as not wanting trans rights to be rolled back. But
Speaker 1: with this document calls for is like basically every right
Speaker 1: trans people have to exist in their genders in particular
Speaker 1: trans women and especially Turgis trans women. UM to just
Speaker 1: take it all back and leave them with basically nothing.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, like that's like they have this whole thing
Speaker 1: about like basically like they want to erase the concept
Speaker 1: of gender right density from law, which is the thing
Speaker 1: that does is it eliminates all trans people from like,
Speaker 1: it eliminates trans people as a thing that the law
Speaker 1: recognizes exists and things should have protections. It's like it's
Speaker 1: it's it is, you know, like it is the legal
Speaker 1: genocide of trans people like that that's that's that's what
Speaker 1: it is. It's yeah, so they've basically all signed this,
Speaker 1: you know, it is a yeah, it's this is not
Speaker 1: at all. Uh. French document positions itself as like you know,
Speaker 1: the demands kind of of this movement and it's extreme. UM.
Speaker 1: The organization's spokeswoman is Karadinsky UM, who uses almost all
Speaker 1: of her public appearances. She has a number of times
Speaker 1: been on Tucker Carl said, Um. She boost Jennifer Billick
Speaker 1: all the time. I think it's her biggest supporter. UM
Speaker 1: and was formerly the chair of Wolf, which is Lear
Speaker 1: Keith organization. So she is Liberation Front is what stands
Speaker 1: for it is a cool name for an organ that sucks,
Speaker 1: and they should get it back to the one better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is I mean generally you see the American
Speaker 1: Turfs kind of in this more radical direction. Um awesome,
Speaker 1: especially explicitly collaborating with the right. Um. And here they've
Speaker 1: made this document that just reports to and everyone has
Speaker 1: signs that kind of direct the overall agenda to one
Speaker 1: to just leaves trance people with just no protections at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think I think it's you know, the reason
Speaker 1: I think this is in a lot of ways, like
Speaker 1: warch Adrea is similarly cave thing is. Again, it's in
Speaker 1: this like it's not actually in legally because none of
Speaker 1: these people are lawyers. And yes, oh so boy said,
Speaker 1: how how did an actual law I mean, okay, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't be asking how did an actual lawyer produce this
Speaker 1: because I've met lawyers and there they're not. They are
Speaker 1: not as smart and above board as they protein itself
Speaker 1: to people. Yeah, Like, this stuff isn't making legal arguments,
Speaker 1: like one of one of the things that they they've like,
Speaker 1: I guess the whole sort of gender critical like turf
Speaker 1: movements invented is like this this concept of sex based rights,
Speaker 1: which is not a thing. Like yeah, like like like
Speaker 1: they all think that there's like rights that you have
Speaker 1: because of your sex, and no, this doesn't exist. They
Speaker 1: completely made this up. They keep on like referring to
Speaker 1: it as if it's like a concept that exists in
Speaker 1: the law, Like none of this stuff like in terms
Speaker 1: of legals. It's like it's nothing. It's it's it's, it's, it's,
Speaker 1: it's it's a jumble of words. Yeah, I know. You
Speaker 1: really see as the movements go, they really have really
Speaker 1: robust movement discipline and kind of taking up these terms
Speaker 1: and then saying them all the time. Is that it's
Speaker 1: a thing everyone's familiar with. One of them is I
Speaker 1: was like women's sex based rights, women's sex based rights,
Speaker 1: Like what people's rights aren't based on their sex. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like a whole thing we're doing with fetism.
Speaker 1: You know. It was like, you don't have special rights
Speaker 1: based on being a man, And it turns out that
Speaker 1: like supposedly a law we've thought that you have special
Speaker 1: rights for if you're a woman, to exclude whoever you
Speaker 1: want to exclude. I guess it's yeah, it's just goofy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but I think, like it's weird, but it's like
Speaker 1: it's also it has this function, which is that the
Speaker 1: sort of like and like okay, so like I don't
Speaker 1: My guess is that most of the people who have
Speaker 1: signed this document have not read it because you know,
Speaker 1: but but you know, like I think the thing that
Speaker 1: it does is it gives them this this legitimization. It
Speaker 1: gives their goal of exterminating trans people this sort of
Speaker 1: legal jargon apparatus. They can hide behind it like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's actually from the U N and we're basing it
Speaker 1: on international law and that. And the organization used to
Speaker 1: have this fancy name, which was the Woman Human Rights
Speaker 1: Campaign UM and they have now dropped that, possibly for
Speaker 1: legal reasons. But it sounds good, right, and the websites
Speaker 1: polished and it seems like feel thing, and the know
Speaker 1: they really try to take this phrase to and using
Speaker 1: it just kind of sneak everything. And so they'll ask
Speaker 1: people questions like well, what about women's sex space rights?
Speaker 1: These are the thing I've never heard about before in
Speaker 1: my life, and but people just get on board and
Speaker 1: I don't really know what's happening. And they've another thing
Speaker 1: they do is they always portray like bathrooms as sex
Speaker 1: segregated spaces, and I feel like every bathroom I've ever
Speaker 1: been and since women on the door and it seemed
Speaker 1: like female bathroom. But like this is like sentence is
Speaker 1: based on sex, not gender. Just making these assertions and
Speaker 1: they have a lot of assertions. Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I think that's a good place to wrap up. I
Speaker 1: guess they have a lot of assertions. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess we've just underwriting again what a serious kind of
Speaker 1: attack on trans people's rights. This is right, and this
Speaker 1: is calling for things that would make it very hard
Speaker 1: for trans people to exist. And it's really scary to
Speaker 1: watch this. I think I can watch it kind of
Speaker 1: progress across this movement and be boosted. It's awful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And next episode we are going to take a much
Speaker 1: deeper dive into some of the people who signed this
Speaker 1: documents and we are going to see what happens when
Speaker 1: this kind of bloodless but genocidal, legalistic rhetoric makes it
Speaker 1: into the hands of people who are not afraid to
Speaker 1: do physical violence. And it is worse. It is going
Speaker 1: to go worse than you're probably imagining. Just to underline
Speaker 1: said earlier that Jennifer Billicks stuff is you know, just
Speaker 1: widely now accepted within this movement, and her stuff is
Speaker 1: portraying trans people and trans rights as existential immediate threat. Right.
Speaker 1: She portrays she often says that doctors are like butchering children, right,
Speaker 1: if they're making children into slaves. It's stuff that, if
Speaker 1: it was true, would call for kind of an extreme
Speaker 1: level of resistance. And that's kind of what this stuff
Speaker 1: functions to do, right, If you are accusing people these
Speaker 1: really extreme offenses and of hurting and threatening all of
Speaker 1: these people, what that motivates is extreme responses and volime responses.
Speaker 1: And Billy herself is sometimes engaged in violent rhetoric. But
Speaker 1: I think many of us who have been following this
Speaker 1: movement are just kind of waiting, afraid because that's just
Speaker 1: where it looks like it's going in the US and
Speaker 1: the UK too, kind of like hard to it's just
Speaker 1: so scary, and like you know, they're mapping out where
Speaker 1: the gender clinics are, and it's it's scary because where
Speaker 1: rhetoric like this goes is to a violent place, and
Speaker 1: it's hard to see it letting up right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that is that is the subject of tomorrow's episode,
Speaker 1: which Yeah, in which a bunch of people will start
Speaker 1: attacking gender clinics and a bunch of trans people are
Speaker 1: going to get violently assaulted by turfs who are direct
Speaker 1: be affiliated with Sheila Jeffreys and our followers of Jennifer Billick.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Christoph, thank you, thank you for coming on
Speaker 1: and doing this. Yeah, yeah, this has been It could
Speaker 1: happen here. Uh, you can find us at happened here
Speaker 1: pot on Twitter and Instagram. We are also there is
Speaker 1: other stuff that we do at the Cool Zone and yeah,
Speaker 1: go go fight for the rights of trans people before
Speaker 1: they ceased to exist. Welcome to it could Happen Here,
Speaker 1: a podcast that this week is about the war on
Speaker 1: trans people. I'm your host, Christopher Wong. If you've been
Speaker 1: around the left long enough, you've probably heard people called
Speaker 1: transclusionary radical feminism or turf is um a colonial ideallo
Speaker 1: g Broadly, the accusation of colonialism is about the erasure
Speaker 1: of non Western genders to fall outside the Christian gender binary,
Speaker 1: but turfs or colonial in another sense as well, exported
Speaker 1: by white academics to a network of fall feminist and
Speaker 1: anti trafficking groups. The ideology has imposed itself on the
Speaker 1: global South, with devastating and violent consequences. As a product
Speaker 1: of this colonial imposition, Mexico has become one of the
Speaker 1: front lines in the war against trans people. I spoke
Speaker 1: to Emmy Flores and Juliana Newhauser, two members of the
Speaker 1: Sexual and Gender Dissidence Resistance Network, a group of activists
Speaker 1: aligned with the Zapatistas who have been documenting and resisting
Speaker 1: the spread of turfs in Mexico. When the new turf
Speaker 1: waves started in Mexico several years back. UM at the
Speaker 1: time I thought, I thought of it as something that
Speaker 1: like a radicalization that went too far, you know, like
Speaker 1: kind of like thinking back to like the New Left,
Speaker 1: and there was a point during the New Left when
Speaker 1: like suddenly everybody joined a Baoist cult and they were
Speaker 1: angry for the right reasons, but it just went off.
Speaker 1: At some point, I thought that's what was going on
Speaker 1: in Mexico. But then slowly it started to come out
Speaker 1: more that more and more turf groups were had to
Speaker 1: tie us to political parties, and one of them and
Speaker 1: foreign agents. And one of the one of the most
Speaker 1: dramatic cases UM is from Toluca City near Mexico City,
Speaker 1: UM just recently at the International Women's Date protests, like
Speaker 1: there were turf groups that had made a pinata out
Speaker 1: of the trans flag, had been burning the trans flag.
Speaker 1: Also in this same city. One of the main turf
Speaker 1: groups turns out that their leader is on government payroll.
Speaker 1: And if you've seen Roma, for example, the incident, the
Speaker 1: political incident that happens in that movie based on a
Speaker 1: real incident from the seventies, and the tactics of that
Speaker 1: political party, which is the party that controls the state
Speaker 1: government of the state to Lucas In basically it hasn't changed,
Speaker 1: and they seem to have been using these turfs basically
Speaker 1: as shock troops. At one point, there were two sit
Speaker 1: ins outside the state Congress, one to push for a
Speaker 1: gender identity a law and another to push for the
Speaker 1: legalization of abortion, which are obviously both important things. The ladder, however,
Speaker 1: was controlled by these turf groups who later mysteriously never
Speaker 1: seems to appear at other protests asking for the legalization
Speaker 1: of abortion, but they were there and they ran off
Speaker 1: the trans encampment. One of them big incidents was the
Speaker 1: sending the sanctity if the woman's bathroom with barbed wire
Speaker 1: wrapped baseball bats Jesus. These groups have deep ties to
Speaker 1: right wing Mexican political parties, the police, and the growing
Speaker 1: Turf International, and they seem to be very chummy with
Speaker 1: the local police. Their leader UM gives classes, gaves like
Speaker 1: trainings to the state government like that. It's not at
Speaker 1: all you know, you can see live strings of the
Speaker 1: quote unquote protests, and he was mostly them like drinking
Speaker 1: coffee with the cops, like they were on first n
Speaker 1: invasis with the cops, while the the other camp had
Speaker 1: like translument were too scared to go to the bathroom
Speaker 1: because they were going to be attacked. And so that's
Speaker 1: the starkest group, I think, right the do locators, which
Speaker 1: are It's funny because almost every party has their own
Speaker 1: the row group. But yeah, also surprised that p R
Speaker 1: is the scariest. Yeah. We should also say that these
Speaker 1: groups are affiliates with Sheila Jeffreys Women's Declation International UM.
Speaker 1: And so this is also a case of an ideology
Speaker 1: developed in the first world, in this case England, which
Speaker 1: is largely a safe country where even as fascist and
Speaker 1: ideology as turfism doesn't or only very rarely leads to
Speaker 1: real violence, and but it gets exported the countries that
Speaker 1: are not safe where it does turn into real violence.
Speaker 1: So another affiliate um of Sheila Jeffreys Humans Declaration in
Speaker 1: Mexico would be Lesprus Delmar, who is another case of
Speaker 1: At first they seemed to be a group that was
Speaker 1: just they just radicalized a bit too far. Then photos
Speaker 1: came out of their leader, who is on the time
Speaker 1: one hundred a couple of years back with Felippe calther
Speaker 1: On and next president of Mexico, and like by far
Speaker 1: one of the worst in the country's history, and not
Speaker 1: like a like just oh I saw you walking in
Speaker 1: the street. She was at a book signing. It was
Speaker 1: not a casual encounter. It was a clear sign of
Speaker 1: admiration in the It's been more than confirmed since then
Speaker 1: that her political ambitions lie with the p AN, the
Speaker 1: the farthest right mainstream political party in Mexico. This political
Speaker 1: alliance between the Churfs and the right has benefits for
Speaker 1: both sides. The Churfs gained funding institutional backing for their
Speaker 1: war against trans people. The right gained a way to
Speaker 1: attack the vaguely center left Mexican President Andrea's Manuel Lopez
Speaker 1: over door by blaming him and trans people from Mexico's
Speaker 1: horrific wave of femicides were distracting from its actual source
Speaker 1: is NAFTA and the War on drugs. Mexico's trans population, however,
Speaker 1: gained a new Western educated threat. When I say the
Speaker 1: radical feminism was a complete import it's from its very beginning.
Speaker 1: In the for a long while, there was like one
Speaker 1: turf in Mexico, and she was She's called gian Maria Yoyo.
Speaker 1: Don't even try to pronounce her name. I don't think
Speaker 1: she can even pronounce her name because she's white as hell,
Speaker 1: and she always dresses like she's a fucking Rachel dollars
Speaker 1: hell from Mexico. Like she's irony that the first originary
Speaker 1: in Mexico is also the Mexican Raciel doll as well, right,
Speaker 1: because she went abroad and was like the only Mexican
Speaker 1: everyone knew. So even though she's white as hell and
Speaker 1: has blue eyes, she started wearing some cotchella motherfucking as
Speaker 1: uh feathers and ship right. Yeah, I've seen I've seen
Speaker 1: these pictures. It's it is, it is like it is.
Speaker 1: It is the Mexican version of and not even just
Speaker 1: the It is the Mexican version of those people like
Speaker 1: Coachella who like wear indigenous head dresses, who are just
Speaker 1: like just like look look like they're descended from like
Speaker 1: hydroc Hembler or something. And like she's she has like
Speaker 1: she has like half French, half a Spanish name and
Speaker 1: she changed it to a half maya half novel name.
Speaker 1: It's gross. So this this person has been active since
Speaker 1: the seventies. Right, she went to she was present in
Speaker 1: the first Pride in Mexico and uh she who that was?
Speaker 1: That was also the two year anniversary of the six massacre.
Speaker 1: So Pride was from the start really leftist here in Mexico,
Speaker 1: but it also had these kind of people the who
Speaker 1: who went to the UK, friends and the United States.
Speaker 1: And I think she was there when Jennie Raymond was
Speaker 1: like sending her friends with guns to to uh threatened
Speaker 1: trans women, right, So that's she. She she was there
Speaker 1: when the turf Wars were at the highest point during
Speaker 1: the seventies and then came back and parton she plasticipating
Speaker 1: a lot of history of Mexican feminism. But the time
Speaker 1: that she came back in two thousand sixteen with that
Speaker 1: letter with that backing because she is also close to
Speaker 1: Jennie Raymond with the Coalition again against Trafficking in Women
Speaker 1: who the Coalition Against Trafficking, the Coalition against Trafficking in
Speaker 1: Women cat W has a lot of After the Third Wars,
Speaker 1: they went underground in the in academia and the universities
Speaker 1: right because they were no are accepted, but they were
Speaker 1: in the process of building NGOs that could globally affect
Speaker 1: policy on UH, specifically sex working trans rights. And you
Speaker 1: can tell that Jean media I saw that that was
Speaker 1: her only opportunity to resurface UH and to make her
Speaker 1: seventies as UH. She saw that seventies rat M discourse
Speaker 1: was retro now and so she became like this UH
Speaker 1: found founding matrix for the new generation of transpos. One
Speaker 1: of them which is Lauda Lequana who is part of
Speaker 1: FEMBA and the Gean Madia and Lekuana were not faced
Speaker 1: at all by the accusitions of alligned with the reactionaries
Speaker 1: because they know their history, they know where they come from,
Speaker 1: and they know that this is how Dorkin survived, this
Speaker 1: is how UH, how Sheila Jefferies and Jennie Raymond survived.
Speaker 1: This is where you get the fucking money in lateral
Speaker 1: Liquna gehan Maria and turned the whole environment around them
Speaker 1: into these uh well these surf questions. The only two
Speaker 1: issues that we talked about nowadays in Mexican feminism are
Speaker 1: our president and trans people. It's kind of gross Jesus.
Speaker 1: And that's like, remember, like there's only a handful of
Speaker 1: states that have legalized abortion. There's femicides happening all the time,
Speaker 1: and but we're we continue to debate these two issues
Speaker 1: over and over and over again like a feedback group,
Speaker 1: and like, as trans people, we don't have any choice
Speaker 1: because we're the targets of this right. And it's not
Speaker 1: it's not an academic debate. Last fall, um there was
Speaker 1: some turfs who had taken over a public park to
Speaker 1: set up their separatist space, and there was a disabled
Speaker 1: assist woman and her chance girlfriend who are denied entry
Speaker 1: at the park and threatened with tasers. And so when
Speaker 1: they're taking over these public spaces and using violence to
Speaker 1: defend them, because the next week there is a protest
Speaker 1: over this and they there they they taste to transpan
Speaker 1: and it's like this is like a public park like,
Speaker 1: of course we have to defend ourselves. The Coalition against
Speaker 1: Trafficking and Women or cat W, an international antisex worker
Speaker 1: group which provided a refuge for white turfs driven from
Speaker 1: mainstream feminism in their home countries, has been a major
Speaker 1: source of Turfy influence in Latin America. There is there
Speaker 1: is so much important of this ideology towards radical feminists
Speaker 1: in Mexico. UH. It's that they needed something to say
Speaker 1: and something to do and and something to feel the
Speaker 1: void UH in organizing and inn geos and the people
Speaker 1: who stepped up where Jannie Raymond's car w right, the
Speaker 1: Coalition against Trafficking in Women who Sings and nan indies.
Speaker 1: UH spent UH a decade and a half building contexts
Speaker 1: in the in the U, N, in the oas in
Speaker 1: several international organisms to extend their influence across the whole
Speaker 1: continent and specifically in Latin America. And UH you can
Speaker 1: see the effecting stuff like stuff like Venezuela where they
Speaker 1: broke up sex worker unions too two with the the
Speaker 1: O S right and in Mexico, the founding leader of
Speaker 1: the Mexican branch of of cab W, Teresa used to
Speaker 1: a un employee, specifically, it's drug and crime segment. And
Speaker 1: before she was like a radical feminist. She used to
Speaker 1: conduct drug rades in Chapa's and yeah, and after that
Speaker 1: she became UH the founding member of cad W Latin
Speaker 1: America and the Caribbean. And with Janice Raymond, they you
Speaker 1: can see them go together to the Beijing Conference on
Speaker 1: Women and they influenced like those they they were a
Speaker 1: big part of why gender is not recognized as a
Speaker 1: social construct by the u N. They allied with the
Speaker 1: Holy See, with the representative from the Vatican in the
Speaker 1: u N, got together with a couple of radical feminists
Speaker 1: and pushed back against gender being recognized as a social
Speaker 1: construct in N. So that's the level of influence these
Speaker 1: groups have in Mexico. UH, these groups wh morphed into
Speaker 1: the cop W, UH supported the war and drugs from
Speaker 1: the get go. They were very high in some of
Speaker 1: the biggest events in now curating the war and drugs.
Speaker 1: They were present right there because if you're fighting drug trafficking,
Speaker 1: it's very easy to just sleep the word human right there. Right,
Speaker 1: No politicians gonna say no. They all fucking love to
Speaker 1: say yeah, I'm hard on on human trafficking, and the
Speaker 1: way that UH showed itself was just targeting trans sex
Speaker 1: workers and migrant sex workers. And with that and that
Speaker 1: feeding the agenda of Jenny's raymon perfectly. Sheila Jefferies gotta
Speaker 1: basically survived the whole two thousand's on writing garbage for
Speaker 1: reports for the u N. Most of her published works
Speaker 1: during the two thousands and early twenty tents. It's stuffed
Speaker 1: aid for cattle. You and they they they In two
Speaker 1: thousands sixteen, they started pushing for more and more anti
Speaker 1: trans legislation worldwide because they could see the writing on
Speaker 1: the world right. They were behind the Women's Declaration. The
Speaker 1: La Jeffers is not okay. She is part of catally
Speaker 1: she just I think cad W Australia. She has her
Speaker 1: own all other politics called Space International, which is behind
Speaker 1: Foster Sista by the way in the US, where she
Speaker 1: allied with a couple of conservative sheriffs to write that legislation.
Speaker 1: So we could go on and on on. How like
Speaker 1: people that read that our transitions think are gone and
Speaker 1: forgotten by history. Right, the authors of these horrible books
Speaker 1: that haunts us to this day are still active, and
Speaker 1: not just in the US, they're active in Mexico, in
Speaker 1: the UK, in France, in South Africa, in Korea. Korea
Speaker 1: is huge in I think I would say Korea is
Speaker 1: as has as big a problem as Mexico and the UK.
Speaker 1: We just don't talk to them as much and we
Speaker 1: can't realize that. But if you check them the languages
Speaker 1: that have signed the Shila Jeffreys Declaration against Trands People,
Speaker 1: which is a specifically general sidal, the Coloration Decloration, it
Speaker 1: doesn't stop at like legislation. It wants to exterminate us
Speaker 1: out right. Yeah, and most of them, you were going
Speaker 1: to see a lot of Brazilian flags, a lot of
Speaker 1: Mexican flags, a lot of Korean flags, even more than
Speaker 1: the United States flags. And if you track the USA flags,
Speaker 1: it's mostly like weird randalls that have yoga classes and
Speaker 1: ship it's not relevant politicians. But if you track the
Speaker 1: other countries, you're gonna find some of the biggest collectives
Speaker 1: in the in their own countries. You're gonna find or
Speaker 1: just spooks, right, You're gonna find a lot people who
Speaker 1: have really weird careers that spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: in Italy and Uganda. It's it's it's a never ending
Speaker 1: uh rabbit hole of of of spooks, of conservatives, of
Speaker 1: have been feminists that have regranted as NGOs to get
Speaker 1: money from those groups and directed towards breaking up trans rights,
Speaker 1: towards affecting sex workers, towards breaking unions, breaking student movements.
Speaker 1: It's a global movement that is birthed by conservative thought,
Speaker 1: but getting more and more reactionary and more and more
Speaker 1: organized as time goes by. That international transphobic movement has
Speaker 1: increasingly found purchased in the US. I spoke to Lee
Speaker 1: Liaville and Kai Shiver's, two members of Health Liberation Now
Speaker 1: with intimate experience with the turf movement who spent years
Speaker 1: particularly documenting its rise. So my first shouldn't is can
Speaker 1: you'll explain what Wolf actually is? And I guess subsequent
Speaker 1: to that, what the relationship to hands across the aisle is? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Wolf is. Um. They're transphobic feminist groups, UM with
Speaker 1: at this point extensive ties to right wing organizations. Um.
Speaker 1: They've worked with Family Policy Alliance here, did Foundation Alliance
Speaker 1: Defending Freedom Concerned, went for America Family Research Cultural among others. Um.
Speaker 1: But they um, they got their start um and they
Speaker 1: started back in two thousand thirteen around when they were
Speaker 1: founded by the Are Keith, who also was one of
Speaker 1: the leaders of Deep Cream Resistance, and she basically got like, um,
Speaker 1: kind of run out of anarchists and environmentalist groups and
Speaker 1: then kind of like went over to uh established like
Speaker 1: turf communities to try and recruit there. So I sort
Speaker 1: of like started out trying to like recruit from these
Speaker 1: like older turf and transphobic lesbian communities. And then after
Speaker 1: Trump got elected and um, you know, the conservative Christians
Speaker 1: on the far right became more mobilized and more empowered.
Speaker 1: They kind of like rebranded themselves and we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's form alliances with these right wing groups, and they
Speaker 1: kind of like traded. They're sort of like like crunchy
Speaker 1: lesbian feminists like like image for like Kara Danski, who
Speaker 1: like you know, is a straight, fairly feminine looking woman
Speaker 1: who used to work for the CLU and and like
Speaker 1: a Democrat and like you know, she's way more presentable
Speaker 1: to like a conservative audience. You know. By working with
Speaker 1: the right then they have access to like money and
Speaker 1: power and they can get easier from the get on
Speaker 1: the media. Like like Kara Dyansky is no longer with Wolf,
Speaker 1: but like she was with them for years and still
Speaker 1: has relations, like like good relations with them, And you've
Speaker 1: been on the Tucker Carlson Show like many times. So
Speaker 1: I think one of the important pieces when it comes
Speaker 1: to understanding like how this relationship with the right started.
Speaker 1: So in in late two thousand and sixteen, Wolf put forward,
Speaker 1: they're filing against the US Department of Justice and US
Speaker 1: Department of Education, right, and they were going up against
Speaker 1: aspects of like trying to reform Title nine to include
Speaker 1: gender identity, you know, to to protect folks um who
Speaker 1: need to be able to use the like women's restroom,
Speaker 1: our locker room or whatever. Right. And this is the
Speaker 1: case that they ended up getting some of the A
Speaker 1: d F funding for. So it's like one of the
Speaker 1: first official seeds I guess of the direct collaboration ended
Speaker 1: up happening. Those a lot of that stuff did up
Speaker 1: eventually end up getting late and then they started doing
Speaker 1: some more official collaborations just a few months later, um
Speaker 1: when they were working with like Family Policy Alliance, UM
Speaker 1: BILE amicust briefs against Gavin Grimm again out of bathroom case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they took something like I think it was like fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand dollars from the Alliance depending Freedom, which is one
Speaker 1: of the main like right wing groups like like trying
Speaker 1: to pass all these like anti trans bills like going
Speaker 1: after a pediatric transition and trans girls and in women's sports.
Speaker 1: So they took that money and then yeah, then later
Speaker 1: like I think, like, um, the whole working with Family
Speaker 1: Policy Alliance, I believe was the first time they like
Speaker 1: publicly allied with with the right ring group. I think,
Speaker 1: so that yeah, in January of two thousand seventeen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then they've just sort of like, yeah, like they
Speaker 1: also were involved with the amicust brief against was it
Speaker 1: Amy stefens Um another Supreme Court case I can't remember. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't surprise me. And like members of both have
Speaker 1: appeared on like Heritage Foundation panels. They helped like released
Speaker 1: apparent Resource Guide and anti transparent resource Guide that was
Speaker 1: also sponsored by like Heritage Foundation, Family Policy Alliance. This
Speaker 1: this this is very similar to almost exactly what you
Speaker 1: see in Mexico, with just sort of slightly less physical violence,
Speaker 1: which yeah, it's it's a lot of you know, and
Speaker 1: the other the other thing is that these are to
Speaker 1: a large extent exactly the same organizations. And that was
Speaker 1: one of the other things you want to talk about
Speaker 1: was the influence of Sheila Jeffreys and the Women's Declaration,
Speaker 1: which has been all over this whole movement. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: one thing to point out, so, like you know, the
Speaker 1: Women's Declaration International is in this in the US is
Speaker 1: led by Karatanski, who you know, she like basically like left.
Speaker 1: She worked at World for a long time and still
Speaker 1: has lots of connections with Thumb, is on good terms
Speaker 1: with them, but she like left and now is like
Speaker 1: working with Women Dexploration International of US France. So and
Speaker 1: as she winds up having kind of like a foot
Speaker 1: in both worlds at the same time too. So like
Speaker 1: she'll like the US chapter Women's Declaration International previously like
Speaker 1: Women's Human Rights Campaign before they had to rebrand. Um
Speaker 1: they was. But if you if you read this comic, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. Um So, what what ends up happening is
Speaker 1: that Kara Danski will either like have the chapter sponsor
Speaker 1: particular events or she herself will become actively involved in
Speaker 1: the formation of the events, right, which we saw happen
Speaker 1: with UM Women Pickett d C last year where they
Speaker 1: were parking themselves outside of that was like it was
Speaker 1: a well, that was that was a whole fix. Oh god,
Speaker 1: it was a purchase that happened on International Women's Day
Speaker 1: to protest the the Equality Act. Yeah, it's it's not
Speaker 1: like it's people's first time dealing with the Equality Act either.
Speaker 1: I mean, like so prior prior to that point, which
Speaker 1: and this starts to go into them like hands across
Speaker 1: the Aisle Coalition because they were actively involved in opposing
Speaker 1: the Equality Act as well, so to to kind of
Speaker 1: roll back a little bit, um, the hands across the
Speaker 1: Aisle Coalition. This was something that started developing in early
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen, you know, not that long after Wolf
Speaker 1: started building the more direct relationships with the Right, and
Speaker 1: so that the people of this coalition would have like
Speaker 1: you would have members of the Right itself. And in
Speaker 1: the process of that UM towards the beginning of two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, in May, they filed this joint letter to
Speaker 1: the House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi to oppose things
Speaker 1: like the Equality Act UM. And they did so alongside
Speaker 1: with Natasha Chart representing Wolf, Concerned Women for America, American
Speaker 1: College of Pediatricians, Family Research Council, you know, a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of really just awful names, and they're, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea involved, Yes, it's it's it's it's really the
Speaker 1: Rose Gallery of all of the people who were anti
Speaker 1: gay marriage until we still are but have downplayed it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, all the people who let the anti game
Speaker 1: marriage campaigns, all of the sort of weird right wing
Speaker 1: pseudo medical bodies. The next thing I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: about is what's been happening in the last couple of
Speaker 1: years with the fusion, Because so you already have your
Speaker 1: your alliance between the turfs and the evangelicals, but in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, we've seen a I don't
Speaker 1: know if if full scale is the right term to
Speaker 1: use for it, but we've seen a merger of this
Speaker 1: with Save the Children and Q and on stuff. It's
Speaker 1: you can talk about that. That's okay. So that's an
Speaker 1: interesting one because like I've I've been digging into the
Speaker 1: timeline of this stuff extensively. It's like I've got hundreds
Speaker 1: hundreds of listings trying to figure out where different cases
Speaker 1: are coming from and trying to understand like the phases. Right,
Speaker 1: So you've got like the formation, the solidification, and then
Speaker 1: the escalation, and we're kind of in the escalation stage
Speaker 1: right now. But so one of the things that I
Speaker 1: started to notice is that elements of this crossover, like
Speaker 1: the cross pollination that was happening, actually predated certain key
Speaker 1: events that we now now are affiliated with Q and On. Right,
Speaker 1: So if we think about out the actual like development
Speaker 1: of Q and ON itself, so you've got the pizza
Speaker 1: Gate thing that was happening in like October two thousand
Speaker 1: and sixteen. I believe that was, um, you know, right
Speaker 1: before Trump was getting elected, and you know, kicking up
Speaker 1: some stuff about like you know, Hillary Clinton's emails and
Speaker 1: stuff like that to go up against her election campaign
Speaker 1: in opposition to Trump, and then you know, folding in
Speaker 1: the harassment towards UM comment Ping Pong to the point
Speaker 1: where like Edgar Madison Wealth shows up at Comment Ping
Speaker 1: Pong in December of two thousand and sixteen with an
Speaker 1: a R fifteen style rifle and starts, you know, firing
Speaker 1: off his shots and stuff like that. Right, And so eventually, um,
Speaker 1: most people know that the timeline of the Q and
Speaker 1: On drops happening around like October two thousand seventeen. Like
Speaker 1: if you look up the original like the first known
Speaker 1: Q robs, I believe that was like October two tho
Speaker 1: seventeen on four Chan. But the thing is that if
Speaker 1: you look at references to save the Children or save
Speaker 1: our Children on like Twitter, the hashtags, and you're also
Speaker 1: looking for trans phobia related stuff, you can actually start
Speaker 1: to see that crossover happening before the original que drops happened. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I found I found tweets that were connecting trans inclusion
Speaker 1: education in schools to pedophilia and using the save the
Speaker 1: Children hashtag in August of two thousand seventeen. The que
Speaker 1: drops hadn't started yet, so and this is something this
Speaker 1: pattern continues to happen. Right There were also multiple um,
Speaker 1: you know, tweets or Facebook posts or whatever that would
Speaker 1: start to use things like save the Children, Save our Children,
Speaker 1: Wake Up America, and stuff like that before you would
Speaker 1: have the big scale takeover by Q and on when
Speaker 1: things were starting to get really popular, because the save
Speaker 1: the Children thing really went viral in the summer of
Speaker 1: but you could still see elements of it before that
Speaker 1: point repeatedly. So another early instance of using both save
Speaker 1: the Children and Wake Up America hashtags started happening on
Speaker 1: UM April. I believe that is a two thousand nineteen
Speaker 1: and bear in mind wake Up America UM is a
Speaker 1: hashtag that's not only used by Q and on proponents
Speaker 1: UM in relation to the whole like accelerationism trying to
Speaker 1: yep deep state stuff UM, but also like Aaron Brewer,
Speaker 1: one of the people that was involved in some of
Speaker 1: the clinic protests harassments, was using that. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: a was wasn't just Brewer, it was like both Brewer
Speaker 1: it was. That was the clinic protest that involved both
Speaker 1: UM Partner's Celtical CARPEC, which Brewer was, remember like one
Speaker 1: of the founders of at the time and one of
Speaker 1: the leaders of and Joey Bright's like can't I get
Speaker 1: a witness? Like they teamed up to stage a bunch
Speaker 1: of clinic protests that they used wake up like wake
Speaker 1: of America was one of the slogans that they used
Speaker 1: in one of the hashtags are to so to to
Speaker 1: make sure we're getting this. Uh, these are protest against
Speaker 1: clinics that offer gender firming care. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah
Speaker 1: yeah that um yeah, that that happened. That one so yeah,
Speaker 1: the Wake Up America one was in um Felt Lake City,
Speaker 1: New York City and l A. Yeah, and they also,
Speaker 1: I mean, speaking of umstas, they also have used the
Speaker 1: slogan pulled back the Curtain UM, which has also been
Speaker 1: used by uh like anti choice activists, Like that was
Speaker 1: I remember, like like finding like they used pulled back
Speaker 1: the curtain a lot to be like they what they
Speaker 1: mean is like they're expose the evil gender industry. But
Speaker 1: like the other this like UM anti abortion group, I'm
Speaker 1: blinking on which one off the top of my head.
Speaker 1: But they also used that um pulled back the curtain
Speaker 1: to go after planned parent put yeah, which I think
Speaker 1: is like probably like that doesn't I'm for a direct connection,
Speaker 1: but it seems like that's too much of a coincidence
Speaker 1: in one of the one of the things that I
Speaker 1: really want to stress about this called like what I
Speaker 1: call tan on thing is that like the seeds for this,
Speaker 1: the cross pollination that we are seeing happening between the
Speaker 1: gender critical movement, pizza Gate, and Q and on, like
Speaker 1: these were already in place before Q and On formally
Speaker 1: developed as its own phenomenon. This keeps happening. It's you
Speaker 1: can't really like figure out where one particular type of
Speaker 1: rhetoric is necessarily coming from in terms of its source,
Speaker 1: because it just keeps going back and forth repeatedly. People
Speaker 1: are acting like they're coming up with a lot of
Speaker 1: the same ideas together because in the end, in the end,
Speaker 1: they are of the same roots. They are in fundamental
Speaker 1: agreement with each other. Whether they're calling themselves different names.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's worries to be in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, partly because you know, I mean, this has
Speaker 1: always been something where if you look at the rhetoric
Speaker 1: that these people are spreading, it's like it's explicitly exterminationist,
Speaker 1: like it's it's you know, like they they're they're storychiatric terrorists,
Speaker 1: like in search of a like a quote unquote load wolf,
Speaker 1: and in a lot of you know, and in the seventies,
Speaker 1: I think they were. There's there's a lot more explicit
Speaker 1: violence that these people are doing directly, and now they're
Speaker 1: kind of like they're they're they're trying to find people
Speaker 1: who will do their already work for them, and there
Speaker 1: are places where they found them already. We've seen this
Speaker 1: in Mexico and in the US. The people who they
Speaker 1: seem to be recruiting are people who are extremely dangerous.
Speaker 1: We've we've seen q and on people have killed enormous
Speaker 1: numbers of people. Um, you know, we've there's a long
Speaker 1: history of of abortion clinic bombings and people getting asassinated
Speaker 1: for that. I mean, I think, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the connections that I've been sort of like looking at
Speaker 1: is the extent to which this stuff is connected to
Speaker 1: the Atlantis shooting, because if you if you look at
Speaker 1: the stuff, the Atlanta shooter believes it's you know, like
Speaker 1: he's in this like in the same sort of Christian
Speaker 1: patriarchal project and his thing is specifically about sex workers.
Speaker 1: But hey, look if you look at yeah, a particularly
Speaker 1: Asian sex workers, and you know, if if if you
Speaker 1: if you look at the anti trafficking groups and you
Speaker 1: look at the Christian anti trafficking groups and you look
Speaker 1: at the ven diagram with them and the Turfs, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: and I'm able are involved, Yeah that particular world, And yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's this kind of vice closing it on trans people.
Speaker 1: Were on the one hand, you have these people attempting
Speaker 1: to employ the violence of the state, and on the
Speaker 1: other hand, you have this sort of stoke giatric terrorism
Speaker 1: where they're attempting to incite violence by sort of individuals.
Speaker 1: And then also, I mean, I think I think there's
Speaker 1: you know, there's sort of there's sort of two forms
Speaker 1: of this, right. There's the explicit people who are explicitly
Speaker 1: like quote unquote political right. You have you have your
Speaker 1: sort of like ideological street fascist. You have like you know,
Speaker 1: you have your people with baseball bass covered and barred wire.
Speaker 1: But then you also have the stuff that's been fueling
Speaker 1: antiation violence where it's not necessarily like you know, there
Speaker 1: is a this is an organization that like hates Asian people.
Speaker 1: It's we will just sort of passively increase the rhetoric
Speaker 1: until the level of violence increases. Yeah, it kind of
Speaker 1: got like you've got the street bash and then you've
Speaker 1: got the intelle actual fash. Yeah. Well, and and I
Speaker 1: think but I think also there's there's another Like if
Speaker 1: it was just those people, I think it'd be less bad.
Speaker 1: But but there's also just the way in which just
Speaker 1: random people who are encountering this become very quickly radicalized
Speaker 1: and it becomes part of sort of I mean, and
Speaker 1: trets up with violence has always been part of the
Speaker 1: sort of background violence in the same way that anti
Speaker 1: black and so I mean, you know, okay, the level
Speaker 1: of anti black violence is much higher, but like the
Speaker 1: level of violence against black trans people in particular, and
Speaker 1: the level of anti Asian violence we've been seeing that
Speaker 1: has just sort of it's just a part of the
Speaker 1: background violence of American society, and that the levels of
Speaker 1: those things, the more of this rhetoric gets circulated and
Speaker 1: the more this activism happens, that background level of violence increases,
Speaker 1: and that to me is also terrifying because it means
Speaker 1: like it's not just sort of like fascist so you
Speaker 1: can track it's just someone on the street. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just sort of like trying to like like associate
Speaker 1: like well, I mean a lot of the like yeah
Speaker 1: that like people like like Felik and erin um alex
Speaker 1: Their and the gender Member and doy Brand stuff like that,
Speaker 1: Like they're they're hardcore like elimination as like they're like
Speaker 1: they're over and over the comm compromise. And I would
Speaker 1: also especially like anti fascist networks to pay more attention
Speaker 1: to it, because you know that solidarity with trans people
Speaker 1: is just as important as solidarity with like racial and
Speaker 1: ethnic minorities when it comes to combating fact, right, especially
Speaker 1: since like there are a number of us that are
Speaker 1: in multiple categories, so like let's all work together and
Speaker 1: try to like you know, be proactive about combating the threat. Right.
Speaker 1: So my my tan on Um collections, I guess, like
Speaker 1: I only have two reports on it so far because
Speaker 1: getting into the full detail is just it is a
Speaker 1: lengthy project, and I keep getting distracted by by the
Speaker 1: conversion therapy stuff. There's so much stuff to research, and
Speaker 1: there's more like two people and and yeah, anyway, so
Speaker 1: ever else in terms of finding that like the original
Speaker 1: kind of like broader views of tn ON both like
Speaker 1: what it is in terms of like the one oh
Speaker 1: one kind of stuff, and also like the timeline of
Speaker 1: where it came from. You can find it on Health
Speaker 1: Liberation Now dot com. We have a little tap there
Speaker 1: that has like analysis, and then if you go down
Speaker 1: to key issues, you can find a tn on tag there, right,
Speaker 1: and it'll have that stuff in there. This has been
Speaker 1: a thing that throughout this entire series, which is that
Speaker 1: most of the information on this stuff has been compiled
Speaker 1: by a very small number of trans people, and that
Speaker 1: cannot stay the state of this because there are just
Speaker 1: not enough trans people and they are extremely overworked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if that's a project that you can take up,
Speaker 1: please do that. Um, yes please, yes, hands on deck,
Speaker 1: I'll hands on back. Yeah, because the seriousness of this
Speaker 1: is such that if you want there to be trans
Speaker 1: people living in a way that does not actively destroy them,
Speaker 1: you have to act now. Yeah. Basically, yeah, this has
Speaker 1: been it could happen here a product of cool zone media.
Speaker 1: Suppress your local turfs before it's too late. Goodbye. You
Speaker 1: know what I love is decadent Western sexual mores. Well,
Speaker 1: that actually does tie you into what we're talking about,
Speaker 1: end of what you were re did Jesus there? God?
Speaker 1: When I when I logged into this call an hour late,
Speaker 1: Garrison was studiously reading reading a book by with the
Speaker 1: screen centered on the cover. We gotta bleep this out
Speaker 1: and have have it be the new thing that's bleeped out.
Speaker 1: I agree with that. Actually, yes, good call. That way,
Speaker 1: we can just do a whole series of jokes where
Speaker 1: we just like pill people on fascist esotericism. What a
Speaker 1: what a fun joke that would be happen here? Show
Speaker 1: we talk about things that could happen of but just
Speaker 1: talking about the onslaught of bills that have been introduced
Speaker 1: the past few months that attacking kind of trends rights
Speaker 1: and queer people in general. Yeah, so we've we've we
Speaker 1: we've heard about gay marriage, We've heard about turfs a
Speaker 1: lot the past the past two episodes, and now we're
Speaker 1: going to be kind of focusing on the Yeah, like
Speaker 1: I said, the kind of current legislation that's happened specifically
Speaker 1: within the past six months, UM that I've been targeting
Speaker 1: kind of LGBTQ people in in schools particularly that and
Speaker 1: a lot of it's been targeted towards towards miners, teen teens, adolescents,
Speaker 1: UM and restricting the visibility and uh and kind of
Speaker 1: what's allowed to be said and mentioned in schools. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna kind of actually talk about um books first,
Speaker 1: because a lot of this stuff is kind of tied
Speaker 1: into the critical race theory UM kind of like organizing
Speaker 1: that the right was doing. So Yeah. The American Library
Speaker 1: Association says that between September and December alone, they received
Speaker 1: more than three thirty reports of book challenges, for which
Speaker 1: is the most over two decades in terms of of
Speaker 1: people trying to restrict what books are allowed to be
Speaker 1: in schools. I experienced a book challenge lately. Tell you what,
Speaker 1: trying to read through the new James Patterson book. What
Speaker 1: do either of you know who James Patterson is? No?
Speaker 1: Was this was? This was a bad idea on my back,
Speaker 1: Please continue, Garrison, I was. I was busy reading the
Speaker 1: before you logged on. I have a different interest in books,
Speaker 1: you know, actually very similar books, very similar, and the
Speaker 1: Pelican brief basically identical. I have no idea how much
Speaker 1: that's gonna get bleeped, but it's gonna be funny. Um
Speaker 1: so yeah. A Tennessee school's removal of Mars the Holocaust
Speaker 1: Graphic Biography became kind of the most famous example of
Speaker 1: this trend a few months ago. Um, the book was
Speaker 1: allegedly banned due to due to nudity and because of
Speaker 1: curse words. But this is kind of you know it was.
Speaker 1: They claimed it had nothing to do with actual political content. Um,
Speaker 1: it was just because of the the inappropriate images to children,
Speaker 1: which is a little a little dubious since it's all,
Speaker 1: you know, starring mice. Um yeah, yeah. But the majority
Speaker 1: of challenged books have been kind of those focused on
Speaker 1: lgbt Q characters or themes. Back in November, nearly two
Speaker 1: dozen people a day. We're dying from COVID nineteen in
Speaker 1: South Carolina. Thank god that god better. Thank god we
Speaker 1: knocked that ship out. But rather than try to handle
Speaker 1: the public health crisis, Governor Henry McMaster seemed more interested
Speaker 1: in pressuring the state's Department of Education to crack down
Speaker 1: on queer theme to books. He directed the Department of
Speaker 1: Education and the State Board of Education to create quote
Speaker 1: statewide standards and directives to prevent pornography and other obscene
Speaker 1: content from entering our state's public schools and libraries of
Speaker 1: the governor said in a letter to the Superintendent of Education.
Speaker 1: Inside the letter, it was specifically targeted towards uh Maya
Speaker 1: Kobe's book Gender Queer, a Memoir UM, which is a
Speaker 1: gender queer graphic novel kind of detailing what it's what
Speaker 1: it's like to be gender queer. It's definitely popular among
Speaker 1: kind of the adult like a young adult kind of
Speaker 1: age range and and as and as a good resource
Speaker 1: for kind of gender bending type stuff UM and it
Speaker 1: has faced a large amount of a large amount of
Speaker 1: the onslaught and like the bashing of queer books have
Speaker 1: been focused on this specific book. It's an autobiographical book
Speaker 1: based on the Bay Area non binary writer and the
Speaker 1: illustrator UM. It's been challenged and it started being challenged
Speaker 1: at one of South Carolina's nearly five hundred schools and
Speaker 1: then got banned from all of them just because people
Speaker 1: were mad at about it. At one school, it was
Speaker 1: being recommended for those in the tenth grade or higher
Speaker 1: to learn about kind of queer issues UM and it
Speaker 1: is now become one of the most banned books of
Speaker 1: this past year. It's been removed from schools and for Ginia,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, Florida, North and South Carolina, Texas, and a
Speaker 1: large amount of other states in the South. UM speaking.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Texas, the Agenda Queer Graphic novel was just
Speaker 1: one part of a massive kind of horrifying purge led
Speaker 1: by Texas Republican state Representative Matt cross Uh. He he
Speaker 1: led an effort to pressure and force schools and libraries
Speaker 1: to remove books based on a list of undesirable reads
Speaker 1: that he compiled himself. UM. The list is a sixteen
Speaker 1: page spreadsheet with over eight hundred and fifty books cataloged
Speaker 1: on Crouse's eight hundred and fifty strong list of titles
Speaker 1: that he wants spanned from Texas libraries, of them concerned
Speaker 1: lgbt Q issues. Um, it's kind of clear that what
Speaker 1: he did, Yeah, well what what what? What? What he
Speaker 1: did to make this list is just like googling the
Speaker 1: words like queer and lgbt Q and gay and trans
Speaker 1: like with book and found a list of books that
Speaker 1: have it like mentioned to somewhere. So like a lot
Speaker 1: of so many books are just like completely a banned
Speaker 1: that aren't even really like yeah, like the list is
Speaker 1: nearly one thousand books, like log So like he was
Speaker 1: just like google searching to like add as many books
Speaker 1: to lists as that he could. It's not actually about
Speaker 1: the content beyond the fact that the content acknowledge the
Speaker 1: existence of queer people. Like yeah, that's to the extent
Speaker 1: that he knows about the content. That's it, Like, you
Speaker 1: can't be reading all these books, no, because like one
Speaker 1: of the more interesting trends that you can find on
Speaker 1: this list is that it challenges and tries to ban
Speaker 1: books that teach students like their legal rights, um, like
Speaker 1: not even counting books about like reproductive rights or writes
Speaker 1: his like l g bt Q people. It also it
Speaker 1: includes in this list like titles like the Legal Atlas
Speaker 1: of the United States, UM Team Legal Rights, Uh, I right, yeah,
Speaker 1: equal Rights, we the Students, Supreme Court cases for and
Speaker 1: about students of Yeah. I mean this is my My
Speaker 1: support for LGBTQ people is worring here with my belief
Speaker 1: that children should not know their rights because they're they're
Speaker 1: they're they're they're getting too upty as it is, we
Speaker 1: gotta we gotta crack Look, could we crack down on
Speaker 1: kids in a way that isn't bigoted, That's all I'm
Speaker 1: asking for. Nope, nope, absolutely no, we gotta slow them down. No, no, kids,
Speaker 1: you must know your rights. And the very important thing
Speaker 1: here is that if you keep WE in your locker,
Speaker 1: the school can just search it. So don't put in
Speaker 1: your locker. If you put it in your car, they
Speaker 1: it's it's way harder for them to search its in
Speaker 1: the Principles car store guns. They're wait, okay, sorry, let's um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you can find that in the
Speaker 1: Legal Acts Less of the United States. But to be fair,
Speaker 1: Texas kids can't read that book either, now, so who
Speaker 1: knows who knows what it sets. Yeah, so to Virginia,
Speaker 1: school board numbers kind of called for a sexual books
Speaker 1: quote unquote sexual books to be burned at a meeting
Speaker 1: last year. UM. And a lot of these, like a
Speaker 1: lot of the rhetoric around like book book burnings and
Speaker 1: book bannings was specifically tied to the kind of the
Speaker 1: effort to harass and gain support in school boards. And
Speaker 1: we saw us last year with like proud boys and
Speaker 1: extremists and it's like other like random people who got
Speaker 1: their brains kind of warped by propaganda kind of leading
Speaker 1: these like incendiary charges against against the school board members.
Speaker 1: Some you know, the school board members got fired, like
Speaker 1: threatened with arrest just for allowing books that mentioned the
Speaker 1: existence of being queer. It was, it was, it was
Speaker 1: quite quite a problem that is now influencing this current
Speaker 1: legislative cycle. UM. In almost every case quote unquote, like
Speaker 1: concerned parents have swarmed school board meetings and flooded kind
Speaker 1: of mailboxes with outrage over what they call pornography um
Speaker 1: being distributed to their children. You know, people will will
Speaker 1: plaster signs with you know, scenes from the gender queer
Speaker 1: graphic novel that is like what they they they deem
Speaker 1: as being like poor not like pornographic um when it
Speaker 1: just depicts like how how like adults and young adults
Speaker 1: behave accurately, just like you can find in any like
Speaker 1: fucking like Batman comic. Like it's not like it's it's
Speaker 1: like it's like not it's it's it's it's both in
Speaker 1: line with other comic books and also like it's obviously
Speaker 1: dealing with like issues around being queer as like that's
Speaker 1: the whole point of it. So but yeah, just blasting this,
Speaker 1: blasting like queerness as innately pornographic is you know, a big,
Speaker 1: a big part of this type of propaganda push. It's it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's pretty upsetting because I mean a lot of these
Speaker 1: adults and like quote unquote parents, you know, who knows
Speaker 1: if they're actually parents. You know, it even goes and
Speaker 1: stuff to being like you know, they're accusing librarians and
Speaker 1: teachers of being pedophiles for having this, for the having
Speaker 1: these type of materials. In Wyoming, prosecutors considered charging library
Speaker 1: staff with stalking books of sexuality, um, including like literary
Speaker 1: classics under like the sex said banner like sex is
Speaker 1: a funny word, and this book is gay, um, but
Speaker 1: I considered charging library staff, like with cribs, for for
Speaker 1: stalking these books, which are like very typical sex said books.
Speaker 1: It's it's incredible because when I was in a Texas
Speaker 1: public school, I read all of the Wheel of Time
Speaker 1: books from my school library, and those are horny in
Speaker 1: a much much more unhealthy way than any of the
Speaker 1: books that you're talking about could possibly be described as well.
Speaker 1: You get that, you get this fun thing where it's
Speaker 1: like they're basically running the clock back on the turf
Speaker 1: arc like if you if you remember we're talking about
Speaker 1: Church in Mexico. It was okay, so the ark that
Speaker 1: they did was they were anti porn people, but then
Speaker 1: they lost the anti porn wars, so they became anti
Speaker 1: trafficking people. And then when sort of turfasing came back,
Speaker 1: they went from anti trafficking back to being turfs. And
Speaker 1: it's like this, this is literally they're they're doing this
Speaker 1: whole thing in reverse right there. Their starting position is
Speaker 1: that their anti trands and they're just going back to
Speaker 1: like the anti porn stuff, but like bringing in and
Speaker 1: sort of like bringing in an anti trafficking angle. And
Speaker 1: it's it's great. It's extremely fun. Yeah, this is I
Speaker 1: would describe this is fun. This is what I consider
Speaker 1: a fun time. Yeah, well I know what you consider
Speaker 1: a fun time. Here. You do notice my my carefully place,
Speaker 1: carefully placed books on on my Yes, I'm extremely aware
Speaker 1: of that. Garrison Harrison is reading books that will get
Speaker 1: them canceled by like five specific people if we talk
Speaker 1: about them too much on this show. That is always
Speaker 1: the fear of that's always the fear of Twitter. It's
Speaker 1: being canceled by five people. My favorite thing about doing
Speaker 1: a podcast for an audience of millions, Garrison is telling
Speaker 1: a joke that is that is precisely for you and
Speaker 1: me and making that like several minutes of content. Sorry. Um,
Speaker 1: And Oklahoma bill was introduced to the state Senate that
Speaker 1: would prohibit school libraries from keeping books that focused on
Speaker 1: sexual activity, sexual identity, or a gender identity. Um, you're
Speaker 1: gonna gonna use the gender identity a lot. That kind
Speaker 1: of just refers to anything that even I mean, like
Speaker 1: it refers to even mentions of being cis gender, right,
Speaker 1: because if you bring up the concept of cis gender,
Speaker 1: that infers that there is an alternative to that. So
Speaker 1: so like even any if anything even mentions being sis,
Speaker 1: it means that there must be something other, so that
Speaker 1: already falls into the gender identity kind of framework. So
Speaker 1: it's just like anything that suggests that you are that you,
Speaker 1: that there's like gender identity is not something you are
Speaker 1: innately born with and are forever, is is gonna be,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be is banned and is seen as pornographic
Speaker 1: what I'm seeing or is like grooming children or whatever
Speaker 1: kind of words that they use. Um and like, all
Speaker 1: of this rhetoric is much worse for lgbtwo Q authors
Speaker 1: who are black or people of color. There's books like
Speaker 1: All Boys Aren't Blue by writer George M. Johnson, whose
Speaker 1: whose book led one white school board member to call
Speaker 1: the police on her own district's librarian for keeping it
Speaker 1: in stock. It's uh the the the Central York School
Speaker 1: District in Pennsylvania, and an extensive list of books last
Speaker 1: year that was almost entirely written by the authomes of color.
Speaker 1: This is all the stuff has been happening like concurrently
Speaker 1: with the anti critical race theory, like organizing in protests,
Speaker 1: which again obviously isn't about actual critical race theory, just
Speaker 1: about the suggestion that maybe racism is something that is
Speaker 1: not just an individual problem, but it's maybe kind of
Speaker 1: built into our entire culture and system of governance, UM
Speaker 1: and education. So it's it's not actual critical race theory.
Speaker 1: It's that. But I think everyone listening to this kind
Speaker 1: of already are already knows that Texas Governor Greg Abbott,
Speaker 1: which is gonna be just who's gonna be a recurring
Speaker 1: character on this episode UM, kind of has taken this
Speaker 1: whole you know, calling the police on librarians thing, uh
Speaker 1: much for a kind of demanding that the state's education
Speaker 1: agency quote investigate any criminal activity in our public schools
Speaker 1: involving the availability of pornography, a move that kind of
Speaker 1: librarians in the state fear could make them targets of
Speaker 1: criminal complaints. For again, the stalking books about sex said,
Speaker 1: or you know, stalking books that not even not not
Speaker 1: not even not even not even but like sex head,
Speaker 1: just just like books that mentioned an alternative to the
Speaker 1: heteronormative like you are the gender that you are signed
Speaker 1: at birth, like idea, like anything other than that is
Speaker 1: now could get them in trouble. So anything that doesn't
Speaker 1: kind of fall under the Christian supremacist like worldview of
Speaker 1: sexuality and gender. It's it's not great. There's a it's
Speaker 1: so yeah, all boys aren't blue. The book, written by
Speaker 1: by George M. Johnson, has been similar to the gender
Speaker 1: queer graphic novel, is one of the most banned books
Speaker 1: of last year, targeted for removal in at least a
Speaker 1: fifteen states. Um, it's a lot of the organizing of
Speaker 1: these efforts kind of start online. There's like Telegram channels,
Speaker 1: Facebook groups, and then they carry over into like school
Speaker 1: board protests, and then eventually, like you know, maybe some
Speaker 1: school board members will will will catch onto this and
Speaker 1: start advocating for it. Then you know, the state governor,
Speaker 1: does you know it's city city councilman, Like all of
Speaker 1: this thing is is is his whole cycle of organizing
Speaker 1: that's really picked up alongside the anti CRT stuff many
Speaker 1: many parents have seen, like Google docs or spreadsheets like
Speaker 1: the sixteen page one made by Matt Krausse of of
Speaker 1: contentious titles posted on Facebook by local chapters of organizations
Speaker 1: such as Mom's for Liberty. So people will make these
Speaker 1: giant giant spend streets talking about books that they don't like,
Speaker 1: and then they'll get shared around on Facebook groups. Telegram
Speaker 1: channels from their librarians. Uh say that parents will ask
Speaker 1: their schools if these books are available inside libraries, and
Speaker 1: then we'll start rallying and organizing to get them banned
Speaker 1: from being available in any kind of public, public government setting,
Speaker 1: whether the school libraries, whether it be like public libraries,
Speaker 1: whether that be like online access, all this type of stuff. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's I don't know, it's Organizing against these
Speaker 1: types of things is never the easiest thing, um, because
Speaker 1: a lot of times they these people get really get
Speaker 1: really dedicated onto this because it is such a it's
Speaker 1: it's it's the whole save the children. The kind of
Speaker 1: idea which gave Q and On such strength, and q
Speaker 1: and On is kind of taking a dip down. This
Speaker 1: stuff is taking a rise up. It's kind of it's
Speaker 1: passing over the same type of organizing principles online. As
Speaker 1: as mentioned before, the governor of South Carolina asked the
Speaker 1: state's Superintendent of Education, but also it's Law enforcement division
Speaker 1: to investigate the presence of quote, obscene and pornographic materials
Speaker 1: from its public schools, um you know, citing the Gender
Speaker 1: and Queer graphic novel as an example that you've seen
Speaker 1: You've seen mayors in difference in different cities withhold funding
Speaker 1: for county libraries saying that he will not release money
Speaker 1: to these candy library systems until books with lgbt Q
Speaker 1: themes are removed. It's it's pretty grim, uh, And so
Speaker 1: far efforts to bring criminal charges against librarians and educators
Speaker 1: have largely faltered, as as law enforcement officials in like
Speaker 1: Florida and Wyoming and other sites for this type of
Speaker 1: thing that's been attempted have you know, found really no
Speaker 1: basis for criminal investigations. But still it's like the same
Speaker 1: thing for like, even even if this process gets started,
Speaker 1: it's about building like fear that it could happen to you.
Speaker 1: It's about you know, this fear that someone's always watching
Speaker 1: and someone's always wanting to report you. Um, and it's
Speaker 1: the thing that they happened with Texas and abortion. It's
Speaker 1: like trying to have like the bounty hunter idea of
Speaker 1: be like parents are trying to find examples of this
Speaker 1: to report it. So then so it's like this like
Speaker 1: proactive kind of surveillance of anything that doesn't fall into
Speaker 1: the Christian supremacist idea of gender sexuality. It's you know, now,
Speaker 1: of course that's like a specific interpretation of Christianity. I'm
Speaker 1: not not saying all Christianities like that, but it is
Speaker 1: the one of them in the South. It's it is
Speaker 1: like one of the bigger strains of that type of
Speaker 1: of that type of kind of religious and politics synthesis.
Speaker 1: Let's let's see. So courts have generally taken the position
Speaker 1: that libraries should not remove these books from circulation um
Speaker 1: but sometimes due to pressure via like loss of funding
Speaker 1: or depending on how like the how much how much
Speaker 1: like who's in charge of each state's kind of education system,
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of a lot of these
Speaker 1: books have been banned and have have been pulled from
Speaker 1: many school libraries and many public libraries. Even if it
Speaker 1: doesn't like go all the way to being like, you know,
Speaker 1: court mandated all of it, sometimes it doesn't need doesn't
Speaker 1: even need to get that far. So yeah, because like
Speaker 1: even if it doesn't get to the court, librarians kind
Speaker 1: of librarians have said that just the threat of having
Speaker 1: to defend against charges and having to defend against like
Speaker 1: accusations of pedophilia and grooming and all this kind of
Speaker 1: nonsense is enough to get many educators to censor themselves
Speaker 1: by just not talking these books to begin with, to
Speaker 1: avoid that whole kind of debacle, because even just the
Speaker 1: public spectacle of an accusation can be enough to like
Speaker 1: ruin someone's life inside like a small like in like
Speaker 1: a small community. Right, it's it's it's is if you
Speaker 1: know parents, if you know kids, and this is like
Speaker 1: part of your social group, it's part of like wherever
Speaker 1: you're like situated in your community. If this type of
Speaker 1: thing starts up, it can really be devastating to someone's
Speaker 1: personal life. And of obviously this is very ironic because
Speaker 1: all these same people who are trying to get get
Speaker 1: these books banned also crying and scream about like censorship
Speaker 1: and cancel culture um, while literally advocating the burning of
Speaker 1: comic books um, and even like fucking like advocating the
Speaker 1: burning of no Your Rights books. So it's it's like, yes,
Speaker 1: they will cry and scream about canceler culture um, but
Speaker 1: they will do all of this stuff as well. It's not,
Speaker 1: it's not there is no ideological consistency. They're they're they're
Speaker 1: they're not they're not trying to that's not that's that's
Speaker 1: not part of the point. It's because it's not even
Speaker 1: hypocrisy in their own eyes, because all of this is
Speaker 1: for the great or good. It's it's about protecting the
Speaker 1: innocence of children. Right. If you'll notice that a lot
Speaker 1: of these bills and efforts try to not explicitly attack
Speaker 1: books for being gay or queer. Instead, they will label
Speaker 1: them as pornographic or obscene. Um. Obviously, many books that
Speaker 1: conservatives will defend have just as graphic depictions of intimacy
Speaker 1: or autonic like or um or anatomy um, but usually
Speaker 1: heterosexual in nature, and alongside other kind of values that
Speaker 1: the right wants to push um. You know, even like
Speaker 1: the fucking Bible is more graphic than the gender queer
Speaker 1: and graphic novel um. But when conservatives say pornography, what
Speaker 1: they just mean is that is any display of queerness, right,
Speaker 1: anything outside the mold of the fundamentalist, Christian supremacist worldview
Speaker 1: that they're fighting for. Just like when they say banned
Speaker 1: critical race theory, they don't they don't actually mean that.
Speaker 1: What they mean is ban any discussion on racism that
Speaker 1: kind of disrupts white comfort. It's it's it's it's they
Speaker 1: they have their own framework to view this and they
Speaker 1: can justify it within their own framework, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's it should not surprise anyone that many of these
Speaker 1: queer book bannings are being organized alongside bands on books
Speaker 1: focusing on race and racism. Um Matt Cross's sixteen page
Speaker 1: spreadsheet was was was made to accompany House Bill three
Speaker 1: nine seven nine, the so called anti CRT bill, that
Speaker 1: band's teaching of any materials that could mean quote an
Speaker 1: individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other psychological
Speaker 1: distress on account of the individual's race or sex. So
Speaker 1: just banning teaching of things that could make a theoretical
Speaker 1: person kind of uncomfortable, which is it seems like a
Speaker 1: great way to view education. Uh yeah, let's just skip
Speaker 1: over the parts that are uncomfortable and that I'll make
Speaker 1: a great society. Wow. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna quote from a great article by Samantha Rydell in
Speaker 1: them dot Com quote small. Wonder then that much of
Speaker 1: the current of fervor can be traced back to the
Speaker 1: conservative group No Left Turn founded in to ban books
Speaker 1: about racial inequality from classrooms by Elena Fish being an
Speaker 1: Alna Fish being believes that Antifa children quote quote quote
Speaker 1: Antiva children are going to assault her kids for being white. UM.
Speaker 1: The organization No Left Turn rocketed to prominence in the
Speaker 1: anti education right wing after fish Being was interviewed by
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson on Fox News. UM a tie, which similarly
Speaker 1: lifted like minded boats such as Moms for Liberty. No
Speaker 1: Left Turns website directs parents to a laundry list of
Speaker 1: books that they claim are used to quote indoctrinate kids
Speaker 1: into a dangerous ideology, including a rope best section on
Speaker 1: quote comprehensive sexual education. UM here that pornography lie is
Speaker 1: laid bare with over forty books whose only kind of
Speaker 1: through line is that they deal with lgbt Q themes.
Speaker 1: The picture book I Am Jazz, Uh, Kate Bornstein's My
Speaker 1: Gender Workbook, and the y a novel Two Boys Kissing
Speaker 1: also included, as Margaret Atwood's The Hand the Handmaiden's Tale.
Speaker 1: UM No Left Turn and discriminately targets all these titles
Speaker 1: because they simply feature queer people having lives or, in
Speaker 1: the case of like Margaret Atwood, having their lives be ended. So,
Speaker 1: after all, ideas ideas like that might influence kids to
Speaker 1: think that they could be different right any and for
Speaker 1: conservative parents, there's no greater horror than the thought of
Speaker 1: not being able to control their children or the idea
Speaker 1: that their kids might not be straight. It should come
Speaker 1: as no surprise that the grassroots campaigns quote unquote grassroots
Speaker 1: campaigns like No Left Turn are in reality links to
Speaker 1: influential conservative donors and packs like the catag Institute and
Speaker 1: the former Federative Society. Pardon, yes, like the Cato it's
Speaker 1: named after Kato Kalin, the guy who lived behind o
Speaker 1: Ja's house. Is that true? No, it's yeah. I should
Speaker 1: have just let that. I should have just got He's
Speaker 1: gonna slightly constantly expand by like red string. It's like
Speaker 1: my red string board has head by head like yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah. Cato Institute named after Kato Kalin, the guy
Speaker 1: who o j Surper bro buddy. But it should come
Speaker 1: as no surprise that the grass roots quote unquote grassroots
Speaker 1: campaigns like No Left Turn on Reality link to influential
Speaker 1: conservative donors and packs like the Cato Institute and former
Speaker 1: Federalist Society and Vice president Leonard Leo. But then again,
Speaker 1: lies don't matter to the reactionary base that Republicans are
Speaker 1: hoping to rally to the front of this culture war.
Speaker 1: What matters to them is controlling the information that children
Speaker 1: have access to to obsensively keep them safe and innocent
Speaker 1: but in truth, because they think that if kids don't
Speaker 1: know but lgbt Q identities, they won't form one. It's
Speaker 1: conversion therapy by ignorance. End quote. But that that's an
Speaker 1: idea I'm going to kind of come back through, come
Speaker 1: back to a few times throughout the course of this episode,
Speaker 1: is the idea of conversion therapy by ignorance, which really
Speaker 1: does kind of I think have introduced a really good
Speaker 1: like mental framework to understand why these things are happening,
Speaker 1: because they think if they can keep kids from learning
Speaker 1: about these things, then they won't become gay or trance.
Speaker 1: It is it's like trying to isolate them so that
Speaker 1: so that their reality tunnel is so small so that
Speaker 1: they won't hopefully will never like break out of it.
Speaker 1: Um Now, obviously, if kids feel if kids start having
Speaker 1: feelings that break that channel, if they don't know that
Speaker 1: there's an alternative to that, that really kind of leads
Speaker 1: to things like depression and suicide, which is why it's
Speaker 1: so high among among queer kids in that region because
Speaker 1: it's like it's like they're fundamentally breaking realities. So it's
Speaker 1: that's hard to cope with. We're just gonna, it's gonna do.
Speaker 1: What's gonna do kind of one more segment quickly before
Speaker 1: before we haven't had break it is UH. It's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: We have like a lot of the parents that have
Speaker 1: been rallying for this UH have some interesting track records themselves.
Speaker 1: We can even you know, go back to UM uh
Speaker 1: to the Family Research Council with Josh Dougger having to
Speaker 1: save the children idea well you know himself being a
Speaker 1: child molester or help Billy Cade like yeah so um.
Speaker 1: In a secondingly ironic case, a Missouri parent named Ryan
Speaker 1: Utterback was charged in December with multiple accounts of child
Speaker 1: molestation and UH giving and distributing pornography to miners, including
Speaker 1: a child as young as four UM. Upon his rest,
Speaker 1: Utterback was heavily involved in the book banning advocacy, including
Speaker 1: protests against the books All Boys Aren't Blue and UH
Speaker 1: and other sex sad books. UM. He he said he
Speaker 1: gave a quote before he got arrested and when he
Speaker 1: was still doing like the book banning advocacy. Quote only
Speaker 1: I have the intimate understanding of what isn't isn't appropriate
Speaker 1: for my children, uh, which is quite quite the quite
Speaker 1: sentence to say on someone who is now arrested for
Speaker 1: a child molestation. So yeah, that's not Yeah, that's uh
Speaker 1: that sucks. But yeah, so like it's it's the idea
Speaker 1: that erasing, erasing documentation of queer lives and making it
Speaker 1: so that so that people to their kids only are
Speaker 1: exposed to a very kind of isolated worldview will make
Speaker 1: it easier to control um. And if they don't hear
Speaker 1: about something, maybe they'll just you know, live their life
Speaker 1: as a regular straight child. And that's that's their hope.
Speaker 1: Now obviously that doesn't that doesn't really happen in practice,
Speaker 1: but that's kind of what they're working towards. That. That's
Speaker 1: why this save the children thing is so important to them,
Speaker 1: because they really do think that they can save the
Speaker 1: kid children, like they do think that they can keep
Speaker 1: keep them from this stuff. So I think there's one
Speaker 1: other reason that they're doing that specifically they focus on
Speaker 1: books too, specifically the pornographic attack, which is that these
Speaker 1: kind of like incredible hard right, evangelicals are not the
Speaker 1: entire Republican base, and so like there are people who
Speaker 1: they have to convent, like they have to fully radicalize
Speaker 1: into into the extermination of where people the specifically extremis
Speaker 1: to transpeople and the like. The easiest way to do
Speaker 1: that is just by constantly associating anything queer with pedophilia
Speaker 1: and with like specific pifically pedophilia and specifically grooming. And
Speaker 1: you know, these kind of campaigns like they have dual effect.
Speaker 1: They have the effect on the one hand of the
Speaker 1: actual material harm to children and they're you know, like
Speaker 1: preventing them from having any access to anything that shows
Speaker 1: them that they could be queer. And then simultaneously it
Speaker 1: has this effect of creating this association in side of
Speaker 1: conservatives that allows you to push for even more genocidal
Speaker 1: stuff that without this they might not have been able
Speaker 1: to swallow. Yeah, well, speaking of genocidal actions, I'm sure
Speaker 1: that one of our sponsors have contributed to at least
Speaker 1: one attempt to genocide. I mean, we we are actually
Speaker 1: entirely sponsored this week by the former Indonesian dictator Suharto,
Speaker 1: So you know, big big thank you to him. Uh
Speaker 1: Pancasila forever and yeah, here's some ads. Ah, we're back.
Speaker 1: Don't don't don't google what Zukarno did in uh in
Speaker 1: West Papua. Hey, Hey, hey, hey, Suharto and Sukarno different. Yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I am very clear on this and that's why you
Speaker 1: should not google what Zukarno did in in Papua because
Speaker 1: dear God. But we will put his pastreon in the description.
Speaker 1: We will be backing his patreon heavily. Look at the
Speaker 1: show notes for at UM. Hi, welcome back. We're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna segue into other types of legislation now, but
Speaker 1: still kind of focusing on the whole parents rights to
Speaker 1: decide what scientific and medical knowledge children can have access
Speaker 1: to UM in terms of like the conversion therapy by
Speaker 1: ignorance category. So we're gonna talk about they don't Say
Speaker 1: Gay bill. So Florida's House and Senate just passed the
Speaker 1: so called don't say gay bill that bands mentioned of
Speaker 1: anything other than the strict heteronormativity and the you are
Speaker 1: the gender assined that birth kind of idea. UM for
Speaker 1: at least most developmentary school, it's banned and possibly farther
Speaker 1: reaching than that UM with teachers also opening themselves up
Speaker 1: to lawsuits if they fail to comply. It's formerly known
Speaker 1: as the Parental Rights in Education Bill, and the text
Speaker 1: of the legislation states that quote, classroom instruction by school
Speaker 1: personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity
Speaker 1: may not occur in kind of garden through third grade,
Speaker 1: or in any manner that is not aged appropriate or
Speaker 1: developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards. So
Speaker 1: it is it is very intentionally vague for how far
Speaker 1: reaching this can be, for how much they will determine
Speaker 1: what and what isn't appropriate for grades for an up
Speaker 1: who knows. Uh. Yeah, but it's not just it's not
Speaker 1: just limited to early grades. Classroom instruction on sexual orientation
Speaker 1: and general identity could be prohibited or at least taken
Speaker 1: to court at all grade levels, Uh, depending on what
Speaker 1: the parents find unacceptable. Right. It is. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: based on what the parents want to want to happen
Speaker 1: to to to the kids that are under their care.
Speaker 1: So it's it's specifically following kind of the framework that, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can you can report something if you don't like it.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's very much pandering to like a
Speaker 1: reactionary conservative all this stuff that conservatives said was a
Speaker 1: nightmare about like the Stazi in East Germany and the KGB.
Speaker 1: They're like, but what if we just decentralized that, you know,
Speaker 1: and and let anyone who's a biggot report and ruin
Speaker 1: the lives of people around them for a variety of
Speaker 1: bullshit reasons. It's good. Yeah, it's ah. And I mean
Speaker 1: just like other states, like in Texas, the enforcement of
Speaker 1: it is not initially done by the government, but is
Speaker 1: open to a concern and fanatical public, saying that parents
Speaker 1: may bring action against the school district to obtain a
Speaker 1: declaratory judgment UM, and a court may award damages and
Speaker 1: attorney's fees if it finds the school violated the measure,
Speaker 1: So there's like financial incentives for parents for this UM.
Speaker 1: The bill will come into effect on the first of July,
Speaker 1: with all school districts UM required to update their policies
Speaker 1: by at least June. There was there was also a
Speaker 1: proposed amendment that would have required schools and educators to
Speaker 1: report if they knew or suspected a child was lgbt
Speaker 1: Q to their parents within six weeks. Of learning that Um,
Speaker 1: so within six weeks of learning, if they're not sis
Speaker 1: or straight, they would have to be reported to the parents. Um.
Speaker 1: But that that part was withdrawn before the bill reached
Speaker 1: the House. But in terms of like, this is the
Speaker 1: type of thing that well, is that like the legislators
Speaker 1: are thinking of. When it became increasingly apparent that the
Speaker 1: bill was going to be passed no matter what, uh,
Speaker 1: a Democrat, Chevin Jones, the first openly gay Florida state senator,
Speaker 1: tried to amend the bill to narrow the language to
Speaker 1: say that in classroom instruction should not be intended to
Speaker 1: change the students sexual orientation or gender identity, and specifically
Speaker 1: not marginalized queer people, and instead just limit the bill
Speaker 1: to itach appropriate sex. Said, and that amendment obviously failed,
Speaker 1: with Dennis Backley, the bill's main sponsor, saying that it
Speaker 1: would significantly get the bill's intent. So it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's specifically to suppress knowledge of being queer. That is
Speaker 1: that is the whole that's the whole point of the bill. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean the the governor claims that the
Speaker 1: bill addresses quote sexual stuff and quote telling kids that
Speaker 1: they may be able to pick genders and all that,
Speaker 1: saying that that has nothing to do like this is
Speaker 1: nothing to do with sex at all, like literally nothing,
Speaker 1: that's like but nothing. Yeah, it's but they still knew it,
Speaker 1: like the pornographic obscene kind of category because like it's right,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing like if you show gay people kissing,
Speaker 1: that is sexual. If you show stray people kissing, that
Speaker 1: isn't right. It's it's being queer as innately more obscene.
Speaker 1: It is. It is, it is. It is so much
Speaker 1: more of an issue. Rana Santist governor also said, like
Speaker 1: how many parents want their kindergarteners to have transjagenderism or
Speaker 1: something injected into their school discussion. Um, but that's so
Speaker 1: that type of stuff he says that like press conferences
Speaker 1: and stuff. So yeah, it is. It is very clear
Speaker 1: that the bill is targeted specifically towards gay people, um
Speaker 1: and being trying are being queer, being non sis, non straight,
Speaker 1: that whole that that that whole category. Um. The governor's
Speaker 1: press secretary called it the anti grooming bill, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: reviving the type of like you know, like that LGBT
Speaker 1: attacks have had for years, suggesting that you know, being
Speaker 1: gay means that you are a pedophile, or being trans
Speaker 1: means that you're a pedophile. It ties in with this
Speaker 1: thing you'll see in like the far right and the
Speaker 1: libertarian right, where people who have like kill your local
Speaker 1: pedophile bumper stickers and stuff because you can't argue with like, yeah,
Speaker 1: pedophiles are are the worst, that's horrible, But you don't
Speaker 1: actually mean people who molest children. You mean people who
Speaker 1: live in a way that you consider obscene, which you
Speaker 1: are equating with pedophilias that you can justify murdering those
Speaker 1: people eventually. Yep uh yeah, and when and when when
Speaker 1: confronted with actual pedophiles, they literally don't do ship well.
Speaker 1: They are off Like Andy No, for a great example,
Speaker 1: has regularly hung out around a specific I think it
Speaker 1: mostly is his name pedophile. The longest serving Republican Speaker
Speaker 1: of the House was a pedophile and passive scale it
Speaker 1: Dennis Haster d Hast that's what that? Um, that's what that?
Speaker 1: What's that German band? This would have been a decent
Speaker 1: joke if I remember their name right, Romstein. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: I sucked it up, okay, so anyway, please please continue.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but like they don't say gay. Bill tries
Speaker 1: even less than some of the like school book bands
Speaker 1: to hide behind the defense of prohibiting pornography. Like it
Speaker 1: just says the quiet part out loud, you know, saying
Speaker 1: that this bill is grounded in the belief loud part
Speaker 1: out loud. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like the bills just
Speaker 1: grounded in the belief that LGBTQ people simply by existing
Speaker 1: are a threat to like children and must be completely arrassed.
Speaker 1: Like that's that's the whole that's the whole idea. Following
Speaker 1: several hours of debate ahead of the vote in the Senate,
Speaker 1: a bill sponsor Atlanta Garcia claimed that quote, gay is
Speaker 1: not a permanent thing, and lgbt Q is not a
Speaker 1: permanent thing. So yeah, it's the type of like conversion
Speaker 1: therapy by ignorance thing. A lot of these people have
Speaker 1: advocated for conversion therapy to be legalized in the past
Speaker 1: or re legalized in the past. So yeah, they just
Speaker 1: they just don't want gay people to be around because
Speaker 1: they find the nikki. So it's it's not it's not
Speaker 1: just Florida though, right the fears with like hyper focusing
Speaker 1: on you know, just justin, justin, don't say, gay bill
Speaker 1: in Florida kind of like, you know, it ignores a
Speaker 1: lot of the other stuff that's happening across the entire country,
Speaker 1: if you do, when you're just focusing on on state,
Speaker 1: because there are like fifteen similar bills moving through state
Speaker 1: legislators that are strict how textbooks and curriculums are allowed
Speaker 1: to teach lgbt Q topics and even like who can
Speaker 1: be hired as teachers and what are what are like
Speaker 1: what's allowed to be said when it comes to genderal
Speaker 1: identity and sexual orientation. All like stuff is happening all
Speaker 1: across the country. Um House bill in Tennessee would band
Speaker 1: textbook and instructural materials that promote normalized support or address lesbian, gay, bisexual,
Speaker 1: or gender lifestyles quote unquote um in in in case
Speaker 1: three twelve schools so also also high school um in
Speaker 1: in UH. In Kansas, there's a bill that seeks to
Speaker 1: amend the state's absidity laws to make using classroom materials
Speaker 1: depicting homosexuality a Class B misdemeanor. UH legislators in Indiana
Speaker 1: are working to bar educators from discussing any content about
Speaker 1: sexual orientation, quote, transgenderism or general identity without permission from parents.
Speaker 1: In Oklahoma, there's a senate bill that would ban public
Speaker 1: schools from plowing anyone who quote promotes positions in the
Speaker 1: classroom or any or any function of the public school
Speaker 1: that is in opposition to the closely held religious beliefs
Speaker 1: of students. So that's that's interesting framing there. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: again we need to be very clear about this when like,
Speaker 1: when these people say deeply have religious beliefs, they mean
Speaker 1: fundamentalist Christianity. They're they're these people are very specifically attempting
Speaker 1: to turn these stay into a Christian at those state
Speaker 1: and this is the ship that they used to do it,
Speaker 1: And it's yeah, it's it's it's grim. We can look
Speaker 1: at like a recent report from the Trevor Project UM
Speaker 1: which is an lgbt Q suicide prevention and crisis internation group,
Speaker 1: and they did a recent report finding that l g
Speaker 1: b t Q youth who learn about l g b
Speaker 1: t Q people or l g b t Q issues
Speaker 1: in the school have a tent lower odds of reporting
Speaker 1: a suicide attempt in the past year. So just that
Speaker 1: like the knowledge that there is an alternative is like,
Speaker 1: is life changing for people right, the ability to to
Speaker 1: realize that there are other reality tunnels is can save
Speaker 1: people's lives, like it is. Yeah, I mean I like
Speaker 1: I I watched this happen like my my public school,
Speaker 1: Like I was in a public school, but I was
Speaker 1: in public school in a really conservative area. The only
Speaker 1: time anyone even mentioned being gay was screaming about gay marriage,
Speaker 1: and like we fucking saw some ship, Like a lot
Speaker 1: of extremely bad things happened to the queer kids. They're
Speaker 1: including me like it, yeah, like this this stuff kills people.
Speaker 1: It still hurts people. It is. I think that's that
Speaker 1: people in like more blue states don't quite understand, is
Speaker 1: how how absolute this type of thing is, like living
Speaker 1: in these communities, How how narrow your version of reality is,
Speaker 1: Like how how everything you're exposed to is so hyper
Speaker 1: focused that even knowledge of an alternative can be so
Speaker 1: mind blowing that it really is important to have at
Speaker 1: least this to be knowledgeable, because yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: people who you know, a lot of people may not
Speaker 1: have access to the internet in the same way. It's
Speaker 1: like a lot of these groups, especially like especially Christian
Speaker 1: groups specifically, have like like you know, services that you
Speaker 1: can buy to like suppress websites on your WiFi, writers,
Speaker 1: is that only you're only available to access like certain websites.
Speaker 1: Like like, like it is a whole effort to restrict
Speaker 1: the reality that kids are exposed to to kind of
Speaker 1: railroad them into this hyper specific, kind of heteronormative idea
Speaker 1: of existence. So yeah, any type of thing that breaks
Speaker 1: these kids out of out of these reality tunnels can
Speaker 1: can be life changing, which is why they're trying to
Speaker 1: ban all these books of libraries because yeah, even if
Speaker 1: you even if you block websites, even if you were
Speaker 1: strict internet access, even if you were strict what can
Speaker 1: be taught in schools, you know, there's the fear of
Speaker 1: what if a kid goes to a library and finds
Speaker 1: a book about being gay? Then oh wow, that could
Speaker 1: that would you know, undo all of the effort that
Speaker 1: undo the thousands of dollars we spend on blocking internet
Speaker 1: access to two websites. So like that's why they're talking
Speaker 1: about like libraries and stuff is because yeah, if they
Speaker 1: find out about this stuff anywhere, then they're going to
Speaker 1: be in trouble. Like that's that's it's the whole point
Speaker 1: of like isolating people, isolating what they view as possible.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we're not gonna talking about some Uh, we're
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna we're gonna talk money, money, money, money. Uh.
Speaker 1: The other thing that they don't say. Gay Bill has
Speaker 1: highlighted is the extent to which Big Illnesses and corporate
Speaker 1: America is financially funding many of these recent efforts to
Speaker 1: hack away queer rights. Uh. This has kind of been
Speaker 1: like a back and forth thing though, especially if you
Speaker 1: look back in the past few years under the Trump era.
Speaker 1: Let's take the North Carolina Bathroom Bill for example, arguably
Speaker 1: the opening act for the current onslaught of socially conservative
Speaker 1: legislation targeting and trans people. Remember this was like right
Speaker 1: after the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, So this
Speaker 1: is when the needle starts to shift towards trans people.
Speaker 1: This is the bill that said that you have to
Speaker 1: use the bathroom assigned at matching the gender you were
Speaker 1: assigned at, BURGERSUNI certificate, all types of stuff, um putting again,
Speaker 1: unspoken bigotry, unspoken stuff. You know, you could be you know,
Speaker 1: arrested or harassed for doing this previously. But it's like
Speaker 1: putting this type of idea into concrete law. Right, This
Speaker 1: is once once progress starts, there's this like back pedaling
Speaker 1: so that they you know, they put they put that,
Speaker 1: they put what was once like unspoken bigotry and just
Speaker 1: like obvious bigotry into actual written law. Um, it's like
Speaker 1: make making it concrete. So during the bathroom Bill kind
Speaker 1: of whole thing in North Carolina, UM, we saw corporations
Speaker 1: trying to stay conscious of culture shifts, attempting to stay
Speaker 1: on the sympathetic side of the rising generations who would
Speaker 1: you know, become their future employees and customers, trying to
Speaker 1: appeal to them and keeping that in mind. So in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of the passage of the bathroom Bill, multiple
Speaker 1: companies like PayPal, Adidas, Doutsche Bank um all rescinded plans
Speaker 1: to invest in the States. Banks wild to like I mean,
Speaker 1: if there's if there's evil going on, Deutsche Bank is
Speaker 1: providing money to make it. Yeah, it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's stunning, Like how bad you have to be that
Speaker 1: Deutsche Bank is? Like no, I like like every every
Speaker 1: person who's like Russia yet like like Deutsche Bank, like
Speaker 1: before like I knew someone who worked there who two
Speaker 1: of his coworkers like started like doing audits of their
Speaker 1: accounts and both of them wound up dead in their
Speaker 1: hotel rooms, non extradition countries. Yeah, that's scans. Yeah, like okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, Deutsche Bank initially said they weren't gonna pull
Speaker 1: out of Russia, but like two days ago, as we record,
Speaker 1: this started pulling out. But they pulled out in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: They pulled North Carolina. Jesus Christ, big, big, big. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a degree to which is probably just like that
Speaker 1: Raytheon energy where it's like Raytheon, we're great with trans
Speaker 1: people that you're making missiles, then you're fine exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean big musical artists like Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam
Speaker 1: and a former former R E M member Ringo Star
Speaker 1: kes Litt concerts. There did you call Ringo Star a
Speaker 1: member of R E M. Garrison the the n C
Speaker 1: Double A announced it was that was championship. Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: If you'd lived through the nine these, you would never
Speaker 1: make fun of Michael Stipe again. At the National Basketball
Speaker 1: Association pulled its All Star game from Charlotte, almost seventy
Speaker 1: companies Joy did a lawsuit against the bill Um and
Speaker 1: you know, money talks the pressure worked, the state repealed
Speaker 1: the law in twhen He's seventeen uh. The same year abroad,
Speaker 1: a coalition of business leaders in Texas blocked a similar
Speaker 1: bill pushed by these Tonchley conservative then Republican Lieutenant Governor
Speaker 1: Dan Patrick. UM and we've seen the same type of
Speaker 1: thing happen in Georgia the past few years. UM with
Speaker 1: with actions like corporate Boycott's many large employeers pushing back
Speaker 1: on the succession of socially conservative bills, including like racist
Speaker 1: voting restrictions, six week abortion bands, and quote religious freedom
Speaker 1: bills that would give businesses protection to refuse customers or
Speaker 1: higher employees that are queer. UM. Prominent in that resistance
Speaker 1: was a Disney, which cast a long shadow over Georgia's
Speaker 1: economy via its filming of Marvel Movie Inside Atlanta. Yeah
Speaker 1: so yeah. Across many states, big corporate brands were quick
Speaker 1: to condemn obviously bigoted political moves. UM. Prominent Tennessee employeers
Speaker 1: like Nissan, del Amazon, and Vanderbilt University sent a since
Speaker 1: sent a letter last year opposing a suite of bills
Speaker 1: targeting lgbt Q rights, and a similarly, a group of
Speaker 1: Texas businesses business leaders declared opposition to Governor Greg Abbott's
Speaker 1: recent directive to investigate parents and others who provide transition
Speaker 1: treatment for for transgender youth. But after Trump got out
Speaker 1: of office, and particularly during this recent round of a
Speaker 1: tax on queer rights, companies have not really even backing
Speaker 1: up their words with any equivalent actions. After Tennessee last year,
Speaker 1: past all the bills that targeted lgbt Q rights, including
Speaker 1: measures restricting classroom discussion, UM, barring trans girls from any
Speaker 1: high school sports, and it's and its own version of
Speaker 1: the bathroom bill, it faced nothing like the North Carolina boycotts.
Speaker 1: There was, there was, There was just nothing because this
Speaker 1: is when Biden was president. Now, um so, whether it
Speaker 1: be the anti CRT stuff, voting restrictions, or stepping away
Speaker 1: lgbt Q rights the past year under Joe Biden, companies
Speaker 1: are not really bothered to push back on these socially
Speaker 1: conservative bills overtaking many states. It's it's they don't it's
Speaker 1: it's easier to push back. But it's easier to push
Speaker 1: back on something when you know when you have a
Speaker 1: big bad in office. I guess, uh, well, and I
Speaker 1: think also it's it's the companies can see which way
Speaker 1: the wind is blowing, right, Yeah, like it's a sat
Speaker 1: stating with grifters. When you when you when you watch
Speaker 1: people like when you watch streamers just like someddenly start
Speaker 1: to flip their political positions. When you when you watch
Speaker 1: the Love the live streamers in particularly do this when
Speaker 1: you watch them starting to flip that that's how you
Speaker 1: can tell which way the wind is blowing. And this
Speaker 1: is really fucking scary because you know the way the
Speaker 1: wind is blowing right now, that that these corporations are
Speaker 1: are are you know, drifting towards is just you know,
Speaker 1: and refusing to oppose is just this exterminationism. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean thankfully Disney got you know, shouted to like we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about so creators of the movie Song
Speaker 1: of the South. UM was notable that in their refusal
Speaker 1: to criticize the bill as it moved through the legislature
Speaker 1: under um the kind of recent stuff inside Florida specifically, so,
Speaker 1: but this was part of an overall pattern, Like the
Speaker 1: corporate response was was much more muted to they go
Speaker 1: to they don't say gay bill um in Florida compared
Speaker 1: to other stuff across across the country. Even UM, and
Speaker 1: it shouldn't really surprise anybody many of the Republican backers
Speaker 1: of the bill in Florida are actually bankrolled by the
Speaker 1: very same businesses that have done performative virtue signally boycott's
Speaker 1: and protests under the troumpb era. Uh. Disney and Disney
Speaker 1: World in Orlando is one of the state's biggest employers
Speaker 1: and and in a normal of s economic force inside Florida.
Speaker 1: And when disney silence was met with pushback, Bob Chapeck,
Speaker 1: the CEO, try to kind of do damage control at
Speaker 1: first like internally within the company and then for outside press.
Speaker 1: UM last Monday, I think, which was the seventh UM
Speaker 1: in a in a in a memo to Disney staff,
Speaker 1: Chapek argue that the company can do more to promote
Speaker 1: tolerance quote through the inspiring content we produce and the
Speaker 1: welcoming culture we create and the diverse community of organizations
Speaker 1: we support UM, which just funny if you know anything
Speaker 1: about the history of Disney. UM also saying that the
Speaker 1: messages in their movies are more powerful than any law
Speaker 1: being effort, which is uh yeah, which is also you know,
Speaker 1: great coming from the company most famous for queer coding
Speaker 1: almost all of their films, so sure, sure, bob um.
Speaker 1: Two days later, UM, at a shareholder meeting, was a
Speaker 1: little more open and told told shareholders that the company
Speaker 1: had privately opposed to the bill. Um, and we'll trying
Speaker 1: to explain why the silence in the recent legislative efforts
Speaker 1: to attack lgbt P LGBTQ people. He said that we
Speaker 1: chose not to take a public position on the bill
Speaker 1: because we felt like we could be more effective working
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, engaging directly with lawmakers on both sides
Speaker 1: of the aisle. But it uh. It later came out
Speaker 1: that Speck had only reached out to Florida Governor Randa
Speaker 1: Centers just that morning, after the bill had already had
Speaker 1: already passed. Yeah, we we need that cat from Saga
Speaker 1: that just yells lies. Yes, lying cats my favorite. UM
Speaker 1: definitely appreciate lying cat lying. Uh. Yeah. So, of course
Speaker 1: none of this satisfied anybody, um, and there's been increasing
Speaker 1: pushback from both within the Disney Company and outside um Uh.
Speaker 1: Pixar sent a letter to CHPEC criticizing his wishy washy
Speaker 1: stance on the on the on the don't Say Gay bill,
Speaker 1: and even goes on even goes on to goes on
Speaker 1: to criticize the corporation for capitalizing on pride through like
Speaker 1: a through rainbow mickey merchandizing and stuff, uh, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: it feels terrible to be part of a company that
Speaker 1: makes money from pride merch when it when it chooses
Speaker 1: to step back in times of our greatest need and
Speaker 1: when our rights are at risk, says the Pixar letter.
Speaker 1: So yeah, after after after, if you did after the
Speaker 1: shareholder meeting, Jpeck said, third times the charm and try
Speaker 1: again to save face, announcing the company would immediately begin
Speaker 1: supporting efforts to combat similar legislation in other states and
Speaker 1: would pause all political donations in the state pending a
Speaker 1: review of the company's political giving. Um conceding that the
Speaker 1: company failed to be a stronger ally in the fight
Speaker 1: for equal rights. And all that is well and good
Speaker 1: if you ignore the fact that in the past two
Speaker 1: years alone, Disney has given three thousand dollars to politicians
Speaker 1: in Florida who voted for they Don't Say Gay Bill.
Speaker 1: Um Disney entities donated at least four thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: the re election campaigns for the bill's chief sponsors a
Speaker 1: state representative Joe Harding and state sponsor Dennis Baxley. UM
Speaker 1: and Disney entities also donated fifty dollars to political action
Speaker 1: committee tied to the governor, Rhonda Santa's one just last year.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's a that's a lot of money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think I think it's worth like noting for
Speaker 1: people who like are somewhat younger, which is that like
Speaker 1: there's a whole thing where corporations pretend that they like
Speaker 1: queer people now and this is the thing that has
Speaker 1: existed for maybe a decade and the other several hundred
Speaker 1: years of capitalism are them like ruthless lee crushing queer
Speaker 1: people of all kinds. So yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: their normal date. Queer capitalism is like not a thing.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a thing that exists solely to sell
Speaker 1: you sweatshirts. It's not a thing get that rainbow Mickey merchandise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they want they are actively okay with funding people who
Speaker 1: want to kill you. So so as as I as
Speaker 1: I was writing this, UM last week tonight the show
Speaker 1: with Jonathan Oliver came out with a small piece that
Speaker 1: was covering similar ground, uh to to my writing. That
Speaker 1: also included some nice, nice, nice background on Disney sponsored
Speaker 1: politician and lead sponsor. If they don't say gay bill
Speaker 1: that Dennis Baxley. Um, so yeah, apparently Baxley has said
Speaker 1: that quote abortion is causing Europeans to be replaced by immigrants.
Speaker 1: Disney's going back to its Nazi roots, nice little white replacement.
Speaker 1: Lie um inwent He worked on bills to repeal protections
Speaker 1: for queer workers and worked to relegalize gay conversion therapy
Speaker 1: um and teen. At some kind of fundraising event, he
Speaker 1: said that quote, I know some districts where there's a
Speaker 1: big infestation of homosexuals that are pushing their agenda under
Speaker 1: the screen and then trying to get more people hired
Speaker 1: like them instead up gated options and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's a continual fight for the values that we hold,
Speaker 1: dear boy, brought to you, brought to you by Disney.
Speaker 1: And yeah, ticket infestation. Yeah, it's a yeah take take
Speaker 1: take none of the infestation there. Um. That kind of
Speaker 1: ties into my whole, my whole like viewing, you know,
Speaker 1: queerness as a contagion kind of idea, well, which I
Speaker 1: mean viewing the enemy is a contagion is also older
Speaker 1: than just viewing queer people as a contagion, because it's
Speaker 1: exactly how Hitler talked about the Jews, and you know,
Speaker 1: it goes. We can look at like some of the
Speaker 1: things the Turks would say about Armenians. It's this idea
Speaker 1: of you know, you, there's no there's no middle ground
Speaker 1: with a virus, and if you turn people into a virus,
Speaker 1: then you don't have to consider a middle ground. Um.
Speaker 1: So before we go and break, I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do one more. I'm gonna do a quote from an
Speaker 1: article in The Atlantic, um titled want to understand the
Speaker 1: Red State onslaught look at Florida. Um, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a deccent article kind of going through the
Speaker 1: financial stuff that Disney has kind of backed. Um. But yeah, quote,
Speaker 1: why have so many companies backed away from these fights? Um,
Speaker 1: the fights against the group legislation. Some corporate lobbyists I
Speaker 1: spoke with said that one reason is that they believe
Speaker 1: the public opposition is counterproductive because more Republican elected officials
Speaker 1: in the Donald Trump era find it politically valuable to
Speaker 1: be seen as fighting big companies. Businesses also frequently complained
Speaker 1: that the widening gulf between the parties leaves them in
Speaker 1: a lose lose position of alienating an important block of
Speaker 1: potential customers wherever they come down on policy debates. UM
Speaker 1: activists the point out that business is often try to
Speaker 1: have both ways by rhetorically identifying causes such as inclusion
Speaker 1: and diversity without taking any tangible steps to defend them.
Speaker 1: Another factor probably looms larger than any of these considerations.
Speaker 1: However much they want to publicly align with the values
Speaker 1: of younger customers and consumers and workers, big companies want
Speaker 1: to only want to go only so far in fighting
Speaker 1: these proposals because they still mostly prefer Republicans and control
Speaker 1: state governments to deliver the low tax like regulation policies
Speaker 1: that they favor. State Republicans have, in turn, have grown
Speaker 1: more overt about threatening those beliefs when business leaders raise
Speaker 1: objections to the cultural war components of their agenda. When
Speaker 1: American Airlines criticized the restrictive voting bill in Texas past
Speaker 1: last year, Lieutenant Governor Patrick openly threatened to kill other
Speaker 1: legislation the company had cared about. So yeah, like, obviously,
Speaker 1: companies want Republicans to be in charge because it will
Speaker 1: make it easier to run their big giant corporate businesses
Speaker 1: that basically are as powerful a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of other like government entities. Uh so, yeah, they're gonna
Speaker 1: spend supporting Rhonda Santis. They're gonna spends in the past
Speaker 1: the past two years, was supporting all these Republican candidates
Speaker 1: that voted for for they don't say, gay bill, because
Speaker 1: that makes them more profit in the long run. And
Speaker 1: that's you know, if you're if you're running a business,
Speaker 1: that's what they want. So yep, that is Uh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna we're We're gonna take another ad break and then
Speaker 1: we will we will come back to talk about Texas
Speaker 1: and and and bathroom bills and healthcare and all of
Speaker 1: the other kind of stuff that's happened in recent weeks. Hot. Yeah, hello,
Speaker 1: we are back. Sorry, I was, I was taking some
Speaker 1: time to listen to my favorite Ringo Star RM album
Speaker 1: in the break in between reading books by It's a
Speaker 1: really good combo of the media. How how dare you
Speaker 1: not the not properly appreciating Michael Stipe, the voice of
Speaker 1: several generations Michael Stiper Michael Stipe, Yeah, so he was,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I I really like the Black Keys.
Speaker 1: So anyway, UM, I'm gonna make more bad music jokes
Speaker 1: or I could continue my script. Yeah, please continue. We
Speaker 1: don't have to talk about all of the wonderful contributions
Speaker 1: your generation is made to music like uh, like you
Speaker 1: two with Hits, like you two, famed Zoomer bands, you
Speaker 1: two with Hitman George Harrison. M Yep, You're gonna make
Speaker 1: a lot of people happy, Garrison, A lot of people
Speaker 1: real happy at least everyone. States have introduced bills that
Speaker 1: would band trans athletes from competing in sports that correspond
Speaker 1: to their gender identities UM. Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee have already
Speaker 1: signed such bills into law. At the start of this year,
Speaker 1: new restructions were put into place for for in in
Speaker 1: Texas to also restrict UM what K through twelve school
Speaker 1: sports people can be on now, making them specifically match
Speaker 1: they're sex listed on their birth certificate at or near
Speaker 1: time of birth. UM and even when the states who
Speaker 1: don't just have blanket bands. There's other horrifying things happening
Speaker 1: UH like. In the beginning of last February, it came
Speaker 1: out that the Utah Republicans are making UH and have
Speaker 1: proposed a commission to analyze the bodies of trans kids
Speaker 1: that would determine student athletes eligibility on a case by
Speaker 1: case basis, with having the authority to establish a baseline
Speaker 1: range for fiscal characteristics affected by puberty, banning schools school
Speaker 1: school athletes who do not fall within these established limits
Speaker 1: from participating in generate sports. Um. Also a non fun
Speaker 1: fun side side but about the bill is that in
Speaker 1: their efforts to analyze the bodies of trans kids, the
Speaker 1: bill would also remember the commission immune from any lawsuit
Speaker 1: with respect to all acts done and a has taken
Speaker 1: in good faith and carrying out their purposes. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And this is this is something that I think is
Speaker 1: really common specifically with transphobia, which is that like all
Speaker 1: of the rhetoric about transphobia is about sort of like
Speaker 1: like a huge amount of it's about molestation. Here's about
Speaker 1: amount amount of it's about pedophilia. And then I mean,
Speaker 1: specifically with the molestation part, it's like, yeah, Okay, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna have this council, right, We're gonna have we're
Speaker 1: gonna have this commission, and these people are gonna they're
Speaker 1: they're going to just like they're going to molest these kids. Right,
Speaker 1: but like this, this is just something that happened to
Speaker 1: transpeople constant, like the t s A like constantly. It's
Speaker 1: just an enormous engine for just like like sexually abusing
Speaker 1: every single trans person who goes who goes into an airport,
Speaker 1: Like I've definitely had not fun experiences at the airport
Speaker 1: the past few times. Like this is this is the
Speaker 1: thing is It's like it's it's they they impose as
Speaker 1: a sanction on trans people, the things that they claim
Speaker 1: trans people are doing. Yes, and it's it is. And
Speaker 1: it's also so interesting you'll find how many of these
Speaker 1: kind of bill sponsors politicians um eventually have it come
Speaker 1: out that like they watch a lot of like trans
Speaker 1: pornography and stuff. It's like it's it's all it's all fake,
Speaker 1: like all like everything, like everything they say they don't
Speaker 1: actually mean. It's all about the culture war, it's all
Speaker 1: about all the fucking like save the children's stuff. It's
Speaker 1: all in opposite that they can get elected into politics. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this with like that with like the
Speaker 1: with the Texas thing, how all of the big New
Speaker 1: Texas stuff happened like days before the primary election because
Speaker 1: they were being challenged by by by other politicians that
Speaker 1: were farther to the right of them. So it's all
Speaker 1: like a political ploy. But the problem is is that
Speaker 1: at certain points, because of how long the culture war
Speaker 1: kind of idea has been going, there's people who you know,
Speaker 1: sincerely bought into the idea of the of the culture
Speaker 1: war now themselves running for office. Um, so like it
Speaker 1: is like they do actually genuinely believe the things now
Speaker 1: it is it is like it is like a full
Speaker 1: circle thing of things that were just you know, just
Speaker 1: to get votes initially, like things that weren't really believe sincerely,
Speaker 1: just just to wold votes. But now people who were
Speaker 1: brought up in that whole political idea are starting to
Speaker 1: run for office who do actually believe those in those
Speaker 1: things that sincerely So now it's it's leading its leading
Speaker 1: to a whole new kind of onslot of rights because
Speaker 1: these people have just escalated and accelerated the whole cultural
Speaker 1: or idea. Yeah. Well, and and the other thing is
Speaker 1: like they've linked up with people who like people whose
Speaker 1: politics is at the church or people whose politics have
Speaker 1: specifically been about eliminated trans people for like half a century, right,
Speaker 1: like there, there's there's the linkages that are being formed
Speaker 1: between people who have sort of like you know, between
Speaker 1: these militantly anti trans organizations, in between sort of these
Speaker 1: people who buy into this, like either who are very
Speaker 1: who who are cynically deploying the sort of the sort
Speaker 1: of Christian supremacist rhetoric, or the people who are just
Speaker 1: actual like Christian fascists. Right, Like, these people like these
Speaker 1: people are going together to the point where it doesn't
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter why they're doing it. Okay, at
Speaker 1: certain points, like the reason why specifically they're doing it
Speaker 1: becomes immaterial and you're just sort of left with the
Speaker 1: things that they are doing. Yeah, it's I mean, and
Speaker 1: there's has just been so much of it the past
Speaker 1: the past year specifically like over like overall, more than
Speaker 1: one hundred bills designed to restrict the rights of transgender
Speaker 1: of transgender people have been introduced in at least thirty
Speaker 1: three states. It justin just one, which is like it's
Speaker 1: become a record breaking here for any kind of anti
Speaker 1: trans legislation. It's just it is accelerated to such a
Speaker 1: extreme degree um and now continuing in two legislative cycle
Speaker 1: um last spring in in in in Arkansas, the state
Speaker 1: legislator banned gender of her main care for minors UM,
Speaker 1: including you know, puberty blockers HRT, all the stuff you
Speaker 1: know UM. And the House Bill one five seven oh
Speaker 1: prevents transpeople from receiving hormotherapy, puberty blockers, similar treatments. UM.
Speaker 1: It was called the Save Adolescence from Experimentation Act UM,
Speaker 1: you know, referring to medical treatment as experimentation UM. And
Speaker 1: shortly after the bill was signed into law, UM, the
Speaker 1: doctors who run the largest or who ran the largest
Speaker 1: provider of of hormone therapy and the state reported an
Speaker 1: increase in suicid attempts in their patients during like just
Speaker 1: that same month. UM. It was it was the first
Speaker 1: of its kind of bill signed into law, and it
Speaker 1: was it was initially vetoed by the governor, but then
Speaker 1: that veto was overturned by the state legislator. So and
Speaker 1: that kind of similar laws have been have been happening
Speaker 1: in states ever since then. We're not gonna talk about Texas, UM,
Speaker 1: because that's one of the one of the biggest, one
Speaker 1: of the biggest kind of things in this whole fight
Speaker 1: is the stuff around Texas. So Texas officials have begun
Speaker 1: investigating parents of transgender adolescence for possible child abuse, according
Speaker 1: to a lawsuit filed on a few a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: after Governor Greg Abbott directed UH the the Child Protective
Speaker 1: Services Agency in Texas, to handle certain medical treatments, including
Speaker 1: puberty blockers and h RT, as possible crimes. The directive
Speaker 1: from Governor Abbott was following a non binding opinion by
Speaker 1: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton UM saying that parents who
Speaker 1: provide their transgender teenagers with doctor prescribed a care could
Speaker 1: be investigated for child abuse. So the moves by both
Speaker 1: Abbott and Paxton tried to Republican UH incumbents came just
Speaker 1: days before the primary election UM in which each of
Speaker 1: them faced significant challenges from farther right opponents. UM. So
Speaker 1: they've both fad they've faced criticis them from not being staunch,
Speaker 1: staunchly anti trans enough in the past, like in the
Speaker 1: months prior to this, and they did this to hopefully,
Speaker 1: you know, gain support from the more radical UH, more
Speaker 1: radical voters in Texas. That's like, that is that is
Speaker 1: undoubtedly a big, a big, big part of why this
Speaker 1: happened at the time that it did. They did the
Speaker 1: same thing both Paxiston, well, let's Paxton, but Abbott did
Speaker 1: basically the same thing with like masks in the last
Speaker 1: year two where it's like yeah, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's great because the people are just they will
Speaker 1: literally kill thousands of people in or just hold onto
Speaker 1: their power and it's among to be. The first people
Speaker 1: investigated for child abuse was actually an employee by the
Speaker 1: States Protective Services Agency who had a sixteen year old
Speaker 1: transgender child. On March one, the A c l U
Speaker 1: of Texas and Lambda Lambda Legal great great name went
Speaker 1: to state court in Austin to try to stop this
Speaker 1: inquiry into this family. Who again, who who worked for?
Speaker 1: Who worked for the Child Protective Services Agency UM. The employee,
Speaker 1: who was not named in the court filing works on
Speaker 1: reviews of reports of abuse and neglect. She was past
Speaker 1: on administrative leave a few weeks ago. According to the filing,
Speaker 1: the friday after Governor Abbott made the initial kind of
Speaker 1: letter UM, she was visited by an investigator from the
Speaker 1: agency UM, who was also seeking medical records related to
Speaker 1: her child. The family of the child, identified in court
Speaker 1: documents only as Mary Doe has as as refused to
Speaker 1: voluntarily a turn of the records and as taking the
Speaker 1: case to court. According to the lawsuit, the state investigator
Speaker 1: told parents that the only allegation against them was that
Speaker 1: their transgender daughter may have been provided with gender affirming
Speaker 1: healthcare and was currently transitioning, and that was that was
Speaker 1: the claims I was, that was the basis for the
Speaker 1: claims of of of of of child abuse. It's a
Speaker 1: so like. Initially, it wasn't clear if Abbot's order would
Speaker 1: survive kind of judicial scrutinty because the order does not
Speaker 1: any The order doesn't change any Texas law. UM. It's
Speaker 1: just it's just an opinion piece. And several county attorneys
Speaker 1: and district attorneys of Dallas and Houston have publicly condemned
Speaker 1: Abbots and Pakiston's directives UM, clarifying that they would not
Speaker 1: prosecute families for child abuse under the new definition and
Speaker 1: they would not irrationally um and unjustiably interfere with medical
Speaker 1: decisions UM. The mayor of Austin announced that Austin should
Speaker 1: be considered a safe place, a sanctuary for transgender children
Speaker 1: and their families, and they would not be enforcing the
Speaker 1: governor's mandate. So it's quite a time to be alive,
Speaker 1: to have sanctuary cities for being trans yep. And of
Speaker 1: course all of these things, whether it be from like
Speaker 1: the d A S or the mayor, that doesn't stop
Speaker 1: Child Protective Services from not investigating you like that doesn't
Speaker 1: like that doesn't like they can still investigate and harass you.
Speaker 1: They can still send agents to your door. They can
Speaker 1: still try to see his medical records, right, they can
Speaker 1: still investigate claims even if even if the DA won't prosecute.
Speaker 1: There's still that massive like looming threat of and like
Speaker 1: that like terror like holding over you know, people's heads. Um,
Speaker 1: you know it's it's it's a it is like a
Speaker 1: mass it's a massive scare tactic, right it is. It
Speaker 1: is to terrorize people like they will be too scared
Speaker 1: to transition because they don't want their family to get
Speaker 1: in trouble. It's it's pretty grim. It's pretty it's pretty
Speaker 1: it's pretty evil. Um. So on the for for the
Speaker 1: for the a cl U and the LAMBDA Legal Court
Speaker 1: failing uh, they they're they're seeking to block the request
Speaker 1: for medical records from the employees case and more broadly
Speaker 1: kind of challenge the legitimacy of the entire investigation and
Speaker 1: the power that the government has to change this definition
Speaker 1: of child abuse. It's a because it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's also important important to mention that the mandatory as
Speaker 1: the mandatory report wunning aspect of the bill, which was
Speaker 1: well not not bill of the of the legal opinion
Speaker 1: that was really emphasized in Governor Abbot's directive UM. Abbott
Speaker 1: describing his letter that the order would mean that all
Speaker 1: licensed professionals who have direct contact with children, including doctors, nurses, therapists,
Speaker 1: and even school teachers, would be required to report to
Speaker 1: state authorities um if if if they believe that there
Speaker 1: is a minor who is trans or could be receiving
Speaker 1: any kind of gender affirming treatment. Um and if they
Speaker 1: don't report this, they could themselves faced criminal penalties. So
Speaker 1: the whole, the whole mandatory reporting aspects and other like
Speaker 1: insanely insanely bad thing that we could talk about it
Speaker 1: for a long time. This episode is getting long enough,
Speaker 1: so we're just gonna continue through and we can we
Speaker 1: can ponder at how at how bad that is. UM.
Speaker 1: One parent of a transgender a teenager in Houston to
Speaker 1: the family's health clinic Legacy Community Health had suspended all
Speaker 1: refills and a new prescriptions for a transgender their youth
Speaker 1: in light of Abbot's new order. So it's it's happening, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's there, it's the stuff has happened, the stuff has started.
Speaker 1: It's it's already scaring people into not doing stuff, like
Speaker 1: it's it's that is what to do. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: I and I know we keep making this episode longer,
Speaker 1: but like it is worth mentioning that, like it actually
Speaker 1: like having someone even temporarily like being off of the
Speaker 1: hormones that they've been taking for for HRT, like that
Speaker 1: fucking sucks. Yeah, it's like it has really bad negative effects.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, like people will be surprised how fast
Speaker 1: hormones start working and how fast going off of them
Speaker 1: they stopped working. Like it is, it is. It is
Speaker 1: pretty it is pretty surprising. And like I didn't want
Speaker 1: to get tons into like the science of being trans
Speaker 1: in this because that's because that's not the focus of
Speaker 1: this week. We're talking about the legislation and the onslaught
Speaker 1: of queer rights of people trying to hurt them. But
Speaker 1: like you know, it's it's obvious that like there is
Speaker 1: not many cases at all where there's being you know,
Speaker 1: like genital surgery done on miners, like if that does
Speaker 1: that does not happen. Um, it can happen for like
Speaker 1: medical like that can happen for medically necessary reasons, like
Speaker 1: if there's like accidents and stuff, but that doesn't happen
Speaker 1: for gender affirming care. What happens is you get on
Speaker 1: you you you go on puberty blockers, which are already
Speaker 1: prescribed to assist gender kids all the time. Um, if
Speaker 1: they have early onset puberty, they have no lasting side effects,
Speaker 1: they're completely safe. Um And in some cases, depending on
Speaker 1: the kids therapists and their doctors, they may be prescribed
Speaker 1: HRT or they will be prescribed that a bit later.
Speaker 1: But that is that even still, that is that is
Speaker 1: really the only things that happened, um, And what they're
Speaker 1: trying to suppress is both but both of like those things,
Speaker 1: but also like the ability for like therapists to even
Speaker 1: talk about gender with kids, Like if kids are having
Speaker 1: problems with with like with gender dysphoria, they don't feel
Speaker 1: comfortable to even have to not even be able to
Speaker 1: talk to that to talk talking about those feelings with
Speaker 1: therapists is like part is part of the goal because
Speaker 1: that can be considered gender affirming care. Um. I think
Speaker 1: that there's this point of the thing they should mention,
Speaker 1: which is that so there there is one kind like
Speaker 1: one that is the few, but there's there there's a
Speaker 1: very important kind of like quote unquote like gender surgery
Speaker 1: that is done on children, which is the stuff that's
Speaker 1: on to intersext kids. Yes, I mean sex kids. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: like circumcisions are already like yeah, but I mean with
Speaker 1: with specific with intersex kids. This stuff matters because all
Speaker 1: of these bills that you're talking about, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you can't have gender affirming surgery, you can't have like
Speaker 1: surgery and kids. Like every single one of these bills
Speaker 1: like that, they all have they all specifically have card
Speaker 1: carve outs to allow doctors to funk up the generals
Speaker 1: of interseex kids. Yeah, that's it's it's all carved out there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well let's say we we are we are
Speaker 1: near the last we are we're near the last little
Speaker 1: stretch here. Um. On March eleventh, a Texas state court
Speaker 1: halted the new Department of Family Protective Services policy of
Speaker 1: investigating the parents of transgender children. Um District District Judge
Speaker 1: Amy mentioned conclude On concluded the hearing on the requested
Speaker 1: statewide injunction by saying, quote, the Governor's directive was given
Speaker 1: the effect of new law or new agency rule despite
Speaker 1: there being no new legislation, regulation, or even agency policy.
Speaker 1: Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Department of Family Protective Services
Speaker 1: Commissioner Baby Masters of their actions violate the separation of
Speaker 1: powers by impermissibly approaching into the legislative domain. UM. Judge
Speaker 1: Mention also granted a temporary restraining order blocking the state
Speaker 1: from investigating the family that that that prompted this lawsuit
Speaker 1: from happening from the from the person who already worked
Speaker 1: at the Department of a Family Protective Services UM. Texas
Speaker 1: Attorney General Kent Pactonum appealed this decision. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: he appealed the restraining order and lost that appeal. UM.
Speaker 1: And and the s l U is trying to make
Speaker 1: this temporaries training order against the state permanent and extend
Speaker 1: to all parents of all transgender kids in Texas. And
Speaker 1: there's there's gonna be a whole trial scheduled for this
Speaker 1: topic on July eleven, two. So this is gonna this
Speaker 1: is gonna get this is gonna happen like where where
Speaker 1: we will figure out what is going to happen with
Speaker 1: this later on this year. Um. And after the judges
Speaker 1: ruling halting the investigations due to lack of legal binding
Speaker 1: um at Turney, General Ken Paxton filed an appeal for
Speaker 1: for for the ruling. So and that's so, so that's
Speaker 1: that's gonna get appealed, um and he he tweeted out
Speaker 1: that the quote Democratic judges order permitting child abuse is frozen.
Speaker 1: Much needed investigations will proceed as they should. The fight
Speaker 1: will continue up to the Supreme Court. I'm ready for it, um.
Speaker 1: But it's unclear how much legal backing this actually has.
Speaker 1: So we don't know if if the if the off
Speaker 1: the protective Services actually has permission to keep investigating or not.
Speaker 1: It is kind of unclear. Paxton says that they can this,
Speaker 1: this state judge says they can't, and that's kind of
Speaker 1: legally up in the air right now. So we don't
Speaker 1: totally know. But there's gonna be a whole trial on
Speaker 1: the topic in July. UM. Kind of one of the
Speaker 1: last things I want to mention is, uh, this this
Speaker 1: Idaho bill that was passed by the House of Representatives
Speaker 1: that would that would criminalize gender affirming medical procedures, including
Speaker 1: property blocker, sorry, including puberty blockers an HRT for any
Speaker 1: kind of trans transgend gender youth. And it was also
Speaker 1: reported that the bill would make it a felony punishable
Speaker 1: by life imprisonment to anyone who helps a kid travel
Speaker 1: across state lines to get gender affirming healthcare. But this
Speaker 1: actually maybe isn't actually true, Like this actually probably wasn't
Speaker 1: a part of that bill. Um. The bill just amend's
Speaker 1: current laws regarding female general mutilation of course of carving
Speaker 1: out a specific section to allow the mutilation of intersext
Speaker 1: kits um. But uh, but yeah, it added a section
Speaker 1: also criminalizing gender affirming care. Um. But the section of
Speaker 1: the bill making it a felony to try out of
Speaker 1: state only refers to the general mutilation section. Um. It
Speaker 1: doesn't refer to the gender firming care section. And it's
Speaker 1: unclear if that was an oversight, um or if the
Speaker 1: limitation was intentional. Who knows, um. But it still did
Speaker 1: attempt to criminalize gender firm me care within the state.
Speaker 1: The bill was I believe I think earlier this morning
Speaker 1: as of time time of recording, the bill was not
Speaker 1: passed by the Senate. Um, so that's good. Uh. They
Speaker 1: said the Senate that it was too vague in scope
Speaker 1: and it was unclear how it was going to be enforced.
Speaker 1: So that bill was halted and it did not did
Speaker 1: not continue. Um. Yeah, but you know that's yeah. There
Speaker 1: is a lot of the reason why all stuff has
Speaker 1: kind of started is that, like there has been so
Speaker 1: much progress happening in queer rights in the past like
Speaker 1: ten years, right, Um, So now because the progress is
Speaker 1: more visible, what was once like obvious but like low
Speaker 1: key bigotry is trying to be put into law. Right.
Speaker 1: There's there's there used to be so many medical hoops
Speaker 1: to jump through to get any type of gender affirming treatment,
Speaker 1: but now almost every like legit medical organization recognizes the
Speaker 1: importance of gender affirming care. So that plus the visibility
Speaker 1: and the cultural acceptance of queerness is making some you know,
Speaker 1: mostly good old white Christian conservative populations a little bit uncomfortable. Right.
Speaker 1: There's there's this increasing fear that what if your kid
Speaker 1: thinks they're trans, well, what if what if they become
Speaker 1: an unholy degenerate what if and what if there are
Speaker 1: people trying to make that happen on purpose. Right, all
Speaker 1: of the brutality, all of like, all of the brutality
Speaker 1: in these bills, the kind of the not like the
Speaker 1: total nonchalance at the possibility of you know, kids killing
Speaker 1: themselves because of this bill and because of all these legislations,
Speaker 1: like all of the transphobia negatively contributing to mental health.
Speaker 1: All that brutality is just justified in the minds of
Speaker 1: these anti trans like people because it's to save that
Speaker 1: it's to save their kids from experiencing that in the
Speaker 1: first place. Right, it's the idea that queerness is an infection,
Speaker 1: that it can spread from person to person. It's like
Speaker 1: it's a it's it's like a contagion. If you hear
Speaker 1: about it, you could yourself become gay. So they don't
Speaker 1: hear about it, then that's not going to be a possibility.
Speaker 1: So all all of the brutality, it's like it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's both the point, but it's also justified because
Speaker 1: this thing is seen as such like an it's seeing
Speaker 1: as such an ontological threat to their whole idea of
Speaker 1: like the world. So yeah, that's uh, and it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's not gonna stop right every you know, one,
Speaker 1: we saw a massive increase in legislation on this topic.
Speaker 1: Two we're seeing an even bigger increased in legislation on
Speaker 1: this topic, and you know, attempts to physically oppose it.
Speaker 1: You know, it's our can can kind of be done.
Speaker 1: I mean, like you can you can see all there
Speaker 1: was some some successful kind of protests to the whole
Speaker 1: school board thing. You can also, like you can sneak
Speaker 1: queer books into libraries, so you can just put you
Speaker 1: can just put them in there. Um, you can request
Speaker 1: queer books in your library systems. Um. You can you know,
Speaker 1: attend school board meetings. And again it's sure that the
Speaker 1: institution of the Institution of schooling is problematic um in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, but it's we shouldn't make it
Speaker 1: worse for queer kids. So maybe it's still is worth
Speaker 1: actually focusing on. And there's there's a lot like you know,
Speaker 1: you can, like like in the case of the a
Speaker 1: sil U suit, there is legal challenges being taken up
Speaker 1: against all of these things. We'll see how that goes.
Speaker 1: The There's always been a there's always been a shaky
Speaker 1: record of the legal you know of like the court's
Speaker 1: ability to protect these rights. But every once in a
Speaker 1: while it does happen, like with like with gay marriage. UM.
Speaker 1: The last thing I'll mention with like specifically with like
Speaker 1: HRT being made illegal in a lot of these places,
Speaker 1: at least like prescribed vida doctor UM. I will kind
Speaker 1: of talk about. I will mention um d I y
Speaker 1: HRT as the thing that that that is the thing,
Speaker 1: it exists. You can go to d I y HRT
Speaker 1: dot get hub dot io to get information on this.
Speaker 1: It's been It requires a lot of like search, but
Speaker 1: you can find like you can get You can get
Speaker 1: like estrogen and stuff from like like made by the
Speaker 1: companies that that supply pharmacies. You can buy that legally. UM.
Speaker 1: Testosterones a little bit more iffy because that is I
Speaker 1: think that it's like a schedule tour scheduled three drug UM.
Speaker 1: But estrogen is much more available UM to buy legally online.
Speaker 1: To just make sure you get it from a good
Speaker 1: place and make sure that you you know, know how
Speaker 1: it affects you and all that stuff, like do lots
Speaker 1: of reading. But that is a possibility. So I will
Speaker 1: probably plan an episode on d A Y h R
Speaker 1: T in the near future. Just it's like a whole
Speaker 1: episode on the topic, but I just wanted to kind
Speaker 1: of mention that as one of the last things that
Speaker 1: being like, yeah, if they're restricting all these stuff, we
Speaker 1: should probably you know, learn to provided ourselves because there's
Speaker 1: no guarantee that the governments or any kind of even
Speaker 1: like pharmacies will be able to do that forever. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's it's good to have alternative methods of figuring out
Speaker 1: how to get the drugs that make you feel nice.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was that is my episode on the
Speaker 1: on the legislation that has been happening in the past,
Speaker 1: in the past really like six months. Um, yeah, that's fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but by the time this is there, there might there
Speaker 1: might be new stuff that has happened. Oh, most certainly.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's good. That's why when you know, when all
Speaker 1: this stuff gets very depressing, I just like listening to
Speaker 1: my favorite Wayne Cohen's song by Pink Floyd and it
Speaker 1: really just really does held me down and you feel
Speaker 1: much better. Wow. Well, I'm gonna go listen to the
Speaker 1: new uh double album that A hundred Guecks did with
Speaker 1: Billy Joel I do I do love me someone hundred
Speaker 1: gus mhmm, yeah, the Gecks Joel concert. It's even I
Speaker 1: hear that that Elton John is going to get into
Speaker 1: and they're gonna they're gonna do That would be quite
Speaker 1: this show. Honestly, that would would be a fascinating experience.
Speaker 1: That would be a very mix of like any women
Speaker 1: in their sixties and horny seventeen year olds. What happens? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is Ah, there are plenty of organizations that are
Speaker 1: you know, fighting against and stuff in Texas. Um. I
Speaker 1: could list them, but honestly, if you if you if
Speaker 1: you're not there, it's it's it's if you mean you
Speaker 1: should you should. You should look into what's happening in
Speaker 1: your area. Learn what legislation is being passed in your area,
Speaker 1: learn what your you know representatives are doing, and look
Speaker 1: into helping people get the turkey. That's really that's really.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, if there's a way that bodybuilders can
Speaker 1: get testosterone, there's a way that you can get testosterone
Speaker 1: for transguise. If estrogen is much easier to get, um,
Speaker 1: so look into that, don't don't, don't be stupid. Um,
Speaker 1: But yeah, that is a. That's that is, that is
Speaker 1: that is my piece. Find joy, find violence and find
Speaker 1: the correct application of the two that allows people to
Speaker 1: stay alive. Yeah yeah, and uh yeah and uh listen
Speaker 1: to listen to music that makes you happy. That is
Speaker 1: that is that is all you can do. All you
Speaker 1: can all all you can do, yeah is find your
Speaker 1: favorite YouTube album. Uh featuring Roger Waters. All right, goodbye,
Speaker 1: oh boy, welcome to America. The podcast? Wait is that
Speaker 1: is that what we're calling it now? I don't think
Speaker 1: that's true. We just had like two episodes on international
Speaker 1: tours that think we are going to we're trying to
Speaker 1: be a little beyond America. I fucked it up. I
Speaker 1: fucked it up. Well that's the podcast. Goodbye everybody. See
Speaker 1: Usually at this point you say, Garrison take over. All right,
Speaker 1: well let's let's get into this. What are we talking
Speaker 1: about today? Who are we? Where are we? What is life?
Speaker 1: Where it could happen? Here? Where is God? Final episode
Speaker 1: of the war on transpeople? Which means when this episode,
Speaker 1: when this episode is done, that means the war will
Speaker 1: be over. We did at everybody and whatever God's once were,
Speaker 1: if long abandoned this place, we did get pretty good
Speaker 1: news about the governor of Utah kind of surprising me here.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that just hit. That's nice. There's the there's that.
Speaker 1: I mean, luckily, looks some of some of the bills
Speaker 1: that we've talked about actually have been shut down at
Speaker 1: this Pointisconsin bill got shut got got kind of down
Speaker 1: surprisingly and in very very recently, like yeah, the past
Speaker 1: few days. Yeah, there's a looks like there's still going
Speaker 1: to be injunctions on any investigations in Texas until the
Speaker 1: case gets put up. That's still very much in the air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's still in the courts, but it's like
Speaker 1: it's it's trying. It's at least it's kind of paused
Speaker 1: right now, and it's going they get settled at some
Speaker 1: point in either the lawsuit or in higher courts. So
Speaker 1: we'll see, we'll see how that develops. But for right now,
Speaker 1: it seems some things seem to be paused and some
Speaker 1: states are not are not fully passing it. I know
Speaker 1: there was a walkout by Disney employees today about over
Speaker 1: there don't say gay bill, and we're gonna see if
Speaker 1: that's gonna get signed. Um So, yeah, still still up
Speaker 1: in the air, but we're gonna be talking about something
Speaker 1: a little bit different. We're gonna do some We're gonna
Speaker 1: do some time travel. Oh boy, that's that's what I
Speaker 1: had to say. So we're going We're going to go
Speaker 1: back to another time in which there was a for
Speaker 1: a very brief period, a massive expansion in the knowledge
Speaker 1: about and sort of but both knowledge about and appearance
Speaker 1: of and safety of trans people. And then it all
Speaker 1: catatrophically came crashing down. Oh good. And to help us
Speaker 1: with that is Robern Evidence, my boss. Hi, everybody, how
Speaker 1: are we doing, Garrison? How? How how are we doing? Oh?
Speaker 1: I'm doing actually flying, I'm just I'm just waiting for
Speaker 1: you to do your job, but not passing over all. Right.
Speaker 1: So the important thing to understand is that like the
Speaker 1: kind of very concept of not just gay rights, but
Speaker 1: like our our modern attitudes towards like what it means
Speaker 1: to be homosexual and trans all have their origins in
Speaker 1: Germany in the not not just in the post war period,
Speaker 1: but really the last couple of decades of the Kaiser
Speaker 1: and the Weimar Republic. Like that is where kind of
Speaker 1: the modern Western attitudes towards what it like is to
Speaker 1: be homosexual really get formed because obviously, like gay people
Speaker 1: have existed for forever, there's quite a bit of documentation.
Speaker 1: But if you look at like, for example, you know,
Speaker 1: to spirit folks within some Indigenous American cultures, that's a
Speaker 1: very different attitude towards um, like what trans people I
Speaker 1: suppose to the Western exactly. Yeah, so this is like
Speaker 1: they're there's Western quote unquote you know whatever. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: the actual thing that's going on, and like the the
Speaker 1: individual sexuality, and then there's kind of the the public
Speaker 1: concept of what it is um and and that is
Speaker 1: really forming in probably the seminal moment that kind of
Speaker 1: starts this progress, as in August eighteen sixty seven, when
Speaker 1: a lawyer named Karl Heinrich Rix goes before the sixth
Speaker 1: Congress of German jurists in munich Um to urge them
Speaker 1: to repeal laws forbidding sex between men. So again there
Speaker 1: is still a Kaiser and like this is this is
Speaker 1: before Germany is actually fully a nation, right because eighteen
Speaker 1: seventies when that happens, so Germany doesn't even really exist
Speaker 1: at this point. There's a series of like kings kind
Speaker 1: of being welded together slowly into a German state. And
Speaker 1: there is a lawyer getting up in front of like
Speaker 1: the council of different German jurists to urge an into
Speaker 1: the laws that get illegal for for men to have
Speaker 1: sex with each other. And one thing that's important to
Speaker 1: notice that obviously there are lesbians in this period of time,
Speaker 1: as again there have been throughout all of history. That's
Speaker 1: not really a legal problem, right, they do not face
Speaker 1: really legal repression and and I mean not to say
Speaker 1: that like there's not repression and things that they're dealing with,
Speaker 1: but it's not the same as as it is for
Speaker 1: like men who want to be in relationships with men.
Speaker 1: That's it's in fact a lot easier for women to
Speaker 1: be kind of like and this is not just Germany
Speaker 1: to be built to like kind of say like fends
Speaker 1: and we lived together right, like we're a tease and
Speaker 1: we live together like where. Yeah, that that because in
Speaker 1: part because men, just like I think a lot of
Speaker 1: like the men in this period just assume it's impossible
Speaker 1: like that women would do that or or the other
Speaker 1: side of it is like femininity is always presentuary, it's
Speaker 1: always like it's you as soon as a beauty symbol.
Speaker 1: So it makes more sense for women to find other
Speaker 1: women attractive, because that's what beauty is, is when is
Speaker 1: performative of femininity. So like that's like way more obvious
Speaker 1: and it doesn't make sense for but and it makes
Speaker 1: less sense for men to find other men attractive, and
Speaker 1: that's way more taboo because of the way that messages
Speaker 1: with like patriarchy. Um, so yeah, I think there could
Speaker 1: be a very like gender studies and sexuality studies, you
Speaker 1: can have a lot of theorizing for how this has developed.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this this idea you can even see in
Speaker 1: like Victorian era and like reruna assance sera of yeah,
Speaker 1: women who lived together and are very good friends, very
Speaker 1: very very close friends. I hope people don't feel like
Speaker 1: I'm trying to like flatten the history of like the
Speaker 1: concept of being a lesbian in the West to to
Speaker 1: that at all, or trying, for that matter, flattened like
Speaker 1: homosexuality between men. But I am kind of making the point,
Speaker 1: and I am not the person who are kind of
Speaker 1: initially made this point. The scholarly work that I'm kind
Speaker 1: of basing my research on this on largely right now,
Speaker 1: and we're going to do an episode Behind the Bastards
Speaker 1: that gets in two more of this, I think in
Speaker 1: the near future. But it's a called gaber Lynn by
Speaker 1: Robert Baccy um And in the book, one of the
Speaker 1: things that Beach argues is that even though obviously same
Speaker 1: sex love is as old as the existence of quite
Speaker 1: a bit older actually than the existence of human beings, um,
Speaker 1: the public discourse around it and like the political attempt
Speaker 1: to win rights for gay people starts in Germany in
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds, and it starts in this conference
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty seven. Um. And and the guy who
Speaker 1: does this RIX is a number one, is a gay man. Um.
Speaker 1: And he had he had been open kind of to
Speaker 1: his relatives. He had started in the period before he
Speaker 1: gets up in front of all these lawyers to be
Speaker 1: open with like his family members that he was homosexual. Um.
Speaker 1: But he had never like, he was not publicly out.
Speaker 1: And so on the same day that he appeals for
Speaker 1: a change in the legal code to make homosexuality legal
Speaker 1: in the German States is the day he comes out
Speaker 1: publicly as a gay man. Like. He does both of
Speaker 1: these things at the same time. And I want from
Speaker 1: a New York Yeah, it's quite a moment. Um. I
Speaker 1: want to read a quote from a New Yorker article
Speaker 1: that's covering all of this, and that's based again on
Speaker 1: the book Gay Berlin quote. He faced an audience of
Speaker 1: more than five hundred distinguished legal figures, and as he
Speaker 1: walked to the lectern, he felt a pang of fear.
Speaker 1: There was still time to keep silent, he later remembered
Speaker 1: telling himself, then there will be an end to all
Speaker 1: your heart pounding. But Rix, who had earlier disclosed the
Speaker 1: same sex desires and letters to relatives, did not stop.
Speaker 1: He told the assembly that people with a sexual nature
Speaker 1: opposed to common custom were being persecuted for impulses that nature,
Speaker 1: mysteriously governing and creating, had implanted in them. Pandemonium erupted
Speaker 1: and Rix was forced to cut short his remarks. Still
Speaker 1: he had an effect. A few liberal minded colleagues accepted
Speaker 1: his notion of an innate gay identity, and a Bavarian
Speaker 1: official privately confessed to similar yearnings, and a pamphlet titled
Speaker 1: Gladius Furens or Raging Sword or Rix wrote, I am
Speaker 1: proud that I found the strength to thrust the first
Speaker 1: lance into the flank of the hydra of publican. I
Speaker 1: feel like that sometimes funny, incredibly Wow, what if there's
Speaker 1: a heaven. I hope this dude made it there because
Speaker 1: one absolute yeah unbelievable. Yeah so no, but like what
Speaker 1: it like like yeah, the astonished, like the astounding bravery
Speaker 1: that that takes. Um. And he's essentially the first gay
Speaker 1: activist in a modern Western political context. Um. And it's interesting,
Speaker 1: like uh within kind of the the next couple of years,
Speaker 1: things start to happen very quickly. Two years later in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine, and Austrian, an Austrian writer I know
Speaker 1: right named Carl Kurt Benny UM, who is kind of
Speaker 1: fighting sodomy laws and and and sodomy laws are laws
Speaker 1: that make everything that's not like missionary position sexily targeted
Speaker 1: towards towards gay men primarily. UM. So Carl Kurt Benny
Speaker 1: create like he's the guy who invinced the term homosexuality,
Speaker 1: like like two years after this is part of his
Speaker 1: like fight against these anti sodomy laws. Um. The eighteen
Speaker 1: eighties Berlin police commissioner makes the decision to stop prosecuting
Speaker 1: gay bars UM. And in fact, not only does he
Speaker 1: stop doing this, but he starts leading tours of the
Speaker 1: gay districts in Berlin just to like show off, like,
Speaker 1: look at how it's kind of rights. Wow, yeah, what
Speaker 1: a weird picture of putting your head at least even
Speaker 1: like yeah, especially copying, like why are we arresting these people?
Speaker 1: Let's show this off? Yeah yeah. So in eighteen nineties six,
Speaker 1: the very first gay magazine starts publishing in Germany in Berlin.
Speaker 1: Really do you want to know what it's called? Of course? Why?
Speaker 1: Of course the German name is Der eigen h and
Speaker 1: that means the self owning. That's great, it's pretty, it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Um So the very next year, eighteen nineties seven,
Speaker 1: one of the primary heroes of the early gay rights
Speaker 1: struggle for Asian, Magnus Hirschfeld uh starts the Scientific Humanitarian Committee,
Speaker 1: which is the first organized gay rights group in Western
Speaker 1: history at least. Um So, by the start of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, a lot of stuff is in place, right,
Speaker 1: And I think I'm even have been a little bit
Speaker 1: guilty of this in the past, of kind of focusing
Speaker 1: so much on Weimar Germany, um and all of the
Speaker 1: stuff that happens around game by rights there and how
Speaker 1: progressive it was. This is building in Germany again, we
Speaker 1: don't consider the kaiser Reich as a particularly progressive place.
Speaker 1: But all of this is happening under the Kaisers. And
Speaker 1: there's there's so many things that are happening in the
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties and the start of the nineteen hundreds that
Speaker 1: directly mirror things that are happening in the United States
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. In fact, right as the century turns, um,
Speaker 1: you start getting an advocate. One of the first gay
Speaker 1: rights advocates in gay literature uses the phrase coins the
Speaker 1: phrase staying silent is death to like talk about the
Speaker 1: importance of gay literary, Yeah, which is essentially the same slogan.
Speaker 1: It's the same stuff we're talking about right now with
Speaker 1: with all of like the with with all like the
Speaker 1: book bannings taking you know, doing a massive sweep of
Speaker 1: that the past the past few years. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred, like basically that this is starting time. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and there's you know, there's even there's a
Speaker 1: lot of um activists start to complain and start to
Speaker 1: try to complain both within like their own magazines and
Speaker 1: within like more public magazines about things like negative depictions
Speaker 1: of gay people in popular novels. They start to be
Speaker 1: the first arguments about whether or not it's morally right
Speaker 1: to out people who are gay but who are attached
Speaker 1: to anti gay organizations, because that starts happen. Absolutely. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's sucking wild, how gold off, this is nothing
Speaker 1: new in the sun. Yeah, but like, but this is
Speaker 1: also like the first time it happened in these types
Speaker 1: of countries, in these societies. Yeah. Yeah, but like it
Speaker 1: is that it is so yes times a flat circle.
Speaker 1: But this is also like the first time it's happened,
Speaker 1: and it's just kind of been rehappening ever since. Then.
Speaker 1: It's important to note I didn't I didn't covers. When
Speaker 1: we start talking about Rix, well, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who get angry, and obviously Rix is not successful
Speaker 1: in repealing the anti homosexuality laws. Um. When he makes
Speaker 1: his speech. In addition to the people who are like
Speaker 1: yelling at him to sit down, there are like German
Speaker 1: deputies yelling no, no, no, let him continue, let him continue,
Speaker 1: like he needs to be allowed to talk. Um. So
Speaker 1: even like in this period of time, there are non
Speaker 1: gay people at a fairly high level in German politics
Speaker 1: who are like vocal allies and starting gonna become vocal
Speaker 1: allies you know. Um, yeah, it's it's it's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 1: So um, obviously World World War One happens, um doesn't
Speaker 1: go great for Germany, but you know, we we get
Speaker 1: after that the Weimar Republic, and the Weimar Republic is
Speaker 1: kind of the traditional era in which we talk a
Speaker 1: lot about, you know, gay rights starting to really move
Speaker 1: forward in significant ways. And uh so there's a lot of, um,
Speaker 1: even kind of into the early nineteen thirties, some pretty
Speaker 1: interesting things that are happening in German society and like
Speaker 1: the mainstream elements of it. There's a film called ma
Speaker 1: Chin in Uniform in nineteen thirty one, which is the
Speaker 1: first like positive portrayal of lesbians in Western cinema. Um,
Speaker 1: Like thirty one is like again we're talking like right
Speaker 1: before uh Z, the Nazis kind of kind of come around. Um,
Speaker 1: and yeah, there's these like this, This this police commissioner
Speaker 1: that we chatted about earlier. I think it's one of
Speaker 1: the people who's most interesting to me. We're gonna get
Speaker 1: to Hirshfeld a bit in in a little bit, but
Speaker 1: this this guy is named Leopold von Muerscheit Hulsheim, Um,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get that right. But he's a
Speaker 1: big part of when we talk about gay Berlin, particularly
Speaker 1: during the Weimar years. Even though he's like during what
Speaker 1: while the Kaiser's in, He's why gay Berlin really happens
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, um. And it's in part
Speaker 1: because like he decides to stop cracking down on on
Speaker 1: gay people, um and like he's not gay, although his
Speaker 1: boss is, which is part of like what makes it
Speaker 1: easier um for him to do this. And there's like
Speaker 1: a lot of debate about why he does this because
Speaker 1: he's not like a gay rights activist. Some people say
Speaker 1: that it's because, um, he's worried that like gay people
Speaker 1: will become politically radicalized by the Reds and so if
Speaker 1: you stop cracking down on them, they won't go communists
Speaker 1: like that. There's a lot of like debate about like
Speaker 1: why he does this. Um. He's also there's a number
Speaker 1: of things that he like, he takes a lot of
Speaker 1: data on on gay people in Berlin, and he does
Speaker 1: this on everybody. He's a big data guy, so it's
Speaker 1: not particularly uh um harmful in his era, but it's
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that he gathers will be used
Speaker 1: by the Nazis later. Um, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: broader thing about like the wisdom of not letting the
Speaker 1: government get access to this like he has. He founds
Speaker 1: a department of Homosexuals in eighteen eighty five that like
Speaker 1: lists the people that they know are gay and and
Speaker 1: in like this is all. So it's really a complicated thing.
Speaker 1: That's that's happening here because he's not he's not this
Speaker 1: like thoroughly sympathetic figure. He's doing a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that's that's weird and that will later have negative outcomes.
Speaker 1: But he's also by ending police persecution of gay people, um,
Speaker 1: at least in an organized way, really allowing gay culture
Speaker 1: to to blossom um in Berlin. Uh. And it's it's
Speaker 1: it's yeah. I'm gonna read another quote from that New
Speaker 1: Yorker article here. For whatever reason, Mr scheit Holsenheim took
Speaker 1: a fairly benevolent attitude towards Berlin's same sex bars and
Speaker 1: dance halls, at least in the better healed parts of
Speaker 1: the city. He was on cordial terms with many regulars,
Speaker 1: and none other than Odious Strindberg testified in his autobiographical
Speaker 1: novel The Cloister which evokes the same sex costume ball
Speaker 1: at the Cafe Nationale, and this is the police inspector
Speaker 1: and his guests had seated themselves at a table in
Speaker 1: the center of one end of the room, close to
Speaker 1: which all the couples had to pass. The inspector called
Speaker 1: them by their Christian names and some in some of
Speaker 1: the most interesting among them to his table. So he's
Speaker 1: kind of like going on safari, like among the gay
Speaker 1: people in Berlin. Like there's a lot of weird it's
Speaker 1: it's weird in a lot of way. Um. But he's
Speaker 1: also one of the things he does is he provides
Speaker 1: police help to gay people who are being blackmailed and
Speaker 1: like threatened without ing um. And he'll even like counsel
Speaker 1: them on how to handle it, Like he provides like
Speaker 1: counselors and stuff. And he does this in part because
Speaker 1: like he's worried about, um, them committing suicide because they're
Speaker 1: being blackmailed, which is like a real problem in Germany
Speaker 1: in a bunch of other places. Um. Yeah, And this guy,
Speaker 1: like why this police commissioner winds up killing himself kind
Speaker 1: of in the early nineteen hundreds, I think because he
Speaker 1: wound up getting found to be taken bribes from some
Speaker 1: millionaire who gets in a lot of legal trouble for
Speaker 1: raping somebody. So again, he is a sketchy dude. But
Speaker 1: he's also like because he's he's got this weird almost
Speaker 1: like voyeuristic fascination with gay people, um and some legitimate
Speaker 1: because there are legitimate humanitarian concern he's really worried about
Speaker 1: people committing suicide as a result of blackmail. So he's
Speaker 1: one of these figures we don't talk about enough in
Speaker 1: history where it's like the overall outcome of this guy's
Speaker 1: at work is pretty positive, but he does it for
Speaker 1: this like really confusing mix of reasons. He's just a
Speaker 1: very strange figure in history. Well, I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: looking at him, like like comparing him to like if
Speaker 1: you look at like what the U. S Is doing
Speaker 1: in the fifties, right where there's this whole thing about
Speaker 1: like gay people are getting are going to get are
Speaker 1: getting blackmailed, and the you know, the the US, the
Speaker 1: entire US security state loses mind and becomes convinced that
Speaker 1: like these people are all gonna become Soviet agents, and
Speaker 1: you know, and instead of like doing counseling that there's there.
Speaker 1: The thing that they do is they they do the
Speaker 1: Levender Scare and they start purging every gay person we
Speaker 1: can find from the entire US government. And it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's interesting that like, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this is a guy in like late eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: early nine hundreds, like like literally ruled bay on arch Berlin,
Speaker 1: and his policies are enormously better than like anything you're
Speaker 1: going to see for like half a century. He's he
Speaker 1: is way more woke on on this than like any
Speaker 1: New York police officer for a century today up up
Speaker 1: to the present day in a lot of ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Magnus Hirshfeld a bit. Um. Hirshfield
Speaker 1: is very influenced by Ulrich, the guy we started the
Speaker 1: story with. His first like publication on the matter is
Speaker 1: called Sappho and Socrates in eighteen nineties six, which is
Speaker 1: again it's a story of a gay man who gets
Speaker 1: coerced into marriage, so this like uh and who commits
Speaker 1: suicide as a result. So there's like a big with
Speaker 1: both um, you know, his police commissioner with Hirshfeld, with
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are becoming activists in this period.
Speaker 1: A big part of why is, for one reason another
Speaker 1: the suicide rate among gay people, um, which is a
Speaker 1: huge problem today for for trans people in particular. And
Speaker 1: this is what it's interesting, like that that Utah governor,
Speaker 1: you know, May the announcement today that like he's vetoing
Speaker 1: this trans sports ban in Utah, and he specifically cites
Speaker 1: like the suicide rate among trans people is so like
Speaker 1: high and it he could not morally conscience doing anything
Speaker 1: that would like make these kids feel mothered and likelier
Speaker 1: to commit suicide. I mean, okay, well let's let's let's
Speaker 1: let's not go that far. He he he was, he
Speaker 1: was willing, he was willing to do the commissions. She
Speaker 1: just wasn't willing to do a full band. Yeah. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying the the justification he gives for what he's
Speaker 1: doing is like, um, is the rate of suicide at
Speaker 1: himps among trans people. Um. Not to like whitewash that
Speaker 1: guy or Utah. Like again, we've been doing this whole
Speaker 1: week's episodes, but it's interesting that you get um again.
Speaker 1: It's just kind of like the the issue for a
Speaker 1: long time has been that when you like other people
Speaker 1: and make it dangerous for them to be who they
Speaker 1: are openly, they will kill themselves. Um, a lot of
Speaker 1: them will. And that's that's a thing that is even
Speaker 1: by very problematic people in Germany in the eighteen nineties
Speaker 1: for recognize that, like this is a huge issue. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Hirschfeld um starts this first organization that's like
Speaker 1: gay rights organization. Um. And he also is doing like
Speaker 1: a huge amount of of research. Um. He is fall again,
Speaker 1: he's following in l Ric's footsteps because he too believes
Speaker 1: that that homosexuality is congenital, right, it's something you're born with,
Speaker 1: as opposed to like a choice people make because of
Speaker 1: Devans or whatever, which is still the big fight that
Speaker 1: we're having to this day. And he's also like it's
Speaker 1: hard to there's a lot that like you can criticize
Speaker 1: about Hirschfeld scientifically, and a lot of the research he does,
Speaker 1: among other things, there's like difficulty with like control groups
Speaker 1: and actually like being the kind of scientific sort of
Speaker 1: detachment that is necessary to study that. There's like critiques
Speaker 1: of his of his research that are valid. But one
Speaker 1: of the he's he's really like, it's wild how far
Speaker 1: ahead of the Curvey is because one of the things
Speaker 1: that Hirschfeld introduces is the idea that sexuality is a
Speaker 1: actrum um, where there's what he calls sexual intermediaries between
Speaker 1: male and female. Um. He doesn't believe that like those
Speaker 1: are even particularly useful terms that sexuality kind of like
Speaker 1: it it again, that it's a spectrum, which is this
Speaker 1: thing that we are just now really starting to have
Speaker 1: good wider kind of ranging conversations about today. Um. And
Speaker 1: Hirschfeld is very much like kind of utopian and his
Speaker 1: belief that if you can scientifically study and understand where
Speaker 1: homose like what homosexuality is, and that it is an
Speaker 1: innate characteristic, that people will stop being bigoted against gay
Speaker 1: folks right, Like his his belief is that science will
Speaker 1: end prejudice, um, just because the German people are so
Speaker 1: scientific and like they'll have to accept this if I
Speaker 1: could just like prove it with enough rigor, which is heartbreaking, um,
Speaker 1: heartbreaking that he was very very wrong. Um. And yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a number of things that are like really worth
Speaker 1: kind of within sort of the because he's not he's
Speaker 1: kind of come down now is this sort of um
Speaker 1: like sainting like hero of the gay rights movement for
Speaker 1: good reason, but that does tend to flatten the fact
Speaker 1: that within his his day and within kind of the
Speaker 1: gay culture in Berlin in particular, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of people who were frustrated with him for a lot
Speaker 1: of reasons. Um, there were a lot of Uh So
Speaker 1: there's this there's this split in gay culture in this
Speaker 1: period of time between um, gay men who are seen
Speaker 1: as more effeminate and what are called the masculinists. Um
Speaker 1: and the masculinists. They are not all or even mostly Nazis,
Speaker 1: but all of the gay Nazis are what you'd call masculinists, right,
Speaker 1: who are like, I'm not having like like like I
Speaker 1: am so manly that the only person I can have
Speaker 1: sex with as a man, right, Like that I'm flattening
Speaker 1: even that quite a bit. But like you have guys
Speaker 1: like um Ernst Rome, who is the head of the
Speaker 1: Brown Shirts and is is a is a gay Nazi
Speaker 1: and is like that's that's a significant, not an insignificant
Speaker 1: chunk of the Nazis. They'll murdered in the Night of
Speaker 1: Long Knives. And it is interesting that that Rome was
Speaker 1: outed by anti fascists. Yeah, he sure, like two years
Speaker 1: before he was murdered, and it was it was it
Speaker 1: was trying he was specifically outed to so division within
Speaker 1: the Nazi party. Yes, and that does like also just
Speaker 1: playing it. You know, you're you're you're talking about like,
Speaker 1: you know, people having debate over whether it's okay to
Speaker 1: out somebody, um if they you know, are part of
Speaker 1: that Organization's right. That was something we mentioned previously And yeah,
Speaker 1: just like an interesting historical tidbit. Yeah, and it's it's
Speaker 1: um so uh again amongst like, one of the things
Speaker 1: that the masculinists are doing is like a lot of
Speaker 1: them are married to women and they're they're actually fine
Speaker 1: with this because again they think that like, well you
Speaker 1: still need to like procreate and have like not it's
Speaker 1: not even all just about being having like a beard
Speaker 1: or whatever you wanna call it. Some of it is
Speaker 1: just like this attitude that you have a responsibility to
Speaker 1: make more Germans for the fatherland. But like then when
Speaker 1: it comes to it's kind of like the Greeks, they
Speaker 1: were not wildly dissimilar concepts and a lot of the
Speaker 1: masculinists ideologically are wrapped up in the work of Max S.
Speaker 1: Turner Um and in fact, like the self owners, that
Speaker 1: first gay magazine that was. I was like, oh, that
Speaker 1: sounds like stars egoism. Ye, yes, yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of that going and we we we again. I went
Speaker 1: to at some point provide a lot more detail on
Speaker 1: this because it's it's all fascinating. Um. But there there
Speaker 1: are these big sort of like this big split and
Speaker 1: there's he gets a lot of ship from the masculinists
Speaker 1: for because he also studies lesbians heavily. Like there's a
Speaker 1: decent chunk of the gay male population in Berlin who's
Speaker 1: against the research in the medical practice he's doing to
Speaker 1: help trans people who was against his research on lesbians
Speaker 1: because they're like, well, this is this is the fight, right,
Speaker 1: like we're the ones who are being legally cracked down
Speaker 1: on or whatever. Like. Um. So there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: like different cleavages and fractures kind of within the community
Speaker 1: at this time in Hirschfeld is not universally beloved and
Speaker 1: there are people kind of within the gay community who
Speaker 1: have a lot of issues with him. Um. And I
Speaker 1: just think it's important to note that because we often
Speaker 1: do again kind of flattened things because the Nazis flattened things, right,
Speaker 1: because these were all it was all the same to them.
Speaker 1: Um and and we often flatten them in a different
Speaker 1: way to where like, yeah, you've got this guy and
Speaker 1: he's the he's the hero of the of the of
Speaker 1: gay Berlin, and he's this like thoroughly positive. No, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of people who hated him for like
Speaker 1: all these different reasons because this was uh, these like
Speaker 1: all people had a million different kind of fractures and
Speaker 1: ideologies sort of running within. Um what what someone who
Speaker 1: was not looking in from the outside would have just
Speaker 1: called gay Berlin, you know. Um And yeah, obviously this
Speaker 1: all falls apart or is cracked down horribly when the
Speaker 1: Nazis come to power. Um, Hirshfeld is doing a lot
Speaker 1: of some of them, I mean, all of the very
Speaker 1: earliest research on like what it is to be transgender,
Speaker 1: and he is performing surgery on like gender operations on
Speaker 1: on trans for the very first time. Um. And and
Speaker 1: that gets all kind of destroyed. In in May of
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three, which is about three months after Hitler
Speaker 1: becomes Reich's chancellor. Uh, Nazis sack Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Science.
Speaker 1: They burn its library. Um, they go after a lot
Speaker 1: of of of his of the people he had been
Speaker 1: working with and on are killed, others have to flee. Um.
Speaker 1: Hirschfeld is thankfully out of the country on tour when
Speaker 1: the Nazis rise to power and just you know, doesn't
Speaker 1: come back. Um he sees he watches his institute get
Speaker 1: burned and all of his his research get burned and
Speaker 1: a newsreel in Paris. Uh, and he dies the next year. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's the that's the the broad details of kind
Speaker 1: of the story of this early period um of of
Speaker 1: the birth of kind of like a lot of our
Speaker 1: our legal fights around you know, gay rights and like
Speaker 1: the birth of kind of Western gay identity, Like this
Speaker 1: is where it comes from and and uh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a lot that's important and understanding this. And this is
Speaker 1: one of the points that gets made in Gaberlin. We
Speaker 1: often see the Weimar years as this kind of inevitable
Speaker 1: march towards fascism, and the reality is that there was
Speaker 1: fifty something years of of incredibly progressive movements on on
Speaker 1: gender and sexuality. Um. And you know, even outside of
Speaker 1: gay rights, just in terms of like attitudes towards democracy
Speaker 1: and attitudes towards the nature of like the state, that
Speaker 1: we're very progressive and very powerful and very popular. Um.
Speaker 1: And they do get you know, it's important to understand
Speaker 1: both that, like the Nazism was not inevitable, the regressive
Speaker 1: ism and the violence and the the the like, that
Speaker 1: kind of flattening of human life under the Fascists was
Speaker 1: not an inevitable progression for Germany. Um. But it's equally
Speaker 1: important to understand that like a tremendous so much progress
Speaker 1: had been made in German culture by the of time.
Speaker 1: When the Nazis rise and it does get wiped out,
Speaker 1: you know, it does not recover right away. It's still
Speaker 1: recovering now, still now, yeah, exactly. Um. And in fact,
Speaker 1: one of the groups of people when when the Allies
Speaker 1: liberate the concentration camps, we don't free imprisoned gay people.
Speaker 1: They go back to prison because what they were doing
Speaker 1: was still seen as criminal. If you have the is
Speaker 1: the pink triangle, you don't just get out because the Nazis,
Speaker 1: because you were in a concentration gap with these other people.
Speaker 1: Because the Allies to a large extenter like well that
Speaker 1: was it was okay for them to punish those people. Anyway.
Speaker 1: That's the story. Not Another interesting thing is that kind
Speaker 1: of on the same note is that if you look
Speaker 1: through all old um German war photography from World War Two,
Speaker 1: you will actually see a higher than average rate of
Speaker 1: men cross dressing inside photos. Now, there's always cross dressing
Speaker 1: during war is not uncommon, especially during the performances for
Speaker 1: like theater and stuff, um, because there's not as much
Speaker 1: women around. But specifically comparing like the documentation of the
Speaker 1: Nazis and all of all of the German soldiers, there
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, absolutely higher than average amount of of
Speaker 1: people comfortable cross dressing despite you know, being a soldier
Speaker 1: for the Nazis. Um it is. And it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting thing in terms of how how some
Speaker 1: of those kind of more advanced US and sexuality still
Speaker 1: carried over um at least like in terms of like
Speaker 1: gender presentation among you know, even even if you fear
Speaker 1: among this genocidal group who's imprisoning gay people by the
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands. Um, it's it just it just it
Speaker 1: just it just it just like kept happening. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: also sort of points to just like how bad everywhere
Speaker 1: else was also, Yeah, like it's yeah, Berlin just got
Speaker 1: so regressive that even when suppressed, there was enough like
Speaker 1: stuff there that things could kind of there was there
Speaker 1: was still there was still a bit there's was still
Speaker 1: a bit of some remnants. Um. And I mean and
Speaker 1: it still it got it did get horribly obliterated, and
Speaker 1: and we're still recovering now in terms of our views
Speaker 1: and medical knowledge on like gender and you know, social contructs, um, susuality,
Speaker 1: you know, all all this kind of stuff. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the German law code that made homosexuality illegal, um again
Speaker 1: after it was briefly more okay than it had been,
Speaker 1: doesn't get repealed until Yeah. I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of sodomy laws do not get repealed until
Speaker 1: the nineties, and a lot of cases they're actually still around,
Speaker 1: we just don't enforce them, like a lot of this,
Speaker 1: a lot of laws that are actually just still just
Speaker 1: hanging out. Texas had anti sodomy laws on the book
Speaker 1: until a two thousand three Supreme Court case, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: invalidated all sodomy laws. Right, That's that's why there's something.
Speaker 1: They're still in the books, but they but they're now invalid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: prosecute people, um yeah. Yeah. Feld was pretty based though,
Speaker 1: so it was fucking rix some pretty based this really
Speaker 1: interesting stuff and then that's why we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about this, is to kind of show the historical background
Speaker 1: and show like there's a precedent for all of the
Speaker 1: same stuff happening before. Um, and you know, there's ways
Speaker 1: people have fought fought against it back then who didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily succeed, but also did have a lot of progression
Speaker 1: and a lot of like views socially on these types
Speaker 1: of topics. You know, you just need to make sure
Speaker 1: that you're also very very aware of of the rise
Speaker 1: of fascism and being also counter that as well, because
Speaker 1: they can just do so much damage in such a
Speaker 1: shorthort amount of time, despite you know, fifty years of progress. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think I think understanding their fragility of every
Speaker 1: thing that exists that I don't know. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: this is you know, one of one of the sort
Speaker 1: of American mythosis, right is that like the moral arc
Speaker 1: of the universe bens towards progress, then everything is getting better.
Speaker 1: And that's not true. Nope, it's not. And like everyvery
Speaker 1: everything good that you see in this world is there
Speaker 1: because people fought for it. Yeah, and if they lose
Speaker 1: it all goes away. Yeah, yeah, we we we absolutely
Speaker 1: could go back. It's like you have that I mean,
Speaker 1: he back pedaled, but you have that Republican uh legislator
Speaker 1: who was like, um, making comments about how he didn't
Speaker 1: think the state should be forced to honor interracial marriages. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's like, yeah, there's people who want to go
Speaker 1: back on all of that stuff, and they could do it.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even and it doesn't matter. I like when
Speaker 1: people criticize kind of like some of the the attitudes
Speaker 1: we have, the fear we have towards this, Especially on
Speaker 1: on the subreddit, I've seen people be like, well, look,
Speaker 1: these are not popular laws, and it doesn't matter. They
Speaker 1: weren't absolutely they weren't as popular. They weren't like necessarily
Speaker 1: all that popular in in in Germany, you know, when
Speaker 1: some like a lot of the thing not specifically even
Speaker 1: talking about what was done to gay people, but a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that were done by the Nazis
Speaker 1: were not necessarily popular. It doesn't matter. What matters is power,
Speaker 1: And this like plays into how like what's is worth
Speaker 1: focusing on on electoralism and being like, yeah, these laws
Speaker 1: obviously aren't being uh pushed as far in blue states
Speaker 1: because there's not enough electoral power there, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that we can flip Texas blue if we will
Speaker 1: it into being Like, there's so many other cultural factors
Speaker 1: that are keeping red states red, and yes, of course,
Speaker 1: ability suppression, all of those things, gerry mandering, all these
Speaker 1: things are contributing factors. But the overall political bent of
Speaker 1: those states right now seems to be pretty firm because
Speaker 1: there's so many people invested in maintaining that power. So
Speaker 1: when we complain about kind of how electoralism is not
Speaker 1: often a super reliable solution to securing these things over
Speaker 1: the long stretches of time, it's more kind of talking
Speaker 1: about that because even though we have you know, democrats
Speaker 1: and power in the executive branch, and they you know,
Speaker 1: make statements about trying to secure things, they make, they
Speaker 1: make some gestures, they follow through, and those things is
Speaker 1: always so minimum and so bare um, and there's it's
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's the thing that like Trump was
Speaker 1: able to do so much um and now we have
Speaker 1: Biden so less willing to use executive powers. Is the
Speaker 1: same thing that like like with with with Obama and
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, when the Senate would refuse to put
Speaker 1: through any any candidates Obama technically had the power could
Speaker 1: because the Senate refused to do to do their job.
Speaker 1: There is a very strong argument that Obama could just
Speaker 1: put someone into the Supreme Court because of the failure
Speaker 1: of what the Senate was doing was specifically doing a
Speaker 1: thing that meant because they were not doing the job
Speaker 1: at all, that he can't get he can't get fully
Speaker 1: put through and we so we could have. That could
Speaker 1: have happened, and Obama just didn't because you know, you
Speaker 1: want to play. You want to be the good guy,
Speaker 1: like you want to be the person who follows the rules.
Speaker 1: But the other side doesn't care about that. They're not
Speaker 1: playing a genuine game. They're not following the rules. They're
Speaker 1: doing whatever they can to win. So this this isn't
Speaker 1: about being plugged into lefty Twitter. I get almost I
Speaker 1: get almost none of my takes from lefty Twitter. I
Speaker 1: get them from like reading reading stuff and thinking about
Speaker 1: how electoralism affects all of these issues and where to
Speaker 1: focus my attention because no matter what I say or
Speaker 1: what I do, that's not going to affect whether Texas
Speaker 1: is blew a red Yeah, and there's this I think
Speaker 1: like one of the things that is an argument against Obama.
Speaker 1: You know, intervening in that way is like, well, that
Speaker 1: would have created precedent that would have like further centralized
Speaker 1: executive power and could have been used by their refused
Speaker 1: to do their job. Yeah, but you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: look at what we got. Look at the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: that we have, which now has a six to three
Speaker 1: bent conservatively. There was just another fucking shadow ruling today
Speaker 1: that is, um about jerrymandering, and god, I was Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: Um one second, I'll look it up. But yeah, like
Speaker 1: you're you're getting like we're we're already living through that scenario. Um,
Speaker 1: And it's like like this I meantime, terms of centralation
Speaker 1: to power, like Obama claimed the legal authority to kill
Speaker 1: any man, woman, or child, regardless of their citizenship as
Speaker 1: as a US citizen without trial moment they left the
Speaker 1: United States Like that that is that is the that
Speaker 1: is the authority that he claimed, like when you know,
Speaker 1: in order to introder to run the drone assassination program.
Speaker 1: And it's yeah, so like at that point, like yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we we we literally have a person who can go
Speaker 1: I'm going to press a button and kill you, like
Speaker 1: like we might centralize before, Like it's just I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's not even a centralization because it was specifically
Speaker 1: within the context of the Senate not doing their job. Um,
Speaker 1: and I kind of all places into like it seems
Speaker 1: like Democrats are more politically successful when they're losing, Like
Speaker 1: it seems like they want the other side to be
Speaker 1: in power because that's when they actually do things politically.
Speaker 1: Then when they have power, they're just so scared to
Speaker 1: use it that they don't even do anything to really
Speaker 1: help people that much. And and and I mean, this
Speaker 1: is the other thing is that like, yeah, the Democrats
Speaker 1: like like most of their their actual constitute like they
Speaker 1: have they have two constituencies, right, they have like you know,
Speaker 1: they have the people they're passing tax breaks for, and
Speaker 1: then they have a bunch of they have a bunch
Speaker 1: of consultants. And the consultants like the thing that they
Speaker 1: care about is campaign donations, right, because that's how they
Speaker 1: get paid. And yeah, hey, guess what happens when you're
Speaker 1: in power. Oh, people don't give you any people don't
Speaker 1: give you much money. That this is this is this
Speaker 1: is a problem the program into in the eighties. They
Speaker 1: get more power when they're they get more money when
Speaker 1: they're not in power because then they're trying to organize
Speaker 1: to get in power. But then once they're in there,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, wow, you're not really using the same
Speaker 1: power capabilities that the other side does when they're in
Speaker 1: charge and they're all willing to play dirty politically and
Speaker 1: we and for some reason that Democrats are not. That
Speaker 1: is kind of they don't like this something like they
Speaker 1: don't actually care about any of this stuff, right, The
Speaker 1: stuff is useful for them in terms of fundraising, right,
Speaker 1: but it's like, yeah, I don't know, Like they don't
Speaker 1: like if if every trans person in the United States
Speaker 1: was killed, right, the Democrats would be sad for a
Speaker 1: little bit, and then they wouldn't move on. Like it's
Speaker 1: not that's that's that's not a thing that if you're
Speaker 1: in a hard blue state, we know, what's more important
Speaker 1: than actually voting for supportive like this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: is actually just giving trans people money like that is
Speaker 1: gonna have much more of a positive political effect. It's
Speaker 1: just give trans people money. Whenever you see a go
Speaker 1: fund me for a trans person, donate to that instead.
Speaker 1: That's gonna have a much more uh lasting effect. Than
Speaker 1: voting if you're in you know, New York or if
Speaker 1: you're in Oregon, right, because like that those states are
Speaker 1: they're they're gonna be blue. That's always gonna happen, um,
Speaker 1: But other states like uh, like I Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alabama,
Speaker 1: like these are gonna be red states like there's and
Speaker 1: as much as we would be nice if yeah, if
Speaker 1: democratic senators and and people in the House we're in
Speaker 1: there instead, then yeah, these transpiles probably wouldn't be happening
Speaker 1: as much. But that's not gonna happen. So if that's
Speaker 1: not going to happen, we should focus on other ways
Speaker 1: to do that politically. And yeah, sure fixing jerrymandering will
Speaker 1: be great, but I don't think you need me to
Speaker 1: tell you that anyway. We should probably that's that's probably
Speaker 1: more or less aisode that is as I will, I will,
Speaker 1: I will plug next week if similar similar on a
Speaker 1: similar train for for kind of talking about queerness and
Speaker 1: fascism um, which yeah we are. We are planning it
Speaker 1: to a two parter, which is a pretty going to
Speaker 1: be extensive deep dive into explaining the curious case of
Speaker 1: Nazi catboys and Garrison says Garrison says, we as if
Speaker 1: any of the rest of us had any choice in this,
Speaker 1: Garrison Garrison forced this on us through violence. Yes, but yes,
Speaker 1: we will be talking about this which kind of touched
Speaker 1: us on some similar topics in terms of like gender
Speaker 1: and sexuality and how it intersects with politics and how
Speaker 1: there can be you know, seemingly contradictory claims that you know,
Speaker 1: game Nazis and all that kind of stuff, So similar
Speaker 1: similar train will be kind of discussing that and how
Speaker 1: that works. Um. But yeah, this is a end of
Speaker 1: Trends week. Honestly at this point, that's we're ending. As
Speaker 1: we're ending it, I'm kind of more optimistic than I
Speaker 1: what than I than I was when we started trans
Speaker 1: weak Um, in terms of like watching kind of how
Speaker 1: some some of these bills have played out, how some
Speaker 1: of them were not We're not fully carried through. Um.
Speaker 1: There is protests and stuff being organized. I know for March.
Speaker 1: I believe it's March thirty one, which is a trans
Speaker 1: day of visibility. There's gonna be protests in a lot
Speaker 1: of conservative states. Um, I know there's gonna be let
Speaker 1: me let me actually, let me check because I know
Speaker 1: there's there's gonna be there's gonna be multiple, multiple things happening,
Speaker 1: and I will I'm gonna be trying to I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try to be in Idaho next next week for that
Speaker 1: because there's gonna be a test in Boizy, which I
Speaker 1: think Boisi, Idaho, that's the place. But there's gonna be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be events in Austin, Tallahassee, Montgomery. Um so yeah,
Speaker 1: I will look up tear it Up dot org for
Speaker 1: events for info on all of the events at different
Speaker 1: at different in different states. For for trans Day of
Speaker 1: Visibility March March one, and yeah, be gay, do crime, Yeah,
Speaker 1: throw bricks at transphobs, Yeah, all that stuff. Hey, We'll
Speaker 1: be back Monday with more episodes every week from now
Speaker 1: until the heat death of the Universe. It Could Happen
Speaker 1: Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening,