Speaker 1: Do do do the thing. The thing, it's could happen here
Speaker 1: a podcast. No, it's it's it's your trying to happen,
Speaker 1: isn't it. They're really it's doing its best. You know,
Speaker 1: they're really going for us. What is you know that
Speaker 1: that thing by Yates, some great beasts slouching to be born,
Speaker 1: Time of Monsters, all that good stuff. That's what's going
Speaker 1: on here with it could happen here. It's the podcast Garrison. Hi,
Speaker 1: how are we doing? So? We're talking about the still
Speaker 1: ongoing and probably well seemingly never ending. Hopefully it will
Speaker 1: end eventually. Uh, the hold up on that one, Garrison,
Speaker 1: the escalating war on trusts people of Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: we've we've brought on some some people who have been
Speaker 1: working to organize again to the the kind of wave
Speaker 1: of bills and rhetoric and legislation targeting trans healthcare, targeting
Speaker 1: the just existence of trans people in general. We're talking
Speaker 1: to cat and Ada Roads from Tear it Up, a
Speaker 1: new newer organization, uh, dedicated to specifically specifically fighting against
Speaker 1: these these new bills. Hello, hey friends, Yes, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Um, we've been we we've been we've been
Speaker 1: talking for a bit because of how these bills have
Speaker 1: been also a thing for a bit. And uh we
Speaker 1: initially met up for trans day visibility. Uh I tagged
Speaker 1: along to go to a protest in Idaho. Um, and
Speaker 1: then we we got on on trans day visibility. We
Speaker 1: we we we cooked up, cooked up plans to sit
Speaker 1: down and have this chat. So it is it. It
Speaker 1: is a little bit late, but it's it doesn't Maybe
Speaker 1: we can have more than one day. Maybe that's a
Speaker 1: good idea. Well, we're not getting remembrance too, so yeah,
Speaker 1: well hopefully we can have more than two days and
Speaker 1: one of them not be just sad um. Yeah, probably too,
Speaker 1: because you know they're still attacking. Oh did they not?
Speaker 1: Did they not stop? Nope? Nope. Our visibility did not,
Speaker 1: in fact scare them back into their cave. All right,
Speaker 1: this is why we need a trans day of one
Speaker 1: free murder. I love this plane. A few problems. Well
Speaker 1: that's a that's a great note to uh. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: Caitlyn Jenner already used hers. She's just christ it's going
Speaker 1: to be my contribution for the day. Wow, this is
Speaker 1: this is gonna really really convince all of the all
Speaker 1: of the on the edge libs who are somehow listening
Speaker 1: to this trying to find a recipe. They thought it
Speaker 1: was tear like a scale and they were like, I
Speaker 1: was trying to work my baking scale. What if I
Speaker 1: could measure of lentils and then arm all your local
Speaker 1: trans women. I would like to make a very very
Speaker 1: trans cooking video in the style of David Lynch's keen
Speaker 1: my video of but that is that is a deep
Speaker 1: cut for all of the lynch heads out there, as
Speaker 1: Lynch fans called themselves. Anyway, we're talking about all of
Speaker 1: all of all the bills talking about um, all of
Speaker 1: the rhetoric that we've seen been specifically increasing the past,
Speaker 1: like the past week as of recording broad past, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a week or two as of time of release
Speaker 1: for they're like they're they're really going for it, for
Speaker 1: trying to get people to do like just violence against
Speaker 1: people who don't look like how they want them to look.
Speaker 1: And that see, that's basically what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1: And we we'renna, we'renna talking. We're talking a variety of
Speaker 1: topics between we're gonna talk. We're gonna unfortunately discuss like
Speaker 1: the groomer thing. We'll talk about all the bills that
Speaker 1: have and haven't passed in different ways that we can
Speaker 1: kind of stand up against this this this thing that's
Speaker 1: really trying to take take a hold. Um, I guess
Speaker 1: I would like to start by discussing the origin of
Speaker 1: of of Tear it Up and like, how you know
Speaker 1: what what happened to I mean, obviously we know what
Speaker 1: happened to cause this distuct, to cause this thing to
Speaker 1: be prompted, but yeah, what was what was like the
Speaker 1: specific process of being like okay, it's it's all these
Speaker 1: things are happening. Let's actually get a group of people
Speaker 1: together to organize this thing across the country. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I guess I can talk about that. So Tear it
Speaker 1: Up actually group pretty directly out of a previous group
Speaker 1: called TROT and Texas, which is the trans Resistance of Texas,
Speaker 1: which started last year during their legislative session, um, and
Speaker 1: then really started to grow during the special sessions in
Speaker 1: response to this constant line of attack and realizing that
Speaker 1: the techniques and the strategy is being employed by a
Speaker 1: lot of the existing more liberal leaning groups were really
Speaker 1: focused on like back room conversations and deals and using
Speaker 1: like procedure to defeat things instead of actually like mobilizing
Speaker 1: people against anti trans state violence. Um and uh. From
Speaker 1: there we started to adopt things like louder, more obnoxious protests,
Speaker 1: a lot of stickering, firing posters. Um. And then this year,
Speaker 1: I so, I originally started TROT, but I moved across
Speaker 1: the country and I was like, wow, ship, things are
Speaker 1: just getting worse everywhere. Um, and I have a lot
Speaker 1: of friends all over the country, from living in Portland
Speaker 1: and New York and Texas and Colorado now the Midwest,
Speaker 1: and reached out to sort of pull together a bunch
Speaker 1: of humans that I knew would be willing to fight
Speaker 1: back and to try and experiment with methods that we
Speaker 1: can pick up from our predecessors, like act up and
Speaker 1: bring more attention and mobilize people more towards taking direct
Speaker 1: action instead of relying on these back room lobbying groups
Speaker 1: I don't think really give a funk about trans people,
Speaker 1: but love to use attacks on us to raise money. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's a number of number of examples we
Speaker 1: could point to, but I think we could be more
Speaker 1: productive and just talk about you guys instead of yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I really the transnational thing is really interesting
Speaker 1: point how it's like, I know, for trans Day visibility,
Speaker 1: there was there was an organized die ins and protests
Speaker 1: all across the country to happen at the same day. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Um there was one night of which I was lucky
Speaker 1: enough to join in on. UM. And yeah, but there
Speaker 1: was there was, there was a lot of them, and
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, it's on on the lead up to
Speaker 1: like as as all of these bills are escalating. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there was the whole there was the whole
Speaker 1: um wave of organizing against trans people for the so
Speaker 1: called like the Transition Day, which is really unfortunate because
Speaker 1: there actually it would be a great discussion to be
Speaker 1: had there on people who choose to not continue on
Speaker 1: with transition, but it's been so used by turfs and
Speaker 1: the gender critical movement that it's now just like it's
Speaker 1: just it's just another day for more transphobia. Just really unfortunate. UM.
Speaker 1: But we had that happening at the same time as
Speaker 1: all of all of these bills, and then we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: so what what what what was what was kind of
Speaker 1: the stuff that prompted all of the guy ins And
Speaker 1: how are you like, um talking with people in all
Speaker 1: the in all the different states to kind of organize
Speaker 1: this thing together, but still also like separately for each location.
Speaker 1: One of the points that I like to come back to,
Speaker 1: like we're going to talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: the details of the you know, some some of the
Speaker 1: specific legislation that has that hassessed land law and some
Speaker 1: of the other legislation that has not been able to
Speaker 1: pass into law. Um. And you know, we're we're drawing
Speaker 1: a contrast between ourselves and some of Tear it Up
Speaker 1: is drawing a contrast between itself and some of these
Speaker 1: more you know, institutionalist liberal organizations. Um. Not because that
Speaker 1: they not because they can't succeed in their stated goals. Sometimes, right,
Speaker 1: like the A c L you will sue on some
Speaker 1: of these things of those lawsuits, maybe maybe something worth celebrating.
Speaker 1: What's happening in Texas right now is a great example
Speaker 1: of that. But that said, right, so, like we we
Speaker 1: can acknowledge that these that these more institutionalist tactics can
Speaker 1: can lead to, you know, like it's a better outcome
Speaker 1: that these laws do not succeed obviously, Um. But there's
Speaker 1: the impacts of this legislation and the discussion around this
Speaker 1: legislation is so much bigger and so much more found
Speaker 1: than any of these individual laws. You know, is specifically
Speaker 1: looking at them, um in terms of their like material
Speaker 1: impact in people's lives, which are already abysmally fucking awful.
Speaker 1: But like the what the place that teared up is
Speaker 1: looking to kind of champion is but kind of hell
Speaker 1: raising that like enables us to empower each other, that
Speaker 1: enables us to be visible in a way that shows
Speaker 1: people on the ground all across the country that like
Speaker 1: that we are not just a a minority to be
Speaker 1: destroyed and ignored. That we're going to fight for ourselves.
Speaker 1: We're going to fight for each other. We're gonna fight
Speaker 1: for our kids, we're gonna fight for our families, and
Speaker 1: we're going to fight for our rights, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: do it loud and as ugly as we need to
Speaker 1: in order to make sure that trans pain is visible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And building on that, um that when we look at
Speaker 1: the start of last month March or I guess late February, UM,
Speaker 1: I think Texas was really kind of the flash point
Speaker 1: and a lot of the country on this where we
Speaker 1: had a lot of these bills sort of boiling. UM.
Speaker 1: I believe they are around seven dy active at that point.
Speaker 1: Um we're now down to like the high sixties, so
Speaker 1: that's better. But that was really where stuff started to
Speaker 1: boil over on this and we looked around and saw
Speaker 1: that the fight needed to focus on trans survival more
Speaker 1: than just the bills. And the bills are important to
Speaker 1: defeat because there things trying to exterminate us. There's things
Speaker 1: that are trying to take families apart, to take away
Speaker 1: the things that are helping people stay alive, and to
Speaker 1: remove trans people from accessing public life, and that's going
Speaker 1: to really ruin a lot of humans. But we need
Speaker 1: to not just look at that individual fight and remember
Speaker 1: we're fighting for survival and we're fighting for each other
Speaker 1: and trans people as a community. We've always had to
Speaker 1: kind of rely on each other via various means, be
Speaker 1: at like Susan's place or like go back to like Transvestia,
Speaker 1: even and like these systems that weren't necessarily always and
Speaker 1: these forms of communication that weren't always focused on um
Speaker 1: necessarily legal winds in the more traditional sense, and more
Speaker 1: just like forming community, even if those communities weren't necessarily great.
Speaker 1: In the case of like Transvestia and like some of
Speaker 1: those much more, um, respectable leaning groups. Could you a
Speaker 1: little talk a little bit about what Transvestia and Susan's
Speaker 1: place work, because I'm gonna guess a lot of people
Speaker 1: listening are not going to be super familiar with that history.
Speaker 1: I kind of am only casually heard anything about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm a bit of a queer history nerd um,
Speaker 1: and you could heard a lot about this. Actually I
Speaker 1: have a can I plug my podcast? What we would
Speaker 1: like to do is provide people with an ability to
Speaker 1: learn more about this kind of stuff. So yeah, please Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I'm part of the totally trans podcast network. Um
Speaker 1: you can pronounce some parrot twitter at like totally TransPod. Um.
Speaker 1: But we talked a lot about trans and queer history
Speaker 1: through the lens of like looking at it through pop
Speaker 1: culture and reading stuff into like The Little Mermaid and things. Um.
Speaker 1: So we go in a lot about Virginia Prince and
Speaker 1: transvestian there because I'm kind of obsessed with this human
Speaker 1: from the nineteen sixties who is like the first Twitter
Speaker 1: trans girl. Um. She was very problematic, super racist and classist,
Speaker 1: and her argument was she led to a lot of
Speaker 1: twentieth century confusion by saying, uh that there's like heterosexual transvestites,
Speaker 1: which are what we would now just call like trans lesbians,
Speaker 1: and then like the homosexual trans sexual, which is now
Speaker 1: what we would call straight trans folks, and that the
Speaker 1: homosexual transsexuals are bad and should be shunned, but the
Speaker 1: heterosexual transvestite should maintain all of her previous privileges. Uh,
Speaker 1: And she put out this magazine called Transvestia. She famously
Speaker 1: also got in trouble for sending nudes in the mail
Speaker 1: to another trans girl across the country. Um. Yeah, fascinating
Speaker 1: historical figure who kind of the curve historically in terms
Speaker 1: of sending nudes. That's that's groundbreaking with stuff. But Transvestia though,
Speaker 1: did have this big cultural impact on sort of being
Speaker 1: an early trans zine. Shortly after it, we start to
Speaker 1: see Drag, which um was much more focused on like
Speaker 1: the homosexual trans sexual and more like sexually liberated takes
Speaker 1: through like the seventies, and then later um my favorite
Speaker 1: scene like gender Trash from how which uh was out
Speaker 1: of Toronto and like the nineties and was very confrontational
Speaker 1: about trans rights. So we sort of exist in this
Speaker 1: larger history where we're looking at how trans community has
Speaker 1: survived informed and learning from things like star UM, which
Speaker 1: was the Street Transvestitate Action Revolutionaries UM out of New
Speaker 1: York with Marcia P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, as well
Speaker 1: as um act up and HIV activism. And we're trying
Speaker 1: to take what we can learn from our ancestors and
Speaker 1: apply it to our current survival and play you with
Speaker 1: it a little bit and update some of their tactics
Speaker 1: because I don't think traditional non violent protests the way
Speaker 1: it existed in the past gets attention anymore. UM, I
Speaker 1: think when you figure out ways to be louder about it.
Speaker 1: And I'm a I'm personally a devout pacivist. Other people aren't,
Speaker 1: and that's a okay. Um, I'm a good Quaker girl.
Speaker 1: But um, we need to be seen. We need our
Speaker 1: lives to be seen, and we know our value as
Speaker 1: humans to be seen so that we can love ourselves
Speaker 1: and each other enough to survive this horrible ship that's
Speaker 1: going to continue happening to us over the next couple
Speaker 1: of years. Yeah, I'm wanna big back on that with
Speaker 1: with one thought that, um, we're talking about this sort
Speaker 1: of like this history of trans people drawing together to
Speaker 1: take care of each other, and you know, I'm just
Speaker 1: thinking about how today, Uh, Marjorie Taylor Green releases a
Speaker 1: video that, amongst a bunch of other just like terrifying,
Speaker 1: awful and occasionally super funny in its incredible stupidity. Um
Speaker 1: things that she's claiming in this video or that like
Speaker 1: trans people are basically like the you know, the barbarian
Speaker 1: hordes that have come to destroy Western civilization. And she's
Speaker 1: you know, she says with a straight face, like, you know,
Speaker 1: the late Rome and modern America are very similar of
Speaker 1: us rely heavily on Verrangian mercenaries in order to maintain
Speaker 1: the sanctity of our borders. I always wanted to be
Speaker 1: a wizard, but I guess I'm a barbarian. But I
Speaker 1: bring that up because there is this impression of trans
Speaker 1: power that like trans people, that is a result of
Speaker 1: our increased visibility, you know, like what the media called
Speaker 1: the transgender tipping point, because suddenly people were like, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess Liver and Cox gets to exist. But like, uh,
Speaker 1: with this increased visibility is this impression that we have
Speaker 1: this like incredible magical cosmic powers to seduce your people
Speaker 1: and ruin your civilization or whatever. And like actually, like
Speaker 1: when I so I came out in two four, three five,
Speaker 1: and like I never imagined a world where we could
Speaker 1: even get healthcare covered when I was, like I was
Speaker 1: like a kid organizing with Camp trans out in the
Speaker 1: woods of Michigan, and like I knew people who got
Speaker 1: orchiectomys in Barns. I every single trans woman, I knew
Speaker 1: everything that they knew about how to like get hormones
Speaker 1: and like manage their own transition and like Endercrian system
Speaker 1: they learned from message boards. It was the only collective
Speaker 1: knowledge in existence that was like accessible to people. Because
Speaker 1: if you went to your doctor, unless you lived in
Speaker 1: San Francisco or New York and we're particularly well connected,
Speaker 1: the response you were going to get is, I don't know,
Speaker 1: are you a demon? Right? Yeah? No, absolutely that That's
Speaker 1: the one thing I found it um really insightful talking
Speaker 1: to the older trans people that I know, because I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know about Jim gen Z gender queer person on hormones,
Speaker 1: And it's very different because when when when I've been
Speaker 1: talking to the my my transgender friends who are older,
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, all of these bills are just are
Speaker 1: a reaction to the increased visibility and increased well being
Speaker 1: of trans people. Right, it's putting, it's putting things that
Speaker 1: used to be kind of just like unspoken or like
Speaker 1: obvious bigotry, it's putting now that that's actually progressed thing.
Speaker 1: It's now putting that that old bigotry into actual law
Speaker 1: because they're like, oh no, we don't want things to
Speaker 1: progress further. So it's a it's a purposeful sliding back. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's just like for a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are older, it doesn't even seem that new. It's just
Speaker 1: seemed to be. It's it's resurfacing. The things that were
Speaker 1: used to be normalized are now becoming you know, are
Speaker 1: becoming more obviously bigoted. But they're putting that bigotry into
Speaker 1: actual law. Um. And that's the Yeah, that's the kind
Speaker 1: of interesting point is because for there's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of people who believe that like the transgenderisms and the
Speaker 1: gender ideology is like a point of power. It's like
Speaker 1: because it's affiliated with the left, um, and the left
Speaker 1: is seen as like the power. It's it's then like
Speaker 1: therefore you're actually punching up on it, which is of
Speaker 1: course entirely backwards like that, none of that. If you
Speaker 1: have any political analysis, you'll you'll know like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: not how anything works. But yeah, these people in their minds,
Speaker 1: they think they're actually pushing up against like the like
Speaker 1: the powerful forces of transgenderism. You're like, no, we're just
Speaker 1: like pugs who are poor, who are trying to who
Speaker 1: are trying to get our homeown injections like leave us alone.
Speaker 1: I can't remember. It was like Tom Cotton or Matt Gates,
Speaker 1: yea one of those guys, one of the Pentagone guys, right,
Speaker 1: being like yelling at him because you know, our military
Speaker 1: is being destroyed because somebody put the class about like
Speaker 1: respecting someone's pronouns and the guy's responses like we can
Speaker 1: obliterate any target on the entire planet with no effort.
Speaker 1: Like what the are you talking about? There's there's that
Speaker 1: great there's that hortable, great tweet about the person that
Speaker 1: runs that four Chune trans account. Who's who is who
Speaker 1: is like this this trends person who is like a
Speaker 1: war criminal because they sell weapons. It was, it was,
Speaker 1: it was a wonderful tweet for a few days ago.
Speaker 1: I mean one of I mean famously a lot of
Speaker 1: companies in the arms industry like Raytheon have a great
Speaker 1: reputation for hiring trans people because all Raytheon cares about
Speaker 1: is you can go to missile guidance chip. That's all
Speaker 1: that matters to Ray Theon. They're they're they're very woke. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is, it is. It is intriguing to watch
Speaker 1: these people really justify their transphobia as a form of
Speaker 1: fighting against the system because they have somehow affiliated of
Speaker 1: being trans with the Democratic Party. Therefore it's affiliated with
Speaker 1: the establishment. Therefore it's actually this force of power, which
Speaker 1: none none of that's, none of that's true. But that
Speaker 1: propaganda is showing to be very effective. But people seem
Speaker 1: really convinced by that because it's it's it's a story
Speaker 1: that's easy to glom onto. And as long as we
Speaker 1: have a story that we can glom onto, then it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what's true or not. It's it's all of
Speaker 1: the stories are what's actually true. Um So, yeah, that
Speaker 1: is an intriguing, an intriguing point in terms of how, yeah,
Speaker 1: how how it's how stuff has changed from like transphobia
Speaker 1: ten years ago for the transphobia now, how that's resurfacing
Speaker 1: some things that used to be they used to just
Speaker 1: take shape in a slightly different form. Yeah. Well, and
Speaker 1: so Cat's experiences in two thousand and four if you
Speaker 1: pass forward a decade, because I'm a little younger than Cat,
Speaker 1: but not a lot younger than Cat. Um around like
Speaker 1: when I was trying to get on hormones, we also
Speaker 1: had like r l E. The kiddos these days know
Speaker 1: what that was the real So it's real life experience, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: which is basically having to socially transition and come out
Speaker 1: and do all of this under the care of a
Speaker 1: therapist and a physician for between six months and a
Speaker 1: couple of years before they'll allow you to access hormones. Um.
Speaker 1: And uh. That was kind of like the stepping stone
Speaker 1: between the previous experiments where it was just like d
Speaker 1: I Y or nothing, um what was or impossible gatekeeping
Speaker 1: and then now where there's like more informth incentence model
Speaker 1: which is what I which is what I do now?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah um. And a lot of these laws are
Speaker 1: just kind of reiterating that weight that comes from a
Speaker 1: really like flawed please like that weight didn't in any
Speaker 1: way benefit anyone is really it's just torturing people and
Speaker 1: trying to kind of like, um like beat the traine
Speaker 1: out of you, uh, make you go to the mall
Speaker 1: presenting as a woman while you feel incredibly awkward and
Speaker 1: get yelled at by some guy for like trying to
Speaker 1: buy shoes and he's like yeah, right, yeah, Like if
Speaker 1: if you're a nine year old who is experiencing precocious puberty,
Speaker 1: it is completely acceptable and no one is going to
Speaker 1: question whether or not, um, you know, prescribing puberty blockers
Speaker 1: to just make make make like to make it so
Speaker 1: that you can experience puberty at it what feels like
Speaker 1: a more appropriate developmental age. Uh sis. People, politicians, the
Speaker 1: right wing generally people agree that that is an acceptable practice.
Speaker 1: But to use that same practice in order to help
Speaker 1: a trans child not die, that is a sin against
Speaker 1: God and leading to the decline of Western civilization. We
Speaker 1: wish whatever whatever. People are like, yeah, like trans people
Speaker 1: are are leading into this degeneracy that's going to bring
Speaker 1: down Western civilization. You're like, oh, wow, that's sure. It
Speaker 1: does sound cool for me. Hormones worked so quickly, and
Speaker 1: I would having to live through like a year of
Speaker 1: trying to present in specific ways, well not on hormones.
Speaker 1: Sounds like complete hell, because it is. I was very
Speaker 1: surprised at how fast even like mindset things changed. Um
Speaker 1: how it is like they're very like hormon it's are
Speaker 1: very useful and very interesting and how they and how
Speaker 1: they affect changes and being forced to I guess as
Speaker 1: the term now is like boy moting or girl moting.
Speaker 1: This is this is this is this is what the
Speaker 1: zoomer the Zoomer kids call whenever they have to like
Speaker 1: like almost like code switch gender. Um, having having to
Speaker 1: like present in the way that you want to without
Speaker 1: these systems of hormones for a while, to even be
Speaker 1: allowed to have hormones as mi a zoomer now sounds
Speaker 1: like horrible. It's literally dangerous, like ye, actually an incredibly
Speaker 1: dangerous thing to put people like experience, to put people into.
Speaker 1: And I think that like that kind of gate keeping. Uh,
Speaker 1: you start looking at it through a more intersectional lens
Speaker 1: and like, who is it hurting the most? It's hurting
Speaker 1: people who don't have a ship ton of money to
Speaker 1: like read get an entirely new wardrobe that people who, um,
Speaker 1: you know, people of color who are more likely to
Speaker 1: be targets of violence if they're more obviously visible and
Speaker 1: read as trans yep. Well, and it really artificially finished
Speaker 1: the number of trans people and just gender variants in general. Um.
Speaker 1: Something that's been really interesting to watch is someone who
Speaker 1: kind of went into the pandemic as like a trans
Speaker 1: elder given a lot of community work. Is the core
Speaker 1: in trans as a thing and how much we give
Speaker 1: everyone an opportunity to like explore themselves and be introspective
Speaker 1: for a year, and how many people are like, fuck,
Speaker 1: I'm a girl, um or like I'm no gender or
Speaker 1: I'm every gender and all of these incredibly beautiful forms
Speaker 1: of exploration that couldn't have happened if they had to
Speaker 1: go through that in like their normal source of situations,
Speaker 1: if you just gave them an excuse to like do
Speaker 1: their own thing for six months. And um yeah, r
Speaker 1: l E was a good way to keep people from
Speaker 1: being able to explore. And it's just one way that
Speaker 1: trans people's bodily autonomy is attacked. And that's what a
Speaker 1: lot of these bills come down to as well. Is
Speaker 1: it's the same thing as like anti abortion or anti
Speaker 1: birth control staff. It's all just about reducing people's bodily autonomy.
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, because like if I had to quote
Speaker 1: unquote live as a girl for a year, I would
Speaker 1: have just never gotten hormones because I don't want to
Speaker 1: live as your girl. Like, that's not that's not what
Speaker 1: that's not what I want to even do. And yeah,
Speaker 1: having having all of that gate keeping, which is part
Speaker 1: part of part of part of what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1: Because I mean, as much as as much as they
Speaker 1: hate people who like are you know, are find more
Speaker 1: comfort inside the inside the more like typical gender rules,
Speaker 1: they also really don't like the people who enjoy being
Speaker 1: more like over gender freaks, um, and like like outside
Speaker 1: of that, it's like so of course they're going to
Speaker 1: try to clamp down on any anything it's worth noting
Speaker 1: to just the like, there's there are a few different
Speaker 1: camps um in in in the sort of right wing
Speaker 1: response to trans people. UM. One of the things that
Speaker 1: I've learned over the years kind of looking at looking
Speaker 1: at what the all right is up to. Um. You
Speaker 1: know what originally I really like of the whole Republican Party,
Speaker 1: the whole right wing is like a single cohesive ideological unit.
Speaker 1: It seemed like they were disabled to get everyone on
Speaker 1: the same page and then go at something and if
Speaker 1: you look closely, you realize, actually, it's this huge, ever
Speaker 1: evolving coalition of people who mostly hate each other and
Speaker 1: if you're if you're clever, you can break people off
Speaker 1: and disrupt things. Um, there's different there's different movements, different
Speaker 1: thoughts inside of the way that people are approaching this.
Speaker 1: And you have a lot of politicians who they probably
Speaker 1: never met a trans person, They certainly probably don't have
Speaker 1: any gay friends. They're just some random suburbanite motherfucker's who
Speaker 1: know that sacrificing trans kids on the altar of political
Speaker 1: convenience will score them points with a radicalized base of bigots. Um,
Speaker 1: so those people are just cynically hurting trans people because
Speaker 1: it will score them some you know, pretend points that
Speaker 1: will lead to real structural power. But there is also
Speaker 1: the evangelical community, and a huge amount of the the
Speaker 1: deepest and scariest fervor against trans people comes out of
Speaker 1: the evangelical community. I was raised vaguely evangelical, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and like when I came out, I was definitely told
Speaker 1: I was going to hell. Like if you look at
Speaker 1: the you look at the where this a lot of
Speaker 1: the incredibly incredibly like eliminationist rhetoric is coming from and
Speaker 1: that's coming from the evangelical community who are like, it's
Speaker 1: not just that I think that From a policy perspective,
Speaker 1: this is like we need to like retool how we're
Speaker 1: doing trans healthcare something, because if people wanted to have
Speaker 1: conversations about how to make the best possible systems, like
Speaker 1: we want to have that conversation, we can we can
Speaker 1: agree to we can disagree about policy, but their policy
Speaker 1: is literally trans people are an army of demons who
Speaker 1: have come to win souls for Satan, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to refill my prescription fun, like we
Speaker 1: need the funk alone. It also creates its really interesting
Speaker 1: looping effect of of politicians who get into antiach friends
Speaker 1: and like like all of this kind of like anti
Speaker 1: gay stuff to specifically win elections. Right. We even saw
Speaker 1: this like Greg Abbott doing his um like letters about
Speaker 1: about investigating parents of trans kids specifically around his primary election. Like,
Speaker 1: so people definitely do are still very much getting into
Speaker 1: this specifically to win elections because they know it's a
Speaker 1: point that riles up the base. But then you also
Speaker 1: have people because that's been going on for so long
Speaker 1: you have people who are maybe not necessarily super evangelical, um,
Speaker 1: but who grew up around this kind of culture of
Speaker 1: politicians need to say these things, who are now getting again.
Speaker 1: Even if politicians didn't really fully agree with it, they
Speaker 1: they needed to do it to get support. But you
Speaker 1: have people who grew up around that and went into
Speaker 1: politics around that who are now just do that sincerely
Speaker 1: because because it was what they were exposed to previously.
Speaker 1: Now we have people like that who are trying to
Speaker 1: run for office for the first time who are just
Speaker 1: that extreme. Um. I think that's even a bit of
Speaker 1: what the Marjorie Taylor Green thing is is like someone
Speaker 1: who was exposed to extremist stuff online who is now
Speaker 1: running for office herself and is completely sincere about all
Speaker 1: the stuff she's doing, Like she she is a true
Speaker 1: believer in the way that some other people like Matt
Speaker 1: Gates may not even be a true believer. He might
Speaker 1: just be doing it because it's popular. But you also
Speaker 1: have the people who are just like fully fully believe
Speaker 1: it because it's it's it's influenced culture long enough that
Speaker 1: it's now a full loop of sincerity. Well, and then specifically,
Speaker 1: the perception of trans people within the religious rights specifically,
Speaker 1: is actually shifted so much and last decade. I guess
Speaker 1: now I'm trying to think how old I am. Um,
Speaker 1: because I was a student at Baylor University. Oh okay, yeah, okay, cool, cool, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have I have, I have some family who used
Speaker 1: to work at Baylor. Oh boy, I have spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time in and around there, the top part
Speaker 1: of the world. Um uh yeah, sick um for all
Speaker 1: of the queer asked Baylor bears out there. But I
Speaker 1: became a student and I graduated, and being queer was
Speaker 1: against the rules the whole time I was there. Despite me,
Speaker 1: we came out and started a student group my freshman year. Um.
Speaker 1: But I had to face this really weird decision because
Speaker 1: in high school I had a lot of gender stuff
Speaker 1: going on, a lot of sexuality stuff going on, and
Speaker 1: I described myself as like a queer sexual because I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm still figuring it out. Sometimes I'm a girl, sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm a boy. I don't know, I'll sort this out
Speaker 1: in my twenties. And then I go to college where
Speaker 1: I thought I'd sorted out, and I was faced with
Speaker 1: this thing like you can neither be out as queer
Speaker 1: and but you have to like present as like as
Speaker 1: sis gay man, or you can transition, which will be
Speaker 1: totally acceptable within this culture, but you have to go
Speaker 1: deep stealth and um, you'll just show up next year
Speaker 1: as a girl and everyone will be fine with that
Speaker 1: and we'll all pretend it didn't happen and that you've
Speaker 1: always been a girl. Um, and that was like the
Speaker 1: standard and a lot of the Baylor's very Upper Crest religious, right,
Speaker 1: like very privileged group of people. But was you just
Speaker 1: kind of go away and we can just for a
Speaker 1: few months and we just pretend this is how it
Speaker 1: always was. And now it's much more um inquisitional is
Speaker 1: the wrong word. But they it's like hunting trans people down, uh,
Speaker 1: in a much more aggressive way where they can't just
Speaker 1: kind of be like, well, God doesn't make trash and
Speaker 1: instead they're like, oh, God connects you to hell just
Speaker 1: very directly, and it's getting worse, and um, that's why
Speaker 1: tear it up is really important that we like start
Speaker 1: now instead of like next fall, because it's gonna be
Speaker 1: horrible next fall. In the spring after that could be
Speaker 1: it's gonna be real grim. I love to talk more
Speaker 1: about like a tear it up and how you approach
Speaker 1: organizing UM and what you're kind of hoping to both
Speaker 1: expand into and the various actions that you have done
Speaker 1: in the past few weeks. So the first tear it
Speaker 1: up action officially was the three thirteen rally in Austin, Texas.
Speaker 1: That was the Transcrids Cry for Help rally UM, where
Speaker 1: we had a bunch of people and the steps of
Speaker 1: the Governor's mansion, UM speaking and getting loud and UM.
Speaker 1: We had a few hundred people show up and not
Speaker 1: really mobilized. A lot of folks in Texas that I
Speaker 1: know got activated from that and are still going. But
Speaker 1: while I was running and organizing that with trot Um
Speaker 1: and actually flew down to Texas from Nebraska to do that, UM,
Speaker 1: the various humans I'd reached out to and I was
Speaker 1: just like, I don't have time to explain directions right now.
Speaker 1: We need to organize the dying by the end of
Speaker 1: the month. Here's here's what I have. I just kind
Speaker 1: of threw it at them and UM, they all ran
Speaker 1: with it. And I think that's UM the way that
Speaker 1: we need to approach this right now, because we need
Speaker 1: to build this big machine because they've been building the
Speaker 1: machine against us for years. Um, and to build a
Speaker 1: machine that can rival that, we kind of need to
Speaker 1: be much more decentralized and much more agile about how
Speaker 1: we grow and how we do these actions. Um, cat,
Speaker 1: you are one of the first humans I reached out
Speaker 1: to and I was like, yes, I would like to
Speaker 1: make a big trouble. What was that like from your
Speaker 1: side of things? Yeah? So I keep thinking about this
Speaker 1: from the perspective of kind of my own political motivation.
Speaker 1: So I've done various kinds of like lefty whatever organizing
Speaker 1: for for most of my adult life. And um, in
Speaker 1: the last like last I guess February and February or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: I think like probably be a lot of people, especially
Speaker 1: a lot of trans people. I had like a couple
Speaker 1: of week period of just like totally depressed, doom scrolling,
Speaker 1: and then the invastion of Ukraine was happening, and it's
Speaker 1: just like everything was bad all the time. Um it's
Speaker 1: still feel still feels like everything is bad all the time.
Speaker 1: But um, I have stuff to do thanks to uh
Speaker 1: get a roads over here. UM. So what it I so?
Speaker 1: Like I said, I grew up, Um, I was a
Speaker 1: child of the nineties. I grew up in a world
Speaker 1: that I knew was utterly hostile to my existence. I
Speaker 1: knew that trans people were like that to be trans
Speaker 1: was something deeply shameful and a secret that I either
Speaker 1: needed to die with or that if I came out
Speaker 1: it would like ruin my life of all of my family, um,
Speaker 1: until I eventually, you know, I managed to not die
Speaker 1: all the way until eighteen came out, and then I
Speaker 1: found a bunch of incredible queer people and uh have
Speaker 1: Um it's been alive since then. But I I was
Speaker 1: shaped by that experience, by the experience of needing to
Speaker 1: survive knowing that I had this secret all you know,
Speaker 1: I knew and I knew in kindergarten. I like just
Speaker 1: just new with total certainty. And I also knew that
Speaker 1: it was evil and bad and that I should be ashamed. Um.
Speaker 1: And there is a whole couple there's like generation, there's
Speaker 1: like a whole generation of kids right now growing up
Speaker 1: who have you know, come out who have been born
Speaker 1: since two thousand fourteen and come out as tiny right,
Speaker 1: So there's like a whole and then never mind like
Speaker 1: kids weren't born before that, but who are in high
Speaker 1: school now who are coming out and like they have
Speaker 1: existed in a world where pop culture and the sort
Speaker 1: of mass culture more generally speaking, has like there are
Speaker 1: trans people on TV, and they're not just serial killers
Speaker 1: or the murder victims in an SPU story. There's legitimate representation,
Speaker 1: there is, you know, you have like the you have
Speaker 1: people in national government and in state government explicit lead
Speaker 1: defending trans people like they they have been enculturated to
Speaker 1: this idea that they have some semblance of rights and
Speaker 1: that civilization, that the civilization they live in doesn't want
Speaker 1: to smite them out of existence. Um, and those kids
Speaker 1: are watching this conversation shift and I don't know what
Speaker 1: that's like, but I can tell you that I've been
Speaker 1: motivated by anger to do a lot of things. And um,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've ever been quite as furious
Speaker 1: in my life as I have been the last the
Speaker 1: last couple of months, and so being drawn towards tear
Speaker 1: it up? To me, is this opportunity to like, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: I I love the Trevor Project. I'm really glad that
Speaker 1: they exist. I'm really glad that they do the work
Speaker 1: that they do. You know, like that there's all these
Speaker 1: different organs who are putting out positive messaging, but it's
Speaker 1: all pretty milk toast. You know, It's like trans people
Speaker 1: are cool. Maybe we should Maybe we should give all
Speaker 1: we should give all the tender cursive baseball bat. Maybe
Speaker 1: that would be a more useful right and to be
Speaker 1: space for. Like they're fucking trying to kill you, thirteen
Speaker 1: year old, they are coming for you. This world is unsafe,
Speaker 1: and I need you to know that you have somewhere
Speaker 1: to run to, that there are adults in the world
Speaker 1: who will keep you safe, who will show up for you,
Speaker 1: who are going to go and raise a bunch of hell,
Speaker 1: make a bunch of noise, do a graffiti, put up
Speaker 1: some posters, go and you know, get ourselves in trouble
Speaker 1: on the steps of the capitals all across the country.
Speaker 1: So that those kids in high school right now who
Speaker 1: are feeling like the entire fucking universe is dissolving around
Speaker 1: them into a bottomless see of fear and hatred. But like,
Speaker 1: there's other people out there. If you're in Idaho, if
Speaker 1: you're if you were a kid who's growing up in
Speaker 1: northern Idaho, like there's other people out there. You just
Speaker 1: have to get free, and we're specifically so our first
Speaker 1: actions we specifically target at these states that tend to
Speaker 1: be ignored by um so like the mainstream liberal media.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say that without sounding like a whacka doodle,
Speaker 1: but were fully past that foot great cool, I have
Speaker 1: feel like a profit storial. We opened this show with
Speaker 1: a joke about that's true. We're fine, that happened. I
Speaker 1: don't know, yeah, um but yeah, like the mainstream liberal
Speaker 1: media doesn't give a funk about Iowa or Idaho. And frankly,
Speaker 1: I've since I've lived all over the country and been
Speaker 1: involved in queer activism for like over a decade. I
Speaker 1: have friends all over and a lot of the um
Speaker 1: more higher up folks and established organs on the coasts
Speaker 1: and in big cities. Look at what happens in like
Speaker 1: Iowa and Idaho, in Texas and Florida, and they're like,
Speaker 1: oh no, this is a sign of what's to come,
Speaker 1: and not this affects a quarter of the country. It's
Speaker 1: already happening. Yeah, it's happened. Yeah it's not it could
Speaker 1: happen here, It's happened already, And fight for these kids
Speaker 1: desperately because their lives are at risk so many ways.
Speaker 1: Right now, they're legally imperiled. The things that we're giving
Speaker 1: them hope for life are being taken away. And a
Speaker 1: lot of these laws most affect the kids that have
Speaker 1: support of families, but we need a fight for the
Speaker 1: kids that don't too, and make sure that they know that,
Speaker 1: like we see you in Iowa and we're gonna go
Speaker 1: do something melodramatic and cover ourselves in fake blood and
Speaker 1: lay on the steps of the capital in the in
Speaker 1: the state that you live in so you can see that,
Speaker 1: like your feelings are being externalized, and hopefully that'll move
Speaker 1: you to knowing that like other people are going through
Speaker 1: this too, and hopefully other people will see what's happening
Speaker 1: and it will move them to action to protect those kids. Um.
Speaker 1: And it will give you a space to start building
Speaker 1: community and building connections for other transpeople and other people
Speaker 1: in the area who want to help keep you alive exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's really the next step and tear it up
Speaker 1: is this next month, I want to have us focus
Speaker 1: a bit more on a little community building and community events,
Speaker 1: which has always been a big part of my strategy
Speaker 1: with previous organizing as big lab protests followed by a
Speaker 1: pizza party UM or we did a great technic in
Speaker 1: Austin after the legislative sessions last year where we had
Speaker 1: a bunch of people show up and made a lot
Speaker 1: of good connections. UM We had a lot of the
Speaker 1: little trans kiddos there and some photos that were taken
Speaker 1: there were then used as like the headline, like the
Speaker 1: the cover photos for like all these articles about the
Speaker 1: kids being attacked. Yeah. Yeah, I think that the we
Speaker 1: we pulled off our sort of first coordinated national set
Speaker 1: of actions, that the model that we're that we're looking
Speaker 1: at is groups like act up so more of a
Speaker 1: sort of decentralized national network of UM folks who are
Speaker 1: all working together to be sort of power amplifiers to
Speaker 1: like share resources, share share tools, make sure that you
Speaker 1: know everyone has what they need and has backup in
Speaker 1: case anything gets out of hand wherever they're whatever state
Speaker 1: they're in, whatever city they're in. UM And that coalition
Speaker 1: building or like the community building part is such a
Speaker 1: such an incredibly important factor. Like I so I was coordinating,
Speaker 1: I was working on the event to have happened in Boise,
Speaker 1: and you know, one of the major things that I
Speaker 1: that I ran into reaching out to all these different
Speaker 1: organizations is like, I mean, they've been at war for
Speaker 1: a long time and they have like there are literally
Speaker 1: militia groups hunting anyone who shows up at a blm
Speaker 1: rally in boise Um. When I talked to, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the like executive directors of like LGBTQ oriented
Speaker 1: nonprofits in boise they were like, Hey, I'm really it's
Speaker 1: really cool that you're doing this, but I we cannot
Speaker 1: send our kids. Were like, I we can't participate in
Speaker 1: this because we don't know you and we don't know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. And this is like this you
Speaker 1: need to understand that this scene is like not safe.
Speaker 1: Totally fair. Yeah, so totally fair. It's like, think a
Speaker 1: big part of this next step is deepening those connections,
Speaker 1: you know, showing people that like, we will show up,
Speaker 1: we are accountable, we are looking to be partners for
Speaker 1: long term action, for long term struggle. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that is really cool about Tear it Up
Speaker 1: that I didn't expect because I am old, so my
Speaker 1: networking has always been phone trees um and literally just
Speaker 1: like calling people out and being like you call these
Speaker 1: three people UM and getting people out for actions, uh,
Speaker 1: for tear it up. We have these amazing humans at
Speaker 1: building like online communities on Discord, which makes me feel
Speaker 1: simultaneously like years old and also like the kids. They're
Speaker 1: all right, they know that how to do the trouble UM,
Speaker 1: and we're trying to not just build do this traditional
Speaker 1: coalition building that I've been doing for a long time
Speaker 1: and making all these connections, but trying to build not
Speaker 1: just like a physical community, but an online community, to
Speaker 1: stitch these physical communities together because if you're in like
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere, Texas, you can see what's happening in Austin,
Speaker 1: but you can't always like physically make it there. So
Speaker 1: it's good to know that, like, these are my humans
Speaker 1: and they're fighting for me, and I can be in
Speaker 1: the loop and get involved UM. And our long term
Speaker 1: strategy with that is to connect people like UM the
Speaker 1: Trevor Project. I love a lot of the humans they're
Speaker 1: actually and like trans Lifeline in these groups because they
Speaker 1: UM and all these other like national groups that raise
Speaker 1: a lot of money, but they're actually not allowed to
Speaker 1: raise a lot of trouble because of like their tax
Speaker 1: status and all these things is like, Uh, the HRC
Speaker 1: like can't do a trouble because it'll look bad for them,
Speaker 1: and they care about those sorts of things. But we
Speaker 1: can connect those people with these young activists that want
Speaker 1: to go stir up ship and cause trouble and need
Speaker 1: to like let out that screaming um. And even if
Speaker 1: we can't defeat the laws in the moment, letting out
Speaker 1: that scream is a communal good. It lets people feel seen,
Speaker 1: and it lets people know I need help right now,
Speaker 1: and shouting and crying and a gnashing of teeth and
Speaker 1: rending of hair and clothes is objectively good. Actually, we
Speaker 1: need people to come together, and we need people to
Speaker 1: see our suffering, and we need people to be moved
Speaker 1: to loving each other and helping each other. And that's
Speaker 1: um how, that's how will survive. Right if we achieve
Speaker 1: nothing beyond Catharsis and we've achieved something. I loved your
Speaker 1: point about the online community component of things, because I
Speaker 1: feel like so much of trans focused online community is like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, do I look okay in this outfit? Or like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're all fans of the same like the anime or something, right,
Speaker 1: like if they're all, they're the very specific kind of projects,
Speaker 1: and there there's not I don't feel like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of spaces that are like, hey, this is like
Speaker 1: the war room. Well, I mean not that we can't
Speaker 1: talk about bullshit, but like the entire focus of this
Speaker 1: space is to connect as many trans people as possible
Speaker 1: so we can amplify our power together. Um, and you know,
Speaker 1: begin to even remotely approximate the boogeyman that sucking. Marjorie
Speaker 1: Taylor Green imagines us to be right well, and we
Speaker 1: need to become like the trans and Sexual Menace, which
Speaker 1: is another protest group that I love from the nineties
Speaker 1: where they create this iconography around like, oh, we are
Speaker 1: the trans sexual menace and then it's a bunch of
Speaker 1: like very nice, like like like very like normal looking folks. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I think we need to reclaim that and taking
Speaker 1: in another direction. And we need to not be menacing,
Speaker 1: and you know, like we need to be a good menace.
Speaker 1: We need to be a bit of an anti hero
Speaker 1: for the trans community, and we need to do fucking
Speaker 1: trouble and we need to cause problems for people. And frankly,
Speaker 1: I think, um, too many politicians get to go to
Speaker 1: bed at night, not listening to people call them motherfucker's
Speaker 1: on a megaphone. And too many people get to have
Speaker 1: a nice lunch at their favorite restaurant without that being
Speaker 1: disrupted and having things shouted at them. I think we
Speaker 1: need to become the menace that we need to be
Speaker 1: to survive in this moment. I concur with this project,
Speaker 1: and yes, I concur with this and UM enjoy enjoy
Speaker 1: participating in things that lead to those outcomes because it
Speaker 1: is it's a because they want us dead anyway, Like
Speaker 1: that's that's that is, that is what they're doing, that's
Speaker 1: what they're complacent with. UM. I think it is also
Speaker 1: an important thing to note that, UM in terms of
Speaker 1: like good news, like not all of these bills are
Speaker 1: passing Like on on this show, we've talked a lot
Speaker 1: about the bills that have passed. We have talked about
Speaker 1: all the stuff that has been going on, but there
Speaker 1: is not not not all of them, not all of
Speaker 1: them are going through and that is an important thing
Speaker 1: to talk about. It doesn't mean the fight's over because
Speaker 1: they're gonna try again. UM. But that is the other
Speaker 1: thing I think is worth is is worth mentioning and
Speaker 1: states from you know, Florida to Idaho to Washington, Utah, Virginia,
Speaker 1: like at least there is not there is stuff that
Speaker 1: is getting blocked um or at least not going through.
Speaker 1: And there's a lesson that needs to be learned from
Speaker 1: how the right operates in this because what they did
Speaker 1: for years was opposed equal rights, was supposed things in
Speaker 1: a variety of ways socially and through legislation that failed,
Speaker 1: and it was fail fail, fail, fail fail for a
Speaker 1: long time until they started to succeed. And part of
Speaker 1: why they succeeded is because they were continuously building a
Speaker 1: wide ranging and powerful machine to push this stuff through,
Speaker 1: learning from their fail years, grabbing more power, getting better
Speaker 1: at messaging and like that. Ultimately, the same attitude needs
Speaker 1: to be had, like when when one of these laws
Speaker 1: gets struck down, it's not a sign that the fight's
Speaker 1: been one. It's a sign um to keep pushing. Like
Speaker 1: it's this kind of thing where you have to you
Speaker 1: have to pay attention to the way they built this
Speaker 1: over the course of really thirty or forty years um,
Speaker 1: because it has to be done. Something a counter a counterweight,
Speaker 1: a machine capable of of applying equal pressure in the
Speaker 1: opposite direction has to be built, and it has to
Speaker 1: be built very quickly well, and nine out of the
Speaker 1: nine out of ten of these bills die and so
Speaker 1: nearly two and seventy I think it's two and sixty
Speaker 1: four is the actual account of how many anti trans
Speaker 1: bills have been proposed in the last two years since
Speaker 1: the last selection UH and only have become law. So
Speaker 1: they're really just playing a numbers game, right, They're just
Speaker 1: forcing it through UM and they're not going to stop.
Speaker 1: And we in Texas it was so hard last year
Speaker 1: because I remember the last day of the legislative session.
Speaker 1: We were all there until midnight and cheered so hard
Speaker 1: when it was done, and we're like this bilt can't
Speaker 1: come back. And then we faced special session followed by
Speaker 1: special sessions followed by special session where they're like, we
Speaker 1: are pushing through this trans legislation and the war is
Speaker 1: not gonna stop. We we we're maybe gonna We're gonna
Speaker 1: win a lot of battles, We're gonna win the majority
Speaker 1: of battles. But they're not playing it to win those
Speaker 1: individual fights. They're playing to eventually exterminate us. And they're
Speaker 1: really gaining a lot of ground and we're way behind
Speaker 1: on building our machine to fight it. And this is
Speaker 1: all happening in the context of, you know, a a
Speaker 1: very very explicit mask off movement to essentially destroy American
Speaker 1: democracy and replace it with Christian fascism, right, and we
Speaker 1: are the scapeboa, We are the enemy that they are
Speaker 1: currently identifying for elimination. Right. So like it's you know,
Speaker 1: for them, they're like I can score some points if
Speaker 1: I encourage this trans kid they killed themselves, right, Um.
Speaker 1: And for us, it's like an existential threat that we
Speaker 1: maybe watching the United States descend into, you know, an
Speaker 1: irreversible chasm of authoritarianism and violence. Uh. And you know
Speaker 1: that's going to be bad for trans people too. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very very understated. How can how can if people are
Speaker 1: interested in tear it Up and what they're doing, how
Speaker 1: can people find out more info online about how to
Speaker 1: keep up with stuff and um and what what y'all do?
Speaker 1: So I think the best place to, I guess get
Speaker 1: little updates. Um, it's the Twitter, which is at tear
Speaker 1: it Up Org on Twitter. Um. And then additionally we
Speaker 1: have our website, uh, which is www dot tear it
Speaker 1: Up dot org and yes, good um. And then if
Speaker 1: you come and get involved, and uh, you can get
Speaker 1: invite to our discord. We're trying to grow that out
Speaker 1: a little slowly and stick with folks that we know
Speaker 1: are getting involved in the fight while we sort of
Speaker 1: build the initial foundation of this. But that's the place
Speaker 1: to find us right now. Twitter, Instagram as well. We're
Speaker 1: also Teared Up Teared Up Org on Instagram and have
Speaker 1: a Facebook page. But who the fuck uses Facebook? I mean, actually,
Speaker 1: so our Facebook. We won't be posting a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: but a lot of our events will go through Facebook
Speaker 1: because in a lot of the Midwest and the South,
Speaker 1: a lot of people still use Facebook, which is probably bad.
Speaker 1: Turns out that's not helping I think, um, but those
Speaker 1: are the places go find us, um and then come
Speaker 1: get involved. We're gonna be doing a lot more. We've
Speaker 1: sort of been on a break for a week because
Speaker 1: we did of ship ton of events last month all
Speaker 1: at once and kind of needed a week off. But
Speaker 1: staring next week, we're gonna be posting a lot and
Speaker 1: organizing and pulling together some community and social events and
Speaker 1: some more protests. And even if you don't want to,
Speaker 1: even if you don't want to join, join the organization. Specifically,
Speaker 1: if you're a fist ally who's listening to this and
Speaker 1: you're like this sucks, I hate it, I'd like to
Speaker 1: do something. Um, we'll We're gonna have things like you know, postering,
Speaker 1: like postering resources and stickers and all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: that you can that you can grab and like just
Speaker 1: go paint the town. Yeah, let it. Let it be
Speaker 1: known that trans people won't be a race, but we
Speaker 1: are fighting back. We're a very pro graffiti organization. Um,
Speaker 1: please bully your local politicians and uh sticker every service
Speaker 1: surface you can get. Get some hate pens. I think
Speaker 1: I think I'll do an upcoming episode on how to
Speaker 1: make or how to do wheat pasting. Yeah, as as
Speaker 1: as as some fun uh content for you, for you
Speaker 1: fans of content out there. But yes, follow follow the
Speaker 1: tear it Up account on the twitters. That's how I've
Speaker 1: been mostly keeping up with it, besides just asking people
Speaker 1: because I know who they are of but the Twitter
Speaker 1: Twitter is definitely a good a good resource. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess any any kind of any other any other
Speaker 1: thoughts or notes that she would like to to add
Speaker 1: before we before we wrap up here, can I say
Speaker 1: fun grag abbitt. Can we all just k ivy uh? Also,
Speaker 1: um yeah, fun, lots of governors, a lot of the
Speaker 1: governor's not most most stuff. I think the vast majority
Speaker 1: of governors should go funk themselves and um I'll see
Speaker 1: them in how Yeah yeah, um that's a good at all.
Speaker 1: I'll plug your plug your history podcast because queer history
Speaker 1: sounds like a great thing that people should learn more about. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: so it's the Totally trans podcast network. We might also
Speaker 1: come up as Totally Trans Searching for the trans Cannon. Uh.
Speaker 1: We were originally just the one show where we talked
Speaker 1: about pop culture and history. It was me and writer
Speaker 1: Henry Jardina. And now we have a slate of shows
Speaker 1: that we do all on the same feed. UM. One
Speaker 1: that talks about comics, one that talks about history that
Speaker 1: I love that the playwright Katie Coleman does UM called
Speaker 1: Our Sacred History. And then we have we just started
Speaker 1: the newest season of Totally Trans Searching for the Trans Canon,
Speaker 1: where we're talking about finding lessons from history and queer
Speaker 1: culture and pop culture. Mind yeah all right, yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: buy some paint pens, uh, show up to actions if
Speaker 1: you can, um and learn to make some trouble. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: megaphones are only forty dollars from Harvard Freight, just saying
Speaker 1: you can get really loud, really cheap. And it's generally
Speaker 1: legal to shout at people from outside their homes, although
Speaker 1: not not always. That can get you in some trouble,
Speaker 1: but not check your local sound ordinances and bring a
Speaker 1: volume meter and really just amplify yourself just to that
Speaker 1: level and learn how to add an audio so you
Speaker 1: can really just dial it in. Find the lawyer and
Speaker 1: consult with them first. Yes. Also, personally, I would like
Speaker 1: to say forced from all anti trans politicians who say
Speaker 1: that you can be peer pressured into transitioning. Um. I
Speaker 1: am personally trying to force from Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick.
Speaker 1: It hasn't worked yet, but he's very insistent it will
Speaker 1: work eventually. So I do feel like the right way
Speaker 1: to pursue that is just by de regular lation and
Speaker 1: then poisoning the water supply. Well, well, that doesn't for
Speaker 1: us today. It could happen here as a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart radio app Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources
Speaker 1: for It could happen here, Updated monthly at cool Zone
Speaker 1: Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.