Speaker 1: Call Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome Dick it Happen here a podcast increasingly about it
Speaker 2: having happened. We have spent a long time on this
Speaker 2: show talking about what the second Tump administration is going
Speaker 2: to meet for trans people, and you know, go listen
Speaker 2: to those episodes. The short version is that it is
Speaker 2: going to be very, very bad. We're facing care bans,
Speaker 2: we're facing federal funding bands. Things are about to get
Speaker 2: unbelievably bleak. But this campaign didn't come out of nowhere.
Speaker 2: It is the combination of almost a decades worth of
Speaker 2: fighting by the right, And I think we have a
Speaker 2: tendency to treat the rights campaign against trans people as
Speaker 2: something abstract right, as a sort of abstract political debate,
Speaker 2: or even if it affects us. We tend to treat
Speaker 2: the subjects, the immediate subjects of the harassment, as sort
Speaker 2: of these distant, famous figures. But the issue with looking
Speaker 2: at it this way is that the harassment, the hatred,
Speaker 2: the violence is happening to real people with real names
Speaker 2: and faces, who live lives exactly like yours. The difference
Speaker 2: between you sitting in your house right now and someone
Speaker 2: whose face is on TV is about the difference between
Speaker 2: whether a few right wing journalists cover who you are.
Speaker 2: So today we're going to be talking to someone who
Speaker 2: has been subject to almost the entire spectrum and range
Speaker 2: of the sort of emergent far right campaign against trans people,
Speaker 2: who have seen basically the entire campaign against trans people
Speaker 2: evolve specifically in the far right's harassment against them. And
Speaker 2: that person is the artist and musician Precious Child out
Speaker 2: of La Welcome to the show. I wish it was
Speaker 2: under better circumstances.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you for having mema. Glad to be here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm excited to talk to you.
Speaker 2: I'm slightly apprehensive in the sense that my god, this sucks, but.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's our lives. What can we do?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What will we do? Wow? Yes?
Speaker 2: That that that's the question for the end of the
Speaker 2: episode is what are we going to do about all
Speaker 2: of this shit? But let's go back to sort of
Speaker 2: the beginning. Can you can you sort of talk about
Speaker 2: your first encounter with I guess at that point, what
Speaker 2: was a not especially mainstream part of the religious right
Speaker 2: back in night around twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I've been I've been making music as a
Speaker 1: Precious Child for almost a decade and it was my
Speaker 1: very first album that I put out, one called Trapped,
Speaker 1: that had this track on it titled Phantom, and that
Speaker 1: was an instrumental track with just some kind of whispery vocals,
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't a song per se, it was
Speaker 1: experimental and I put on a music video with it
Speaker 1: and it was pretty It's pretty creepy and there's flashing lights.
Speaker 1: You know, if you think of movies from the eighties
Speaker 1: like hal Raiser, it's kind of like that, you know,
Speaker 1: like kind of gritive of some type of greater supernatural horror.
Speaker 1: And the far right at that time, the far right,
Speaker 1: vintage twenty eighteen, they found it and started reporting it
Speaker 1: on mess and tagging their friends and saying to report this,
Speaker 1: report this. And this was on Instagram and Facebook and
Speaker 1: on YouTube as well. And that video, like, as I said,
Speaker 1: you know, it's creepy, but it's there's nothing political in it,
Speaker 1: and there's a little bit of like of blood, but
Speaker 1: there's no gory. But they found it unsettling and explicitly satanic.
Speaker 1: That's what they said, This is satanic. And that was
Speaker 1: my first brush with the right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's really interesting to me that it's specifically
Speaker 2: the satanic angle that they're taking, because it's like it's
Speaker 2: like in this early enough phase that they're still sort
Speaker 2: of developing their reasons to be angry. They haven't quite
Speaker 2: like a tastasized transphobias like they're driving things, so they're
Speaker 2: kind of they're reaching back into this kind of satanic
Speaker 2: panic era, like the weird nineties and two thousand stuff
Speaker 2: that like when when I was growing up, the town
Speaker 2: that I grew up with super religious, and like, you know,
Speaker 2: we had to have lists of like if you were
Speaker 2: inviting like a friend in high school to a party
Speaker 2: whose parents could know that it was a Halloween party
Speaker 2: and whose parents couldn't because they would freak out about
Speaker 2: which is it's like that kind of thing, which I
Speaker 2: don't know, it feels like almost quaint now, even even
Speaker 2: as this stuff's escalated.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was, as I said, it was a
Speaker 1: moral panic. And their point was that that I was
Speaker 1: a moral for making art like this, and it was
Speaker 1: this is the same thing that's happening today. I'm a
Speaker 1: moral for the art that I make. And it's not
Speaker 1: just my art, but it's me. It's me. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and I think that's perhaps what has changed as well.
Speaker 1: Like before they were saying that this is a satanic
Speaker 1: evil person because they're making this art, and now they're
Speaker 1: saying this is a satanic evil person making satanic evil art.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think part of the focus on art here, right,
Speaker 2: is this kind of mirrored reflection of the sort of
Speaker 2: I mean of the original Nazis, Right, Like one of
Speaker 2: their big things was just like cracked down on quote
Speaker 2: unquote degenerate art, and they had like these like quote
Speaker 2: unquote degenerate art festivals of just like Jewish artists and
Speaker 2: people whose art they didn't like it. It was, you know,
Speaker 2: like what a thing that was like a significant factor
Speaker 2: in their rise. And I think there's this sort of
Speaker 2: mirror of it here, but I don't know, starting in
Speaker 2: a weirder place in some ways, like starting more out
Speaker 2: of this very very weird like Christian moral panic shit.
Speaker 2: That's I guess if you want to look at how
Speaker 2: this you know, plays out, like that's kind of where
Speaker 2: it is in like twenty eighteen, right, this is the
Speaker 2: first bathroom bill is in past twenty eighteen years Carolina.
Speaker 2: But there's you know, there's a huge backlash to it
Speaker 2: and that's something that's i think very different than now
Speaker 2: where like all of this city trendshit is happening, everyone's
Speaker 2: just kind of going eh, So, do you want to
Speaker 2: talk about the second time he became tarketed the far right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean, realistically, like this has been pretty constant
Speaker 1: throughout my life as a public artist. And there was
Speaker 1: another there was another track on that album that was
Speaker 1: also targeted. One call it titled My Little Problem Violet Door,
Speaker 1: that has some more provocative imagery than the track Phantom,
Speaker 1: has some nudity, and that was the collaboration between myself
Speaker 1: and a artist who is trans themselves Kid out of Brazil,
Speaker 1: and that has again some body horror in it. There's
Speaker 1: commentary about gender norms and plastic surgery and identity, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't explicitly political. Again, it was kind of a
Speaker 1: surreal body horror video. And that was brigade reported not
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen, but in twenty nineteen and actually taken
Speaker 1: down from YouTube and then reinstated. And that video is
Speaker 1: notable because as a result of what's going on today,
Speaker 1: YouTube took that down despite it being up for five
Speaker 1: years without a problem that you know, I'd had tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of views and now it's gone, So that
Speaker 1: was the second time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one I think is interesting to in the
Speaker 2: sense of like that one's like a lot more it's
Speaker 2: more overtly trans and it's also I think the more
Speaker 2: trands you are, the more the more like very obviously
Speaker 2: trans it is. And this is I guess something that's
Speaker 2: very common among trans artists is kind of like art
Speaker 2: that's an exploration of sort of body horror it you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not going to project onto it. I
Speaker 2: don't know if this is ucifically are doing, but like,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot of it that's body horror
Speaker 2: as this sort of metaphor for dysphoria, and like it's
Speaker 2: this way of sort of thinking about the things that
Speaker 2: are happening to your body, things that have been done
Speaker 2: to your body, and the things that you're doing back
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, I didn't really think too
Speaker 1: much about the concepts in that direction when I made
Speaker 1: it or when and I okay didn't either at that time. However,
Speaker 1: the truth is, for much of my young life, I
Speaker 1: felt out of body and I wanted my flesh to
Speaker 1: match my personal vision of myself and my identity, and
Speaker 1: that was something I struggled with for quite a long time.
Speaker 1: When I was young, I didn't have access to the
Speaker 1: information and communities that are out there now that support
Speaker 1: trans people. Yeah, and I have had some gender confirming
Speaker 1: procedures done, not as many as I think I would
Speaker 1: have when I was younger. I did feel existential discordance.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if that's a word, but if
Speaker 1: it's not, I'm going to coin it because pretty sure
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't feel feel in concordance with my flesh,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, I came to experiment what the
Speaker 1: boundaries were of of my fleshy identity, in my existence
Speaker 1: in my art. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think there's something about the way that your
Speaker 2: art works and the way that a lot of quratis
Speaker 2: are where there's you know, and this isn't to say
Speaker 2: that all Corota's like this, but there's definitely like an
Speaker 2: edge to it. There's stuff going on. There's body horror
Speaker 2: things happening. There's like eighties aesthetic stuff, and I think
Speaker 2: it conflicts with this kind of weird concaid everything is
Speaker 2: like happy and cozy, sort of kitch aesthetic thing. That
Speaker 2: a lot of like this kind of fascism is really into.
Speaker 2: They use the kind of a kind of aesthetic sensibility
Speaker 2: as as a weapon to go after stuff that they oppose.
Speaker 2: Is for more oftly political reasons. They can do this
Speaker 2: kind of like hey, look at this disgusting thing, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera kind of attack on queer art as a
Speaker 2: result of this kind of like fascist kitch aesthetic thing
Speaker 2: that's kind of like this this you know, this sort
Speaker 2: of like cultural norm in our society. And I think
Speaker 2: I have I haven't one worked out the political inplication
Speaker 2: of this, but I think there's this kind of connection
Speaker 2: between their their weaponization of like revulsion and their weaponization
Speaker 2: of this reaction to like anything that's kind of like
Speaker 2: horror e that they kind of like use as a
Speaker 2: political attack.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I think gender is horrifying period. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not just for queer people, but also for CIS people.
Speaker 1: Like I'm gonna defend CIS people here for a second.
Speaker 1: So SIS people struggle with gender dysphoria. I think maybe
Speaker 1: I would say every bit as much as trans people,
Speaker 1: but they sure fucking struggle with it. Yeah. For instance,
Speaker 1: an example I will give is face. Lots of people
Speaker 1: that were assigned male at birth, they fret and earned
Speaker 1: worry over their facial hair. Is it too much? Is
Speaker 1: it too little? Then people that are signed female at birth,
Speaker 1: you know, if they have facial hair, you know, they
Speaker 1: thread over it. You know, well, people see it. Do
Speaker 1: I have to bleach it? Do I have to pluck it?
Speaker 1: People fret over like they're freaking jaw lines like you know,
Speaker 1: if you search online like masculine jawline, how do I
Speaker 1: get There's a huge community out there of assigned male
Speaker 1: at birth sys men that are trying to get more
Speaker 1: defined jaw lines because they feel that their genetics are
Speaker 1: presenting them as a non optimal male quote unquote, And
Speaker 1: of course, same thing for quote unquote females, like do
Speaker 1: I have the female feminine body? Is it curvy enough
Speaker 1: in the right ways? Is my waist slim enough? You know?
Speaker 1: Is am I just brick shaped? And then all the
Speaker 1: industries around that, and that, I think is is horrifying.
Speaker 1: And everyone goes through that and struggles with it, and
Speaker 1: very few people are lucky enough to embody the ideals
Speaker 1: of gender that we thrust upon ourselves. And to me,
Speaker 1: that is a tragedy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that sort of like fear and
Speaker 2: that sort of like grinding experience of being forced to
Speaker 2: like perform a gender at a certain way. Well, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to say perform, because the Butler scholars
Speaker 2: are going to get extremely mad at me.
Speaker 3: But the.
Speaker 2: Way in which you're forced to sort of live up
Speaker 2: to these standards that are sort of nonsense. I think
Speaker 2: it gets to this thing where you know, you could
Speaker 2: either sort of like muddle through it and try to
Speaker 2: ignore the distance as much as you can. You can
Speaker 2: attempt to fight it, or you can get extremely bad
Speaker 2: and everyone else is trying to do something about it.
Speaker 2: And I think we're seeing an explosion of the last option.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, we need to go to ads, which is another
Speaker 2: thing that drives a whole bunch of this. Luckily, these
Speaker 2: are audio ads, so hopefully they're not driving beauty standards.
Speaker 2: But you know, who knows people are wizards. They'll find
Speaker 2: a way to you.
Speaker 1: By mabeline.
Speaker 2: And we are back. I mean, I guess the Watch
Speaker 2: to Stay Highway Patrol does forder dorms on people.
Speaker 1: Oh, they sure do. May I give another example of
Speaker 1: of hideous gender and ORMs yeah. So you listener, you're
Speaker 1: hearing me, right, and you're hearing my voice. And this
Speaker 1: is another thing that all people fret about. It's not
Speaker 1: trust trans people. Lots of a fabs, I know, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna say a fab and amap Okay, lots of
Speaker 1: a fabs, I know. You know, they have pretty darned
Speaker 1: deep voices naturally, and they I've talked with them privately
Speaker 1: and they say that they worry about how husky their
Speaker 1: voice is when they just relax. And then same thing
Speaker 1: for amaps. They talk about worrying if their voice is
Speaker 1: squeaky and thinner. Talk like frecking wrestler from w WE,
Speaker 1: you know, like people people like that. People struggle with
Speaker 1: that too. Just so yeah, just something as simple as
Speaker 1: our appearance and our voice. You know, we're just torturing ourselves.
Speaker 1: And ultimately, I gotta say, Niah, you know, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a trans woman. However, ultimately I'm a gender abolitionist because
Speaker 1: this shit sucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's not it's not great. It's not a
Speaker 2: good time for any way in fault. Yeah, speaking of
Speaker 2: bad times, this is even an ad pivot. I just
Speaker 2: do this now, which really bad. I do it to
Speaker 2: people by daily life. They're like, why are you anpivoting me?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh God, but yeah, I guess God,
Speaker 2: this and the sort of racialization aspect, and I don't
Speaker 2: know the aspect of zones of gender performance. God damn.
Speaker 2: I keep saying performance that I literally mean that you
Speaker 2: were performing it, as in you were acting and not
Speaker 2: the butler thing of your before we get to make
Speaker 2: it real. Please don't yell at me in the comments
Speaker 2: I had. I had the guy who wrote a writer
Speaker 2: on the Big Bang Theory yelled at me specifically about
Speaker 2: that on Twitter. What Times Apparentoid. It's really okay. Sorry,
Speaker 2: I about to rail this enough, partially because this next
Speaker 2: part is really depressing. But so a while back on
Speaker 2: this show, my my co host Garrison, who is I
Speaker 2: don't know, probably having an absolutely terrible time at the
Speaker 2: Consumer Electronics Show right now, covered a specific far right
Speaker 2: panic that became known as the we Spat contract for Sea.
Speaker 2: Do you want to talk about how the right stuck
Speaker 2: you into that shit? Because Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you know, in twenty eighteen, as I said,
Speaker 1: I put out this album and then I put out another,
Speaker 1: and I star I was touring the country and Canada
Speaker 1: and stuff and doing shows pretty much constantly. And then
Speaker 1: twenty happened and I became involved in the George Floyd
Speaker 1: uprise and the Black Lives Matter marches and protesting, and
Speaker 1: so I began to live stream those protests and marches
Speaker 1: with the specific intent of contextualizing what the heck was
Speaker 1: going on on the streets to people watching, because a
Speaker 1: lot of people, you know, regardless of their politics, did
Speaker 1: not understand what the issues were. And the thing is,
Speaker 1: in LA there were a lot of continual police murders
Speaker 1: even through the riots. And by police murders, I mean
Speaker 1: the cops shooting on our black people in the back
Speaker 1: as they were running away, or executions, you know, shooting
Speaker 1: them in the car, that type of thing. And so
Speaker 1: I was explaining that to the viewers, like, this is
Speaker 1: why people are in the streets, this is a specific issue,
Speaker 1: these are the laws surrounding it, and why these actions
Speaker 1: by the police are not just horrifying, they're also illegal.
Speaker 1: And so I was doing that and I became pretty
Speaker 1: darn visible and popular, like I was maybe one of
Speaker 1: the top five best known activist or racial justice voices,
Speaker 1: and I was targeted by a right wing activist who
Speaker 1: was known for blocking the vaccination clinics at Dodger Stadium,
Speaker 1: specifically because I was visible, because I was trans, and
Speaker 1: so she went for me and posted and said that
Speaker 1: I was a transgender individual who was in the women's
Speaker 1: spa of we Spa and I was sexually harassing people,
Speaker 1: and that went viral on social media. It was covered
Speaker 1: on Fox News for a week. I was getting constant
Speaker 1: death threats, and you know, I was dogs. It was
Speaker 1: pretty durable, especially because I was not that person in
Speaker 1: the spa and I was only best picked up because
Speaker 1: I was picked up for my visibility. My response to
Speaker 1: that was I didn't immediately say yeah, I was me,
Speaker 1: It wasn't me, leave me alone, Leave me alone. I
Speaker 1: didn't do that because I knew that if I said that,
Speaker 1: then they would just pick and attack some other transperson. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, I know that like the shit that
Speaker 1: the that the right wing machine and acts, if it
Speaker 1: happens to one of us, it can happen tral that's end,
Speaker 1: it likely will.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean I think the thing that it
Speaker 2: reminds me the most. Something we've also covered on the
Speaker 2: This is one of the problems with talking about this.
Speaker 2: It's like doing this for so long that like there's
Speaker 2: very few things that I could say that I can't
Speaker 2: be Like, I've said this on the show before, but
Speaker 2: we spent a lot of time, petically, Garrison spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time covering the way that every time there's
Speaker 2: a mass shooter, the right immediately just like picks a
Speaker 2: random transperson and goes it was this person. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: this reminds me a lot of the same thing, although
Speaker 2: this is a more targeted, like we've invented a fake
Speaker 2: controversy about a trans person, and then we're going to
Speaker 2: like also just pick a random famous trand well not
Speaker 2: even famous, but like a random trans person that we
Speaker 2: know about and don't like.
Speaker 1: It's my understanding that this twenty twenty one, we spaw
Speaker 1: a controversy that I was targeted for became something of
Speaker 1: a right wing playbook. Yep. It was after that that
Speaker 1: they started saying, oh, this and that person's trans, and
Speaker 1: before that they didn't have a real moral panic around
Speaker 1: trans people unless you look all the way back to
Speaker 1: the North Carolina South Carolina bathroom man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think I think there's an interesting
Speaker 2: intermediary thing too, where so my friend Vicky ashterwhile who
Speaker 2: depending on when this episode comes out, you'll you'll be
Speaker 2: hearing from either right before this episode or right after.
Speaker 2: I had another version of this where she wrote a
Speaker 2: book called In Defensive Looting. It came out in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty and just for like three months became all the
Speaker 2: rest we really two months like became the like the
Speaker 2: giant figure with which everyone who didn't like the uprising
Speaker 2: was just like taking it out, so like like sitting
Speaker 2: in Congress, people were like denouncing this book that you wrote.
Speaker 2: Every base Remdia outlet like specifically had their editorial people
Speaker 2: going like, this book is evil, Vicky's evil. And I
Speaker 2: think that was also like this moment of deep connection
Speaker 2: between the backlash of the uprisings and the anti trans
Speaker 2: uprisings because the people who you know, are trying to
Speaker 2: maintain a white supremacist gender system like intimately themselves, even
Speaker 2: if they don't understand it on a theoretical level, understand
Speaker 2: that they're that these things are preserving the same systems
Speaker 2: of violence, and so they picked us as sort of
Speaker 2: like the wedge point to to break this thing apart.
Speaker 2: And I think with Vicky, they hadn't really figured out
Speaker 2: how to do it, and I think it was like
Speaker 2: specifically your case, the the we spa, like with you
Speaker 2: being put in as the figure of the we spase,
Speaker 2: this is where they like actually really figured out how
Speaker 2: to do the whole thing. And yeah, there's just something
Speaker 2: really bleak about both how effective it was and the
Speaker 2: fact that it's like these are just people I don't know,
Speaker 2: Like this isn't the thing that's happening to sort of
Speaker 2: like astract figures. It's just like, yeah, people I'm having
Speaker 2: conversations with are how.
Speaker 1: They did this just I don't know. I wish I
Speaker 1: had more and elsis but but yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: trends people like to to Greater America, to most to
Speaker 1: a lot of America, I'll say, are a.
Speaker 4: Sensational you know people people imagine chicks with dicks and
Speaker 4: dudes with dudes without dicks, and so I think that's
Speaker 4: really exciting for a lot of people, you know, for
Speaker 4: better or for worse.
Speaker 1: I think for for worse. But yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: just like people and their bodies, right, Like you know,
Speaker 1: I guess some people walk around think all the time
Speaker 1: about other people's crotches. Uh, I'm not going to say
Speaker 1: that's a bad thing. Crush the first of your scene,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, right, there's this there's this
Speaker 2: aspect of which, like you know, there's a seris socialism,
Speaker 2: but then there's also the experience of being a trans
Speaker 2: person is like I too am trying to find a
Speaker 2: way to not pay rent. Like that's like I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so back to back to we SPA. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was a pretty terrible experience for me. And I'm not
Speaker 1: going to lie about it now. I I'm glad that
Speaker 1: I stood up for for myself. I'm glad I stood
Speaker 1: up for trans people that I didn't pass the buck.
Speaker 1: It was also really difficult and traumatic, and I didn't
Speaker 1: appreciate the death threats. I didn't appreciate and docs and
Speaker 1: you know, people have come after me my my whole life,
Speaker 1: like I present I think just naturally physically, like I
Speaker 1: present as being gender queer, like I've been pretty like
Speaker 1: fearing like looking femme my entire life. That had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with my internal identity. I've been weird my
Speaker 1: entire life. I've perpetually been curious and provocative and interested
Speaker 1: in things that were provocative, and so I've been harassed
Speaker 1: my whole life. However, until we SPA and to experience
Speaker 1: the strangers by the hundreds saying that they're gonna hunt
Speaker 1: me down and fucking shoot me. Yeah, I never know
Speaker 1: if someone will recognize me when I'm out and be like, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: I know you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's one of these things where like the
Speaker 2: more of a target on you, the more likely it
Speaker 2: is to happen. And even people who don't have targets
Speaker 2: on them, like I know people you know who've never
Speaker 2: experienced anything like this that have still just like had
Speaker 2: attacks on them, and it's fucking terrifying. It is an
Speaker 2: absolutely terrible way to have to live in, a terrible
Speaker 2: sort of thing to have to experience, especially is it's
Speaker 2: just being intensifying.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was That was twenty to twenty one,
Speaker 1: and that changed me. That experience of being targeted and
Speaker 1: just picked on out of the freaking blue. That changed
Speaker 1: me as an artist. And at the same time it
Speaker 1: also firmly established me as a sort of celebrity. And
Speaker 1: I want to speak to that because there's different tiers
Speaker 1: of celebrity, you know. At that yes, at the at
Speaker 1: the top because the tier that's known as I get
Speaker 1: a Christmas card from Tom Cruise every year, and that's
Speaker 1: an actual thing, and that's the A list. And you
Speaker 1: know you're on the A list because Tom Cruise since
Speaker 1: your Christmas card. And at the bottom is me, who's
Speaker 1: been in mass media many times now but has none
Speaker 1: of the benefits.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, I make very little money as an artist,
Speaker 1: and I don't have an entourage. I can tour and
Speaker 1: I play play some shows and you know, some of
Speaker 1: them are sold out. I'm playing the show in LA
Speaker 1: that's sold out, But I'm not playing large venues. No.
Speaker 1: I maybe play like, you know, three hundred five hundred
Speaker 1: capacity tops, and most place I play are like small clubs,
Speaker 1: like one hundred and fifty years. So yeah, and so
Speaker 1: I don't I don't have the protection that most celebrities
Speaker 1: inherently have. I don't have book deals, I don't have
Speaker 1: movie deals. I don't even have an AGA. I don't
Speaker 1: even have a record label. Yeah. So I'm the freaking
Speaker 1: D tier. I'm the D tier, and they're coming after me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's I mean, and that's the thing about
Speaker 2: the sort of like this status of like niche d
Speaker 2: tier internet micro celebrity is like I don't like, I
Speaker 2: feel like I got the best possible version of it,
Speaker 2: where like I got a job that pays slightly I
Speaker 2: think I might have hit. No, I'm still I'm still
Speaker 2: below the median salary of assists man in the U,
Speaker 2: but I'm approaching it, getting closer every year, every union fight,
Speaker 2: we approach median.
Speaker 1: Sis man salaries.
Speaker 2: But like, yeah, the situation I got is effectively the
Speaker 2: equivalent of winning the trans lottery, right, Like this is
Speaker 2: about the best you could possibly hope for if you're
Speaker 2: a transperson you get famous, Like yeah, I mean like
Speaker 2: I get that threats too, right, Like nothing anywhere near
Speaker 2: the scale that you get, And mostly what happens is
Speaker 2: like I mean, like single digit numbers of trans people
Speaker 2: in the US have the kind of protection that actual
Speaker 2: celebrity gives you and everyone else. Celebrity is just another
Speaker 2: It's just a giant target painted on you. And yes,
Speaker 2: you have none of the benefits and all of the
Speaker 2: sort of Hey, here is one hundred and fifty million
Speaker 2: people who absolutely hate you and who've been primed and
Speaker 2: targeted like specifically at you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's something that I wonder about, like, why why
Speaker 1: would they do something like this? Why would Fox News
Speaker 1: we talk about me? Why would the founder of the
Speaker 1: Proud Boys, Gavin mckinnis that old video about me. Bad
Speaker 1: Boys is a terrorist group if you don't now listener
Speaker 1: to ever recognized as a terrorist group by Canada. Not here,
Speaker 1: because like, we're just cool with that shit here, white
Speaker 1: supremacist terrorist group. So why me? Why why would a
Speaker 1: congress person come after me? And my own hypothesis is
Speaker 1: that they punched down because they secretly believe that they
Speaker 1: themselves are weak and attacking me, attacking people like me,
Speaker 1: is a fight that they can win. And my view
Speaker 1: is that it's not a fight that they can win
Speaker 1: because they've already lost. They're trying to get power in small,
Speaker 1: small ways and false ways, in my opinion, and they're
Speaker 1: trying to get money. First of all, they want money,
Speaker 1: you know, they want their views, they want their donations,
Speaker 1: and that's the entire top of the pyramid for them
Speaker 1: and for me though, I'm a fucking artist, and power
Speaker 1: is something that I've always been developing because I've sought
Speaker 1: to know myself. I've sought to understand who I am
Speaker 1: and why and that extends to myself as a queer person,
Speaker 1: to come to understand myself who I am as a
Speaker 1: queer person. That's not something they'll ever have. So I've
Speaker 1: already fucking won. And same with all the other queer
Speaker 1: people that are under attack, all your other dcer queer
Speaker 1: celebrities out there, we fucking won hopefully well.
Speaker 2: And I think part of this is also like the
Speaker 2: reason this campaign is happening is because they're trying to
Speaker 2: stop the tide from coming in. And they saw how
Speaker 2: far in the tide had already come, and now they're
Speaker 2: trying to like dam off the tide and you know,
Speaker 2: like probably it's not going to work. But the only
Speaker 2: way that it can is if everyone just like sits
Speaker 2: here does nothing and let's to just keep building and
Speaker 2: building and building more walls. It's it's something that is
Speaker 2: within our power to resist. We just have to actually
Speaker 2: do it, right. You have to actually organize, you to
Speaker 2: talk to the people around you, you have to go
Speaker 2: get them to do things to resist this. And if
Speaker 2: we do, yeah, we like the things that we've already won,
Speaker 2: the things that we are going to win are going
Speaker 2: to stick. But if not, like things are going to
Speaker 2: get really really bad really quickly. And yeah, and speaking
Speaker 2: of things getting very bad, very quickly, Carris some more
Speaker 2: ats before we get back to things getting wars. We
Speaker 2: are back. Yeah, you've been specifically targeted by a city
Speaker 2: in US Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who is the person who
Speaker 2: actually I don't know if we talked about the bathroom
Speaker 2: stuff here yet, but she's the sort of person behind
Speaker 2: an attempt to get trans people to not be able
Speaker 2: to use the bathroom Capitol Hill. She's become a leading
Speaker 2: anti trans figure in Congress. Literally every single thing that
Speaker 2: she tweets about is about trans women and how they
Speaker 2: to be put in men's jails, which is just an
Speaker 2: incredibly cynical ploy to make a bunch of people get
Speaker 2: horribly raped and killed, which is one of the predominant
Speaker 2: things that happens when we get put in ben's prisons.
Speaker 2: And she specifically came after years, you want to talk
Speaker 2: about how that happened and the latest sort of a
Speaker 2: congress woman tweets and a fucking social media company does
Speaker 2: their bidding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, right at the end of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: I think it was on December twenty eighth, I was
Speaker 1: docked by a right wing control nazi that has doxed
Speaker 1: multiple friends of mine, the activist friends, artist friends, and
Speaker 1: they pointed out in a tweet how my art was
Speaker 1: on YouTube, specifically my music videos were on YouTube calling
Speaker 1: for violence and how I was an evil trans person,
Speaker 1: and they added like at symbol YouTube and said that
Speaker 1: these videos are in violation of your terms of service?
Speaker 1: Why are they still up? And Nancy May saw that
Speaker 1: because if you look at her Twitter, it's all just
Speaker 1: just stocks and trans people and perpetual like rage bait
Speaker 1: about the queer menace, the trans menace, and so she
Speaker 1: saw that, retweeted and said, YouTube, this squarly violates your
Speaker 1: terms of service. Why haven't you done anything? And then
Speaker 1: immediately following that, my videos were taken down, the ones
Speaker 1: that were mentioned in these tweets. And as I said before,
Speaker 1: some one of these videos, what was that of my
Speaker 1: little problem that's been up for seven years?
Speaker 2: Yeah, for a long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And YouTube terms of service they're very clear, and
Speaker 1: I do my best to stay within YouTube terms of
Speaker 1: service so my work doesn't get taken down. And they
Speaker 1: state that stuff like violence, minimal nudity that is allowed
Speaker 1: within the context of art, within the context of music videos,
Speaker 1: and so my videos, you know, they weren't designed to
Speaker 1: This is from the terms of service. They weren't designed
Speaker 1: to sexually titillate or gratify. That's exactly what it says
Speaker 1: in the in the terms. Now they weren't recreations of
Speaker 1: real life violence, and they weren't real life violence, but
Speaker 1: they were still they were still removed at the behest
Speaker 1: at the easy click press of Nancy Mace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think there's there's a couple of things
Speaker 2: going on here, one of which is, you know, so
Speaker 2: we've seen this with Facebook in the last I guess
Speaker 2: when this comes out, it'll be like a week ago.
Speaker 2: But you know, Facebook has in stated policies that allow
Speaker 2: you to basically stay slurs against queer people. Allowed you
Speaker 2: to call core people mental illnesses and stuff like that
Speaker 2: that's very specifically you can only do to queer people.
Speaker 2: You can't do it to anyone else. And I think
Speaker 2: there's this sort of trend here of I don't know
Speaker 2: with Facebook. I wouldn't say that it's like compliance with
Speaker 2: the sort of new Trump regime, because like this is
Speaker 2: just your Facebook is right, like they did hing the genocide,
Speaker 2: like the genocide into Gray too. That was also a
Speaker 2: Facebook thing. So they've always just been evil and they
Speaker 2: have been sort of looking for the excuse that they
Speaker 2: need to like drop the hammer on us. But I
Speaker 2: think YouTube, to some extent to what we're seeing right
Speaker 2: now is this kind of like mask coming off moment
Speaker 2: where people are realizing that with Trump and power, they
Speaker 2: can just drop the hammer on a queer artist because specifically,
Speaker 2: like on a trans artist, because now they have this
Speaker 2: sort of like backing to do this stuff, and the
Speaker 2: right has you know, realized that they can feel like YouTube,
Speaker 2: take this video down and they'll do it. And that's
Speaker 2: a really terrifying precedence in a lot of ways. And
Speaker 2: also it's very you know, I was like, yeah, obviously,
Speaker 2: because a point of a hypocrisy does nothing. But like,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think of a more explicit demonstration of
Speaker 2: censorship than a member of the government says that something
Speaker 2: should be taken down and it's taken down.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's really sound. You know. It makes me
Speaker 1: kind of afraid, honestly, because you know, before I was
Speaker 1: a victim of a moral panic, and now my work
Speaker 1: is effectively being disappeared with little fanfare, So you know,
Speaker 1: what's what's going to happen next? For what Well, we
Speaker 1: see just made invisible and unseen. And I know that
Speaker 1: in this country, I have freedom of speech, but that's
Speaker 1: that's really bullshit. We all know that, Like, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to reach many people if I stand on a
Speaker 1: street corner at the park and yell at people. What
Speaker 1: matters nowadays is the freedom of reach that these social
Speaker 1: media platforms control, that are themselves controlled now by the
Speaker 1: by the Republican Party. And what happens when our freedom
Speaker 1: of reach is annihilated and then suddenly trans people are
Speaker 1: actually invisible. We're very close to that. I think Fancy
Speaker 1: proved that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and disappearing people from the mainstream is the first
Speaker 2: step for how you destroy a people. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Art, art is perhaps the loudest way a person can speak,
Speaker 1: and I know that's why she came after my art.
Speaker 2: There's something just incredibly galling about watching this whole thing happen.
Speaker 2: And then like the next tweet is again a sitting
Speaker 2: member of the US government saying that trans women should
Speaker 2: be put in Ben's prisons, and it's like, okay, one
Speaker 2: of these is considered violence by sort of the media machine,
Speaker 2: and one of them isn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, does she even actually do work for the people
Speaker 1: of South Carolina? Like I saw. All she does is
Speaker 1: just like start shit with trans people, like she says,
Speaker 1: another lousy politician trying to be an entertainer, And she says,
Speaker 1: the a knockoff product of a bootleg Trump, That's what
Speaker 1: she is. And she's not even good at her fucking politics.
Speaker 1: Like she's tried to get this bathroom band for disallowing
Speaker 1: trans people to use a bathroom at the US Capitol,
Speaker 1: and her own freaking party kicked the bill out of
Speaker 1: the out of the bylaws for this year, so she
Speaker 1: couldn't even get that. And yeah, so I guess she
Speaker 1: thinks you can get a get a win by harassing me,
Speaker 1: harassing my art. Yeah, try to get people to come
Speaker 1: after me.
Speaker 2: You know, these people are not as powerful as they
Speaker 2: want you to believe, right, A lot of their stuff
Speaker 2: just fails. But they will only fail if people are
Speaker 2: willing to resist and people are willing to stop them.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing that's needed in this moment. Is
Speaker 2: organization is you know, like is organization, It is action,
Speaker 2: It is it is now. It is now the time
Speaker 2: to go do whatever political activity thing you've been being like,
Speaker 2: should I be organizing a U? Should I be like
Speaker 2: setting up strikes? Should I be doing street demonstrations. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's time, It's time to go, because otherwise, you know,
Speaker 2: and I think this is something that like every trans
Speaker 2: person now understands intimately, and I think most people don't.
Speaker 2: Which is that right now it's us, But you know,
Speaker 2: in two years, assuming we're all still alive, there's a
Speaker 2: very good chance that it's going to be you like
Speaker 2: showing up on this show because a fucking congress person
Speaker 2: is deliberately interviewing to destroy your life. And I would
Speaker 2: rather we had stopped this before it got to any
Speaker 2: of us. But they're going to come for you too
Speaker 2: unless we stop them. Thank you so much for coming
Speaker 2: on the show. And where can people find you and
Speaker 2: find your art? And yeah, support you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for having me. May I really like talking
Speaker 1: with you. It's been very good and Listaris. You can
Speaker 1: find my work on Spotify. You can also check out
Speaker 1: my website at precious Child dot and please sign up
Speaker 1: for my mailing list there as well. That is the
Speaker 1: best and best direct way for me to stay in
Speaker 1: touch with my friends and fans. I'm most a precious
Speaker 1: child on Instagram, on TikTok, i am the last precious child.
Speaker 1: I also will be doing live shows this spring and
Speaker 1: summer in the US, and so follow me on my
Speaker 1: website and on social media to stay up to date
Speaker 1: on that and come say hi in person.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, we will have links to all of that
Speaker 2: in the description, So yeah, go check it out and
Speaker 2: resist the creep of fascism.
Speaker 1: That's one thing I want to add about I said
Speaker 1: earlier about personal power and how I have to develop
Speaker 1: plan personal power by getting sick down myself. I want
Speaker 1: to toil you trans people out there, you queer people
Speaker 1: and your allies. That first thing is getting to know yourself,
Speaker 1: and then next thing is like, fuck these fucking laws,
Speaker 1: Fuck these fucking lall makers. Good to know each other
Speaker 1: and strengthen our bonds with each other, because those are
Speaker 1: bigger than any type of oppressive laws they may put
Speaker 1: upon us. And it's only by the strength that we
Speaker 1: develop with each other, within each other that we will persevere.
Speaker 1: It could happen.
Speaker 3: Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
Speaker 3: podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonmedia. Dot
Speaker 3: com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to podcasts. We can now find
Speaker 3: sources for it could happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.