Speaker 1: All Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to dig it up in here. This is me
Speaker 2: a long back with part two of my interview with
Speaker 2: Kay and Lee from Health Liberation Now about the long
Speaker 2: origins of anti trans legislation and policy in Ohio. Let's
Speaker 2: get right into it, Okay. So the next thing I
Speaker 2: wanted to sort of ask about is, so this is
Speaker 2: a very very long running I guess, sort of strategy
Speaker 2: and campaign of sort of right wing or right wing
Speaker 2: and turf de transition like groups advocating for trans healthcare bands.
Speaker 2: And I wanted to I wanted to talk about some
Speaker 2: of the older campaigns that happened, and I wanted to
Speaker 2: talk about specifically some of the campaigns to influence WPATH.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, right, right, So we should we should start
Speaker 2: by explaining to people what WPATH is, because I think
Speaker 2: unless you're trans, you probably don't know. You've probably never
Speaker 2: heard of WPATH.
Speaker 3: It's like World Professional Association for Trans Healthcare, I believe,
Speaker 3: is what it?
Speaker 4: Double check that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, World Professional Association for Transvender Health formerly known
Speaker 3: as the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Alliance.
Speaker 4: They published the standard care that is usually used to
Speaker 4: help inform gender firming care for trans people, and they
Speaker 4: have done various versions of this over the course of decades.
Speaker 4: We are currently on version eight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and historically they've they're a way of administering trans
Speaker 3: healthcare has involved a lot of like gatekeeping and then
Speaker 3: psychological assessments or requiring people to do a real life test,
Speaker 3: which is like making someone live as the gender they're
Speaker 3: transitioning to for like a year before they can actually
Speaker 3: access medical transition. So I guess like social transition, but
Speaker 3: it's like a test to prove you're a quote unquote
Speaker 3: real trans person or not. And like things have, Yeah,
Speaker 3: things have gotten like somewhat better over time, but there's
Speaker 3: still a lot of medical professionals in and especially like
Speaker 3: therapists in WPATH who like still want to require some
Speaker 3: form of gatekeeping basically still don't trust trans people to know,
Speaker 3: you know, who we are and what we need and
Speaker 3: are like, okay, but we need to make sure they
Speaker 3: get therapy. We need to make sure we do like
Speaker 3: oh the sype tesks, what if they regret it? And
Speaker 3: so yeah, So I used to be a detransitioned radical
Speaker 3: feminist back in the day, and I used to know
Speaker 3: I mean, I knew Maxim Kitty. I was involved in
Speaker 3: that particular group for about like six and a half
Speaker 3: seven years, and I used to have a blog called
Speaker 3: Crash Chaos Cats where I wrote about de transitioning and
Speaker 3: kind of got more more turphy over time. But like
Speaker 3: pretty early into my blog, about like three months or
Speaker 3: so in this gender therapist who worked for the San
Speaker 3: Francisco Department of Health like left a comment on my
Speaker 3: blog and was like, I'm interested in talking to de
Speaker 3: transitioned people because I think there are too Like well,
Speaker 3: she have to comment that she was interested in talking
Speaker 3: to de transition people and you know, talking to me,
Speaker 3: and then like we started emailing back and forth, and
Speaker 3: she opened up pretty quickly and said, like there are
Speaker 3: too many f to ms in San Francisco. It was like,
Speaker 3: too many f to ms in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Speaker 3: There are too many like you know, Quoe unquote, female
Speaker 3: people transitioning.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: It's just it's like, oh no, It's like, oh wow,
Speaker 3: there's It's like it couldn't possibly be that people are
Speaker 3: just coming to one of the most trans friendly areas
Speaker 3: in the country to transition because they think they'll have
Speaker 3: an easier time there. No, there's got to be too
Speaker 3: many people. I mean, I think somewhere early in the
Speaker 3: conversation she brought up YouTube influencing people towards transitioning. She
Speaker 3: thought there was like, you know, pressure to transition in
Speaker 3: the trans community. So anyway, shit all this stuff, something
Speaker 3: about like you know, people are treating this social problem
Speaker 3: as a medical problem. And I you know, immediately kind
Speaker 3: of turned around and started talking with this other detrans
Speaker 3: radical feminist that I knew, devoras Ahab, and we started
Speaker 3: scheming like, Okay, this like gender therapist who works for
Speaker 3: the San Francisco Department of Health like thinks there's too
Speaker 3: many people transitioning. How do we exploit this, Like how
Speaker 3: can we like use this as an opportunity to like
Speaker 3: cut down on the number of like people transitioning.
Speaker 4: It wasn't just the connection to the Department of Health.
Speaker 4: It was also the w Path.
Speaker 3: Well that that we found out about that I was
Speaker 3: just going to go into that, like eventually, first we
Speaker 3: found out she was working for the Department of Public Health,
Speaker 3: and then we found out that she was in w
Speaker 3: PATH and she actually was like you know, talking to
Speaker 3: the president of w PATH and that she like so
Speaker 3: she made it clear that like, she wanted to use
Speaker 3: the stories of detransitioned people to try to get more
Speaker 3: clinicians to be to take a more cautious approach, And
Speaker 3: she also wanted to try to develop psych assessments that
Speaker 3: could supposedly like weed out you know, who the real
Speaker 3: trans people were, who was going to benefit from transitioning
Speaker 3: and who was supposed to go on to regret transitioning
Speaker 3: and d transition.
Speaker 1: No, the thing is, we.
Speaker 3: Didn't actually believe that you could tell the difference between
Speaker 3: someone who would end up like state transition or because
Speaker 3: we were terms right, we thought everyone could you know,
Speaker 3: be saved by radical feminism, like we and we had
Speaker 3: a bunch of people in our group who thought that
Speaker 3: they were you know, quote unquote true transsexuals, who thought
Speaker 3: they fit the criteria of someone who would have a
Speaker 3: successful transition, you know, until they you know, decided they
Speaker 3: actually were suffering from internalized misogyny or some other kind
Speaker 3: of rad fem explanation for gender dysphoria. And like, the
Speaker 3: thing is, like Devora also lived in the San Francisco
Speaker 3: Bay area, so she actually ended up like meeting up
Speaker 3: with this gender therapist. His name was Julie Graham and
Speaker 3: was like pretty open with her with their anti trans views.
Speaker 3: I mean, she wasn't like completely open with her like
Speaker 3: intentions like oh, I'm going to use this person to
Speaker 3: try to like work towards ending all transition, but she was.
Speaker 3: She did tell you know, Graham, but she didn't think
Speaker 3: anyone really benefited from it. And she told her that,
Speaker 3: you know, she said she knew people who have been
Speaker 3: true transsexuals who had de transitioned and said like lots
Speaker 3: of really awful things about like trans women being fetishists
Speaker 3: and just like you know, all this very anti trans stuff.
Speaker 3: But then you always say, oh, but I think we
Speaker 3: don't have to agree on everything. I think we can
Speaker 3: like work together, and like, you know, this gender therapist
Speaker 3: fell for it like somehow like divorcing all this very
Speaker 3: anti trans stuff, like making a close she was opposed
Speaker 3: to transition, saying like really nasty trans misogynistic shit, like
Speaker 3: none of that was like objectionable enough for Graham not
Speaker 3: to like continue to like work with her, to continue
Speaker 3: to be like, hey, do you want to talk to
Speaker 3: these clinicians about what it is to do transition? And
Speaker 3: you know eventually what happened like that Eventually, this relationship
Speaker 3: with this gender therapist eventually led to a presentation at
Speaker 3: the first us PATH conference by Carrie Callahan, who's like
Speaker 3: she's a kind of an odd figure because she never
Speaker 3: actually identified as like a radical feminist, but she spent
Speaker 3: like years hanging out was like de transitioned radical feminist,
Speaker 3: and she's she's de transitioned, but she's kind of more
Speaker 3: of like a weird liberal who believes in more gatekeeping,
Speaker 3: but she's kind of handy, like we like, like, she
Speaker 3: did this presentation at us PATH and she showed some
Speaker 3: videos of d trans turfs, including myself, like I made
Speaker 3: one of I made a short video, and Max Robinson
Speaker 3: also made one of those videos, and Carrie Stella was
Speaker 3: the third person, and Carry Stella she did like she
Speaker 3: was another like d trans tumbler turf who did this
Speaker 3: survey that still gets like it was a it was
Speaker 3: a survey monkey survey. It's gets cited by like anti
Speaker 3: trans researchers about d transition yeap, which anyways, so we
Speaker 3: so there were three of us who made these short videos.
Speaker 3: Both me and Max Robinson by that point had gone
Speaker 3: like we had hooked up with these weird turfs who
Speaker 3: were deanic witches and taking part in these kind of
Speaker 3: weird neopagan x trans reclaiming femaleness rituals. We had been
Speaker 3: through this kind of like religious neopagan like you know,
Speaker 3: conversion practice rituals, which of course that wasn't something that
Speaker 3: the USP like those are the people, you know, us
Speaker 3: Path knew that, but we hit that. We just you know,
Speaker 3: I talked about how I thought I had transitioned due
Speaker 3: to like internalized misogyny and trauma on all that. So
Speaker 3: I was sort of like spreading a more like kind
Speaker 3: of watered down terf ideology to the folks over at
Speaker 3: us Path.
Speaker 4: This is this is kind of an intentional strategy if
Speaker 4: you think about it, because I want to I want
Speaker 4: to point out something from the the emails about how
Speaker 4: that presentation was made and then given where Carrie Callahan
Speaker 4: noted that her slides were quote unquote decidedly on radical.
Speaker 4: She was trying to talk to therapists as a therapist.
Speaker 4: What that basically meant was she was taking away a
Speaker 4: lot of the more objectionable elements, the things that would
Speaker 4: identify folks like Kai in her previously scrambled state as
Speaker 4: a turf and being completely opposed to transition and stuff
Speaker 4: like that, and then putting on you know, kind of
Speaker 4: suiting them up right, like you know, getting getting them
Speaker 4: in their in their nice clothes, and then presenting them
Speaker 4: to a professional audience who is then able to take
Speaker 4: that information and sort of absorb it into their general
Speaker 4: thinking and then how that's going to play out in
Speaker 4: terms of their changes or implementations of care in the
Speaker 4: long term.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's something that like, I there's something that's
Speaker 2: pretty common with like a trendsuh, like anti transactivists across
Speaker 2: the spectrum, Like a lot of people like Clary Cold,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of the sort of like just hardline
Speaker 2: right wingers who didn't talk about stuff like like' like
Speaker 2: some of these people D transition because like the thing
Speaker 2: that they're saying now is the d transition because they
Speaker 2: got a vision from God, right, And they don't start
Speaker 2: with that because I think, right, I mean, I think
Speaker 2: I think there should be more skepticism of people who
Speaker 2: are like I got a vision from the Christian God
Speaker 2: or like the Abrahamic God that told me to do transition.
Speaker 2: I think they should be more skepticism of that. But
Speaker 2: that's not something that like, I don't know if if
Speaker 2: you if you walk into like w Path and you
Speaker 2: tell them I was given to vision from God, They're
Speaker 2: gonna be like, what whereas this kind of stuff?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Like, you know, but the Wpath people like and this
Speaker 2: is something that's kind of complicated about this because I
Speaker 2: think there's I think there's a lot of people who
Speaker 2: see W Path as one of the sort of like
Speaker 2: as one of the organizations that's there to protect trans
Speaker 2: people and their sort of allies in this sort of
Speaker 2: in this battle against handy trends stuff. And it's true
Speaker 2: to a certain extent, but they're also like, this is
Speaker 2: an organization composed of a bunch of CIS doctors, right,
Speaker 2: who can be influenced and manipulated.
Speaker 4: And there's there's trans members as well, a few there's,
Speaker 4: but it also is less powerful.
Speaker 3: Well, it also seems like the trans people who do
Speaker 3: end up like in a high position at Wpath like
Speaker 3: also tend to be like end up believing in gatekeeping
Speaker 3: and restrictions that kind of like internalize the general mindset,
Speaker 3: and so so it's kind of like they're tokens, right.
Speaker 3: It's kind of handy for like CIS medical professionals who
Speaker 3: want to like control trans people. To have some trans
Speaker 3: people as like figureheads, you know, expressing those views gonna
Speaker 3: be like oh well, you know, look this person's saying
Speaker 3: it and they're trans, so like yeah, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 3: like yeah, at the same like that the first US Path,
Speaker 3: I mean, just to kind of show how far things
Speaker 3: still need to come, you know, the same us Path
Speaker 3: where Carrie did her de transition presentation. Ken Zucker was
Speaker 3: there and he got he got protested, I mean, like
Speaker 3: there was a protest against him, and I did. I
Speaker 3: believe they ended up like canceling at least like one
Speaker 3: of his presentations.
Speaker 4: But yeah, so ken Zucker kind of.
Speaker 3: This notorious like conversion therapist to focus primarily on on
Speaker 3: trans youth, Like he had this clinic in uh Canada,
Speaker 3: you know people, I mean and like going after both
Speaker 3: like trans youth and gender non conforming youth. They tried
Speaker 3: to like you know, prevent kids from growing up trance,
Speaker 3: but they also tried to make you know, non conforming
Speaker 3: youth like more gender conforming as well, with the justification,
Speaker 3: oh well, it's easier to change individual than to like
Speaker 3: make society less bigoted.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he was the type of like he was
Speaker 3: one of the medical professionals that was like you know,
Speaker 3: helping to create like the standards of care for for
Speaker 3: trans youth for decades, and it took a lot of
Speaker 3: work to to change that. And like, yeah, he was
Speaker 3: still given a platform by w Path in like twenty seventeen.
Speaker 4: That's not that long ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's I don't know, it's this is one
Speaker 2: of these things where like the history of CIS doctors
Speaker 2: treating trans people is really really bleak in ways that
Speaker 2: don't get talked about. And the reason, like one of
Speaker 2: the reasons they don't get talked about from people who
Speaker 2: know about it is that like it's fucking bad. Like
Speaker 2: it's a lot, it's a lot of people getting raped.
Speaker 2: It's like a lot of like I mean, and like
Speaker 2: when we talked about sort of like gatekeeping for healthcare,
Speaker 2: like that was the like one of the original things
Speaker 2: was like you know, one of the things that would
Speaker 2: happen very very commonly was you know it's like okay,
Speaker 2: like if you if you want to get healthcare, like
Speaker 2: you have to let me rape you.
Speaker 4: Like that.
Speaker 2: That's the thing that happened all the fucking time and
Speaker 2: this is the and that's not something that's you know,
Speaker 2: extremely long ago, right, And and you could you could look
Speaker 2: at like modern w path and be like, well, it's
Speaker 2: obviously like yes, it has come a long way from
Speaker 2: that ship. But simultaneously, yeah, like I don't know, that's
Speaker 2: that's something that you know, like there are living people
Speaker 2: who fucking experience that, right and m you know, and
Speaker 2: and when when you when you look at why these
Speaker 2: kinds of like d trans campaigns, why why these just
Speaker 2: like like these sort of d trans anti transactivists have
Speaker 2: been so successful in targeting this it's like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's it's I think I think it's a
Speaker 2: kind of similar thing to like, oh wow, I wonder
Speaker 2: why like the third KKK was successful in this South
Speaker 2: And it's like hmm hmm, maybe there are things happening.
Speaker 2: I mean that that is slightly unfair as being a
Speaker 2: bit unfair to them, But you know, there's there's still
Speaker 2: a lot of these sentiments that there's a lot of
Speaker 2: sort of like transphobic sentiments that are just kind of
Speaker 2: like buried beneath the surface. And I think a lot
Speaker 2: of what we've been seeing over the past you know,
Speaker 2: like like eight ish years. What is time hold on?
Speaker 3: Is that?
Speaker 1: God?
Speaker 2: Okay, I've broken my own rule about not trying to
Speaker 2: do bath life on air. People don't figure out that
Speaker 2: I can't do subtract. But you know, that's a lot
Speaker 2: of what's the topic of the last like eight years
Speaker 2: is that people figured out that there's still a lot
Speaker 2: of sort of lingering anti transcendiment, and they figured out
Speaker 2: where you can target it in ways that are extremely effective.
Speaker 2: We need to go to ads were back in a
Speaker 2: second with less capitalism, and we're back.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah, I mean like yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: I I feel like like in terms of like medical
Speaker 3: professionals who want a gatekeeper what like they they've been
Speaker 3: using you know, d transition and transition regret as like
Speaker 3: an excuse for controlling people for basically since the beginning
Speaker 3: of trans healthcare. I mean that, like, like you know
Speaker 3: that gender therapist Julia Graham, she went looking for us,
Speaker 3: She like went looking for for de trans people to use.
Speaker 3: She's like, Okay, this is how I'm going to like
Speaker 3: cut down on the number of people transitioning. I'm going
Speaker 3: to find some like de transitioned women and then use
Speaker 3: their experiences and you know, that's what she.
Speaker 4: Tried to do.
Speaker 3: And like, and I see this happening with other like
Speaker 3: clinicians too, like kind of going back to Ohio Scott Leibowitz,
Speaker 3: who runs he's a therapist who runs the Thrive Clinic
Speaker 3: in Ohio, and he's another one who has used like
Speaker 3: de transition to justify like more psych assessments. And I
Speaker 3: mean he was actually one of the therapists featured in
Speaker 3: one of the New York Times articles that everyone a
Speaker 3: lot of trends. People got mad at the one by
Speaker 3: Emily Bailon. Was it like I forget what it's called
Speaker 3: the giald for gender therapy, where he's like kind of
Speaker 3: cast is this like this poor moderate position who's caught
Speaker 3: between the religious right that wants to ban all trans
Speaker 3: healthcare and these wacky transactivists who just want to let
Speaker 3: everyone transition. It's like he's just trying to find this
Speaker 3: nuanced approach and make sure that like teenagers don't transition
Speaker 3: and regret it. And you know, yeah, I know he
Speaker 3: was like, I mean, like he was trying to stop
Speaker 3: the healthcare bands in Ohio by pointing out like, oh look,
Speaker 3: you know we're we do comprehensive care. You know, most
Speaker 3: most youth don't go on to medically transition. Like like
Speaker 3: Carrie Callahan was also one of the you know she
Speaker 3: and her testimony, and in some op ed pieces that
Speaker 3: she wrote, she was like praising his broach, calling it cautious.
Speaker 3: You know, people who want to like restrict care implement
Speaker 3: more gatekeeping will use like D transition stories to justify that.
Speaker 3: And then of course, like you know, the religious right
Speaker 3: who wants to completely wipe out all transition healthcare will
Speaker 3: also use like D transition stories as well.
Speaker 4: They'll have their set.
Speaker 3: Of de transition people that they bring out, like lucole
Speaker 3: to testify for the bands.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Leibawitz was also one of the co leads for
Speaker 4: the adolescent chapter in the Standards of Care eight from
Speaker 4: w Path. This was also partially reported on in the
Speaker 4: Basilon piece since they were given exclusive access to the
Speaker 4: draft before the actual final product was officially published. And
Speaker 4: so this particular chapter, especially compared to most of the
Speaker 4: other ones, was it was basically a dumpster fire, Like
Speaker 4: it was a massive rollback in terms of accurate information.
Speaker 4: And part of this was actually captured by a white
Speaker 4: paper that was written by Kelly Winter's a trans woman.
Speaker 4: You know, she's got a PhD and everything like that.
Speaker 4: She's been paying attention to this stuff for a really
Speaker 4: long time, has been working in aspects of wpath and
Speaker 4: trying to like, you know, kind of help reshape some
Speaker 4: of the transphobia that's been happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean she's been finding back against like how
Speaker 3: trans people are pathologized and you know, against paternalistic yeah
Speaker 3: healthcare for for a very long time now.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So she ended up writing a white paper about
Speaker 4: Version eight with a significant section focusing on the adolescent
Speaker 4: chapter and some of the weird like pseudoscience laundering that
Speaker 4: ended up happening because that chapter not only did it
Speaker 4: include like you know, lip service to things like quote
Speaker 4: unquote rapid onset gender dysphoria, which is a this is
Speaker 4: a bunk pseudo diagnosis that was invented by Lisa Littman
Speaker 4: after surveying a bunch of anti transparents, but then within
Speaker 4: that chapter you also see the laundering of specific studies
Speaker 4: that are focused on predominantly de transitioned women, predominantly gender
Speaker 4: critical or radical feminist. These two papers were Litman twenty
Speaker 4: twenty one, which surveyed a lot of the kind of
Speaker 4: the old D trans turf groups that we had been
Speaker 4: connected with right around twenty seventeen or so, So this
Speaker 4: was before the ROGD paper was published in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4: But then there was also let's see, there's the Vanderbusch study,
Speaker 4: which I believe that was published in like what twenty
Speaker 4: I don't remember what year that was published in the
Speaker 4: Vanderbusch study. Now, this study was done by Eli vander Busch,
Speaker 4: who is basically post trans the half of a gender
Speaker 4: critical de transition project, and it had a very similar
Speaker 4: kind of like recruitment strategy sometimes an overlapping recruitment pool.
Speaker 4: But the difference is that this happened after the rog
Speaker 4: D paper dropped RGDS.
Speaker 2: That's wrap it on SUT gender dysphoria, which is distinct
Speaker 2: correct to be like all the kids are suddenly Transitioning's
Speaker 2: like no, this is yes, yeah, but that's what that
Speaker 2: acrid is.
Speaker 4: Yep. When that paper dropped, a shift in some of
Speaker 4: the narratives from people who are coming out as de
Speaker 4: transitioned was also starting to be observed. More people were
Speaker 4: starting to call themselves as having experienced RGD. This is
Speaker 4: where the Peak Resilience project came from. And so as
Speaker 4: a result, like this Bandibush study was also pulling in
Speaker 4: aspects of that kind of narrative as well. Right, and
Speaker 4: you know this, none of this actually makes sense. These
Speaker 4: are wildly biased sample pools. It's not going to be
Speaker 4: generalizable to basically any population. It's only focused on like
Speaker 4: a very particular subset of people who end up detransitioning
Speaker 4: and then develop some kind of like political belief it's
Speaker 4: connected to it, right, And then it's being used as
Speaker 4: legitimate data as part of standards of care that is
Speaker 4: supposed to be like, yeah, yes, it's just it's particulars.
Speaker 3: Well, it is ridiculous, But I don't feel like like
Speaker 3: I feel like the medical professionals who want more gatekeeping
Speaker 3: like they just need some de transitioned.
Speaker 4: People to justify it.
Speaker 3: They don't really care if like the people ended up
Speaker 3: de transitioning because they like found God or radical feminism
Speaker 3: or like or you know, our old group. A lot
Speaker 3: of the detrendsmen I think already mentioned this before, Like
Speaker 3: a lot of us like talked about how like we
Speaker 3: had the same kind of dysphoria than any other transperson
Speaker 3: had and we're still fighting it off. That was a
Speaker 3: thing too. Most of the people I knew still had
Speaker 3: gender dysphoria, and we're just finding like quote unquote alternative
Speaker 3: ways to cope with it. And it's just like, I
Speaker 3: don't I mean a lot of people were trying to
Speaker 3: like talk themselves out of like transitioning again. So I
Speaker 3: don't think the issue here is like, oh, transition didn't
Speaker 3: work for these people. It's more like they internalized the idea.
Speaker 3: You know that no one said transition, but again, like
Speaker 3: people don't. It's like people don't. Yeah, they only care
Speaker 3: about using de transition in order to reduce the number
Speaker 3: of trans people or prevent transition. They don't care about
Speaker 3: transition or d transition that you know results from transphobia,
Speaker 3: either internalizing it, yeah, internalizing it an anti trans ideology,
Speaker 3: or you know, not being able to access transition because
Speaker 3: of you know, living in a transphobic society, coming from
Speaker 3: a transphobic family, you know, having to go into the
Speaker 3: closet to find a job, that kind of stuff. Like
Speaker 3: it's never about like, yeah, it's never about preventing due
Speaker 3: transition that results from transphobia. It's just about finding excuse
Speaker 3: to control us and our access to healthcare.
Speaker 2: There's this perverse incentive structure here too, because you know,
Speaker 2: these doctors are trying to find you know, they're trying
Speaker 2: to find something that gives them more ability to do gatekeeping.
Speaker 2: So it's it's it's in their interest to in order
Speaker 2: to in order to preserve and increase their own power,
Speaker 2: to find this kind of stuff, which means that they're
Speaker 2: not actually doing their job. They're going out and trying
Speaker 2: to find ways to like they're trying to find, you know,
Speaker 2: whatever whatever like absolutely dog shit studies or like just
Speaker 2: stuff that like probably should be considered medical malpractice. Like
Speaker 2: they don't really care because again it's it's it's it's
Speaker 2: just this like loop because that's the thing that they need.
Speaker 2: So they'll they'll find whatever, like crank pseudo scientists just
Speaker 2: like cranking this stuff out and they'll use it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, And also, I mean I also feel
Speaker 3: like this is one of the reasons why there aren't
Speaker 3: more resources for people who end up transitioning too, because
Speaker 3: they want to be able to use as a scar
Speaker 3: scare story, right because like really, I mean, like okay,
Speaker 3: like you know, Ig transitioned and like it was hard
Speaker 3: because there weren't as much like resources and support out there,
Speaker 3: and I mean a lot of the supports I did
Speaker 3: find were crappy because they were coming from urfs. But
Speaker 3: it's like it's really just kind of like transitioning again
Speaker 3: and then a.
Speaker 4: Lot of ways.
Speaker 3: So it's like, well, if you can create resources to
Speaker 3: make transitioning easier, you could definitely create a lot of
Speaker 3: similar resources to make de transitioning easier.
Speaker 4: But that's not there.
Speaker 3: And I feel like like one of the reasons that
Speaker 3: is not there is because if like, if it's easy
Speaker 3: for someone to do transition, get what they need to
Speaker 3: have a good life, and just move on, then it's
Speaker 3: hard to use those stories, like you'll have less people
Speaker 3: who want to, like, you know who you can kind
Speaker 3: of like, uh, you know, indoctrinate into these anti trans
Speaker 3: ideologies and then use them, you know, as part of
Speaker 3: the anti trans movement. But also just like I mean,
Speaker 3: if it's not scary anymore, if you just feel like, okay,
Speaker 3: like this is just an issue of like making people,
Speaker 3: making sure people get the supports that they need so
Speaker 3: they can just get on with their lives. Like we
Speaker 3: just treat it as a practical problem. That needs to
Speaker 3: be solved instead of using it to feed a trans panic. Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just like the the there's actually like less reasons
Speaker 3: for gatekeeping. I mean, I feel like like creating like
Speaker 3: basically you're kind of like creating a safety dit for
Speaker 3: in case, like you know, in case something unexpect did
Speaker 3: or negative happens. So you're like, okay, well, if you
Speaker 3: transition and things you end up changing your mind or
Speaker 3: things don't work out the way you think they would,
Speaker 3: here's all these supports you can turn to. So I
Speaker 3: feel like that's kind of a better long term thing
Speaker 3: to work for, is like okay, like make sure there
Speaker 3: are supports for people no matter how their transition turns out,
Speaker 3: like if then including you know, de transitioning, or if
Speaker 3: people like you know, face health complications, like make sure
Speaker 3: that there's like supports in place for that. Don't use
Speaker 3: that as an excuse for gatekeeping.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's unfortunately one that I know all too well
Speaker 4: the consequences of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think I think also the everything that's
Speaker 2: going on is there's just like all of these groups,
Speaker 2: see both trans people and people do transitions as just
Speaker 2: not like like they're you know, they're they're they're violating
Speaker 2: the content categorical imperative in the sense that they're not
Speaker 2: treating people as actual humans or treating them as objects
Speaker 2: or tools. Yes, and once you do, when you do that, right,
Speaker 2: like everything suddenly you know, like who cares what happens
Speaker 2: to these people afterwards, because you don't think of them
Speaker 2: as people. You think of them as just a thing
Speaker 2: that you're using to do another thing.
Speaker 3: Mm hm oh yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely. The unfortunate thing is that unfort like this can
Speaker 4: also happen within the community as well. When they are
Speaker 4: trying to advocate for certain kinds of things, people will
Speaker 4: end up using each other, Oh yeah, as tools in
Speaker 4: order to meet their own personal goals.
Speaker 2: Speaking of goals, make it your goal to uh buy
Speaker 2: these products and services. Oh no, we're back.
Speaker 4: So let's go back a little bit to about like
Speaker 4: twenty nineteen. Some of the bills are starting to go out.
Speaker 4: We had the test balloon bill that was happening in
Speaker 4: South Dakota that eventually turned into twenty twenty. Right in
Speaker 4: this timeframe, an organizing call went out on the Well,
Speaker 4: the site previously known as Twitter by Kerrie Callahan that
Speaker 4: was looking for people that wanted to advocate for better
Speaker 4: healthcare outcomes for trans and d trans people. Right during
Speaker 4: that time frame, I had been starting to go off
Speaker 4: of my hormones. I started going off of them a
Speaker 4: few months prior to that point, and in that time frame,
Speaker 4: I started experiencing certain types of what seemed like progressive
Speaker 4: vision loss. Right. My brain, I sometimes have a tendency
Speaker 4: to panic, I guess, especially when it comes to things
Speaker 4: like health anxiety. My brain started to make the internal connection,
Speaker 4: did going off of my hormones cause my vision to change? Right?
Speaker 4: And unfortunately, as I started to talk about this online
Speaker 4: and the likes, I was getting a lot of encouragement
Speaker 4: from other folks, usually like you know, gender critical, anti transparents,
Speaker 4: that kind of thing. That yes, absolutely like the hormones
Speaker 4: were causing me to have vision loss right and it
Speaker 4: was really impacting my ability to function in my daily life. Right.
Speaker 4: But another part of me at the same time as
Speaker 4: all of this was starting to feel like I was
Speaker 4: starting to feel aspects of regret and anger, which made
Speaker 4: me want to do something. This is a very common narrative, right.
Speaker 4: It made me want to do something so that other
Speaker 4: people would not end up in the situation that I
Speaker 4: was in and so I answered this call. Probably not
Speaker 4: the best of decisions that I could have made for myself,
Speaker 4: but I decided to go ahead and do so answered
Speaker 4: Kerry Calhoun's call, Yes, Yes, I decided to go ahead
Speaker 4: and say, yes, I will, I will connect in with this.
Speaker 4: I would like to be a part of it. I
Speaker 4: had to apparently apologize for talking to the wrong clinician
Speaker 4: in public first, but.
Speaker 3: Had to apologize for talking to Jack Turbin because he
Speaker 3: was too affirming and she was mad that you would
Speaker 3: speak to him because I was too willing to respect
Speaker 3: fans kids.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, because he prescribed puberty blockers. I was talking
Speaker 4: to the wrong clinician and therefore this was not allowed.
Speaker 4: But anyway, so eventually the actual like organizing committee starts
Speaker 4: with four people. So it was me, Carrie Corina Cone
Speaker 4: who was later testifying in favor of some of these bills,
Speaker 4: and then Grace Leedinsky Smith. There were some other people
Speaker 4: that were in and out, but they ended up dropping
Speaker 4: off very early on. So it was predominantly the four
Speaker 4: of us that ended up being the actual formal board
Speaker 4: at any point in the early stages, right, And so
Speaker 4: we started to draft a lot of this stuff. But like,
Speaker 4: over I was starting to wonder about two things, right, Like,
Speaker 4: after some exchanges with other board members about who it
Speaker 4: is that we should be predominantly outreaching. Should it be
Speaker 4: clinicians or should it be people that are actually impacted,
Speaker 4: people who have gone through gender affirming care, regardless of
Speaker 4: how they identify themselves currently, Like, what is our main priority?
Speaker 4: The other board member at the time wanted to focus
Speaker 4: more on the clinician route. I did not. My focus
Speaker 4: was on if we are going to be doing a
Speaker 4: quote unquote patient advocacy organization, we should be focusing on
Speaker 4: the people that we are supposed to be connected to, right, Like,
Speaker 4: those are who we are. Why would we want to
Speaker 4: put more power into the hands of the clinicians that
Speaker 4: supposedly harmed people. That doesn't make any sense, right? And then,
Speaker 4: like you know, as these wheels were starting to churn,
Speaker 4: another part of me was starting to worry that over time,
Speaker 4: the trajectory of this organization at that point was going
Speaker 4: to start advocating for more restrictions or full out bands
Speaker 4: later on in the future, possibly even partnering up with
Speaker 4: some of the some of the more right wing groups.
Speaker 4: I believe I Actually, I think I worried about them
Speaker 4: becoming like the gender care equivalent to Wolf, which was
Speaker 4: unfortunately pretty accurate, I would say in terms of my
Speaker 4: my concern that was that was part of my my
Speaker 4: formal resignation to the board. I stepped down as vice
Speaker 4: president about five months after I had joined on because
Speaker 4: I could not see any I could not see any
Speaker 4: recourse within the group for for changing directions. I couldn't
Speaker 4: be party to them hurting other people, even if I
Speaker 4: felt hurt at the time, and so I ended up
Speaker 4: taking a step back. My vision was still having problems,
Speaker 4: but you know what ended up making that a lot easier. Actually,
Speaker 4: it's funny. This is not something that was recommended to
Speaker 4: me by anybody that I had been talking to about
Speaker 4: this stuff, who had been more exposed to anti trans
Speaker 4: rhetoric like I. I talked to blind people. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: ended up talking to to blind people. I connected with
Speaker 4: folks from the National Federation for the Blind. It was
Speaker 4: a group that was recommended to me by somebody I
Speaker 4: knew from a from a past job that I had
Speaker 4: because she was the daughter of somebody who went blind
Speaker 4: later in life due to a genetic condition, and he
Speaker 4: was a member of the NFB right, he was part
Speaker 4: of the federation, and so that was her recommendation to me.
Speaker 4: I hadn't reached out at the time. My brain was
Speaker 4: too focused in doing this weird we got to save
Speaker 4: people kind of bullshit direction. But like, eventually, after I'm
Speaker 4: like taking a step back from all of this stuff,
Speaker 4: I decided to go ahead and pursue that suggestion from
Speaker 4: you know, this random person in my life, not from
Speaker 4: anybody I had been connected to in terms of organizing.
Speaker 4: And when when I went there, like the only thing
Speaker 4: that I ever got was acceptance. There was no questioning.
Speaker 4: Nobody asked what happened, Nobody asked like any sort of
Speaker 4: details about like my my personal views. Like I didn't
Speaker 4: have to express any forms of like, you know, sorrow
Speaker 4: or regret or anything like that. A lot of it
Speaker 4: was focused on, Okay, these are the issues that you're
Speaker 4: currently dealing with. Here are some of the things that
Speaker 4: you can work on to make your life easier. Here
Speaker 4: are some supports that you can find within your states
Speaker 4: if you need to do things like, you know, get
Speaker 4: certain kinds of mobility training using a white cane and
Speaker 4: the likes. If you need to learn how to use braille,
Speaker 4: all of that fun stuff. Here. Here's even like specific
Speaker 4: doctors that you could try to go to who can
Speaker 4: like really assess what's going on with your vision. Because
Speaker 4: before that point I did not have access to specialists.
Speaker 4: I was living in like you know, rural main There
Speaker 4: was there was nothing there. I would have had to
Speaker 4: travel like over three hours to go to Boston for
Speaker 4: me to be able to see as specialist. Instead, like
Speaker 4: they were able to point me to people who had
Speaker 4: specializations in like retinal conditions, and so when I went there,
Speaker 4: you know, they they did their usual tests. They ruled
Speaker 4: out some things that were known to run in my
Speaker 4: family actually, but they did ultimately decide that like my
Speaker 4: retinas are not processing light correctly and that it's actually
Speaker 4: likely genetic, so unrelated to horrormone youth conrelated to hormone usage.
Speaker 4: In fact, you know, as I was going through that
Speaker 4: process and I started to reflect on what my vision
Speaker 4: was like before I even took hormones, let alone stopping it,
Speaker 4: like certain symptoms were actually there, just at a much
Speaker 4: lower degree. Since like at least my teens, I already
Speaker 4: had difficulties with my night vision. I had difficulties with
Speaker 4: color contrasts. Sometimes my light sensitivity wasn't nearly as bad.
Speaker 4: Usually it was only with migrains. But time, like you know,
Speaker 4: that started to break out more where like even just
Speaker 4: like you know, there being too much sunlight was painful
Speaker 4: for me. But like some of this stuff, it definitely
Speaker 4: predated when I started my transition. But because I wasn't
Speaker 4: really given space to actually unpack any of this stuff,
Speaker 4: I didn't really have the ability to make those connections. Instead,
Speaker 4: what happened was, you know, I join in on this
Speaker 4: organizing board. I connect in with three other people that
Speaker 4: were looking to advocate in very particular directions. And like,
Speaker 4: my story was not something that was meant to get support,
Speaker 4: My story was something that was meant to scare people.
Speaker 4: I was also nominated as the spokesperson, which meant I
Speaker 4: would have had the responsibility to do things like, you know,
Speaker 4: respond to the press or give sound quotes or whatever. Right,
Speaker 4: I gave certain kinds of descriptions over to a like
Speaker 4: a Democratic candidate that we had been scheduled to meet
Speaker 4: with Ryan Starzik at the time down in Arizona, and
Speaker 4: you know, give the whole spiel, right, you know, A
Speaker 4: visible trans person with a story that for a lot
Speaker 4: of people who, like most people, are very connected to
Speaker 4: their senses, whether that's hearing, vision, touch, or whatever, they
Speaker 4: can't conceptualize a life without them, and so it terrifies them. Right,
Speaker 4: But like that doesn't actually help the person be able
Speaker 4: to get to a point where this is a livable life,
Speaker 4: it's even a frame life. There are certain things that
Speaker 4: I can do that other people can't do. I can
Speaker 4: navigate inside the apartment without having the lights on because
Speaker 4: I know where everything is mapped out of my head,
Speaker 4: and I can rely on touch. I can pour myself
Speaker 4: a glass of water and not have to worry about
Speaker 4: its spilling because I can feel where it like goes up.
Speaker 4: But that's not really something that like we're not even
Speaker 4: allowed to think about. We're not even allowed to think about. Like, Okay,
Speaker 4: so if this thing happens to you and there's documented
Speaker 4: evidence of it, not like something that's completely imagined, like
Speaker 4: my brain decided it was, here's what we can do
Speaker 4: to help m's. That's the kind of things that people
Speaker 4: really need to be able to access, right, you know,
Speaker 4: if something happens to you, these are the things that
Speaker 4: you can do to be able to work through this
Speaker 4: and live a more comfortable life in the way that
Speaker 4: you are happy with. But I don't really see any
Speaker 4: of that happening to be perfectly frank well, no, Like,
Speaker 4: I'm also thinking back about the like the standards of
Speaker 4: care A because like, you know, there's this you know,
Speaker 4: inclusion of aspects of regret and de transition and stuff
Speaker 4: like that into things like the adolescent chapter. But you
Speaker 4: know what, they don't include a chapter for de transition support. Yes, no,
Speaker 4: because they're not serious about that.
Speaker 3: I guess they just want to use it as like
Speaker 3: a scary story and a justification for controlling people exact
Speaker 3: like you know, putting them through a bunch of assessments
Speaker 3: or something like that. Like again, I very much believe
Speaker 3: that there's a connection between like a desire for more
Speaker 3: gatekeeping and psych assessments control over trans people and not
Speaker 3: having support for like.
Speaker 4: Do transition for retransition either, because there's not, like.
Speaker 3: I feel like there's even less talk or resources for
Speaker 3: people end up retransitioning after de transitioning because no one's
Speaker 3: trying to figure out like, oh, like the idea that
Speaker 3: do transition could just be temporary or that a lot
Speaker 3: of people, you know, go on to retransition later on
Speaker 3: or just confirmed for them that they really are trans
Speaker 3: Like that's also a thing that you know, just people
Speaker 3: don't really want to touch.
Speaker 2: It's one of these things where you know, like pain
Speaker 2: is useful to these people, but like the actual like
Speaker 2: people experiencing the pain aren't. And you know, and that
Speaker 2: has its own perversion center cycle because like, yeah, if
Speaker 2: you want to harvest scare stories, you don't want people
Speaker 2: getting actual help. And that is an absolutely terrible, insensive
Speaker 2: structure for making sure people actually get the care and
Speaker 2: the help that they need. And it absolutely sucks.
Speaker 3: Just yeah, oh I remember realizing, like when I was
Speaker 3: still a deed triens radical feminist, like realizing that a
Speaker 3: whole lot of like people who wanted to restrict or
Speaker 3: eliminate transition like like head an investment in my suffering
Speaker 3: because you know, I was, and I was struggling a
Speaker 3: lot like I do. It can really be hard to
Speaker 3: do transition like right now, because there are you know,
Speaker 3: there is a lack of resources and support and understanding.
Speaker 3: But the thing is, like I you know, I kind
Speaker 3: of slowly realized over time. It's just like, oh, all
Speaker 3: these people to use my story, but they need me
Speaker 3: to suffer for it to like work out for them.
Speaker 3: Like they don't have any interest in making my life easier,
Speaker 3: Like they don't have any interest in like helping me
Speaker 3: like create a good life and being happy. They want me,
Speaker 3: they really do want me to be ruined and miserable
Speaker 3: forever because they can use like that's more valuable to them,
Speaker 3: Like my suffering matters more than my happiness to a
Speaker 3: lot of these people. Yeah, Like you know, that was
Speaker 3: definitely one of those moments where I was like, what,
Speaker 3: like one of those things that eventually, you know, let
Speaker 3: me to get disillusion with the whole thing and be like,
Speaker 3: you know what I get myself involved with. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just it's it is really like sick and perverse.
Speaker 3: How how anti trans people like use suffering, use both
Speaker 3: transcendi trans people suffering for their own agenda.
Speaker 4: It's awful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think this is something that you know,
Speaker 2: there's this is the sort of it's also that there's
Speaker 2: a broader set of incentives here too, which is the
Speaker 2: sort of the structure of the media market, right which
Speaker 2: at the media that's like the like you know, the
Speaker 2: the entire media broadly, like you know, like if it bleeds,
Speaker 2: it leads right, Like that's that's that's the that's the
Speaker 2: actual media model of you know, everything from like your
Speaker 2: like shitty local right wing tabloid to like the New
Speaker 2: York Times, right. And the way that this plays out
Speaker 2: for trans people and for de trans people is that
Speaker 2: like the thing that these people that you know, the
Speaker 2: journalists also are looking for is suffering, like they don't
Speaker 2: really care, you know, like they like, none of these
Speaker 2: people ever report stories that are just like, hey, like
Speaker 2: I went to a gender clinic and it was great,
Speaker 2: Like nobody's gonna like, I don't think anyone's going to
Speaker 2: read that, Like I would read that because you know
Speaker 2: that's you know, that's great, but like like they don't
Speaker 2: care about that there's there's no sort of sensationalism there.
Speaker 2: The sensationalism is like, you know, then this is why
Speaker 2: you get like the Washington Post interviewing this light. You know,
Speaker 2: like these people who are just like, oh, like I
Speaker 2: was I worked at a gender clinic, but I was
Speaker 2: secretly doing evil or like you know, or or or
Speaker 2: you get all of and this is why a lot
Speaker 2: of even protrans like media coverage is about things like
Speaker 2: suicide rates and about things like you know, like how
Speaker 2: like how likely you are to die if you don't
Speaker 2: get the healthcare thing you need, because it's it's the
Speaker 2: same as CenTra structure. It's the thing, the thing that's
Speaker 2: useful to sell to people is suffering and that I
Speaker 2: don't know what the solution is to that, because I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know have have media that's not based on profit,
Speaker 2: I guess, but like, you know, to decommodify the news.
Speaker 2: But that's one of these things where it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: like as long as long as like every single like
Speaker 2: shitty local newspaper is making all of their money from
Speaker 2: like crime scare stories, they're not going to report. They're
Speaker 2: not going to You're not gonna get accurate reporting about
Speaker 2: police because they need the police to like give the
Speaker 2: like feed them all of these shitty crime stories.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: And this is the same thing here where it's like
Speaker 2: you're not going to get actual good reporting about trans
Speaker 2: people and about people who do transition because nobody actually
Speaker 2: cares about that because the incentive structure is just suffering,
Speaker 2: and that trickles down through through the healthcare system and
Speaker 2: through you know through the legislative system, and it trickles
Speaker 2: down through social networks and what support networks exists and
Speaker 2: don't exist. And it's a absolutely like if you were
Speaker 2: just to like ask someone, how do you want a
Speaker 2: society to be run? Zero people would answer, we want
Speaker 2: it to be based on the production of suffering. And
Speaker 2: yet we have done this, but it doesn't have to
Speaker 2: be like this. To sort of finish that, Dave a
Speaker 2: great quote, the ultimate hidden truth of the world is
Speaker 2: that it is something that we make and could just
Speaker 2: as easily make differently. So let's go build a world
Speaker 2: that's safe for trans people. This has been It could
Speaker 2: happen here. You can find more of Lee and Kai's
Speaker 2: work at Health Liberation Now dot com. I recommend you
Speaker 2: go do it. It is great and go and make
Speaker 2: the world otherwise.
Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
Speaker 1: monthly at Coolzonemedia dot com.
Speaker 2: Slash sources.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening,