July 26, 2024 • 42 mins
Minutes before Biden dropped out of the election, Mia talked with trans policy expert Corinne Green about a series of disturbing anti-trans moves by the Biden administration and Democrats in congress.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Alone media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
It could happen here. It's it could happen here. The
podcasts that is about. I don't know how everyone hates
trans people and how this has become a sort of
cross partisan thing. I'm your host, Bio Wong. We are
we have been doing. Oh god, I don't even know
what sort of number of RNC episodes are going to
(00:25):
have come out before this thing before you hear this episode.
But we are once again turning away from their republic
from the sort of chaos and despair of the Republican Party,
to turn it towards the chaos and despair of the
Democratic Party. Yeah, we're gonna specifically be talking about a
series of what I think we're kind of high profile
(00:46):
fights in trans circles over sort of the administration very
publicly starting to write off trans kids. I don't think
it got that much news attention because as as you
may have noticed, it is. Yeah, a lot of this
is by very specifically Biden administration stuff. We are recording
the Sunday Warning the morning of the twenty first. There
is a real chance that by the end of the
day Biden is no longer the nominee. So we'll get
(01:08):
into that a little bit, but as of right now,
he's still the guy and he is fucking us. So, yeah,
with you to talk about this is Karin Green, who
we have had on the show before. Is a trans
policy expert of many organizations and much experience, and yeah,
welcome back on this. Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Hey, thanks to having a mea. Yeah, it's kind of
fun to come back on to talk more about this,
because the timing of when you had me on last
time was pretty much just before a montha four he
went public with this new stuff we're going to talk about.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, so the last time we were talking about this,
it was largely about stuff that was kind of like
plausibly deniable for the administration. It was a lot of
sort of stuff buried in bureaucratic medutia. Whether or not
any of that stuff even exists anymore given recent Supreme
Court rulings that have effectively annihilated the administrative state, who knows.
But now having had the Supreme Court get their ability
(02:03):
to do this sort of non plausibly, they have full
lot gone on the record against trans kids. So I
guess I want to start there. Can can you sort
of explain what happened with this New York Times story
that kind of kicked this whole saga off.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah, so kind of the context is, I'm a trans
policy analyst. It's what I do. Unfortunately, are not that
many of us in the country, and all those of us,
many of us are still employed in the movement organizations,
so they can't talk about this stuff humbly. But so
he's been putting out the regulations that the Biden administration
has been putting out are not good regulations for trans people, right,
(02:37):
But it's hard to help people understand that they're transphobic
because it's a five hundred page regulation and so you know,
it's kind of wonky, a little weird. And if there
is comms like the Biden administration and the orgs have
been putting out calling him pro trans and all this stuff,
there's a big barrier to overcome there with a wonky
stuff like that. But what happened a couple of days
(02:59):
after the debate, which I'm sure everyone saw, or if
you didn't want didn't watch it live, you realized in
a horror that you now had to watch it to
understand what this country is going through. They there was
some initial reporting around how the w PATH Standards of
Care Version eight came out. So WPATH is the World
(03:20):
Professional Association for transter or Health. It's either last year
or the year before they updated the Standards of Care
seven to Standards of Care eight. This is a little background, sorry,
And at the time there was discussion among WPATH members,
doctors and kind of policy people to some degree about
whether mentioning kind of rough ages for what time, what
(03:43):
age people tend to start certain treatments like purity blockers, hormones,
that kind of thing, what kind of normal normal age
ranges those things happening. We know from years and years
of advocacy and work and activism is that if some
write something like those things down, even if they present
it as a kind of loose guideline or this is
(04:06):
where things typically fall, policymakers will write that stuff into
law and rig and take what is supposed to give
doctors and patients, you know, room to figure out what
works best for them, and make it a very strict regime.
And so transactivists did not want ages in the WPATH
sock eight for that reason. And in the one and
(04:27):
only instance of pro trans advocacy that I'm aware of
her ever engaging in it. Rachel Levine in AHHS kind
of advocated with w Path not to include those age
ranges in it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Levine, by the way, is like the o WT A
health secretary. I think, Yeah, she's like the only trans Like.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
She's the highest ranked trans like you know, White House
official ever.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
By like an order of magnitude. She's like, she's like
the only transperson, like openly transperson possibly in history to
ever like get to a position where she has some authority,
and she doesn't use it ever except this one time.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
It's a bit disappointment too. I was her biggest fan
in the world because she passed. She wrote Pennsylvania's Narkann
Standing Order, and I based my law in Louisiana legalizing
Narkhann and our subsequent standing order on hers. So I
thought it was really cool that Transforms had done this
in both places, and I really really was a big
And then she just crickets nothing. It's all this terrible
(05:29):
stuff happens. So that's the context in which The New
York Times was reporting they somebody had gotten, like some
bad guys had gotten some of the emails between Levin
and w Path and we're like trying to make it
into a scandal, right, and they and the bad guys
misrepresented kind of what the issue and discussion was about. Right,
(05:52):
So we discussed what it was, but the way that
they would present it as, oh, you know, w Path
was trying to limit treatments to kids being old enough
of a certain age, which is not what they were doing.
And they were trying to present Levine as trying to
get rid of those so that five year olds could
have surgery or whatever. It's so, you know, just very
(06:13):
very insincere. But so the media was kind of reporting
just on that because they love muck breaking.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, and partially the other thing we should mention it
is it was really it was extremely hard to figure
out what was going on for the issue reporting because
the New York Times, instead of employing trans journalists, they
employed transphobic journalists. And the thing about transherbic journalists, they
don't fucking understand policy at all. They're like, they're absolute
fucking clouds. These people have no idea what the fuck
they're talking about, and so you know, when they're trying
(06:41):
to write a story that's about like leaked technical policy documents,
they have no fucking idea what they're doing, and the
reporting is gibberish. It's like I was trying to understand it.
And this is a real issue because the only source
we had was this document of this New York Times
(07:01):
writer who like couldn't like the New York Times writer
who like couldn't find the back of their hand with
a map right trying to like write out these skinned emails.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
I'm convinced SIS people don't even understand that they don't
know what they're talking about, because I think they just
inherently feel like, oh, I have a gender, therefore I
know everything about gender idea.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
It's like, you know, and like I I I, and
it's this is like mostly kind of like fine ish.
But the problem is when you have you know, when
you have CIS journalists who don't know anything about trans
like people at all, who in a lot of places
don't think trans people exist, trying to write these policy things.
(07:42):
It's they they have nothing.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
And yeah, so it wasn't presented super clearly, and so
other people had questions, some justified, some based on misunder
that misunderstanding, some not. But anyway, there was additional kind
of back and forth between the media and the White House,
they were asking about it, and in that the White
House at one point told them that they opposed surgery
(08:07):
for transgender youth. And then, obviously that is, at least publicly,
that is a new position for the President who has
has been called not by me but by other people,
you know, one hundred percent pro trans super great ally
his entire administration. I disagree with that, but other people
(08:27):
have been saying that for a long time. And so
that took a lot of people by surprise and was
a big kind of kurf lefvel. And so that's kind
of the jumping off point for where we're going here.
And so that happened. That came out on a Friday
in the New York Times that the White House opposed
surgery for trans miners, and nobody talked like. There were
(08:52):
no responses from the orgs, There was no additional reporting,
no follow up from the White House that Friday, not
that Saturday, not that Sunday, although that Sunday Sunday evening,
the heads of three national large National LGBTQ Advocacy orgs, HRC,
(09:14):
Family Equality Council, and National LGBTQ Task Force went on
all three together an MSNBC show. The host I don't
remember his name, but he has an MSNBC show, writes
for Washington Post and then also contributes to PBS News Hour, Right.
And so none of these three people that we pay
(09:37):
to advocate for us or this journalist brought up this
very fresh, very pertinent, very relevant New White House position.
They just talked about like how important it is to
vote and how much fun they had at pride parades
instead of garbage, right, And so it was very weird
to me that these three people who represent LGBT obviousy
(10:01):
organizations would not immediately vocally condemn that kind of anti transtance.
And it also blew my mind that this journalist must
be like allergic to scoops or something like why yeah,
why wouldn't you like that's your chance right there?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I mean I I genuine And you think the journalists
didn't know because like this stuff didn't break out of
like a very small sort of like transphere by this point, right, I.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Mean it's in the New York Times.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
You're given like but like like nobody cares about like people.
People don't care about us like you. You would think
that these people would know but like, I genuinely don't
even know if this person had any idea what was happening,
because I trust journalists to write about trans people about
as much as I trust myself to be able to
bench for us a car.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
So you know, yeah, So that came and went Sunday evening, Nope,
And I was going insane the whole time, right, because
for me, as a trans policy analyst, you know, I've
been I've noticed and been and been calling Biden's transphobic
REGs and executive words and stuff problematic and transphobic since
I first noticed it and picked up on it, which
(11:10):
was you know, two or three years ago now. And
so for me, it was a very kind of complicated
feeling of Okay, now, at least other people don't have
to take my word about the rags. There's something they
can look at and see it themselves. But I was
also you know, completely threw off my sleep schedule. I
was bouncing off the walls, going and see and trying
(11:32):
to you know, or organize responses. And so the first org,
actually I think I believe it was HRC, issued a
statement Monday night, and it was a decent statement. I
might have critiques of them whatever, and then the rest
of the orgs kind of didn't issue statements until Tuesday evening,
(11:54):
and so that Tuesday also the White House issued a
statement that to clarify their position, and the statement actually
made it worse. So what the statement said was that
they do oppose surgery for transgender youth. So they reiterated that,
and then it went on to say, however, we continue
(12:17):
to support gender affirming care for youth, such as mental
health care. Period. I mean, it wasn't it was a
common the THEA said other but they didn't list other
things that they supported, right, So, like the only thing
they put in the list that they supported was mental
health care, which to a policy person, again, you're not
sneaking those things past me. If you're talking about trans
(12:39):
healthcare and the only thing that you say that you
support is mental health care, I'm very worried. I'm very concerned, right,
because if you're pro trans and you support trans access
to healthcare, it is not complicated or hard or controversial
for you to say, yeah, you know, I support trans
people and their access to health care. They should have
access to therapy, hormones, pubity blockers, surgery, whatever they need,
(13:02):
like it's not complex there, right, But they didn't do that,
And so to me that felt even worse than kind
of the initial position, because it signaled to me that
there's likely we're likely kind of losing them on not
just surgery, it's all this other stuff. And so two
hours later that statement was updated, revised, and it took
(13:29):
out saying they support mental health care and was changed
to say we support gender affirming care like a continuum
of care and used the words continuum of care instead
of mental health care. Now that doesn't that feels like
tripling down to me, because the problem was that it
(13:49):
was very overt what you left out, and you had
the opportunity to go back and fix it, and then
you continued. You just made new words that very overtly
leave out the kind of things that we would need
reassurance about. Right, And so that's kind of where things
were at at that point.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
And yeah, we're gonna let's let's leave it there for
a seconds. You turn to the people who are funding
us talking about this, which is the I was gonna say,
the noble product products and services. I cannot promise their
nobility at all, but the products and service system support
this podcast here they are. Yeah, and we are back.
(14:38):
And there's one other thing I want to mention before
we sort of get into where this went, which is
part of the fear that was going on, is that
at the same time as this is all happening, Labor
has taken power in the UK, and the Labor government
they're fucking okay, what what what can what? What can
I say about the about West streeting? That won't get
(15:00):
me impaled across They're militantly transphobic piece of shit. I
think it's like their health secretary now, yes, yeah, masters
over there, don't forget Yeah, yeah, they're ministers came out
and said we're going to ban all children from getting
puberty blockers.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Not just on the NHS but.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
All private healthcare everyone. Yeah. And this is a this
is an absolutely sort of terrifying step. It is going
to get a lot of kids killed. Want to reiterate, Yeah,
already already has there's a whole scandal over there about
like about the number of.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Trus The Good Law Project has you know, done the
research into like NHS minutes and all this stuff, and
as thinks that there have been sixteen suicide since this.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, and I I also want to there's like a
sort of debunking thing that's going on. That was from
data that like that that the party released. I was like, oh,
there weren't actually that many suicides. And the thing you
have to understand about those numbers is that those numbers
don't count people on waitlists, and the waitlists are not
the only place that people die, but they kill a
lot of people. So I want to sort of like, yeah,
(16:03):
we got to get that sort of context in which
is we're in this position.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Not justreting right the farmers and then there are a
whole lot have very vocally transphobic labor impis.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, and and that you know, that's there's a lot
of fear that the Democratic Party can sort of take
this even more extreme path than the sort of stuff
we've been saying. And you know, I'm going to include
the standard thing about puberty blockers, which is we give
these we give puberty blockers to like literal like five
year old CIS children. They're fine, it's complete, like they're
completely safe. There's no there's no downside.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Apparently blockers only have dangerous terrifying side effects used, and
they can tell when they're in a trans body and
it's the spot. Yeah, I only do the bad things.
We've created the trands specific bio weapon like you know,
so like that this all of this stuff is safe,
and it's not only safe, it saves lives, like the
difference between you know, like any transperson can tell you,
(16:58):
the difference between being on your hormones and being off
your hormones is night and day. It is the difference
between being alive and not being alive. Like it is
the difference between having sort of like a stable like
stable interiority and feeling like you don't exist every fucking day.
So we're not just talking about being on your right hormones,
but in this case, we're also talking about preventing being
(17:22):
on the wrong hormones right, which can be even more experciated.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, it's terrible, like yeah, and so there's there's this
real fear that what we're seeing here is a pivot
to UK style stuff. And one of the things I
do in the UK that was specifically worrying about that
language about mental health care is one of the big
turf tactics is pushing this thing where we go, oh, well,
we're going to have this, like you know, we're going
to give you mental health care. We're going to like
(17:45):
help you figure out what your gender is. Is they
call it like exploratory care. This is conversion therapy. Yeah,
that's what they are talking about. And you know, seeing
the White House suddenly pivot to this language that is
like effectively identical to again the UK thing where they're
like we're going to give these conscivers therapy was terrifying.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Yeah. And then so I think that the space between
that Friday with the New York Times article and then
the Tuesday with that clarification, I think the fact that
the orgs were so quiet and didn't offer any pushback
and didn't organize community to demand better to ban their
(18:27):
retract it like, I think that that's what gave them
the room to essentially double and triple down in that
statement on Tuesday. And so that coincided, unfortunately with a
couple other anti transdevelopments and the Democratic Party in a
way that I find very worrying, especially when taken kind
of as a constellation. Right, So that same week, the
(18:51):
Senate Armed Services Committee, So the NDAA is a large
military funding bill. It's the National Events Authorization Act, and
the House has been passing versions with lots of transphobic
riders in them, and then for the last couple of
years the Senate has been taking those out and passing
a clean version, and then ultimately it's a clean version
of that gets enactive. Last year, I was very, very
(19:12):
worried that we would lose on that and that it
would go through with the writers and the implications here.
So the DoD Department of Defense funds healthcare for the
VA and trycare. I think there's one other smaller program
kind of similar that's a different name and effort, but
largely VA and tricare so for active service members and
(19:34):
their families and veterans, which is I think I last
read like ten million people or something. And so if
they cut off public funding for trans healthcare through those programs,
a whole lot of people are going to lose it,
and we're going to very quickly wind up in a
situation like abortion is with the High Amendment, where no
public money can be used on our healthcare. And so
(19:54):
that week, at the same time, the Senate Armed Services
Committee had their version of the NDAA and commit Joe
Manchin voted with Republicans to attach to these transphobic writers
to it. And then it was everyone in the committee
except for three people. I believe it was Warren, one
other Democrat, and then I think possibly one Republican who
(20:15):
voted against it. But all the other Democrats on the
committee voted to pass it out of committee with those
transphobic riders, which is terrifying. Yeah, and Senator Kelly has
introduced a floor amendment to take those out, but whether
his mimite even makes it to the floor, I don't know.
(20:36):
And what the vote looks like that like on that,
I don't know. So I'm really worried that the NBA
will pass with these riders in it, and then subsequent
spending bills for other departments will as well. And then
simultaneously there's the third thing. Over Biden's term, there have
been over he's had over two hundred of his judicial
nominees that he's offered up and over his whole term,
(20:59):
not a single time has a Democrat opposed one of
his judicial nominees. But that week us Off actually opposed
one of his judicial nominees over the fact that she
had sent a trans woman to women's prison, so specifically
a transphobic reason for objecting, and so she didn't be
(21:19):
denominated and that's the first time that has happened over
Biden's term from what I read, And so there are
just lots of these signals that kind of back me
up in my feeling that the support that you know,
everyone has been pretending that the Democratic Party has for
trans people. I mean, I read their eggs, so I
(21:41):
know better, but it is not. It is an illusion, right,
and when it shatters, it's going to come apart really fast,
and people are going to be really surprised by it
because our organizations have not been kind of educating people
along the way.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yeah, we're going to we're going to come back and
talk more about this, and we're also going to come
back very specifically to the transom in women's prisons thing,
because I really truly do not think since people understand
how fucking bad that is. Yeah, we're gonna come back
to that after these ads.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Yeah, so we're back.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah. So I wanted to specifically highlight the prisons thing
in the context of you know, okay, so there's a
chance by the time this comes out that bite is.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
No longer than on me your lips to God's tears.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah. The issue with this is that the strongest possibility
for replacing Cana is Kamala Harris. And you know, I'm
gonna ask you to explain Kamala Harris's record on trans
women in fucking prisons because it is appalling.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Because I can never escape these ship libs. I actually
worked at TLC while we were suing the slain Chelsea, Yeah,
transgender lossoner Tilse. We had to sue the State of
California for incarcerated trans people to be able to access
healthcare that they deserved, and Kamala Harris, as the age
(23:13):
of the State of California, defended the state's position that
they did not they did have a right to health care.
We won, she lost. But so she is not someone
that I can ever trust with trans lives, right, especially
because there have been other issues, I think marijuana most recently,
(23:35):
where she has tried to kind of trumpet that she
has used her discretion and not prosecuted certain things or whatever, right,
And that doesn't help me at all, right, because it
shows you know you have prosecutor you know you have
discretion in what cases you take and what you defend
and all this stuff, and you used it to prevent
trans people from getting healthcare.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Yeah, and I want to allo specifically talk about the
part about this judge sending a transfer into a women's prison,
which is the thing that you should do, because this
is the kind of thing that has to be opposed
at all costs, because you know, prison is violent enough
for everyone, it is even worse for us. And the
(24:18):
fact that Democrats are like, you know, it looks like
we're seeing the sort of tide break on this and
especially specifically on this issue, where the consequences are so
dire it is extremely bad.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah, And so I kind of had the suspicion that
there was a deal struck on the NDAA that Democrats
and this is solely me speculating, right, I have no
insider information about this, speculating that the Democrats kind of
accepted a deal on the NDA that there would be
some level of anti trans writers that they would accept
(24:57):
and into the enacted law, and that after making that deal,
the White House felt they could kind of move to
the right publicly on trans people, because you know, it
would be in the news from the NBA passing that
they could start kind of preparing people for that by
(25:18):
kind of making a public and kind of moving to
the right word there, right, So that's kind of what
I suspect maybe happened. I don't know, but it is.
It doesn't vode well for us, especially because you know,
so the the White House's position has already been cited
in at least one judicial opinion yep, and then was
(25:38):
also recently cited yes the day before yesterday or not now, yeah, Friday, yeah,
I think it was Friday in New Hampshire as justification
from Governor Sunu for signing their surgery VAM there. And
so these things have immediate consequences even before they show
up in executive branch policy. And this is why I
(26:02):
have been very convinced ever since kind of I read
the policy tea leaves and the executive orders and rags
and kind of identified that we were dealing with the
functioning a hostile executive branch. I've been trying. I tried
as hard as I could to get movement leadership to
switch from a kiss ass framework to a take names framework, right, yeah,
(26:25):
but they just they haven't done it. So the community
just doesn't. It's going to feel like whiplash, I think
for a lot of folks who aren't kind of deep
into this stuff. And then don't follow me on Twitter
to see me yelling about five hundred page regulations. But
it makes me worried that, you know, the leadership is
(26:46):
not advocating for trans people appropriately, and I think that
if this is demonstrating that they're not, they don't have
leverage or they're not willing to bring a leverage to
bear on whoever. The not many is when it's not Biden, right, Like,
they're not setting the movement up to have strong footing
(27:07):
to hold people accountable to trans equality kind of on
the campaign trail, and that's really scary looking at labor,
especially as kind of a blueprint.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Yeah, we're gonna be talking of God, Yeah, we're gonna
be talking about Sean o'brien'soking dog shit weird fascist turn
later with some teamsters. Well hopefully, well we'll see, well,
see'll see appens this episode. But yeah, yeah, it's very bad.
But also it's not We're not in a position yet
where this is inevitable, right right, Like it doesn't have
(27:41):
to happen, And the way that it gets this gets
stopped from happening is by us organizing and us fighting
and us putting pressure on these people to fucking do
this because you know and like this, this is this,
this has always been the thing. Like these people unfortunately
they do need us, right, they hate it, but you
know these like the Democratic Party needs us.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Yeah. We got to see last month during Pride month,
they all show up at Pride parades. Yes, yeah, right,
it's like y'all actually don't belong here? Why why are
you fuck off? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (28:12):
And it's like you know, they like they they they
they have been successfully sort of like feasting off of
the movement that we build for decades now. And it
is you know, if they're going to fucking if they're
going to fucking eat our corpses, it is, it is,
it is. It is absolutely time for them to fucking
try to defend us. And the only way that's going
to happen is if we we actually start mobilizing it,
(28:34):
we start putting pressure on these people to like not
fucking back down and write us off for dead.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
But the way that the national organizations have been moving, right,
like the positive press and the praise that they've given
deepen Biden's shittiest actions and inactions on trans people actively
stimy's community organizing. Right, Yeah, because if I have to
explain a five hundred page regulation to show people that
Biden's transphobic that and they're just like no, but look,
(29:06):
this HRC statement says it's actually great policy. It's a
big barrier to overcome or community organizing there, right.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
So yeah, and you know, the the other sort of
issue here, right, is that the Republican Party is I mean,
I don't know if hurling towards is even the right word,
but they are. They are very, very very close to
what is effectively like banning transfer from public life and
(29:34):
their eventual goal of wiping us out right.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
And you know, if there's no actual force to oppose that,
because all of these sort of national organizations are busy
sort of kissing ass instead of actually fighting, we are
in deep trouble.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Yeah, And I think and I think we are. I
think we are in deep trouble. But like you said,
it is not a done deal yet, right. I was
actually heartened. I was very I was terrified. So Zoe
Zoe's ephyort the trans representative state representative from Montana. After
the draft bad Title nine regulation came out, she organized
(30:10):
an open letter from fourteen out of sixteen out trans
and non binary state electeds against it. They released it
a couple of days after all of the orgs put
out their praise were they're praising statements, and they looked
really dumb. So she actually organized another open letter of
out trans and non binary state legislators against this. It
wasn't the you know, the full compliment because it was
over a weekend, really scrambly, but just like the title
(30:33):
nine one, Dana Carome and Sarah McBride did not sign it.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Why can you explain who that is, by the way,
for the audience.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Yeah, So Dana Carome is a trans state representative from Virginia,
and then Sarah McBride is an out trans legislator from
Biden's home state of Delaware. And the McBride's are actually
family friends with the Bidens, and Joe Biden actually wrote
(31:01):
the forward to Sarah McBride's memoirs, autobiography whatever you call it, right,
But she's also a Zionist and she is a kind
of centrist, center right Democrat who you know, as I've
talked to people, my understanding is that she didn't sign
on to the title nine letter because she has you know,
(31:25):
rising star and the Democratic Party aspirations. She's probably going
to be the first trans congress person soon. I hate it,
And so I was extremely concerned that Sarah McBride, who
you know, because of those ties and because she's probably
going to be in Congress soon, is the most kind
of politically powerful trans person in the country. I was
extremely worried that she was going to join the mind
(31:48):
administration on this. So I agro posted the ship posts
that are for several days and thankfully she she did
condemn it and kind.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Of bullying work. Yeah, right, go at.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
I was seriously concerned about that because you know, just
these the forces, this anti transit humanization campaign is so
powerful and so strong at this point that a lot
of people are making the calculation that if they want
to advance in politics, they got a multuous you know.
(32:26):
And I don't think highly I and don't think highly
enough of Sarah to have been confident that she wouldn't
do that.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah, And I think that's you know, that's also one
of the really hard parts about this is, like you,
I don't know, as much as there is sort of
intercommunity solidarity among trans people, you can't even trust your
own people when they take power right right, And you know,
this isn't to say, like this is one of the
rare times where like I think there are like there's
(32:55):
some legislators who do good stuff, like Zoey's effort has
been doing great, But you have to keep the pressure
on everyone, no matter who they are about it, where
they come from, you have to you have to keep
pressuring them, because.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
I mean, that's my experience as now does.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, if you don't, we're going to get We're going
to get left behind and left to die.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Yeah, And so like one of the one of the
ways that this has been so dismaying for me, right,
is that trans people don't have any or any national
organization that advocates for them full throatedly, principally in a
(33:35):
trans maximalist kind of unapologetic way. Right. It's always all
of the orgs, all the LGBTQ orgs and the Transpacific orgs,
which is kind of what I'm getting to all kind
of take this very centrist tech or they have over
the last several years with Biden. They were all kind
of a lot happier to be radical when Trump was president,
(33:55):
but no longer. Right, Yeah, And my my main issue
is even if you are you know, a rich DC
strategist who leads who runs these movement orgs like you
know they are, And you believe, even you believe that
the balance between kind of strident, principled advocacy and lobbying,
(34:18):
blazer tightened up moderated advocacy is way further in the
moderated direction than I do. Even if you believe that,
you still understand the need for some group with a
voice to articulate the trans maximalist position, to articulate the
standards by which you know politicians are going to be
(34:40):
measured if they're going to be considered pro trans. And
what we have not seen is the trans specific organization,
so specifically National Center for transgener Quality and CT and
Transferred Legal Education Defense Fund till Death. They recently merged
into Advocates for Equality, which is abbreviated a for te
(35:02):
don't ask, don't ask, But like, why let the LGBT,
let HRC do the centrist bullshit, let them put out
milk toast statements, let them praise politicians who don't fully
support us. Right, but we need at least one organization
(35:23):
representing trans people to lay out the full case to
present kind of our actual policy needs. And be the
rubric by which everyone else can be measured. And also
just for community education, so we know, so the community
knows without you know, people like organizers, people like me
(35:44):
trying to overcome these huge, these huge walls to get
people to understand what's going on, can see what's being
done to us, know what we deserve in terms of policy,
and then measure what is actually being done for us
against that bar.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Yeah, And I think one of the other frustrating aspects
of this, this is something that you talk about a lot,
is that the people who do the work in these organizations, right,
you're sort of like, you know, your sort of staffers
or researchers to people on the on the sort of
bottom of the pyramid you make all this stuff function.
They don't get a say in how these you know,
and how how these fucking orgers put these things out.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
No, most of them are radical anarchists and communists like
I am, right, They they really really want to do
what we need to be done, and it's just you know,
comes down from on high that that's not what they're doing.
And I know that I am not the only trans
national ORG staffer who has been silenced by the White
(36:44):
House or the White House reached out directly to my bosses.
I think I mentioned it the last time I was
on Yeah. But I know that's happened to my colleagues,
friends at other organizations. And I know that I have
a lot of privileges that that a lot of people don't,
So I can kind of get fired or I could
I not maybe couldn't afford it anymore, get fired for
(37:05):
my principles. And I don't, you know, I don't, I
don't judge, you know, my my comrades and colleagues horstal
kind of doing the best they can. But I'm really
really scared with with leadership and the way that they
have not recognized kind of the situation they've gotten us into.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Yeah, And I think the thing I want to close
on is what do you think are effective things that
people can do sort of now right? And people who
aren't in the top of these power structures. Although if
you're for some reason you're the head of one of
these orgs and you're listening to this, what the fuck
are you doing? Please do better? But yeah, what what? What?
Speaker 3 (37:45):
What?
Speaker 2 (37:45):
What kinds of things can people do on top of
sort of just like community education and yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Yeah, so, I mean, I I think the real thing
that I mean I've encourage you to do this on
Twitter as well, is if you see one of these
national organizations fall short of one hundred percent and advocating
for a transit, if you see them equivocate about you know,
maybe banning surgery isn't that bad because it's not super common,
(38:13):
or maybe it's okay not to demand that Biden, you know,
explicitly say that he supports you know, these these parts
of these components of our healthcare before calling him one
hundred percent pro trans on healthcare. You know that kind
of stuff. If you see them fall short of that,
you know, don't trust them anymore, don't donate to them anymore.
(38:33):
Take that money, attention, time, and energy, and turn it
to mutual aid efforts, to local organizing efforts to supporting
trans people in Red states. Campaign for Southerner Quality just
expanded their their practical support program to be not just
a subset of Red states that they will help transuth
(38:57):
in families in, but all Red states that are that
are facing healthcare bands and similar anti trans measures. Support
that fund right, go look at and if you don't
know of a of a local trans group or a
state trans group near you doing good work. You can
go to TRANSSICE funding projects kind of grantee map. They're
(39:20):
really low barrier only grant to translate groups and you
can see what those groups are doing and you can
hook up with them or donate to them. But I
think that the biggest thing is not I mean, we
Lord knows we need money, we're all poor as shit, yeah,
but mainly but mostly honestly, what I think we need
is we need vocal, visible support. We need assist people
(39:42):
not to remain silent or passive when they hear or
see transphobia, or when they hear or see someone equivocating
on well maybe you know, maybe kids aren't old enough
to know their trands. Like if you're that's the sounds
in saying actual trans people, right, but you know it
can take this people, right. And so if you are
(40:05):
a SIS ally, being an ally is an action, right,
and we need that now more than ever as the
stakes of the risks of being attached to us supporting
us grow higher, right, Like we need principal allies to
stand with us. And so if you can do that
in your daily life, you can be a trans advocate
(40:27):
in your kind of routine. We desperately need that.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah, and I think that's a good I know that
that that's a good sort of rallying cry. It's like
all you know, and this has always substantively been one
of the big issues with being trans is that we
are one percent of the population right now. Right That's
probably gonna rise in future, but right now are sort
of distributed, pauled like our distributed impacts on politics. You know,
(40:53):
we have an outsized impact of politics, but for one
percent of the population, we can't fight ninety nine per population, right,
So we need we need your help, and we need
you know, we need not just sort of milk toast
lip service. We need to actually fight.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Yeah. We need people in your life to know you
know that you are fully pro trans and that means
that you kind of learned maybe how to talk about
trans healthcare to educate other folks who won't know as much,
or you are able to develop and kind of share
a personal story about how you learned about trans people
(41:31):
and uh and became you know, an outlying right. So
learning how to do that work I think is super important.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
So this is this spinna can happen here Krinn, Thank
you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
Thank you so much for having me. Like I said
that timing of the last show, Yeah, very smart.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Yeah, we I have I have a weird knack for
tiding this stuff correctly for mostly for worse. But you know, Yeah,
this spindic can happen here. You can find us in
the places and yeah, go support the trans people in
your life because the Lord knows they need it.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Yeah, and you can follow me. Yeah, so I'm crankering,
I share, they pronounce, and I'm at gay Narcan on Twitter.
You can find me there for hot trans policy takes
that are not moderated by centrist calm staff.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, and don't find me on Twitter, absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Alone media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
It could happen here. It's it could happen here. The
podcasts that is about. I don't know how everyone hates
trans people and how this has become a sort of
cross partisan thing. I'm your host, Bio Wong. We are
we have been doing. Oh god, I don't even know
what sort of number of RNC episodes are going to
(00:25):
have come out before this thing before you hear this episode.
But we are once again turning away from their republic
from the sort of chaos and despair of the Republican Party,
to turn it towards the chaos and despair of the
Democratic Party. Yeah, we're gonna specifically be talking about a
series of what I think we're kind of high profile
(00:46):
fights in trans circles over sort of the administration very
publicly starting to write off trans kids. I don't think
it got that much news attention because as as you
may have noticed, it is. Yeah, a lot of this
is by very specifically Biden administration stuff. We are recording
the Sunday Warning the morning of the twenty first. There
is a real chance that by the end of the
day Biden is no longer the nominee. So we'll get
(01:08):
into that a little bit, but as of right now,
he's still the guy and he is fucking us. So, yeah,
with you to talk about this is Karin Green, who
we have had on the show before. Is a trans
policy expert of many organizations and much experience, and yeah,
welcome back on this. Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Hey, thanks to having a mea. Yeah, it's kind of
fun to come back on to talk more about this,
because the timing of when you had me on last
time was pretty much just before a montha four he
went public with this new stuff we're going to talk about.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Yeah, so the last time we were talking about this,
it was largely about stuff that was kind of like
plausibly deniable for the administration. It was a lot of
sort of stuff buried in bureaucratic medutia. Whether or not
any of that stuff even exists anymore given recent Supreme
Court rulings that have effectively annihilated the administrative state, who knows.
But now having had the Supreme Court get their ability
(02:03):
to do this sort of non plausibly, they have full
lot gone on the record against trans kids. So I
guess I want to start there. Can can you sort
of explain what happened with this New York Times story
that kind of kicked this whole saga off.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah, so kind of the context is, I'm a trans
policy analyst. It's what I do. Unfortunately, are not that
many of us in the country, and all those of us,
many of us are still employed in the movement organizations,
so they can't talk about this stuff humbly. But so
he's been putting out the regulations that the Biden administration
has been putting out are not good regulations for trans people, right,
(02:37):
But it's hard to help people understand that they're transphobic
because it's a five hundred page regulation and so you know,
it's kind of wonky, a little weird. And if there
is comms like the Biden administration and the orgs have
been putting out calling him pro trans and all this stuff,
there's a big barrier to overcome there with a wonky
stuff like that. But what happened a couple of days
(02:59):
after the debate, which I'm sure everyone saw, or if
you didn't want didn't watch it live, you realized in
a horror that you now had to watch it to
understand what this country is going through. They there was
some initial reporting around how the w PATH Standards of
Care Version eight came out. So WPATH is the World
(03:20):
Professional Association for transter or Health. It's either last year
or the year before they updated the Standards of Care
seven to Standards of Care eight. This is a little background, sorry,
And at the time there was discussion among WPATH members,
doctors and kind of policy people to some degree about
whether mentioning kind of rough ages for what time, what
(03:43):
age people tend to start certain treatments like purity blockers, hormones,
that kind of thing, what kind of normal normal age
ranges those things happening. We know from years and years
of advocacy and work and activism is that if some
write something like those things down, even if they present
it as a kind of loose guideline or this is
(04:06):
where things typically fall, policymakers will write that stuff into
law and rig and take what is supposed to give
doctors and patients, you know, room to figure out what
works best for them, and make it a very strict regime.
And so transactivists did not want ages in the WPATH
sock eight for that reason. And in the one and
(04:27):
only instance of pro trans advocacy that I'm aware of
her ever engaging in it. Rachel Levine in AHHS kind
of advocated with w Path not to include those age
ranges in it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Levine, by the way, is like the o WT A
health secretary. I think, Yeah, she's like the only trans Like.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
She's the highest ranked trans like you know, White House
official ever.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
By like an order of magnitude. She's like, she's like
the only transperson, like openly transperson possibly in history to
ever like get to a position where she has some authority,
and she doesn't use it ever except this one time.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
It's a bit disappointment too. I was her biggest fan
in the world because she passed. She wrote Pennsylvania's Narkann
Standing Order, and I based my law in Louisiana legalizing
Narkhann and our subsequent standing order on hers. So I
thought it was really cool that Transforms had done this
in both places, and I really really was a big
And then she just crickets nothing. It's all this terrible
(05:29):
stuff happens. So that's the context in which The New
York Times was reporting they somebody had gotten, like some
bad guys had gotten some of the emails between Levin
and w Path and we're like trying to make it
into a scandal, right, and they and the bad guys
misrepresented kind of what the issue and discussion was about. Right,
(05:52):
So we discussed what it was, but the way that
they would present it as, oh, you know, w Path
was trying to limit treatments to kids being old enough
of a certain age, which is not what they were doing.
And they were trying to present Levine as trying to
get rid of those so that five year olds could
have surgery or whatever. It's so, you know, just very
(06:13):
very insincere. But so the media was kind of reporting
just on that because they love muck breaking.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, and partially the other thing we should mention it
is it was really it was extremely hard to figure
out what was going on for the issue reporting because
the New York Times, instead of employing trans journalists, they
employed transphobic journalists. And the thing about transherbic journalists, they
don't fucking understand policy at all. They're like, they're absolute
fucking clouds. These people have no idea what the fuck
they're talking about, and so you know, when they're trying
(06:41):
to write a story that's about like leaked technical policy documents,
they have no fucking idea what they're doing, and the
reporting is gibberish. It's like I was trying to understand it.
And this is a real issue because the only source
we had was this document of this New York Times
(07:01):
writer who like couldn't like the New York Times writer
who like couldn't find the back of their hand with
a map right trying to like write out these skinned emails.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
I'm convinced SIS people don't even understand that they don't
know what they're talking about, because I think they just
inherently feel like, oh, I have a gender, therefore I
know everything about gender idea.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
It's like, you know, and like I I I, and
it's this is like mostly kind of like fine ish.
But the problem is when you have you know, when
you have CIS journalists who don't know anything about trans
like people at all, who in a lot of places
don't think trans people exist, trying to write these policy things.
(07:42):
It's they they have nothing.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
And yeah, so it wasn't presented super clearly, and so
other people had questions, some justified, some based on misunder
that misunderstanding, some not. But anyway, there was additional kind
of back and forth between the media and the White House,
they were asking about it, and in that the White
House at one point told them that they opposed surgery
(08:07):
for transgender youth. And then, obviously that is, at least publicly,
that is a new position for the President who has
has been called not by me but by other people,
you know, one hundred percent pro trans super great ally
his entire administration. I disagree with that, but other people
(08:27):
have been saying that for a long time. And so
that took a lot of people by surprise and was
a big kind of kurf lefvel. And so that's kind
of the jumping off point for where we're going here.
And so that happened. That came out on a Friday
in the New York Times that the White House opposed
surgery for trans miners, and nobody talked like. There were
(08:52):
no responses from the orgs, There was no additional reporting,
no follow up from the White House that Friday, not
that Saturday, not that Sunday, although that Sunday Sunday evening,
the heads of three national large National LGBTQ Advocacy orgs, HRC,
(09:14):
Family Equality Council, and National LGBTQ Task Force went on
all three together an MSNBC show. The host I don't
remember his name, but he has an MSNBC show, writes
for Washington Post and then also contributes to PBS News Hour, Right.
And so none of these three people that we pay
(09:37):
to advocate for us or this journalist brought up this
very fresh, very pertinent, very relevant New White House position.
They just talked about like how important it is to
vote and how much fun they had at pride parades
instead of garbage, right, And so it was very weird
to me that these three people who represent LGBT obviousy
(10:01):
organizations would not immediately vocally condemn that kind of anti transtance.
And it also blew my mind that this journalist must
be like allergic to scoops or something like why yeah,
why wouldn't you like that's your chance right there?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
I mean I I genuine And you think the journalists
didn't know because like this stuff didn't break out of
like a very small sort of like transphere by this point, right, I.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
Mean it's in the New York Times.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
You're given like but like like nobody cares about like people.
People don't care about us like you. You would think
that these people would know but like, I genuinely don't
even know if this person had any idea what was happening,
because I trust journalists to write about trans people about
as much as I trust myself to be able to
bench for us a car.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
So you know, yeah, So that came and went Sunday evening, Nope,
And I was going insane the whole time, right, because
for me, as a trans policy analyst, you know, I've
been I've noticed and been and been calling Biden's transphobic
REGs and executive words and stuff problematic and transphobic since
I first noticed it and picked up on it, which
(11:10):
was you know, two or three years ago now. And
so for me, it was a very kind of complicated
feeling of Okay, now, at least other people don't have
to take my word about the rags. There's something they
can look at and see it themselves. But I was
also you know, completely threw off my sleep schedule. I
was bouncing off the walls, going and see and trying
(11:32):
to you know, or organize responses. And so the first org,
actually I think I believe it was HRC, issued a
statement Monday night, and it was a decent statement. I
might have critiques of them whatever, and then the rest
of the orgs kind of didn't issue statements until Tuesday evening,
(11:54):
and so that Tuesday also the White House issued a
statement that to clarify their position, and the statement actually
made it worse. So what the statement said was that
they do oppose surgery for transgender youth. So they reiterated that,
and then it went on to say, however, we continue
(12:17):
to support gender affirming care for youth, such as mental
health care. Period. I mean, it wasn't it was a
common the THEA said other but they didn't list other
things that they supported, right, So, like the only thing
they put in the list that they supported was mental
health care, which to a policy person, again, you're not
sneaking those things past me. If you're talking about trans
(12:39):
healthcare and the only thing that you say that you
support is mental health care, I'm very worried. I'm very concerned, right,
because if you're pro trans and you support trans access
to healthcare, it is not complicated or hard or controversial
for you to say, yeah, you know, I support trans
people and their access to health care. They should have
access to therapy, hormones, pubity blockers, surgery, whatever they need,
(13:02):
like it's not complex there, right, But they didn't do that,
And so to me that felt even worse than kind
of the initial position, because it signaled to me that
there's likely we're likely kind of losing them on not
just surgery, it's all this other stuff. And so two
hours later that statement was updated, revised, and it took
(13:29):
out saying they support mental health care and was changed
to say we support gender affirming care like a continuum
of care and used the words continuum of care instead
of mental health care. Now that doesn't that feels like
tripling down to me, because the problem was that it
(13:49):
was very overt what you left out, and you had
the opportunity to go back and fix it, and then
you continued. You just made new words that very overtly
leave out the kind of things that we would need
reassurance about. Right, And so that's kind of where things
were at at that point.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
And yeah, we're gonna let's let's leave it there for
a seconds. You turn to the people who are funding
us talking about this, which is the I was gonna say,
the noble product products and services. I cannot promise their
nobility at all, but the products and service system support
this podcast here they are. Yeah, and we are back.
(14:38):
And there's one other thing I want to mention before
we sort of get into where this went, which is
part of the fear that was going on, is that
at the same time as this is all happening, Labor
has taken power in the UK, and the Labor government
they're fucking okay, what what what can what? What can
I say about the about West streeting? That won't get
(15:00):
me impaled across They're militantly transphobic piece of shit. I
think it's like their health secretary now, yes, yeah, masters
over there, don't forget Yeah, yeah, they're ministers came out
and said we're going to ban all children from getting
puberty blockers.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Not just on the NHS but.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
All private healthcare everyone. Yeah. And this is a this
is an absolutely sort of terrifying step. It is going
to get a lot of kids killed. Want to reiterate, Yeah,
already already has there's a whole scandal over there about
like about the number of.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Trus The Good Law Project has you know, done the
research into like NHS minutes and all this stuff, and
as thinks that there have been sixteen suicide since this.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yeah, and I I also want to there's like a
sort of debunking thing that's going on. That was from
data that like that that the party released. I was like, oh,
there weren't actually that many suicides. And the thing you
have to understand about those numbers is that those numbers
don't count people on waitlists, and the waitlists are not
the only place that people die, but they kill a
lot of people. So I want to sort of like, yeah,
(16:03):
we got to get that sort of context in which
is we're in this position.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Not justreting right the farmers and then there are a
whole lot have very vocally transphobic labor impis.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah, and and that you know, that's there's a lot
of fear that the Democratic Party can sort of take
this even more extreme path than the sort of stuff
we've been saying. And you know, I'm going to include
the standard thing about puberty blockers, which is we give
these we give puberty blockers to like literal like five
year old CIS children. They're fine, it's complete, like they're
completely safe. There's no there's no downside.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Apparently blockers only have dangerous terrifying side effects used, and
they can tell when they're in a trans body and
it's the spot. Yeah, I only do the bad things.
We've created the trands specific bio weapon like you know,
so like that this all of this stuff is safe,
and it's not only safe, it saves lives, like the
difference between you know, like any transperson can tell you,
(16:58):
the difference between being on your hormones and being off
your hormones is night and day. It is the difference
between being alive and not being alive. Like it is
the difference between having sort of like a stable like
stable interiority and feeling like you don't exist every fucking day.
So we're not just talking about being on your right hormones,
but in this case, we're also talking about preventing being
(17:22):
on the wrong hormones right, which can be even more experciated.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Yeah, it's terrible, like yeah, and so there's there's this
real fear that what we're seeing here is a pivot
to UK style stuff. And one of the things I
do in the UK that was specifically worrying about that
language about mental health care is one of the big
turf tactics is pushing this thing where we go, oh, well,
we're going to have this, like you know, we're going
to give you mental health care. We're going to like
(17:45):
help you figure out what your gender is. Is they
call it like exploratory care. This is conversion therapy. Yeah,
that's what they are talking about. And you know, seeing
the White House suddenly pivot to this language that is
like effectively identical to again the UK thing where they're
like we're going to give these conscivers therapy was terrifying.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Yeah. And then so I think that the space between
that Friday with the New York Times article and then
the Tuesday with that clarification, I think the fact that
the orgs were so quiet and didn't offer any pushback
and didn't organize community to demand better to ban their
(18:27):
retract it like, I think that that's what gave them
the room to essentially double and triple down in that
statement on Tuesday. And so that coincided, unfortunately with a
couple other anti transdevelopments and the Democratic Party in a
way that I find very worrying, especially when taken kind
of as a constellation. Right, So that same week, the
(18:51):
Senate Armed Services Committee, So the NDAA is a large
military funding bill. It's the National Events Authorization Act, and
the House has been passing versions with lots of transphobic
riders in them, and then for the last couple of
years the Senate has been taking those out and passing
a clean version, and then ultimately it's a clean version
of that gets enactive. Last year, I was very, very
(19:12):
worried that we would lose on that and that it
would go through with the writers and the implications here.
So the DoD Department of Defense funds healthcare for the
VA and trycare. I think there's one other smaller program
kind of similar that's a different name and effort, but
largely VA and tricare so for active service members and
(19:34):
their families and veterans, which is I think I last
read like ten million people or something. And so if
they cut off public funding for trans healthcare through those programs,
a whole lot of people are going to lose it,
and we're going to very quickly wind up in a
situation like abortion is with the High Amendment, where no
public money can be used on our healthcare. And so
(19:54):
that week, at the same time, the Senate Armed Services
Committee had their version of the NDAA and commit Joe
Manchin voted with Republicans to attach to these transphobic writers
to it. And then it was everyone in the committee
except for three people. I believe it was Warren, one
other Democrat, and then I think possibly one Republican who
(20:15):
voted against it. But all the other Democrats on the
committee voted to pass it out of committee with those
transphobic riders, which is terrifying. Yeah, and Senator Kelly has
introduced a floor amendment to take those out, but whether
his mimite even makes it to the floor, I don't know.
(20:36):
And what the vote looks like that like on that,
I don't know. So I'm really worried that the NBA
will pass with these riders in it, and then subsequent
spending bills for other departments will as well. And then
simultaneously there's the third thing. Over Biden's term, there have
been over he's had over two hundred of his judicial
nominees that he's offered up and over his whole term,
(20:59):
not a single time has a Democrat opposed one of
his judicial nominees. But that week us Off actually opposed
one of his judicial nominees over the fact that she
had sent a trans woman to women's prison, so specifically
a transphobic reason for objecting, and so she didn't be
(21:19):
denominated and that's the first time that has happened over
Biden's term from what I read, And so there are
just lots of these signals that kind of back me
up in my feeling that the support that you know,
everyone has been pretending that the Democratic Party has for
trans people. I mean, I read their eggs, so I
(21:41):
know better, but it is not. It is an illusion, right,
and when it shatters, it's going to come apart really fast,
and people are going to be really surprised by it
because our organizations have not been kind of educating people
along the way.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Yeah, we're going to we're going to come back and
talk more about this, and we're also going to come
back very specifically to the transom in women's prisons thing,
because I really truly do not think since people understand
how fucking bad that is. Yeah, we're gonna come back
to that after these ads.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Yeah, so we're back.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah. So I wanted to specifically highlight the prisons thing
in the context of you know, okay, so there's a
chance by the time this comes out that bite is.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
No longer than on me your lips to God's tears.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah. The issue with this is that the strongest possibility
for replacing Cana is Kamala Harris. And you know, I'm
gonna ask you to explain Kamala Harris's record on trans
women in fucking prisons because it is appalling.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Because I can never escape these ship libs. I actually
worked at TLC while we were suing the slain Chelsea, Yeah,
transgender lossoner Tilse. We had to sue the State of
California for incarcerated trans people to be able to access
healthcare that they deserved, and Kamala Harris, as the age
(23:13):
of the State of California, defended the state's position that
they did not they did have a right to health care.
We won, she lost. But so she is not someone
that I can ever trust with trans lives, right, especially
because there have been other issues, I think marijuana most recently,
(23:35):
where she has tried to kind of trumpet that she
has used her discretion and not prosecuted certain things or whatever, right,
And that doesn't help me at all, right, because it
shows you know you have prosecutor you know you have
discretion in what cases you take and what you defend
and all this stuff, and you used it to prevent
trans people from getting healthcare.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
Yeah, and I want to allo specifically talk about the
part about this judge sending a transfer into a women's prison,
which is the thing that you should do, because this
is the kind of thing that has to be opposed
at all costs, because you know, prison is violent enough
for everyone, it is even worse for us. And the
(24:18):
fact that Democrats are like, you know, it looks like
we're seeing the sort of tide break on this and
especially specifically on this issue, where the consequences are so
dire it is extremely bad.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah, And so I kind of had the suspicion that
there was a deal struck on the NDAA that Democrats
and this is solely me speculating, right, I have no
insider information about this, speculating that the Democrats kind of
accepted a deal on the NDA that there would be
some level of anti trans writers that they would accept
(24:57):
and into the enacted law, and that after making that deal,
the White House felt they could kind of move to
the right publicly on trans people, because you know, it
would be in the news from the NBA passing that
they could start kind of preparing people for that by
(25:18):
kind of making a public and kind of moving to
the right word there, right, So that's kind of what
I suspect maybe happened. I don't know, but it is.
It doesn't vode well for us, especially because you know,
so the the White House's position has already been cited
in at least one judicial opinion yep, and then was
(25:38):
also recently cited yes the day before yesterday or not now, yeah, Friday, yeah,
I think it was Friday in New Hampshire as justification
from Governor Sunu for signing their surgery VAM there. And
so these things have immediate consequences even before they show
up in executive branch policy. And this is why I
(26:02):
have been very convinced ever since kind of I read
the policy tea leaves and the executive orders and rags
and kind of identified that we were dealing with the
functioning a hostile executive branch. I've been trying. I tried
as hard as I could to get movement leadership to
switch from a kiss ass framework to a take names framework, right, yeah,
(26:25):
but they just they haven't done it. So the community
just doesn't. It's going to feel like whiplash, I think
for a lot of folks who aren't kind of deep
into this stuff. And then don't follow me on Twitter
to see me yelling about five hundred page regulations. But
it makes me worried that, you know, the leadership is
(26:46):
not advocating for trans people appropriately, and I think that
if this is demonstrating that they're not, they don't have
leverage or they're not willing to bring a leverage to
bear on whoever. The not many is when it's not Biden, right, Like,
they're not setting the movement up to have strong footing
(27:07):
to hold people accountable to trans equality kind of on
the campaign trail, and that's really scary looking at labor,
especially as kind of a blueprint.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Yeah, we're gonna be talking of God, Yeah, we're gonna
be talking about Sean o'brien'soking dog shit weird fascist turn
later with some teamsters. Well hopefully, well we'll see, well,
see'll see appens this episode. But yeah, yeah, it's very bad.
But also it's not We're not in a position yet
where this is inevitable, right right, Like it doesn't have
(27:41):
to happen, And the way that it gets this gets
stopped from happening is by us organizing and us fighting
and us putting pressure on these people to fucking do
this because you know and like this, this is this,
this has always been the thing. Like these people unfortunately
they do need us, right, they hate it, but you
know these like the Democratic Party needs us.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Yeah. We got to see last month during Pride month,
they all show up at Pride parades. Yes, yeah, right,
it's like y'all actually don't belong here? Why why are
you fuck off? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (28:12):
And it's like you know, they like they they they
they have been successfully sort of like feasting off of
the movement that we build for decades now. And it
is you know, if they're going to fucking if they're
going to fucking eat our corpses, it is, it is,
it is. It is absolutely time for them to fucking
try to defend us. And the only way that's going
to happen is if we we actually start mobilizing it,
(28:34):
we start putting pressure on these people to like not
fucking back down and write us off for dead.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
But the way that the national organizations have been moving, right,
like the positive press and the praise that they've given
deepen Biden's shittiest actions and inactions on trans people actively
stimy's community organizing. Right, Yeah, because if I have to
explain a five hundred page regulation to show people that
Biden's transphobic that and they're just like no, but look,
(29:06):
this HRC statement says it's actually great policy. It's a
big barrier to overcome or community organizing there, right.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
So yeah, and you know, the the other sort of
issue here, right, is that the Republican Party is I mean,
I don't know if hurling towards is even the right word,
but they are. They are very, very very close to
what is effectively like banning transfer from public life and
(29:34):
their eventual goal of wiping us out right.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
And you know, if there's no actual force to oppose that,
because all of these sort of national organizations are busy
sort of kissing ass instead of actually fighting, we are
in deep trouble.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Yeah, And I think and I think we are. I
think we are in deep trouble. But like you said,
it is not a done deal yet, right. I was
actually heartened. I was very I was terrified. So Zoe
Zoe's ephyort the trans representative state representative from Montana. After
the draft bad Title nine regulation came out, she organized
(30:10):
an open letter from fourteen out of sixteen out trans
and non binary state electeds against it. They released it
a couple of days after all of the orgs put
out their praise were they're praising statements, and they looked
really dumb. So she actually organized another open letter of
out trans and non binary state legislators against this. It
wasn't the you know, the full compliment because it was
over a weekend, really scrambly, but just like the title
(30:33):
nine one, Dana Carome and Sarah McBride did not sign it.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Why can you explain who that is, by the way,
for the audience.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Yeah, So Dana Carome is a trans state representative from Virginia,
and then Sarah McBride is an out trans legislator from
Biden's home state of Delaware. And the McBride's are actually
family friends with the Bidens, and Joe Biden actually wrote
(31:01):
the forward to Sarah McBride's memoirs, autobiography whatever you call it, right,
But she's also a Zionist and she is a kind
of centrist, center right Democrat who you know, as I've
talked to people, my understanding is that she didn't sign
on to the title nine letter because she has you know,
(31:25):
rising star and the Democratic Party aspirations. She's probably going
to be the first trans congress person soon. I hate it,
And so I was extremely concerned that Sarah McBride, who
you know, because of those ties and because she's probably
going to be in Congress soon, is the most kind
of politically powerful trans person in the country. I was
extremely worried that she was going to join the mind
(31:48):
administration on this. So I agro posted the ship posts
that are for several days and thankfully she she did
condemn it and kind.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Of bullying work. Yeah, right, go at.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
I was seriously concerned about that because you know, just
these the forces, this anti transit humanization campaign is so
powerful and so strong at this point that a lot
of people are making the calculation that if they want
to advance in politics, they got a multuous you know.
(32:26):
And I don't think highly I and don't think highly
enough of Sarah to have been confident that she wouldn't
do that.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Yeah, And I think that's you know, that's also one
of the really hard parts about this is, like you,
I don't know, as much as there is sort of
intercommunity solidarity among trans people, you can't even trust your
own people when they take power right right, And you know,
this isn't to say, like this is one of the
rare times where like I think there are like there's
(32:55):
some legislators who do good stuff, like Zoey's effort has
been doing great, But you have to keep the pressure
on everyone, no matter who they are about it, where
they come from, you have to you have to keep
pressuring them, because.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
I mean, that's my experience as now does.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, if you don't, we're going to get We're going
to get left behind and left to die.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
Yeah, And so like one of the one of the
ways that this has been so dismaying for me, right,
is that trans people don't have any or any national
organization that advocates for them full throatedly, principally in a
(33:35):
trans maximalist kind of unapologetic way. Right. It's always all
of the orgs, all the LGBTQ orgs and the Transpacific orgs,
which is kind of what I'm getting to all kind
of take this very centrist tech or they have over
the last several years with Biden. They were all kind
of a lot happier to be radical when Trump was president,
(33:55):
but no longer. Right, Yeah, And my my main issue
is even if you are you know, a rich DC
strategist who leads who runs these movement orgs like you
know they are, And you believe, even you believe that
the balance between kind of strident, principled advocacy and lobbying,
(34:18):
blazer tightened up moderated advocacy is way further in the
moderated direction than I do. Even if you believe that,
you still understand the need for some group with a
voice to articulate the trans maximalist position, to articulate the
standards by which you know politicians are going to be
(34:40):
measured if they're going to be considered pro trans. And
what we have not seen is the trans specific organization,
so specifically National Center for transgener Quality and CT and
Transferred Legal Education Defense Fund till Death. They recently merged
into Advocates for Equality, which is abbreviated a for te
(35:02):
don't ask, don't ask, But like, why let the LGBT,
let HRC do the centrist bullshit, let them put out
milk toast statements, let them praise politicians who don't fully
support us. Right, but we need at least one organization
(35:23):
representing trans people to lay out the full case to
present kind of our actual policy needs. And be the
rubric by which everyone else can be measured. And also
just for community education, so we know, so the community
knows without you know, people like organizers, people like me
(35:44):
trying to overcome these huge, these huge walls to get
people to understand what's going on, can see what's being
done to us, know what we deserve in terms of policy,
and then measure what is actually being done for us
against that bar.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
Yeah, And I think one of the other frustrating aspects
of this, this is something that you talk about a lot,
is that the people who do the work in these organizations, right,
you're sort of like, you know, your sort of staffers
or researchers to people on the on the sort of
bottom of the pyramid you make all this stuff function.
They don't get a say in how these you know,
and how how these fucking orgers put these things out.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
No, most of them are radical anarchists and communists like
I am, right, They they really really want to do
what we need to be done, and it's just you know,
comes down from on high that that's not what they're doing.
And I know that I am not the only trans
national ORG staffer who has been silenced by the White
(36:44):
House or the White House reached out directly to my bosses.
I think I mentioned it the last time I was
on Yeah. But I know that's happened to my colleagues,
friends at other organizations. And I know that I have
a lot of privileges that that a lot of people don't,
So I can kind of get fired or I could
I not maybe couldn't afford it anymore, get fired for
(37:05):
my principles. And I don't, you know, I don't, I
don't judge, you know, my my comrades and colleagues horstal
kind of doing the best they can. But I'm really
really scared with with leadership and the way that they
have not recognized kind of the situation they've gotten us into.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Yeah, And I think the thing I want to close
on is what do you think are effective things that
people can do sort of now right? And people who
aren't in the top of these power structures. Although if
you're for some reason you're the head of one of
these orgs and you're listening to this, what the fuck
are you doing? Please do better? But yeah, what what? What?
Speaker 3 (37:45):
What?
Speaker 2 (37:45):
What kinds of things can people do on top of
sort of just like community education and yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Yeah, so, I mean, I I think the real thing
that I mean I've encourage you to do this on
Twitter as well, is if you see one of these
national organizations fall short of one hundred percent and advocating
for a transit, if you see them equivocate about you know,
maybe banning surgery isn't that bad because it's not super common,
(38:13):
or maybe it's okay not to demand that Biden, you know,
explicitly say that he supports you know, these these parts
of these components of our healthcare before calling him one
hundred percent pro trans on healthcare. You know that kind
of stuff. If you see them fall short of that,
you know, don't trust them anymore, don't donate to them anymore.
(38:33):
Take that money, attention, time, and energy, and turn it
to mutual aid efforts, to local organizing efforts to supporting
trans people in Red states. Campaign for Southerner Quality just
expanded their their practical support program to be not just
a subset of Red states that they will help transuth
(38:57):
in families in, but all Red states that are that
are facing healthcare bands and similar anti trans measures. Support
that fund right, go look at and if you don't
know of a of a local trans group or a
state trans group near you doing good work. You can
go to TRANSSICE funding projects kind of grantee map. They're
(39:20):
really low barrier only grant to translate groups and you
can see what those groups are doing and you can
hook up with them or donate to them. But I
think that the biggest thing is not I mean, we
Lord knows we need money, we're all poor as shit, yeah,
but mainly but mostly honestly, what I think we need
is we need vocal, visible support. We need assist people
(39:42):
not to remain silent or passive when they hear or
see transphobia, or when they hear or see someone equivocating
on well maybe you know, maybe kids aren't old enough
to know their trands. Like if you're that's the sounds
in saying actual trans people, right, but you know it
can take this people, right. And so if you are
(40:05):
a SIS ally, being an ally is an action, right,
and we need that now more than ever as the
stakes of the risks of being attached to us supporting
us grow higher, right, Like we need principal allies to
stand with us. And so if you can do that
in your daily life, you can be a trans advocate
(40:27):
in your kind of routine. We desperately need that.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah, and I think that's a good I know that
that that's a good sort of rallying cry. It's like
all you know, and this has always substantively been one
of the big issues with being trans is that we
are one percent of the population right now. Right That's
probably gonna rise in future, but right now are sort
of distributed, pauled like our distributed impacts on politics. You know,
(40:53):
we have an outsized impact of politics, but for one
percent of the population, we can't fight ninety nine per population, right,
So we need we need your help, and we need
you know, we need not just sort of milk toast
lip service. We need to actually fight.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Yeah. We need people in your life to know you
know that you are fully pro trans and that means
that you kind of learned maybe how to talk about
trans healthcare to educate other folks who won't know as much,
or you are able to develop and kind of share
a personal story about how you learned about trans people
(41:31):
and uh and became you know, an outlying right. So
learning how to do that work I think is super important.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
So this is this spinna can happen here Krinn, Thank
you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
Thank you so much for having me. Like I said
that timing of the last show, Yeah, very smart.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Yeah, we I have I have a weird knack for
tiding this stuff correctly for mostly for worse. But you know, Yeah,
this spindic can happen here. You can find us in
the places and yeah, go support the trans people in
your life because the Lord knows they need it.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Yeah, and you can follow me. Yeah, so I'm crankering,
I share, they pronounce, and I'm at gay Narcan on Twitter.
You can find me there for hot trans policy takes
that are not moderated by centrist calm staff.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, and don't find me on Twitter, absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated
monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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