September 3, 2024 • 21 mins
Shane Diamond, GLAAD consultant on transgender advocacy, joined Danielle for a timely conversation about the state of LGBTQ+ rights and advocacy in 2024.
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good morning, peeps, and welcome to OKP Daily with Meet
your Girl Danielle Moody recording pre recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
we are off celebrating the Labor Day holiday, but as
always we leave you with fantastic interviews that we pre recorded,
(00:32):
and today I am very happy to bring you kind
of a follow up to yesterday's interview with Nadia with
Shane Diamond. Shane is a consultant at GLAD and spoke
to us about the importance of their Here We Are campaign,
which highlights trans people's stories and the fullness of who
(00:56):
they are. Like I said yesterday, it is too often
that whenever we're talking about trans people, we're talking about
horrific policies that are being put out to dehumanize them.
We're talking about the deaths of black trans women. We're
talking about their lives in terms of tragedy as opposed
(01:17):
to the fullness of who these people actually are. And
we have to understand that narratives matter, right, stories matter,
and this is why this campaign is so important and
why I was so thankful for Shane and Nadia to
stop bi WOKF to talk to us about the importance
(01:37):
of sharing story and the importance of you know, GLAD
as an organization and ensuring that people see full and
complete narratives about queer people and not just what the
right right wants people to see and rather wants people
to be afraid of. So coming up next my conversation
(02:01):
with GLAD consultant Shane Diamond, Folks, I am very happy
to welcome to wok AP Daily Shane Diamond, who is
a consultant at GLAD on transgender advocacy and have been
a part of the Here We Are campaign. Shane talk
(02:26):
to us about Glad's decision to move into this space
of telling trans stories from a trans perspective, like having
people talk about themselves as opposed to being talked at.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
That's a great question, and thank you for having me
on the podcast. Big fan and really grateful to be
part of this discussion with you. Todayson, thank you. I've
been consulting with GLAD in this transgender advocacy position for
about a year and this project, this campaign called here
We Are is part of a larger LGBTQ metaging project
that GLAD is undertaking in part because our CEO and
(03:04):
executive director, Sarah Kate ellis recognize that there's just a
lack of positive trans stories and storytelling that is coming
from trans people ourselves, and this campaign specifically has been
a a storytelling campaign. How does it look? What does
it feel like when we put trans people in the
(03:27):
driver's seat and let them let us tell our own
stories and be It's been a research project to see
if the way that we are telling these stories actually
changes how people think about trans people.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
And want you to tell me there was a time,
because I'm old so I can say this, there was
a time when I remember when folks would ask how
many of you know a person that is and it
was at the time lesbian, are gay or bisexual? And
it was in the teens the teens of percentage in
number of people. Now when you ask people how many
(04:04):
folks know somebody that is LGBTQ plus, I believe it
is in like the eighty or ninety percentile. What is
that number for trans people specifically? Do you know? And
how has it grown over the years.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I do know the answer to that, and it's a
very interesting one.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
So GLAD every year conducts a survey called Accelerating Acceptance
to see where we are as a country in terms
of LGBTQ acceptance. So some of the questions on this
year's Accelerating Acceptance Survey, we're about, like what should we
talk about in schools? Like should kids have access to
safe schools? And in twenty twenty three, we asked non
(04:43):
LGBTQ people how many of them knew someone who is transgender,
and over seventy percent of participants said they did not
know someone who is transgender. And I just like to
sort of caveat that with they don't know someone that
transgender that they know of. So, because this is a podcast,
(05:05):
I'm a white guy with some scruffy facial hair and
a bad mustache, and I'm wearing like very hipster glasses
and a buzz cut and two little gold earrings and
like a button down shirt with pineapples on it. And
so if someone met me on the street, they might
not assume that I'm transgender, right right, So I have
(05:26):
the privilege of being assumed cisgender. And when when I
talk about sisgender, it is someone who's gender identity who
they know themselves to be on the inside, matches the
sex they were assigned at Earth. So if you see
me on the street or on the sidewalk or at
a coffee shop, you might not guess that I'm trans, right,
So when we say that seventy plus percent of Americans
(05:46):
don't know someone that's transgender, it's always that they know
of because the reality is that trans people are here.
We're in communities. We've been here, you know. We're holding
down jobs, we're back in groceries, we're trying at parallel park,
we're having families, having kids. And it is still kind
of surprising that so many people say they don't know
someone who's transgender, given that we are in communities all
(06:08):
of this country.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
And I think that to that point, it is because
of the fact that not everybody leads with their transness
right like, So if you are a person like to
your point, that is, and I'll use the term passing right,
meaning that I would look and be like, Okay, there's
a guy in a pineapple shirt, as I think that
most people would. If I'm not being told directly that
(06:33):
then you are trans, I could understand. I guess the
numbers and how that kind of works. And I think
there was a point in the accelerating acceptance of reporting
throughout the years where I think that one of the
questions was do you know I have an LGBTQ person
in your family, which I think then becomes like a
bit more specific, right, because then I have intimate knowledge
(06:56):
of said person, as opposed to do I know anyone
right exist in the world. Why do you think that
it is so important to have campaigns like this that
expressly offer narrative around the different stories and the different
ways in which people see themselves as trans.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, I want to back us up just for a
hot second, because it's very common usage to say, like
someone is cispassing. And I said this in conversation with
a colleague at GLAD who called me in and corrected
me around the history of passing as a term, and
that we know the term passing is traditionally historically referred
(07:44):
to light skinned black black people who are passing for white.
And in this language where sort of it becomes the goal,
whiteness becomes the goal, it becomes that the position of power.
And so if we say someone is passing is white passing,
it is putting more power into white supremacy. And so
(08:04):
as we talk about being cis passing, it makes it
seem like the goal. The goal is to appearance, yeah
is being cis and that cis being cisgender inherently has
more power and privilege and is thus desired by trans people.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
And I appreciate that. Please continue.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, no, just you know, it's like we live in
a country right now where medical access for trans care
is being banned, and so not every trans person is
interested in seeking to medically transition, and even for those
who are interested, they're unable to do so depending on
where they live. So thinking more about being assumed.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
To be cis gender, got it? Okay, But that was.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Something that passed on to me because I would I
said all the time that I was cis passing.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah, oh okay, I get it.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
If we look at some of the statistics and we
see that over seventy percent of people say they don't
know someone who's transgender, how do we make these introductions
in a way that can do it on a large scale,
can do it effectively, and can keep trans people safe
in the process. Like I know, if you drop me
(09:13):
in any room, give me ten fifteen minutes, Like I
can change people's minds on what they think about trans
people or what it means to be transgender also entire
and like there's only one of these, thank goodness, And
so how do we do this on a larger scale
but also keeps trans people safe? And so much of
what we've heard and seen about trans people historically is
(09:38):
trans people who are playing like a tertiary character in
a show. And it's a lot of dead sex workers
and you know, people who are addicted to drugs, and
that's not the narrative for all trans people. And so
how do we put trans people, as I said, in
the driver's seat, to tell their own stories and to
tell their own stories of love and joy and happiness.
(10:00):
And what affect does this have on people who are
learning about trans people for the first time.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
I will share with you that my parents have asked me.
My mother owns a yoga studio and one of her
students was in the midst of transitioning and was talking
to her about it. They know that her daughter is
queer and so you know readily more you know, accepting
than other people. And my parents were just like, you know,
(10:30):
help us understand, help us understand and be better in
terms of how we talk and have conversations around this
idea of trans, non binary and what have you. And
what I appreciated about that is that, like, my parents
are boomers, and for them they were socialized in a
kind of way, but because their daughter is queer, they're
(10:52):
much more expansive in their thinking.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
And so.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
How do you utilize these different stories to kind of
move people who are seemingly assumed to be rigid in
their thinking, but they literally just don't know right. They
just want they want more access to language, they want
more access to stories so that they can begin to
(11:19):
wrap their minds around how our society has shifted over
the last you know, several decades.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I think that question is really at the heart of
some of the research and some of the questions we
wanted to answer ourselves in putting together this campaign and
this narrative framework. We have been working with ground Media
on this project for years. Glad and ground Media work
together on a video campaign two years ago, and they've
been just a joy to work with and they have
(11:46):
been spearheading a lot of the research and also the production.
So if you see the videos and you're like, wow,
this is wonderfully made, that is all thanks to ground Media.
But your question about like, how do we with seemingly
well meeting audiences, how do we help close that gap,
that knowledge gap, that experience gap in a way that's
not like you're terrible, we hate you because you got
(12:09):
this thing wrong. And that's been a lot of what
this research has been targeted on is what are the
necessary components in a story being told by a trans
person in thirty or sixty seconds that can effectively communicate
their transness and why people should care. And so our
(12:31):
hypothesis with this really was on the theme of trans truth,
which is being trans is a real thing. It's not contagious,
it's not communicable, it's not a whim that being trans
is as inherent a part of my identity as so
many other things as being Jewish. As I id, I
(12:52):
played college hockey, so I will always identify as a
hockey player, and being trans is an inherent, immute part
of my identity. And so we came at this trying
to speak to audiences who were undecided about their opinion
of trans people. So we asked audiences, we did a
(13:12):
huge survey before we started, do you think society has
gone too far or not far enough in their support
of transgender people? And what we identified as the movable
or winnable middle were people who responded in the like
three to seven on a one to ten scale. So
the way I think about this is, have you ever
seen Olympic diving?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I love Olympic diving actually, but yes, good.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
My gosh, I my body does not move like that.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
I don't understand how they enter the warder with no splash,
but that's got the point.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, in Olympic diving, they throw out you get seven scores,
and the judges throughout the highest of those score, so
you're only evaluated on the middle five. And that is
who are target audiences for this campaign. It's also how
I try to live by life, like, some people are
going to think I'm greater than slice bread and they
are wrong. And some people are going to think I'm
worse than a paper cut, and they are also wrong.
(14:01):
And the more that I spin my wheels trying to
change the opinions of those on the margins, the more
time I'm getting disheartened and dissuaded by what I'm seeing
or what I'm not seeing. So you were talking about
parents were boomers, And the way that we identified this
winnable middle audience is based on this question of do
you think society has gone too far or not far
(14:21):
enough in their support of trans people? And when we
looked closer at who was in this segment, we see
people from across the political spectrum. We see people who
have varied ages, who live all over the country, with
different levels of income and education. And so by cutting
this according to issue and not according to political party
(14:43):
or political ideology, we're able to cast a much wider
net in who the people are that we're trying to
move And before we ask people to do something different,
to behave differently around trans people, to practice better ally,
ship tips, to do their own research, before we're asking
(15:03):
the trans people that we meet about their identity in
their lives, we need to change how people think about
trans people. And our guess was that if we can
show people show audiences that being trans is, as you said,
just another part of someone's identity, are they more or
(15:24):
less likely to support a friend or a family member
who's trans, a child who's trands and sort of tertiarily like,
are they more likely to support policies that benefit trans people?
And across the board. Our research is showing that yes
to all of these things, that if we can change
(15:45):
how audiences think and understand trans people. In thirty or
sixty seconds, we see a positive increase in how likely
people are to accept a friend, a family member, a child,
an acquaintance who's transgender, and increase in their support for
policies that affect trans people, all by just talking about
(16:05):
trans people as people who have hobbies and jobs and
families and lives, love and goals like everyone else.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, because I think that, Look, the opposition knows this
that if I feed you enough stereotypes, if I feed
you enough fear, then I too can shift how you're
thinking about people as people. Right, I too can feed
you this steady diet of dehumanization, so that when it
comes time to vote on said policy or to vote
(16:37):
on said measure, that that's the narrative that's going to
be stuck in your mind. And so what you're doing
with this campaign is a disruption because in the absence
of being able to provide people from their perspective and
give them voice and platform to tell their own stories,
then their stories are told for them. And we know
that when those stories are told for them, they're told
(16:59):
in the negative. Shane with a couple of minutes that
we have left. As we're several weeks away from the
most consequential election in our lives. What do you want
people to think about when they are voting? What do
you want them to think about when they're voting with
(17:19):
regard to you know, there have been five hundred plus
anti trans bills that have popped up across this country.
There's been so much in terms of trying to dehumanize
and denigrate this population. What is it that you're hoping
that this campaign will bring to mind as people are
voting for, you know, the future?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Casual question to end us on.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, I'm good at that.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
I love it. I truly believe that we are all
capable of good and of love. I don't think people
are good people are bad people. I think we are
people who are full of a myriad of sometimes conflicting
beliefs or ideas. But I believe that we all think
that we're good people. And one of the things that
(18:08):
this campaign is really trying to disrupt is those among
us who believe they're good people, who believe they have
good intentions, who believe they're doing the right thing, and
still hold anti transgender or anti LGBTQ beliefs, and part
of this work is showing that those two things you know,
(18:31):
you can't necessarily have all the values that you think
you have and also believe in discrimination and trans people
are we are the lowest on the food chain in
terms of privilege and access and rights, and when we
all have equal rights and equal protections, it benefits everyone.
(18:53):
And that starts with those of us on the margins
or who hold intersectional identities. We need to focus on
those of us on the margins, lifting all of us up,
and that's how we achieve equitable just societies. So, as
people are coming into this election, there is so much
discord around this candidate or that candidate, and people who
(19:18):
are saying, I don't like either candidate and so I'm
going to vote this other way. And so what I
ask people to do when we go into the election
is not only to think about how the results of
this election are going to affect your life, but how
are the results of this election going to affect the
lives of those that you love? Yep, Because there are
(19:39):
two very very different possible outcomes, and a number of
people in this country will not be affected dramatically one
way or the other, but for the majority of us,
that's not the case. And so if you're coming into
the election and you're thinking about how how you're going
(20:00):
to vote, think about those in your community that you love,
and also just please vote. You know, I think we
had like forty percent of registered voters or people of
voting age in twenty twenty who didn't vote, and that
that could decide the election. So if you're if you're
not registered to vote, please register to vote. It varies
(20:21):
by state, and vote early and vote often if you can.
Because this is this is our bed and we got
to make it and then we got to sleep in it.
We can't do this by ourselves.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah, Shane, thank you so much for your work. It
is extremely important, and thank you very much for making
the time for WOKA. If really appreciate this and your
conversation Danielle.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
This has been a true joy. Thank you and for
all the listeners. The campaign can be found at herewe
Are now dot com. You can see videos and stories
from Nadia at GEO and Ashton as they sit down
with their families and talk about what it means to
be trans and what it means to love trans people,
which is not all that different from guessing many of
(21:06):
our own lives.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
That is it for me today. Dear friends on Woke
af AS always, power to the people and to all
the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.
Good morning, peeps, and welcome to OKP Daily with Meet
your Girl Danielle Moody recording pre recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
we are off celebrating the Labor Day holiday, but as
always we leave you with fantastic interviews that we pre recorded,
(00:32):
and today I am very happy to bring you kind
of a follow up to yesterday's interview with Nadia with
Shane Diamond. Shane is a consultant at GLAD and spoke
to us about the importance of their Here We Are campaign,
which highlights trans people's stories and the fullness of who
(00:56):
they are. Like I said yesterday, it is too often
that whenever we're talking about trans people, we're talking about
horrific policies that are being put out to dehumanize them.
We're talking about the deaths of black trans women. We're
talking about their lives in terms of tragedy as opposed
(01:17):
to the fullness of who these people actually are. And
we have to understand that narratives matter, right, stories matter,
and this is why this campaign is so important and
why I was so thankful for Shane and Nadia to
stop bi WOKF to talk to us about the importance
(01:37):
of sharing story and the importance of you know, GLAD
as an organization and ensuring that people see full and
complete narratives about queer people and not just what the
right right wants people to see and rather wants people
to be afraid of. So coming up next my conversation
(02:01):
with GLAD consultant Shane Diamond, Folks, I am very happy
to welcome to wok AP Daily Shane Diamond, who is
a consultant at GLAD on transgender advocacy and have been
a part of the Here We Are campaign. Shane talk
(02:26):
to us about Glad's decision to move into this space
of telling trans stories from a trans perspective, like having
people talk about themselves as opposed to being talked at.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
That's a great question, and thank you for having me
on the podcast. Big fan and really grateful to be
part of this discussion with you. Todayson, thank you. I've
been consulting with GLAD in this transgender advocacy position for
about a year and this project, this campaign called here
We Are is part of a larger LGBTQ metaging project
that GLAD is undertaking in part because our CEO and
(03:04):
executive director, Sarah Kate ellis recognize that there's just a
lack of positive trans stories and storytelling that is coming
from trans people ourselves, and this campaign specifically has been
a a storytelling campaign. How does it look? What does
it feel like when we put trans people in the
(03:27):
driver's seat and let them let us tell our own
stories and be It's been a research project to see
if the way that we are telling these stories actually
changes how people think about trans people.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
And want you to tell me there was a time,
because I'm old so I can say this, there was
a time when I remember when folks would ask how
many of you know a person that is and it
was at the time lesbian, are gay or bisexual? And
it was in the teens the teens of percentage in
number of people. Now when you ask people how many
(04:04):
folks know somebody that is LGBTQ plus, I believe it
is in like the eighty or ninety percentile. What is
that number for trans people specifically? Do you know? And
how has it grown over the years.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I do know the answer to that, and it's a
very interesting one.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
So GLAD every year conducts a survey called Accelerating Acceptance
to see where we are as a country in terms
of LGBTQ acceptance. So some of the questions on this
year's Accelerating Acceptance Survey, we're about, like what should we
talk about in schools? Like should kids have access to
safe schools? And in twenty twenty three, we asked non
(04:43):
LGBTQ people how many of them knew someone who is transgender,
and over seventy percent of participants said they did not
know someone who is transgender. And I just like to
sort of caveat that with they don't know someone that
transgender that they know of. So, because this is a podcast,
(05:05):
I'm a white guy with some scruffy facial hair and
a bad mustache, and I'm wearing like very hipster glasses
and a buzz cut and two little gold earrings and
like a button down shirt with pineapples on it. And
so if someone met me on the street, they might
not assume that I'm transgender, right right, So I have
(05:26):
the privilege of being assumed cisgender. And when when I
talk about sisgender, it is someone who's gender identity who
they know themselves to be on the inside, matches the
sex they were assigned at Earth. So if you see
me on the street or on the sidewalk or at
a coffee shop, you might not guess that I'm trans, right,
So when we say that seventy plus percent of Americans
(05:46):
don't know someone that's transgender, it's always that they know
of because the reality is that trans people are here.
We're in communities. We've been here, you know. We're holding
down jobs, we're back in groceries, we're trying at parallel park,
we're having families, having kids. And it is still kind
of surprising that so many people say they don't know
someone who's transgender, given that we are in communities all
(06:08):
of this country.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
And I think that to that point, it is because
of the fact that not everybody leads with their transness
right like, So if you are a person like to
your point, that is, and I'll use the term passing right,
meaning that I would look and be like, Okay, there's
a guy in a pineapple shirt, as I think that
most people would. If I'm not being told directly that
(06:33):
then you are trans, I could understand. I guess the
numbers and how that kind of works. And I think
there was a point in the accelerating acceptance of reporting
throughout the years where I think that one of the
questions was do you know I have an LGBTQ person
in your family, which I think then becomes like a
bit more specific, right, because then I have intimate knowledge
(06:56):
of said person, as opposed to do I know anyone
right exist in the world. Why do you think that
it is so important to have campaigns like this that
expressly offer narrative around the different stories and the different
ways in which people see themselves as trans.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Yeah, I want to back us up just for a
hot second, because it's very common usage to say, like
someone is cispassing. And I said this in conversation with
a colleague at GLAD who called me in and corrected
me around the history of passing as a term, and
that we know the term passing is traditionally historically referred
(07:44):
to light skinned black black people who are passing for white.
And in this language where sort of it becomes the goal,
whiteness becomes the goal, it becomes that the position of power.
And so if we say someone is passing is white passing,
it is putting more power into white supremacy. And so
(08:04):
as we talk about being cis passing, it makes it
seem like the goal. The goal is to appearance, yeah
is being cis and that cis being cisgender inherently has
more power and privilege and is thus desired by trans people.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
And I appreciate that. Please continue.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Yeah, no, just you know, it's like we live in
a country right now where medical access for trans care
is being banned, and so not every trans person is
interested in seeking to medically transition, and even for those
who are interested, they're unable to do so depending on
where they live. So thinking more about being assumed.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
To be cis gender, got it? Okay, But that was.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Something that passed on to me because I would I
said all the time that I was cis passing.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Yeah, oh okay, I get it.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
If we look at some of the statistics and we
see that over seventy percent of people say they don't
know someone who's transgender, how do we make these introductions
in a way that can do it on a large scale,
can do it effectively, and can keep trans people safe
in the process. Like I know, if you drop me
(09:13):
in any room, give me ten fifteen minutes, Like I
can change people's minds on what they think about trans
people or what it means to be transgender also entire
and like there's only one of these, thank goodness, And
so how do we do this on a larger scale
but also keeps trans people safe? And so much of
what we've heard and seen about trans people historically is
(09:38):
trans people who are playing like a tertiary character in
a show. And it's a lot of dead sex workers
and you know, people who are addicted to drugs, and
that's not the narrative for all trans people. And so
how do we put trans people, as I said, in
the driver's seat, to tell their own stories and to
tell their own stories of love and joy and happiness.
(10:00):
And what affect does this have on people who are
learning about trans people for the first time.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
I will share with you that my parents have asked me.
My mother owns a yoga studio and one of her
students was in the midst of transitioning and was talking
to her about it. They know that her daughter is
queer and so you know readily more you know, accepting
than other people. And my parents were just like, you know,
(10:30):
help us understand, help us understand and be better in
terms of how we talk and have conversations around this
idea of trans, non binary and what have you. And
what I appreciated about that is that, like, my parents
are boomers, and for them they were socialized in a
kind of way, but because their daughter is queer, they're
(10:52):
much more expansive in their thinking.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
And so.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
How do you utilize these different stories to kind of
move people who are seemingly assumed to be rigid in
their thinking, but they literally just don't know right. They
just want they want more access to language, they want
more access to stories so that they can begin to
(11:19):
wrap their minds around how our society has shifted over
the last you know, several decades.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I think that question is really at the heart of
some of the research and some of the questions we
wanted to answer ourselves in putting together this campaign and
this narrative framework. We have been working with ground Media
on this project for years. Glad and ground Media work
together on a video campaign two years ago, and they've
been just a joy to work with and they have
(11:46):
been spearheading a lot of the research and also the production.
So if you see the videos and you're like, wow,
this is wonderfully made, that is all thanks to ground Media.
But your question about like, how do we with seemingly
well meeting audiences, how do we help close that gap,
that knowledge gap, that experience gap in a way that's
not like you're terrible, we hate you because you got
(12:09):
this thing wrong. And that's been a lot of what
this research has been targeted on is what are the
necessary components in a story being told by a trans
person in thirty or sixty seconds that can effectively communicate
their transness and why people should care. And so our
(12:31):
hypothesis with this really was on the theme of trans truth,
which is being trans is a real thing. It's not contagious,
it's not communicable, it's not a whim that being trans
is as inherent a part of my identity as so
many other things as being Jewish. As I id, I
(12:52):
played college hockey, so I will always identify as a
hockey player, and being trans is an inherent, immute part
of my identity. And so we came at this trying
to speak to audiences who were undecided about their opinion
of trans people. So we asked audiences, we did a
(13:12):
huge survey before we started, do you think society has
gone too far or not far enough in their support
of transgender people? And what we identified as the movable
or winnable middle were people who responded in the like
three to seven on a one to ten scale. So
the way I think about this is, have you ever
seen Olympic diving?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I love Olympic diving actually, but yes, good.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
My gosh, I my body does not move like that.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
I don't understand how they enter the warder with no splash,
but that's got the point.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, in Olympic diving, they throw out you get seven scores,
and the judges throughout the highest of those score, so
you're only evaluated on the middle five. And that is
who are target audiences for this campaign. It's also how
I try to live by life, like, some people are
going to think I'm greater than slice bread and they
are wrong. And some people are going to think I'm
worse than a paper cut, and they are also wrong.
(14:01):
And the more that I spin my wheels trying to
change the opinions of those on the margins, the more
time I'm getting disheartened and dissuaded by what I'm seeing
or what I'm not seeing. So you were talking about
parents were boomers, And the way that we identified this
winnable middle audience is based on this question of do
you think society has gone too far or not far
(14:21):
enough in their support of trans people? And when we
looked closer at who was in this segment, we see
people from across the political spectrum. We see people who
have varied ages, who live all over the country, with
different levels of income and education. And so by cutting
this according to issue and not according to political party
(14:43):
or political ideology, we're able to cast a much wider
net in who the people are that we're trying to
move And before we ask people to do something different,
to behave differently around trans people, to practice better ally,
ship tips, to do their own research, before we're asking
(15:03):
the trans people that we meet about their identity in
their lives, we need to change how people think about
trans people. And our guess was that if we can
show people show audiences that being trans is, as you said,
just another part of someone's identity, are they more or
(15:24):
less likely to support a friend or a family member
who's trans, a child who's trands and sort of tertiarily like,
are they more likely to support policies that benefit trans people?
And across the board. Our research is showing that yes
to all of these things, that if we can change
(15:45):
how audiences think and understand trans people. In thirty or
sixty seconds, we see a positive increase in how likely
people are to accept a friend, a family member, a child,
an acquaintance who's transgender, and increase in their support for
policies that affect trans people, all by just talking about
(16:05):
trans people as people who have hobbies and jobs and
families and lives, love and goals like everyone else.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, because I think that, Look, the opposition knows this
that if I feed you enough stereotypes, if I feed
you enough fear, then I too can shift how you're
thinking about people as people. Right, I too can feed
you this steady diet of dehumanization, so that when it
comes time to vote on said policy or to vote
(16:37):
on said measure, that that's the narrative that's going to
be stuck in your mind. And so what you're doing
with this campaign is a disruption because in the absence
of being able to provide people from their perspective and
give them voice and platform to tell their own stories,
then their stories are told for them. And we know
that when those stories are told for them, they're told
(16:59):
in the negative. Shane with a couple of minutes that
we have left. As we're several weeks away from the
most consequential election in our lives. What do you want
people to think about when they are voting? What do
you want them to think about when they're voting with
(17:19):
regard to you know, there have been five hundred plus
anti trans bills that have popped up across this country.
There's been so much in terms of trying to dehumanize
and denigrate this population. What is it that you're hoping
that this campaign will bring to mind as people are
voting for, you know, the future?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Casual question to end us on.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Yeah, I'm good at that.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
I love it. I truly believe that we are all
capable of good and of love. I don't think people
are good people are bad people. I think we are
people who are full of a myriad of sometimes conflicting
beliefs or ideas. But I believe that we all think
that we're good people. And one of the things that
(18:08):
this campaign is really trying to disrupt is those among
us who believe they're good people, who believe they have
good intentions, who believe they're doing the right thing, and
still hold anti transgender or anti LGBTQ beliefs, and part
of this work is showing that those two things you know,
(18:31):
you can't necessarily have all the values that you think
you have and also believe in discrimination and trans people
are we are the lowest on the food chain in
terms of privilege and access and rights, and when we
all have equal rights and equal protections, it benefits everyone.
(18:53):
And that starts with those of us on the margins
or who hold intersectional identities. We need to focus on
those of us on the margins, lifting all of us up,
and that's how we achieve equitable just societies. So, as
people are coming into this election, there is so much
discord around this candidate or that candidate, and people who
(19:18):
are saying, I don't like either candidate and so I'm
going to vote this other way. And so what I
ask people to do when we go into the election
is not only to think about how the results of
this election are going to affect your life, but how
are the results of this election going to affect the
lives of those that you love? Yep, Because there are
(19:39):
two very very different possible outcomes, and a number of
people in this country will not be affected dramatically one
way or the other, but for the majority of us,
that's not the case. And so if you're coming into
the election and you're thinking about how how you're going
(20:00):
to vote, think about those in your community that you love,
and also just please vote. You know, I think we
had like forty percent of registered voters or people of
voting age in twenty twenty who didn't vote, and that
that could decide the election. So if you're if you're
not registered to vote, please register to vote. It varies
(20:21):
by state, and vote early and vote often if you can.
Because this is this is our bed and we got
to make it and then we got to sleep in it.
We can't do this by ourselves.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
Yeah, Shane, thank you so much for your work. It
is extremely important, and thank you very much for making
the time for WOKA. If really appreciate this and your
conversation Danielle.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
This has been a true joy. Thank you and for
all the listeners. The campaign can be found at herewe
Are now dot com. You can see videos and stories
from Nadia at GEO and Ashton as they sit down
with their families and talk about what it means to
be trans and what it means to love trans people,
which is not all that different from guessing many of
(21:06):
our own lives.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
That is it for me today. Dear friends on Woke
af AS always, power to the people and to all
the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.
Host
Danielle Moodie
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