0:12

Hello, everybody. Welcome to podcast.

0:15

I'm Matthew Remski. Remember,

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June thirteenth through the link at the bottom

0:40

of the show notes for this episode. This

0:43

is episode one hundred and forty three.

0:46

Trans reality, trans possibility

0:49

with Brink. If

0:53

you've been listening to our show for

0:55

long enough, you'll know that

0:57

spirituality is a ragged

0:59

spider web of ideas and commitments

1:02

that tries to map out and stitch

1:04

together a chaotic world. It's

1:06

a tango of conspiracy theories, positive

1:09

affirmations, a cautious record readings,

1:12

transmissions from the galactic federation,

1:14

satanic fetishes, poorly

1:16

pronounced sunscrip mantras, turmeric

1:19

supplements, and MLM pitches.

1:23

But all of these ragged threads

1:26

cover over something more

1:28

primal, and that would be

1:30

a pulsing sense of anxiety. That

1:33

we call body fascism. This

1:36

is the rigid, armored demand

1:39

that we must perfect our

1:41

bodies. In order to be healthy,

1:43

pure, virtuous, worthy

1:45

of the divine. It's the

1:47

defensive wBeau pious feeling

1:50

that we individually must

1:53

exhibit and enforce something we call

1:55

natural immunity, not only against

1:58

viruses, but against anything that

2:00

challenges our sense of moral cleanliness

2:03

or biological order. Many

2:07

vaccine hesitant folks cite

2:10

reasonable concerns about big

2:12

pharma profiteering, but those who

2:14

are truly seized with body fascism

2:17

seem to believe that any substance

2:19

entering their bodies from the modern

2:21

world will overtake and

2:23

corrupt them. Some

2:25

COVID skeptics plausibly wonder

2:28

whether masking will really help

2:30

cut transmission. But the

2:32

hardcore body fascist is

2:34

insulted by the idea that anything

2:37

foreign could enter them without

2:39

their knowing. Our

2:42

body fascists bigots Individual

2:46

members of the yoga and wellness

2:48

demographics we study might be explicitly racist

2:51

massages, homophobic, or

2:53

anti trans as they post about

2:55

preberthing, muscle tone, and green

2:58

drinks. But

3:00

there's a larger contingent whose body

3:02

fascism is internalized and nonverbal.

3:05

They nurture a vague but ever

3:07

present craving for things to be simpler,

3:10

older, easier to understand, and

3:13

homogenous. Their offered

3:15

countless consumer choices to feed

3:17

cravings for purity and virtue.

3:21

Bourgeois body fascism looks

3:23

for order a slower pace

3:26

for a nostalgic but regressed place

3:28

where the stories of childhood make sense

3:31

with princes and princesses played

3:33

by boys who are boys and girls

3:35

who are girls, a world in which

3:38

you don't have to think about JK

3:40

Rowling's politics. So

3:42

here we come to sex and gender.

3:45

Fashions and proper has always

3:47

been creepily obsessed with bodies

3:50

and genitals And in Europe, its

3:52

Eugenicist roots were soaked in fears

3:54

of white racial suicide or the

3:56

belief that sexually deviant

3:58

brown people enabled by Jews

4:01

were building their muscles and vitality

4:03

and their non urban connections

4:05

to the land and would eventually overrun the

4:07

fjords if white men didn't pump iron

4:10

and white women didn't stay pregnant. In

4:13

the nineteen twenties, the physical

4:15

culturists doled out fitness

4:17

protocols, and in the nineteen thirties,

4:19

the brown shirts fire bombed gay

4:21

and lesbian bars in Weimar Berlin,

4:24

and we know how that ended up. But

4:26

we also know how people fought back.

4:30

Today, we see the same

4:32

regressive violence blaring throughout

4:35

the right wing media sphere and

4:37

red state legislatures through

4:39

the groomer discourse, through

4:42

open attacks on the privacy, dignity,

4:44

and health care of queer and trans people.

4:47

But it also simmers in every

4:49

crunchy social media space where yoga

4:51

moms save the children from

4:54

GMO's and drag shows in

4:56

the name of preserving the divine masculine

4:58

and feminine. Meanwhile,

5:01

the liberal abandonment of

5:04

coalition politics and activism

5:06

in favor of individualism means

5:08

that support from would be allies

5:10

is tepid. Watching

5:12

Democrats trying to reason with

5:14

red pilled magma activists has

5:17

a real Neville Chamberlain visits

5:19

Berlin in nineteen thirty eight five to

5:21

it. So we've

5:24

covered this beat for three years. But

5:26

what we've taken far too long to do

5:28

is to host a trans person who

5:30

can give us both a frontline, personal,

5:33

and analytical report on

5:35

what it feels like and what it means

5:38

to live under the current regime of

5:40

moral panicry and legislative aggression.

5:43

So today, we welcome artist and

5:45

journalist Brink. Beau

5:48

has worked in digital publishing for a

5:50

decade moving from producing

5:52

feminist personal essays to editing

5:54

and training writers to data reporting

5:56

and finally into search engine optimization.

5:59

As an independent researcher, uses

6:02

SEO data to investigate online

6:05

hate networks, and all of this is

6:07

grounded in over twenty years of

6:09

activism and advocacy for the

6:11

LGBTQ plus community, starting

6:14

with leading his high school's queer straight

6:16

alliance and lobbying with Gleeson

6:19

as a student leader and continuing

6:21

through current day reporting on gay rights

6:23

and advocating for strategic improvements

6:26

to LGBTQ plus coverage

6:28

in the media. is a member

6:30

of the Trans journalist association, but

6:33

after hours, He's also an outsider

6:36

artist who works primarily with

6:38

cosmetics and crafting materials.

6:48

Bo Brink, welcome to Conspirituality

6:50

podcasts. Hello. Now,

6:52

we're going to dive into the

6:55

architecture of antiqueer and

6:57

anti trans hatred, but I wanna

6:59

just start by saying, I'm fifty one, I'm

7:02

white, I'm cisgendered, I'm male. In

7:04

what ways might I be prone

7:06

to totally fuck up this interview Do

7:08

you have any pointers for me? Remember

7:11

what time recording starts? Right.

7:15

I was late. Sorry,

7:19

I had to. Pointer number

7:21

one. Okay. Good. Pointer number one. Right.

7:25

No. But not to get too philosophical right

7:27

off the

7:28

bat. But what would it mean to fuck it up? Well,

7:30

I mean, offending you and then, like, getting

7:32

all canceled and then winding up with all the bad

7:34

feelings. So can you just take care

7:36

of me, please, to start. Now

7:39

isn't that but cis guys always ask

7:41

of people assigned

7:42

for your email at birth. Interesting. Right?

7:46

Interesting. No. I I think that

7:48

says folks have kind of worked yourselves up into

7:50

some very unnecessary anxiety

7:53

about making mistakes with trans people.

7:55

Mhmm. And that

7:57

the anti trans lobby,

7:59

so to speak, does a good job of reinforcing

8:02

and escalating what starts

8:04

out as well meaning anxiety by spreading

8:06

around videos of, for instance,

8:09

newly out middle aged trans

8:11

women having public freakouts when

8:13

they're misgendered, which is the exceptional

8:16

reaction to mistakes, not the rule

8:18

trans people are misgendered all the time and

8:21

most of the time we do not say

8:23

anything about it because believe it or not, we don't want

8:25

to draw attention to ourselves in public.

8:27

My, I guess, second pointer would be

8:30

it's okay to relax.

8:31

Okay. So I can I we need to do the yoga,

8:34

in other words? Yeah. You can do the yoga.

8:36

I'll do the transcendental meditation because I

8:38

did pay for my mantra. Alright.

8:40

Good. My second pointer is that when

8:42

cis people are talking to trans people about

8:45

trans issues. They almost always make

8:47

it about themselves, about

8:49

their lack of understanding around trans identity,

8:51

their with what we do to medically

8:54

alter our bodies, their sexual

8:56

disgust toward trans people, their

8:59

free speech quote unquote,

9:02

their own manhood or womanhood.

9:04

And in that sense, the trans debate or

9:06

the trans issue really isn't about

9:08

trans people at all. There's nothing

9:11

much to debate for trans

9:13

people. We're pretty settled on who we

9:15

are and what our understanding of gender

9:17

is with some variations within

9:19

the community, but it it

9:22

really becomes like the SIS issue

9:24

and the SIS debate when SIS people are

9:26

really just talking about their own anxieties.

9:28

Yeah. And because of that

9:30

tendency to make the conversation about yourselves,

9:33

trans people are rarely afforded

9:35

the curiosity with which SIS people

9:37

treat other SIS people. So

9:40

third pointer is try

9:42

to put your anxiety aside and

9:44

just stay curious about other

9:46

people. Now anti queer,

9:49

anti trans hatred is

9:51

at a boiling point. But

9:53

it's also nothing new. And in

9:56

our pre interview discussions, you

9:59

threw back to an old

10:01

piece of theater. You mentioned feeling

10:04

like hair schultz in

10:06

cabaret, which is the nineteen sixty six musical

10:08

by candor Edwin Master off. Maybe

10:11

listeners will know that Liza Minelle starred

10:13

in the famous film from nineteen seventy two.

10:16

But the setting is nearly

10:19

a century old. So let's just start

10:21

there. Who is hair schultz? And why do you

10:23

identify with him? Cabaret is

10:25

a play that's set in Weimar Germany right

10:28

as the Nazis are coming to power. In

10:30

the play, hair schultz is a Jewish

10:33

fruit merchant who lives in the same building

10:35

as the other main characters on the Nollendorf

10:37

plots, and he falls in love with their landlady,

10:40

Fresh Schneider. He's a hopeless romantic

10:43

and he and Far Schneider eventually decide to

10:45

get married despite being older and a little

10:47

jaded about romance and like what they

10:49

can expect out of their lives at that point.

10:51

And then at their engagement party,

10:54

Frode Schneider realizes just how many of

10:56

her friends and acquaintances are

10:58

in the Nazi party and to protect

11:01

herself in her older age, she decides

11:03

to call off the engagement. Hair

11:05

Schultz never wavers in his commitment

11:07

to staying in Germany and refuses

11:09

to fear the

11:10

Nazis, which is part way foolish,

11:12

but mostly I think an active hero

11:14

is No fries neither. Good morning.

11:17

Good morning, his shorts. New Aperous.

11:19

Fresh from the three

11:21

delicious, please. The haves

11:23

leader.

11:25

About the party last evening. I'm

11:27

afraid I do not remember it too well.

11:30

Was I that

11:30

initiated? Can you ever forgive

11:33

me?

11:33

For what? A few glasses of schnapps?

11:35

I

11:35

promise you no more drinking. On our wedding

11:38

day, you will be proud of

11:39

me. I'm already proud of you. But

11:43

as far as the wedding is concerned

11:46

--

11:47

Yes. -- there is a problem.

11:51

A new problem.

11:53

A new problem. New to me

11:55

because I had not thought about it.

11:57

But last night at the party,

12:00

My eyes were opened. And

12:05

I saw that one can no longer dismiss

12:07

the

12:07

Nazis. They are my friends

12:09

and neighbors, and how many others are

12:11

there? Of course, many. And

12:13

many are communists and socialists and social democrats.

12:16

So what is it? Do you wanna wait on the next election

12:18

and then decide?

12:21

But if the Nazis come to power.

12:23

You'll be married to a Jew, but

12:26

also a German, a German as much

12:28

as anyone. I need a

12:30

license to let my rooms if

12:32

they take that away. They would take nothing

12:35

away. And from

12:37

night night, it's not always a good thing to

12:39

settle for the lowest apple on the tree, the one

12:41

easiest to reach. Climb up

12:43

a little way. It is worth it. Up there,

12:45

the apples are so much more

12:46

delicious. And if I fall I

12:48

will catch you. I promise.

12:51

So this clip takes place just

12:53

after the engagement party where a

12:55

Nazi character denounces her Schultz as

12:58

not a German on the base of basis

13:00

of his Judaism. Here she'll insist

13:02

on his identity as a German that his Judaism

13:05

is important, but is

13:07

one part of a whole human being

13:09

also has a national identity. I

13:11

often feel the same way. Yes, I am

13:13

transgender and I am an American.

13:16

Beres trans is just one part

13:18

of who I am. And my citizenship

13:20

is another with all the ways that I

13:23

am obligated to my country and in all

13:25

the ways my country is obligated to

13:27

be. I try very hard to have faith

13:29

that America will weather the storm of

13:31

anti trans bigotry and come out

13:34

the other side more compassionate and

13:36

inclusive, and that

13:38

I will be able to stay in my home without worrying

13:40

about my safety and my husband's safe

13:42

and most of all, my child's

13:45

safety and stability. But

13:47

given the way that pundits across the political

13:49

spectrum talk about trans people, I'm

13:52

increasingly worried that that won't

13:54

happen. The philosopher Michael

13:56

Clifford has a great essay on fascist

13:59

aesthetics that compares fascism to an

14:01

ulcer eating away at the flesh of

14:03

the foot that it lives on, which is an analogy

14:06

for the way that fascism purports to

14:08

be nationalistic and patriotic

14:10

but destroys and consumes other

14:12

groups of its own citizens in order

14:14

to function. It's such an amazing point.

14:17

So to accomplish that

14:20

consuming of itself, fascism

14:23

has to claim that these marginalized groups

14:25

are not citizens. In

14:27

cabaret and in historical

14:30

fact, that claim is explicit.

14:32

Nazi propaganda outright says that

14:34

Jews aren't Germans. The way

14:37

that American anti trans politicians

14:39

and pundits make this claim isn't so

14:41

explicit yet, but it's implied in the ways

14:43

that they talk about trans people

14:45

and people of color religious minorities,

14:48

disabled people, fat people, poor people,

14:50

homeless people. They believe that

14:52

they are entitled to the privacy

14:55

of our homes and our

14:57

medical care to invade that privacy

14:59

in a way that they don't invade the privacy

15:01

of cis people. And

15:04

they constantly frame being cis

15:06

as if it's natural without

15:08

acknowledging that we have records of trans people

15:11

existing going back to

15:13

the literal beginning of recorded history

15:16

when I think it was, was it herodotus?

15:18

I don't know, but it was the scythean disease

15:22

in ancient history. They're establishing

15:24

trans people as a second class

15:26

and outside the realm of American

15:29

law and as invaders

15:31

into American culture and civic

15:34

life. A

15:36

colleague of mine told

15:39

me last week about TikTok

15:41

that she had seen where this

15:43

woman was talking about trans people

15:45

and saying, like, I invited

15:47

you into my home and now you're rearranging

15:49

the furniture. And it's like -- Wow.

15:52

Mary, you did not invite

15:54

me anywhere. I was born here.

15:57

Are you kidding me? But

15:59

that is that is the way that they talk

16:01

that not just the pundits and

16:03

politicians talk about us, but it's the way that

16:05

that, you know, the cis populace has started

16:07

thinking of trans people's Well, we welcomed

16:09

you

16:10

in. Well, we were already here. We

16:12

are America. It's very fucked up, but

16:14

in what particular way, we

16:16

invited you in you

16:19

were Beres, but what are they actually saying? They're saying,

16:21

we became aware of you, and now you're

16:23

ticking up psychic space within

16:25

us. We have to grapple with that. Is

16:27

that what they're saying? I guess. I mean,

16:29

the point that this woman made was I

16:31

waited thirty years to become a mother

16:33

and now you're telling me can't. Call myself

16:35

mother. It's like, Mary, yes, you can. You

16:37

can call yourself whatever you want. I don't care.

16:40

And I would point out, I waited thirty four

16:42

years to live as a man. Nobody's

16:44

gonna take that away from me. You know?

16:46

I feel the same way. And but

16:49

the thing is that, like, people are actually

16:51

trying to criminalize my exist instance where

16:53

she's complaining about people saying that, like, maybe

16:55

we should use more inclusive language about

16:57

parenthood. Rearranging the

16:59

furniture is an interesting way of putting it.

17:01

I mean, there is this assumption that

17:04

trans people want to dictate the way that

17:06

people think. I will tell you, I

17:08

think that there is a strain of that. I think there is a

17:10

strain of that. That there is a

17:12

huge anxiety in the trans

17:14

community based on the fact that we are being

17:17

targeted, harassed, killed, Beres

17:19

a huge anxiety that motivates some

17:21

trans people to advocate for completely

17:23

changing the way that we talk and think. And

17:27

I would hope that cis people would be reasonable

17:29

enough to understand that that where

17:31

that's coming from without feeling

17:34

like anybody's gonna knock down their door

17:36

and arrest them

17:37

for, honestly, for thinking

17:39

I'm a woman. I don't care if anybody thinks

17:41

I'm a woman. I just want to be referred

17:44

to the way that I

17:46

want to be referred to. I

17:48

follow a number of queer and trans

17:50

writers on Twitter, including those who

17:52

keep track of you know,

17:54

the real material at play,

17:56

the anti trans legislative efforts

17:59

in red states. Erin Reed

18:01

tracks daily legislative activities and

18:04

is always publishing these long lists of anti

18:06

trans Beres being introduced on, you

18:08

know, single days across the country.

18:10

And then just you know, at

18:12

the end of January, Alejandro Carabayo

18:15

tweeted out details from new bill tabled

18:17

in Arizona. She writes

18:19

a new introed bill in Arizona

18:21

would criminalize drag in

18:24

presence of a miner as a felony

18:26

punishable by up to fifteen years in prison

18:28

and a requirement to register as sex offender,

18:31

the bill defines drags as just

18:33

singing and dancing while wearing makeup.

18:36

And then a little bit earlier, she noted

18:38

There are now two forty two

18:40

anti LGBTQ introduced

18:42

bills with at least two thirty

18:45

eight of those being anti trans Beres.

18:47

That is more this year than in all of twenty

18:49

eighteen, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, and twenty

18:52

twenty one combined. This is a war on

18:54

trans existence. Then

18:56

on February first,

18:59

Trump went on rumble to

19:01

give an anti trans platform speech

19:05

for his assumed twenty twenty

19:07

four run. The speech is

19:09

super structured. He probably

19:12

does better here with teleprompter than

19:14

I've ever heard him

19:16

trigger warnings all the way around. Here

19:19

is the opening. The left wing

19:21

gender insanity being pushed in our children

19:24

is an act of child abuse, very

19:26

simple. Here's my plan

19:28

to stop the chemical, physical,

19:30

and emotional mutilation of

19:32

our youth. On day one,

19:34

I will revoke Joe Biden's

19:36

cruel policies on so called

19:39

gender affirming care, ridiculous,

19:42

a process that includes giving kids

19:44

puberty blockers, mutating

19:46

their physical appearance and ultimately

19:49

performing surgery on minor

19:51

children. Can you believe this?

19:54

I will sign a new executive order

19:56

instructing every federal agency to

19:58

cease all programs that promote

20:00

the concept of sect and gender

20:03

transition at any age. Okay.

20:07

Sorry. That's enough. That's enough. I

20:10

should note that goes on to say that he'll

20:13

bar federal money for any

20:15

gender affirming care and cut

20:17

Medicaid to Medicare funding for hospitals

20:19

that provide it. He's going facilitate

20:22

the suing of doctors who provide

20:24

gender affirming care he'll investigate

20:26

big pharma over profiteering from

20:28

gender affirming care. He'll investigate and punish

20:31

school teachers who teach about trans existence.

20:33

Quote, as part of our new credentialing body

20:35

for teachers, we will promote positive education

20:38

about the nuclear family, the roles

20:40

of mothers in fathers and celebrating rather

20:42

than erasing the things that make men and women

20:44

different and unique unquote, no

20:47

serious country should be telling us children that they

20:49

were born with the wrong gender,

20:51

a concept that was never heard of

20:54

in all human history. Nobody's ever heard

20:56

of this. What's happening today? It was all

20:58

when the radical left invented it

21:00

just a few years ago. Alright. So

21:02

the hits keep coming and it's

21:04

like too fast to track and just

21:07

a few days ago, Candice Owens is

21:09

on her daily Wire show, outright calling

21:11

trans people demonic Carabio

21:14

uses the term war to describe

21:17

this landscape. So Bo is is

21:19

war a good descriptor here with its implications

21:22

of

21:22

casualties, and refugees.

21:25

God, first of all, I'm not

21:27

gonna give an accounting of all the

21:30

lies and inaccuracies there because

21:32

other people have done a better job, but

21:34

to answer your question, yes, I'm gonna

21:36

I'm gonna answer yes, two ways.

21:39

But yes, it's a better descriptor than a lot

21:41

of cis folks who give credit for. So

21:44

as far as Trump goes, I need

21:46

cis people to understand that the stakes for trans

21:48

people are way higher than

21:51

sports or pronouns. The

21:54

first gender affirming surgery I got was

21:56

a total hysterectomy. So

21:58

like every cis woman who's had a total

22:00

hysterectomy for other valid medical

22:02

reasons, my body no longer produces

22:04

sex hormones. If I don't take hormones,

22:07

I will enter menopause and develop osteoporosis,

22:10

and I'm only thirty six. I

22:12

will be hobbled and living in

22:14

excruciating pain for the rest of

22:16

my life and all to satisfy something

22:19

as trivial as cis people's discomfort

22:21

and lack of understanding something

22:23

that they could go ahead and remedy on their own

22:26

without depriving me of completely

22:28

appropriate medical care. And

22:31

to be clear, nobody's going to force

22:33

me to take estrogen ever

22:34

again. Okay. So can you say a little

22:36

bit more about this because under

22:38

proposed gender affirmation treatment

22:42

bans, you could be

22:44

barred from HRT, but

22:46

Is there also an implication that

22:49

you would be forced to chemically retrans?

22:52

Like, if that's possible? Or

22:54

Is that a choice you'd be forced into to

22:56

try to prevent downstream health challenges?

22:59

The first thing I would point out is that cis

23:01

men don't go through menopause. So

23:03

if I'm taken off of testosterone and I go into

23:05

menopause all of sudden I'm in cis body again,

23:08

cis woman's body again. So that is in

23:10

and of itself a sort of chemical

23:13

transition. The other thing I would say

23:15

is that I don't think that since people

23:17

really appreciate the cognitive and emotional

23:19

changes that you go through on on

23:22

hormone therapy. I

23:24

I can't speak to what it's like being on estrogen

23:27

for a trans woman, but for me,

23:29

a lot of things about cis men became a lot

23:32

clearer once I started testosterone.

23:34

And there are emotional patterns

23:37

and cognitive patterns that

23:41

are that happen due to your

23:43

primary sex hormone. So

23:45

going off of testosterone in

23:48

addition to going into menopause and those

23:50

physical changes would also cause

23:53

cognitive changes that I really don't

23:55

want. The thing about saying, like, I

23:57

never could've go on estrogen again is more of

23:59

a preemptive thing. A lot of

24:01

cis people treat being trans as if

24:03

trans people could just choose to live

24:05

as cis people if we wanted to.

24:08

And in this case, like, I could imagine

24:11

me saying, like, I'll develop osteoporosis

24:13

and have Swiss cheese Beres. And

24:16

they could say, like, oh, well, you could just take estrogen,

24:18

you know? But the the answer is

24:20

no. Imagine looking in

24:22

the mirror and seeing a face and body

24:25

that didn't belong to you and didn't

24:28

reflect to other people who

24:30

you are. I did that

24:32

every day for thirty four years.

24:35

I spent half of my energy

24:38

trying to act like a woman and

24:40

understand on what it's like to be a woman

24:42

and project womanhood when

24:44

I'm not a woman every

24:46

day for thirty four Beres.

24:49

Transitioning, removed those

24:51

burdens and allowed me to live with the

24:53

ease and sense of self that cis people get

24:55

to have by default. Right.

24:57

Going back on estrogen would

25:00

kill who I am. It

25:02

would kill me spiritually, emotionally,

25:06

I I mean, it might be a little melodramatic to

25:09

say maybe physically, but for some trans

25:11

people, that is true. Not wBeau

25:14

forced back into the closet is a dust

25:15

set. For a lot of trans people. When the chemistry

25:18

is involved, the changes are so disregulating

25:21

and disorganizing that the person

25:23

becomes a stranger to

25:24

themselves. Again, Okay. I mean,

25:26

that's Dysportia. That's gender Dysportia. You

25:28

are a stranger to yourself. Yeah. That's a good way putting

25:31

it. One way I kind of grotesque way

25:33

of putting it when I was starting

25:36

my transition is that I feel like I'm wearing a

25:38

skin suit, you know.

25:41

Yeah. It's that you had been wearing a skin

25:43

suit. And that now

25:45

that was gonna come off. Yep. Yeah.

25:48

Amazing.

25:50

I am I am so determined to

25:52

live as a man that I would rather

25:55

have osteoporosis for the rest of my

25:57

life than ever go on estrogen. But

25:59

those shouldn't be my only two choices No.

26:04

No. Okay. Alright. So

26:06

when Donald Trump threatens to put up barriers

26:09

to act assessing gender affirming healthcare

26:11

that were this high. It's

26:13

not a trivial threat. It's not something that

26:15

trans people can just adapt to a workaround.

26:18

It's an existential threat, and I mean that

26:20

not in terms of saying he'll wipe out our

26:22

culture, but in terms of saying, we

26:24

will become at least preventably disabled

26:27

and some of us will die. At

26:29

the same time, it is also

26:31

the culture that is particularly

26:33

egregious to reactionary. So,

26:35

lips of TikTok might target individual

26:39

LPGTQ plus people on

26:41

Twitter But the overall target

26:43

is abstract. So they talk about

26:45

the elites or the transhuman agenda

26:47

or grooming in our schools. And

26:50

so to me, this makes it all the more

26:52

important to emphasize the material

26:54

impacts on real people when their medications are taken

26:56

away with their privacies and treated upon.

26:58

Right. You know, they mean the Jews,

27:00

doctors, and trans people when they say the

27:03

elites, the transhuman agenda, grooming

27:05

in our schools. And they're using these dog

27:07

whistles so they have plausible deniability when

27:09

someone rightly calls them out for it.

27:12

They're concerned about covering their asses.

27:14

While I'm concerned about weather

27:17

and how long my family can safely stay

27:19

in the US in the political

27:21

environment that they're creating. But

27:23

in terms of the question of it, like, is

27:26

war a

27:28

good term here? I also wanna

27:30

point out that most folks tend

27:32

to see the current wave of transphobia

27:34

as its own distinct event or an isolated

27:37

war on trans people. But

27:39

it's actually an extension of a culture

27:41

war that started decades ago. So

27:43

to give you a timeline, the culture war started

27:45

because on the one hand, from nineteen

27:47

forty four to nineteen seventy four, you had the beat

27:50

generation in sixties counter culture

27:52

-- Right. -- in nineteen fifty

27:54

four through nineteen 6D8, you have the civil rights

27:56

movement, which saw the passage of

27:58

the civil rights act and the fair housing act,

28:01

nineteen sixty four to nineteen sixty five. You know, this

28:03

is a piece of history that I wish more people

28:05

at my age had context into,

28:07

but you had LPGA's great society

28:10

programs, which included the war on poverty.

28:12

Various civil rights, voting, education, consumer

28:15

protection acts, the creation

28:17

of the national endowments for the arts and humanities,

28:20

the job corps, the peace corps, and a lot

28:22

more. All these programs benefited the most

28:24

vulnerable Americans, and the war on poverty

28:27

drastically reduced both the raw

28:29

number and the percentage of Americans in

28:31

poverty. I really like this timeline. Right?

28:34

In in sixty five, you also had the HeartSeller

28:36

Act, which reduced limitations on immigration

28:39

and increase the rate of immigration to the US. And

28:41

then from the late sixties through the

28:43

eighties, you had the women's lip movement and the

28:45

gay lip movement. So this is really

28:47

the progress timeline, but I think

28:49

you're gonna tell me about something else going on

28:51

too. Yeah. And stop me if this sounds familiar,

28:54

but there was an immediate backlash. To

28:56

these civil and human rights movement, to counter

28:58

culture, and to these policy initiatives that

29:01

benefited Americans of color in the poor,

29:03

So on the other hand, you have

29:06

in nineteen sixty seven and nineteen

29:08

sixty eight, you have the creation of the Hyde

29:10

School in Sidew, which were the first Tripleteen

29:12

schools as We know them now.

29:14

In sixty eight, Nixon ran

29:16

on a promise of welfare rollbacks. Also,

29:19

the population bomb was

29:22

published which kicked off the

29:24

racist and anti immigrant zero

29:26

population growth movement, seventies,

29:29

widespread back clash to welfare based

29:31

on the racist narrative that welfare

29:33

enables people of color to be to

29:35

be lazy and take handouts. Seventy

29:37

one, you had the war on drugs, which now we

29:39

understand is a targeted assault on the black

29:42

community. Nineteen eighty,

29:44

Stabi of the thousand earlier. Michelle

29:46

remembers was published, which kicks off

29:48

the satanic planet. Eighty

29:51

one the first attempts to

29:53

abolish the national endowments for the arts,

29:55

which was justified by moralizing about

29:58

which projects the MEA funded, which included

30:00

projects by gay artists, which you could argue

30:03

was the first official push of

30:05

the culture war, at least in the

30:07

eighties?

30:07

Yeah. The most visible and sort of

30:09

visceral push would say. Right.

30:12

Yeah. Eighty one,

30:14

Reagan dismantles the office of economic

30:16

opportunity, which was established during the great

30:19

society programs. Eighty one, you

30:21

also had the first cases of AIDS in

30:23

the US. In eighty four, you had

30:25

the creation of the Cor Corrections Corporation

30:27

of America, which officially establishes the

30:29

private prison industry. In

30:32

the nineties, politicians across

30:34

the spectrum adopt the super

30:36

predator theory of crime, which

30:38

creates a media narrative of crime that suggests that

30:40

criminality is an inborn trade. And in this

30:42

case, it's inborn black people, but

30:44

it goes on to include trans and gay

30:46

people with the groomer of. Ninety

30:49

three, Clinton puts through

30:51

don't ask Total. Ninety six,

30:54

Clinton cuts the legs out of out from

30:56

under welfare with a Fair Reform

30:58

Act. And then in ninety

30:59

six, you had the Defense of Marriage Act.

31:01

So that's the really bad timeline. It's

31:04

the darkest timeline, and we're living in it

31:06

still.

31:06

Because, really, I

31:10

you could continue this on to include

31:12

things like Citizens United or

31:15

the attack on Muslims and Seeks after

31:17

nine eleven or the panic over

31:19

trans people. I'm kinda

31:21

stopping here in the in the mid nineties because

31:23

I to me, this is the point at which all

31:26

of these tactics on

31:28

the part of centrist

31:31

and conservative politicians harden

31:34

into a go to strategy that

31:37

they can use anytime that

31:39

marginalized groups challenge the status

31:41

quo. And and these policies have

31:43

resulted in the deaths of millions of Americans.

31:46

Now I imagine that you've

31:47

brought numbers with you. I

31:49

can't not. Yeah. So

31:53

to be as brief as possible, as

31:55

a result of the war on welfare, One

31:57

in seven Americans now depend on food banks

31:59

for nutrition. And just in twenty

32:02

twenty, nine thousand one hundred and fifty

32:04

two children under the age of

32:06

fourteen died due to malnutrition.

32:09

As a result of the war on teenagers and

32:11

the counterculture, American parents

32:14

put their children into troubled teen schools be

32:16

kidnapped tortured and in the cases of

32:18

at least one hundred and fifty nine children

32:20

killed at their parents' behest. And

32:23

that's not even touching the three hundred and

32:25

thirty one thousand children who have experienced

32:27

gun violence in American schools since

32:29

columbine, while American politicians

32:31

refuse to do anything to help. As a

32:33

result of the war on civil rights in black Americans,

32:36

we created a war on drugs that fed a disproportionate

32:38

number of black people into prisons that exploit

32:41

their labor. In a form of modern

32:43

day slavery between two thousand

32:45

one and twenty nineteen, eight

32:47

thousand five hundred and seventy three prisoners

32:50

died of unnatural causes in state and

32:52

federal prisons, which is to say nothing of the

32:54

hundred and thirty five unarmed black people

32:56

who died in police shootings just between

32:58

twenty fifteen and twenty twenty one,

33:00

and you could really cite endless

33:03

data about the number of black people who have

33:05

died at the hands of the state. As a result

33:07

of the war on gay Americans, Reagan intentionally

33:10

ignored the aids epidemic for as long

33:12

as possible to cater to his homophobic base

33:14

in between nineteen eighty one and twenty six

33:16

seen six hundred and seventy five thousand

33:19

Americans died due to AIDS. Incredible.

33:21

Yeah. All the while, our politicians,

33:24

conservatives and particular, but with the complicity

33:26

in policy making of liberals, have

33:28

raised moral panic after moral

33:30

panic to justify this legislative violence

33:32

against the most vulnerable Americans. Whether

33:35

those panics are over drugs,

33:37

welfare, immigration, super predators,

33:40

feminist gay people, trans people, or unruly

33:42

kids. The antitrust bills that

33:44

are being proposed and passed now are just

33:46

conservatives once again, falling

33:48

back on the same old strategies to uphold

33:51

the status quo. I don't even really

33:53

need to cite specific murders of trans people

33:55

to call this war. The culture war has had

33:57

millions of casualties over the past decades,

34:00

and most of them weren't individual acts

34:02

of violence against marginalized

34:03

people. They were acts of state violence against

34:05

American citizens. Okay. So all of these

34:07

themes bring us to

34:09

the artist Felix Gonzalez

34:12

Torres. We were

34:14

emailing in preparation for this and

34:16

you asked me to read an essay by

34:18

him called public and

34:20

private spheres of influence. And you

34:22

told me it has very deeply

34:25

informed the way I think about these issues. So

34:27

we'll get to the essay,

34:29

which will return to the themes that you've just been

34:32

articulating. But First

34:34

off, why is Gonzales towards

34:36

important to you as an artist in finger?

34:38

So I might cry.

34:41

I'm gonna try not to cry. Okay.

34:44

So III mean,

34:46

I first encountered his work

34:49

when I was much younger. Because

34:51

the Art Institute of Chicago has a fair

34:53

number of his his art works, and

34:55

I grew up here. But I

34:58

started studying his artwork when I was

35:00

in college. And at the time,

35:03

I was in a

35:05

long term abusive relationship. I

35:08

had taken this class on contemporary art, basically,

35:10

to say, like, I don't get contemporary art.

35:13

So I'm gonna take a class on it and see if they can

35:15

convince me to like it. Right.

35:18

Which they did. It was really

35:22

the right time for me to come

35:24

across this. This relationship

35:28

had abuse dynamics that I think

35:30

a lot of straight cis

35:32

people wouldn't really understand he

35:34

had isolated me from my family. He had isolated

35:37

me from my friends from people

35:39

who knew who

35:41

I was and what I valued. In

35:43

high school, I was very,

35:46

very involved in in LGBT activism.

35:48

That that died the minute that I started

35:51

dating Missouri Senate, Lutheran. No

35:53

offense. It was recent at Luther and Allies.

35:56

This one was particularly hardcore. So

35:59

I started studying

36:01

this gay artist and when

36:04

I learned when I

36:09

Gonzales Torres was

36:11

deeply in love with his partner Ross,

36:15

deeply in love with his partner Ross.

36:17

And the artwork that I got really

36:19

involved with was the artwork untitled

36:21

portrait of Ross in LA. So

36:23

this is a pilot handy. That's a

36:25

hundred and seventy five pounds,

36:28

which was Ross' weight when he was healthy.

36:31

Felix and Ross both had AIDS

36:33

and they knew that they were imminently

36:35

dying. So Gonzalez

36:38

Torres made a lot of artwork about this and

36:41

and portrait of Ross in LA that was,

36:43

you know, when they were living together for the first

36:45

time and maybe the happiest they had ever Beres, but

36:47

Ross was dying. He was wasting away

36:49

before before Felix's eyes

36:52

and So this

36:54

this pile of candy, you're invited as

36:56

the viewer to take from it,

36:59

and in

37:01

taking from it, you are reenacting

37:05

Ross' death, the wasting

37:07

away of his body, and at

37:10

the same time. I mean, this is this is

37:12

a a pile of candy that's like it's

37:14

those hard candies that are fruit flavored

37:16

and wrapped in like multi

37:18

colored cellophane and it's beautiful.

37:21

I mean, when you come across it in the museum,

37:23

it it's it's sparkling and gorgeous

37:25

and it's on the floor which is unusual and

37:28

what's really cool about it is, like, it's like

37:30

right at kids level. So if you go there

37:33

on a field trip day,

37:35

you can see kids like turn the corner,

37:37

see this artwork, and just Beres

37:40

for it and start digging their little hands

37:42

and stuffing their pockets full of candy. And

37:46

that's the way that Felix felt about

37:48

Ross. And

37:49

that's, I mean, how beautiful

37:52

I believe I remember reading

37:54

an article about it or seeing

37:56

it in the magazine and thinking that was

37:58

the most extraordinary idea I'd ever heard

38:01

of. It's exceptional. And I

38:03

had spent so long working

38:05

with people when I was a teenager

38:08

working with people who had AIDS. And

38:10

I knew what they had been through

38:12

in the nineties and the eighties

38:15

and it is

38:17

an incredible act

38:19

of to

38:21

be loved like that, to be

38:23

loved to be awesome, to be loved like

38:25

that. I mean, Gonzales Torres

38:27

created eternal life for

38:29

his gay partner. Yeah. You

38:31

know, he created a body that wouldn't

38:33

die because the museum has to keep refilling

38:36

it. So it lives

38:38

forever. This is something super

38:41

important because that stipulation

38:43

about the installation that

38:46

the the gallery has to replenish

38:48

the pile is

38:50

also Gonzales Torres's way,

38:53

I think of saying, that institutions

38:55

can mitigate the disappearance of

38:58

our loved ones. Like, as a society,

39:00

we can actually account

39:03

for and

39:05

and help preserve the memory

39:07

of those that we love. Absolutely.

39:10

And whereas the the the children and all of

39:12

the other participants are actually like, they

39:14

are reenacting, but also sort

39:16

of existentially performing a

39:19

participation in his death, but also

39:21

taking away with them a kind of sweet memory

39:24

of who this person was that they never

39:27

met. And in that way, he

39:29

is disappearing. Society is

39:32

in in, like, tasked with

39:34

keeping him there at the same time, like, exactly.

39:36

And that's what makes him a political

39:38

thinker. Right? Let

39:39

me get to the politics in a second, but let me

39:41

just

39:41

Yeah. I'm so sorry. Sorry. Yeah.

39:45

No. There is

39:47

this quote that I have here from an

39:49

interview that he gave and he says,

39:52

love gives you the space and the place

39:54

to do other work. Once that space

39:56

is filled, once that space was covered

39:58

by Ross, that feeling of home, then

40:00

I could see, then I could hear,

40:03

and that struck

40:05

me so hard

40:07

being in an abusive relationship.

40:10

It hits to you in a very personal

40:13

and transformative way. And

40:16

then I think you

40:18

also become aware that he's

40:21

also like political scientist. Yeah.

40:24

Very much. You dug up an old

40:26

lecture for us

40:28

where Gonzalez Torres is is speaking

40:30

at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago,

40:33

and he's reading from

40:36

a bit of this essay after this fascinating

40:39

discussion of how the art world makes

40:42

ideology invisible Yeah.

40:44

It's no accent. That culture is

40:46

not the new battleground.

40:48

After all, the economic and social changes

40:50

that the brick and June sought to

40:52

bring about another accomplished deal. Our

40:54

national deficit in nineteen eighty was seventy

40:57

four billion, but by nineteen ninety, we had

40:59

deficit two twenty one billion. In

41:01

nineteen eighty, the ratio of the U. S. Government

41:03

budget for housing to its budget for

41:06

the military was one to

41:07

five. By nineteen eighty one, nineteen

41:10

eighty nine, it was one dollar for housing and

41:12

thirty You know, so I think

41:14

we can hear how strongly

41:16

he echoes in your own analysis.

41:19

That's from nineteen ninety four. He died

41:21

two years later if it's related causes of the age

41:23

of thirty eight -- Yep. -- for fuck's sake.

41:25

And so he starts

41:28

the essay with, it's no accident,

41:30

the culture is the new battleground. He

41:32

goes on as you have to list the

41:34

accomplishments of repressive capitalism.

41:37

I think he's saying that

41:39

once the powerful of exerted control

41:41

over the money, what's left is

41:43

to come after bodies and minds. But

41:46

what else does Gonzales torres say in this

41:48

essay in a

41:49

nutshell? The thesis is

41:52

that, as he says, there's

41:54

there's no such thing as a private sphere,

41:56

not when the state claims that has a

41:59

vested interest in what happens in the bedroom.

42:01

was referring especially to the

42:04

nineteen eighty six Supreme Court case, Bowers

42:06

v Hardwick, which decided that there's

42:08

no constitutional protection for the practice

42:10

of sodomy, specifically when

42:12

it's between two men. And states were

42:15

at will to outlive, essentially making

42:17

possible for states to criminalize having

42:19

gay sex. This wasn't undone until

42:21

the two thousand three case, Lawrence v Texas

42:24

decided that it was a violation of the due process

42:26

clause to criminalize consensual sexual

42:29

conduct between two adults of the

42:31

same sex, which was seven years after

42:33

Gonzalez Torres died. And by the way,

42:35

Greg Abbott wants to take Lawrence v Texas

42:37

back to the Supreme Court now that has a religious

42:39

conservative

42:40

majority. Yeah. This is the governor

42:42

of Texas. And just to underline it,

42:44

for a moment, if Lawrence

42:46

v Texas is overturned, the

42:48

state could prosecute anyone

42:50

for consensual sexual behavior of the

42:52

privacy of their

42:53

homes. That's Is that the deal? Yeah. Yes.

42:55

And Ken Paxton, the attorney general in Texas,

42:58

has said that he would enforce it. I would

43:00

not underestimate these people.

43:03

They are trying to create a registry of

43:06

trans people in Texas at the moment.

43:09

So they are violently

43:13

in favor of of these

43:15

incredibly appalling repressive

43:18

policies. And

43:21

and in favor of criminalizing

43:24

gay and trans people. And

43:26

and that's a great example of Gonzales, Torres's

43:28

point. You know, it

43:31

it Beres like he's saying essentially that

43:34

when the corporate state cannot

43:36

be moral, When it's shown to

43:38

be immoral, it has to invent

43:41

and to prosecute immorality in

43:43

its

43:43

citizens. Do you think that's

43:45

fair? Yes. I'm

43:48

trying to think of maybe a more layperson's

43:50

way of putting it. Right.

43:53

That's always good.

43:54

Yeah. That's that's what I'm constantly

43:57

trying to do. Yeah. Let's let's let's work it out.

43:59

It would be it would be you

44:01

need somebody to blame. Mhmm. And

44:03

we will find the blame worthy

44:06

group for you to --

44:08

Yes. -- you know, exercise yourselves upon.

44:10

Right. And that is despite the fact that

44:14

our politicians are the people

44:16

who are creating the conditions in which you do

44:18

not have a fulfilling life. They

44:21

are depriving us of

44:24

the opportunities that we

44:26

had decades ago. Not

44:29

all of us, not equally, but, you

44:31

know, there was progress in the right direction.

44:34

They have deprived us of that progress. They

44:36

have done everything they can to stymie

44:38

progress. Of course, people are unsatisfied

44:41

with their lives. And yeah, they

44:43

find the targets to distract from the

44:45

fact that they should be

44:47

the targets of our iron

44:49

disgust.

44:50

Now, so do you imagine that as economic

44:54

and institutional crises continue

44:56

to crest that the pressure

44:58

will continue to increase? Yes.

45:02

I think if the arc

45:05

of history tells us anything, the attacks

45:07

will increase until they're too extreme

45:09

and violent for sis people

45:11

to ignore and then it'll start getting better.

45:14

Although with gay people

45:16

being roped into the trans panic, it's like

45:19

we're kinda going backward on that too, but

45:21

I think Matthew Shepherd

45:23

was probably the turning point for a lot of

45:25

straight people in terms of gay rights.

45:27

But I think it's really notable that it took

45:29

one good looking white guy to be

45:31

brutally murdered on the side of the road

45:34

for straight people to start carrying despite

45:36

the fact that for two decades, the government

45:39

had neglected the aids crisis and

45:41

and killed hundreds of thousands of gay

45:43

men. Who knows who will have

45:46

to die and how brutally they

45:48

will have to die in order for cis

45:50

people to start caring

45:52

about trans rights as

45:54

a group and who knows

45:56

how many trans people will die via state violence

45:59

in the meantime.

46:00

Fascinating that you bring up Matthew Shepherd because

46:02

I think that also emerges in a completely

46:04

different media landscape in which something

46:06

about the reporting and something about

46:08

the imagery could

46:11

not be ignored. And

46:13

today, it seems like as

46:15

soon as something appears on Twitter,

46:17

it can be spun or it can

46:19

be -- Yeah. -- named as a deep

46:21

fake or it can be

46:24

there's a there's a reality distortion principle

46:26

at play here as well that I think is very

46:28

confounding. Yeah. I have to wonder

46:30

if maybe there's a

46:32

lot of cis people out there who think that trans

46:35

people don't have it that bad. Because

46:37

of this reality distortion. It's like,

46:39

live our lives, you know? Like,

46:42

go touch grass, come out and meet

46:44

us, find out what our lives are actually

46:46

like, get off of

46:47

Twitter, and maybe you'll find out that

46:49

no, we're not exaggerating, but it is that

46:51

bad. Right.

46:52

But I and kinda to that

46:55

point, Chaya

46:57

Ryzhik has already used Lids of TikTok.

47:00

To incite bomb threats against children's hospitals

47:02

on the basis of lies about gender affirming care

47:04

for children. There's also a sort of

47:07

click of anti trans activists who are waging

47:09

a very effective astroturfing campaign

47:11

by forming overlapping advocacy

47:13

groups that focus on gender medicine and de

47:15

transition. The Society for Evidence

47:17

Based Gender Medicine is the best known of these

47:20

groups, but also includes Gensbach, rethink

47:22

identity, medicine, ethics, gender

47:24

health, query, lots of, like,

47:26

groups with, like, really legitimate sounding

47:28

names. Yeah.

47:34

But, yeah, these are these are a

47:37

bunch of social workers,

47:39

a couple of actual, like, MDs,

47:42

some physicians, but none of them

47:44

have any experience in gender

47:46

medicine And they don't they

47:48

may have worked with some dtransitioners, but

47:51

they don't specialize in gender medicine or

47:53

work with trans people on a regular basis.

47:56

You know, that's that's training that you have

47:58

to do to

48:00

be, like, qualified to speak on this stuff and

48:02

they haven't gone through that training. They completely

48:06

misrepresent the research on

48:08

gender medicine and and on transition.

48:11

They they really warp data

48:13

and intentionally misinterpret

48:17

scientific research to make

48:19

it seem like there's more of a consensus

48:21

than there actually is that gender medicine

48:23

might be dangerous as they are waging

48:25

a really, really effective campaign. The

48:27

Alabama attorney general cited

48:30

them while defending anti

48:32

trans laws. Like, on the record,

48:35

and that is the political activity

48:37

that if they're not they're not gonna bother

48:40

with town hall meetings because

48:42

who needs to go to town hall meet and then say

48:44

that stuff, when you can get the information

48:46

out there, the misinformation, the disinformation

48:49

out there, and have an inflame

48:52

conservatives so that they can go

48:54

to the town hall meetings. You know,

48:56

it's it's pretty sophisticated. You

48:59

know, a team of Yale researchers found

49:01

that the quote unquote

49:03

research on on SCGM's website

49:06

is actually mostly

49:08

just opinion letters that they write

49:10

to the editors medical journals, and then

49:13

they'll link to them on their website as if

49:15

this is actual medical research because they'll

49:17

be able to

49:17

say, oh, this was published in XYZ Journal.

49:20

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. They'll they'll write

49:22

a letter to the editor and then link. And because

49:25

the link goes to the

49:26

journal, they'll say it's peer reviewed research.

49:28

I don't know that they'll say that as peer reviewed research,

49:30

but I think that they're hoping that nobody

49:33

will actually click through the link and see that

49:35

it's just an opinion

49:36

piece. And also, I mean, there's not that much like

49:38

scientific literacy in the public. So

49:40

-- Right. -- I don't think that lot of

49:42

people understand how to evaluate

49:45

scientific research or methodology or

49:47

even understand what

49:50

is research and what is

49:52

an opinion piece. We cover

49:54

this all the time in relation to how

49:57

vaccine science is presented

49:59

by right wing activists.

50:02

Right? It's the same thing. Yeah.

50:05

And also, there's a similar dynamic with

50:07

people who might have medical

50:10

or academic credentials in one area who

50:12

have no real research experience or

50:15

on the ground experience with trans people. Stepping

50:17

out of their lane and using their credentials to

50:20

sort of charismaticly

50:22

suggest that they have some

50:24

specialized knowledge where they don't. Yeah. And

50:26

I would say, like, to cis listeners,

50:28

like, if you hear

50:31

the guy who's talking about this stuff when it

50:33

comes to COVID vaccines, and you're like, wow,

50:35

that's really objectionable. Go and

50:37

look at what they're doing with gender medicine. Like,

50:40

it's the same thing. You know, we need

50:42

to object to it as hard as

50:44

we do when it's when it's vaccines. Right.

50:47

These groups are being cited by policymakers

50:49

as justification for anti trans.

50:52

Fear mongering in legislation and

50:54

they're being cited and or

50:57

uncritically linked to by publications like

50:59

the Daily Mail, the New York Post, Medscape

51:01

is really bad about this. Newsweek,

51:04

The New York

51:05

Times, holy

51:08

There's stuff that the New York Times has published

51:10

about gender medicine is reprehensible.

51:13

This is despite the fact that the people who comprise

51:15

these groups have no real quality occasions

51:18

to inform policy or the public. And if cis

51:20

allies don't start holding themselves, the

51:22

media, and politicians accountable for

51:24

factual accuracy around trans identity,

51:27

and around gender medicine, twenty twenty

51:29

four is going to be a bloodbath for the trans

51:31

community psychologically

51:33

and emotionally for sure, but it look

51:36

at what happened at Club Q. It might also be

51:38

in terms of actual human loss. And, you know,

51:40

that is something that Chiara Ryzhik and

51:42

Alex Jones really want is human

51:45

loss.

51:46

If I zoom in on my own experience

51:49

many years ago of being confused

51:52

and triggered by the reality of trans

51:54

existence, I

51:56

feel like I know something about where

51:58

some of this is coming from,

52:01

if we set the politics aside, I guess.

52:04

Because I remember getting to know a

52:06

trans colleague as a friend and

52:08

having these weird bodily sensations

52:11

that curled up around questions like

52:13

you know, why don't they just accept themselves

52:16

as they were Beres? And do they really

52:18

need to change who they are? And

52:21

at a certain point, I I guess I just

52:23

got over it. You know, I realized

52:26

it was none of my business, but then

52:28

it went farther than that because

52:31

one day I remember that I was

52:33

riding the subway and I suddenly

52:35

realized that I was not looking at people

52:38

as biological men and women because if I

52:40

was, I would have to be

52:42

imagining weird things about their

52:44

genitals. Like, I was just looking

52:46

at people and and realizing

52:49

that was a very liberating,

52:51

I would say, almost spiritual experience.

52:54

I mean, I know that

52:56

we're not talking primarily about

52:58

psychology

52:59

with this material, but

53:01

that's in the background as well.

53:04

I think neo liberalism has done a

53:06

really good job of convincing Liberals

53:09

and progressives that all it takes to enact

53:11

change as a hearts and minds campaign that

53:13

you just have to do the internal work

53:16

and everyone else will follow you.

53:22

Is that everybody still moved by my experience

53:24

on the subway? I

53:28

hope so. Didn't

53:30

I do a great job? You

53:31

did a great job, and you didn't share it with anybody,

53:33

and you didn't do any correlation building. But the

53:35

people will follow you, Matthew. Politics

53:38

will definitely follow you if you don't do anything

53:40

to act on it. No. No.

53:43

Because because years

53:45

in the yoga world taught me that if I just

53:47

did my yoga, then I would become a better person

53:49

too. Right? And if I just do my my

53:51

transcendental meditation,

53:54

God. Well, you should because you paid

53:56

for that fucking mantra too. Do you

53:58

pay for the mantra? Okay. I paid for the training. Let's

54:00

be fair to

54:01

I paid for it. The training the

54:02

training was excellent, and

54:03

I paid for mantra and the mantra is great. Awesome.

54:05

Yeah. Okay. Anyway,

54:09

But, yeah, I I have certainly come

54:11

across this attitude from cis allies.

54:14

I can't tell you how often I hear

54:16

things like Well, for what it's

54:18

worth, not everyone thinks like that or,

54:20

like, most people don't think like

54:22

that. And when they say like that, they mean, like,

54:24

you know, like a transflow. But that's

54:26

not true. That's demonstrably untrue.

54:29

Pew found in twenty twenty two that sixty

54:31

two percent of Americans either think that greater

54:33

acceptance of trans people is actively

54:35

bad for society or they're undecided

54:38

on whether it's good or bad. And that includes

54:40

a whopping forty

54:43

percent of democrats They found

54:45

in a separate twenty twenty two study that

54:47

the share of people who believe that gender is determined

54:49

by your sex at birth is actually rising

54:51

over time, not falling, And then about

54:53

a fifth of Democrats believe it should be illegal to

54:55

teach about gender identity in grade schools and

54:57

that parents who support their child's gender

55:00

identity should be investigated by law enforcement.

55:02

And what frustrates me is that, like you

55:04

said, cis people, including allies, often

55:07

demand explanations from trans

55:09

people before they're willing to even that

55:11

Beres real in the first place.

55:13

Yeah. That's so uncomfortable because

55:15

I remember getting to know the

55:17

first transcript I made and realizing that

55:20

somehow for my own safety,

55:23

I felt compelled to ask them all kinds

55:25

of intrusive questions. You

55:27

know, and I'm not gonna lie. I I was

55:30

for some reason thinking about things that I never

55:32

think about when I'm with cis people, and

55:34

I restrain myself from,

55:36

you know, saying those things out loud, but

55:38

there's a very weird impulse there

55:41

that's really real and and has to be

55:43

dealt with in some

55:44

way. Well, I wouldn't even call it a weird impulse

55:46

because it's curiosity. And and I wouldn't

55:48

wanna discourage natural curiosity. Trans

55:50

people are I don't wanna

55:53

say unusual in the sense of being strange,

55:55

but we're not typical. We're in

55:57

the minority, so curiosity is

55:59

is understandable. I get it. But It

56:02

often crosses into cis people silently

56:04

evaluating trans people to figure out

56:06

if they think actually men and

56:08

actually women by their narrow

56:10

individual standards. And

56:13

that is, like said before, making it

56:15

about themselves. They don't make much of

56:17

an effort to put themselves in our shoes understand

56:20

that our lives are unbelievably difficult

56:22

over current conditions and actually work

56:24

to change those conditions. They don't

56:26

get that I don't understand

56:28

cis people. I tried. I

56:32

tried for thirty four

56:34

years to understand what it's like to be cis

56:37

and and to understand what it means to be

56:39

a cis woman, and I don't get it.

56:41

And you might never get what it's like to be

56:43

a trans person. You might never know

56:45

explanation will be enough. So

56:48

you have to, at some point, start

56:50

putting aside your lack of understanding

56:53

and saying like, I support human

56:55

rights period. It doesn't matter if I

56:57

understand. Because look, I don't understand

57:00

you and your experience as a cis person.

57:02

But it doesn't mean I'm gonna withhold my support

57:05

for your civil and into rights until you can explain

57:07

it to me.

57:07

Bo, we're totally normal. We tell you

57:09

who we are within day. I mean, maybe you're you're

57:12

you're just not leaning in and and

57:14

really listening. I don't know. I

57:17

listened to my great detriment.

57:20

I listened

57:21

I wouldn't

57:21

even get into it. Yeah.

57:24

Okay. So so speaking of listening, the

57:26

reason why we're talking at all

57:28

is because you had responded

57:31

to some of our coverage of the satanic panic.

57:34

And you specifically responded to a listener

57:36

who complained about how

57:38

we framed certain things. She

57:40

said that we weren't giving

57:43

enough credit to the satanic panic as

57:45

a movement that made it permissible to

57:47

finally talk about child

57:49

sexual abuse. She was implying,

57:51

as lot of people do, that

57:54

it was an important development in

57:56

feminist activism. And then

57:58

you had a response to that

58:01

exchange. What what what did it bring up

58:03

for

58:03

you? Without getting too hyphy about it because

58:05

it's Silvics, be angry, beep, about

58:07

it. I

58:09

got frustrated at the fact that you bothered to respond

58:12

to such a ludicrous claim that's so obviously

58:14

throws the LGBTQ plus community under

58:16

the bus. It's very clear

58:19

to me that the satanic panic

58:21

is part of a larger culture war that I outlined

58:23

clear that is set at sites on

58:25

gay and trans people, black people, indigenous

58:28

people, people living in poverty, immigrants,

58:30

and teenagers as its scapegoats and

58:32

women. And women. Right. I agree

58:35

with your analysis that Pasteur was reacting

58:37

to Vatican two and the decline of

58:39

Catholicism in America when he published Michelle

58:41

and remembers, but Focusing on the satanic

58:44

panic is just a vehicle for buttressing

58:46

Catholic influence ignores the

58:48

next four decades of anti

58:50

gay, anti trans rhetoric and moralizing

58:53

that condemns us based on our supposed

58:55

violation of Christian principles and outright

58:57

calls us satanic and demonic and

59:00

suggest that we're lusting after nice

59:02

white Christian children. And

59:04

that's moralizing, but it comes not just

59:06

from Catholics, but from many Protestant

59:09

denominations as well. So the idea

59:11

of gay Satanism is clearly useful

59:14

across the divide of the reformation. And

59:17

that's beyond the fact that the satanic panic made

59:19

gays and lesbians into supposedly anti

59:22

christian scapegoats, targeted child

59:24

hair workers in place blame for the alleged

59:26

abuse on working mothers for putting their children

59:28

in day

59:29

cares. Okay. So here's a good example

59:31

of my own journalistic myopia

59:33

because it's very natural for me. As

59:36

a lapsed Catholic with a chip on my shoulder

59:38

to focus on pastors like cookie,

59:41

tad calf fantasies as morally

59:43

and intellectually repugnant, but then

59:46

I, like, completely miss the on the ground

59:48

impact on people with less privilege. Okay.

59:50

So

59:51

busted? You know, there are a lot of victims

59:53

beyond just the obvious, like beyond

59:55

child care workers and gay people and working

59:57

mothers. You have other victims

1:00:00

of the satanic panic that include, you

1:00:03

know, just if you're if you're just looking at

1:00:05

the satanic panic on its own divorce

1:00:07

from the culture war, The victims are

1:00:09

also the warmly imprisoned, children

1:00:11

who were subjected to the traumatic

1:00:13

psychological baggage of the adults in their

1:00:15

lives and unnecessarily exposed

1:00:18

to high stress environments like investigations

1:00:20

and courtrooms, religious

1:00:22

minorities, everyone who has been smeared

1:00:24

in the press as satanic or demonic, QAnon

1:00:27

and Pizza Gator, an extension of the satanic

1:00:29

panic. Many artists, particularly gay

1:00:31

artists have been accused of satanism and harassed

1:00:33

for it for Beres, if not decades. Also

1:00:36

say, look at all the musicians who

1:00:38

have been called satanic and attacked for

1:00:40

that for decades. Satanism has

1:00:42

become a default accusation against any

1:00:44

ideological opponents of conservatives and

1:00:46

is weaponized to immediately curtail

1:00:49

any productive conversation about diversity

1:00:51

and difference. I'll also say, like,

1:00:53

for a more recent example,

1:00:56

the reaction to Little Nasdaq's, his

1:00:59

video called me by your name. Like,

1:01:01

that's another one. It's it's this

1:01:03

is a a pretty sophisticated critique

1:01:05

of the way that Christianity has targeted gay

1:01:07

people, and it was him saying, like, okay. Let

1:01:10

me go embody what you you're so afraid of.

1:01:12

And and what and what what

1:01:14

now. But, yeah,

1:01:17

to to to get to that men people

1:01:19

looking in the mirror and seeing the devil, white

1:01:22

feminists aren't immune to that impulse,

1:01:25

and and that's I identified in that

1:01:27

listeners argument was white feminism.

1:01:30

I want to encourage your listeners to read

1:01:32

white feminism by Quebec against

1:01:34

white feminism by Raffia Zakaria if

1:01:36

they wanna know more about deeply entrenched

1:01:39

white supremacy in American feminism. But

1:01:41

the thrust is that white women have

1:01:43

dominated the feminist movement carefully

1:01:46

and intentionally excluding the activism

1:01:49

and perspectives of black, brown,

1:01:51

indigenous, Asian, working

1:01:53

class, Jewish, Muslim, fat,

1:01:55

disabled, elderly, and queer women

1:01:57

and that as a result, feminism in America

1:02:00

is centered on the priorities of affluent

1:02:02

white women. These priorities have become

1:02:05

deeply and increasingly individualistic.

1:02:08

And in the last several decades, feminism has

1:02:10

been reduced to advocating for individual

1:02:12

wage earning individual achievement in

1:02:14

the workplace, individual sexual liberation,

1:02:16

and individual self care. Leaning

1:02:20

in.leaning in.leaning in. Thank you, Cheryl.

1:02:23

When it comes to the discussion of

1:02:26

child sexual abuse, I am a

1:02:28

survivor of long term child sexual

1:02:30

abuse. So I do empathize

1:02:33

with the need to recognize and

1:02:35

process your trauma and to have something

1:02:38

prompt that recognition in the first place.

1:02:40

But saying that we should feel more positively

1:02:43

about the satanic panic on the basis of it,

1:02:45

helping people talk about their history of abuse

1:02:47

would be like saying that, well, the Holocaust

1:02:50

woke the world up to the dangers of of anti

1:02:52

Semitism. So maybe

1:02:55

Nazism can have positive effects. You

1:02:57

know, oh gosh. Call of Ye,

1:02:59

let him know. It's

1:03:01

a it's a it's a reprehensible self

1:03:04

centered highly individualistic way of

1:03:06

interpreting history. If

1:03:08

we're gonna approach this really critically too,

1:03:10

think it's important to find out exactly which

1:03:13

and how many victims have benefited

1:03:15

from this satanic panic opening up conversations

1:03:17

about child sexual abuse. I wonder if there's

1:03:19

data. I wonder if there I wonder

1:03:21

if there's literally just one

1:03:24

study that I could find Matthew. It's

1:03:27

admittedly old, but two

1:03:29

thousand three Department of Justice study

1:03:31

found that at that time eighty six percent

1:03:33

of victims of child sexual abuse did not report

1:03:35

that abuse. To me, that doesn't scream

1:03:38

such a resounding success on the part

1:03:40

of the satanic panic quote unquote, opening

1:03:42

up the conversation about CSA that's

1:03:44

worth all of the harm. I don't

1:03:46

know how many cases of CSA were reported

1:03:49

prior to the satanic panic, But

1:03:51

when it comes to brass tacks, fourteen

1:03:53

percent is inadequate and we need better solutions

1:03:56

for victims of child sexual abuse than

1:03:58

quote

1:03:58

unquote, conversation opening, moral

1:04:01

panics. Yeah. Now with regard

1:04:04

to the satanic panic timeline, two

1:04:06

thousand and three isn't bad, like it's not

1:04:08

a bad benchmark because the last major cases

1:04:11

were tried in the mid nineties. So you'd

1:04:13

expect an increased reporting rise

1:04:15

right after the

1:04:16

panic. Right? You would expect that by

1:04:19

two thousand three, there would

1:04:21

have been some difference. If we're saying,

1:04:23

like, this starts with Michelle remembers

1:04:25

and that opens the floodgates, then you would

1:04:27

expect that in the twenty two years

1:04:29

after that, there would be something

1:04:31

better than fourteen percent So

1:04:34

I will also point out that if we

1:04:36

were if if the satanic panic was really

1:04:39

so good at opening up a conversation

1:04:41

about child sexual abuse, why can't

1:04:43

I find anything better than this two thousand

1:04:45

three study? It was twenty years ago.

1:04:47

Why isn't there more? Like,

1:04:50

it's so hard to find data

1:04:52

about the actual

1:04:54

reporting rates of child sexual

1:04:57

abuse. So clearly, it hasn't

1:04:59

done a good

1:05:00

job. We're not talking about it enough.

1:05:02

Or that there isn't

1:05:04

actually the the

1:05:06

will to answer the question.

1:05:09

Yeah. Yeah. And that does satanic panic didn't

1:05:11

create the will to answer it. Believe

1:05:14

it or not, creating lies about

1:05:16

supposed satanists and ritual

1:05:19

abuse and shit, which is not how

1:05:21

child sexual abuse normally happens,

1:05:23

but propagating those lies

1:05:26

didn't do a good job.

1:05:28

Right. It's not effective.

1:05:29

Heading towards our home stretch

1:05:32

and back to social psychology

1:05:35

for a moment. And

1:05:37

very, very broadly, why

1:05:39

the fuck is the dominant culture

1:05:42

so obsessed with

1:05:45

trans people. Well, the simplest answer

1:05:47

is that if you're looking for a scapegoat, you'd be hard

1:05:49

pressed to find a group that's easier to scapegoat

1:05:51

and trans people. As far as the data

1:05:53

tells us currently, we are less than one percent

1:05:56

of the population. So if you lie

1:05:58

about who we are and what we want,

1:06:00

It's going to be harder for us to be heard

1:06:02

when we refute your claims by

1:06:04

virtue of us just being a tiny community.

1:06:07

And you can see that in the public debate now, the

1:06:09

SIS community has dictated to trans people

1:06:11

what we supposedly care about

1:06:13

and what we supposedly want, and now

1:06:16

we have to react to it. For instance,

1:06:18

cis people really have it in their heads

1:06:21

that trans folks are demanding that trans

1:06:23

kids be able to play sports on the sex segregated

1:06:25

team of their choice. They have it in their hands

1:06:27

that we are demanding this. But have you ever

1:06:29

met queer people? We

1:06:32

are not some of us some

1:06:36

some lesbians and there

1:06:38

are some gay leads and stuff,

1:06:41

but, like, for the most part, we are not

1:06:43

exactly the biggest sports fans in the universe.

1:06:46

On the whole, we were not the sporty

1:06:48

kids. This

1:06:51

issue is not organically on most trans

1:06:53

folks' agendas. And it

1:06:55

was put there by says people who deflected

1:06:58

from our actual Beres by demanding

1:07:00

that we come up with an answer for how

1:07:02

trans feed people fit into something

1:07:04

as trivial as sex segregated

1:07:06

sports. The whole times, cis people have been bringing

1:07:08

this up to me personally. I've been

1:07:11

sighing and rolling my eyes because

1:07:14

I didn't care about kids sports when I was

1:07:16

a kid. Ask my dad. He

1:07:19

was he was my soccer coach and my

1:07:21

team all coach. It was a mess.

1:07:25

I didn't I didn't care about kids sports when I

1:07:27

was a kid and I continue not to care about

1:07:29

kids sports now and the fact that I'm being forced

1:07:31

to think about it when really annoys

1:07:33

me when all I really want is an assurance of

1:07:35

me and my family's physical safety and the freedom

1:07:38

to make my own medical

1:07:39

choices. So there's less seeming

1:07:41

exaggeration of a

1:07:43

demographically tiny concern. So

1:07:45

issues around fairness when,

1:07:48

for instance, trans women are presented as

1:07:50

outperforming cis women in individual sports

1:07:52

like swimming is something that's talked

1:07:54

a lot

1:07:55

about. But we are talking about a

1:07:57

fraction of the one percent of the population.

1:07:59

Right? Yes. And and I gotta point out,

1:08:01

it is always trans women. People don't think

1:08:03

that trans men can compete with Cisman,

1:08:06

so they're not worried about it. But the

1:08:08

the ACL Eagle in the animated really salient

1:08:11

point in a fact sheet about trans youth and sports

1:08:13

that the legislators in Indiana who

1:08:16

were passing HP ten forty one to ban

1:08:18

trans kids from sports couldn't produce evidence

1:08:20

that this was even really problem in the

1:08:22

state and outright admitted on the record that

1:08:25

it wasn't widespread problem. ESPN

1:08:27

reported that only about one point eight

1:08:29

percent of high school students identify

1:08:31

as trans. And of those trans students,

1:08:33

only thirteen percent play sports.

1:08:35

So -- Oh,

1:08:36

jeez.

1:08:37

yeah. So when when you're,

1:08:39

like, kinda calculating how many

1:08:41

athlete, like, high school athletes or trans,

1:08:44

ESPN's estimation is, it's about zero

1:08:46

point four four percent of all high

1:08:48

school athletes are trans athletes.

1:08:50

And even fewer than that are trans

1:08:52

girls, which is what anti trans activists

1:08:55

are actually scared of. I would not

1:08:57

call that widespread or

1:08:59

worth legislating around. And

1:09:02

I find it extremely interesting that trans

1:09:04

anti trans people chose to zero in

1:09:06

on team sports, in particular as their

1:09:08

battleground. Because, to my

1:09:11

mind, as admittedly a not sporty person,

1:09:13

Team sports are arguably the sports in which

1:09:15

physiology matters the least. A lot goes

1:09:17

into winning a game in Team Sports other

1:09:19

than raw physical talent, like strategy

1:09:22

and collaboration and teamwork and leadership,

1:09:25

they all arguably matter more

1:09:27

than any players physiology. Every

1:09:29

team is going to have a lot of physical variation

1:09:32

between players. So theoretically, there absolutely

1:09:34

should be room for trans players on team sports.

1:09:36

No matter who's on your team, a big

1:09:38

part of working together is going to be playing

1:09:41

to each player's strengths and working around their

1:09:43

weaknesses.

1:09:43

Yeah. For sure. So why team

1:09:45

sports of all the sports? I had

1:09:48

to ask my husband about this because he

1:09:50

is a sporty person. And he

1:09:52

pointed out that from a bigoted parents

1:09:54

point of view, it it probably has to do with the implied

1:09:56

intimacy and com cam camaraderie of Team

1:09:58

Sports. Beyond the fact of

1:10:00

sharing locker rooms, athletes who play on teams

1:10:02

become quite close and friendly and invested

1:10:05

in one

1:10:05

another. And if you hate trans people, you can't

1:10:07

have that for your cis child. Okay. So I would

1:10:09

agree here with your husband. And

1:10:12

I'm also going to focus in on the

1:10:14

locker room aspect and say that

1:10:17

that's the site of what

1:10:19

I would call permissible but

1:10:21

repressed sexual transgression

1:10:23

and hazing. So as

1:10:26

a straight this guy, I can tell you that

1:10:28

we can shower together, we can

1:10:31

swing our dicks at each other, we can laugh about

1:10:33

each other's dicks, We can make racist comments

1:10:35

about size, etcetera. I'm not speaking about

1:10:37

myself in the present tense, but I know this culture.

1:10:40

We can snap towels at each other's asses.

1:10:42

We can show each other porn on our

1:10:44

phones. Also, this was before this was this

1:10:46

was after my time. But all

1:10:49

of this, like, edgy stuff

1:10:52

is permissible only if

1:10:54

there's a very rigid rule in place, which

1:10:56

is that nobody here is actually

1:10:58

clear. Right. Because if a queer

1:11:00

person is present, that queerness

1:11:03

will make the homo erotic nature

1:11:05

of the play transparent. So,

1:11:08

you know, the locker room is

1:11:10

also a place where, you

1:11:12

know, men can talk shit about women

1:11:15

and they can even assault women if they get too

1:11:17

close because I don't know if you've seen these

1:11:19

instances where, like, a female reporter is

1:11:22

assigned to do postgame interviews of, like,

1:11:24

a baseball team and a bunch

1:11:26

of them feel like it's their right and it's like really

1:11:28

funny to surround her or brush

1:11:30

by her while they're naked even while

1:11:32

the cameras on them. So they're basically

1:11:34

saying, this is our dick swinging space.

1:11:37

But if you tell them, you

1:11:39

know, here's a trans man and he's one of

1:11:41

you, Suddenly, like,

1:11:44

they have to become more self aware and aware

1:11:46

in a way. They have to become more polite. They

1:11:48

might feel infiltrated. In in

1:11:50

a space where they've been blowing off repressed

1:11:52

steam. You know, they're they're gonna be

1:11:54

confronted with the notion that someone is breaking

1:11:56

some kind of rule that they barely understand. And

1:11:59

meanwhile, the actual reality is that the trans

1:12:01

man just wants to change the damn clothes, right, and

1:12:03

get their shoes. So this stuff is so

1:12:05

viscerally present for me that when I

1:12:07

bring my six and ten year old boys into the locker

1:12:10

room when we go swimming, the only

1:12:12

thing I'm actually anxious about are

1:12:14

the Dick Swingers because they're

1:12:17

definitely gonna be there. So

1:12:19

I'm on the lookout and if there's Dick Swinging

1:12:21

wBeau, like in over in that part of

1:12:23

locker room, I'm gonna steer us towards another

1:12:25

part. And it never, literally,

1:12:28

never occurs to me, to be concerned.

1:12:30

That my children would be around gay or

1:12:32

trans men because my experience

1:12:35

so far is that gay and trans men

1:12:37

are just like more self aware and bound

1:12:39

read And if I feel

1:12:41

a threat on my kid's behalf,

1:12:43

it's gonna be the threat of culture that's gonna

1:12:45

encourage them to become both

1:12:48

repressed and aggressive at the same

1:12:50

time. And it reminds me of like how Bell

1:12:52

Hooks talks about patriarchy in

1:12:54

its primal stages disconnecting boys from

1:12:56

their own feelings, and that allows

1:12:58

them to evade the challenges of empathy. And I

1:13:00

think the locker room is is the

1:13:02

scene where this

1:13:03

unfolds, where boys

1:13:06

are told that in their essential selves,

1:13:08

they should they should be Dick Swingers. This is

1:13:10

interesting because I used the men's locker room

1:13:12

at my gym -- Mhmm. -- which is a new

1:13:14

development. Right.

1:13:17

How's it going? I mean, is it okay? Yeah. That's

1:13:19

fine. I mean, I'm I

1:13:22

this is this is the thing I've always felt comfortable

1:13:24

in men's faces. Like, that

1:13:26

it has never phased me even when

1:13:28

I was presenting as a woman. But

1:13:30

yeah. No. I mean, the

1:13:33

so what you're saying about, like, game transmit

1:13:36

being more boundary? I think that that has to

1:13:38

do with, like, when we're in shared spaces

1:13:42

with straight people and cis

1:13:44

people, but straight people in particular.

1:13:47

I think there's this sense of like, okay, we're

1:13:49

not gonna be the gayest right

1:13:52

now. Because we're in

1:13:54

a shared space, but we have private

1:13:56

spaces and spaces that are kind of hours

1:13:58

that are more culturally hours where

1:14:01

like drag shows, where

1:14:03

we can be more

1:14:06

flamboyantly gay, more

1:14:08

more queer. So there's this sense

1:14:10

of like they're, you know, some stuff

1:14:12

is appropriate Beres, but not here. And

1:14:15

straight people are not gonna understand. So,

1:14:18

you know, let's not subject them to it.

1:14:21

Do you know what? I just it just occurred to me that

1:14:23

there could be an entire protest movement outside

1:14:26

of men's locker rooms. Oh

1:14:28

god. Right? Right? Yeah.

1:14:30

Where where like queer and trans people

1:14:32

came and they held signs about

1:14:35

how, you know, we don't

1:14:37

want our children groomed

1:14:39

into dick swinging

1:14:41

spaces. Exactly. Exactly.

1:14:43

I mean, certainly that's how I feel. Obviously,

1:14:46

it's how you feel. But, yeah, I mean, the

1:14:48

nice thing about the club that I go to, so when

1:14:50

I signed up, my

1:14:53

my license had my dead name

1:14:55

on it. So I had introduced myself as

1:14:57

Bo. I was the guy who was

1:14:59

signing me up was the manager of the club. And

1:15:01

we were having a nice conversation and then it got

1:15:04

to the point where I had to give them my license. And I said,

1:15:06

so I'm trans. So

1:15:08

the name on this license is not going be the name

1:15:10

that I go by. And he

1:15:13

was so great. He was like, oh, yeah. I kind

1:15:15

of figured. And just kept moving.

1:15:17

Which is, by the way, the best response

1:15:19

anybody has ever given me. I love that because

1:15:21

you're simultaneously saying,

1:15:23

I accept that your trans I

1:15:25

did clock you, but I'm not

1:15:27

gonna treat you differently.

1:15:28

And don't really care. I don't care. I don't

1:15:30

care. Let's keep moving. And then he showed me the men's locker

1:15:32

room. So there you go. Amazing.

1:15:35

Yeah, I I mean, it's certainly communicated to

1:15:37

me that that's where I belong and

1:15:40

that, you know, it is the club's stance,

1:15:42

that that is where I belong. So I feel entirely

1:15:44

entitled be in there. I don't feel like I have to hide

1:15:47

anything necessarily, although I am

1:15:49

a little more on the modest side. There's

1:15:51

only one guy who I think

1:15:54

has, like, really clocked me.

1:15:56

And it it's not hard to

1:15:58

do. I still shave my legs. I have

1:16:00

very wide hips and I have two huge

1:16:02

scars on my chest. So --

1:16:05

Right. -- it's not hard to do, but most

1:16:07

people aren't looking, and this guy just happens

1:16:09

to usually be in the same bay of lockers

1:16:11

as me. He has kind of uncomfortable, and

1:16:13

I don't know if it's that he's uncomfortable

1:16:16

with the fact on trans or if he's uncomfortable

1:16:18

because he's, like, I don't wanna fuck up.

1:16:20

Or, like, he's just trying to give me space,

1:16:22

which is, like, either no matter

1:16:24

what it

1:16:25

is, I don't care. Like I said, I'm entitled

1:16:27

to be in there. So It's an amazing moment

1:16:29

where you don't actually know whether whether

1:16:31

the discomfort is an actual

1:16:33

discomfort or an altruistic discomfort.

1:16:36

Right. Yeah. And and I'm I

1:16:39

mean, it doesn't matter to me either

1:16:41

way. Like, I I said before, like, if people

1:16:43

see me as a woman, I don't care. That's fine.

1:16:45

You can think whatever you want to. It's not

1:16:47

my business. I'm not the thought police. But,

1:16:50

like, this guy, as long as he is just

1:16:52

letting me do my thing and staying out

1:16:54

of my way and I'm staying out of his

1:16:56

way. We're good. You know? I

1:16:59

If this is coming from a place of bigotry, that's

1:17:01

fine. He's allowed to be a bigot. But, like,

1:17:04

you know, as long as we're just, like,

1:17:07

living and letting

1:17:07

live, that's that's all

1:17:10

I can ask for. That's the very

1:17:12

American part of your

1:17:14

argument, I can't. Right?

1:17:16

Like like it

1:17:19

seems that so often the discourse is

1:17:21

really, really enmeshed in the

1:17:23

particulars of identity

1:17:26

politics and and

1:17:29

it's and the jargon that can flow

1:17:31

through that at times.

1:17:33

But you're also really making

1:17:36

a civics argument

1:17:39

that is like, really unimpeachable.

1:17:43

Thank you. Just, like like, leave

1:17:45

me leave me alone, please.

1:17:49

And I have the same rights as you.

1:17:51

So Yeah. And and that

1:17:54

yeah. And that our internal sort

1:17:57

of paradigms are really not

1:17:59

on the table here. They are matters of privacy.

1:18:02

Like, it's almost like an establishment clause

1:18:04

argument as well. Right? You're saying

1:18:06

don't have, you know, psychological

1:18:08

or religious sort of feelings

1:18:11

or or beliefs intervene

1:18:13

in this space where we simply should

1:18:15

be sharing civil

1:18:16

rights. Yes. And I

1:18:18

would point out that my

1:18:21

point of view, most Transamerica's point

1:18:23

of view about this is way

1:18:26

more tolerant and permissive of free

1:18:28

speech than than Trans and

1:18:30

Gay people have to be in other countries.

1:18:32

Like Germany has hate speech law

1:18:34

that for bids hate speech against

1:18:36

trans people, but it happens all the time in

1:18:38

the US. And my stance is,

1:18:41

say whatever you want. Just don't legislate about

1:18:43

me. I don't care. That's fine.

1:18:46

Like, you are people are allowed to have their opinions,

1:18:48

but there is a

1:18:51

constitutional issue here and

1:18:53

a civil rights issue here that

1:18:57

I'm I'm like I have a line

1:18:59

and the line is when you start legislating

1:19:01

against me, when you start projecting your

1:19:04

Christian morality or even your

1:19:06

you know, personal anxieties as a cis

1:19:08

person onto

1:19:10

legislation. That's when I draw the line.

1:19:12

You know, this brings us back to hair schultz actually

1:19:14

because one comment that you made was

1:19:17

my identification with him might be naive

1:19:20

that his argument that he's as German

1:19:23

as everybody else is and

1:19:25

that's going to be

1:19:27

the pillar that he stands on is

1:19:31

something that this current wave

1:19:33

of legislative and cultural violence is

1:19:36

actually

1:19:37

undermining. And so when you say,

1:19:39

you know, I don't really, I'm

1:19:41

not concerned about the speech

1:19:43

issues. At the same time, that's

1:19:46

the tip of the spear, isn't it? Where

1:19:48

when hate speech becomes louder and

1:19:50

louder, then that begins to influence

1:19:52

legislative movements.

1:19:55

It is something that I worry about, but it's something

1:19:57

that I try to respect because I think that there's

1:19:59

room for I think that

1:20:01

there's room for people to hate each other.

1:20:04

Honestly. Beres

1:20:06

there's so much that we don't

1:20:08

have control over. There's so

1:20:10

much that don't have control over. We can't control how people

1:20:13

think about us and we can't really speculate on people's

1:20:15

motivations. One of the things that I learned

1:20:17

in therapy for post traumatic

1:20:19

stress disorder one of the things

1:20:21

that I learned in cognitive processing therapy

1:20:24

was that one of the

1:20:26

sort of disordered ways that

1:20:29

you start thinking when you have PTSD,

1:20:31

as you start trying to figure out

1:20:34

what people's motivations were

1:20:38

for the violations

1:20:39

that they inflicted on you? Oh, yeah.

1:20:41

And then you start trying to avoid those things.

1:20:43

Right. That is at the heart

1:20:45

of PTSD. Really?

1:20:48

And yeah. Well, according

1:20:50

to Patricia Risik, Risik.

1:20:53

She's the one who created CPT

1:20:56

in response to the

1:20:58

needs of rate victims in the seventies.

1:21:00

She was working in women's shelters when she developed

1:21:02

this. But her her way of thinking

1:21:04

of it is this is,

1:21:06

like, if you can undo that way of thinking,

1:21:08

if you can undo this, like, constant anxiety

1:21:11

over, like, how do I avoid this? And

1:21:13

accept the fact that you can't

1:21:15

control what other people

1:21:17

think or what other people do. And if

1:21:20

you try to find motivations for it, it's just

1:21:22

a losing game. The objectionable thing

1:21:24

that happened isn't why somebody

1:21:27

violated

1:21:27

you. The objectionable thing that happened

1:21:29

is that they violated you.

1:21:32

And that's enough. It comes

1:21:34

it's like the second aero teaching

1:21:36

in Buddhism where you

1:21:39

know, the the buddha says

1:21:41

to the the person who's in mental

1:21:43

or emotional suffering isn't

1:21:46

it enough that you have been

1:21:48

struck by this arrow. Yeah.

1:21:50

Why is it that you regret being in the

1:21:52

wrong place exact why

1:21:55

is it that you you blame

1:21:57

yourself for being such an easy

1:21:59

target? Why is it that you

1:22:01

stress about how long it will take to get

1:22:03

the arrow

1:22:04

out. These are all reasonable

1:22:06

and they distract from the basic fact

1:22:08

of the matter. I will say as soon as

1:22:10

I stopped worrying about why my ex

1:22:13

husband did what he did, why the rapist

1:22:15

who came after that did what he

1:22:17

did, I

1:22:20

found this

1:22:23

sense of ease like just

1:22:25

it it unburdens you mentally

1:22:27

to to stop wondering

1:22:31

what their motivations were. It just

1:22:33

doesn't matter And as soon as you stop

1:22:35

thinking about it, like, you can get down to brass

1:22:37

tacks and just be like, you know,

1:22:40

in the case of my ex husband, he had a

1:22:42

million choices. For

1:22:44

how to respond to

1:22:47

me being unusual,

1:22:50

which is what it comes down to. And

1:22:52

the response that he chose

1:22:55

was not to be compassionate or

1:22:57

curious or tolerant

1:23:00

or accepting or interested. He

1:23:03

chose to try to

1:23:05

exert as much control over

1:23:07

me as possible so

1:23:09

that I would be shaped

1:23:11

into the person, the wife he

1:23:13

wanted. And that,

1:23:18

you know, that is that's that's

1:23:20

it. That's it. That's all it is. And I

1:23:22

I can say, like, well, I know that he

1:23:24

had a history of abuse. He

1:23:27

had this religious belief.

1:23:29

He had, like, XYZ other thing. And

1:23:31

but when it comes down to it, it was just that

1:23:33

he chose to act in an abusive

1:23:35

way. Period. In your

1:23:37

list of choices, I think you left out ambivalent.

1:23:41

He could have not cared and

1:23:43

moved

1:23:43

on. He could have not cared

1:23:45

to move on. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

1:23:47

Everybody everybody has that

1:23:50

choice. You know, when you see something

1:23:52

that you object to, you can

1:23:54

choose to be

1:23:55

ambivalent. You can choose to

1:23:58

not care.

1:23:59

Right. Right. So

1:24:01

to the question of why cis people are so

1:24:03

obsessed with us, if you'll allow me to get really

1:24:05

philosophical here, if we were going

1:24:07

to be really honest about

1:24:10

how we define manhood and womanhood

1:24:12

in white western cultures. The

1:24:15

fact is that it's

1:24:17

not chromosomes, it's not appearance,

1:24:20

It's that we

1:24:22

have defined women as the objects

1:24:24

of men's sexual desire

1:24:26

and men as competitors for sexual

1:24:28

access to women for so

1:24:30

long that it's become the default way

1:24:32

of thinking about other human Beres. And

1:24:35

in that way, men have decided

1:24:37

who's a quote unquote real

1:24:39

man and who's a quote unquote real

1:24:41

woman based on either who they're

1:24:43

competing with or who they want to have

1:24:45

sex with.

1:24:47

Yes. Okay. So this brings me back

1:24:49

to my subway moment because

1:24:51

as I'm, you know, in

1:24:53

this crowded car, I realized that

1:24:56

I'm typically going through this

1:24:58

mental calculus that

1:25:00

is usually not transparent. I'm identifying

1:25:02

man, woman, man, man, woman, man,

1:25:04

woman. Suddenly, that

1:25:07

internal monologue becomes audible

1:25:09

to me. And I

1:25:12

realize I don't actually know what

1:25:14

the words mean because my definition of them

1:25:16

depends on creepily imagining people

1:25:18

naked. So that was suddenly

1:25:21

absurd. And so in that absurdity,

1:25:23

I start seeing something else beyond

1:25:25

man, woman, man, woman, and that makes

1:25:27

me wonder about what it means

1:25:29

to fall in love with a person instead

1:25:32

of a a man or a woman.

1:25:34

So this litany of man,

1:25:36

woman, man, woman, man, is this internal

1:25:39

scorecard of who

1:25:41

I should be allowed to think about in

1:25:43

a sexual way, if I'm totally honest.

1:25:46

Right. And part of the

1:25:48

reason feminism is so offensive

1:25:50

to patriarchy is that it asserts that

1:25:52

women can also define men

1:25:55

as the objects of women's sexual desire.

1:25:58

And homosexuality is considered deviant

1:26:00

under patriarchy because it defines

1:26:02

men as the objects of men's sexual desire

1:26:05

and women as the objects of women's sexual

1:26:07

desire. Right. But trans and non

1:26:09

binary people, people break

1:26:11

this system entirely by

1:26:14

saying we are not defined

1:26:16

by who wants to have sex with us,

1:26:19

we define ourselves. Who

1:26:21

wants to have sex with us? And

1:26:23

who wants to compete with us for sex

1:26:26

is absolutely irrelevant to

1:26:28

our

1:26:28

identities. Okay. So but hold the phone because

1:26:31

this makes it sound like trans identity

1:26:33

is not socially constructed.

1:26:37

Right. So we have stumbled onto the

1:26:39

hill that I'm gonna die on. Okay. Alright.

1:26:41

Go for that. Okay.

1:26:44

So when we say that gender is a social

1:26:46

construct, which I don't like, phrasing

1:26:49

like that because it feels very ziggy.

1:26:52

We are saying that man

1:26:54

and woman are roles

1:26:57

that we our culture has sort of

1:26:59

agreed upon collectively. Yeah.

1:27:02

And that is why manhood

1:27:05

and womanhood are context dependent because

1:27:07

they're different in different cultures. So

1:27:09

that's gender is a social

1:27:11

construct, but identity isn't at all.

1:27:14

Trans identity is not a social construct,

1:27:17

cis identity is not a social construct,

1:27:19

no identity is a social construct. The

1:27:22

only person who gets to construct an identity

1:27:24

is you as an individual. So

1:27:28

nobody gets to tell a cis man,

1:27:30

you don't make enough money, so you're not a

1:27:32

real man. Nobody gets to tell a cis woman,

1:27:35

you're not able to have children, so

1:27:37

you're not really a woman. Or

1:27:39

you're not attractive to me, so you're

1:27:41

not a good enough woman, or you're

1:27:43

not whatever, you know, or to

1:27:45

go back even further, you're

1:27:48

a Jew, so you're not a German, or

1:27:50

you're black, so you're two thirds of a person.

1:27:52

This is a power that

1:27:56

white people, white says straight,

1:27:58

able-bodied people have had for

1:28:01

a long time, and they have

1:28:03

used it to legislate

1:28:05

against marginalized people. And what's

1:28:07

so offensive about trans people

1:28:10

is that we're saying you do not

1:28:13

actually have that power or that entitlement

1:28:16

to tell other people who they

1:28:18

are. You don't get to tell anybody

1:28:20

that. It's not just about trans people.

1:28:22

It's about

1:28:23

everybody. You don't get to tell

1:28:25

other people who they are, period. That

1:28:27

does feel like a hill to die on

1:28:29

because that is a very

1:28:33

That's coming close to a universal message,

1:28:36

like a gospel message. Yes.

1:28:39

Yeah. And And I just you know, when

1:28:41

I think about this, when I because

1:28:43

this is probably my most deeply

1:28:46

held belief. When I think about this, it

1:28:48

breaks my heart. Thinking

1:28:51

about all the people who

1:28:53

have been hurt by people telling

1:28:56

them who they are. By by people

1:28:58

passing judgment. And it's not

1:29:00

just marginalized people. It's

1:29:02

everybody. Everybody gets hurt

1:29:04

by this. I'm sure you can think of many

1:29:06

times in your own life where somebody

1:29:08

told you your XYZ and

1:29:11

you're lesser than because of it. Oh god.

1:29:13

Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Everybody

1:29:15

can. I I mean, I it

1:29:18

it kills me to

1:29:20

think of boys

1:29:24

being like little boys Beres

1:29:26

told that they're not good enough, being

1:29:28

bullied by other boys. It kills me to think

1:29:31

of these these children listening

1:29:33

to Andrew Tate and

1:29:36

hearing him say that if you don't make enough

1:29:38

money, you're not a good man or

1:29:42

that if woman has had multiple

1:29:44

sexual partners, then she's not really a woman.

1:29:47

You know, we have told cis people

1:29:49

that they are not good enough or

1:29:52

enough of a man, enough of a woman. I

1:29:56

want his people To

1:29:58

feel grounded in their identities,

1:30:00

I don't want the realization that

1:30:02

trans people exist to

1:30:04

threaten cis people. I wanted

1:30:07

to empower them, to define

1:30:09

themselves, and to stand in their truth, and

1:30:11

to have a really strong sense

1:30:13

of who they are. I think that is one of the things

1:30:15

that I love most about gay and trans people

1:30:17

is that we have been forced by necessity

1:30:20

to have a very strong sense of who we

1:30:22

are and to stand for it. And

1:30:25

I want that for cis people too.

1:30:27

I want cis people to feel

1:30:29

very strong and and, you know, to

1:30:31

to that woman who's like, I waited

1:30:33

thirty years to become a mother. It's like, I don't wanna

1:30:35

take that away from you. I I want

1:30:37

you to identify as a mother because that's

1:30:40

who you are, and that's something that's very important

1:30:42

to you. And I honor that. There's

1:30:45

probably some contingent some minority

1:30:47

contingent of trans people who are like, now

1:30:49

we get to we you people don't

1:30:51

get to call themselves. You know? Like

1:30:54

or we shouldn't use gender terms or

1:30:56

whatever. Like, there's probably some contingent

1:30:58

of, like, tumbler Beres who feel that way. But

1:31:00

I don't think that's the majority of trans people. I

1:31:02

think that's tumbler teens being teenagers,

1:31:04

you know. And and since

1:31:07

people have gotten really hung up on

1:31:09

what I think was intended to be a mild

1:31:12

suggestion that we think more

1:31:14

intentionally and inclusively about the way that

1:31:16

we talk And they've interpreted that as

1:31:18

I don't get to have my identity. And it's like,

1:31:20

look, I'm not the one who's gonna tell you that you

1:31:22

don't get to have your identity. Maybe you should tape this

1:31:24

up with all of the cultural

1:31:26

commentators who have been saying,

1:31:29

men are this, women are this, we don't live up to

1:31:31

this standard of manhood and womanhood then

1:31:33

you're not good at

1:31:34

Yeah. You need to take it up with your parents. No

1:31:37

comment.

1:31:41

Let me just reflective listen for

1:31:43

a bit -- Yeah. -- because this is this is this

1:31:45

is blowing my mind. We did not discuss

1:31:47

this before

1:31:49

this this conversation. So

1:31:51

No. You brought up the question and I was like,

1:31:53

oh, oh, here we go.

1:31:58

So what has happened and

1:32:00

what seems to be instinctual is

1:32:02

that the awareness of trans

1:32:05

reality destabilizes CIS

1:32:07

psychology. But what you're saying

1:32:10

is that can only really

1:32:12

happen if the person's

1:32:15

self identification has been subjected

1:32:18

to a lifetime of accusations and

1:32:20

belittlings and judgments and

1:32:23

you've always been told

1:32:25

something that is somewhat shameful

1:32:28

about who you are. And as soon as

1:32:30

you encounter, a person

1:32:32

who is taking ownership of

1:32:34

an identity that you cannot conceive of

1:32:36

for yourself. And maybe they they're even expressing

1:32:38

pride about it, and that's why the pride

1:32:41

parades are such an incredible fixation

1:32:43

for this crowd that suddenly

1:32:46

your own sense of insecurity

1:32:48

is laid

1:32:49

bare. Is that what you're saying here? Yes.

1:32:52

And you have spent

1:32:54

your whole life trying

1:32:58

to live up to other

1:33:00

people's demands of

1:33:02

you whether or not they are

1:33:04

relevant to who you are and

1:33:06

you have been told that you are not

1:33:09

good enough unless you do it. And

1:33:11

that is so damaging. That

1:33:13

is so psychologically damaging. And

1:33:16

when somebody waltzes in and says,

1:33:18

now I'm this thing. Now I'm

1:33:21

a woman. Now I'm a man. And

1:33:24

they're experience doesn't line up with

1:33:26

yours, you feel like they're stealing something from

1:33:28

you. Goddamn it. So what you're saying actually

1:33:30

is the trans person who is

1:33:32

willing to change themselves

1:33:35

in in in a public

1:33:38

sphere in a way that other people

1:33:40

become aware of. That they're actually

1:33:42

making an assertion about the fluidity

1:33:44

of identity that everybody actually yearns

1:33:46

for. Howard Bauchner: Yeah. Yeah. We're making

1:33:48

a statement saying like you

1:33:51

just you don't have to play

1:33:54

along. You don't have to. Nobody

1:33:56

does. You don't have to live up to

1:33:58

anybody's standards but your own. And

1:34:02

I think there's this sense. This

1:34:04

kind of gets back to Gonzalez Torres a little

1:34:06

bit, but there's this sense that

1:34:10

Beres this anxiety that we all have to cooperate

1:34:12

and follow the same rules for

1:34:15

society to function. And it's like,

1:34:17

to a certain extent, yes, I feel

1:34:19

very strongly about civics as we've

1:34:21

mentioned. But in terms of

1:34:23

identity, who does it really actually affect

1:34:25

if you say If

1:34:28

you put your foot down, if you put

1:34:30

your stake in the ground and say, this is who I am

1:34:32

and nobody's gonna tell me otherwise, how

1:34:34

does it affect other people? For cis

1:34:36

people. Like, not not I'm not saying this about trans

1:34:39

people. For cis people, if

1:34:41

you are a

1:34:43

cis mother if your

1:34:45

identity includes, I

1:34:47

don't know, how much you care

1:34:49

about your grandmother or whatever,

1:34:51

like, what you know, I I don't know. Like,

1:34:53

anything anything. If you're an artist, if you're

1:34:55

whatever. Oh, well, that

1:34:58

kind of gets to it too. Let's think about all the

1:35:00

people in the world who have been saying, like, on not

1:35:02

really an artist. They're making art and they're saying I'm

1:35:04

not really an artist because I'm not good enough according

1:35:06

to XYZ standard that they heard

1:35:08

from some book or some

1:35:10

podcast or some influencer or something.

1:35:13

You know, you

1:35:15

just You get to be whoever

1:35:17

you want to be You know?

1:35:19

And as long as you are

1:35:22

engaging in civics and playing

1:35:24

along by the rules that we set out,

1:35:26

to cooperate with each other and keep society

1:35:28

functioning. You get to

1:35:30

be who you say you

1:35:31

are. For the straight and

1:35:33

cis person who wants to

1:35:37

help. What is the best

1:35:39

first thing to

1:35:40

do? If I have to choose just one

1:35:42

thing, Join your local chapter

1:35:44

of p flag and actually go and

1:35:46

attend their meetings. They operate more or less

1:35:48

independently, so it's not the same everywhere. But

1:35:51

my local chapter meets once a month for an

1:35:53

hour, so it's a big payoff for not a

1:35:55

big investment of time. If you're

1:35:57

not familiar with pflag, it stands for parents

1:35:59

and friends of lesbians days. And the name

1:36:02

is a relic of an older time. They do

1:36:04

support trans people in our loved ones.

1:36:06

And they do incredible work

1:36:08

that actually positively affects the lives

1:36:11

of queer and trans people by supporting, providing

1:36:13

support for the people who support us.

1:36:15

You don't have to currently know or

1:36:18

love a queer trans person to join.

1:36:20

You will be welcome so long as you're dedicated

1:36:22

to your allieship. But just don't

1:36:24

just donate actually go to the

1:36:26

meetings. Oh, well, but

1:36:28

why why is

1:36:29

it important to go? Bo, I

1:36:31

might have to meet people. And god forbid

1:36:33

you meet more queer people and trans

1:36:36

people and find

1:36:38

a loving and supportive community of

1:36:40

like minded people.

1:36:43

I I might feel like my

1:36:46

identity is more fluid and that

1:36:48

I can actually make choices about who I am

1:36:50

in the

1:36:50

world. Yes. Yeah. Why would

1:36:52

I want that bow? What's in it for

1:36:54

me? A lot

1:36:56

more peace in your life. Also,

1:36:58

like, there is the whole, like, touch grass thing.

1:37:00

Like, I mean, part of it is just you can't

1:37:03

build coalitions from your couch unless

1:37:05

you are hosting a group of

1:37:07

like minded individuals on your couch. You

1:37:09

can't change anything on

1:37:12

your own. People have to work

1:37:14

together. And if

1:37:16

your allieship stops

1:37:19

at your wallet, it's never

1:37:21

gonna go anywhere. Because look, the

1:37:23

people who oppose us

1:37:25

have lots and lots of money. Joanne Rowling

1:37:28

is in the top two hundred wealthiest

1:37:30

British people. You know, that

1:37:32

puts her in the point zero four percent

1:37:35

of British wealth. You know? She

1:37:37

has more money than God. Most

1:37:39

of these people do. There's so much money behind

1:37:41

it that just throwing money at

1:37:43

it isn't going to do the trick. You have

1:37:46

to actually go out with

1:37:48

your body and say

1:37:50

I am a person who cares about this and I'm not

1:37:52

gonna let you abuse my