It Could Happen Here Weekly 27

is Garrison Davis from It could happen here. For this week of episodes, the team has put together a sepastoral group of episodes, all focused on the broad topic of the escalating war on trans people. We'll cover historical background, the international turf movement, and all the new anti trans legislation trying to be made into law here in the

United States. We won't have time to cover everything. It's only five episodes, but we were tried to cram more stuff in, and you know it's it's we don't want to make episodes all like two or three hours, So I'm sure we'll we'll cover all these topics more in the future, but we tried to create five episodes here that kind of cover a lot of a lot of our bases. Also, we've we've tried not to make the episodes super depressing, because yeah, it's five episodes based on

a kind of upsetting topic. So we try to keep them more information based and throwing in some jokes here and there, you know, but it is still not a fun, fun topic, so to keep keep that in mind. But we've tried to try to space things out and not make them too long or not too depressing. So, without further ado, here is episode one of the War on

trans People. Welcome to It could Happen here, a podcast about things falling apart and in in the case of this week, getting very angry at people doing really shitty things, um to a specific subset of the population. All right, Gary, isn't that every week? Well no, sometimes we talk about other stuff like three D printed guns, but that ties in Garrison take it from here. I'm done for the week. Yes,

So welcome to can happen here? We're talking about Well, one of the big it could happens here is yeah in in in relation to the ongoing war on queer people in general. Um and how yeah that sure seems to be like it's happening, so here here, right now.

But but before we get to the actual right now points, I still I do want to do want to do a little bit of background on how it's kind of gotten to this point in the past few decades and the variously precursors to the current moment that has seemed to be really focused on trans people specifically, but for a long time, a lot of the focus was on protecting quote unquote the sanctity of marriage, which was one of the one of the big, one of the big

talking points. And to help us talk about this fun and engaging topic, I asked on Karen and Eve from the Kitchen Table Cult podcast to assist us in this horrible endeavor. Greetings, and I'm sorry, Yes we are. We are gays who grew up in that universe, so as as as was I, as was probably a few other people of this this call. Uh yeah, we we all we all have varying experiences growing up in the evangelical movement. Um well also realizing huh, maybe we are not straight

and orsist children. So yeah, but we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna be talking about the kind of the escalating war and gay marriage and how that kind of moves over to trans people at a certain point. Um, and specifically talking about kind of the combination of religion and politics, because this is this is something I've discussed before on my two part Focus on the Family episode, and this really is going to tie into a lot of that

stuff because it's a lot of the same people. But I would love for everyone else to kind of fill in the gaps where I have stuff missing, because I definitely have a a good, good point on the Family Research Council kind of side of things, and I would love for people to fill in the gaps on the other other kind of stuff. But yeah, we're gonna start off for talking about Family Research Council, um and that whole kind of side of things, because I mean they, oh, yes,

Josh Tugger is coming up. Don't both research and families, So this seems unproblematic. I'm gonna just mute things from now on, and yeah, you guys continue in terms of

all of the save the children rhetoric. Yes, Josh Josh Dogger will be coming up, so yeah, but I do want to actually open up with a quote from Mike Rosebush, who was the vice president of Focus on the family from thousand four UM and then a few years ago he came out as as gay and as a surprise so called affirming like Christian who like loves Jesus and endorses rights for gay people. He left, he left, got fired from focus on the family EC side or say side B. Does he is he in favor of the

celibacy model or is he a show with marriage? He seems to be excited about fucking okay, so it is definitely the better side. But I want to start off with by by him just to kind of set the stage for how this type of thing kind of really got got started, for combining, you know, the evangelical kind

of biblical worldview with political organizing. So anyway, I'm going to read a quote here, quote Dobson even more so than focused on the family, and that's a that's James Dobson, by the way, Um, Dobson even more so than focus on the family as an organization, strongly encouraged all evangelicals to support and express their values in the public arena. As background, before about nineteen seventy, evangelicals often confined themselves

within their own like cloistored communities. Political development was viewed as a secular enterprise and suspect at best, and this change during the Dobson era, He and others encouraged evangelicals to learn and apply the Biblical worldview. The evangelical person was coached in applying the apologetics debate method in publicly sharing the Biblical worldview. Voting in every local and national

election became seen as a Christians duty. So at Focus I learned that the evangelical leaders like Dr Dobson considered the Republican Party to be the political machine best equipped to endorse a Biblical worldview. In delated harmony, Republican Party strategists salivated to win elections by securing the evangelical vote. Thus a mutual agreement was formed. The plan became that evangelical leaders would introduce a hot button issue onto ballots

at every local and state election. Evangelical ministers would provide voting guides on how to influence evangelicals to vote for the only correct Christian choice, in turn the elector cand in turn that elected Republican Canada when champion the corresponding Biblical worldview. And this strategy worked, and what was the most reliable hot button to place on the local and state of voting ballots, something that would ensure evangelicals in mass to show up to vote the up anti gay

rights bills. Gay rights were viewed by evangelicals as a

threat to the Biblical family and society in general. So yeah, that's kind of how I want to open up in terms of kind of the shift in like the seventies and eighties and especially in the nineties, from kind of evangelicals being pretty divorced from political mainstream action to them becoming a crucial part of the Republican machine, and this kind of circle that completes itself at this at this like at this point afterwards, because yeah, this combined with

a whole bunch of save the children rhetoric and like saving the family, like like the unit of the family as a sacred thing to protect. It's really like that that idea really carries over now into into into the trans stuff because obviously they kind of lost a lot of this to they wanted to do on gay marriage after a long, a long fight, you know, decades and decades, but it's still the same core idea at the heart

of it. Yeah, I just want to put an evergreen footnote on all of that and say thanks and fuck you to finish laughly for getting us down that road. Yes, yeah, that was like blame can definitely be passed around like originates there, Like I mean like before all of that, like the Evangelical Church was not even united on the idea of abortion being bad. Like like we have come so far to merging these these universes in this really

sucked up little marriage that they got going on. No, and and you can't you cannot divorce the ideas of like the escalating war against abortion and then also like with the save the children, like protect the family idea, right,

these these are the these are the same issues. Like these these do go together in terms of people, you know, making this like fake version of the family that they are swearing to protect, whether that be from gay people, or that be from you know, women's bodily autonomy or you know women's rights or like fifth like feminism. All of it's in the same is in the same package. It's like that meme of like two pictures and PAMs

like these are the same picture. It's the same exact rhetoric and it's just like re skin slightly too for whatever topic of the day. The The other other big thing I want to mention before I get into Family Research Council UM is the two thousand and four book A Marriage Under Fire, Bye Bye by Dr James Dobson, which was definitely one of the one of the other kind of key points in escalating these idea of the

culture war UM. And you know that that type of that type of like more like almost like tactical rhetoric. It's all yeah, it's it's It was definitely it was definitely turning point at the same time when Fireproof came out.

Oh I think so, Yeah, it happened close. Yeah. Fireproof and all that came out between two thousand and four and two thousand and six seven, so that was all around the same time period because they were losing, like you said earlier, they were losing the battle against it, right, because that was that was around the time Queer I was coming out. That was when they were starting to get nervous that maybe they could not stop this particular like like forward slide. But yeah, like on the back

cover of their Robert you have something to say. No, I was just thinking back to that period of time when it it seemed positive progress in that regard seemed inevitable and unstoppable. Yeah, I think the note on martial language as used for this is really important here, Like this is a battle, it is under fire, Like that's that is something that was definitely on that point. I'm just gonna read a little bit of the back cover

of a Marriage under Fire. Here we go. In this succinct analysis of the issue, Dr James Dobson presents a compelling case against the legalization of marriage between homosexuals. At the dire ramifications our nation could face. Same sex marriage will destroy the fundamental principles of marriage, parenthood and gender. Families will be increasingly unstable as their definition expands to

incorporate multiple moms or dad's in quotation marks. Legalization of gay marriages will lead to polygamy and other alternatives to one man, one woman unions. The divorce rate will be higher, making our children less safe. Marriage Underfire provides the foundations of a battle plan for the preservation of traditional values in our nation. Our response cannot be clearer. The well being of the family and thus our nation hangs in the balance. Now the time to speak out in defensive

marriage and the American family. So yeah, it is particularly the battle plan, right. You know. One thing I really loved during this time was the like libertarian Christian response to this kind of conversation where they're just like or we could just you know, not have marriage each tied to the state at all. You know, yeah, yeah, I do remember that this is the like, this is the backup plan for like, okay, if like if marriage you know, gay marriage goes forward, then we can just like do

that if we want to, you know, just like completely eliminated. No, absolutely, yeah, I absolutely remember that that type of rhetoric. Even even yea, even around when like the Supreme Court cases we're going forward, they were like really set on like this is like

you know, last resort. We have to fixture that makes sure that it like like like church marriage is just completely separate, which even then that still is the case, and like like a lot of places, like churches is still in a lot of states like reserve the right to uh not people, um, and you can only you can do it through the courts, but not through the church.

There's also the subtext in that that I think should be unpacked, which is that the multimum moms and Dad's kind of image that's given is not a signal of like the non traditional family being bad, but more of a There was this myth that was pushed really hard in the conversion therapy circuit that like if you didn't have a good father figure, you were going to be gay. You're you know, if you didn't have a good relationship

with your mom, you're going to be gay. So like having this as like this, these coded statements in there are giving the clue of like we're trying to stop the cycle. We're trying to not create more gay kids. Um, and that's why this is important. Yeah, I was reading a lot earlier today from the Heritage Foundation because I remember them being a key start. It was so bad, and their whole thing was like you have to have

a mother and a father otherwise everything is terrible. And then you get gay kids, and that also lights like goes into the whole other theory that was like well, which I think Robertson either made up or repeated. Um, it was like, well, people who are gay were abused as children. Yeah, that is that is definitely when I mean then of course all these all these evangelicals are also all like beating their kids, were abusing your child because they were gay or because I mean I was

and I am, But I don't think. Yeah, the related in the sense that you being gay is is the is the one of the triggers for the parents, but it's not the cause of relationship runs the opposite direction. Rights exactly. We are gonna take a break and hear from all of our lovely sponsors who don't support child abuse. Probably well, I mean unless it's unless it's which which does you know does run that island off the coast

of Indonesia where you can hunt children for sport? But we prefer not to see that is I don't think, Robert, I think you have to bleep that. No, Garrison, We're not going to bleep an ad. That's what sponsors this show is child hunting island, which you cannot say that is designed to do every week more gay kids. Um, well,

it's designed to make happier billionaires. Yeah, there's nothing. There's nothing Elon Musk gloves more than hunting children on his at a private island reserve off the coast of Indonesia. And and like Elon Musk, you two can hunt children if you bube anyway, here's here's yet. Yes, we are we are back, and now we're gonna we're gonna move on to probably the most unfun portion of the show today.

Um f r C. The Family Research Council. I'm gonna actually talk about like what they are and what they did and how they're kind of important in the evolution of rhetoric and various other stuff. So yeah, Family Research Council emerged from a nineteen eighty White House conference on families that James Dobson kind of co led with the

President of the United States. So that's fun. Um. Yeah, So he he met and prayed with a group of like eight Christian leaders at a Washington, d c. Hotel, ultimately leading to the creation of the Family Research Council UM, under the direction of a Gerald region Er. That's how that's then, that's how I'm gonna say it. That's what I'm gonna say his name because he doesn't respect so I'm not going to google it. Um and it uh it. It became a division to focus on the family, and

like the late eighties under Gary Bowyer. Um. And the reason there's a who bunch of like complicated like tax stuff because focused on the family can't get too political because then middle like sacrifice their tax taxing extempt status. So there's a whole bunch of really shady stuff happening in between Family Research Council and focused on the family proper not doing any lobbying. Yeah, in terms of like who runs what and like what cross over there is

with like the leadership. They're basically the same organization, but they are like legally separate and kind of have different like operating strategies. Um, but they really are, like to be fair, lots of words to do this, this is not unusual. No, it's it's it's not unusual, but like it's important to that. Like they basically are like like they're they're very late, like they are like like sibling organizations. So yeah, this is uh, this is uh the Gary boy or the guy who took over in the late

eighties of what it was. Also the was the under Secretary of Education and Domestic Policy advisor to President Reagan. UM. So again already like fully fully tied into like the Republican machine. So m Boyer brought in several anti LGBT researchers who pumped out like defamatory material about queer people. UM. Robert Knight was a longtime conservative writer and journalist and

the kind of major propagandist against lgbt Q rights. He served as the f f r c S Director of Cultural Affairers in the nineties up into the early two thousand's. Um While working there, he wrote, along with some Focus on the Family editors, a booklet called the the Homosexual

Behavior and Pedophilia. This is a very very very common thread and all their stuff is that gay people were abused as kids and gay people therefore are like wired to also abuse kids, Like it's part of this cycle that they like coopit a whole bunch of research on it, that they misrepresented that all of the researchers who did

the actual stuff was like, no, you're totally wrong. Um yeah, it's it's there's there's I talk I talked about this a little a little bit and more in depth than the focus on the family episodes for for bastards in terms of like they actually research they used, Um, but yeah it is uh. In the what one of the remarkable claims inside the booklet was was the a search

and that quote. One of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the profits of a new sexual order. So that's uh, that's great profits. F I T S that iss P E P H Y s pH is just libertarianism then basically yeah, basically yes, um, yes, the for some reason, you cannot find this pamphlet on

the f FRC website today. Um. Yeah. So Boya left the group UM, and then FARC had two presidents UM and emerge and one of the most one of them kind of resulted in becoming the most powerful religious right lobbying group in the country with tons of tons of policy researchers and writers UM, and a lot of a lot of like email like email lists and like physical mailing us was a big part of their political organizing.

You know, Eve and Karen we have talked before about the effective power of the rights mailing lists in terms of getting political change. Yeah. Um. Kenneth Conners was a Florida attorney and a leader in the pro life movement. He served as president in the early two thousand's. During his kind of tenure, um f r c's agenda focused mostly on abortion and then also a traditional marriage of other stuff. Was like religious liberty, which means Christian supremacy,

not actual religious liberty. Um. And then like uh, like protecting parents rights right, protecting like parental choice, um, which we'll we'll talk, we'll talk like how do they define traditional marriage? Is this involving like dowries and land transfers and treaties. I believe they just I believe they want one man and then one woman and the woman doesn't really need to actually want it, but as long as

the man wants it, then it's fine. Um. And are they like the Catholics where they believe it has to be for the purposes of procreation? Um? I mean they're they're part of the mainstream evangelicals. Like there's definitely there's like the court of Idea. So yeah, like they are they are, they are for that. But it's I know,

it's it is. It's it's a very like patriarchal thing. Um. And it depends things dumb here, but like the because these are these are important distinctions that need it depends on congregation to congregation, right, Like like the kind of the stuff that I grew up with wasn't super focused on tons of on having tons of kids actually, um. In fact that they kind of prefer just keeping it capped off at two kids, because you know, the more kids you had, the less loyal you were to the

church because you had to focus more on your kids. Actually, so it does, it does. It does really depend on congregation to congregation. I think Family Research Council tried to keep themselves open to lots of interpretations, so blets people call the glom onto their stuff, so they didn't get like super specific around the rule of child rearing. And

that's anything it's important to note around that. This time, or a little before it was when John Paul's Theology the Body was coming out, which is this tone um that's basically getting into like why you know, the death penalty you would be bad and why abortion is bad, and it's all this like sanctity of the body and the body existing and then like the sanctity of sex as for the purposes appropriation that was in the in the atmosphere at this time. That was definitely a key

point is that sex is just for making kids. Like that is definitely like a big, a big part of it, which like they don't actually really believe, but they say right, because like if you look at all of like the all of the extra like the people like all like these leaders like are not like faithful to their wives by anything. Not an accidental side effect of kids at

the point. No, Yeah, but I think it is, like it is interesting, like the amount of stuff that's aund like parental choice and like parent rights, which will come up over the course of the next episodes of the series. I'm right now writing episodes about the current like a book bannings going across the country and a lot of those tied to liked like parents rights over their children, um, like they decide what their children gets to read. So it's all stuff I've never heard of that before in

my life. That's definitely not also tied up with a bunch of the stuff happening in Florida right now, it's definitely not definitely related to Mike Ferris at all. Yeah, and now, yeah, I mean really like yeah, I mean this is sort of what we're getting at, is that the modern anti trend stuff is they're just playing all of the sort of greatest chance of the antipa stuff like the bathroom and the stuff. Yeah, I don't worry. I'm planning to tie this up in a nice in

a nice little bow ahead of you. Just give me like fifteen minutes and I'll do it. So um yeah up next we're talking starting to two US and three they change leaders again and this is where they really have evolved into their current form with Tony Perkins, who became president of the Family Family Research Council into US prior prior to that, he serves two terms as a Louisiana state representative in the nineties and even even even when he was president of Family Research Counselor, he served

to two years as state representative. He's also a former police officer UM and a television news reporter. So overall just sounds like a quite quite the dude. Um yeah he he. He authored a whole bunch of you know, like all these guys right in, tons of like Christian books they get published by like weird Christian publishers. Um. He also served as the senior pastor of a of a church in Maryland UM called the Hope Christian Church.

He uh and he was. He was a leader of an effort by white and black religious right preachers to work together against LGBT equality, specifically like in like the East Coast in the South. That's where there's so there's a there's a like cross organizing between historically black churches. Of course not all of them, but like the Perkins really tried to like reach out on that front to get like that coalition going, which was kind of unique

at the time. So yeah, a big part of FARC strategy is to pound home the false claimed that queer people are more likely to sectually abused children other than heterosexual people. Um, this is uh, yeah, this is not not scientifically true. You can look up like stats and you can look up you can look up like the American Psychology Association has a lot of research on this topic because it was such a big point in the

early two thousands that people had to like talk about it. Yeah, so we is all that's like one of these things that like was a myth, you know, ambiently as a scare tactic and a slippery slope fallacy. But I think there's also it has its roots in a particular misunderstanding of Romans too, which is the passage that most people

point to as their anti gay rhetoric. And the context of that is like most like centrist and liberal like biblical scholars will agree that that passage was more about the pedophilia that was happening in the Roman Empire and speaking out against that um and not specifically against like consulting adults even even even even like the Old even even in the Old Testament to a lot of new people going into the actual translations of stuff, and like

even like Leviticus um, it is definitely pointing towards it being about specifically like fathers not abusing their like like you know, like pre pubescent like sons who are like more like androgynous, Like it is specifically targeted like this type of idea, it's not it's not against like gay men who are like adults. Yeah, there's there's this theological conversation on the right that was happening that kind of was like trying to account for that historical context and

was like it's both. Clearly it's both because they go together, right and obviously, like we have to find a way to justify demonizing gay people in order to protect the san city of marriage, so we have still save the children and multiple children. So Perkins has continued to defend

the kind of game and his pedophiles idea. Um. He had a he had a televised debate on MSNBC into in two US in ten about this, UM, so like yeah, that's I mean, that is like twelve years ago at this point, but still two US and ten feels much more recent than stuff you know, talking about like the late nineties. Um, yeah, debating with the Southern Poverty Law Center,

like on the issue of that now. Yeah. Yeah. So. Some other anti LGBT kind of propagandists at uh f RC includes Peter Sprigg, who joined into US in one UM. He authored the brochure called a Top ten Myths about Homosexuality,

which was pretty popular around the time. UM. Such claims inside the book conclude that like X, gay therapy or conversion therapy were sexual oritation can be change, UM, lgbt V LGBTQ people are mentally ill because being lgbt Q makes you ill, and that the sexual abuse of boys by adult men is more common than consensual sex between adult men, which is not obviously not true. That is quite I have questions, that is quite so many questions.

That is quite quite. The stat um and like Springs, sources are a mixture of like junk science is stewed by groups that support conversion therapy UM and also legitimate science, quota out of context or cherry picked, which is a long used tactic by anti gay kind of groups. The bolster their bolster like their claims and their general like rhetoric. Right, if you mix in like a hint of truth, it can make all of your outrageous stuff seem more like legible. Um,

we knew that from the screw Tape Letters. Yeah, like one of what one of one of his better books. I actually enjoy the screw Tape Letters. I think it's it's pretty fucking funny. It's good, but also like just so like an easter egg for those who know what

we're talking about, Like he was extremely kinky carry on. Anyway, one of the main researchers they kind of misused research for was Juith Stacey, who was like since issued lots of public statements condemning the condemning what you know, Family Research Council advocates for, and has endlessly requested that anti

gay groups to stop mr misrepresenting her work. Um. Yeah, so we're gonna jump forward to two US and eight, uh, because this is this is of course, the election of Obama has really kind of frightened a lot of people. This is when Dobson sent out that letter detailing like what a post Obama future could be, in which he included gay marriage as a part of like the dystopian night mare. He was imagining, this is the future that

gay people want. Yeah, an interesting it was just an interesting thing on spring Here he was, he was he was on MSNBC again, which I mean, maybe we should stop, maybe we should stop inviting these people onto new his channels, But anyway, um Springs responding, Springue responded to a question about allowing non American same sex partners um of American citizens to immigrate into the States by saying I would prefer that we export homosexuals from the United States rather

than import to them UM and saying I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions on homosexual behavior um and then when asked, so should we outlaw gay behavior, Spruce said yes, so yeah. It's it's like it's very much a clear kind of mask off thing is that they just don't they just don't want it around at all. And an idea I'm going to tie this kind of more towards towards the end of the series with the trans stuff. Is like the idea of queerness has like

a contagion. Um, these people having to like the brutality is justified in their own heads because they it's like this idea that queerness can spread and it can infect children, so you have to you have to contain it, and any action taken against it is justified because it's like you're containing a virus, and it's like this is really what kind of makes them feel so justified and righteous

in every action they do. So yeah, including out including outlaw and gay gay people could have you know, exporting them from the United States, you know, a blatantly fascist idea. So yeah, um uh I. F ARC also worked unsuccessfully to continue they don't ask, don't tell policy. Um, this was up until like two US and ten, So that was that was a bit definitely another thing that they tried to focus on. But the slide, you know, the

progressive side, actually was happening around that time. You know something interesting about that, yeah earlier today Yeah oh yeah, So I was again looking at Heritage Foundation because that was the Heritage Foundation was like my big kind of go to when I was growing up in the nineties and two thousands and doing speech and debate and apologetics. Campaign all that ship and um, I was like, well, what was their take on Donuts Don't Tell? And they

in the early nineties, we're very very against it. Yeah, in ninety three they had like this paper published and they were very against it because they were like, well, then you won't then you'll still have gay people in the military. Yeah, absolutely in the military. Yes, they're like, they will. There will be like, it will be bad for the unit cohesion, there will be sexual abuse, as

if that wasn't already happening. There will be like all of these terrible things happening in the military that couldn't possibly happen, couldn't possibly be happening otherwise, it will like we can combat effectiveness is the line that Family Research Council used. Yeah. Yeah, So there was definitely a shift in like the nineties where a lot of these evangelical groups were against Donuts Don't Tell because yeah, it's still allowed gay people and just that they didn't say anything.

But then as they saw progress happening there like Okay, this is better than nothing like this, this is better than them being openly gay, So they kind of switched gears towards UM which is you know, they're just like grasping at anything they can. Um, I think, what's time for another break and then we will kind of finish this off with some other not fun information. But yeah, let's let's let's do let's let's do let's let's do it at. Let's let's see, let's see what our our

lovely sponsors at has to say. Well, this big thing is trying to get volunteers together to raid it's child hunting island off the coast of Indonesia, a counter raid. Yeah, yeah, you can. You can volunteer to go fight in Ukraine, or you can volunteer to help take down it's child hunting island so that you can run it. You know, it would be fun to have all of the food delivery services have their own private militias that take the world.

We're moving towards garrison. I mean the post office already does so, right, not the companies. Yeah, yeah, arm everybody. Everything should be a military. That's the whatever podcast this is, and we're back and we are still talking about my

favorite topic, which is the Family Research Council. During the twelve election cycle, they donated about two two thousand dollars to eighty federal Republican candidates UM, saying that they're using the money to UH to strategically be used to support pro family candidates and pro family issues and elections and valid incentives across the country. Yeah, so this is just you know, in terms of you know, keep keep the

keep keep the pro pro family angle in mind. You know, this is that they continuously were always donating money to two US and twelve was the highest one on on record UM and I think I don't think they've even matched that since then. It was it was pretty high

because that was that was Obama's second term. So they were definitely like trying to really really organize, right because this this this is like right but right before when the Supreme Court was going to be ruling on gay marriage as well, so of course which digit didn't get finalist, but they were starting to hear cases. We're gonna let's go, We're going to kind of briefly go back to to UH. To James Dobson here, reference of people are people who

do not listen to the behind the bastards once. He's an evangelical Christian author and self proclaimed psychologist who who if you if you don't know who James Dobson is, please preserve your innocence and just quit, like, just go enjoy it. I don't know now forever now, I just don't know, God I do. I do love the idea of a self proclaimed psychologist. That's that's that's the energy child psychologists, just like I know what kids need. They

need to be on Hunting Island, you know. And and this guy doesn't even believe in like child's about Like no, he doesn't held development. But also you do know that I'm getting a PhD in para psychology, right, I know, Garrison, We're paying for it. This podcast is going to have the highest rate of doctors of any podcast on the internet other than the one that our friend does. Anyway, I will be happy to be invited back onto Cova's podcast as a doctor in para psychology. I think I'll

be able to offer some really unique insights. Okay, Anyway, Dobson founded Focus of Family in nineteen seventy seven, which is unfortunate because he could have just watched Star Wars, but instead he that is that is a key part of this ideology. Um, yeah, he was. He's he's a founding He's a founding member of several um T lgbt hit groups, UM Family Research councilor being one of them, also a lot. He is a founder of Alliance Defending Freedom. Um. So yeah, he got he got, he got two under

his belt. Um. The the organization, which is now based in Arizona, became a very powerful kind of fundraising behemouth dedicated to fighting so called marriage like marriage equality for

for queer people and trans inclusive nondiscrimination protections. Um and with a big part of the thing that they were fighting for was enshrining a quote right to discriminate against LGBTQ people in state laws, which is, you know, all the stuff around like you know what if a baker is forced to bake a cake for you know, all of this nonsense is what so that that that is so like that that that is that that is Dobson

He started that kind of thing. Yeah, so I'm gonna I'm gonna now have a little fun though, because when we want to jump ahead a little bit just to kind of get the rhetoric kind of nailed down on what on what kind of house stuff we we're gonna start shifting towards the trans stuff at this point. Um. But um, after after the Supreme Court ruling for nationwide kind of marriage equality. Um Dobson has had this had

this beautiful, beautiful quote. I had this black cloud over me on June twenty six when that decision was handed down and I was contemplating this foreboding. This black clowd to hit me like a ton of bricks. The decision was not really about gay marriage. It's not. It's about everything else. It's about the entire culture war. It's about it's about control of the public schools, and it's about

what's happening in universities. It's about the economy, and it's about what businesses, and it's about the military, and it's about medicine. It's about everything. We lost the entire culture war without one decision. The gay marriage thing was just a part of it. But it's going to touch every dimension. So I wish that was true. But in terms of yes, in terms of kind of how this gets expanded to

like businesses, schools, universities, medicine. I just love the histrionics that they started kind of focusing on in terms of like, well, we lost this culture war. I guess we got to move on to the next one, which is you know, the even more freakish thing, which is, oh, kids wanting to kids realizing that may be they have a different views on gender. So that's the next kind of like rotating target, that that that they that they move moved towards.

So yeah. Um. Earlier that year, Dobson laid laid bare his his fundamental confusion on what it means to be a LGBT um. He claimed on his radio show that being bisexual meant that you have orgies, should mean not yes yes um. He also blamed uh in two US twelve. He also blamed the two US in twelve Sandy Hook massacre on a queer people because because they should the nation turned turned their back on God. It allowed it allowed judgments to fall on us, which is why I

said that happened. That's one of the interesting splits in the right between the people who think it's fake and the people who thought it was queer people's fault. Yes, yeah, it's is there. Yeah, they've all come back together now, But it was it was a real it was a real split. And one of one of the other great things about Dobson is so after my Behind the Bastard's episodes on Dobson, like literally, like the day after it dropped.

I found this extra little disturbing nugget of info about him, um in a in an old blog post titled is my child Becoming homosexual? Dobson recommends Dobson recommends things that a father can do to help his child fix homosexual symptoms fix sorry, including taking your child into the shower with you to compare penises of Yeah, it is not good. I will I will quote from I will quote from the blog. Um. The boy's father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son's male nous.

He can play rough and tumble games with his son in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help us and learn how to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to hown a square put in peg into a square hole. He could even take his son into the shower with him where a boy couldn't help. Notice that dad has a fetus just like his holy bigger. Oh my god, this reminds me of so that is

a quote by Dr Jim Stuffson, psychologist. Oh my god. Anyway, I'm sure there's nothing nothing at all to uh, hey, Jimmy Dabbs, how's your son? Yeah, that's good. How are you? Are you talking nothing at all? To kind of interrogate there, Um yeah, m hm. The other thing that I really love, and by love, I mean don't live, um, is that like the only gay people who exist are gay boys. Yeahs and by people don't exist at all. Like, yeah,

this is a really interesting thing. It's because it's about why would Uh, it's about if it happens to a woman, it's like, oh, well, they're a woman anyway, They're already not as good as men. I guess it kind of makes sense that they would do that. Um, if it happens to a guy, you're like, well, obviously, like why would you do that? You're part of the patriarchy. Why would you, Like you're supposed to exert power over women?

What is wrong with you for not wanting that? Like there's a whole bunch of other like patriarchal stuff going on, and like why they focused on that Also because they undeniably find lesbians attractives, like they can't like they can't help but find it hot. So they definitely focus it more on gay men because they find that more gross because it is like a defiance of patriarchy in like

a different way you but stuff. Yeah, and of course, but um well and I think also this is the same reason why transmisogyny becomes such a huge sort of driver fanti transmove because you know, I mean you see this a lot also with we see with non Christian

like transforms too. But like the ultimate sin you can commit if if if you if you're a person is if like, yeah, the ultimate sin you can commit against sort of the family is having someone who being born and being seen as a man and then you know, becoming a woman a woman, and that's like that's you know that, that's that's what trans misogyny is, right, It's it's about it's it's the specific kind of trans sexist trans sexism that you get when you do that, when

you specifically like you know, in in these people's eyes, it's like you give up being a man and become a woman. And these they go ballistic over this because it's you know, like it's it's it's it's it's rejection to patriarchal power. And then you know, and they have to do all of this sort of like incredible pathologizing to explain why this would happen and ignore just like

this person was always a woman. That's you know, also like it's it's a condemnation of your misogyny, in your misogynistic behavior to like go join you know, the victims of our hate. So like it has all of these these layers here. Yeah, and it's gonna we're gonna get like right right right into trend stuff now because yeah, in Supreme Court ruling making the same sexual marriage illegal throughout the United States, which sent LGBT anti LGBT hate

groups into a furious reaction. Um, Family Family Research Council was no exception, and it started working in tandem with other groups to support so called kind of religious liberty, you know, laws which allowed people who object to same sex to same sex like couples and just you know, queerness in general, to to deny goods and services to same sex couples and just you know, queer people in general.

It is it is very like nonspecific um. So yeah, also in Family Research Council faced its own set of scandals. Referring to a friend of the pod Josh jugger Um was executive who was executive director of the Family Research Council action um political arm of the organization. It was obviously revealed that he had molested several save the babies to your hard drive, several children And yeah, I had a lot of had a lot of children on his hard drives so much that like even like the FBI

was kind of surprised how much he had. Like when when when the FBI is surprised on how much child porn you have, You're like, quite, yeah, you are? You are when you surprised them? Have you have you read his his appeal? I have not read. It's basically making it out to be like there was this other guy who had access to that computer. Was his name Josh Tucker. No, it's deciding, you're just like he's just like somebody else

probably did it. It wasn't me. Yeah. So he resigned from Family Research Council after posting a brief message on his website saying that he resigned after events public. I think he resigned for a Family Research Council because of the Ashley Madison Yes, well, yeah, he resigned. Listing listed listing concerning events as the recent he stopped Ashley Madison accounts got hacked and leaked and it was revealing his email was also on there. Yes, yeah, yeah, I feel

like that's what we kicked it off. But that was around the time that was he didn't get Yeah, his sister's case got released to the press. It is it is frustrating, how Yeah. Definitely the actually Madison thing was seen as more of a moral failing than molestian children um and having tons of child porn. That was definitely like within like the church and within within the kind of the whole like like church like network. The actually Madison thing was seen as much more of a kind

of like an egregious sin. Well, because that's infidelity and that's just like that destroys the entire you know, nuclear family, whereas molesting your siblings is just boys doing waste stuff. See, I I grew up a boy, and I never I never did that. I kind of whether they never did

that either. So anyway, uh, any real boys right in and let us know this back to back to Perkins um the Perkins was elected head chair of the U S Commission on International Religious Freedom um IN, which was an independent, bipartisan and federal government entity established by US Congress to monitor, analyze, and report on threats to religious freedom.

So who sponsored that fucking bill? That's a good question. Uh. Over the course of this time, he continued to work at the Family Research Council as well UM, including the annual Family Research un SOL sponsored UH Values Voter Summit been to those which featured President Trump as a speaker UM as well as Healthy Human Services Secretary Alexaser. So yeah, this was the first time a sitting Health and Human Services secretary was addressed, like gave an address at at

the gathering UM so. Also at VVS the Values Voter Summit, they featured an anti trans panel that illustrated the anti lgbt Q rights shift to kind of storytelling as a way to further marginalized trans people's and like next year, oh god, the the panel hosted like a multiple kind of anti transactivists. Um Lynn Mager was there. Um two of Maker's children in entify his trans and they no

longer speak to her. Um. Andre van Mole, the co chairman Anti lgbt Hate group of the American College of Ediatricians Committee on Adolescent Sexuality, used to use like suico scientific claims, telling the audience that the that that dissidence from gender dysphoria is the norm, calling that they use this weird problematic study that LEMPT, like that limpt trans kids together with non trans kids to study this idea

of gender identity. It's a whole bunch of like the same like you know how like they were like over two thousands they were they were misusing like research to say like, oh, look, how all of these gay people are all also all pedophiles. Also they have sex with kids more often than adults. Like what, No, it's it's

the same, It's this, it's the same type of thing. Um. They also me the false claim that the majority of trans kids are also like a diagnosed with autism um, which makes it easier for them to be recruited into being transgender because they can be tricked because they're autistic. You can collect them all. This is like the they then diagram of autism causema vaccines is causing trans kids.

Also also the idea that like trans affirming care causes or dysphoria, which causes more suicide, as opposed to the scientific reasoning that affirming care causes less dysphoria, which causes less suicide. Um, you know, a whole bunch of a whole bunch of nonsense stuff feature. You can't expect a group that will not acknowledge the fact that having access to birth control as a way to prevent abortions would

acknowledge any of this is real either. Yeah, no, I mean The Pedal also featured Cathy Grace Duncan from from the Portland, Oregon based Portland Fellowship, which states that it offers a freedom to people from homosexuality. UM. Duncan claims that she detransitioned and is proof that transitioning is always wrong because that she de transitions. That means it's proof for everybody that everybody should yes, because trans people are

a monolith. Yeah, we're talking more about We're gonna be talking more about, um, the sort of how how people who do transition get weaponized against trans people. And again I also I also need to point out, like you just immediately that like most people who do transition, detransition because they are under immense social pressure too, because society is normously transphobic. And then there are a small number of people who do treat who do treat de transition

because it's not for them and good for them. But yeah, they get a very various small minority of those people basically get used by people who don't care about them. Other people get gender firming surgeries and change their minds about it later. There's this whole movement of you know, women who are getting their breast implants removed. What's the difference.

It's the same picture, Yeah, same picture. Sure. Another really fun another fun thing I do at least once a year as I go onto the focus on the Family and Family Research Council websites and that look at look at their entire like queer section. That's really interesting because like all of them around like gay people like is is my kid gay? What to do? What to do with my kids? Gay? Is my is my kids showing

gay symptoms? Like all the stuff, and then post it's all like a gender issue, you know, the cult of people trying to get your kid to become trans? Is my kid trans? Why is my kid dressing up in girls clothes? It's like it's it's such a it's such an immediate shift to know if your kid is texing transhit all of this homosexual like fear stuff to immediately being scared about, like the agenda identity kind of movement, and like the cult of transgenderism. Um, yeah, it is,

it is. It is such a stark, stark change. Heritage Foundation website is the same. I licked up when they added their gender page, and it was in twenty seven, Yeah, exactly. That was when they started going after trans things that the only thing was like, oh well, it's actually okay

that there's a pay gap between men and women. In seventeen, they were like trans From eighteen, you see a massive explosion in all of these in all of these like stuff about trans and like trans science, whether it be like the whether it be like the answers in Genesis, whether it be focused with the family, whether it be because the Heritage Foundation, all of this stuff. You can watch, you watch an immediate shift in the type of stuff

that they start talking about. I will just say I am a little glad they're doing it, not for reasons you think, but because this means that they're their kids growing up like we grew up, who know that this is an option now? Whereas like that is true, we didn't know that it was an option until we got out. Yeah is it's yeah, But you can see the kind of the switch and stuff. There's a in the in a family Research Council pamphlet written by Peter Sprague called

how to Respond to the LGBTQ Movement Publish. People with gender dysphoria or transgender identities are more likely than the general population to engage in high risk behaviors, which may contribute to psychological disorders or both. The suicide exists among those who have already received gender resignment surgery, which exists

to a siddle tendencies results in an underlying pathology. The same people write the script of euphor you but yeah, a whole bunch of stuff around like Tom Perkins, Peter Sprig. If you just look at all of this stuff, it's um, this is such a such an explosion. Uh. Tony Perkins wrote a pamphlet called I Have a Girl Brain but a boy body, um for for for a Virginia kindergarteners like a transgender story thing that he was doing around thing For years. Lgbt Q activists wanted to keep the

goal of luring children into sexual confusion under wraps. But now that they've hood winked a lot of the country on their agenda, these extremists no longer have to hide. In fact, they're increasingly bold and even boastful about their real intentions of recruiting kids. So in terms of like again it's it's it is and it is an infection. It's a contagion that they're trying to like infect or

recruit children. Um and again, all of that kind of rhetoric is in a post like in a in like a in a pamphlet call you know about about trans about being trans thaying I have a girl brain but in a boy body. It's like the fact that they the Fredwick is happening, it is going to it's gonna convince kids that they fall prey to it. Like it's this whole, this whole thing that is such a such a marked kind of change. Um. You can read, you know.

The other titles include stuff like the regressive cult of Transgenderism. Um, all this kind of stuff talking about our country understands that scientology is a cult, but we don't seem to understand is how the much, how much the transition, how much the transgender movement mirrors cults like scientology. It's it's all of it's all of the same, it's all of the same stuff. And the transgender cult is a cult. It's the best cult I've been in yet rates like I I feel like we need to nobody will give

me sh I can. I can stop doing my weekly injections whenever I want to, and you won't. You won't

lose your friends, No, I will not. So anyway, not at any point, that was kind of the bulk of stuff I had gathered around, specifically talking about kind of family family, we uch council and how you know, the change happened around from all of the stuff around you know, protecting marriage equality, protecting you know, the psychety of marriage to changing It's like it's the same save the children rhetoric, but now shifted over to gender issues, I mean, the

window because they can't win on the gay issue anymore, so they've just got to keep pushing in that direction. But it's the same organizing forces. It's the same organizations, it's the same mailing lists, it's the same pamphlets, it's the same writers, right, it's all the people who wrote all the same stuff, just moving it over to trans things.

So I just wanted to kind of lay this groundwork for us when we when we talk about kind of the ongoing legislative fight against trans people in these next few episodes. I just wanted to kind of lay this out for an example of talking about Yeah, it is really just you know, there was all these fears around you know, gay people in the change rooms, gay people in the bathrooms just gets shifted over to trans people in change rooms, trans people in the bathrooms. It's just this,

it's the just moving. It's just this like this running of the clock that just shifts it over to the transgender o' clock. I don't know what before, but it's easier to like to pull parental. Right, stuff is on the rise in the in this community as a talking point, and it's always easier to pull that in with trans issues than it is with gay issues. Yes, well I think that we are running out of time. But even Curan, where can people find you online? Our podcast is the

Kitchen Table Cults. You can find it at Kitchen Table cult dot com. Um our handle on Twitter is kitchen could Pod. I'm at blue Pep Boy on Twitter, and I'm at even Underscore at ginger um. I would also recommend, like, if you want to have a like you know, trans authors take on the transition. The novel De transition Baby is out there, It exists, is again one person's takes. It's not a monolithic thing, but it's a it's a

good novel. Um. And then if you want to learn more about the effects of the deconversion therapy universe, UM, Gary Conley's book Boy Race is fucking great. Yep, agreed. Um. I always want to thank you both for coming on to talk about again one of one of the most fun topics. Our favorite people near and dear to near and dear to all of our hearts with featuring friends of the pod James Dobson and his urge to take his kids in the shower with them to compare penises,

and our good friend Josh Dogger. Um, Save save the children. Not like that? That all right, that's the That's the episode. Welcome Deck could happen here a podcast about the war against trans people. I'm your host, Christopher Wong. In February, a camp of indigenous and ecological protesters attempting to stop the Thacker past lithium mine in Nevada was thrown into

chaos over an unexpected issue, transphobia. Two of the camp activists, including a man who had volunteered to act as an attorney for the group, revealed to be members of another organization called Deep Green Resistance or DGR. Nominally, Deep Green Resistance is an ecological organization dedicated to destroying industrial society to preserve the environment through promoting the destruction of dams

and other infrastructure. Deep Green Resistance found little success on this front, but they have been much more successful in spreading the other core of their ideology, miligiant, ruthless and fanatical transphobia. When the Indigenous protesters at Thacker Pass discovered the twos membership in DGR and the result in transphobia,

they were furious. Falk the DGR lawyer who had offered to represent the protesters, was kicked off the case, and the presence of the two d g R members was used by Lithium America as a weapon against the protesters. This is a familiar cycle for Deep Green Resistance. Soon afterwards founding in two thousand eleven, the group fully embraced radical feminism, staking out a position in an old debate inside the feminist movement raging since the nineteen seventies over

whether trans women are in fact women. These feminists, I used the term loosely here became known as trans exclusionary. Radical feminists or turfs through heroes were people like Janis Raymond, author of the vehemently transphobics Greed the Transsexual Empire. Raymond, whose BaFL influence will return to next episode, was largely ran out of the mainstream American feminist movement with the rest of her turf companions. A similar fate would befall

Deep Green Resistance. Ecological activists in groups like Earth First, Green Peace, the i w W, and the Broader Green Anarchist Movement. Cists and trans alike ran d g R out of the ecological left for the transphobia, and waged an incredibly successful no platforming campaign against d g r's founders, Derek jens in In Leary Keith. Driven from the left so thoroughly they were reduced to slinking into protest camps

in secret, only to be expelled upon discovery. Members of Deep Groom Resistance moved right and increasingly to other countries to seek an audience for the transphobic bile. Leary Keith founded a turf organization called the Women's Liberation Front or WOLF. More on them later. This brings us a turf extraordinaire, Jennifer Billock Black could have been a member of Deep Groom Resistance in charge of booking appearances for Derrick Jensen.

The success of indow platform in campaign waged by the left confessor that trans people were secretly backed by a conspiracy of billionaires. This idea spread like wildfire across the UK, and as well discussed next episode Mexico. To understand what happened in the UK, we spoke with Krista Peterson, a graduate student at USC who, at significant personal cost, confronted the rise and spread of transphobia and the English speaking world. Krista,

Welcome to the show and thank you for joining us. Hi, thank you. I guess wanted to start with Jennifer Billick and talking a bit about how how she sort of moved into increasingly increasingly transpoblic territory and I guess how she started moving into the sort of follow the money conspiracy theories that she's been peddling for the past several

years now. Yeah, So I give you her narrative of this UM, which is that in two thousand thirteen, I think she was supposed to be on a panel UM about big trans people UM that was canceled because of pushback UM and then because of that, she thought what is the big force behind this and then got into it from there. UM. But she has really I think you know that Deep Green Resistance was kind of into

UM focusing on trans people for a while. UM, but she really has gone from an environmental activist as someone who's just solely focused on dreads people. It's basically all she is ever talking about. UM, and she's kind of she started as opposing this kind of existential threat UM that was real, which was ecological destruction to collagon UM, and she has kind of maintained that tenor in the shift where now she's portraying this as an existential threat,

but instead of climate change, it's transpeople. So the way she got into the money UM, she's just a very prolific, kind of at home researcher UM, and she kind of had this anti corporate mindset going in from her background, and she she produces a lot of research. There's not that many people in the gender critical movement probably producing a lot of original content, and so when someone is

there's really they can get a lot of uptake from that. UM. Her mate her saying was it actually a federalist article about who are the rich white men institutionalizing transgender ideology. Um, and just by being a pretty big platform. I think that got some big initial distribution, and I think that was how people initially started seeing her kind of beyond

the deep green resistance type audience. Yeah. No, I mean that's one of the things that that's been very interesting to be studying this is that you see this a lot. You see a lot of people who we're sort of run out of left by their transphobia, like pivoting really hard right and then using right wing media platforms and using sort of also writing political backing to start pushing

this stuff. And I think, yeah, Bill looks interesting example to me, because yeah, she acs you're talking a bit about this moreman, she has this weird because she she has too weird and goal she has the weird trans humanism angle, and then she has this like incredibly like when becomes like an increasingly anti semitic angle. Yeah. So where she so she's following the money is the original thing? Where she follows the money too, is um, trans rights

are a conspiracy to usher and trans humanism. Um. So her thing is she often says transgender is an ad campaign for trans humanism. This is a quote. To get people comfortable with actual emerging with machines slash air ai, there must be a complete dissociation for biological reality. So you see this a lot with conspiracy theories, I think, where you have this kind of like metaphorical goal, right, where it's all about getting people to dissociate from their bodies.

It's like not very clear what that looks like when an actual causal level. Yeah, but that's that's the big goal, right, um, and then they need a big goal. It's there's kind of this mysterious part of this supposed conspiracy UM that is trans rights, which is like what is this for? Right? They lots of people now are accepting that there's like this big dark money push behind it, um, which raises the question why what what is this doing? Um? And the answers are kind of cookie right, So this one

has caught on more than I would have expected. It's really weird. So they kind of walk into it slowly, right. They start off and it's they think there's something weird with trans rights, and they have it's very common for them to think that their opponents don't really believe their beliefs. Um, something is up and for some reason all these people are supporting trans rights. What they know it's bad that you need you need something to go in there to

played why. And this is a narrative that fits with Billick's worldview. You know, you can see how some with her background would get here. It's kind of unusual for all these ladies from the UK now to believe that trans people are trans human conspiracy, but they needed something

to go there as the goal they picked it up. Yeah, I guess I guess we should get into Mom's net a little bit because most that's a really weird, like specifically UK thing that I don't know if there's like there's not really an American equivalent to it, Like I guess it's like it's like it's like what if you took the worst parts of Facebook ends next door? I guess. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about like what Mom's

Net is and how this stuff sorted sorted seeping into it? Yeah, So this is part of this bigger question, which is like why in the UK has taken off so much in the way it has a big part of that story is moms That, which is a website for moms um to ask kind of parenting questions UM, and it's really widely used, I think, especially among this kind of

like white, upper middle class educated population. A lot of people are on moms and it's kind of a trusted website for a lot of familial type things like advice about what to do when your kid has life, things like that, and Moms has become just like the main infection point I think in the gender critical movement that okay, with why it happens more generally, you have to look at it as kind of part of this global resurgence

and fascism around the same time period. It's like the mids on UM, you know, like the most obvious instances of that have the kind of traditional fascist targets and ideals. UM. I think what's essential is this kind of logic that you really see in the gender critical movement also, which as you have this kind of background climate of anxiety and fear, then you get this narrative that's minorities are

rising up against you. You've lost something, your identity used to give you a special status, and now they're taking it from you and you have to fight back. UM. And it's how they've kind of switched out, like what the big identity is who the minorities are, what the special status is with this more feminist thing. But it really does have that kind of internal logic in the

same way. Um, And I think you just had this kind of moment globally where you have the kind of background emotional state that was ripe for fascism in a lot of ways, and then this ideology was just infectious in that way. And then in Mom's night it was able to catch um and it really provided run it with this place where really grow uh into this kind

of a waal demographic group or a kind of fascist moment. Yeah, I mean, I think there's there's there's an interesting I think there's The other interesting thing to me about it is like, I don't know, I've been thinking about this a lot in terms of, yeah, why why specifically the

UK and why the US doesn't have this? And I mean, I mean, you know, I mean, I guess one one explanation for it partly is like the US is so much more religious than the UK is and a lot of these people sort of would have been evangelicals in like in the US. But but yeah, I think the months that angles interesting to me in that it really seems like because there's so few people publishing anything that's even remotely tangible, like a very very small number of

actors were able to very quickly radicalize people. And I think, I don't know, and I think it's interesting that like like people like Jesse gall like I think, wind up being much more influential in the UK than they are in the U s even so they're getting sort of published in these US publications because there's sort of I don't know, I guess there's there's this like hunger for it on Mom's naight, like for for anything that sort of supports his world view in a way that there's

kind of wasn't in the US. I think part of why, like the y UK question, there's some part of it that's just kind of by chance moms that existed was a place where it could really take off. But I think also to some extent, like you're aldic to think kind of part of the relevant group in the US

is like a little more inoculated against this stuff. I mean that it doesn't really have the same initial appeal among women who would like to contrue construe themselves as feminists because many many Americans see anti trend stuff and immediately um connected to like the religious right, So it doesn't you don't really get the initial way into it where you know, you come across this thing presenting transpeople as encroaching on your space and taking something from you,

and for us, we see that and it's like, oh yeah, bathroom bill laws really just had this a few years ago and it was this right wing religious thing. We know what this is. The UK has kind of had a more prominent turf act division for a little while in that Julie Bendel kind of long ben a thing there, but it wasn't really catching in the same way it

is now really caught. Yeah, I guess, I mean, what are the other things that I was talking I had an interesting conversation that sadly didn't wind up getting recorded, but I was talking with some Mexican feminists, like trans feminist about this, and one of the things they were saying was the way like talking about the way like intersectionality is a framework and the fact that there was there was an incredibly strong black feminist current in the

US insulated like the main line of of American feminism from this stuff in a way that didn't really happen in the UK because like the black feminist movement there is just not as strong and not as sort of mainstream,

and that has this knock on effect. I guess we're like you get you know, without an intersectionality framework, is it's easier to have this sort of like totalizing like identity of like the woman as like a thing that's just one object that you can like pin down to biological barkers, instead of having to sort of like look at all of the different actual relations that are going on. Yes, so my read on them is that most of them are not really we're not pre existing feminists. There are

not people who are very interested in women's rights. And then kind of took this turn and my pressures that they're largely people who really started identifying as feminists once that that could be a guys to kind of taking things out on trans people. Um, and I think probably why it was able to get so big on Mom's Net. So eventually the women's rights for my Mom's Net, which is just one of those subboards, in addition to all the childcare stuff, just became almost all anti trans stuff.

And so that is partially this stuff was popular, but I also I think that you know, normal mainstream feminist stuff wasn't as popular and they weren't getting a lot of engagement on normal important feminist issues, um, and instead this was what their user base was really going for. It's really striking, I think how those exceptions, um. But in general, the big gender critical people talk very very little about all feminist issues, like this is the thing

they care about always all the time. Yeah, yeah, that's

definitely a pattern. What turfs. So it's like yeah, once once, once you're a turf, like this is the only thing you care about, Like don't you don't do Yeah, I mean, I guess like one of one of the we'll talk more about this in the next episode, but one of the sort of big like flagship things in in like with the UK and Ireland, was like a bunch of the Turfs getting extremely mad at the at at these end, at the at the pro like at the pro abortion

activists in UH in Ireland because they weren't being Turfs, and so the other the Turfs were like, no, no, no, we're gonna like try to sabotage this, the actual feminist movement trying to get access to abortions because we're turfs

and they're not. Yeah, they could be really devidictive against women who they say are like selling out women's rights by focusing on anything other than the tiny present of the population that is trans is v one issue you're allowed to focus on and if you say, like no, please please leave us alone, we're focusing on something else.

Really do not think that wom I guess the everything I wanted to ask about was because I think the everything that happened in the UK that only really started happening in the US like pretty recently, and even then was kind of like it was an event in like a way that I don't know how much it was

in the UK. Is the extent to which like people like J. K Rowling and like the sort of the sort of mainstream of British famous people and like the British British journalists stuff like that like like start started rallying around this stuff. Yeah, this is It's been wild for me seeing I don't think super highly of the American media, but seeing how much worse the British media is really will they just have been publishing stuff things like The Times of London have been the worst, with

more conservative Eletto especially bad. But even you know, like the Guardian was in some BBC since some uh, these things are just kind of like demonstrably false coverage of transmit stuff that just gives a lot of credence to this transphobic movement. UM. It's kind of this like near blackout of in serious consideration of what trans people are experiencing UM and what their actual position on this stuff is.

It's just really grim. I think I think part of it is maybe that moms that did have this reach to a lot of people who are like professionals. Their audience is pretty professional, and it was it's kind of trusted website where this guy normalized a lot. The last thing I wanted to talk about before UM we go to break is do you want to talk about Kathleen Stock and that whole thing a little bit? Yes, Okay, Also we should talk about um we should connect Billick too.

Oh yeah yeah, yeah, we should. We should do that first. Yeah. So that is there was, you know moms that started UM. I think the initial narrative was kind of trans people are being really unreasonable, they're really demanding, they're infringing on our status. This is the thing that was more localized about this group that was easy to cast as unreasonable, um, and they were able to take kind of a victim's

stance relative to them. And then it just kind of kept estialating, right, it just kind of fiction it too, more and more of this kind of content, and then eventually there, Yeah, there really was a great site, this kind of anti trans content, and it just got increasingly conspiratorial. I think so people at this point, I think almost everyone in the gender court movement thinks that there's dark money behind trans rights. They think it's like some kind

of AstroTurf movement for who knows what. Lots of them will say the goal is like selling you know, hormones and surgery to people. What it's funding, you know, a global conspiracy. It's like pretty expensive and how it's like the most plausible way to get an audience for this kind of thing. Um. But Jennifer Billick is what a relatively few people get doing this kind of deep research. Um. And so it's just kind of kind of the kind of thing they were looking for. And they have pretty

minimal bullshit filters about what they're willing to see. Um, it's just pretty rare that they we'll see a source that seems to be on their side and be like, no, there's something wrong with us UM. And so she increasingly got fans and a lot of people hear her stuff secondhand. I think they're not directivating her, but people are repeating her on so much of her stuff now is part

of the just the background of this movement. Like there's this woman, Martin rothblatt Um who's it's kind of a random rich woman who was she was involved in kind of early trans rights activism UM, and I kind of moved on and got interested in trans humanism stuff instead. She's like kind of a stratulating um and she is interested in trans humanism stuff and rich um and is

not the architect of the Transferts movement. But now you know, they just all I think that this person has central role UM and when you see them talking about her, it is Jennifer Billick's influence. And they just don't have they're they just don't have many defenses against kind of increasingly radicalized stuff. And when I started kind of looking into Jennifer and I started seeing her and get you know, when you see people talking about a conspiracy of people

like George Soros, Jennifer Printsker Jewish. Roth Blatt is also Jewish. There there's a red flag and in conspiracy spaces just kind of tends towards anti Semitism if you're not on the lookout for and if you're not defend against it.

And billicks not and she has gotten increasingly into anti Semitic side of things, um, up to the point where she was boosting Heath Woods, who is just a Nazi his content that was largely inspired by her work UM about the Jews behind the transgender movement UM and just taking kind of going from its kind of non explicit anti Semitic conspiracy theory where you have this group of people who happened to be largely filled with Jewish people

kind of orchestrating this global conspiracy to explicitly naming the Jew and saying no, this is a Jewish movement um. And yeah, and she just like followed it all the way. UM. And there was some I started making a big deal about this, you know, there was some pushback from the general critical movement UM, but largely and they think I'm like a bad faith acting right on the enemy. It's

they're not gonna take anything I say really seriously. Um, but also it was really struck by how some of them were arguing with me about this Keith Woods video that was, you know, about how this was just a Jewish pot and why the Jewish religion would inspire uses do something like this, and they say, no, this is an anti Semitic there's nothing you know, it's just it's very interesting it's about Judaism, because they already believed all

the background stuff, right, they thought that there was in fact this conspiracy that's populated by people who happened to be Jewish, and so then when you take the explicit step, it's they're like, well, yeah, there's an interesting question, right, why are all these people Jewish interest going all the way. But it's just and yeah, it's just in general, the movement is just really not have good defenses against this

kind of stuff at all. And yeah, this kind of conspiratorial stuff will take you there if you don't have defenses against it. It's just a very old road that comes in exactly that direction that is ready for you if you start getting into this stuff and aren't watching out for it. Yeah, all right, so lets let's let's let's let's let's talk about Kathleen Stock philosophies horror child. Oh no, so I need not just Kathleen, but you have.

One of the things that is noteworthy about the movement I think is you have these this unusual prominence of academics, one of them being Kathleen Stock, maybe the most prominent being Kathleen Stock UM, but also like Rosa Freeman and Selena's hod and you have this kind of academic face of it. And it's very interesting I think how that works UM, and that these people are in generally not

doing kind of substantive research on anything related to this UM. Instead, what I see is, you know, stuff starts out in the community. UM. It's like on mom's dad, it's on Twitter, and then Kathleen Stock picks it up, right, She is getting her stuff kind of from mom's dad and stuff, and then just legitimizing it. Right. It's like, oh, this

is what these fancy professors think. And then centrally their role is claiming that there are all these serious issues on the basis of their academic status UM and saying that trans people aren't willing to discuss it. You know, trans people are shutting down debate, they're being silenced, and it gives it this legitimacy that the movement I think really capitalizes on. Yeah, which I think with Stock in particular.

You know there part part of what's happening is like the anti transsequent kind of like moves between different conservative panics and so like like the bottom one, they're on the stay of the children panic. But when Stock was sort of like getting big and you can see this with the end of a career arc uh She'll get

to in a second. But she was big on the whole sort of like like conservative callus canceled, like college free speech crisis, like can I guess sort of cancer culture also, But yeah, she was really big on the on the whole, like, yeah, the conservatives are being silence or like not even sort of like I think she was kind of doing the like liberal centrist thing, but but she was. Yeah, she she was doing all these

censorship claims and then turning around and just actually censor people. Yeah. Yeah, I gave a talk at Sussex cathletex University that I believe she tried to have canceled. Come on. It was just kind of interesting rix. I. Initially this talk was kind of scheduled as a protest at the same time as one of her as talks she was going to give on a related topic, um, and then she canceled

her talk. So I thought she might come to mind, right, like free to bay, like ask me questions, and I was like okay, but of course she didn't, right Instead, See,

I tried to just get it shut down. But I think this is Yeah, it's one kind of the cancel culture thing is kind of one element, but I think it's really central and a lot of their stuff, um, and that the kind of in the background of other stuff is like you know, somehow the consensus has been controlled, and like it's the result of like the truth not being heard and people not considering all these important things that they need to consider, kind of from care for

trans youth too, you know, trans woman being able to use the bathroom. Kind of across all this, they're running this narrative that the truth has been silenced and you know, trans people are being unreasonable and have shut it down.

I think that is like pretty foundational. And the other overall narrative they've built, yeah, and and it and you see this as like this is one of the ways they try to I guess rest the batchful of authority back from literally every actual medical group who all agree that you should actually let kids transition and you should let adults transition, and that this is in fact good and like a thing that medically is is like and then like I said, yeah, I mean this isn't this

is a huge deal. But so, like Catholt Sog is a philosopher, right, and so she started off her first thing was, like, something is a funt in academic philosophy. You know, academic philosophers aren't debating whether trans women or women in the way that they should. This idea that the debates being silenced in philosophy, you know, like doesn't

have really important consequences. I think the idea that like all of mainstream research on trans healthcare and like what is in the good in the best interests of trans kids being able to diligitimize that is really serious, right, that it just has these tremendous consequences. I think they've

been able to be pretty effective on that too. Yeah, And that's been really scary in a lot of ways because you see like the arguments of these people pioneered and the sort of the techniques and the groups that they're part of like wind up being core parts of the anti trans push in both the UK and the US. And yeah, that's extremely scary. It's really scary. I mean, it's just it's just awful, like these are these are children and for them to become the focus of this

kind of hate movement is just horrifying. And it's m just offen. The you know, the history of healthcare for general conforming kids is really grim, and its like they are just pushing to kind of go back there, and it's just ghastly. It's really horrifying to see. Yeah, I guess I think that's a that's a good point. We can Okay, this is probably should probably be the second AD break, But yeah, do you know what else is

horrifying ads? And we're back? Um what one of the scariest parts I think of what was happening in the UK was the extent to which I mean not just mainstream British media gets involved in this, but I mean literally the BBC, which is which is the you know this, this is this is the state media organization right starts

to just push unbelievably transphobic articles out as just regular contents. Um. I think I think the probably the most famous one is Yeah, in in October, BBC publishes this article that's called We're being pressured into sex by some trans women. That is just an just just an absolutely appalling display of of transphobia. Um. Yeah, can you talk a little bit about that? And yeah, So the this article was framed around the question is a lesbian transphobic if she

does not want to have sex with trans women? Some lesbians say they are increasingly being pressured and coerced into accepting trans women as partners. Um. And so the the over arching perspective in the piece that you get is that this is a significant problem among lesbians. They're experiencing sexual pressure from trans women. Um. The kind of reporting strategy that the reporter used was, you know, just soliciting this one kind of particular narrative from lesbians who said

that they had had these kind of experiences with trans women. Um. The people who are quoted in the article who aren't anonymous are general critical people, right, They're like Rose of Don, Debbie Hayden. And then there's these anonymous women who we don't know who they are. Um, but it's not they didn't go and approach you know, normal mainstream lesbian activists or lesbian organizations to see like what they were experiencing the community, Right, there's kind of no perspective just from

any kind of mainstream lesbian or relations at all. That that was one of the things that like sort of haunting about this, Like this journalist is working on this for age, like I think it was like and like like she was specifically trying to find this people, these people like people who like had to experienced a specific thing and like no normal but she couldn't find normal

people because it's not a thing. And so she she after like many many years, she was able to find like a couple of examples, like a few examples and mostly from yeah, just open transpops. And the article is just like so conceptually sloppy that it doesn't distinguish, you know, theoretical discourse about whether you know, it's transphobic to just say out of hand you never date a trans woman.

It doesn't distinguish this from sexual abuse. It just kind of takes for granted that they're just saying in kind of an abstract theoretical contact um that's some's like just saying that you won't ever sleep with a trans woman saying that that is transphobic is itself treated as akin to pressuring someone into sex, right like that. Yeah, journalism that doesn't distinguish between just a conversation about sexual issues

and sexual abuse is just disastrous. There's just something serious about this piece, and it's just kind of throughout it it's just yeah, like like one of other things about this is so they found like a survey, right, the journalists went looking for a survey about like like what percentage of lesbians have like encountered this encountered this pressure, and the only thing they could find was, well, okay, the only thing they could find that would like support

their actual claim was this this poll from this group called get Out the l which is just like a group that whose entire purpose is just being anti trans

people and trying to get rid of them. Yeah, And it was just it was just like it was it was like a Twitter poll, right, it was it was like they're they're they're publishing as as statistical evidence for their claim a Twitter poll from a from a turf group and trying to like claim this is serious journalism, and it's just yeah, I mean so literally, on the

page of the statistic they cite in this report. The report approvingly cites Janice Raymond saying about all trans sexuals rape women's bodies by reducing the real female form to an artifact. And so like, are we talking about metaphors here or are we talking about social abuse? It's just sick And so what of the people who was interviewed in this um was Lily Cade, who was an adult performer and again throughout this just a trans woman saying that the way someone is reading her in a sexual

context is transphobic, is itself treated as sexually abusive? Um? So Lilly Cade, you know, she refused to think initially she refused to be in a scene with a trans woman. The later on also refused to m shoot a transpmant at all, um when she was working as a producer. Um. So they kind of get a quote from Lily you know, saying something about women being pressured into sex by trans woman. And it turns out that Lily Cade was pushed out

of the adult industry because she's like a serial rapist. Right, So this is there source on whether this is problem for assist woman is herself as this woman who is a serial rapist, right, And they're using this person to portray trans woman is the victimizers, and it's just so grim. Yeah,

most of it is just like haunting. Like one of the other things that came out was like part of the stories that they said that like no prominent trans women would speak with them for the story, and then a prominent trans woman was like, no, you guys interviewed me,

and that didn't include it in the article. Yeah, So this was one of the people who literally Kate had had a conflict with, was Chelsea powe Um, another woman important who had asked if Lily Um she could work really his company, and Lily said no because she was trans. So they talked Chelsea was is it reasonably prominent person um? And they interviewed her, didn't include her in the article. She says that she told them that Lily had this

predatory past. They also didn't say anything about that. And so we have the situation where we have this person who is this this woman who the author has been told is a serial sexual predator being presented as kind of an authority on women's sexual victimization supposedly by trans woman. She is the victimized and not only is she a serial sexual predator. But she's like specifically attacked people in bathrooms.

But she's like the famous fearmongering transphobic thing is that trans people are going to attack you in the bathroom in the venus, your sources attack people in bathrooms, And there's just very little interest like how women are actually victimized and by who. Yeah, and I think like that that's amused to disturbing party. She's like, this isn't just like a negligency of reporting. Think here, this is just malice.

Like if you are told anything, it's like it's not it's not like it was hard to like find out that that you know, it's okay, so someone someone tells you that someone else is an abusive, right, it's like okay, Like maybe you're a journalist, maybe you're going to be like, oh,

I should check this out. Like Lily Cage assaulted so many people and like rape so many people that like just scrolling through Twitter, I found multiple people who have been abused by her, Like this was this was not something that was like like she she'd admitted it in public. This is not something that was hard to find right, And and I just want to underline that, which is that Billy Kay. After these accusations really got going, she did like publicly and she did not deny, and then

she retired from porn. Yeah, and and and you know, and this is something like the BBC does this, They do this weird backtracking at this article comes out and

everyone gets exurely mad at them. But they refused to release the like the tape of the interview they had to with Chelsea Poe, which you know, would have proved that Chelsea Pope did in fact tell them that Lilli k was a rapist, and they published the story anyways, and there's there's so much of this stuff was like yeah, like the they the way they backtrack about it, the way that also like so the two places where this thing, the story ran was the BBC in Britain and they

syndicated it out to Brazil and a few of the places that were like that are incredibly transphobic, and it ran like and just like right in Brazil, like ran as a bunch of mainstream news headlines like where like news stories and in the major newspapers like ran this and it was I don't know, like there there's there's there's this extent to which yeah, like you're watching British state media decide that they actively just want to go to war on trans people and they literally just do

not care that like they are, you know, publishing little rapists. And then yeah, I just just the BBC's policy now is when we interview those responsible for ani social behavioral crime, it made us to cause distress to victims, and we should contact victims and advise them of our plans. You know what a viewing criminals. Care must be taken to minimize potential of stress this may cause to victims of

the crime. They they didn't see Lily as this applying to her, right, This is uh, this woman who they have been told is a sexual predator. You can find this information. I found it pretty quickly, all of these victims talking about it, her acknowledging it, and they didn't identify this this woman as a predator with victims who would be like very plausibly upset by seeing their rapists

treated as an authority. Sexual abuse, right, and this is kind of pervasive, I think in the gender critical movement right where if any of you are out there, I'm sure you're thinking women can't be rapists. Rape requires a penis, which is in the Okay, it's kind of a you know, most fem is considered this a pretty reactionary way to define rape, where it has to be um penetration with a penis, and this isn't reflective of you know, how women experience sexual assault that it's just kind of totally

other category UM. And most countries feminism consider it quite important that you don't kind of treat this as this like categorically different offense UM. But the general curtal really pushes this perspective where it is literally impossible for women

to commit ray, you know. And this is they think that when they a brief period where they thought that they had identified like that every rape that was recorded as committed by a woman was trans woman because they thought that it required apenis and they thought it that was the only way it's possible and so you can actually be convicted of it if you were aiding and abetting.

I think they thought that they had all these this and they just have this overall perspective where it is literally impossible for you know, they say a woman meaning the assist woman to commit a sexual offense, and into this they create cover for sis woman predators like it creates this context where that their victimization just disappears. People

can't even acknowledge it. And yeah, and like I think like the the extent to which this whole movement is built on violence and it is built any and there are so many people that the that the general critical people work with who are abusers. There are you know, And I like, I want to come back to the last piece of the Lily Kid thing, which is that after this article came out, the BBC initially basically didn't

do anything right even that to the rape out. Yes, yeah, and then literally Kay published one of like one of the most transphobic things I've ever encountered in my life, like a a just this it gets called a manifesto, Like I don't think like a manifesto. It was terrified. Yeah, Like she she's she she's explicitly like like like name specific trans women that she wants lynched. Like there's a bunch of stuff about the people she wants raped. She

wants like she wants all trans people to die. Uh, there's a there's a bunch of there's like really racist stuff. There's like I mean, it's it's it's just it's it's it's it is a document that calls for genocide, and the part where it's calling for genocide probably isn't like line for Lyne the most disturbing part of it because the individual threats are like so graphic. And I was terrified when i've I was the person who you know,

initially dug up the sexual abuse allegations. And when I did it, I knew it would kind of it would throw a match into her life. I thought that they hadn't you know, they were there, they were visible, you could find them. But when it had happened, she had not really been in the mainstream I and so I knew if this got uptake, it would make it bigger. And what had it? And then you know, this woman is posting this terrifying manifest It read like, yeah, she

shooting someone now. It was just so it was just terrified. It was like something to be written, you know, immediately before someone goes to shoot someone. It was not until she's tweeting it and tagging the BBC in it. Yeah, and like that that finally, like one of the most disturbing things I've ever read in my life. Like that was fine. Lead the thing with the BBC was like, Uh, maybe we should do something about this. It was just so so little, right, this is they took her out

of the article. Um, they added an update and says we have updated this article published last week to remove a contribution from one individual in light of comments she has published on a blog post in recent days which we have been able to verify. We acknowledge that an admission of inappropriate behavior by the same contributor should have

been included in the original article. So this is you know, they just kind of erased her, right, So they didn't acknowledge that they had included this person in the article who just published this genocidal ran. Right, So one of their sources is the person who is advocating for killing trans people. That is important, right, That is pretty to

this narrative they're pushing. And they also are not saying, you know, they should have we acknowledged that an admission of inappropriate behavior should have been included in the original article. It really changes the overall narrative of the article. Right, if you acknowledge this sis woman is a serial, right, the overall picture is like six women are at risk

from trans women and it's a reality check. Right to hear no, in fact, this woman who were presenting as like victimized is one of the women who's preying on people, and she's not a trans woman. And it's just they just, you know, even after this, responded in a way that protected the narrative of the piece, right, they were they

weren't going to let in anything that acknowledge this. The people they're finding with this position are transphobic, this person was very and that it just says they've removed the contribution in light of comments she has published. What kind of what are they about? And it's serious, right, it's serious and naughty knowledge that one of their sources is a violent transfer. Yeah, this is how I found out

that she was alive. Also them saying that they had been able to verify it before that, I had been like, she's not very online in a lot of cases. Um, so I was really what, I didn't know how long it was going to be before you know, there's confirmation that like in fact that like Kate had not just shot someone and herself. This was it was just really

it's manifest. It was terrified. I don't know, it's just awful. Yeah, And I think you know, one of the things that that's happening here is you get to see there's a couple of like there's a couple there's like layers at

which this stuff operates. So you have, you know, you have your BBC running diligitimization, right, but then you have the stuff beneath it, which is just appritly genocidal, and I think, you know, and sometimes like with the Lily Kid, like if you're going to be a turf really kid kind of blew it right because like you can't like

okay like that. You can be really really transphobic in a lot of in a lot of ways, but like you know, actively calling people to get lynched is a thing that like even like transphobs are are normally like wait, what why are you? Yeah? Yeah, but but I don't think like that. The mainstream church movement is not in a place where you can do stuff like that. But in some ways, I think, you know, the stuff that's

more moderate is more dangerous. The last thing I want to talk about is a document called the Decoration on Women's Sex Based Rights, which was put together by a bunch of turf activists, fairly prominently featuring arch Australian turf, Sheila Jeffreys. But yeah, can you can you talk a bit about like what this is and yeah, so this is a document that basically all of the gender critical organizations and which you people have signed. I mean, it

is extreme, right. It calls for trans women to be banned from all women's spaces, including toilets, which you know, if if we can't go to the bathroom, they can't participate in society. Right, It's just like a basic need people to have to exist in public um. And that it bands all. It has to ban all internationally recommended

healthcare for trans children. UM. It has still legally protect deliberate miss gendering um, which would you know, allow you to be m just treat it with such hostility at work, just in public. This is a just kind of a threat assault on trans people's ability to exist with dignity and society just live normal lives. And you know a lot of general critical people will say will portray themselves, you know as only opposing advances for trends rights, you know,

as not wanting trans rights to be rolled back. But with this document calls for is like basically every right trans people have to exist in their genders in particular trans women and especially Turgis trans women. UM to just take it all back and leave them with basically nothing.

Yeah yeah, like that's like they have this whole thing about like basically like they want to erase the concept of gender right density from law, which is the thing that does is it eliminates all trans people from like, it eliminates trans people as a thing that the law recognizes exists and things should have protections. It's like it's it's it is, you know, like it is the legal genocide of trans people like that that's that's that's what

it is. It's yeah, so they've basically all signed this, you know, it is a yeah, it's this is not at all. Uh. French document positions itself as like you know, the demands kind of of this movement and it's extreme. UM. The organization's spokeswoman is Karadinsky UM, who uses almost all of her public appearances. She has a number of times been on Tucker Carl said, Um. She boost Jennifer Billick all the time. I think it's her biggest supporter. UM and was formerly the chair of Wolf, which is Lear

Keith organization. So she is Liberation Front is what stands for it is a cool name for an organ that sucks, and they should get it back to the one better. Yeah, so this is I mean generally you see the American Turfs kind of in this more radical direction. Um awesome, especially explicitly collaborating with the right. Um. And here they've made this document that just reports to and everyone has signs that kind of direct the overall agenda to one

to just leaves trance people with just no protections at all. Yeah, And I think I think it's you know, the reason I think this is in a lot of ways, like warch Adrea is similarly cave thing is. Again, it's in this like it's not actually in legally because none of these people are lawyers. And yes, oh so boy said, how how did an actual law I mean, okay, I shouldn't be asking how did an actual lawyer produce this

because I've met lawyers and there they're not. They are not as smart and above board as they protein itself to people. Yeah, Like, this stuff isn't making legal arguments, like one of one of the things that they they've like, I guess the whole sort of gender critical like turf movements invented is like this this concept of sex based rights, which is not a thing. Like yeah, like like like they all think that there's like rights that you have because of your sex, and no, this doesn't exist. They

completely made this up. They keep on like referring to it as if it's like a concept that exists in the law, Like none of this stuff like in terms of legals. It's like it's nothing. It's it's it's, it's, it's, it's it's a jumble of words. Yeah, I know. You really see as the movements go, they really have really robust movement discipline and kind of taking up these terms and then saying them all the time. Is that it's

a thing everyone's familiar with. One of them is I was like women's sex based rights, women's sex based rights, Like what people's rights aren't based on their sex. It's kind of like a whole thing we're doing with fetism. You know. It was like, you don't have special rights based on being a man, And it turns out that like supposedly a law we've thought that you have special rights for if you're a woman, to exclude whoever you

want to exclude. I guess it's yeah, it's just goofy. Yeah, but but I think, like it's weird, but it's like it's also it has this function, which is that the sort of like and like okay, so like I don't My guess is that most of the people who have signed this document have not read it because you know, but but you know, like I think the thing that it does is it gives them this this legitimization. It gives their goal of exterminating trans people this sort of

legal jargon apparatus. They can hide behind it like, oh, it's actually from the U N and we're basing it on international law and that. And the organization used to have this fancy name, which was the Woman Human Rights Campaign UM and they have now dropped that, possibly for legal reasons. But it sounds good, right, and the websites polished and it seems like feel thing, and the know they really try to take this phrase to and using

it just kind of sneak everything. And so they'll ask people questions like well, what about women's sex space rights? These are the thing I've never heard about before in my life, and but people just get on board and I don't really know what's happening. And they've another thing they do is they always portray like bathrooms as sex segregated spaces, and I feel like every bathroom I've ever been and since women on the door and it seemed like female bathroom. But like this is like sentence is

based on sex, not gender. Just making these assertions and they have a lot of assertions. Yeah, yeah, I think I think that's a good place to wrap up. I guess they have a lot of assertions. Yeah, yeah, I guess we've just underwriting again what a serious kind of attack on trans people's rights. This is right, and this is calling for things that would make it very hard for trans people to exist. And it's really scary to watch this. I think I can watch it kind of

progress across this movement and be boosted. It's awful. Yeah, And next episode we are going to take a much deeper dive into some of the people who signed this documents and we are going to see what happens when this kind of bloodless but genocidal, legalistic rhetoric makes it into the hands of people who are not afraid to do physical violence. And it is worse. It is going

to go worse than you're probably imagining. Just to underline said earlier that Jennifer Billicks stuff is you know, just widely now accepted within this movement, and her stuff is portraying trans people and trans rights as existential immediate threat. Right. She portrays she often says that doctors are like butchering children, right, if they're making children into slaves. It's stuff that, if it was true, would call for kind of an extreme

level of resistance. And that's kind of what this stuff functions to do, right, If you are accusing people these really extreme offenses and of hurting and threatening all of these people, what that motivates is extreme responses and volime responses.

And Billy herself is sometimes engaged in violent rhetoric. But I think many of us who have been following this movement are just kind of waiting, afraid because that's just where it looks like it's going in the US and the UK too, kind of like hard to it's just so scary, and like you know, they're mapping out where the gender clinics are, and it's it's scary because where rhetoric like this goes is to a violent place, and

it's hard to see it letting up right now. Yeah, and yeah, that is that is the subject of tomorrow's episode, which Yeah, in which a bunch of people will start attacking gender clinics and a bunch of trans people are going to get violently assaulted by turfs who are direct be affiliated with Sheila Jeffreys and our followers of Jennifer Billick. So yeah, Christoph, thank you, thank you for coming on and doing this. Yeah, yeah, this has been It could

happen here. Uh, you can find us at happened here pot on Twitter and Instagram. We are also there is other stuff that we do at the Cool Zone and yeah, go go fight for the rights of trans people before they ceased to exist. Welcome to it could Happen Here, a podcast that this week is about the war on

trans people. I'm your host, Christopher Wong. If you've been around the left long enough, you've probably heard people called transclusionary radical feminism or turf is um a colonial ideallo g Broadly, the accusation of colonialism is about the erasure of non Western genders to fall outside the Christian gender binary, but turfs or colonial in another sense as well, exported by white academics to a network of fall feminist and anti trafficking groups. The ideology has imposed itself on the

global South, with devastating and violent consequences. As a product of this colonial imposition, Mexico has become one of the front lines in the war against trans people. I spoke to Emmy Flores and Juliana Newhauser, two members of the Sexual and Gender Dissidence Resistance Network, a group of activists aligned with the Zapatistas who have been documenting and resisting the spread of turfs in Mexico. When the new turf

waves started in Mexico several years back. UM at the time I thought, I thought of it as something that like a radicalization that went too far, you know, like kind of like thinking back to like the New Left, and there was a point during the New Left when like suddenly everybody joined a Baoist cult and they were angry for the right reasons, but it just went off. At some point, I thought that's what was going on

in Mexico. But then slowly it started to come out more that more and more turf groups were had to tie us to political parties, and one of them and foreign agents. And one of the one of the most dramatic cases UM is from Toluca City near Mexico City, UM just recently at the International Women's Date protests, like there were turf groups that had made a pinata out of the trans flag, had been burning the trans flag.

Also in this same city. One of the main turf groups turns out that their leader is on government payroll. And if you've seen Roma, for example, the incident, the political incident that happens in that movie based on a real incident from the seventies, and the tactics of that political party, which is the party that controls the state government of the state to Lucas In basically it hasn't changed, and they seem to have been using these turfs basically

as shock troops. At one point, there were two sit ins outside the state Congress, one to push for a gender identity a law and another to push for the legalization of abortion, which are obviously both important things. The ladder, however, was controlled by these turf groups who later mysteriously never seems to appear at other protests asking for the legalization of abortion, but they were there and they ran off

the trans encampment. One of them big incidents was the sending the sanctity if the woman's bathroom with barbed wire wrapped baseball bats Jesus. These groups have deep ties to right wing Mexican political parties, the police, and the growing Turf International, and they seem to be very chummy with the local police. Their leader UM gives classes, gaves like

trainings to the state government like that. It's not at all you know, you can see live strings of the quote unquote protests, and he was mostly them like drinking coffee with the cops, like they were on first n invasis with the cops, while the the other camp had like translument were too scared to go to the bathroom because they were going to be attacked. And so that's the starkest group, I think, right the do locators, which are It's funny because almost every party has their own

the row group. But yeah, also surprised that p R is the scariest. Yeah. We should also say that these groups are affiliates with Sheila Jeffreys Women's Declation International UM. And so this is also a case of an ideology developed in the first world, in this case England, which is largely a safe country where even as fascist and ideology as turfism doesn't or only very rarely leads to real violence, and but it gets exported the countries that are not safe where it does turn into real violence.

So another affiliate um of Sheila Jeffreys Humans Declaration in Mexico would be Lesprus Delmar, who is another case of At first they seemed to be a group that was just they just radicalized a bit too far. Then photos came out of their leader, who is on the time one hundred a couple of years back with Felippe calther On and next president of Mexico, and like by far one of the worst in the country's history, and not like a like just oh I saw you walking in

the street. She was at a book signing. It was not a casual encounter. It was a clear sign of admiration in the It's been more than confirmed since then that her political ambitions lie with the p AN, the the farthest right mainstream political party in Mexico. This political alliance between the Churfs and the right has benefits for both sides. The Churfs gained funding institutional backing for their

war against trans people. The right gained a way to attack the vaguely center left Mexican President Andrea's Manuel Lopez over door by blaming him and trans people from Mexico's horrific wave of femicides were distracting from its actual source is NAFTA and the War on drugs. Mexico's trans population, however, gained a new Western educated threat. When I say the radical feminism was a complete import it's from its very beginning.

In the for a long while, there was like one turf in Mexico, and she was She's called gian Maria Yoyo. Don't even try to pronounce her name. I don't think she can even pronounce her name because she's white as hell, and she always dresses like she's a fucking Rachel dollars hell from Mexico. Like she's irony that the first originary in Mexico is also the Mexican Raciel doll as well, right, because she went abroad and was like the only Mexican

everyone knew. So even though she's white as hell and has blue eyes, she started wearing some cotchella motherfucking as uh feathers and ship right. Yeah, I've seen I've seen these pictures. It's it is, it is like it is. It is the Mexican version of and not even just the It is the Mexican version of those people like Coachella who like wear indigenous head dresses, who are just like just like look look like they're descended from like

hydroc Hembler or something. And like she's she has like she has like half French, half a Spanish name and she changed it to a half maya half novel name. It's gross. So this this person has been active since the seventies. Right, she went to she was present in the first Pride in Mexico and uh she who that was? That was also the two year anniversary of the six massacre.

So Pride was from the start really leftist here in Mexico, but it also had these kind of people the who who went to the UK, friends and the United States. And I think she was there when Jennie Raymond was like sending her friends with guns to to uh threatened trans women, right, So that's she. She she was there when the turf Wars were at the highest point during the seventies and then came back and parton she plasticipating

a lot of history of Mexican feminism. But the time that she came back in two thousand sixteen with that letter with that backing because she is also close to Jennie Raymond with the Coalition again against Trafficking in Women who the Coalition Against Trafficking, the Coalition against Trafficking in Women cat W has a lot of After the Third Wars, they went underground in the in academia and the universities right because they were no are accepted, but they were

in the process of building NGOs that could globally affect policy on UH, specifically sex working trans rights. And you can tell that Jean media I saw that that was her only opportunity to resurface UH and to make her seventies as UH. She saw that seventies rat M discourse was retro now and so she became like this UH

found founding matrix for the new generation of transpos. One of them which is Lauda Lequana who is part of FEMBA and the Gean Madia and Lekuana were not faced at all by the accusitions of alligned with the reactionaries because they know their history, they know where they come from, and they know that this is how Dorkin survived, this is how UH, how Sheila Jefferies and Jennie Raymond survived.

This is where you get the fucking money in lateral Liquna gehan Maria and turned the whole environment around them into these uh well these surf questions. The only two issues that we talked about nowadays in Mexican feminism are our president and trans people. It's kind of gross Jesus. And that's like, remember, like there's only a handful of

states that have legalized abortion. There's femicides happening all the time, and but we're we continue to debate these two issues over and over and over again like a feedback group, and like, as trans people, we don't have any choice because we're the targets of this right. And it's not

it's not an academic debate. Last fall, um there was some turfs who had taken over a public park to set up their separatist space, and there was a disabled assist woman and her chance girlfriend who are denied entry at the park and threatened with tasers. And so when they're taking over these public spaces and using violence to defend them, because the next week there is a protest over this and they there they they taste to transpan and it's like this is like a public park like,

of course we have to defend ourselves. The Coalition against Trafficking and Women or cat W, an international antisex worker group which provided a refuge for white turfs driven from mainstream feminism in their home countries, has been a major source of Turfy influence in Latin America. There is there is so much important of this ideology towards radical feminists

in Mexico. UH. It's that they needed something to say and something to do and and something to feel the void UH in organizing and inn geos and the people who stepped up where Jannie Raymond's car w right, the Coalition against Trafficking in Women who Sings and nan indies. UH spent UH a decade and a half building contexts in the in the U, N, in the oas in several international organisms to extend their influence across the whole

continent and specifically in Latin America. And UH you can see the effecting stuff like stuff like Venezuela where they broke up sex worker unions too two with the the O S right and in Mexico, the founding leader of the Mexican branch of of cab W, Teresa used to a un employee, specifically, it's drug and crime segment. And before she was like a radical feminist. She used to conduct drug rades in Chapa's and yeah, and after that she became UH the founding member of cad W Latin

America and the Caribbean. And with Janice Raymond, they you can see them go together to the Beijing Conference on Women and they influenced like those they they were a big part of why gender is not recognized as a social construct by the u N. They allied with the Holy See, with the representative from the Vatican in the u N, got together with a couple of radical feminists and pushed back against gender being recognized as a social construct in N. So that's the level of influence these

groups have in Mexico. UH, these groups wh morphed into the cop W, UH supported the war and drugs from the get go. They were very high in some of the biggest events in now curating the war and drugs. They were present right there because if you're fighting drug trafficking, it's very easy to just sleep the word human right there. Right, No politicians gonna say no. They all fucking love to say yeah, I'm hard on on human trafficking, and the way that UH showed itself was just targeting trans sex

workers and migrant sex workers. And with that and that feeding the agenda of Jenny's raymon perfectly. Sheila Jefferies gotta basically survived the whole two thousand's on writing garbage for reports for the u N. Most of her published works during the two thousands and early twenty tents. It's stuffed aid for cattle. You and they they they In two thousands sixteen, they started pushing for more and more anti trans legislation worldwide because they could see the writing on

the world right. They were behind the Women's Declaration. The La Jeffers is not okay. She is part of catally she just I think cad W Australia. She has her own all other politics called Space International, which is behind Foster Sista by the way in the US, where she allied with a couple of conservative sheriffs to write that legislation. So we could go on and on on. How like people that read that our transitions think are gone and

forgotten by history. Right, the authors of these horrible books that haunts us to this day are still active, and not just in the US, they're active in Mexico, in the UK, in France, in South Africa, in Korea. Korea is huge in I think I would say Korea is as has as big a problem as Mexico and the UK. We just don't talk to them as much and we

can't realize that. But if you check them the languages that have signed the Shila Jeffreys Declaration against Trands People, which is a specifically general sidal, the Coloration Decloration, it doesn't stop at like legislation. It wants to exterminate us out right. Yeah, and most of them, you were going to see a lot of Brazilian flags, a lot of Mexican flags, a lot of Korean flags, even more than

the United States flags. And if you track the USA flags, it's mostly like weird randalls that have yoga classes and ship it's not relevant politicians. But if you track the other countries, you're gonna find some of the biggest collectives in the in their own countries. You're gonna find or just spooks, right, You're gonna find a lot people who have really weird careers that spend a lot of time

in Italy and Uganda. It's it's it's a never ending uh rabbit hole of of of spooks, of conservatives, of have been feminists that have regranted as NGOs to get money from those groups and directed towards breaking up trans rights, towards affecting sex workers, towards breaking unions, breaking student movements. It's a global movement that is birthed by conservative thought, but getting more and more reactionary and more and more

organized as time goes by. That international transphobic movement has increasingly found purchased in the US. I spoke to Lee Liaville and Kai Shiver's, two members of Health Liberation Now with intimate experience with the turf movement who spent years particularly documenting its rise. So my first shouldn't is can you'll explain what Wolf actually is? And I guess subsequent to that, what the relationship to hands across the aisle is? Um? Yeah,

so Wolf is. Um. They're transphobic feminist groups, UM with at this point extensive ties to right wing organizations. Um. They've worked with Family Policy Alliance here, did Foundation Alliance

Defending Freedom Concerned, went for America Family Research Cultural among others. Um. But they um, they got their start um and they started back in two thousand thirteen around when they were founded by the Are Keith, who also was one of the leaders of Deep Cream Resistance, and she basically got like, um, kind of run out of anarchists and environmentalist groups and then kind of like went over to uh established like

turf communities to try and recruit there. So I sort of like started out trying to like recruit from these like older turf and transphobic lesbian communities. And then after Trump got elected and um, you know, the conservative Christians on the far right became more mobilized and more empowered. They kind of like rebranded themselves and we're like, oh, let's form alliances with these right wing groups, and they

kind of like traded. They're sort of like like crunchy lesbian feminists like like image for like Kara Danski, who like you know, is a straight, fairly feminine looking woman who used to work for the CLU and and like a Democrat and like you know, she's way more presentable to like a conservative audience. You know. By working with the right then they have access to like money and power and they can get easier from the get on

the media. Like like Kara Dyansky is no longer with Wolf, but like she was with them for years and still has relations, like like good relations with them, And you've been on the Tucker Carlson Show like many times. So I think one of the important pieces when it comes to understanding like how this relationship with the right started.

So in in late two thousand and sixteen, Wolf put forward, they're filing against the US Department of Justice and US Department of Education, right, and they were going up against aspects of like trying to reform Title nine to include gender identity, you know, to to protect folks um who need to be able to use the like women's restroom, our locker room or whatever. Right. And this is the case that they ended up getting some of the A

d F funding for. So it's like one of the first official seeds I guess of the direct collaboration ended up happening. Those a lot of that stuff did up eventually end up getting late and then they started doing some more official collaborations just a few months later, um when they were working with like Family Policy Alliance, UM

BILE amicust briefs against Gavin Grimm again out of bathroom case. Yeah, they took something like I think it was like fifteen thousand dollars from the Alliance depending Freedom, which is one of the main like right wing groups like like trying to pass all these like anti trans bills like going after a pediatric transition and trans girls and in women's sports.

So they took that money and then yeah, then later like I think, like, um, the whole working with Family Policy Alliance, I believe was the first time they like publicly allied with with the right ring group. I think, so that yeah, in January of two thousand seventeen. Yeah, and then they've just sort of like, yeah, like they also were involved with the amicust brief against was it Amy stefens Um another Supreme Court case I can't remember. Yeah,

I wouldn't surprise me. And like members of both have appeared on like Heritage Foundation panels. They helped like released apparent Resource Guide and anti transparent resource Guide that was also sponsored by like Heritage Foundation, Family Policy Alliance. This this this is very similar to almost exactly what you see in Mexico, with just sort of slightly less physical violence, which yeah, it's it's a lot of you know, and the other the other thing is that these are to

a large extent exactly the same organizations. And that was one of the other things you want to talk about was the influence of Sheila Jeffreys and the Women's Declaration, which has been all over this whole movement. Yeah, the one thing to point out, so, like you know, the Women's Declaration International is in this in the US is led by Karatanski, who you know, she like basically like left.

She worked at World for a long time and still has lots of connections with Thumb, is on good terms with them, but she like left and now is like working with Women Dexploration International of US France. So and as she winds up having kind of like a foot in both worlds at the same time too. So like she'll like the US chapter Women's Declaration International previously like Women's Human Rights Campaign before they had to rebrand. Um they was. But if you if you read this comic, yeah, yeah,

exactly exactly. Um So, what what ends up happening is that Kara Danski will either like have the chapter sponsor particular events or she herself will become actively involved in the formation of the events, right, which we saw happen with UM Women Pickett d C last year where they were parking themselves outside of that was like it was a well, that was that was a whole fix. Oh god, it was a purchase that happened on International Women's Day

to protest the the Equality Act. Yeah, it's it's not like it's people's first time dealing with the Equality Act either. I mean, like so prior prior to that point, which and this starts to go into them like hands across the Aisle Coalition because they were actively involved in opposing the Equality Act as well, so to to kind of roll back a little bit, um, the hands across the

Aisle Coalition. This was something that started developing in early two thousand seventeen, you know, not that long after Wolf started building the more direct relationships with the Right, and so that the people of this coalition would have like you would have members of the Right itself. And in the process of that UM towards the beginning of two thousand nineteen, in May, they filed this joint letter to the House of Representative Speaker Nancy Pelosi to oppose things

like the Equality Act UM. And they did so alongside with Natasha Chart representing Wolf, Concerned Women for America, American College of Pediatricians, Family Research Council, you know, a whole bunch of really just awful names, and they're, oh, yeah, the idea involved, Yes, it's it's it's it's really the Rose Gallery of all of the people who were anti gay marriage until we still are but have downplayed it.

And yeah, all the people who let the anti game marriage campaigns, all of the sort of weird right wing pseudo medical bodies. The next thing I wanted to ask about is what's been happening in the last couple of years with the fusion, Because so you already have your your alliance between the turfs and the evangelicals, but in the last couple of years, we've seen a I don't know if if full scale is the right term to use for it, but we've seen a merger of this

with Save the Children and Q and on stuff. It's you can talk about that. That's okay. So that's an interesting one because like I've I've been digging into the timeline of this stuff extensively. It's like I've got hundreds hundreds of listings trying to figure out where different cases are coming from and trying to understand like the phases. Right, So you've got like the formation, the solidification, and then the escalation, and we're kind of in the escalation stage

right now. But so one of the things that I started to notice is that elements of this crossover, like the cross pollination that was happening, actually predated certain key events that we now now are affiliated with Q and On. Right, So if we think about out the actual like development of Q and ON itself, so you've got the pizza Gate thing that was happening in like October two thousand

and sixteen. I believe that was, um, you know, right before Trump was getting elected, and you know, kicking up some stuff about like you know, Hillary Clinton's emails and stuff like that to go up against her election campaign in opposition to Trump, and then you know, folding in the harassment towards UM comment Ping Pong to the point where like Edgar Madison Wealth shows up at Comment Ping Pong in December of two thousand and sixteen with an

a R fifteen style rifle and starts, you know, firing off his shots and stuff like that. Right, And so eventually, um, most people know that the timeline of the Q and On drops happening around like October two thousand seventeen. Like if you look up the original like the first known Q robs, I believe that was like October two tho

seventeen on four Chan. But the thing is that if you look at references to save the Children or save our Children on like Twitter, the hashtags, and you're also looking for trans phobia related stuff, you can actually start to see that crossover happening before the original que drops happened. Right, Yeah, I found I found tweets that were connecting trans inclusion education in schools to pedophilia and using the save the

Children hashtag in August of two thousand seventeen. The que drops hadn't started yet, so and this is something this

pattern continues to happen. Right There were also multiple um, you know, tweets or Facebook posts or whatever that would start to use things like save the Children, Save our Children, Wake Up America, and stuff like that before you would have the big scale takeover by Q and on when things were starting to get really popular, because the save the Children thing really went viral in the summer of but you could still see elements of it before that

point repeatedly. So another early instance of using both save the Children and Wake Up America hashtags started happening on UM April. I believe that is a two thousand nineteen and bear in mind wake Up America UM is a hashtag that's not only used by Q and on proponents UM in relation to the whole like accelerationism trying to yep deep state stuff UM, but also like Aaron Brewer, one of the people that was involved in some of

the clinic protests harassments, was using that. It wasn't just a was wasn't just Brewer, it was like both Brewer it was. That was the clinic protest that involved both UM Partner's Celtical CARPEC, which Brewer was, remember like one of the founders of at the time and one of the leaders of and Joey Bright's like can't I get

a witness? Like they teamed up to stage a bunch of clinic protests that they used wake up like wake of America was one of the slogans that they used in one of the hashtags are to so to to make sure we're getting this. Uh, these are protest against clinics that offer gender firming care. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah

yeah that um yeah, that that happened. That one so yeah, the Wake Up America one was in um Felt Lake City, New York City and l A. Yeah, and they also, I mean, speaking of umstas, they also have used the slogan pulled back the Curtain UM, which has also been used by uh like anti choice activists, Like that was I remember, like like finding like they used pulled back the curtain a lot to be like they what they

mean is like they're expose the evil gender industry. But like the other this like UM anti abortion group, I'm blinking on which one off the top of my head.

But they also used that um pulled back the curtain to go after planned parent put yeah, which I think is like probably like that doesn't I'm for a direct connection, but it seems like that's too much of a coincidence in one of the one of the things that I really want to stress about this called like what I call tan on thing is that like the seeds for this, the cross pollination that we are seeing happening between the gender critical movement, pizza Gate, and Q and on, like

these were already in place before Q and On formally developed as its own phenomenon. This keeps happening. It's you can't really like figure out where one particular type of rhetoric is necessarily coming from in terms of its source, because it just keeps going back and forth repeatedly. People are acting like they're coming up with a lot of the same ideas together because in the end, in the end, they are of the same roots. They are in fundamental

agreement with each other. Whether they're calling themselves different names. I think that's that's worries to be in a lot of ways, partly because you know, I mean, this has always been something where if you look at the rhetoric that these people are spreading, it's like it's explicitly exterminationist, like it's it's you know, like they they're they're storychiatric terrorists, like in search of a like a quote unquote load wolf, and in a lot of you know, and in the seventies,

I think they were. There's there's a lot more explicit violence that these people are doing directly, and now they're kind of like they're they're they're trying to find people who will do their already work for them, and there are places where they found them already. We've seen this in Mexico and in the US. The people who they seem to be recruiting are people who are extremely dangerous. We've we've seen q and on people have killed enormous

numbers of people. Um, you know, we've there's a long history of of abortion clinic bombings and people getting asassinated

for that. I mean, I think, you know, one of the connections that I've been sort of like looking at is the extent to which this stuff is connected to the Atlantis shooting, because if you if you look at the stuff, the Atlanta shooter believes it's you know, like he's in this like in the same sort of Christian patriarchal project and his thing is specifically about sex workers.

But hey, look if you look at yeah, a particularly Asian sex workers, and you know, if if if you if you look at the anti trafficking groups and you look at the Christian anti trafficking groups and you look at the ven diagram with them and the Turfs, it's like, oh, and I'm able are involved, Yeah that particular world, And yeah, there's there's this kind of vice closing it on trans people.

Were on the one hand, you have these people attempting to employ the violence of the state, and on the other hand, you have this sort of stoke giatric terrorism where they're attempting to incite violence by sort of individuals. And then also, I mean, I think I think there's you know, there's sort of there's sort of two forms of this, right. There's the explicit people who are explicitly like quote unquote political right. You have you have your

sort of like ideological street fascist. You have like you know, you have your people with baseball bass covered and barred wire. But then you also have the stuff that's been fueling antiation violence where it's not necessarily like you know, there is a this is an organization that like hates Asian people. It's we will just sort of passively increase the rhetoric until the level of violence increases. Yeah, it kind of got like you've got the street bash and then you've

got the intelle actual fash. Yeah. Well, and and I think but I think also there's there's another Like if it was just those people, I think it'd be less bad.

But but there's also just the way in which just random people who are encountering this become very quickly radicalized and it becomes part of sort of I mean, and trets up with violence has always been part of the sort of background violence in the same way that anti black and so I mean, you know, okay, the level of anti black violence is much higher, but like the level of violence against black trans people in particular, and the level of anti Asian violence we've been seeing that

has just sort of it's just a part of the background violence of American society, and that the levels of those things, the more of this rhetoric gets circulated and the more this activism happens, that background level of violence increases, and that to me is also terrifying because it means like it's not just sort of like fascist so you

can track it's just someone on the street. Yeah, and yeah, they're just sort of like trying to like like associate like well, I mean a lot of the like yeah that like people like like Felik and erin um alex Their and the gender Member and doy Brand stuff like that, Like they're they're hardcore like elimination as like they're like

they're over and over the comm compromise. And I would also especially like anti fascist networks to pay more attention to it, because you know that solidarity with trans people is just as important as solidarity with like racial and ethnic minorities when it comes to combating fact, right, especially since like there are a number of us that are in multiple categories, so like let's all work together and try to like you know, be proactive about combating the threat. Right.

So my my tan on Um collections, I guess, like I only have two reports on it so far because getting into the full detail is just it is a lengthy project, and I keep getting distracted by by the conversion therapy stuff. There's so much stuff to research, and there's more like two people and and yeah, anyway, so ever else in terms of finding that like the original kind of like broader views of tn ON both like what it is in terms of like the one oh one kind of stuff, and also like the timeline of

where it came from. You can find it on Health Liberation Now dot com. We have a little tap there that has like analysis, and then if you go down to key issues, you can find a tn on tag there, right, and it'll have that stuff in there. This has been a thing that throughout this entire series, which is that most of the information on this stuff has been compiled by a very small number of trans people, and that cannot stay the state of this because there are just

not enough trans people and they are extremely overworked. Yeah, and if that's a project that you can take up, please do that. Um, yes please, yes, hands on deck, I'll hands on back. Yeah, because the seriousness of this is such that if you want there to be trans people living in a way that does not actively destroy them, you have to act now. Yeah. Basically, yeah, this has been it could happen here a product of cool zone media. Suppress your local turfs before it's too late. Goodbye. You

know what I love is decadent Western sexual mores. Well, that actually does tie you into what we're talking about, end of what you were re did Jesus there? God? When I when I logged into this call an hour late, Garrison was studiously reading reading a book by with the screen centered on the cover. We gotta bleep this out and have have it be the new thing that's bleeped out. I agree with that. Actually, yes, good call. That way, we can just do a whole series of jokes where

we just like pill people on fascist esotericism. What a what a fun joke that would be happen here? Show we talk about things that could happen of but just talking about the onslaught of bills that have been introduced the past few months that attacking kind of trends rights

and queer people in general. Yeah, so we've we've we we've heard about gay marriage, We've heard about turfs a lot the past the past two episodes, and now we're going to be kind of focusing on the Yeah, like I said, the kind of current legislation that's happened specifically within the past six months, UM that I've been targeting kind of LGBTQ people in in schools particularly that and a lot of it's been targeted towards towards miners, teen teens, adolescents,

UM and restricting the visibility and uh and kind of what's allowed to be said and mentioned in schools. So we're gonna kind of actually talk about um books first, because a lot of this stuff is kind of tied into the critical race theory UM kind of like organizing

that the right was doing. So Yeah. The American Library Association says that between September and December alone, they received more than three thirty reports of book challenges, for which is the most over two decades in terms of of people trying to restrict what books are allowed to be in schools. I experienced a book challenge lately. Tell you what, trying to read through the new James Patterson book. What do either of you know who James Patterson is? No?

Was this was? This was a bad idea on my back, Please continue, Garrison, I was. I was busy reading the before you logged on. I have a different interest in books, you know, actually very similar books, very similar, and the Pelican brief basically identical. I have no idea how much that's gonna get bleeped, but it's gonna be funny. Um so yeah. A Tennessee school's removal of Mars the Holocaust Graphic Biography became kind of the most famous example of

this trend a few months ago. Um, the book was allegedly banned due to due to nudity and because of curse words. But this is kind of you know it was. They claimed it had nothing to do with actual political content. Um, it was just because of the the inappropriate images to children, which is a little a little dubious since it's all, you know, starring mice. Um yeah, yeah. But the majority of challenged books have been kind of those focused on

lgbt Q characters or themes. Back in November, nearly two dozen people a day. We're dying from COVID nineteen in South Carolina. Thank god that god better. Thank god we knocked that ship out. But rather than try to handle the public health crisis, Governor Henry McMaster seemed more interested in pressuring the state's Department of Education to crack down

on queer theme to books. He directed the Department of Education and the State Board of Education to create quote statewide standards and directives to prevent pornography and other obscene content from entering our state's public schools and libraries of the governor said in a letter to the Superintendent of Education. Inside the letter, it was specifically targeted towards uh Maya Kobe's book Gender Queer, a Memoir UM, which is a gender queer graphic novel kind of detailing what it's what

it's like to be gender queer. It's definitely popular among kind of the adult like a young adult kind of age range and and as and as a good resource for kind of gender bending type stuff UM and it has faced a large amount of a large amount of the onslaught and like the bashing of queer books have been focused on this specific book. It's an autobiographical book based on the Bay Area non binary writer and the

illustrator UM. It's been challenged and it started being challenged at one of South Carolina's nearly five hundred schools and then got banned from all of them just because people were mad at about it. At one school, it was being recommended for those in the tenth grade or higher to learn about kind of queer issues UM and it is now become one of the most banned books of this past year. It's been removed from schools and for Ginia, New Jersey, Florida, North and South Carolina, Texas, and a

large amount of other states in the South. UM speaking. Speaking of Texas, the Agenda Queer Graphic novel was just one part of a massive kind of horrifying purge led by Texas Republican state Representative Matt cross Uh. He he led an effort to pressure and force schools and libraries to remove books based on a list of undesirable reads

that he compiled himself. UM. The list is a sixteen page spreadsheet with over eight hundred and fifty books cataloged on Crouse's eight hundred and fifty strong list of titles that he wants spanned from Texas libraries, of them concerned lgbt Q issues. Um, it's kind of clear that what he did, Yeah, well what what what? What? What he did to make this list is just like googling the words like queer and lgbt Q and gay and trans like with book and found a list of books that

have it like mentioned to somewhere. So like a lot of so many books are just like completely a banned that aren't even really like yeah, like the list is nearly one thousand books, like log So like he was just like google searching to like add as many books to lists as that he could. It's not actually about the content beyond the fact that the content acknowledge the existence of queer people. Like yeah, that's to the extent

that he knows about the content. That's it, Like, you can't be reading all these books, no, because like one of the more interesting trends that you can find on this list is that it challenges and tries to ban books that teach students like their legal rights, um, like not even counting books about like reproductive rights or writes

his like l g bt Q people. It also it includes in this list like titles like the Legal Atlas of the United States, UM Team Legal Rights, Uh, I right, yeah, equal Rights, we the Students, Supreme Court cases for and

about students of Yeah. I mean this is my My support for LGBTQ people is worring here with my belief that children should not know their rights because they're they're they're they're they're getting too upty as it is, we gotta we gotta crack Look, could we crack down on kids in a way that isn't bigoted, That's all I'm asking for. Nope, nope, absolutely no, we gotta slow them down. No, no, kids, you must know your rights. And the very important thing here is that if you keep WE in your locker,

the school can just search it. So don't put in your locker. If you put it in your car, they it's it's way harder for them to search its in the Principles car store guns. They're wait, okay, sorry, let's um. Yeah, I'm not sure if you can find that in the Legal Acts Less of the United States. But to be fair, Texas kids can't read that book either, now, so who

knows who knows what it sets. Yeah, so to Virginia, school board numbers kind of called for a sexual books quote unquote sexual books to be burned at a meeting last year. UM. And a lot of these, like a lot of the rhetoric around like book book burnings and book bannings was specifically tied to the kind of the

effort to harass and gain support in school boards. And we saw us last year with like proud boys and extremists and it's like other like random people who got their brains kind of warped by propaganda kind of leading these like incendiary charges against against the school board members. Some you know, the school board members got fired, like threatened with arrest just for allowing books that mentioned the

existence of being queer. It was, it was, it was quite quite a problem that is now influencing this current legislative cycle. UM. In almost every case quote unquote, like concerned parents have swarmed school board meetings and flooded kind of mailboxes with outrage over what they call pornography um

being distributed to their children. You know, people will will plaster signs with you know, scenes from the gender queer graphic novel that is like what they they they deem as being like poor not like pornographic um when it just depicts like how how like adults and young adults behave accurately, just like you can find in any like

fucking like Batman comic. Like it's not like it's it's like it's like not it's it's it's it's both in line with other comic books and also like it's obviously dealing with like issues around being queer as like that's the whole point of it. So but yeah, just blasting this, blasting like queerness as innately pornographic is you know, a big,

a big part of this type of propaganda push. It's it's, uh, it's pretty upsetting because I mean a lot of these adults and like quote unquote parents, you know, who knows if they're actually parents. You know, it even goes and stuff to being like you know, they're accusing librarians and teachers of being pedophiles for having this, for the having

these type of materials. In Wyoming, prosecutors considered charging library staff with stalking books of sexuality, um, including like literary classics under like the sex said banner like sex is a funny word, and this book is gay, um, but I considered charging library staff, like with cribs, for for stalking these books, which are like very typical sex said books.

It's it's incredible because when I was in a Texas public school, I read all of the Wheel of Time books from my school library, and those are horny in a much much more unhealthy way than any of the books that you're talking about could possibly be described as well. You get that, you get this fun thing where it's like they're basically running the clock back on the turf arc like if you if you remember we're talking about

Church in Mexico. It was okay, so the ark that they did was they were anti porn people, but then they lost the anti porn wars, so they became anti trafficking people. And then when sort of turfasing came back, they went from anti trafficking back to being turfs. And it's like this, this is literally they're they're doing this whole thing in reverse right there. Their starting position is that their anti trands and they're just going back to like the anti porn stuff, but like bringing in and

sort of like bringing in an anti trafficking angle. And it's it's great. It's extremely fun. Yeah, this is I would describe this is fun. This is what I consider a fun time. Yeah, well I know what you consider a fun time. Here. You do notice my my carefully place, carefully placed books on on my Yes, I'm extremely aware of that. Garrison Harrison is reading books that will get them canceled by like five specific people if we talk about them too much on this show. That is always

the fear of that's always the fear of Twitter. It's being canceled by five people. My favorite thing about doing a podcast for an audience of millions, Garrison is telling a joke that is that is precisely for you and me and making that like several minutes of content. Sorry. Um, And Oklahoma bill was introduced to the state Senate that would prohibit school libraries from keeping books that focused on sexual activity, sexual identity, or a gender identity. Um, you're

gonna gonna use the gender identity a lot. That kind of just refers to anything that even I mean, like it refers to even mentions of being cis gender, right, because if you bring up the concept of cis gender, that infers that there is an alternative to that. So so like even any if anything even mentions being sis, it means that there must be something other, so that

already falls into the gender identity kind of framework. So it's just like anything that suggests that you are that you, that there's like gender identity is not something you are innately born with and are forever, is is gonna be, it's gonna be is banned and is seen as pornographic what I'm seeing or is like grooming children or whatever kind of words that they use. Um and like, all of this rhetoric is much worse for lgbtwo Q authors

who are black or people of color. There's books like All Boys Aren't Blue by writer George M. Johnson, whose whose book led one white school board member to call the police on her own district's librarian for keeping it in stock. It's uh the the the Central York School District in Pennsylvania, and an extensive list of books last year that was almost entirely written by the authomes of color.

This is all the stuff has been happening like concurrently with the anti critical race theory, like organizing in protests, which again obviously isn't about actual critical race theory, just about the suggestion that maybe racism is something that is not just an individual problem, but it's maybe kind of built into our entire culture and system of governance, UM and education. So it's it's not actual critical race theory.

It's that. But I think everyone listening to this kind of already are already knows that Texas Governor Greg Abbott, which is gonna be just who's gonna be a recurring character on this episode UM, kind of has taken this whole you know, calling the police on librarians thing, uh much for a kind of demanding that the state's education agency quote investigate any criminal activity in our public schools involving the availability of pornography, a move that kind of

librarians in the state fear could make them targets of criminal complaints. For again, the stalking books about sex said, or you know, stalking books that not even not not not even not even not even but like sex head, just just like books that mentioned an alternative to the heteronormative like you are the gender that you are signed at birth, like idea, like anything other than that is

now could get them in trouble. So anything that doesn't kind of fall under the Christian supremacist like worldview of sexuality and gender. It's it's not great. There's a it's so yeah, all boys aren't blue. The book, written by by George M. Johnson, has been similar to the gender queer graphic novel, is one of the most banned books of last year, targeted for removal in at least a fifteen states. Um, it's a lot of the organizing of

these efforts kind of start online. There's like Telegram channels, Facebook groups, and then they carry over into like school board protests, and then eventually, like you know, maybe some school board members will will will catch onto this and

start advocating for it. Then you know, the state governor, does you know it's city city councilman, Like all of this thing is is is his whole cycle of organizing that's really picked up alongside the anti CRT stuff many many parents have seen, like Google docs or spreadsheets like the sixteen page one made by Matt Krausse of of contentious titles posted on Facebook by local chapters of organizations

such as Mom's for Liberty. So people will make these giant giant spend streets talking about books that they don't like, and then they'll get shared around on Facebook groups. Telegram

channels from their librarians. Uh say that parents will ask their schools if these books are available inside libraries, and then we'll start rallying and organizing to get them banned from being available in any kind of public, public government setting, whether the school libraries, whether it be like public libraries,

whether that be like online access, all this type of stuff. So, yeah, it's a it's I don't know, it's Organizing against these types of things is never the easiest thing, um, because a lot of times they these people get really get really dedicated onto this because it is such a it's it's it's the whole save the children. The kind of idea which gave Q and On such strength, and q and On is kind of taking a dip down. This stuff is taking a rise up. It's kind of it's

passing over the same type of organizing principles online. As as mentioned before, the governor of South Carolina asked the state's Superintendent of Education, but also it's Law enforcement division to investigate the presence of quote, obscene and pornographic materials from its public schools, um you know, citing the Gender and Queer graphic novel as an example that you've seen You've seen mayors in difference in different cities withhold funding

for county libraries saying that he will not release money to these candy library systems until books with lgbt Q themes are removed. It's it's pretty grim, uh, And so far efforts to bring criminal charges against librarians and educators have largely faltered, as as law enforcement officials in like Florida and Wyoming and other sites for this type of thing that's been attempted have you know, found really no

basis for criminal investigations. But still it's like the same thing for like, even even if this process gets started, it's about building like fear that it could happen to you. It's about you know, this fear that someone's always watching and someone's always wanting to report you. Um, and it's the thing that they happened with Texas and abortion. It's like trying to have like the bounty hunter idea of be like parents are trying to find examples of this

to report it. So then so it's like this like proactive kind of surveillance of anything that doesn't fall into the Christian supremacist idea of gender sexuality. It's you know, now, of course that's like a specific interpretation of Christianity. I'm not not saying all Christianities like that, but it is the one of them in the South. It's it is like one of the bigger strains of that type of of that type of kind of religious and politics synthesis.

Let's let's see. So courts have generally taken the position that libraries should not remove these books from circulation um but sometimes due to pressure via like loss of funding or depending on how like the how much how much like who's in charge of each state's kind of education system, a lot of a lot of a lot of these books have been banned and have have been pulled from

many school libraries and many public libraries. Even if it doesn't like go all the way to being like, you know, court mandated all of it, sometimes it doesn't need doesn't

even need to get that far. So yeah, because like even if it doesn't get to the court, librarians kind of librarians have said that just the threat of having to defend against charges and having to defend against like accusations of pedophilia and grooming and all this kind of nonsense is enough to get many educators to censor themselves by just not talking these books to begin with, to avoid that whole kind of debacle, because even just the public spectacle of an accusation can be enough to like

ruin someone's life inside like a small like in like a small community. Right, it's it's it's is if you know parents, if you know kids, and this is like part of your social group, it's part of like wherever you're like situated in your community. If this type of thing starts up, it can really be devastating to someone's

personal life. And of obviously this is very ironic because all these same people who are trying to get get these books banned also crying and scream about like censorship and cancel culture um, while literally advocating the burning of comic books um, and even like fucking like advocating the burning of no Your Rights books. So it's it's like, yes, they will cry and scream about canceler culture um, but they will do all of this stuff as well. It's not,

it's not there is no ideological consistency. They're they're they're they're not they're not trying to that's not that's that's not part of the point. It's because it's not even hypocrisy in their own eyes, because all of this is for the great or good. It's it's about protecting the innocence of children. Right. If you'll notice that a lot of these bills and efforts try to not explicitly attack books for being gay or queer. Instead, they will label

them as pornographic or obscene. Um. Obviously, many books that conservatives will defend have just as graphic depictions of intimacy or autonic like or um or anatomy um, but usually heterosexual in nature, and alongside other kind of values that the right wants to push um. You know, even like the fucking Bible is more graphic than the gender queer

and graphic novel um. But when conservatives say pornography, what they just mean is that is any display of queerness, right, anything outside the mold of the fundamentalist, Christian supremacist worldview that they're fighting for. Just like when they say banned critical race theory, they don't they don't actually mean that. What they mean is ban any discussion on racism that

kind of disrupts white comfort. It's it's it's it's they they have their own framework to view this and they can justify it within their own framework, so you know, it's it should not surprise anyone that many of these queer book bannings are being organized alongside bands on books

focusing on race and racism. Um Matt Cross's sixteen page spreadsheet was was was made to accompany House Bill three nine seven nine, the so called anti CRT bill, that band's teaching of any materials that could mean quote an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other psychological distress on account of the individual's race or sex. So just banning teaching of things that could make a theoretical person kind of uncomfortable, which is it seems like a

great way to view education. Uh yeah, let's just skip over the parts that are uncomfortable and that I'll make a great society. Wow. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote from a great article by Samantha Rydell in them dot Com quote small. Wonder then that much of the current of fervor can be traced back to the conservative group No Left Turn founded in to ban books about racial inequality from classrooms by Elena Fish being an Alna Fish being believes that Antifa children quote quote quote

Antiva children are going to assault her kids for being white. UM. The organization No Left Turn rocketed to prominence in the anti education right wing after fish Being was interviewed by Tucker Carlson on Fox News. UM a tie, which similarly lifted like minded boats such as Moms for Liberty. No Left Turns website directs parents to a laundry list of books that they claim are used to quote indoctrinate kids into a dangerous ideology, including a rope best section on

quote comprehensive sexual education. UM here that pornography lie is laid bare with over forty books whose only kind of through line is that they deal with lgbt Q themes. The picture book I Am Jazz, Uh, Kate Bornstein's My Gender Workbook, and the y a novel Two Boys Kissing also included, as Margaret Atwood's The Hand the Handmaiden's Tale. UM No Left Turn and discriminately targets all these titles because they simply feature queer people having lives or, in

the case of like Margaret Atwood, having their lives be ended. So, after all, ideas ideas like that might influence kids to think that they could be different right any and for conservative parents, there's no greater horror than the thought of not being able to control their children or the idea

that their kids might not be straight. It should come as no surprise that the grassroots campaigns quote unquote grassroots campaigns like No Left Turn are in reality links to influential conservative donors and packs like the catag Institute and the former Federative Society. Pardon, yes, like the Cato it's named after Kato Kalin, the guy who lived behind o Ja's house. Is that true? No, it's yeah. I should have just let that. I should have just got He's

gonna slightly constantly expand by like red string. It's like my red string board has head by head like yeah, oh yeah. Cato Institute named after Kato Kalin, the guy who o j Surper bro buddy. But it should come as no surprise that the grass roots quote unquote grassroots campaigns like No Left Turn on Reality link to influential conservative donors and packs like the Cato Institute and former

Federalist Society and Vice president Leonard Leo. But then again, lies don't matter to the reactionary base that Republicans are hoping to rally to the front of this culture war. What matters to them is controlling the information that children have access to to obsensively keep them safe and innocent but in truth, because they think that if kids don't know but lgbt Q identities, they won't form one. It's

conversion therapy by ignorance. End quote. But that that's an idea I'm going to kind of come back through, come back to a few times throughout the course of this episode, is the idea of conversion therapy by ignorance, which really does kind of I think have introduced a really good like mental framework to understand why these things are happening, because they think if they can keep kids from learning about these things, then they won't become gay or trance.

It is it's like trying to isolate them so that so that their reality tunnel is so small so that they won't hopefully will never like break out of it. Um Now, obviously, if kids feel if kids start having feelings that break that channel, if they don't know that there's an alternative to that, that really kind of leads to things like depression and suicide, which is why it's so high among among queer kids in that region because it's like it's like they're fundamentally breaking realities. So it's

that's hard to cope with. We're just gonna, it's gonna do. What's gonna do kind of one more segment quickly before before we haven't had break it is UH. It's it's interesting. We have like a lot of the parents that have been rallying for this UH have some interesting track records themselves. We can even you know, go back to UM uh to the Family Research Council with Josh Dougger having to save the children idea well you know himself being a child molester or help Billy Cade like yeah so um.

In a secondingly ironic case, a Missouri parent named Ryan Utterback was charged in December with multiple accounts of child molestation and UH giving and distributing pornography to miners, including a child as young as four UM. Upon his rest, Utterback was heavily involved in the book banning advocacy, including protests against the books All Boys Aren't Blue and UH and other sex sad books. UM. He he said he gave a quote before he got arrested and when he

was still doing like the book banning advocacy. Quote only I have the intimate understanding of what isn't isn't appropriate for my children, uh, which is quite quite the quite sentence to say on someone who is now arrested for a child molestation. So yeah, that's not Yeah, that's uh that sucks. But yeah, so like it's it's the idea that erasing, erasing documentation of queer lives and making it so that so that people to their kids only are exposed to a very kind of isolated worldview will make

it easier to control um. And if they don't hear about something, maybe they'll just you know, live their life as a regular straight child. And that's that's their hope. Now obviously that doesn't that doesn't really happen in practice, but that's kind of what they're working towards. That. That's why this save the children thing is so important to them, because they really do think that they can save the kid children, like they do think that they can keep

keep them from this stuff. So I think there's one other reason that they're doing that specifically they focus on books too, specifically the pornographic attack, which is that these kind of like incredible hard right, evangelicals are not the entire Republican base, and so like there are people who they have to convent, like they have to fully radicalize into into the extermination of where people the specifically extremis

to transpeople and the like. The easiest way to do that is just by constantly associating anything queer with pedophilia and with like specific pifically pedophilia and specifically grooming. And you know, these kind of campaigns like they have dual effect. They have the effect on the one hand of the actual material harm to children and they're you know, like preventing them from having any access to anything that shows

them that they could be queer. And then simultaneously it has this effect of creating this association in side of conservatives that allows you to push for even more genocidal stuff that without this they might not have been able to swallow. Yeah, well, speaking of genocidal actions, I'm sure that one of our sponsors have contributed to at least one attempt to genocide. I mean, we we are actually entirely sponsored this week by the former Indonesian dictator Suharto,

So you know, big big thank you to him. Uh Pancasila forever and yeah, here's some ads. Ah, we're back. Don't don't don't google what Zukarno did in uh in West Papua. Hey, Hey, hey, hey, Suharto and Sukarno different. Yes, yes, yeah, I am very clear on this and that's why you should not google what Zukarno did in in Papua because dear God. But we will put his pastreon in the description. We will be backing his patreon heavily. Look at the

show notes for at UM. Hi, welcome back. We're gonna we're gonna segue into other types of legislation now, but still kind of focusing on the whole parents rights to decide what scientific and medical knowledge children can have access to UM in terms of like the conversion therapy by ignorance category. So we're gonna talk about they don't Say

Gay bill. So Florida's House and Senate just passed the so called don't say gay bill that bands mentioned of anything other than the strict heteronormativity and the you are the gender assined that birth kind of idea. UM for at least most developmentary school, it's banned and possibly farther reaching than that UM with teachers also opening themselves up

to lawsuits if they fail to comply. It's formerly known as the Parental Rights in Education Bill, and the text of the legislation states that quote, classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kind of garden through third grade, or in any manner that is not aged appropriate or

developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards. So it is it is very intentionally vague for how far reaching this can be, for how much they will determine what and what isn't appropriate for grades for an up who knows. Uh. Yeah, but it's not just it's not just limited to early grades. Classroom instruction on sexual orientation and general identity could be prohibited or at least taken to court at all grade levels, Uh, depending on what

the parents find unacceptable. Right. It is. It's it's it's based on what the parents want to want to happen to to to the kids that are under their care. So it's it's specifically following kind of the framework that, yeah, you can you can report something if you don't like it. So it's it's it's very much pandering to like a reactionary conservative all this stuff that conservatives said was a nightmare about like the Stazi in East Germany and the KGB.

They're like, but what if we just decentralized that, you know, and and let anyone who's a biggot report and ruin the lives of people around them for a variety of

bullshit reasons. It's good. Yeah, it's ah. And I mean just like other states, like in Texas, the enforcement of it is not initially done by the government, but is open to a concern and fanatical public, saying that parents may bring action against the school district to obtain a declaratory judgment UM, and a court may award damages and attorney's fees if it finds the school violated the measure, So there's like financial incentives for parents for this UM.

The bill will come into effect on the first of July, with all school districts UM required to update their policies by at least June. There was there was also a proposed amendment that would have required schools and educators to report if they knew or suspected a child was lgbt Q to their parents within six weeks. Of learning that Um, so within six weeks of learning, if they're not sis

or straight, they would have to be reported to the parents. Um. But that that part was withdrawn before the bill reached the House. But in terms of like, this is the type of thing that well, is that like the legislators

are thinking of. When it became increasingly apparent that the bill was going to be passed no matter what, uh, a Democrat, Chevin Jones, the first openly gay Florida state senator, tried to amend the bill to narrow the language to say that in classroom instruction should not be intended to change the students sexual orientation or gender identity, and specifically not marginalized queer people, and instead just limit the bill

to itach appropriate sex. Said, and that amendment obviously failed, with Dennis Backley, the bill's main sponsor, saying that it would significantly get the bill's intent. So it's it's it's it's specifically to suppress knowledge of being queer. That is

that is the whole that's the whole point of the bill. Um, you know, I mean the the governor claims that the bill addresses quote sexual stuff and quote telling kids that they may be able to pick genders and all that, saying that that has nothing to do like this is nothing to do with sex at all, like literally nothing,

that's like but nothing. Yeah, it's but they still knew it, like the pornographic obscene kind of category because like it's right, it's the same thing like if you show gay people kissing, that is sexual. If you show stray people kissing, that isn't right. It's it's being queer as innately more obscene. It is. It is, it is. It is so much more of an issue. Rana Santist governor also said, like how many parents want their kindergarteners to have transjagenderism or

something injected into their school discussion. Um, but that's so that type of stuff he says that like press conferences and stuff. So yeah, it is. It is very clear that the bill is targeted specifically towards gay people, um and being trying are being queer, being non sis, non straight,

that whole that that that whole category. Um. The governor's press secretary called it the anti grooming bill, Um, you know, reviving the type of like you know, like that LGBT attacks have had for years, suggesting that you know, being gay means that you are a pedophile, or being trans

means that you're a pedophile. It ties in with this thing you'll see in like the far right and the libertarian right, where people who have like kill your local pedophile bumper stickers and stuff because you can't argue with like, yeah, pedophiles are are the worst, that's horrible, But you don't actually mean people who molest children. You mean people who live in a way that you consider obscene, which you are equating with pedophilias that you can justify murdering those

people eventually. Yep uh yeah, and when and when when confronted with actual pedophiles, they literally don't do ship well. They are off Like Andy No, for a great example, has regularly hung out around a specific I think it mostly is his name pedophile. The longest serving Republican Speaker of the House was a pedophile and passive scale it Dennis Haster d Hast that's what that? Um, that's what that? What's that German band? This would have been a decent

joke if I remember their name right, Romstein. Yeah, well I sucked it up, okay, so anyway, please please continue. So yeah, but like they don't say gay. Bill tries even less than some of the like school book bands to hide behind the defense of prohibiting pornography. Like it just says the quiet part out loud, you know, saying that this bill is grounded in the belief loud part

out loud. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like the bills just grounded in the belief that LGBTQ people simply by existing are a threat to like children and must be completely arrassed. Like that's that's the whole that's the whole idea. Following several hours of debate ahead of the vote in the Senate, a bill sponsor Atlanta Garcia claimed that quote, gay is not a permanent thing, and lgbt Q is not a permanent thing. So yeah, it's the type of like conversion

therapy by ignorance thing. A lot of these people have advocated for conversion therapy to be legalized in the past or re legalized in the past. So yeah, they just they just don't want gay people to be around because

they find the nikki. So it's it's not it's not just Florida though, right the fears with like hyper focusing on you know, just justin, justin, don't say, gay bill in Florida kind of like, you know, it ignores a lot of the other stuff that's happening across the entire country, if you do, when you're just focusing on on state, because there are like fifteen similar bills moving through state legislators that are strict how textbooks and curriculums are allowed

to teach lgbt Q topics and even like who can be hired as teachers and what are what are like what's allowed to be said when it comes to genderal identity and sexual orientation. All like stuff is happening all across the country. Um House bill in Tennessee would band textbook and instructural materials that promote normalized support or address lesbian, gay, bisexual, or gender lifestyles quote unquote um in in in case three twelve schools so also also high school um in

in UH. In Kansas, there's a bill that seeks to amend the state's absidity laws to make using classroom materials depicting homosexuality a Class B misdemeanor. UH legislators in Indiana are working to bar educators from discussing any content about sexual orientation, quote, transgenderism or general identity without permission from parents.

In Oklahoma, there's a senate bill that would ban public schools from plowing anyone who quote promotes positions in the classroom or any or any function of the public school that is in opposition to the closely held religious beliefs of students. So that's that's interesting framing there. Yeah, and again we need to be very clear about this when like, when these people say deeply have religious beliefs, they mean

fundamentalist Christianity. They're they're these people are very specifically attempting to turn these stay into a Christian at those state and this is the ship that they used to do it,

And it's yeah, it's it's it's grim. We can look at like a recent report from the Trevor Project UM which is an lgbt Q suicide prevention and crisis internation group, and they did a recent report finding that l g b t Q youth who learn about l g b t Q people or l g b t Q issues in the school have a tent lower odds of reporting

a suicide attempt in the past year. So just that like the knowledge that there is an alternative is like, is life changing for people right, the ability to to realize that there are other reality tunnels is can save people's lives, like it is. Yeah, I mean I like I I watched this happen like my my public school, Like I was in a public school, but I was

in public school in a really conservative area. The only time anyone even mentioned being gay was screaming about gay marriage, and like we fucking saw some ship, Like a lot of extremely bad things happened to the queer kids. They're including me like it, yeah, like this this stuff kills people.

It still hurts people. It is. I think that's that people in like more blue states don't quite understand, is how how absolute this type of thing is, like living in these communities, How how narrow your version of reality is, Like how how everything you're exposed to is so hyper focused that even knowledge of an alternative can be so mind blowing that it really is important to have at least this to be knowledgeable, because yeah, a lot of people who you know, a lot of people may not

have access to the internet in the same way. It's like a lot of these groups, especially like especially Christian groups specifically, have like like you know, services that you can buy to like suppress websites on your WiFi, writers, is that only you're only available to access like certain websites. Like like, like it is a whole effort to restrict the reality that kids are exposed to to kind of railroad them into this hyper specific, kind of heteronormative idea

of existence. So yeah, any type of thing that breaks these kids out of out of these reality tunnels can can be life changing, which is why they're trying to ban all these books of libraries because yeah, even if you even if you block websites, even if you were strict internet access, even if you were strict what can be taught in schools, you know, there's the fear of what if a kid goes to a library and finds

a book about being gay? Then oh wow, that could that would you know, undo all of the effort that undo the thousands of dollars we spend on blocking internet access to two websites. So like that's why they're talking about like libraries and stuff is because yeah, if they find out about this stuff anywhere, then they're going to be in trouble. Like that's that's it's the whole point of like isolating people, isolating what they view as possible.

So yeah, we're not gonna talking about some Uh, we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna talk money, money, money, money. Uh. The other thing that they don't say. Gay Bill has highlighted is the extent to which Big Illnesses and corporate America is financially funding many of these recent efforts to hack away queer rights. Uh. This has kind of been like a back and forth thing though, especially if you look back in the past few years under the Trump era.

Let's take the North Carolina Bathroom Bill for example, arguably the opening act for the current onslaught of socially conservative legislation targeting and trans people. Remember this was like right after the Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, So this is when the needle starts to shift towards trans people. This is the bill that said that you have to use the bathroom assigned at matching the gender you were assigned at, BURGERSUNI certificate, all types of stuff, um putting again,

unspoken bigotry, unspoken stuff. You know, you could be you know, arrested or harassed for doing this previously. But it's like putting this type of idea into concrete law. Right, This is once once progress starts, there's this like back pedaling so that they you know, they put they put that, they put what was once like unspoken bigotry and just like obvious bigotry into actual written law. Um, it's like

make making it concrete. So during the bathroom Bill kind of whole thing in North Carolina, UM, we saw corporations trying to stay conscious of culture shifts, attempting to stay on the sympathetic side of the rising generations who would you know, become their future employees and customers, trying to appeal to them and keeping that in mind. So in the aftermath of the passage of the bathroom Bill, multiple companies like PayPal, Adidas, Doutsche Bank um all rescinded plans

to invest in the States. Banks wild to like I mean, if there's if there's evil going on, Deutsche Bank is providing money to make it. Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's stunning, Like how bad you have to be that Deutsche Bank is? Like no, I like like every every person who's like Russia yet like like Deutsche Bank, like before like I knew someone who worked there who two of his coworkers like started like doing audits of their accounts and both of them wound up dead in their

hotel rooms, non extradition countries. Yeah, that's scans. Yeah, like okay, so yeah, Deutsche Bank initially said they weren't gonna pull out of Russia, but like two days ago, as we record, this started pulling out. But they pulled out in North Carolina. They pulled North Carolina. Jesus Christ, big, big, big. You know, there's a degree to which is probably just like that Raytheon energy where it's like Raytheon, we're great with trans

people that you're making missiles, then you're fine exactly. Yeah, I mean big musical artists like Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam and a former former R E M member Ringo Star kes Litt concerts. There did you call Ringo Star a member of R E M. Garrison the the n C Double A announced it was that was championship. Okay, okay, okay. If you'd lived through the nine these, you would never

make fun of Michael Stipe again. At the National Basketball Association pulled its All Star game from Charlotte, almost seventy companies Joy did a lawsuit against the bill Um and you know, money talks the pressure worked, the state repealed the law in twhen He's seventeen uh. The same year abroad, a coalition of business leaders in Texas blocked a similar bill pushed by these Tonchley conservative then Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. UM and we've seen the same type of

thing happen in Georgia the past few years. UM with with actions like corporate Boycott's many large employeers pushing back on the succession of socially conservative bills, including like racist voting restrictions, six week abortion bands, and quote religious freedom bills that would give businesses protection to refuse customers or higher employees that are queer. UM. Prominent in that resistance was a Disney, which cast a long shadow over Georgia's

economy via its filming of Marvel Movie Inside Atlanta. Yeah so yeah. Across many states, big corporate brands were quick

to condemn obviously bigoted political moves. UM. Prominent Tennessee employeers like Nissan, del Amazon, and Vanderbilt University sent a since sent a letter last year opposing a suite of bills targeting lgbt Q rights, and a similarly, a group of Texas businesses business leaders declared opposition to Governor Greg Abbott's recent directive to investigate parents and others who provide transition

treatment for for transgender youth. But after Trump got out of office, and particularly during this recent round of a tax on queer rights, companies have not really even backing

up their words with any equivalent actions. After Tennessee last year, past all the bills that targeted lgbt Q rights, including measures restricting classroom discussion, UM, barring trans girls from any high school sports, and it's and its own version of the bathroom bill, it faced nothing like the North Carolina boycotts. There was, there was, There was just nothing because this

is when Biden was president. Now, um so, whether it be the anti CRT stuff, voting restrictions, or stepping away lgbt Q rights the past year under Joe Biden, companies are not really bothered to push back on these socially conservative bills overtaking many states. It's it's they don't it's it's easier to push back. But it's easier to push back on something when you know when you have a

big bad in office. I guess, uh, well, and I think also it's it's the companies can see which way the wind is blowing, right, Yeah, like it's a sat stating with grifters. When you when you when you watch people like when you watch streamers just like someddenly start to flip their political positions. When you when you watch the Love the live streamers in particularly do this when you watch them starting to flip that that's how you

can tell which way the wind is blowing. And this is really fucking scary because you know the way the wind is blowing right now, that that these corporations are are are you know, drifting towards is just you know, and refusing to oppose is just this exterminationism. Yeah. I mean thankfully Disney got you know, shouted to like we're going to talk about so creators of the movie Song

of the South. UM was notable that in their refusal to criticize the bill as it moved through the legislature under um the kind of recent stuff inside Florida specifically, so, but this was part of an overall pattern, Like the corporate response was was much more muted to they go to they don't say gay bill um in Florida compared

to other stuff across across the country. Even UM, and it shouldn't really surprise anybody many of the Republican backers of the bill in Florida are actually bankrolled by the very same businesses that have done performative virtue signally boycott's and protests under the troumpb era. Uh. Disney and Disney World in Orlando is one of the state's biggest employers and and in a normal of s economic force inside Florida.

And when disney silence was met with pushback, Bob Chapeck, the CEO, try to kind of do damage control at first like internally within the company and then for outside press.

UM last Monday, I think, which was the seventh UM in a in a in a memo to Disney staff, Chapek argue that the company can do more to promote tolerance quote through the inspiring content we produce and the welcoming culture we create and the diverse community of organizations we support UM, which just funny if you know anything

about the history of Disney. UM also saying that the messages in their movies are more powerful than any law being effort, which is uh yeah, which is also you know, great coming from the company most famous for queer coding almost all of their films, so sure, sure, bob um. Two days later, UM, at a shareholder meeting, was a little more open and told told shareholders that the company

had privately opposed to the bill. Um, and we'll trying to explain why the silence in the recent legislative efforts to attack lgbt P LGBTQ people. He said that we chose not to take a public position on the bill because we felt like we could be more effective working behind the scenes, engaging directly with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. But it uh. It later came out that Speck had only reached out to Florida Governor Randa Centers just that morning, after the bill had already had

already passed. Yeah, we we need that cat from Saga that just yells lies. Yes, lying cats my favorite. UM definitely appreciate lying cat lying. Uh. Yeah. So, of course none of this satisfied anybody, um, and there's been increasing pushback from both within the Disney Company and outside um Uh.

Pixar sent a letter to CHPEC criticizing his wishy washy stance on the on the on the don't Say Gay bill, and even goes on even goes on to goes on to criticize the corporation for capitalizing on pride through like a through rainbow mickey merchandizing and stuff, uh, saying, quote, it feels terrible to be part of a company that makes money from pride merch when it when it chooses to step back in times of our greatest need and when our rights are at risk, says the Pixar letter.

So yeah, after after after, if you did after the shareholder meeting, Jpeck said, third times the charm and try again to save face, announcing the company would immediately begin supporting efforts to combat similar legislation in other states and would pause all political donations in the state pending a review of the company's political giving. Um conceding that the company failed to be a stronger ally in the fight

for equal rights. And all that is well and good if you ignore the fact that in the past two years alone, Disney has given three thousand dollars to politicians in Florida who voted for they Don't Say Gay Bill. Um Disney entities donated at least four thousand dollars in the re election campaigns for the bill's chief sponsors a

state representative Joe Harding and state sponsor Dennis Baxley. UM and Disney entities also donated fifty dollars to political action committee tied to the governor, Rhonda Santa's one just last year.

So yeah, that's a that's a lot of money. Yeah, and I think I think it's worth like noting for people who like are somewhat younger, which is that like there's a whole thing where corporations pretend that they like queer people now and this is the thing that has existed for maybe a decade and the other several hundred years of capitalism are them like ruthless lee crushing queer people of all kinds. So yeah, this is this is their normal date. Queer capitalism is like not a thing.

It's a it's a thing that exists solely to sell you sweatshirts. It's not a thing get that rainbow Mickey merchandise. Yeah, they want they are actively okay with funding people who want to kill you. So so as as I as I was writing this, UM last week tonight the show with Jonathan Oliver came out with a small piece that was covering similar ground, uh to to my writing. That also included some nice, nice, nice background on Disney sponsored politician and lead sponsor. If they don't say gay bill

that Dennis Baxley. Um, so yeah, apparently Baxley has said that quote abortion is causing Europeans to be replaced by immigrants. Disney's going back to its Nazi roots, nice little white replacement. Lie um inwent He worked on bills to repeal protections for queer workers and worked to relegalize gay conversion therapy

um and teen. At some kind of fundraising event, he said that quote, I know some districts where there's a big infestation of homosexuals that are pushing their agenda under the screen and then trying to get more people hired like them instead up gated options and all this stuff. It's a continual fight for the values that we hold, dear boy, brought to you, brought to you by Disney. And yeah, ticket infestation. Yeah, it's a yeah take take

take none of the infestation there. Um. That kind of ties into my whole, my whole like viewing, you know, queerness as a contagion kind of idea, well, which I mean viewing the enemy is a contagion is also older than just viewing queer people as a contagion, because it's exactly how Hitler talked about the Jews, and you know, it goes. We can look at like some of the

things the Turks would say about Armenians. It's this idea of you know, you, there's no there's no middle ground with a virus, and if you turn people into a virus, then you don't have to consider a middle ground. Um. So before we go and break, I'm gonna I'm gonna do one more. I'm gonna do a quote from an article in The Atlantic, um titled want to understand the Red State onslaught look at Florida. Um, it's a it's a it's a deccent article kind of going through the

financial stuff that Disney has kind of backed. Um. But yeah, quote, why have so many companies backed away from these fights? Um, the fights against the group legislation. Some corporate lobbyists I spoke with said that one reason is that they believe the public opposition is counterproductive because more Republican elected officials in the Donald Trump era find it politically valuable to

be seen as fighting big companies. Businesses also frequently complained that the widening gulf between the parties leaves them in a lose lose position of alienating an important block of potential customers wherever they come down on policy debates. UM activists the point out that business is often try to have both ways by rhetorically identifying causes such as inclusion and diversity without taking any tangible steps to defend them.

Another factor probably looms larger than any of these considerations. However much they want to publicly align with the values of younger customers and consumers and workers, big companies want to only want to go only so far in fighting these proposals because they still mostly prefer Republicans and control state governments to deliver the low tax like regulation policies

that they favor. State Republicans have, in turn, have grown more overt about threatening those beliefs when business leaders raise objections to the cultural war components of their agenda. When American Airlines criticized the restrictive voting bill in Texas past last year, Lieutenant Governor Patrick openly threatened to kill other

legislation the company had cared about. So yeah, like, obviously, companies want Republicans to be in charge because it will make it easier to run their big giant corporate businesses that basically are as powerful a lot of a lot of other like government entities. Uh so, yeah, they're gonna spend supporting Rhonda Santis. They're gonna spends in the past the past two years, was supporting all these Republican candidates that voted for for they don't say, gay bill, because

that makes them more profit in the long run. And that's you know, if you're if you're running a business, that's what they want. So yep, that is Uh, I'm gonna we're We're gonna take another ad break and then we will we will come back to talk about Texas and and and bathroom bills and healthcare and all of the other kind of stuff that's happened in recent weeks. Hot. Yeah, hello,

we are back. Sorry, I was, I was taking some time to listen to my favorite Ringo Star RM album in the break in between reading books by It's a really good combo of the media. How how dare you not the not properly appreciating Michael Stipe, the voice of several generations Michael Stiper Michael Stipe, Yeah, so he was, I mean, yeah, I I really like the Black Keys. So anyway, UM, I'm gonna make more bad music jokes

or I could continue my script. Yeah, please continue. We don't have to talk about all of the wonderful contributions your generation is made to music like uh, like you two with Hits, like you two, famed Zoomer bands, you two with Hitman George Harrison. M Yep, You're gonna make a lot of people happy, Garrison, A lot of people real happy at least everyone. States have introduced bills that would band trans athletes from competing in sports that correspond

to their gender identities UM. Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee have already signed such bills into law. At the start of this year, new restructions were put into place for for in in Texas to also restrict UM what K through twelve school sports people can be on now, making them specifically match they're sex listed on their birth certificate at or near time of birth. UM and even when the states who don't just have blanket bands. There's other horrifying things happening

UH like. In the beginning of last February, it came out that the Utah Republicans are making UH and have proposed a commission to analyze the bodies of trans kids that would determine student athletes eligibility on a case by case basis, with having the authority to establish a baseline range for fiscal characteristics affected by puberty, banning schools school school athletes who do not fall within these established limits

from participating in generate sports. Um. Also a non fun fun side side but about the bill is that in their efforts to analyze the bodies of trans kids, the bill would also remember the commission immune from any lawsuit with respect to all acts done and a has taken in good faith and carrying out their purposes. Um. Yeah, And this is this is something that I think is really common specifically with transphobia, which is that like all of the rhetoric about transphobia is about sort of like

like a huge amount of it's about molestation. Here's about amount amount of it's about pedophilia. And then I mean, specifically with the molestation part, it's like, yeah, Okay, so we're gonna have this council, right, We're gonna have we're gonna have this commission, and these people are gonna they're they're going to just like they're going to molest these kids. Right, but like this, this is just something that happened to

transpeople constant, like the t s A like constantly. It's just an enormous engine for just like like sexually abusing every single trans person who goes who goes into an airport, Like I've definitely had not fun experiences at the airport the past few times. Like this is this is the thing is It's like it's it's they they impose as a sanction on trans people, the things that they claim

trans people are doing. Yes, and it's it is. And it's also so interesting you'll find how many of these kind of bill sponsors politicians um eventually have it come out that like they watch a lot of like trans pornography and stuff. It's like it's it's all it's all fake, like all like everything, like everything they say they don't actually mean. It's all about the culture war, it's all about all the fucking like save the children's stuff. It's

all in opposite that they can get elected into politics. Right, Well, we'll talk about this with like that with like the with the Texas thing, how all of the big New Texas stuff happened like days before the primary election because they were being challenged by by by other politicians that were farther to the right of them. So it's all

like a political ploy. But the problem is is that at certain points, because of how long the culture war kind of idea has been going, there's people who you know, sincerely bought into the idea of the of the culture war now themselves running for office. Um, so like it is like they do actually genuinely believe the things now it is it is like it is like a full circle thing of things that were just you know, just to get votes initially, like things that weren't really believe sincerely,

just just to wold votes. But now people who were brought up in that whole political idea are starting to run for office who do actually believe those in those things that sincerely So now it's it's leading its leading to a whole new kind of onslot of rights because these people have just escalated and accelerated the whole cultural

or idea. Yeah. Well, and and the other thing is like they've linked up with people who like people whose politics is at the church or people whose politics have specifically been about eliminated trans people for like half a century, right, like there, there's there's the linkages that are being formed between people who have sort of like you know, between these militantly anti trans organizations, in between sort of these people who buy into this, like either who are very

who who are cynically deploying the sort of the sort of Christian supremacist rhetoric, or the people who are just actual like Christian fascists. Right, Like, these people like these people are going together to the point where it doesn't it doesn't really matter why they're doing it. Okay, at certain points, like the reason why specifically they're doing it becomes immaterial and you're just sort of left with the

things that they are doing. Yeah, it's I mean, and there's has just been so much of it the past the past year specifically like over like overall, more than one hundred bills designed to restrict the rights of transgender of transgender people have been introduced in at least thirty three states. It justin just one, which is like it's become a record breaking here for any kind of anti

trans legislation. It's just it is accelerated to such a extreme degree um and now continuing in two legislative cycle um last spring in in in in Arkansas, the state legislator banned gender of her main care for minors UM, including you know, puberty blockers HRT, all the stuff you know UM. And the House Bill one five seven oh prevents transpeople from receiving hormotherapy, puberty blockers, similar treatments. UM. It was called the Save Adolescence from Experimentation Act UM,

you know, referring to medical treatment as experimentation UM. And shortly after the bill was signed into law, UM, the doctors who run the largest or who ran the largest provider of of hormone therapy and the state reported an increase in suicid attempts in their patients during like just that same month. UM. It was it was the first of its kind of bill signed into law, and it was it was initially vetoed by the governor, but then

that veto was overturned by the state legislator. So and that kind of similar laws have been have been happening in states ever since then. We're not gonna talk about Texas, UM, because that's one of the one of the biggest, one of the biggest kind of things in this whole fight

is the stuff around Texas. So Texas officials have begun investigating parents of transgender adolescence for possible child abuse, according to a lawsuit filed on a few a few weeks ago, after Governor Greg Abbott directed UH the the Child Protective Services Agency in Texas, to handle certain medical treatments, including

puberty blockers and h RT, as possible crimes. The directive from Governor Abbott was following a non binding opinion by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton UM saying that parents who provide their transgender teenagers with doctor prescribed a care could be investigated for child abuse. So the moves by both Abbott and Paxton tried to Republican UH incumbents came just days before the primary election UM in which each of

them faced significant challenges from farther right opponents. UM. So they've both fad they've faced criticis them from not being staunch, staunchly anti trans enough in the past, like in the months prior to this, and they did this to hopefully, you know, gain support from the more radical UH, more radical voters in Texas. That's like, that is that is undoubtedly a big, a big, big part of why this

happened at the time that it did. They did the same thing both Paxiston, well, let's Paxton, but Abbott did basically the same thing with like masks in the last year two where it's like yeah, you know, I mean it's it's great because the people are just they will literally kill thousands of people in or just hold onto their power and it's among to be. The first people investigated for child abuse was actually an employee by the States Protective Services Agency who had a sixteen year old

transgender child. On March one, the A c l U of Texas and Lambda Lambda Legal great great name went to state court in Austin to try to stop this inquiry into this family. Who again, who who worked for? Who worked for the Child Protective Services Agency UM. The employee, who was not named in the court filing works on reviews of reports of abuse and neglect. She was past

on administrative leave a few weeks ago. According to the filing, the friday after Governor Abbott made the initial kind of letter UM, she was visited by an investigator from the agency UM, who was also seeking medical records related to her child. The family of the child, identified in court documents only as Mary Doe has as as refused to voluntarily a turn of the records and as taking the

case to court. According to the lawsuit, the state investigator told parents that the only allegation against them was that their transgender daughter may have been provided with gender affirming healthcare and was currently transitioning, and that was that was the claims I was, that was the basis for the claims of of of of of child abuse. It's a so like. Initially, it wasn't clear if Abbot's order would survive kind of judicial scrutinty because the order does not

any The order doesn't change any Texas law. UM. It's just it's just an opinion piece. And several county attorneys and district attorneys of Dallas and Houston have publicly condemned Abbots and Pakiston's directives UM, clarifying that they would not prosecute families for child abuse under the new definition and they would not irrationally um and unjustiably interfere with medical

decisions UM. The mayor of Austin announced that Austin should be considered a safe place, a sanctuary for transgender children and their families, and they would not be enforcing the governor's mandate. So it's quite a time to be alive,

to have sanctuary cities for being trans yep. And of course all of these things, whether it be from like the d A S or the mayor, that doesn't stop Child Protective Services from not investigating you like that doesn't like that doesn't like they can still investigate and harass you. They can still send agents to your door. They can still try to see his medical records, right, they can still investigate claims even if even if the DA won't prosecute.

There's still that massive like looming threat of and like that like terror like holding over you know, people's heads. Um, you know it's it's it's a it is like a mass it's a massive scare tactic, right it is. It is to terrorize people like they will be too scared to transition because they don't want their family to get in trouble. It's it's pretty grim. It's pretty it's pretty

it's pretty evil. Um. So on the for for the for the a cl U and the LAMBDA Legal Court failing uh, they they're they're seeking to block the request for medical records from the employees case and more broadly kind of challenge the legitimacy of the entire investigation and the power that the government has to change this definition

of child abuse. It's a because it's it's it's it's it's also important important to mention that the mandatory as the mandatory report wunning aspect of the bill, which was well not not bill of the of the legal opinion

that was really emphasized in Governor Abbot's directive UM. Abbott describing his letter that the order would mean that all licensed professionals who have direct contact with children, including doctors, nurses, therapists, and even school teachers, would be required to report to state authorities um if if if they believe that there is a minor who is trans or could be receiving any kind of gender affirming treatment. Um and if they

don't report this, they could themselves faced criminal penalties. So the whole, the whole mandatory reporting aspects and other like insanely insanely bad thing that we could talk about it for a long time. This episode is getting long enough, so we're just gonna continue through and we can we

can ponder at how at how bad that is. UM. One parent of a transgender a teenager in Houston to the family's health clinic Legacy Community Health had suspended all refills and a new prescriptions for a transgender their youth in light of Abbot's new order. So it's it's happening, Like, yeah, it's there, it's the stuff has happened, the stuff has started. It's it's already scaring people into not doing stuff, like

it's it's that is what to do. Yeah, and and I and I know we keep making this episode longer, but like it is worth mentioning that, like it actually like having someone even temporarily like being off of the hormones that they've been taking for for HRT, like that fucking sucks. Yeah, it's like it has really bad negative effects. I mean yeah, like people will be surprised how fast hormones start working and how fast going off of them they stopped working. Like it is, it is. It is

pretty it is pretty surprising. And like I didn't want to get tons into like the science of being trans in this because that's because that's not the focus of this week. We're talking about the legislation and the onslaught of queer rights of people trying to hurt them. But like you know, it's it's obvious that like there is not many cases at all where there's being you know, like genital surgery done on miners, like if that does

that does not happen. Um, it can happen for like medical like that can happen for medically necessary reasons, like if there's like accidents and stuff, but that doesn't happen for gender affirming care. What happens is you get on you you you go on puberty blockers, which are already prescribed to assist gender kids all the time. Um, if they have early onset puberty, they have no lasting side effects,

they're completely safe. Um And in some cases, depending on the kids therapists and their doctors, they may be prescribed HRT or they will be prescribed that a bit later.

But that is that even still, that is that is really the only things that happened, um, And what they're trying to suppress is both but both of like those things, but also like the ability for like therapists to even talk about gender with kids, Like if kids are having problems with with like with gender dysphoria, they don't feel comfortable to even have to not even be able to talk to that to talk talking about those feelings with therapists is like part is part of the goal because

that can be considered gender affirming care. Um. I think that there's this point of the thing they should mention, which is that so there there is one kind like one that is the few, but there's there there's a very important kind of like quote unquote like gender surgery that is done on children, which is the stuff that's on to intersext kids. Yes, I mean sex kids. Yeah. Also, like circumcisions are already like yeah, but I mean with

with specific with intersex kids. This stuff matters because all of these bills that you're talking about, it's like, oh, you can't have gender affirming surgery, you can't have like surgery and kids. Like every single one of these bills like that, they all have they all specifically have card carve outs to allow doctors to funk up the generals of interseex kids. Yeah, that's it's it's all carved out there. So yeah, well let's say we we are we are near the last we are we're near the last little

stretch here. Um. On March eleventh, a Texas state court halted the new Department of Family Protective Services policy of investigating the parents of transgender children. Um District District Judge Amy mentioned conclude On concluded the hearing on the requested statewide injunction by saying, quote, the Governor's directive was given the effect of new law or new agency rule despite there being no new legislation, regulation, or even agency policy.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Department of Family Protective Services Commissioner Baby Masters of their actions violate the separation of powers by impermissibly approaching into the legislative domain. UM. Judge Mention also granted a temporary restraining order blocking the state from investigating the family that that that prompted this lawsuit from happening from the from the person who already worked at the Department of a Family Protective Services UM. Texas

Attorney General Kent Pactonum appealed this decision. Well, first of all, he appealed the restraining order and lost that appeal. UM. And and the s l U is trying to make this temporaries training order against the state permanent and extend to all parents of all transgender kids in Texas. And there's there's gonna be a whole trial scheduled for this topic on July eleven, two. So this is gonna this is gonna get this is gonna happen like where where we will figure out what is going to happen with

this later on this year. Um. And after the judges ruling halting the investigations due to lack of legal binding um at Turney, General Ken Paxton filed an appeal for for for the ruling. So and that's so, so that's that's gonna get appealed, um and he he tweeted out that the quote Democratic judges order permitting child abuse is frozen. Much needed investigations will proceed as they should. The fight will continue up to the Supreme Court. I'm ready for it, um.

But it's unclear how much legal backing this actually has. So we don't know if if the if the off the protective Services actually has permission to keep investigating or not. It is kind of unclear. Paxton says that they can this, this state judge says they can't, and that's kind of legally up in the air right now. So we don't totally know. But there's gonna be a whole trial on

the topic in July. UM. Kind of one of the last things I want to mention is, uh, this this Idaho bill that was passed by the House of Representatives that would that would criminalize gender affirming medical procedures, including property blocker, sorry, including puberty blockers an HRT for any kind of trans transgend gender youth. And it was also reported that the bill would make it a felony punishable by life imprisonment to anyone who helps a kid travel

across state lines to get gender affirming healthcare. But this actually maybe isn't actually true, Like this actually probably wasn't a part of that bill. Um. The bill just amend's current laws regarding female general mutilation of course of carving out a specific section to allow the mutilation of intersext kits um. But uh, but yeah, it added a section also criminalizing gender affirming care. Um. But the section of the bill making it a felony to try out of

state only refers to the general mutilation section. Um. It doesn't refer to the gender firming care section. And it's unclear if that was an oversight, um or if the limitation was intentional. Who knows, um. But it still did attempt to criminalize gender firm me care within the state. The bill was I believe I think earlier this morning as of time time of recording, the bill was not

passed by the Senate. Um, so that's good. Uh. They said the Senate that it was too vague in scope and it was unclear how it was going to be enforced. So that bill was halted and it did not did

not continue. Um. Yeah, but you know that's yeah. There is a lot of the reason why all stuff has kind of started is that, like there has been so much progress happening in queer rights in the past like ten years, right, Um, So now because the progress is more visible, what was once like obvious but like low key bigotry is trying to be put into law. Right.

There's there's there used to be so many medical hoops to jump through to get any type of gender affirming treatment, but now almost every like legit medical organization recognizes the importance of gender affirming care. So that plus the visibility and the cultural acceptance of queerness is making some you know, mostly good old white Christian conservative populations a little bit uncomfortable. Right.

There's there's this increasing fear that what if your kid thinks they're trans, well, what if what if they become an unholy degenerate what if and what if there are

people trying to make that happen on purpose. Right, all of the brutality, all of like, all of the brutality in these bills, the kind of the not like the total nonchalance at the possibility of you know, kids killing themselves because of this bill and because of all these legislations, like all of the transphobia negatively contributing to mental health.

All that brutality is just justified in the minds of these anti trans like people because it's to save that it's to save their kids from experiencing that in the first place. Right, it's the idea that queerness is an infection, that it can spread from person to person. It's like it's a it's it's like a contagion. If you hear about it, you could yourself become gay. So they don't hear about it, then that's not going to be a possibility.

So all all of the brutality, it's like it's it's it's it's both the point, but it's also justified because this thing is seen as such like an it's seeing as such an ontological threat to their whole idea of like the world. So yeah, that's uh, and it's I mean, it's it's not gonna stop right every you know, one, we saw a massive increase in legislation on this topic. Two we're seeing an even bigger increased in legislation on this topic, and you know, attempts to physically oppose it.

You know, it's our can can kind of be done. I mean, like you can you can see all there was some some successful kind of protests to the whole school board thing. You can also, like you can sneak queer books into libraries, so you can just put you can just put them in there. Um, you can request queer books in your library systems. Um. You can you know,

attend school board meetings. And again it's sure that the institution of the Institution of schooling is problematic um in a lot of ways, but it's we shouldn't make it worse for queer kids. So maybe it's still is worth actually focusing on. And there's there's a lot like you know, you can, like like in the case of the a sil U suit, there is legal challenges being taken up against all of these things. We'll see how that goes.

The There's always been a there's always been a shaky record of the legal you know of like the court's ability to protect these rights. But every once in a while it does happen, like with like with gay marriage. UM. The last thing I'll mention with like specifically with like HRT being made illegal in a lot of these places, at least like prescribed vida doctor UM. I will kind of talk about. I will mention um d I y HRT as the thing that that that is the thing,

it exists. You can go to d I y HRT dot get hub dot io to get information on this. It's been It requires a lot of like search, but you can find like you can get You can get like estrogen and stuff from like like made by the companies that that supply pharmacies. You can buy that legally. UM. Testosterones a little bit more iffy because that is I think that it's like a schedule tour scheduled three drug UM. But estrogen is much more available UM to buy legally online.

To just make sure you get it from a good place and make sure that you you know, know how it affects you and all that stuff, like do lots of reading. But that is a possibility. So I will probably plan an episode on d A Y h R

T in the near future. Just it's like a whole episode on the topic, but I just wanted to kind of mention that as one of the last things that being like, yeah, if they're restricting all these stuff, we should probably you know, learn to provided ourselves because there's no guarantee that the governments or any kind of even like pharmacies will be able to do that forever. Right, Like, it's it's good to have alternative methods of figuring out how to get the drugs that make you feel nice.

So yeah, that was that is my episode on the on the legislation that has been happening in the past, in the past really like six months. Um, yeah, that's fun. Yeah, but by the time this is there, there might there might be new stuff that has happened. Oh, most certainly. Yeah that's good. That's why when you know, when all this stuff gets very depressing, I just like listening to my favorite Wayne Cohen's song by Pink Floyd and it really just really does held me down and you feel

much better. Wow. Well, I'm gonna go listen to the new uh double album that A hundred Guecks did with Billy Joel I do I do love me someone hundred gus mhmm, yeah, the Gecks Joel concert. It's even I hear that that Elton John is going to get into and they're gonna they're gonna do That would be quite this show. Honestly, that would would be a fascinating experience. That would be a very mix of like any women

in their sixties and horny seventeen year olds. What happens? Well, yeah, that is Ah, there are plenty of organizations that are you know, fighting against and stuff in Texas. Um. I could list them, but honestly, if you if you if you're not there, it's it's it's if you mean you should you should. You should look into what's happening in your area. Learn what legislation is being passed in your area, learn what your you know representatives are doing, and look

into helping people get the turkey. That's really that's really. I mean, like, if there's a way that bodybuilders can get testosterone, there's a way that you can get testosterone for transguise. If estrogen is much easier to get, um, so look into that, don't don't, don't be stupid. Um, But yeah, that is a. That's that is, that is that is my piece. Find joy, find violence and find the correct application of the two that allows people to stay alive. Yeah yeah, and uh yeah and uh listen

to listen to music that makes you happy. That is that is that is all you can do. All you can all all you can do, yeah is find your favorite YouTube album. Uh featuring Roger Waters. All right, goodbye, oh boy, welcome to America. The podcast? Wait is that is that what we're calling it now? I don't think that's true. We just had like two episodes on international tours that think we are going to we're trying to be a little beyond America. I fucked it up. I

fucked it up. Well that's the podcast. Goodbye everybody. See Usually at this point you say, Garrison take over. All right, well let's let's get into this. What are we talking about today? Who are we? Where are we? What is life? Where it could happen? Here? Where is God? Final episode of the war on transpeople? Which means when this episode, when this episode is done, that means the war will

be over. We did at everybody and whatever God's once were, if long abandoned this place, we did get pretty good news about the governor of Utah kind of surprising me here. Uh yeah, that just hit. That's nice. There's the there's that. I mean, luckily, looks some of some of the bills that we've talked about actually have been shut down at this Pointisconsin bill got shut got got kind of down surprisingly and in very very recently, like yeah, the past

few days. Yeah, there's a looks like there's still going to be injunctions on any investigations in Texas until the case gets put up. That's still very much in the air. Yeah, it's it's it's still in the courts, but it's like it's it's trying. It's at least it's kind of paused right now, and it's going they get settled at some point in either the lawsuit or in higher courts. So we'll see, we'll see how that develops. But for right now, it seems some things seem to be paused and some

states are not are not fully passing it. I know there was a walkout by Disney employees today about over there don't say gay bill, and we're gonna see if that's gonna get signed. Um So, yeah, still still up in the air, but we're gonna be talking about something a little bit different. We're gonna do some We're gonna do some time travel. Oh boy, that's that's what I

had to say. So we're going We're going to go back to another time in which there was a for a very brief period, a massive expansion in the knowledge about and sort of but both knowledge about and appearance of and safety of trans people. And then it all catatrophically came crashing down. Oh good. And to help us with that is Robern Evidence, my boss. Hi, everybody, how are we doing, Garrison? How? How how are we doing? Oh? I'm doing actually flying, I'm just I'm just waiting for

you to do your job, but not passing over all. Right. So the important thing to understand is that like the kind of very concept of not just gay rights, but like our our modern attitudes towards like what it means to be homosexual and trans all have their origins in Germany in the not not just in the post war period, but really the last couple of decades of the Kaiser

and the Weimar Republic. Like that is where kind of the modern Western attitudes towards what it like is to be homosexual really get formed because obviously, like gay people have existed for forever, there's quite a bit of documentation. But if you look at like, for example, you know, to spirit folks within some Indigenous American cultures, that's a very different attitude towards um, like what trans people I suppose to the Western exactly. Yeah, so this is like

they're there's Western quote unquote you know whatever. Yeah, there's the actual thing that's going on, and like the the individual sexuality, and then there's kind of the the public concept of what it is um and and that is really forming in probably the seminal moment that kind of starts this progress, as in August eighteen sixty seven, when a lawyer named Karl Heinrich Rix goes before the sixth Congress of German jurists in munich Um to urge them

to repeal laws forbidding sex between men. So again there is still a Kaiser and like this is this is before Germany is actually fully a nation, right because eighteen seventies when that happens, so Germany doesn't even really exist at this point. There's a series of like kings kind of being welded together slowly into a German state. And there is a lawyer getting up in front of like the council of different German jurists to urge an into the laws that get illegal for for men to have

sex with each other. And one thing that's important to notice that obviously there are lesbians in this period of time, as again there have been throughout all of history. That's not really a legal problem, right, they do not face really legal repression and and I mean not to say that like there's not repression and things that they're dealing with, but it's not the same as as it is for like men who want to be in relationships with men.

That's it's in fact a lot easier for women to be kind of like and this is not just Germany to be built to like kind of say like fends and we lived together right, like we're a tease and we live together like where. Yeah, that that because in part because men, just like I think a lot of like the men in this period just assume it's impossible like that women would do that or or the other side of it is like femininity is always presentuary, it's always like it's you as soon as a beauty symbol.

So it makes more sense for women to find other women attractive, because that's what beauty is, is when is performative of femininity. So like that's like way more obvious and it doesn't make sense for but and it makes less sense for men to find other men attractive, and that's way more taboo because of the way that messages with like patriarchy. Um, so yeah, I think there could be a very like gender studies and sexuality studies, you can have a lot of theorizing for how this has developed.

But yeah, this this idea you can even see in like Victorian era and like reruna assance sera of yeah, women who lived together and are very good friends, very very very close friends. I hope people don't feel like I'm trying to like flatten the history of like the concept of being a lesbian in the West to to that at all, or trying, for that matter, flattened like homosexuality between men. But I am kind of making the point, and I am not the person who are kind of

initially made this point. The scholarly work that I'm kind of basing my research on this on largely right now, and we're going to do an episode Behind the Bastards that gets in two more of this, I think in

the near future. But it's a called gaber Lynn by Robert Baccy um And in the book, one of the things that Beach argues is that even though obviously same sex love is as old as the existence of quite a bit older actually than the existence of human beings, um, the public discourse around it and like the political attempt to win rights for gay people starts in Germany in the late eighteen hundreds, and it starts in this conference in eighteen sixty seven. Um. And and the guy who

does this RIX is a number one, is a gay man. Um. And he had he had been open kind of to his relatives. He had started in the period before he gets up in front of all these lawyers to be open with like his family members that he was homosexual. Um. But he had never like, he was not publicly out. And so on the same day that he appeals for a change in the legal code to make homosexuality legal in the German States is the day he comes out publicly as a gay man. Like. He does both of

these things at the same time. And I want from a New York Yeah, it's quite a moment. Um. I want to read a quote from a New Yorker article that's covering all of this, and that's based again on the book Gay Berlin quote. He faced an audience of more than five hundred distinguished legal figures, and as he walked to the lectern, he felt a pang of fear. There was still time to keep silent, he later remembered telling himself, then there will be an end to all

your heart pounding. But Rix, who had earlier disclosed the same sex desires and letters to relatives, did not stop. He told the assembly that people with a sexual nature opposed to common custom were being persecuted for impulses that nature, mysteriously governing and creating, had implanted in them. Pandemonium erupted and Rix was forced to cut short his remarks. Still

he had an effect. A few liberal minded colleagues accepted his notion of an innate gay identity, and a Bavarian official privately confessed to similar yearnings, and a pamphlet titled Gladius Furens or Raging Sword or Rix wrote, I am proud that I found the strength to thrust the first lance into the flank of the hydra of publican. I feel like that sometimes funny, incredibly Wow, what if there's a heaven. I hope this dude made it there because

one absolute yeah unbelievable. Yeah so no, but like what it like like yeah, the astonished, like the astounding bravery that that takes. Um. And he's essentially the first gay activist in a modern Western political context. Um. And it's interesting, like uh within kind of the the next couple of years,

things start to happen very quickly. Two years later in eighteen sixty nine, and Austrian, an Austrian writer I know right named Carl Kurt Benny UM, who is kind of fighting sodomy laws and and and sodomy laws are laws that make everything that's not like missionary position sexily targeted towards towards gay men primarily. UM. So Carl Kurt Benny create like he's the guy who invinced the term homosexuality, like like two years after this is part of his

like fight against these anti sodomy laws. Um. The eighteen eighties Berlin police commissioner makes the decision to stop prosecuting gay bars UM. And in fact, not only does he stop doing this, but he starts leading tours of the gay districts in Berlin just to like show off, like, look at how it's kind of rights. Wow, yeah, what a weird picture of putting your head at least even like yeah, especially copying, like why are we arresting these people?

Let's show this off? Yeah yeah. So in eighteen nineties six, the very first gay magazine starts publishing in Germany in Berlin. Really do you want to know what it's called? Of course? Why? Of course the German name is Der eigen h and that means the self owning. That's great, it's pretty, it's

pretty cool. Um So the very next year, eighteen nineties seven, one of the primary heroes of the early gay rights struggle for Asian, Magnus Hirschfeld uh starts the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which is the first organized gay rights group in Western

history at least. Um So, by the start of the twentieth century, a lot of stuff is in place, right, And I think I'm even have been a little bit guilty of this in the past, of kind of focusing so much on Weimar Germany, um and all of the stuff that happens around game by rights there and how progressive it was. This is building in Germany again, we don't consider the kaiser Reich as a particularly progressive place.

But all of this is happening under the Kaisers. And there's there's so many things that are happening in the eighteen nineties and the start of the nineteen hundreds that directly mirror things that are happening in the United States in the nineteen eighties. In fact, right as the century turns, um,

you start getting an advocate. One of the first gay rights advocates in gay literature uses the phrase coins the phrase staying silent is death to like talk about the importance of gay literary, Yeah, which is essentially the same slogan. It's the same stuff we're talking about right now with with all of like the with with all like the book bannings taking you know, doing a massive sweep of that the past the past few years. Yeah, this is

nineteen hundred, like basically that this is starting time. Um. So yeah, and there's you know, there's even there's a lot of um activists start to complain and start to try to complain both within like their own magazines and within like more public magazines about things like negative depictions of gay people in popular novels. They start to be the first arguments about whether or not it's morally right to out people who are gay but who are attached

to anti gay organizations, because that starts happen. Absolutely. Um, it's it's sucking wild, how gold off, this is nothing new in the sun. Yeah, but like, but this is also like the first time it happened in these types of countries, in these societies. Yeah. Yeah, but like it is that it is so yes times a flat circle. But this is also like the first time it's happened, and it's just kind of been rehappening ever since. Then.

It's important to note I didn't I didn't covers. When we start talking about Rix, well, there's a lot of people who get angry, and obviously Rix is not successful in repealing the anti homosexuality laws. Um. When he makes his speech. In addition to the people who are like yelling at him to sit down, there are like German deputies yelling no, no, no, let him continue, let him continue,

like he needs to be allowed to talk. Um. So even like in this period of time, there are non gay people at a fairly high level in German politics who are like vocal allies and starting gonna become vocal allies you know. Um, yeah, it's it's it's pretty fascinating.

So um, obviously World World War One happens, um doesn't go great for Germany, but you know, we we get after that the Weimar Republic, and the Weimar Republic is kind of the traditional era in which we talk a lot about, you know, gay rights starting to really move forward in significant ways. And uh so there's a lot of, um, even kind of into the early nineteen thirties, some pretty interesting things that are happening in German society and like

the mainstream elements of it. There's a film called ma Chin in Uniform in nineteen thirty one, which is the first like positive portrayal of lesbians in Western cinema. Um, Like thirty one is like again we're talking like right before uh Z, the Nazis kind of kind of come around. Um, and yeah, there's these like this, This this police commissioner that we chatted about earlier. I think it's one of

the people who's most interesting to me. We're gonna get to Hirshfeld a bit in in a little bit, but this this guy is named Leopold von Muerscheit Hulsheim, Um, I'm not going to get that right. But he's a big part of when we talk about gay Berlin, particularly during the Weimar years. Even though he's like during what while the Kaiser's in, He's why gay Berlin really happens

in a lot of ways, um. And it's in part because like he decides to stop cracking down on on gay people, um and like he's not gay, although his boss is, which is part of like what makes it easier um for him to do this. And there's like a lot of debate about why he does this because

he's not like a gay rights activist. Some people say that it's because, um, he's worried that like gay people will become politically radicalized by the Reds and so if you stop cracking down on them, they won't go communists like that. There's a lot of like debate about like why he does this. Um. He's also there's a number of things that he like, he takes a lot of data on on gay people in Berlin, and he does

this on everybody. He's a big data guy, so it's not particularly uh um harmful in his era, but it's some of the stuff that he gathers will be used by the Nazis later. Um, which is kind of a broader thing about like the wisdom of not letting the government get access to this like he has. He founds a department of Homosexuals in eighteen eighty five that like lists the people that they know are gay and and in like this is all. So it's really a complicated thing.

That's that's happening here because he's not he's not this like thoroughly sympathetic figure. He's doing a lot of stuff that's that's weird and that will later have negative outcomes. But he's also by ending police persecution of gay people, um, at least in an organized way, really allowing gay culture to to blossom um in Berlin. Uh. And it's it's it's yeah. I'm gonna read another quote from that New

Yorker article here. For whatever reason, Mr scheit Holsenheim took a fairly benevolent attitude towards Berlin's same sex bars and dance halls, at least in the better healed parts of

the city. He was on cordial terms with many regulars, and none other than Odious Strindberg testified in his autobiographical novel The Cloister which evokes the same sex costume ball at the Cafe Nationale, and this is the police inspector and his guests had seated themselves at a table in the center of one end of the room, close to which all the couples had to pass. The inspector called them by their Christian names and some in some of

the most interesting among them to his table. So he's kind of like going on safari, like among the gay people in Berlin. Like there's a lot of weird it's it's weird in a lot of way. Um. But he's also one of the things he does is he provides police help to gay people who are being blackmailed and like threatened without ing um. And he'll even like counsel them on how to handle it, Like he provides like

counselors and stuff. And he does this in part because like he's worried about, um, them committing suicide because they're being blackmailed, which is like a real problem in Germany in a bunch of other places. Um. Yeah, And this guy, like why this police commissioner winds up killing himself kind of in the early nineteen hundreds, I think because he wound up getting found to be taken bribes from some millionaire who gets in a lot of legal trouble for

raping somebody. So again, he is a sketchy dude. But he's also like because he's he's got this weird almost like voyeuristic fascination with gay people, um and some legitimate because there are legitimate humanitarian concern he's really worried about people committing suicide as a result of blackmail. So he's one of these figures we don't talk about enough in history where it's like the overall outcome of this guy's at work is pretty positive, but he does it for

this like really confusing mix of reasons. He's just a very strange figure in history. Well, I think it's interesting looking at him, like like comparing him to like if you look at like what the U. S Is doing in the fifties, right where there's this whole thing about like gay people are getting are going to get are getting blackmailed, and the you know, the the US, the entire US security state loses mind and becomes convinced that like these people are all gonna become Soviet agents, and

you know, and instead of like doing counseling that there's there. The thing that they do is they they do the Levender Scare and they start purging every gay person we can find from the entire US government. And it's like, you know, it's it's it's interesting that like, yeah, this is this is a guy in like late eighteen hundreds, early nine hundreds, like like literally ruled bay on arch Berlin, and his policies are enormously better than like anything you're

going to see for like half a century. He's he is way more woke on on this than like any New York police officer for a century today up up to the present day in a lot of ways. Yeah, So let's talk about Magnus Hirshfeld a bit. Um. Hirshfield is very influenced by Ulrich, the guy we started the

story with. His first like publication on the matter is called Sappho and Socrates in eighteen nineties six, which is again it's a story of a gay man who gets coerced into marriage, so this like uh and who commits suicide as a result. So there's like a big with both um, you know, his police commissioner with Hirshfeld, with a lot of people who are becoming activists in this period. A big part of why is, for one reason another the suicide rate among gay people, um, which is a

huge problem today for for trans people in particular. And this is what it's interesting, like that that Utah governor, you know, May the announcement today that like he's vetoing this trans sports ban in Utah, and he specifically cites like the suicide rate among trans people is so like high and it he could not morally conscience doing anything that would like make these kids feel mothered and likelier to commit suicide. I mean, okay, well let's let's let's

let's not go that far. He he he was, he was willing, he was willing to do the commissions. She just wasn't willing to do a full band. Yeah. I'm just saying the the justification he gives for what he's doing is like, um, is the rate of suicide at himps among trans people. Um. Not to like whitewash that guy or Utah. Like again, we've been doing this whole week's episodes, but it's interesting that you get um again.

It's just kind of like the the issue for a long time has been that when you like other people and make it dangerous for them to be who they are openly, they will kill themselves. Um, a lot of them will. And that's that's a thing that is even by very problematic people in Germany in the eighteen nineties for recognize that, like this is a huge issue. Um. So yeah, Hirschfeld um starts this first organization that's like gay rights organization. Um. And he also is doing like

a huge amount of of research. Um. He is fall again, he's following in l Ric's footsteps because he too believes that that homosexuality is congenital, right, it's something you're born with, as opposed to like a choice people make because of Devans or whatever, which is still the big fight that

we're having to this day. And he's also like it's hard to there's a lot that like you can criticize about Hirschfeld scientifically, and a lot of the research he does, among other things, there's like difficulty with like control groups and actually like being the kind of scientific sort of detachment that is necessary to study that. There's like critiques

of his of his research that are valid. But one of the he's he's really like, it's wild how far ahead of the Curvey is because one of the things that Hirschfeld introduces is the idea that sexuality is a actrum um, where there's what he calls sexual intermediaries between male and female. Um. He doesn't believe that like those are even particularly useful terms that sexuality kind of like it it again, that it's a spectrum, which is this thing that we are just now really starting to have

good wider kind of ranging conversations about today. Um. And Hirschfeld is very much like kind of utopian and his belief that if you can scientifically study and understand where homose like what homosexuality is, and that it is an innate characteristic, that people will stop being bigoted against gay folks right, Like his his belief is that science will end prejudice, um, just because the German people are so scientific and like they'll have to accept this if I

could just like prove it with enough rigor, which is heartbreaking, um,

heartbreaking that he was very very wrong. Um. And yeah, there's a number of things that are like really worth kind of within sort of the because he's not he's kind of come down now is this sort of um like sainting like hero of the gay rights movement for good reason, but that does tend to flatten the fact that within his his day and within kind of the gay culture in Berlin in particular, there were a lot of people who were frustrated with him for a lot

of reasons. Um, there were a lot of Uh So there's this there's this split in gay culture in this period of time between um, gay men who are seen as more effeminate and what are called the masculinists. Um and the masculinists. They are not all or even mostly Nazis, but all of the gay Nazis are what you'd call masculinists, right, who are like, I'm not having like like like I am so manly that the only person I can have sex with as a man, right, Like that I'm flattening

even that quite a bit. But like you have guys like um Ernst Rome, who is the head of the Brown Shirts and is is a is a gay Nazi and is like that's that's a significant, not an insignificant chunk of the Nazis. They'll murdered in the Night of Long Knives. And it is interesting that that Rome was outed by anti fascists. Yeah, he sure, like two years before he was murdered, and it was it was it was trying he was specifically outed to so division within

the Nazi party. Yes, and that does like also just playing it. You know, you're you're you're talking about like, you know, people having debate over whether it's okay to out somebody, um if they you know, are part of that Organization's right. That was something we mentioned previously And yeah,

just like an interesting historical tidbit. Yeah, and it's it's um so uh again amongst like, one of the things that the masculinists are doing is like a lot of them are married to women and they're they're actually fine with this because again they think that like, well you still need to like procreate and have like not it's not even all just about being having like a beard or whatever you wanna call it. Some of it is just like this attitude that you have a responsibility to

make more Germans for the fatherland. But like then when it comes to it's kind of like the Greeks, they were not wildly dissimilar concepts and a lot of the masculinists ideologically are wrapped up in the work of Max S. Turner Um and in fact, like the self owners, that first gay magazine that was. I was like, oh, that sounds like stars egoism. Ye, yes, yeah, there's a lot of that going and we we we again. I went to at some point provide a lot more detail on

this because it's it's all fascinating. Um. But there there are these big sort of like this big split and there's he gets a lot of ship from the masculinists

for because he also studies lesbians heavily. Like there's a decent chunk of the gay male population in Berlin who's against the research in the medical practice he's doing to help trans people who was against his research on lesbians because they're like, well, this is this is the fight, right, like we're the ones who are being legally cracked down

on or whatever. Like. Um. So there's a bunch of like different cleavages and fractures kind of within the community at this time in Hirschfeld is not universally beloved and there are people kind of within the gay community who have a lot of issues with him. Um. And I just think it's important to note that because we often do again kind of flattened things because the Nazis flattened things, right, because these were all it was all the same to them.

Um and and we often flatten them in a different way to where like, yeah, you've got this guy and he's the he's the hero of the of the of gay Berlin, and he's this like thoroughly positive. No, there were a lot of people who hated him for like all these different reasons because this was uh, these like all people had a million different kind of fractures and ideologies sort of running within. Um what what someone who was not looking in from the outside would have just

called gay Berlin, you know. Um And yeah, obviously this all falls apart or is cracked down horribly when the Nazis come to power. Um, Hirshfeld is doing a lot of some of them, I mean, all of the very earliest research on like what it is to be transgender, and he is performing surgery on like gender operations on on trans for the very first time. Um. And and that gets all kind of destroyed. In in May of nineteen thirty three, which is about three months after Hitler

becomes Reich's chancellor. Uh, Nazis sack Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Science. They burn its library. Um, they go after a lot of of of his of the people he had been working with and on are killed, others have to flee. Um. Hirschfeld is thankfully out of the country on tour when the Nazis rise to power and just you know, doesn't come back. Um he sees he watches his institute get burned and all of his his research get burned and

a newsreel in Paris. Uh, and he dies the next year. Um. Yeah, So that's the that's the the broad details of kind of the story of this early period um of of the birth of kind of like a lot of our our legal fights around you know, gay rights and like the birth of kind of Western gay identity, Like this is where it comes from and and uh yeah, there's a lot that's important and understanding this. And this is

one of the points that gets made in Gaberlin. We often see the Weimar years as this kind of inevitable march towards fascism, and the reality is that there was fifty something years of of incredibly progressive movements on on gender and sexuality. Um. And you know, even outside of gay rights, just in terms of like attitudes towards democracy and attitudes towards the nature of like the state, that

we're very progressive and very powerful and very popular. Um. And they do get you know, it's important to understand both that, like the Nazism was not inevitable, the regressive ism and the violence and the the the like, that kind of flattening of human life under the Fascists was not an inevitable progression for Germany. Um. But it's equally important to understand that like a tremendous so much progress had been made in German culture by the of time.

When the Nazis rise and it does get wiped out, you know, it does not recover right away. It's still recovering now, still now, yeah, exactly. Um. And in fact, one of the groups of people when when the Allies liberate the concentration camps, we don't free imprisoned gay people. They go back to prison because what they were doing

was still seen as criminal. If you have the is the pink triangle, you don't just get out because the Nazis, because you were in a concentration gap with these other people. Because the Allies to a large extenter like well that was it was okay for them to punish those people. Anyway. That's the story. Not Another interesting thing is that kind of on the same note is that if you look through all old um German war photography from World War Two, you will actually see a higher than average rate of

men cross dressing inside photos. Now, there's always cross dressing during war is not uncommon, especially during the performances for like theater and stuff, um, because there's not as much women around. But specifically comparing like the documentation of the Nazis and all of all of the German soldiers, there was like, yeah, absolutely higher than average amount of of people comfortable cross dressing despite you know, being a soldier

for the Nazis. Um it is. And it's like, yeah, it's an interesting thing in terms of how how some of those kind of more advanced US and sexuality still carried over um at least like in terms of like gender presentation among you know, even even if you fear among this genocidal group who's imprisoning gay people by the hundreds of thousands. Um, it's it just it just it

just it just it just like kept happening. Yeah. It also sort of points to just like how bad everywhere else was also, Yeah, like it's yeah, Berlin just got so regressive that even when suppressed, there was enough like stuff there that things could kind of there was there was still there was still a bit there's was still

a bit of some remnants. Um. And I mean and it still it got it did get horribly obliterated, and and we're still recovering now in terms of our views and medical knowledge on like gender and you know, social contructs, um, susuality, you know, all all this kind of stuff. Um. But yeah, the German law code that made homosexuality illegal, um again after it was briefly more okay than it had been,

doesn't get repealed until Yeah. I mean a lot of a lot of sodomy laws do not get repealed until the nineties, and a lot of cases they're actually still around, we just don't enforce them, like a lot of this, a lot of laws that are actually just still just hanging out. Texas had anti sodomy laws on the book until a two thousand three Supreme Court case, Yeah, and invalidated all sodomy laws. Right, That's that's why there's something.

They're still in the books, but they but they're now invalid. Yeah, prosecute people, um yeah. Yeah. Feld was pretty based though, so it was fucking rix some pretty based this really interesting stuff and then that's why we wanted to talk about this, is to kind of show the historical background and show like there's a precedent for all of the

same stuff happening before. Um, and you know, there's ways people have fought fought against it back then who didn't necessarily succeed, but also did have a lot of progression and a lot of like views socially on these types of topics. You know, you just need to make sure that you're also very very aware of of the rise of fascism and being also counter that as well, because they can just do so much damage in such a

shorthort amount of time, despite you know, fifty years of progress. Yeah. Yeah, and I think I think understanding their fragility of every thing that exists that I don't know. I mean, there's this is you know, one of one of the sort of American mythosis, right is that like the moral arc of the universe bens towards progress, then everything is getting better. And that's not true. Nope, it's not. And like everyvery everything good that you see in this world is there

because people fought for it. Yeah, and if they lose it all goes away. Yeah, yeah, we we we absolutely could go back. It's like you have that I mean, he back pedaled, but you have that Republican uh legislator who was like, um, making comments about how he didn't think the state should be forced to honor interracial marriages. Um. And it's like, yeah, there's people who want to go back on all of that stuff, and they could do it.

It doesn't even and it doesn't matter. I like when people criticize kind of like some of the the attitudes we have, the fear we have towards this, Especially on on the subreddit, I've seen people be like, well, look, these are not popular laws, and it doesn't matter. They

weren't absolutely they weren't as popular. They weren't like necessarily all that popular in in in Germany, you know, when some like a lot of the thing not specifically even talking about what was done to gay people, but a lot of the things that were done by the Nazis

were not necessarily popular. It doesn't matter. What matters is power, And this like plays into how like what's is worth focusing on on electoralism and being like, yeah, these laws obviously aren't being uh pushed as far in blue states because there's not enough electoral power there, but that doesn't mean that we can flip Texas blue if we will it into being Like, there's so many other cultural factors that are keeping red states red, and yes, of course,

ability suppression, all of those things, gerry mandering, all these things are contributing factors. But the overall political bent of those states right now seems to be pretty firm because

there's so many people invested in maintaining that power. So when we complain about kind of how electoralism is not often a super reliable solution to securing these things over the long stretches of time, it's more kind of talking about that because even though we have you know, democrats and power in the executive branch, and they you know, make statements about trying to secure things, they make, they make some gestures, they follow through, and those things is

always so minimum and so bare um, and there's it's like it's it's it's the thing that like Trump was able to do so much um and now we have Biden so less willing to use executive powers. Is the same thing that like like with with with Obama and the Supreme Court, when the Senate would refuse to put through any any candidates Obama technically had the power could because the Senate refused to do to do their job.

There is a very strong argument that Obama could just put someone into the Supreme Court because of the failure of what the Senate was doing was specifically doing a thing that meant because they were not doing the job at all, that he can't get he can't get fully put through and we so we could have. That could have happened, and Obama just didn't because you know, you want to play. You want to be the good guy, like you want to be the person who follows the rules.

But the other side doesn't care about that. They're not playing a genuine game. They're not following the rules. They're doing whatever they can to win. So this this isn't about being plugged into lefty Twitter. I get almost I

get almost none of my takes from lefty Twitter. I get them from like reading reading stuff and thinking about how electoralism affects all of these issues and where to focus my attention because no matter what I say or what I do, that's not going to affect whether Texas is blew a red Yeah, and there's this I think like one of the things that is an argument against Obama.

You know, intervening in that way is like, well, that would have created precedent that would have like further centralized executive power and could have been used by their refused to do their job. Yeah, but you know, I mean, look at what we got. Look at the Supreme Court that we have, which now has a six to three bent conservatively. There was just another fucking shadow ruling today that is, um about jerrymandering, and god, I was Wisconsin. Um one second, I'll look it up. But yeah, like

you're you're getting like we're we're already living through that scenario. Um, And it's like like this I meantime, terms of centralation to power, like Obama claimed the legal authority to kill any man, woman, or child, regardless of their citizenship as as a US citizen without trial moment they left the United States Like that that is that is the that is the authority that he claimed, like when you know, in order to introder to run the drone assassination program.

And it's yeah, so like at that point, like yeah, okay, we we we literally have a person who can go I'm going to press a button and kill you, like like we might centralize before, Like it's just I mean, it's it's not even a centralization because it was specifically

within the context of the Senate not doing their job. Um, and I kind of all places into like it seems like Democrats are more politically successful when they're losing, Like it seems like they want the other side to be in power because that's when they actually do things politically. Then when they have power, they're just so scared to use it that they don't even do anything to really

help people that much. And and and I mean, this is the other thing is that like, yeah, the Democrats like like most of their their actual constitute like they have they have two constituencies, right, they have like you know, they have the people they're passing tax breaks for, and then they have a bunch of they have a bunch of consultants. And the consultants like the thing that they care about is campaign donations, right, because that's how they

get paid. And yeah, hey, guess what happens when you're in power. Oh, people don't give you any people don't give you much money. That this is this is this is a problem the program into in the eighties. They get more power when they're they get more money when they're not in power because then they're trying to organize

to get in power. But then once they're in there, it's like, oh, wow, you're not really using the same power capabilities that the other side does when they're in charge and they're all willing to play dirty politically and

we and for some reason that Democrats are not. That is kind of they don't like this something like they don't actually care about any of this stuff, right, The stuff is useful for them in terms of fundraising, right, but it's like, yeah, I don't know, Like they don't like if if every trans person in the United States was killed, right, the Democrats would be sad for a

little bit, and then they wouldn't move on. Like it's not that's that's that's not a thing that if you're in a hard blue state, we know, what's more important than actually voting for supportive like this kind of stuff is actually just giving trans people money like that is gonna have much more of a positive political effect. It's just give trans people money. Whenever you see a go fund me for a trans person, donate to that instead.

That's gonna have a much more uh lasting effect. Than voting if you're in you know, New York or if you're in Oregon, right, because like that those states are

they're they're gonna be blue. That's always gonna happen, um, But other states like uh, like I Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alabama, like these are gonna be red states like there's and as much as we would be nice if yeah, if democratic senators and and people in the House we're in there instead, then yeah, these transpiles probably wouldn't be happening as much. But that's not gonna happen. So if that's not going to happen, we should focus on other ways

to do that politically. And yeah, sure fixing jerrymandering will be great, but I don't think you need me to tell you that anyway. We should probably that's that's probably more or less aisode that is as I will, I will, I will plug next week if similar similar on a similar train for for kind of talking about queerness and

fascism um, which yeah we are. We are planning it to a two parter, which is a pretty going to be extensive deep dive into explaining the curious case of Nazi catboys and Garrison says Garrison says, we as if any of the rest of us had any choice in this,

Garrison Garrison forced this on us through violence. Yes, but yes, we will be talking about this which kind of touched us on some similar topics in terms of like gender and sexuality and how it intersects with politics and how there can be you know, seemingly contradictory claims that you know, game Nazis and all that kind of stuff, So similar similar train will be kind of discussing that and how that works. Um. But yeah, this is a end of

Trends week. Honestly at this point, that's we're ending. As we're ending it, I'm kind of more optimistic than I what than I than I was when we started trans weak Um, in terms of like watching kind of how some some of these bills have played out, how some of them were not We're not fully carried through. Um. There is protests and stuff being organized. I know for March. I believe it's March thirty one, which is a trans day of visibility. There's gonna be protests in a lot

of conservative states. Um, I know there's gonna be let me let me actually, let me check because I know there's there's gonna be there's gonna be multiple, multiple things happening, and I will I'm gonna be trying to I'm gonna try to be in Idaho next next week for that because there's gonna be a test in Boizy, which I think Boisi, Idaho, that's the place. But there's gonna be. Yeah,

there's gonna be events in Austin, Tallahassee, Montgomery. Um so yeah, I will look up tear it Up dot org for events for info on all of the events at different at different in different states. For for trans Day of Visibility March March one, and yeah, be gay, do crime, Yeah, throw bricks at transphobs, Yeah, all that stuff. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the Universe. It Could Happen

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