It Could Happen Here Weekly 31

something that did happen here and absolutely sucked. And with me to talk about the Atlanta shooting is Scarrison. Hello, Hi, not happy to be here? Yeah, yeah, no, this is this is not a we're not talking about a current event. This happened like what was it last year? So yeah, in case someone's listening, I'm wondering if there was another one. No, this is specifically talking about Actually there have been a

couple of shootings in Atlanta since then, obviously there. Yes, we're talking about is from from last year and the ties into many of the topics we discussed at the show. Yeah, a March sixteenth, two thowy one, Robert Aaron Long, a regular at Young's Asian massage, refused to tip after getting a massage shout you a ton. The SPA's owner confronted him about the tip. Long simply walked away. He got dressed, went to the bathroom, pulled out his gun and started shooting,

leaving shout you ton dying on the floor. Driving from spot to spa, Long shot nine people and killed eight. The loan wounded survivor, Alicia Fernandez Ortiz, got on his knees and begged Long not to shoot. Long shot him anyways. There's a there's a there's a tendency, when confronted with true horror, to retreat into abstraction, as if the abstract is sheltered from the violence of the storm. I intend,

if briefly, to do it myself. But there is no safety there, only the same violence, repeated again and again and again in a thousand ways, with a thousand names, wearing a thousand faces. Because this is hell and we live in it, So on onto the abstract. There's a concept in Marxism called trigger um. It's a German word. It's usually translated as bearer, in the sense of an

individual capitalist being the bearer of capitalist social relations. They enact this relation by you know, turning capital into more capital, which is what makes a capitalists. Uh. There is you know, literally endless debate over what this actually means. Most of it is pointless, and the meeting is contested enough that I'm going to abuse it a bit further and argue that a person can become a bearer of historical forces larger than themselves. Robert Aaron Long was the bearer of

a great number of historical forces. He bore the violent of capitalism, of misogyny, of racism, of horror, phobia, of whiteness, of Christianity itself, and he unleash it into the world. It's just like the idea of like invoking, right drawing on these external ideas into yourself and then becoming them

for like a brief period of time. Yeah, I mean, I think it's slightly different in that with bearing, it's it's not so much that that you're briefly invoking them, it's that you're you're constantly a part of the relation. So theclation defines you and it and you you sort of you constantly enacted by the things that you do, and in doing like the relation reel. It's more of like an ever present thing that is Yeah, Yeah, it's it's it's yeah. It's something that's just sort of structures

how the society works. Right, Like, we're all sort of like enacting the wage relation, right every time we like do like, you know, like doing this right now by doing our jobs. Yeah, we are re enacting the wage relation. Yeah. And you know, I think I think a lot of people after the shooting were left asking, you know why, And you know, we can name social and historical forces, we can talk about sort of antiation, violence and racism

and horophobia, but what does it actually mean? And you know what, what are the forces that Long unleashed in this world? What do they look like? And I think I think we have we have a good example of this from right after Long was arrested. Police Captain J. Baker the Cherokee Sheriff's Department said this to reporters at a press conference. This is about Long and the shooting. He was pretty much fed up and at the end of his rope, and yesterday it was a really bad

day for him, and this is what he did. He apparently has an issue what he considers a sex addiction and he sees these locations as something that allow him to go to these places, and it's a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate. Now, yeah, that there there was a lot going on in in in in the is like two sentences, Um, so you know Cherokee Sheriff's Department. Oh yeah, there is. There is so much

like there's somebody, somebody somebody later. Yeah, it's incredible. One of the things that we're going to go more into the next episode is it like this, this is where I what's his name? This is where the guy who just like drew a random line on a map that he found from like that he pulled out of his like national geographic thing who divided Korea and half like

this is where he's from. There's this is Yeah, there is a there's a lot of historical violence in this very specific part of Georgia that is all coming together here. And oh yeah, his school was also super racist, Like there's they had a mascot that was like doing all

the racist stuff. Yeah. Yeah, And you know, before we go any further, it's worth mentioning that, like almost immediately after the honorable Police Captain gave that press conference, a bunch of people on the Internet found out that Baker had posted like a shirt that said uh COVID nineteen and imported virus from China. I remember this. Yeah, Yeah, sheriff was pretty pretty racist himself. Yeah, a part of

many many anti Asian tropes relating to conspiracy theories. Yeah, this is you know this, this this is classic twenties like anti Asian rhetoric. It's you know, it's stuff that's led directly to hundreds of attacks nation Americans since it started the pandemic. And you know, the race is on slot driven by every sector of American society. Now people immediately start speculating that Jay Baker had collaborated with Long to cover up the racial like motivation for his violence.

And okay, I think there's some truth to this. The cops have been collaborating with Long and his family in various ways. I'm going to read a part of an article in Vanity Fair written by the journalist May Jong called how the Atlantis Boss shooting the victims the survivors tell a story of America? Which is it? This is one of the best things that anyone's written about shooting so far. I'm going to read a little bit offit because it's oh boy. I ring the bell at the

family home. No one answered. Before I could decide what to do, a police cruiser showed up. An officer who introduced himself as Sergeant Clement, explained that the neighbors multiple people had called to report suspicious activity. The one good thing about Cherokee County, he told me, is that we look out for each other. It's like how it used to be in the seventies. I asked Clement what specifically

the neighbors were worried about. To be honest, he said, what they are worried about is they are afraid of revenge. What is the context for the like revenge line? Yeah, it was basically just they were released like they were terrified that like Asian people were going to show up, like to this community and take revenge for the shooting. Thought they were like attack like the church or something. Well, no, like they thought they were gonna show up to like

the family's house and like attack the neighborhood. Ah, when is when? When is that ever happened? Yeah? Yeah, you know and and and you know and you can like what what this demonstrates a is just the kind of community you're dealing with here and be also like you just you have very obvious close connection between the cops and like Long's family at this point. Yeah, and I mean in terms of like the covering up, the covering

up of like the anti h violence part of it. Honestly, I don't even know how intentional that would be, because I don't think he even recognizes that as racism. And I'm not sure how much the cops recognize that as a super big part, since that they are already uh, pretty pretty racist. I guess that Asian people, Okay, Like I I don't even know how much they recognize that

as being like a thing that isn't normal. Yeah, but but I think also like I don't know the the the explicitness to which particularly Baker is being racist like makes me suspect that he does. That he would have been able to figure it out, because he's like, like you have to go out of your way to like have a shirt that says like COVID imported from China, Like yeah, but I don't think that he would consider that racist, right, Like it's so it's so racist that

but but he can't even consider that. He just think it's just like normal, right, Like he's yeah. It's like in terms of like them trying to cover up any kind of anti Asian um stuff leading towards the shooting, they may not see that as like as anything to be covered up because they think that's just normal. So they're not going to like even focus on it because they're like, yeah, I mean obviously right, Like it's just we're so far down the rabbit hole that it's hard

to even like recognize it. I don't know, I'm just I'm just I'm just it it makes it makes sensesciousness. And I think also the other thing that's going on here that that's I think the other part of why they wouldn't have recognized it if they didn't, is that like, okay, so like like most people see this and they're you know, they kind of like analytically, they kind of throw up their hands. They're like, wow, this is anti Asian violence.

They talk about like the stuff that particular dangerous faced by like Asian women and sex workers, and they sort of call it a day, and the nowsis sort of like stops there, and like they're right, like that this is anti Asian violence. The violence is primarily inflicted on women, and it particularly on sex workers or and I mean this is also very important people who are perceived as sex workers no matter what they actually do. And yeah,

like it's got worse than the pandemic. But there's a very very specific kind of violence that long is doing here. It is and it's not it's related to, but not identical to the sort of post COVID stuff. And I think people really like did a disservice to what happened, and did a diservice to help the people understand it by not actually poking at it, because this shooting is at its core and evangelical shooting like this is this is this is evangelical violences, is Christian violence, and this

is this is purity culture. And you know, if if you want to understand what actually happens here, you have to actually you have to go back and you have to understand the Christianity angle because it is critical. Now. East Asia's contact with Christianity in the last two hundred

years has been broadly speaking, extremely bleak. Uh the conclusion of the First Opium War in eighteen forty two, which Britain forced China to buy opium to cover Britain's trade deficit with the country, and then the Britain also stole Hong Kong and then allowed critics. Yeah, it all also had the effect of allowing Christian missionaries into the country. And it is genuinely unclear which one of those acts

has the highest body counts. The product of the Christian missionaries work was the Typing Rebellion, in which the self proclaimed brother of Jesus Christ waged a failed war against the ruling Ching dynasty. That like, even if even if you use like the lower estimates of the body count, that war makes World War One with like a minor border skirmish. It is a just incredibly devastating war. And you know that the product of this is there's there's famines.

There's also just a bunch of floods that happened at the same time, and this sends an enormous number of immigrants and refugees fling from their homes looking for any way to survive. And a lot of those people find their way to the US and they get imported by American capitalists, where you know, looking for a new labor force to serve. It's like a racial racial buffer between

right black workers after the Civil War. And the other thing is like it's really hard to get to the west coast in the like they know, in the Panama Canal. You have to go over land and it sucks and it's hard, and so they need a labor force that they can just get to the west coast. And it's literally easier for people to come from China, and you know, and so they do, and it is a it is

a brutal existence. Chinese workers are worked at death building the railroads, and they you know, they struggled to carve out of life for themselves and they do halting lead and leaps and spurts, but they create communities, they build towns and temples and cultures in the beginning of a new society. And that's when the white working class decides they want to exterminate them because this is this is

a great country. Uh yeah. White workers, you know immediately start blaming Chinese workers for the low wages, and they use their workers organizations to ethnically climbs the west. The result of this is a series of massacres that goes on literally for decades, stretching like into the ninth like this this these things starting like the eighteen seventies and they're still going in like the nineteen like like in the in then like the early ninteen hundreds. Um. And

and it's at this point where Christianity gets involved. Um. I think like most people who are listening to the show have probably heard at least in passing of the Chinese Exclusion Act just this sort of like the great triumph of like the dark alliance of racists and the white working class. But what I think is less known about is the Page Act, of which banned quote lud

and immoral women from entering the United States. And this, this is like this is directly targeted at Asian and Chinese women, um, who were seen as a threat to the sort of racial and moral character of like the white Christian American nation because of like they're supposed to like inheritent immorality demonstrated by the popular usical demonstrated by the popular image of all Chinese women as sex workers.

And you know, I think, like looking back on this, this is extremely recognizable that this is literally just an anti trafficking panic, like this whole thing, it's just it's like this this this this is like this is like proto this is like proto q shiit um and you know, and like like there is there is legitimately like sex trafficking going on, but the existence of like like the fact that there is sex trafficking gets used as this

sort of like political and racial image. It gets projected onto just like all Asian women who get portrayed as a trafficking victims and you simultaneously be like saved but then also expelled from the US to preserve both there in the U s's purity. And you know, like this

image of Asian women has literally never changed. You will find it today like to this day, people find people using like the exact same racist projections like consciously you're unconsciously to talk about Asian immigrants and like particularly SPA workers. It's it's this like it's it's just like incredibly toxic mix of like Christian moralism, sexism, horror phobia, and racism.

And the racism element is really important because like, okay, well this is going on, Like prostitution is legal in California, Like you can just do this, like there there's there's no law against it um, you know, and so and so you think that like oh hey, there, you know that the sort of like Christian panic would just be targeted against brothels, like no, it's it's like very specifically

against Asian women. And it's you know, this is because all of this sort of like the Christian fears about sex work is you know, and and their horror phobia is and and still is today incredibly deeply fused with this sort of like that this is this is like incredibly racist like concern over the purity of the race yea.

And yeah, you know this this will sound familiar to anyone who's been like paying attention at all to any of the trafficking panics and if the anti trans stuff, any of just interracial dating was only extremely recently allowed at all of like the biggest Christian universities, like like they have like they yeah, not a it is it's

a it's a thing. It's a yeah, it's and that's and like the thing about it, it's it's really it's it's really close to the surface, right, even even when they're not explicitly just saying it, like if you look, it's been about two seconds looking, it's like, oh, this

is what's going on here? Huh yeah? Yeah, And you know, so so that that that's sort of that's sort of one side of this whole thing, right, is you have this sort of like you have this sort of like Christian like anti trafficking panic that that creates that that like, you know, it creates the sort of image of way age women are and has a lot of effects. But the other side of this coin is that there is a just incredible amount of sexual violence that America has

inflicted on Asian women, like particularly through its war. Successive invasions of the Philippines, China, Korea, and Vietnam saw American soldiers committing just untold and horrific sexual violence on Asian women, like to to the extent that like the US essentially just inherits Japan's like mass military rape system in Korea and just runs it for itself. Like there's this all of all of those things came home so massively, all the things that were normalized to oversee is just came

right back when all the soldiers came back. Yep, yep. Yes, I think it's gonna say next year, like the and this this has a like the I don't know, I think people get the relationship between pop culture depictions and of you know, racist despictions of people in pop culture and the actual culture backwards, like they don't help and they spread it. But like you know, the the like me love you long time ship from like Kubrick like

that that doesn't come out of nowhere. That's not just Kubrick like that's that is that's something that was brought home by the American racists and you know, like when when they got back and that stuff. Like it's it's not just that like the stuff is being spread by media. It's that the media is being influenced by the people who did this stuff and then came home. It is

the full circle thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I mean even still now there's such a such a degree of like Asian women being like an object to possess, even more so than right, like like it's like even more so than like regular women, which obviously under under like a lot of like patriarchal stuff in the States and you know overseas everywhere, you know, women are seen as objects to possess, but specifically there's that is so much

heightened for uh women of color and specifically like Asian women. Um that that idea, I mean you see that everywhere for the libertarian Asian girlfriend. You like you see this in media all the time. Um that like the Asian wife is something you own, and it's it's a very extremely pervasive Yeah, And I think the reason why is that, like this image gets refreshed every time of generation comes

from from a war in Asia. And you know that that's what because because the US has been fighting wars in Asia like forever, I mean basically since like it we've been fighting wars and Asians late Asian hundreds, and you know, like the violence of each subject generation just sort of refreshes this image of like Asian women as prostitutes bodies are supposed to just be like accessible to

white men at all times. But this has a sort of there's a kind of clash that happens here too, because like on the one hand you have this sort of like racial and sexual feticization, and on the other hand you of Christian horror phobia. And this gives you this culture where like Asian women are at once seen as like hyperdesirable and hyper available, but are also just like utterly despised for both and this sort of like racist pathology, this like this like this like this this

sexual desire bixed with loathing. He's at just the absolute core of of the Atlantic shooting, and as if to remind us if its origin, Long carries out as massacre on the fifty three anniversary of my lie and we're bad. So I think we now have enough context to like go back to Long's initial description of why he carries out the attack, which to self describe sex addiction. Is

desired to quote eliminate temptation. Yeah, Because I mean we cannot overstate the degree to which both the police, the church, and the shooter himself framed this not as an anti astion thing, but as like as a as a as something addressing his sex addiction. Um, that was the angle it talked about it. Now, there's all of the anti ation stuff that is like right under the surface, but it's like probably up so much of what's going on. But the thing that they were publicly talking about was

this uh so called sex addiction. Yeah. And and I think this is this is you know, this is this is a very important angle of this is we should actually talk about what that is and because and to understand because he just not like okay, so like the sex edition is I think like actually sort of a thing, but people that is a hotly debated Yeah. I don't know. I'm not a psychiatrist. Don't take advice to me. I

think it's the slightly more legit of the two. Things that the of the two like fake syndrome things we're gonna talk about here, but this is not what's going on with him, and you want to understand it. Yeah, yeah, what's going on with this? We need to go back to enemy of the show, purity culture. Um friend friend of a friend of the pod. Yeah, I'm gonna say no. I I refused, I had I had friends, and there are a couple of times and I was like, I refused to call this friend of the show. Damn it.

Like I can't do myself to do it right. Joshua Harris just unsubscribed so long, like by all accounts, is extremely religious. He's heavily involved both his church and his high school. Like his high school he's a public high school. But the public high school has like Christian athletic groups, which is a fun thing that they let you do in public schools. Um, yeah, it's great. H So you know, to get it, to get it an understanding of like the kind of baptism we're dealing with here. Here's a

line from the church's by laws. Quote. We believe that any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, polygamy, pedophilia, pornography, or any attempt to change one's sex or disagreement with one's biological sex, is sinful and offensive to God. Yep, you know, and all of that's in the Bible. Yeah, they have you you can tell because they cite three passages. Not if we say that, Well, okay, I know there is there

is beast reality stuff. Bit is I think that the incess is in there. Well, I mean there's doing this stuff. But parts of the Bible are pro incests. Parts the Bible are Antians. Yeah, it's um. The Bible has a real sticky relationship with the topic of incest um. But yes, I'm sure they thoroughly slight all of their passages for they talk about when they talk about bisexual conduct. Yeah, it's well, I mean, you know, the one that's great is the attempting to change one's sex or disagreement with

one's biological sex. A thing that I I'm guessing they're citing God created males and females, and males and females, He created them. And I don't actually think so because they're not they didn't. Okay, yeah, this this is me. I'm just I'm just speculating based on experience in these in these types of types of groups. Yeah. So so speaking of these types of groups, so Long is like, Okay,

so Long's church like expels him after the the shooting murder. Yeah, because, like I'm they violated their own by laws because there's no way they could have done their expulsion their actual explosion protocol and that amount of time, because they would have acted like send people to visit him in jail. See, I think you're overestimating the degree to which churches care about what their by laws actually say. Well, I mean it's the blanking on it. What's the thing Matt Matt eighteen.

There's like the thing that churches have that's like their explosion protocol and they like send someone to this this is the thing into I think you're I think you're slightly overestimating how much people actually care about that, which it's all just a racket used to prop up the authority of the leaders and push people towards whatever political gains that the movement has. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, speaking of getting people to submit to the authority and polluting

instant movements. Yeah, So we talked about purity culture on this show, like we had dausium um. So we're not gonna go into an enormous amount of detail about it here.

The very should at least describe what it is. So the very very very short version is, it's like it's an incredibly patriarchal, like evangelical Christian religious system in which like sex before marriage is seen as like an incredible sin, and there's just like like focused on the purity of the wife and like like a woman is essentially the property of her husband, and the entire goal of existence

just to like bare and raised children. So it was it was invented, but it was the modern version that was invented in the nineties, strongly influenced by a book written by someone named Joshua Harris. It was called I Kissed a Dating Goodbye. The book promotes a pro courtship to marriage pipeline instead of dating. I think dating will probably encourage you to have sex before marriage, which is

of course bad um. And under under all of this under like the actual like you know, if you if you if you started digging into this all the stuff it talks about in terms of like sexual purity um is a about you know, women are responsible for men's sexual like um sins right, Like if if a man lusts for a woman, that's the woman's fault, not the man's fault. Right. It's because women must be presenting in

a way that causes that to happen. Um. Right, So women's women's bodies and clothes should be designed in a way so that it will not cause men to stumble um. And by stumble they mean get horny um. And you know it's something that you know, your your body is both this thing that should be pure, but also you should be ashamed of it, right because it causes the sin. Uh. Women can't really have any sexual desire on their own. Women are going to really enjoy sex. Um. It's it's

specifically for men, and it's for procreation. Um. It's in in in intense value tied to your idea of like virginity and virginity extending out to like personal purity and spiritual purity, Like if you have sex before marriage, you are like like unclean. It's it's like it's like your it's like you're chewed up gum, Like you like you would not pick up someone's Like if you found some chewed up gum on the street, you wouldn't put it

back in your mouth. Right, So that's the idea, Like if you if you're not a virgin, you are you were like chewed up gum, Like you are already used, you're spent um. So you have so you save safer marriage so that only your husband can chew up your gum, and then after your marriage you're just stuck there forever. Right. It's also like very very very anti divorce um. And there's really no difference, Like there's they don't really there's

not much discussion around consent. Oddly enough, you know as you know that they surprise you based on what I all just said, like obviously they don't care about consent. Um. There's like they they view any they view a sexual assault just as bad as consensual sex before marriage. They see them as the same thing. Um. It's it's basically this, it's the same structure as that they're both in equal sin ah And I mean that is that is purity

culture one oh one. We could we could just do an entire episode on pure any culture, and we probably

would do. We can do series on it, like yeah, like yeah, yeah, I think the really important thing about it is like this is basically like in terms of they're sort of being like like I don't know what if you call it a counterculture, but they're sort of being like an evangelical cultural machine, like it's this like this is this is what they're pushing as like as like their mass movement for for youth expect especially in the nineties and two thousand's, we have we have stuff

like purity rings, which is like you know, when you when you're a teen, you'll get like objects or jewelry which are like like almost like magical items do you put on to like show that I am going to keep myself pure and by doing this, by doing this action,

it's symbolizing that and therefore internalizing it. There's also um purity balls, which is not what you'll so when would use the word purity ball, certain things will come to mind, right, Um, Unfortunately they're not as fun as what that's what you are thinking. Um, A purity ball is just like a formal dance event, you know, like a ball that you put on um, which is meant to it's a it's

a meant to. Usually it's like fathers take their daughters there and then their daughters swear to make a virginity pledge um to protect their purity of mind, body, and spirit um so that they will not then infect you know, boys, uh and cause them to stumble and and commit the sin of lust, which again is an incredibly weird thing to do at a ball, Like, yes, it's so weird. Well also, yeah, it's most most Yeah, it's well, I

think I think we've got into enough event. Yeah, but the specific sort of thing, I think the last thing I will look at. There, there is one more thing we're gonna so before that, I do want to point out that Joshua Harris, who like is in a lot of ways responsible, like single handedly responsible for an enormous amount of this, she is Japanese. Yeah, fucking thanks for that one, buddy, Great job, good ship man. In ten,

he announced that he and his wife were divorcing. Yeah, so you know, and and and now and now no longer considers himself like the type of Christian he was before I'm unclear what his actual spiritual beliefs at the moment, but he did he did try to distance himself from his from from what I've read, like it's unclear that he knows. So oh, he he knows. He definitely knows. I can, I can, I can. I can guarantee that he's he used to be running. He has a new

grift now. It sucks they always get new grips. But actually we will, yeah, we will get into the new grift industry in a second. Um. But Yeah, one of the other things that's that's a big part of this is like a deep and abiding hatred of porn. Like all of this is yeah, like as you said, like in the list of by laws watching porn again, it's the same as sexual assaults. Yeah, it's a huge it's

morally the same level of sin. Yeah. And and like you know, I mean, and and you can read that both ways as how seriously they take watching porn and how not seriously it takes sexual assault because it does go it does go both ways. Yeah. Um. And this this thing, the fact that that this is this is like considered a sin, is the apotheosis, Like the apotheosis that this is is porn addiction, which again like not

really dubious existence. This is this is even more dubious sex than sex addiction, Like there's no there, this is this is like this is just fake. Um. But there's an entire culture that's that's a like developed around stopping manifest seeing poor and these like there's like these incredibly elaborate accountability setups where like there's like apps you install on your stuff, Like there's ways to alter your IP

addressed to watch certain sites. Yeah, Robert Aaron Long the shooter, like he he uses a flip phone instead of a smart phone because he thinks having a phone will like lead int senation. Um. Now Long. Yeah. And the product of this is that there's like there's like this entire industry that is built up around quote unquote treating the porn addiction. Yeah. Um, and it's it's all bullshit. But Long had spent at twice been in one of these

facilities called hope Quest. Now, hope Quest is an affiliateive for old friends that focus in the family. But that's not actually the part I want to talk about, because what's more interesting about hope Quest is that it's founded by roy A Blankenship, a former ex gay who left both hope quests and the X gay community to live with his husband. Now, now this what a what a what what what a what a funny pattern we keep

finding out? Yeah? No, now I think I think my two listeners, if you were, if you were not as cursed as as as we are as we are, and you don't know what an ex gay is, um X gays were there were this movement of like evangelical gaze who claimed that like this this is the thing that

starts in like the nineties and twos. They claimed that like they've gone to conversion therapy and it made them not gat yeah yeah, and and this and you know, and in partial part of partial was going on here is they claimed that that like they did it voluntarily because like involuntarily doing conversion therapy had gotten to a point where it was like bad pr wise, because Jesus Christ, you were like torturing children and they're still torturing children,

but but this time they're like, no, it's voluntary, and that this is like they're big, this is the rights, big cultural campaign against the gay right through nineties in two thousands and uh, like I I would say this like it's it's not exactly the same thing as the way they use detansitioners, but like there's a lot of it's very similar. And of course obviously that we now

have the x X gay movement. Yeah yeah, and and you know and and and to to like so okay, So like the X game movement falls apart in like the late two thousands and early doesn't tends because like it doesn't work. The leaders personal all the leaders were initially gay, said they were X gay and then kept having gay sex because that rules. Yeah, and they all kind of realized maybe we should stop doing this thing

that keeps killing kids. Yeah, And Blaken Blankenship too is credit like he'd been a big person doing this and then he was just like like one of his friends like commit suicide and he's like, oh shit, and so like he stops, like he's announced this in version therapy and he's now appropriar so many of the focus on the family. People who were involved in like Love One out all of these escape programs. So many of them then renounced it, accepted their their gayness, and then moved

to Portland's fucking Oregon. So many of them didn't this though,

like this this is what's interesting about this. So okay, So, so while he was sort of figuring this out, Blancolin ship had a founded hope quest, right, and so he leaves with the people who are running it now, like our X gays who they're like the only X gays left who didn't renounce it and who like still claimed to be ex I mean, they they've taken their stuff about how like homosexuality should be like dealt with by saying by having by marrying women and just not acting

on it or whatever. Like they they took that stulf out of their bios, but they apparently they still believe it, like like they've they these people have never probably come out against it. And you know what essentially happened was that like enough of enough of the X gays, like but the thing collapsed enough that like they had to find and they had to find a new thing to do. And the new thing they found to do was they

went and they went into the porn addiction treatment industry. Yeah, and we also if if if you want more background like the X gay thing, you can listen to my my two part are on focus on the family and James Dobson for Behind the Bastards. Also for our week on the War on Transpeople, we discussed some of the same stuff for the first episode, which is the evangelical

gay marriage, um like thing that. So yeah, we we we have we we we do, we do have something like produced scripted stuff on these topics if you want more background on them. Yeah. Unfortunately, this is a this is a story where there's like every single thread you've ever done suddenly is coming together in one moment of horrific violence. This is where long like winds up for is like treatments for like poor and sex addiction addictions,

which I kindot emphasize enough. This is literally what he's talking about is literally that he watches porn like like that that's what porn sex addiction like means. And because none of this is real, the treatments like don't work because again it's all fake. And I do would also say, hope quest Is operates out of Georgia. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know so so so. So he goes into treatment twice and he's he's he says it like Maverick,

which is this like recovery center. Um, it doesn't work, and he goes home and his parents kick him out of his house for watching porn. And you know, I think this is something that like is important to understand, which is that the people inside of this world really deeply believe this stuff, right and and like watching porn has real social consequences for them, and it has you know, and this, this has, this has has has like a profound fact on how these people think. I'm going to

read a quote from a Washington Post article. Bayless, who was Long's roommate at Maverick Recovery, a sober living facility in Roswell, Georgia, in two thousand nineteen and two twenty and the months between his stay at Hope stays at Hope Quest, said Long felt his very salvation was at stake as he told his roommate that he was quote living in sin and not walking in the light. He

was walking in darkness. So this this is how these people like see this stuff right, like like this is this is literally about whether you're you're like yeah, they're talking about like something extremely existential like it like it is this all seems very silly to people who are not inside it, because it is it is. It is absurd. But if the people involved in it it is like the totality of the universe, like it is, it is

so big, it's like the biggest thing. It's so important because you're you're determining what you're, what you will, what's your conscious being will exist for for thousands and thousands of years like that, Like this is what they actually believe. So it's super important, like it's it is it is worth killing before because it's that's that's how important this is.

Like like I think, I think there's no sense to which it is more important than life or death because you dying, Like okay, you die, once you go to your physical death doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Yeah, and and this, you know, and you know, we talked about this, like it's there. There's those things. There's there's a social consequences. You can get kicked out of your house, you can kick out of your church if you keep doing this,

like like these churches will kick you out. Um, and and this, you know, this makes the ideology at work here incredibly powerful. And it provides a mixture of this like this this really incredible self hatred for like falling into sin and giving him too temptation. And it also creates a hatred of the temptation itself. And this brings us all the way up to the shooting. UM purity culture. Purity culture is the key that unlocks, you know, the

meeting of Long's words. We can understand the explanation that the police gave, which again like he apparently has an issue what he considers a sex addiction and sees these locations as something that allows him to go to these places, and it's a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate, you know. And there was a at the memorial for for the shooting last year, UM Sex Work or organizer kail and Jong said this, they hate us so they can hate themselves less. And I think that's that's a

really great that is a really good analysis. Yes, yeah, it's a perfect calculation of like what's happening here. But this is the part of the story with the media just violently and spectacularly fox up to endaupt. They they dropped the purity ball. You might say, yeah, I mean it's it's it's really horrible there, Like what they've essentially done is an act two years of racist violence against people who had either literally just survived a mass shooting,

or who are literally dead. And the way they do this, the press reads long talking about sex edition addiction, and they immediately assumed that the women in these massage parlors have been having sex with him, and they start, there's like this whole hunt that they do to like search for evidence that massage workers were doing like full service sex work, based off of again the words of a literal racist mass murderer and their own racist preconception that

like all Asian women, especially SPA workers, are also sex workers. Yep. And like you know, on the one hand, yeah, it's true that this stuff is fueled by horr phobia and also like morally, who gives a ship what they were doing. But the immediate problem here is that by doing this witch hunt, you were sicking the police on the survivors you're putting you're putting a survivors in immense legal and physical danger. Yeah, and and we we will talk about

this more next episode. But like, these women have already seen more police violence and police raids than all of the journalists writing about this combined I've seen in their entire lives. And if any of these people had bothered to spend five sec thinking about what purity culture is

they would have realized it. Long is from a fanatically puritanical culture, a culture where, for example, in massage given by a woman where the man is like almost entirely naked, uh is something that would absolutely have been considered a sexual service. And like you know, and and if you think about this again for like five seconds, right when he's talking about removing temptation, he already thinks of all of these women as sex workers, because that's that's what

he thinks the massage is. He thinks like that that that that's that's how he thinks about massages. It's yeah, it is it women are the like women do this then they cause men to sin, right, it's not it's nothing to do with what's going on with the man.

It is specifically what the woman is doing. Yeah. Well, and and and even then like it doesn't actually like I think I think that the important distinction here is that it does not matter when Long talks about how this is a place that was giving intemptation and also like like he was giving intemptation and he was like he was going there for his sex edition. Like it doesn't actually matter to him whether or not any of these women have ever like exchange money set at all.

It doesn't, It doesn't, it doesn't need to be, yeah, because these people are fucking like it just engulfed in Like it's so totally engulfed in this incredibly like violence and racist and misogynists be homophobic ideology that it just sort of you know, like that that's just how they think.

And I think that this is where we're going to return one final time this episode to race, because there's a mistake that people make thinking about this analytically that prevents him from understanding both what's happening in Atlanta and

how sort of capitalist and racist violence happens everywhere. Which is that like, okay, so right when this happened, um, like when when when the press conference dropped, you got all that there are a lot of people like I think Glenn Greenwald did this like a leaf sing like there's a whole crew of people who were like this isn't about Asian racism, but all this is about him like hating sex workers, and okay, it is true that human labor has been transformed into a commodity that can

be bought and sold at will. Now on on a on a more theoretical level. Right, you will see sort of incredibly theory brain people who will talk about how you know in in March's Critique of Political Economy, right, all labor is astracting, interchangeable, each each unit of labor time is equivalent, identical, and exchangeable. But here in the massage parlor, this is a deadly simplification this labor. That

the labor that is going on here is Asian. It is indelibly stamped with race and ethnicity and nationality and hundreds of years of violence and perception. Um Rumors Paca, a assistant professor at the Institute of Women's Studies at the University of Georgia, roode a piece last year called white supremacy in the Wellness Industry, or why it matters that that this happened at a spot ah Um, And I'm going to read a passage on it because it's

very good. Massage spas, also called salons or parlors, like the one where these crimes took place, are part of a broader industrial complex that capitalizes on the racist belief that Asian people and Asian woman in particular, possess magical, spiritual,

and sexual healing abilities. These attitudes belong to an entrenched Orientalist infrastructure in the United States that connects yoga and meditation and massage to tourism, pleasure, and escape, signaled by the exotic tropical flower and the photo above, if there's a photo of flower at a parlor. Yeah, you know. And and this this labor, the labor of of of the massage that is happening here is it depends almost entirely on a very specific performance of a specific kind

of Asian femininity. And you know, when this sort of gender and racialized violence. But when when this gender and racialized labor comes into contact with Long and all of this historical forces that he's bearing, he murders the workers. And yeah, I think, yeah, this is the part of the story of the Atlanta shooting that I think if people know about Atlanta shooting at all, like, this is the part they know about, right, they know the story

of Robert Darren Long. But there are other stories here, stories that aren't stories that in large parts are just not about the US at all. Um. There are the stories of the victims, the survivors, and the absolute hell that brought them into the massage parlor in the first place. On the horrific night, and those are the stories that we're going to tell him part two. Yeah, well that

doesn't for us today. I do want to say, I know, uh, I know Christmas planning these for the annivers three of the shooting, but they proved to be quite the daunting task to put together. I had to get had to get pushed back for a while. So but but big

thanks to you for doing the work too. Read through all of the horrible things and if like the other thing I said about this, like if you if you think this is bad, wait till part two, which is even more wide spanning, and it has horrific and disturbing violence in a way that will I don't know, reduced media tears multiple times. And yeah, we'll leave you an

existential dread of the condition of this world. Yeah, and I guess again there there is there, There is ways to combat it, right, because all of these a lot a lot of these things, all right, you know, problems with like viewpoint and ideas in terms of how we view sex, how we view women, how we view race, um.

And there are things that when you see you can interrogate in people, um, especially if you're especially if you're a Christian, if you're if you're going to church, these there are things to watch out for and you can push back on because and doing so can maybe save

people's lives, because these ideas have a death count. Yeah, and I think I think there's another part of this too, which is that you know, I mean, the reason we talk about purity culture stuff so much, the reason we talk about the mobilizations of the evangelical rights so much, is that they keep producing these movements that you know,

that that put that put our lives in danger. And the only way that we can stop this, and this is a thing that we can do, is you have to actually destroy their movement, right, you have you have to you have to actually break their power. You have to you know, you have to find various ways to break the power, break the power of these churches, and you have to find ways to break the power of their political movements. And that is not an easy task.

But if if we want to live in a world well, I mean, just quite blank, if if we want to live in a world and not in you know, like four degrees fahrenheit, like unlivable death escape, like, we have to deal with these people because they are the source of almost every right wing movement that that we're facing, and they have to be crushed before they do this again. Yeah,

and they're they're going to try. I mean there's yeah, because the biggest thing would would say is like reaching out to people who you know are in us or if you if you go to church. I think it's your duty as a Christian to push back on these things because I'm not gonna bash anyone specifically for whatever religion they have. I understand why people have this. I I can see how they work. Um. You know, I

was raised in something very similar. Um. But you can you can still push back on the type of rhetoric that leads to these things in the type of like like objectification and racism that necessitates violence and gets people to be okay with violence, um, and pushing back against like a Christian apocalypse to worldviews and like the idea your your actions will determine your you know how, the spiritual quality of your soul and where it's going to

reside for all of eternity. Right, All these things are our ideas that are pretty pretty like innately dangerous. Um. And there's ways to do religion that don't have that. Yeah, but I think I think that is a good enough place till even for today, because I know part two we're gonna have some more more fire. Why why widespread problems? Yeah, alright, well this has been make it happen here. You can find us in the social media places that happened here pods.

You can also flee into the woods. Flee into the woods. But but but before you flee into the woods, subscribe to the pod and leave a five star review. Bye bye bye everybody. I see you tomorrow. Yep, it's it could happen here a podcast about things falling apart and some other stuff occasionally. I'm Robert Evans. Welcome to the show today, our guests fresh off their new hit movie by paramount Garrison Davis. Uh and and yeah, what what what I'm doing? Like a like a thing, Chris Garrison.

Garrison's lost the thread? Why don't you pick it up? I also have lost the thread. So here's the one. This has been very confusing for of an episode, absolutely baffling. Look, you want things to not be confusing, you have somebody else introduce your podcast. That's just the way it goes noted. Yeah, so what welcome to part two of the Atlantis shooting. Um, we are back with actually less Atlanta this time, but

more shooting. Oh good, sorry, this is a very absurd Really we found ourselves, dear God, just a normal day at work. Oh take it away, Chris, you got this, You got this. We believe in you. There's there's a tendency I think among Asian American writers where when we get confronted with what are you know, considered quote unquote Asian American stories, there's almost inevitably an autobiographical pivot that happens.

Like at some points in the piece Um made Jong, the author of the Vanity Fair piece I mentioned last episodes, that's been a major source for both these episodes. It doesn't her piece, So do I mean? Like dozens and dozens and dozens of as American writers who are you know, much more accomplished and talented than I am, And like, I get it. I I don't blame them for it. I think it's a powerful way to anchor a story

and understand the story. And I also think that it's why we miss like half of the story that we when we talk about things, because you know, the the the audio autobiographical focus has this tendency to narrow the scope into looking at just sort of the US. And this story and the story of Asian Americans in general, isn't just a story about sort of a minority in the US or about American imperialism. It's about Asia itself, and here especially it's about China and Korea to lesser

cent Japan. And you know, the histories of these places have as much to do with why the people who died in Atlanta were in those rooms on that day as Christian purity culture does. And you know, by by bym actually looking at this, we we got to introduce another key player in this horror show who only sort of appeared change intily in part one, which is capitalism. Because capitalism is about to show up and make just all of this monumentally worse. Yeah. It's kind of like

Steven Seagal in that way. Yeah, I think more much more active than Steven Seagal, but by capitalism, unfortunately, moves at an incredibly relentless pace. Yeah. Capitalism's knees are an incredible shape. Yeah. So, and and this, this, this brings us back to Atlanta itself. Now, Yo Fong died a

hero in the final moments of her life. As shots rang across Young Zation missaw she motioned for Marcus Leone, still half naked on the massage table, to stay still and wait for her to walk in front of him before he died behind the massage table by covering Leon's movement as she opened the door. She sacrificed her life to save the life of a man she'd met just minutes before. Her award, in typical American fashion, was a

bullet in the head. It took six days for her family in China to realize that she had been killed. By village custom, the remains of an unmarried woman who left the village could not re enter it to be buried. Her body thus lay unclaimed in a morgue for nineteen days before she was buried in the land of her killer at a funerals attended entirely by strangers. Marcus Leone, the man Fong sacrificed her life to save, was forced to return to work at FedEx just three days after

surviving the massacre. The sound of the packages he dropped on his delivery runs sounded like gunshots. He quit soon after. There is no justice in this world. Only an unending parade of or the details of which are somehow each

worse than the last. And it is. Yeah, this is I think what I wanted to sort of what I wanted to talk about this episode, which is that, like, it's not just that there was a shooting, it's that each element of why everyone is there is its own successive horror story, and the conditions that produced this horror or not. You know, they're not just two conditions that produce Probader and Long. They're not just the conditions that produced to shoot her. They are the conditions that produced

sail Fung. She spent almost her entire life as a miket workers, supporting a family whose most pressing concern was attempting to marry her off. And and I think it's worth tracing out these conditions and how they developed. Because a twelve year old girl drops out of middle school to work at a factory fifty miles away and that eventually is gunned down by an American racist is not how the future of Asia was supposed to go. Like,

you know, I I don't have much love and imagine that. Yeah, it's like I don't have much loved for now, but I don't think if you showed mouth this he would be like, oh my god, this is the future that I wanted for my people. Like this, things have gone very badly wrong, and I think to understand how we got to this hell, we need to go back to another hell, which is the beginning of the Korean War.

And you know, we've talked about the effects that the Korean War had on Korean women in the last episode, but I think there's a few other things that are worth emphasizing here, one of which is that the absolute devastation that the war rought on North and South Korea is incalculable. I mean, the effects of this I still

felt to this day. It was a utterly devastating war. Um. But it also has sort of more subtle effects on the sort of politics and economics of of the region because what one of the you know, one of the very important things about this war is that the US is fighting in East Asia, and this means that the US is going to leave an enormous army in South Korea, which has its own military and sort of political and

economic consequences. And you know, those troops are still there to this day, like technically fighting a war which has never formally ended. And you know, we'll come back a bit to this later. But this has a enormous application for the entire region. Um. I've I've talked on bastards before about like you know, about so many effects this has.

But you know, Korea and later Vietnam are a major like the wars, the US fights there are a major factor behind the industrialization of Japan, which sees you know, enormous U S investment as part of this attempt to like shorten American supply lines by exporting their military industrial complex to East Asia. You know, we talked about the Japanese ankle this, but sell Korea is likewise industrialized, so

American capital for you know, pretty much the same reason. Um, you know, and and and this goes on to the extent that like Korean troops like fight on the side of the US in Vietnam, and you know, so in South Korea's production base proves a sort of a pivotal military asset for the US war machine in the East. Now, the thing I think, and I think I think that part of it like is understood decently well because you know, if you if you if if you do if you

like you know literally anything about this region. You've you've seen the effects of this stuff. But the part of it I think is less understood is that in China, this the war has a similar effect, which is that communist leadership fights this war right and it immediately becomes clear to them that there is a looping possibility they're gonna have to fight the US again. And if they're gonna have to fight the US again, they need an actual sort of modern industrial base to fight a war

against the US. And this, you know, this eas to sort of militarization, industrization, and you you get a look at two very different kinds of state led developments, uh, which I'm going to call state led development corruption and state state led development socialism question mark, which sort of

which sort of a play out in China and Korea. UM. And you know, I think it's it's it's worth actually talking about this because both of these systems are essentially going to collapse, and when they do, they are going to send an enormous number of people, both in China and Korea, you know, spreading, spreading across the world seeking like any kind of sort of economic salvation. And a lot of the people who are killed in Atlanta are in Atlanta because of these because of these crises. Yes,

so so. The first of these is the chapel system in Korea, which is sort of informally established by the dictator Park junk Key is like the core of his plan for economic development, and it generates a number of extremely powerful family owned megan conglomerates with intimate ties to the state and these sort of various political factions, and these conglomerates which control just vast sections of the Korean economy.

I like, like, like to this day, Samsung, which is the largest the remaining chabels, Like I think I think they're they're total percentage of the GDP of Korea's like seventeen percent or something. It's like, it's it's absolutely absurd. Jesus, Yeah, like and and and and like and the thing is that you know, and it's sort of it's basically about this is that like the chabels are much weaker than the ust to be um for reasons that we will

get to in a bit. And you know, when when when they're found and when they're sort of at the height of their powers they have, you know, they're they're they're established with three goals. Um, there's an attempt to develop the economy. I you know, there's an attempt to sort of the fuel. There's attempt to sort of fuel the Abaric in South Korean war machines. And the third thing I'm trying to do is to make a lot of people in the government and their allies indescribably rich.

And it works sort of amazingly, which is a weird thing to say about development regime started by military edcatorship, but they have they have an enormous amount of mill of American capital military aids, and like they do successfully develop, they kill in enormous sumber of people in the process, but you know, they do it. On on the other side, you have Chinese datelight developments, and this is also about

economic development and fueling the military. But you know, the goal here is to create an economic base for socialism and this does not work. Um. There there there's number of complicated reasons for this. The simplest one is that China just doesn't get the kind of investment technology transfer

south Korea gets until like way later. Um. But the other really important element of this for this story is about the urban world divide, and this is another thing I've talked about Bastards like on I've talked about on Bastards a bit, but I think it's worth going into the details a little bit because otherwise a lot of the stuff that's going to happen that is, you know, the the part of the story that is directly sending twelve year olds off to a factory and Shenzen like

don't make any sense without it. So to make a very complicated and shifting set of economic programs like as simple as possible. UM. Chinese industrial policy dread what's sort of called the socialist period is about extracting grain from the countryside and fuelly and funneling get into urban industrial developments and you know, to get it, to get it like understanding of what we're talking about here. So the CCP is essentially deliberately under developing the countryside in favor

of developing cities. And this is this is the supposed to state policy. UM from three in nine of the Chinese population is doing agricultural labor, but agriculture receives less than ten percent of state investments over the same period, so they are like really really really incredibly not funneling any resources back into into rural areas. Yeah, I mean is there a degree to that? Is there a degree of that that is maybe related to like I know in the USS are a lot of the early left

wing resistance to the Soviet regime came from rural areas. Um, is there anything to do with that? Like, is it kind of a desire to avoid developing these places that are less controllable? No? And this is this is the sort of interesting thing about China is that I mean, Okay, so the CCP originally has an urban base, but they managed to get their retire urban base killed. So this is this is this is the cause of like like this, this is this is one of the reasons for the

center Soviet split. Like this is basically like salon in Trotsky or bickering, and their bickering gets like a million Chinese communist killed, and that means that you know, this this this is this is where the sort of rise of Mao comes in, because Mao is a mau as a peasant organizer, and once the entire World Party is dead, it's like, well, okay, so now we have a peasant base and they have they actually have a really they have they have like a basically unprecedented level of of

sort of buy in from the countryside. But the problem is that the party just isn't interested in world development because the thing that they want is they want to be able to develop military power and they want to be able to develop like heavy industry, and those aren't things that they think you can do in the countryside.

And so their strategy is just to just I mean just literally it's just pure grain extraction from the countryside and then using that to feel industrial development, which they're doing for i mean largely ideological reasons, but it also does have to do with the fact that China, like like people people talk a lot about how like, you know, the communist revolution in Russia happens and like the least developed country in Europe, and it's like, yeah, but like

Russia had like several times more industrial capacity in Russian Revolution than China does after the war. So this is a country that is like a complete economic backwater. And so you know, this, this is this is part of what they're doing. I thought it doesn't it doesn't work. And you know, I actually mentioned that there's one other thing that they're doing here, which is that so they're

based in the peasantry is fairly solid. But the other thing they have to use this grain budget for is to buy off this like incredibly bilitant working class that they've inherited, because these people are on strike like constantly, and this is this is this is a really serious problem for the CCP, and so they you know, they have all these welfare programs, they have all of this sort of these resources that they're they're paying they're putting

into sort of buying off this class. And the result of this is you have just incredible rural poverty because like one of one of the things that happens here is I guess, I guess you called the benefits, but things like there's like housing, education, like medical care, this stuff is all distributed like through your work and through

your household registration. And so you know, if if if you're someone who has a job in the countryside, you're the resources that you're getting are are also from the countryside, and that means that you have just these like awful underfooted services, Your benefits are terrible. And even if you can somehow get a job in the city, which is really hard because China also has these like really intense

internal like immigration restrictions. So like if if you're like in another province that you're not supposed to be, like you, you will get deported back to your home province. There's all these are these really tight controls, and this means that like if you're in a rural area, like your livelihood is tied to your family unit in a way that's like not happening anywhere near as intensely in the cities.

And when I say your livelihood is tied to your emily unit, what I mean is that like other than this like brief like token attempt they make to socialize, like housework reproductive labor in the greatly forward men in the state are just like entirely dependent on uncompensated housework and production by women, which yeah, it's not just a China thing. Yeah, I mean yeah, it's like okay, it's like, oh, hey, this sounds like your modern system and like yes, this

is true. Um. But on the other hand, the socialists like ideologically are claiming to be better than this, So I'm holding them through their own standards and giving them just like d on this because this is like yeah, I mean, like I think this is really one of like, you know, Okay, so they failed to end capitalism. But I think if if you look at, like, what is the other great failure of the Chinese Revolution, it's that

they never dealt with the patriarchy. And this means, like, you know what, when when Mao is saying stuff about like women hold up half the sky, like, what what he actually means is that like women's labor is holding up like seventy percent of the budget and they're getting

like twenty of the pay. And this this is extremely important for reasons that we will get to in a second, because it turns out if your entire economy is based on patriarchy, really bad things start happening in terms of your gender politics, which is a thing that has never has literally never happened in any other regime. But we should not at all take any lessons from this about how our own economy works. It's great, It's completely fine.

The other thing that we need to talk about is the CCPs just utter full scale war against urban workers. And this is not the kind of like abstract class war that you hear Left is talking about all the time, that's you know about like wages, unionization and so forth. Like this is an actual war that is resolved by the by just the p l A, the Chinese army just butchering the Chinese working class. And this comes to

a head and the Cultural Revolution ends. You know. I have I have a whole rant about the Culture Revolution that I will do sometime that's not now. But the short version of it is that one of the things that happens in the Culture Revolution is that the CCP crushes these sort of rebel worker factions and they kill a million people, like from from from from Yeah, I mean it's like it's really it's really slick. Comparing it, like to the scale of like the great anti communist purges,

like this is I think it. I think it's actually more. I think it's a million people. I think it's more people than than Sue Hardo killed. It's like there you go, see there's some left right unity. Yeah, it's well, I mean Mount MoU undisputed greatest anti communists, has the highest number of Communism kills. Well, I don't know, let's let's I mean, Joseph Stalin's in that running. That's true. You've got to You've got to. You've got a couple of

Titans battling it out here. Yeah, it's it's it's definitely, it's it's it's a difficult choice. But yeah, I mean like they are like like this CCP is literally fighting a war against against cerverin workers, and like this is even by like the mid seventies, there are there are moments where the army is sending like tens of thousands of work since the thousands of troops like in the

cities to break up strike waves. And this is this is an enormous problem for CCP, you know, Okay, Like it's an aorways problem for them politically because it turns out that being a communist party and then the thing that you're doing all of the time is sending soldiers to shoot workers is really bad for your political system ideologically. Well okay, that's your opinion. Yeah it does. It doesn't

go great for them. And and the the other problem they have is, uh, you know, this this creates this like this incredible militarization of society, and this leads a stagnation and there's all this corruption that's happening. But the other problem is like, okay, so if you're like a cadre like Planner, right, and there's always people on strike.

You need to not be strike because you needed to produce stuff for your like central planning production schedules, and so all of these like cadre planners start being like, okay, these workers keep going on strike, like where where can we get labor that won't do this? And they start looking at the countryside and they start going like beard stroke,

can we send this over here? And meanwhile, like the actual world, like real lights are fed up with just being treated like shit, and they start decollectivizing their farms because okay, there's a lot of reasons why they're doing this, but they essentially start forming these things that become called town and village enterprises, which are these like the civil sixplination of it is that they basically start for forming

capitalist companies and trying to make money. But the ownership structures are a bit different because they're like, you know, it'll be like a village, right, and like the village like technically collectively owns this like company that makes tires or something, right, And this is where you start getting

markets coming China. And the CCP looks at this, it goes like yeah, sure this is fine, Uh that this this won't stop our communism thing because we're having budget shortfalls right now, and if we let someone else do this work, we don't have to pay for it. And these so these town of village enterprises are called tv s. Like mostly what they're doing is they're like selling parts

and stuff to like these giants. State own enterprises, which are you know, your state own enterprises are things that are building like bikes, like tractors and refrigerators, so they're like you know, they're selling them like wheels or like refrigerator parts. And this is this is the thing that becomes the core of the Chinese economy, particularly in Dario Fung's home province of Guandong, because Gando is really unique,

well okay, really unique province. Like this is the thing you can say about literally every province, but Gwendong is particularly unique in this period because it's right next to

Hong Kong. And this means that, I mean, there's always been sort of like capital kind of through really shady black markets and like people passing each other like notes under dinner tables and extra like all all of the weird like diplomacy stuff that like like Kissinger and Dixon get up to is happening through these like weird back channels that a lot of which are running through Hong Kong. There's a lot of stuff that's been sort of running

through there. And when this stuff starts to happen, um you uh Gwendong gets these special economic zones and this becomes sort of the prototype for China's like eventual sort of capitalist centric like export development model. Um Gwendong is like they're they're literally there, They're they're they're they're taking like form capital from Hong Kong and they're using it to produce good for the market. And this is the

world that Dano Fong and shout Jitan grow up in. Um. It's a world where on the one hand, there's enormous economic growth. On the other hand, like all of the safety nets that Chinese socialism have put in place are just like being completely destroyed and everyone is once again dependent on wages to survive. And it's also an incredibly

deeply patriarchal world. You know, and we've seen this already right with Diane Fung's village, just like refusing to bury her body because she's not married, and you know, this is this is something that's only gotten worse as the sort of as the eighties where we're on, you get

into their form period. You have simultaneous you have the one child policy, which is this incredibly draconian state and forced destruction of bodily autonomy, and it also serves this really horrific role and devalue in girls because girls are as having less economic value than boys. And so you get all these things where like you get these you

get targeted like gender targeted abortions. They're these masterializations that happen, and yeah, it's this just enormous patriarchal engine and it sucks. And there's also there's a return to Confucianism as well, because like, and this is one of the things is like the most infuriating about this because like like of like what the original Chinese Revolution was about was like, hey, Confucianism sucks. Like this incredible like reactionary patriarchal ideology is

in fact bad. And then like forty years in there, like hold on, wait, what if we bring this ship back?

And it is it is it is extremely bad, and you know, and it serves as a sort of like like this pacifying picture archical ideology that they're using to sort of hold the family unit together because the family unit are so there's a lot of the firms in this period they're just like owned by families, right, and you know, you can there's there's a lot of sort of similarities here between if you look at your like, you know, you're you're sort of like right wing, like

culturally Christian like small business owner families, and you look at this and it's like, uh, we've we've we've redeveloped the wheel here. We we have once again created the patriarchal death engine. Good who it's it's great, it's yeah. And this this is basically this is the world that

Dayo fang like grows up in. And this is the period where the old urban working class is just hammered to pieces so that the state and capital just gorge itself as well for benefits, and the new Chinese working class is born, and this migrant working class, it's vanguard are these women who are given to imperatives by their families.

And these these these imperatives are given I mean literally Dayong fang like Dayo fang Like directly and I think indirectly to um shout git on well because it like with with Daya Fong, like we literally have the quotes of this right, like she she is told by her family get married and find a job and shout Shitan gets married off at twenty but a middle school day Fog like drops out of school and just goes to work in a factory in Shenzen, and this like these

are the women who built modern China, like these are these are literally these are the people who turned shens In from a tiny rural town into a world class manufacturing caub that is literally larger than any city in North America. And I mean this happens in the span of like a couple of decades, and they get jack shipped for it, like the wages they are working for. Like Dayan Fong's brother is working on rubber plantation. He's

making five dollars a month. And you know, in Dion Fong's case, like the other thing she's dealing with is literally these constant demands for a family to get married,

and Fong just refuses. They try to was a young adult, she just goes no, and they try to try to to get like when she's like thirty eight, they like they bring her back to her village and her like pick a husband, she just goes no, and she just like they keep showing your guys gypsy come like no. And you know what she does instead is charter her own path by managing to secure a visa to the US where and this this, this is so Diao pongs like he's a margant worker for ages and eventually I think,

like she wasn't sixteen, she moves to the US to support her family. Again from afar, there's there's only there's one more piece of macroeconomics. I mean you talk about before we can follow Dio Pong to the massage parlor, and this one is going to get like everyone else, to the scene of this massacre. So what when we last left our Korean corruption chapels, business business is booming, and in the early nineties business is like even more booming. It is this is this is the best I've ever

done economically. And the reason is the best I've ever done economically is because is by in large part because of the thing that I am just perpetually cursed by when I do research for this show, which is the Plaza chords. Um. I've talked about this before, but I will once again, do a brief summary of this, which is that so in the nineties, as people probably are aware of the U s the US manufacturing economy is dying. And this is a real problem for Reagan because everyone's

like Reagan, why does the economy suck? And his solution to this is just basically, at gunpoint, forcing Japan and West Germany to like let the U s D value its currency relative to the end of the Deutsche Mark. And it's like, Okay, this is a this is a boring, tetocratic thing. But the thing it actually does is if if your currency is weaker than another currency, it's easier for you to like sell them to have an export

economy and sell them stuff. And this sets off just like an incredibly catastrophic chain of events where the US manufacturing actually comes back because you know, hey, hey, look the dollars the dollars week and now we can produce it again. But it just, you know it, it combines with this like structural weakness, Japan's economy, Japan's economies dimplodes, and Japan goes, okay, funk it. How do we keep

the economy going without manufacturing sector? And their solution is invest in other countries and do real estate speculation, and you know, okay, so obviously nothing bad ever happens happens when you do real estate speculation. And the Japanese economy was completely fine until it collapsed like five years later. Um, but this this is a series of effects. One of them is that the Korean shables, you know, those those companies that are doing like literally the best business I've

ever done. The reason they're doing this is because of Japanese credit and the fact that like there's there's more complicated currency bullshit going on. But basically, like the value the value of the Korean currency was pegged to the dollar, and so when the dollars value decreased, uh, the wand also decreased, and so you know this, this this gives

Korea like a big manufacturing competitive manufacturing edge. But then you know, Japan goes under and they start to lose credit, and then the US does the reverse Plaza Chords where they just reverse the thing that they did before, and so now the dollar is incredibly strong again. Every other

currency is really weak well due to it. And this just like this just obliterates like every economy in East Asia, like they all just implode, Thailand goes under, and most of these countries that have never recovered, like Thailand trickler, like the I mean, South Korea kind of does, but it's basically the only one. All the rest of the

economies are just obliterated. And you know, this, this is this is the Asian economic crisis, and you know, saddle with like enormous debts and declining profits like these tables started collapsing left and right, and South Korea just is just on the edge of bankruptcy and right on Q the I m F shows up and makes everything worse because yeah, it's great, it's the I m F. They yeah, they do, they do normal I m F stuff, and they you know, they impose a bunch of austerity measures,

and this just this annihilates the Korean middle class. Like it's just it just gets obliterated. This is this, this is just a death knell. And it it also has you know, it has a lot of effects. But one of the other ones is the Korean labor movements is really severely damaged by just all the economic devastates that's happening around them. And the product of this is just as sort of rural poverty drives Dayong Fong and Jan

from their villages. The economic collapse drives Kian Jung Kim grants, who's one of the other people who died in this shooting, from Korea to the US. And this is something that this is there's there's something about the U S here. Well, okay, something about the US is that it's economy is incredibly strong, and the dollar is incredibly strong. And even in people who come to the US for other reasons that the two of the women who went up here, like are

here basically because they buried someone. And but even that, you know, they like there's a couple of people like they marry someone and they break up, divorces the but they stay in the U s. And they stay in the US because like the median American income is like three times the median American income in China, and that's like now, and so you know, and the combination of that and the strength of the American the American dollars sort of it brings it brings the brave, the desperate,

and just the love struck to our shores. Um. Now, if you remember lcs Hernande's Ortiz, Who's who's the man that long like shot while he was on his knees begging for his life. Um Hernanda's Ortiz was in that mall because he was wiring money home to his family in Guatemala. And you know, we could do another entire story here about Guatemala and the United Fruit Company and

these the u S baccus and genocides. But I think the thing about this story is that every atrocity is tied to every other atrocity, you know, and it creates this web of death that we sort of you know, we we euphemistically call it capitalism or society or reality. And the survivors of this are just flung from meat grinder to meet grinder, desperately looking for a new life in new country, and you know they get there, in the country just buries them instead. Yongfang was also you know,

constantly sending money home to her family. When she arrives in the US. She and she's supporting like ten members of her family off of a salary. That is, like I mean, like she supporting to members her family off

of the salary that you get from massage work. Right, Yeah, I think that this is like like again, I think something like people don't understand about the US is that like, yeah, American wages are low, but the dollar is so strong that even like like like small amounts of money that you can send, like small amounts of money in dollars you can send back home have this enormous economic impact.

And there is there is an enormous like an absolutely enormous sort of network of of immigrants in the US who are here basically to work in the center business is back home. And this is I mean, this is like this is an enormous part of just how the economy the Philippines works because of yeah, a bunch of the just incredibly fucked up stuff that the marcos Is did. Um. Yeah.

And you know, for for Asian women in particular, once they get here, they're often drawn to spot work because and there's there's a lot of reasons we'll get into in a second, but these spas, the spas are some such just like a microcosm of the US, Like the pay is good, and the people doing the work often

like for it to other jobs that are accessible to immigrants. Well, okay, they're accessible to immgrants with their levels of political and economic capital and social connections, which is usually really not that large. But the problem is, you know, as as with everything in the US, it's also often dangerous, like the particular kind of sort of exposure and performance of femininity that you need to do. This leaves these workers incredibly vulnerable to stockers, and you know, they face sort

of constant like racial massages abuse. UM Butterfly, which is a Toronto based sex worker group, released a report that said that half of all massage parlor workers reported some kind of threat to their safety at work. Jesus, Yeah, it's it's workplace is both incredibly dangerous. And then you know, and when when when when we're saying like threat to their workplace, that doesn't that's not even like that's not

even counting the police. And if you've read anything about this, you'll read people saying things like massage parlors face constant police raids and this is true. But if anything, it understands how bad it actually is because like Asian massage parlers are subjected to two different kinds of police rates that just happened constantly. Um, I'm going to read a thing from BuzzFeed. Yeah, it's it's great, it's it's really fun.

Fro from three thousand six of people arrested for unauthorized practice of a profession for any job requiring a license in New York. We're Asian and nine percent were women, according to data from the New York Division of Criminal

Justice Services, and our prostitution is a misdemetor defense. Unauthorized practice of a profession, which is the charge that covers unlicensed massage along with roles like veterinary medicine, engineering is a felony that carries higher penalty, including up to four

years of jail time. Now I'm no expert, but that's sure does sound like racism of that misogyny, because like, yeah, there's an argument to me, like if you're if you're moonlighting as a bridge engineer and you're not qualified, Yes, that's it really just calling me on on the pod, just right right in the garrison. We've agreed not to talk about all of those people who died when that bridge collapse that you built in Florida, on that university campus.

The thing of value was lost. No, it was Florida. Like that's why that's why the d A is not coming after you. Yeah, US government not pressing charges. It's Florida. Mm hmm. So okay, back to back to back to the racism. It's like, okay, so, so you you have these raids that are like literally only like targeted against Asian massage workers and then on top and so that

that's type one. And the second type of raid is that the other thing that happens at these places constantly are I are these anti prostitution and anti trafficking raids

And I'm putting both of those in enormous quotations. You know this, Okay, I'm gonna gonna go on a side tangent rant here, which is that Like okay, so, like every single person who does reporting on this, and I don't know if this is like a journalistic standards thing, but like even the good reporting on this, they like almost always have like a section that says, I, oh, the the Georgia, like Georgia's like resources on sex Trafficking says that, uh salon Asian salons are a place where

there's a bunch of sex trafficking. And it's like mm hm, really like this this, this is what you're putting in your article about a bunch of people getting murdered by a racist dude, Like this is the thing that that you're gonna put in here, and you know, and like this this is sort of like all of that stuff that I talked about, like last episode about Robert Aaron Long, like all of your gratification and the racism and the horror phobia and that like mixture of like desire and loathing.

Like the cops have this, Like also the journalists who are think about this have this stuff, and the the people who don't are sort of like picking up on on the sort of like abbeyant racism. So you get all this coverage that's just focused on like trying to figure out if there was sex work going on here. And you know, and like I talked about the last episode, like this is really dangerous because exposing people, exposing these sites the police investigation means you get more of these stings.

And you know, like we we we mentioned at the beginning that uh Dayong Fong like no no no one

she knew showed up to her funeral. And the reason that no one she knew showed up to her funeral is that no one wanted to be at a place where they could potentially be cops, so they wouldn't be deported, right, How could anyone who knew her come to her funeral because that would be well and her her brother wanted to come, but the like travel to the US was expensive enough that he was just like, yeah, we can't do this, and you know, and like and I that

these these anti trafficking, anti prostitution raids are so common that two of the Atlanta victims have been arrested as part of raids like before this, and even though both of them are innocent. Uh Sum Chung Park was convicted of criminal trust passing anyways, again, which is like one of the most insane things I've ever heard in my life, because she was arrested at the place where she worked

and they convicted her of criminal trust passing. Because this entire system is made up of just like Robert are and long levels of of racism, but they have they have a legal outlet to do it so they don't have to just go murder people and and sometimes they still do. Yeah, definitely, yeah, I mean we talked about very generous with that sometimes, Garrison. Yeah, I mean there

there there, there's a really horrific story of that. There was there was a Chinese sex worker who the NYPD like repeatedly attempted to force her at gunpoint to have sex with them, and she refused and they so and you know, because because she refused, the NYPD kept doing raids on her, and eventually she died because she jumped out a window trying to escape one of the raids. God.

Because these people are just literal monsters. Um. Yeah. And you know Sun Chun Park, like, she's convicted of criminal trust passing and she gets, you know, the sort of particular American humiliation of being forced to wear an ankle monitor that you have to pay for around your house while being under house arrest. And I've I've talked about this with the journalists, but again, like there, this is

an entire system full of robber aeron lungs. It's the judges, is the prosecutors, it's the social workers, is the journalists,

it's the cops. And this is this is an incredible level of systemic state violence that makes these already tenuous migrant working communities even more vulnerable because you know, if someone's harassing them, they can't call the cops because if the cops show up, it's like, oh hey good, this is this is even worse than the harassments and that's I think where I want to want to end here today on with things that can actually be concretely done

about this to help spot workers and sex workers. Um, there's two proposals that spot and sex workers have been backing, one of which is just ending the licensing licensing requirement from massages because it's it's literally only ever used to target Asian massage workers. Yeah, that seems that seems like a good call. Yeah, it's definitely not the law, but oh yeah, yeah, getting rid of its, getting rid of

it clarify there. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's you know, like this, this is my this is my my, my most libertarian position is just being against like a lot of these licensing things, because what's next to license to make their own toaster. If it's a thing that people just do all the time, uh, and in fact cannot be stopped from doing under any circumstances, then it shouldn't require a license to do, like flying exact Garriet, like flying a plane, like performing surgery, you know, um, like

being a police officer. Just make everybody everything all licenses. Sorry,

I've lost the thread. It's okay, I mean, well I think that the actual thread here though, is that like you know, okay, so like yeah, on the one hand, in theory, it is good to have licenses that that you know, like have a way to tell who knows how to do something and who doesn't, Right, But the thing is that's that's not what does Yeah, yeah, it's and like and the thing that the state actually does even with licenses, like and they do this driver's licenses,

Like even even with driver's licenses, which is the thing that like, yeah, like people should know how to drive before you put them behind like the four wheel death machine. Like what do they do with it? It's like, oh, they used to go after a documented immigrants because the state is just incredibly racist and that this is the thing that's happening with with these licenses is yeah, they just they just do racism with it. Well, it's it's

why you can't have like the common sense. I would be like, okay, well we're gonna have sex workers, so there should be some sort of system to make sure that people are getting tested for things and that basically you know, certain safety procedures or that at least people know what safety procedures are being you know, used at the place or whatever. Um, But what It always boils down to, is uh, this is an excuse for police

to funk with vulnerable people. Yeah. The thing that this brings us to is the second proposal, which is just decriminalizing sex work, Like, don't prosecute people for this, don't send the cops after them, just don't do it. Like it it only ever causes violence against people who are already the most marginalized people. It doesn't actually help against traficking either, in makes it makes pend against trafficking actually harder. People feel not able to talk about things when they

see stuff that's questionable. It's it's I'm sure we can do more content content. Um, I'm sure we could do more stuff about sex work in the future. Um. But yeah, it really should be uh not a crime. Yeah. And I think this is something like you know, it's it. It reminds me a lot of like of of the anti trends stuff where it's like, okay, so you should care about the stuff because you should care about trends people.

You should also care about the stuff because it affects people who are not trans and this this is this is this thing where these massage workers are like most of them are not sex workers. And it doesn't matter at all, and it's the splash over effects are hitting them too. And yeah, the consequence of that is eight

people are dead. Yep. Yeah, go hope your local sex work or organization and go hope you help your local spot workers associations like get rid of this licensing stuff and fire for decriminalization because this, this this kind of ship doesn't have to happen, and we can. This is something that we actually can concretely do and when that will make an enormous number of people whose lives are incredibly precarious enormously better. Yep. Okay, so we have already

seen before our eyes that you can do. You can do things that involves safety where the police are just useless. We we have seen we we we have seen. We have seen Zach. But what is his name, Zack? Yeah, Zack is his name. Yeah. Yeah, but look we we we we we have we have yeah, he rules. We have seen Bodega Zach outwit like outdo the entire police force, even after literally the guy called them the churn himself in and Bodega Zach still got there before they did

the entire New York Police Department. This isn't himself in and left his wallet and good at the scene. Yeah, then again, this is this is this is this is this is a ten billion dollar police force. The thing that the thing that they mostly do is harass homeless people and sex workers. For the love of God, we don't need them. We could, like literally one man could do their job for them. H yeah, get get rid of them. Okay, yeah that sounds nice. Okay, well there

we go. We did it. Happy episode. Everybody's an introduction. Good for you, we did it. Yeah, I love what what show is this? Uh? This is? This is it could happen here a show that is also currently in the middle of about seventeen thousand personnel disasters. But it's fine. Uh yeah, I am I am Christopher Wong and with me is Garrison. Hello, Hi, good morning or afternoon or evening, depending on when you're listening. And also Sophie, Hello, Hi. So we are we're going to talk about something that

is I guess technically over. But it was extremely weird and did a lot of harm. And that is the very weird stuff that Texas General General Jesus hopefully not Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who had General the General of Texas. Greg at I mean, like you're kind of not wrong, but I he wished like that, he wishes, he wishes he was the general of Texas. I mean, I feel like that's me one of those things words like that. That's when we know the coup started, is when he

promotes himself to general takes over Texas. So Greg Abbott is extremely mad, and he's actually mad because Biden finally decided to end one of like the absolute worst Trump era border policies, just called Title forty two, and it's for it was like nominally an anti pandemic measures, like the CDC. That's so I don't know why it took me like five seconds to remember the name of the CDC, the Central Defense Agency. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that one. Yeah.

So it's normally supposed to be a thing where it's like, okay, you can you you cut off migrants from coming into the country because there's a risk of a pandemic. Now, okay, if if if you have lived the last two years, you know that the US just literally does not give a single ship about the pandemic at all, like ending yeah. Yeah, and so this this whole thing really has just been

a justification to just boot out. This prevents every like asylum seeker, in refugee, an immigrant for getting into the country. And you know that you can tell this because the title forty two when it was originally invoked, didn't cover people who were like driving trucks across the border. Like he didn't cover economic activity of course not. Yeah, so it's it's it's just a way for the US to

like not have asylum seekers. And Biden let this go for like another fucking year while he was in office, and so like it's like like late last monthy like he finally got rid of it. And you know, this means that like immigrants and refugees now once again have their legal right under both American and international law to a petition for asylum, which again the US doesn't give a shit about because you know you doesn't care about laws unless they do bad things. But this finally happens.

And Greg Abbott, who is once again we must remind of you one the great habit, is running for election in November, and she's it's thus just literally running through the entire right wing like every single right wing scare we can possibly think of. Don't worry, Chris, don't worry Chris Beto will get him. I believe, I believe, I

believe in Beto this time lose by like slide. You know. Well, Okay, so the thing that could stop him from this is Greg Abbott decided to do like two PR stunts, and one of them is he's taking busses of of immigris than asylum seekers and just busting them the d C and I want to talk about this for a little like a second, because like this is really shitty and that shouldn't be legal. It shouldn't be allowed to really traffick. You're trafficking people across the country for a political stunt.

That's like that that should be allowed. Yeah, Like and like I think like everyone's like this book is like it is, but like the thing with American political sence is that real people get hurt constantly. Yeah, And we're gonna come back to that theme more in a second. As we talked about the second stunt that he did,

which was so essentially what Abbott did. Is there are, in a norm just a number of trucks that cross the US Mexican border into Texas like every day, right, I mean, there's like there are individual bridges that are moving SI seventy billion dollars of just produce like every day, and so that produced when it when it comes into the US, it goes to a bunch of checks by the border patrol and stuff, and there's all these checks

and this is this whole thing. But uh Abbott went on this incredibly bizarre rants about well, I mean it's not bizarre. I guess if you're right when we went on this rant about like the cartels and there's immigrants we need to stop them, and so he very scary. Yeah, it's really weird. Okay, So he's he's doing all these bird fairymongering and he's like, Okay, we need to stop the people from getting across the border. So we're gonna inspect all of these trucks, which again like they're already

being inspected by the FEDS. Like this this is this is you know, this is where like the horrible ice budget is going. Right. So he he does this and he he calls in a bunch of just like the border patrol to just literally do all of the same checks again. And this has an enormous economic impact. Um, I'm going to read a quote from the American Statesman The delays have resulted in a six drop in commercial traffic at the border, according to ums U S Customs

and Border Protections. The agency said the delays are a direct results of quote additional and unnecessary inspections being conducted at Abbott's request. I I do like that the same people who were shooting moms in Portland now inspecting produce at the Texas. It's it's pretty well. I mean, I think I think that there there there's an important thing to note here, writes like, so, why why are these

the people who are like doing both these things? And the answer is that, like those organizations like that, the thing that they're designed to do is to protect the interests of American capital. And you know, so the interests of American capital are we need to move capital across that, we need to move goods across the border, and we need to just like absolutely obliterate like a bunch of teenagers who don't like us. That is pretty much their

bit um. I mean, yeah, I know we've talked in the past about us like customers and worter and water protections and the weird the weird like agencies and weird kind of almost militias that they operate, and how they get deployed into certain areas if there you know, x x miles away from the border. Um, it would be worth talking about more in depth in the future, because I know Robert has done some historical background on them for Bastards. UM. But I think, yeah, that is something

I would I would be down to talk more about. Yeah. I think they are a very bizarre agency. Yeah, they're very weird. They're also really not like in this story. They're basically really just sitting there being mad because it's taking longer at what they do. Yeah. And and you know because because again like these these actual these inspections are being run by like state troopers, and because because because Abbott has more direct control over stage. Yeah, because yeah,

Abot direct power for them. And this means that like, okay, so you have your truck right, your rock has a bunch of produce in it, you would be it across the border. Um. This usually takes about two hours of you know, being like sitting there in a truck while you're stop your every once cargo gets inspected and stuff, which I will say the truckers don't even get paid for that. When they're waiting two hours. Yeah, and and and you know what would make that worse. Oh yeah,

now it takes between ten and thirty hours. Because intentionally, on purpose, was like, okay, we're just we're gonna put six thousand like people total to do this whole thing. And so, you know, like hundreds of millions of dollars of produce like sins like onions and tomatoes and avocados are just sitting in these trucks, rotting in the Texas heat. Yep. Hopefully the trucks are refrigerated, but still, well, the trucks are refrigerated, but like the people in them, I'm sure

the cabins are not. Yeah, I'm sure it gets mighty well. You know, I I do have some family who would truckers, and some of the cabins can't be nice. But still that's sitting for thirty hours without getting paid because you only get paid when you are moving um to oh uh not a great way to you know, run our entire economy. Yeah, I'm going to read a quote. I'm

gonna read a suction from the paragraph of the Texas Tribune. Felix, a sixty year old Mexican trucker who was transporting tomatoes, onions, and avocados, waited about thirteen hours in line at the bridge. He has to be identified only by his first name for fear of retribution and targeted inspections from CPB officials. Hearing of the delays at the border, he packed water and food for a few days, but other truckers didn't come as prepared, and we're sitting in stand still traffic

without anything to eat or drink. Felix said he was told by a CPB official that the agency would be putting portable bathrooms along the bridge for the gridlocked truckers, but he never saw them. Once Felix made it to the state troopers inspection point around nine pm, he said they didn't even peer into his truck, which had been sealed since Mexican authorities inspected about six hundred miles away

in the state of Sinaloa. There's no possibility of bringing legal immigrants in the merchandise or in the cabin, he said, referencing one of Abbott's explanations for the inspections. I can't bring any illegal immigrants here from money because I know inspectors are going to discover them. It's not a thing here. I don't know what the politicians ideas are. I don't know what they're talking about. So that seems not good.

It's it's really bad. And like again, like this is this whole thing is nonsense, Like that I didn't even I didn't even think about having to, you know, use the bathroom for hours. Yeah, and like do you think the thing with this is like this the backups are eight miles long, so like if you want to go to the bathroom, you have to walk for like miles depending depending on where you are in this backup. And you know, this is having like these just enormous horrifying

because there's like these normous horrifying knock on effects. Um. Because you know, it's not that the truckers are really affected by this. There's a bunch of workers whose job it is, you know, it's to process these goods, right, take them out of trucks, put them into American trucks to like sort through the vegetables and figure out like which ones are good and which ones are not. And again, like just enormous amounts of just produce that is like

fresh and good to eat. It's just being intentionally destroyed because it's being forced to sit at the border for this long. Uh, there's a bunch of these people whose whose job like who who are contract workers whose job it is to like go through this stuff, and they're all getting fired because they're like there's no work for them to do. Um. There's all of these people who like their their jobs and they run bodegoes and they

run like like they were in restaurants. Did they run a buch of stuff on the border for these truckers and they also don't have any work and those people have to on a day by date like it's like I think it's per day to rent a terminal in like yeah, and they're making nothing, and it's it's it's horrified.

There's all there's this's just enormous economic devastation that that that's been sort of like you know that that that that's been happening because of this and well, you know, you know what else reminds me of economic devastation, Ah, the fact that the fact that our paychecks are solely reliant on the products and services that support this podcast. It's true. Yeah, Well, we'll talk about the problems they're

having in a second after this break. Yep, one second. Wow, that was that was a fast second that just that flew right by time is not real? Destroy the clocks the scientists sart the police, all right, if you press, if you press the if you press the thirty second button four times? Yes, yeah, real speedy. Now this is having other problems because, as you talked about the show, literally ad nausea, our supply chains are really bad. And it turns out, yeah that that does seem to be

a recurring character on the pod. Is that supply chains uh, not the most stable thing we've invented. Yeah, and especially with especially with with with fruit and vegetables. Well, I mean, well we will be getting some of the other supply

chains that are like fun because of this. But like Prudent VEGTA was in particular, like the way that we do them, they're they're designed to be in motion for like a very specific amount of time so that when they show up to you, they're right, yeah, yeah, you know, you add a few hours onto that everything falls apart.

And this like I'm not sure if it happens because I'm not in Texas, but there was there were a bunch of articles are talking about like yeah, like avocados and Texas are gonna cost five more dollars, Like like a single avocados price is gonna increase by like five dollars over the weekend because like because it was just the enormous amount of produces that that's being destroyed here, and you know there there's there's a lot of other stuff going on here because American and Mexican supply chains

are enormously integrated from now. I mean they've always been into good to some extent, but like particularly post NAFTA, there's a lot of like auto supply chains in particular that are that are tied to two plants in Mexico, and you actually this occasionally has like interesting effects, like Mexico's has a lot of auto strikes, and you get like you get these things where like people will like tuck messages into like auto parts and like send them

to the US. People will open these messages from like a worker in Mexico too, Yeah you need And it's it's cool that there's lots of there's interesting stuff there, but this also means that like, yeah, so if those parts are moving across the border, those just in time production schedules are even more omega screwed than they've been already and so yeah, there's been a lot of sort

of economics stuff that's been happening here. And you know, the other people who are getting just completely screwed by this are the are the Mexican truckers and so yeah and so so so this this this starts on April six, on Monday, April eleven, I the truckers are just like fun this and they start just completely blockading the largest border crossing between like this, it's on the Giant Bridge. They started they literally just blockade the bridge and but

prevent any goods from from getting in. And this this has an enormous impact because again, like you know it it was going like yeah it was production was down by sixty percent, but that means still means are getting through and now you know, and bye bye bye. By

the eleven it's just nothing. Um I do I do hope the one the one good thing that can come out of the whole Canada COVID isn't real protests, um, is that people have learned that blocking off supply chains it's a really effective way to do protest because you can stop the import of thousands and millions and billions of dollars of trade um pretty easily actually, and it would be cool if more people realize, Hey, obviously the COVID stuff they were talking about in the whole overthrowing

the government part um to install a right wing dictator, that part's obviously bad, but some of their tactics were actually pretty interesting. Yeah, we're we're going to get more into that, uh like later, Yeah, I mean I will say, like, I think that the thing with the U S is that, like I think there's been a lot of focus on the American left on ports because yeah, there's a lot of reasons for that, but like, yeah, you can do the border crossings too, and the the Mexican rucker is

really effective. I mean, okay, so that's this has been a thing where it's it's it's kind of hard to get information from. I saw a few like newspapers talking about um like cartel people like like attacking the blockaded, lighting trucks on fire to try to force goods to

go through again, which it's possible. I I don't know, um, but this you know, once once there are like once the block like the border is completely block headed, this completely changes like the entire political situation because now, like you know, ab Abbot's been running this thing sort of as a political stunt and as this game he's playing with you know, I suppose he's trying to play a game with Biden, right, and he's like, Okay, well, yeah,

you gotta decently about the border or whatever, like you know's he's been challenging Biden over like immigration bullshit. But you know, now now they're there's a third party involved, and that third party is Mexican truckers. And now and now Abbots not just in the it's like abbotts in a confrontation with the people that he needs to make the entire Texan economy run yep, And this starts going

very badly for him. And the other thing that starts going very badly for him is that I it turns out if you shut down cross border trade, you really really piss off the bourgeoisie. Turns out, it turns out that will happen if you ain't careful. Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting and you know, and and I think I should mention like stressed this, like they're piste off on both sides of the border, and like obviously you can talk about the ecents, which like, yeah, they're the same class.

But like capitalists on both sides of the border start exerting their political pressure because they're I mean, they're losing enormous amounts of money off of this. That's what they do. Yeah, and you know, the way their ability to do capitalism

as capitalists, they're going to be mad. Yeah, which again, you think you would think that the abbot would like get this, but he just he it seems to have not occurred to him that he was gonna piss off like either or like he he thinks he didn't care enough and thought it wouldn't matter, but like, no, it

turns out like you know, one of the things that happens. Yeah, it's it's amazing, Like he's you know, like I mean, I think this is this is you know, I think this is this is sort of a symptom of like people lose like right wing politicians losing sight of what their actual basis because like this is all this is all supposed to be like campaign trail feeding the anti immigrant base. But like, you know, you you are a politician in the US, Your actual constituency is the capitalists,

and like do you have an actual job? And let's make the economy keep going and keeping people in power to have all the power, like you're not just like that. That's one interesting thing that Trump was kind of one of the first big um indicators for which is like a politician now is just the endless cycle of campaigning and they don't actually have a job. It's just always

campaigning and that it's always campaigning. Uh, and they're like, oh, I guess I should do my actual job that I was elected for or I could just do more rallies

and that seems like it would be less work. Yeah. Well, and I think I think what Trump was like there was those things out to which the bureaucracy kept functioning, and you know, like like he like Trump got Trump got the tax cut right, and like he didn't really start getting in trouble with them until he started doing the anti China stuff, which was sort of a disaster because there was a lot of people who turned out like need those trade connections to make money. And you

saw like and like it was weird. It was a very weird thing. Like you started to see even some of his like like domestic like small business base. I started to get really mad at him because he's putting all these sanctions up and it's like, oh, hey, look, all these sanctions mean that all these people who are reliant on Chinese supply chains have to pay this stuff. And an Abbott Abbott has like done this in microcosm, and like these these people like the star, they start

going to the press. Um, I'm going to read a quote from Bloomberg. Uh. Some retailers, particularly those in the grocery industry, have experienced supply chain delays resulting from the

extended wait times a lot Texas Mexico border. John McCord, the executive director of Texas Retailers Association, wrote in an email, so, like, you know these are like like the Texas Retail Association is like this is like the most republican solidly institution in the country and and you can watch them over time, like these people are getting really mad. Like one of I I was like, like what if Abbot's like I get the exact title, like what one of abbots like secretaries,

like they're look at the secretary or something. One of the like economic bureaus was like, yeah, man, Alvaca is gonna cost five more dollars, And you know, you know this really hits me hard. Because everyone knows it's about me. I care a lot about retail. UM. Retails like my one of my big core of personality traits UM. And you know who else wants you to care about retail? Oh my goodness is that the wash Upton State of That is right, Sophie, it's the Washington State Patrol. Are

are are good friends? Um? So here here is some here's some messages about about how you can improve your retail decisions. Okay, I I can't find this George Bush quote that I was going to use as a bit, so instead of that, we will return to this. And you know, and one one thing I think we should also mention is if you ran into this on Twitter, um, you will see a lot of videos of people like Democrats like standing at the border and pointing at the

trucks and going, uh, this is this. This is abbot attempting to like make inflation to get worse by sabotaging the economy. Cringe and like cringe cringe moments. Yeah, Like okay, Like I cannot rule out that this was like a part of what he wanted to do, but that's not

really why he's doing this. Like this, this is this is like mostly and I some people talking about like, oh, this is like the trucker's buckage and Chile, and I'm like, no, no, it's not at all, like like yeah, yeah, yeah, like yes, Chile has a bunch of right had I had a bunch of right wing anti communist truckers unions that tried to shut down the government. But like, that's not what's

happening here. This is the state and Abbott trying to do this is like an immigration pr thing like this isn't like he's not actually he's not actually trying to destroy the government, because the the only way you can get stuff like that is if like is is it the capitalist classes like genuinely afraid that they're about to get like like wiped out by communists And it turns out that is not about to unize the entire US.

I don't think that's actually a looming threat at the moment. No, So yeah, it's like no, it's like it's it's not it's not really about that, like it's it's it's it's mostly about this sort of this sort of like border

game that the Communis are coming free of off Picados. Well, this is sort of this is the interesting thing here, because it's like you have this really weird scenario where like it's it's it's the right wing governor like shutting down the flow of commodities, and like the liberals are like, we must restore the flow of commodities, and the like, we must restore the flow of commodities, and like even the cartels or something extential, like come on, like we

all we all need the border open. Uh. It really, it really does just showcase the entire bit. Yeah, you know, but I mean, like we've been talking a lot about the human cost of this, and the reason this stuff works is because American politics is literally just a machine that turns human suffering into stories and then turns those stories into percentage points at the polls. And that's Abbot's entire weight. Am I getting him confused with no Greg

Abbots the governor? I momentarily got him confused with the UK guy Tony Emmett ris so bad in very similar ways. Yeah, but I think I think we're allowed to have two bad Abbots. Yeah. I thought there's kind of Australia too, But well, the bad applets are multiplied. To get on this. We need we need to deal with the anglos theory before they produce the fourth produced the fourth one when we get the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. That would

be funny if you just have four Abbots bringing the apocalypse. Yeah, But I think I think that the thing that's important to understand about like about Abbott is like that that everything that Abbott does is just about inflicting suffering on

people and trying to use that to do polls. Right, Like he he has genuine right wing beliefs, but like the timing of everything that he does, that's what all of his that's that's that's what all has had anti trans stuff is is that he couldn't beat his primary challenger, who was trying to campaign a little bit fur them to write than Abbott was. Yeah, and this is the thing where like politicians are allowed to play games with

all people's lives, that that's their job. But they're allowed to do this up until the exact moment at which those real people are the bourgeoisie and the moment this is this the thing that Abbott is learning is that you can do this kind of stunts all you want, Like you can you can like you can shoot every trans kid, you can like I don't know, like you can you can ban like every school from like saying the word race, but you can't funk with the bourgeoisie.

And you know this, this is this, this is the problem that he has is bye by like by like the middle of last week. He has the like the ruling classes turning on him. The truckers are blockading the bridges that preventing all travel, and Abbott is like basically scrambling to find a way out. And the thing that he does to do this is he like he goes to a bunch of Mexican governors who who are like

that the governors of border states. And these governors had like sent him letters being like hey, like what are you doing, Like we need like we we we need our economies to function. Can can you can you actually do this? And you know, so he starts doing these negotiations with him where he's like, well, okay, if you guys like inspect all of these trucks or whatever before and you ensure that there's no immigrants and then where whatever before they get here, like we'll reopen the borders.

And you know, so they do this, and I think there's a couple of interesting things about this one is that most of these I think there's one guy who's from the p r I, but like almost all of these governors are from the p A N, which is Mexico's like far right wing party, and like these guys, these guys are also like hard right, like we're on drug hard liners, you hate immigrants and and this this has been another big part of how the sort of border machine works, which is that like, yeah, on the

one hand, you have you have Abbo and you have like Texas, so you have just the US government like projecting its power like into Mexico, which is you know, another big part of what this is. But the other part of it is has been the US essentially outsourcing it's it's border regime and border policy just in like to Mexico. And so you get a lot of there. There's been a lot in the last especially to dn

Trump administration. Uh, I mean it goes back much further than that, but like in in the last like five years have been a lot of really egregious examples of just like border patrol ship but by the Mexican police, because it turns out there's also a bunch of people in Mexico who fucking hates Central American refugees and be

uh the police or the police literally everywhere. And yeah, and this this also for example, like this this is how this is how a lot of the border regime stuff works in um, in Europe, front ACKs of the European border like thing makes you to do like makes like basically just negotiates with like literally every like I don't even know what you call them, like border state, I guess in Africa to ensure that like refugees coming up to North Africa like don't ever get to Europe.

And like this is that they make deals with Gadaffi, they made deals with the people who came after Gadaffi. Um, yeah, there's the border system is horrible and this is sort of the border system like working as intended. Now, the other thing that we should mention is that like, okay, so they're they're stopping and like supposedly searching all of these trucks and they find literally nothing the entire time, because like there's there's you know, there's ever anything there.

But you get all these press conferences they were like, well, yeah, of course there is nothing. It's because the cartels were tipped off. Of the raid because we did Presston conferences about it, and that's why they announced. We announced the thing that we were gonna do. So it gave him

a chance to smartest Wow whoa. Yeah, So that that that that's been fun um And the last thing I wanna talk about, Yeah, this was part of what we were talking about earlier, which is that like, yeah, this is the second time this year that we've seen right wingers like block off a border for political reasons. And I think there's a few interesting things here. Um. One is that this is the kind of stuff that from like basically from the start of occupy and even before

then until like the Bernie campaign. This is like the core of like what Marxists we're thinking about in the US, and also anarchists or something sent like if if you go and read anything from that period, like it's all about logistics and kinter logistics and how you can like disrupt them and whether or not we should try to

take control of logistics. And you know, and I think you see here like like attacking logistics is a very powerful political tool, but it's tool that has like limited um, like it it has limited utility for the right because you know, the right depends on the backing of capitalists for the politics to work. They really really need buy it capitalists, and those capitalists need cross border trade and you know, and the other thing like they also need

they also need migrant workers to make their money. And if you cut that stuff off, your political base starts to collapse. And the second part of it that's interesting is you get to see how powerful this is as a weapon for you know, like the working class because of just like how instant enviously Abbott back down when the trucking blockhead starts because this this is all over. Um last Friday, I think the what date is that? That was good Friday, I mean the goodest, the goodest Friday. Yeah,

Abbott was like, oh, oh, it's all over. We secured the border. Yeah everything border, sure, buddy, Okay, yeah, but you know, and you but like that's the thing, like you can see like, yeah, you gotta see you gotta see a rare moment of like Mexican workers and also like the the sort of international capital class working on

the same side. And you've got to see how fast they just like collaborate their politicians because yeah, like yeah, like that the state is that the state is the powerful force, but it turns out it's it's class politics all the way down. And I think I don't know this in Canada. I think there's a couple of interesting things. One is which, Okay, yeah, you're like if you're on the left, like already automatically you're going to be fighting the capital business ois just always mad at you. So

that's concern. You will face more suppression immediately obviously. This this is this is how the game is played. Yeah, your face one suppresion deedily. But it's also like that that's not like a your base turning on you, Like that problem doesn't stem from capital is not making money. The problem you have with your base turning on you is about being being able to provision supplies to people. And I think this is you know, against even you know more about this than I do, but I will

finish the sentence and then stop talking. Which is that like like, yeah, if you look at Canada, it was like part of the reason their occupations failed was that like yeah, like just like a bunch of ordinary people got really really mad at them because their whole their cities were being locked down. Yeah, yeah, they started impacting not just the economic drivers, but the people who live

in those areas regularly and need them to operate. And that gave politicians enough enough of the incentive to be like, see, actually hurting real people. It's not just hurting the economy, but it's hurting you know, your grandma who could be

living in like Ottawa or something. Right, So when you when you use these tactics, it's about balancing the propaganda of like not severely impacting the people who actually live in these places very much, but but targeting the economics, policies and the you know, you know, the corporate elite

or whatever kind of framing you want to use. Because as as soon as you start doing tactics that just hurt you know, regular people, that is such an immediate like propaganda l as the kids would say, um, because yeah, you're but you're just giving them the tools to easily fight you back. And yes, they're gonna they're gonna try to invent tools to to to stop you no matter what. Like they're they're gonna, they're gonna they're gonna try to

do something the via propaganda lens. But there's some propaganda is way easier and uh much harder than others. So I think a big part of these types of things when you're starting to like block off you know, roots to cities, block off supply chains as you need to be cognizant of making sure that the people who are like immediately next to kind of things that you're also cool, because that can give you so much more legs. I mean,

we saw this in the Red House in Portland. There was a there was a lot of effort, um to make the immediate neighbors not hate the occupation there, to to stop the family from being evicted, um, And there was a lot of debate around like how much graffiti should be allowed in the surrounding area because you know, you don't want to piss off the neighbors too much.

Now that this can obviously stem in bad directions in terms of like there was then like self self appointed security guards like beating up and shooting people with paintballs who were doing graffiti, which is obviously like not not not how you do good anarchism um. But then there's other stuff being like no, we should just trash this area anyway. It's all in the process of being gentrified, which mean it is, but you're like, yes, I understand

that emotional impulse. Um, and you may be right in a lot of senses, like like more like more correct morally, but to play the propaganda game to actually stop a black family from being evicted, maybe we can actually to look at this at a more tactical level. Yeah, And I think that there's a lot of examples things we

can learn from strikes that do is very efficiently. Like one of the things one of the reasons the wildcats in West the wildcat teacher strikes West Virginia and he doesn't seventeen worked was that the striking teachers in West Virginia were very very careful about making sure that they did things like you know, like making making sure that kids got like the meals that that the school would have been like providing like like you know, like this

is why this is why mutual aid is extremely important because it lets you It lets you provision services, not just when they collapse because of like you know, oh, hey the government's doing weird stuff or like there's a plague. It lets you do it, lets you shut down logistics slnes yourself and still have community support and still be

able to provide people. To think that provide people things that they need, and it's just like, you know, if if you carry this all the way to like the macro macro level, it's like yeah, okay, So like why did why did the Russian Revolution not work? And you know, like like why did the Pairs Commune fail? And it's like, well, yeah, it's because instead of like giving peasants things, they went into the countryside and shot them into actepting to get

those things. And it's like, yeah, like you have to what what what what whatever. The thing that you're doing is in in in your sort of like base area, right whatever. You're like, hey, you're you're doing a strike,

You're shutting down a bridge. You're like, you know, you're blocking up border, you're trying down a port, right you you have to make sure you're constantly expanding and building out support outside outside of that, outside of that action, and making sure you're you're you're able to provision the people who are affected by it. And if you don't

do this, you end up like Abbott. And it's like yeah, you know he Abbott had like the entire power of the American state behind him, and he was able to keep this up for like less than two weeks before he had to just pull out. So, yeah, we can do this better and for things that are good and in ways that don't hurt people or at least hurt people significantly less or you know, don't not hurt the wrong people instead try to try to hurt the right people.

Just like an incredible lack of like thinking. That's my that's my summaries. Yeah, better do you think? Like? Yeah? And I think also like again like Abbott, Abbott's politics like is entirely about like infricting cruelty on people, right, and ours like shouldn't be and shouldn't Yeah, And the fact that we actually care about people makes our politics were effective and sho in theory. In theory they should um and any time when we take a misstep from that, I think is of it is a big loss. Yeah.

There's there's one more strike thing that I just remembered that I was going to talk about, which is I So these also trains a lot. There's there's a type of striker's name I'm forgetting because I'm a hack and a fraud where like the people, the people, the people just like take over a train and they'll run it, but they just won't take fars. That is incredibly bit Yeah, and you know, so that's that's that's like level one

of it. And then level two of the strike is insteade of just we're on strike, but we're running the service and not taking any money. It's we now control this train and that that has happened on several occasions, and well, yeah, you do that. It's cool. You heard it here. First take over your local train. Um, it could happen here. We could, we we can do it. Anarchism can make the trains run on time. Oh I'm not sure about that. Pug punk time it is as

an unstoppable Okay. Here, here's the thing. Here's the thing, right like punk time. Like okay, so you don't have the punks running the trains. You have the train nerds running the train, people who should spend all of their time playing train simulator running the trains. Okay, that the trains will run great? Alright, that is that is completely fair. Um. Where can people find you and or the show on the internet. You can find me at three on Twitter if you want to do that for some reason. You

can find us that happened here pod on Twitter, Instagram. Uh, there's also the Cool Zone. We have Zone Media. Yeah, we have a we have a new podcast that is coming so if you do want to want to go, we actually got we got two new ones for you coming soon. We have a Ghost Church by Jamie Loftus. Episode one is out April, and then we have Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff hosted by Margaret Killjoy. Trailer is out next week and episode one is out on

May second. Check both of them out. So many, so many pods in the pipe, as you say, that is the technical term, pods in the pipe. These these are genuinely, legitimately very good shows and you should listen to them. And I'm really excited. So alright, well, thank for listening, and uh go go take over a train. Greetings listeners in the podcast verse, this is it could happen here, the podcast about things falling apart and sometimes how we

can put stuff back together. I'm Garrison Davis are Resident Gender mess. In the past few weeks, we've been talking a lot here on the show about the escalating war

on trans people and queer folks in general. There's been a wave of bills making any gender affirming healthcare of felony for people under the age of eighteen, which forcibly detransitions teenagers and multiple states, and we've had a lot of banning trans people from participating in sports and trying to ban books and discussion in schools about the just the existence of queer people at all. But today we're not really going to be talking about that. We've talked

about that plenty for the past few weeks. It's good to have a little little bit of a break, but

we'll still be talking about stuff around trans people. Because with all the discussion around gender affirming healthcare, I thought it would be a good idea to put something together talking about what HRT or hormone replacement therapy actually is, as since it's the most common form of trans healthcare, and since many states are trying to or already have criminalized it, perhaps I can use the pod to point people towards alternative means of receiving care, you know, in

the vein of the putting stuff back together side of the show. Now, I want to clarify upfront that we're not giving anyone medical advice, obviously, I'm just making observations and talking about things as they exist, um and talking about things that many trans people have been doing for a long time, and that includes d y h RT. My doctorate program is in parapsychology, not medical science, so

just keep that in mind. First, I will quickly clarify what HRT or hormone replacement therapy actually is for specifically non CIS gender individuals because HRT as a term is also used for SIS women to describe similar but different treatment. So HRT as a form of gender affirming treatment is when someone receives sex hormone medication that produces a number

of desired secondary sex characteristics. There are two broad types of hormone therapy that one would receive, depending on what direction you want to go in gender of wise, there's feminizing hormones and masculinizing hormones. Feminizing hormones produce more typically feminine traits, right, big big shocker there. Uh. It usually consists of a form of estrogen, usually called estradial. There's different types of estradial and also it can include anti

androgen's aka a testosterone blockers. Masculinization therapy consists of taking to sosterone or androgen's and then also less commonly anti estrogen's, but usually just taking testosterone will suffice now I'm no expert in hormones despite my weekly shot, but lucky enough I was able to sit down with an actual expert on hormones and talk over zoom. So what follows is segments from our conversation. I guess first, do you want to introduce yourself? Sure? I am the Reverend Dr Victoria

Luna B. Grieve. I am an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy. My primary clinical focuses on gender affirming hormone therapy, other kind of advocacy work in queer healthcare, and I do a lot of other stuff on the side, heatago g LUDC, instructional design, game design,

just anything that strikes my fancy. Really found fun stuff in with within kind of our our coverage of trends stuff the past few weeks and months, it's been mostly on like the bills and like the politics side of things. I definitely had some people like reach out and be like, okay, but how like why why trands? Gender? Why why hormones?

Like why are hormones actually important? Like could you actually explain like why, like you know, with all of these all these states banding hormones, let's I would like to kind of explain why it's such a big deal and like how much these things actually are like life saving medication for so many people. Yeah, so why hormones? I love it because it's a question that as like a species, we've been we we have known the answer to for like five thousand years. It's it's very funny, but um,

hormones are Okay. A big part of this requires to like acknowledge something that is very wrong in in like the medical literature. There's a lot of elements of healthcare that are coordinated between like male and female, and there's a kind of like obviously is a little so there's a lot of mean I mean like from like from people's I know, when trans people talk about interacting with the medical system, it's always like, oh, yes, we're gonna

be doing this bullshit, yes of course. Yeah. Well but it even goes to it like a really deep level, like if you're in the hospital and you get a CBC count, there's a male profile and a female profile of what your hematocrit should be on, like what the level of red blood cells are and and the general understanding and like the health industry is that there's a biological anatomical difference between them, and for the longest time, certainly in this country, trans women would have would be

compared against the male profiles. But but it's nonsense. It's actually should be thought of in form of hormone dominance, because the vast majority of medical differences are not anatomical. They're hormonal, and and that right there should should give the game away, which is really funny, which is why I why I kind of hate the term biological woman whenever people start using that, because that's not really how

biology works. Yeah, I mean the joke is my my nesting partner, my fiance, wishes that she could be a robot, and then if she were to do that and upload her brain into an immortal robot body, she would no longer be a biological woman, but she would still be a woman. It's just cybernetic um. I hate that. It's like organic. Organic just means it has carbon in it. Like, give me a break. So yeah, hormones, what's what's what's

the deal do they? Because I know all of people will be like, well, all of these treads people sure do seem sad. I want that's how how how can we make things better? Does this thing actually work well, So it's somewhat multifactorial. I have a friend who does um sell imaging and her like working theory, which I'm a little dubious of. Is it like the brains of trans people like have receptors for hormones that the body doesn't make, and we should think of being transgender is

having like a form of hypogonadism. Yeah, there's there's a lot of different trains of thought there in terms of the different theories of why trans people exist and how it's like, you know, the girl's brain, boys body, blah blah blah blah blah, which all, if you dig deep enough, goes back to eugenic so it's all. Yeah, I've always

not liked that model. I've always it's always I've always found it to be a little bit uncomfortable because I take hormones because I want to, and I don't think it's because my my my brain is like secretly looking for girl receptors or something like, right, I totally agree, Like it also requires a certain like extremely binary understanding of gender, which I also do not ascribe to. So

it's a very like odd thought. But putting aside all of that if you just wanted to look at the like why people want hormones, Because when a person who wants hormone gets the hormones they want, their suicidality goes down, their anxiety, depression goes down, gender dysphoria, if we wanted to, you know, talk about the problems with that, essentially like goes away. Uh, and they get they start to get treated like the way they want to be treated in society.

So from the if if you want to look at it, not from like the causes, but from the results. Giving gender affirming hormone therapy to a person who is requesting

gender affirming hormone therapy has a success rate. The rate of regret from starting hormones is one percent or less, which is unbelievable in the health care field, like like having a child, like biologically giving birth has a seven percent regret rate, Like the idea of any therapy having that high of a rate of preventing death, anxiety, depression, bullying, like all of the different effects. Being that successful should be like a miracle. It should be looked at as

the thing we in healthcare are like should do absolutely ethically. Uh. And it is. It is so much more complicated than that. So like hormones from the results obviously makes sense. It aligns your body's shape and like fat fat deposits and the way that you feel, the way that you relate to your emotions, it all goes back to the way

that hormones work on your body. And there's there's like the old saying that like assis person would never want to try gender forming hormerone therapy, so like if you have the in if you want to try it, you

should be allowed to try it. I mean, like you're you're kind of a good example right here, Like yeah, but I'm sitting Yeah, if you're sitting around a bar with a bunch of like ciss guys and you're like, hey, who wants some estrogen, they would all like shrink away from it, Like no, absolutely, because yeah it's definitely a thing. Like I'm not the most dysphoric person, but like sure, I'll take estrogen. That sounds fun. That's like it's like that that sounds like a thing that I could enjoy

watching my body change. And I'm you know, it's it's I'm happy that we're moving more towards that and not having to deal with Oh, I'm so dysphoric. I want to die, which is obviously a big thing for a lot of people. I'm not I'm not minimizing that right um. But also a lot of trans people have had more kind of complicated feelings on gender, whether they're like gender queer, non binary. Having the past had made it more difficult to get gender firm in care because they don't fit

into those specific like male female boxes as easily. Well, and what you're talking about is really something that's relatively recent, the idea of gender euphoria, like the idea that people want to take und because it gives them joy to like dress or act or feel a certain way, and that, I mean, health care is all about, at least up until well, the reality of health care is that it is all about finding problem to solve and not really

looking at like your life just better in general. Yeah, exactly. So you know, I know plenty of people who started hormones of any type just because they felt it would make them happier, and they were correct, And that gender euphoria is just as good of a reason to take it as the dysphoria. The problem ends up in how the medical industry treats it because dysphoria quote unquote is

something as long. Oh my gosh, I could go into the whole history of that if you wanted, but I'm sure we could talk about the ds M four and five for a long time. Oh it's so frustrating. I spend I spend a two hour session in my queer healthcare class specifically just dunking on the d s M

five definition of gender dysphoria. Um. But the real problem is like this focus on this negative quality and how that actually damages a lot of the conversations around uh, gender firming hormone therapy and trans people in general, Like instead of seeing it as like this manifestation of people like truly taking control roll of their lives to become authentic in like the truest way, Like you have never met a more truly well self made man than a

transman who gets hormones. Like it's I mean, it's and it's still something we're even we're not quite at the at the gender utopia, I mean obviously because of all of the anti tran stuff, but even even on like just purely purely the medical side, like I even for for informed consent um I still needed to get diagnosed with gender dysphoria at the Informed Consent clinic in order to get hormones, which is in part like an insurance thing, and you know it has has all of these all

of these bullshit reasons. Um, but that is that is something we're still we're still definitely dealing with. Oh my goodness. Yeah. And the better informed care clinics are the ones that they realize it's just like an effort in box ticking. So they're just like, Yep, sounds good. You came here to this clinic and you asked about hormones. Sounds like gender dysphoria to me, Like, we'll say your insurance whatever, we gotta say, yes, event we will go into like

hormone blockers as well. Um, but I want to talk about there's a lot of this, there's a lot of rhetoric that's been we're growing for a long long time about the extremely damaging, irreversible effects of of hormone replacement therapy, um, and how they're gonna permanently alter your biology. If you give these two children and there's five year olds taking testosterone and it's gonna like you're like, you're like really that sounds very scary. Um, So that's something I would

like to discuss. It's like because a lot of people when we when we do we talk talk about hormones, they think of it as this like big, extremely life altering thing, um that has like these you know, irreversible effects on your your your bones are gonna get weak and trivel to never and never get big again, and all of all of this very scary stuff. Um. What's

up with that? I think a lot of it goes back to the biological essentialism, because hormones, even for the people who give them, are considered partially like reversible because the majority of the things that happen one take a long ass time, like you will know whether or not. This is a good idea for the majority of people

well before the physical manifestations occur. Uh. And and considering like one of the biggest problems we have with certain formulations, like in the once a week or once every other week injectable version of estrogen, by the time you get to right before your next dose, your estrogen is so low you're feeling it and it's starting to like reverse some of those So like if you're feeling it after

two weeks. How irreversible could it be? Uh? And some of it depends on like eight timing, because if we're talking about a person who has say, already gone through a testosterone mediated puberty, then some of the things are just not going to be affected. You can't change like

bone size, height or anything like that. There's some interesting things about like hip uh, like flexation and and and and pivoting and actually yeah, yeah, and and and even like shoe sizes can can change because of the way the ligaments work on hormones, but like the bones aren't going to change once they're done growing. But that's sort of where the puberty blockers come in that we can

we'll talk about later. Um. But for the for the majority of people, if you are going through if you have gone through a puberty that you did not want, you can take hormones to go through puberty you do

want and get the effects that you do want. And some of the elements sure, like you know, growing breasts uh guna coomastia as we would call it, an assist man, which is another whole nonsense, UM, is not irreversible, Like you can have them removed if you decided that you needed to like de transition, which is a whole another story, but even then, it takes like five years to see

your final breast size. Like if you if you're on hormones for five years and you're worried about the ir rever posable quote unquote effects, like what are we doing here? I mean, and even I've heard from a lot of my elder trans friends that whenever they go off hormones sometimes their breasts just kind of go away because they're not massive to begin with. Like if it's generally generally generally you don't get the massive, massive honkers immediately. Um

working on it. I know, I know we're trying, um, but a lot of a lot, a lot of even the you know, that was one of the big things that informed consent thing was like, you know, a lot of these changes are reversible except for breasts. These are

these are these are these are permanent change. Be careful and all my transferends are like a little bit but I mean, like your nipples won't shrink, Like your nipples will definitely be bigger, and that that won't change, but a lot of like the size actually does fluctuate, and I can't even tell that on like depending on if I like missidos or something, being like oh yeah, like there is a lot of a lot of fluctuation, even like on like you know, like temperature and stuf how

cold it will determine how how how how how my chest looks it is. It is, Uh, it's pretty fun. I mean, I am I just like the bio hacking thing in general. It is like the cyberpunk and me um. But yeah, I guess I guess we could talk about hormone hormone blockers as well, because this is the other kind of thing you hear a lot about when conservatives are very scared about transpeople. The idea of hormone blockers like making people infertile or making permanent changes to children's

health or something blah blah blah blah blah. Gosh, that's the thing that is like really really frustrating for me, specifically because puberty blockers, the Ganada troupe in the g n R H antagonists and agonists which have been around for like long time, like ever for for I want to say it was like a hundred years, but I might be misquoting something that I'm half remembering, but they've been a down for like a really long time to the point where we have generics and in the in

the pharmaceutical industry, that means that it's been like decades at the very least, something that had rigorous testing that has an indication with the FDA for precocious puberty, which just means a person who is usually SIS who for whatever reason has puberty at a very young age. With some of the some of the specific cases that I've seen that that I've that I've looked into, um involved giving puberty blockers to like a three or four year

old because their body is trying to undergo puberty. So even the idea of like, oh, well, I don't know this twelve year old being on a puberty blocker for three years, that sounds very dangerous when we have a person over here who was on it for fifteen years with no ill effects, like like no long lasting ill effects. Um, that the idea of anybody describing it as like experimental

is absolutely a historic outside of the realm of reality. Yeah, there's it's it's basic anti anti intellectualism, because yeah, we've been giving six children hormone blockers for a long time for early onset puberty, and it turns out they work and they're pretty safe. So yeah, maybe we should give those two trans kids too if they want them. Uh, it seems like something we could at least try and see if it improves mental health. And then it's it's not even a matter that we have to try it.

We've been doing it for like almost ten years, like the it was first and think it was like two thousand thirteen. There's a there's a ted talk I use in my class of a of a physician who like pioneered the use of puberty blockers in trans kids and showed that any trans kid who got puberty blockers and then was allowed to undergo the puberty that they desired at an appropriate age, which is actually like fourteen fifteen,

at the same time as their peers um. But even if they had to wait till eighteen, the psychological effects of having in appropriate puberty are essentially nullified. They are otherwise psychologically and physically like identical to their their CIS

gender peers. So it's like we have actual evidence that it is extremely beneficial and extremely worthwhile, and like the one kind of long term side effect is you might be up to an inch shorter than you otherwise be which is a wildly like problematic like study that was done because like we don't have time machines to know whether or not that work, Like what would your control

group be? Um, And it's just wild. It's very bothersome to me because a lot of the gender affirming hormone therapy, the evidence is all over the place for a variety of political reasons and historical reasons. But for hormone blockers or for puberty blockers specifically, the evidence is like really solid, really strong, and it's, ah, this is the question I actually have because I'm actually unfamiliar with this specific thing.

But yeah, if you give like, um, hormone blockers to like a kid who's tend they still kind of like grow at the same rate as a lot of as a lot of their peers, and that is it just it's it's this specifically like the secondary sex characteristic changes that get put on pause. UM. But there's just so much Yeah, there's just so much fear around the even

even just the hormone blocker thing. Right when we're getting you know, just like prescribing hormone blockers being like a felony offense, and multiple states now you're like, it's like it's it is just an extreme degree of anti anti intellectualism just like just like purposeful like ignorance, um and just extreme hatred and uh bigotry, and it's it is uh, I mean yeah, it's a I'm kind of speaking to the choir here. But but but but that's the trick.

And and even like the purity blocker thing, like you were saying, your body will still make human growth hormone, You will still grow, it's just that the modulation of that with testosterone, which would increase the overall growth like

just doesn't there. And people say make a lot of you know, talk a lot about the idea of um bone mineral density because you don't have testosterone estrogen, which are both necessary one or the other necessary for your like bone mineral density to not like have like easily fractured bones. But like you don't even have that until

you go through puberty. If you're just like preventing one puberty, the endogenous puberty, and then providing the hormones for an exogenous puberty, they're fine, Like they have the hormones they need,

their bones are happy. Uh So yeah, I'd like to talk about I guess kind of access to hormones and in like the like the different models of of obviously we're not giving up medical advice, but like access to hormones and the different ways that people can go about that now through doctors, through in form of consent um and all of all and all of that jazz. Yeah, So the informed consent model is a much more recent option,

and it's not available everywhere. I have a friend in Texas we had to find a clinic that was like two hours away to get her hormones. But here where I live, we actually have too informed consent clinics, So it's pretty convenient, but it varies wildly by by region. Uh. And the informed care clinics are great. It means you come in, they say this is what's going to happen. Do you still want to do it? You say yes, They take some blood, they run some tests, you come

back in two weeks, and they go here. You go like that's They work really well depending on the clinic, I guess and uh, but the more traditional quote unquote standard model would be going to your pc P or or whoever and saying that you want to do this, which makes most of them very concerned because most physicians, pharmacist, nurses, they don't get taught anything about trans people, are caring for trans people or gender affirming hormone therapy in their

school like, so they have nothing to fall back back on. Uh. So that makes them very nervous to do it. And then UH, if you if you look at gosh, I really want to tell you about the guideline stuff at some point here because it is buck wild um as to why that would be a concern. But another part of it is is also the insurance you know, America's

original sin in our healthcare dystopia, if you will. Uh, the insurances historically have required and part of this is also from antiquated guidelines that has been somewhat like just grandfathered into excuse the term, uh, this idea of like we you have to go to a therapist, if you go to a psychologist, and they have to say that you have gendered dystoria, that's why it's in the d s M. And then after you do that, some places

require you to socially transition before getting hormones or anything, which can be extremely problematic for some individuals. That just increases like visibility and bullying and and such in a way that it may drive people. It's it's sort of was intentionally required back in the day to drive people to not want hormones anymore. And it's all of these

gate keeping steps. And it's even worse if you wanted to get a surgery later on, where you have to have been on hormones for a certain length of time, you have to have two different generally like susgender right. Healthcare practitioners who don't necessarily understand like the full like everything that's going on, write you letters before. The most insurances up until recently wouldn't even cover it. So it's

just gate keeping step after gate keeping step. Because even the big guidelines, which is w PATH, which is about

to put out their so gate guidelines. Um, there's a guidelines out of San Francisco, and the Endocrine Society has guidelines from two seventeen that are but all of those are made by cisgender people, usually with the intent to gate keep this care because it's either they're uncomfortable with it, because they're unfamiliar with it, they have some kind of ideological reason to be against it, or whatever whatever else.

There's a survey that I often quote to my students in class that, Um, they surveyed a whole bunch of trans individuals trying to get care from their physicians, and it was nearly a quarter of them said that they avoided healthcare because of discrimination, and half of them reported having to teach their health care practitioner how to care for them, which is wild. Like imagine going to the hospital with like heart failure and having to like talk

your physician through how to care for you. Can you can you live for two years with heart failure first? Before we go, Oh my gosh, could you imagine if we treated other things this way? I'd be like, well, are you sure that you have diabetes? Are you sure that you're? Like, well, we can't treat your diabetes you're too fat, Well, your b m I is too high, so we can't give you the insulin. Like, give me a break. What is happening? Uh? It seems like, uh, basically,

what you're is that we got a good system. We gotta oh, we gotta figure it out. Absolutely no notes perfect and every well that does it for us today? Here? Uh? Well, specifically if I could, Um, it's really interesting from like the healthcare perspective because from you know, the practitioners perspective, because there's essentially two kinds of like treatment. There's guideline

based medicine and evidence based medicine. And a lot of schools, like my school teaches a lot of guideline based medicine, which is for something like hypertension or diabetes, is put out by like large organizations with a ton of evidence.

It is actually like pretty reasonable. But that means that if you're going along with what they say, that means that you believe that they read those studies correctly and that their interpretation is in no way compromised by like sources of their income, say, and that those guidelines actually

match your patients. So it's a lot of assumptions that you're making, which can be extremely pro ablematic an evidence based is where you dive into literature and you figure it out yourself, which is very time consuming and requires an awful lot of like professional uh, like you know, criticism in a way. Uh, but when you look at it for for trans care, for for gender affirming hormone therapy,

those guidelines are unbelievably compromised. To give you an example, a hotly contested issue in feminizing therapy is the use of micronized progesterone in feminizing care. Uh, it's kind of like all over the place. There's a long history of it of this controversy. In the upcoming w path socate guidelines that I had like a preliminary copy to to provide notes on there, there's a single statement that just says that there's a controversy that exists and you should

not use micronized progesterone and transfiminine care. And they list a study. Okay, if you pull up that study, the title of it is progesterone is important for transgender Women's therapy. Applying evidence for the benefits of progesterone insists women. And it is like a pretty long document that concludes that

it is like an ethical imperative to offer it. So the idea that the people who are writing the w PATH guidelines read this article, read this this like meta analysis and went, yeah, I don't really agree with any of that. I'm just gonna say no, is just so infuriating. Again,

that seems like we've got a good system going here. Yeah, no, notes, I guess on that note, let's do what did discuss some of the some of the things that an't talking about as much as like um antiandrogen's, uh, progesterone spiro and what all kind of those do and how they can kind of supplement a regular estradial regimen regiment regiment. Yes, that sounds that sounds fancy. Sure, sure, So generally speaking, if you're maybe you give a baseline for for folks

who are unaware. The way that we do feminizing arapy is we offer estra dial, which is a bioequivalent version of E two, because there's like three different versions of estro of estrogen UM and an antiandrogen because testosterone tends to be somewhat of an overriding hormone. The presence of testosterone will override the effects of estrogen to a certain extent depending on doses and stuff like that, which is for the transmasculine individuals, why we just give testosterone. It

just does the job. You don't need to block the estrogen. Uh. So there's a you know, there's a lot of history and just those hormones as well that we could talk about, like conjugated estrogens versus estra dial and and all the different other stuff. But for the antiandrogens that we give Historically in this country we give spironal lactone, which is a mineral corticoid. It's a potassium sparing diuretic, and it's

just really good at higher levels. We usually use it in like cardio issues, like it can be used for like hypertensions and other things. Um, I believe it makes you pee a lot, So it's a diuretic, meaning that it makes you urinate an awful lot. And it's a potassium sparing because it prevents your body from eliminating potassium. So uh well, so that is that's the thing that I think is really really wild because you're using these

high levels of it. It is preventing your production of your endogenous production of testosterone and making you pee all of the time, which spoilers estradial also makes you pay more often. So like that's a real fun combination. But then physicians, if they don't know what the heck they're doing, they might say something like, well, you can't eat any bananas, and like, historically the people who are on feminizing therapy are healthy enough that their body just accommodates for it.

And if you have hyper kelmia, which is like too much potassium, you're gonna know, like your muscles are gonna ache, and there's gonna be a lot of like tell teal side effects. Usually it's only a problem if you are like only consuming a like salt alternative that has potassium instead of sodium, which is not super common, not super common, or if you have some other reason why your body is like holding onto potassium. Um, So it's not usually

an issue. Uh, it's an inspiral actone isn't sufficient for everyone. There's plenty of people who have like refractory testosterone after some time, and there's some other options. Uh. There's kind of a weird controversy about it that is sort of heralded by the San Francisco guidelines. I mentioned earlier that spironal actone uh leads to Okay, well, I want to

make sure I get the wording right. It's leads to premature fusing of the breast bud uh and overall smaller breast size, which the document that they cite for that is a real weird retrospective study from like a bunch of years ago on the rate of trans women getting breast augmentation, and it found that the vast majority of trans women who were on spirontal actone got breast dogment great, but the problem is like of their sample group of like two people, almost all of them were on spur

on elactone, Like there's like a sampling error, Like it's not it's very silly. Um And also even like that premature fusing in the breastbed. I have never been able to find anything that suggests that that's a thing or even like a way to explain what that statement even means.

But the San Francisco guidelines, to go back to the my guideline thing actually says, has some like maybe don't use spur on a lactone, even though it's something we've been using since literally like the fifties or sixties for

this purpose. In other countries, you'll use what's called cyprotorone, which is a synthetic progesterone, but it's not actually approved in the States because it has a like there is actually some evidence that it causes increase in certain specific cancers, but it's like a pretty limited overall risk, Like it's not like something like you know, going outside increases your

risk of cancer. It's it's not like a huge deal, but it was enough that they don't it's not approved in the States, but in a lot of other countries you might get cyprotarone, which there's a lot of you know,

controversy around that too for those reasons. UM. Here, the other option that we usually see is finasteride, which is a five alpha reductation inhibitor that essentially is preventing testosterone from being turned into dihydro testosterone, which we use normally for UM to prevent quote unquote male pattern baldness and in higher doses for prostate cancer because it's real good at because it like reverses some of the feedback loops

just reducing product testosterone production. UM. So it's just fine like that one has like very limited side effects, but it might not have as substantial of a UM reduction of testosterone that spiral lactone does. UH. And then the kind of third one that we really we don't see very often but there's a lot of interesting evidence about is called bicaludamide. It's also a UH prostate cancer medication. It actually blocks all of the receptors of testosterone in

your body while not reducing the production of it. So you'll see a person who has like you know, they have like seven hundred there their testosterone comes back is like seven six whatever, But they're entirely feminized because none of it has anywhere to work. Um. But the problem with that is by plutamide being an anti cancer med uh, primarily is ridiculously expensive. I think it's like fifty bucks a dose or something like here, it's so great, uh, I will say, and and for my gender queers out

there or any anyone else. So you can also just take estrogen without any without any blockers UM and you still get results as I can, as I can confirm UM and for a subset of the population, just taking estrogen A sufficient dosages will also reduce your levels of progester of testosterone. Like it's your body knows what it's doing. Is it is? It is? It is pretty cool. How but you can just change things up in your body is like, oh, we're doing this now, Okay, got it? Great?

I have all these mechanisms. It's wonderful. It was that That wraps up part one of our little two part series of episodes talking about hormone replacement therapy. Tomorrow, I'll talk more about access to gender affirming treatment and touch on d I y h R T special thanks to Dr Victoria Luna Brennan Grieve for chatting with me about

gender affirming hormonal treatment. You'll get to hear more of my discussion with her tomorrow as well, including a brief tangent about the Scythian priestesses, which I was it was very, very very excited to talk about, but that doesn't for us today. You can follow this show at Happen to Hear pod and Cool Zone Media on Twitter and Instagram, and you can look at my late night gender tweets at Hungry about Tie on Twitter dot com. So see

you all on the other side. Welcome back to It Could Happen here, the podcast about things falling apart and sometimes how we can put things back together. I'm Garrison Davis, Aspiring Rebus, and this is part two of my little two part series talking about trans hormone replacement therapy. Last episode, we discussed what HRT is, it's various benefits as gender affirming treatment, and the informed consent model of receiving hormones.

Before we continue on with my discussion with Dr Grieve, I would like to talk a bit more about informed consent. So the informed consent option can be great for many many people as an attempts to bypass some of the red tape around receiving gender reforming healthcare. For its form of consent, all you gotta do is set u an appointment, signed the forms, maybe get some blood work done, and then pick up your hormones. Right. You don't need to live as trans for like two years or have letters

and therapists. It's it is. It is just up to you, so it is. It is really convenient if you can get that option. Some places even let you do it via telemedicine appointments, so you can just sit at home holding your little I keya shark and then get your hormones, which does sound very very nice. Planned Parenthood offers informed consent trans health care in many states, and in the show notes I will link a Google map of the

informed consent clinics from across the country. Depending on your insurance, you can get hormones for a little to no extra cost. This way it can be really convenient. The biggest asterisk for informed consent is that since it's based on you know, informed consent, it often is just for humans age eight teen and older, or sometimes teens a few years younger,

but only if their parents or guardians signed the forms. Obviously, this is not ideal for a sixteen year old with transphobic parents, who would really be helped by receiving like hormone blockers or something, right. Another potential drawback is that the clinics can sometimes have quite the wait list. I started off with the informed consent model because it was the easiest, but by the time I needed more blood work done and my prescription refilled, setting up more appointments

that planned parenthood became kind of a nightmare. I was continuously having appointments being canceled on me last minute and just getting pushed back months and months into the future. Eventually, I just resorted to getting hormones through my regular doctor instead of just continuing on within formed consent. Now, this

is obviously a regional issue, right. I don't know what it's like in Florida, for example, but the COVID andeen pandemic has stressed a lot of the medical infrastructure here in the States, and scheduling some appointments in these clinics can be still quite challenging. And as you know, a big theme of this show is that maybe we shouldn't assume the structures that hold up our society are concrete,

permanent fixtures. The term the crumbles that we used to describe the slow deterioration of the systems that we rely on, was initially coined in reference to our medical system by a friend of the show who works in the medical field. Listen to the first five episodes of The Daily Show talking about climate change for more on that. But a part of the criminal's idea is trying to learn how to become less reliant on the systems that we take for granted, right, trying to solve for the fallacy of

misplaced concreteness before it's too late. On that note, back to my discussion with Dr Victoria Luna Brendan Grieve, Assistant

professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy. For places that are getting, uh, you know, all of these anti trends bills criminalizing all of this stuff for miners, and then you know, eventually maybe even you know, my big fear is that, you know, first off, they're gonna criminalizing it for minors, and they're gonna say the brain's not fully developed, your twenty five, and they're gonna criminalize it until you're twenty five and they're just gonna criminalize

it for everyone after that. Um So for all of these places that are making access to healthcare is so much harder, What what is what is one to do? Like if these if there's these kids and then even adults who are like just find it so much harder to get stuff. Like I know there's the informed consent clinics, but there's there's like there's like a few in Texas, but I don't even know what they can even offer anymore, right,

Like it's really unclear. Yeah, well, I'll tell you some of that fear is already becoming reality here in Pennsylvania. Just two days ago HP. I think it was HBO passed by the House in don in Harrisburg that prevents it's a ban on trans people playing sports up through the college level, not just high school and grade school, it's all the way up through you know, secondary education. Uh. And even though our governor like has valve de Vito,

it like who even knows what's going to happen. But they're already taking taking aim at this higher level kind of thing. And there's a lot of pressdent for that. But my goodness, if there's a long and storied history of d I Y hormone therapy, and it's easier for the trans feminine individuals because testosterone is actually a scheduled to control I think it it might be a three I think it's scheduled three steroid. I'll write a little

thing about it, and I'll say in the episode. And it's such a funny reason too, because it's just you can use it to dope for endurance based like like cycling and running, because it will increase your red blood cell account that's a like. And so it's a controlled substance because people can use it to dope for for exit, for for sports. So it's that's a little bit harder

to get ahold of in like a meaningful way. But there are a lot of different allegedly, there are a lot of different place is online that you can acquire estrogen or estra dial relatively easily. Now I'm gonna actually pause the discussion with me and Dr Grieve to talk a little bit about d I Y h R T or for those anti acronym people out there, do it yourself hormone replacement therapy. Again, I'm not a medical doctor.

Unless you have a problem regarding parapsychology, I cannot offer you any expertise, but I can talk about d I Y h R T as it's existed for trans people for the past two decades. Because an unfortunate truth is, although it's gotten much easier to get gender affirm and care and hormones the past few years, even in states that aren't facing this wave of anti trans healthcare bills, the medical establishment hasn't been the most trans friendly place

in general. A recent Center for American Progress report found that nearly half of transgender people and sixty of transgender people of color reported having experienced to mistreatment at the hands of a medical provider, including refusal of care and verbal or physical abuse, just in the year before the survey, which took place in June, so this is this is

still very much an ongoing issue. One in two trans people reported that their access to gender affirming healthcare was curtailed significantly during the pandemic, and nearly one in two transgender adults have had insurance providers denying them coverage for gender affirming care, and very often doctors don't even know how to properly treat transgender patients, and often it's up to the patients to educate the doctors on trans health

care issues. The Center for American Progress survey from last year found that one in three trans people report having to teach their doctors about trans people to get them appropriate care, and reported having been asked innovasive or unnecessary questions about being trans which were not related to the

reasons for them visiting the doctor. The report cited a twenty eight team brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation that found that more than half of medical school curriculums lack information about unique health issues the LGBTQ community faces, and doesn't cover treatment beyond HIV prevention and care. So obviously, that leaves a lot to be desired for people wanting

to receive transgender health care. Between medical mistreatment, insurance complications, and doctor ignorance, many trans folks have taken it upon themselves to get the drug necessary for hormone replacement therapy because the alternative is often just having to face not being able to receive the health care that in many

cases makes it possible to live. The Center for American Progress survey found that twenty eight percent of trans folks report having postponed or not gotten necessary medical care for fear of discrimination. Taking your endochronology and hormone treatment into your own hands has a lengthy history and used to be much more common in the days before informed consent.

In a survey of trans people in Washington, d c. Circus two thousand, over half of the respondents so that they had used non prescribed hormones also known as d I y h RT. So information on how to go about d I yng your HRT spread via online forums and websites in the early two thousand's, and after some trial and error, the information is kind of consolidated into a few main information hubs, that being the d I y h r T Wiki, HRT dot Cafe, and d

I y HRT dot get hub dot io. Now, obviously, when you're getting into taking drugs from online sources, you need to be extremely careful and cautious about what foreign chemicals you're putting into your body, including and trying to only acquire drugs from trustworthy sources, doing drug testing if you can, and doing your own blood testing before and after to keep an eye on your testosterone and estrogen levels.

It is possible to order blood tests via online and send it through a lab that you have to ship your blood too, but often it's just easier to do it by going through the medical system. Now, one massive caveat with d y h r T is although it's more straightforward to acquire extra dial and antiandrogen's like spiro from online sources, getting too stosterone for masculinization therapy is much more tricky because in most places it's a restricted drug.

Here in the States it is a Schedule three substance, so technically buying it without a prescription would be a felony um. So for this reason, most d I y h r T stuff focuses on feminizing hormones since that is less legally complicated. Now, obviously you know steroids exist, so it is possible to get them, but I will not be giving out guides on how to do that here on the pod, but you know you can. You can look into it if you so desire for feminizing hormones.

The main way of going about it requires obtaining bioidentical extra dial. It can come in a few forms pills, which are not difficult to acquire, and assuming you get the dose right, it's pretty easy because it's just a process of dissolving the little pill tablets under your tongue, and that's kind of it, right. Dosage is its own thing, which you can figure out if you do reading, but the actual taking of it is pretty straightforward. Transdermal estrogen

or transdermal estra dial is kind of the new hot thing. Uh. Usually this has you taking weakly estra dial patches which you just switch out every week um or you can also do daily gels, which you just rub out your body, although unfortunately for dosing gels it can be more tricky if you go d I Y because it's hard to know what concentration just the jela is if you're just rubbing a sav on yourself. It's not already prepackaged, but

the patches are pretty good. And lastly, the classic method is injectable estradial at various concentrations in the form of some oil solution. This can usually be the cheapest option if you can figure out how to buy estra dial and needles. Syringes can be bought at any pharmacy just over the counter in most countries without a prescription. For

ferminizing hormones. Some people also take antiandrogen's a k A. Testosterone blockers like spiral lactone, which can be acquired online and are almost always taken orally in the form of a pill. Now, when getting these drugs online, there are two main categories of purchase. There's pharmaceutical grade and home brewed. Pharmaceutical grade refers to HRT produced by legitimate pharmaceutical companies

that are licensed and subject to regulation. They should be of the same quality as those found in your local pharmacy, and they can be ordered without a prescription from websites based in countries that allow for the legal exportation of certain medications. These will almost always carry less inherent risk versus receiving and taking home brewed hormones, which leads us to the second version that you can buy, which is

home brewed. This refers to HRT produced by individuals by sourcing raw extrodial or whatever other chemical you're taking in the form of a powder, and then compounding the medication themselves.

They do not synthesize or from scratch these hormones, but they do use the powdered versions of them, and they get them from sources from drug manufacturing companies to synthesize it into their own estradial or whatever other drug you're taking, you know, in the antiandrogen list, there's there's too many, too many to name. Now. While this this concept does sound scary and it can obviously go wrong if someone's

not synthesizing it correctly. Uh, there are a couple of well respected members of the community that have been known to produce high quality and safe HRT medications. But before anyone decides to take drugs that you get on the internet, please, please, please please do lots of reading beforehand on on dosage effects, side effects, and be very cautious with your drug sourcing, right you should know who you're buying it from. You don't want to just buy from whatever it's catchy website.

You should make sure that what you're doing is other people are backing up on this decision. Make sure that's there. You can cross reference information here, because there's a lot of information out there online and not all of it is good information, obviously, but really try to cross reference information on any drug sources, on hormone dosage, on any

possible drug interactions. If you're taking multiple drugs or you already have prescriptions, now I should I should note that supply chain issues that affect the medical system can even extend out to d y A h r T. There's

no true escape. There's no true other. One of the main pharmaceutical grade online sites to source HRT from is currently out of estradial pills, so there there is there is no true escape sometimes, but to learn more about d I Y HRT, you should check out d I O Y HRT dot get hub dot io or HRT dot cafe and the d I y trans dot wiki. And keep in mind not everything you read on those sources is necessarily good advice or up to date with

the current information on how these drugs work. Recently, I would reading a guide I found via one of those sites on how to homebrew my own estrogen by buying the powdered version of it that synthesizing it myself to level up my alchemy stat um, and I found the guy that I was reading contained quite a bit of outdated misinformation about progester around, So don't take everything you read as gospel, but those resources are at least a

good place to start anyway. Now back to the interview, the problem that you might run into with the I y ng it is you might not be able to get the bioequivalent estradial in some form, you might have to settle for conjugated estrogens or even something like an ethaniol estradiale, which is like hormonal birth control, which because they are synthetics, they actually have a much rougher time on your body. And that's where a lot of the

side effects quote unquote like come from. Like all of the worry about like blood clots and things from taking estrogens comes from conjugated estrogen sethanio estrodi. Yeah. The actual study, uh that a lot of that is citing goes all the way back and it was studying the rate of plotting in cis gender women taking hormonal and it's just like, okay, so this is the wrong population with the wrong medication. Yeah, that seems like not a great scientific study, Right, what

do we do? I mean, it might be great to talk about for the rate of yeah, right, or doesn't really right, it doesn't it doesn't really help so much. Um And what I think is also pretty wild too. I mentioned the progesteran thing earlier. A lot of that controversy comes from the fact that the original studies on whether or not it could be beneficial. We're done with medroxy progesterone, a synthetic progesterone that has a really nasty

side effect profile in a lot of different ways. And now that we have micronized progesterone where the evidence suggested not only is it safe, actually makes estrogen safer, and now they're like, no, we can't give that, that's just

that's just crazy talk. I will say, I have heard from people with more experience taking hormones than me that progesterone does make you way too hoarny um heads up for for side effects, TAG can confirm, but um, well, but but progesterone can have a lot of other really beneficial side effects. It can really increase the fat deposition to various places. It can help with your mood, it

can help with your sleep. It actually reduced the period symptoms that I was having because I because there's surprise, people on estrogen can also have periods. Uh And because your body again knows what it's doing, it's gonna modulate it through the E one, E two, E three pathway like throughout the month in a sixal fashion, and you

can get bloating and cramps. And I had really bad morning sickness like for for three days every twenty eight days for months until eventually I started micronized progesterone and those some them's alleviated, Which makes a kind of sense if you know that progesterone only birth control reduces periods. So like there's a there's there's a lot of precedent, a lot. It makes a lot of like sense that

it would work. God, I it's I need to tell you have have you ever heard of the Powers method of of Oh Garrison, I am so excited to introduce you to this person. Like doctor Powers is a fascinating grifter in the trans health care space because he is a He's a physician who like has has made it his duty to to to make sure that trans people, especially trans women. He actually doesn't like really have anything to say about trans men because the the therapy is

so like easy to to to do that. He has a wild postulation as to like better ways to give hormones, and he he has things where it's like, we don't need antiandrogens, you just give really high levels of injectable estrogen, which like I mean that will probably work because for some people, but yeah yeah, but but also estrogens like really safe and so like you can give it to an unbelievably high level. It's not really going to speed things up exactly like it will maybe a little bit,

but not that much. And any of the side effects you might experience, which could also come from the the excipients, the non active elements of it, like you can be allergic to those if you ever really high dose, if you're real problem. Um. But the big thing for him is he pushes that micronized progesterone is not only necessary and good, especially for breast size, you should also stick the oral capsules in your butt. Oh we're we are, we are officially boofing estrogen now yes, yes, okay, well

I'm I'm switching back to pills. This sounds very exciting. Well so well, oh my gosh. So the the idea is his line is, um that you know that the oral capsules you only get a tiny fraction of the total progesterone, and you get a lot more if you stick it up you get the whole dose if you stick it up your butt, which, like if you know literally anything about pharmacology is both right and entirely insane because anything that you take orally, there's a bioavailable like

level of it like so oral. Uh, micronized progesterone has a bioequivalence of I think like two or three percent, which is why when you take like a hundred milligram capsule, you get like a certain blood level. If you take

it rectally, it's like a twelve. It's still not the whole thing, which is why the the micronized progesterone rectal suppositories or twenty five milligrams to give you the same exposure, so it's four times the systemic absorption, which means that if you are boofing a micronized progesterone capsule, you getting three to four times the dose that you should be getting. And uh, the I pulled because I get into fights

with people all the time about this. I pulled the original FDA filing for micro and I progesterone, and they suggested that three hundred milligrams is basically getting to what like a cis gender person's maximum progesterone levels would be, meaning that if you're boofing one or two, as some of his regimens suggests, like, you might be essentially overdosing on progesterone for no reason, like there's no real reason

to do that and it is just crazy. When when I started this call today, I did I did not think we would get to boofing progesterone. It is a weird, like a weirdly large part of my Twitter interactions have been fighting people to stop boofing progesterone. UM, so I needed to say unfortunately, just exposed this idea. Two millions of more people know well, no, I'm saying, don't do it well and so but you know, you know, you know that's not how that works. I do know that's

not how that works. But I mean, I I tell you, if if your your friend Robert Evans were here, I could pitch a hole behind the bastards on this Dr powers guy um sounds, he sounds fascinating. He has a subreddit, like all good physicians do. I love the doctor has a subreddit and my my favorite post other than recently, he's been pushing this like miracle hair tonic that he made, which is like come on, buddy, like like now it's just obvious. He calls it to yep, yep, the verbon.

He might call it. He might even call it an elixir, which is very funny, but from a magical hand, tonic exactly. It's so funny because one of the components of it, I think is finasteride. Like I I looked at the and I'm like, yes, that is something for bald for male pattern baldness. It will probably work. Congratulations, you just remade rogaine. Uh. But the single post that I feel

like perfectly encapsulates this guy's mentality. Um is, there's this big post that went around through like cis gender like kind of like centrist spaces that every trans person I saw was just like, excuse me, what the fuck? Where this guy was secretly micro dosing injectable estrogen that he prescribed himself, which sounds kind of illegal. Not gonna lie. Uh, and messed up the dose by a thousand percent by a thought, by a times thousand Yeah yeah yeah. And

um like, I can give you the link. I I can. I know exactly where it is. I can give you the link if you wanted to read this. It is buck Wild. But the thing is, he goes on to describe this like acute dysphoric episode that he had from one high dose of subcutaneous estrogen, a thing that is

not physiologically possible and completely insane. That and he but he was like, but I understand the pain the trans women go through because I fucked up a dose where I was secretly taking estrogen to make my face look younger. So I understand your pain and have so much empathy for for the trans women's that I am trying to save.

And it is so frustrating to me how many people give him like credence, give him credit um because he he has He has claims like apply progesterone cream to the the the smaller breast to even them out, and it's like, okay, my dude, have you ever met like people with breasts one is larger than the other. That's how breasts work. It's like, well, what's your evidence for that? Well, I had two people who did it and they said it worked. Okay, cool. Do you have those those reports? No? No, no,

they got burned up in a house fire. It's very sad, and I can't give you that act. Yes. So, so he worked in a clinic that a friend of mine actually moved to after they got rid of him because he made all these wildly and total claims and whenever anybody challenged, and then his house burned out, which is actually very sad because his cats died in it, and he didn't deserve his cats because cats are perfect creatures and this man is insane and cats never do anything wrong.

Cats are perfect, magical beings. I love yours so much as they keep crossing in front of the screen. They're perfect. Um. But so whenever anybody challenges him on literally any of his claims, he goes, well, I had all of that data, but it burned up in my house, and then he like makes it a sob story about like how like like horrible this was, which like I'm sure it was really bad, Like I'm sure it was like really really bad.

But even his um like power point presentations that he has that he like goes through to like really like talk about the powers method and make it sound like really really good, has a like fire safety section specifically so he can garner this like sympathy so people will not question his claims that have no evidence behind them. And so it's just such a fantastic examinated to me. I like, it's just so weird seeing like a space

that has historically been denigrated in the evidence. You know, you had that whole episode on like the Hirshfeld Institute, and you know, we see all this like anti anti trans uh like propaganda and legislation going on right now that there's a lot of like empty space in the medical record and in the evidence record for what to

do in these situations. There's a lot of confusion from the guidelines in these other societies, like I was talking about, and in steps this guy who sees an opportunity to be like, uh like popular, like powerful individual in this space to give people hope that he can cash in on uh And since the medications and since the hormone therapy is so safe, he doesn't actually hurt that many people.

And it's it is so wild seeing this juxtaposition of individuals being like, well, this is unsafe experimental nonsense, and seeing this guy flagrantly overdosing people on hormones with no ill effects because they're that safe. Uh. That is that is pretty funny. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's funny in

that like laughing until you're crying kind of way. What is the way that people can try to combat all the medical disinformation around HRT specifically because we do this specifically, let you see this a lot and to save the children rhetoric, we see this a lot for just anti TRN stuff in general of and like, yeah, just in terms of someone who has to deal with this stuff on a professional level, like when when we're just faced with all of this just complatantly, just like wrong stuff

being treated as absolute fact when your experience, what's kind of the best ways to go about that in people? Oh my goodness, UM, it kind of depends on the audience. When I'm talking to other other healthcare practitioners, I, UM, I can. I I have historically because I do a lot of like teaching and advocacy in this area to other health care practitioners and UM holding sessions like volunteering for to hold sessions of like to educate on this and say like these are the kind of regimens that

are commonly used in clinics. This is why these are things to look out for and to stress the importance of believing the patient and um, the importance of you don't want to gate key because if if which they're not that dangerous, but if there is to be a problem, you would rather have that patient want to work with

you to solve it. Is like such a big part of it, Like even just understanding that from that level that you're not like delivering this kind of like life saving medication to them as this like Lord on High. It's this idea that like, no, you should be working with this person and if you're not familiar with it, you need to do your fucking research. Uh. And I will give you the resources for that. I will. I

will walk you through those resources. And that's that's awfully convincing for the majority of healthcare individuals at any level, because I've done I've done talks for students and nursing programs and physical therapy programs all the way up to like actively practicing physicians, nurses and pharmacists, and it's basically

the same. You just you make the argument, you show the evidence, You give them the evidence, and you walk them through uh like kind of and and then and then have a robust question and answer period where they will ask you those questions and you can explain why

they are wrong. Having that kind of dedicated space can be really beneficial, but not scalable in a way that's necessarily helpful, Like I've made a positive impact on my city, but that doesn't really necessarily help if you yourself are not a health care practitioner and want to like explain this kind of stuff. And I mentioned earlier that on Twitter, I've spent a lot of time like arguing that people shouldn't be boofing their progesterone. But I've had to stop

because it's exhausting every single person like coming back. It's like the same conversations over and over again, and there's no good way to like have a central location that just has all that information that anybody is gonna believe

because of the way the internetworks. Um So, I guess my answer is I'm not sure, Like there's so much misinformation out there, and so much of it is so wrong and not in alignment with reality that looking at it at all, it falls to pieces and and the idea of the majority of people to I guess I could say, if a person is coming to you and asking legitimate questions and they don't really know, like they're just like parroting stuff that they heard, they they're much

easier to convince because you can show like, oh, like we have a long history of doing this, like look at you know. I tell my students about how like nineteen fifty two was the first like recognized hormonal mediated transition in the United states like she was like a movie star. Um and and you know, I talked about a lot of the history to be like this isn't new, this is something like we have been here forever. Um my my favorite story. Do you know about the story

about the Scythian priestesses? Yes, I actually do, but I would love for you to explain it. But oh my god, I found out about that a few months ago and I was like, oh my god, it makes me so happy. So so to to explain very briefly, I think it's it's an old um. I think it was like Herodotus. It's like an old like Crestian like author that we have information, author, philosopher, whatever, historian. But they talk about in one of the texts the Scythian priestesses who essentially

distill the poison of woman. They call it in one of the text which I think is just such a great term from um uh, pregnant mayor urine, which interestingly enough, we actually still make today conjugated estrogens. The brand name is Premarin because it comes from pregnant mayor urine, Like are you serious? Yeahah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's literally a thing that we still do today. That is hilarious. It's beautiful, it's so good. Um. And so they were priestesses.

They were like, you know, people would come to them to seek out their wisdom and they're like the spiritual thing. And it was a it was like a bunch of trans women who like got high, told stories and probably sucked each other. And that sounds like a policule to me. But like the silly the Sithians were like a nomadic group of people who would travel all around kind of

what is now the Middle East. Um. And yeah, it's I mean, I do love the idea of trans people having like specific like more esoteric insight almost naturally because they've had to deal with ideas of ontology and ideas as ontology is just like the nature of being um and so having to people with that, having to deal with like the nature of reality from a much a younger age because their whole perception of reality and self is obviously so different because of their experience of being

what is now called trans um. So it makes a lot of sense that a lot of these people would have been like basically different forms of Shabin's mediums. We'll just have like esoteric insite because they've been thinking about these types of like reality altering topics for so much longer because it's so much more personally affecting to them. Um. But yes, what I specifically read about the cythy and priestesses and like, oh my, they're just like doing the thing,

just doing the thing. It turns out we've been doing this forever. My favorite account is one of the reasons they commanded respect of the like masculine leaders that would come to get information was because they were all terrified that they would inflict the poison of women, which of them it does spread by the way it is, it's

highly contagious, contagious. But it's just the idea that like there was like some of the respect was from like this fear of being force femed is hilarious, from like this early BC, the primordial fear of the primordial fear. I was gonna say, Garrison, you mentioning like ontology. My original degree was in psychology and philosophy, So like, let's go, baby, we can go deep on some of this stuff. Sure, I'm sure, I'm sure we couldn't talk to the mysticism

and magic and gender for a long long time. Oh my god, that would be a whole another podcast are big areas of interest. But I but I, but I super agree with you because I've been thinking about this and I've ended up having conversations with a lot of my peers in pharmacy and in the university. Because people might not recognize this, but pharmacy is actually one of

the more conservative spaces in healthcare. Uh. Like my my school had a dress code for the students until two years ago when I fought hard enough to get it removed. Like it was wild. Um, Like the code of Conduct committee tried to get me, tried to prevent me from getting my ears pierced. Like, yeah, it's a wild space for me to exist in. Um, it's extremely conservative, extremely traditional, like the some Like yeah, I got stories that I'd

love to tell if you wanted to hear them. But the thing that I think is really interesting is when you look at me in comparison to my my colleagues who are predominantly like Christian, predominantly like traditionalist, predominantly capitalist, and I roll in as this like anti capitalist, like anarchists, trans woman, who's Polly, who's pan sexual, who's a pagan? All the p's and it's like, well, once I question gender, I started realizing all of culture and society is bullshit,

and now I can tell you the truth. Come to me for the truth of reality. No, it even makes sense in terms of like you know, why why did two trans women make the matrix? You're like, yeah, no, it's like it's it is. It is the same thing as your Your entire nature and basis of reality was severely questioned. So so you're trying to trying to understand

these feelings. And for you know, mid modern days we have like stuff like simulation theory, we have the matrix, um, and then you know, but before before then, you know, it would have been taken out in like spiritualism and religion and you know, the different levels of reality on like the whole like mystic side of things as opposed to like the more sci fi side of things. Um. But yeah, like it's it's all the same stuff. Like you're you're, you're, you're playing with the same things. Um, yeah,

it is. It is just a funny a funny trend that once you once you notice it, you'll you'll start seeing it in in like different places. Yeah, so we are still mystics who understand the true reality of the world and will force them you if you don't give us respect. I just don't see what the problem. I believe that That was my takeaway from Matrix Resurrections. Oh yeah, well, of is there is there anything else you would want to you would want to add? Oh my goodness, Um,

I don't know fight for trans people. One of the things that I end up always having to talk to my students about in colleagues and things is what ally means, because I've literally gotten into arguments with people who are like, oh, yeah, it's l g B t Q I A because A stands for ally, and I'm like, oh, I will knife you, like like, it doesn't stand for ally, it stands for a sexual or romantic of all of all of the

other a's yes. But it's the it's this thing where people think being an ally is just being like like okay with a person existing the kind of like, well if it makes you happy, which is like okay, motherfucker, that's not like. That is so belittling of the experience. Um, that's not ally. Ship. To be an ally, you have to leverage your privilege by not being a member of that community to protect people in that community. You can

be tolerant, but not an ally. And that's sort of where the old saying comes from that if that's what being an ally is to you, we don't need allies, we need accomplices. And um. With the current legislative push against trans people, I mean, like literally what I do is like a felony in three states now, are almost a felony in three states, and it's going to be a growing number of states. Yeah, and and and it's

just so unbelievably depressing. And there aren't enough. I mean, there's a lot of trans and non binary and and every kind of expression you could want people in this country, way more than than a lot of surveys suspected. Um, but we're not enough to necessarily fight this in a way that isn't going to end up with increasing violence.

I mean, the the FBI statistics of random violence against into like hate crime specifically has been rising against LGBT people, especially trans people, in the last couple of years, and I'm sure it's only going to get more in the next few years. Still with all of the with the wave of stuff happening in the past few months. Yeah, So if you're if you're not. If you're assist person and you want to be an ally, you gotta fight

for us. And if you're a trans person, if you don't have other reasons why you can't maybe arm yourself in some way at this point, if you if you feel mentally capable, it's not a bad idea to learn how to do things. It's not a not a bad idea to get stop the bleed training, not a bad idea to get you know, emergency first aid training, right all of all of all of the things. Because things are things are happening and they're going to keep happening.

One might say it could happen here. Wow, I know, we really we really put this together, just pulled it back, just just really encapsulated it. So yeah, I think that does it for us today. Um, do do you have do have any of plugables that you would like to uh plug? Yeah? Sure, So if you wanted to talk to me more, you can. I'm on Twitter for now, assuming that elon must doesn't make it entirely unlivable at Vixen, which but the w S two vs. I don't post a hole up, but you can you can find me there.

You can also just straight up email me if you had questions. My like work email for that purpose is just Victoria dot grieve at pit dot e d U I'd have I'd be happy to answer any questions that people have. UH. And it's a robust university firewall, so if I get hey that, that's fine, it won't get through. UM. The and then outside of like my classes and stuff. The only other thing I wanted to plug because you

brought it up. I am a frequent guest on a podcast that a friend of mine hosts called School of Movies, and we actually did Matrix two, three and four UM and I was on those episodes and talked a lot about the trans narrative there in UH. We also did an episode on Priscilla, Queen of the because that's great. I was always lucky enough to watch for Siliquin of the Desert a few a few months ago UM with some queer friends of mine with Hugo Weaving, and in

both of those he is he is. It is pretty It is pretty fun watching Hugo Weaving go from agents Smith to his character and Prisili Queen of the Desert, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful metamorphosis. It is it is very good, But yeah, thank you so much for coming on to talk anytime. Thank you for listening to my

little two parter on hormone replacement therapy. If you want to start reading more on the d I Y and mutual aid side of things, check out d I Y HRT dot, get hub dot, io HRT dot Cafe and d I Y trans dot Luckie as a jumping off point. But obviously you don't take everything to read on the

internet as gospel. I do think it's worth learning how to make your own drugs possibly and learning how to source your own estrogen from play says that are not just a doctor, because who knows what other states will start criminalizing getting drugs for doctor right, it's it is. There seems to be a trend of making HRT illegal via the medical system, So if this is something definitely to look into, because it seems more and more people

will face restrictions in this vein. So yeah, that's kind of a big reason for why I wanted to talk about this today on the pod. Big Extra special thanks to Dr Victoria Luna Brennan Grieve for coming on to talk with me about gender affirming hormonal treatment. You can check her out or ask her questions on her Twitter, which can be found at vixen which with a two vs for the w in which or you can email her queries at Victoria dot grieve at pit dot e

d U and that doesn't for us today, everybody. You can follow the show at Happened Here pod and cools one Media on Twitter and Instagram, and you can look at my late night gender style tweets at Hungry bow Tie. See you on the other side. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here is

a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.