Hello and welcome to Big Gay Energy. I'm Caitlin. And I'm Fiora. Come along with us while we dive into the fun and nuances of queer media. Representation matters, and we're. Here to talk about it. Cheers queers. Today on the Big Gay Agenda, we're thrilled to be part of the 3rd edition of podcasts on where over 1000 podcasts are coming together to highlight incredible organizations and making a difference.
We're joined by Alex Petrovnia from the Transformations Project, a trans LED non profit dedicated to tracking and fighting anti trans legislation across the US. Welcome to the podcast, Alex. Hey, I'm so glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, thank you. It is unfortunately timely with tracking legislation in general, especially anti trans legislation. And we thank you for your service and your organization.
Thank you. Yeah, it's kind of a strange time, honestly, because Transformations project is an org I Co founded with my best friend back in 2021. And we founded it because we saw this coming in horrifying
detail. And really she and I kind of sat down and I'm I'm trained as a researcher scientifically and we were both relatively recently out trans people and I was looking for info on anti trans legislation that was like reputable, reliable and frankly could inform the public instead of people who already knew policy. And I couldn't find it period. In 2021, actually there was only one organization at all that was tracking anti trans as its own
category. And that was freedom for all Americans. And for me, I kind of took a step back and looked at myself and said, hey, it like I literally, you know, have the advantage of being academically trained as a researcher. If I can't with my academic trained research skills finds this information. And people who don't have that advantage, who are the ones going to be affected by the legislation first and most severely definitely don't have the access.
So I decided to do something about it. And really it's we, we kind of joke within TFP that we say we do the work until we don't need to. And by which we mean, you know, we're functionally trying to make ourselves irrelevant. That is, that is the mission. Like the mission is that we close the org, everybody's safe, there's no more anti trans legislation, and we all go home and party, you know, But unfortunately that does not
appear to be on the horizon. In which case, you know, we're quite fortunate to have been working on this for almost four years now. And we've earned a lot of expertise and a lot of Community Trust and a lot of network connections that we really feel will be really valuable to address the crisis that is been building for years now and now has reached, I guess, the new stage of exponential growth. Well, we thank you for your dedication. 4 years is not
nothing. That's a long time and we appreciate you guys doing this and keeping people informed here on this podcast. We we say over and over again that representation matters. We focus primarily on representation in media and how that's impactful. So how have you with the with the rise in anti trans legislation that's like you said, is exponentially increasing at this point? How do you think that impacts the way trans people are talked about in media and pop culture?
Yeah. So that is actually kind of my specialty. I am the Director of Communications for the Transformations Project, But more deep to my heart is what I refer to as narrative or rhetorical politic. And when I talk about narrative politic, I talk about basically the the stories we're telling each other, about each other. Because if you hear the same story about a group of people or about a specific person over and over and over, especially if you hear from different places,
that's very persuasive. And especially if that story fulfills a confirmation bias that you already have due to living in this society, such as being anti trans. It's very powerful to persuade people. And I think a lot more people now are aware of what in narrative policy we termed the Overton window. The Overton window is basically a concept of how acceptable any concept is to the broader public and society.
And So what we saw, you know, 10 years ago in 2015 is when marriage equality was passed by the Supreme Court, is we saw this huge explosion in acceptance for queerness. And we saw this huge really progressivism in culture and society and in media. It was just reflected. And we're really, really seeing that pull back and actually
regress significantly. And one of the things that I really harp on in my work is that we tell ourselves the story of this, you know, March of progress towards progressive futures where more people are included. But that's not at all how it goes. Every bit of progress that we have that our ancestors fought for and urge for us has to be defended at all times or we lose it. And that's what we're seeing
right now. And so really, really what I focus in on in my work, and particularly in my, I write significantly outside of transformations project as an individual. And really one of my focuses is how can we read what's going on in media? How can we read what's going on in politics to read the Overton Window and where it is and read House because that policy is one thing for sure. Policy impacts a lot for sure. Policy is a very powerful tool, but it is perfectly the only
tool. And when you look at narrative politic, what you're really looking at is the day-to-day interactions with people. So the Overton window really describes people's safety on the ground in their lives day-to-day. You know, we people can legislators can sign any piece of paper they want.
It's a piece of paper until someone goes out into the world and enforces it, and particularly that enforcement is so much easier when you've already manufactured consent from the public to be eliminationist and a way to manufacture that consent. The most effective way that we have seen weaponized by the anti trans fascist regime we are now under to great success to the point that they have now taken power is this weaponization of narrative.
I see so many people on the left of center discussing that our enemies are, you know, silly or stupid or making foolish moves. And that has always really bothered me because I really don't think they're stupid. I just think they're playing a different game than we are. And the game they're playing is narrative politic. The game they're playing is they get to go up on stage and clown around, but we have to read between the lines of what they're saying because their
supporters are. So that is kind of, I guess, the simplest explanation I can give for how I'm viewing all of this. But why? You know, the stories we tell each other really do inform our reality and really do inform how we think about each other and how we think about the world and how we think about our place in the world.
And when it comes to something as fundamental as gender and gender roles and how society organizes itself around gender, that is just so core and fundamental that once you capture the narrative around that, as again, this administration has, you can weaponize that so effectively. And that's exactly what we've seen over the last five years. So what impact does visibility, whether it is positive or unfortunately negative, have on the on trans communities when
the media and politics collide? Yeah, that's an excellent question. Thank you, Caitlin. Yeah. So the first thing I will say is that media and politics are one and the same, and anybody who tells you different is selling something. And, yeah, media is politic at all points because that's the message, right? And it's not done by the same people. I'm not, you know, proposing some grand conspiracy where, like, Republican lawmakers are writing TV scripts. But I am saying that all of this
informs the narrative. All of this informs the narrative that we live in. And that defines what people think is possible. And if people think gender diversity is not possible, they will punish it. And that's what we're seeing here because they think gender
diversity isn't real. And this is really, really interesting from a historical perspective as well, because that is fundamentally the exact same argument that they made against lesbian and gay people in the 80s and 90s and the odds, because the argument literally was queer people don't exist. They're just people who are deviants and making the choice
to be this way. And actually, the original concept of coming out was to force people in your life to recommend the fact that you're a human person and also queer. And so we're kind of really seeing an A resurgence of the exact same narrative we've seen before weaponized against queer communities, except now weaponized against trans communities in particular. And yeah, you got to pay attention. You got to pay attention to the stories that are being told about you.
And you know, everybody, there's a lot of discussion around visibility and representation. And I really think some folks miss that representation is also narrative work. And by that, I mean, if you are going to uplift yourself to be visible into the public eye, you need to be mindful of what you are representing. And that doesn't mean that you need to lie. I am very much in the point and in the favor of, you know, we're here, we're queer. Fuck you. Because capitulation is death,
as always. But I will say that there are a lot of people in all spaces in society who get a taste of power and want more. And, you know, there's no exception to marginalized communities for that.
And when you see a community dominated by the same few voices over and over and over and over and over, and they're taking up all the oxygen in the room, that's a problem, regardless of who they are, regardless of if they hopefully they belong to the community they claim to represent, but not always. And that's a huge, big problem because we are denying people the opportunity to see us as multiplicative. We are denying the opportunity for people to see us as more
than just that figurehead. And, you know, you see, I guess a really good example in the trans community is Caitlyn Jenner. She is the de facto trans person for a lot of the public. And that's a huge problem because, one, Caitlyn Jenner is a horrible human being. Two, she, like, she literally opposes gay marriage, but she's gay married. So make that make sense to me. Yeah. And unfortunately, we are giving her every microphone as a society for trans people.
And she is deeply, unfortunately, choosing to take every microphone for herself and for her own wealth and power. And we just need to be notating these things and we need to be critical of them. And I keep seeing these calls right now from community members who I, I absolutely believe, mean well to say we need to stand behind every trans person right now, regardless of who they are, what they do.
And I absolutely disagree because a trans fascist is a fascist, you know, and just because we share an identity doesn't mean we share politic. And that doesn't mean we're in community. Personal politics are more important than your identity. And anybody who doesn't realize that yet is selling something. Anyway, all of this to say that we have to pay attention to media and we also have to pay attention to the stories that people are being told about us.
And you know, in the trans space, again, we consistently see the same kind of people representing the trans community. And those are overwhelmingly white binary, white binary, medically transitioned transforms almost always. And that is not the majority of the community. And I want to be really clear here that I am not the majority of the community either. And I say that every time I put myself as visibility because I am one of the extremely fortunate of my community.
I, you know, have health insurance. I have medically transitioned to a great extent that many, many people are denied systematically. I am not in poverty. I'm closer than I'd like, but I'm not in poverty. And you know, all of these are huge advantages when you consider that trans populations have poverty rates twice that of the CIS average in the US.
And that stands to get a lot worse, frankly, because we are now seeing every non discrimination, every non discrimination policy that, to be fair, was not enforced, being restricted. And that matters not from a policy perspective, but from a narrative perspective, because that is explicit permission to all the shitty landlords and all the shitty bosses and all the shitty cops out there that were free game and nobody's going to stop them.
That's that's great that you point that out because representation, yeah, people are just thinking about like the stories in the shows that they're watching and that that is really good to point out that the people who you're seeing the face of these identities also are skewing the way we think as well. But. And I see that so much in the trance space with there's this huge expectation, frankly, that every trans person has access to medical transition. And that's bonkers because
that's absolutely untrue. And I think that really actually feeds this, this mythology that, you know, anti trans radicals are pushing where, you know, they're arguing, oh, you can walk into any Planned Parenthood and trans your gender or, you know, your kid goes to school and comes home a different gender. Like, no, people are dying every freaking day because they can't get healthcare.
Like. And, and when we only portray and only see trans people who are perceived as this and are perceived as their actual gender, that feeds that narrative, whether they like it or not. And that's nothing against them as people. That is to say that we need to represent various kinds of people within any community because there is no such thing as community. Like the homogeneity of the
trans community does not exist. We are so diverse, we are so different, each of us. There are so many identities within us and just we need to show off some of that beauty because that really is the point. I feel like the more we try to say, and again, this comes back to historical precedent, you know, there was in queer rights movements, you know, there was a big separation between like the the Mashians and like the Gay Liberation Front.
And that was because, you know, there were a lot of there were a lot of white passing gay and lesbian people who wanted to pull up the ladder after them and wanted to say, hey, well, you know, I can be tolerated in society. Therefore we're all good. And that's also something you see in the national scene politically after 2015, you know, a lot of a lot of folks got marriage equality and a lot of white wealthy folks got marriage equality and decided,
OK, we're good now. And they left everybody else behind. And we need to call them out on that. And also we need to show that, hey, that's not actually the majority of the community. You know, what's what's very relevant right now with all the Stonewall Monument news that came out is everybody loves to frankly fetishize the legacy of Marsha P Johnson. But nobody knows what she stood for.
And one of the things that she really stood for, like her most famous quote, was no pride for some of us without liberation for all of us. And that's what she was talking about. You know, she was looking us as white queers in the face and saying, you can't leave us behind. This is on you. And so many people have chosen to do that so. I never understood how people in the LGBTQ plus community could not stand for everybody. It it just blows my mind and how wrong it is. Oh, for sure.
And especially because it's so tenuous. Like, I really feel like there are so many people, queer folks our age, and especially white queer folks and wealthy queer folks our age who feel way too secure, frankly. Like, I grew up in rural Pennsylvania. I graduated high school in 2015. I am not that old when I was in high school in 2014 a good friend of mine almost got beat to death because the wrong people found out he was gay and like that is an example to say 1.
Homophobia isn't solved. It really depends who you are and where you are. And two, gays and lesbians aren't the whole community And you know, no matter how many times they try to pretend it's not, the team is and always has been load bearing. And like even we can even go back to Stonewall again. Stonewall was a police busting the the bar doors down to search for crossdressers.
That's trans people. They were here, they were at Stonewall to strip search people to make sure they weren't crossdressing and that, you know, people love to talk about drag Queens, but you know, there was there was drag Queens, absolutely. But also there were trans women, There were non binary people, there were trans masks, there were butches, there were drag kings. You know, queerness is challenging gender norms at a
fundamental level. And the more we pretend that it's not, the more we erode our own ability to stand together. That is very well said. Thank you for all of that. Switching gears a little bit, when setting up this interview, we asked you about how relating to queer media that we have and you brought up the movie Nimona, and that was nearly lost due to corporate decisions. So and it was eventually
released. What does the success about this movie say about the state of queer storytelling today? That's such a good question. Excellent. Yeah. That's, that's such an interesting question because it really does say a lot. I really think there's like a a hunger in a lot of people for more radical and more honest storytelling. You know, we live in this media ecosystem where, you know, like 3 corporations produce all the media and that's pretty bleak.
And that really means that so many people are left out. And you know, you could even look at like the Moana scandal that just happened, like that was stolen. We know that. And that is because the exacts that these huge legacy corporations are not really interested in telling stories. They're interested in making money. And when your only motive is a profit motive, you're not going to really make art.
And that is reflected in so many ways in our society right now like this, this push for monetary efficiency over like humanity itself. And I guess the biggest example for me is like, AI is like, you know, AI art, which is like literally not, can't be art because it's not, it's not communicating anything. You know, it doesn't have subtext. It doesn't have this narrative
because it cannot. It is literally just regurgitating a compilation of all the narratives that's been fed without criticism and without introspection because
it's incapable of that. And I feel like so much of the media that we are given on a daily basis right now, whether it be like the shortness and quickness and instant gratification of like short video content being so popular or even like the series that, you know, a big network will pitch like 5 first seasons and film them all and they're all garbage and renew one of them. You know, it's, it's just trying
to cash out. And we are losing so much art in that because the artists, you know, the people who are trying to act their truth or write the script or write the score or animate it, any of these things are left out of all these decisions. And that's really, really what I'm seeing here. And it also, you know, needs to be said that Numona is fundamentally a story about resisting fascism. And that was produced and is on Netflix now. And that's something.
Yeah. I I'm re watching Android right now, which is so good if you haven't watched it, so good. But also really though a breathtaking critique. Yes. Also also we have to keep in mind that Android was literally produced by the Walt Disney Corporation. Yeah.
And I shortly after I watched Android the first time I read this essay, and I apologize that I don't remember where I read it, so I cannot find it for you, but basically that the the argument of this essay was, listen, Andrew is amazing, but we should be scared shitless that Disney felt comfortable producing that. And that's kind of where I'm at is like to produce radical narratives. These corporations are making the calculated decision that we're not going to do shit about it.
They are making the calculated decision that they can feed us radical narratives of hope and joy and that it will stop there. And that we will, you know, we will read these stories, we will hear these narratives and we'll go, wow, I'm so inspired.
And then go back to our day jobs and keep paying our taxes and, you know, lining up. And that's on us at some level, you know, like the propaganda is absolutely encapsulating, especially at this point, like in the last month, the media ecosystem, the level it has broken down. And just like the sheer impermeability of the propaganda bubble from within the US right now is devastating. And that's something I'm trying to navigate right now as an
organizer. But what we do need to keep in mind is that when we, when we access these radical narratives that, you know, the artists, the storytellers are trying to reach us with, we need to read between the lines of what their corporate entities have forced them to censor. Because frankly, the artists are smarter at subtext and the corporate walks and they'll find ways to get their message through because that's what artists do.
Artists throughout all of history have spent most of their time and energy building subtext to subvert systems of censorship. And really one of the things that I am emphasizing to everyone who will listen and most people who won't is that literally narrative and rhetorical skills will be life saving in this environment. And that's something that we are so atrophied on as a society.
I wrote this essay recently and I literally, it's basically like the simplest explanation I can give of what narrative politic is and why the hell it matters to you. And I literally titled it Here's what you should have learned in English class, because everybody's like bitching about the curtains being blue. And they're like, OK, the curtains are blue. OK, I've actually read that story. The curtains are blue because James Joyce was critiquing the Catholic Church.
Y'all like, but he couldn't come out and say, hey, the Catholic Church owns us and we should do something about it or he would be arrested. And the same is true now. But with corporate entities, you know, where where past writers and past storytellers spoke in subtext to avoid, to avoid monarchist totalitarian governments. One, we're heading back in totalitarianism, so jot that
down. And two, you know, the corporate entities that frankly own a lot of our lives and a ton of our media, which should scare the hell out of you if it doesn't, because they are controlling the stories we tell each other and the way we conceive of our world and what we think is possible. You know, they are producing these radical stories because they're arrogant, frankly, and because they think they know better than the storytellers who will get their message through
anyway. And you know, there's so many examples, even Kendrick Lamar's halftime show that just happened. I have been seeing so many white people bitching and moaning on the Internet about it. First of all, it wasn't for you, so sit down. Second of all, he's not going to flip off Trump because he'd be
arrested. And three Black Americans who are, you know, descended from literally generations upon generations of subjugated and enslaved people are masters of subtext because that is the only communication method that has been available to them. And we need to take notes of this. We need to learn from the communities who have been practicing this art of subtext for untold generations because frankly, the average white American doesn't know what that is or what community really is.
And that's something I've only learned in adulthood, coming into queer communities and learning. Oh, community means accountability. Oh, community doesn't mean kumbaya and unity. Community means kicking out abusers. Community means I protect people. So. Well, I'm glad you. Went off on a on the on radical narratives because that is important and so circling back to Nimona as our. Example. You will have to keep you on topic, I apologize. No, no, no, no.
That was all relevant. But like to go back to what you were saying. So in that movie specifically, like the themes like you said, are about challenging authority, questioning labels, refusing to conform. It literally like the. Propaganda is an enormous theme in that movie. Yeah, propaganda and how to recognize it. And then when you do, once you recognize it. So all of that relevant to the movie, how do those themes resonate with the fight for trans rights that we're experiencing?
Now, Oh my gosh, how do they not I mean harking back to what I was saying that hey popper, the way we harking back to what I was saying with. Overall, I don't think most people realize how limited they are by their own worldview. If we don't think something is possible, we won't try it. And that is simply the easiest way to control people, to not do something radical. And you know, this is a lot of
this is so relevant right now. You know, a lot of people are waking up recently and their first instincts, because of their worldview and because of the narrative story they've been fed is going, oh, we should call our legislators. And they don't realize that. Like, they should have been calling their legislators five years ago and now we're kind of a little past that. But not that you shouldn't, to be clear, you should call your legislators. They work for you. You pay them.
You should harass the hell out of them, but also you should try some other things in the meantime. And, you know, pneumonia is really a story that Alistair has. The main character is such an excellent narrative choice because Balusters is all of us. You know, Alistair is all of us when we are recently radicalized. He's a very human character. He's a very, you know, sympathetically flawed character. He is holding on to the shreds
of what he thought was true. You know, at the very opening of the movie, his life is destroyed. Everything he believes in is shattered before his eyes. And that's where so many people are right now. And I really encourage so many people to use Baluster as as a narrative example that you can learn from because characters are people. You know, we're all just stories we tell each other. And Alistair is such a kind and loving explanation of where we all stumble in this, and I am
absolutely including myself. To be extremely clear, the only reason I am here on this podcast talking to you on that is because I was fortunate enough to meet people who taught me the truth five years ago. And they were people who were taught the truth by others years before that. And you know, we all arrive at the time we arrive. It's what we do when we get there. And so I've spent the last five years trying to prepare for now. And now I'm trying to teach people what I've learned.
And it's really about just passing on the message over and over and over that kindness costs everything. This this concept that kindness costs nothing is such a bullshit narrative. We tell each other niceness costs nothing. Kindness costs everything and it's worth it and you still should choose it. And and balusters really kind of a narrative of that. You know, he's very polite. He's very kind of almost meek because he has to be, because he is the outsider already.
You know, he's been marginalized for his whole life for being commoner, and yet he's worked his way into these halls of power. And yet none of it mattered. None of it mattered because the whole time he was trying to fix the system from the inside, the system was using him. And that is really important for people to hear right now. And it's really important for people to hear, you know, it's OK to fuck up. You're going to fuck up.
We have this this enormously carceral society and and you know, that stands to like literally the fact that the US uses imprisoned people as slave labor constantly and has forever. And, and, you know, the cops are criminalizing everything, including homelessness and poverty, you know, to feed that system of private prisons also who have humans contracted out to fast food chains and agricultural applications. Yeah, yeah.
And, and agricultural applications are a huge part of that, which is about to be super relevant as they, you know, support all of the undocumented people who have been doing most of the farm labor in the US for a long time. They are going to try to replace that labor with imprisoned people because it's even cheaper for them.
And this cultural concept, you know, there's I keep talking about sloganization where we have these really core teachings that we just still down to a slogan so it can be passed on. But by sloganizing it, we lose its meaning. And, you know, people, people hear it and they go, oh, yeah, I know what that is. And they don't think about it. But like one of those is that when people say kill the cop in your head, they mean it. They really mean it.
You really got to think about it because especially in this hyper online, hyper individualized society that we are right now, people are obsessed with ideological purity and people are obsessed with doing the right thing all the time. And that actually fucks us in the end. Because if you are constantly worried about making a mistake rather than you're worried about being better for those around you, you're going to be nice and you're not going to be kind.
And when those I think I keep talking about in all my writings now is about resolving yourself to make the hard choices in advance. Because under fascism, we're not going to get a ton of opportunities that are meaningful to to act right, because that is how they control they, they control everything in the system to trap people inside it. And so, you know, you really do got to meditate on what are you willing to sacrifice? What are you willing to meaningfully do to protect
others? You know, a stranger, your loved ones, your friends. Think about specific people and really, really honestly address this in yourself. You don't have to tell anybody else, but if you don't think about that ahead of time in the split second opportunity you may be presented, you're going to freeze and you're going to take the easy way out because that's human nature. And that's, you know, coming all the way back to Nimona. That's what balance St. dots, right?
That is the crux of the final arc of Nimona is that Ambrosius meets Balusters in a bar or a restaurant or something. They order nachos. Yeah, they order nachos. They order nachos and have my favorite line in the whole movie, which is when Balusters, he's allergic because like, I felt a couple vibes so hard there. But yeah, it's not to be that way.
But they order nachos. And Ambrosius presents Balusters with this scroll and this new evidence that Baluster didn't emotionally prepare for in advance. Baluster did not take the time to really, in his heart of hearts, go, do I trust Nimona or do I trust the system? He did not take the time to resolve himself, to say everything I've learned will, you know, culminate in me to
remember this. And there's a lot of discussion right now about viewing fascism through, like, abusive family dynamics, which I really find persuasive. And I'm a deeply traumatized person. I have had been diagnosed with PTSD since I was 18, which is literally when you can get diagnosed with it. So, like, I've done a lot of trauma work, is my point. And trauma work is organizing because we are all traumatized and we're all just trying to work together for the most part.
But Baluster did not make that choice in himself. To say, OK, when I'm presented with something that angers and confuses me, that I'm going to remember who I am and what I've learned and I'm not going to turn my back on the mota. He did not do that. And he fucks up and he comes back to the Mota and portrays her. Absolutely. And that is, in my mind, literally the crux of the movie. Because obviously that, you know, culminates in the big final scene and everything.
But that didn't have to happen. And that's the point of telling this story, is that if Baluster had taught the presence of mind of himself to step back and go, OK, I need to take time to grieve. And I need to take time to really think critically about what I'm going to do when I am inevitably presented with another argument from, you know, the regime about why I should to fast back to them.
He didn't think about it. He didn't think about what would I sacrifice for Nirvana. And that's the kind of thing we need to be thinking about or we are all Baluster and we are all going to fuck it up. And frankly, not everybody gets a second chance like the beautiful movie gave us. You know, it's a beautiful, beautiful story, and we love that. But real life doesn't owe you any happy endings. Real life doesn't owe you any conclusions. It doesn't owe you a nice moral
narrative conclusion. Sometimes people just die. A lot of the time, people just fucking die. And if you're not prepared in advance to do something different. When you are presented with something that you didn't expect and didn't emotionally prepare for from the regime, as you absolutely will be, they've got every resource under their thumb right now.
You're going to question it and you're going to doubt everything and you're going to go into fond mode and you're going to resort to doing whatever someone tells you. And I know that as a deeply traumatized person, that that is something in me. When I panic, whoever is giving me orders is what I do because that is a fond response. That is a common trauma response. And we are all traumatized right now.
We are all traumatized by this regime we are not living under, and specifically by the speed at which it is moving. And when they say another slogan, I think when they say the cruelty is the point, that's what they're talking about. They're saying this is to shock and argue into inaction. This is to terrorize you into fear so that you don't stand up
for each other. This is to terrorize us so that when those critical moments come, we freeze and do nothing or even worse, like baluster, we turn on each other and it's going to feel like you're the exception in those moments. It really is. And once again, I want to be really clear. I am not calling for unity at all costs. Accountability is the core of
community. If you know, if that's a really important point I want to make, actually I'm going to take a minute to talk on that if that's cool. Cool, thank you. I recently I recently attended a acquaintances ordination. He is now a minister. He is a sis gay white man and I thought he was pretty cool. He's a self-described communist. He, he was pretty radical for a middle-aged white guy or sorry, this gay white guy. Sorry. He, he's, he could, he could do
some politic work. And I went to his ordination because I'm a singer and he asked me to sing there and I did that. So that was nice. And it was weird. I went into a church for the first time in a long time, and it was like, it was a little triggering. And, you know, that was really me being like, OK, I'm doing this for my community. I'm doing this because I'm showing up for you, you know? And he was actually ordinated by another gay man who was, like,
his mentor in the community. And it was a very, like, gay ceremony. It was cool. And then during the remarks, the already ordinated person who was ordinating the new guy notated that I was so like emboldened in my brain because he said he praised the new person being ordinated's moral clarity. This was in December of 2024. He praised his moral clarity for saying that everyone, especially and including Trumpers, are welcome in his church.
And I almost walked out because here's the thing that every bartender in this country understands, and no pastors that I've met seem to. The paradox of tolerance is real. If you let an abuser and a marginalized person into the same space, that's not welcoming everyone. That becomes an abuser's face. Every bartender knows if a Nazi walks into the bar and sits down, you kick their ass out or it becomes a Nazi.
Bar pastors should know if you let the Trumpers into the church, it becomes a Trumper church. And that's where we are. And this is what I'm talking about when I say accountability is the basis of community in queer communities. I think we have this, this assumption that unity and, you know, protecting each other is welcoming in anyone who identifies with us at all costs.
And that is absolutely not true. If someone acts abusive, if someone acts bigoted, if someone does something wrong and harms another community member, they need to be held accountable. And accountability is not punishment. And if you don't know the difference, kill the cop in your head. Accountability is not punishment. Accountability is saying, hey, this caused harm. What are you going to do to address that? This doesn't happen again in the
future. And if they don't respond to that, well, if they don't say, oh, wow, I, you know, I will work on that. Please, you know, help me grow as a person because we're all learning and growing. And this is coming back to that part of we cannot demand ideological purity. We always must to ask accountability for ourselves, for everyone else. Believe me, I've fucked up. I've done horror. I've I have mistakes that I've made organizing that haunt me.
And I work on them and I try to grow from them and I try to learn from them because that's what you can do. You can't change the past and you can't hold yourself in guilt over it forever, but you also can't ignore it and continue to do harm. And we need to hold everyone in our communities accountable equally in this way, or there is no community. There's just a bunch of people being shitty to each other. And that's what I see so often in queer community spaces right now.
That's a really great point, yeah. And fortunately, we know that there are a lot of increasing attacks on trans rights right now, which of course your organization is helping people track and understand what is happening right now. Sure. Is there anything that gives you hope for the future? Yeah, I mean, I love that question. Another very sloganized thing in this in this work is, you know, the very famous quote of hope is a discipline. And I revisit that quote all the time.
And I think every single time I revisit it as I progress through my work and my life, I understand it more and deeper. And, you know, I'm peel, peel back more layers of that onion. And I think people misunderstand what hope is in a lot of ways. I think, you know, we're, we're taught in our current context that hope is a wish inactionable. You know, I think we're taught that hope is, you know, oh, well, you know, I wish that this would happen. OK. That's nothing though.
That's, that's dust, right? That's that's words. I mean, you could say it as much as you want, but for what? And really, I think we need to recontextualize hope really powerfully. And again, this is like the narratives to find what we think is possible. Hope is a radical act. And hope is about cultivating, cultivating the concept of what can be in yourself.
And hope is really about, you know, you look at the world and you see what it is and you dare against all of it, despite all of it to say, but I bet we could do better. And that, that is what I mean by hope. And when I say hope is a discipline, when, when that original quote was written, I really, you know, I can't I can't speak to her to her logic in it necessarily, But for me, that is a reminder that hope takes work. You know, it's not just given to you.
It's not you don't just have hope. You grow hope. You nurture hope. You cultivate hope. And hope is like I read this beautiful poem recently that was hope is not something something this is a paraphrase. I apologize, but it was like, hope is not the glass figurine on the shelf. Hope has bloody knuckles and broken teeth and I I felt that
Hope is brutal. Hope is looking at the despair, looking at the cruelty, looking at all of the fucking things humans are capable of at our worst and saying I still believe we could do better. I still believe that inside each person there's something worth reaching. And for me that's that is the hope that I am cultivating. I take a lot of wisdom from a lot of indigenous teachings and a lot of like solar punk Afrofuturism.
And one of the things that they, those kind of lenses to view society emphasize correctly in my mind is that I'm a, I'm a big dork for anthropology and like human origins. I'm actually trained as a, as an ecologist, which is like evolutionary biology is a big nerdy bit of fun. Humans have been on this earth, depending on how you define a human, for a little under 500,000 years. That's not a hot, that's not very long geologically, but it is really long in a human lifespan.
We have been doing agriculture for arguably 10,000 years and we've been doing capitalism for about 500. And now the Earth is on fire. And so really for me, one of the hopes that I keep coming back to is, you know, I look out of the world. I look at all of that we've created and I say like, OK, but this isn't how it has to be. You know, we lived, we lived for 490,000 years in a very
different way than we live now. And frankly, all of the cruelty, all of the just horrors beyond my comprehension are because people are suffering. And we need to remember that, right? We're incentivizing people to harm each other. We've created a society with the profit motive that incentivizes people to murder each other on mass for personal power and gain. And that's not how we're supposed to be. And that's not how we've been for almost all of human history.
Almost all of human history, we have lived in small groups where people know each other and love each other and care for each other because that is what we're like supposed to be doing. You know, humans want to work together. They want to love each other. Humans want to be together. And we are all in this society just crying out for help because we are all suffering right now. And that does not excuse the actions of like, actually people doing genocide.
To be clear, again, accountability is the verge of community. But it also means that we can't deny them their humanity if we don't want to be like that. I have to look at Musk and say there is a person in there who is lonely. I don't think he's reachable. I'm not going to waste my time on him. He's made his choices, but he's a human being. And I have to hold on to that because he's not going to.
And that's what makes us different is that I'm looking around at all the atrocities we're committing, the atrocities of negligence that almost everybody I talk to on a daily basis is, you know, participating in, whether they admit it or not. And I'm finding the hope within myself to not like to start screaming and instead to go, I see you. I see you as a person and I see inside you that you want to be loved.
And that really is what it all comes down to is that humans, if you take a person, any person on this earth, you could take the most, you know, macho man on earth, you could take Bear Grylls and plop him without his camera crew somewhere he's going to die. We are all dependent on the tools our ancestors gave us, the knowledge our ancestors gave us, and the community we rely on. And all of this hyper individualism under capitalism that we're doing right now is
just pretending. And fascism is the sake that eats its own tail, right? Fascism will pass and it's unsustainable and there will be people after that. And I really see my role now. My job now is 1, to keep as many people alive as I can. Two, to shop for people and care for them. Because every touch counts. Every, every, every time you reduce someone's suffering matters and that's what you got to hold on to.
And I'm trying to preserve as much knowledge from this time as I can for the future and for the people who will look back at this time and say, oh, my God, where were the people who wanted better? And you know, I have to be that, right? You know, you got to like, I guess be the change you want to see in the world. OK? I'm, I'm trying to. And most of that is modeling love. And most of that is modeling radical kindness. And most of that is modeling that.
When somebody spits in my face, I'm not going to just take it, but I'm also not going to hate them about it. I'm going to be fucking pissed. Don't get me wrong, there are people out there kid murdering members of my community and I'm furious and I'm holding them accountable, but I flatly refuse to remove their humanity from them for it. Like, and that is the core of what I'm doing.
And you know, I, there's a couple, there's a couple little quotes and clips I've been watching when I need to remember this. And you know, we're all tempted to forget or get confused about the things we really believe and
why we're doing any of this. The why, the why, the why you got to sink your teeth and claws into your why now and refuse to let it go. And you have to give yourself as many reminders as you can because it's fucking hard to hold on to. We're all just human, mostly, doing our best, wanting to be loved. And one of the quotes that a lot of people are saying now and
again, it's being sloganized. But Ursula Lebouin, she at the National Book Awards in 2013, gave a famous speech about how the literary industry has been taken over by capitalism. And that restricts the stories and the narratives that can be told and how that is an existential threat to our humanity and how that paves the way for fascist capitalism that we're seeing now. And, you know, she said that 15 years ago or 12 years ago. But she was right.
And she closed the speech by saying capitalism seems inescapable, but so did the divine right of kings. We must remember that any human power can be remade of human hands. And the other one that is very complimentary to that in my mind that is like just resonating with me, echoing through my brain is James Baldwin. James Baldwin gave this interview and we are blessed enough to have a video of him giving it.
And it is so powerful where he just off the cuff, someone asks him, you know, how do you remember who you are in this fight? And this is going to be me paraphrasing a little bit, but he said, walk through any city on any afternoon and look around you. What you've got to remember is that everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that monster. You could be that cop. And you have to decide in yourself not to be. And that's what we owe each
other right now, frankly. We owe each other to resolve ourselves to make the fucking hard choices, the impossible choices. We owe ourselves and each other to meaningfully create community based on accountability. And we owe it to ourselves and each other to decide to show up for each other, even when it costs everything, especially
when it costs everything. And as queer people and as young queer people, I think one of the greatest tragedies of queer folks of my generation is that we are so isolated from our ancestors. And one of the things I harp on a lot, and one of the things I am proudest of about Transformations Project is that intergenerational queer community is a literal lifeline. And I have gone out of my way. We're, you know, we're a digital organization, so we skew young.
But I've gone out of my way to be very welcoming to older folks who want to participate. And we have elders in our community there, and their knowledge and their presence is invaluable because, one, they know how to survive times that people our age do not know because we haven't experienced and we're about to need that knowledge. If you don't already, many people do.
And two, you need to keep passing on the message and we need to remember that there's no such thing as a moment, you know, we are all the result of the context that has come before us, and we create the context that comes after us. And that's what narrative really is, is understanding where you are and understanding what you can do and understanding that the narrative limitations placed on you by the possible are flexible and you can move them. You can seek out different
perspectives. You can seek out, you know, more kinds of people to interact with and think about then you have been exposed to. And you can expand literally what you think is possible. You know, none of us are the holders of all the information on earth. It's not possible. No one can be perfect. We all have to hold each other accountable and be in community. And one of the intergenerational community part is just so tragic
for so many reasons, but. They know that we need each other, and older queer folks understand these lessons that I'm trying to communicate throughout this whole interview in ways that I don't. And frankly, I learned it from them. And also I will absolutely mention and, you know, underline, highlight that so much of this is about whiteness and white supremacy too. Like as white people, and I say this very much about myself, we are trained in hyper individualism, in niceness and
not in community. And so, frankly, we have catching up to do before we can position ourselves as leaders. And people of color, especially like Black and Indigenous people, frankly, have not had that luxury. And they survive based on community, and they survive based on this generational knowledge of surviving under a fascist regime that has one of them dead for centuries. And when they are kind enough to risk themselves by sharing that information with us, we need to be grateful.
And also we need to use it. Yeah. Community is nothing without accountability, that's just a bunch of people in a room. Without accountability, it's just a social club. Community means you hold each other accountable, and community means you show up for each other when it matters. And we don't start doing that sometime. We're all going to die. And that's bleak as hell. But it's also true.
And there's a big instinct in this work, particularly in trans policy work, to sugarcoat things, frankly. And I think that's a huge disservice to people. I think that's insulting. I think that is infantilizing and demeaning. Like the Transformations project exists because I had the advantages of being formally trained due to my whiteness and my class status and my generational wealth. And I decided in myself to try to break down that barrier with that advantage.
And the way that I did that was we've tracked over 1500 NC transpose at the state level since 2021. Every single one has a plain language description written by human beings because the ultimate objective of Transformations project, there's three, there's three main objectives. One is the obvious one, which is, you know, get people to do something, get people to organize, get people to agitate. We love that.
Please do that. But secondarily, and I would argue more importantly, we are archivists and we're very aware of that internally. And that's we write a newsletter that is everything you need to know about anti trans policy in the US this past week. And that has come out every single Friday since April 2022. And every single one of those is available for free on our on our public website.
And we regularly hear from reporters and researchers and academics and novelists that they're, you know, using these to understand the progression of what we're seeing. And you can look at numbers forever, right? But numbers don't speak human language. And policies don't speak human language. Communities do. And yeah, yeah, policies speak Heritage Foundation. Yeah. And ADF, don't forget. And the, the real.
The real final purpose of Transformations Project, that is the one I had in mind when I founded it and the one that is, you know, the most relevant now. And frankly, our most important and sacred duty to each other is that the people who are going to be killed by these policies are not the people who have the academic chops due to being denied them, due to being systematically denied access to those spaces to learn in order
to protect themselves. And you know, it says right on our front page, it says we breakdown policy so that you can show up for your community. And I really believe that in my heart. It's like, I don't know what your community needs because I'm not part of it. I am trying to use the skills and the expertise that I have been unfairly given by this world to reach out and offer you something. And I'm not asking anything in return. To be clear, like we are
completely free. All of our data is completely free and we are regularly ripped off by other works who profiteer off of it, honestly. And we can get into that. But we are always free and we always will be because our ultimate goal is to reach the people who no one else. Sorry, it's like emotional. Yeah, we are trying to reach the people who no one else has shown up for. And by that I mean like the the trans people who are like homeless and doing sex work on the streets.
You know, the people who are totally forgotten by all the policy wonks and all of the nice statements and all of the horseshit niceness that we're giving each other in our nice little circles where we hold space for each other. You know, they don't get space. And here I am as someone advantage enough to medically transition as someone advantage enough to look like a white CIS man.
And I use that in every way I can to get into rooms where my true self is not welcome and open my big white man mouth to say the shit that they need to hear. And I'm, I don't know, I like to say I'm a professional quick coated villain, by which I mean I walk into rooms where I'm very much not welcome and then they kick me out. But the point of it is I don't need to be in those rooms. The point of it is I'm the messenger, right? You can shoot me. I'm the messenger.
I'll tell you something you needed to hear and you'll hate me for it, but I have to do it anyway because there's the chance that it will, you know, rattle around in someone's brain somewhere. And they might make better choices, the people in power. But also, even more importantly, I will get in front of every microphone I can and tell the people who we claim as community who are just so abandoned. I have all of us and I see them. God, I wish I could do more.
Oh, I wish I could house everyone. I've literally, but at minimum I can see them and at minimum I can use the skills I have to encourage other people to join me and build a collective and build meaningful community. And we can do that to help other people build meaningful community and keep each other safe because nobody needs another policy wonk telling us what to say to legislators. Everybody needs to know the real shit of where are we?
What I tell people what the bills do, and then they can decide for themselves what they need to do to protect themselves and each other, because that's not my call. And they know more about how to survive their circumstances than I ever will because I've not experienced it. And frankly, they're the experts on survival in ways that I will never be. And so when they are advantage, when they are kind enough to share some of that back with me, I am so grateful because it's bleak right now.
And it's I'm an internal refugee right now. I just fled. I used to live in St. Louis, MO and I just fled with my husband to California because I am very vocal about many things and I am well known to people who want me dead and the state laws of California are more likely to keep me safe for longer than the state laws of Missouri. And I'm buying myself time to keep saying the message. Keep talking, really. But honestly, I made the hard choice for myself years ago.
I decided in myself that I was willing to give it all if I needed to, if I was asked. And the way things are looking, I don't know if I'm going to survive this. And I don't mean that in a self pitying way. I don't mean that in a martyrdom way. I mean that in a way that I choose it anyway, and I always will. And if they want me to stop talking, they'll have to kill me.
And I say that with all of the advantages I have of my wealth and my connections and my big white man mouth, that I have the advantage to talk longer than most. So I'm just going to keep talking and hopefully I'll reach some people. And that, you know, comes back to hope. And it's we're all just reaching out to each other. We all just want to be seen and we all just want to be loved for what is seen. And what else is queerness but saying, you know, I am here.
Thank you. Well, thank you truly for all of that and for all the work that you're doing just in life and with the transformation project. And thank you for taking the time to talk to us. Those are all the questions we have for you. We, we hope that with our tiny bit of power, we can amplify your voice and the message that you're giving and what you're doing. So thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. And I hope everybody home listening got something out of
this. But aside from just listening, how can our listeners at home, you know, support you follow the transformation project? Like what can they do? Yeah, excellent questions. Cool Transformations project. I will mention it is plural. So like that if you do transformation project, you get to some weird gospel Bible site. So don't go there. Go to transformationswithansproject.org and you can find all our socials there and also all of our free resources.
We have a database of all anti transfills that have been filed in all 50 States and nationally since we started tracking in 2021. And we also offer representative scorecards which is something that very few other orgs are able to do because of their tax status.
We have every state and every state level Rep in the country is listed in our database and we have all their contact information for you already on the same page as well as we record all of their votes both in committee and on the floor for every anti trans bill as well as sponsorships. So hold them accountable. Hold them accountable for all of this. And accountability is not punishment. And also, elected reps, literally their job is to be yelled at by us and we pay their
salaries. So every time anybody's, you know, complaining about tax dollars, I'm like, OK, but like, Rep salaries, yeah, yeah. We pay for their fancy houses. We pay for them to, you know, do insider trading, all of that. So we should hold them more accountable than we do and when they dare to complain that their constituents are talking to them. Jeffries, we are perfectly at liberty to be horrible. Yeah, you can get involved with Transformations Project. Like I said, we are an all
volunteer collective. We are also completely digital and remote, so anyone can join us from anywhere. We have or we have volunteers from all over the country and also actually internationally, which is very cool. The one caveat to that is that we are unable to accept anyone under the age of 18 because of child labor laws that we do not want to run afoul of. And particularly I will mention now that we take security extremely high, extremely
seriously there. One of the policies I have instituted from the very beginning and feel very strongly about is that we do not have a list of our volunteers internally. And also we don't ask our volunteers for information we don't need to know, period. We ask you for a name, to call you a valid e-mail, your pronouns and your time zone, and that is it. Oh, and we asked you that you're above 18. We do have to verify that for legal reasons, we make you check
a box. But yeah, we really are serious about that because, you know, it is a vulnerability and, you know, people who are volunteering with us are putting themselves at risk to do this work. And we take that extremely seriously. We also have a policy that I call leading with Gratitude, which is that we don't prescribe volunteer work to anyone. What we do is anyone who joins us, we work with them to figure out what they want to do and where their skills are best
applied. And this ties into the next point I'm about to make, which is that we work with everyone who volunteers with us. And we, you know, we find them a spot because one, we want you to enjoy what you're doing or you won't come back. And two, just on a really practical and also, you know, internal joy level is we, we, we exist because of the volunteers, you know, like, and we're that's why it's called leading with gratitude. And also we are very disability focused collective.
Myself and my Co founders Sam Mendepurty are both disabled and we feel it. And one of the parts of the leading with strategy policy is that anyone can change their capacity at any time for any reason or no reason. We just ask that you let us know. That's it. And as leadership of this org, it is our job to figure out how to cover gaps and it is not your job as a volunteer to feel beholden to us.
And coming back to the point of we work with people to find out where they want to be and what they want to do. That is what I want people to take away from all of this. Really this whole conversation. If you remember one thing, please let it be. The next couple minutes I'm going to be talking, which is I can't tell you what to do. I've been working on this for five years and everybody is coming to me now and saying, Oh my God, what do I do?
I don't know, what do you do? What you do is you reach deep down inside yourself and you figure out who you are. And by that I mean not only resolving yourself to make the hard choices and resolving yourself to be radically kind and sort of nice, but also, I mean, what do you offer? Who are you? Who are you in that? What experience do you have? What kind of life experiences have you have you have you had? What kind of skills have you cultivated? There is no one on this earth
who has not lived a full life. It's not possible. Every human being is a multitude. And I don't know about your multitudes, right? I don't know about my multitudes. And frankly, we don't have time for me to figure out your multitudes. So what I need everyone listening to this to do is really take the time to look inside yourself and say, OK, what can I do with who I am and the skills I've cultivated to this point and the experiences
that have given me perspective. And I need all of us to think really critically about the fact that the rules that governed our society, that we were taught were immutable, that we were taught these rules are fixed and static. And this is the way things are are breaking down. Many of them are already broken. We're just pretending like they're not yet, and that is devastating. And you're allowed to grieve. That, of course, take time to grieve, but also it's an opportunity.
And the systems that bind us are not there by mistake. They were working as designed. And the absolute and catastrophic breakdown of those systems is going to hurt a lot of people. It is hurting a lot of people. But also, if the systems are breaking down already, that gives us an opportunity to reimagine them. And this is what I mean by cultivating hope and by expanding your vision of what is possible through narrative.
Seek out things you think are impossible and people who have spent time thinking about that and learn from them. We all need to learn from each other now. And think about who you are and what you have to offer. And I've written about this so many times, and I really hope it's, you know, resonating more. But one of my big crazy opinions is I say, I don't need you to show up for trans rights,
period. I need you to recognize that your rights are tied to trans rights and show up for all of us. I need you to be a collaborator. I do not need you to listen to what I say and immediately do it because frankly, that's fascism. Like, like the pitch of fascism is you don't have to think for yourself. Here's what you have to do. Here are the rules.
Go for it. And the most meaningful way we can resist fascism in ourselves is by constantly reevaluating and re examining who we are and what we believe in and why we believe in it and how we act based on that. And so I can't tell you what to do. I absolutely cannot. And actually, I refuse to because. It's not about me commanding you, and it's not about anyone giving you orders.
It's about you questioning all forms of authority, including mine, and deciding whether what I say makes sense to you. And thinking about your life experience and how it fits in. And then showing up for other people and encouraging other people to show up for you and how we get through by showing up for each other over and over and over and over and over. And so much of this work is showing up for people who don't have your back. And that hurts. Don't get me wrong, that hurts every time.
But it's also one of the things I'm proud of stuff. Because if we want to envision a better world, we have to start with ourselves. Because we only control one person, and that's never enough. And one day I'll probably figure out how to forgive myself for that. But in the meantime, we pass on the message, we figure out who we are and what we can do, and we get to work together. All right. Thank you, Alex. We appreciate that. Hope you listeners at home learn
something today. If we will leave the website for the Transformations project in our episode description so you can check out their resources and support their mission. You can also head to www.podcastathon.org to discover hundreds of other amazing organizations that are being highlighted by podcasters this week when the episode is released so you can get involved and be the change you want to see in the world like Alex said so. Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry, I forgot something kind
of critical. If you want to find my writing, which I do usually independently of TFP, you can search my last name. Petrovnia. PETROVN like nose IA and I am the only Petrovnia on earth, so you'll find me. I love it. All right. Thank you again, Alex. This is a lovely conversation. We appreciate getting to talk to you, get to know you today and to the listeners at home. Until next time I treat for lesbian. Jesus. And get it up all over the
place. Bye. Bye. And with that, we've been Big Gay Energy. Thank you for listening. We'd really appreciate it if you downloaded this episode and left us a review. No matter how brief, your contribution will help us reach a wider audience. We would love to hear from you about everything and anything. You can find us on all social media platforms at Big Gay Energy Pod or e-mail us at [email protected]. Join our Discord server to connect with us and our friends
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