Tear It Up & Fighting Back for Trans Lives

ongoing and probably well seemingly never ending. Hopefully it will end eventually. Uh, the hold up on that one, Garrison, the escalating war on trusts people of Yeah, and uh, we've we've brought on some some people who have been working to organize again to the the kind of wave of bills and rhetoric and legislation targeting trans healthcare, targeting

the just existence of trans people in general. We're talking to cat and Ada Roads from Tear it Up, a new newer organization, uh, dedicated to specifically specifically fighting against these these new bills. Hello, hey friends, Yes, thank you so much. Um, we've been we we've been we've been talking for a bit because of how these bills have been also a thing for a bit. And uh we initially met up for trans day visibility. Uh I tagged along to go to a protest in Idaho. Um, and

then we we got on on trans day visibility. We we we we cooked up, cooked up plans to sit down and have this chat. So it is it. It is a little bit late, but it's it doesn't Maybe we can have more than one day. Maybe that's a good idea. Well, we're not getting remembrance too, so yeah, well hopefully we can have more than two days and one of them not be just sad um. Yeah, probably too, because you know they're still attacking. Oh did they not? Did they not stop? Nope? Nope. Our visibility did not,

in fact scare them back into their cave. All right, this is why we need a trans day of one free murder. I love this plane. A few problems. Well that's a that's a great note to uh. I mean, look, Caitlyn Jenner already used hers. She's just christ it's going to be my contribution for the day. Wow, this is this is gonna really really convince all of the all of the on the edge libs who are somehow listening to this trying to find a recipe. They thought it was tear like a scale and they were like, I

was trying to work my baking scale. What if I could measure of lentils and then arm all your local trans women. I would like to make a very very trans cooking video in the style of David Lynch's keen my video of but that is that is a deep cut for all of the lynch heads out there, as

Lynch fans called themselves. Anyway, we're talking about all of all of all the bills talking about um, all of the rhetoric that we've seen been specifically increasing the past, like the past week as of recording broad past, you know, maybe a week or two as of time of release for they're like they're they're really going for it, for trying to get people to do like just violence against people who don't look like how they want them to look.

And that see, that's basically what they're trying to do. And we we'renna, we'renna talking. We're talking a variety of topics between we're gonna talk. We're gonna unfortunately discuss like the groomer thing. We'll talk about all the bills that have and haven't passed in different ways that we can kind of stand up against this this this thing that's

really trying to take take a hold. Um, I guess I would like to start by discussing the origin of of of Tear it Up and like, how you know what what happened to I mean, obviously we know what happened to cause this distuct, to cause this thing to be prompted, but yeah, what was what was like the specific process of being like okay, it's it's all these things are happening. Let's actually get a group of people together to organize this thing across the country. Yeah, um,

I guess I can talk about that. So Tear it Up actually group pretty directly out of a previous group called TROT and Texas, which is the trans Resistance of Texas, which started last year during their legislative session, um, and then really started to grow during the special sessions in response to this constant line of attack and realizing that the techniques and the strategy is being employed by a lot of the existing more liberal leaning groups were really

focused on like back room conversations and deals and using like procedure to defeat things instead of actually like mobilizing people against anti trans state violence. Um and uh. From there we started to adopt things like louder, more obnoxious protests, a lot of stickering, firing posters. Um. And then this year, I so, I originally started TROT, but I moved across the country and I was like, wow, ship, things are

just getting worse everywhere. Um, and I have a lot of friends all over the country, from living in Portland and New York and Texas and Colorado now the Midwest, and reached out to sort of pull together a bunch of humans that I knew would be willing to fight back and to try and experiment with methods that we can pick up from our predecessors, like act up and bring more attention and mobilize people more towards taking direct action instead of relying on these back room lobbying groups

I don't think really give a funk about trans people, but love to use attacks on us to raise money. Yeah. Yeah, I mean there's a number of number of examples we could point to, but I think we could be more productive and just talk about you guys instead of yeah. So yeah, I really the transnational thing is really interesting point how it's like, I know, for trans Day visibility, there was there was an organized die ins and protests

all across the country to happen at the same day. Obviously, Um there was one night of which I was lucky enough to join in on. UM. And yeah, but there was there was, there was a lot of them, and I guess, yeah, it's on on the lead up to

like as as all of these bills are escalating. Um. And then there was the whole there was the whole um wave of organizing against trans people for the so called like the Transition Day, which is really unfortunate because there actually it would be a great discussion to be had there on people who choose to not continue on with transition, but it's been so used by turfs and the gender critical movement that it's now just like it's

just it's just another day for more transphobia. Just really unfortunate. UM. But we had that happening at the same time as all of all of these bills, and then we're like, okay, so what what what what was what was kind of the stuff that prompted all of the guy ins And how are you like, um talking with people in all the in all the different states to kind of organize this thing together, but still also like separately for each location.

One of the points that I like to come back to, like we're going to talk a little bit more about the details of the you know, some some of the specific legislation that has that hassessed land law and some of the other legislation that has not been able to pass into law. Um. And you know, we're we're drawing a contrast between ourselves and some of Tear it Up is drawing a contrast between itself and some of these more you know, institutionalist liberal organizations. Um. Not because that

they not because they can't succeed in their stated goals. Sometimes, right, like the A c L you will sue on some of these things of those lawsuits, maybe maybe something worth celebrating. What's happening in Texas right now is a great example of that. But that said, right, so, like we we can acknowledge that these that these more institutionalist tactics can can lead to, you know, like it's a better outcome

that these laws do not succeed obviously, Um. But there's the impacts of this legislation and the discussion around this legislation is so much bigger and so much more found than any of these individual laws. You know, is specifically looking at them, um in terms of their like material impact in people's lives, which are already abysmally fucking awful.

But like the what the place that teared up is looking to kind of champion is but kind of hell raising that like enables us to empower each other, that enables us to be visible in a way that shows people on the ground all across the country that like that we are not just a a minority to be destroyed and ignored. That we're going to fight for ourselves.

We're going to fight for each other. We're gonna fight for our kids, we're gonna fight for our families, and we're going to fight for our rights, and we're gonna do it loud and as ugly as we need to in order to make sure that trans pain is visible. Yeah, And building on that, um that when we look at the start of last month March or I guess late February, UM, I think Texas was really kind of the flash point and a lot of the country on this where we

had a lot of these bills sort of boiling. UM. I believe they are around seven dy active at that point. Um we're now down to like the high sixties, so that's better. But that was really where stuff started to boil over on this and we looked around and saw that the fight needed to focus on trans survival more than just the bills. And the bills are important to

defeat because there things trying to exterminate us. There's things that are trying to take families apart, to take away the things that are helping people stay alive, and to remove trans people from accessing public life, and that's going to really ruin a lot of humans. But we need to not just look at that individual fight and remember we're fighting for survival and we're fighting for each other

and trans people as a community. We've always had to kind of rely on each other via various means, be at like Susan's place or like go back to like Transvestia, even and like these systems that weren't necessarily always and these forms of communication that weren't always focused on um necessarily legal winds in the more traditional sense, and more just like forming community, even if those communities weren't necessarily great. In the case of like Transvestia and like some of

those much more, um, respectable leaning groups. Could you a little talk a little bit about what Transvestia and Susan's place work, because I'm gonna guess a lot of people listening are not going to be super familiar with that history. I kind of am only casually heard anything about it. Yeah, so I'm a bit of a queer history nerd um, and you could heard a lot about this. Actually I have a can I plug my podcast? What we would like to do is provide people with an ability to

learn more about this kind of stuff. So yeah, please Yeah. So I'm part of the totally trans podcast network. Um you can pronounce some parrot twitter at like totally TransPod. Um. But we talked a lot about trans and queer history through the lens of like looking at it through pop

culture and reading stuff into like The Little Mermaid and things. Um. So we go in a lot about Virginia Prince and transvestian there because I'm kind of obsessed with this human from the nineteen sixties who is like the first Twitter

trans girl. Um. She was very problematic, super racist and classist, and her argument was she led to a lot of twentieth century confusion by saying, uh that there's like heterosexual transvestites, which are what we would now just call like trans lesbians, and then like the homosexual trans sexual, which is now what we would call straight trans folks, and that the homosexual transsexuals are bad and should be shunned, but the

heterosexual transvestite should maintain all of her previous privileges. Uh, And she put out this magazine called Transvestia. She famously also got in trouble for sending nudes in the mail to another trans girl across the country. Um. Yeah, fascinating historical figure who kind of the curve historically in terms of sending nudes. That's that's groundbreaking with stuff. But Transvestia though, did have this big cultural impact on sort of being

an early trans zine. Shortly after it, we start to see Drag, which um was much more focused on like the homosexual trans sexual and more like sexually liberated takes through like the seventies, and then later um my favorite scene like gender Trash from how which uh was out of Toronto and like the nineties and was very confrontational

about trans rights. So we sort of exist in this larger history where we're looking at how trans community has survived informed and learning from things like star UM, which was the Street Transvestitate Action Revolutionaries UM out of New York with Marcia P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, as well

as um act up and HIV activism. And we're trying to take what we can learn from our ancestors and apply it to our current survival and play you with it a little bit and update some of their tactics because I don't think traditional non violent protests the way it existed in the past gets attention anymore. UM, I think when you figure out ways to be louder about it. And I'm a I'm personally a devout pacivist. Other people aren't, and that's a okay. Um, I'm a good Quaker girl.

But um, we need to be seen. We need our lives to be seen, and we know our value as humans to be seen so that we can love ourselves and each other enough to survive this horrible ship that's going to continue happening to us over the next couple

of years. Yeah, I'm wanna big back on that with with one thought that, um, we're talking about this sort of like this history of trans people drawing together to take care of each other, and you know, I'm just thinking about how today, Uh, Marjorie Taylor Green releases a video that, amongst a bunch of other just like terrifying,

awful and occasionally super funny in its incredible stupidity. Um things that she's claiming in this video or that like trans people are basically like the you know, the barbarian hordes that have come to destroy Western civilization. And she's you know, she says with a straight face, like, you know, the late Rome and modern America are very similar of us rely heavily on Verrangian mercenaries in order to maintain the sanctity of our borders. I always wanted to be

a wizard, but I guess I'm a barbarian. But I bring that up because there is this impression of trans power that like trans people, that is a result of our increased visibility, you know, like what the media called the transgender tipping point, because suddenly people were like, oh, I guess Liver and Cox gets to exist. But like, uh, with this increased visibility is this impression that we have this like incredible magical cosmic powers to seduce your people

and ruin your civilization or whatever. And like actually, like when I so I came out in two four, three five, and like I never imagined a world where we could even get healthcare covered when I was, like I was like a kid organizing with Camp trans out in the woods of Michigan, and like I knew people who got orchiectomys in Barns. I every single trans woman, I knew everything that they knew about how to like get hormones and like manage their own transition and like Endercrian system

they learned from message boards. It was the only collective knowledge in existence that was like accessible to people. Because if you went to your doctor, unless you lived in San Francisco or New York and we're particularly well connected, the response you were going to get is, I don't know,

are you a demon? Right? Yeah? No, absolutely that That's the one thing I found it um really insightful talking to the older trans people that I know, because I'm like, you know about Jim gen Z gender queer person on hormones, And it's very different because when when when I've been talking to the my my transgender friends who are older, It's like, yeah, all of these bills are just are a reaction to the increased visibility and increased well being

of trans people. Right, it's putting, it's putting things that used to be kind of just like unspoken or like obvious bigotry, it's putting now that that's actually progressed thing. It's now putting that that old bigotry into actual law because they're like, oh no, we don't want things to progress further. So it's a it's a purposeful sliding back. Um. So it's just like for a lot of people who are older, it doesn't even seem that new. It's just

seemed to be. It's it's resurfacing. The things that were used to be normalized are now becoming you know, are becoming more obviously bigoted. But they're putting that bigotry into actual law. Um. And that's the Yeah, that's the kind of interesting point is because for there's a whole bunch of people who believe that like the transgenderisms and the gender ideology is like a point of power. It's like because it's affiliated with the left, um, and the left

is seen as like the power. It's it's then like therefore you're actually punching up on it, which is of course entirely backwards like that, none of that. If you have any political analysis, you'll you'll know like, oh, that's not how anything works. But yeah, these people in their minds, they think they're actually pushing up against like the like

the powerful forces of transgenderism. You're like, no, we're just like pugs who are poor, who are trying to who are trying to get our homeown injections like leave us alone.

I can't remember. It was like Tom Cotton or Matt Gates, yea one of those guys, one of the Pentagone guys, right, being like yelling at him because you know, our military is being destroyed because somebody put the class about like respecting someone's pronouns and the guy's responses like we can obliterate any target on the entire planet with no effort. Like what the are you talking about? There's there's that great there's that hortable, great tweet about the person that

runs that four Chune trans account. Who's who is who is like this this trends person who is like a war criminal because they sell weapons. It was, it was, it was a wonderful tweet for a few days ago. I mean one of I mean famously a lot of companies in the arms industry like Raytheon have a great reputation for hiring trans people because all Raytheon cares about is you can go to missile guidance chip. That's all that matters to Ray Theon. They're they're they're very woke. Yeah,

but it is, it is. It is intriguing to watch these people really justify their transphobia as a form of fighting against the system because they have somehow affiliated of being trans with the Democratic Party. Therefore it's affiliated with the establishment. Therefore it's actually this force of power, which none none of that's, none of that's true. But that propaganda is showing to be very effective. But people seem really convinced by that because it's it's it's a story

that's easy to glom onto. And as long as we have a story that we can glom onto, then it doesn't matter what's true or not. It's it's all of the stories are what's actually true. Um So, yeah, that is an intriguing, an intriguing point in terms of how, yeah, how how it's how stuff has changed from like transphobia ten years ago for the transphobia now, how that's resurfacing some things that used to be they used to just

take shape in a slightly different form. Yeah. Well, and so Cat's experiences in two thousand and four if you pass forward a decade, because I'm a little younger than Cat,

but not a lot younger than Cat. Um around like when I was trying to get on hormones, we also had like r l E. The kiddos these days know what that was the real So it's real life experience, yeah, um, which is basically having to socially transition and come out and do all of this under the care of a therapist and a physician for between six months and a couple of years before they'll allow you to access hormones. Um.

And uh. That was kind of like the stepping stone between the previous experiments where it was just like d I Y or nothing, um what was or impossible gatekeeping and then now where there's like more informth incentence model which is what I which is what I do now?

Yeah yeah um. And a lot of these laws are just kind of reiterating that weight that comes from a really like flawed please like that weight didn't in any way benefit anyone is really it's just torturing people and trying to kind of like, um like beat the traine out of you, uh, make you go to the mall presenting as a woman while you feel incredibly awkward and get yelled at by some guy for like trying to buy shoes and he's like yeah, right, yeah, Like if

if you're a nine year old who is experiencing precocious puberty, it is completely acceptable and no one is going to question whether or not, um, you know, prescribing puberty blockers to just make make make like to make it so that you can experience puberty at it what feels like a more appropriate developmental age. Uh sis. People, politicians, the right wing generally people agree that that is an acceptable practice.

But to use that same practice in order to help a trans child not die, that is a sin against God and leading to the decline of Western civilization. We wish whatever whatever. People are like, yeah, like trans people are are leading into this degeneracy that's going to bring down Western civilization. You're like, oh, wow, that's sure. It does sound cool for me. Hormones worked so quickly, and I would having to live through like a year of trying to present in specific ways, well not on hormones.

Sounds like complete hell, because it is. I was very surprised at how fast even like mindset things changed. Um how it is like they're very like hormon it's are very useful and very interesting and how they and how they affect changes and being forced to I guess as the term now is like boy moting or girl moting. This is this is this is this is what the zoomer the Zoomer kids call whenever they have to like

like almost like code switch gender. Um, having having to like present in the way that you want to without these systems of hormones for a while, to even be allowed to have hormones as mi a zoomer now sounds like horrible. It's literally dangerous, like ye, actually an incredibly dangerous thing to put people like experience, to put people into. And I think that like that kind of gate keeping. Uh, you start looking at it through a more intersectional lens

and like, who is it hurting the most? It's hurting people who don't have a ship ton of money to like read get an entirely new wardrobe that people who, um, you know, people of color who are more likely to be targets of violence if they're more obviously visible and read as trans yep. Well, and it really artificially finished

the number of trans people and just gender variants in general. Um. Something that's been really interesting to watch is someone who kind of went into the pandemic as like a trans

elder given a lot of community work. Is the core in trans as a thing and how much we give everyone an opportunity to like explore themselves and be introspective for a year, and how many people are like, fuck, I'm a girl, um or like I'm no gender or I'm every gender and all of these incredibly beautiful forms of exploration that couldn't have happened if they had to go through that in like their normal source of situations, if you just gave them an excuse to like do

their own thing for six months. And um yeah, r l E was a good way to keep people from being able to explore. And it's just one way that trans people's bodily autonomy is attacked. And that's what a lot of these bills come down to as well. Is it's the same thing as like anti abortion or anti birth control staff. It's all just about reducing people's bodily autonomy.

I mean yeah, because like if I had to quote unquote live as a girl for a year, I would have just never gotten hormones because I don't want to live as your girl. Like, that's not that's not what that's not what I want to even do. And yeah, having having all of that gate keeping, which is part part of part of part of what they're trying to do.

Because I mean, as much as as much as they hate people who like are you know, are find more comfort inside the inside the more like typical gender rules, they also really don't like the people who enjoy being more like over gender freaks, um, and like like outside of that, it's like so of course they're going to try to clamp down on any anything it's worth noting to just the like, there's there are a few different camps um in in in the sort of right wing

response to trans people. UM. One of the things that I've learned over the years kind of looking at looking at what the all right is up to. Um. You know what originally I really like of the whole Republican Party, the whole right wing is like a single cohesive ideological unit.

It seemed like they were disabled to get everyone on the same page and then go at something and if you look closely, you realize, actually, it's this huge, ever evolving coalition of people who mostly hate each other and if you're if you're clever, you can break people off and disrupt things. Um, there's different there's different movements, different thoughts inside of the way that people are approaching this.

And you have a lot of politicians who they probably never met a trans person, They certainly probably don't have any gay friends. They're just some random suburbanite motherfucker's who know that sacrificing trans kids on the altar of political convenience will score them points with a radicalized base of bigots. Um, so those people are just cynically hurting trans people because it will score them some you know, pretend points that

will lead to real structural power. But there is also the evangelical community, and a huge amount of the the deepest and scariest fervor against trans people comes out of the evangelical community. I was raised vaguely evangelical, and yeah, and like when I came out, I was definitely told

I was going to hell. Like if you look at the you look at the where this a lot of the incredibly incredibly like eliminationist rhetoric is coming from and that's coming from the evangelical community who are like, it's not just that I think that From a policy perspective, this is like we need to like retool how we're doing trans healthcare something, because if people wanted to have conversations about how to make the best possible systems, like we want to have that conversation, we can we can

agree to we can disagree about policy, but their policy is literally trans people are an army of demons who have come to win souls for Satan, and I'm like, I'm just trying to refill my prescription fun, like we need the funk alone. It also creates its really interesting looping effect of of politicians who get into antiach friends and like like all of this kind of like anti gay stuff to specifically win elections. Right. We even saw this like Greg Abbott doing his um like letters about

about investigating parents of trans kids specifically around his primary election. Like, so people definitely do are still very much getting into this specifically to win elections because they know it's a point that riles up the base. But then you also have people because that's been going on for so long you have people who are maybe not necessarily super evangelical, um, but who grew up around this kind of culture of politicians need to say these things, who are now getting again.

Even if politicians didn't really fully agree with it, they they needed to do it to get support. But you have people who grew up around that and went into politics around that who are now just do that sincerely because because it was what they were exposed to previously. Now we have people like that who are trying to run for office for the first time who are just

that extreme. Um. I think that's even a bit of what the Marjorie Taylor Green thing is is like someone who was exposed to extremist stuff online who is now running for office herself and is completely sincere about all the stuff she's doing, Like she she is a true believer in the way that some other people like Matt Gates may not even be a true believer. He might

just be doing it because it's popular. But you also have the people who are just like fully fully believe it because it's it's it's influenced culture long enough that it's now a full loop of sincerity. Well, and then specifically, the perception of trans people within the religious rights specifically, is actually shifted so much and last decade. I guess now I'm trying to think how old I am. Um,

because I was a student at Baylor University. Oh okay, yeah, okay, cool, cool, Yeah, I have I have, I have some family who used to work at Baylor. Oh boy, I have spent a lot of time in and around there, the top part of the world. Um uh yeah, sick um for all of the queer asked Baylor bears out there. But I became a student and I graduated, and being queer was against the rules the whole time I was there. Despite me,

we came out and started a student group my freshman year. Um. But I had to face this really weird decision because in high school I had a lot of gender stuff going on, a lot of sexuality stuff going on, and I described myself as like a queer sexual because I'm like, I'm still figuring it out. Sometimes I'm a girl, sometimes I'm a boy. I don't know, I'll sort this out

in my twenties. And then I go to college where I thought I'd sorted out, and I was faced with this thing like you can neither be out as queer and but you have to like present as like as sis gay man, or you can transition, which will be totally acceptable within this culture, but you have to go deep stealth and um, you'll just show up next year as a girl and everyone will be fine with that and we'll all pretend it didn't happen and that you've

always been a girl. Um, and that was like the standard and a lot of the Baylor's very Upper Crest religious, right, like very privileged group of people. But was you just kind of go away and we can just for a few months and we just pretend this is how it always was. And now it's much more um inquisitional is

the wrong word. But they it's like hunting trans people down, uh, in a much more aggressive way where they can't just kind of be like, well, God doesn't make trash and instead they're like, oh, God connects you to hell just very directly, and it's getting worse, and um, that's why tear it up is really important that we like start now instead of like next fall, because it's gonna be horrible next fall. In the spring after that could be

it's gonna be real grim. I love to talk more about like a tear it up and how you approach organizing UM and what you're kind of hoping to both expand into and the various actions that you have done in the past few weeks. So the first tear it up action officially was the three thirteen rally in Austin, Texas. That was the Transcrids Cry for Help rally UM, where we had a bunch of people and the steps of the Governor's mansion, UM speaking and getting loud and UM.

We had a few hundred people show up and not really mobilized. A lot of folks in Texas that I know got activated from that and are still going. But while I was running and organizing that with trot Um and actually flew down to Texas from Nebraska to do that, UM, the various humans I'd reached out to and I was just like, I don't have time to explain directions right now. We need to organize the dying by the end of

the month. Here's here's what I have. I just kind of threw it at them and UM, they all ran with it. And I think that's UM the way that we need to approach this right now, because we need to build this big machine because they've been building the machine against us for years. Um, and to build a machine that can rival that, we kind of need to be much more decentralized and much more agile about how

we grow and how we do these actions. Um, cat, you are one of the first humans I reached out to and I was like, yes, I would like to make a big trouble. What was that like from your side of things? Yeah? So I keep thinking about this from the perspective of kind of my own political motivation. So I've done various kinds of like lefty whatever organizing for for most of my adult life. And um, in

the last like last I guess February and February or whatever. Um, I think like probably be a lot of people, especially a lot of trans people. I had like a couple of week period of just like totally depressed, doom scrolling, and then the invastion of Ukraine was happening, and it's just like everything was bad all the time. Um it's still feel still feels like everything is bad all the time. But um, I have stuff to do thanks to uh get a roads over here. UM. So what it I so?

Like I said, I grew up, Um, I was a child of the nineties. I grew up in a world that I knew was utterly hostile to my existence. I knew that trans people were like that to be trans was something deeply shameful and a secret that I either needed to die with or that if I came out it would like ruin my life of all of my family, um, until I eventually, you know, I managed to not die all the way until eighteen came out, and then I found a bunch of incredible queer people and uh have

Um it's been alive since then. But I I was shaped by that experience, by the experience of needing to survive knowing that I had this secret all you know, I knew and I knew in kindergarten. I like just just new with total certainty. And I also knew that

it was evil and bad and that I should be ashamed. Um. And there is a whole couple there's like generation, there's like a whole generation of kids right now growing up who have you know, come out who have been born since two thousand fourteen and come out as tiny right, So there's like a whole and then never mind like kids weren't born before that, but who are in high school now who are coming out and like they have existed in a world where pop culture and the sort

of mass culture more generally speaking, has like there are trans people on TV, and they're not just serial killers or the murder victims in an SPU story. There's legitimate representation, there is, you know, you have like the you have people in national government and in state government explicit lead defending trans people like they they have been enculturated to this idea that they have some semblance of rights and that civilization, that the civilization they live in doesn't want

to smite them out of existence. Um, and those kids are watching this conversation shift and I don't know what that's like, but I can tell you that I've been motivated by anger to do a lot of things. And um, I don't know that I've ever been quite as furious in my life as I have been the last the last couple of months, and so being drawn towards tear it up? To me, is this opportunity to like, you know, uh, I I love the Trevor Project. I'm really glad that

they exist. I'm really glad that they do the work that they do. You know, like that there's all these different organs who are putting out positive messaging, but it's all pretty milk toast. You know, It's like trans people are cool. Maybe we should Maybe we should give all we should give all the tender cursive baseball bat. Maybe that would be a more useful right and to be space for. Like they're fucking trying to kill you, thirteen

year old, they are coming for you. This world is unsafe, and I need you to know that you have somewhere to run to, that there are adults in the world who will keep you safe, who will show up for you, who are going to go and raise a bunch of hell, make a bunch of noise, do a graffiti, put up some posters, go and you know, get ourselves in trouble on the steps of the capitals all across the country.

So that those kids in high school right now who are feeling like the entire fucking universe is dissolving around them into a bottomless see of fear and hatred. But like, there's other people out there. If you're in Idaho, if you're if you were a kid who's growing up in

northern Idaho, like there's other people out there. You just have to get free, and we're specifically so our first actions we specifically target at these states that tend to be ignored by um so like the mainstream liberal media. I'm trying to say that without sounding like a whacka doodle, but were fully past that foot great cool, I have feel like a profit storial. We opened this show with

a joke about that's true. We're fine, that happened. I don't know, yeah, um but yeah, like the mainstream liberal media doesn't give a funk about Iowa or Idaho. And frankly, I've since I've lived all over the country and been involved in queer activism for like over a decade. I have friends all over and a lot of the um more higher up folks and established organs on the coasts

and in big cities. Look at what happens in like Iowa and Idaho, in Texas and Florida, and they're like, oh no, this is a sign of what's to come, and not this affects a quarter of the country. It's already happening. Yeah, it's happened. Yeah it's not it could happen here, It's happened already, And fight for these kids desperately because their lives are at risk so many ways. Right now, they're legally imperiled. The things that we're giving

them hope for life are being taken away. And a lot of these laws most affect the kids that have support of families, but we need a fight for the kids that don't too, and make sure that they know that, like we see you in Iowa and we're gonna go do something melodramatic and cover ourselves in fake blood and lay on the steps of the capital in the in the state that you live in so you can see that, like your feelings are being externalized, and hopefully that'll move

you to knowing that like other people are going through this too, and hopefully other people will see what's happening and it will move them to action to protect those kids. Um. And it will give you a space to start building community and building connections for other transpeople and other people

in the area who want to help keep you alive exactly. Um. And that's really the next step and tear it up is this next month, I want to have us focus a bit more on a little community building and community events, which has always been a big part of my strategy with previous organizing as big lab protests followed by a pizza party UM or we did a great technic in Austin after the legislative sessions last year where we had a bunch of people show up and made a lot

of good connections. UM We had a lot of the little trans kiddos there and some photos that were taken there were then used as like the headline, like the the cover photos for like all these articles about the

kids being attacked. Yeah. Yeah, I think that the we we pulled off our sort of first coordinated national set of actions, that the model that we're that we're looking at is groups like act up so more of a sort of decentralized national network of UM folks who are all working together to be sort of power amplifiers to like share resources, share share tools, make sure that you know everyone has what they need and has backup in case anything gets out of hand wherever they're whatever state

they're in, whatever city they're in. UM And that coalition building or like the community building part is such a such an incredibly important factor. Like I so I was coordinating, I was working on the event to have happened in Boise, and you know, one of the major things that I that I ran into reaching out to all these different organizations is like, I mean, they've been at war for a long time and they have like there are literally militia groups hunting anyone who shows up at a blm

rally in boise Um. When I talked to, you know, some of the like executive directors of like LGBTQ oriented nonprofits in boise they were like, Hey, I'm really it's really cool that you're doing this, but I we cannot send our kids. Were like, I we can't participate in this because we don't know you and we don't know what's going to happen. And this is like this you need to understand that this scene is like not safe.

Totally fair. Yeah, so totally fair. It's like, think a big part of this next step is deepening those connections, you know, showing people that like, we will show up, we are accountable, we are looking to be partners for

long term action, for long term struggle. And one of the things that is really cool about Tear it Up that I didn't expect because I am old, so my networking has always been phone trees um and literally just like calling people out and being like you call these three people UM and getting people out for actions, uh, for tear it up. We have these amazing humans at building like online communities on Discord, which makes me feel

simultaneously like years old and also like the kids. They're all right, they know that how to do the trouble UM, and we're trying to not just build do this traditional coalition building that I've been doing for a long time and making all these connections, but trying to build not just like a physical community, but an online community, to stitch these physical communities together because if you're in like middle of nowhere, Texas, you can see what's happening in Austin,

but you can't always like physically make it there. So it's good to know that, like, these are my humans and they're fighting for me, and I can be in the loop and get involved UM. And our long term strategy with that is to connect people like UM the

Trevor Project. I love a lot of the humans they're actually and like trans Lifeline in these groups because they UM and all these other like national groups that raise a lot of money, but they're actually not allowed to raise a lot of trouble because of like their tax status and all these things is like, Uh, the HRC like can't do a trouble because it'll look bad for them,

and they care about those sorts of things. But we can connect those people with these young activists that want to go stir up ship and cause trouble and need to like let out that screaming um. And even if we can't defeat the laws in the moment, letting out that scream is a communal good. It lets people feel seen, and it lets people know I need help right now, and shouting and crying and a gnashing of teeth and

rending of hair and clothes is objectively good. Actually, we need people to come together, and we need people to see our suffering, and we need people to be moved to loving each other and helping each other. And that's um how, that's how will survive. Right if we achieve nothing beyond Catharsis and we've achieved something. I loved your point about the online community component of things, because I feel like so much of trans focused online community is like, uh,

you know, do I look okay in this outfit? Or like, hey, we're all fans of the same like the anime or something, right, like if they're all, they're the very specific kind of projects, and there there's not I don't feel like there's a lot of spaces that are like, hey, this is like the war room. Well, I mean not that we can't talk about bullshit, but like the entire focus of this space is to connect as many trans people as possible so we can amplify our power together. Um, and you know,

begin to even remotely approximate the boogeyman that sucking. Marjorie Taylor Green imagines us to be right well, and we need to become like the trans and Sexual Menace, which is another protest group that I love from the nineties where they create this iconography around like, oh, we are the trans sexual menace and then it's a bunch of like very nice, like like like very like normal looking folks. Yeah. But I think we need to reclaim that and taking

in another direction. And we need to not be menacing, and you know, like we need to be a good menace. We need to be a bit of an anti hero for the trans community, and we need to do fucking trouble and we need to cause problems for people. And frankly, I think, um, too many politicians get to go to bed at night, not listening to people call them motherfucker's on a megaphone. And too many people get to have a nice lunch at their favorite restaurant without that being

disrupted and having things shouted at them. I think we need to become the menace that we need to be to survive in this moment. I concur with this project, and yes, I concur with this and UM enjoy enjoy participating in things that lead to those outcomes because it is it's a because they want us dead anyway, Like that's that's that is, that is what they're doing, that's

what they're complacent with. UM. I think it is also an important thing to note that, UM in terms of like good news, like not all of these bills are passing Like on on this show, we've talked a lot about the bills that have passed. We have talked about all the stuff that has been going on, but there is not not not all of them, not all of them are going through and that is an important thing to talk about. It doesn't mean the fight's over because

they're gonna try again. UM. But that is the other thing I think is worth is is worth mentioning and states from you know, Florida to Idaho to Washington, Utah, Virginia, like at least there is not there is stuff that is getting blocked um or at least not going through.

And there's a lesson that needs to be learned from how the right operates in this because what they did for years was opposed equal rights, was supposed things in a variety of ways socially and through legislation that failed, and it was fail fail, fail, fail fail for a

long time until they started to succeed. And part of why they succeeded is because they were continuously building a wide ranging and powerful machine to push this stuff through, learning from their fail years, grabbing more power, getting better at messaging and like that. Ultimately, the same attitude needs to be had, like when when one of these laws gets struck down, it's not a sign that the fight's

been one. It's a sign um to keep pushing. Like it's this kind of thing where you have to you have to pay attention to the way they built this over the course of really thirty or forty years um,

because it has to be done. Something a counter a counterweight, a machine capable of of applying equal pressure in the opposite direction has to be built, and it has to be built very quickly well, and nine out of the nine out of ten of these bills die and so nearly two and seventy I think it's two and sixty four is the actual account of how many anti trans bills have been proposed in the last two years since

the last selection UH and only have become law. So they're really just playing a numbers game, right, They're just forcing it through UM and they're not going to stop. And we in Texas it was so hard last year because I remember the last day of the legislative session. We were all there until midnight and cheered so hard when it was done, and we're like this bilt can't

come back. And then we faced special session followed by special sessions followed by special session where they're like, we are pushing through this trans legislation and the war is not gonna stop. We we we're maybe gonna We're gonna win a lot of battles, We're gonna win the majority of battles. But they're not playing it to win those individual fights. They're playing to eventually exterminate us. And they're really gaining a lot of ground and we're way behind

on building our machine to fight it. And this is all happening in the context of, you know, a a very very explicit mask off movement to essentially destroy American democracy and replace it with Christian fascism, right, and we are the scapeboa, We are the enemy that they are currently identifying for elimination. Right. So like it's you know, for them, they're like I can score some points if I encourage this trans kid they killed themselves, right, Um.

And for us, it's like an existential threat that we maybe watching the United States descend into, you know, an irreversible chasm of authoritarianism and violence. Uh. And you know that's going to be bad for trans people too. Yeah. Yeah, very very understated. How can how can if people are interested in tear it Up and what they're doing, how can people find out more info online about how to keep up with stuff and um and what what y'all do? So I think the best place to, I guess get

little updates. Um, it's the Twitter, which is at tear it Up Org on Twitter. Um. And then additionally we have our website, uh, which is www dot tear it Up dot org and yes, good um. And then if you come and get involved, and uh, you can get invite to our discord. We're trying to grow that out a little slowly and stick with folks that we know are getting involved in the fight while we sort of build the initial foundation of this. But that's the place

to find us right now. Twitter, Instagram as well. We're also Teared Up Teared Up Org on Instagram and have a Facebook page. But who the fuck uses Facebook? I mean, actually, so our Facebook. We won't be posting a lot of stuff, but a lot of our events will go through Facebook because in a lot of the Midwest and the South, a lot of people still use Facebook, which is probably bad. Turns out that's not helping I think, um, but those are the places go find us, um and then come

get involved. We're gonna be doing a lot more. We've sort of been on a break for a week because we did of ship ton of events last month all at once and kind of needed a week off. But staring next week, we're gonna be posting a lot and organizing and pulling together some community and social events and some more protests. And even if you don't want to,

even if you don't want to join, join the organization. Specifically, if you're a fist ally who's listening to this and you're like this sucks, I hate it, I'd like to do something. Um, we'll We're gonna have things like you know, postering, like postering resources and stickers and all kinds of stuff that you can that you can grab and like just go paint the town. Yeah, let it. Let it be known that trans people won't be a race, but we

are fighting back. We're a very pro graffiti organization. Um, please bully your local politicians and uh sticker every service surface you can get. Get some hate pens. I think I think I'll do an upcoming episode on how to make or how to do wheat pasting. Yeah, as as as as some fun uh content for you, for you fans of content out there. But yes, follow follow the

tear it Up account on the twitters. That's how I've been mostly keeping up with it, besides just asking people because I know who they are of but the Twitter Twitter is definitely a good a good resource. Um. Yeah, I guess any any kind of any other any other thoughts or notes that she would like to to add before we before we wrap up here, can I say fun grag abbitt. Can we all just k ivy uh? Also, um yeah, fun, lots of governors, a lot of the

governor's not most most stuff. I think the vast majority of governors should go funk themselves and um I'll see them in how Yeah yeah, um that's a good at all. I'll plug your plug your history podcast because queer history sounds like a great thing that people should learn more about. Yeah. Well, so it's the Totally trans podcast network. We might also come up as Totally Trans Searching for the trans Cannon. Uh. We were originally just the one show where we talked

about pop culture and history. It was me and writer Henry Jardina. And now we have a slate of shows that we do all on the same feed. UM. One that talks about comics, one that talks about history that I love that the playwright Katie Coleman does UM called Our Sacred History. And then we have we just started the newest season of Totally Trans Searching for the Trans Canon, where we're talking about finding lessons from history and queer

culture and pop culture. Mind yeah all right, yeah, uh, buy some paint pens, uh, show up to actions if you can, um and learn to make some trouble. Yeah. Also, megaphones are only forty dollars from Harvard Freight, just saying you can get really loud, really cheap. And it's generally legal to shout at people from outside their homes, although

not not always. That can get you in some trouble, but not check your local sound ordinances and bring a volume meter and really just amplify yourself just to that level and learn how to add an audio so you can really just dial it in. Find the lawyer and consult with them first. Yes. Also, personally, I would like to say forced from all anti trans politicians who say that you can be peer pressured into transitioning. Um. I am personally trying to force from Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick.

It hasn't worked yet, but he's very insistent it will work eventually. So I do feel like the right way to pursue that is just by de regular lation and then poisoning the water supply. Well, well, that doesn't for us today. It could happen here as 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.