Alone media.
It could happen here. It's it could happen here. The podcasts that is about. I don't know how everyone hates trans people and how this has become a sort of cross partisan thing. I'm your host, Bio Wong. We are we have been doing. Oh god, I don't even know what sort of number of RNC episodes are going to have come out before this thing before you hear this episode.
But we are once again turning away from their republic from the sort of chaos and despair of the Republican Party, to turn it towards the chaos and despair of the Democratic Party. Yeah, we're gonna specifically be talking about a series of what I think we're kind of high profile fights in trans circles over sort of the administration very publicly starting to write off trans kids. I don't think it got that much news attention because as as you may have noticed, it is. Yeah, a lot of this
is by very specifically Biden administration stuff. We are recording the Sunday Warning the morning of the twenty first. There is a real chance that by the end of the day Biden is no longer the nominee. So we'll get into that a little bit, but as of right now, he's still the guy and he is fucking us. So, yeah, with you to talk about this is Karin Green, who we have had on the show before. Is a trans policy expert of many organizations and much experience, and yeah,
welcome back on this. Welcome back to the show.
Hey, thanks to having a mea. Yeah, it's kind of fun to come back on to talk more about this, because the timing of when you had me on last time was pretty much just before a montha four he went public with this new stuff we're going to talk about.
Yeah, so the last time we were talking about this, it was largely about stuff that was kind of like plausibly deniable for the administration. It was a lot of sort of stuff buried in bureaucratic medutia. Whether or not any of that stuff even exists anymore given recent Supreme Court rulings that have effectively annihilated the administrative state, who knows. But now having had the Supreme Court get their ability to do this sort of non plausibly, they have full
lot gone on the record against trans kids. So I guess I want to start there. Can can you sort of explain what happened with this New York Times story that kind of kicked this whole saga off.
Yeah, so kind of the context is, I'm a trans policy analyst. It's what I do. Unfortunately, are not that many of us in the country, and all those of us, many of us are still employed in the movement organizations,
so they can't talk about this stuff humbly. But so he's been putting out the regulations that the Biden administration has been putting out are not good regulations for trans people, right, But it's hard to help people understand that they're transphobic because it's a five hundred page regulation and so you know,
it's kind of wonky, a little weird. And if there is comms like the Biden administration and the orgs have been putting out calling him pro trans and all this stuff, there's a big barrier to overcome there with a wonky stuff like that. But what happened a couple of days after the debate, which I'm sure everyone saw, or if you didn't want didn't watch it live, you realized in a horror that you now had to watch it to
understand what this country is going through. They there was some initial reporting around how the w PATH Standards of Care Version eight came out. So WPATH is the World Professional Association for transter or Health. It's either last year or the year before they updated the Standards of Care
seven to Standards of Care eight. This is a little background, sorry, And at the time there was discussion among WPATH members, doctors and kind of policy people to some degree about whether mentioning kind of rough ages for what time, what age people tend to start certain treatments like purity blockers, hormones, that kind of thing, what kind of normal normal age
ranges those things happening. We know from years and years of advocacy and work and activism is that if some write something like those things down, even if they present it as a kind of loose guideline or this is where things typically fall, policymakers will write that stuff into law and rig and take what is supposed to give doctors and patients, you know, room to figure out what works best for them, and make it a very strict regime. And so transactivists did not want ages in the WPATH
sock eight for that reason. And in the one and only instance of pro trans advocacy that I'm aware of her ever engaging in it. Rachel Levine in AHHS kind of advocated with w Path not to include those age ranges in it. Yeah.
Levine, by the way, is like the o WT A health secretary. I think, Yeah, she's like the only trans Like.
She's the highest ranked trans like you know, White House official ever.
By like an order of magnitude. She's like, she's like the only transperson, like openly transperson possibly in history to ever like get to a position where she has some authority, and she doesn't use it ever except this one time.
It's a bit disappointment too. I was her biggest fan in the world because she passed. She wrote Pennsylvania's Narkann Standing Order, and I based my law in Louisiana legalizing Narkhann and our subsequent standing order on hers. So I thought it was really cool that Transforms had done this in both places, and I really really was a big And then she just crickets nothing. It's all this terrible
stuff happens. So that's the context in which The New York Times was reporting they somebody had gotten, like some bad guys had gotten some of the emails between Levin and w Path and we're like trying to make it into a scandal, right, and they and the bad guys
misrepresented kind of what the issue and discussion was about. Right, So we discussed what it was, but the way that they would present it as, oh, you know, w Path was trying to limit treatments to kids being old enough of a certain age, which is not what they were doing. And they were trying to present Levine as trying to get rid of those so that five year olds could have surgery or whatever. It's so, you know, just very
very insincere. But so the media was kind of reporting just on that because they love muck breaking.
Yeah, and partially the other thing we should mention it is it was really it was extremely hard to figure out what was going on for the issue reporting because the New York Times, instead of employing trans journalists, they employed transphobic journalists. And the thing about transherbic journalists, they don't fucking understand policy at all. They're like, they're absolute
fucking clouds. These people have no idea what the fuck they're talking about, and so you know, when they're trying to write a story that's about like leaked technical policy documents, they have no fucking idea what they're doing, and the reporting is gibberish. It's like I was trying to understand it.
And this is a real issue because the only source we had was this document of this New York Times writer who like couldn't like the New York Times writer who like couldn't find the back of their hand with a map right trying to like write out these skinned emails.
I'm convinced SIS people don't even understand that they don't know what they're talking about, because I think they just inherently feel like, oh, I have a gender, therefore I know everything about gender idea.
It's like, you know, and like I I I, and it's this is like mostly kind of like fine ish. But the problem is when you have you know, when you have CIS journalists who don't know anything about trans like people at all, who in a lot of places don't think trans people exist, trying to write these policy things. It's they they have nothing.
And yeah, so it wasn't presented super clearly, and so other people had questions, some justified, some based on misunder that misunderstanding, some not. But anyway, there was additional kind of back and forth between the media and the White House, they were asking about it, and in that the White House at one point told them that they opposed surgery
for transgender youth. And then, obviously that is, at least publicly, that is a new position for the President who has has been called not by me but by other people, you know, one hundred percent pro trans super great ally his entire administration. I disagree with that, but other people have been saying that for a long time. And so that took a lot of people by surprise and was a big kind of kurf lefvel. And so that's kind of the jumping off point for where we're going here.
And so that happened. That came out on a Friday in the New York Times that the White House opposed surgery for trans miners, and nobody talked like. There were no responses from the orgs, There was no additional reporting, no follow up from the White House that Friday, not that Saturday, not that Sunday, although that Sunday Sunday evening, the heads of three national large National LGBTQ Advocacy orgs, HRC, Family Equality Council, and National LGBTQ Task Force went on
all three together an MSNBC show. The host I don't remember his name, but he has an MSNBC show, writes for Washington Post and then also contributes to PBS News Hour, Right. And so none of these three people that we pay to advocate for us or this journalist brought up this very fresh, very pertinent, very relevant New White House position.
They just talked about like how important it is to vote and how much fun they had at pride parades instead of garbage, right, And so it was very weird to me that these three people who represent LGBT obviousy organizations would not immediately vocally condemn that kind of anti transtance. And it also blew my mind that this journalist must be like allergic to scoops or something like why yeah, why wouldn't you like that's your chance right there?
I mean I I genuine And you think the journalists didn't know because like this stuff didn't break out of like a very small sort of like transphere by this point, right, I.
Mean it's in the New York Times.
You're given like but like like nobody cares about like people. People don't care about us like you. You would think that these people would know but like, I genuinely don't even know if this person had any idea what was happening, because I trust journalists to write about trans people about as much as I trust myself to be able to bench for us a car.
So you know, yeah, So that came and went Sunday evening, Nope, And I was going insane the whole time, right, because for me, as a trans policy analyst, you know, I've been I've noticed and been and been calling Biden's transphobic REGs and executive words and stuff problematic and transphobic since I first noticed it and picked up on it, which was you know, two or three years ago now. And so for me, it was a very kind of complicated feeling of Okay, now, at least other people don't have
to take my word about the rags. There's something they can look at and see it themselves. But I was also you know, completely threw off my sleep schedule. I was bouncing off the walls, going and see and trying to you know, or organize responses. And so the first org, actually I think I believe it was HRC, issued a
statement Monday night, and it was a decent statement. I might have critiques of them whatever, and then the rest of the orgs kind of didn't issue statements until Tuesday evening, and so that Tuesday also the White House issued a statement that to clarify their position, and the statement actually made it worse. So what the statement said was that
they do oppose surgery for transgender youth. So they reiterated that, and then it went on to say, however, we continue to support gender affirming care for youth, such as mental health care. Period. I mean, it wasn't it was a common the THEA said other but they didn't list other things that they supported, right, So, like the only thing they put in the list that they supported was mental health care, which to a policy person, again, you're not
sneaking those things past me. If you're talking about trans healthcare and the only thing that you say that you support is mental health care, I'm very worried. I'm very concerned, right, because if you're pro trans and you support trans access to healthcare, it is not complicated or hard or controversial for you to say, yeah, you know, I support trans
people and their access to health care. They should have access to therapy, hormones, pubity blockers, surgery, whatever they need, like it's not complex there, right, But they didn't do that, And so to me that felt even worse than kind of the initial position, because it signaled to me that there's likely we're likely kind of losing them on not
just surgery, it's all this other stuff. And so two hours later that statement was updated, revised, and it took out saying they support mental health care and was changed to say we support gender affirming care like a continuum of care and used the words continuum of care instead of mental health care. Now that doesn't that feels like tripling down to me, because the problem was that it was very overt what you left out, and you had the opportunity to go back and fix it, and then
you continued. You just made new words that very overtly leave out the kind of things that we would need reassurance about. Right, And so that's kind of where things were at at that point.
And yeah, we're gonna let's let's leave it there for a seconds. You turn to the people who are funding us talking about this, which is the I was gonna say, the noble product products and services. I cannot promise their nobility at all, but the products and service system support this podcast here they are. Yeah, and we are back.
And there's one other thing I want to mention before we sort of get into where this went, which is part of the fear that was going on, is that at the same time as this is all happening, Labor has taken power in the UK, and the Labor government they're fucking okay, what what what can what? What can I say about the about West streeting? That won't get
me impaled across They're militantly transphobic piece of shit. I think it's like their health secretary now, yes, yeah, masters over there, don't forget Yeah, yeah, they're ministers came out and said we're going to ban all children from getting puberty blockers.
Not just on the NHS but.
All private healthcare everyone. Yeah. And this is a this is an absolutely sort of terrifying step. It is going to get a lot of kids killed. Want to reiterate, Yeah, already already has there's a whole scandal over there about like about the number of.
Trus The Good Law Project has you know, done the research into like NHS minutes and all this stuff, and as thinks that there have been sixteen suicide since this.
Yeah, and I I also want to there's like a sort of debunking thing that's going on. That was from data that like that that the party released. I was like, oh, there weren't actually that many suicides. And the thing you have to understand about those numbers is that those numbers don't count people on waitlists, and the waitlists are not the only place that people die, but they kill a
lot of people. So I want to sort of like, yeah, we got to get that sort of context in which is we're in this position.
Not justreting right the farmers and then there are a whole lot have very vocally transphobic labor impis.
Yeah, and and that you know, that's there's a lot of fear that the Democratic Party can sort of take this even more extreme path than the sort of stuff we've been saying. And you know, I'm going to include the standard thing about puberty blockers, which is we give these we give puberty blockers to like literal like five year old CIS children. They're fine, it's complete, like they're completely safe. There's no there's no downside.
Apparently blockers only have dangerous terrifying side effects used, and they can tell when they're in a trans body and it's the spot. Yeah, I only do the bad things. We've created the trands specific bio weapon like you know, so like that this all of this stuff is safe, and it's not only safe, it saves lives, like the difference between you know, like any transperson can tell you, the difference between being on your hormones and being off your hormones is night and day. It is the difference
between being alive and not being alive. Like it is the difference between having sort of like a stable like stable interiority and feeling like you don't exist every fucking day. So we're not just talking about being on your right hormones, but in this case, we're also talking about preventing being on the wrong hormones right, which can be even more experciated.
Yeah, it's terrible, like yeah, and so there's there's this real fear that what we're seeing here is a pivot to UK style stuff. And one of the things I do in the UK that was specifically worrying about that language about mental health care is one of the big turf tactics is pushing this thing where we go, oh, well, we're going to have this, like you know, we're going to give you mental health care. We're going to like help you figure out what your gender is. Is they
call it like exploratory care. This is conversion therapy. Yeah, that's what they are talking about. And you know, seeing the White House suddenly pivot to this language that is like effectively identical to again the UK thing where they're like we're going to give these conscivers therapy was terrifying.
Yeah. And then so I think that the space between that Friday with the New York Times article and then the Tuesday with that clarification, I think the fact that the orgs were so quiet and didn't offer any pushback and didn't organize community to demand better to ban their retract it like, I think that that's what gave them the room to essentially double and triple down in that
statement on Tuesday. And so that coincided, unfortunately with a couple other anti transdevelopments and the Democratic Party in a way that I find very worrying, especially when taken kind of as a constellation. Right, So that same week, the Senate Armed Services Committee, So the NDAA is a large
military funding bill. It's the National Events Authorization Act, and the House has been passing versions with lots of transphobic riders in them, and then for the last couple of years the Senate has been taking those out and passing a clean version, and then ultimately it's a clean version of that gets enactive. Last year, I was very, very worried that we would lose on that and that it would go through with the writers and the implications here.
So the DoD Department of Defense funds healthcare for the VA and trycare. I think there's one other smaller program kind of similar that's a different name and effort, but largely VA and tricare so for active service members and their families and veterans, which is I think I last
read like ten million people or something. And so if they cut off public funding for trans healthcare through those programs, a whole lot of people are going to lose it, and we're going to very quickly wind up in a situation like abortion is with the High Amendment, where no
public money can be used on our healthcare. And so that week, at the same time, the Senate Armed Services Committee had their version of the NDAA and commit Joe Manchin voted with Republicans to attach to these transphobic writers to it. And then it was everyone in the committee except for three people. I believe it was Warren, one other Democrat, and then I think possibly one Republican who
voted against it. But all the other Democrats on the committee voted to pass it out of committee with those transphobic riders, which is terrifying. Yeah, and Senator Kelly has introduced a floor amendment to take those out, but whether his mimite even makes it to the floor, I don't know. And what the vote looks like that like on that, I don't know. So I'm really worried that the NBA will pass with these riders in it, and then subsequent
spending bills for other departments will as well. And then simultaneously there's the third thing. Over Biden's term, there have been over he's had over two hundred of his judicial nominees that he's offered up and over his whole term, not a single time has a Democrat opposed one of
his judicial nominees. But that week us Off actually opposed one of his judicial nominees over the fact that she had sent a trans woman to women's prison, so specifically a transphobic reason for objecting, and so she didn't be denominated and that's the first time that has happened over Biden's term from what I read, And so there are just lots of these signals that kind of back me up in my feeling that the support that you know, everyone has been pretending that the Democratic Party has for
trans people. I mean, I read their eggs, so I know better, but it is not. It is an illusion, right, and when it shatters, it's going to come apart really fast, and people are going to be really surprised by it because our organizations have not been kind of educating people along the way.
Yeah, we're going to we're going to come back and talk more about this, and we're also going to come back very specifically to the transom in women's prisons thing, because I really truly do not think since people understand how fucking bad that is. Yeah, we're gonna come back to that after these ads.
Yeah, so we're back.
Yeah. So I wanted to specifically highlight the prisons thing in the context of you know, okay, so there's a chance by the time this comes out that bite is.
No longer than on me your lips to God's tears.
Yeah. The issue with this is that the strongest possibility for replacing Cana is Kamala Harris. And you know, I'm gonna ask you to explain Kamala Harris's record on trans women in fucking prisons because it is appalling.
Because I can never escape these ship libs. I actually worked at TLC while we were suing the slain Chelsea, Yeah, transgender lossoner Tilse. We had to sue the State of California for incarcerated trans people to be able to access healthcare that they deserved, and Kamala Harris, as the age of the State of California, defended the state's position that they did not they did have a right to health care.
We won, she lost. But so she is not someone that I can ever trust with trans lives, right, especially because there have been other issues, I think marijuana most recently, where she has tried to kind of trumpet that she has used her discretion and not prosecuted certain things or whatever, right, And that doesn't help me at all, right, because it shows you know you have prosecutor you know you have discretion in what cases you take and what you defend
and all this stuff, and you used it to prevent trans people from getting healthcare.
Yeah, and I want to allo specifically talk about the part about this judge sending a transfer into a women's prison, which is the thing that you should do, because this is the kind of thing that has to be opposed at all costs, because you know, prison is violent enough
for everyone, it is even worse for us. And the fact that Democrats are like, you know, it looks like we're seeing the sort of tide break on this and especially specifically on this issue, where the consequences are so dire it is extremely bad.
Yeah, And so I kind of had the suspicion that there was a deal struck on the NDAA that Democrats and this is solely me speculating, right, I have no insider information about this, speculating that the Democrats kind of accepted a deal on the NDA that there would be some level of anti trans writers that they would accept and into the enacted law, and that after making that deal, the White House felt they could kind of move to the right publicly on trans people, because you know, it
would be in the news from the NBA passing that they could start kind of preparing people for that by kind of making a public and kind of moving to the right word there, right, So that's kind of what I suspect maybe happened. I don't know, but it is.
It doesn't vode well for us, especially because you know, so the the White House's position has already been cited in at least one judicial opinion yep, and then was also recently cited yes the day before yesterday or not now, yeah, Friday, yeah, I think it was Friday in New Hampshire as justification from Governor Sunu for signing their surgery VAM there. And so these things have immediate consequences even before they show
up in executive branch policy. And this is why I have been very convinced ever since kind of I read the policy tea leaves and the executive orders and rags and kind of identified that we were dealing with the functioning a hostile executive branch. I've been trying. I tried as hard as I could to get movement leadership to switch from a kiss ass framework to a take names framework, right, yeah, but they just they haven't done it. So the community
just doesn't. It's going to feel like whiplash, I think for a lot of folks who aren't kind of deep into this stuff. And then don't follow me on Twitter to see me yelling about five hundred page regulations. But it makes me worried that, you know, the leadership is not advocating for trans people appropriately, and I think that if this is demonstrating that they're not, they don't have leverage or they're not willing to bring a leverage to
bear on whoever. The not many is when it's not Biden, right, Like, they're not setting the movement up to have strong footing to hold people accountable to trans equality kind of on the campaign trail, and that's really scary looking at labor, especially as kind of a blueprint.
Yeah, we're gonna be talking of God, Yeah, we're gonna be talking about Sean o'brien'soking dog shit weird fascist turn later with some teamsters. Well hopefully, well we'll see, well, see'll see appens this episode. But yeah, yeah, it's very bad.
But also it's not We're not in a position yet where this is inevitable, right right, Like it doesn't have to happen, And the way that it gets this gets stopped from happening is by us organizing and us fighting and us putting pressure on these people to fucking do this because you know and like this, this is this, this has always been the thing. Like these people unfortunately they do need us, right, they hate it, but you know these like the Democratic Party needs us.
Yeah. We got to see last month during Pride month, they all show up at Pride parades. Yes, yeah, right, it's like y'all actually don't belong here? Why why are you fuck off? Yeah?
And it's like you know, they like they they they they have been successfully sort of like feasting off of the movement that we build for decades now. And it is you know, if they're going to fucking if they're going to fucking eat our corpses, it is, it is, it is. It is absolutely time for them to fucking
try to defend us. And the only way that's going to happen is if we we actually start mobilizing it, we start putting pressure on these people to like not fucking back down and write us off for dead.
But the way that the national organizations have been moving, right, like the positive press and the praise that they've given deepen Biden's shittiest actions and inactions on trans people actively stimy's community organizing. Right, Yeah, because if I have to explain a five hundred page regulation to show people that Biden's transphobic that and they're just like no, but look,
this HRC statement says it's actually great policy. It's a big barrier to overcome or community organizing there, right.
So yeah, and you know, the the other sort of issue here, right, is that the Republican Party is I mean, I don't know if hurling towards is even the right word, but they are. They are very, very very close to what is effectively like banning transfer from public life and their eventual goal of wiping us out right.
Yeah.
And you know, if there's no actual force to oppose that, because all of these sort of national organizations are busy sort of kissing ass instead of actually fighting, we are in deep trouble.
Yeah, And I think and I think we are. I think we are in deep trouble. But like you said, it is not a done deal yet, right. I was actually heartened. I was very I was terrified. So Zoe Zoe's ephyort the trans representative state representative from Montana. After the draft bad Title nine regulation came out, she organized an open letter from fourteen out of sixteen out trans
and non binary state electeds against it. They released it a couple of days after all of the orgs put out their praise were they're praising statements, and they looked really dumb. So she actually organized another open letter of out trans and non binary state legislators against this. It wasn't the you know, the full compliment because it was over a weekend, really scrambly, but just like the title nine one, Dana Carome and Sarah McBride did not sign it.
Why can you explain who that is, by the way, for the audience.
Yeah, So Dana Carome is a trans state representative from Virginia, and then Sarah McBride is an out trans legislator from
Biden's home state of Delaware. And the McBride's are actually family friends with the Bidens, and Joe Biden actually wrote the forward to Sarah McBride's memoirs, autobiography whatever you call it, right, But she's also a Zionist and she is a kind of centrist, center right Democrat who you know, as I've talked to people, my understanding is that she didn't sign on to the title nine letter because she has you know, rising star and the Democratic Party aspirations. She's probably going
to be the first trans congress person soon. I hate it, And so I was extremely concerned that Sarah McBride, who you know, because of those ties and because she's probably going to be in Congress soon, is the most kind of politically powerful trans person in the country. I was extremely worried that she was going to join the mind administration on this. So I agro posted the ship posts that are for several days and thankfully she she did condemn it and kind.
Of bullying work. Yeah, right, go at.
I was seriously concerned about that because you know, just these the forces, this anti transit humanization campaign is so powerful and so strong at this point that a lot of people are making the calculation that if they want to advance in politics, they got a multuous you know. And I don't think highly I and don't think highly enough of Sarah to have been confident that she wouldn't do that.
Yeah, And I think that's you know, that's also one of the really hard parts about this is, like you, I don't know, as much as there is sort of intercommunity solidarity among trans people, you can't even trust your own people when they take power right right, And you know, this isn't to say, like this is one of the rare times where like I think there are like there's some legislators who do good stuff, like Zoey's effort has been doing great, But you have to keep the pressure
on everyone, no matter who they are about it, where they come from, you have to you have to keep pressuring them, because.
I mean, that's my experience as now does.
Yeah, if you don't, we're going to get We're going to get left behind and left to die.
Yeah, And so like one of the one of the ways that this has been so dismaying for me, right, is that trans people don't have any or any national organization that advocates for them full throatedly, principally in a trans maximalist kind of unapologetic way. Right. It's always all of the orgs, all the LGBTQ orgs and the Transpacific orgs, which is kind of what I'm getting to all kind of take this very centrist tech or they have over
the last several years with Biden. They were all kind of a lot happier to be radical when Trump was president, but no longer. Right, Yeah, And my my main issue is even if you are you know, a rich DC strategist who leads who runs these movement orgs like you know they are, And you believe, even you believe that the balance between kind of strident, principled advocacy and lobbying, blazer tightened up moderated advocacy is way further in the
moderated direction than I do. Even if you believe that, you still understand the need for some group with a voice to articulate the trans maximalist position, to articulate the standards by which you know politicians are going to be measured if they're going to be considered pro trans. And what we have not seen is the trans specific organization, so specifically National Center for transgener Quality and CT and
Transferred Legal Education Defense Fund till Death. They recently merged into Advocates for Equality, which is abbreviated a for te don't ask, don't ask, But like, why let the LGBT, let HRC do the centrist bullshit, let them put out milk toast statements, let them praise politicians who don't fully support us. Right, but we need at least one organization representing trans people to lay out the full case to present kind of our actual policy needs. And be the
rubric by which everyone else can be measured. And also just for community education, so we know, so the community knows without you know, people like organizers, people like me trying to overcome these huge, these huge walls to get people to understand what's going on, can see what's being done to us, know what we deserve in terms of policy, and then measure what is actually being done for us against that bar.
Yeah, And I think one of the other frustrating aspects of this, this is something that you talk about a lot, is that the people who do the work in these organizations, right, you're sort of like, you know, your sort of staffers or researchers to people on the on the sort of bottom of the pyramid you make all this stuff function. They don't get a say in how these you know, and how how these fucking orgers put these things out.
No, most of them are radical anarchists and communists like I am, right, They they really really want to do what we need to be done, and it's just you know, comes down from on high that that's not what they're doing. And I know that I am not the only trans national ORG staffer who has been silenced by the White House or the White House reached out directly to my bosses. I think I mentioned it the last time I was on Yeah. But I know that's happened to my colleagues,
friends at other organizations. And I know that I have a lot of privileges that that a lot of people don't, So I can kind of get fired or I could I not maybe couldn't afford it anymore, get fired for my principles. And I don't, you know, I don't, I don't judge, you know, my my comrades and colleagues horstal kind of doing the best they can. But I'm really really scared with with leadership and the way that they have not recognized kind of the situation they've gotten us into.
Yeah, And I think the thing I want to close on is what do you think are effective things that people can do sort of now right? And people who aren't in the top of these power structures. Although if you're for some reason you're the head of one of these orgs and you're listening to this, what the fuck are you doing? Please do better? But yeah, what what? What?
What?
What kinds of things can people do on top of sort of just like community education and yeah.
Yeah, so, I mean, I I think the real thing that I mean I've encourage you to do this on Twitter as well, is if you see one of these national organizations fall short of one hundred percent and advocating for a transit, if you see them equivocate about you know, maybe banning surgery isn't that bad because it's not super common, or maybe it's okay not to demand that Biden, you know, explicitly say that he supports you know, these these parts
of these components of our healthcare before calling him one hundred percent pro trans on healthcare. You know that kind of stuff. If you see them fall short of that, you know, don't trust them anymore, don't donate to them anymore. Take that money, attention, time, and energy, and turn it to mutual aid efforts, to local organizing efforts to supporting
trans people in Red states. Campaign for Southerner Quality just expanded their their practical support program to be not just a subset of Red states that they will help transuth in families in, but all Red states that are that are facing healthcare bands and similar anti trans measures. Support that fund right, go look at and if you don't know of a of a local trans group or a state trans group near you doing good work. You can
go to TRANSSICE funding projects kind of grantee map. They're really low barrier only grant to translate groups and you can see what those groups are doing and you can hook up with them or donate to them. But I think that the biggest thing is not I mean, we Lord knows we need money, we're all poor as shit, yeah, but mainly but mostly honestly, what I think we need
is we need vocal, visible support. We need assist people not to remain silent or passive when they hear or see transphobia, or when they hear or see someone equivocating on well maybe you know, maybe kids aren't old enough to know their trands. Like if you're that's the sounds in saying actual trans people, right, but you know it
can take this people, right. And so if you are a SIS ally, being an ally is an action, right, and we need that now more than ever as the stakes of the risks of being attached to us supporting us grow higher, right, Like we need principal allies to stand with us. And so if you can do that in your daily life, you can be a trans advocate in your kind of routine. We desperately need that.
Yeah, and I think that's a good I know that that that's a good sort of rallying cry. It's like all you know, and this has always substantively been one of the big issues with being trans is that we are one percent of the population right now. Right That's probably gonna rise in future, but right now are sort
of distributed, pauled like our distributed impacts on politics. You know, we have an outsized impact of politics, but for one percent of the population, we can't fight ninety nine per population, right, So we need we need your help, and we need you know, we need not just sort of milk toast lip service. We need to actually fight.
Yeah. We need people in your life to know you know that you are fully pro trans and that means that you kind of learned maybe how to talk about trans healthcare to educate other folks who won't know as much, or you are able to develop and kind of share a personal story about how you learned about trans people and uh and became you know, an outlying right. So learning how to do that work I think is super important.
So this is this spinna can happen here Krinn, Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Thank you so much for having me. Like I said that timing of the last show, Yeah, very smart.
Yeah, we I have I have a weird knack for tiding this stuff correctly for mostly for worse. But you know, Yeah, this spindic can happen here. You can find us in the places and yeah, go support the trans people in your life because the Lord knows they need it.
Yeah, and you can follow me. Yeah, so I'm crankering, I share, they pronounce, and I'm at gay Narcan on Twitter. You can find me there for hot trans policy takes that are not moderated by centrist calm staff.
Yeah, and don't find me on Twitter, absolutely not.
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