The War on Trans People: Part 5, How the Nazis Destroyed German Queerness

Where it could happen? Here? Where is God? Final episode of the war on transpeople? Which means when this episode, when this episode is done, that means the war will be over. We did it, everybody, and whatever God's wants were, if long abandoned this place. We did get pretty good news about the governor of Utah, kind of surprising me here. Uh yeah, that just hit. It's nice. There's the there's that.

I mean. Luckily, look, some of some of the bills that we've talked about actually have been shut down at this point. The Wisconsin Wisconsin bill got shut got got signed down surprisingly and in very very recently, like yeah, the past few days. Yeah. Um, there's a looks like there's still going to be injunctions on any investigations in Texas until the case gets put up. Still very much in the air. It's it's still in the courts, but

it's like it's it's trying. It's at least it's kind of paused right now, and it's going to get settled at some point in either the lawsuit or in the higher courts. So we'll see, we'll see how that develops. But for right now, seems some things seem to be paused and some states are not are not fully passing it. I know there was a walkout by Disney employees today about over there don't say gay bill, and we're gonna

see if that's gonna get signed. Um. So, yeah, it's still still up in the air, but we're gonna be talking about something a little bit different, gonna do some We're gonna do some time travel. Oh boy, that's that's what I had to say. So we're going we're going to go back to another time in which there was a for a very brief period, a massive expansion in the knowledge about and sort of but both knowledge about and appearance of and safety of trans people and then

it all catatrophically came crashing down. Oh good. And to help us with that is Robern Evidence my boss. Hi, everybody, how are we doing, Garrison? How? How how are we doing? Oh? I'm doing actually fine, I'm just I'm just waiting for you to do your job and not passing over all. Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

for how this is developed. But yeah, this this idea you can even see in like Victorian era and like run Us on Sarah of yeah, women who lived together and are very good friends, very very very close friends. I hope people don't feel like I'm trying to like flatten the history of like the concept of being a lesbian in the West, to to that at all, or trying to for that matter, flattened like homosexuality between men.

But I am kind of making the point, and I am not the person who are kind of initially made this point. The scholarly work that I'm kind of basing my research on this on largely right now, and we're going to do an episode behind the Bastards that gets in two more of this, I think in the near future.

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

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

publicly as a gay man. Like. He does both of these things at the same time. And I want to from a New york Yeah, it's quite a moment. Um. I want to read a quote from a New Yorker article that's covering all of this, and that's based again on the book Gay Berlin quote. He faced an audience of more than five hundred distinguished legal figures, and as he walked to the lectern, he felt a pang of fear.

There was still time to keep silent, he later remembered telling himself, then there will be an end to all your heart pounding but Ulrix, who had earlier disclosed the same sex desires and letters to relatives, did not stop. He told the assembly that people with a sexual nature opposed to common custom were being persecuted for impule is that nature, mysteriously governing and creating, had implanted in them. Pandemonium erupted and Rix was forced to cut short his remarks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

of this is happening under the Kaisers. And there's there's so many things that are happening in the eighteen nineties and the start of the nineteen hundreds that directly mirror things that are happening in the United States in the

nineteen eighties. In fact, right as the century turns, um you start getting an advocate one of the first gay rights advocates in gay literature uses the phrase coins the phrase staying silent is death to like talk about the importance of gay literary, which is essentially the same slogan, the same stuff we're talking about right now with all of like the with with all the book bandings taking you know, doing a massive sweep of that the past

the past few years. Yeah, this is nineteen hundred, like basically that this is starting. Um, so yeah, and there's you know, there's even there's a lot of um. Activists start to complain and to try to complain both within like their own magazines and within like more public magazines about things like negative depictions of gay people in popular novels.

They start to be the first arguments about whether or not it's morally right to out people who are gay but who are attached to anti gay organizations, because that starts happening absolutely, Um, it's it's sucking wild howld off. This is nothing new or than the sun. Yeah, but like, but this is also like the first time it happened in these types of countries, in these societies. Yeah, yea, but it is that is so yes, times of flat circle. But this is also like the first time it's happened,

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

like he needs to be allowed to talk. Um. So even like in this period of time, there are non gay people at a fairly high level in German politics who are like vocal allies and starting to become vocal allies. You know. Um, yeah, it's it's it's pretty fascinating. So um. Obviously, World World War One happens, um doesn't go great for Germany,

but you know, we we get after that. The Vimar Republic and the Viimar Republic is kind of the traditional era in which we talk a lot about, you know, gay rights starting to really move forward in significant ways. And uh so there's a lot of um, even kind of into the early nineteen thirties, some pretty interesting things that are happening in German society and like the mainstream elements of it. There's a film called ma Chin in Uniform in nineteen thirty one, which is the first like

positive portrayal of lesbians in Western cinema. Um. Like thirty one is like again we're talking like right before uh Z the nazis kind of kind of come around. Um. And yeah, there's these like this this this police commissioner that we chatted about earlier. I think it's one of the people who's most interesting to me. We're gonna get to Hirshfeld a bit in in a little bit, but this this guy is named Leopold von Muerscheite Wholsheim. Um,

I'm not going to get that right. But he's a big part of when we talk about gay Berlin, particularly during the Weimar years. Even though he's like during what while the Kaiser's in, He's why gay Berlin really happens in a lot of ways. Um. And it's in part because like he decides to stop cracking down on on gay people. Um. And like he's not gay, although his

boss is, which is part of like what makes it easier. Um. For him to do this, and there's like a lot of debate about why he does this because he's not like a gay rights activist. Some people say that it's because is um he's worried that like gay people will become politically radicalized by the Reds and so if you stop cracking down on them, they won't go communists like that. There's a lot of like debate about like why he

does this. Um. He's also there's a number of things that he like, he takes a lot of data on on gay people in Berlin, and he does this on everybody.

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

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

For whatever reason, Mr scheid Holsenheim took a fairly benevolent attitude towards Berlin's same sex bars and dance halls, at least in the better healed parts of the city. He was on cordial terms with many regulars, and none other than Odious Strindberg testified in his autobiographical novel The Cloister, which evokes the same sex costume ball at the Cafe Nationale.

And this is a the police inspector and his guests had seated themselves at a table in the center of one end of the room, close to which all the couples had to pass. The inspector called them by their Christian names, and some and some of the most interesting among them to his table. So he's kind of like going on safari like among the gay people in Berlin. Like there's a lot of weird. It's it's weird in

a lot of way. Um, But he's also one of the things he does is he provides police help to gay people who are being blackmailed and like threatened withouting, um. And he'll even like counsel them on how to handle it, Like he provides like counselors and stuff. And he does this in part because like he's worried about, um, them committing suicide because they're being blackmailed, which is like a

real problem in Germany in a bunch of other places. Um. Yeah, and this guy, like why this police commissioner winds up killing himself kind of in the early nineteen hundreds, I think because he wound up getting found to be taken bribes from some millionaire who gets in a lot of legal trouble for raping somebody. So again, he is a sketchy dude, but he's also like because he's he's got this weird almost like voyeuristic fascination with gay people, um,

and some legitimate because there are legitimate humanitarian concerns. He's really worried about people committing suicide as a result of blackmail. So he's one of these figures we don't talk about enough in history where it's like the overall outcome of this guy's at work is pretty positive, but he does it for this like really confusing mix of reasons. He's

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

counseling that there's the thing that they do is they they do the Lavender Scare and they start purging every gay person they can find from the entire US government. And it's like, no, it's it's it's interesting that like, yeah, this is this is a guy in like late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds like like literally ruled Bay Monarch Berlin, and his policies are enormously better than like anything you're

going to see for like half a century. He's he is way more woke on on this than like any New York police officer for a century today, upped up to the present day. In a lot of way, it's like, yeah, so let's talk about Magnus Hirschfeld a bit. Um. Hirshfield is very influenced by Ulrich, the guy we started the story with. His first like publication on the matter is called Sappho and Socrates and eight nineties six, which is again it's a story of a gay man who gets

coerced into marriage. So this like uh, and who commits suicide as a result. So there's like a big with both um, you know, his police commissioner, with Hirshfeld, with a lot of people who are becoming activists in this period. A big part of why is, for one reason another the suicide rate among gay people, um, which is a

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

let's not go that far. He he he was, he was willing, He was willing to do the commissions. She just wasn't willing to do a full band. Yeah, I'm just saying the the justification he gets for what he's doing is like, um, is the rate of suicide attempts among trans people. Um. Not to like whitewash that guy

or utah. Like again, we've been doing this whole week's episodes, but it's interesting that you get um again, It's just kind of like the the issue for a long time has been that when you like other people and make it dangerous for them to be who they are openly, they will kill themselves. Um, a lot of them will. And that's that's a thing that is even by very problematic people in Germany in the eighteen nineties, folks recognize that, like this is a huge issue. UM. So yeah, Hirschfeld

um starts this first organization that's like gay rights organization. Um. And he also is doing like a huge amount of of research. Um. He is fall again, he's following in l Rick's footsteps, he too believes that that homosexuality is congenital, right, it's something you're born with, as opposed to like a choice people make because of Dvans or whatever, which is still the big fight that we're having to this day.

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

to study that. There's like critiques of his of his research that are valid, But one of the he's he's really like, it's wild how far ahead of the curvey is because one of the things that Hirschfeld introduces is the idea that sexuality is a spectrum um where there's

what he calls sexual intermediaries between male and female. Um. He doesn't believe that like those are even particularly useful terms that sexuality kind of like it it again, that it's a spectrum, which is this thing that we are just now really starting to have good wider, kind of

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

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

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

as a man, right, Like that I'm flattening even that quite a bit. But like you have guys like um Ernst Rome, who is the head of the Brownie Shirts and is is a is a gay Nazi and is like that's that's a significant, not an insignificant chunk of the Nazis. They will get murdered in the Night of Long Knives. And it is interesting that that Rome was

outed by anti fascists. Yeah, he sure, like two years before he was murdered, and it was it was, it was he was specifically outed to so division within the Nazi party. Yes, and that does like also just playing it, you know, you're you're you're talking about like, you know, people having debate over whether it's okay to out somebody, um if they you know, are part of that organization's right. That was something we mentioned previously and yeah, just like

an interesting historical tidbit. Yeah, and it's it's um so uh again among like one of the things that the masculinists are doing is like a lot of them are married to women, and they're they're actually fine with this because again they think that like, well, you still need to like procreate and have Like no, it's not even all just about being having like a beard or whatever you wanna call it. Some of it is just like this attitude that you have a responsibility to make more

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

because it's it's all fascinating, um. But there there are these big sort of like this big split, and there's he gets a lot of ship from the masculinists for because he also studies lesbians heavily, Like there's a decent chunk of the gay male population in Berlin who's against the research in the medical practice he's doing to help trans people, who was against his research on lesbians because they're like, well, this is this is the fight, right,

Like we're the ones who were being legally cracked down on or whatever like. Um. So there's a bunch of like different cleavages and fractures kind of within the community at this time in Hirschfeld is not universally beloved and there are people kind of within the gay community who

have a lot of issues with him. Um And I just think it's important to note that because we often do again kind of flattened things, because the Nazis flattened things, right, because these were all it was all the same to them, um and and we often flatten them in a different way to where like, yeah, you've got this guy and he's the he's the hero of the of the of

gay ber Lynd and he's this like thoroughly positive. No, there were a lot of people who hated him for like all these different reasons because this was uh, these like all people had a million different kind of fractures and ideologies sort of running within Um what what someone who was not looking in from the outside, would have just called gay Berlin, you know. Um. And yeah, obviously this all falls apart or is is cracked down horribly

when the Nazis come to power. Um, Hirshfeldt is doing a lot of some of them, I mean, all of the very earliest research on like what it is to be transgender, and he is performing surgery on like gender operations on on trans people for the very first time. Um. And and that gets all kind of destroyed in in May of nineteen thirty three, which is about three months after Hitler becomes Reich's chancellor. Uh, Nazis sack hirshfeldt Institute

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

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

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

very powerful and very popular. Um. And they do get you know, it's important to understand both that like the Nazism was not inevitable, the regressivism and the violence and the the the like, that kind of flattening of human

life under the fascists was not an inevitable progression for Germany. Um. But it's equally important to understand that like a tremendous so much progress had been made in German culture by the period of time when the Nazis rise and it does get wiped out, you know, it does not recover right away. It's still recovering now still um. And in fact, one of the groups of people when when the Allies

liberate the concentration camps, we don't free imprisoned people. They go back to prison because what they were doing was still seen as criminal. If you have the is the pink triangle, you don't just get out because the Nazis because you were in a concentration gap with these other people, because the alleys to a large extenter like well that was it was okay for them to punish those people. Anyway.

That's the story. And another interesting thing is like kind of on the same note, is that if you look through all old German war photography from World War Two, you will actually see a higher than average rate of men cross dressing inside photos. Now, there's always cross dressing during war is not uncommon, especially during performances for like theater and stuff, um, because there's not as much women around.

But specifically comparing like the documentation and of the Nazis and all of all of the German soldiers, there was like yeah, absolutely higher than average amount of of people comfortable cross dressing, despite you know, being a soldier for

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

to just like how bad everywhere else was also. Yeah, like it's yeah, Berlin just got so progressive that even when suppressed, there was enough like stuff there that things could kind of there was there was still there was still a bit there's still a bit of some remnants. Um. And I mean and it still it got it did get horribly obliterated, and and we're still recovering now in terms of our views and medical knowledge on like gender and you know, social contructs, um, susuality, you know, all

all this kind of stuff. Um. But yeah, the German law code that made homosexuality illegal, Um, again after it was briefly more okay than it had been. Doesn't get repealed until Yeah. I mean a lot of a lot of sodomy laws do not get repealed until the nineties, and a lot of cases they're actually still around, we just don't enforce them, like a lot of this a lot of laws that are actually just still just hanging out. Texas had anti sodomy laws on the book until a

two thousand three Supreme Court case invalidated all sodomy laws. Right, That's that's why there's something They're still in the books, but they but they're now invalid. Yeah, esecute people. Um yeah yeah. Feld was pretty based though, so it was fucking rix some pretty based this really interesting stuff. And then that's why we wanted to talk about this is to kind of show the historical background and show like

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

you know, fifty years of progress. Yeah. Yeah, and I think I think understanding the fragility of everything that exists that I don't know. I mean that there's this is you know, one of one of the sort of American mythosis, right, is that like the moral arc of the unit firs bence towards progress, then everything is getting better. And that's not true. Nope, it's not like every every everything good that you see in this world is there because people fought for it was, Yeah, and if they lose it

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

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

weren't they were, they weren't as popular. They weren't like necessarily all that popular in in in Germany, you know when someone like a lot of the thing not specifically even talking about what was done to gay people, but a lot of the things that were done by the Nazis were not necessarily popular. It doesn't matter. What matters is power, And this like plays into how like what's is worth focusing on on electoralism and being like, yeah, these laws obviously aren't being uh pushed as far in

blue states because there's not enough electoral power there. But that doesn't mean that we can flip Texas blue if we will. It into being like, there's so many other cultural factors that are keeping red states red, and yes, of course, ability suppression, all of those things, gerry mandering, all these things are contributing factors. But the overall political bent of those states right now seems to be pretty firm because there's so many people invested in maintaining that power.

So when we complain about kind of how electoralism is not often a super reliable solution to securing these things

over the long stretches of time. It's more kind of talking about that because even though we have you know, democrats and power in the executive ranch, and they you know, make statements about trying to secure things, they make, they make some gestures, they follow through, and those things is always so minimum and so bare um, and there's it's like it's it's it's the thing that like Trump was able to do so much um and now we have

Biden so less willing to use executive powers. Is the same thing that like like with with with Obama and the Supreme Court, when the Senate would refuse to put through any any candidates, Obama technically had the power could because the Senate refused to do to do their job.

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

But the other side doesn't care about that. They're not playing a genuine game. They're not following the rules. They're doing whatever they can to win. So this this isn't about being plugged into lefty Twitter. I get almost I get almost none of my takes from lefty Twitter. I get them from like reading, reading stuff and thinking about how electoralism affects all of these issues and where to focus my attention because no matter what I say or what I do, that's not going to affect whether Texas

is blew a red. Yeah, and there's this I think like one of the things that is an argument against Obama, you know, intervening in that way is like, well, that would have created precedent that would have like further centralized executive power and could have been used by their refused to do their job. Yeah, but you know, I mean, look at what we got, Look at the Supreme Court that we have, which now has a six to three bent conservatively. No, there was just another fucking shadow ruling

today that was about jerrymandering and god I Wisconsin. Um, one second, I'll look it up. But yeah, like you're

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

assassination program. And it's yeah, so like at that point, like yeah, okay, we we we literally have a person who can go I'm going to press a button and kill you, like like we might centralize me. Probably, it's just I mean, it's it's not even a centralization because it was specifically within the context of the Senate not

doing their job. Um. And it kind of all places into like it seems like Democrats are more politically successful when they're losing, Like it seems like they want the other side to be in power because that's when they actually do things politically than when they have power. They're just so scared to use it that they don't even

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

happens when you're in power. Oh, people don't give you any people don't give you much money. That this is this is this is a problem to progran into in the eighties. They get more power when they're they get more money when they're not in power because then they're

trying to organize to get in power. But then once they're in there, it's like, oh, wow, you're not really using the same power capabilities that the other side does when they're in charge, and they're all willing to play dirty politically, and we and for some reason that Democrats are not that kind of like they don't like this

something like they don't actually care about any of this stuff. Right, The stuff is useful for them in terms of fundraising, right, but it's like, yeah, I don't know, like they they don't like if if every trans person in the United States was killed, right, the Democrats would be sad for

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

That's gonna have a much more uh lasting effect than voting if you're in you know, New York or if you're in Oregon, right, because like that those states are they're they're gonna be blue. That's always gonna happen, um.

But other states like uh like I Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alabama, like these are gonna be red states like there's and as much as we would be nice if yeah, if Democratic senators and and people in the House were in there instead, then yeah, these trans pips probably wouldn't be happening as much, but that's not gonna happen. So if that's not going to happen, we should focus on other ways to do that politically. And yeah, sure fixing jerymandering will be great, but I don't think you need me

to tell you that anyway. We should Probably that's that's probably more or less aisode that is as I will I will, I will plug next week if similar similar on a similar train for for kind of talking about queerness and fascism um, which yeah, we are. We are planning it to a two parter, which is a pretty going to be extensive deep dive into explaining the curious case of Nazi catboys and grisons, Garrison says. We as if any of the rest of us had any choice

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

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

of conservative states. Um, I know there's gonna be let me let me actually let me check because I know there's there's gonna be there's gonna be multiple, multiple things happening, and I will I'm gonna be trying to I'm gonna try to be in Idaho next next week for that because there's going to be a protest in Boisy, which I think Boise, Idaho, that's the place. But there's gonna be Yeah, there's gonna to be events in Austin, Tallahassee, Montgomery. Um, so yeah, I will look up tear it Up dot

org for events. For info on all of the events at different at different in different states. For for trans Day of Visibility March March one, and Yeah, be gay, do crime, Yeah, throw bricks at transphobs, Yeah, all that stuff. It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone Media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

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