Trans Journalism In the Era of Trump

is also pretty fucking bad right now. But in the words of lengths andhes between the darkness and the dawn, the rises a red star. And one of the things that has happened as this sort of like you know, sort of the crisis of transphobia and the crisis of the genocide and the sort of multiple genocides the government's doing, and as sort of transphobia as like an institutional state

discourse has like solidified. Is that, I mean, honestly, multiple generations a trans journalists have really kind of like risen to the forefront. And yeah, we've we've been We've been seeing a bunch of extremely cool reporting and a bunch of very very good work from a bunch of like more radical trans journalists and that's a thing that kind of like there's been so few of us for so long and suddenly.

and the creator of Maddy cast News. All of you welcome to the show.

transmedia in general. Like I was just watching like the space that had been opened a little bit in like the twenty tens for there to be trans people in media, just like closing, you know, And like I've been watching like pretty immediately around me, Like I've been watching the number of like transferms, especially like non white transferms, just like disappearing from media. And it was, you know, it was it was like watching the stars disappear from the sky.

And the thing about the stars disappearing from the sky is, you know, there's you don't notice it unless you're looking at them, in which case light has fucking gone forever.

And it was this really really bleak thing. But also you know, as it's happening, and as we've been sort of like resisting this, I've been getting to watch like the stariscope back on in the sky and like watching new like people emerge and watching people who've been doing cool work for a really long time sort of like come out into the open and like get more sort

of national recognition. And yeah, I don't know, I guess, So I guess that's the sort of place I wanted to start, is just talking a little bit about like what it's like to be fucking doing journalism right now.

in twenty sixteen. I started my transition in twenty fifteen, and immediately my freelance career basically died overnight. And it wasn't like I was writing for you know, right wing outlets something, And you know, honestly, the fact is, and this is I think unusual among trans journalism because a lot of it, admirably focuses on international level stuff because

what we face is so vast. But if it had not been for the local support, because the Blade, a lot of the Blades subscribers are local that we certainly welcome people to subscribe from wherever they are, you know, I would be homeless. And there's a good chance I

wouldn't be talking to you all right now. But at the same time, in this kind of what I kind of call the quiet purge, which I think has been escalating in recent years that you talked about about, you know, just we've got trans journalists who used to write for national magazines leaving out of their cars. Now that is the reality we face our publications, all working class trans people. And you know, we've had journalists arrested twice, yeah, oh my god.

hell bent to persecute trans journalists. Yeah, one of our one of our journalist until the Bliss was openly mistreated in gendered based on her gender during that So to some degree what's happening now is certainly a worsening, but it is also an extension what's been going on for a very long time. So okay, like it is getting worse, I don't know we're going to be in a two, three, even one year, but also like this is not a new fight.

protect myself and my friends basically. But even in that short period of time, I have faced a lot of bad stuff from honestly predominantly the left and liberals and sometimes even though they're queer people being a woman of color, and that wasn't really initially what I was afraid of, you know. I was afraid of like I'm going to get death threats and Nazis, something like fandox being Actually

none of that's happened. I can't really explain why, other than that I just don't use Twitter, and I guess so they don't know I exist. But I have like one of the first national news story that I broke, or one of them, I guess. So it was about like Metai being like super racist and I like kind

of figured that out. I like proved that it was racist. Basically, I just like use my brain to make it tell on itself and explain it's prompt and all that, and it became this huge international news story, but it was like immediately co opted by a Washington Post journalist who retreated me and then recreated the conversation and posted it again, and then I had to go on like this week's long like kind of campaign to try to just get

basic credit for that. And eventually she did credit me in the column to give her credit, but that was not something that was forgiven, and a lot of others that I said the thing to you also didn't credit me. And that's just been a recurring trend that, uh yeah, like I'm kind of invisible even though I make a lot of important years, so that kind of sucks.

taking stuff from like if. And this goes all the way up the chain, right like if if. If you want to know what's going to be on Rachel Maddow Show, look look at what's happening on behind the bastards whenever they cover someone on the right, and within about three weeks you will get a Rachel Mattour episode that is

five minutes a thing. But like you know, but like you know, it's obviously like it'ignificantly worse with like trans people, because like, yeah, they can just fucking stell stories like I remember, God my, like my fucking like the first like journalism well that's not true, but the first journalism e stuff that I did with like po zone people was like we were dreaming like the Atlanta Spas shooting.

We tracked down there there's like that there was a Facebook post that people were circulating reportedly from the shooter that was like basically blaming like anti China media stuff

for it. And we tracked down that this person did not have a Facebook and that all of this was fake, but that that post had been circling into the national news and we were like, well, yeah, this is like fake, right, And then like every single news like every single like CNN fucking Fox News, like every single major news outlet just like took all of our work and like repackaged it and then never fucking mentioned that it was like Garre and I who did this, because you know, why

would you credit the transgender anarchists when you could simply

repackage the story yourself. And this is a problem that's like goes all the way up to like this is part of the reason we're here right now, right Like we're complaining about this on sort of like professional level because like it's annoying, but also like the reason we're fucking here right now is because the person who got to write about trans stuff was fucking Jestison Gull, who is a sis man whose only qualification it was the thing he previously wrote about was men who fuck other

men who don't consider themselves gay. And because he was the person who got to write all of the like trans coverage, though he's just like some fucking cis dipshit right, Like he's now the guy who's like been being cited in fucking legal cases for ages and ages for why you should restrict trans healthcare.

get pitches accepted. Yeah, and it just so happened I became more out as trans I'm not time frame definitely not a coincidence at all. But more recently, this week I launched my independent newsletter, The Free Radical.

chance they got. Come to find out, this is because a trans woman wrote that she's awesome. I just followed her the other day. But then bazillion it was out started picking up on this.

like dozens of other outlets came in. None of them credited me, and they posted like social media stuff about the story. Not a single one of those credited me, and they're getting like thousands of lights and comments and shares, and most egregious I think is I've seen a few of them credit the journalist with Fulha as breaking the story, and have you seen one sank them as breaking the story?

and like your bosses are supportive. You are like trying to cobble together like every scent that you can possibly pull out of a fucking couch cushion, because like you know, I've said this other show before, right, like, if you're a transperson in the US, even when even before all the turf tariffs hit, right like you you were living in the night in like nineteen thirty six, great depression levels of unemployment, and you know, so so that means that,

like it actually matters a lot when when other outlets do your studies and don't attribute it to you, because like you have to find a way to fucking make money, and like almost all trans journalists are like the most hideously broke people you've ever heard of in your entire

fucking life. Like and this is also you know, and this this is also part of the way that like class plays out in the transmitting you see, is like, you know, the people with the biggest platforms tend to be trans people who were already doing okay, because those are the only people who can afford to fucking do this, and like that's why most of you have heard of me, and most of you probably have not heard of David and Mirror, even though David and Mirror do like quite

frankly more important journalism than I do, and like and in terms of especially in terms of like like and like break a lot way more fucking stories than I do, because it's not kind of like not exactly like my thing, right, But that's because I was, like, you know, like I was already sort of like in a place that was financially secure, and everyone else is so unbelievable fucking broke all the time, and it matters when fucking stories get stolen because the only way that if you're a trans

journalist and you're you know, you're working at your own outlet, because outlet won't fucking hire you because that's just the way that the fucking media is structured. The only way for you to get paid is by like people seeing your stories. And that's part of why there's like just not that many trans journalists because like the level of discrimination on top of the kind of like erasire of independent journalist, it already happens makes it just like financially impossible to fucking do it.

cautious about me, is my theory. But anyway, after that initial news story that cited me, same thing happened where it's like everyone's like, oh, well, we can just cite the Washington Post now, and so this person no one knows.

The first website to do that was like a queer news outlet, and then I just kept watching as like I think it was like three or four different queer or like feminist women focused news outlets did the same thing of not citing me, And there was even like a really long piece from this other like that was it felt like it was going out of its way not to cite me, because it was talking about this entire issue about nonprofits censoring people, and that was an

entire conversation that was started specifically because of the news article I wrote, but it specifically did not cite me, even though they mentioned how one of the organizations that I reported on had reversed course, which is something that they emailed me and said it was because of me.

So that's how well, that's how deep this does. They will like go out of their way to like carve you out of a story that exists because of you, even if they are ostensibly, you know, not just a liberal like a New York Times outlet, but like a left wing like progressive facing outlet that's trying to like reket it stuff like that. They they just want to exclude trans women from their own stories, even it's kind of crazy.

kind of specializing. So I think you're really good for like raising issues in the local level about how awful the Tours and Development Authority is which is this hotel or cartail that takes every dime of all the local hotel tax, every bit of it, and then uses it to market the place to more rich people and push crackdowns on pretty much everyone else. So we pushed this.

It became a widespread public demand. A lot of organizing happened around it, and there was zip zilch zero mentioned that like spurred by investigations and editorials in the Asheville Blade. Even one of the people who wrote that editorial, who was a local resident activist who dealt with some tourism stuff, was literally being quoted the fact she'd written a piece for the Blade and that you know, was just not mentioned.

And it actually became kind of a running kind of grim joke because we're all working class trans people and you know, half of us are transferm is just the Asheville Blade does not exist. And some of that was for liberals, but honestly, Asheville has a massive trans misogyny problem, which think we were the first meet outs to do like a quick guide to trans misogyny, which we did kind of like a slide show about it in our

Patreon and stuff, because it was that extensive. But even the left in Ashville has some real problems with trans misogyny. So and it's applied everything got just from trans issues, but even to bread and butter kind of local stuff, which we also do a lot of reporting on. You know, it's we can't admit that trans leftists and anarchists are shaping the discussion in any way, shape or form.

way the sort of capitalist media functions. And then on top of that, we have the kind of like trifecta of like we will never mention that you exist, which is trans independent and radical at the same time, and like this is the thing happens like every fucking trans fan like journalist like friend of the show Maya Arson crime w has had this happen to it like a

billion fucking times. I want to talk a bit more about kind of just like the financials of how this plays out and how independent media is sort of being supported in this era because you know, like it's also really true that like even even the like nominally trans outlets, like a lot of it functions a labor exploitation. And yeah, let's let's talk a bit about that.

Reason I got started then because I was homeless and I needed a way to make money, and where I was living at the time it was a complete job desert. I didn't have a car and there was nothing in walking distance to me. The only things that were like minimum wage food service jobs that over half an hour walk and my long disabled. My body is in pain if I stand up too long. So those jobs did

not last long because I physically couldn't. And so I tried to find something that I could do remotely, more consistently, and I went all in into freelance writing and journalism.

that industry is just dead. It was dying at that point and now it's just like, if you want to get a job as a gaming journalist, you're not gonna I tried. We need more people to do it, but it does not pay. So I'm going into vix journalism, which pays like marginally better, and by marginally better, let me talk about some of my rates. Oh god, yea one outlet I've written for pretty consistently go for a while.

To start, it paid me about one hundred bucks an article flatter rate, and this includes for highly research in deft reporting articles.

pieces in a month, and so that was great. You know that two hundred dollars a month for each individually reported piece that really paid the bills, and eventually it changed into one fifty a piece for endef reporting pieces that often took over a month's worth of work to get going, and I had to meet my deadline or as they would get really angry at me and and they would be really dickish. And that was one of

my better experiences, certainly not the best. I've had plenty of people who were wonderful, who I've written for, and I've had great times with. But the through line of all of it, even the places that pay better, they're for one off stories. They're for things that do not giving key a source of and com long term. Even the places that have paid me the best for individual stories,

it's not enough. Not the least of which because you know, the cost of living is borrible right now, Terris, they're going show up and oh god, where what the fuck is happening? But also because none of it's consistent. The closest to consistent I had was overworking myself by writing like upwards of like ten articles a week, sometimes upwards of like five to seven in one day and all of them being reported and in that and it's not

sustainable doing that, No no, but that's just common. That is just normal.

I was trans But like that's also just true for a lot of people, which is that like that's like the way that you can do it. So like there is the like front toward discrimination. But then also the second aspect of it is that like the way that all of this stuff plays out structurally in the economy is that you get reduced to sort of contract labor unless you try to go and go it by yourself.

And because of the incredible just my material financial oppression of trans people, this is another big part of the reason why there's just so few, you know, and like there's there's becoming more, right, and I'm incredibly happy that, like you know, like.

But like part of the reason why there's not more is just that, like it's so difficult to survive doing this and y you know, and that's also I'm gonna'm gonna sur this into a minor plug, which is like, go subscribe to the Asheville Blade, Go subscribe to Free Radical, Go subscribe to Manicast News, because like literally the difference between like people being able to have an apartment and pay their rent or like living in a car is the amount of support that you get from this stuff.

a co op. But also when we do hit a difficult financial spot and we operate in a shoestring budget, especially post Helene as sadly a lot of folks have been driven out of Ashville by the refusal of farious governments to do anything about rental aid, by the resumption of like very quick resumption of fvictions, and a lot of other horrible stuff, Like it's a struggle. We all are working class folks. We all work of their jobs and face trans the discrimination, trans misology, and transphobia. So

it's it's difficult. And even with being a co op, we do the best we can, and we do, unlike other places, pay freelancers fair rate. But sometimes it's legitimately difficult to divide up our tiny budget, and at some points we say, look, we can't cover this right now, or we have to say okay, yea in some cases I've done it before. Certainly I'm covering this, but I am going to literally have to split up payment forward over multiple months because we just don't have the money

in there. But I feel it does need, it does need to get out there, and even if those decisions are made more fairly, it is still a real problem that we are dividing up us fairly small pool of resources.

of the of the lottery professions for trans women. You get your healthcare, you got your money. But I've been trying to go beyond just me and try to help other people as well. So recently we just applied for fiscal sponsorship with five to one C three, which hopefully hopefully let us become a charity tax deductible and all that.

And I've also been putting a bit of my own money, and I've also been you know, pretty much begging all my readers to give us money because one of the biggest goals of my publication has it kind of started off more about like, you know, reporting on the news, of course, but now it's reporting on the news and also you know, making sure the people who report on the news aren't holmost actually, maybe that's a bad thing.

Everyone I know in my life knows people like all these journalists who report on this news, but a lot of them probably don't even know how much like they suck.

They struggle, just like getting through their daily lives. So I'm really trying to hopefully create some structure for us to have at least one nonprofit that will fund trans journalists at like a living wage of at least you know, twenty five dollars an hour, which I honestly don't think is a lot, especially like in a place like La but twenty five dollars an hour is probably more than

you can get almost anywhere as a trans journalist. Also, I've heard a lot of jokes about, you know, we're passing around the same point dollars in the trans community, and it's a little bit more of that. But I'm also hoping to see if I can try to fundraise from other people and try to you know, raise awareness for this issue because I don't have a lot of time myself to be writing articles these days, because I

do have a full ten job. But yeah, hoping to kind of make a dent on this issue and raise awareness. And it's really a win ran for all trans people that you know, if we're paying people who need this money to survive, but they're also creating really important news coverage that literally is like life changing for hundreds of thousands of millions of people at many times. And that's how I see it's an exceptionally important issue that is completely unaddressed.

of my head. Things like three or four times of the very least more likely across the entire transpopulation to be homeless than people. And like you can just fucking see that if you know trans people. It's like, yeah, fucking everyone's spent a bunch of time being homeless, and like, you know, that's just the conditions of this. And you know this is the thing that like, as you the listener, like it is possible for this. It doesn't have to

fucking be like this. Yeah, like it doesn't. You have the power in your hands, like to keep people off the street and like with a roof above their head, and you could do this by clicking The links in.

But that piece is reported very differently from if it had been reported by, say a trans journalist who'd been very well off their entire lives, you know, because a lot of us people in our co op have either been close to or been homeless before, and so we were able to bring in the experience of knowing that if you are a trans homeless person, the Salvation Army isn't letting you in or is one of the worst

possible shelters you can end up in. And that piece was written and read very differently because we were drawing from that, from that on the ground experience.

But I remember working on a story sometime like the summer of last year for them where I was I was writing about some new report that came out talking about just like poverty rates, job discrimination rates of trans people. And one thing I've noticed is, like David mentioned, there is a huge disconnect between even if you have like wealthier trans people write about an issue versus those who

are in poverty. Like a lot of the sources I had for a specific article, I don't remember the headline because I wrote like five hundred or goalster q Nation last year, but a lot of the sources I used for that article, and like other ones like it, are like big nonprofits, And you know, obviously your mileage maybe

very depending on which nonprofit. But most of the folks who like were writing these reports or who were doing the press releases and stuff like that, you could just kind of tell that they maybe did not have quite the same experiences as say, trans people who have been homeless, trans people who have had to deprive themselves of medical care because they couldn't afford it, trans people who have had to go without food because not enough money. And it's almost like a lot of people who didn't have

to go through this stuff, like intellectualize it more. They see it as like these abstract numbers and they know it's bad, but they don't have that like individual connection.

Like even many of the nonprofit folks, a lot of their friends, even their social circles are all going to be on average, you know, I can't say for every single person, obviously, like on average more wealthy, more stable, they have family to back them up, they have plenty of options, and I don't know, rambling a bit, but there's just a disconnect, you know, whenever reaching out to folks who won the birth law a little bit.

it's like, oh, you're not making money. It's not about that. It's like if you're losing, like eighty percent of the money you put into these articles because it takes so many Like I'm a very strong believer of paying people, you know, a living wage. So I was paying the journalists like well over twenty five dollars an hour for you know, dozens of hours of work, and that adds

up really fast. And then court feet, like pacer fees, all these other costs are adding up and it ends up being like around the thousand dollars for the single article. And it's a really important article that you know, raise a lot of awareness. Everyone in Maryland, in the trans circle, they're talking about it. But at the same time, it's basically a charity product, right, This is why I'm trying to become a nonprofit because there's simply no other way

to be able to fund this stuff. There's no capitalist model for reporting on trans women in prison. It's not something that people are you know, like I definitely get there's a lot of people who support us out of the goodness of their hearts, and that's really nice, but even that is not enough, because that's just how it is. There's just not enough people who care about these issues. Sadly,

especially the more intersectional it is. You know, even a lot of people in the queer community aren't as wory necessarily about people in prison. They're more a worried about people not in prisons. And you know, of course everyone matters, but I think it's really important to focus on those most intersectional issues because when you really think about it, like prisons are basically, you know, where they do every thing they want to do to transom and aren't in prison.

That's where they get to do all of it, and no one's looking on, no one's watching them, no one's holding them accountable. But yeah, I think it's basically a complete failing of capitalism, Like it's there's definitely be some outlets that, you know, maybe they could be doing better, but at the same time, a lot of the time that's basically, you know, be really shitty. The people are closed down and neither of those are great options. And personally I would close down, but I can't tell other

people what to do. And I think really it's a systemic issue that society doesn't care about us, that the cists, people who really should be funding these things and trying to solve these issues, just pretend like we don't exist, and you know, go out of their way to even erase our presence even when we do, you know, create national needs.

foctioned around class journalism are a microcosm. It's like the most intense version of the stuff that's happening to the entire journalism industry, right, or like, you know, part of what we're seeing is like is just that it's been the destruction of local news, right, And the product of this is that the only people who can be journalists are like a bunch of fucking rich dipshits and you know, like, yeah, you've all fucking read like New York Times columnist is

like the platforming a genocide denier today, right, like that, and that's that's sort of the product of this. And it means that like unless like literally like people like you, the fucking listener, And I guess this doesn't apply to you if you're you know, like statistically a good number of you are like you are also transgender, and you make like fucking nine dollars an hour like running a forklift or something like. This is not this is not on you, like, I know much of you are gonna

be like, holy shit, actually give money these people. It's like okay, but like this stuff is only possible if people are actually fucking willing to support it, like until we can like fundamentally change the way that the entire political and economic system works in this country and in

this world. And until then, it's like yeah, like it's this is a fucking problem for like us here too, because you know, like again, like I got fucking lucky, Like I am extremely dissimilar, Like I am the transfoman, like one of the transfomens who you will hear from

the most. And I have like a stable job. I haven't been homeless, and I haven't done sex work, and this makes me completely unlike a huge portion of trans people, especially transferms, right, And yeah, it's like, yeah, it fucking colors the way I do this shit in ways that like I don't see because like I haven't had to like do this shit, and this is a real fucking problem.

The only way that it can not be like this is if people are actually willing to support the people who understand these things because they've fucking gone through it, and so so your options are like all of our stuff gets reported on by Jesse Singahl and we all fucking die, or we fund's journalism if we fight them and we all live in a fucking better world.

We just put out a really powerful investigation about you know, more yet more mouthfeasance in the police department. So so yeah, like it can be done. It's not impossible, And as tight as things are, there is also a lot of resilience and we do get a lot of very genuine support. I do think that's worth them sizing two. So, like, there is strengthen there is some hope here. Yeah, and you know, and again it's like it's it's not impossible. It just requires it.

We really need everyone to start pitching in, especially people who aren't trends, and we really need like it's it's literally life saving the money. Like and I think one thing to consider is, you know, one thousand dollars to someone who makes a lot of money is completely different from one thousand dollars to someone who is like a month away from being homeless.

to be supported and to be able to make a living. Also, frankly, we're really good at this, like generally as a whole, like we have a lot more perspective I think on how this healthscape social structure actually does and doesn't work, and a lot more determination to actually tell the truth in general, and so you know, dollars to the actual blade for example, or to or Tamra or too maddicast,

Like they go to journalism. You know, they're not going to like some baroque hierarchy of you know, of gentry administrators or something or CEOs.

it is not possible to act on something. Yeah, So, like you know, you are simultaneously you are supporting, like you are supporting trans people in like the most vicarious position we've been in in fucking ages. You are like supporting your supporting journalism. And you are not even poking a stick. You are helping build a lance to like stab into the side of the people who are like destroying this world. And yeah, I think that's fucking important.

So if people want to support you, where do they go? Where do they go?

the only one only mirrors and Losine on there. And if you subscribe, you're supporting some of the only trans anarchist national news coverage. Basically in every single article I write, I try to find a way to shoot order anarchist theory and what fucking I'm sucking. Like my first article, I was like, hey, go check out crime thing, the one who one I published yesterday. I just I went on a whole like page long tangent where I'm like, okay, cool,

so this is what more liberal people are saying. But go read Lorenzo O. Kombola Irvin, go read queryan anarchism, Go read this shit, and yeah that's I just want to shoehorn anarchist theory and get more people will be anarchists.

your email, I appreciate that too. But my website is maddiecast dot com and that's only one b So m a d y cast dot com and round bluebliskuy too with the same same website named and yeah, thank you. People can find our co ops work at Ashville Blade dot com and there's a giant link to our Patreon there. For fifteen bucks a month, you can get a lovely Gentry Tears mug, which we're particularly proud.

you can't fucking talk about how to solve them. And this is also partially why I have a cogul journalists like I kind of jokingly refuse to call myself a journalist because, like I, fucking I refuse to be associated with like all of those goddamn Atlantic mother fuckers who institutional jobs to endanger trans people, like you know.

be like that. But like the structural, the structural like structural dature of the media is one of the ways that this fucking happens. And we don't have to let the New York Times do this again.