Hey, Welcome back to your Wednesday episode of the Nonprofits. Texas Governor Greg Abbott had recently called for a special congressional session to address some bills that he had recently vetoed during the regular session. That special session was interrupted by the deaths of, as of July fifteenth, one hundred
and twenty or more Texas citizens. This affected Texas lawmakers so deeply that the focus of the special session shifted to flood relief, and the lawmaker spent the entire first day addressing exactly zero pieces of legislation related to flood relief and instead focused on issues like laws concerning public bathrooms to protect their citizens not from real threats, but from men and women who may or may not have
the presupposed Genitalia. House Bill thirty two was introduced by Representative Valerie Swanson as the Texas Women's Privacy Act, and would require transgender people to the bathroom associated with their sex assigned at birth, rather than their gender identity in sex segregated public spaces. It's unclear how Texas lawmakers intend to both enforce this law and protect women's privacy at the same time. The story is from NBC News by
Brooke Sipelsa on July fifteenth, twenty twenty five. So, gentlemen, there's really no shortage of perspectives to take on this one.
I think between the three.
Of us, like, each of us is pretty well aligned but slightly different. So while none of us have lived a trans person's experience, Jonathan, you've definitely dealt with some of the harassment, biggest bigotry and marginalization and dehumanization in your life that trans people are going through today, end mass So where are you kind of sitting, you know, reading this.
Sort of angry but bigotry and prejudice and used to justify government oppression of already stigmatized citizens has nothing to do with the country I was raised in, at least after Stonewall and the follow on riots, not to mention the civil rights movement that happened before that. This is a homophobes dream, you know. We can we with the current court system, we can go ahead and do whatever we want to anybody we don't like or we think is icky, and nobody's going to stop us. And I'm
beyond disgust. I'm beyond anger anymore. You know, when I was growing up, you could joke about gays and call each other names as an insult, beat up, or kill with impunity. Actually in some cases, you know, the defense being but I was so freaked out when I found out in bed that she was a he and killed in perfectly legitimate defense for murder at the time, you know, And I could be wrong on that. I don't know
if anybody got got off on that necessarily. I don't have any examples, but when I was growing up, that seemed to be what everybody felt was Okay, I hate the gay defense. Actually Dan White did get away with it with the but it wasn't that defense. It was a twinkie defense. So anyway, that's a whole nother thing. I was in San Francisco for that particular milestone and gay gay history. The death of somebody is a little
bit serious, but at that time it wasn't. It was just like Strange Fruit, the song that was by Lady Sings the Blues, and I can't remember her name now, I just slipped my tongue, but was about lynchings in the South that were prevalent up until and through the nineteen fifties and into the early sixties. I have no more I just don't have any disgusted and disdain. The limit has been reached, it's maxed out. These are awful
human beings. They're completely back in the seventeen hundreds. They're pensiant for doing the very worst they can to people that aren't even that a problem in their society, who just want to live their lives. They don't want to do any of the made up shit that they say we do. You know, like there are almost none no child abuse or child molestation trans people who are charged with that and convicted of that, almost none. You know,
who was the ones that were charged with it? Your priests, your ministers, your youth pastors, and your uncle's and aunts and members of your own family. That's the ninety nine point nine percent of the people who will do those kind of crimes. Yet they make them about keep other people. Again, every accusation is a confession, and when it comes to conservatives. So I'm just I'm really sick of having to deal with it or hear about these people, and because they
are just evil. If you think you're righteous or not, you're evil. Get over yourselves anyway, I'm ranting. I'm going to stop, That's.
All right, now I wanted to give you your space to get that out.
And I don't know if this is like considered a hot take or not, but I think that sex segregation, in most cases, generally speaking, is just kind of silly. I think that it comes from like purity and modesty culture, and I think both of those are kind of silly. And I think the humans are the only animals that do a lot of things, and in many cases it's because we have cognitive context if I can summarize it,
that other animals don't have. But I think shameful pissing is not something that is like a high cognitive context thing. I think that's that's just from purity culture, is just from modesty culture, and and the idea of like bathroom legislation, Like now we're creating laws about how.
Ashamed we are of using the bathroom.
Tracy, where does before you get to that, I just use this thermometer that was not a hot take.
It in facts that.
Error okay, so.
Has no yeah, it doesn't register, Okay, it has no temperature, no molecules, good moles that's data. So when when they're meeting for the purpose of addressing flood relief, where does bathroom legislation land like on your like are just even generally speaking, I can't fathom.
I'm just going to quote myself and my notes because it's just what that is my stance on this issue. I can't fathom being concerned about the bathroom thing. I can't like, like, here's the deal right here, here's like the the very super big. There's some things I can I can almost wrap my head around, you know what I mean, Like I can wrap my head around being afraid of an afterlife. I can. I can wrap my
head around racism. I can't understand it, but I can wrap my I can see how you got there, just because I'm aware of the of the greater societal effects that lead to that. Not not that I have any understanding.
That you relate, but that Yeah.
But with the with the bathroom thing, this literally just sounds like separate but equal again in my but it's not even separate but equal. It's separate. But we're gonna beat you up anyway, because any like not any there is a large number of trans women who will go if they now follow the law that is immediately putting themselves in a super dangerous position. There is a huge number of trans men who if they now follow the law, that is putting them in a super dangerous position. So
like no matter, it's soup super super intentionally. It's so that it's an outing, it's a it's it's it's a combination of separate but equal and the wearing of a pink triangle. It is a combination of those two things. They want to be able to identify you easily, and they want to control where you pee, which like, how how far are we going to really take this? I don't I haven't read the bill, but my mom would take me in the women's bathroom when I was a kid.
Are we but like that is there a reservation for for for miners or insinuating circumstances, Like like like what are we doing? Are we really just picking on marginalized people? Is that all we're doing? Are we really not? I don't are they even trying to hide it at this point anymore? That's that That's what I'm getting to. It seems pretty bald faced. It's like, yeah, there was a there was a there was a big old flood, and
I know everybody wants us to get to that. So maybe yes, on my on my fuck the trans people thing? How about that? How about that, let's just vote yes on that one and then we're good. It does.
See, they're not They're not framing it that way though, and that's why it's landing with certain people, because what they're framing it as is, this is what's going to protect women. This is how we make sure men don't go on women's restrooms and hurt women. But I don't know.
As I said, I'm.
Gonna keep ahead because I really think that what I have to say is more important. But I'm sorry, Eli, everybody.
You don't know me and.
Eli well enough to know how that would land.
Yeah, Tracy and I have known each other for a long time. That's fine.
Yes.
So the the thing I'm running into is that, you know, there's a lot of people on the left side of politics who are against firearms, and like just in general, they they they they're they're not for it at all. And one of the common arguments is that, like, these laws that you're bringing up won't even fix what you're saying they're gonna fix. That is what a lot of people on the right side of politics will say in
response to the left side of politics. Bringing up arguments against arguments to bring forth legislation that they say, we'll fix the problem. A lot of the rebuttal is that it won't actually fix that. The exact same argument can be used for this. Criminals will figure out how to attack your wife anyway. This isn't gonna protect her. It's not the guy who the same guy who will change everything about his life. And did John just die?
John is a ghost now, ghost of.
Ale and translucent John. It scared me. But no, the same guy who is going to to change how to change how he dresses and take hormones and possibly engage in surgery, and change how he presents himself to the rest of the world, all for that sweet sweet payoff of watching your wife, Pete. If he's really gonna also attacker now you've just taken away that way he can do it, he's gonna still do it.
You know.
Purpose purpose, The real purpose is very thinly veiled. The real purpose is to identify and track people they don't like, to out them and to make sure that they are embarrassed and everything else. There's a very simple solution to this, and a lot of places have it, and that's called a unisex bathroom.
That's it.
Yeah, and that's one stom you know, you could have one stall bathroom for everybody, and then you can have as many of those as you need for the amount of people there.
Yeah, solved And that kind of agrees with well, the kind of agrees that is what I was thinking earlier.
I think, like every every living animal, at every mammal at least uses the bathroom, and the idea that we have to hide it from everyone else because your body is gross and you're a gross and you should be ashamed and you're disgusting. It's just it's so silly to me and and and I'm using silly to be polite, but any number of words could describe it and stupid.
It doesn't do us any good.
And I don't remember the last time I even looked at somebody in a public bathroom that I didn't already know long enough to even have any idea what their face looks like, let alone obsess over what their genitals looked like when they were born.
I don't do that for anybody.
By the way, you don't.
Know a bathroom laugh at people? Come on, what was it?
Sophia Vergara could be in the bathroom with me, and I wouldn't know because I try really hard not to look at people in the bathroom.
Right, And that does come from like we are sort of socialized to like give people privacy during that time because of how like the societal you know, expectation and attitude towards Christ.
Because if this is better back in Roman times, everybody did that together you know where going and you take your dump whatever, and you could talk to.
Each other and you use the communal sponge on a stick.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
I honestly don't know if that's true or not. It's pretty gross. I hope it's not for at least a period of time.
I'm gonna hope.
I'm gonna say they probably change it out, cleaned it. That's let's hope. But it's not that.
But the thing is, this purity and modesty culture has just led to this idea where it's like, no, like there are certain times where you just don't look at people, and it like nothing bad happens when you see a person naked, nothing bad happens when you get seen naked either.
Like it's just the way.
That it is well with me that people get grossed out. But that's just but that's.
Once again I'm going to that's exactly.
It's just this idea of like, oh, bodies are supposed to look a certain way or they're supposed to be concealed when they don't look that way.
Or under certain circumstances. And I could rant it.
That's a view I've held for a while, and I could go on about it. I don't mean to, but I wonder. My thought was what the real motivation for
the bill is? And I wonder how much of it is how like politicians are worried that they're going to like secretly proposition a man in the bathroom for gay sex and then find out later on that he has a volva, and like, all this isn't what I wanted, because I remember I was in like seventh or eighth grade and there was some scandal about a politician, like there was some I don't know, some symbol he used in the bathroom to like proposition somebody for sex, and.
So I wonder, I wonder how much of that is their motivation as the zero non zero non zero. I don't know, And I did, did you, either of you have any final.
Thoughts just that oppression is oppression, and if you're using your religion or you're firmly held beliefs to oppress people, you're wrong and you're evil full stop. Sorry, you cannot be called a nice or a good person. You're not. And so you get to wear that moniker. You know, if you're a human, you have human rights, no exceptions, full stop. Nothing else to say on that. I know we got time, but you know, hey, I already did my rant. I'm kind of like I'm not ranted out.
I have more. Don't worry people, I had plenty of rants left, but this one's kind of like so disgusting that they wouldn't help find the children that were washed away in a flood, but they will worry about whose bathroom you're going into.
You know.
That's to me, says it all about who their legislators are. You know that they're just evil people, that's all. They're just very evil people who don't know can't They couldn't tell the truth if they you know, if it was shoved up their ass and they grabbed their ass with both hands, they couldn't. They couldn't find it. You know. It's just like don't even talk to me about what truth is ever again, people, you know, because you don't know what it is, So get the fuck out of
my life. You don't like my apples, don't shake my tree. Okay, don't shake that tree.
What do you think, Tracy?
Hallelujah? But what I'm gonna say is, I'm just really tired of talking about Like I feel like part of the strategy is to just to just not let go that, just just bring it up again, bring it up. And I'm just like, can can we like? Is this really that big of a deal to you? I feel like I've been having to talk about bathrooms since I was in high school, which granted isn't a long time ago, but it was like a decade. So we've been having this same talk. Yes, yes, I'm young, Yes I am
a baby. It's fine, but I love hearing it. Please say it again.
You're a baby, but you're a cute baby. Okay.
I got you to say something about it, got you to say something bout my looks. But I'm just tired of talking about it because we've been talking about it for for for such a long time, and I genuinely don't is it it's just it's a fear or a lie either these people, and it's it's it's a fear based on a lie. If it is a fear, but it's either your you're lying or somebody lied to you. And that that's where we're getting back to on this. Either you don't genuinely believe this, or somebody who doesn't
genuinely believe this convinced you of it. And and that's where I'm getting to. And I'm so sick and got. I don't think they've met any trans people. I've met trans. I've met a ton trap And let me tell you this, there's some trans people that if I met him again, I hit them outside the head with a tube by four. But that isn't representative of my feelings about trans people in general. That's represent that's my feelings about that person.
I feel like just the basics of yeah, if a dog bites you, that's not every dog's fault, Like, like, can we get that basic message through? Yeah, a dog might bite you, they probably won't if you just treat them well. But if a dog bites you, that's not every dog's fault. And you can't be mad at everyone for something you made up in your head.
It's or for people refusing to believe what you made up in your head.
And the thing is, even if you didn't make it up in your head, if they had accounts that they could pull from, if they had this trans woman attacking a child in a bathroom, Okay, that isn't every trans person's fault.
Even if you have that example, that's not a symp.
You know what I mean.
If anything, it might be as simple of being a person in a position of power. But that's not even ample.
And that's not that I have to that I think nobody is considering, is that this opens up the possibility that at any time, you know, there, any woman could be asked to verify that they have the appropriate genitals to be in that bathroom, or any man for that matter. Anybody can be asked at any time by the law to verify they have the appropriate genitals, which is a crazy thing to think about passively.
Weird.
Yeah, But I do want to say as well, since we didn't get to spend much time talking about the actual floods, which is what the special session of the State Congress was supposed to be about, and since the State Congress chose not to address it in their first day.
I want to direct you all to bit dot l y slash Austin Fund, Austin Flood Fund, bit dot l y slash Austin Flood Fund, where you can donate to the Care County Flood Relief Fund to help those affected by the floods in Texas and check back here this Friday or down below for more nonprofits