Rerun: The moral panic behind “groomers” is an attack on marginalized people

people and injuring at least nineteen others. He was subdued by Richard M. Thierro, a military veteran who was at the nightclub with a family, who tackled the gunman, grabbed the gun and hit him with it, while a trans woman who apparently has been misidentified as a drag performer stomped on him with her high heels. This tragic attack on the LGBTQ community, it's just another escalation of the increasing climates of threats and violence against queer people, gay bars,

and drag events all over the country. Because we are in the middle of a full blown dangerous moral panic around lgbt Q identity, drag performers, queer people, and educators are being smeared as pedophiles or being accused of grooming kids for sexual abuse, and this comes as trans and

queer people were already under attack. According to NBC, state lawmakers have proposed a record two hundred and thirty eight bills that would limit the rights of LGBTQ Americans this year, or more than three per day, with about half of those bills targeting trans folks specifically. What's empowering these bills in part hateful online rhetoric, fearmongering, and baseless conspiracy theories

about trans and queer people. And when we first spoke back in May, months before the Club que shooting and a Hundra, Carbio told me that we all need to be paying attention because she says that the kind of escalation and violence like we saw at Club Q was only a matter of time. My name is Alejandra Carravallio. I am a Sovio rights attorney, UM and currently teaching at Harvard Law Schools Cyber Law Clinic as a clinical instructor. Alejandra has spent her entire life building power for and

with marginalized communities online and off. As we talked, she sat in her office at Harvard, flanked by posters of historic power builders like Sylvia Rivera and Marcia P. Johnson. So you are one of the first trans women of color to ever teach at Harvard. I guess my first question is what has that been like for you? And how did you get here? How did you get to

be doing what you're doing. I mean, it's been three I mean I've been very fortunately, I know you said one of Like I was very fortunate to start at the same time as my my dear friend Anya Marino Um who's working at the LGBTQ because clinic we started with been like a day of each other. Um at you know, at the clinics, so we kind of both started at the same time. They're both the first transmitment of color to teach at the clinic or at Harvard Law.

I mean, it's been a quite an interesting experience. Like I've never been so close to like these kind of centers of power this way. Like I grew up in a very middle class like Florida suburb, like you know, like Harvard just seemed like this like pipe dream out there. And even then, you know, I went to Brooklyn Law School and I did three years of direct legal work

doing immigration family law with trans Latine immigrants. Uh, and then two years of movement impact litigation at the trans generally the Funds Education Fund, and then um, I've always been a bit of a tech nerd, so you know, this kind of was a nice way to kind of give myself a break. I kind of really burned myself out on movement work after five years, and especially during the Trump administration, it was just there's a lot. So

it's it's been great. My students are my favorite thing about teaching here, Like they like and one of the things I always say is that, you know, law students come to school wide eyed with a lot of hope and enthusiasm for the law, and a lot of people once they leave law school and actually they packed us law become very jaded and cynical and like it's hard. I fought it, but I am very many ways I've

become very jaded and cynaco about the law. And when I see like the next generational lawyers and I get to work with them on projects and cases and really see like how they developed throughout the semester in terms of their legal writing skills and everything else, like and just see like the passionate enthusiasm they have for the for the work, and also just like the diverse backgrounds of the students that I am teaching, all of those things,

like it just it fills me with hope. And like this you know right now, like to to recording, Like I've been doing final evaluations with students and this is like one of my favorite times because it's really an opportunity not just for me to help students improve, but like to help build them up because I have a lot of students that come from disadvantaged backgrounds that are not the typical you know, which you think of what do you think of Harvard Law, and they are rock stars, um.

And as like someone here who's like not typically represented, I like really realized the power of visibility, right, Like just even being visible here means like you know, students can come and tell me things that like they probably can't tell to like they're seventy something year old assist, white male professor, right that just doesn't get it. Um. And so that is just really huge, like that visibility. And I think also like I take it to the next step, like I have my my Sonia poster behind me,

or my Studia portrait. I also have, uh, you know, just like drew a Parrikan flag, I Judge Jackson and Marcia and Sylvia Rivera and then of course bad Beast would compos I call it like my wall of power. I love it. I would be so beyond stoked if I came to college or came to law school and you were my professor, and I would in your office

looking at your wall of power. That's incredible, Yeah, because you don't see these faces typically in the law school, right, like you see a lot of older white folks, like you know, famous alumni stuff like that. It's rare that you see like people of color and like in that way. And it's like I could point that we have two Supreme Court justice as one who's an alumni of the school and who a lot of people don't know about.

But he was the Puerto Rican independence leader supposed to be the valuatorian of the class of ninety one Harvard Law School as an Afro Latin X And you know, Harvard couldn't at that time like stand having a Afro Latin X man be the valedictorious. They've withheld his grades to keep up to delay him graduating, so he wouldn't be valedatorian, but you know, I have them here and I am working to make sure he is more visible on this campus. Yes, carrying that legacy. I love it.

I guess one of my one of the questions I'm so interested to get into is, I know it has been a hard time for trans folks, and I think something about the elon Musk News, this was that much harder on a time that's already been very difficult. So I want to like acknowledge that, you know, what is Twitter? The experience of being on Twitter on social media have been like for you as a trans woman? Yeah, I

mean it's been It's been something else. Right. So I've been on Twitter for like twelve is years, but I didn't really use it. I mostly just kind of had a Twitter to just check every once in a while whatever it was trending, and um, when I started running for city council, ultimately did not obviously, but when I you know, I started heavily using Twitter as an organized tool and as an ability to connect with others in

a political way, and I really started building up. But following like two years ago, I had like a hundred followers um on Twitter, and now I'm like at sixteen thousand, So it's like it's just like it's ballooned. And that experience changes. Right when you're an anonymous account with a hundred people and you just kind of interact like nobody really cares, right, But the minute you start getting a following and you start getting a lot of engagement and

stuff like that, like the experience changes. You really start getting singled out, um uh for people that if you like, like for instance, on Monday, like I criticized Elon musk Uh buying Twitter and called it like called into question. Like a lot of the things that he does are that come off as very like white supremacist, like him flashing the okay symbol on sn L, him having like a segregated workplace at Tesla, his parents having wealth invested

in an emerald mind in apartheid era South Africa. I mean, I'm always just skeptical of any wealthy white person from South Africa, Like we only like major red flag, major

red flag. Yeah, like yeah, you know that the family's wealth is built on colonialism like explicitly, um but uh, you know, and things like that, and then you know just a history of transphobic jokes and statements on Twitter, and you know, I think like calling it a question that and my god, I got like hate mail on my personal working email, which like that almost ever happens, and like I had to go private because like I was getting not just bombarded, because like I have my

notifications filtered, so like if they don't follow me, I don't I don't see it, you know, so like people can go at me all they want and do what at ratio whatever the hell they can. I don't care,

Like I don't see it that way. But what ends up happening is I do have my d ms open, so I can you tell when something is going sideways when I start getting a ton of actually hate d M s um, and those get filtered as well, right like, um, so it's it's just like message requests, so I don't even see them unless I like specifically go like it doesn't even send me a notification, and just like it's just when I'm checking my messages, so I might check

them like once a day or something like that. Um. And yeah, and like flooded with messages on on Monday, and it was just like a lot, and it was overwhelming and I was like, you know, I'm taking this private. And the only other time I've gotten that dog piled was when I criticized Joe Rogan. There's something about these like weight men that just like drives others to just go to all these links to defend them. I don't understand.

They don't need to be defended. They have. Elon Busk is the richest man in the world with eight million Twitter followers. Joe Rogan has the most listened to podcasts in the world at like a hundred million dollars. Like, he's gonna be fine. He doesn't need a personal army to defend him. Yes, have you ever seen that meme where it's um, It's like that Simpson's meme where it's like um Elon Musk, you know, valid criticism and like internet weirdos diving in front of the bullet to save

him from any kind of valid criticism. I feel like Joe Rogan Elon Musk, they're two. There are two men who really I feel like people must search on Twitter for their names to be like, so, yeah, like someone criticizing him, not on my watch. And if you notice a lot of people who start criticizing Elon Musk or even Joe Rogan. Like what they'll do is they'll misspell his name like I've seen I Like on my subsequent post, I was like using the name melon Husk because like

they would, but they literally that's what they do. Like how like how much of a loser do you have to be to sit there and search the name Elon Musk so that when you see negative criticism you dogpile that person and you attack them like just it's it's just like ridiculous, Like get a life, get a job, do something. Definitely sounds like the behavior of someone who calls themselves an advocate of free speech. So for sure,

let's take a quick break at our back. We've seen increasing attacks on LGBTQ folks using the label groomer, according to research for Media Matters. On Twitter, the number of tweets with groomer related language increased by over six in April, with over eight hundred and seventy thousand tweets and retweets compared to nearly five tweets in March. Now, grooming is

a serious thing. It's used to describe the actions and adult takes to build a relationship with a child that makes that child more vulnerable to sexual abuse, and today, both online and off, extremists and apply that LGBTQ folks or those who affirm lgbt Q youth are actually pedophiles who present a dangerous threat to children. It's a resurgence

of a well worn tactic of extremists. In the seventies, anti gay activist Anita Bryant ran the Save Our Children campaign, aimed at repealing a local Florida ordinance prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and a key component of her campaign was suggesting that gay teachers were a threat to the safety of kids. And it's not just French extremists.

Mainstream Republicans have passed legislation attacking originalized identities, like laws criminalizing trans youth or Florida's Don't Say Gay bill that puts vague restrictions on talking about sexual orientation in classrooms. Florida Governor Ronda Santiss Press Secretary Christina Pushaw described the legislation as quote the anti grooming bill, tweeting that if you did not support the don't Say gay quote, then you're probably a groomer, or at least don't announce the

grooming of four to eight year old children. Honestly, it is not difficult to see the influence of the Q and on conspiracy inter comments, and it should not be surprising to find that this moral panic has accompanied a wave of violent in real life threats against LGBTQ people.

It's it's already been kind of toxic. I think with that, there's definitely been a vibe shift since February, UM that I've noticed, and it's been on like anything I've ever seen, um, the kinds of attacks on LGBTQ people, specifically labeling lgbt people's groomers like and pedophiles like. I never thought that would like happen in that way, and it's just absolutely gross,

Like it is one of the grossest things I've ever seen. UM. And so we saw like in February, like lives of TikTok, James Lindsay, some of these like right wing trolls jack the Soviet and eventually got all the way up, you know.

And and then what really changed was to frances Is Press Secretary Christina Pusha, uh labeling that don't say gay bill as an anti gu grooming bill, um, and like that was the first time we have like a government official put the im premature of like you know, this is a government message that like where you know, if you opposed, don't say gay, you're a groomer kind of thing.

And um, it was terrifying, like like I think for for pretty much all the trans people I know on Twitter, Like it's like flaring red siren, like this is getting bad, Like this is gonna lead to people getting killed. And we've already seen someone walk into a barn Brooklyn with kerosene and set it on a gay bar and set it on fire. Just like two days ago, someone through

bricks through a pride center in Burlington, Vermont. And this comes about two weeks after um, I believe it was her name is Feather Fern was was murdered in in Vermont like a trans woman. Um, and the person tried initiate like the trans planic defense and so like we've already seen that, and like that, the the attacks on like this gay couple on an Amtrak train in California being called pedophiles and child stealers because they adopted to kids.

Like it's just horrific stuff. And this is directly as a result of the toxic online discourse. And because of this, like Twitter has generally tried to do the right thing, but any time is specifically around trans people. Anytime they try to make it better for trans people, though, like right wing ecosphere just goes into overdrive, like they just like it is, like they feel like it's their constitutional right to go on private companies websites to harass trans people.

It's really not surprising to me that Twitter has emerged as this new battleground for the so called culture wars. Traditionally, marginalized people use Twitter to carve out power and a waste for ourselves. We built movements like me Too in Black Lives Matter on Twitter, and I think the idea of marginalized people building power on Twitter is incredibly threatening

the people who have traditionally had all the power. For instance, Elon Musk said that he was inspired to buy Twitter after the right wing parody site The Babylon b was suspended for refusing to delete a transphobic tweet miss gendering Admiral Rachel Levine, who was a trans woman and the Assistant Secretary for Health for the U S Department of

Health and Human Services. And like that's what we saw, Like we saw what was reported, right, the babylon be being suspended for its joke about Dr Levine was supposedly one of the last straws for Elon Musk, and so like they pushed the envelope, they pushed this hatred. And then when a site tries to step in and say like this is leading to violence, this is causing harm,

they you know, cry free speech or whatnot. But what it really is is they want the free freedom to bully right, Like, because if you want to say, like I hate trans people, don't believe they should exist, you can say that to the cows come home, right, Like, you could just go on a street corner and yell at that is free speech. The government cannot stop you from saying that. You can scream it out of a corner.

You can write manifestos, you can like do it, write a novel how much you hate trans people, knock yourself out right. But a social media company is different. They are not under those obligations, and people fundamentally do not understand that the problem is is like, if you bake a social media company hostile to people, you're not going

to stay around very long. Like we've seen what sites with no moderation are like four chan h h chan a con um, you know, all these sites, like they don't have advertisers, no, like typical person goes on there because it is filled with racial slurs, anti Semitic slurs, homophobic slurs, like just the worst of the worst. Like it is literally filled with actual Nazis, Like posting an see means so like we know what that looks like.

And so at some end, like Twitter has to engage in moderation, and it really what it is is like they're trying to use trance people as a wedge to basically destroy a social media site for daring to protect

trance people. The way that I see it is that, you know, in the last five, ten years or whatever, social media platforms, I would say all of them, but really Twitter is like a special platform people who have been traditionally marginalized have been able to you know, have a little bit of a more of a voice and have a little bit more power that institutionally we didn't

really get to have. And I think that that's maybe one of the reasons why we're seeing this Twitter be this big battlefield right now, because I think people who are threatened by that, people who are threatened when they see, you know, people who have traditionally had a harder time making their voices heard. Get those platforms. Get those voices. And even if even if a platform like Twitter does the bare minimum to make their platform a little bit

hospitable to these voices, that feels very threatening or threatened. Yeah, that feels very threatening, and therefore they have to sort of go out of their way to to remind folks know, this platform needs to be hostile toward people who are traditionally marginalized. I want that status quo back where I can say whatever and they can't say anything right right, um, And like it's like the classics, saying right when all you're accustomed to is privilege. Equality feels like oppression. Um.

And that's very much what what it is. Lives of TikTok it's a Twitter account run by shier Rycheck with over one point two million followers that basically exist to spread lies and fear about teachers grooming children. The account is called public Schools quote government run indoctrination camps for the LGBTQ, spread outlandish lies about lgbt Q youth and teachers, also singling them out for harassment and abuse. It's also

become an influential piece of right wing online infrastructure. Florida Governor Ron De santisis Press Secretary Christina Pushall said the account truly opened her eyes on the state of LGBTQ education in schools. I think one of the most illustrative issues of this was TikTok. Like what it is is it's it's all about fundamentally power, and it's power to make sure that the in group maintains power in society

and the out group is minimized. And in this case, the the in group is mostly white conservatives, mostly white supremacists and others and fascists, um. And then what you have is the out group is like queer LGBTQ people, people of color, women, others and like that they want

to marginalize. And so what ends up happening is is like you have TikTok, right, So like TikTok or not TikTok, lives of TikTok is specifically retweeting videos of LGBTQ teachers that likely have like maybe a hundred or thousand views on TikTok. This is these are relatively obscure people that are just posting their thoughts online. They ripped those videos and they post them online with very leading titles some

of them, Like I've watched the videos. It's just like a teacher talking about the students asking them who their husband is. And they like came out to the class and they were like, if anyone comes out, and if any gay teacher comes out, they should be fired on the spot. Like that's literally what lives of TikTok said. And so then they come out and they're like, you know, they're just exposing liberals for what they say and they're just showing up and you know, that's what they do.

And I like, meanwhile, like they're just setting a torrent of harassment towards these people that are relatively anonymous, and additionally towards school districts. They're creating a whole panic by like pushing this groomer or libel um and then essentially,

you know, they want the power to do that. And then the minute that anybody steps up and says, yeah, this is who that person is, shy a ray check, Like they forgot to use a pseudonym when they registered their domain name, and now that's public information, Like they went into overdrive to attack Taylor Lawrenz at the Washington Posts, who didn't even expose it, by the way Internet researchers exposed it, and they were so upset that this person was like docked or you know, quote unquote or that

they were exposed, and that like it was so vicious, and she's exposed her harassment, all this stuff, and it's like it's literally what she does. She said she sends harassment and had like not her directly, but it's like what's called stochastic terrorism, right, she knows that by putting

somebody on blast on her Twitter, what will happen? And the fact that she was scared of people know who she was, and the fact that they acted like it was some big thing to expose that, like like grow up, grow up, Like you have an account with a million followers. Now you are getting interviewed by Tucker Carlson and national media and you have an expectation of privacy. I'm sorry you do not um and you know, and again, don't use your actual name to register a domain a domain

like just don't do so. And but but again, like going back to the dynamic, like this is about preserving power, right, Like That's what lives with TikTok does, right. It creates a chilling effect. How many queer or lgbt Q teachers on TikTok are not going to talk on TikTok or post a video for fear that they will be their content ripped and then there will be fired, or have a mob at a school board meeting talking about them,

to asking for them to be fired. Teachers making a our parents making accusations against them, like all these things just for existing as a queer person, right, Like it is a moral panic. That is what it was going on right now. I'm so good that you brought this up because this is something that I talked about a

lot on the show and just in general. So Elon Musk and people like him, they love talking about free speech, and they from the way they talk, it would seem as though the people who are likely facing consequence for the things they say are white, conservative or libertarian men who just like want to say slurs or whatever. But the reality is that it's marginalized people who are much more likely to face consequences for the things they say,

especially online. And so you know, I guess my question is, like, how can we and I think that just completely gets missed whenever we're having in conversation about speech and who who you know, free speech for who? How can we change that conversation, change that focus so that it is about the reality that it's queer folks, transpokes, sex workers, activists who are either pushed out of spaces or silenced or you know, d platform for what they say, Like like,

why do you think that that wouldn't be talking? But when people who seem so obsessed with talking about speech, why do you feel like though the marginalized people who we know are the people who are facing consequences of what they say, like like why do they get why are they able to get left out so often? Yeah? Uh, it's mainly because you know, again it's it's insidious what these people do. Right. So it again blows down to the difference between equality and equity. Right, So, if everyone

has access on Twitter, that's equality, that's everyone. So everyone's equal here on on the site, But that doesn't necessarily mean that there's equity, right, Like, there's all kinds of things that go into a social media site, like even having time to be able to post on Twitter, that's a that's a privilege because a lot of people do not, Like there are people working two jobs, three jobs, like doing stuff like they don't have time to pay a

touch on Twitter. They're raising kids like to doing all this stuff, so like that already, like you're already creating all these things. But you know, that's one of the things I always love to point out with the difference between equity and quality is like, let's say you have three children that were different ages and sizes. One is like three foot, one is four foot, one is five ft and there is a four foot fence, uh covering

while they're trying to watch a baseball game. Well, you could say, I'm going to give them all one of a one ft like block for them to stand on. The third child is still not going to be able to see because but that's equality, right. They all got the same boost, and the first kid, who didn't even need it in the first place, is now even higher

up for a better view. But what equity is is understanding the nature of the situation and giving that first kid a two foot block, the middle kid a foot block and then just leaving it and they are there.

You know, that is equity, right, And so understanding that, and so there's an idea here that we you know, we've been been discussing within the clinic, you know, within our our course here and our seminars, like talking about algorithmic reparations, like the designs of these sites, because people act like that these things are designed neutral e they're not. There's always conscious bias that goes into the design of these websites, and so if you're not actively countering it,

you are permitting it. Um And so that's one of the aspects of the design of sites like Twitter that needs to be accounted for. And I think Twitter hasn't necessarily gone that way. They're just trying to plug holes and everything that shows up, right, But they're at least attempting. I think they have like like they're trying so that that concept of equity, right, that's what they're demonizing. They're demonizing diversity, equity, inclusion. They're acting like it's this horrible thing.

They're banning, you know, any talk about critical race theory, which like I'm like, if you want to take critical racery,

you have to like a two al or three. Ill here at Harvard Law School, like we're not teaching it to kindergarteners, Like that is not what's happening, but that doesn't matter, right, Like all they have to do is scream it, and that's all of a sudden, that's audi And like what is even more disturbing beyond the critical restor, which is like just a wholesale denial of this country's history. It's it's all to protect white innocence, right at the end of the day, Like that's what it's about. It's

protecting white inscence. More after a quick break, let's get right back into it, just in case you needed any more proof that we're in the middle of a full blown moral panic. Last month, Laura's education department accused publishers of trying to indoctrinate kids with math textbooks by trying to sneak in lessons grounded in emotional and social learning, which is basically a classroom methodology that helps kids understand

their emotions around subjects and demonstrate empathy for others. For example, if a math book said that sometimes ma problems can look scary, or if a book said it's good to work together to solve problems, those are the examples of social and emotional learning. The Washington Post reports that Florida's Education department said that it rejected fort of books, the most ever in Florida's history, even though at least twenty four of those books scored high marks from the official

state reviewers for conforming to Florida's standards. But we're rejected anyway, and this crackdown happens all will. People like University of Virginia recent grad Emma camp who published a recent New York Times op ed about how conservative speech is being suppressed on college campuses, are uplifted as the face of

attacks on free speech. What's more devious is like this attack on emotional and social learning like this where we saw in Florida with like forty books math books banned for the crime of putting we it's sometimes better to learn together, listen to other people, hear what they have to say. And it's like, are you trying to raise a country of sociopaths? Like the what is the goal of that? Like literally these people would like attack Mr

Rogers today. Yeah. I saw one of my favorite books growing up was Babies Everywhere, and it's like it's like essentially a picture book about how there's babies everywhere, and it was banned in some state, I can't remember where. And the offending the only like offending image I use that in scare quotes was one of the babies. Behind the baby was two men and one of the men

has his hand on the other shoulder. And so it's like I was reading this interview with the author and she was like, we don't explicitly say that they're married or that they have this child. It's like they could be brothers, they could be friends. Like we don't even say anything, but under these under in this new climate, just the suggestion like oh, two men standing next to each other. No, can't have that in schools. Can't have

anybody seeing that. Yeah, I mean that, that's that's part of it, right, Like it's a race in any sense of queerness. And this this is what is frustrating about mainstream coverage around this whole debate, right, Like we constantly see OpEd after OpEd about I don't feel like I can say what I want to say in classrooms and like what they mean in like college classrooms or or like college courses or college campuses. Like I feel like if I say something, my my uh classmates might ostracize me.

And I'm like Okay, that's real life. Like, I'm sorry, that's a new concept. You say something unpopular and people will not like it. Yeah, I like you can. I can't go into my office and be like, all, y'all smell like ship without my co workers getting up that what's the deal. It's like, yeah, it's called It's always been that way. You there are consequences of the things that you say. People can accetrize you when they don't

like we have to say. And I guess I feel like, in comparison to the way that we're seeing this very clear cracked down on marginalized voices, it just seems so like the whose stories get amplified of you know, quote unquote having their free speech crackdown on, where it's like, oh my college classroom when I said something they didn't like it, compared to you know, people being five, it's like it's it's it's just really wild to be in

the mainstream coverage. Who gets amplified and who doesn't. Yeah, like in that that that story that was in the New York Times recently, Like the woman who wrote it like had already just graduated, and I think it was working for Reason magazine and like was being pushed up by fire and which is like a big or like libertarian orc um and like has like these powerful people behind her, like performing, and she's like she went to University of Virginia, I just like already like one of

the top schools in the country, and so she's like went to a top school, is working at a national media and it's like I can't say what I want to say in the college classroom. Meanwhile, the most banned books in the country are literally is like literally, um anything dealing with LGBTQ people. I mean we're literally talking about like books that feature like two penguins, Like it's it's insane, like and there are like entire like there are school boards like saying that books should be burned.

Like I'm sorry, Like on what way is any of this like on an equal plane? Like that is a much greater threat because like you know what the cliche goes, like where they burned books, they will burn people. Like that is far scarier because that is much more systemic, and that is using the levels of government to achieve it.

It's not a private company deciding who is coming into their little social media site and saying stuff like that is that they're using the government and so like that that is on that's explicitly what the First Amendment was to protect. The First Amendment is to protect us against

the government it censoring speech. So we have governments censoring speech, banning books and like barely a pip and like all of a sudden, we have like one white girl on a college campus who feels like she can't say something, and like that's on the front page of the New York Times, like I'm sorry, like I'm you lost me.

I guess you know, do you see this kind of climate that we're in that is so hostile to or where we're seeing such a backlash against marginalized voices, do you that you know, we know brew online and brew on social media says, do you see this as a direct threat to democracy? Yeah, I absolutely do. I mean we've seen what social media can do when it's unchecked. Literally all we have to do is like a I mean I remember being in the middle of it on Reddit.

Like Reddit was a heavy site for disinformation in the twenty sixteen campaign, and like it was I felt like I was losing my mind, like and like reading similar stories of people in Ukraine and twenty four team. Like that's what it feels like when you're subjected to that kind of disinformation because like you will talk to people in real life and like nobody talks that way or believes anything like that. And like there's one thing to be said about social media bubbles and like stuff like that,

but it's a whole another one. It's like this just like completely out of left field stuff and just the kind of vitriol they get, you know, shared online, and like we've seen where that leads, right, Like Trump was most definitely like it's probably not the only factor, Like there's a million things that went into it, but a huge reason why Trump was elected is because of disinformation on Facebook, on Twitter, on Reddit, on all these sites.

And so for people to think that this doesn't have like a potential threat to democracy, it has the ability to influence democracy. Like a conspiracy theory on Twitter got a man to go with a uh an assault rifle to a pizza shop because of conspiracy theories around, like

the whole pizza Gate conspiracy. There are people who believe that Wayfair is shipping children in furniture, Like if you and like was that the I feel like this one's always misquoted, but the Voltaire Um quote, it's like, if you can get people to believe in absurdities, you can get them to commit atrocities, and like that That's exactly the kind of thing that I think about, because like if you start labeling like trans people as this like

groomer cult that are going after children and damaging their bodies quote unquote and doing all these things, and like all of this, like and just the linguage you're using, it is a matter of time. It is not an if. It is a when someone is going to take matters into their own hands and they're either gonna go shoot up a gay bar or they're gonna bomb a gender clinic.

I mean, we've seen this is the kind of stuff that's going on around und Like the organizing around gender clinics is the same kind of stuff that was happening in the nineties around apportion clinics, and were like, we've seen what happens around that, and so like this kind of amped up rhetoric, it's it's stochastic terrorism. Like you can't pinpoint any violent act to anything said online, but the overall raising of the temperature is what allowed it

to happen in the first place. Yeah, I feel the exact same way. Um. I live in d C, so I remember very clearly when that happened at Comment Ping Pong, the pizza place here in d C, like like that. And I think I was even before we just got on the call, just now I was reading that. Um. I think the FBI arrested a man who was threatening to attack Miriam Webster the Dictionary because he did not

agree with the way that they were defining man and woman. Um. And yeah, I just I just feel like we've come to this place where the temperature has been raised so much, and I see that as a direct result of things happening on social media, of social media algorithms really you know, prioritizing the most extreme content, the the most you know, inflammatory rhetoric, and just yeah, I guess I really I I hadn't intended for this interview to sound so alarmist,

but it's it is. I feel it. So, you know, it's just a lot I don't I don't like, I don't feel good about when I asked, you know, where does this end? I don't really like imagining what the answer to that question is, Like where does this end. I don't know, probably nowhere good. This is what I am reading. Oh my god, you're so you're just like really doing is um? So no. I held at the book gaberlin Um, which I talked about like pre Weimar but also mostly Wimar Republic era Germany, and how you know,

it was a haven for LGBTQ people. Um had like the first the first surgery, gender affirming surgeries that had some of the first attempt like first administrations of hormones um, the first serious attempt at a study of queer and trans people, of lesbians and gays and others like it, just like by Magnus Hirschfeld, like all those things, And there was just kind of this like golden era where it was like that never really existed in that way in the West of tolerance right in Berlin, and it

all just came crashing down so quickly in three But like if you have been paying attention, like it wasn't a surprise, Like a lot of people got out like starting in the late twenties, early thirties, like they saw what was happening. And so it's like I think people just think that like these things come out of nowhere, and like you don't you know, and I always hate I guessid Godwin's law, like bring up the Nazis and stuff like that, because that that that's kind of we have.

We just have so much media, so that's like it's easier to relate to. But I think like if you you don't need to go far, you can go to contemporary examples. You have Hungary and Poland. Hungary has banned the existence of trans people. They've banned all legal recognition of trans people in the country. They have made passed gay propaganda laws, which the press secretary for Rohn de Santis and Florida admitted now that it was based on

the band in Hungary. Like so they're getting these ideas from these like far right, authoritarian, illiberal countries and like Russia just dissolved the biggest LGBT rights or in the country and they've passed a gay propaganda law. Like they see that and they see that as a model, Like that is their goal, that is their inspiration um And that's terrifying because like that's exactly the same kind of stuff.

Like like like queer people right now are like that canary in the coal mind And I would argue like before that it was it's very much been immigrants, Like having been in an immigration attorney for three years, the kinds of stuff that people would say about immigrants, the kinds of policies we have here in the United States, like, like are the conditions that we hold immigrants in detention and the rights that they have, like would violate the

genuine a convention, Like it is atrocious what we do. It is a human rights like violation and crime for what we do around immigrants. And like we saw the ratic rhetoric with Trump, right, and then now it's it's LGBTQ people, and we already start to see this, this kind of massive reactionary backlash to the George Floyd protests, the Black Lives Matter protests, and like it's it's only a matter of time, like this is going to get worse.

And it always reminds me of that poem. It's like, you know, and I posted this and it went viral, and and you know, some people like we're like, well, you was this group or exacrement, Like that's not the point. There's not point of being a first group. That's the point that like if you don't stand up for a marginalized group, like it's it's not gonna stop, and so

I posted the you know, the famous poem. It's like, first they came for trans people and I did nothing because I'm not trans. That they came for the lesbians and gays and I did nothing because I'm not lesbian and gay, and I was like, we are here right like especially after this like groomer rhetoric, and it was just like it was mind blowing to me to see conservative gay men freak out and like, oh, this has gone too far, Like like Andrew Sullivan was like apoplectic

about the groomer labor being applied to him. Is happy to talk, happy for that label to be applied to trans people, but the minute it got applied to him was like whoa, wow, this has got too far. And it's like where did you think this was going? Like did you think that they could just delineate between trans people and queer people like that? They can't, like they're all the same. They think we're all degenerates. They think we're all like need to be wiped from this planet

like that. It's exterminationist. They are not going to make some fine distinction for the good ones. And be like, oh no, no, he's okay, no, not gonna happen. Well, you know I always end my interviews with the question are you hopeful? I guess I feel I feel like I mean, I'll ask it. Does it sound like you are aren't when you look at this state of things today? Are you hopeful? I posted about this on my Twitter the other day. I am a pessimist. Like I am

a pessimist. I I love the quote from um Uh, I'm a huge marvel nerd Like I love the m c U. I've watched that. I just completed a whole rewatch of the m c U for the fifth time. Um. But there's like a zimdist character m j and in Spiderman, and she's talking likecause she's like, UM, you know, I always expect disappointment, so that way, you know, if if it happens, then you know, I won't be disappointed. Um. And that's the kind of attitude I have, which I

feel like a lot of people like that. That doesn't work for them, and that's fine, Like some people need to be optimistic. Nothing wrong that my The way I function, in the way that I cope is pessimism because if I'm wrong, which I always hope I am. Things worked out much better than I anticipated, and so that's always kind of served me well. And so like for me, like, I see this going down a very dark path, and I don't think there's anything changing. It's and it's only

accelerating and getting worse. And like I fully believe, like like by November or early like I think we'll see like basically collapse of democracy in the United States and things can go very south, very quickly. Um. And so I've been starting to prepare. I'm getting my passport ready, and I'm starting to save up a ton of money and like getting ready to like, yeah, hey, Europe sounds good around this time of year, and like, you know what,

I know, there's not an option for everyone. It really isn't Like a lot of people can't just immigrate, a lot of people can't get passports, a lot of people can't get the money to even fly, right, So like that's a privilege in itself, but like we've got time if you can, like you know, save money, like all the things. I feel like I'm being very alarmist and like negative, but hey, if it doesn't, if everything turns

out fine, and I'm catastrophically wrong, which I hope I am. Well, now I've got my passport and I got a ton of money, and I can go on vacation. Oh there you go. That's a that's a like, you know, a little silver lining on this ship sandwich. That is our democracy and our country. Oh, I mean, it's it's bad. I used to I used to joke years ago, back

when I thought it was impossible. So so my organizing background is in the reproductive rights movement, and I used to joke years ago that like, oh, if Roe ever falls, I hope I'm I'm I will be reading about it from the newspaper in a different country. And now it seems like, oh, well I'm still here in the United States and it seems like it's gonna happen. So I

guess that didn't work out for me. So well, yeah, I mean, like ask you know, I'll g gt Q Russians, right, Like I used to have some friends who who were from Russia, and it was like, when is it gonna get too bad to go back, right, like for them, like to to even visit their family, and um, you know, now obviously things have gone to a point where it's like not not really okay, but for a fris with you people like was it in twent thirteen and they

passed the gay propaganda law? Was it like seventeen when Zecha started a concentration cancer gay men, Like is it now that they start the words? So like there's always a question of like when is the right timing? And I don't think there really is. Like if you left Berlin in nineteen twenty nine, and you'd be fine. If you left in nineteen thirty two, you'd be fine. If you even left in nineteen thirty three, you'd likely be okay. If you waited until nineteen thirty five or even lanteen

thirty nine, who are not gonna be okay? Right Like, And so it's like learning our history so that you can see the signs and knowing, okay, this is my red line, like I need to get out of here, and having an exit plan because things can also move quickly. I feel that like knowing your history and knowing history

is empowering. I'm I mean, I'm glad that we have folks like you in our institutions who are helping you know, the next generation to really have that power to be empowered by our collective shared history, try as conservatives might to make that impossible to study and know and learn from. Yeah, exactly where can folks keep up with all of the incredible work that I know that you are up to. Yeah, you can find me. All My social media handles are Squere underscore so E s q U e R. It

is a portmanteau of Squire and queer. Again. You can find me an Square underscore M on Twitter, Instagram. Um, and you can catch my podcast, Queering the Law. Um. We typically released weekly on Monday's. Um. You can find it basically anywhere podcasts are issued. UM and yeah, thank you so much for having me. Is there anything that I did not ask but you want to make sure it gets included? Um? Yeah? Please please donate to the Trevor Project. There is going to be a massive smear

campaign against the Trevor Project this week or this upcoming week. Um, this is how low they've stooped. They're attacking a suicide hotline. UM, it's it's fucking sick like. That's all I'm gonna say. So please if you can ten, it's life saving work. Our youth are bearing the front of this. UM and They need the help and support, so please if you can, donate to the Trevor Project. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our work store at

tangodi dot com. Flash Store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, you can be just at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts today's episode at tangdi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me big Pad. It's a reduction of iHeart Radio and Unboss Creative edited by Joey pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.

Michael Amata was our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.