Good morning, peeps, and welcome to OKP Daily with Meet your Girl Danielle Moody recording pre recording from the Home Bunker. Folks, we are off celebrating the Labor Day holiday, but as always we leave you with fantastic interviews that we pre recorded, and today I am very happy to bring you kind of a follow up to yesterday's interview with Nadia with
Shane Diamond. Shane is a consultant at GLAD and spoke to us about the importance of their Here We Are campaign, which highlights trans people's stories and the fullness of who they are. Like I said yesterday, it is too often that whenever we're talking about trans people, we're talking about horrific policies that are being put out to dehumanize them. We're talking about the deaths of black trans women. We're talking about their lives in terms of tragedy as opposed
to the fullness of who these people actually are. And we have to understand that narratives matter, right, stories matter, and this is why this campaign is so important and why I was so thankful for Shane and Nadia to stop bi WOKF to talk to us about the importance of sharing story and the importance of you know, GLAD as an organization and ensuring that people see full and complete narratives about queer people and not just what the right right wants people to see and rather wants people
to be afraid of. So coming up next my conversation with GLAD consultant Shane Diamond, Folks, I am very happy to welcome to wok AP Daily Shane Diamond, who is a consultant at GLAD on transgender advocacy and have been a part of the Here We Are campaign. Shane talk to us about Glad's decision to move into this space of telling trans stories from a trans perspective, like having people talk about themselves as opposed to being talked at.
That's a great question, and thank you for having me on the podcast. Big fan and really grateful to be
part of this discussion with you. Todayson, thank you. I've been consulting with GLAD in this transgender advocacy position for about a year and this project, this campaign called here We Are is part of a larger LGBTQ metaging project that GLAD is undertaking in part because our CEO and executive director, Sarah Kate ellis recognize that there's just a lack of positive trans stories and storytelling that is coming from trans people ourselves, and this campaign specifically has been
a a storytelling campaign. How does it look? What does it feel like when we put trans people in the driver's seat and let them let us tell our own stories and be It's been a research project to see if the way that we are telling these stories actually changes how people think about trans people.
And want you to tell me there was a time, because I'm old so I can say this, there was a time when I remember when folks would ask how many of you know a person that is and it was at the time lesbian, are gay or bisexual? And it was in the teens the teens of percentage in number of people. Now when you ask people how many folks know somebody that is LGBTQ plus, I believe it is in like the eighty or ninety percentile. What is
that number for trans people specifically? Do you know? And how has it grown over the years.
I do know the answer to that, and it's a very interesting one.
Okay.
So GLAD every year conducts a survey called Accelerating Acceptance to see where we are as a country in terms of LGBTQ acceptance. So some of the questions on this year's Accelerating Acceptance Survey, we're about, like what should we talk about in schools? Like should kids have access to safe schools? And in twenty twenty three, we asked non LGBTQ people how many of them knew someone who is transgender, and over seventy percent of participants said they did not
know someone who is transgender. And I just like to sort of caveat that with they don't know someone that transgender that they know of. So, because this is a podcast, I'm a white guy with some scruffy facial hair and a bad mustache, and I'm wearing like very hipster glasses and a buzz cut and two little gold earrings and like a button down shirt with pineapples on it. And so if someone met me on the street, they might not assume that I'm transgender, right right, So I have
the privilege of being assumed cisgender. And when when I talk about sisgender, it is someone who's gender identity who they know themselves to be on the inside, matches the sex they were assigned at Earth. So if you see me on the street or on the sidewalk or at a coffee shop, you might not guess that I'm trans, right, So when we say that seventy plus percent of Americans don't know someone that's transgender, it's always that they know of because the reality is that trans people are here.
We're in communities. We've been here, you know. We're holding down jobs, we're back in groceries, we're trying at parallel park, we're having families, having kids. And it is still kind of surprising that so many people say they don't know someone who's transgender, given that we are in communities all of this country.
And I think that to that point, it is because of the fact that not everybody leads with their transness right like, So if you are a person like to your point, that is, and I'll use the term passing right, meaning that I would look and be like, Okay, there's a guy in a pineapple shirt, as I think that most people would. If I'm not being told directly that then you are trans, I could understand. I guess the
numbers and how that kind of works. And I think there was a point in the accelerating acceptance of reporting throughout the years where I think that one of the questions was do you know I have an LGBTQ person in your family, which I think then becomes like a bit more specific, right, because then I have intimate knowledge of said person, as opposed to do I know anyone
right exist in the world. Why do you think that it is so important to have campaigns like this that expressly offer narrative around the different stories and the different ways in which people see themselves as trans.
Yeah, I want to back us up just for a hot second, because it's very common usage to say, like someone is cispassing. And I said this in conversation with a colleague at GLAD who called me in and corrected me around the history of passing as a term, and that we know the term passing is traditionally historically referred to light skinned black black people who are passing for white.
And in this language where sort of it becomes the goal, whiteness becomes the goal, it becomes that the position of power. And so if we say someone is passing is white passing, it is putting more power into white supremacy. And so as we talk about being cis passing, it makes it seem like the goal. The goal is to appearance, yeah is being cis and that cis being cisgender inherently has more power and privilege and is thus desired by trans people.
And I appreciate that. Please continue.
Yeah, no, just you know, it's like we live in a country right now where medical access for trans care is being banned, and so not every trans person is interested in seeking to medically transition, and even for those who are interested, they're unable to do so depending on where they live. So thinking more about being assumed.
To be cis gender, got it? Okay, But that was.
Something that passed on to me because I would I said all the time that I was cis passing.
Yeah, oh okay, I get it.
If we look at some of the statistics and we see that over seventy percent of people say they don't know someone who's transgender, how do we make these introductions in a way that can do it on a large scale, can do it effectively, and can keep trans people safe
in the process. Like I know, if you drop me in any room, give me ten fifteen minutes, Like I can change people's minds on what they think about trans people or what it means to be transgender also entire and like there's only one of these, thank goodness, And so how do we do this on a larger scale but also keeps trans people safe? And so much of what we've heard and seen about trans people historically is trans people who are playing like a tertiary character in
a show. And it's a lot of dead sex workers and you know, people who are addicted to drugs, and that's not the narrative for all trans people. And so how do we put trans people, as I said, in the driver's seat, to tell their own stories and to tell their own stories of love and joy and happiness. And what affect does this have on people who are learning about trans people for the first time.
I will share with you that my parents have asked me. My mother owns a yoga studio and one of her students was in the midst of transitioning and was talking to her about it. They know that her daughter is queer and so you know readily more you know, accepting than other people. And my parents were just like, you know, help us understand, help us understand and be better in terms of how we talk and have conversations around this
idea of trans, non binary and what have you. And what I appreciated about that is that, like, my parents are boomers, and for them they were socialized in a kind of way, but because their daughter is queer, they're much more expansive in their thinking.
And so.
How do you utilize these different stories to kind of move people who are seemingly assumed to be rigid in their thinking, but they literally just don't know right. They just want they want more access to language, they want more access to stories so that they can begin to wrap their minds around how our society has shifted over the last you know, several decades.
I think that question is really at the heart of some of the research and some of the questions we wanted to answer ourselves in putting together this campaign and this narrative framework. We have been working with ground Media on this project for years. Glad and ground Media work together on a video campaign two years ago, and they've been just a joy to work with and they have been spearheading a lot of the research and also the production.
So if you see the videos and you're like, wow, this is wonderfully made, that is all thanks to ground Media. But your question about like, how do we with seemingly well meeting audiences, how do we help close that gap, that knowledge gap, that experience gap in a way that's not like you're terrible, we hate you because you got
this thing wrong. And that's been a lot of what this research has been targeted on is what are the necessary components in a story being told by a trans person in thirty or sixty seconds that can effectively communicate their transness and why people should care. And so our hypothesis with this really was on the theme of trans truth, which is being trans is a real thing. It's not contagious, it's not communicable, it's not a whim that being trans is as inherent a part of my identity as so
many other things as being Jewish. As I id, I played college hockey, so I will always identify as a hockey player, and being trans is an inherent, immute part of my identity. And so we came at this trying to speak to audiences who were undecided about their opinion of trans people. So we asked audiences, we did a huge survey before we started, do you think society has gone too far or not far enough in their support
of transgender people? And what we identified as the movable or winnable middle were people who responded in the like three to seven on a one to ten scale. So the way I think about this is, have you ever seen Olympic diving?
I love Olympic diving actually, but yes, good.
My gosh, I my body does not move like that.
I don't understand how they enter the warder with no splash, but that's got the point.
Yeah, in Olympic diving, they throw out you get seven scores, and the judges throughout the highest of those score, so you're only evaluated on the middle five. And that is who are target audiences for this campaign. It's also how I try to live by life, like, some people are going to think I'm greater than slice bread and they are wrong. And some people are going to think I'm worse than a paper cut, and they are also wrong.
And the more that I spin my wheels trying to change the opinions of those on the margins, the more time I'm getting disheartened and dissuaded by what I'm seeing or what I'm not seeing. So you were talking about parents were boomers, And the way that we identified this winnable middle audience is based on this question of do you think society has gone too far or not far enough in their support of trans people? And when we looked closer at who was in this segment, we see
people from across the political spectrum. We see people who have varied ages, who live all over the country, with
different levels of income and education. And so by cutting this according to issue and not according to political party or political ideology, we're able to cast a much wider net in who the people are that we're trying to move And before we ask people to do something different, to behave differently around trans people, to practice better ally, ship tips, to do their own research, before we're asking the trans people that we meet about their identity in
their lives, we need to change how people think about trans people. And our guess was that if we can show people show audiences that being trans is, as you said, just another part of someone's identity, are they more or less likely to support a friend or a family member who's trans, a child who's trands and sort of tertiarily like, are they more likely to support policies that benefit trans people?
And across the board. Our research is showing that yes to all of these things, that if we can change
how audiences think and understand trans people. In thirty or sixty seconds, we see a positive increase in how likely people are to accept a friend, a family member, a child, an acquaintance who's transgender, and increase in their support for policies that affect trans people, all by just talking about trans people as people who have hobbies and jobs and families and lives, love and goals like everyone else.
Yeah, because I think that, Look, the opposition knows this that if I feed you enough stereotypes, if I feed you enough fear, then I too can shift how you're thinking about people as people. Right, I too can feed you this steady diet of dehumanization, so that when it comes time to vote on said policy or to vote on said measure, that that's the narrative that's going to
be stuck in your mind. And so what you're doing with this campaign is a disruption because in the absence of being able to provide people from their perspective and give them voice and platform to tell their own stories, then their stories are told for them. And we know that when those stories are told for them, they're told in the negative. Shane with a couple of minutes that we have left. As we're several weeks away from the most consequential election in our lives. What do you want
people to think about when they are voting? What do you want them to think about when they're voting with regard to you know, there have been five hundred plus anti trans bills that have popped up across this country. There's been so much in terms of trying to dehumanize and denigrate this population. What is it that you're hoping that this campaign will bring to mind as people are voting for, you know, the future?
Casual question to end us on.
Yeah, I'm good at that.
I love it. I truly believe that we are all capable of good and of love. I don't think people are good people are bad people. I think we are people who are full of a myriad of sometimes conflicting beliefs or ideas. But I believe that we all think
that we're good people. And one of the things that this campaign is really trying to disrupt is those among us who believe they're good people, who believe they have good intentions, who believe they're doing the right thing, and still hold anti transgender or anti LGBTQ beliefs, and part of this work is showing that those two things you know, you can't necessarily have all the values that you think you have and also believe in discrimination and trans people
are we are the lowest on the food chain in terms of privilege and access and rights, and when we all have equal rights and equal protections, it benefits everyone. And that starts with those of us on the margins or who hold intersectional identities. We need to focus on those of us on the margins, lifting all of us up,
and that's how we achieve equitable just societies. So, as people are coming into this election, there is so much discord around this candidate or that candidate, and people who are saying, I don't like either candidate and so I'm going to vote this other way. And so what I ask people to do when we go into the election is not only to think about how the results of this election are going to affect your life, but how are the results of this election going to affect the
lives of those that you love? Yep, Because there are two very very different possible outcomes, and a number of people in this country will not be affected dramatically one way or the other, but for the majority of us, that's not the case. And so if you're coming into the election and you're thinking about how how you're going to vote, think about those in your community that you love,
and also just please vote. You know, I think we had like forty percent of registered voters or people of voting age in twenty twenty who didn't vote, and that that could decide the election. So if you're if you're not registered to vote, please register to vote. It varies by state, and vote early and vote often if you can. Because this is this is our bed and we got to make it and then we got to sleep in it. We can't do this by ourselves.
Yeah, Shane, thank you so much for your work. It is extremely important, and thank you very much for making the time for WOKA. If really appreciate this and your conversation Danielle.
This has been a true joy. Thank you and for all the listeners. The campaign can be found at herewe Are now dot com. You can see videos and stories from Nadia at GEO and Ashton as they sit down with their families and talk about what it means to be trans and what it means to love trans people, which is not all that different from guessing many of our own lives.
That is it for me today. Dear friends on Woke af AS always, power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.