May 3, 2023 • 38 mins
Mia and James talk about the recent anti-trans legislation and rules in Missouri, Montana, Kansas, and Nebraska and how you can stop them
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to Dick It Happened Here, a podcast about the
transgenocide because it keeps happening, and so we keep having
new episodes about it because it just gets worse. Yeah,
I'm Mia Wong with me as James.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'm I'm excited to hear more about what people are
doing to trans people in different parts of this country.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yeah. The answer is not good, so nice things. Okay.
At about five am this morning, I was watching a
video from last year, and you know, they had this
lie about how like there's been one hundred anti trans
bills in twenty twenty two alone, and like, oh oh boy,
that is a that is a quaint figure from a
more civilized age. We are three months into twenty twenty
(00:48):
and there's been five hundred anti trans bills across the country.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
That was a Freudian slip. We have three years into
twenty twenty, my friend.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Oh god, yeah, you're twenty three that one, which I
guess it won't work out like this, but technically, speaking
of this pace continues, we're on track for what Yeah,
we're on track for I think two thousand this year,
which would be great.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Heyce, Yeah, it's good. Well, we'll be rebooting Mansona by November.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Now, most of these bills, have we've talked about before,
are going to fail, but a lot of them haven't.
And the other sort of aspect of this that I
think it's been less reported on but is also extremely important,
is that, Okay, so if you want to do anti
trans bullshit, you have like three options. Basically, you have
you try to get a bill through the legislature, You
have the governor doing a mandate or something, and then
(01:42):
you have the attorney general doing some bullshit. And our
first story from the front lines of the worst shit
that's happening is from Missouri, where Missouri's Attorney General Andrew
Bailey has issued a quote emergency rule that claims that
because gender care is quote experimental, it's already banned by
(02:03):
state law, which is nonsense, but it gets worse.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I don't know if it's worth like addressing this shit
head on because it's such so clearly bullshit. But like,
we have more than a century of people seeving gender
firming care and auditioning.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
It's it's like people.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
People, television is more experimental than gender refirming care. Yeah,
like this stuff like aeroplanes.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Are more experiment This stuff predates the Nazis like, it's
like it's old.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, it definitely predates passenger flight.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, like so okay, I mean that there's like a
standard turf argument though, is that it's like, oh, it's experimental.
It's like now it's not. Okay, So these rules are
oh boy, okay, here's from so I think it was
Saint Louis. Yeah, the city government of State Lewis put
out a thing about it that was basically like, this
is bullshit. They said, quote the Aterney General's Emergency Regulations
(02:59):
institute extremely strictions that require one medically documented gender just
for you for three years, to at least fifteen consecutive
therapy sessions over eighteen months, and three that all mental
health conditions are treated and resolved prior to gaining access
to gender affirming care. There's also this section that is
(03:21):
I'm just gonna read it. I don't have any words,
I don't have any analysis for this, so it's saying
like you can't have care. That quote fails with respect
to a patient who is a minor, to ensure that
the patient has received a comprehensive screening at least annually
for social media addiction or compulsion and has not for
at least six months prior to the beginning of any
(03:42):
intervention suffered from social media addiction or compulsion.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
So wow, yeah. Now, so the good news is that.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
This role was supposed to go into effects, like before
this episode is recorded. It was instantly. There are a
bunch of lawsuits. It's been blocked by a judge until
May fifteenth, so hopefully the judge will be like, this
is obviously illegal, not holding out hope for that. This
is probably the worst law in the books anywhere in
(04:14):
the country right now. Maybe will also I'll show you
the other really bad one and what we'll see. But okay,
so the notable thing about this law is that this
is not just a band from minors. This is for everyone.
And you know, there's lots of atrocious stuff in here,
right Like if you have autism, for example, and there's
a bit every thing about screening for autism. If you
(04:34):
have autism, you cannot transition, Jesus, and you know, and
then you know they're part of the right. Even if
you're like a ninety nine year old on your fucking deathbed,
you can't transition unless you feel fill all of these
bullshit requirements. There's this like there's a social media compulsion thing,
which is this sort of bizarre like social contagient bullshit
that these people have been spreading for a long.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Time, especially given like where the fuck do we think
their trans panic comes from? It's because they logged onto
Facebook and you're racist. Uncle Joey had posted to think
about like how Twitter is transing his niece's gender.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, and you know, and it's like all of this
stuff is very like we're getting into we're getting into
the part of this where it's just sort of like
they're like copying and pasting turf rants into like laws. Yeah.
The mental health care thing is like just awful.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
You know.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
For example, if you have depression, one of the reasons
you might have depression if your trans is because you
have dysphoria. Yeah, so you're caught in this loop or
if you try to get care for the depression, you
can't get like treatment for the dysphoria. What if you
get treating for the dysphoria, you can't get it for
the depressions.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Right, Yeah, you're totally alienated from getting care. And like
I'm sure living in a fucking state which is trying
with surgical precision to force you to pick which way
you want to be suffering. It's not like great for
your mental health to be Like being a trans person
in Missouri would be pretty hard, given that the state
(06:02):
is its powers to stop you getting anything out of care.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
And you know, I mean everything that's about this is
like the therapy requirement, the fifteen therapy things over eighteen months,
it's just effectively a ban because you know, do you
know how fucking hard it is to get an appointment
with a gender therapist, Like it is so like there
are we are talking about something where there are optimistically
(06:26):
dozens of these people for an entire state. It is fucked.
It is so bad even in states where it's legal. Right,
This is this is sort of the grim joke of
like the anti trans canard that like it's too easy
for kids to get gender firmin care and they're giving
your hormones like candy. It's like, no, no, it's really
even in states where it's legal to get gender firmin care,
(06:48):
it's hard as fuck, takes forever and is expensive, and
you know, given how through few therapists there are and
how hard it is to clear these requirements the Missouri
rule is just effectively a ban on gender fermin care
for everyone. Now it's been stayed for now, but this
is really bad. People are fleeing the state. We're going
(07:08):
to talk more about trans refugees yeah later, but you know,
basically every state that has passed one of these laws
has refugees already. I know, I personally know multiple people
who fled multiple states. Yeah, it's really fucking bad. It's
also you know, I mean, like it is genuinely important
(07:32):
to make sure that people get supported and to make
sure people are way out. It's also not a solution
because there's just going to be new trans kids born
into these states.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
So yeah, yeah, we can't fix it by the existing
trans people leaving. And like obviously there's people have their
friends in their family and their community there. Like we
didn't fix it by them getting something completely different.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, so now we're gonna move to the next state
where shit's happening that this one I don't know that's
happening in Kansas is also like, okay, relative to the
amount of media attention it's gotten, this is the worst
thing that's happening in absolute terms, It's unbelievably bad. Okay.
(08:14):
So there's a bill in Kansas that people are calling
a bathroom bill, and they're calling it that because bathroom
bill is the terminology that they have. This is not
a bathroom bill. We need to be very clear about this.
This is way, way, way, way fucking worse than a
bathroom bill. So this is a bill that what it
does is in the eyes of the state, it legally
(08:35):
assigns you a gender by defining male and female in
all in all state laws as and I'm going to
let us legislature take it from here. Women are those
who quote biologically whose biological reproductive system is developed to
produce OVA, and men are those quote whose biological reproductive
(08:56):
system is developed to fertilize the OVA of a female.
Which y yeah, Hey Radfams, I hope you're fucking happy.
Now you've gotten the state to legally define your gender
as based on your reproductive capacity.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, We've great job. Feed run of the fucking what's
the thing where they will wear the bonnets?
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah? And here here's it just intersects people kind of exist.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
You're fucking it's worse. Okay, So again, here here's kas NT,
which is a news outlet in Kansas. In addition to restrooms,
the legislation would define words like woman, man, mother, and
father in areas like athletics, prisons or other detention facilities,
domestic violence centers, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, and quotes
(09:42):
other areas where biology, safety, or privacy are implicated that
could result in separate accommodations.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, so, uh supposedly this is going to be on
a case by case basis, but you know, like this
is going to lead to trans women being put in
bends prison where they will be raped and almost certain
like almost certainly will be raped, quite possibly will be
killed because that happens all the time. Uh, you know
this is i mean, like kicking trans women out of
(10:12):
domestic violence centers and rape crisis centers when you know,
and this is gonna happen, and you know, similar like
bullshit's gonna happen to trans men and also to non
binary people who all of whom are abused and assaulted
at rates that are fucking indescribable. I mean, there is
also the bathroom bill shit, and like the worst version
(10:32):
of bathroom billshit we've ever seen. And you know, but
also so this is not the only one of these bills.
That's we'll talk about the other one in Montana in
a little bit. But because the Kansas Republicans are somehow
even more cretnius than their colleagues in Montana, they have
written the bill in such a way that, in the
words of Pink News, quote definitions outlined in the bill
(10:55):
also state that a female a female is a person
who produces ova, in other words, eggs meeting cis. Women
who are infertile and are unable to produce eggs could
be barred from spaces under the legislation's legal terms.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Likewise, sis, man, I guess yeah, it's it's yeah, like
or like you have like fucking had an accident or
you know, yeah, like yeah, you know, and and it's bullshit,
like its pointing out the logical errors. It doesn't really
work because that's not really the point, is it, Like,
(11:30):
like their point is not to be like logically found,
it's to be cruel.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Yeah. But but but I think there is something very
important about this, which is that this this is a
very very firm example of how the struggle for trans
rights and sort of you know, like trans bodily autonomy
is intimately connected with the struggle with abortion rights, because
if you look at what's happened here, right, Republican lawmakers
are literally defining women by their by their capacity to
(11:55):
produce children for them. Yeah, so you know this is
this is not like the these are these are two
very very into connected struggles and the same people have
the same absolutely dog shit like horrific patriarchal politics in
both of them. So, okay, so we're gonna We're gonna
(12:15):
leave camp in Nebrette. Okay, so we've we've had two
really grim stories in a row. We're gonna have one
that saw less grim, which is Nebraska. So okay, there
has been a bill to ban January Form CAARE for minors,
but it is being staved off basically single handedly by
the genuinely heroic efforts of state Senators Megan Hunt and
Michelle Kavanaugh, who have been philibustering literally every bill that
(12:38):
goes through the state Senate the stop bit from happening,
which fucking rips. Yeah, and like you know, okay, so
basically the things like we will, we will, we will
philibuster literally every single bill until they stop trying to
patch this band through. And you know this is the okay,
So like there was there was a thing that happened
in the early twenty tens where in the US, like
the big US Senate, right, they changed the rules about philibustering,
(12:59):
so don't actually have to stand there and talk for
eight hours because they're fucking cowards and an almoys pieces
of shit in that is not true in Nebraska. If
you want to fill a buster a bill, you have
to fucking stand up there and talk for eight hours.
And they have been doing this for months. Yeah, and
it's it's it's it's holding that you know, basically. So
(13:21):
the way philibust it works, right is you can't kind
of like in the Senate, and then also in the
state Senate, you can't stop someone from talking unless they
like dream debate, you can't stop someone talking unless you
get a two thirds vote of the body for emotion
to cloture. So they've just been forcing you to do
it for every single bill, and they don't have the
votes in some of the bills. So yeah, you know,
and the reason I think this is this is happening,
(13:43):
you know, the reason that they've been doing this and
not sort of just like like doing bullshit like most
of the Democratic. Well, partially it's because there's a Senate
and partially because Senator Hunt has a twelve year old
trans son, Yeah, which yeah, has has given her, you know,
a sort of urgency that's absent from Democrats and other states.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yeah, which theoretical for her. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And I mean, like, this is one of the things
that sucks about this right is like it it should
not fall on you know, like literally the trend, like
the rights of the children of an entire state are
falling on like one mom and the few other Democrats
who decided to take a stand with her, And that's fucked.
(14:26):
That is nonsense.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Like it's yeah, it's great that she's doing it, but like, yeah,
this is.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
This is horrible. Yeah. Do you know what else is horrible? A?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Is it the products and services that support podcast?
Speaker 1 (14:45):
But I have to see regulations. I don't think I
can legally say that.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
But no, no, we do don't.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
No, it's not not that Yeah, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Okay, So now we're gonna get to I think the
most famous story or most most well known story of
an anti trans fight that's been happening recently, and that
is Montana. So Montana has passed a bill that bands
gender for macare from Binnis and also opposes legal sanction
as anyone who does it. Governor Greg Giafanti like has
(15:23):
a non binary son. Who is he they and he
like gave a speech it was like dad, fucking don't
sign these bills, and his dad signed them. Anyways. Yeah,
one of the co sponsors of this bill, on the
floor of of of the Montana House said she'd rather
her children die in transition and then had yeah, yeah,
(15:45):
and she had to give a press commence later saying
she didn't actually mean that, but like no, she that's
literally what she sat on the floor of the fucking house.
So these people are ghouls and monsters. They are the
dogs of uh this the sort of the Republican Freedom Caucus,
which is their like absolutely deranged like Matt Gates fucking
(16:07):
weirdos in Congress who are if you remember that giant
fight over the speaker of the House, like that was
those freaks like the Yeah, these people are like their
local sort of like dogs. There's two other absolutely terrifying
bills that are about to become law. There's HB three
fifty nine, which is a ban on kids attending drag shows,
which like that bill has gotten less bad than it was,
(16:30):
which is it's now a ban on kids attending adult entertainments.
But you know, guess he gets to decide what adult
entertainment is, ETA, et cetera. Right, yeah, And that bill
has passed both the House and the Senate is waiting
for reconciliation. There is the even worse SB four fifty eight,
which is basically the bill from Kansas, except I'm just
gonna read some of it. Female means a member of
(16:50):
the human species who, under normal developments, has produced xx
chromosomes and producers it would produce regular, relatively large, immobile
gam meats or a between her life cycle, and has
a reproductive and endocrine system oriented around this production of gammi.
As an individual who would otherwise fall within this definition
but for a biological or genetic condition as female. So
(17:11):
this is straight turf shit, right. This is a straight
up like a woman as an adult human female thing
that like these people walk around saying, thinking is like
a normal thing to say, oh.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah, and thinking that, like specifically the chromosonality thing we
know has been bullh it for a very long time.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
There was nonsense. The people don't know is nobiology.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, sorry, yeah, and we can Like the example is
this woman called Mario Jose Martinez Patigno who was a
hurdler who won a number of events and then lost
her medals because she failed a chromosonality test and fucking
ruined her life, right, lost her fiance, lost her job,
lost all her competitions, and was able to successfully sue
(17:53):
with the help of leading experts in the field, to
prove that like I think she had like mosaics, she
exhibited mosaicism x Y, and that like this is in
fact a normal fucking variation in the human species. And
like this was in the eighties and we're still doing
this shit.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Yeap.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Her paper's are really good, by the way, she's a
professor of philosophy now, oh cool, yeah, yeah she's yeah,
she's great. I specator a few times, but.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, brad w Yeah. But like these people are doing,
you know, like they are you know this this this
this bill legally rights trans people out of existence, and
it is again another one of these gender paragraph things
where this the state is legally defining what gender you are.
But also you know, but again like they have to
do all this like bullshit because you know, this is
(18:41):
other thing that I said, like, these guys, these people
are like slightly I don't know smarter is the right word,
but they're slight. They're they're slightly more engaged in turf shit.
So they have a more convoluted, like biological misconception of
what a woman is, which they can't define because it's
not a thing.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Like yeah, it's a social constructagy yeah, because they can't society. Yeah.
And put in mind of South Africa constantly chasing the
fucking definition of what race was and like trying to
define like a multi racial kids into one box or
another box.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah, it's you know, it doesn't work. But the problem
is this bill is going to be signed by the
governor like next week, probably possibly this week, like in
the next couple of weeks, is going to be signed.
So that's really fucking bad. So the part of the
story that thinks the most well known is Montana Republican's
crusade against Montana House Rep. Zoe Zephyr. Zoe Zephyr is
(19:39):
trans She is a rep for a part of Missoula,
which is a college town home to the University of Montana.
We talked about this a bit when Zoe won her seat.
But I really before we really get into what's been
happening to Zoe, I want to talk a bit about
Missoula and a bit about the sort of the geography
of transmigration, because the the way the media talks about this,
(20:02):
right is that you know, transmit like trans trans refugees
and transmigration is something thats started with these anti trans bills.
And that's not true. This is this, all of this stuff,
all of the sort of fleeing, all the refugee stuff,
pre dates Tennessee, it predates Missouri. It's always been happening, yeah,
(20:22):
you know, because and the the actual process of this
is that, you know, for for generations and generations, the
wretcht of the earth get fed to the wolves, and
then the wolves spit them out of their homes and
their communities, and they fled. They've fled to places like Portland,
in Philadelphia, in Atlanta and Chicago, places where people like
us had clawed out in existence in a world that
(20:44):
wants is dead, where we continuously survive off the shit
end of urban labor markets. And this is something that
has happened beneath the notice or even the contempt of
Bush West society. But it's been going on for longer
than we've had words that we've had the words that
we used today to describe it. And you know, Azula
is one of those places where you can go when
your family kicks you out. And then you know and
that that that's not the only way people end up here, right, Like,
(21:06):
there's a lot of people who you know, you know,
have better stories, right they go to college, they discover themselves.
There are people who go here because it's where they've
chosen to make new lives. And you know something, there's
also just people who are from Missoula who just realize
they're trans. And you know, it's this mix of sort
of trans refugees, transmigrants and the local trans community that
(21:28):
you know, all fuse together and becomes a sort of
beautiful community that we've been you know, has finally like
stepped out of the shadows in the last like ten years.
And you know, and this is why it's not enormously
surprising that Missoula sent Zoe's efforts to a Letta to
represent them, because this is, you know, again like this
is one of these places that like collects people from
(21:51):
all over Montana and you know from all over like
eastern Washington too. Some of these people go to Seattle,
some of these people go to Portland's but yeah, they're there.
The there have always been these massive networks of migration
that just you know, no one ever, no one researches,
no one talks about, no one even it's it's hard
to even know they exist unless you know the people
(22:12):
who like have been moved along them. The product of
this now is that Zoe Zephyr is Trans is in
the you know, on the floor of the House debating
with Republican legislatures this bill to uh uh like ban
health care for for like trans youth, and she says, quote,
if you vote yes on this bill and yes on
(22:33):
these amendments, I hope the next time there's an invocation,
when you bow your hands in prayer, you see the
blood on your hands, which I really wish because the
media talks about the blood on your hands thing costs
And I wish they read the whole quote because it
fucking rips like it's.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Great, Yeah, I think you need to you can't. There's
no fucking point in bourgeois civility with this stuff. Is
that that's nook and and.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
This is what has been one of things that's been happening, right,
is like like the Republicans their backlash that this has
been a sort of like, oh, you're not being civil thing,
right and like in uh, like Senator Hunt in uh
uh Nebraska was like literally didn't actually literally say fuck you,
but you know, like said like yeah, like no, I'm
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna like show up to
(23:15):
like your like your dinner parties or whatever, like like
you don't don't say hi to me in the halls,
like you know, my fucking kid, and you know what
you're doing to them.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
That's the way to approach you, right, like the person
trying to legislate your little trans son out of existence.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah, it was like fuck these people, they're gonna do
this ship. Okay. So there's a couple of theories as
to why what happened next happened next. There's been a
lot of speculation that it's been like, oh, this is
like a gambit by the the the Freedom Caucus to
like turn Zoe's Ephyr into like the face of the
Montana Democratic Parties they can win a Senate race. It's like,
I I actually don't buy that I think very specifically
(23:54):
the when you close your hands to pray, you see
the blood in your hands thing. I think they got
really fucking pissed off, and then they just kept escalating.
So after that happens, the Montana Republicans formally censor her
and they prevent her from speaking on the floor until
she apologizes and as long as like, no, fuck you,
I got much, but she said no, I'm I'm not
(24:15):
gonna apologize. Right, there are there are a bunch of
like pretty large protests like in Helena that are like
you know that that are that are like pro trans
protests and protests to like let Zoe speak, and they
arrest seven of the protesters.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
One of the people they arrest was I think a
woman on crutches who like couldn't clear the area fast enough.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, she was on crutches. Yeah, I was like I
did go down before people didn't. Yeah, and all kinds
of ship.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
And then and then the so there's like there are
these protests in the gallery right and the the Montena
Republicans start doing this whole thing about how this is
this is this is the democratic January sixth, and like
they were storming the capital the capitals in the seats.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
I try to do that in Tennessee as well. Like
it's so pathetic, like so asinine.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah, and the every thing I want to mention about this,
right is like, okay, like the Montana Freedom cocause people
and all, like the censors and the fucking press releases
are just constantly misgendering Zoe.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
It is.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
It's really fucking ugly. Uh yeah, And you know, so
after these protests, the house like banishes her from the
floor and kicks her out of her offices, and so
she shows up like to work from a bench outside
the chambers where like legally they can't kick her out
of But then like this is an ongoing saga, right,
(25:39):
like like this morning she showed up and there were
like three really old white women sitting on.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
The bed speaker of the house's mom oh speak of
the house much.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah, like this this fucking big Montana tough guy had
to call his mom to fight his battles for him.
Like they just insanely pureile to nine nonsense, but it's
unfortunately has very real consequences.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, and like you know, so she was like at
like a lout. She was like like had her like tablet,
like on a lunch counter, taking meetings from like like
standing at the counter. Yeah, it's it's been a whole thing. Also,
I think earlier today someone someone tried to swat her girlfriend. Yeah,
because the journalist Aaron Reid. Uh So, that's bad. This
(26:28):
whole thing's been getting like an unbelievable amount of media attention,
and you know, in a very very short period of time,
Zoe Zephyr goes from someone who I know about because
I'm trans, and like all trans people are like four
hops away from each other, something I probably shouldn't say,
but like it's true. Yeah, you kind of get there,
(26:48):
aren't that many of us, and a lot of us
are extremely online, so like you know, like I'm like
two hops away from this person, right, like from.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Multiple strangles with her, right.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Yeah, I met her like very briefly in a stream.
She's you know, like she's a good person. She I
don't know, she's just like this is one of the
things that I think, like I've met a couple of
the or a few of the like very famous like
trans people who sort of come under the gun and
they're just normal fucking people, like just normal trans people
(27:23):
and this bullshit happens to them.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, it's so like bullshit that like, like I know
a number of trans ladies who are bi racist, right,
and like they like it must be pretty clear that
if you win a fucking race, if you win a
big race, like you know what's coming for you know,
fucking bright bart and News is going to have you
on there the next year. It's and the same for her, right,
she likely would have been aware that the moment she
(27:49):
tried to defend her right to fucking exist, all the
very worst people around the country with baying for blood.
She's very brave anyway, Like she should fuck them. They
shouldn't be able to side and.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Say yeah, okay, we should take an ad break. Yeah
one more time and then yeah we'll come back and.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Say something funny.
Speaker 5 (28:11):
Bit more chit chit chit chi, chumback, Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Okay. So in the middle of all of this, so
we went home to I think there was like a
recess or something, because legislatures work like two days a year.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Rich people hours. Yeah it was bullshit, like, yeah they
have like a break for fucking horse racing and yeah
poo or whatever.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, But so she she went home to Missoula, and
there was a just like a massive march. There was
this rally that turned into like this basically like a
twenty four hour long party. People. My favorite story for this,
there's some people who Okay, so they brought beer they
had got from rowing a boat out to a derailed train. Yes,
(29:13):
I say think the two media narratives is twenty twenty three. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it's great and like you know, I mean,
I think in these sort of moments, right, you can
see the new world there, right, you can see a
world where, you know, we no longer live in fear. This,
you can see this world where where we're free to
(29:34):
create joy and meeting in art, in our lives, you know,
can be a celebration of the beauty that's in and
around us. But that world, the world that generations and
generations with trans people have fought and died to sort
of claw out of the dirt the world tried to
bury us in, that world will die unless we fight
for it. And that fight cannot be left to individual
(29:57):
state representatives. There's not enough of them. Eventually they will lose.
And and this is this is the other story of
Montana rights. As much as you know, as much as
what's been going on in Montana is a story about
a trans woman defying like all of the sort of
organized power for state, like all of those bills passed,
and there is not enough power to If we keep
(30:19):
trying to fight them in legislatures, and we keep trying
to only fight them in in the legislatures and in court,
we're going to lose. But okay, I probab, I probably
shouldn't say this before I know we've we've locked in
the title. But the projected title of this is the
Trans is the Transgenocide. A siege and a counter attack,
and I promised a counterattack, So now I'm gonna fucking
(30:40):
give it to you.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
You didn't want like brief notes on the seageon like
you could have gone full maoist on the tide.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Now why we will? We did? We did that with
the other one, and I realized after the last episode
we did on this and I could have just called
it counterattack and that would be better. So I've saved
it for this moment.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
I'm glad that you get to ease it.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
So, Okay. One of the things that's become incredibly apparent
in the last in the last few years, is that
as as much as there is sort of passive transphobia
in society, transphobia is not a sort of nebulous idea
that just like floats freely around the world. It is
brought into this world by men. And you know, we
(31:19):
know the foundational story of how these men and women
gain power. Right they cut a deal with capital to
reconstitute the Republican Party in the eighties. But you know
this is this is both their weakness and their strength.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
It's their strength because this gives them an enormous amount
of resources to pull on. It gives them the institutional
backing of an entire political party. But it's weakness is
and it means that capital and the transphobes are bound together.
And this means that when you scratch a capitalist of
transphobe bleeds. Now, the other things that we know are A,
(31:52):
there are power in there's power and logistics, and b
there are companies profiting from genocide. FedEx, for example, FedEx's
headquarters are in Tennessee. Tennessee has passed a bunch of pennesces,
like the state where this shit all fucking started, right
with the original bathroom bills, with their drag bills, with
their you know that they've also passed bands on minors
getting gender from and care. There are other states where,
(32:15):
you know, you can look at the largest sort of
companies in the states, like Missouri is probably like Panera, Montana,
Schnyder Electric, Kentucky's probably KFC, and you know those companies
are weaknesses. So what am I talking about here? I'm
not talking about a boycott because this is the US.
Nobody fucking knows how to do a boycott. Like when
when Americans try to do a boycott, they buy like
(32:35):
sixteen palletts of bud light and shoot it with a bazooka,
right Like, this is the This is a boycott. It
is not what I'm talking about here is something a
lot more serious. You know, we we we've we've we've
seen this sort of so let me praise this. We've
sort of the sort of echoes of what this kind
of campaign could look like with the SOB Coop City
(32:59):
protest with you know, you have protests outside the offices
of banks and outside of corporations that are backing that
are backing cop City. But I'm talking you know that
and that at the most mild is something that we
should be doing. Right, These companies that are profiting from genocide,
the companies that are you know, funded by the fucking
tax exemptions that are given out by these states. The
companies that are you know, giving money to the seple
(33:21):
political campaigns. But I'm talking about more than that. I'm
talking about blockades. This is you know, veries bifically FedEx
is quite post is possibly the best example of a
company that you can that you can just target right
talking about blockades, we're talking about supply like disrupting their
supply chains. I'm talking about very specifically a campaign that
(33:41):
put the trans sword to the arteries of capital and
make the bassards bleed. I'm talking about a counter attack. Now,
the advantage of the strategy of picking corporations, targeting them
and disrupt like not not not just necessarily protesting outside
of their office so though doing that, but specifically actually
making them fucking bleed, actually just up in their ability
to function as a company. Right. The advantage of this strategy,
(34:03):
which has developed and sort of broad strokes of my
dear friend Vicky Ostroweil, is that what one of the big,
one of the big problems we have in this whole fight.
Is this sort of weird? Is this geog the geographic mismatch, right,
the you know, the majority of people in the US
and also the majority of people in most of the
states where this is happening, right, don't support this ship.
But it doesn't matter because you know, the district are
(34:25):
jerry mander to fuck and you know, but it means that,
like there's a lot of people who like me. For example,
like I live in Illinois, right, like the the you know,
under normal circumstances, the best I can do is help
my friends in Missouri get out and try to help,
like you know, do do do things like secure access
(34:46):
to transport and housing for refugees, secure access to hormones
of people. But if we're if we're going after if
you're going after capital, if we're going after the companies,
the banks, the financial institutions that are funding this ship,
we can hit them everywhere because states have borders, but
capital doesn't. And that means that you know, you know,
we can if if if if you are specifically you
(35:08):
want to target the legislature of Kentucky, you can go
after fucking KFC, right, you can go after their banks.
You can go after you can go after anyone who
funds them. We can hit them on multiple fronts here, right,
we can hit them with protests. But these companies also
they rely on our labor. Right. A lot of these
places are you know, are either sort of fast food
change or logistics networks. And that's that's a place where
you know, trans people are overrepresented because trans people are
(35:29):
overrepresented in the service sector, you know, again because it's
easier to get jobs there and institutional transphobia locks you
out of better jobs. They also rely on public infrastructure.
They rely on you know, streets being open, right, They
rely on an entire logistics network to make sure that
not only are they extracting the labor of people that
(35:50):
they are, like you know, the sort of like theoretical
term for this is realization. Right. They have to actually
be able to sell, they have to be able to
assemble their prouct they have to be able to sell it.
And you can stop them things, right, I mean the
k KFC. And sometimes it's also kind of hard because
there's franchise shit going on. But that's not true with FedEx,
Like every FedEx office is FedEx and you know, these
(36:12):
these are these are companies that like, maybe we can't
fucking drive them underground, right, but we can make them bleed,
and we can make it we can make it painful
enough to be complicit in this genocide that these people
that you know, these people get fucking acts, right, we can,
we can, we can make them bleed, we can go
And you know another another thing that you know people
can do, right, is it's not that you know, if
(36:34):
if if if you have like a spare afternoon on
a weekend, Right, it's not that hard to figure out
that like the specific business interests of the legislators who
are voting for this stuff. You can just do this.
All these people are unbelievably corrupt. They have land deals
that they're doing.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
And so you know, open records that let you see
who donates to all those people as well.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Yeah, yeah, and there are websites that you can just
like like you can just google who gives the notions
to people and yeah, it's like donations trackers, and you
can like plug in their name and it will show
you whe who donates to them.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
And so we have learned through the through sort of
the experience of the past few years, right, that these
people cannot be swayed by logic. They cannot be swayed
by They can't be swayed by logic. They cannot be
swayed by science. They cannot be swayed by you know,
they cannot be swayed by the emotional appeals. They do
not give a shit about trans people. They would literally
(37:27):
rather have their kids die than be trans. But again,
the one thing they do care about is capital. And
if you, if you, if you, if you, if you
make capital bleed, these people will bleed to and that
will actually fucking hurt them, and that will give you
the leverage you need to let these people make a choice. Right,
(37:47):
It's either us or the world of capital burns.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, have visited our
website coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Thanks for listening
Welcome to Dick It Happened Here, a podcast about the
transgenocide because it keeps happening, and so we keep having
new episodes about it because it just gets worse. Yeah,
I'm Mia Wong with me as James.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'm I'm excited to hear more about what people are
doing to trans people in different parts of this country.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yeah. The answer is not good, so nice things. Okay.
At about five am this morning, I was watching a
video from last year, and you know, they had this
lie about how like there's been one hundred anti trans
bills in twenty twenty two alone, and like, oh oh boy,
that is a that is a quaint figure from a
more civilized age. We are three months into twenty twenty
(00:48):
and there's been five hundred anti trans bills across the country.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
That was a Freudian slip. We have three years into
twenty twenty, my friend.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Oh god, yeah, you're twenty three that one, which I
guess it won't work out like this, but technically, speaking
of this pace continues, we're on track for what Yeah,
we're on track for I think two thousand this year,
which would be great.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Heyce, Yeah, it's good. Well, we'll be rebooting Mansona by November.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Now, most of these bills, have we've talked about before,
are going to fail, but a lot of them haven't.
And the other sort of aspect of this that I
think it's been less reported on but is also extremely important,
is that, Okay, so if you want to do anti
trans bullshit, you have like three options. Basically, you have
you try to get a bill through the legislature, You
have the governor doing a mandate or something, and then
(01:42):
you have the attorney general doing some bullshit. And our
first story from the front lines of the worst shit
that's happening is from Missouri, where Missouri's Attorney General Andrew
Bailey has issued a quote emergency rule that claims that
because gender care is quote experimental, it's already banned by
(02:03):
state law, which is nonsense, but it gets worse.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I don't know if it's worth like addressing this shit
head on because it's such so clearly bullshit. But like,
we have more than a century of people seeving gender
firming care and auditioning.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
It's it's like people.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
People, television is more experimental than gender refirming care. Yeah,
like this stuff like aeroplanes.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Are more experiment This stuff predates the Nazis like, it's
like it's old.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, it definitely predates passenger flight.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, like so okay, I mean that there's like a
standard turf argument though, is that it's like, oh, it's experimental.
It's like now it's not. Okay, So these rules are
oh boy, okay, here's from so I think it was
Saint Louis. Yeah, the city government of State Lewis put
out a thing about it that was basically like, this
is bullshit. They said, quote the Aterney General's Emergency Regulations
(02:59):
institute extremely strictions that require one medically documented gender just
for you for three years, to at least fifteen consecutive
therapy sessions over eighteen months, and three that all mental
health conditions are treated and resolved prior to gaining access
to gender affirming care. There's also this section that is
(03:21):
I'm just gonna read it. I don't have any words,
I don't have any analysis for this, so it's saying
like you can't have care. That quote fails with respect
to a patient who is a minor, to ensure that
the patient has received a comprehensive screening at least annually
for social media addiction or compulsion and has not for
at least six months prior to the beginning of any
(03:42):
intervention suffered from social media addiction or compulsion.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
So wow, yeah. Now, so the good news is that.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
This role was supposed to go into effects, like before
this episode is recorded. It was instantly. There are a
bunch of lawsuits. It's been blocked by a judge until
May fifteenth, so hopefully the judge will be like, this
is obviously illegal, not holding out hope for that. This
is probably the worst law in the books anywhere in
(04:14):
the country right now. Maybe will also I'll show you
the other really bad one and what we'll see. But okay,
so the notable thing about this law is that this
is not just a band from minors. This is for everyone.
And you know, there's lots of atrocious stuff in here,
right Like if you have autism, for example, and there's
a bit every thing about screening for autism. If you
(04:34):
have autism, you cannot transition, Jesus, and you know, and
then you know they're part of the right. Even if
you're like a ninety nine year old on your fucking deathbed,
you can't transition unless you feel fill all of these
bullshit requirements. There's this like there's a social media compulsion thing,
which is this sort of bizarre like social contagient bullshit
that these people have been spreading for a long.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Time, especially given like where the fuck do we think
their trans panic comes from? It's because they logged onto
Facebook and you're racist. Uncle Joey had posted to think
about like how Twitter is transing his niece's gender.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah, and you know, and it's like all of this
stuff is very like we're getting into we're getting into
the part of this where it's just sort of like
they're like copying and pasting turf rants into like laws. Yeah.
The mental health care thing is like just awful.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
You know.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
For example, if you have depression, one of the reasons
you might have depression if your trans is because you
have dysphoria. Yeah, so you're caught in this loop or
if you try to get care for the depression, you
can't get like treatment for the dysphoria. What if you
get treating for the dysphoria, you can't get it for
the depressions.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Right, Yeah, you're totally alienated from getting care. And like
I'm sure living in a fucking state which is trying
with surgical precision to force you to pick which way
you want to be suffering. It's not like great for
your mental health to be Like being a trans person
in Missouri would be pretty hard, given that the state
(06:02):
is its powers to stop you getting anything out of care.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
And you know, I mean everything that's about this is
like the therapy requirement, the fifteen therapy things over eighteen months,
it's just effectively a ban because you know, do you
know how fucking hard it is to get an appointment
with a gender therapist, Like it is so like there
are we are talking about something where there are optimistically
(06:26):
dozens of these people for an entire state. It is fucked.
It is so bad even in states where it's legal. Right,
This is this is sort of the grim joke of
like the anti trans canard that like it's too easy
for kids to get gender firmin care and they're giving
your hormones like candy. It's like, no, no, it's really
even in states where it's legal to get gender firmin care,
(06:48):
it's hard as fuck, takes forever and is expensive, and
you know, given how through few therapists there are and
how hard it is to clear these requirements the Missouri
rule is just effectively a ban on gender fermin care
for everyone. Now it's been stayed for now, but this
is really bad. People are fleeing the state. We're going
(07:08):
to talk more about trans refugees yeah later, but you know,
basically every state that has passed one of these laws
has refugees already. I know, I personally know multiple people
who fled multiple states. Yeah, it's really fucking bad. It's
also you know, I mean, like it is genuinely important
(07:32):
to make sure that people get supported and to make
sure people are way out. It's also not a solution
because there's just going to be new trans kids born
into these states.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
So yeah, yeah, we can't fix it by the existing
trans people leaving. And like obviously there's people have their
friends in their family and their community there. Like we
didn't fix it by them getting something completely different.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah, so now we're gonna move to the next state
where shit's happening that this one I don't know that's
happening in Kansas is also like, okay, relative to the
amount of media attention it's gotten, this is the worst
thing that's happening in absolute terms, It's unbelievably bad. Okay.
(08:14):
So there's a bill in Kansas that people are calling
a bathroom bill, and they're calling it that because bathroom
bill is the terminology that they have. This is not
a bathroom bill. We need to be very clear about this.
This is way, way, way, way fucking worse than a
bathroom bill. So this is a bill that what it
does is in the eyes of the state, it legally
(08:35):
assigns you a gender by defining male and female in
all in all state laws as and I'm going to
let us legislature take it from here. Women are those
who quote biologically whose biological reproductive system is developed to
produce OVA, and men are those quote whose biological reproductive
(08:56):
system is developed to fertilize the OVA of a female.
Which y yeah, Hey Radfams, I hope you're fucking happy.
Now you've gotten the state to legally define your gender
as based on your reproductive capacity.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, We've great job. Feed run of the fucking what's
the thing where they will wear the bonnets?
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah? And here here's it just intersects people kind of exist.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
You're fucking it's worse. Okay, So again, here here's kas NT,
which is a news outlet in Kansas. In addition to restrooms,
the legislation would define words like woman, man, mother, and
father in areas like athletics, prisons or other detention facilities,
domestic violence centers, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, and quotes
(09:42):
other areas where biology, safety, or privacy are implicated that
could result in separate accommodations.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, so, uh supposedly this is going to be on
a case by case basis, but you know, like this
is going to lead to trans women being put in
bends prison where they will be raped and almost certain
like almost certainly will be raped, quite possibly will be
killed because that happens all the time. Uh, you know
this is i mean, like kicking trans women out of
(10:12):
domestic violence centers and rape crisis centers when you know,
and this is gonna happen, and you know, similar like
bullshit's gonna happen to trans men and also to non
binary people who all of whom are abused and assaulted
at rates that are fucking indescribable. I mean, there is
also the bathroom bill shit, and like the worst version
(10:32):
of bathroom billshit we've ever seen. And you know, but
also so this is not the only one of these bills.
That's we'll talk about the other one in Montana in
a little bit. But because the Kansas Republicans are somehow
even more cretnius than their colleagues in Montana, they have
written the bill in such a way that, in the
words of Pink News, quote definitions outlined in the bill
(10:55):
also state that a female a female is a person
who produces ova, in other words, eggs meeting cis. Women
who are infertile and are unable to produce eggs could
be barred from spaces under the legislation's legal terms.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Likewise, sis, man, I guess yeah, it's it's yeah, like
or like you have like fucking had an accident or
you know, yeah, like yeah, you know, and and it's bullshit,
like its pointing out the logical errors. It doesn't really
work because that's not really the point, is it, Like,
(11:30):
like their point is not to be like logically found,
it's to be cruel.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Yeah. But but but I think there is something very
important about this, which is that this this is a
very very firm example of how the struggle for trans
rights and sort of you know, like trans bodily autonomy
is intimately connected with the struggle with abortion rights, because
if you look at what's happened here, right, Republican lawmakers
are literally defining women by their by their capacity to
(11:55):
produce children for them. Yeah, so you know this is
this is not like the these are these are two
very very into connected struggles and the same people have
the same absolutely dog shit like horrific patriarchal politics in
both of them. So, okay, so we're gonna We're gonna
(12:15):
leave camp in Nebrette. Okay, so we've we've had two
really grim stories in a row. We're gonna have one
that saw less grim, which is Nebraska. So okay, there
has been a bill to ban January Form CAARE for minors,
but it is being staved off basically single handedly by
the genuinely heroic efforts of state Senators Megan Hunt and
Michelle Kavanaugh, who have been philibustering literally every bill that
(12:38):
goes through the state Senate the stop bit from happening,
which fucking rips. Yeah, and like you know, okay, so
basically the things like we will, we will, we will
philibuster literally every single bill until they stop trying to
patch this band through. And you know this is the okay,
So like there was there was a thing that happened
in the early twenty tens where in the US, like
the big US Senate, right, they changed the rules about philibustering,
(12:59):
so don't actually have to stand there and talk for
eight hours because they're fucking cowards and an almoys pieces
of shit in that is not true in Nebraska. If
you want to fill a buster a bill, you have
to fucking stand up there and talk for eight hours.
And they have been doing this for months. Yeah, and
it's it's it's it's holding that you know, basically. So
(13:21):
the way philibust it works, right is you can't kind
of like in the Senate, and then also in the
state Senate, you can't stop someone from talking unless they
like dream debate, you can't stop someone talking unless you
get a two thirds vote of the body for emotion
to cloture. So they've just been forcing you to do
it for every single bill, and they don't have the
votes in some of the bills. So yeah, you know,
and the reason I think this is this is happening,
(13:43):
you know, the reason that they've been doing this and
not sort of just like like doing bullshit like most
of the Democratic. Well, partially it's because there's a Senate
and partially because Senator Hunt has a twelve year old
trans son, Yeah, which yeah, has has given her, you know,
a sort of urgency that's absent from Democrats and other states.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yeah, which theoretical for her. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And I mean, like, this is one of the things
that sucks about this right is like it it should
not fall on you know, like literally the trend, like
the rights of the children of an entire state are
falling on like one mom and the few other Democrats
who decided to take a stand with her, And that's fucked.
(14:26):
That is nonsense.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Like it's yeah, it's great that she's doing it, but like, yeah,
this is.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
This is horrible. Yeah. Do you know what else is horrible? A?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Is it the products and services that support podcast?
Speaker 1 (14:45):
But I have to see regulations. I don't think I
can legally say that.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
But no, no, we do don't.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
No, it's not not that Yeah, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Okay, So now we're gonna get to I think the
most famous story or most most well known story of
an anti trans fight that's been happening recently, and that
is Montana. So Montana has passed a bill that bands
gender for macare from Binnis and also opposes legal sanction
as anyone who does it. Governor Greg Giafanti like has
(15:23):
a non binary son. Who is he they and he
like gave a speech it was like dad, fucking don't
sign these bills, and his dad signed them. Anyways. Yeah,
one of the co sponsors of this bill, on the
floor of of of the Montana House said she'd rather
her children die in transition and then had yeah, yeah,
(15:45):
and she had to give a press commence later saying
she didn't actually mean that, but like no, she that's
literally what she sat on the floor of the fucking house.
So these people are ghouls and monsters. They are the
dogs of uh this the sort of the Republican Freedom Caucus,
which is their like absolutely deranged like Matt Gates fucking
(16:07):
weirdos in Congress who are if you remember that giant
fight over the speaker of the House, like that was
those freaks like the Yeah, these people are like their
local sort of like dogs. There's two other absolutely terrifying
bills that are about to become law. There's HB three
fifty nine, which is a ban on kids attending drag shows,
which like that bill has gotten less bad than it was,
(16:30):
which is it's now a ban on kids attending adult entertainments.
But you know, guess he gets to decide what adult
entertainment is, ETA, et cetera. Right, yeah, And that bill
has passed both the House and the Senate is waiting
for reconciliation. There is the even worse SB four fifty eight,
which is basically the bill from Kansas, except I'm just
gonna read some of it. Female means a member of
(16:50):
the human species who, under normal developments, has produced xx
chromosomes and producers it would produce regular, relatively large, immobile
gam meats or a between her life cycle, and has
a reproductive and endocrine system oriented around this production of gammi.
As an individual who would otherwise fall within this definition
but for a biological or genetic condition as female. So
(17:11):
this is straight turf shit, right. This is a straight
up like a woman as an adult human female thing
that like these people walk around saying, thinking is like
a normal thing to say, oh.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah, and thinking that, like specifically the chromosonality thing we
know has been bullh it for a very long time.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
There was nonsense. The people don't know is nobiology.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah, sorry, yeah, and we can Like the example is
this woman called Mario Jose Martinez Patigno who was a
hurdler who won a number of events and then lost
her medals because she failed a chromosonality test and fucking
ruined her life, right, lost her fiance, lost her job,
lost all her competitions, and was able to successfully sue
(17:53):
with the help of leading experts in the field, to
prove that like I think she had like mosaics, she
exhibited mosaicism x Y, and that like this is in
fact a normal fucking variation in the human species. And
like this was in the eighties and we're still doing
this shit.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Yeap.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Her paper's are really good, by the way, she's a
professor of philosophy now, oh cool, yeah, yeah she's yeah,
she's great. I specator a few times, but.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah, brad w Yeah. But like these people are doing,
you know, like they are you know this this this
this bill legally rights trans people out of existence, and
it is again another one of these gender paragraph things
where this the state is legally defining what gender you are.
But also you know, but again like they have to
do all this like bullshit because you know, this is
(18:41):
other thing that I said, like, these guys, these people
are like slightly I don't know smarter is the right word,
but they're slight. They're they're slightly more engaged in turf shit.
So they have a more convoluted, like biological misconception of
what a woman is, which they can't define because it's
not a thing.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Like yeah, it's a social constructagy yeah, because they can't society. Yeah.
And put in mind of South Africa constantly chasing the
fucking definition of what race was and like trying to
define like a multi racial kids into one box or
another box.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Yeah, it's you know, it doesn't work. But the problem
is this bill is going to be signed by the
governor like next week, probably possibly this week, like in
the next couple of weeks, is going to be signed.
So that's really fucking bad. So the part of the
story that thinks the most well known is Montana Republican's
crusade against Montana House Rep. Zoe Zephyr. Zoe Zephyr is
(19:39):
trans She is a rep for a part of Missoula,
which is a college town home to the University of Montana.
We talked about this a bit when Zoe won her seat.
But I really before we really get into what's been
happening to Zoe, I want to talk a bit about
Missoula and a bit about the sort of the geography
of transmigration, because the the way the media talks about this,
(20:02):
right is that you know, transmit like trans trans refugees
and transmigration is something thats started with these anti trans bills.
And that's not true. This is this, all of this stuff,
all of the sort of fleeing, all the refugee stuff,
pre dates Tennessee, it predates Missouri. It's always been happening, yeah,
(20:22):
you know, because and the the actual process of this
is that, you know, for for generations and generations, the
wretcht of the earth get fed to the wolves, and
then the wolves spit them out of their homes and
their communities, and they fled. They've fled to places like Portland,
in Philadelphia, in Atlanta and Chicago, places where people like
us had clawed out in existence in a world that
(20:44):
wants is dead, where we continuously survive off the shit
end of urban labor markets. And this is something that
has happened beneath the notice or even the contempt of
Bush West society. But it's been going on for longer
than we've had words that we've had the words that
we used today to describe it. And you know, Azula
is one of those places where you can go when
your family kicks you out. And then you know and
that that that's not the only way people end up here, right, Like,
(21:06):
there's a lot of people who you know, you know,
have better stories, right they go to college, they discover themselves.
There are people who go here because it's where they've
chosen to make new lives. And you know something, there's
also just people who are from Missoula who just realize
they're trans. And you know, it's this mix of sort
of trans refugees, transmigrants and the local trans community that
(21:28):
you know, all fuse together and becomes a sort of
beautiful community that we've been you know, has finally like
stepped out of the shadows in the last like ten years.
And you know, and this is why it's not enormously
surprising that Missoula sent Zoe's efforts to a Letta to
represent them, because this is, you know, again like this
is one of these places that like collects people from
(21:51):
all over Montana and you know from all over like
eastern Washington too. Some of these people go to Seattle,
some of these people go to Portland's but yeah, they're there.
The there have always been these massive networks of migration
that just you know, no one ever, no one researches,
no one talks about, no one even it's it's hard
to even know they exist unless you know the people
(22:12):
who like have been moved along them. The product of
this now is that Zoe Zephyr is Trans is in
the you know, on the floor of the House debating
with Republican legislatures this bill to uh uh like ban
health care for for like trans youth, and she says, quote,
if you vote yes on this bill and yes on
(22:33):
these amendments, I hope the next time there's an invocation,
when you bow your hands in prayer, you see the
blood on your hands, which I really wish because the
media talks about the blood on your hands thing costs
And I wish they read the whole quote because it
fucking rips like it's.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Great, Yeah, I think you need to you can't. There's
no fucking point in bourgeois civility with this stuff. Is
that that's nook and and.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
This is what has been one of things that's been happening, right,
is like like the Republicans their backlash that this has
been a sort of like, oh, you're not being civil thing,
right and like in uh, like Senator Hunt in uh
uh Nebraska was like literally didn't actually literally say fuck you,
but you know, like said like yeah, like no, I'm
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna like show up to
(23:15):
like your like your dinner parties or whatever, like like
you don't don't say hi to me in the halls,
like you know, my fucking kid, and you know what
you're doing to them.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
That's the way to approach you, right, like the person
trying to legislate your little trans son out of existence.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah, it was like fuck these people, they're gonna do
this ship. Okay. So there's a couple of theories as
to why what happened next happened next. There's been a
lot of speculation that it's been like, oh, this is
like a gambit by the the the Freedom Caucus to
like turn Zoe's Ephyr into like the face of the
Montana Democratic Parties they can win a Senate race. It's like,
I I actually don't buy that I think very specifically
(23:54):
the when you close your hands to pray, you see
the blood in your hands thing. I think they got
really fucking pissed off, and then they just kept escalating.
So after that happens, the Montana Republicans formally censor her
and they prevent her from speaking on the floor until
she apologizes and as long as like, no, fuck you,
I got much, but she said no, I'm I'm not
(24:15):
gonna apologize. Right, there are there are a bunch of
like pretty large protests like in Helena that are like
you know that that are that are like pro trans
protests and protests to like let Zoe speak, and they
arrest seven of the protesters.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
One of the people they arrest was I think a
woman on crutches who like couldn't clear the area fast enough.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Yeah, she was on crutches. Yeah, I was like I
did go down before people didn't. Yeah, and all kinds
of ship.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
And then and then the so there's like there are
these protests in the gallery right and the the Montena
Republicans start doing this whole thing about how this is
this is this is the democratic January sixth, and like
they were storming the capital the capitals in the seats.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
I try to do that in Tennessee as well. Like
it's so pathetic, like so asinine.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Yeah, and the every thing I want to mention about this,
right is like, okay, like the Montana Freedom cocause people
and all, like the censors and the fucking press releases
are just constantly misgendering Zoe.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
It is.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
It's really fucking ugly. Uh yeah, And you know, so
after these protests, the house like banishes her from the
floor and kicks her out of her offices, and so
she shows up like to work from a bench outside
the chambers where like legally they can't kick her out
of But then like this is an ongoing saga, right,
(25:39):
like like this morning she showed up and there were
like three really old white women sitting on.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
The bed speaker of the house's mom oh speak of
the house much.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah, like this this fucking big Montana tough guy had
to call his mom to fight his battles for him.
Like they just insanely pureile to nine nonsense, but it's
unfortunately has very real consequences.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, and like you know, so she was like at
like a lout. She was like like had her like tablet,
like on a lunch counter, taking meetings from like like
standing at the counter. Yeah, it's it's been a whole thing. Also,
I think earlier today someone someone tried to swat her girlfriend. Yeah,
because the journalist Aaron Reid. Uh So, that's bad. This
(26:28):
whole thing's been getting like an unbelievable amount of media attention,
and you know, in a very very short period of time,
Zoe Zephyr goes from someone who I know about because
I'm trans, and like all trans people are like four
hops away from each other, something I probably shouldn't say,
but like it's true. Yeah, you kind of get there,
(26:48):
aren't that many of us, and a lot of us
are extremely online, so like you know, like I'm like
two hops away from this person, right, like from.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Multiple strangles with her, right.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Yeah, I met her like very briefly in a stream.
She's you know, like she's a good person. She I
don't know, she's just like this is one of the
things that I think, like I've met a couple of
the or a few of the like very famous like
trans people who sort of come under the gun and
they're just normal fucking people, like just normal trans people
(27:23):
and this bullshit happens to them.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, it's so like bullshit that like, like I know
a number of trans ladies who are bi racist, right,
and like they like it must be pretty clear that
if you win a fucking race, if you win a
big race, like you know what's coming for you know,
fucking bright bart and News is going to have you
on there the next year. It's and the same for her, right,
she likely would have been aware that the moment she
(27:49):
tried to defend her right to fucking exist, all the
very worst people around the country with baying for blood.
She's very brave anyway, Like she should fuck them. They
shouldn't be able to side and.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Say yeah, okay, we should take an ad break. Yeah
one more time and then yeah we'll come back and.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Say something funny.
Speaker 5 (28:11):
Bit more chit chit chit chi, chumback, Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Okay. So in the middle of all of this, so
we went home to I think there was like a
recess or something, because legislatures work like two days a year.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Rich people hours. Yeah it was bullshit, like, yeah they
have like a break for fucking horse racing and yeah
poo or whatever.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, But so she she went home to Missoula, and
there was a just like a massive march. There was
this rally that turned into like this basically like a
twenty four hour long party. People. My favorite story for this,
there's some people who Okay, so they brought beer they
had got from rowing a boat out to a derailed train. Yes,
(29:13):
I say think the two media narratives is twenty twenty three. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it's great and like you know, I mean,
I think in these sort of moments, right, you can
see the new world there, right, you can see a
world where, you know, we no longer live in fear. This,
you can see this world where where we're free to
(29:34):
create joy and meeting in art, in our lives, you know,
can be a celebration of the beauty that's in and
around us. But that world, the world that generations and
generations with trans people have fought and died to sort
of claw out of the dirt the world tried to
bury us in, that world will die unless we fight
for it. And that fight cannot be left to individual
(29:57):
state representatives. There's not enough of them. Eventually they will lose.
And and this is this is the other story of
Montana rights. As much as you know, as much as
what's been going on in Montana is a story about
a trans woman defying like all of the sort of
organized power for state, like all of those bills passed,
and there is not enough power to If we keep
(30:19):
trying to fight them in legislatures, and we keep trying
to only fight them in in the legislatures and in court,
we're going to lose. But okay, I probab, I probably
shouldn't say this before I know we've we've locked in
the title. But the projected title of this is the
Trans is the Transgenocide. A siege and a counter attack,
and I promised a counterattack, So now I'm gonna fucking
(30:40):
give it to you.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
You didn't want like brief notes on the seageon like
you could have gone full maoist on the tide.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
Now why we will? We did? We did that with
the other one, and I realized after the last episode
we did on this and I could have just called
it counterattack and that would be better. So I've saved
it for this moment.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
I'm glad that you get to ease it.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
So, Okay. One of the things that's become incredibly apparent
in the last in the last few years, is that
as as much as there is sort of passive transphobia
in society, transphobia is not a sort of nebulous idea
that just like floats freely around the world. It is
brought into this world by men. And you know, we
(31:19):
know the foundational story of how these men and women
gain power. Right they cut a deal with capital to
reconstitute the Republican Party in the eighties. But you know
this is this is both their weakness and their strength.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
It's their strength because this gives them an enormous amount
of resources to pull on. It gives them the institutional
backing of an entire political party. But it's weakness is
and it means that capital and the transphobes are bound together.
And this means that when you scratch a capitalist of
transphobe bleeds. Now, the other things that we know are A,
(31:52):
there are power in there's power and logistics, and b
there are companies profiting from genocide. FedEx, for example, FedEx's
headquarters are in Tennessee. Tennessee has passed a bunch of pennesces,
like the state where this shit all fucking started, right
with the original bathroom bills, with their drag bills, with
their you know that they've also passed bands on minors
getting gender from and care. There are other states where,
(32:15):
you know, you can look at the largest sort of
companies in the states, like Missouri is probably like Panera, Montana,
Schnyder Electric, Kentucky's probably KFC, and you know those companies
are weaknesses. So what am I talking about here? I'm
not talking about a boycott because this is the US.
Nobody fucking knows how to do a boycott. Like when
when Americans try to do a boycott, they buy like
(32:35):
sixteen palletts of bud light and shoot it with a bazooka,
right Like, this is the This is a boycott. It
is not what I'm talking about here is something a
lot more serious. You know, we we we've we've we've
seen this sort of so let me praise this. We've
sort of the sort of echoes of what this kind
of campaign could look like with the SOB Coop City
(32:59):
protest with you know, you have protests outside the offices
of banks and outside of corporations that are backing that
are backing cop City. But I'm talking you know that
and that at the most mild is something that we
should be doing. Right, These companies that are profiting from genocide,
the companies that are you know, funded by the fucking
tax exemptions that are given out by these states. The
companies that are you know, giving money to the seple
(33:21):
political campaigns. But I'm talking about more than that. I'm
talking about blockades. This is you know, veries bifically FedEx
is quite post is possibly the best example of a
company that you can that you can just target right
talking about blockades, we're talking about supply like disrupting their
supply chains. I'm talking about very specifically a campaign that
(33:41):
put the trans sword to the arteries of capital and
make the bassards bleed. I'm talking about a counter attack. Now,
the advantage of the strategy of picking corporations, targeting them
and disrupt like not not not just necessarily protesting outside
of their office so though doing that, but specifically actually
making them fucking bleed, actually just up in their ability
to function as a company. Right. The advantage of this strategy,
(34:03):
which has developed and sort of broad strokes of my
dear friend Vicky Ostroweil, is that what one of the big,
one of the big problems we have in this whole fight.
Is this sort of weird? Is this geog the geographic mismatch, right,
the you know, the majority of people in the US
and also the majority of people in most of the
states where this is happening, right, don't support this ship.
But it doesn't matter because you know, the district are
(34:25):
jerry mander to fuck and you know, but it means that,
like there's a lot of people who like me. For example,
like I live in Illinois, right, like the the you know,
under normal circumstances, the best I can do is help
my friends in Missouri get out and try to help,
like you know, do do do things like secure access
(34:46):
to transport and housing for refugees, secure access to hormones
of people. But if we're if we're going after if
you're going after capital, if we're going after the companies,
the banks, the financial institutions that are funding this ship,
we can hit them everywhere because states have borders, but
capital doesn't. And that means that you know, you know,
we can if if if if you are specifically you
(35:08):
want to target the legislature of Kentucky, you can go
after fucking KFC, right, you can go after their banks.
You can go after you can go after anyone who
funds them. We can hit them on multiple fronts here, right,
we can hit them with protests. But these companies also
they rely on our labor. Right. A lot of these
places are you know, are either sort of fast food
change or logistics networks. And that's that's a place where
you know, trans people are overrepresented because trans people are
(35:29):
overrepresented in the service sector, you know, again because it's
easier to get jobs there and institutional transphobia locks you
out of better jobs. They also rely on public infrastructure.
They rely on you know, streets being open, right, They
rely on an entire logistics network to make sure that
not only are they extracting the labor of people that
(35:50):
they are, like you know, the sort of like theoretical
term for this is realization. Right. They have to actually
be able to sell, they have to be able to
assemble their prouct they have to be able to sell it.
And you can stop them things, right, I mean the
k KFC. And sometimes it's also kind of hard because
there's franchise shit going on. But that's not true with FedEx,
Like every FedEx office is FedEx and you know, these
(36:12):
these are these are companies that like, maybe we can't
fucking drive them underground, right, but we can make them bleed,
and we can make it we can make it painful
enough to be complicit in this genocide that these people
that you know, these people get fucking acts, right, we can,
we can, we can make them bleed, we can go
And you know another another thing that you know people
can do, right, is it's not that you know, if
(36:34):
if if if you have like a spare afternoon on
a weekend, Right, it's not that hard to figure out
that like the specific business interests of the legislators who
are voting for this stuff. You can just do this.
All these people are unbelievably corrupt. They have land deals
that they're doing.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
And so you know, open records that let you see
who donates to all those people as well.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Yeah, yeah, and there are websites that you can just
like like you can just google who gives the notions
to people and yeah, it's like donations trackers, and you
can like plug in their name and it will show
you whe who donates to them.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
And so we have learned through the through sort of
the experience of the past few years, right, that these
people cannot be swayed by logic. They cannot be swayed
by They can't be swayed by logic. They cannot be
swayed by science. They cannot be swayed by you know,
they cannot be swayed by the emotional appeals. They do
not give a shit about trans people. They would literally
(37:27):
rather have their kids die than be trans. But again,
the one thing they do care about is capital. And
if you, if you, if you, if you, if you
make capital bleed, these people will bleed to and that
will actually fucking hurt them, and that will give you
the leverage you need to let these people make a choice. Right,
(37:47):
It's either us or the world of capital burns.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, have visited our
website coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Thanks for listening
It Could Happen Here News
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Robert Evans
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