America is Obsessed With Gender

First they come for trans people...it won't stop there.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good morning, peeps, and welcome to WOKAP Daily with Me
your Girl, Daniel Moody, recording from the Home Bunker, Folks.
On today's WOKF I am actually going to be running
an episode of The Daniel Moody Show, my YouTube show
that I did earlier this week, and the reason for
that is that currently, as I've mentioned here on this show,

(00:36):
the Supreme Court heard opening arguments this week on the
US versus Scrimmetti case, which is a case that is
based on the right of a state, the state of Tennessee,
to deny transgender youth access to life saving medical treatment.

(00:57):
And where we are is is in a country that
nine unelected black robes get to decide whether or not
people live or die, get to decide who is human
and who is not, who is worthy of dignity and
respect and who is not. And this week on The

(01:20):
Danielle Moody Show, I made the connection between America's current
gender obsession, where trans people make up one percent of
the population, and yet if you were to look at
the messaging that has come out of the Republican Party
and the Trump campaign, you would think that they made

(01:42):
up eighty percent of the population. With how much they
have been targeted. Then you look at the ways in
which the Republican MAGA Party is now embracing toxic masculinity
and elevating the wife and redefining gender roles in this

(02:05):
country at the same time that they are pushing back
against those who do not subscribe to the binary. And
I talk about it at length in this episode because
it's a connection that is worth making, and one that
isn't about whether or not you know somebody that is

(02:27):
trans or whether you are trans yourself. It is about
basic human rights and also for a party that cares
so much about parental rights, apparently when it pertains to
that of trans youth, parents and doctors don't know what
is best, but your politicians do. When will it end?

(02:49):
And that's the question that I pose on the Danielle
Moody Show, And it was such an important episode and
I received so much feedback on it that I wanted
to run it here as well. Take a listen. I'm
not going to be using this show to follow all
of the ins and outs of what is happening over

(03:10):
in Trump's bizarre world. When it affects us genuinely, then
I will delve into those conversations, but on this show,
I want us to have broader conversations really ask ourselves
some questions that we may not have the answers to
at this time, but it's important to ask the questions.
And so the US Supreme Court heard the opening arguments

(03:33):
in the US v. Scrimmeti case, which is challenging the
States ban Tennessee's ban on treatments for transmnors. And this
case is going to have a massive ripple effect across
the country as it pertains to transgender rights. And you know,

(03:58):
there are lots of folks who will tell you that, well,
I don't know a trans person, or this doesn't affect me,
or you know, I'm not concerned. And I will tell
you that whenever you hear about a case that is
going to decide the future health and well being and
safety of another community that you may not be a

(04:22):
part of, you should pay attention because, like we've been saying,
first they come for right the Martinia molar poem. First,
they come for the low hanging fruit, the people that
they think that no one cares about or that they
will have common discrimination with, and that is trans people

(04:44):
in this country. Because whether you speak with people in
the black community, white folks, working class, Muslims, Christians, what
have you. What there seems to be consensus around is
transgender identity. So I want to provide a little bit

(05:06):
of insight into this case. Why it matters so deeply
to me, and what came up as I was reading
and kind of putting together today's show is that America
is obsessed with gender and gender roles and trans people.

(05:28):
The reason why, folks, before I get into the case,
the reason why there is all of this pushback and
angst and discrimination and policies and weaponization of bathrooms is
because I recognize, I believe that transgender people pose a

(05:52):
threat to conservatives because if gender roles and gender see
stereotypes no longer apply, then they lose their power. Then
all of a sudden, we start talking about people as
actual people and the roles that we want them to

(06:12):
play in our partnerships, in our households and our families
based on who that person is, not what their identity is.
And what this all boils down to, folks, is about power,
power over rather than power with. And if now you
have young people coming home and saying that they identify

(06:36):
as LGBTQ, largely because for them, for Generation Z and Alpha,
presenting as LGBTQ or calling themselves queer is more aligned
with their political identity than it is with their gender identity.
It's to showcase the fluidity with regard to their thinking

(06:59):
and the fact that they recognize that we don't live
or have to live and operate inside of a binary
and so who would we all be if we were
not prescribed our roles literally from the womb the moment
that a baby comes out, blue hat or pink hat,

(07:23):
now it's blue, pink, and white. You go down any
children's toy aisle, you see very clearly based on the
pastelles versus the primary colors, who you're supposed to get
a gift for the boy or the girl. And what
we have realized over times is that all of this

(07:44):
has been prescribed to us, and it all has its
foundation in religious doctrinization. So what does it mean then
for people to exist free in their own skin, in
their own body and say that if my gender that
was provided to me at birth does not match how

(08:08):
I feel and who I am, and I'm saying to you,
I'm telling you this is who I am. Why does
anyone get to tell them? No? If I say my
name is Danielle, refer to me as such, and then
you turn around and tell me, well, you look like
a Mary, so I'm gonna call you Mary. How does

(08:30):
it the person that has decided to change my name?
How do they have more power to identify me than
I do to identify myself? This is basic shit, folks,
like this is basic things. If I am telling you
who I am, who are you to tell me who
you think I am? And to me, that's what this

(08:51):
case is. That's what this is about. You can run
it down whatever legal lines you want to right, whether
it violates equal protection, whether it violates parental consent, whether
this that or the other thing. But when you drill
down to the fundamentals of what is at stake in

(09:12):
this case, it is who gets to dictate their personhood
the person who is telling you this is how I feel,
this is who I am, or the other person living
outside of that body that gets to tell you what
you can and can't do with that body and how

(09:32):
that body will be identified. It doesn't make any sense
when it's said very plainly like that. The case was
broad discrammatic case was brought by three trans youth and
their parents last year, and they argue that the law
violates the equal Protection clause of the fourteenth Amendment because

(09:57):
of sex based discrimination. The decision in the case, which
is expected in June, could have sweeping implications for trans
youth across the country. According to the Human Rights Campaign,
twenty six states have passed bans on gender affirming care,
affecting thirty nine point four percent of trans youth in

(10:19):
this country. So I want to unpack for a moment
why this case is important and I want this is
its very small print, but I want to offer it
up to you also I will read it. This is
about transgender or non binary youth having access to medically
necessary care, services and treatments commonly provided to cisgender youth

(10:45):
that their doctors have prescribed to them to treat their
gender dysphoria and improve their physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing.
Not having this care results in devastating consequences for their
health and well being. This life saving care has been

(11:06):
approved by the major medical associations and has been scientifically
proven to be safe and effective. So, once again, friends,
once again we have politicians playing doctor and telling us
that those that actually went to medical school, those who

(11:29):
actually have a degree in medicine, and are telling you
that the care that is being issued for young trans
youth is medically necessary and safe. Who are these politicians
to come in and now say these doctors are wrong?

(11:52):
So take it again, Roe v. Wade, nine unelected black
robes got to DECI that women in this country, people
with uteruses in this country no longer have bodily autonomy.
For fifty years, abortion had been the law of the land,

(12:14):
had been certified and safe because abortions are not just
used for quote unquote unwanted pregnancies, they are also used
as a part of reproductive care, full stop. And we
are watching right now as women across the country that
are in these red states are dying, are miscarrying, are

(12:39):
bleeding out, are being forced to carry non viable pregnancies,
and then listen as those babies gasp for air for
hours before they die. When we said my body, my choice,
it does not matter whether you are cisgender or transgender.
It matters that you are and that you should have

(13:02):
a say in your own goddamn life. And I just
I woke up today and I said, my god, when
will there come a time when humans are not being
dictated to about who is human and who is not,
who is deserving of dignity and who is not, Who

(13:23):
should have life saving treatment and who shouldn't. Why is
this something that is up for debate? And frankly, friends,
if your life write it. If you don't know what
it is like to wait with baited breath for nine
unelected judges to decide your future, then you are a

(13:45):
part of the oppressive class. You are the mainstream. Because
my god, folks, from the fucking constitutional convention that decided
that black people were only three fifths of human to
the dread Scott decision to Plusy versus Ferguson, to Brown
versus Board, to Roe v. Wade, to now the scrematic case,

(14:09):
it is all the same. It is about the majority
getting to dictate to the minority who is deserving and
who is not. So all of a sudden, folks, the
same conservatives that want to talk to you about parental
rights and oh, your parents should have a right to

(14:30):
say who gets to read what book and who gets
to be in what curriculum, and parents writes, parents writes, Well,
these parents of transgender youth are saying, we're listening to
our kids, and our kids want the care, and our
doctors say that the care is necessary because guess what
they would rather their child be trans than dead. But

(14:52):
politicians are telling you what you should be doing with
your child. So conservatives want to have it multiple ways,
not just two ways. They want to have it multiple ways.
It's parents' rights so long as it is about taking
other people's rights away and access away. But when it

(15:13):
is about granting rights and listening to people and extending
kindness and decency, then all of a sudden, politicians must
intervene on your behalf because now parents don't know any better.
This is the shit that is driving me crazy, and frankly,

(15:35):
it should be driving all of us crazy. And you
should not need to know somebody that is trans to
give a damn about what the Supreme Court is doing
and will decide with their six to three MAGA majority
because it won't stop with trans folks. What will be next?

(15:55):
And so here I want to read what would be
the imp locations of this case and its decision. There
are a range of different outcomes that are foreseeable in
a final ruling. A ruling in favor of the families
would return the case to the lower courts to apply
the appropriate standard of review for improper sex based classifications.

(16:20):
If the court upholds the ban, the Tennessee law would
remain in effect, depriving transminers from receiving hormone therapy, green
lighting similar bands already enacted in other states twenty six
and potentially emboldening even more states to pass similarly restrictive

(16:40):
laws and perhaps even more draconian bands. However, this case
is decided, it is likely to have significant impact on
how much deference courts give to bands on medical care
to treat gender dysphoria. Folks. Then, what's next, I'll tell

(17:01):
you what comes next. What comes next will be birth control.
It'll start with youth. Oh, women, girls under a certain
age can't receive birth control, right, which already happens in
some states. I'm sure of it. You need parental consent.
Da Da Da da da. Then they'll say, well, no,

(17:23):
now you don't need parental consent. We're saying that no
one under the age of say, seventeen eighteen will be
able to access birth control. You'll let these things enter.
When do they end it's transgender youth today, it's SIS

(17:44):
youth tomorrow, and then it's all of us. It really
is terrifying. And when you look at the numbers, folks,
because this is something that is also incredibly important, transgender
youth report its significantly increased rates of depression and victimization

(18:05):
compared to their cisgender peers. Notably, in the past year,
one in three transgender youth reported attempted suicide. Folks, listen
to this. Let me say that again. Notably, in the
past year, one in three transgender youth reported attempting suicide,

(18:27):
almost one third reported being a victim of sexual violence,
and more than half reported a two week period of depression. Folks,
how is this okay? Seriously considering suicide in the past year,
sixteen percent of cisgender youth, while forty four percent of

(18:47):
trans youth felt sad or hopeless for two weeks or more.
In the past year, thirty percent of cisgender kids, fifty
three percent of trans kids. This should not be acceptable.
And so when you hear that this case is happening,
and I will tell you that Chase Strangio, who is

(19:10):
the lawyer for ACLU, who is also on the team
presiding over this case is the first openly transperson to
argue before the Supreme Court and use his own life
and the life saving hormones and therapy and medical intervention

(19:30):
that he received that allows him to be standing before
the Supreme Court to argue for the ability of trans
youth to have a future, because that is what this
is about. We do not know what it is like

(19:51):
to exist inside of a body that you feel like
is betraying you on a day to day basis, to
be victimized, to be her rest. Just this week, Model
of the Year was given to a trans model. You
see folks like Laverne Cox, transactress. You see people in

(20:15):
prominent positions and you want to believe that we are
headed in the right direction. But folks, we are not.
Those people are the exception, not the rule. After the election,
the Trevor Project where I got this data from. The
Trevor Project is an LGBTQ organization that works to decrease

(20:40):
suicide and mental health issues that regularly plague the LGBTQ community.
They have a hotline and that hotline folks had a
six hour wait following the election because the youth, the
queer youth of this country watched as America voted against them.

(21:05):
They are watching as folks like Nancy Mace put into
effect bathroom bands for a duly elected member of Congress
to embarrass her. Our children are watching, and what we
are showing them is that their lives do not matter.

(21:25):
I remember and I participated in that It Gets Better
campaign in the early two thousands because there had been
a rash of high profile suicides of young queer kids
who were being bullied to death and who were going
home and they were hanging themselves, they were cutting themselves,

(21:49):
and a bunch of queer adults, celebrities, advocates, activists started
that it Gets Better project to show them that life
gets better. To hang in there. School. Maybe Top high
school may be rough, but like you will make it
to the other side. You can get married, you can
be successful, you can find love even if it is

(22:13):
not in your home. And now, years later, can we
honestly tell them that things get better when half of
this country, half of the states, have voted to ensure
that they will never receive the care that they need,
the interventions that they need to live a full, complete

(22:34):
and abundant life. That half of this country said that
they are undeserving of life, which is why not only
are suicide rates high for the trans community, but murder
rates as well. It is this obsession with gender and
a binary that has us here rules that were made

(22:57):
up in order to control people and to keep them
in their place. It is not an accident that at
a time when we are talking about and having arguments
about and debates about the existence of trans people, that

(23:17):
you also are watching this unfold on social media, this
return of the traditional wife, now with a hot new
handle as a trad wife taken over TikTok. You think
you're watching a video about a woman baking bread from scratch,
like many people did during the pandemic, and then you

(23:38):
find out, oh no, there's a whole maga, fucking white
Christian nationalist agenda all under it. So again, at a
time when youth are seeing the opportunity to break outside
of these binaries, where they are seeing women in positions
of power and people and positions of power right, and

(24:01):
people being able to own their personhood, this is what
the pushback looks like, folks. It looks like reminding women
of their roles, reminding men that your job is to
provide and get the bacon and be strong and do this,
that this is what you're seeing. The pushback to inclusive

(24:24):
gender identity and acceptance is toxic masculinity and this shit.
And so you know, I bring this to folks' attention
because I don't think that people make these connections on
a regular basis. Right between what is happening with the
pushback and the weaponization of identity and then this miraculous

(24:50):
creation of the triad wife and celebration of them, Hannah Nielman,
eight kids, more men, living on a three hundred and
fifty eight acre farm, the Ballerina Farm, because she was
once in Juliad and Juilliard until you know, she found

(25:11):
her husband, whose father, by the way, owns Jet Blue,
so they're not poor by any stretch of the imagination,
and she uses her I think it's twenty two million
people follow her. Twenty two million people. Some follow her
because they like her, some follow her because they hate her,

(25:33):
while she tends to her eight children and bakes bread
and milks the cows, showing you, you know that you
don't need to be all concerned and worried about what
feminism is. Just tend to your man, and this is
what they say. The traad wives online lives are a

(25:55):
pleasant parade of floaty dresses and appealingly rustic accompanied by
voiceover monologues about home simplicity, God and of course husbands
who protect and provide and lead the household by example
are the tradwives. Okay, wonder some onlookers, while others consume

(26:18):
video after video wistful for a quiet life of butter churning. Now,
don't get it twisted. I too have fantasies of leaving
New York City and going up state and making fucking
jam and like you know, live in a slower life.
But it is. It is based on the fact that

(26:40):
New York is filled with prenetic energy, and I don't
want to burn out and drop dead, right, But there
is a difference between a life of quiet and jam
and being told that you need to have a football
team sized family and that the man is the head

(27:01):
of the household and whatever he says goes, and all
you have to do is push out children and churn butter.
There's a big difference between those things. And so I
am thankful for Tia Levings, who wrote an incredibly important

(27:22):
memoir entitled The Well Trained Wife and the Howering memoir
about the trad wife that she says fans need to
know here's a little insight into it. Levings decided to
write A Well Trained Wife in the late twenty tens
in response to the politically motivated way extreme Christian views

(27:45):
were going mainstream. When she recognized that the members of
her fundamentalist Christian community wanted to quote to run our
country the way they run their homes, she writes, quote,
I suddenly realize why it mattered so much that I
talk about what it's like in those households. I could

(28:06):
tell the public what it's really like and guess what, folks,
it wasn't, you know, like the voiceover monologues of the
pretty thin white women mother of seventy five who is
milking cows and carrying eggs. No, it was filled with

(28:29):
abuse and battery. A Well Trained Wife effectively establishes how
extreme religions so wholly indoctrinate their followers by isolating them.
Early born in the mid nineteen seventies and brought up
attending a Baptist church in Jacksonville, Florida, Levings was taught

(28:49):
to mistrust the outside world with its abundance of information
and technology. Cancer church leaders told her was a punishment
for the sins of huge humans. The nineteen eighty six
Challenger space shuttle explosion was the natural consequences of quote
scientists playing god. The United Nations was already plotting a

(29:13):
future one world government that would arrest and torture people
left behind in the rapture folks. What her book laid out,
and I had the opportunity to interview her a couple
of months ago was terrifying because she was like from

(29:34):
a young age, from birth, she was taught the roles
that women have you. When you're young, your father is
in charge, then when you get older, your husband is
in charge. And above all that the church is in charge.
And she talked about the beatings, she talked about the

(29:56):
sexual assault, but all of this being sanitized and filtered
through the lens of the tradwife telling young women, you
shouldn't want to go and get that degree, You shouldn't
aspire to do anything other then be a mother. What

(30:18):
did they say at the turning point one of those
conservative conferences, a young woman stood up and said that
she was trying to decide whether or not she should
follow her dreams of being a surgeon or you know,
being a mother, because she doesn't feel like she has
the ability to do both. And what did the men
tell her? To go hold a baby and then come

(30:41):
back And if that doesn't move you, then by all means,
go be a surgeon. So how does this tie into
the fight for trans writes because all of this, fundamentally,
dear friends, is about control and creating a society where
freedom of thought, freedom of body doesn't exist, where you

(31:05):
are dictated to and your life is not your own.
And what that sounds like to me is another form
of slavery. Because if I don't have the ability to
have self determination, then what am I? Self determination is
the basis of being human, the ability to decide who, when,

(31:28):
where and how you live. And if we are telling
women now we're taking that power away from you. We're
telling people, young people, no, you don't get to tell
us who you are and how to treat you. We're
telling you who you are and how we're going to
treat you. How do we call ourselves? And continue to

(31:49):
even muse on this idea that we live inside of
a free democracy that has freedom of expression and thought
and that we have the ability to pursue our own happiness.
Those are what is given to us inside of the Constitution,
and what this Maga Supreme Court is doing is taking

(32:11):
away our rights, one decision at a time, redefining who
we get to be and how we get to show up. So, folks, again,
you do not need to know somebody that is trans
in order to stand for trans rights, because at the
end of the day, it is about our right to

(32:33):
be human, to exist on our own terms, to have
self determination, to have the ability to pursue our happiness,
to live full, free and abundant lives. That's what these
cases are about. And no one should have the ability
to decide that other than you. So when we decide

(32:56):
to divide ourselves off to cists over here and trans
over here, black over there, and Latino over there, Muslim
over here and Christian over here, able bodied over here
and disability over here, we fracture ourselves from our humanity.

(33:17):
And then we trick ourselves into believing that, oh, since
they didn't call out my group this time, I'm safe.
Your number is coming. Trust and believe. So do not
sit oddly and quietly by hoping and praying that your
number isn't called. Make your voices heard, make them loud

(33:43):
and determined, regardless of whether or not you that day
are on the chopping block, because your day and your
number will come. We need to fight for each other.
We need to fight for everyone's right to exist, free

(34:03):
from oppression, free from discrimination. Right now, trans people, the
trans community is under attack. There have been hundreds, hundreds
of policies that have been introduced to ban them from existence.

(34:24):
Sure it starts with bathrooms, and then it's sports, and
then it's workplaces, and then it's movie theaters, and then
it's stay home. Then it's they're dangerous. We cannot let
this happen. So I implore all of you, if you
have resources, think about donating to places like the Trevor Project.

(34:47):
Think about donating to places like the ACLU who are
literally fighting for our civil liberties. Think about donating to
places like the Transgender Law Center to Family Equality. These
are organizations who work tirelessly to make sure that LGBTQ

(35:08):
folks live in a country free from discrimination and are
safe and able to live their lives. Think about joining
a group as an ally because we need more like
minded people that are willing to stand up for all people.

(35:30):
I will say this. When it is Muslims that are
being attacked, I will say it, and I said it
when it was Haitian immigrants that are being attacked, right
when it is women and people with uteruses under attack.
We have power in our voice and our collective action.
You can contact your representatives to make sure that they

(35:54):
haven't signed on to these bullshit bathroom bills that Nancy
Mace and Johnson are pushing in the House. You can
call up these senators and your representatives and ask them
where do you stand on transgender rights and the rights
of humanity. These are your representatives. They answer to you.

(36:18):
We are all connected because we are all human and
regardless of how we live, how we look, whom we love,
we all want fundamentally the same things. To be healthy,
to be safe, to be happy. How we go about
those different ways, so long as it doesn't hurt or

(36:38):
harm other people, as Tim Wall said, is none of
our goddamn business. Freedom is our business, and not freedom too,
but freedom with that is it for me today. Dear
friends on WOKF as always power to the people and

(36:59):
to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke
as fuck,