There’s an opinion about where trans kids use the bathroom

Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy, shouldn’t use the bathroom? A story that changed lives: What have we learned in my hometown of Virginia?

It is the middle of the academic year in a small town in Virginia. Dozens of speakers have gathered at a school board meeting for their chance to comment on the board’s most burning issue: Where should Gavin Grimm, a transgender boy, use the bathroom?

I was the subject of headlines not only in my hometown but across the country. At that school board meeting, parents of kids I grew up with were calling me a freak directly to my face – and talking about my genitals in a public forum. That’s how low they were willing to go to inflict hate on a child.

A trans person coming out at a point in their life where they want to be heard is fundamentally about wanting to be heard. There’s an artist that I love named grlofswords on Instagram, who does these Jenny-Holzer-style slogans. She believes that having a child with a different sex is a blessing. Why is it a blessing to have a child who is not male or female? It’s a blessing to have a child who is strong enough to tell the truth when others want them to lie.

When the state is threatening them with removal from their family and threatening to put them into a foster care system where, one, transgender youth are already overrepresented, and, two, they’re frequently subjected to physical abuse, sexual abuse and conversion therapy and attempts to make them cisgender, that’s an extremely threatening blade to hold over these young people’s heads.

I was a high school student, and I saw that the threats to the trans Americans’ lives had reached a tipping point. I didn’t want to be an activist. I was just a kid. But it felt like the task of spreading greater awareness about a community that had been pushed to the margins fell to me.

These treatments that allowed me and other people of the same gender to become themselves have been studied, peer reviewed and are some of the best practices in their field.

Across the country, they are being banned, challenged or indefinitely delayed and people who want to transition are put through many hoops before they can get treatment.

My case ended in favor of trans students. There are protections afforded by the Education Amendments of 1972 for trans people within the jurisdiction of Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. The Supreme Court allowed the decision to stand. As a result, all schools in the Fourth Circuit were required to adopt a policy in their schools that provided for the needs and rights of transgender students based on the model policies set by the Department of Education.

After wending its way through the system for four years, the courts ruled the school board was in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX of the US Education Amendments of 1972, a federal law barring schools from sex discrimination.

This event is greeted by right-wingers as an apocalyptic event. I often have to remind folks that this happened in liberal and progressive spaces. I recall seeing a poll that claimed most of the country thought firing someone because they were gay or transexual was against the law. So I often have to remind people in liberal progressive spaces that this case even happened.

The Virginian Governor Glenn Youngkin: Discriminating against transgender students, religious freedom, and the fundamental rights of children and adolescents

But last year saw the election of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who ran on a platform that included blatant misinformation and targeted attacks against marginalized communities.

Under his administration’s proposed guidelines, transgender students would only be permitted to use their correct name, pronouns and facilities if a parent requests so in writing. The measure does not include any language that requires schools to approve such requests. Children who don’t go out to their parents or guardian for safety reasons, or who have parents who aren’t supportive, are excluded.

And notably, Virginia’s model policy contains language permitting schools to go beyond the guidelines and institute even more restrictive rules, saying “Each school board shall adopt policies that are consistent with but may be more comprehensive than the model policies developed by the Virginia Department of Education.”

It seems as if Gov. Youngkin is willing to reject not only established federal and state law, but also guidance and best practices from leading authorities on the physical and mental health of children and young adults. Youngkin and his administration have couched discriminatory actions in language about protecting children, religious liberty and the rights of parents, but it is my belief that his real agenda is scapegoating a minority already under duress, in a cowardly bid to gain support from his base.

He may succeed but his gains will be short-lived. A few weeks ago, thousands of students across Virginia walked out of school to protest Youngkin’s proposed restrictions on trans students. Protests are continuing against this unjust proposed policy. The community of trans people is still alive.

What Do Conservatives Really Want to Happen When They Can’t ‘Turn Their Fists’? The Case That Doesn’t

So the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference wrapped up this past Saturday. And this conference, if you don’t follow it, it’s a big deal every year because it is the clearest window into the id of modern conservatism. It brings together its politicians and media figures and influencers.

And the right is now making trans people their political target. And the most ambitious conservatives are competing not just in rhetoric, but in policy, to make their lives harder, to try to push them out of the boundaries of public life. A lot of these policies have conflicting rationales. But I think collectively, if you look at them, you see that what Knowles said was true.

Soon after that, you have people such as Josh Hawley thumping their fists on the table and saying this is a sign that the conservative legal movement is over. That if an employer couldn’t fire someone because of their sex change, then it would be an existential threat.

I believe that people who follow politics feel this is happening but perhaps not of the scale and severity of these policies. The hard edge cases get more attention in the mainstream press. The rules for the NCAA swimming meets should be changed. What about the rare but real cases where somebody transitions and regrets it? What kind of medical assessment and parental involvement should you need to access this kind of care as a minor?

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

The Texas Child Welfare Commission: How does the A.C.L.U. fight child abuse? An unintentional example of how the DSPS, G.G.B.T.Q., and H.I

I don’t think those questions are fake, I don’t think they’re easy, and I don’t pretend to have answers to them. I think that we should not lose sight of the fact that trans people are already living in poverty, homelessness, and violence because of the terrible discrimination and difficulty they already face.

Gillian Branstetter is a Communications Strategist at the A.C.L.U.‘s Women’s Rights Project and the L.G.B.T.Q. and H.I.V. Project. The A.C.L.U. has been very involved in fighting these policies. So Branstetter has an unusually specific and global sense of how all this is coming together on the ground.

The state legislature failed to codify the definition of child abuse because it did not include gender-affirming care. A bill was introduced in the state legislature in Texas in 2021 and ultimately failed. They took him to task for this. So he began a long-rolling process to apply political pressure and basically set the tone that this care and its provision in Texas was going to be the next focus of his target.

The state’s family policing agency is mobilized by it. Advocates have been complaining for a long time that child welfare agencies have a lot of power. And this power often gets used in very discriminatory ways, in particular against poor, Black, Indigenous, immigrant families. Queer youth, especially, are overrepresented in our nation’s foster care system.

The first impact of the directive is to get that agency to investigate. And one of the first people they targeted is actually a client of ours who we are representing alongside the A.C.L.U. of Texas and Lambda Legal in one of two challenges to this directive, who was a DSPS employee themselves.

If you have ever worked in a field where children are involved, you will know that there is a requirement for you to be a reporter, meaning that if you have a reason to suspect, you can do it.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

What they are trying to end: How they are not advocating gender identity rebirth in the U.S. and what they are advocating for in rural areas

Counseling is one form of gender-affirming care that helps people get over the shame they feel about being who they are and help them move past it.

Most trans people are very focused on these risks. Nobody’s not attuned to these, right, even in the informed consent model of providing this care. So for young transgender people, for people under 18, there’s a long road of mental health counseling and assessment and making sure this care is right for them.

When a young person presents as their lived gender for a while, they are more likely to access puberty blockers. Doctors often use these as a pause button, which stops the signals that the body sends to begin developing some sexual characteristics such as breasts, wider hips, and a deeper voice.

Then, in older adolescents and adults, you begin talking about hormone replacement therapy, which, if you’re looking for feminizing effects to reflect your gender identity, will include a testosterone blocker and some form of estrogen. testosterone is usually a component of masculinizing effects.

And then surgical care, which for anyone under 18 tends to be pretty rare and very much based around the needs of that patient. It can range from what’s often colloquially referred to as top surgery, which are mastectomies, for example, if somebody has breasts that they don’t want, or down to bottom surgery, which, while hard to access, is usually a vaginoplasty, so reconstructive surgery creating a vagina or a number of surgeries that create a penis.

It’s very shocking to see that in modern political language. And it’s even more shocking to realize that what they’re looking for in these bills is not to end these treatments. They are not trying to end these treatments for everyone. They’re specifically trying to end them for people who are seeking them in order to rewrite their gender assignment, in order to actually make sure their gender assignment reflects who they know themselves to be. They are protecting the other treatments.

Now, what that means, of course, is that all of those health care treatments, most people who express a need for them have a very long road ahead before they can actually obtain them. This care is hard to get in rural areas, like those in Texas.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

The impact that gender dysphoria can have on young people: ezra, gillian and the vile rhetoric around gender affirming care

When gender dysphoria is not being treated, there are a number of other symptoms. And that can range from depression and anxiety to low self-esteem, down to poor academic performance, struggling to build healthy relationships with friends or their family, all the way up to suicidality. According to numerous research, trans people have a higher rate of suicidality than their peers.

It’s Foundationally. So when I sat in a courtroom in Arkansas, where we were challenging that state’s ban on gender affirming care, there was a long line of medical experts and doctors who work with transgender youth who took the witness stand and spoke to the efficacy and the impact that this care has on young people’s lives. It’s very abstract. I think it would be very hard for a lot of cisgendered people to understand what dysphoria is and how much it can impact your life and stunt your emotional development and your emotional growth.

I think that is something that a parent would want for their child. And the, at times, cartoonishly vile rhetoric around this care is very much meant to obscure that positive impact that it has on people and very much meant to obscure the pain of being denied it, particularly when you know that it’s an option that you could pursue.

A lot of young people who have been banned are facing a situation like that, as the number of bans increases, which means they have politicians who have never met them and politicians who have never talked to them.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

Is it child abuse to inject hormones or puberty blockers? What do transgenders really think about the implications of their actions on pediatric dysphoria?

And I think the word that comes to mind when I’m usually trying to describe what dysphoria is like to cisgender people is a deep sense of inauthenticity, a deep sense that you were playing a role for other people. And I think that’s something that most people can relate to because we all have to do that in one degree or another. We have to navigate around and meet people’s expectations.

I think it can be hard — a colleague of mine, Rebecca Kling, has this metaphor of this giant bag of rocks that you’re carrying around your entire life. And after a certain point, you kind of tire out. And you either put down the bag of rocks or you stop going forward.

It is gender because it feels dishonest to say who you are when your friends and family are assigning you gender, from our economic order to police and our laws. It is an all-Consuming sense.

I see a lot of encouragement in that because it means that more trans people feel safe, that they feel that they will, at the very least, find a community of people like them. When you talk with transgender people over a certain age, you hear a similar refrain, that I thought I was the only one. They had no idea that other people felt the same way.

So how then does Abbott or Paxton, the attorney general, in these letters and opinions, make the argument — what is the foundation of the argument that it is child abuse to use puberty blockers or hormone therapy?

To the degree that there is much logic to it at all, he — and I’ve seen this in — I saw this in Arkansas, too, in their defense of this ban. They’re very much hunting for basically any potential risk or any potential excuse, no matter how small, that they can attach to this care.

And you can very much see that they’re running the same playbook on gender-affirming care. It’s very easy to imagine them running this pattern on birth control. In fact, you can already see them laying the groundwork.

So some of the risks they cite include, for example, prolonged use of synthetic estrogen, like the kind that many transgender girls and women take, can gradually increase your risk for blood clots or for breast cancer. And as we talk through these risks, it’s important to understand these aren’t surprises to anyone that goes on them. Parents who talk through them are not surprised by them. The risks of interventions are much higher for the trans youth of gender dysphoria, which is very grave, as we discussed.

So what are some of those risks, speaking not here about the surgical interventions, which are, I think, pretty rare for minors, but the hormone and puberty blockers?

He also looks into testosterone is a controlled substance and has some low level risk for misuse and for abuse. In the rare instance that somebody goes on from puberty blockers directly to hormone therapy, it may gradually increase their risks for osteoporosis. As a New York Times report found, it will gradually increase the risk for experiencing osteoporosis in their 50s, instead of their 60s.

In the space for medical care for transgender adults, there’s been an increasing move towards informed consent, which basically means that as long as this person is informed about the risks and effects of this care, we should trust their autonomy to access it. And when you really feel like your own personhood is on the line and somebody says, but wait, you could experience osteoporosis in your 50s instead of your 60s, you’re like, we’ll cross that bridge when I get to it, I guess. I would be very happy to live into my 50s.

I think most of the arguments are in bad faith because of the risks associated with health care. There are more than one type of health care which these ban don’t touch, and which carry more danger than the child abuse accusations might suggest.

The guidelines for this care were written by the American Academy of Pediatrics, so when we were working on the episode, we talked with them. One point he made is that this kind of care is very, very highly individualized.

That if you look at the standards for it, you look at the structure and sequencing, it’s built on a lot of discussions between the patient, between the doctors, if it’s a minor, with their families.

And one thing that is very striking to me about Texas’s policy here, but not just their policy — I mean, you see this in a bunch of different states — is they’re trying to short-circuit — they’re putting literally the government — conservatives putting the government, which I know the charge of hypocrisy here has lost a lot of force over the years, but take it for a minute — into this process that would otherwise be an individualized weighing of risks and questions and the person’s individual needs with a doctor who knows what they’re doing and possibly mental health professionals and families.

Everyone who has access to birth control knows that it is very individualized. Side effects can come from it. It can be risky. And people hopefully trust you to manage those risks and to weigh them against your desire to not get pregnant, which, depending on who you’re talking to, is you rejecting your gender assignment in the same way that a transgender person is.

I don’t think anyone would describe the process of having an I.U.D. inserted in joyful terms, but people still do it because they want that degree of autonomy over their own body and over their own ability to write their life story for themselves.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

Multiple lawsuits filed by families and the PFLAG National, a L.G.B.T. organization that protects transgender minorities

Two lawsuits were filed against the directives and D.F.P.S. Both of them were filed joint by A.C.L.U., A.C.L.U. of Texas and Lambda Legal. We filed another lawsuit for families and PFLAG National.

For folks who don’t know, PFLAG is one of the oldest L.G.B.T. rights organizations in the country. They work with the parents of queer people. And they were one of the first organizations to really have — to mention gender identity in their official policies to protect transgender youth. There is hundreds and hundreds of chapters in the country. Support groups like these are often what I go to. They are usually talking about what it means to have a young queer person, not just protecting them from discrimination and advocating for their rights, but also changing their own expectations for what life is going to lead based on their queer identity.

So we file on behalf of PFLAG National and receive an injunction on behalf of PFLAG National, so that if a family is a member of PFLAG national, they are protected under that injunction, which, in Texas, last I heard was somewhere around 600 families. That means that many families are still exposed to this directive.

In truth, what we know is that the actual number of cases that have been opened is luckily relatively small. I heard that it was under 20. And in each instance that a case was open, the case was closed. And that’s enormously relieving, in that it means whatever accusation Greg Abbott wants to make against them, these folks are being exonerated by the state agency.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

How much do we really think about targeting children if we aren’t young? A piece of advice I gave to the American Principles Project

Especially when we are talking about young people who are struggling with imagining a future world with them in it, the process of the investigation is a major invasion into a family’s life.

So what you often hear is this is just about children. We are trying to protect the children from harm. Maybe they don’t know who they are yet. Maybe they’re influenced by something they saw on TikTok. But a bunch of these bills target adults, too.

The Texas Senate has introduced a measure that would effectively ban the treatments for children but also prohibit gender-affirming surgery for adults. Tell me a bit about the relationship between the targeting of children and the legislation in other countries that includes adults.

And one of them is the American Principles Project. Over the past few years he has warned politicians on the right that they shouldn’t target people who are trans. And there was a report that Maggie Astor in The New York Times did, where she called up Terry Schilling, the group’s president, and he said, we do, in fact, want to ban this care for anyone of any age. And in his words, the purpose in going towards young people was, quote, “going where the consensus is.”

I would challenge the idea that there is a consensus. And two, I think that belies just how sort of bad faith a lot of these discussions are, that most of these groups, ALEC, these organizations that are really well-known in right-wing circles for basically acting as bill mills for printing off this legislation and distributing them across states — they are not going to tolerate medical transition at all.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

What are the core cleavages of right wing legislative and political parties concerned about gender-affirming healthcare for transgender people?

People who are born with sex characteristics other than normal are called intersex. Intersex conditions can range from hormonal sensitivities down to people born with what might be called anomalous sexual characteristics or maybe the presentation of sexual material that is associated with one sex right next to sexual material that is associated with another sex.

The target of human rights activists and of the intersex rights movement is getting hospitals to not perform these surgeries on babies. It was dropped by the hospital as the default. There is growing inclusion among American Medical Association and other groups.

Right. Exactly. And I found the bill that was passed into law in Arkansas banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth that we have sued and blocked in federal court. And you find that across not just in folks in the family, but across how the right wing regards intersex folks.

So the right-wing legal movement walks away from this case with an enormous amount of egg on their face and I think a lot of outrage because they just walked away from four years of a Trump administration, where they didn’t feel like any of their needs were being met, which is laughable as somebody who was working in trans advocacy at that time. And they are feeling cheated even by the Supreme Court itself. And it’s the legislative session right after that case — so the 2021 legislative session — where you really start to see the total number of these bills take off.

Every right wing legislature across the country has at least one of these bills. It has been a move to the center of their agenda. And one of the ways I understand politics in this era is that we’ve been watching or living through this transition from — because politics is always changing as to what the core cleavages really are, what people will compromise on and what they won’t.

And I think the broad understanding of the Republican Party 15 years ago — and I think it was true — is that they talked to social conservatives, they talked social conservatism, but they governed economic conservatism. The actual non-negotiable was tax cuts for corporations. They would inform the Evangelicals of what they needed to do to vote.

Over this period, that is more or less flipping. You now have the Republican Party. There’s a lot of people who are kind of confused and often opportunistic on economics. But these questions of I would call it social gender hierarchical change — this question of the traditional hierarchies of American society have become really fundamental.

There is a search going on for the issue that breaks this open. I think that there was a view of immigration. Donald Trump’s first play was that. And it worked for him to a degree, but it’s actually not popular to be highly anti-immigrant in this country. When there were protests that had elements of riot, there was a backlash on Black Lives Matter. And then that failed. In 2020, Joe Biden wins the election.

But I’m curious, because you’re obviously much more read in on this than I am and think about it much more, how you’ve understood this transition to the center of the Republican agenda for this set of issues.

It seems like there is a divide between economic and social conservative concerns in the right. I think they share a lot of the same things. Conservative economics tend to produce socially conservative outcomes.

Two, there’s been an interesting turn in right-wing politics over the course of just about the last decade where there’s been a lot of motivation and energy around the social conservative wing, this wing that’s devoted towards a explicit construction of what it means to be American along racial, gender, and class lines.

And likewise, before that, in 2004, in Lawrence v. Texas, when the Supreme Court found that the state could not criminalize same sexual relations, that was very much also founded in this private life, in this private space. It is important to make sure that the government does not see what consenting adults are doing behind closed doors.

This was a test of the political rights of trans people. There were some previous fights around HERO, and we could talk to that history if you want. This was definitely the largest conflagration that gendered rights had had in some time.

And the bill was signed into law. And you quickly saw a number of corporations and large institutions like the N.B.A. and performers like Bruce Springsteen begin pulling events out of North Carolina. And begin saying, well, we’re not going to spend money in a state that would endorse this hate. And according to one analysis, this cost the state of North Carolina’s economy around $3 billion.

Pat McCrory lost re- election because he focused on this issue more than the rest of the state. And this caused a deep sense of frustration within the conservative movement. I believe it was the dawning of woke capitalism, which means that the culture has left our values and taken corporations with them.

The Chamber of Commerce crowd can no longer act in defense of socially conservative actions. It was almost the end of what has been called fusionism, this idea of the libertarian-minded economic right and its ties to often more Evangelical, more socially concerned right.

Social conservatives are starting to feel left behind. The legislative agenda of the Trump administration was overwhelmingly focused on tax cuts and not much else, so they don’t attempt to reflect conservative values back in the real world.

And an inflection point for this comes in 2020. There was a lot of activity in 2020. You could remember it. But I remember in June of 2020, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, which is actually a trio of cases on behalf of LGBT people who had been fired because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The A.C.L.U. was represented by the person who spoke it. She had a gender transitioning disorder in her 50s. She worked at a Michigan funeral home. She said she came out as a female. She wrote a letter that explained how important this is to her. And the funeral home turned around and fired her two weeks later.

Since the Civil Rights Act was passed, sex discrimination has been expanded as a definition. It now covers discrimination against pregnant women. It covers lots of sexual harassment. It covers what is called sex discrimination. The way you think someone should act based on their biology, quote unquote, “biological sex.”

It’s because a lot of the legal victories on behalf of L.G.B.T. rights had a lot to do with the private life. So Obergefell and the right to marry, for example. As much as you’re running into the issues of does a baker need to make a wedding cake or does a website need to make a website for a gay couple that’s getting married, the foundational right to marry is about a right to privacy, as well as just equal protection clause under the 14th Amendment.

In contrast, Bostock was very much about your public life. We are suddenly in the workplace. Now suddenly somebody has the right to be trans in the workplace, around other people even, Ezra. And there is the logic that the opinion, which was written by conservative golden boy Justice Neil Gorsuch, the logic of his opinion, it doesn’t take a whole lot of thinking to then apply it to all other laws, which prohibit sex discrimination, including Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in education, or Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits sex discrimination in health care.

I want to get at something that you talked about and that is part of the evolution of the politics of this, which is that progressives don’t realize or admit. The policy became much more equal in this area after the quiet revolution in the Obama administration. You mentioned some very, very important cases that pushed forward non-discrimination.

And some of the backlash actually was a response to the fact that the equilibrium on this was being pushed forward. It was being pushed towards justice. That created an opposite counter-reaction. And there’s also the feeling that many people have — and I think is, to the extent we have data on it, seen as true — that we are seeing a rise, whether that’s because more people are coming out as trans and they would have suppressed it and not told anybody at another point or because something is changing. But that we are seeing a rise in the number particularly of trans kids.

In your book, “Why We’re Polarized,” available in stores now, you reflect on how polarization is not inherently a negative thing. That is true, when moving forward with important progressive issues. Whenever there has been a consensus around an issue, it is usually related to discrimination or an issue that we now think negatively of and which we would be happy to change.

A cliché to write about the second term of the Obama administration and what has often been described as the trans tipping point is that within the first two paragraphs you should mention the name of drag queen Laverne Cox, who is on the cover of Time.

And I think that’s what really threatens a lot of folks is that suddenly trans life is looking a little possible. And the fact that the number of people who are willing to be openly trans is increasing is a really good sign for that reason, at least for my work.

Over the course of decades of public education campaigns, advocacy, and meetings with politicians, you begin to see that slowly begin to creak open. It is one reason why if you are over 30 you were raised in a culture that depicted you as sickly eunuchs or decadent libertines.

And not just using the language of today of transgender and finding these early examples in the 1990s you can find and things like that, but using the old language of transvestite and transsexual. And what you find is not very pretty. And I don’t think that’s specific to The New York Times at all. I think a lot of institutions across American life, including mainstream political organizations, have that same history.

The North Carolina bathroom bill was one of the first questions that took center stage in this time period, it wasn’t the only issue, but I think it was one of the first.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

What Did Florida Governor DeSantis Say in a White House at the Black Lives Matter Convention? How Do We Shouldn’t Forget to Choose Sides?

So I mean, we’re talking in a week where Governor DeSantis succeeded in taking away some special autonomous privileges that Disney had in Florida. One of the big named Florida employers is Disney.

Disney was criticized over their response to the Don’t Say Gay Bill which is very targeted at trans people. And I think there’s been a particular important dimension in our politics right here at this line where you’ve had the woke corporations fight around Black Lives Matter. You really have it around these issues in an ongoing way.

And it does seem to me to be forcing a weird realignment in the Republican Party, where a party that was known very much as the big business party, now, at least in some cases — obviously not in every — and there’s still plenty of deregulatory efforts and corporate tax cuts and all the rest of it swirling around the Republican agenda — but Ron DeSantis is going to run for president bragging about how he used the power of the state to punish a corporation —

For the speech. I think it’s a good example of how much the Republican Party is focused on this set of issues. I am wondering if you can tell me how it is that you are forcing people within the Republican Party to choose sides.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

David against a Goliath: Why he picks the fight with Disney to stop the woke capital on our children, or why he chooses not to bully

Yes. So the Don’t Say Gay law, as it’s popularly known, the Parental Rights in Education Bill, prohibits discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through the third grade. A version that would extend it to the eighth grade was just introduced in the Florida House. It’s a funny way that it happens.

And this has resulted in queer teachers feeling like they need to hide who they are at school. The rainbow flag and basic L.G.B.T. symbols were taken down due to the banning of books that mention queer people. “Heather Has Two Mommies” is a book about gay penguins. It is part and parcel of this goal of forcing queer identities onto people.

One of the reasons that he picks this fight with Disney is that it will allow him to keep telling the story. So instead of the young queer kids he’s demonizing or the parents who are now afraid their kid might mention that they have two moms and will get them in trouble or the teachers that you’ve read about who now feel like they have to leave the state altogether, instead of those real people who are being scared, now the story is Ron DeSantis takes on woke capital and Disney forcing its ideology on our children.

I believe that he is choosing the frame for himself by picking that fight. He is positioning himself as a David against a Goliath, when he himself is an empty-headed bully wandering around the playground and smashing kids face into the dirt.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

Homintern: Where are the brightest, brighter, and worse places in the trans world? What are the places that are brighter to you?

I don’t know if it’s worse or better at the same time, as we’ve been talking about legislation that is terrible in red states, and the rhetoric has gotten very vicious. I don’t believe that can be discounted.

Several blue states are trying to move in the opposite direction. So are there places that are brighter to you? That at the same time we’re seeing not just backsliding, but actual literal demonization and scapegoating, are there places that are looking more like there’s no bottom, that there’s also you can look up towards — I don’t want to say no top. I’m not sure that metaphor works.

A different kind of future, but in a different way. Are there places that are more hopeful to you right now, that if you’re just following the places things are getting worse, you might not see?

You pointed out that the number of openly trans people have gone up and particularly so in younger generations. I think that matches the rise of L.G.B. identification over the decades. People like to cite this chart for left-handedness because once public schools stopped hitting children for writing with their left hand, there was a huge surge in left-handedness identification.

Then, as the internet grows and social media grows, I know that there’s a lot of anxiety that there are young people self-diagnosing themselves with gender dysphoria and rushing off and getting their breasts removed because they saw it on a TikTok video or whatever else, right? That’s not what I see when I see trans people gathering online.

I see the breaking of geographic boundaries that used to separate us. That trans people are, of course, very naturally gravitating towards people who are like-minded, who have similar experiences, because, believe it or not, the world still doesn’t greet transgender people with absolute joy.

It is very hard to find people in a lot of rural areas who have the same experience. And the internet has this interesting place in trans history as this ultimate gathering space where we can share experiences, share wisdom. Because one of the ways that trans life is deemed unlivable and impossible is we are all isolated from one another.

I’m going to start with a book by Gregory Woods called “Homintern.” And it is a history of queer life and culture pre-Stonewall, from the trial of Oscar Wilde up to just really right before the sexual revolution. And it is this incredibly rich, entertaining, vibrant history of people making space for themselves when, as many people who grew up queer did, they thought they were the only one, including finding community before they even really had the language to describe queer identities. And it’s a fantastic history told through, I mean, love notes and cocktail napkins and police reports and gossip. And it’s very juicy in parts.

And it’s just fascinating to think, how did the arrest of Oscar Wilde, one of the world’s most famous playwrights, change how the media and politics regarded gay people? What was Josephine Baker learning from the drag queens of Harlem and Washington? How did George Orwell reckon with his own homophobia?

The second book is “Caliban and the Witch,” by Silvia Federici. The wage for housework movement was led by a person named Silvia Federici, who was a seminal feminist thinker. The book “Caliban and the Witch” deals with a labor shortage and revanchist movement to assign gender stereotypes to people that target queer people and women.

And the pandemic was the Black Death. And the movement to enforce these rigid strict gender norms were the witch hunts, this long period of time in Europe when women and queer people were hunted and killed because they did things like offer abortions or offer contraceptives or cross-dressed.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-gillian-branstetter.html

The Ezra Klein Show: A Nightmare in the Life of Paul Preciado – Recommendation –

The third and last recommendation is a book called “Can the Monster Speak?” by Paul Preciado. He is a person who is not male or female. He gave a lecture to an esteemed group of psychoanalysts about his book “Can the Monster Speak?”

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