We think it’s obvious that trans women are women, but our Twitter mentions say otherwise. In an election year full of dog-whistling, we have grown disgusted by the dehumanization of trans people from all sides of the political spectrum. Trans people deserve to live their lives, play sports, and be themselves. On this episode, we talked with Anya Marino and Gillian Branstetter about why TERFs are not feminists, how transphobes have become emboldened to spread their hatred in our politics and schools, and why it is more important than ever to protect trans adults and trans children.
We think it’s obvious that trans women are women, but our Twitter mentions say otherwise. In an election year full of dog-whistling, we have grown disgusted by the dehumanization of trans people from all sides of the political spectrum. Trans people deserve to live their lives, play sports, and be themselves. On this episode, we talked with Anya Marino and Gillian Branstetter about why TERFs are not feminists, how transphobes have become emboldened to spread their hatred in our politics and schools, and why it is more important than ever to protect trans adults and trans children.
Resources:
Lark:
Hi, I am Lark.
Hilary:
I'm Hilary.
Jessica:
And I'm Jessica. And welcome to Hearsay where we deep dive into the cultural moments that live rent free in our heads and probably yours too. And today we are shouting from the rooftops that trans rights are human rights. Everyone deserves safety, security, and education. And trans joy is important.
Hilary:
I hope you like shout it so loud and that it echoes back clearly, and then it just goes everywhere. Ya know.
Jessica:
I've been like sending that meme of that person, like on their knees,
Lark:
You did send it to me today.
Jessica:
I sent it to you and Hilary today!
Lark:
Yeah both of us
Jessica:
I sent it like about Bridgerton, but like Yeah. I'm literally like. Like, it's been me to the core on like the peaks and the valleys of my life. I don't know where this falls, but
Lark:
Sometimes you just gotta yell.
Hilary:
You gotta yell.
Lark:
Sometimes you gotta yell.
Jessica:
I, anyway, we can talk about yelling at another time,
Lark:
What a concept.
Jessica:
Yeah, I know. But as a gender justice org, we are used to receiving resistance about pretty much anything that we say.
Hilary:
But none as much as we do.
Jessica:
That’s true.
Lark:
The mentions get scary.
Jessica:
We get the, our mentions go. They're the worst they ever are when we talk about trans rights in any sort of capacity. Um, our president and CEO of Fatima Goss Graves testified on the Hill last December. I was out, um, having a tonsillectomy at the time and I came back
Lark:
Not sure what's worse, that or looking at our Twitter mentions on that day.
Jessica:
Well, honestly, it kind of felt like I was having my tonsils ripped out all over again when I came back and saw all of our mentions and was like, oh. Um. 'cause it was not only like the most mentions we had had all last year. But they were disgusting. They were vile.
Hilary:
People just get really upset when we specifically talk about supporting trans rights speaker.
Lark:
And that's enter into the chat TERFs
Jessica:
Yes. So TERF, T-E-R-F if you're unfamiliar stands for trans exclusionary radical feminist.
Lark:
Sure does.
Hilary:
Yes. That's their name for themselves, not ours.
Lark:
Yes.
Jessica:
Feminists in general should not be excluding anyone. Yeah. And also trans women are women, so it's like
Lark:
Sure are.
Jessica:
Yeah. And I
Lark:
You gotta go. You have to go. Lose my number.
Jessica:
This is just not gonna work and they like stood on business, clearly.
Lark:
That's the thing I think about TERFs, is they make so many, do so much mental gymnastics of why their identity can work with their bananas ideology. There's a lot of gay people in our mentions that are trans exclusionary. There's a lot of quote feminists that are trans exclusionary. And it's like,
Jessica:
And I need to learn your history
Lark:
Right. How are you, how do you get there?
Hilary:
Well, the idea that it's somehow like, uh, an affront to women's rights, that there's never enough space, that somehow there's not enough like justice to go around. Right. As if it,
Lark:
It's not a pie.
Hilary:
It's not a pie. Right. Exactly. That that, that like, the idea of inclusion somehow doesn't work if you include everybody.. And like that it, it's fear-based. Right? It's like they back themselves into a corner rather than accept that the world and their understanding of like, gender can expand. Like, you have a choice. You can either shut the door.
Jessica:
It is never too late to change your mind..
Hilary:
Right. It's, or you can just accept that how you understand the world is maybe not how the world is.
Lark:
Right. Because that's the thing, it's your understanding, like most moral panics, it is outta fear, out fear that something that didn't actually change. Like everyone's like, the world is changing. Nope. No. Trans people actually have been here the whole time.
Jessica:
The whole time.
Lark:
And like, you are just somehow opening your eyes. I don't know. But it’s so interesting.
Jessica:
And or like, people that came before you put you in a bubble. Yeah. And why aren't we talking more about that? And it's just crazy.
Lark:
And it's sick to watch. I mean, the, the violence is unbelievable. Like, I I truly think a lot of people don't understand or even realize
Jessica:
The dog whistling has gotten to be disgusting.
Hilary:
Well, that the Right has decided it's become a thing that they can use to stay in power.
Jessica:
It has been, I feel like in like talking about parental rights in schools. And it ends up being about book bans and it's bullying trans children. Um, where there might be maybe one out of hundreds of kids in the school to generally decide that you are going to live your truth in this way specifically should not be a risk. But it is.
Hilary:
And more and more so.
Jessica:
More and more so.
Hilary:
And it's a risk to not, and like that's the, the position that that parents of trans kids find themselves in. Right. Which is like to let your child be themselves, like lessens the rate of suicide, helps lessen depression is like so critical for someone's mental health, which like, we all know if we stop and think about it. Right. Like, being able to be yourself is how you are happy. Mm-Hmm.
Lark:
They're at risk,
Hilary:
Then, then they're at risk in, in so many states across the country,
Jessica:
I don't think people realize like how gender is obviously this thing that like from, from conception has shaped the way that policy has been made and how things have been set out, but ultimately is literally so fucking stupid.
Lark:
And made up.
Jessica:
And made up. And it's because of literally you're, you're born, like you have a gender reveal party for your, for your,
Lark:
And those, abolish those. Let em go.
Jessica:
For your fetus. And then when they come out the womb, you put a bow on their head if they're girl,
Hilary:
Less they be mistaken for a boy,
Lark:
Bows or baseballs.
Jessica:
Um, you put like a, you put a soccer ball in its hand, if it's a boy. You get a kitchen set if you're a girl, you get a monster truck if you're a boy. You take your daughter to
Hilary:
Father daughter dances.
Jessica:
Yes.
Hilary:
All of it. From a parenting perspective. Right. This is, but I have two boys. We've tried to make sure a bunch of times we like, were like, you know, we were told you guys were boys, but if you're not, let us know. And it's cool.
Lark:
HMU
Hilary:
And also, Lots of ways to be a boy. There is no right way. Mine really, really like nail polish and jewelry and still do. But they have every single time they've worn it had to like talk about, you know, like had someone say something. I just feel like all I can do is keep telling them that they are perfect as they are and their friends are great as they are. And no one has to be, but
Lark:
Right. Its hard.
Hilary:
It it is because all the messages are there anyway, no matter what you say within your own family. And it's really frustrating as a parent.
Lark:
And that's in like the DC area. That is like,
Hilary:
No, we live…
Lark:
I don't wanna say best case scenario, but like, it is like, even in that instance, you know, with all those things set up, it's still a battle.
Hilary:
It's funny. The other thing I, I was thinking about this and for me for a lot of my life, like gender was like a problem. 'Cause I was never girly enough as a kid. Mm-Hmm.
Lark:
Well I wouldn’t go that far. But yeah.
Hilary:
No, but it gives, it's the freedom of it. Of being like, I don't actually have to present any way I don't want to. I don't have to look like, I don't,
Lark:
This ideal.
Hilary:
I don't have to look like anything else. And I have found the more that I can just accept, like dress how you wanna dress Mm-Hmm.
Lark:
Right.
Jessica:
Exactly.
Hilary:
And I, that's the part where I just feel like not enough people have sat down and thought about what are the ways that I feel constrained by my gender
Jessica
Because it’s easier not to. I think it's easier to just go along with this is what you do.
Hilary:
Well, or you were so pushed into it that.
Lark:
You can't even unthink it.
Hilary:
That it, that it's like, what was all that pain for then?
Lark:
Yeah. Well, and I think a lot of it's like control too. Like I think people have, again, back to fear, like when you were talking about your kids, I thought of like, when we were little and my parents did not find out the gender of us, any of us when they were pregnant. Mainly because it was like the nineties and it was really,
Hilary:
The testing wasn't as like rampant.
Lark:
No. And it was wrong. And so we all had like gender neutral clothes. I did have my ears pierced. I feel like Jessica,
Jessica:
I did. Think it was like before I was a year old.
Lark:
I feel like most brown, not white babies get their ears pierced, which I still love, but I was a baby with my ears pierced in like a gray outfit. And people would be like, oh my God, you got his ears pierced to my mom. And my mom would be like, one, why do you care? Two, it's a girl and I it's a baby. It's not your baby. Why do you care? Like, it's still just
Hilary:
Because you weren't in pink.
Lark:
Yeah. Like, no matter. And and I was bald. But that again, it goes to back to the messaging of it's a baby. Like, and I think people just have this weird, I don't know, this control, this fear of like, what, what will happen if I don't do this? And it's like, you actually.
Hilary:
Yeah
Jessica:
Will be fine. You will actually. Well, I mean, will you? That's the whole thing. And I, and I think that like. Well, yeah. My parents also, my dad knew my gender. My mom didn't wanna know my gender and so they bought a bunch of like gender neutral stuff for me. But like, the moment I was born and they realized I was a girl, my grandma went to the store, came back with lace and bows
Lark:
Oh my god.
Jessica:
And like everything. And then, so like, it kind of, kind of all went away, you know? But like,
Hilary:
I made it clear that I only wanted my children ever dressed in stripes to avoid like
Lark:
Mommy's heartbreaker
Hilary:
Or yeah. Look out ladies, I'm crawling.
Jessica:
Only stripes, but no polka dots?
Hilary:
I'm not…
Lark:
You're not a, you're a big stripes person.
Hilary:
I'm literally wearing stripes today.
Lark:
Yeah. You're a big stripes person.
Hilary:
I love stripes.
Jessica:
Okay. I also love stripes. I just, you know, I think us living in the DMV, living in DC like we know that if we decide not to wear a dress today, that we're probably gonna be fine. But also not necessarily like, part of people choosing to conform to the gender that they were told they were at birth, or like deciding to withhold, um, who they really are can literally be like a safety thing.
Lark:
Like if you make people uphold to these made up ideals of femininity and masculinity, that's gonna come for all of us. Like how we've said. How you were just saying, it's fine, we feel comfortable not wearing a dress and feeling that's okay. But if we let this line slip of what's female and what's male, then that's eventually gonna go away. Also, it affects, we're all gonna get policed Mm-Hmm. And certainly trans folks.
Hilary:
We already are. Right. But the degree that, yeah. I, I just feel like the, the way out is for people to, to like try to embrace difference. And try to like, instead of conformity as like a general principle. And then that's what's at stake right now, like in our country is like, which way, you know, are you gonna return to one idea of what life is like? Are you gonna let the world evolve as it always does and always will. And I just, I I, it's hard 'cause I think you know, because it's so fear based, like we have to like counter away from that Mm-Hmm. And just like remind people what's at stake, which is like basic humanity. But that's probably all a little idealistic. And I, you know, also sit here as someone who like doesn't have to fight this daily in life
Jessica:
Yeah as like three cis women, it’s like, we can only really sit, we are very privileged and we can only say but so much, you can only speak to so many like experiences. And I mean, I, I don't know about y'all, but like when I learned that trans people exist and when I learned about non-binary people, I learned about the spectrum of gender. I sat and I marinated. I had thought about it and I was like, okay, that's really cool. And I think I've thought about like, I can't because of how much pressure we put on gender as a society, like, I can't imagine how I feel like challenging it has to be to like, navigate anything in terms of your identity, but especially like realizing that you do not conform with one or the other, like, you are not fixed on the binary. Like to have to come to grips with it yourself. And also understanding that it is a fluid thing in terms of identity, let alone expression. 'cause identity and expression are not the same thing.
Lark:
And just so brave that is for people that do and openly fight that battle or privately fight that battle every single day. Like we've sat here and talked about the harms and the risks of your literal life and physical and mental safety. And so I think as allies, like we have to just put our money and our time where our mouths are like, Mm-Hmm.
Jessica:
And elevate.
Lark:
Yeah. And elevate. We don't need to be the loudest people in the room. Mm-Hmm.
Jessica:
But we are gonna be in the room.
Lark:
We need to show up. Yeah.
Jessica:
So after us having this conversation, I am looking forward to talking to two people who at one point or another have been affiliated with the law center
Lark:
And are just like brilliant and fabulous
Hilary:
So smart
Jessica:
So smart. To say the least.
Hilary:
Two of the smartest people we know.
Jessica:
I can't wait for everyone to hear our conversation. I'll be talking with Gillian Branstetter and I'll also be talking to Anya Marino. And we're just gonna talk about what we need to continue to elevate trans rights to continue to fight for trans rights. Um, especially in this election year.
INTERVIEW
Jessica:
I'm so, honored doesn’t even begin to describe the word. But I'm very excited and honored to be here with Gillian Branstetter, the communication strategist at the ALUS National L-G-B-T-Q and HIV project. And I'm also here with Anya Marino, the director of L-G-B-T-Q-I equality at the National Women's Law Center. Thank you all so much for coming.
Anya:
Thank you.
Gillian:
It's so nice to be here. Thank you so much.
Jessica:
Of course. Yeah. So with the wave of legislation against gender-affirming care and against trans, um, inclusion in the United States, for lack of a better word, and now we are in an election year, more and more states are continuing to push anti-trans legislation, um, against adults and children. Both of y'all having been in the movement, and doing the work for a long time. How did we, how did we get here?
Anya:
Gillian, do you wanna start?
Jessica:
Gillian:
So I think a very cliche starting point for this discussion has often been sort of this moment in the early 2010s when the cultural conversation about trans people, really started to take a more sympathetic turn. So as I'm prone to reminding folks like, if you are over 30 in this country, you were very likely raised to hate trans people. Mm-Hmm.
Right? Um, and it's not just like the dregs of culture like Jerry Springer and daytime tv. It was like award-winning TV shows, movies, novels that were very much committed to portraying a transgender life as an unlivable life, as one of risk and danger and misery. What happened in the 2010s, and what obviously started long before that, was that a lot of trans people were trying to push back against those narratives and really hoping that public education about our experiences, our lives and our healthcare would lead to some very much needed policy change. And with the rise of social media, uh, starting in the late aughts and through the 2010s, that allowed us to sort of build our own networks and build our own platforms, and in spaces that were then co-mingling with, the decision desks of major newspapers and producers in Hollywood entertainment and news producers and nonprofits and advocacy spaces.
And suddenly a lot of people realized that all of that dehumanizing rhetoric, that dismissal of our rights,, and, and the open mocking of us, couldn't and shouldn't continue. And a large contingent of the right wing saw in trans people an existential threat. Um, because they rely on this idea that the gender you are assigned to birth is the gender you will always be. And these gender identities are not just meaningless categories, but are closely tied to an arrangement of reproductive labor of caregiving or breadwinning. Right. And if trans people are allowed to live meaningful, fulfilling, joyful lives, it pulls the foundation of that entire myth they're trying to tell right out from under their feet and betrays all they're trying to sell to people as the lie it is. So over the course of, the later half of the 2010s between like Donald Trump's election and, the 2020 election, um, they began moving bathroom bills through states.
They began going after transgender athletes and basically, picking and poking at any area of trans life. They can, looking for the point where they can take advantage of most people's assumptions about sex and gender in order to villainize transgender people to portray them as a danger to portray their rights as risky to suggest that our, uh, equality and our freedom comes at the expense of other people's equality and other people's freedom. And in 2020, there was a really important Supreme Court case that took this from a serious issue that the Right was obsessed with to, to really, an apocalyptic event, uh, from their perspective. In 2020, um, several cases including one that the ACLU had taken up were arguing that workers who had been fired based on their sexual orientation or their gender identity were being discriminated against on the basis of their sex. We won that case six three. And it's really after that Supreme Court opinion that you begin to see the number of bills being introduced and state legislators restricting transgender rights really begin to spike. And again, all in pursuit of this idea that a trans life must be an unlivable life. That if trans people can lead meaningful, joyful, fulfilling lives, they perceive that as a threat to their ideology.
Anya:
You know, I mean, I think the discussion about gender-expansive people has been one that's existed in the Euro-American tradition for as long as European settlers came over to this country. And it's in part because of the very rigid gender binary that existed based on principles of faith that, you know, was pervasive throughout Europe. And so when settlers came over here and they saw natives that first revered women inauthoritative roles, had female deities, recognized gender expansive people, um, and it wasn't only here, it was other parts of the globe as well. That was seen by European settlers as a threat to their way of life. And it was often used as a method to dehumanize entire cultures of people and to deprive them of their liberty and property. But even beyond just colonialization, there were examples of gender-expansive people that were seen in literature.
We see them during the Revolutionary Period. We see them during the Civil War period. A great example of it is actually a series of writings called The Female Marine, which involves a gender-expansive person. And then we see it again, rise around the Industrial Revolution because we see black and brown people and lgbtqi plus people really living in harmony in certain communities that existed either in Harlem or in San Francisco. And that's around the time that we start seeing the pathologizing of LGBTQI plus people. We see J Edgar Hoover make comments like, all lgbtqi plus people are psychopathic sexuals. And what we're seeing now is another example of this purity ideology that exists to restrict people to very specific stereotypes and roles that are really centered around men maintaining power. Um, and also men being the, the leader of families and of government. Because if you look at trans people or other gender expansive people, they are in many ways a complete defiance of what it means to comport to that specific ideology. We engage in critical thought, we
Jessica:
Crazy concept
Anya:
I know.
Gillian:
Most of us, most of us.
Anya:
Um, we, we reject gender stereotypes. We celebrate authenticity. That is something that is seen as an existential threat to those who maintain a very conservative extremist ideology.
Jessica:
Why, why do you think the simple existence of queer people, trans people, just the simple existence of them is so threatening in, in these cases when it is simple, not simple, but it literally is, I just want to live and have the same things that everyone else has
Anya:
Well, I think there are a couple of things, right? The first is that people become deeply uncomfortable when they encounter something that's foreign to them. Mm-Hmm.
Gillian:
You know, I think a lot about gender as a way of not just ordering the world, but ordering yourself. Mm-Hmm.
Jessica:
And creating this like imaginary or like envisioning what this person will be like.
Gillian:
Right. It provides like a path for you to think about that. And it, it's because it limits choice. It limits options. And that is a very like human desire for certainty. Um, and it's why, you know, I've been talking about trans rights more and more in the language of freedom. Um, because freedom is a really precarious resource and one that we need to remind folks is a really positive thing because I think most people hear it and feel positive things, but in fact it inspires so much anxiety.
Jessica:
And you were talking about trans rights through the lens of freedom. And talking about how mainly the backlash is grouped in with other restrictions related to like gender and expression. And I think something that the National Women's Law Center is a gender justice organization. We call ourselves that. And something that Lark and Hillary and I talked a lot about is when we tend to speak out about trans rights at the law center, like on social media, or when Fatima goes and testifies, that's when we receive most of our backlash on social media or in emails or in any way that people can get to us. In a lot of mainstream L-G-B-T-Q movements and gender justice movements, it seems as though the trans experience and trans liberation is either on the back burner or it is not given the same amount of resources or attention. I don't know if y'all would agree with that.
Anya:
I think historically that may indeed be true, because there was a time before, let's say 2013, 2014, in which there was a lot of dismissal of the needs of trans and non-binary people, despite the fact, however, that there are many trans women of color who have contributed to modern equality laws. Right. So two great examples of course that immediately come to everyone's mind are Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who were part of the Liberation Front. They also founded Star this Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, um, and, and really provided shelter to many youth who were living in, in New York City during the late 1960s, early 1970s. Right. But even around that time, there was by the queer Liberation Front, a desire to reject the needs of trans people. And I think that's one of the reasons, actually, no, it is the reason that Sylvia Rivera stormed the stage at the Christopher Street Festival in 1973 to discuss the needs of trans people who were being ignored at that time. And she, she noted how many trans and non-binary people were subject to, laws that involved body policing and walking while trans and being deprived, of, of their liberty and subject to, to the Carceral system and the needs of those people in the Carceral system. And it was sadly lost on that audience, which is one of the reasons why you saw Sylvia Rivera kind of leave the movement for a, for a very long time and moved to Connecticut for several years. Um, but another hero that people frequently forget is Dee Farmer who had an incredible case that she brought on her own, to challenge the deliberate indifference of the federal Carceral system that ignored the many times that she was subject to battery and rape while she was incarcerated. And it was the first case where the Supreme Court had to encounter a trans woman of color in a matter, but we didn't see that again for, for quite a while. Right. Um, yeah. I, I mean, it's, it's, it's hard for people.
Jessica:
Yeah.
Gillian:
I've been, uh, reading a lot about the postwar era for queer rights. And you noted this interesting moment in the 1970s, where there was this divide, within activism spaces because in the fifties and sixties there was a lesser known Right-wing backlash, against queer people and gay people specifically in government jobs. So in the federal government, in the military, in schools, and this led to the purging of literally thou, there was an executive order mandating the investigation of claims of homosexuality, um, across the federal government. And within a few years, thousands of people lost their jobs. This led to the developing of like what were then called, like homophile organizations and people like Frank Kameny in the sixties who were, um, very eager to portray gay people as, uh, basically talking to the straight world and saying, we're just like you. Right. And they would march outside the White House, and, uh, literally they would impose dress codes on their protestors Mm-Hmm.
Jessica:
Um, the last question I feel like we should discuss going forward is for anyone listening to the podcast, um, thank you
Anya:
So I would say a couple things, right? The first is pause and listen to your trans non-binary and gender-expansive people and hear what they have to say and understand their experiences, right? And understand also what their priorities are and what their needs are so that you're not dictating to a group of people what they need. Mm-Hmm.
Jessica:
Gillian?
Gillian:
Anya made such a great point about solidarity across difference and, you know, speaking with folks who are trying to help families with transgender youth access care in states that have banned it like in Texas, they have been so overjoyed at the support and the energy from, abortion access organizers and abortion funds, um, who are mobilizing on their behalf and, so I think, uh, one really great action to take is to support your local abortion fund and see, you know, what they need and, and what interest there is and expanding some, services to help trans folks. 'cause certainly we know these, these attacks aren't just gonna stop at trans kids and they're likely to extend to, to trans adults. Right. And then lastly, we're also watching attacks on trans healthcare in Congress. and I'm sure in the notes, to this episode, will include an action from aclu.org where you can send a member to your, a member of Congress, um, ensuring that they oppose, all attacks on trans people's access to healthcare. they're trying to force them into budgets, they're trying to hide them under line items., and also of course, Marjorie Taylor Greene's, bill to ban gender affirming care for trans youth nationwide.
Jessica:
Gillian Anya, thank y'all so much for coming. I really appreciate our conversation and your thoughtful and thorough responses. I really wish more people were having these conversations and just based on all of the history and context that ya’ll shared, it couldn’t be more clear to me that we need to continue to have these conversations in order to progress. I know I’ll definitely be doing more research and reflection after this and I really hope that our listeners will do the same. As always, if you’re looking to learn more or find a jumping off point, you can find more information in the shownotes.
CREDITS:
Hearsay is a Wonder Media Network production and partnership with the National Women's Law Center. It is hosted and produced by Jessica Baskerville, Lark Lewis and Hilary Woodward. Our producers are Taylor Williamson, Adesuwa Agbonile, and Luci Jones. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer, and Maddy Foley is our editor. Show Art by Andrea Sumner.
BLOOPER:
Jessica:
I was in a fake wedding when I was kid. You wanna talk about that? I was in like a fake wedding. I don't even know if that counts.
Lark:
Were you like debutante?
Jessica:
No.
Hilary:
Did they marry you off?
Jessica:
Kind of technically
Lark:
Like purity ball stuff?
So like, okay. Okay. No, no. Not even Purity Ball. I feel like purity ball would make more sense.
Lark:
Yeah. Im like what is it?
Jessica:
It was a church fundraiser