Factually! with Adam Conover - Anti-Trans Playbook is Designed to Hurt Women, with Paisley Currah

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

Why is it that the anti-trans movement is so ferociously set on upending the livelihood of people who are simply trying to live their lives? As it turns out, it’s because it’s part of a larger playbook to dismantle civil rights as we know them. Paisley Currah is a Professor of Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, the author of Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity, and the writer of an essential new essay in the New York Review Books titled The Anti-Trans Playbook. Today Paisley joins Adam to discuss how we must approach the ongoing attacks on trans rights in America. --SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. Hey there, I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. Welcome to Factually. You know, if you're someone who knows and loves trans people or who cares about other people at all, you've probably been horrified by the immense backslide on trans and queer rights that this country has gone through in just the last few years. Bad faith political attacks have flourished, fake panics about trans people playing sports or using the bathroom, or even just trans kids having access to health care with their doctors?

Well, all of that has helped fascists rise to power. They literally ran on demonizing this vulnerable minority population in order to create their fascist takeover of the country. And now that they're in power, they are using that power to make life worse for trans people. We are seeing an unprecedented wave of anti-trans legislation around the country with thousands of bills being brought before state houses in just the last few years. The White House has banned trans people from serving in the military and is using federal law to exclude gay and trans people from everyday life in whatever way they can.

And, you know, I hate to say something that's really fucking obvious here, but trans people just want to live their lives. You know, they just want to go to the store, you know, listen to some music, be able to grow old and die, maybe with a loved one. You know, basic human shit. That's all they've ever been asking for. The freedom to, I don't know, use the fucking bathroom and go to the doctor. And it's this plea for existence and basic inclusion in society that has been disgustingly weaponized for political gain by people who have never even met a trans person.

But despite all of that, the fact remains that trans people exist. They have always existed throughout human history and they will always continue to exist. they're not going anywhere and we are not going to abandon them. So today on the show, we're going to talk about the anti-trans movement and what we can do about it. But really importantly, this is not just a story about trans people. Even if you do not give a shit about trans people, and I really hope you do, you should still listen very carefully. Because as my guest today will explain, the attacks on trans people are designed to also undermine the legal doctrines that protect women and other minorities from discrimination as well.

That is their purpose, and that is what they are doing in this country today. Now, real quick, I want to remind you if you want to support the show and all the conversations we bring you every single week, head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free, lots of other community features as well. And if you would like to come see me do stand-up comedy, I'm constantly on the road. You might hear I'm a little bit hoarse today. That's because I was just in San Francisco at the punchline.

Comedy Club. We killed it all weekend. Had a wonderful time, Sammy Mallory opened for me, and I strained my voice a little bit, so I'm going to rest up. But then in a couple weeks, I'm headed out on the road again. March 20th and 21st, I'll be in Hartford, Connecticut. April 2nd through 4th, I'll be in Sacramento, California. April 11th through 12th, I'll be, April 10th through 12th, I'll be in La Jolla, California. April 18th, I will be taping my new special in Chicago, Illinois, at the Den Theater. Please come out. And on May 8th through 9th, I will be in Kansas City, Missouri.

I would love to see you there. Head to Adam Conover.comover. And now, let's get to this week's guest. His name is Paisley Currah. And he's one of my favorite past guests on the show. I'm thrilled to have him back. He's a professor of political science and women's and gender studies at Brooklyn College

and the CUNY Graduate Center. And he is the author of the book, Sex is as Sex does, governing transgender identity. Most recently, he's the writer of an essential new essay in the New York Review of Books titled The Anti-Trans Playbook, which details exactly how the fight against trans people

by the bigots in power is designed to undermine the foundation of rights for women and other minorities as well. Please welcome Paisley-Kura. Paisley, thank you so much for coming back on the show. Oh, it's a pleasure, Adam. Glad to be here. I mean, I think you were last on three or four years ago. weren't doing these on video yet. So it's wonderful to have you on YouTube.

A lot has happened in the field of trans rights in America over the last couple of years to say the least. What do you make of the last couple years first? And what do you make of the response by specifically the politicians who a couple years ago were all wearing love is love t-shirts, right? And are now running away from this issue. Yeah. Well, I think last time we talked, you know, three or four years ago, I don't think

anyone could have predicted how huge trans issues would become and how much a lot of like the anti-trans backlash would occupy our political rhetoric like teeny group of people become the centerpiece of an entire campaign on the right so I think that was not I could no one predicted that but and we can maybe talk a little bit about why but it's been interesting to see the kind of mainstream pundits kind of suggest like Matthew Iglesias, people like that say, oh, there's just too much pro-trans policies

and Democrats have to moderate on trans issues. And now we start to see that a little bit with some politicians like Gavin Newsom, who for a long time has been a real kind of ally of LGBT communities and now he's like trying to tacking a little bit towards the right on trans issues. I mean, he first came to national prominence

because he was one of the first elected officials to officiate same-sex weddings before 2015, before the 2015 decision, right? That was like, that was when I first became aware of him, not living in California at the time. And now he has like Ben Shapiro on his podcast. And Ben Shapiro's like,

you don't like trans people do. And he's like, no, no, Ben, I'm not gay. Don't worry about it. Like,

I'm, I want you to like me. Like, which is, it looks, first of all, it looks weak and pathetic because he has these guys on to basically bully him and,

force him to change his position. And then B, I mean, who is this pleasing? You're running away from the people who you used to have some amount of solidarity with. It's a little bit mystifying to me how he thinks that's good politics in any way. I know. I think he thinks he's pandering that he probably wouldn't use that word to the right. But I think what a lot of people are misunderstanding is the polarization on policy between, like, the Democratic mainstream and the Republican Party is huge.

The Republican Party is... So far to the right on anti-trans stuff, but the individuals, voters, aren't quite as polarized. Like for just a few days ago, there was a Fox News poll, Fox News that finds that, you know, a majority of voters, a very hefty majority of voters, trust the Democratic Party more on trans policy issues than the Republican Party, even Republicans. And that was fascinating because it comes from Fox News. So there is this kind of incitement of emotion and this kind of incitement of anti-trans feeling amongst the voters. But when people kind of start thinking about policy, they're like, oh, wait, that doesn't seem nice. I mean, so I think when Democratic politicians like Buttigieg or Newsom try to attack the right of anti-trans stuff, they're just going towards the Republican Party, but not necessarily going to where voters are. Yeah.

I mean, the position of the right wingers is so nakedly based on hatred. Like, they just so obviously hate trans people. You can tell they've never met a trans person. They just hate what they've seen on TV. And it's sort of frothing at the mouth. And I think average people are a little bit repulsed by it, you know, especially those who are lucky enough to know a trans person in their lives. But even those who don't is like, hey, why do you expect me to be so mad about this?

Yeah, exactly. You know, I was doing some research. I was just kind of, you know, I found a new research database of old newspapers. and I was finding something from like, Dear Abby in the 70s, and someone wrote her and said, what should a transsexual woman do about the bathroom? And she goes, well, she's wearing women's clothes. She should go to the one's bathroom.

Like, it was just like a no-brainer, like, in terms of where people were. And that's kind of people, you know, when you talk to people face to face and explain the issues, they're like, oh, yeah, that doesn't make any sense. Like half the state's in the country now, if I were to go in a public building, I would have to use the woman's bathroom. But that is not as a transgender man.

But that, how, like, that doesn't really make any sense. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't, and it's not going to make the women in that bathroom feel safer. So a lot of what, you know, the work of advocates we have to do is trying to take this crazy rhetoric and, and pop those balloons and kind of bring it back down to the level of like, what makes good sense. Yeah. And I think on the vast majority of trans issues, the ones about basic decency, most people do have good. sense. So you can appeal to their basic decency and just their common sense. Hey, take a look at this person. Which bathroom do you want them to be in? Right? Like, it's going to be pretty clear, right? And hey, does it bother you to have a third bathroom that's for everybody? Is that such a big deal? Clearly not,

right? Nobody, nobody's really that mad about it. But what the right wing is successfully done is to focus on one or two issues in, you know, trans rights discourse or policy where the part of the public's intuition is a little bit more confused because the issue is a little bit more complex and it interacts with something that, you know, they already have ideas about. I think about trans people in sports. A lot of Americans, the only thing they care about is sports in their lives. And they have a lot of opinions about fairness in sports and like as though that's the most important thing that matters is who wins a basketball game. And, you know, the right winger is by focusing on that one narrow issue, look, it's important, but it's not, if I was going to rank, every issue in the, you know, ability of trans people to move through society, it wouldn't be

in the top 10, you know, but they've focused on that one as a wedge to try to, uh, drive people apart. At the same time, you don't want to just concede the issue if you're an advocate and say, well, let's not let trans kids play sports. Um, but they have chosen this sort of favorable ground. So I'm just a little bit curious how a favorable ground to make a bad faith, you know, horribly hateful argument, but it's good strategy on their part. As an advocate, how do you suggest that we think about those particular issues? And of course, I'm also thinking about health care for trans kids, which is another one where I remember the public might rightfully say, I have more questions about this issue than others. Can you walk me through it more slowly?

And that makes it a more difficult issue to have a conversation about. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so with the Republicans, you know, they first tried to go anti-trans, like in 2000. 15 after Obergefell, they were like, okay, let's pass laws banning trans. We're going in bathrooms and it didn't really work. And then the public didn't get why that was such a big deal. And then they did turn to sports. And that has a lot more, has been much more effective. And I think because people think, oh, I don't want my daughter competing against a man.

That seems unfair. And like, that does seem unfair. So, but what we have to do is, is, and what trans advocates talk about is like, would need to be making sure it's fair and inclusive. And what does the data say? What should the policy be based on the data? Like there was a study out just a couple of days ago, a big, huge, one of those meta studies where they review all the studies,

were found that trans athletes, trans women athletes don't really have a lot of, may not have advantages in strength of fitness or their advantages or their strength of fitness is similar to trans women after they've been on hormone therapy for a while. So, but what we need to do is kind of bring the conversation back down to kind of reality and talk about like, okay, what is fair? How long should someone have been on hormones before they can compete in a women's competition and not this kind of banning people from ever participating? And the thing that's really upsetting with this is like the major sports athletic organizations had slowly in fifth and starts been kind of figuring out their policy and trying to kind of have a data-based policy. And then Trump comes along and they, just all just kind of like, oh, we can never have any people participating. And the really sad thing about this is that we're not just talking about competitive sports. We're talking about like a 12-year-old trans girl trying to play intramural volleyball, you know, in school. And like, that's also banned. And a few years ago, like Utah passed a ban on trans girls participating

in sports. And the governor of Utah, who is a Republican, Archibald Cox, I think his name is, he vetoed the bill. He said, hey, I'm not on this trans rights bandwagon, but I looked into the data. There's like four trans athletes in high school in Utah, and no one's upset about them, and they're not winning much. And like, this is a, this is a, you know, there's no problem that has to be solved with this legislation. So he vetoed it. And that was a Republican. But it got overbroad, of course, by the Republican legislature. But it just shows you like, it's a, it's just such overkill. And the funny thing is, and this is the thing we can get talked to later is like, even as Trump and Republicans are doing this and banning trans women from sports and banning trans athletes from coming into the country to compete in sports and every possible thing, the same time Trump is doing that, he unwound a Biden-era policy where in the last few years, the National College Athletic Association and all the powers that be sort of sorted out like, okay, maybe college athletes should make some money off name, image-likeness stuff. And the Biden administration had a policy. He said, okay, let's Let's make sure that name, image, likeness, revenue is distributed equitably. Like some of the women's teams get some of that or goes to some of the women athletes. And it was an idea of like, let's make this a little more fair. And the same time Trump is banning trans women athletes, he is saying, oh, we're going to take the gender equity principles out of that policy and get, you know, women don't get any of that money. Wow.

But no one notices that. And that's going to affect a lot more women athletes, girl athletes, than the few trans women who are. unable to compete now. Yeah. And what's funny is that all of the, you know, all of these, organizations were moving their way in fits and starts towards good database policies on the hot button issues, on trans people in sports and on trans kids. And you can have a valid scientific debate or ethical debate about where should we draw the line and, you know, what's healthy and what's not healthy on both those issues. And that's for scientists and, you know, caregivers and people like that to decide. And some of them were making good decisions and, you know, they were being adjusted.

But then this panic when it came in, like completely destroyed that attempt to get closer to to something fair. It actually made it less fair because now all of those athletic organizations, well, they're not even trying for fairness. They're just like, oh, it's become politically impossible to do anything other than concede to the right-wing moral panic. around this issue. Same thing with kids' health care. Like, you know, all these hospitals here in California that were previously leaders in healthcare for trans kids. And we're, I'm going to assume, making advancements in the science and then the treatment of these kids by putting that practice in place. They're not doing

it anymore. And so we're actually not, and so if you're one of these like center right people saying, well, hold on, let's slow down and let's, you know, slow down on what we're doing because we need to do more research. Well, guess what? Now the research is not. being done because the entire we had the break slammed on the entire enterprise yeah absolutely absolutely and the thing is you know you know transgender medical care for youth has been going on for decades now and there's been you know it's like it's like not a new thing but the the thing that is fascinating is like the proportion of kids and you know or mostly teenagers who get any kind of medical intervention um for transitioning is teeny it is absolutely teeny but you would think

from all these bills, like I think 27 states now ban gender affirming care for trans youth. You would think that it was a huge proportion of the population. And it's not. And what's fascinating is that the decision last June with the Supreme Court in this case called Scrametti, Tennessee v. Scrametti was about a ban on trans youth medical care. And what the trans advocates pointed out is like there is gender affirming care that is allowed under this law. and it's for cisgender people and cisgender youth, but you're banning the same care,

whether it be puberty blockers or maybe some sorts of surgeries for transgender people. So you're saying if you're born, if you're assigned male at birth, if you sign female at birth, and you want to have a mastectomy, you can't. But if you're assigned male at birth and you don't like the gyomystasy that's developed,

you can have breast reduction surgery. I mean, that's very common for cisgender boys because they feel uncomfortable. And they want to have that sorted out. And it does get sorted out, which is great. Surgery for transmasculent teenagers is really, really rare. But even now, it's completely banned, even though it's in some ways the same chest as being sculpted. So it's just an example of like this weaponization of like people's unfamiliarity with transgender people.

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exclusive for my listeners. That's L-E-E-S-A.com, promo code factually for 25% off, plus an extra $50 off, off, support our show, and let them know we sent you after checkout. Lisa.com promo code factually. Okay, well, I want to get to a point that you made just a few minutes ago where you said that the Trump administration unwound a policy that was also designed to make things more

equal for women in sports, for cis women in sports. And so actually this action, if people care about fairness in sports for women, that element of the sport is now less fair as a result of this campaign. So this brings me to why I wanted to have you on the show because you've written a wonderful article in New York Review of Books and elsewhere about how this campaign against trans rights is designed to and is going to affect rights for everybody, including cis women, but not even limited to them. So can you walk me through that argument because it's a really powerful one? Yes, exactly. So what the Trump administration has done and what many Republican-led states are doing is defining sex. There's lots of complications.

but basically defining sex according to the sex you assigned at birth. So there's this kind of idea that sex is a simple thing to define. It's based on biology. I mean, Trump's executive order from gender 820. It defines it based at conception. But the health and human services department said, oh, all right, we'll just define it at birth. But the idea is that, like, sex is this easily known thing that's defined at birth. And we're going to get rid of this word gender identity.

Gender ideology is this terrible theory we must get rid of. And even the word gender is being excised from the federal government, from all forms, from all this sort of stuff. And so the idea that Trump's executive order literally was called defending women from gender ideology, extremism, and restoring biological truth to the federal government. And it's put out there as like a defense of cis women. And sometimes the anti-trans groups, anti-trans feminist groups, sometimes they're called. gender critical. Some people call them Terfs. They talk about sex-based rights. We need to have these sex-based rights that are based on our biology so that trans people can't have recognition in their new gender and can't have access to single-sex facilities. And what I was trying to

point out in that article is that is playing, supporting this kind of sex-based rights idea is playing into this long Republican strategy of rolling back feminism and rolling back the rights that liberal feminists won. Because in the article, I go back to this case from 1873, where a woman named Mira Bradwell wanted to be a lawyer. And Illinois said, no, you can't. And the Supreme Court said, that's right. Illinois made the right decision because women's proper sphere is the domestic sphere and they

don't have the ability to be lawyers and they shouldn't be lawyers. Biologically, basically. Yeah, they're saying, yeah, based on their sex, they shouldn't be lawyers. And so, like, all to the 20th century, but especially starting in the 60s and 70s, the work of people like Ruth Bader Ginsburg as an advocate in later words of justice was to say, you can't deny women opportunities and rights based on these stereotypes about who women are. So almost all of like sex discrimination wins that feminists have had are not based on like, you know, what your chromosomes are, but are. based on saying that stereotypes about who you are, what women can do and what women can be, can't be the justification for treating women differently. So there's this case in Mississippi where there's a nursing school that didn't let men in. And I think this is a case that

Sandra Day O'Connor authored the decision. She was a Republican appointed justice. But she said, yeah, they can't do that. That's not constitutional. Because the state was arguing that, well, women tend to be nurses and men don't tend to be nurses. And, you know, that might be true empirically, but you can't take a stereotype and say only women can be nurses and men can never be nurses. So that's taking a biological fact of birth and turning into your destiny. Like you can't be women, or you can't be nurses, men are all going to be truck drivers or women all going to be nurses. So so much of feminist jurisprudence has been to kind of get rid of sex stereotyping. But now, with Trump getting rid of the word gender from the federal government and from

anything the government does, it actually kind of means that all these things that have helped women are going to be cast aside. Right. I mean, the phrase that they use over and over again to describe the struggle for trans rights of gender ideology, that's the phrase that they have centered on, sort of framing the beliefs of advocates or the beliefs of many, many Americans on this issue as being akin to Marxism or, you. you know, libertarianism or some other political idea, gender ideology as this, you know, deviant way of thinking. And, you know, you point out some people might have this comforting fiction that that's just referring to trans ideology, quote unquote. But no, the word is gender ideology. They can, they're packing a lot into that. They're, they are including your beliefs about yourself, probably, you know, gender critical feminist woman. That, that, That's your argument, right?

Right, exactly. What's interesting is that in the United States, gender ideology is sort of known as like, oh, trans people are propagating gender ideology and we have to fight transgender people and we have to fight gender ideology. But what's called the anti-gender movement in the rest of the world, they see gender, you know, when the Vatican complains about gender ideology, by that they mean the idea that women are equal to men, that women should have reproductive rights, that women should be able to, you know, marry whoever they choose or not married, that women should not have to

submit unto her husband. Like, most of the world understands gender ideology to be all the stuff where feminism is included and LGBT rights are included. In the United States, it's sort of taken a different twist and it's just become understood as more anti-trans. But if you actually look at what the Trump administration is doing, they actually are trying to kind of like roll back feminism. I mean, it comes, it's very obvious when you see people like Pete Higgs-Geth, Secretary of war, you know, removing all the, you know, high, the highly ranked women leaders from the military, taking their pictures off the wall. He's like trying to get women out of combat, right?

Like, he's like, don't. Yeah. And women in the kind of combat, like I just read a piece today, you know, they have to pass a same physical test that men do. So he has his own ideologies that men are superior. It's like, well, then if men are superior, we don't really have to legislate that women can't try. I mean, it reminds me of the first time a woman was trying to run the New York City marathon in the 70s, and women were not allowed to run it. But this woman snuck in and was running

it. And then the marathon organizers realized she was running it. And they tried to, I can't remember if they succeed or not, they tried to arrest her and stop her from running it. And my thing is like, if she can't run the marathon, she can't run it. Yeah. Why do you have to arrest her? Maybe because she actually could run the marathon. So there's this kind of cult of masculinity going on is being propped up by, let's fire all the women leaders in the military. Let's take down the pictures. It goes along with the anti-D-A and anti-people of color stuff. And so Pete Hagsgris, he retweeted somebody, you know, it seems like, you know, positively talking about we should repeal the 19th Amendment. Like women's right to vote was probably one step too far. So some

members of the Trump administration are not too subtle about what they think of feminism. Yeah, and they, he's retweeting that with a little wink as though he's doing some kind of like ironic edge lord. Like he's a stand-up comic going like, women shouldn't even be allowed to vote. But when you look at what they actually do, they do all the shit that they were quote unquote joking about, right? Exactly. He actually believes that. And by the way, the idea that Pete Heggseth would think that men are superior to women. I can think of so many women who are superior to Pete Hegsef in almost every possible way.

The man is an alcoholic and an idiot. And I don't know if you've seen the videos of him like, you know, doing like kettlebell exercises and shit. He also like doesn't know how to lift weights. Like the man is, he's a stuffed shirt. He looks good on TV. You know what I mean? But he looks like he just dunked his head in a toilet and like combed it real quick to like clean up after a bender. The idea that this guy considers himself superior is imagine the women in the military who he is dismayed.

missing who are more competent than him in every way because they actually rose up under great adversity, not to mention the people of color. Now, I personally think nobody should be in combat, you know, like, so I'm not like advocate, hey, let's let's, let's have women be shot at too. But the, you know, I do think the military is important as a sphere of equality that is like really important in America that that trickles outwards. And yeah, I mean, it's very obvious that these people's project is to, you know, shove gay people back in the closet and to shove women back in the kitchen. It's like basically explicit, you know? I mean, J.D. Vance is up there talking about everybody should have more babies. Who does, who do you think he thinks

should be having the babies and what do those people should be, what should those people be doing with their time? It's pretty straightforward. Um, so why is it that you have groups that consider themselves feminist groups that have swallowed this, you know, because it seems like on the face of it, to me, I'm, like, it's very obvious that you're being played. Why do they not see it that way? Yeah, it's really, it's fascinating to me. Like, some of them are like Republican feminist groups. So they're not, you know, they think pay equity is, or they think there's no difference in women's in women's pay and that's just something people have made up.

So some of them are truly feminist. But others, there are. Yeah, they're kind of Republican groups. But others, you know, are. And there's this. And then we have J.K. Rowling who, you know, know, has spent the last 10 years bankrolling anti-trans policy and legislation in the United States.

And, oh, lo and behold, she turns out to be in the Epstein files, having her people invite him for a private dinner. Really? It's like, she's invited. He's not like, come on the plane. She's like, hey, come to dinner, Jeff. Like, I'd like to talk to you about some of your ideas. In 2018, this is after the Julie Brown expose,

her people reached out to him and say, oh, would you, here's tickets to the show, please come to this dinner in between. And like, and there was a lot of, know, she shows up in his correspondent. So, like, you know, it's one thing when, like, the head of a college or, like, a G. Chomsky's doing that because, hey, maybe they need the money.

It's not a highly paid profession. J.K. Rowling is, like, the most, she's like the richest woman in England, isn't she? Why does she need to butter up Jeffrey Epsey in 2018? My God. I know, exactly. And if she's, great defender of women. I know.

And her, her continual kind of thing that she says is, like, trans women are a danger to cis women. that trans women are sexual predators, which is just not barren out by any fact whatsoever. But like, at that time, Jeffrey Epstein is clearly known as a sexual predator to women and girls. So it was that I don't understand. But I do think with people who, with feminists who are a little unsure about transgender people, like I was at a dinner party a couple of weeks ago. And I just was at a dinner party. And I don't want to do trans stuff all the time.

So I'm just going to have a nice time. So I think some of the guests didn't realize it was trans. And there are these really cool, smart, Marxist, British feminists who I just loved and were so great. And then they were starting going on to this anti-trans rant. And I realized, like, it's just like more widespread than, you know, one would think. And I think there's a lack of understanding because people don't know transgender people. But people have also started this lies about transgender women being dangerous, get repeated enough. Even like intelligent people start to hear it.

And I also think sexual assault is a huge epidemic problem. And it might be some, you know, it's like blaming trans women for some epidemic of sexual assault is kind of absurd. But that doesn't mean that we still need to kind of think about like, what can we do to think more, you know, to do better around sexual assault and lay people's fears and move away from distraction. I mean, I think one thing that happens is like it's hard actually for people to get. get mad at cisgender men because they're powerful and your career doesn't go too far if you're always yelling with cisgender men. So I think that's part of it. So it's a sphere of sexual assault and sexual violence is understandable that gets displaced onto a vulnerable population

that no one is going to get mad at them for, you know, targeting them. The argument I was used here is, you know, one of the most common places that sexual assault happens are the most common perpetrators of sexual assault are family members. Are we going around and saying, we have to ban the family. No family is allowed because sexual assault happens. Like, no, we, it's literally a large measurable number of people's only own family members are threats to them, right? Just that if you are born, there's an X percent chance a family member reverse is going

to assault you. Are we, are we decrying like the nuclear family on some societal level and saying we can, we can't do it anymore. We got to separate like every kid from their parents because they're a danger. No, of course we don't. But so why do we do that for, you know, this sphere or many other spheres? This is also true of, you know, sex work, plenty of other places where people say, oh, there's a big sexual assault problem there.

Yeah, there fucking is at your house too, you know. Yeah, exactly. Well, it doesn't really make any sense, but some of the, some people who have been kind of thinking about this who are outside the United States, like in, you know, South America. in Europe have been dealing with this anti-gender stuff for a while. There's like gender becomes this weird kind of, I think some of these people say, like a collection point, like all these anxieties about the world, like, oh, income and equality, climate change, all these things I can't predict.

That's all terrible. If we can only bring the traditional family back, then everything will be fine. So gender just becomes this weird spot where people think that will just sort things out. You know, the man will be the leader of the household and will get kids not mithing off to their parents, good luck with that. And, you know, like, everything will go back to some kind of nostalgic time that actually never existed if we could just do that. I think it's like a weird kind of magical thinking. It's like, well, during, between 1945 and 1973, you know, US had a real period of growth. And for, you know, white middle class people, it was the height of American

greatness. And that time, women wore skirts and men wore pants. And if we just make women wear skirts again, we'll get back to that time. Like, it's this magical weird, you're logical thinking. I also think, it's funny, you mention this. This is sort of what my new hour of standup is about that I'm touring right now, is this idea that if you are simply able to be the person you're expected to be, everything will be okay. And when I look at guys like J.D. Vance and Pete Hegseth, right?

I think they're laughable to a lot of us because we look at them and we say, God, they're performing masculinity so hard. And they're such little weeners, you know, but they're like, I'm a big strong man every day. And actually, I think a lot of other people find that relatable. They're like, yeah, I'm a little weiner too. And I have to perform as a big strong man. Look at JD trying to be big, putting on his cowboy boots and driving his Ford F150.

That's what I have to do, too. And so that performance becomes so part of your personality saying you have to do. And if you can just do it well enough, you'll have everything that you need. But it's painful to do it. And I think that the existence of trans people is a threat to these guys because it says to them, hey, what if you didn't have to do that? What if you could be the person you really are? And that is so destabilizing to, that's the ideology, right?

The ideology is if everyone just obeys the roles that we're all told we should obey and no one ever questions them, then everything will go great at no matter the cost, even though it's causing us to drink and to kill ourselves and to be unhappy and to beat our wives and to, you know, commit suicide and shit. if we just do it, it'll all work. And, like, trans people are the living, uh, uh, uh, counter example of like, hey, guess what, man,

if you really looked inward and you figured out who you were, then you'd be happier. And that is, they can't face that. Is it, what do you, is am I psychologizing it too much? No, I think, I think that's right. I mean, because people have pointed out, or scars have pointed out for a long time, like the health costs of masculinity in terms of, like, blood pressure and diseases of stress and.

actually related to what we're talking about in gender, during COVID, there was this thing like, oh, men die more of, men die more of COVID than women. And the press was like, oh, there's a biological difference between the sexes around COVID. And this researchers at Harvard who run this really cool lab called this Gender Sex Lab, they said, well, let's kind of, let's just look at these numbers really carefully. I don't think that's exactly true because men in in Connecticut aren't dying more than women, but men in New York are. So men in Connecticut are a different biological species. And they said, actually, it's all these, it's like occupational, the way occupations work. So more men are in the public sphere, more delivery, doing deliveries, and be more susceptible to, you know,

catching the virus. And there's these ideas of masculinity around mask wearing that men are less likely wear masks. So there's all these things around gender, and stereotypes and gender difference that produce different health outcomes. And now that kind of science would not be fundable by the NIH under Trump's policies. So any, any science that has the word, gender in it that looks at gender differences as opposed to so-called biological sex-based differences, you couldn't get funding for now. So, like, it's a really good example of, like, focusing on sex difference and bringing, making sex the primary thing means we can't really think about, like, why are all these deaths of despair? Well, could it be about the economy?

Could it be about income inequality? No, we have to go back to biological sex. That will explain everything. But in fact, we also have to look at, like, our societal ideas of gender. It is not actually literally just the biological sex, something chromosomal, something genetic. Literally, we have diseases that are caused by our notions of gender. That's the point you're making. Yeah, absolutely, exactly. So in some situations during the COVID epidemic, men were more likely to die because of they were, because of ideas about masculinity, put them more at risk. And because of like the kind of work they did, meant they, you know, were more exposed to the virus.

but the press was immediately, oh, it's just biology again. Like, people always want to bring things right back to, like, birth sex to explain things, and it's not very helpful in any cases. You know, people keep asking about my 2026 resolutions, and sure, I've got the usual goals. I'm trying to read more and write more. But this year, there is a new goal at the top of my list. I also want to get comfy, which will make doing those other two things a lot more fun.

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Go to shipstation.com and use code factually for 60 days for free. 60 days gives you plenty of time to see exactly how much time and money you're saving on every shipment. That's shipstation.com code factually. Shipstation.com code factually. What are some other examples, if you have any, of ways in which, you know, this enshrining of biological sex is going to hurt, you know, women and other people? women and other people. Sure. Well, I'll tell you one more science one, which is a really kind of, it's like a

famous epidemiological study. But you know when you say the phrase people with uterces, that sounds like super woke. You're like people with uterces. You mean women. So under the new Trump administration kind of guidelines for the rules for the, you know, health research that will be funded by the federal government, you can only look at birth sex. So if you're actually trying to study cancers of the uterus by looking at birth sex, you were going to underestimate the prevalence of uterine cancer in older women and in black women often. And that's like, what? What that's about? It's because older women, over 70 are more likely to have had hysterectomies. And in many parts of the country, black women are more likely had hysterectomies. So if you're including those populations in the

group of people you're studying the prevalence of uterine cancer, that means like, This is just mathematical. But like, say you have, yeah, say you have 10, 10 women, five of them have had hysterectomies, but because they're birth sex as female, they're all included in the denominator.

And then you say five, five of those 10 women have uterine cancer. It looks like there's a 50% rate. But in fact, if you take out the other five who could not get uterine cancer because it was removed, that's like 100%.

Like, it's not exactly that rate. But like, so it's an example of like being specific, and precise about what you're studying and the body parts you're looking at is not woke. It just produces accurate, rigorous, nuanced, careful research. But now under the Trump administration, that would not be funded. Oh, my God. This is so funny to me because, yes, a lot of us, even folks in the left have internalized

this idea that saying something like people with uteruses is just like a woke virtue signaling. And look, I'm going to be, some people have used that phrase, we're doing so. and you roll your eyes and go, whatever, man, it's okay. But like, when you're talking about someone who's literally researching uterine cancer and they're like, no, you dumb motherfucker, I'm talking about literally people with uteruses. Some people have had their uteruses removed so they don't have uteruses. They can't get uterine cancer and not researching them. That's what we're fucking talking about.

Like, we're just, we're interested in the uterus, dumbass. I know, exactly. Exactly. The science around biological sex servants is so much more concept, like, advanced. Like, sex is made up of, like, you know, your gonads, your secondary sex characteristics, your, you know, genitalia, all these different things. And it's not like one thing that, or the other. It's all these different sorts of things. And it's not exactly for trans people, for intersex people. And for other people, it doesn't always line up because people's body

changes over time. A lot of people take exogenous hormones who are not transgender. People have body parts removed. Like, we're all different kinds of people. And for the, The federal government to say you can always look at biological sex as determined at birth is a way of like really undermining research and science and epidemiology. So that's one example. That's kind of wonky, science-y. But the other example comes out in some of these state Republican bills where they always quote Justice Ginsburg, because in this one case about a Virginia Military Institute where

a woman wanted to be a cadet and Virginia said no. Ginsburg wrote the decision and said that's that's a denial of equal protection for Virginia to say women can't attend Virginia Military Institute. And in that decision, Ginsburg said, sure, there were enduring physical differences between many women. But that doesn't mean that, you know, this cadet can't be part of the military institute. And that became, you know, that was a real important piece of women's rights law. Anyways, these state bills, where they're defining sex at birth, they keep quoting Ginsburg. They keep saying, yes, there are these enduring differences between men and women, and we have to protect women. And what they're, you know, Ginsburg at this point would be spinning in her grave because they're saying, because men and women are born different, we have to preserve those differences.

And so these bills will say, like the bill in Texas says, and that's why we need to have different. in like bathrooms and locker rooms and changing rooms. And then they throw in the word education, right? So they're saying men and women are different and we have to preserve those differences. And so many women might need to go to different schools. And that is exactly what Ginsburg and people are arguing about. You can't take the differences and make the fact that stereotypes have created particular pathways for people, like women as nurses and men as truck drivers, and then legislate those stereotypes back into

the law, which is what exactly the Republicans, I think, want to do. Because why would the state of Texas, I think Nebraska also does it in an executive order, put in educational institutions as a place where, you know, it's okay to have sex segregated facilities? So that's like a good example, I think. I mean, it seems like what they're doing by saying that all that matters is sex as defined at birth. Like, that part's important to me, defined at birth, meaning whatever the doctor put on your fucking birth certificate at that one moment. And that's it. That's the only thing anyone ever gets to say about it, right?

What is that doing on the macro level? It's removing all nuance, all possible nuance. Doesn't matter if you're intersex. Doesn't matter if you're trans. Gender's not real. Hormones you might take later, hysterectomy that you might get later in life. Any other qualifying thing other than that, you know,

that single letter that was placed on your birth certificate. it. And what that does is it removes all of the underlying differences. Like, I think that what we're trying to do in the movement for justice and equality is we're not saying there's no differences between men and women. We're saying that there are differences. And then within those differences, there are further differences. And within those differences, there are further differences. So within sex, there's intersex people. Within gender, there's different roles that people can play within, you know, like women, yes, yes, we fill this role. We also fill that role.

You know, there's, there's like deeper and deeper levels. Everybody is different in their own way and we want the world to accommodate every single person and allow people to live fully. And what their project is to say, no, none of that is real. It's just there's a letter on your birth certificate and that determines everything about your life. And that is so obviously an understanding. undermining of, you know, the last 50 to 70, 100 years of like the fight for equality and

accommodation for women and for everybody else. It seems, seems very clear to me. Yeah, it's really clear. The anti-feminist aspect of it by taking, by saying it's just about biology, it's not about social, it's not about this word gender, it's not about stereotyping. It's to kind of like stick everybody back into this sort of, you know, very traditional mold of gender. Like in Texas, the Secretary or the Department of Agriculture, this was even before Trump, but he issued a memo saying, oh, by the way, and it was an anti-trans policy,

when you come to work, you have to dress in accordance with your birth sex. So, you know, if you're born a male, a sign male at birth, he didn't use that language. You need to dress in men's clothes. And he said, you know, a suit. And if you're born to women, you need to wear women's clothes. It's like it was meant to be anti-trans. But what it's also doing is saying, like, oh, you, you're cisgender women, you better not wear, like, pants too much, or you better make sure your suit is tailored to look traditionally feminine. And somebody foy at all the correspondence as a result of that policy. So his employees and other residents in Texas were emailing him. So, like, I'm not sure about my gender of my crew socks. Like, how do I know the, you know, there's all these kind of FOIA requests about, like, how do you, how do you gender clothing? But like, that's a, that's a good example.

But just going back to what you were mentioning about birth certificates and identity documents, like one of the things we haven't talked about is just like, because I think people have a general sense. It's just how bad all this is actual for trans people in terms of the military prisons, you know, all the things we've talked about a little bit. But it does also make it's bad, it's mean, it's harmful to trans people. But a lot of this policy just doesn't make sense. So, for example, the Trump administration has this new policy of putting your birth sex on your passport.

And that's been challenged to the litigation. It had a restraining order. It was kind of stayed. And it went up to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court said, well, Trump is likely to succeed. So we're going to let this policy go forward.

And like, we don't need to talk with the Supreme Court, but it doesn't make any sense, as Justice Jackson pointed out. But the thing with the passport, which it says in the Code of Federal Regulations, the passport is a document of an identity. And the Trump says, well, would your birth sex is an historical record? But the passport proves who you are.

And I had this memo from like the 1970s where the passport office says, oh, we think that, you know, trans people should, you know, be able to, you know, should change the, we will change the doc, the sex marker on trans people's passports because it's a document of identity and it helps people identify who you are. So this policy has been in place for a long time. is undoing it, but it makes no sense. So now when my passport is renewed, it will have an F on it. So it will make it really hard for me to travel. It doesn't do a very good job of verifying who I am because it don't look like I was someone who was born assigned female at birth. And if it was, you know, we have our pictures on our passport. So there's a picture of the person and there's the person. And, you know, you make a connection, right? And if it was an historical document, why aren't it requiring us to put her baby pictures on the passport then? Like it just,

These policies just, they don't really make sense except for, you know, propagating anti-trans hatred and stirring people up and distracting people. So that's what's really shocking about so much of this last couple of years of the Trump administration or the last year. Yeah. I mean, the literal topic that you were on to talk about last time you were on the show was this point, some of your wonderful prior work, that like the way sex and gender markers have been used. throughout American society for the past 100 years is individual departments will make a determination about what sex or gender marker they want to have. And that's because they have different fucking needs because they're different departments. The Department of Veterans Affairs, what, you know, hospital, you know, their record of, you know,

a soldier's medical records is a completely different need than a TSA agent who is trying to verify that the person on the plastic card is the same as the person standing in front of them. Like those are two completely different spheres. There's different purposes. The marker means literally something different. And so each of those departments had latitude to say, okay, I'm the Bureau of Marriage. Here's what it means for us, you know, for legal inheritance claims when it comes to, you know, marriage. And then here's what it means in a medical context.

And what the Trump administration has done, again, is to remember. move all of the nuance that everybody was using to simply make the world work, right? And, and like, say, no, it's just this now. Well, guess what? That fucks up the, you know, algorithms that a million different agencies were using all across the country in ways that make no sense, just for the purpose of hatred. Absolutely. They just, like much of the Trump administration on tariffs or whatever, it makes no sense.

And some of the Republican-led states have been doing this, you know, for a few years prior. And it's just like in Montana, for example, I spent some time where you went there a lot. It's just like, we're going to define sex the same way everywhere across the state. And if you look into it's like, so your birth certificate will have your birth sex. You can never change it. And then your death certificate has to have your birth sec on it. And then the document of where you get buried, they had this directive to funeral home directors to making sure they didn't have people's gender identity on it. But they had their birth sex on it.

It's like, what is the point of that? You're having a funeral for a loved one. And then the funeral has to make sure that everybody knows that their birth sex was something different. Like, it doesn't make any sense. It's just needlessly, needlessly cruel. Yeah, I mean, I'm picturing you traveling and having to explain the TSA. Hey, you know that executive order. Like, that's why I know you're confused.

And the TSA agent, who maybe is a Trump voter, is like, ah, what the fuck this is fucking my day up? Right. It's just, it's literally creating like all this bizarre friction throughout the system that is unnecessary. Absolutely. Because identity document is supposed to be like help you move to the world, not stop you from moving for the world. But again, the harms that transgender people for the Trump administration is like, it's a feature, not a, not a bug. Yeah. But again, those harms are to everybody.

And I think where you're arguing is that's also a feature for the Trump administration. They are also trying to hurt women and other groups whose rights we've been fighting for for a long time by vis-a-vis these policies. That's part of what, like, ooh, we can attack trans people and women at the same time. We love that. Exactly, exactly. And the beauty of it from the Trump administration and the project 2025 and Russell Vodd, who's architected a lot of this, is that the executive order that was the kind of the mother of all this policy is called defending women. So they get to act like they're helping women, helping cis women, even as this harm. transgender people and harms and harms this gender women. So, you know, looking at some of the

policies that have changed as a result of this order. Like, there's just little things and Trump that you can find here over here and there in the government because the Trump administration is not really doing free of an information act request anymore. But there's a few things that have happened that we can document. For example, like there was this, there's this there's this agency called the Bureau of Engraving, you know, I don't know, makes the mint. I don't know. And they had a program with an outside group called Women in Manufacturing. So the people in the Brewerving Grating could network and learn about women in manufacturing. I don't know. So as a result of its executive order, they said, we've cut all ties to women in manufacturing because they're going

to be promoting radical gender ideology. So the very existence of like a group that promotes the interests of women is promoting radical gender ideology. And certainly a group called women in manufacturing, come on. It's not going to be that radical. I'm glad it exists, but come on. And we've seen that with other things like women in law enforcement, the Secret Service now cut all ties with this group about women in law enforcement. Again, that is not going to be a very radical group, but anything that promotes the interests of women falls under this category of promoting radical gender ideology. Yeah, and you can imagine, I'm just picturing Pete Hegseth finding out that there's a group called Women in Manufacturing. Women in Manufacturing,

there shouldn't be there. Like, that's what these guys fucking think. So what do you think about, you know, the J.K. Rowlings of the world and their psychology because, like, I have to believe that J.K. Rowling is to some extent sincere about her desire to protect women. She's been so vocal about it. She is, she is, in fact, herself as this woman. So I don't think that she's, like, secretly, you know,

trying to undermine women. Or maybe, I don't know, maybe you think that she is. How does someone work themselves into accepting such a program that is manifestly harming women? How do they get themselves there psychologically? Yeah, I know. That's a really difficult question to answer. Because, I mean, it's true that J.K.

Rowling has given tons of money, tons and tons of money to like women's shelters, women's rights groups, not just gender critical feminist or anti-trans. but also kind of just kind of bread and butter important social service, you know, organizations that help women. And that's, then that's a good thing. And the only thing I can say is that there's this idea, you know, in social science, of like a moral panic. And you take, you know, a vulnerable group that don't, that are really, that people don't

understand. They're too small to be understood. And there's this kind of fear. So I think something has happened where like the moral panic around transgender people has, like, come into contact with this kind of larger feminist concern about sexual violence and produce this crazy anti-trans policymaking as if being mean to transgender people and transgender women is going to help cisgender women. So it's just weird just kind of coming together of two different problems in producing this crazy outcome. Yeah, it seems like on some level, I've heard

it described this way before that for some segment of the population, when they find out about trans people, they are driven insane. The fact of the existence of trans people is like puts a bug in their brain and they can't think about anything else. Your J.K. Rawlings, your, the British sitcom guy, and Dave Chappelle, I've talked about this a lot just from a comedy perspective. I'm embarrassed for the guy because he's done like five specials at this point. all about trans people. And at the end of one of them, he goes, you know what, I'm never talking about trans people ever again.

I'm done with the topic. And that's like the headline, Dave Chappelle declares himself. He's never going to do more comedy about trans people. The next year, he puts out another special. The first joke is about trans people. And that's the new headline. Dave Chappelle opens with trans joke. I'm like, that's humiliating the fact that he is not able to, like,

think about anything else. He is so obsessed with this issue for some reason. And it starts to become sad. It's like, oh, man, why, why can't you think about anything else, man? What's going on with you, buddy? And so something about it is, it burrows deep into people's brains. It's almost like they can't help themselves. Does that make any sense to you?

Yeah, well, I definitely think there's something like going on in terms of people's sense of their own masculinity or sense of femininity, like, that it's like, it's endangered by transgender people. And I think like if we're endangering your sense of masculinity, you probably need to kind of think about why that is or where it's coming from. But at this point, with all the anti-trans stuff and the war on transgender people and the stuff that's happening to trans youth and the increasing prevalence of suicide, like the idea of like punching down on transgender people in a comedy show, like I just can't understand how anybody, even if they didn't love transgender people,

would be doing that at this moment in time. A lot of people are. I mean, I go to the comedy clubs and I'm not happy about it. I do my part to pull in the other direction. But part of that is because let's try to move towards a positive note here, Paisley. Because for me, the trans folks in my life have been such an invitation for me to ask, hey, what would it look like for me to live more authentically as myself? You know, it's such a beautiful thing when someone, you know, says, hey, here's who I really

fucking am. I've been friends with people as they've gone through that transition. And there's some of my favorite people on earth because what a wonderful thing. What what a centered perspective if it gives you to really figure out who you are. And to me, that's like it's a gift to be around. And it's something that I've made a big part of my life to try to to support. And I have to believe that the more trans people are coming out, the more that the more that's changing our society for the better, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the political power of the coming out movement, um, that started, you know, that, that the LGBT rights movement, you know, came up with of we're going to come out. We're going to be, the, the soul of pride, right,

as a political program, um, has been so powerful. I have to believe it'll continue to work. Is there evidence, do you think that it's still working? I think, I think, I think, came out last year that like only 20% of Americans personally knew a trans person. That seems, you know, that seems shockingly low to me because I'm trans. I know a lot of trans people, but that makes a difference. Like we need to like get that 20% further up there because we're just, if you're just, and also we have as sure you know better than I, like our segmented media society. So if you don't know what transgender people and you're getting all your news from Fox News or all your news on Twitter from Elon Musk, you have a very weird idea of transgender people. So I think that also

kind of plays into it. But I don't know, one thing that is heartening when I think about all the stuff that's going on in Minnesota, you know, and I follow people I know there and so on is like, it's just people coming together and they are like all kinds of people, right? They are like, you know, church moms and soccer dads and, you know, trans kids. Like, and I think like those those kinds of coming together and those kinds of movements that are like, oh, this is a crisis and we all have to just stop yelling at each other for a second and, you know, respond to this, these fascist DES thugs in the streets. And I think, like, that actually gives me some, you know, some hope. Or also, like, Mondami's campaign in New York. Like, that was a guy, like, he's position on trans issues as perfect.

He didn't spend a lot of time talking about it. He just had the right position. And when people asked him questions, he said, we have to cherish trans. youth. What's so complicated about that? And people were like, oh, if he's saying that and like this guy, that's something. So we need to have, you know, people like just feel comfortable in supporting transgender people. And he didn't take any kind of hit for that. And I remember hearing a story from, you know, when he was still polling very low in the polls in New York. And there was a protest at a hospital trying to get people to support, you know, try to tell the hospital to like, come on, continue

doing trans youth care. Because Langoni, I think, was going to, NYU's hospital was going to stop doing trans youth care and the organizers had tried to get Mandami to come and he said he would. And then they called him back. He said, actually, we're not going to have any, we're not going to have any politicians speak. So just so you know, he's like, okay. So there's the protest and there's mandami just, you know, in the crowd standing there. So like that's the kind of, you know, support and solidarity we need, you know, between movements and between groups where people show up for each other. And I think that's happening, you know, it's happening in Minnesota. It happens with mutual aid.

It's happening with a lot of these, you know, parents of trans kids who are creating new, you know, communities to try to make sure their kids survive through this Trump regime. I love that approach that you're talking about, that Zoran took, because when you compare that to, you know, Newsom who's changing his position or, you know, when Kamala was cornered about her past, you know, quote on whatever, blah, blah, blah, you know, when she was asked about this And she sort of did the evasive, you know, liberal maneuver of just sort of talking in circles or, you know, when a Pete Buttigieg ties himself in knots, like it, it demonstrates weakness and it demonstrates a lack of comfort with the, with the idea. Whereas Zoran is like, he's running to be the mayor in New York. He's like, yeah, I support trans people.

Can we move on? Like, who gives the fuck? This is not that big of an issue. Here's my position. and if you just have the position, it's not that interesting to people. You know what I mean? Fox News can't talk about it that much

because he's like, yeah, I support trans people. Guess what? I'm still fucking winning, idiot. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because he has these positions and beliefs that he holds genuinely. And like, people can feel that. They're like, all right, I don't really get this trans thing,

but he seems to be fine with it. And so it's like the politicians who are always like reading the polls and trying to kind of figure out, like, what did the people want? And they don't, they're not getting what the people want. But, you know, leaders can help shape people's approach because so many people admire him and his views on trans issues, you know, matter. I also find that, you know, trans people exist all over the country and, and more are, you know, coming out and transitioning or living as themselves all the time.

And, you know, I travel. I do stand up all across the country. There's trans folks every single state I go to. I was in Louisville, Kentucky. I was in, you know, Fort Wayne, Indiana, you know, and it's like parents coming with their trans kids. It's trans couples coming to my shows, right? And I'm like, these folks are living their lives and that makes such a difference. And I've even seen, I've seen clips of, I don't want to get into the details, but I saw a clip of a comedy show with some comedians who I know make shitty jokes about trans.

people and appeal to an audience of bigots on the issue. And they're having a conversation with a trans person who came to one of their shows. And the conversation's a little bit, hey, it's not how I would talk to this person. The trans woman's at the show. And she's like, yeah, I like you guys. And I'm like, that's great. Because those guys are now confronted with, hey, guess what? Here's a fucking trans person in front of you.

And you can't be that mean or you can't be. Or at the very least, once you meet the person, you are confronted with their reality. And it's no longer just someone on TV, you know. Absolutely, absolutely. And just kind of showing up and not being so, you know, segmented. You know, I do this, I like to go in nature stuff. And I do stuff like kayaking. And I just want to go kayaking.

So I want to be like a 10-day trip with 10 strangers in Lake Superior, you know. And it was just like, I'm just not being trans and they don't know I'm trans. And over the course of the times, you know, we talk a lot with you're kayaking 20 miles today. And then they realize, like, this guy's trans. He's not so weird. And I also realized, like, oh, these people from all over the place, they're not so transphobic. They just don't understand. So, like, we all need to kind of get out of our bubbles, you know, and not just, and not just be talking to each other. You know, when we'll have made great progress is when we have the first right-wing trans-republican congressperson. You know what I mean?

When we've got, and that'll happen because we've got, we got right-wing, you know, cis-gay people. Some of them are on YouTube, right? And we can, once we got right-wing trans people, then we will really know that we have, we have gotten somewhere as a society. I actually have one more question for you. I know I was trying to end on a positive note, but I, I'm curious about this. Because there was a lot of talk after the skirmetti decision, which I talked about on this show, about like, did the, uh, did the trans legal movement or the, or the LGBT legal movement make a strategic error of any kind in waging that particular case or in any, you know, a particular way that they went for it.

I'm just curious, if you have a view on that particularly, maybe you don't. And what do you think the way forward is on those issues? I think when it got to the Supreme Court, I think the outcome was sort of predetermined just because that court is so right-wing right now. But sometimes people say, oh, the trans people shouldn't be pushing that. Well, like, the states are passing these anti-trans laws, and then they have to be. you know, countered in courts.

You can't just not challenge them. And then it just becomes part of this legal process where they go up and they go up to the, through the courts. And the time it gets to the Supreme Court, you know, it was kind of, you could see from the oral arguments, it was kind of be determined. They were not going to,

they were not going to argue, they were not going to buy the argument that this is a kind of sex discrimination because you're treating trans kids who get gender from and care different from cis kids who get gender from in care. They were just going to see it's like about trans. So I don't really think. they made any mistakes. I just think like we need to put less emphasis on the courts. I came up in the 80s and I thought democracy wasn't so great for gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender

people. So we like the courts. And now the courts have gone a different direction. So we need to put our energy back into the democratic process, which people are doing. We can't rely on the courts. And the cultural change process. I mean, part of the reason, I remember the cultural mood right before the O'Bershfeld decision. It was like, people were like, hey, what's the holdup here? Fucking do it. And that's why the court did it. They were like, all right, we don't want to be behind public opinion, basically. And guess what? Public opinion took a couple decades on that issue. And it's going to take longer than we thought it was going to for trans rights or longer than we hoped it was going to. But like it'll work in the long run. And hey, there's been

bad Supreme Court decisions on every civil rights matter, on slavery, on women's rights. as you said, you know, that case of the 19th century that went the wrong way. The real change has to happen in the hearts of the American people, right? Absolutely, absolutely. And that's where that change has to happen. We can't really have the courts anymore for sure. Paisley, do you have any final message for the folks listening? Folks, anything that you'd like to keep them in mind as they think about this issue,

especially folks who are, you know, very depressed and frightened over what's happened over the last couple years? Well, one thing I think for the trans people who might be listening is like things aren't as bad as they look. I mean, the policy is bad. But if you look at the public opinion in the recent elections, like where Donald Trump, where Republicans have lost, where school board elections have all gone towards officials who don't want to censor books or don't want to harm trans people, I do think we're seeing this kind of pushback against the right wing on that level. So I do feel I do feel kind of hopeful. And my hope is that eventually, like, people will see that you can't separate anti-trans stuff from anti-feminist work and even anti-people work. Like, if you want you get people, you know, if you treat one group of people that way, it's going to affect, it's going to kind of normalize a terrible administrative approach to human rights overall. Yeah.

And the administration's overt cruelty towards everybody might help us build some solidarity, right? And realize, oh, hold on a second. they're like, you know, disappearing brown people and they're attacking trans people and hold on a second, maybe all this shit kind of goes together and, you know, maybe we'll have the pendulum swing back to the other way as some of those center moderates who go, oh, maybe I don't know if we should support the trans people. Like they're going to realize, oh, hold on a second. That's part of the same fucking project. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Paisley, I love you so much. I'm so grateful to you for coming on the show. I hope next time you come. come back on. We'll have some good developments to talk about.

I would love to have that conversation. Either way, I hope to come back in the future. Yeah, me too. It was lovely being here. Thank you. Well, thank you once again to Paisley for coming on the show. I hope you got as much out of that as I did. It was a really beautiful interview.

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