Factually! with Adam Conover - Trump’s Attacks on Trans Rights with Chase Strangio

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

In recent years, despite trans people making up a relatively small percentage of the population, there has been an outsized and deeply harmful wave of anti-trans backlash. Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign was fueled in large part by anti-trans rhetoric, and he wasted no time acting on his hateful promises in his first days back in office. This week, Adam speaks with Chase Strangio, Co-Director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project and the first trans man to argue before the Supreme Court, to discuss the relentless assault on trans rights in America—and how these attacks ultimately impact everyone.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. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. You know, one of the biggest and most welcome social changes in my life has been the progress of LGBT rights. You know, when I was in high school in the late nineties,

I had literally one gay friend who came out publicly and she faced an enormous social cost for doing so because the prejudice against gay people at that time was so massive. And yet just 15 short years later, gay marriage was legalized across the country because of a Supreme Court decision. And not only that, there was suddenly a full-throated acceptance of LGBT people in mainstream U.S. society. Everyone from Macklemore to Target was getting on board. For a moment, it seemed like that new age of acceptance was total, complete, and permanent.

But needless to say, it wasn't. In recent years, we have seen an alarming backslide on LGBT rights, especially for trans people, the T in LGBT. This backlash against trans people's very existence had been percolating in right wing circles for years. But last year, Donald Trump rode that wave of hatred, explicit hatred for trans people, directly back to the White House. He campaigned on transphobia and he won. And that's somewhat of a new thing in American society, at least when you compare it to the past couple decades. Think about 2016, when North Carolina passed that bathroom bill

that banned trans people from using the bathroom. Well, when that happened, major corporations stood up for their trans employees and family and said that it was unacceptable, that it would stop them from doing business in the state. But it's hard to imagine that now. Facebook just announced that they are literally going to allow trans slurs on their platform and published a list of which slurs are now allowed. There was an effort to ban the first trans congresswoman from using the bathroom at her workplace,

the halls of Congress. And there is anti-trans legislation across the country that is looking to take away the right for doctors to determine care for their patients if those patients are trans. And finally, needless to say, Donald Trump is now the president again, and on day one of his new administration, he signed a wildly transphobic executive order. This order declares that from now on, the federal government will only recognize the existence of two genders, two sexes, male and female, and directs the federal government to stop aiding gender transition in any form. He also repealed a rule allowing trans people to serve openly in the military, and his administration seems hell-bent on making life for trans people in this country as difficult as possible.

These rules are part of an explicit project to literally erase trans people from our society. To put it plainly, we are seeing civil rights for trans people being rolled back in America, just like we've seen it done for abortion rights and voting rights. We are seeing new restrictions placed on the ability of trans Americans

to live as themselves and to simply move freely in society. And there has not been nearly enough pushback on this from the left, from liberal institutions, or from mainstream American society. Trans rights are one of the defining civil rights issues of our time, and we must address them. And that is what we are going to do in today's episode. We have one of the most prominent and influential Americans on this issue on the show today.

I am so thrilled to have them. But before we get to them, I just want to remind you that I'm on tour right now. If you want to come see my new hour of stand up comedy, you can see me February 12th in Omaha, Nebraska, February 13th in Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 21st in Chicago, Illinois, February 23rd in Boston. And after that, I'm going to Burlington, Vermont, London, Amsterdam, Providence, Rhode Island, Vancouver, British Columbia, Eugene, Oregon, Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Head to adamkonover.net for tickets and tour dates. And of course, if you wanna support the show directly and get every episode of this show ad free, head to patreon.com slash adamkonover.

Five bucks a month gets you access to all of that. Patreon.com slash adamkonover. And now, to talk about the ongoing attack on trans rights in our country in and out of the courts, we have an incredible guest. I am so thrilled to have him. I've wanted to have him on the show for years, and I'm so honored he decided to join us.

His name is Chase Strangio, and he's the co-director of the ACLU's LGBT and HIV project. And he is also the first trans man to argue before the Supreme Court. He is simply one of the most significant civil rights attorneys in the country, and I cannot think of anyone better to walk us through the attacks on trans rights. Now, I want to let you know that we recorded this interview just before Trump's inauguration.

So we had not seen the text of that executive order yet, but it was very clear what was coming down the pipe. And Chase gives an incredible in-depth look at how trans rights are being attacked and what we can do to protect trans Americans going forward. Please enjoy this conversation with Chase Strangio. Chase, thank you so much for being on the show, man. Thank you, Adam. Good to be here. I'm really thrilled to have you. Let's jump right into it.

What is the state of trans rights and trans acceptance in America? Because to me, it seems like there's been a backslide over the past few years. How does it look from your view? Yeah, I think it's a complicated picture because on the one hand, we are obviously seeing a considerable backslide

when it comes to public discourse, public policy. And if you look at just the metrics of, for example, 2024 campaign spending targeting transgender people, it was wildly disproportionate to the population of transgender people in the United States. So looking just at those things, it's bad, I would say. It's frustrating, it paints a grim picture, it has material consequences for the transgender community. On the other hand, there is a way in which we are continuing

to make progress as trans people living openly in our lives, and that is undeniable. I'm 42 years old, it is just drastically different than it was 10 years ago. It is just drastically different than it was 10 years ago. And there is something to be said that that forward momentum can't be undone. People aren't going to go back into the closet, so to speak. And that I think that as bad as things are getting in this national discourse context, it is not changing the fact that trans people are existing or out here in our country.

Yeah. And I think that coming out process, that change of the last 10 years has been massive. Is there, was it a surprise to you at all to see the backlash? Because I think for a long time, we sort of saw it as, you know, we had all these advances in LGBT acceptance. Hey, T is in the acronym. And so, you know, trans folks are along for the ride. And now it seems like, you know, over 10 years after the Obersfeld decision, you know, a lot of America is going to hold up a second. We're actually not as accepting as you all thought we were.

Is there a reason for that in your mind? Well, there's certainly a reason. I think, and it's not just about trans people, it's not just about LGBTQ people, this obviously is a regressive trend that you can tie to, for example, the overturning of Roe v. Waite. That is, you know, it's not just that

we are going back in time with respect to LGBTQ people, we are going back in time with respect to ideas about gender writ large. And we are calling back in time with respect to ideas about gender writ large. Yes. And we are calling into question things that I thought that we had settled. And things like access to contraception, interracial marriage. We are really seeing a regressive moment when it comes to political and cultural acceptance of just people who are outside the norm of the,

or sort of I should say the power norm of the white heterosexual Christian family. So in some sense, it's yes, it's a back slide with respect to trans people, but it is not existing only in the context of trans people. It's much bigger than that. And you can see that on every metric that you look. That's a really good point.

And thank you for pointing that out. But I have to say that the backslide for trans people, to me, looks like extra virulent, right? Because, I mean, yes, we had the backslide on Roe v. Wade. Yes, we had the backslide on voting rights. Trans Americans were the only people who were demonized by one entire political party's campaign ads and were not protected by the other party.

And now that other party is saying, hey, maybe we shouldn't be protecting those people so much even though they were not doing so in the first place, vocally, during the campaign. So the degree to which trans Americans have become a specific target politically is to me a little bit surprising. What do you credit that to?

Yeah, it certainly is demoralizing. And in some sense, it feels to me as a trans person, slightly less surprising because I feel like there was only like six months where we weren't like actually being demonized and in one way. So it's sort of a backslide from a very, very, very small period of time where things were going slightly, slightly better. And so I would attribute it to actually several things.

You pointed out the Obergefell decision, which came down from the Supreme Court in 2015. And that was the decision that struck down, remaining bans on marriage equality for same-sex couples. From there, you do start to see the anti-LGBT forces really mobilize against trans people almost immediately. And in 2016, you start to see the emergence of the bathroom bill. That's when North Carolina passed their infamous HB2, you know, in this wave of legislation that said, oh, I don't know if we want to go to the bathroom with

trans people. Bathrooms are very intimate, special places, and we don't want to pee next to someone whose body might be different than us. That discourse really escalated in 2016, and it sort of ebbed and flowed for a period of time. In some sense, during the first Trump administration, the states sort of cooled off on that because they had an ally in the White House. But from 2020 to the present, we've seen this escalation of targeting of trans people, both in the United States and elsewhere around the world. And it has really coincided with a rise in right-wing leadership.

And if you look at leaders like Victor Aban or Bolsonaro in Brazil, there's a fixation on gender. Because if you have an authoritarian impulse, there is a goal to control notions of manhood and womanhood and the family. And trans people are seen as both a politically unpopular group, even among more progressives and liberals, and as a direct threat to the stability

of maleness and femaleness. And so in that context, it is actually quite common for trans people to become the fixation of right-wing leaders. And I think what happened in the United States is you sort of simultaneously see this rise in right-wing leadership that does have a fixation on gender. You cannot deny it.

You have the childless cat ladies coming, throughout JD Vance, that does have this notion of what is the role of masculinity in society? I mean, Trump is picking cabinet picks largely because they have a history of abusing women and defining their masculinity in that context. And so then you sort of see the rise of our government structures coinciding with this escalation of gender-based ideologies and then also having this very effective media campaign, sort of calling into question trans identity.

And those things coincide in 2024 around the election and it is dire for trans people. But I actually think if we don't wake up to what's really going on, it's going to become a dire for a lot more people. This is not really about it. We're less than one percent of the population. And I think you should care about us for that reason. But they don't really they don't care about us. We're not we're not enough people for this to be an end game about trans people.

This is an end game about everyone. And I think we need people to be more tapped in to that reality as we start to prepare for the first year of the Trump presidency. Yeah, but we do need to be tapped into that. But that starts with being tapped into what is happening to trans people in America right now, which a lot of people are not tapped enough into. Because you mentioned the bathroom bans in North Carolina in 2016, do I have the year right? You do.

When that happened, there was a big cultural response to that, like a lot of companies said they wouldn't do business in the state anymore. It was seen as really outright bigotry. That was almost 10 years ago. We're now at a point where I think if the same state or a different state passed the exact same law, I don't think you would have the same cultural response. In fact, I don't think we're seeing that sort of response to the laws that are being passed to oppress trans people

right now. So the degree to which mainstream America or even mainstream liberalism is standing up for trans people has seemed to ebb a bit from the high water mark a little bit ago. And we need to return our focus on it, I agree, or we're going to miss what's going to happen next to everybody, not to say enough about what's going to happen to trans people specifically. Yeah, I mean, that's absolutely right. In 2016, you had PayPal say, we're not going to build in North Carolina. You had the NBA pull their All-Star game from North Carolina. There was massive corporate outrage. There was boycotts of the state.

People were talking about this as just a massive injustice. We cannot stand for this type of government sponsored discrimination. Half the country has now done that and 10 times worse in the last few years with absolutely no response from the public, from corporations. You know, instead we're seeing, you know, a corporate turn towards, oh my god, well, we just actually want to discriminate outright. We're getting rid of, you know, all of our internal efforts to improve diversity and inclusion.

We are pulling, you know, target pulling their pride lines in response to right-wing protests of target. So complete just absolute capitulation to these very, I would say, mean-spirited and totally disingenuous efforts from the right. So, I mean, I guess, I guess maybe I take it a little too much for granted that we've gone into an absolutely catastrophic situation with respect for trans people. And it is true. And we're in a place where half the country is banning medical care that parents and doctors and adolescents are consenting to and doing in a way where they're really just doubting these parents loving their children and instead accusing them of making them trans as if that would be something that would even be possible to do

and if it was, that anyone would not choose to do it in this climate. So I think that we've come so far, it is so hard to have a measured conversation. People have turned against trans people so swiftly. And as you point out at the top, the Democrats come out of 2024 elections saying, you know who's really to blame here? Trans people. When, you know, it's the idea that the Democratic party

tacked too far in support of trans people when for the duration of the election season said, quite literally nothing. You know, it's like what we're seeing is again, another form of capitulation exactly to the position of the right. And it's dispiriting, it's like what we're seeing is again, another form of capitulation exactly to the position of the right and it's dispiriting, it's disheartening. And also I think it just means we have to build our capacity to help people see that this is as bad

as it could get and if you don't care about us, you should care about yourself. And so I have shifted a little bit to broadening the lens through which I believe we should really be looking at these things. Yeah, I mean, I understand why you should do that, why you feel the need to do that strategically, but the issue, it is enough that trans people

are being treated this way for us to care about it. And the dismay I felt when I watched the Democratic Party, when I watched Kamala give these answers, when they would confront her with the stuff that was being alleged in the Trump ads, and then she would say, well, I followed the law and we must follow, she'd give this very legalistic, lawyerly answer, she's a former prosecutor,

but I mean, you're a lawyer as well and you're not giving me legalistic answers. Why not just say, this is what I couldn't understand, why not just say, hey, trans people are worth protecting, we care about trans people, they're a very small part of the population, this is a distraction, this is the Trump administration or the Trump campaign trying to sow hatred

to divide people and we're not gonna let them, we're gonna support trans people and now let me change the subject To something that is like really part of my platform, you know It's it seems like a pretty easy political move and they're the Democrats are very good at Supporting a lot of their coalition, right? They know like coalition management is like their thing we support this group we support this group we support this group and Yet not trans Americans

who supposedly have been part of the coalition for at least a decade now. Yeah, I mean, and really far longer, I imagine, is just for the prior period of time, we were just so far in the shadows that no one would ever inquire as to what we were doing or thinking and could ever find us. But I certainly think that there were ways

that you could have robustly defended trans people, still explained compliance with the law and moved on. They did not do that. But I can point to a lot of sort of missteps in the campaign in terms of just going, you know, going on principle, speaking with your chest and moving forward. I don't think that they did that. At the end of the day, what would have made a difference and what wouldn't have made a difference? I have no idea.

I really don't. I think that the ultimate failures that I see are just our inability to counter this grievance-based message from the right with a message of galvanizing people to make the world better. They're trafficking in complaints, in grievances, in hatred, and people are going for it

when in reality what we need is a robust counter-narrative about, you know, I just think about how beautiful it is when people just care for each other and work together. If you look at the response, for example, in California, in Los Angeles, where you can just see the actual beauty of human beings coming together. Yes.

And why are we not going to that place? We have far more in common than we have that divides us, and yet we are continuing to put people in office who want to divide us, who want to make it more difficult for us to care for each other. And that just is depressing commentary on where we end up in these election moments. You use the phrase, and we'll move off of politics in a second, but you use the phrase, speaking with your chest,

and that is what the Democrats did not do. And I have to believe that even the bigots out there, if the Democrats were to say, you know what? We're going to stand with the people who we care about. These are people, these are, these are Americans just like anybody else. And we're going to stand with them. There would have to be a lot of Americans who would simply respect that to who would respect Democrats for standing with their values.

And as you say, standing up for each other and we're going to be the party that like brings people together and stand shoulder to shoulder and looks out for each other. That would at least be a democratic party that a lot more people could be excited about or basically respect as opposed to one that is just constantly blowing where the wind goes and is willing to throw anybody off the bus if they think it's going to win over two suburban moms in it in the Atlanta suburbs. Like come on. Like, enough focus testing and more like,

how about the real fucking people that you represent? Like, say something about them. Yeah, no, totally. And it's just, it is. It's like, so one thing that I've learned as a lawyer when you're doing an oral argument in court and you know you're going to have hard questioning from the judges or from the justices,

if you just are clear and definitive even if you know it's an answer they do not want to hear if you know that your argument takes it takes them in a place they do not want to go if you try to just sort of you know waffle your way to try to please everyone or shut you know sort of pretend that you're not doing something they don't want you to do you are screwed in in that argument. You are going to get 20 minutes of questions that you do not want. If you just say, you know what? Yes. This does mean that trans people get more legal protections across the board. It means that. I'm not going to lie to you. They're going to stop harassing you. And it's just a simple way of dealing with any sort of oppositional argumentation.

Be clear, be principled, and don't act like you're hiding the ball. I think that would have just served us so much better in the end, but it just was not, it was so clear that that was not gonna happen. Right. The answer Kamala gave, you know, are you for they, them, not for we or whatever, like in the ad, and she goes, I followed the law and I was da da da da da. Then that leaves the question open. But if she said, yeah, I'm fucking for they them.

Yeah, yeah, what of it motherfucker? You know, like that's a much stronger answer that gets you more respect. Yeah, and also at the end of the day, it's like bring us back to the things that people care about. Like, no, I don't wanna be on the one trans girl in Kentucky from sports.

I wanna make your life better. I want to bring down the price of groceries. So I am not going to be distracted, but that, you know, Mary wants to play field hockey in seventh grade in Lexington, Kentucky. You know, it's like, come on. Yeah. Folks, this episode is brought to you by Alma. Isn't it wild how the things we turn to for comfort often end up making us feel worse? I mean, I've definitely caught myself doom-scrolling or getting stuck in endless

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Folks, this episode is brought to you by Squarespace. I've said it before, and I'll say it again as many times as it takes, life happens online. That's why it is so important to present the best version of yourself on the internet, whether you're running a business, building a brand, or just sharing your passion with the world. And that is where Squarespace comes in. Squarespace makes it easy to create a stunning website, connect with your

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What does life look like for trans Americans under some of these new laws that are being passed around the country? What are folks facing? Yeah, I will say, like, I can, I predicted that it would be bad for trans people at different points, but I could not have imagined what we're facing in in 2025. You have half the country banning medical care for trans adolescents, you have the incoming Trump administration threatening to implement bans nationally. So, you know, just in the last few months, I'm contacted daily by families asking if they have to flee

the United States in order to provide medical care for their children, looking for clinics in South America and Canada and elsewhere in Europe. So that's one sort of just stark reality for trans people who can't access healthcare. And then you have people who are having trouble going to school because states are banning trans kids from going to the restroom in school.

States have started to ban trans people of all ages. And then you have people who are having trouble going to school because states are banning trans kids from going to the restroom in school. States have started to ban trans people of all ages from going to the restroom that aligns with their gender in any public building. You try to go to court, you try to go to the DMV, you try to go to your public employee job and you can't go to the bathroom. This means that trans people can't go to school, they can't go to work, they can't go vote, they can't go get their driver's license without being in this environment where they hope they don't have to interface with any, you know, sex-based system because in those systems,

they know they will be harassed, targeted, and excluded. And the reality is, of course, that many trans people are living in the world and nobody knows they're trans and they're using these spaces, but now they're doing so with this escalated fear, with this anxiety and with this sense at any moment, someone will turn them over to some authority. And we're starting to see this in places like Texas, for example, where Ken Paxton, the attorney general, has repeatedly deputized citizens to turn over their community members. He did it first with abortion, with the Bounty Hunter Abortion Law, SB 8, where it was, if

you know someone who's trying to help people get an abortion, we're going to go after those individuals with civil lawsuits. And he's doing the same thing. If you know a parent who's providing gender-affirming medical care for their child under the supervision of a doctor, then we're going to go after them for child abuse and you can turn them over. As you start to see this deputization again, going into these mechanisms of dividing us, which makes life just unlivable for people around the country. And now we're going to start to see these policies at the federal level, policies that

ban we're already seeing it. You know, Speaker Johnson, you know, gives in to Representative Mason, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and all of a sudden bans incoming representative Sarah McBride from the restrooms in the house building. Like this is just the most juvenile behavior, but it has real consequences for people. Well, it also echoes the civil rights movement

for black Americans of, at this point, 60 years ago, that what's so shocking about it is that it is public accommodations, that we're talking about the use of public restrooms, which is, you know, what the civil, that was the focal point of the Supreme Court battles of the Supreme Court battles, uh,

you know, of the last century. Um, and who is allowed to be in public life? Um, and it's so obvious that that's the case, that that's the playbook to exclude trans people from public life. It's not like anybody in the Jim Crow South had a big problem with the water fountains per se. It's not like there was some public safety issue of who's using the water fountains. It's just like, no, you're in public. You can't use the shit we use. It's the whole thing is like a a way of evoking

the ejection from public life of a of a of an oppressed minority. And so to do that in the House of Representatives is just, it's just clear, outright discrimination and nothing else in my view. Yeah, I mean, yes, and I do think it's so important for people to understand that exactly as you said, the public restroom has been a site of contested space for centuries.

And the reason for that is that A, it is an indicator of whether people can be in public space, one. And then two, it is a place where people have to be around people that are different than themselves. You are in a public restroom, you just don't know who's going to be there. And that is why it is used by forces seeking to eject people, as you know, from the public sphere altogether, use the public restroom as a side of doing so. So yes, in the Jim Crow South and all sorts of structured mechanisms

of race-based segregation, they targeted people in restrooms excluding black people from restrooms repeatedly as part of, of course, this complete systemic segregation regime. It also is true that women were excluded from the workplace all the time. And when, for example,

Justice O'Connor got on the court, there was no bathroom for women in the chambers all the time. And when, for example, Justice O'Connor got on the court, there was no bathroom for women in the chambers of the Supreme Court because there had only ever been men, which is just an indication of how restroom access is itself a sort of suggestion of who gets to be in a space. And same with disabled people. The restroom, the public restroom,

having wheelchair accessible restrooms, having aides being able to go into restrooms was a huge part of the Rehab Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. These are important ways that people are able to be held and included in public space. That's why trans people are being targeted. And also, I think it's important for people to remember that there is a way where each iteration of civil rights is sort of exceptionalized. It's like, well, this one's really different than the other

ones. And they do it with trans people. They did it with gay people. They do it with women. They do it with black people. And one thing we hear now is like, well, but the trans person in the public space is a real safety threat to the cis person in the bathroom. And that is exactly what they said about black people being in space with white people. And they used science to do it. When they were banning interracial marriage between white people and black people

and white people and other people of other races, there was a huge scientific argument that they put forth. They're like, well, I don't know what's gonna happen to these kids. This seems like a really risky scientific thing that, I don't know what's gonna happen to these kids. This seems like a really risky scientific thing that we just don't know what's gonna happen. We don't know what's gonna happen when gay people have kids. The science is unsettled.

This is what we do. We use systems to cultivate fear, to exclude people from public space, and then say there's some sort of scientific justification for it. It's the same playbook that we've seen over and over again, but we're programmed to think it's new. I mean, the idea that people in a bathroom

would be at risk from trans people assigns this like magical power to the door of the bathroom that like someone who wants to do you harm is gonna look at the sign in the bathroom, go, oh, not my gender, I can't go in. Like the harm is gonna happen whether or not you, I mean, use the fucking anti-gun Oh, not my gender. I can't go in like the harm is going to happen whether or not you go. I mean, use the fucking gun, the anti-gun control argument. If you want the bad guy is going to get a gun, whether or not it's banned, the bad person is going to go in the bathroom, whether you know, no matter whether it's a gender neutral bathroom

or not. Um, it's, it's sort of ludicrous, but it, it has this, I don't know, bathrooms do have this like powerful place in the American mind where unfortunately I think a lot of normies are open to this argument a little bit. Because the bathroom for the average person is maybe a little bit of a fraught space and a space where their privacy is not always assured, but they want it to be. And so it ends up being this spot where the bigots can sort of like insert a wedge and, you know, oh, don't you, wouldn't you feel a little bit safer if, or wouldn't this make you feel a little bit unsafe? And so it has sort of a pernicious effect on the public imagination.

Yeah, completely. And you start with a place where there's a baseline anxiety, which there is, and it's exploited. And of course, it also just obscures the real problems. Like at the end of the day, this is another example of us as a society sort of saying, yes, you know what our biggest risk of violence is? It's a random stranger coming into the bathroom and causing us harm. That is simply not how, you know,

where people are at risk of violence in their homes. And that's where children are at the most risk of violence. And this idea that we are gonna continue to displace violence onto a stranger, respond to that actually quite rare. If you look at the statistics, um, form of violence and ignore the many forms of violence that take place by people we know in our homes, it's just another way of obscuring what actually happens. So that we're never going to create the systems of accountability that we need.

Yeah. Good point. Public bathroom violence was not create the systems of accountability that we need. Yeah, good point. Public bathroom violence was not a large form of violence at any point. No, it's not. And that's not the reason for the gendered-ness of bathrooms in the first place was to prevent bathroom violence. It's not, it's a completely false argument.

But I really like that you put the point about baseline anxiety, that the public has a baseline anxiety. So one more that I'd like to get into head on here is around trans kids, trans youth. Um, because I think a lot of, again, normies folks who are not, you know, uh, a read in educated on the topic. Um, you know, we'll hear about trans kids. And one of their first thoughts might be like, Hey, you know, a kid is young, they're impressionable, how do they know, et cetera. That is, I think, a thing that comes to a lot of average people's minds.

It's an anxiety people have. What's happening to the children is a constant anxiety in American society. And so I think the bigots have been very strategic in attacking, you know, trans folks at that spot, right? Because that's a place where people have anxiety. So, I'd love for you to, you know, like to the person listening who, and I'm not sure how much of our audience this will be, but to the person listening, who does say, hey, I have some concerns about trans kids,

about kids transitioning, kids receiving that form of care, et cetera. How do you start that conversation? And yeah, in order to set those anxieties aside. Yeah, I mean, I do wanna start with just a little bit of context setting, which I do think is important because it is, I'm a parent, I am perpetually anxious about my child. It's like if you do one thing,

you're doing it wrong in one direction, but then you're gonna overcorrect and do it wrong in the other direction. And so I totally relate to the fact that we are anxious about our children. I also think that most parents are of the view that they do know their children better than random people. And I do think it's important to keep in mind

that every trans person who's under 18, who is getting any form of medical treatment, is doing so with the support and consent of their parents. And that just is the reality. So when we're talking about this, what we're talking about is people's nervousness about someone else's children that those parents are also nervous about and thinking about. So that's who we're talking about here. And then when we talk about baselines, we're also talking about, there was a study that

just came out that found that over the last five years, looking at private insurance claims, 0.1% of adolescents received these medications, puberty blockers and hormones for these purposes in the last five years. So we're talking about 0.1, like 0.1 of 1%. And so we're talking about very, very, very small group of people. And if we are concerned about quote unquote the children in mass, we are not seeing $215 million

in campaign spending in an election year about say, I don't know, preparing for the next pandemic, or ensuring that our children are receiving adequate education in schools, or, I don't know, preventing gun violence in schools, which is, as we know, the leading cause of harm to our children.

So we are sort of taking our anxieties about a very scary world, and then putting them onto a group of people that represents 0.1% of the population. And so then when it comes to those people, and so maybe some people still say, well, I just don't like the idea of kids being able to make these types of choices that they could regret. Again, we are talking about choices that parents are making with doctors, are making with adolescents, and in the context of the US medical system.

So I want people to also use all the knowledge that they have in every other context and apply it here, which means that they're not walking in to some easy to access endocrinologist appointment and getting a prescription on day one, because we're still talking about the shit ass system that we have, which means they're waiting two years before they ever talk to someone. And so like we just we need people to use their critical thinking skills to apply it

to a context that scares them. Because that's what we're talking about here. Like I can't get into a specialist. Who are these people that think that like medications are easy to access in the United States? And so there's that. And then also, these parents know their children. And oftentimes people will be like, well, my child thought he wanted to be a dinosaur for three months. Right. Yeah. We're talking about people who feel something for five years consistently and with deep, deep distress. You know, I have

a friend who's 13 year old started expressing herself as a girl when she was 18 months old in another country and the mom had never heard of being transgender. How could she have imposed that on that child? And frankly, it's very rare for parents to be like, okay, sure. It's very rare for parents to be like, okay, sure. It's usually through years of contesting this experience and then realizing that their children are suffering. And so we do need to have these conversations. We do need to help people understand, but we need to do so with actual information and with the sort of goal of trying to figure out

who we're actually talking about and what our actual goals are. Because what we're doing now is taking away medical care that kids have relied on, that their parents have decided is in their best interest, weighing the risks and benefits of treatment and doing it in the exact same way they do that for all their other children's medical care. Like, my parents consented for me to have orthopedic knee surgery when I was 13 years old.

I don't know. Was that a good thing? I do regret it, but you know what? I'm not campaigning for normal orthopedic surgeries, and I think that's like, come on, this is what parenting is, it's making hard decisions and hoping it turns out okay, and these are some of the most deliberative decisions. Oh my God, that's a, I honestly really love that example

that you just gave at the end the most that like, yeah, you went through a family process to have surgery when you were a kid that you maybe kind of regret now. Yeah, that's something that we accept with all medical care. So there is a risk factor. Why don't we accept it for this one form of medical care? Why are we intolerant of, you know, a little bit of air that we're tolerant of

in the rest of the medical system? I mean, I remember being, you know, I was 17 and a dermatologist gave me an Accutane prescription that they definitely shouldn't have given me. You know? Exactly. That kind of thing. So why, why is this the only area of focus

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and use code factually. That's hungryroot.com slash factually, code factually, to get 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life. Hungryroot.com slash factually code factually. You argued against, there's a ban in Tennessee against gender affirming care for minors of this type. You argued against it before the Supreme Court

quite recently, the decision is not out yet. I would love if you would, can that what you just gave us was a wonderful explanation for an average member of the public. I'd love it if you could paraphrase a little bit the argument you made before the Supreme Court on the issue. What exactly is the legal argument against a ban like that? And how did you make it to, you know,

try to appeal to those nine justices in black robes sitting at the bench? Yeah, so the legal argument I think of is very simple. Obviously it is contested as the legal arguments that go to the Supreme Court are, but we argued that this was a form of sex discrimination. Just like all other forms of sex discrimination, the court has to look at it under a particular scrutiny.

And that's sort of the legal paradigm in which constitutional claims are assessed by the court. When it's sex-based, you get this type of review, and that's what we were arguing for. We actually were only arguing for that. We were saying, look, it is sex-based. Go send it back to the lower courts. They can answer whether it's constitutional.

The majority of the argument was about this question of whether or not banning medical care when it is prescribed inconsistent with sex is a form of sex based differential treatment. And the way that this argument works and why I think it is simple is Tennessee's law says you cannot have medical care inconsistent with your sex. That is how it's framed if you're under 18 and So what that means is that if you are a non transgender boy if you are assigned male at birth And let's say you're a late bloomer. You're 15 years old. You are still four ten Everyone is gone through puberty, you could go to an endocrinologist, as often happens

with boys that are going through puberty much later than their peers, and you could go on testosterone because you were having distress about the fact that you were not having a puberty that looked like your peers. And that would be lawful. And the records show that that is a way testosterone is used.

If you were a trans boy, you were assigned female at birth, you also were distressed by the fact that you were not going through a male puberty because you have a male identity, that you could not have testosterone because it would be considered inconsistent with your female sex at birth. And so we were making the argument that, look, whatever you think may be the justifications for this law,

it is a law that is based on sex. And then you can answer the question of whether or not the government has a good reason for banning the medication when it is prescribed and consistent with sex. And that actually is very consistent with a long history of sex-based laws in the United States, where you basically just decide is the law based on sex, and then you decide whether or not it's good or bad. Under the constitutional framework, our argument was this is sex-based, it should be treated like all other sex-based laws

and therefore the lower court got it wrong. And the other side was saying it's not sex-based, it's based on the procedure. And our answer to that was, okay, but the procedure you're banning is inconsistent with sex. They did tie themselves in knots trying to explain how a law banning something inconsistent with sex

is not sex-based. And that was the nature of the legal argument as it played out before the Supreme Court. Well, so that's really fascinating. It's also a very technical legal argument based on precedent and et cetera, et cetera. I'm not a lawyer. I followed this Supreme Court. legal argument based on precedent and et cetera, et cetera. I've, you know, I'm not a lawyer. I followed this Supreme Court.

I also know how courts in general tend to decide things. They tend to use the legal, the technical legal argument as a fig leaf for doing whatever they sort of naturally feel is moral and just according to their biases and their values and all of that. We've certainly seen, in my opinion, a number of decisions like that from the from the this Supreme Court where they have a predetermined conclusion and then they shape the legal argument to fit it. I think we can all agree that judges do

that all the time. So I'm a little bit curious, you know, when you're making your argument, you're making your technical legal argument because you know that's what the Supreme Court needs. They need the fig leaf one way or another. But are you at all trying to also make the moral argument to them as people to try to win them over to your case? And I do want to point out, you're the first trans lawyer to ever argue before the Supreme Court.

And so your presence there is hopefully making that argument a bit as well, right? Yeah, I mean, I certainly want, I mean, it didn't include that fact in my argument itself. I wanted it to hopefully speak for itself. And the reality is that I have benefited from this medical care. If laws like this were to continue,

if the types of laws that we're seeing proposed were to continue, I couldn't even enter the court that I would never have been there in the first place. And so we do wanna call the question in the sense of, what are you doing here? And we did make the point that, look, if Tennessee can do this, they can ban the care for adults because the same arguments would apply,

which means that we're looking at a world in which you are in essence going to rubber stamp a host of discrimination against a politically unpopular minority. And the whole purpose of our Constitution is to create a judicial check on majoritarian discrimination against minority groups. That is certainly the purpose of the Reconstruction Amendment. And so we definitely had that as a central theme running through the argument. And the other thing I would say thematically that played into the argument is that

parents' rights, people may have noticed, is a big conservative framework. And we have the center of this case are parents who the state of Tennessee has decided they are gonna override their judgment. The same state government that said that we are, you know, we absolutely wouldn't get in the way of patients and doctors if you want to, you know, prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID despite the fact that we have no, we know it's actually not effective.

So these are the governments that were giving, you know, special treatment to ineffective COVID treatments. We're also coming in and saying, well, this is, we don't know about this. And also the same governments that were saying, well, parents should get to say that their child doesn't have to wear a mask to school. Parents should get to say that their child

doesn't have to learn about black history in school. Parents should get to say that their child doesn't have to be vaccinated. Are saying, parents actually don should get to say that their child does not have to be vaccinated are saying, parents actually don't get to decide if they want to prescribe this medication to their transgender children. And so even though it wasn't the doctrinal argument running

through, we were sort of saying to these justices, you do actually believe that parents get to make decisions. You believe it very strongly. So what about these parents? Because these parents love their children too. I think that is a really strong and smart, strategic and also moral argument to make. Because it does the thing that you were talking

about earlier, it points to how this legal campaign wants to take rights away from all of us. Because that's, you know, the question it raises is who gets to be a parent with rights. And you don't get to be a parent with rights if you're the parent of a trans kid. You don't have to be trans or gay or a minority group yourself. You just have to be connected to someone who is and they want to take your rights away. And that means it's not just, is, and they wanna take your rights away.

And that means it's not just, hey, get your laws off of us, the right wing, we want to restrict you as well. And that really points in the direction of, of yeah, legally restricting all of us, not just the minority group that they're currently attacking. Do you feel that your arguments had purchased at all? I mean, again, we're in between the argument

and the decision now. Decision comes out in the summer, am I right? Yeah, so the term ends in usually that by July, so we expect a decision by July. One sort of potential wrinkle here is that this is a case in which the United States was a party and the United States is going to change positions. We expect, you know, on the 20th or on the 21st that the Trump administration will signal to the Supreme Court that they no

longer have the views of the Biden administration, which had been in court vigorously defending the rights of the evil protection rights of the transgender adolescents, their parents, and their doctors who treat them. And then now you're going to have that sort of switching of sides. Now that happens all the time. Nothing about the case is sort of gone. We, the private parties, the plaintiffs who are the trans kids and their parents, filed the lawsuit against the Tennessee officials. It is ongoing no matter what happens, but you never know how the court is going to respond

to that type of change in position from the United States. So there's that, where that'll happen, you know, in the near term, but we can, we expect that the case will continue, the decision will come out before, before the end of the June month. And look, the headlines that I saw said, justices seem skeptical of arguments in favor of trans youth or whatever, right? You see that kind of coverage based on their questions. Sometimes they can surprise you. I am a little bit curious

Maybe you don't want to say you can just say no that you don't want to speculate but Yeah, do you have a sense of how you thought the arguments were received? Yes, what I'll say is that Going in we knew it's an uphill battle. Yeah, you know I'll say is that going in, we knew it's an uphill battle. Yeah. And there's no question in my mind. I was surprised by the coverage, I'll say, that was so negative about the argument in the sense that every aspect of those sort of headlines

after the argument were just based on what we already know about the justices. I do not think that anything that was in any of those articles was based on the tenor of questioning. And we actually don't, you know, I think there was no aspect of the questioning on December 4th that told me this is, this is actually a definitive way that we now know that the chief or Kavanaugh or Barrett are sort

of thinking about this. So that. So in that sense, it was just a, I thought it was a little more definitive against us than was warranted. And I'm not, you know, I came out of, for example, the 2019 arguments in the cases, the Title VII cases, where the court ultimately ruled for us, 6-3, that to fire someone for being gay or transgender is a form of sex discrimination prohibited by federal law. I thought we might have lost that one, like 7-2. It's not. I didn't come out of that argument feeling great. We won 6-3. That similar thing happened where people didn't feel great after the argument.

It was very hard to tell. The thing that's even, you know, a little more confusing here is that Justice Gorsuch didn't ask any questions at all, which is very unusual, which means we have no idea how Justice Gorsuch feels about this. And he is a critical vote here because he's the person that wrote the 6-3 opinion in favor of the trans and gay workers in Bostock in 2020. That is fascinating.

I'm a little bit curious strategically, you hear a lot about organizations like the ACLU that are, or, you know, organizations on the right that are, you know, we'll put together a plan to bring an issue before the Supreme Court. And they generally do so strategically. We want to find the right case. We want to make sure we can win. We don't want a bad decision. You know, when I saw that this case was coming before the Supreme Court, my thought was, Ooh, I assume the Supreme Court's a little bit hostile here.

Is there a risk of a bad decision being a worse outcome than no decision? So I was hoping you could talk a little bit about what the reason is to bring this case at this time, and is there a benefit to doing so even if it goes the other way? Yeah, it's a great question. And I'll say it's always a hard decision. Do you fight a case going to the Supreme Court? Do you actively try to bring a case to the Supreme Court? I will say in this context, we were looking at a country

where half the country had banned this health care for trans adolescents. So it was a pretty dire map. We certainly didn't strategically decide to target this context. We were reacting to the dire circumstances that our community was facing. And that was, of course, the impetus

for filing the initial lawsuits that we filed. And there were many of them across the country. I think, importantly, in that first wave of litigation, we won every single case that we filed, including the ACLU had seven cases. We won multiple cases case that we filed, including, you know, the ACLU had seven cases. We won multiple cases at the lowest court, the district court, including in front of multiple Trump appointed judges. So the judges who have been closest to the evidence, that heard the evidence, uniformly for the first year, struck down these bans.

And then in 2023, the appeals court started to rule against us. And they did so in such devastating decisions that from my perspective, we needed to fight that precedent. And it was increasing the decisions against us. And the consequences of that were felt most immediately, of course, on the trans youth and their families because these laws went into effect. But the precedents were there, you know, to embolden state legislatures to start targeting, you know, public restrooms, to start targeting health care for adults. And they did so. And so we, I think, had a very difficult decision to make. But the cost of just letting all of these adverse decisions stand and not going to the Supreme Court was

to signal to the community that these were right, and they absolutely were not, and also to leave in place these material harms. And so we thought we have a better chance of getting the five at the Supreme Court, and we certainly win or lose, wanna continue the forward momentum of showing people that we're going to fight, of showing people that this is the right thing to do.

And obviously, if you have an adverse decision from the United States Supreme Court, that is precedent for the whole country. That is a very serious thing. But in this case, the question was, can states ban this care? If the Supreme Court says yes, devastating as that is, and it depends how they say it, of course, but 25 states already do ban the care. Every state that wants to does.

So we do sort of as a practical matter, stay in the place that we're in. Now with Trump coming in, the stakes are even higher because we'll see these things federally. It will have an impact on that. But I'm of the view that you look at your clients, you look at the community, you look at where you're headed, and you try to choose the path that you think will improve the conditions the most. And that's what we did.

And win or lose at the Supreme Court, we'll keep fighting. Because also a win at the Supreme Court doesn't give you everything you need. Look at Brown v. Board of Education, look at Roe v. Wade, you're always in the fight. And so I think that's how I'm looking at the future. And I think the, you know, the forces of liberalism or the forces of, you know,

folks who want to see more inclusion and acceptance in society, our reliance on the courts for the past decades has not been the best strategy. The idea that the courts are always going to have the backs of minorities who are seeking more rights was maybe a little bit of a blip in the past century rather than something that we could rely upon.

And so, I think we should have a recognition that the fight is going to be throughout all of our society in every arena, and the courts are just one of them at this point. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would say that a legal opinion and a popular podcast are like maybe on equal footing in terms of their influence. Like, I, yeah.

You're right, Chase. Your appearance here is more important than the Supreme Court, and I appreciate I, yeah. You're right, Chase. Your appearance here is more important than the Supreme Court. And I appreciate you saying so. Yeah. You know, look, I don't make the rules. You know, I think if you look at the 2024 election, I think baby podcasts may have had a greater role

than Supreme Court precedent. And the changing media climate is a very real one in terms of how people's idea of what the law is is changing changing. And what is the law if not what people think it is? Because that, you know, if we're regulating ourselves or if we're acting in accordance with what we believe is true, that's as much a control over our collective than anything else. And I actually do think we need to take really seriously the idea that the, the, we're producing the law all the time. We're producing our reality all the time in these conversations,

and that's why we see the world that we do. And so actually, it is this exchange that we're having that's gonna be the most meaningful, I think. Oh my, well that's far too kind of for you to say, especially when you are, again, doing historic work arguing for civil rights before the Supreme Court in the long American tradition of doing so, you know, I mean, look, Thurgood Marshall famously did so,

and then later became a Supreme Court justice and weighed in on these cases. So that's part of the, you know, that is what you are doing right now, what you have been doing in the court system. What is that like? Do you ever, what is that like? Do you ever look around and going like, man, this is fucking sick.

We are actually making history, even though it's a horrible time, right? And so for horrible reasons, what's your emotional reaction to being a part of that story? Yeah, I think there's moments where I let things sink in and sort of try to conceptualize where we are in a longer arc. But most days, I think that what matters to me

is sort of how are we doing? How are we doing for our people? How are people feeling? And are we doing our job in the way that it needs to be done? And that is definitely at the forefront of my mind. And when it came to the argument itself, I had to really tune out the noise, really focus on the on the task at hand, not think about people's narrative ideas about what my role was or wasn't, what it represented or didn't, because I had a job to do. And it was really

important to do it well, especially when there was so much scrutiny on it. So I've really tried to stay grounded. And also, you know, I got to stay a little bit compartmentalized because the work that I do directly implicates my life and the lives of people around me. And so, I really try to just stay focused, connect with the people who are part of my actual community and sort of... People project all sorts of weird things onto you when you have even the smallest platform. And I get the weirdest messages and like,

maybe just don't think about me so much or don't think about other people. Just focus on yourself. Cause one of the hard parts about all this is just like a huge amount of mean, cruel, sometimes scary hate gets directed at you. And that's when I think about sort of antecedents. Like, you know, I know that Justice Marshall had to, when he was an advocate, you know, have armed security with him. People were also trying to stop many other forms of change

that made them uncomfortable, including with violence. And we have increasingly been confronted with what happens when you go try to litigate a civil rights case that people don't want to see litigated, try to make change that people don't want to see happen. They do act violently and it is scary. And certainly the people in my life didn't choose to be around this. And so I don't want that to sort of ricochet into my world. And so I think those moments are sort of some of the most haunting, into my world. And so I think those moments are sort of some of the most haunting where I'm like, I'm just, you know,

just a person doing a job for the people I care about. And the amount of energy people seem to have to worry about other people's lives and decisions is somewhat unnerving. And I think it's just a sort of symptom of a larger problem that we're looking at in this country. That was a very gracious answer to, or description of what it's like to do your job

under the threat of bigoted violence. And it's, yeah, I can't thank you enough for doing it. I wanna talk a little bit longer about what we see coming down the pipe. One of the things I've noticed again with the incoming Trump administration and the things I've noticed again, with the incoming Trump administration and the cultural shift against trans people, the shift away from tolerance seems to be a shift

towards overt punishment and attacks of trans people. When I look at, you know, the changes that happened at Metta, at Facebook over the past couple of weeks, not only are they rolling back protections for trans people on their platform, they are literally, in internal documents, allowing specific forms of bigoted speech, I would say hate speech in many cases.

They're like, oh, here's something very hateful and bigoted and harmful that you can say. They are removing gender-neutral bathrooms. They are like removing gender neutral bathrooms. They are doing more than they have to to appease the right. They really seem to be looking to aggressively punish trans people or someone at Facebook has put those policies in place. Maybe the, I believe there's a former like MMA person

who's like on the board now or whatever the fuck. You know, it's really turned in that direction. So it has made me very concerned about, you know, what is the Trump administration gonna do in their first couple days? And I'm curious if you have any fears, if you have any guesses of what we're gonna see coming down the pipeline in just the first year

of that administration, what are they gonna try to do? Yeah, it is alarming what we're seeing on the private sector just the first year of that administration. What are they going to try to do? Yeah, it is it is alarming what we're seeing on and on the private sector, obviously from government. And it's it's a little bit hard to predict, because what you hear from from Trump himself is I'm going to end transgender insanity. That's his big his big phrase. And that's what some of his cabinet nominees have also said with respect to their respective agencies.

And that has no obvious legal meaning. Some of his cabinet nominees have also said with respect to their respective agencies, and that has no obvious legal meaning. That is just pure rhetorical, flourish, harmful as it is. It doesn't give you a map of how you're going to do that in your warped idea of what needs to be done, which I think is one of the many problems of sort of anticipating life under a Trump administration. It's very deliberately designed to be unpredictable, to be chaotic. And so I guess first I would say my approach has been to stay measured and and sort of not feed into the chaos because I think there is a sort of tendency towards chaotic

reaction to a chaotic environment, which makes sense. But it creates more problems than it than it solves. And I think a lot of what we're going to see, especially in the first week, is going to be unclear, confusing, and not well thought out. And it's, of course, characterized the majority of the first term. So that may just be what we see for four years. But in that beginning period, I imagine we'll see some sort of effort to ban trans service members from the military. He has made that very clear.

It is a concrete thing he did in his first term. I imagine he will do something similar here. And it is something that, as the executive, he could do so relatively easily, as a matter of sort of attempting to do it. Obviously, the repercussions of it are horrific. It's hugely costly to the American public. But of course, it is so cruel to the individuals

who have been serving, who now potentially lose their current employment, not to mention their long-term benefits. We're just now seeing Biden pardon the individuals who are dismissed for the homosexual conduct in the past. So we have a horrible history here, and I think it's gonna be repeated, it's gonna be repeated swiftly,

and it's gonna be horrible. I think it's gonna be repeated, it's gonna be repeated swiftly, and it's gonna be horrible. I think we're gonna see some early effort to restrict access to healthcare for people of all ages in terms of gender-affirming medical care through some sort of restriction on federal funding. And there's lots of different ways that could play out, but it will have very significant consequences. I think we're gonna see some sort of very vague,

there are only two genders and they are defined at birth, executive order that I would caution people to read into the actual legal effects of because it is going to be a lot more about Trump's idea than it is going to be legally enforceable. And so we're going to wait and see how those harms play out. And then of course we'll sue when they are implemented. And then there's things that I just don't know

what they're gonna try to do. Are they gonna try to go outside Congress when they really do need to go through Congress? Are they gonna do things like try to have a, you know, sort of federal, don't say gay, don't say LGBT law that is modeled after what DeSantis did in Florida? There's gonna be a lot.

And I think we can look to places like Florida and Texas to see what's happened at the state level to then see what's gonna happen at the federal level. So it's very scary. People are understandably nervous. They're making preparations. But I would also say that we have, throughout history, trans people in many communities

have survived through unthinkable and intolerant, intolerable conditions. And we will do so here and we will take care of each other. You look at, again, I come back to moments of crisis. People come together, they do. Human beings, as negative as I feel, when I look at some of our human beings in leadership, when I look at the people around me,

I think, wow, we can do incredible things. And I think that's what will happen. Yeah, I really hope so as well. And the degree to which, you know, the queer community stands up for each other has always been so inspiring to me. I was at a... On New Year's Eve, I was at a gay bar downtown, and the drag performer on stage gave an inspiring speech

to a couple hundred people of, we are a strong queer community. We're gonna get through this together. We're not going anywhere. And then everybody continued getting super fucked up and celebrating. It was really fun and really a powerful moment to be there knowing what's coming down the pipe,

but I can't help but be very worried. I wanna pose one scenario to you. This is sort of where my mind has been going is what I'm worried about is gender affirming care of all kinds for adults going down the same road that abortion went down in America, where even here in California, because of the Hyde Amendment and other laws,

reproductive care is not normal care. You can, you know, you can't just it should just be routine medical care. You should be able to get it from any place. Instead, you have to go to a specialized clinic in most of America because, you know, they're not eligible for federal funds, yada, yada, yada. There's been this sort of, through multiple legal mechanisms, we're gonna push this particular form of medical care, which is technically legal, to the side

and just make it more difficult to get. And gender care for years has been routine medical care, and I'm worried about them pushing it in that direction. I have multiple friends who rely on, you know, those hormones, etc. And that being taken away from people en masse or just being restricted, again, even in states that would normally try to protect it, seems like a real threat to me. I'm curious how you feel about it.

It's a very real threat. It is very real. We're going to see some some amount of federal funding restrictions, which which means that it could look a lot like Hyde, which is the ban on federal funds going to abortion services. Or it could be even broader. You know, some states have gone so far as to say that you can't receive federal funding for any purpose if you, in any context,

treat people with gender-affirming care. So there's a lot on the table that would be catastrophic for the provision of care to trans people, as you note, of all ages. Some trans people have probably been relying on this care for 40, 50 years, could end up having it severely curtailed. And that's just, if you think about the differences

between the access to this care and abortion is that there are ways, not to say that these are tolerable circumstances for abortion, it is absolutely intolerable, but we have been able, and you know, with huge costs and not for many, many people, to at least get people the care in the one-off circumstances and the aftercare that they need.

Now, of course, there are complications, there are other things that have happened as the deaths, the preventable deaths that people have shown. But for the individuals who need this care, who are trans, you know, a lot of it is going to be lifelong, consistent care. You simply can't just like go to, you know, Canada or Colombia to get the care. Right. You know, and so it is not a one-off circumstance. It is ongoing and there will not be easy workarounds. And I will say that, you know,

the reality of trans people accessing healthcare has been off and underground for a very long time in a variety of different circumstances because we've been pushed underground in so many circumstances. And that is not a good way to administer healthcare. Adophan has, you know, the effects of anything that goes underground,

but it also means that people do find a way, which is, it's so, you know, it effects of anything that goes underground. But it also means that people do find a way, which is it's so, you know, it's, it's so counterintuitive that you think that to even suggest that you're going to improve health by banning health care. It's just it's ridiculous, only, you know, really such a United States thing to do. And and that it does have these these adverse health consequences, which includes lack of oversight, people getting hormones that are not safe. And people will do it and people will get the help they need. And so it's sort of, I want to sort of recognize that this is so dire and this is so catastrophic. And also, as everyone has shown throughout history, is people find a way and people will

continue to find a way. You can't stop people from being who they are. You can make it very difficult. You can actually, you can stop people by killing them. And we've seen that. But you're not gonna take away transness from history, from our society. It just cannot be done.

And so, you know, in that sense, they're embarking or continuing a losing project. Yeah, and let me ask about that on a historical level. I know we've had you for a while, but this will be my last question before we wrap up, I promise, but you raised such a good point that the political project of coming out for gay Americans, beginning in the last part of the last century

or the last couple of decades, was so politically powerful, right? It was a slow drip of, hey, we're here, we're here, we're here, until I would have to say most Americans probably have an out gay friend of some sort and they're like, ah, I'm gonna fuck with my friend Dave. I work with Dave or whatever.

And you can talk about Will and Grace and all the other shit in the media too, but I think it's just that lived reality of I know gay people. Now for me, just as a cis person walking around, the number of trans folks I know who came out in the last 10 years has grown enormously. That coming out process has been more recent.

And now we're seeing the backlash to it, as we did in the 90s for gay Americans. And so I'm hopeful that what we're seeing the backlash to it, as we did in the 90s for gay Americans. And so I'm hopeful that what we're seeing is just, hey, the process has to play out again. Trans people need to come out and live as who they are. There are trans people in every state in the country. I travel the country as a standup comic. And the number of trans folks who come to see me in Texas, in Indianapolis, you know,

places like that, you know, places like that, you know, it is very clear that folks are there. And so my hope is, hey, over the next decades, that process is gonna work again, and we're gonna see that acceptance happen somewhat naturally. I'm curious if you share that optimism. Yeah, well, I do share the optimism in the sense that,

that I think it is inevitable. And I sort of have two sort of general thoughts. And the first is that, as I said, I'm 42. My first elections and political sort of adult experiences were from 2000 to 2008. And that was a time when gay people were blamed for everything. It was the entirety of the George W. Bush era was that it was because of support and sort of too far of a shift on the left to support gay people.

And that's why we had George Bush. And that's why you had the constitutional amendments, banning gay marriage. They drove out the right. And that's why we lost in 2000 and 2004. That was my political awakening, and I was this young queer person being like, oh, shit, this doesn't look good for me.

And it really didn't look good at the time. It was unthinkable to me that I would have sort of like, that being gay would be something that you could just bring with you in a lot of places. And you can't lot of places. And you can't, of course, everywhere. And there is a backlash to queerness as well. But there was a dramatic shift.

And I was definitely on the left in terms of my critiques of the mainstream demands of the LGBT movement and this sort of demand for inclusion through marriage, military service, and these sort of more assimilationist institutions. And I still critique that in many ways. And at the same time, I recognize that it fundamentally changed the country. And now if you talk to gay, if you talk to straight people who will claim that they've

always been supportive of, they will claim they've always been supportive of gay marriage, and they absolutely have not. People have completely, you know, changed the memories of themselves. And that's, and so that's how far far we've come that people have not only changed as a country, but people had changed their own idea of what they thought in 2000 and 2010. Yeah, even Barack Obama's probably going, I was for gay marriage the whole time. Exactly, exactly. Completely.

Like totally campaigned on it. So, you know, I think there's, there's that. And I think we just have to remember that that things feel, you know, and I'll also just, you know, sort think there's that. And I think we just have to remember that, that things feel, you know, and I'll also just, you know, sort of go even further back. In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled that it was perfectly constitutional to criminalize same-sex sex. Yes.

Like that was not that long ago. That was, you know, I was born, you know, and that was seen as a just catastrophic setback. The Supreme Court says, you know, of course you can make gay sex a crime. That's pretty bad. And yet, you know, 17 years later, the Supreme Court reverses itself in Lawrence in 2003. It says, you know, Bowers, which was that case, was wrong, is wrong today, was wrong when it was decided.

And so these things do change. And so that's one sort of general reaction. And the other is that at the end of the day, you know, we have this sense that we just have to help people be okay with us. And that is true to an extent. And then also, I think we also just have to really just assert that however people feel about us,

we're okay with ourselves. And going back to sort of the beginning of our conversation, which is like, just stand in your principles, stand in your certainty of who you are. My life has just become so much better in my adulthood when I stopped waiting for someone else to say they're okay with me and for me to find the process to be okay with myself.

And I think that that is a lesson for everyone because so much of the instability is people just looking for validation when they haven't yet sort of found it within. Can I tell you something that moves me so much that you just said that? And one of the reasons I treasure so much being in community with trans folks,

the trans friends that I have, I treasure so much, is that every single one of them has said to some extent, hey, you know what, I know who I am. I'm not who you thought I was, or I'm not who I was told I was. This is who I am, and I'm gonna be that person at sometimes great personal cost, right? At financial cost, at social cost, at professional cost,

I'm gonna be who I am. And that is such a powerful thing to do. And it is so powerful to be around people who have made that decision and that transformation. It's inspiring to me for me to live who I, who has, as I think I am. It's just, it's so not just personally powerful, it's politically powerful, it's socially powerful.

It's such a profound thing to do. I think it's undeniable. And I think the more people do it, the more it's gonna transform our society. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I personally think like what a gift transness is. It's if not to look in every single thing in the world is telling you you cannot be something.

And that if you embody this thing, you know you are, you will be punished. You may be punished by your parents, by your family, by your school, by your work, by the entirety of this societal structure. And yet you are so certain that you cannot deny it. And that is a gift. That is a type of freedom that people are terrified of,

which I think is another reason going back to why this fixation on transness, that people are scared of that amount of freedom, that the box they were put into, that they should have questioned it. Such a certain box as male or female that is the organizing structure of society, transness is disarming for people

who have not asked themselves some fundamental questions or are afraid to. And I would say that we're all more liberated when we ask ourselves the hard questions. And that's just, that is just true. And I will say as, even as a trans person who's gone through this, I look at, so I was very moved by the film, Will and Harper,

and the documentary about Harper Steel coming out, Will Ferrell going on this road trip. And you look at someone like Harper, and she had lived most of her life just in pain, and especially for the last 10 years. And what you're telling people to do is stay hurt and lost and in pain if you're saying you can't be who you are.

And that's just a universal story. And so I would say that, you know, we are gonna be better off if we give more space to everyone that we love and everyone that we know and everyone that we're proximate to, to find the most joyful, authentic version of themselves to embody and inhabit in the world. That is so beautiful.

You're making me emotional at the end of this episode. I wanna ask, you know, for those listening, you say, you know, this is something that we all need to stand up for, right? We all need to be standing up for trans rights, especially at a moment when so much of the parts of society that we hoped would stand up for trans folks are abdicating that responsibility.

How can we be standing up for each other right now? What are the most important steps that we can take? So I will start with just the real sort of personal, everyone can do at all time step, which is just make more room for people to be who they are in your life. It is something that, you know, it's an everyday thing. It's sort of, it's to not be reflexively uncomfortable is something that you are not familiar with. It's to give pause when someone

is telling you something about themselves, because this is, this is actually the work. Because at the end of the day, the reason why anti-trans sentiment has been able to flourish is because in every micro interaction, people have legitimized it. They then say, oh, it is weird actually to think, I don't know about this sports thing or I don't know about this healthcare. Or when in any other context,

we would use different critical faculties, going back to the healthcare point. And so I think this is just something we can all do. Stop the person from being a dick. Sort of create more space for people. Don't let someone make a joke about trans people. That's not even a good joke. Come on, let's be better.

And I think that is actually a huge part of the change that's needed because it's very much a cultural change. Going back to the gay marriage and the gay movement analogy, we moved through changes in how people interacted in our lives. And that then was reflected in policy changes. So first and foremost, make those changes in how people interacted in their lives. And that then was reflected

in policy changes. So first and foremost, make those changes in the world around you. That's sort of number one. Number two, sort of in engage on the local, state and federal level. There are so many anti-trans things happening in school boards. I'm fighting my own my child's school board in Manhattan, New York, where you have Moms for Liberty people that have taken over at past anti-trans resolutions who are trying to make parents My Child's School Board in Manhattan, New York, where you have Moms for Liberty people that have taken over at past anti-trans resolutions who are trying to make parents anxious about the rise in trans people in schools.

Wow. And they're in LA. There we, I and I have friends who are also fighting in LA. So be aware. Like, you know, it's a thing that the politics that impact our lives the most are things like, who is your fire commissioner? Who is your district attorney?

Who is your mayor? Who is on your school board. These are things we can all engage in more robustly and not just pay attention every four years and we have a presidential election every two years when we're voting for our member of congress. And then for most people, most people will live in a state that introduces some number of anti-trans bills, even the states that won't pass them. And we need to show just a fortified response to them. We have for too long, you know, let so many things just roll through. And even if they are going to pass, speak out, get people to show up because the lawmakers do respond to their constituents. The constituents just don't engage enough. And so we need that engagement. And then I would say, we are going

to be in a moment of crisis when it comes to people's access to healthcare with people's access to go, you know, go into public buildings, be redistributive, use your power to help someone go into a public building and go to the restroom and be by their side. Support someone's GoFundMe to get access. We basically are now, you know, GoFundMe stepped in for the government, we can say in a whole range of contexts. And, you know, instead of having, you know, systemic care, we're just going to go fund-me's. It's so dark. But that is going to be the way, like, and it does make a difference. Fund people, go fund-me's, because that's how they're going to stay alive. And as we continue to fight these political battles and just be open and be good, you know, kindness goes a long way. And I'm not really, I don't mean to be, you know,

sort of Pollyanna about it. It actually means a lot when people just approach people as a peer, as a friend, as a possible colleague or comrade. So do that. Chase, I cannot thank you enough for coming on the show. And more importantly, I can't thank you enough for fighting so vocally and so powerfully for all the trans folks across the country,

kids and adults who need protection for friends of mine, friends I'm in community with. It's just, it's so meaningful, really meaningful to have you on the show, to be able to talk about this historic work you're doing. And the moment we're all facing. I just thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Adam. It was great.

It was great. Happy to be here. Oh, wait, let's end here. Is there someplace you can direct people, where can they learn more about your work? Where can they follow you? All that sort of thing. Oh, my, so ACLU, you know, follow the ACLU, ACLU nationwide, on Instagram,

and follow everything that ACLU is doing. We're getting ready for a Trump and then follow me, Chase Strangio on different platforms. And also one of the things I hope to do is help people have clear information about what we're seeing, especially in the first few weeks of the chaotic Trump administration. Chase, thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks so much. Well, my God, thank you once again to Chase Strangio for coming on the show. I can't thank him enough. What an incredible conversation. If you value this conversation and all the conversations we bring you every single week, head to patreon.com slash Adam Convert to support the show. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free. For 15 bucks a month, I will read your name at the end of the show and put it in the credits

of every single one of my video monologues this week. I'm choosing some names at random. I want to thank Sean Garrison, Kevin Sosa, Raghav Kaushik, Siri Dal, Glenn, Jason Nelson, Hayden Matthews, and Eric Zegar. Thank you so much for supporting the show. Patreon.com slash Adam Conover. If you'd like to join them. I also want to thank my producers, Sam Roudman and Tony Wilson, everybody here

at HeadGum for making the show possible. Thank you so much for listening. Once again, my tour dates, adamconover.net to come see me in Toronto, Omaha, Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston. We're going to have a blast. See you there. Thank you so much for listening. adamconover.net for those tickets and tour dates and I'll see you out on the road. That was a HeadGum Podcast.

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