It Could Happen Here - From Anti-Satanic Crusaders to Congresswoman: Tracing an Anti-Trans Harassment Campaign

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

Mia talks with LA trans artist Precious Child about how she was the target of a series of anti-trans harassment campaigns against her art culminating in Congresswoman Nancy Mace censoring her work. https://preciouschild.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show, which means he's also back in our ears on The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Join late night legend John Stewart and the best news team for today's biggest headlines, exclusive extended interviews and more. Now this is a second term we can all get behind. Listen to The Daily Show Ears Edition on the iHeartRadio app, apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast increasingly about it having happened. We have spent a long time on this show talking about what the second Trump administration is going to mean for trans people and go listen to those episodes. The short version is that it's going to be very, very bad. We're facing care bans, we're facing federal funding bans.

Things are about to get unbelievably bleak. But this campaign didn't come out of nowhere. It is the combination of almost a decade's worth of fighting by the right. And I think we have a tendency to treat the rights campaign against trans people as something abstract, right? As a sort of abstract political debate. as something abstract, right? As a sort of abstract political debate. Or even if it affects us, we tend to treat the subjects, the immediate subject of the harassment as sort of these distant famous figures.

But the issue with looking at it this way is that this harassment, the hatred, the violence is happening to real people with real names and faces who live lives exactly like yours. The difference between you sitting in your house right now and someone whose face is on TV is about the difference between whether a few right-wing journalists discover who you are. So today we're going to be talking to someone who has been subject to almost the entire spectrum and range of the sort of emergent far right campaign against trans

people who has seen basically the entire campaign against trans people evolve specifically in the far right harassment against them. And that person is the artist and musician Precious Child out of LA. Welcome to the show. I wish it was under better circumstances. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Mia. Glad to be here. Yeah, and I'm excited to talk to you. I'm slightly apprehensive in the sense that, my god, this stuff sucks. But... Oh, you know, it's our lives.

What can we do? Yeah. What will we do? Well, yes, that's the question for the end of the episode is what are we going to do about all of this shit. But let's go back to sort of the beginning. Can you sort of talk about your first encounter with, I guess at that point, what was a not especially mainstream part of the religious right back in around 2018?

Yeah. So I've been I've been making music as Precious Child for almost a decade. And it was my very first album that I put out, one called Trapped that had this track on it titled Phantom. And that was an instrumental track with just some kind of whispery vocals. It wasn't a song per se, it was experimental. And I put on a music video with it and it was pretty it's pretty creepy And there's flashing lights, you know, if you think of movies from the 80s like hellraiser It's kind of like that, you know, like kind of

evocative of some type of greater supernatural horror and the far right At that time the far right vintage 2018 they found it and started reporting it on mass and tagging their friends and saying report this report this and this was on Instagram and Facebook and on YouTube as well and that video like as I said it said, it, you know, it's creepy, but it's, there's nothing political in it. And there's a little bit of like, of blood, but there's no gory. But if they found it unsettling and explicitly satanic, that's what they said. It's a satanic.

And that was my first brush with the right. Yeah. And that's really interesting to me that it's specifically the satanic angle that they're taking because it's like it's like in this early enough phase that they're still sort of developing their reasons to be angry. They haven't quite like metastasized transphobia as like they're driving things. So they're kind of they're reaching back into this kind of satanic panic era, like the weird nineties and 2000s stuff that like, when I was growing up, the town that I grew up with super religious and like, you know, we had to have lists

of like, if you were inviting like a friend in high school to a party, whose parents could know that it was a Halloween party and whose parents couldn't because they would freak out of a witch. It's like that kind of thing, which I don't know. It feels like almost quaint now, even as the stuff's escalated. Yeah, it was, as you said, it was a moral panic and their point was that I was amoral for making art like this. And this is the same thing that's happening today. I'm a moral for the art that I make. And it's not just my art, but it's me. It's me. And I think that's perhaps what has changed as well. Like, before they were saying that

this is a satanic evil person because they're making this art, and now they're saying this is a satanic evil person making satanic evil art Yeah, and I think part of the focus on art here right is this kind of mirrored reflection of The sort of I mean of the original Nazis right like one of their big things was just like cracked out on quote-unquote degenerate art and they had like These like quote-unquote degenerate art festivals of just like Jewish artists and people whose art they didn't like and it was you know like what a thing that

was like a significant factor in their rise and I think there's a sort of mirror of it here but I don't know starting in a weirder place in some ways like starting more out of this very very weird out of this very, very weird, like Christian moral panic shit. That's, I guess, if you want to look at how this, you know, plays out, like that's kind of where it is in like 2018, right? This is the first bathroom bill has been passed by 2018 with Carolina, but there's, you know,

there's a huge backlash to it. And that's something that's, I think very different than now where like all of this anti-trans shit is happening and everyone's just kind of going, eh. So do you want to talk about the second time you became a target of the far right? Yeah, I mean, realistically, like, this has been pretty constant throughout my life as a public artist. And there was another track on that album that was also targeted,

one called titled My Little Problem, Violet Door. That has some more provocative imagery than the track Phantom. It has some nudity and that was a collaboration between myself and an artist who is trans themselves, Kate, out of Brazil. And that has, again, some body horror in it. There's commentary about gender norms and plastic surgery and identity, but it wasn't explicitly political. Again, it was kind of a surreal body horror video and that was Brigade reported not in 2018 but in 2019 and actually taken down from YouTube and then reinstated and that video is notable because as a result of what's going on today YouTube took that down despite it being up for for five years with without the problem. I'd had tens of thousands of years and now it's gone.

So that was the second time. Yeah. That one I think is interesting too in the sense of like, that one's like a lot more, it's more overtly trans and it's also I think the more trans you are, the more very obviously trans it is. And this is, I guess, something that's very common among trans artists, is this kind of like art that's an exploration of sort of body horror. And, you know, I mean, I'm not going to project onto it. I don't know if this is what you specifically are doing, but like, you know, there's a lot of it that's body horror as this sort of

metaphor for dysphoria and like as this way of sort of thinking about the things that are happening to your body, things that have been done to your body and the things that you're doing back to it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, I didn't really think too much about the concepts in that direction when I made it or when, or I know K didn't either too much about the concepts in that direction when I made it, or when NNOK didn't either at that time. However, the truth is, for much of my young life, I felt out of body, and I wanted my flesh to match my personal vision of myself and my identity. And that was something I struggled with for quite a long time. When I was young, I didn't have access to the information and communities that are out there now that support trans people. And I have had some gender confirming procedures done, but not as many as I think I would have

when I was younger. I did feel existential discordance. And I don't know if that's a word, but if it's not, I'm going to coin it because I didn't feel in concordance with my flesh. And so I came to experiment with the boundaries were of my fleshy identity and my existence in my art. Yeah. I think there's something about the way that your art works and the way that a lot of queer artists are where there's,

and this isn't to say that all queer artists like this, there's definitely an edge to it. There's stuff going on, there's body horror things happening, there's like 80s aesthetic-y stuff. I think it conflicts with this weird, concave, everything is like happy and cozy, sort of kitsch aesthetic thing that a lot of like this kind of fascism is really into.

They use a kind of aesthetic sensibility as a weapon to go after stuff that they oppose for more overtly political reasons. They can do this kind of like, hey, look at this disgusting thing, etc, etc. Kind of attack on queer art. As a result of this kind of like fascist kitsch aesthetic thing that's kind of like this, you know, the sort of like cultural norm in our society. And I think I haven't 100% worked out the political

implications of this, but I think there's this kind of connection between their weaponization of like revulsion and their weaponization of this reaction to like anything that's kind of like horror that they kind of like use as the political attack. Yeah, you know, I think gender is horrifying period. Yeah, not just for queer people, but also for cis people like, I'm going to defend cis people here for a second. So cis people struggle with gender dysphoria I think maybe I would say every bit as much as trans people that but they sure as fucking struggle with it Yeah, for instance an example I will give is facial hair Lots of people that were assigned male at birth they fret fret and worry over their facial hair. Is it too much? Is it too little?

Then people that are assigned female at birth, if they have facial hair, they fret over it. Will people see it? Do I have to bleach it? Do I have to pluck it? People fret over their freaking jaw lines. If you search online masculine jaw line, how do I get? There's a huge community out there of assigned male at birth cis men that are trying to get more defined jawlines because they feel that their genetics are presenting them as a non-optimal

male, quote unquote. And of course, same thing for, quote unquote, females. Like, do I have the female feminine body? Is it curvy enough in the right ways? Is my waist slim enough? No. Am I just brick shaped? And then all the industries around that.

And that I think is horrifying. And everyone goes through that and struggles with it. And very few people are lucky enough to embody the ideals of gender that we thrust upon ourselves. And to me, that is a tragedy. Yeah, and I think that sort of like fear and that sort of like grinding experience of being forced to like perform a gender in a certain way. Well, okay, I'm not gonna say perform

because the Butler scholars are gonna get extremely mad at me. But the way in which you're forced to sort of live up to these standards that are sort of nonsense. I think it gets to this thing where, you know, you could either sort of like muddle through it and try to ignore the distance as much as you can. You can attempt to fight it or you can get extremely bad at everyone else who's trying to do something about it. And I think we're seeing an explosion of the last option. Yeah.

Unfortunately, we need to go to ads, which is another thing that drives a whole bunch of this. Luckily, these are audio ads. So hopefully, they're not driving beauty standards. But who knows? Ad people are wizards. They'll find a way. Brought to you by Maybelline.

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Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by I Heart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturne, Tales from the Shadows. And we are back. I mean, I guess the Washington State Highway Patrol does

enforce gender norms on people. Oh, God. They sure do. May I give another example of hideous gender norms? Yeah. So you, listener, you're hearing me, right? And you're hearing my voice. And this is another thing that all people fret about. It's not just trans people. Lots of AFABs I know. I'm just going to say AFAB and AMAB, okay?

Lots of AFABs I know. You know, they have pretty darn deep voices naturally. And I've talked with them privately and they say that they worry about how husky their voice is when they just relax. And then same thing for AMABs. They talk about worrying if their voice is when they just relax. And then same thing for AMAPs that talk about worrying if their voice is squeaky and then talk like a fricking wrestler from WWE, you know, like people, people like the cis people struggle with that too. Just, so, you know, just something as simple as our appearance and our voice, you know, we're just torturing ourselves.

And ultimately, I gotta say, Mia, you know, I'm a trans woman. However, ultimately, I'm a gender abolitionist, because this shit sucks. Yeah. It's not great. It's not a good time for anyone involved. Yeah. Speaking of bad times, this isn't even an ad pivot, I just do this now. It's really bad. I do it to people my daily life. And they're like, why are you ad pivoting me? And I'm like, Oh God. But yeah, I guess God, this and the sort of racialization aspect and I don't know, sort of the aspect of zones of gender performance. God damn it, I keep saying performance,

and I literally mean that you were performing it as in you were acting and not the Butler thing of your performance to make it real. Please don't yell at me in the comments. I had I had the guy who wrote a writer on the Big Bang theory yelled at me specifically about that on Twitter one time, so now I'm paranoid. Oh no. It's really, okay sorry, I've out-railed this enough, partially because this next part is

really depressing, but. So a while back on this show, my co-host Garrison, who is, I don't know, probably having an absolutely terrible time at the Consumer Electronics Show right now, covered a specific far-right panic that became known as the Wee Spot Controversy. Do you want to talk about how the right stuck you into that shit because Jesus Christ? Yeah so you know in 2018 as I said I put out this album and then I put out another and I was touring the country and Canada and stuff doing shows pretty much constantly. And then 2020 happened and I became involved in the George Floyd uprising and the Black

Lives Matter marches and protesting. And so I began to live stream those protests and marches with the specific intent of contextualizing what the heck was going on on the streets to people watching because a lot of people, you know, regardless of their politics did not understand what the issues were and the thing is in LA there were a lot of like continual police murders even through the riots and by police murders I mean the cops shooting unarmed black people in the back as they were running away or Executions, you know shooting them in the car that that type of thing. Yeah, and So I was explaining that to the viewers like this is why people are in the streets

This is a specific issue. These are the laws surrounding it and why these actions by the police are not just horrifying They're also illegal. And so I was doing that and I became pretty darn visible and popular. Like, I was maybe one of the top five best known activists or racial justice voices. And I was targeted by a right-wing activist who was known for blocking the vaccination clinics at Dodger Stadium, specifically because I was visible, because I was trans. And so she went for me and posted and said that I was a transgender individual who was in the women's

spa of Wee Spa, and I was sexually harassing people. And that went viral on social media. It was covered on Fox News for a week. I was getting constant death threats and I was doxxed. It was pretty terrible, especially because I was not that person in the spa and I was only just picked up because I was picked up for my visibility My response to that was no I didn't immediately say yeah, it wasn't me. It wasn't me. Leave me alone. Leave me alone I didn't do that because I knew that if I said that then they would just pick and attack some other Transperson yeah, and you know, I know that like the shit that the that the right wing machine and acts, if it happens to one of us, it can happen to all

of us and it likely will. Yeah. And I mean, I think the thing that it reminds me the most something we've also covered on this. This is one of the problems with talking about this. It's like doing this for so long like, there's very few things that I can say that I can't be like, I've said this on the show before, but we've spent a lot of time, specifically Garrison's spent a lot of time covering the way that every time there's a mass shooter, the right immediately just, like, picks a random trans person

and goes, it was this person. And this reminds me a lot of the same thing, although this is a more targeted, like, we've invented a fake controversy about a trans person, then we're going to like also just pick a random famous trans, well not even famous, but like a random trans person that we know about and don't like. It's my understanding that this 2021 we spot a controversy that I was targeted for became something of a right wing playbook. It was after that that they started saying, oh, this and that person is trans. And before that, they didn't have a real moral panic around trans people, unless you look

all the way back to the North Carolina, South Carolina bathroom man. Yeah. I mean, I think I think there's an interesting intermediary thing to where so my friend Vicky asked a while who, depending on when this episode comes out, you will either you'll be hearing from either right before this episode or right after. I had another version of this where she wrote a book on the indefense of looting. It came out in 2020. And just for like three months became and just for like three months became, I don't know, two months, like became the like the giant figure

with which everyone who didn't like the uprising was just like taking shit out on. So like sitting congress people were like denouncing this book that you wrote. Every mainstream media outlet like specifically had their editorial people going like this book is evil, Vicky is evil. And I think that was also like this moment of deep connection

between the backlash of the uprisings and the anti-trans uprisings because the people who, you know, are trying to maintain a white supremacist gender system, like, intimately themselves, even if they don't understand it on a theoretical level, understand that these things are preserving the same systems of violence. And so they picked us as sort of like the wedge point to break this thing apart and I think With Vicky they hadn't really figured out how to do it And I think it was like specifically your case the the we spot like with you being put in as to figure that we spots

this is where they like actually really figured out how to do the whole thing. And yeah, there's just something really bleak about both how effective it was and the fact that it's like, these are just people. I don't know. Like this isn't the thing that's happening to sort of like abstract figures. It's just like, yeah, people I'm having conversations with are how they did this. Just, I don't know. I wish I had more analysis.

Yeah, I think that trans people like to greater America, to a lot of America I'll say, are sensational. You know, people imagine chicks with dicks and dudes without dicks. And so I think that's really exciting for a lot of people. You know, for better or for worse. I think for worse, but... Yeah. I think that's just like people and their bodies, right?

Like, you know, I guess some people walk around thinking all the time about other people's crotches. I'm not going to say that's a bad thing. Crotch sniffer is your scene. You know, but on the other hand, right, there's this, there's this aspect of which like, you know, there's this sensationalism, but then there's also the experience of being a trans person is like, I too am trying to find a way to not pay rent. Like that's like, I don't know.

Yeah. So back to, back to WeSpa. Yeah, that was a pretty terrible experience for me. I'm not gonna lie about it. You know, I, I'm glad that I stood up for myself. I'm glad I stood up for trans people that I didn't pass the buck. It was also really difficult and traumatic.

And I didn't appreciate the buck. It was also really difficult and traumatic. And I didn't appreciate the death threats. I didn't appreciate being doxxed. And people have come after me my whole life. I present, I think, just naturally, physically, like I present as being genderqueer. I've been pretty, like, veering, like, looking femme my entire life. That had nothing to do with my internal identity. I've been weird my entire life.

I've perpetually been curious and provocative and interested in things that were provocative. And so I've been harassed my whole life. However, until we spa and experienced strangers by the hundreds saying that they're gonna hunt me down and fucking shoot me Yeah, I never know if someone will recognize me when I'm out and be like, hey Buddy, I know you yeah, and it's one of these things where like the the more of a target on you the more Likely it is to happen and even people who don't have targets on them Like I know people, you know who've never experienced anything like this and have still just like had attacks on them and it's fucking terrifying it is an absolutely terrible way to have to live in a terrible sort of thing to have

to experience especially as it's just getting intensifying. So yeah that was that was 2021 and that changed me that experience of being targeted and just picked on out of the freaking blue, that changed me as an artist. Yeah. And at the same time, it also firmly established me as a sort of celebrity. And I want to speak to that because there's different tiers of celebrity. Yes.

At the at the top There's the tier that's known as I get a Christmas card from Tom Cruise every year yeah, and that's an actual thing and That's a list and you know, you're on the a list because Tom Cruise sends sends your Christmas card And at the bottom is me who's been in mass media many times now, but has none of the benefits. Yeah. I make very little money as an artist and I don't have an entourage. I can tour and I play some shows and some of them are sold out.

I'm playing a show in LA that's sold out, but I'm not playing large venues. I maybe play like 300, 500 capacity tops. And most of the places I play are like small clubs, like 150 or so. So I don't have the protection that most celebrities inherently have. I don't have book deals. I don't have movie deals. I don't even have an Asia. I don't even book deals. I don't have movie deals. I don't even have an Asia. I don't even have a record label

Yeah, so I'm the frickin D tier. I'm the D tier and They're coming after me Yeah, and it's I mean and that's the thing about the sort of like this status of like niche D tier internet micro celebrity Is like I don't like I feel like I got the best possible version of it where like I got a job that pays slightly. I think I might have hit. No, I'm still below, I'm still below the median salary of a CIS man in the US, but I'm approaching it. Okay. We're getting closer every year. Every union fight we approach median CIS man salary.

But like, yeah, the situation I got is effectively the equivalent of winning the trans lottery, right? Like this is about the best you could possibly hope for if you're a trans person and you get famous. Like, yeah, I mean, like I get that threats too, right? Like nothing anywhere near the scale that you get. And mostly what happens is like, I mean, like single digit numbers of trans people in the US have the kind of protection that actual celebrity gives you and everyone else, celebrity is just another, it's just a giant target painted on you. And yeah, so you have none of the benefits and all of the sort of, hey, here is 150 million

people who absolutely hate you and who have been primed and targeted like specifically at you. Yeah, it's something that I wonder about like, why? Why would they do something like this? Why would Fox News be talking about me? Why would the founder of the Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes, that old video about me? Proud Boys is a terrorist group, if you don't know, listener, they were recognized as a terrorist group by Canada, not here, because like, we're just cool with that shit here. They're white supremacist terrorist group. So why me? Why would a congress person come after me? And my own hypothesis is that they punch down because they secretly believe that they themselves are weak and attacking me, attacking people like me is a fight that they can win.

And my view is that it's not a fight that they can win because they've already lost. They're trying to get power in small ways, false ways in my opinion. They're trying to get money first of all. They want money. They want their views. They want their donations. And that's the entire top of the pyramid for them. And for me, I'm a fucking artist. And power is something that I've always been developing because I've sought to know myself. I've sought to understand who I am and why. That extends to myself as a queer person to come to understand myself, who I am as a queer person.

That's not something they'll ever have. So I've already fucking won. And same with all the other queer people that are under attack, all the other DCT or queer celebrities out there, we fucking won. Hopefully. And I think part of this is also like, the reason this campaign is happening is because

they're trying to stop the tide from coming in. And they saw how far in the tide had already come and now they're trying to like dam off the tide. And, you know, like probably it's not going to work, but the only way that it can is if everyone just like sits here, does nothing, it lets them just keep building and building and building more walls. It's something that is within our power to resist. sits here, does nothing, and lets them just keep building and building and building more walls.

It's something that is within our power to resist. We just have to actually do it, right? You have to actually organize. You have to talk to the people around you. You have to go get them to do things to resist this. And if we do, yeah, the things that we've already won, the things that we are going to win are going to stick. But if not, things are going to get really, really bad really quickly. And yeah. And speaking of things getting very bad very quickly, I care some more hats before we get back to things getting worse. Jon Stewart is back at The Daily Show and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Dive into John's unique take on the biggest topics in politics, entertainment, sports

and more. Joined by the sharp voices of the shows, correspondents and contributors. And with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed? Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by I Heart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters... ...to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturna, Tales from the Shadows as part of my cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. We are back. Yeah, you've been specifically targeted by a sitting US Congresswoman, Nancy Mace, who

is the person who, actually, I don't know if we talked about the bathroom stuff here yet, but she's the sort of person behind an attempt to get trans people to not be able to use the bathroom on Capitol Hill. She's become a leading anti-trans figure in Congress. Literally every single thing that she tweets about is about trans women and how they should be put in men's jails, which is just an incredibly cynical ploy to make a bunch of people get horribly raped and killed, which is one of the predominant things that happens when we get put in men's prisons.

And she specifically came after you. So you want to talk about how that happened and the latest sort of a congresswoman tweets and a fucking social media company does their bidding? Yeah. So right at the end of 2024, I think it was December 28th, I was doxxed by a right-wing troll Nazi that has doxxed multiple friends of mine, the activist friends, artist friends, and they pointed out in their in a tweet how my art was on YouTube, specifically my music videos were on YouTube calling for violence and how I was an evil trans person. And they added like at symbol YouTube and said that these videos are in violation of your terms of service. Why are they still up? And Nancy May saw that because if you look at her Twitter, it's all just, just docs and

trans people and perpetual like rage bait about the queer menace, the trans menace. And so she saw that and retweeted it and said, YouTube, this clearly violates your terms of service. Why haven't you done anything? And then immediately following that, my videos were taken down, the ones that were mentioned in these tweets. And as I said before, some, one of these videos, what was titled My Little Problem, that's been up for seven years. Yeah, like a real long time.

Yeah. And YouTube Terms of service, they're very clear. And I do my best to stay within YouTube terms of service, so my work doesn't get taken down. And they state that stuff like violence, minimal nudity, that is allowed within the context of art, within the context of music videos. And so my videos, you know, they weren't designed to, this is from the terms of service, within the context of music videos. And so my videos, you know, they weren't designed to, this is from the term as a service, they weren't designed to sexually titillate or gratify. That's exactly what it says in the terms. You know, they weren't recreations of real-life violence and they weren't real-life

violence, but they were still removed at the behest at the easy click press of Nancy Mace. Yeah. And I think there's a couple of things going on here. One of which is, so we've seen this with Facebook in the last, I guess when this comes out, it'll be like a week ago, but Facebook has instated policies that allow you to basically say slurs against queer people and allow you to basically say slurs against queer people and allow you to call people mental illnesses and stuff like that.

That's very specifically you can only do to queer people. You can't do it anyone else. And I think there's this sort of trend here of, I don't know, with Facebook, I wouldn't say that it's like compliance with the sort of new Trump regime because like, this is just your Facebook is right. Like they the Rohingya genocide like the genocide into Gray to that was also a Facebook thing. So they've always just been evil and Have been sort of looking for the excuse that they need to like drop the hammer on us but I think YouTube to some extent to what we're seeing right now is this kind of like mask coming off moment where people are realizing that

with Trump in power they can just drop the hammer on a queer artist because specifically like on a trans artist because now they have this sort of like backing to do this stuff and the right has you know realized that they can feel like YouTube take this video down and they'll do it. And that's a really terrifying precedent in a lot of ways. And also it's very, you know, it's like, yeah, obviously, supporting a hypocrisy does nothing. But like, I'm trying to think of a more explicit demonstration of censorship than a member of the government

says that something should be taken down, and it's taken down. It's like, It's really something. Yeah. It makes me kind of afraid, honestly, because before I was a victim of a moral panic and now my work is effectively being disappeared with little fanfare. So, you know, what's going to happen next? What will we see just made invisible and unseen? And I know that in this country, I have freedom of speech. But that's really bullshit. We all know that. Like, I'm not going to reach many people if I stand on a street corner at the park and yell at people. What matters nowadays is the freedom

of reach that these social media platforms control, that are themselves controlled now by the Republican Party. And what happens when our freedom of reach is annihilated and then suddenly, you know, trans people are actually invisible. We're very close to that, I think. Nancy proved that. Yeah. And then disappearing people from the mainstream is the first step for how you destroy a people.

Yeah, art is perhaps the loudest way a person can speak. And I know that's why she came after my art. There's something just incredibly galling about watching this whole thing happen. And then like the next tweet is again, a sitting member of the US government saying that trans women should be put in men's prisons. And it's like, okay, one of these is considered violence by sort of the media machine and one of them isn't. Yeah.

Does she even actually do work for the people of South Carolina? Like, all she does is like start shit with trans people. Like, she's just another lousy politician trying to be an entertainer. And she's just a knockoff Prada of a bootleg Trump. That's what she is. And she's not doing good on her fucking politics. Like she's tried to get this bathroom ban for disallowing trans people to use a bathroom at the US Capitol and her own freaking party kicked the bill out of the

out of the bylaws for this year, so she couldn't even get that and Yeah, so I guess she thinks you can get a get a get a win by harassing me Harassing my art. Yeah, try to get people to come after me You know, these people are not as powerful as they want you to believe, right? A lot of their stuff just fails. But they will only fail if people are willing to resist and people are willing to stop them. And that's the thing that's needed in this moment is organization is, you know, like is organization, it is action, it is it is now it is now the time to go do whatever political activity thing you've been being like, I should be organizing the

union, should I be like setting up strikes? Should I be doing street demonstrations? It's like, yep, it's time. It's time to go because otherwise, you know, and I think this is something that like, every trans person now understands intimately. And I think most people don't which is that right now It's us but you know in two years assuming we're all still alive there's a very good chance that it's going to be you like showing up on this show because a fucking congressperson is deliberately intervened to destroy your life and I would rather we had stopped this before it got to any of us, but

They're going to come for you too, unless we stop them. Thank you so much for coming on the show and where can people find you and find your art and yeah, support you. Yeah, thanks for having me. I really like talking with you. It's been very good. And listeners, you can find my work on Spotify. You can also check out my website at preciouschild.com.

And please sign up for my mailing list there as well. That is the best and best direct way for me to stay in touch with my friends and fans. I'm also precious child on Instagram, on TikTok. I am the last precious child on Instagram, on TikTok. I am the last precious child. I also will be doing live shows this spring and summer in the US. And so follow me on my website and on social media to stay up to date on that and come say hi in person. Hell yeah. We will have links to all of that in the description. So yeah, go check it out and resist the creep of fascism. There's one thing I want to add about, I said earlier about personal power and how I've

developed my own personal power by getting to know myself. I want to tell you trans people out there, your queer people and your allies, that first thing is getting to know yourself and then next thing is like, fuck these fucking laws, fuck these fucking lawmakers. Yeah. Good to know each other and strengthen our bonds with each other because those are bigger than any type of oppressive laws they may put upon us. And it's only by the strength that we develop

with each other, within each other, that we will persevere. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions.

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