It Could Happen Here - Life For Trans People Under Trump

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Gare and Mia discuss Trump's policies targeting trans rights, and how we can prepare to mitigate harm. Sources:https://diyhrt.wiki/https://www.glad.org/transgender-id-project-updating-your-passport/#ds-11 https://www.transjusticefundingproject.org/ https://www.transincomeproject.org/  https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/united-states-v-skrmetti/  https://thehill.com/homenews/3839471-trump-vows-to-punish-doctors-hospitals-that-provide-gender-affirming-care-to-transgender-minors/\  https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/11/harris-trump-trans-rights-election-lgbtq/  https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/trump-transgender-rights-lgbtq  https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/rcna178755  https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2024/05/10/trump-promises-rollback-on-trans-rights-heres-what-hes-said/  https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trumps-anti-trans-ads-are-just-election-rhetoric-rcna178755  https://thehill.com/homenews/3839471-trump-vows-to-punish-doctors-hospitals-that-provide-gender-affirming-care-to-transgender-minors/  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/08/us/politics/trump-republican-transgender-ads.html  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/us/politics/democrats-kamala-harris.html?unlocked_article_code=1.YU4.kF1q.d5RAok6aekNd&smid=url-share https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-anti-transgender-political-ads-are-dominating-the-airwaves-this-electionhttps://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/8/26/21374948/trump-second-term-lgbtq-peopleSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Call zone media. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by Mia Wong. It's the start of a new week. So let's start preparing for what these next few months are going to look like in the wake of Trump's election victory last week. So one thing I was thinking about after the results kind of rolled in and seeing everyone's reactions online, you have a, you know, a mix of people going full doomer, some people trying to get hopped up on hopium, some people on copium, right? Just trying to like find any psychological way to survive. And for me, kind of the way I like to survive is just through information. So this episode, we're going to get

into how we see life for trans people under a second Trump term, based on both what he's done in the past, what he's promised to do in the future. And I know in like the days after the election, LGBTQ crisis hotlines all saw a massive spike in people calling in to the point where some people were even unable to reach someone. And I understand this is a very scary moment in time. And as much as it might not be fun to hear about how things are all going to get worse, there's also some misconceptions.

And I think there's also a degree of power in actually being able to reasonably ascertain what things could look like instead of just kind of feeling it out and just going purely on vibes. So to kind of start, I guess I'll mention some things that Trump did in his first term that then got undone by Biden, which will probably just end up being reinstated. We don't know these for sure, but that's like a decent guess. So one of the first things Trump did when he got into office is he rolled back an Obama era memo directing schools to protect trans students from discrimination. Yeah. And that, by the way, discrimination protection is a constant theme in

this episode. It's going to get a lot worse. Trump later went on to ban trans people from serving in the military. He also went after trans prisoners, making it so that trans people usually would need to be housed in prisons and jails according to their assigned sex at birth, which is, of course, a very dangerous situation for people incarcerated, specifically trans women. Yeah, and I think there is good reason to expect that treatment there is going to get worse. There's been, you know, we'll get into this more later in the episode, but there's been a real focus on incarcerated trans people getting health care. Yeah. And this is one of the things that's kind of ambiguous as to how Trump could go about trying to stop these people

from getting health care. So the thing about providing health care to trans people who have been incarcerated is that they have to do it it is it is something that is required by the constitution of the united states the eighth amendment holds that there is a ban on cruel and unusual punishment and withholding medical care is so obviously a form of cruel unusual punishment that even staggeringly right-wing supreme courts have been like no you actually have to give people medical care in prison so this is one that's going to be a little bit difficult for him to do i don't know he might find some way to do it this is one of the ones where there's a real potential for it to get worse and we simply do not know enough about what legal strategy is going to be here to say for sure. But it's also worth

mentioning, like people have had to fight for access to health care in prison. Like it's not something that comes easily. Like people have had to sue to make sure that they get the health care that they are legally required to receive. And we can just assume that that process will probably be slightly more difficult under a second Trump term like it was under a first Trump term than it may kind of currently be now. So that's kind of one shift in how things might be slightly more challenging. Yeah. And I want to also mention, so that analysis and a lot of the analysis, the policy analysis that I'm going to be doing going forward is heavily indebted to trans policy expert Corinne Green, who we've had on the show a couple of times before.

Amazingly, she was one of the people who ended up working on compliance for that lawsuit where Kamala Harris tried to keep trans prisoners from getting healthcare, and she came in and had to ensure that the state of California was doing it, and they weren't. So that's something that has been fought for, and that's something, I mean, the trans community is small enough that that is the thing that that has been fought for. And that's something, I mean, the trans community is small enough that that is the thing that has specifically been

fought for by people who I consulted to make this episode. So yeah, these rights have been dearly won and it's going to be very hard to protect them. If I'm doing something

where there's something about policy implementation, assume that I talked to Corinne about this and that's why it's accurate. And while I'm doing this this I want to plug a couple of the projects that she works on but there's there's something you can do very immediately right now before we get into all of the terrible stuff that's going to happen which is you can

donate to the trans income project which is a project that supports trans people and trans sex workers in particular which is a lot of trans people and supports them by just giving them direct cash transfers they do some other work too but them by just giving them direct cash transfers they do some other work too but yeah and it's it direct cash transfers are one of the most effective ways that you can help trans people and if you give money to this organization there'll be links in the chat you can help do this so let's get into how things are going to get worse unfortunately trump administration congress and state legislatures have an enormous amount of power to make everything worse. We're mostly going to be focusing on what Trump and Congress can do. Well, we'll get into the legislators a bit at the end. So there are a lot of levers of state power

and sort of policy techniques that Trump can pull here to make things worse. We're going to go roughly from easiest to hardest to pull off. So the first lever is federal funding. Probably the easiest place that this lever can get pulled is in the education system. Trump can unfortunately fairly easily implement what amounts to a don't say trans ban on a federal level by threatening to withhold federal funding for any school that doesn't mandate things like misgendering and dead naming students and banned and this is something he's explicitly talked about is like banning anyone in classes any teachers from talking about transitioning at all he's also you know threatened to have teachers who talk to students about being trans like investigated by

the department of justice we'll get more into department just investigations in a bit he's also used an explicit threat the same threat of of cutting state funding to stop schools from letting kids use the right bathroom in the locker room it's also possible he will do that through title nine but there's a lot of ways that he can do this very easily that are probably not going to be able to be stopped and this is going to get extremely bad very quickly another sort of avenue that he has is i i guess what do you call like the hyde amendment for trans people so for people who don't know what the hyde amendment is the hyde amendment is a writer that bans federal

spending on abortion it's been like modified it's not like the 100 ban that it used to be because now there's like exceptions for rape and incest and stuff right for the parents too but it is a very very effective republican tool especially also joe biden helped implement that that's been used to limit access to abortion and we already have seen the start of these kind of things even under biden there was a version of this of a kind of height amendment for trans health care that was an attempt to get the dod to not be able to spend money on trans health care that that's already a provision that's been tacked on to like one of the most recent spending bills that went through because joe mansion like defected and joined the republicans to get it on to one of the spending omnibuses and that was again just for the Department of Defense. We are very likely to see versions of these

attached to every single spending bill that explicitly say that government funding cannot be used for trans healthcare. It will definitely be used to say you can't use it for trans healthcare for minors. It is possible this will be expanded to adults. We don't know. It depends how far their sort of anti-trans,

I don't know, derangement there's sort of anti-trans i don't know derangement goes but that that is a real danger and this can also be expanded to refusing to allow medicare and medicaid to pay for anything at a clinic that does trans health care even if the money isn't funding the health care that's also possible that would be absolutely catastrophic for the medical system. Even just a government ban that prevents things like Medicare and Medicaid and government health care from covering transition in the first place is a disaster. who like provide trans health care from taking medicare medicaid that's bad enough that i think that is in terms of what what is the thing we most need to be worried about right now i think that's the worst possible thing that can happen very quickly because it could basically pressure medical clinics into refusing to offer any kind of gender affirming care because it would threaten their just base ability to operate as a medical clinic taking medicare medicaid etc yeah this

is something i talked about a bit in our Agenda 47 episode on this, but this effectively creates Sophie's choice for these clinics because either you treat trans people who have private insurance, or you can treat people who are on Medicare and Medicaid. So it's like,

either you let trans people get fucked, or you let every poor person or old person in the u.s like eat shit so there aren't good options here for that how do we think something like this would be implemented like is this an executive order or does this have to go through congress so that's the other part about this that's very bad um the way this this is being done is these things are attached as what are called writers to to spending bills so any spending bill the republicans put in front of the house they will have this like provision in it right

and the really big problem for us is that spending bills usually get passed now out of this thing called senate reconciliation and the thing about senate reconciliation is that you can't filibuster them so these can just get rammed through really, really quickly. And there's not going to be enough opposition in the House to stop it either. So, I mean, some of this stuff probably could be done with executive orders, but it's quite possible you won't even need that because it can just be rammed through in spending bills. Which is a little bit harder to undo from my understanding. Yeah, yeah. Executive orders can be overturned by the next guy, whereas

getting these provisions out is going to take a long time. from my understanding yeah yeah executive orders can be overturned by the next guy whereas getting these provisions out is going to take a long time yeah you know this is another issue that we have the the map for the democrats retaking the senate is terrible in 2026 and it's bad in 2028 too so i still don't think this is being recorded friday i don't think we still actually know what their majority in the senate is going to be but it's's a lot. And also, we know that Joe Manchin is willing to vote for stuff like this because he's done it already. So this is probably coming quickly. It basically depends on how good their policy people are, which who knows. But yeah, this is not going to be difficult for them to implement, and it's going to be extremely damaging. Well, that was a lot. Let's take a little

bit of a break. And when we come back, take another look into what life could be like under a second Trump term. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. We are back. So the threat to trans people does not only come from Congress and the president. One of the things that's almost certainly going to happen very soon is there is currently a case about a trans health care ban for minors in Tennessee in front of the

Supreme Court. It's called Scrimeti versus U.S. We are almost certainly going to lose this. Not losing this requires a bunch of extremely unlikely things happening. And this is very, very bad. What Scrimeti versus U.S. is probably going to cost us is trans people as a group being protected by the 14th Amendment. So the 14th Amendment is supposed to provide everyone equal protection under the law. The way this has been interpreted is that if you're passing a law that directly targets a group, there are certain levels of scrutiny

that have to be applied to it to see whether or not it's it's discriminatory and can like be allowed to proceed what's probably going to happen here is that trans people aren't going to be held as protected at all which means that the 14th amendment will not protect us from things that are unbelievably obviously discriminatory like trans health care bans for youth which is again literally the same procedures that are happening for trans children are done to cis children all the time, and it's fine. So this is very obviously discrimination. We're probably going to lose it because the Supreme Court is full of a bunch of the worst people in the entire world. It is technically possible that Gorsuch defects

and drags someone else over, and we get a thing that says we have intermediate scrutiny. That would be the best win we could possibly get on this it's extreme it's unlikely we're probably going to lose it and this is also going to overturn the landmark case uh bostock versus clayton county which is the one that rules that you can't discriminate against trans people based on gender identity specifically for like employers as well yeah for employers specifically for employers so what we could very well be about to lose and again this is this is another thing that's very high likelihood because this case is already in front of the supreme court and the supreme court hates

us we could be about to lose employment discrimination protections now to be fair and i think most trans people who are listening to this show know this i don't know how many cis people understand this but the level of trans employment discrimination in the workplace is unbelievable yeah this isn't really enforced at all uh yeah it's pretty bad it is something that right now is technically possible to do and you're not allowed to just straight up say it but you know like there there is a reason that the unemployment rate for trans people is like three times as high no it's I think it's about three times as high as the rate for cis people, right? We don't have great data. There's some data from the Translunch Journal survey from 2022, but the full report isn't out yet.

But what I will say is that the trans level of unemployment right now in the U.S. is very low. The level of unemployment for trans people is 1936 Great Depression levels. And this is before we lose these these protections it is also worth noting this will not overturn like state level protections so if you're in a state that like has specifically banned it you will have some more recourse but we're losing 14th amendment protections on a federal level would basically allow explicit employment discrimination yeah if if someone's trans. It's possible that case goes marginally better for us, and that doesn't happen,

but it's hard to see how that would happen. The lawyers I talk to will say this is not a legal opinion, but they seem to think that this is how this would go, and the policy people seem to think it'd be going the same way. There's some other things that can happen. Trump has been promising we're going to get federal investigations into clinics that provide gender affirming care. Also into hospitals.

You know, there's gonna be enormous legal harassment. This has already been happening on a sort of lower level, but from sort of individual lawsuits and state attorney generals. Yeah. But this is going to be happening with the full backing of the Department of Justice. You can look at like what Texas has been doing the past four years. Yeah. With them investigating not just clinics, but also like parents of trans kids.

Yeah, parents, like individual health care providers. He was also pledging to investigate like the companies that make hormones. So that's bad. There's also the Department of Justice has been making some incredibly half-assed attempts to try to go after some of the health care bans. That's all going to stop. They're just going to give all that up. There's also a bunch of bills that could be passed depending on the Democrats' willingness to filibuster them. So Trump has called for a ban of trans people playing sports that correspond with their gender.

And that may well pass because the Democrats are cowards and the republicans are going to have a large majority in the senate yep trump has also pushed for a ban on gender affirming care for minors including hrt's hormone replacement therapy which is like one of the main ways you transition and puberty blockers that one is less likely to make it through the senate but it also again depends on how cowardly the democrats are and how much they decide to cave and this is the moment that there is another thing that you can do and you should start doing this right now which is this is the moment right now to start pressuring your congressperson about this like start calling them start pressuring them and start making sure

that they don't fully sort of turn on trans rights this is something that you can concretely do right now because these people need to understand that there are consequences for turning on trans people because if there aren't consequences they're going to do it now trump has also called for a ban on recognizing trans people at the federal level on like all identification documents things like that also would outlaw non-binary markings on passports and stuff that would also be really bad that's also something that probably requires a law and that's again and everything call your congress people like pressure them now start doing it now do not wait until he's actually in office and like all of these issues are things that public opinion has been shifting on greatly

the past like two years yeah these things used to be much more seen as like, yeah, this makes sense. This is a humane and reasonable effort to include a group of discriminated people. And now we see in a growing number, a majority of people polled on this issue do not support these measures. They don't support having the ability

to have your gender marker match your gender identity. They don't support your ability to participate in public life and that is the result of a of an intentional misinformation campaign and essentially like a hate crime campaign uh and a hate speech campaign that has been going on for the past like four years because republicans knew that they already lost the battle on like regular gay people so they so they moved on to the next subjugated class and that's something we've talked about for a while and this is like something that is shifting so you have to actually verbally express to to your representatives that this is something that you actually do care about

otherwise they will look at these like general polls and be like oh i guess this isn't popular anymore and shift and cave on it they need to know that their constituents actually do care about these things if we want these things to not get passed through congress yeah and it's also worth mentioning that a lot of this people just don't know anything about about trans people because we're like one percent of the population right now part of the reason the republican campaign is working is that people are susceptible to being told things about trans people and believing them but that also works for us yeah right it goes both ways part of what's been going on is that like we haven't had the kind of giant advocacy push outside of some trans people but we have no money we have no resources and we need there to actually

be large widespread and vocal public support because otherwise all of the stuff that's happening here is going to get even worse and you know the word and we could get very well the worst case scenario things which are full bans for adults that's the thing that they could pass through congress but right now they don't have the support for it however comma as garrison is going to get to there are signs that the democratic party is deciding to throw us under the bus yeah not as steadfast on this issue than what we would probably prefer. Yeah, and on the state level,

I guess the important thing for the state level is that once we lose 14th Amendment protections, it's going to be so much harder for there to be legal challenges to any of this. And this means we're going to see a proliferation of these state-level bans on healthcare, even sort of marching ahead of where the federal government is.

Let's have our last break. And when we come back, we will close the episode by discussing Trump's focus on trans issues during his campaign, as well as things that you can start doing like right now to get ready and prepare for these next four years. Cheers. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more.

After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone

from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko.

It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it.

Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry,

we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. All right, we are back. During the last few months of Trump's campaign, his team shifted away from the key issues of the economy and immigration in their national election ad efforts and specifically honed in on trans issues as a wedge against Kamala Harris and the Democrats in general. The infamous Kamala is for they them ad being the prime example of this. According to a PBS report, from October 7th to October 20th, Trump's campaign and pro-Trump groups spent an estimated $39 million on anti-trans ads. And Trump ended up spending more money on these ads than on housing, immigration, and the economy combined. This was his main focus in his final ad push, specifically after the September debate. A new report from journalist Casey Parks using data from Ad Impact shows that Republicans spent

nearly $215 million on anti-trans ads this election cycle. And this figure does not include cable or streaming ads. This is just network TV. And these anti-trans ads weren't just focused on the presidential election. Other Republicans in various Senate races picked up on the success of these anti-trans ads and used them in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Now, initially, some thought that maybe this would be a repeat of 2022. Maybe this extra focus on this small group of the population wouldn't lead to kind of electoral successes, pointing to how a similar strategy failed during the 2022 midterms. But then election day came and we saw that there was a degree of success, or at least these did not hurt them in any substantial way. And Republicans won

many of the Senate races on anti-trans campaign messages. I'm going to quote from an article in the New York Times called Trump and the Republicans bet big on anti-trans ads across the country. Quote, the Kamala is for they them ad was rated as one of his campaigns more effective in September in some Democratic testing, according to results reviewed by the Times. Republican strategists said the focus on transgender women and girls in sports had been particularly effective with a key group of voters the party had hemorrhaged support from in recent years, college-educated women. One of the things you see in the focus groups is that the moms get really visibly angry on this

issue, said Jim McLaughlin, a Republican pollster who works for Mr. Trump and other Republican The enthusiasm for this issue kind of lines up with what me, Sophie, and Robert saw at the RNC, where anti-trans statements consistently got the loudest applause. Though some state-level Democrats, like Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Tom Sulzy of New York, as well as some other DNC advisors, have jumped onto the blame game, citing trans issues as, if not the reason, then a reason Democrats just completely fumbled this election, claiming that the Democratic Party is far to the left on trans issues than the average American. But largely, the Dems were not out campaigning for trans people, like loud and proud, this election cycle. Trans issues were intentionally pushed offstage at the DNC, and the Harris campaign tried their

hardest to sidestep this issue, giving vague non-answers on whether trans people should be able to receive healthcare by just stating that her administration would quote-unquote follow the law and invoking states' rights type type framing and i see this as just a massive failure to confront an issue that republicans have like slingshotted into the spotlight and it shows a failure to do things because it's like the right thing to do not just necessarily for some like electoral gain well even even on a strategic level, right? We saw this with border policy too, right? Where the Democrats adopted the Republicans' border policy,

and then they lost. Exactly. And it's like, yeah, if you just agree or refuse to contest them on their core issues, then that's what people are going to believe, because people have a tendency to believe what their elites are telling them. You can't defeat these people's ideology by just agreeing with it, or stepping out of the way of it. That just lets it spread. I think this is going to be proven to be like the

biggest mistake Democrats made this election cycle. Like you can't just cede territory to the right based on a massive disinformation campaign, which is exactly what the Democrats did on immigration and crime. And they showed a willingness to do that on trans rights. Now, even if some of these people, Democrats included, claim to not hate trans people individually, they have allowed questions around access to bathrooms, sports, and government-funded healthcare to be used as a wedge against trans rights as a whole

and the ability for trans people to be able to exist in public life. To close, I think we should have just a brief discussion on what people can do, specifically during these next 75 days, and even in the months after, like what people can do to prepare for some of the worst aspects of this, specifically on the healthcare front. Now, we did a series of episodes a few years ago on DIY HRT. There are both pharmaceutical and home-brewed options for hormones that can be ordered online. Now, since that episode, home-brewed options for hormones that can be ordered online. Now, since that episode, home-brewed distribution networks have spread throughout the United States.

There's probably one already in whatever city is closest to you. Now, access to those networks does require a degree of in-person community, and I know that can be challenging. You can certainly do organizing online on Discord. You can certainly do organizing online on Discord. You can certainly find trans people on Discord that can help you learn where pharmaceutical grade estrogen can be ordered online. But that type of online organizing will only get more dangerous under a Trump term, especially if the legal status of these hormones change. So I will always emphasize the importance of in-person community. And it might just take learning if there's a trans band in the city you're in, going to some shows, learning where

trans people go, where trans people gather. Is there community picnics? Is there book fairs? Is there zine fairs? Is there even gaming conventions, right? Just places that there might be a number of trans people gathered and talk to them about being trans, talk to them about the issues that you're facing. It might take a few months to gain trust and become friends, but that's just how friendships work anyway. And that can be challenging. And there may not be something like this in a city super close to you, which is why online connections are useful. And sometimes that might require a little bit of travel. Now, what we can do, at least right now, is stockpile things in case things get harder to maintain or produce. There's multiple forms of these hormones that can be stored. And I do

believe that there will be some form of homebrewed option that will most likely continue to exist, even if prescribed hormones get restricted. And a part of why I emphasize kind of doing this in person as well, especially if you're a minor, that will just get more dangerous to do under a second Trump term. I will point people to the website diyhrt.wiki. It's currently the best information source on dosing, testing, how to find supplies,

and options for ordering hormones. Now, because changing legal paperwork on the federal or state level often takes a while, if that's something that you want to do, now is the time to start. There's still 70 days until Trump takes office, and some of these changes could start being put into effect. You should absolutely apply for a passport. being put into effect. You should absolutely apply for a passport. Now, depending on many variables, it may be advantageous to have your legal name and gender marker match whatever you more easily pass as, rather than your gender identity. Now, I understand why this is less than ideal, and if you think that this might just inhibit your transition progress and push you

further back into the closet, especially if the option of changing your gender marker on federal documents just like goes away during the next four years, then people should just go ahead and get that stuff changed ASAP. But it's something to reflect on and consider. Lastly, I want to mention something about personal safety. Over the course of the past week, I've heard from friends around the country experiencing a spike in anti-queer and misogynistic violence. Chuds, frat boys, and just asshole men have been way more willing to just openly harass queer people out in public. Some of this, I think, is just Trump supporters, quote-unquote, celebrating the election results. But once Trump takes office, I expect this type of harassment

to start slowly increasing as Truds feel like they can get away with more just open misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc. I know a lot of people have been talking about or posting about buying firearms. And firearms is one of the last things you should buy in a panic. This is a very careful and calculated choice you need to make about your own personal safety, your own mental health, your own willingness to carry and train with a gun. This is its own topic. But I do recommend buying and carrying pepper gel for basically all queer people and women. It's a great self-defense tool. It spreads less than pepper spray, so you're going to be less likely

to just spray yourself. Saber is a good brand. Buy it for yourself. Buy it for your friends. Mia, do you have anything else you want to add? Yeah, yeah. Two things. One, people have been asking for book recommendations, so we're giving them to you. We're only giving them to you at the end of the episode, so you gotta stay around. I mean, honestly, like feminist theorists of the last, like of this century. And there's a new edition of Whipping Girl that's come out recently. And it is one of the fundamental sort of texts to understand the experience of trans femme people in this country and why things have gotten the way that they've gotten. So, yeah, go read Whipping Girl. It's spectacular.

And then I want to plug one more thing that you can give money to so i mean again another very effective way for cis people to support trans people is give them money because all of us are unbelievably broke like all of the time another place you can give money to is the trans justice funding project we'll have that in this too and they they give out grants to other just like trans groups who are doing organizing or doing other kinds of sort of support work mutual aid etc etc so that's money that just goes directly to trans people yeah and then obviously as we've said this is the forces people part of the episode after our after our four trans people part go call your congress people go pressure them go show up to their offices and make it extremely clear that it is unacceptable

to write off trans people and that they need to be willing to successfully stop these writers and successfully do whatever they can to channel the works to make sure that the Republicans cannot pass bills that will harm us even more than the things that they're already going to do. If It Happened 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 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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