It Could Happen Here - Ohio's War On Trans People, Pt. 1: Meet the Detrans Terfs

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Mia talks with Ky and Lee from Health Liberation Now about the anti-trans bills in Ohio and the strategies detrans terf groups have used to restrict and ban trans healthcare.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Calls on Media. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast that is in no small part about the increasing and escalating series of anti-trans laws being passed around the country uh it's another one of those episodes things are getting worse things are also getting weird and with me to talk about worse and weird is kyan lee from health liberation now welcome to the show yeah i'm excited to talk to you both because, okay, very, very odd stuff has been happening.

So the main reason I wanted to have you two on is to talk about stuff that's been happening in Ohio. So for people who are unaware, Ohio's legislature has been trying to pass a very draconian ban on all gender affirming care for minors the state's republican governor vetoed the bill and this was for about one day there was a lot of sort of like liberal cheering about like ah compassionate republicans blah blah blah and then immediately after that like like like the next day when all of all of us we haven't even like we hadn't even really gotten into the wait hold on on, he's going to do something else. The thing that DeWine did is, you know, and this is being framed as, like, an attempt to stave off the veto, which hasn't worked so far. But he immediately implemented a bunch of rules that say that in order to get gender-affirming care,

rules that say that in order to get gender affirming care and this is true of both minors and adults which makes it in a lot of ways more draconian than the actual bill it's quote-unquote supposed to be preventing like getting passed if you want to get gender affirming care you need recommendations from a psychiatrist an endocrinologist and a bioethicist and also all gender-affirming care in the state has to be reported to the government there and there's like other stuff too so this is uh the the the technical term for this is this is extremely bad yeah yeah put it mildly yeah and i mean he also signed an executive order just banning surgery for everyone under 18 too yeah

so yeah yeah I mean also I think I believe it was like everyone under 21 also had to go through six months of counseling as well yes yeah at least six months of counseling yeah there's no upper cap.

And a lot of this was DeWine and his spokespeople have ended up justifying a lot of this, trying to use language from clinicians working at clinics in Ohio that see trans youth and be like, well, they're taking this comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach, and most of the people they see get counseling instead of medical transition, so they're actually

using a lot of the testimony against the ban to try to justify these rules and regulations. And I don't think they're acting in good faith, because when you actually look at the details, you're like, well, this would basically make it almost impossible for anyone at any age to transition. But it's a very sneaky, smart move, right?

Like being like, oh, look, we're trying to find a compromise. We're trying to make sure everyone gets good health care. And unfortunately, sometimes liberals and liberal media will just kind of eat that up without really looking at the details. Yeah. eat that up without really looking at the details yeah and one of the things that's happening here too is that so so the u.s where in places where there's pretty good access to gender affirming health care it works off of something called informed consent and informed consent is like okay so you go there they tell you what is going to happen and you talk you talk to like a nurse or a doctor and then once you know the like what you're actually getting into you say yes or no

if you want to do something right and you know this is a this is a pretty good system it still can be really annoying to navigate because of insurance stuff and you know like there's definitely problems with it but it's a it's a much better system than exists in a lot of places and you know i think there have been two sets of comparisons about what these restrictions look like and we're going to get to the comparisons to uh tarp restrictions on abortion in a second but i want to talk about another thing that these restrictions strike me as very similar to which is the british system and the way the british system works is you get put on a wait list and then you die

or you go to armenia like those are those are your options right or or you're really wealthy and you can you can bypass the public health care system and go to the private health care system but you know like i hope like i i hope you were are like the heir to a mansion before you start that process or you're in serious trouble the thing about the british system is there's all of these paths of interlocking experts you have to go through with every single you have to get signatures from every single one of them and what this means is you have this enormous sort of interminable british gender bureaucracy whose only job and only the only thing they want to do is stop you from getting health care there's a very very good um philosophy tube episode about this about what it's actually like to be in that system and it's terrible and this is a this is what the the kinds of things are being proposed here are in a lot of... It's not exactly the same as the British system, but to like do all you have to like jump through all of these hoops is that at every single point in the

process, there is another gender bureaucrat who can just by themselves decide that they're just doing a trans health care ban. And, you know, every every individual person you put into the process is another person who could just say no. And's how the British system works is that someone in the process just says no and you die in a wait list yeah I mean we we know trans people in Britain and in other European countries where they have like a lot of gatekeeping and you know all of them have warned us like you do not want this coming to the U.S. yeah um you know reminding us like all the time like how much easier a lot of U. of us trans people have it in terms of accessing healthcare. I just like,

yeah, I mean, everything I've heard about like the UK healthcare system sounds like nightmarish people asking invasive questions about like your sexuality or your trauma history or for youth that often ends up like involving like genital inspections for some reason. It just sounds like a horrible, dehumanizing, violating experience. And then again,

a lot of people spend years, years and years, and are lucky if they do it, are able to access care. A lot of people have to go private if they can afford to. Honestly, before, I mean, technically it was during but before the the full like onslaught

of bills started to hit the u.s like there there were brits that were trying to sound the alarm and get the message out to u.s based yeah like it was around when the kira bell ruling happened kira bell was a detrans woman whose lawyer was affiliated with the ADF, with the British branch of Alliance Defending Freedom, which is behind a lot of the it's like an international Christian nationalist organization that's behind a lot of the

healthcare bans in the US as well. Also anti-abortion, anti-birth control. Yeah. Really nasty people. But anyway, so like, Kira Bell, this detrans woman, it's like she sued the NHS for allowing her to transition and originally won her case and that led to basically the end of transitioning for youth.

Yeah, she submitted a judicial review. The initial review was favorable to her, but upon further review, the appeals did end up overturning it, but by that point, the damage had already been done. A bunch of people were starting

to lose access to care and the likes, and the wheels were starting to spin internally as well in terms of the Tavistock system, and so as a result, the waitlist just to care and the likes and the wheels were starting to spin internally as well in terms of the Tavistock system and so like as a result like the waitlist just end up getting longer and longer and longer. Yeah so that was like a huge blow that happened

in the UK and like UK trans people like were basically like by that point starting trying to warn people in the US like this is going to come for you too. Yeah. Like get ready like they'd already been already like, suffering under this, like, you know, anti-trans blitz for a while, and they, like, knew it was going to spread

on the borders of the U.K. And unfortunately, it has. Yeah. In, like, the very early stages of our project, when we launched at the beginning of 2021, almost immediately after the Kiribati initial ruling, we hosted a transcript of a podcast from Blood & Turf that was trying to deliver this message over to U.S.-based comrades.

And unfortunately, it does not appear to have reached as many people as it really needed to. But we do have that available in the event that people can still learn from it because this onslaught is not going to stop yeah it's not yeah and and i think one of the things that we're seeing now is that we're now seeing a kind of an opening of new fronts in a way where you have in the same state at the same time you have both what i guess I would call the American-style approach of just straight-up bands, and then this kind of an attempt to implement this sort of British gender bureaucracy system.

And one of the things that's been happening with this is, know okay so there's a lot of places where there's inspirations coming for this um and i think you know we mentioned it briefly earlier one of the inspirations for this is obviously um tarp restrictions on abortion where you have these like unbelievably restricted like basically these targeted things when before before roe v wade uh collapsed there was you know you could you could ban abortions by for example you know saying like passing a bill that says that like okay if you want to do abortions at a hospital the the walls in the hallways have to be like exactly like this diameter which is not the same diameter as like as as normal hospital walls are so now you can't do abortions in hospitals and so they do things like this right and this

this is you know and this has been a a huge problem for a long time anti-abortion activists have been talking about it for ages uh the democratic party did nothing uh so you know that that's i think i think a sort of like forewarning of where this is going yeah a direct parallel is actually over in arizona if i remember correctly because one of the things that they ended up doing down in arizona is a requirement that they tried to implement was this rather controversial piece where they also had to provide information on abortion reversal using certain types of hormone care right similar to how in order for people to be able to provide gender affirming care they have to provide information about detransition and stuff like that.

But when you actually start to look at some of the data, not all of it, but some of the data that they are relying on to inform people of this, it is a wildly biased sample or just downright pseudoscience, right? They looked at the evidence base for the abortion reversals and it didn't actually work the way that they were saying it was and it was actually coming from very very very explicitly motivated groups right so yeah like abortion has been difficult to access in arizona for a very

long time um in part because of some of these obnoxious requirements that people end up putting into place through trap laws. Yeah, and you know, I think it's worth noting that this is true of both the anti-trans bans and anti-abortion legislation is that the science,

they're just making it up a lot of the time. Like, you know, one of the very famous things was these fetal heartbeat bills that required like and the thing about like fetal heartbeat bills is that fetuses don't have heartbeats you're not hearing a heartbeat like doctors will like force you to listen to this it's like that it's not what's happening it's literally not a heartbeat but these people like they put a stethoscope to a woman's chest and heard a beating. And we're like, oh shit, it's the baby's heart. And it's like, no, it doesn't have a heart.

This is a fetus. What are you even talking about? But this kind of stuff, they're basically doing just scientific malpractice. They're straight up lying to people. they're they're they're basically they're they're doing just scientific malpractice right they're straight up lying to people and then they're using that as justification for you know actual legislation which has sort of material impact and like you know carries the force of the law behind it etc etc etc and we've been seeing a lot of very similar kinds of things from from these anti-trans legislation and one of one of the ways that they've been able to use sort of pseudoscience to get restrictions on health care passed and

this is this is true both of sort of the straight up bans and also of these kind of like massive bureaucratic restrictions is by allying with groups of sort of right-wing detransitioners and we're going to talk about that more after this ad break because we unfortunately are reliant on ads to cover this stuff so yeah here's here's ads 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.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba.

He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez.

At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we are back. And this is the point where we need to talk about the stuff in the Ohio story that is very weird. Now, I think if people have been following the story of sort of anti-trans bills one of the things that's been happening a lot is there's been this sort of there's there's a network of people who detransitioned for various reasons i don't know who have become very very hardline right-wingers and who have basically been doing like circuits of of the the capitals of you know of like state capitals and like going to capitol hill and like telling their quote-unquote stories to try to get this to try to get like all trans health care banned now so and this is you know this is

something we've covered on the show in the past what is very weird about ohio is that you had a group of these right-wing detransitioners who specifically were trying to get, it looked like at the very least, were trying to stop the actual gender-affirming care ban from going through. And were in favor of more of this restriction stuff. Am I getting this right? Not exactly. There's a couple of different, um, sorry.

I, I can provide my, my brief, um, description here real quick. Um, and then you can retake aspects of that stuff because something to bear in mind is the fact that,

um, like some of the opposition in the Ohio, um, testimonies are actually coming from people who view themselves as very left-wing. These are radical feminists, specifically. They are just hardcore opposed to Christians. I would say their actual politics are very

reactionary. But they call themselves left-wing. They see themselves as being opposed to the right. That's how they present themselves. They definitely believe that they're anti-right-wing. They see themselves as being opposed to the right. That's how they present themselves. And they definitely believe that they're anti-right-wing. There's also another component. This one is like the nuances are sometimes almost impossible to be able to tease out. I swear, tomato, tomato. He's out, I swear, tomato, tomato. But one of the people who was a proponent for both this current bill and a past bill is actually Corinna Cohn, who does not consider herself to be right wing, though she does appear to be working with a number of right wing people.

She considers herself to be, quote unquote, libertarian now this is a red flag yeah um for for those of us who have done any sort of like real engagement with certain types of libertarians or political organizing or whatever in that if you actually pay attention to some of the arguments that are being made or the collaborations that are being made you can generally tell which direction their politics are truly leaning towards right is it left wing is it right wing and hers have been steering far and far more right wing like she uses the like excuse of you know i i want small government and stuff like that but if you're working with like legislators to put in full-on bans i'm sorry honey that's not small government that's not small government that is the opposite of small government actually and so like like it it's kind

of hard to sort of like encapsulate the the entirety of like the proponents of the opposition into particular political alignments because a lot of it is really based off of what are their motivations and who are they willing to work with, which, again, tomato, tomato. But I'll have to come back to the Corinna Cohn one at some point here, too, because that one is actually an important timeline in terms of understanding the Ohio bills. Yeah, I mean, basically, I mean, you have like these, an important timeline in terms of understanding the Ohio bills. And yeah, I mean,

basically, I mean, you have like these, you do have like right wing East transition people like Chloe Cole or Christian Bosley, Laura Becker, who like do, you know,

they, they'll be hanging out with like the heritage foundation or billboard, Chris or, um, yeah. The Q shop. Yeah. Or our duty.

Like, and they, They very much are just working to try to pass these full-on bans. But then, yeah, you have also these detrans turf and their more liberal fellow travelers who definitely see themselves as being opposed to the right

and are opposed to... They're opposed to the right because they see right-wing christians as being a threat to them as well and are at least smart enough to understand that um if you know right-wing christians have their way they're going to suffer too but they also want to end uh trans health care or restrict it i mean uh some of the two of the people who helped organize helped collect the testimony, the group statement that was submitted under the name Are You Asking Why? Max and Katie Robinson

they have ties to Janice Raymond. Dead serious. Yeah, they do. Janice Raymond helped publish Max Robinson's book over at Spinifex Press, this swerf and turf publisher. So, yeah, they

they're not actually pro-trans. We should mention, so Janice Raymond, for people who, someone we've talked about on the show a few times, but Janice Raymond wrote a book called The Transsexual Empire, and okay, so people normally leave off

the subtitle of it, which is called, it's the transsexual empire the making of the shemale it's like one of the original like original anti-trans people like incredibly violent transphobe like if like both both in terms of like the career of her work like physically like violently anti-trans and yeah yeah she is she is connected to a lot of the modern anti-trans groups and also the modern like the modern i don't know what you'd call them people who are attempting to take away trans health care but who don't see themselves as anti-trans i have no idea how to even summarize that in a single term. Yeah. Bad? I don't know.

Yes, definitely bad. Yeah, yeah. So, like, I mean, yeah. I mean, yeah, Max and Kitty fully endorse Janice Raymond's theories. I mean, Janice Raymond, one of the things she's famous for is saying that, like, transsexualism should be morally mandated

out of existence. Like, Max Robinson has said that she supports that. They also both, I mean, Janice Raymond, uh, focused heavily on, on trans women overall. And,

you know, also claimed that basically like trans women were, you know, committing sexual assaults against women just for existing. Yeah. Max and Kitty are also horrible trans misogynist to actually make i mean kitty makes a lot of propaganda tracking uh attacking trans women and trying to cast all trans women as predators and yeah just not people you want

on your side because they're not yeah they're a danger to all trans people they're just like yeah trying to find a way to influence trans healthcare in a different way. And I'm concerned that people will hear, oh, look at all these supposedly trans-friendly, detrans people who testified against this ban, not realizing that these are actually turds with an agenda. Part of what they want to do is to infiltrate queer and trans subcultures and promote like proof ideology and recruit people like let's put it this way so max robinson in terms of some of her beliefs um refers to uh medical transition for like trans masculine folks as a sedo ritual going back to mary daly um types

of descriptions of things and then kitty was one of the people that was interviewed for and gave extensive background information for a bbc article that was released i believe it was called something along the lines of we are being pressured into sex by some trans women which is basically that yes that that one right like so feeding into this narrative that trans women are sexual predators right into the british media when they were already having a massive influx of anti-trans media that was again feeding into the the demonization of trans people as a whole but then also like controlling trans youth and the likes and of course this article not only did it end up originally platforming like an actual like serial rapist yeah lily cade like someone someone a a serial rape is so prolific that like within

like maybe 30 minutes of this article going up like multiple like probably like a dozen people had come forward and been like she raped me like that that that is the person that the bbc was like coming forward to do this shit with yeah she ended up posting um basically a manifesto um on her website that was even more extreme than aspects of the article showed off and then i will also note that this article was originally, I believe it was only translated into Portuguese in order to be moved into BBC Brazil, which is also one of the countries that has one of the highest rates of

trans femicide. So like, yeah, these, these are the people that decided to go ahead and testify. Yeah. And like, well,

I'm also personally bringing up Max and Kitty, because they were some of the people who helped get the testimonies. I found a post on Kitty's Tumblr blog looking for detrans and desisted women who were willing to testify against a ban, and then Max was the one who actually submitted

the collective statement from R.U.S. Kingwai. She also submitted an individual statement, too. So basically, like, they found a bunch of, like, detrans and desisted TERFs on Tumblr to sign a statement and then submitted it to, like, the state of Ohio, which is kind of wild to think about. Yeah, you don't normally expect to see testimony from TERF Tumblr,

let alone detrans TERF Tumblr, but that hasn't even happened. Not really who you want to show up for. No! Yeah, it's really not good in terms of who you want doing your legislation. Like, oh god.

Yeah. Yeah, so, okay, we need to take another ad break, and then we will come back and talk more about this so enjoy your brief capitalistic respite from the horror of capitalism 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. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google 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 iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel.

I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy

and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace,

the Elian Gonzalez story as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are back. In order to properly understand the situation in ohio you kind of have to go back several years right um one of the bills that ended up being proposed in 2020 was hb 513 um this was another version of a proposed ban on gender affirming care for trans youth in particular.

And it was sponsored by representatives Ron Hood and Bill Dean. This one is interesting because one of the groups that ended up coming out in opposition to it was the Gender Care Consumer Advocacy Network. This is the organization that I helped found in 2019 prior to my resignation. They submitted this opposition after my resignation, but it is available on archives. Then in 2021 and the 2022 legislative session, there was the proposal for HP 454, which was another proposed ban on gender affirming care for trans youth. This time, it was being sponsored by Representative Gary Click, who is also the sponsor of the current bill that had recently been vetoed and then the veto vetoed. And in May of 2022, the Gender Care Consumer Advocacy Network, or GCCAM, testified in tentative support.

The testimony was submitted by Corinna Cohn and included suggestions for amendments. These amendments are actually very important. One of the amendments that she recommended was on data tracking. I believe it says here, the second amendment would be a requirement for physicians, mental health care providers, and other medical health care professionals mandating an annual report to the Ohio Department of Health, the number, age, and sex of minor patients who are receiving gender transition services of any type this was what she originally proposed as an amendment to the bill the bill again did not end up passing um but now we are seeing hb 68 which is the one that merges the ban on gender affirming care for trans youth and a sports ban because i guess you know trans youth

playing chess is somehow like threatening but so this one was again represented uh like sponsored by representative click and this time curiously enough um corinna had been working more extensively with uh click during various portions of the um of the push for the bill right you know she testified multiple times she's posted videos with him pictures etc another person who had originally founded the organization carrie callahan did originally start opposing. Curiously, she did not note her prior experience with the organization, but she did start to oppose the bill and then later starts to put out

basically a more general call for opposition to HB 68, right? Trying to collect in various of uh detransitioned people who were opposed to bans on gender affirming care right and then who is it that ends up showing up um it's this weird little like turf group that originally came out of detrans turf tumblr in 2013 that historically speaking she had prior working relationships with and even presented their stories to us path yeah and also i also, I mean, Max Robinson, too. Both Max Robinson and

Carrie Callahan were both featured in Jesse Singles' Atlantic article, too. There's lots of points of connection. They've been, they've known each other since at least 2016 and, you know, worked together. Like, I can't

say for certain how it is that they ended up there personally to me it seems a little weird that people who had prior working relationships dating back a decade are showing up in the same place again and like they are also showing up in legislative testimony for the first time in the state where some like one of the the central figures for a long time there is putting out a call to oppose this particular bill like the the coincidences are racking up a little bit here it might be good to ask some further questions about what exactly happened because I have some questions. So, you know, this happened in December of 2023, right? Eventually, Governor DeWine goes ahead and vetoes.

But at the same time, he makes his, you know, proposal for the drafting of new regulations with, you know, the Department of Health and the likes. And within that is the suggestion of detailed data tracking that is reported to the Department of Health and then to the general public every six months. and then to the general public every six months, focusing on things like, you know, I don't think that he wanted to focus on like the number of people that were doing it, but he did include a, like the nature of the diagnosis. It applies to all ages. It was not originally restricted to trans youth like the original testimony was from GC-CAN. The time range was also ended up being like it's shortened. He wants it every six months, not every year. But, you know, very similar kinds of things, right, in terms of what it is that he is proposing for this mass collection of data and a previous testimony that was submitted to the ohio legislature in fact like not long after that fact um representative click ended up going on an

interview with tony perkins of family research council talking about the pending veto they originally did this interview on january 9th and he noted that the data collection um suggestion was originally included in a draft version of his bill but was removed due to opposition and so he's glad actually that that was included although he wished that there would be even more restrictions uh he actually was going to encourage the governor to also sign an executive order uh banning the use of puberty blockers not just surgery um as far as i can tell that has not happened but he did say that he was going to try but like it's like there's there's definitely some weird kind of like escalations that end up happening

and some of the like some of the interconnecting threads with individuals that again just happen to keep showing up in the same place over and over and over again, either in support or in opposition. Some folks have been consistently opposed, whereas other people have been kind of flip-flopping. The GC Can organization is one of the ones that flip-flopped. It originally opposed all bands bands and then now all of a sudden it's like you know the the person that they are throwing out into these testimonies was arguing in favor of them and then like you know the the quote-unquote are you asking why collective and to be fair carrie callahan have also been uh firmly opposed to uh full-on bans and the Christian right pretty much from the beginning,

though for very, very, very different reasons. I mean, some of their opposition was like, well, people could go to other states where there's less restrictions. They're like, no, the stuff we have in Ohio already has a lot of restrictions and majority of trans youth only get counseling and they don't get any like none of them get surgery and most of them like only a very small number of them get

puberty blockers or hormones so this should be like this should be an example for the entire country like that was kind of uh carrie galahan's take on things and then like i mean yeah a lot of the the more like the detrans terps like uh the robinsons or other members of are you asking why it's like okay well they're opposed to the christian right and they recognize like if the christian right gains more power and is banning things that's bad um not just for trans people but also for you know cis lesbian and gay people and cis women and and you know it will end up hurting them too. So even from a self-preservation stance, they understand why they should be opposed to the Christian right.

But if you actually read their testimony, a lot of them do make it clear that they're opposed to transition. One person called it compared medical trans healthcare to a Hydra and said that banning it would only be cutting off a head. These aren't... A lot of them were also praising

regulations. The group statement talks about shutting down clinics won't improve anyone's quality of care. Ohio's existing programs are known for their moderation. They don't

perform surgery on minors. Many clinics out of state do. Yada, yada. Max Robinson's testimony also said similar, but that she had it on good word from an Ohioan.

I have questions. I hear from good authority from an Ohioan that Right. I have questions. Yes, you did say I hear from good authority from an Ohioan that pediatric gender clinics there prescribe hormones pretty sparingly and don't actually perform any underage transition surgeries.

Other states do, though. So there's like this whole thing that's like, they're still kind of scaremongering. It's like, oh, but these other states

were easier to transition as a minor. Those are bad. But they're still making it clear that these other states where it's easier to transition as a minor, those are bad. They're still making it clear that the idea that people having easy access to transition, especially as youth, is a bad thing in their minds. I don't think we actually mentioned how

if you actually look at the collective statement that Are You Asking Why issued and who signed it, a whole bunch of them didn't actually transition. A lot of them were actually desisted, which means that they never actually medically transitioned. They considered transitioning or maybe socially transitioned, but then they decided not to medically transition,

possibly after converting to anti-trans feminism or the like. So it's just a bunch of people who are like, I decided not to transition. I'm desisted. Testifying against a healthcare ban. That's also kind of a classic strategy too. They have a bunch of desisted people along

mixed in with people who actually transition and detransition to kind of inflate the numbers. Yeah. This is standard. Yeah, this is very standard. It's an old trick. It's like, oh yeah, you're like, okay. Yeah, and then a bunch of them are also saying the ones who did transition and detransition,

they're emphasizing how they, a few of them are emphasizing how young they were when they transitioned and detransitioned. Again, not exactly pro-trans. This collective here with pretty explicit TERF ties, including some of them directly to Janice Raymond herself, was the bulk of the opposition from detransitioned people to the bill, I should note. That's 15 signatures right there. People are talking about how there were 19 people that were opposed so 15 of them were either like part of the recruitment or actively recruited on detrans turf tumblr yeah and then like at least

five of them are just assisted they're not's, it's weird. It's just, it's really weird. And it's also been really weird to see the, the media just kind of take that testimony of theirs at face value. Well, that's been a problem for a long time. It's like getting the media to actually sort of like,

um, investigate or care about people's like political views or activism or actually kind of being like like sometimes like i think like i want to say like the the basel on new york times story we were talking about before has grace ludinsky smith in there without saying that she was you know affiliated with gc can she's like not just with with, she was the president. She was the president. She's just represented as

a dethroned woman without going into actually she's the head of this political organization. Yeah. This has been a problem for years. Yeah, yeah. So it's just like, I mean, just a whole lot of different

sketchy characters kind of came out for what's going on in Ohio. I mean, you have like, you know, Republicans and right wing Christians who just want to straight up ban transition and move towards eliminating it for all trans people and, of course, making it as impossible for trans people to live in society as they can. And then you have kind of more, like, tricky Republicans, like, de-wine, sort of, like, pretending to find some kind of compromise and be like, oh, we're just trying to work for, like, more comprehensive healthcare

so everyone gets what they need, and using some of the language that was used by clinicians who were trying to fight against the ban and their testimony, and trying to make these claims. But if you actually look at the details, the regulations they're proposing would make it nearly impossible for anyone to transition, know both youth and adults and then you have like you know these um different medical professionals and kind of more liberal transphobic detrans people who want more gatekeeping and

regulation and control over trans people and are kind of like using detransition and transition regret as a justification for that or praising being like oh well ohio their their youth clinics are already really good because they're very cautious and they they use therapy a lot more than they actually uh allow youth to medically transition i mean that argument didn't seem to work out at all. Instead, it sounds like the governor kind of was like, oh, two-thirds of youth only get therapy instead of medical transition? We should do that for everyone!

Yeah. It's sort of like, you know, if you propose restrictions and say, oh, this is great, then of course the people who are more extreme will just take that and run with it. And then, you know, you have detran's TERFs showing up and testifying for their own weird reasons, probably because of their connections to Carrie Callahan.

But this also is a chance for them to sort of launder their image, make it seem like, oh, look, we're good detran's people. We oppose the religious right. We're fighting against these bans. And then people who don't necessarily know any better will like, oh, look, we're good. We're good detrans people. We oppose the religious right. We're fighting against these bans. And then people who don't necessarily know any better will like... Come hang out with us in the woods. Right, right. I mean, that's a strategy.

They often pretend to be more trans-friendly than they really are to sort of draw people in or be able to influence queer and trans communities and slowly slip in like crypto-terf ideology and recruit people.

Or just flat-out stalk people. Yeah. There's just a whole lot of different anti-trans groups and individuals stretching from paternalistic medical professionals who want more gatekeeping,

who want to restrict the number of people transitioning all the way to Christian nationalists who want to just wipe us out completely and not only are basically at war with bodily autonomy in general. They don't want anyone. They want to be the ones who control what people do with their bodies.

They also want to restrict reproductive care and abortion. It's all part of the same war uh just control people and sort their version of authoritarian christianity and then you have you know uh you know weird detrans terfs and it's just like all you kind of have to like understand like all these different factions and how they sort of like interact together and how you know they try to use each other you know it can seem overwhelming but like the more we kind of understand like what we're up against like the the easier it is for us to you know develop strategies of resistance and it's like you know even though you know it can seem like we're up against a lot of different groups

but like you know we're also part of this larger fight for for liberation and you know we can connect you know with with feminists who are liberation and you know we can connect you know with with feminists who are fighting for reproductive autonomy we can connect with like disability liberation uh activists who are fighting for better health care for everyone we do potentially have lots of allies we do have lots of connections like with other movements um and so when you think of it that way it's like okay we're not just like one small group up against this whole like goliath that's like no we're part of this larger movement that is fighting so that everyone is free and that everyone gets the health care they deserve

yeah and i mean i think that one of the one of the the sort of tangential things here too is you know this is an extremely negative example of the amount of influence that a very very small number of people can wield who have extremely unpopular ideologies on the other hand there are a lot of us and the things that we believe are very popular and you know the amount of power that we can wield if we are willing to organize and we are when we understand what we're organizing against is immense and it is enough to drive these people into the fucking ground. Oh yeah.

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