It Could Happen Here - The Trans Genocide Part 1: Eradication

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Garrison and Mia are joined by Margaret Killjoy to discuss the year's violent escalation in anti-trans rhetoric and the legislation they've produced.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We've got a bit of a downer of an episode here, but this is going to be part one of a two-part series talking about the increasing war on trans people that we've seen both on the rhetorical side and on the actual legislative side. With me today is Mia and Margaret. How are you doing on this fine day? It's been really fun frantically updating my part of the script because there keep being fucking new bills yeah that are like going through committee so it's

great having having a good time i'm doing great i'm not aware of anything that's wrong i assume you all are here to tell me that everything's fine forever well hopefully next episode we'll talk more about how we can like uh i don't know deal with this sort of thing i i most i it was my job to handle the bad part of the of this two-part series and it was the other people's job to handle the good part so i don't know what they have in plan for the next episode. Actually, all I did was watch hours and hours of people advocating for genocide and put together some of the worst bits that I feel like are still worth mentioning. It's probably worth noting that the two of us who are supposed to be writing about what we do about it, both have swords over

our shoulders. This is true. I can go grab a sword if that is if that is a core part of the advice i think so okay so um i think whenever i put together episodes like these i always try to be careful not to i i don't just want to include people who are talking about why myself and others should die like just like i i don't want to include that unnecessarily because that's just kind of a bummer. But I think it is also important to actually hear and understand the types of rhetoric that they are trying to spread and they're trying to normalize and be aware of what techniques and what rhetorical styles they are trying to employ. So I've condensed this down as much as I can. You will still hear a decent amount of pretty gross stuff. I think I should

have almost all of the misgendering completely edited out. I should have a whole bunch of things not included, but there will be a decent amount of rhetoric that you will hear from. Just as a heads up, that's what's going to be kind of part of this episode. from. Just as a heads up, that's what's going to be kind of part of this episode. A lot of this is going to be talking about hosts that are employed by the conservative news site ran by Ben Shapiro, The Daily Wire. They have really, really focused in an excruciating extent on anti-trans like campaigning and activism for really the past year. Um, it got, this type of stuff got really bad last February and it once again got really bad this February. Uh, it's no coincidence that this is also the start of the legislative cycle that this,

this is why they're doing this right now. It is, it is part of an attempt to actually affect the laws that the United States have around if trans people are allowed to exist. It is, it is, it is purposeful. Um, so we may as well just get started here. We're going to start a little bit light actually. So most of this will be documenting the types of rhetoric they were using in February to March. So the past like month and a half. In early February, Candace Owens on her Daily Wire show referred to trans people as demonic while advocating for the total ban of transgender health care for all ages. The Trans Lives Matter protesters decided to occupy the Oklahoma Capitol building to fight GOP bills that ban gender conforming surgery for

people that are under the age of 21. So of course that should be banned if you are under the age of 21. You should not be, honestly, you should never be allowed. I would go a little further, Oklahoma, if you really want to do something, just ban it altogether. Yeah, I love that because they're always trying to be like, no, no, no, we're just here to protect the children. Whereas we've known this entire time that they're trying to stop anyone from being trans. Yes. This, this is a pattern that will come up a lot in the research I put together for this is how last year it was, they were very much trying to make it like, no, it's

just about the kids. And then we were talking about how first they're going to try to limit it to 18 years old and they're going to limit it to 21 years old and they're going to limit it to 25 years old. Then they're just going to ban it altogether. And that is very clearly what they're doing. And they're now just saying the quiet part out loud. So good on us for calling that a year in advance, but now they're emboldened just to say it outright. So Candace Owens refers to trans people as demonic later on in that clip. I'm not including that bit because just today, Michael Knowles on his Daily Wire show said that this so-called transgenderism is demonic. The second Daily Wire person to drum up this satanic panic shit. This is demonic stuff, really demonic stuff. this point I got in trouble with our publicists over at Media Matters because I said that

the attacks on man's sexual nature and sexual difference and complementarity are demonic. And they are. They go back throughout all of history, throughout some of the earliest depictions of demons. Even one of the most prominent depictions of demons comes from an artist, Eliphas Levy, who is an occultist, who did a depiction of Baphomet. If you just think, what's a demon look like, you're probably thinking of this picture. Okay, okay, alright. That's not true! It's not! Hold on! It's completely wrong! This is, this is really funny to me because for years now, I've been trying to say that being trans is not demonic. It's very clearly alchemical.

Please, please get your occult terms right. Thousands of years of alchemical development has delivered onto me estradiol valerate. It's very clearly alchemy. or dial valerate it's it's very clearly alchemy um but also it's just extremely funny to me that knolls tried to cite levy who's like baphomet isn't really a demon in levy's work but like whatever it's it's all it's extremely funny he he goes on to talk about solvay and and coagula which i've actually been planning to do an episode on for a while but it's it's all extremely funny is it worth describing that baphomet is the statue of the horn-headed person with

tits and a dick? Yes. Often falsely identified as Satan or a demon. It's a very famous statue. If you think of the statue of Satan, this is what Baphomet actually is. It's not Satan.

The use of this like demonic rhetoric is a very, it's very basic, like dehumanizing stuff, trying to dehumanize trans people while also pulling from like the remnants of the satanic panic that still exists

in some conservatives' minds. Moving on to a friend of the pod, Matt Walsh. One of his recent main targets is actress dylan mulvaney uh on february 14th matt went on a mindless rant while continuously misgendering mulvaney and attacking her appearance at one point referring to her as like doing a woman face minstrel show routine which a reoccurring thing about this is that all of in all of their rhetoric against trans people they also managed to be incredibly racist yep and like not understanding what racism actually is which i mean is not surprising

considering their they work for the daily wire i'm not gonna actually include the clip of matt welsh there because it's just it's just misgendering and like making fun of how someone looks for like a minute. And it's all very gross. Who is that actress? I just I live under a rock. Dylan Mulvaney. I think she does like Broadway stuff. She's like a New York person. I've not I've only I've only really heard of her based on Matt Walsh's continuing rants against this person. We can't have cross-dressers in the theater. Imagine! I literally

don't know how far back you'd have to get to get to where people didn't play with gender on stage. I think it's impossible. I think the further back you go, the worse it gets because you get into things where only men could be on stage and it's like, well, OK, this is every Shakespeare performance, et cetera, et cetera. who called into the Daily Wire sports show, Crane and Company,

talked about how dads like him are going to cause dangerous problems if trans inclusivity continues. The host of the show agreed and said that violence will be an inevitable response to trans women playing sports. Which one of you brought it up? But somebody said something about dads being in the stands, finding out that for the first time that somebody in the locker room was a male and that they were just hanging it all out in front of their girls, how irate they would get.

My view is that, yeah, we're going to have not just one irate dad. We're going to have a lot of irate dads. That's going to cause a massive problem in the school system, and it is going to be very dangerous for everybody because people are going to start taking it in their own hands because they're seeing that other people are not. That's exactly, jungle rules. We call it jungle rules.

Exactly. At what point do we say, we've tried to talk this out and hash this out with you, you're not being reasonable. Those are part of my values. So it's not even us saying go in there and handle business. It's saying, I know what's going to happen the minute that girl runs out of that locker room or a couple girl. Imagine if a 12 year old girl ran out of the locker room and said that to her. Just imagine that how it or whatever men shouldn't be in women's locker room. But if a man that was straight walked into a women's locker

room with a trench coat and just showed everything and started shaking like this and got beat to sleep, everybody would be doing this. They'd be clapping great job. But you let the same thing happen to somebody who says they think they're a woman in there and does the exact same thing, then it's no, it's a totally different situation. So while we're not advocating for it, I'm telling you what's gonna happen because I live in the real world. I know what you would do for your daughter. Yep. That man does not live in the real world. I know what you would do for your daughter. Yep. That man does not live in the real world. No. And it's, it's all like, it's this weird, like trying to have some form of like, of a, of, of like denial in their very clear advocating for violence and like advocating

for the normalization of just assaulting people. I mean, I even feel like though, this is like, this is like last year's anti-trans rhetoric. You know, the like lowest hanging fruit was to come at us about sports, this issue that affects the tiniest percentage of people. Yeah, and it's the blending of the sports issue with like the locker room stuff. Yeah.

Later on in the show, another caller admitted that he would assault trans women, including his own children. Um, and the daily wire hosts refuse to push back on like any of this as this man just advocates child abuse. And I just wanted to say too, as a,

uh, as a new father, uh, I've got a new baby boy, uh, and I've got a two year old daughter. And not only would I want to beat somebody up for doing that to my daughter, but I would beat my son up if he ever thought about doing

something like that in a women's locker room. It's just again and I want to make sure and again we live in the real world. We know what's going to happen because we're not even advocating violence. Like I said, we're telling you what's going to happen. These are the fathers and the brothers and the uncles and the mamas are it's going to get to a point where they're just going to handle business. It is what it is. We're trying to tell y'all. This isn't a threat.

It's just a forewarning. It is foreshadowing of what's going to happen. The British are coming. Yeah. Okay, but the British are coming is a really, really funny thing for an American to say about this. Wait, is he saying that they're the british they're trying to do like a paul revere thing oh oh oh i thought they were trying to be like we're gonna show up and we're

gonna handle business us no i think okay it's going the opposite i'm sorry we are we are warning that if this insanity continues then people will start violently assaulting anyone who they suspect of being yeah a man in a bathroom which will also just lead to like people assaulting like like butch cis women as well like no i mean it's like this has already been happening like like one of my friends can't get changed at the local gym um even though they're assigned female at birth because there's no safe place for them to do it because of the way that they read you know like and i don't know whatever i mean that's just one example off the top of my head but it's just no absolutely it's happening constantly suddenly we have gender police everywhere and everyone is expected to perform masculinity and femininity and like

weird cis normative ways i'm saying shit that everyone knows i'm sorry i'm just no no no but i think there's something important about this too which is like and anytime someone tries to say like anytime someone starts talking about the real world this is the way the world really works right that that's not an actual description of reality it's an it's an aspirational thing right and the way that you make something real is through violence yes and that's what all this stuff is absolutely and and specifically speaking of violence and uh child abuse the next day on february 16th uh candace owens was discussing this uh this like trans kids tiktok video about his grandmother's transphobic reaction to him coming out um and it's also it's just extremely gross how these like these media people

who are paid millions of dollars spend their days making fun of trans kids on tiktok like like random like random minors on tiktok who are making videos about their experiences and they then these these like uh these grifters and these content creators who work on the right, it's like blast these kids on their, on their, on their shows. They get like millions of millions of viewers. I mean, this is the entire lips of TikTok platform,

but you're now seeing this across like almost every mainstream conservative influencer. So on top of Candace calling being trans a mental illness placed upon you by society, Candace Owens also said that if she had a trans grandchild, she would beat them with a cane. It is a cry for help. And your grandmother answered that cry for help by telling you that you are loved as you are, and that you don't need to fall into this trap of insanity. You're the best grandma ever, by the way, because when I'm a grandma, I get any foolishness like that. I don't need to fall into this trap of insanity you're the best grandma ever by the way because when i'm a grandma i get any foolishness like that i don't know i want to be

a sweet grandma i really do i want to be a sweet old lady but i feel like i might be the kind to hit somebody with a cane i don't know be like i'm not calling you michael i feel like that would probably be me but i will i would have prayed for you you know like a thing that i keep thinking about with this like this can is clip with most of these clips it's like they're just like laughing the whole time they're doing they're saying this stuff yep like it's just a joke to them right it's like yeah they believe it but it's also it's just like a joke it's just something they can sort of like casually talk about while like you know fucking hanging out on their show or whatever and it's absolutely because i mean the primary goal for

these people is is content creation and yeah they're making suffering content for for and as well as like normalizing this type of like violent response yeah and i and i and i think i think the sort of joking thing is it is a big part of how normalization works like i don't think like i i think it would be much harder to have someone just being incredibly serious going like yeah i'm gonna like beat my child with a cane right like if but if you do in that sort of like joking like matter of fact thing it helped it helps normalize it enormously yeah no absolutely i'm just really sad thinking about the because because acceptance by family, a family that doesn't necessarily understand

but is willing to accept is like the thing that I think bolsters the spirits of young trans people or adult trans people more than anything else, you know? And I've been like reading a bunch of history about like trans people from a hundred years ago where their family are like, all right, well, we don't get it, but what's your name now?

Yeah. And like, it's like a hundred years ago. We, we could have improved from there. And, and this is something that the daily wire definitely does continue to harp on across multiple hosts.

Even like, uh, the next video that, that we have here, um, Matt, Matt Walsh is doing like, this is same thing.

They're talking about if they themselves had trans kids or trans grandkids, that they would continue to be as openly vitriolic and even violent against their own children. So this next clip came like a week after Matt Walsh's first unhinged rant attacking Dylan Mulvaney. Walsh claimed that he wouldn't stop barking vitriolic rhetoric if he had a trans kid, that in fact he would, quote, rather be dead than discover he had a trans kid. A beautiful and innocent kid one day seemingly out of nowhere gets sucked into the gender cult and is devoured by it all of their innocence and light and beauty just drained out of them replaced by this self cannibalizing madness for a parent to see this happen to a child it is a fate worse than death i would rather be dead than have that happen to my kids. Then die. What do we do?

Argue with you? I'm not on the debate team. This is a mock trial. I keep thinking of whenever these things happen, like I keep thinking about Matt Chrisman's one good line, which is we should give the Christians what they want and crucify them. Persecute, persecute all day, every day. So unfortunately, there was more to that clip than Walsh just threatening to kill himself. Using the groomer and protect the children rhetoric that we saw go viral last year, Walsh promises that mean words are only the beginning.

See, the thing that I most despise about Dylan Mulvaney is that part of a movement which actively seeks to turn my children into Dylan Mulvaney. That's why I'm entitled to my anger and to whatever language I use to convey it. I will say whatever I want to say and I will be justified in saying it because these people are after my kids and yours and everyone else's. And you're worried that I'm being a little rude? Well, you see, when it comes to my children, the children that I cherish more than my own life, if you think mean words go too far, then you would be very shocked to hear how far I would really go to protect them trust me words are the least of it i love this i would do anything to protect my children unless they're a gay in which case i'm

like off myself or something like yeah yeah just i mean i mean i don't know whatever you're already the legally actionable things have already been said. Hey, it's not my idea. It's only Matt Walsh's. This is his idea. You know, I do want to go back for a second to the early parts of this clip where he's talking about like, oh, you have these pure and innocent children

and the light goes out of them. The thing that strikes me about that so much is like, he's describing the process exactly in reverse like the thing that he's describing is what is like this is what happens if you do transition a kid like by force like the thing that actually happens when a trans kid transitions is like you can you can literally see this in like like you can you can like literally see this in pictures of of kids it's like like you can watch the light come back to their eyes as they transition totally no yeah yeah and it's you know it's it's one of sort of like it's one of the most beautiful things about being trans it's like is

experiencing that joy and experiencing like what it is to be yourself and then you get to watch this fucking dipshit like just literally just like taking the process as it actually happens and then like lying and saying it's like literally like lying and saying that the thing that is making these people have this joy is the like the thing that's fucking killing them no absolutely that's something that's often overlooked when covering this sort of thing is the like just the presence of trans joy and the trans joy that can be experienced when people are given access to the treatments that have been like known to be successful for decades now this is also i mean i don't know if you're intentionally going in an escalating sense this is the first person that i'm looking at being like oh this man wants to kill me

you know i am i am going in an escalating sense. We escalate pretty far over the next bit. First, I think let's have a bit of an ad break. Do you know who doesn't want to kill you? 50% of the advertisers? At least. At least 50% of the advertisers don't want you dead because instead they want your money.

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Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds 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. All right, we are back. As previously stated, when reporting on this topic before

we've always said that like the limited focus on transgender minors was simply a form of rhetorical deception oh won't somebody please think of the children by conjuring concerns that have been like culturally ingrained in us around the protection of children, anti-trans activists have been introducing and normalizing anti-trans talking points that inevitably get used against trans people of all ages. Last year, Matt Walsh openly said that, quote, it should be illegal for doctors to medically transition anyone of any age, illegal for doctors to medically transition anyone of any age, unquote. And as Margaret said, it seemed like we were moving in a more escalating direction. That just so happened to correspond as the month of February continued. So here's a clip from Daily Wire host Michael Knowles

from late February 2023. In order for women to have the right to have their own bathrooms, you have to ban transgenderism entirely. You can't just ban it for the kids. It's got to be entirely. In order for women to be able to have their own locker rooms at the gym, you have to ban transgenderism entirely. In order to protect businesses from having to participate in weird, occult sexual rituals like the transgender transition you have to ban transgenderism entirely so that is just like straight up advocating for genocide right like yeah there there is no difference between this this term that the daily wire people use transgenderism, and currently existing transgender people.

That is, it's like saying we have to eradicate Judaism. Like, what do you mean by that? You obviously mean exterminating human beings, and making it impossible for them to continue on. Like, that is what genocide is. Yeah, and you can hear me.

Like, literally the next thing he says is like, you know, he's talking about, like, transitioning as an occult ritual whatever the fuck and it's like well yeah i know like like he's explicitly saying like what what yeah what this banning transgenderism means does it ever like confuse you all when you just have these moments where you're like these people believe in sky daddy like i'm not even anti-religious i'm not even an atheist i don't know exactly what i am but like when you hear people just being like god has willed me to do this murder or whatever that this is what this person is saying i'm just like they think of themselves as like holy warriors who have been chosen by god to eradicate this demonic plague that is infecting like humankind yeah it would be like if all of the

sudden they were like and that's why gandalf has told me that i must go on a quest like i'm just like am i living in the same century as these people like again not an atheist but i'm just like you've decided that sky daddy has told you to march off to murder like yeah that doesn't even map to a fucking basic understanding even of religion anyway sorry no absolutely and I mean this unfortunately continues to get worse um yeah the very next the very next day Michael Knowles defended his eliminationist rhetoric in another unhinged rant about the, like, probably about 2 million trans people in the United States, saying that, quote, there can't be a genocide of trans people because it's, quote, not a legitimate category of being. for the extermination of transgender people. They said I was calling for a genocide against, I said, what?

I must have missed that part of my show. When did I, did I say that? I don't, one, I don't know how you could have a genocide of transgender people because genocide refers to genes. It refers to genetics. It refers to genes. It refers to genetics. It refers to biology. And the whole point of transgenderism is that it has nothing to do with biology. That's what the transgender

activists say. They say, forget about biological sex. My gender expression doesn't have to have anything to do with my biological sex. Okay, well then there can't be a genocide. That refers to genetics. But furthermore, nobody's calling to exterminate anybody. Because the other problem with that statement is that

transgender people is not a real ontological category. It's not a legitimate category of being. There are people who think that they're the wrong sex, but they're mistaken. They're laboring under a delusion. And so we need to correct that delusion. Okay, so that was a lot. I'm just clinging to my emotional support sword. What solution, pray tell, will you be employing to correct that so-called delusion?

Maybe just like one at the end. one yeah a final a final one not the penultimate solution that's not his his thing no one step further the the the very the very last one i can't think of a of a of another word for for very last but yeah i also like have these motherfuckers kerotyped themselves no one has almost no one has been goddamn like the percentage of people who've seen what their genes are like i don't know whatever nonsense it's nonsense yeah the science does not hold up to the like thing you learn in fourth grade that that you know i don't know when they teach you xx and xy or whatever but it's like but like that but like, that's not science. That's not the current scientific understanding.

And I think it's never really been the scientific understanding. That part I'm not as certain about. No, I mean, like it's, and by saying like, I'm not calling for genocide because the group I'm targeting aren't even a real group of people. They're not even real people. It's literally the talking point of every single genocidal fascist ever in existence. So like, like literally, literally this is, oh my God, I can't, I cannot find the person who was writing about this. is literally the talking point of every single genocidal fascist ever in existence so like like literally literally this is oh my god i i can't i cannot find the person who was writing

about this i i apologize immensely but when when this clip was first circulating there was a really interesting article about that was circulating about how like not a legitimate category is what like the word that gets translated as degenerate like that the nazis used but actually means like like that's like not a legitimate kind of like like that very specifically is what the nazis used as like you know as as their thing for we need to kill the jews right like that that's that's that's very very specifically what they were doing no and like genocide does not refer to genetics it fucking doesn't. And, you know, you can look at like,

these people are like just unfathomably fucking stupid, right? Like they look at genocide, right? And they see the word gen and they go, this means genes. No, but, you know, and I think something that is worth mentioning is that, so Raphael Lemkin is the guy who coins the term genocide. Right. The Lemkin Institute, which is the like the Lemkin Institute, which is like the institute from this guy that that does genocide, like does anti-genocide prevention work specifically in the US was like there is now a risk of genocide against trans people. is now a risk of genocide against trans people so you know the institute of the actual guy who made the term genocide versus a guy who thinks that gen means gene it's like it's just oh no

it's very obvious that that is saying that transgender people are not a real ontological category is like he's doing the nazi thing he's literally that is how you do the nazis did that is how you do nazi stuff like so like i'm under the impression the whole thing with ontology is accepting that there's like multiple ontologies like it's clearly not an ontological concept in his ontological like his way of viewing the world that's one of the problems you know i just think i don't think he would pass a basic philosophy course in college you know okay i will say this my my my arguments against against specifically against there being multiple legitimate ontologies is these people's fucking ontology who, like, believe that, like, these people,

all these fucking freaks literally believe individually, right, that there is no scientific explanation for lightning and that, like, every act of lightning is an individual act of God. That is not a legitimate ontology like fuck that shit no i i i refuse i refuse to do fucking to to to to to to have to have there be fucking multiple valid ontological positions i refuse for there to be i didn't say valid worlds like no fuck this shit there's some that are just wrong and you have to be able to say that shit otherwise you get this fucking bullshit reality tunnels do do be funny like that um he he later added quote

transgenderism ultimately is a lie it's a deception it is a fraud fraud is not protected by the first amendment fraud is not a category protected by the principles of free speech you have no right to fraud. You know, here's the thing. I will. I will agree with him. You have no right to fraud. Fraud is not protected by free speech.

I really like have have have a real fun time when we fucking come for you on those principles. And you're like tiny as show disappears. And your little tiny-ass show disappears. A few days later, Knowles once again invoked groomer rhetoric and openly called drag queens pedophiles and explicitly called on, quote, the heavy hand of the state to shut down drag shows and arrest performers and parents. Why is he dressed like Mr. Rogers in a Black Mirror episode. He's just Mirror Universe Mr. Rogers. He's like just telling you to hate your neighbor, you know? I don't know how you can watch this and not conclude that the performers are pedophiles. I don't use that word lightly. I know a lot of people on the right use that word and they fling

it around and they use it imprecisely. I don't see how you can. I know a lot of people on the right use that word and they fling it around and they use it imprecisely. I don't see how you can dance around in a thong or in a leather harness in front of babies and toddlers if you are not a pedophile. So I would bet, if not the farm, I'd bet a lot of my money that that's the case and that's being normalized. I don't see how these parents should be permitted to keep their children. They're abusing their children. They're sexually abusing their children by taking them to these events. I don't see how whatever company is hosting this should be allowed to keep its doors open. All of this should be shut down by the heavy hand of the state. All of these people, other than the children, should be arrested. And some of them should face pretty severe

consequences. Not great stuff stuff he did hedge his bets he was like you know i'm actually not sure about this that was my favorite part i think it is it is interesting that the whole heavy hand of the state line is uh is is is is an interesting little little unique gem in their style of rhetoric whenever they explicitly call on the powers of the government to like do fascism i think a lot of this type of rhetoric was leading up to cpac uh in which happened in early march uh during cpac anti-trans rhetoric was a very central theme across their many speakers that's like their big right-wing gathering where all the far right people get together and talk to an empty room well Well, CPAC is the Conservative Political Action Conference. It is far-right by the world's Overton window, but it's like a mainstream right-wing convention in the United States.

Cool. So the conference featured an array of speakers, including prominent Republican politicians and policymakers, as well as people like Michael Knowles, who are just like right-wing pundits. Many speeches had attacks against gender-affirming healthcare, trans-inclusive sports and bathroom policies, as well as the typical groomer and pedophilia stuff that we saw get super popular last year, as well as framing this word transgenderism as a radical ideology. Now, words like transgenderism and gender ideology are not actually terms that trans people use. These were terms invented by anti-trans activists. I want to be very specific about this because this is a thing I don't think people understand. The term gender ideology was specifically invented

by the Catholic Church, like as a thing to oppose this and also as sort of a way to oppose like gay marriage and like queerness in general yes and they're all of the fucking all of the like shitty like one of the one of the sort of like quote-unquote like dark secrets in the fucking closet of all of the black people who claim to be like radical feminists who are anti-trans all of of these people specifically worked with the cat like back back back when this stuff was first being developed in like the late 90s and early 2000s all these people worked with the catholic church specifically to make sure that i like that that that more sort of like more gender inclusive like terminology and stuff like not only terminology like more gender inclusive programs and definitions of like of what gender is wouldn't be implemented at the UN.

So this sort of like rad-femme conservative Catholic alliance is very old, and most of the people who are in it will deny that that's what they were doing. But it is. This is Catholic church shit. The pope literally had a rant about how gender ideology was colonialism like a week ago it's like and and the pope does the same demonic rhetoric as these people and i mean yeah so see i believe it from him it makes sense from him that's his that's his thing that's his literal job yeah which admittedly also it's like sir you are the pope like shut the fuck up about colonization man like just don't like you're from latin america that doesn't fucking excuse you like

the catholic church the catholic church famously never never never done colonization um but yeah these words were invented by anti-trans activists to dehumanize transgender people and frame being trans as itself this dangerous ideology or a mental illness in a need of curing. CPAC speakers consistently invoked grooming and pedophilia stuff in their long anti-LGBTQ hate rants. Lauren Bobbert claimed that educators are attempting to groom children, echoing the lips of TikTok stuff that got popular in 2021 and 2022. Tulsi Gabbard was at CPAC. She basically claimed that LGBTQ plus people were trying to gain acceptance for pedophiles

by labeling them as minor attracted persons and allowing them to teach in schools. This is another conspiracy theory that lives of TikTok has boosted for a long time. By the way, i want to hold a fucking good share which is that there were a lot of people who like claim to be leftist who in like 2018 2019 2020 were like telling all of us that uh tulsi gabbard was a leftist it was like the only anti-imperialist very clearly a fascist fuck like she she she like no fuck off uh you were wrong please admit you were wrong i please be more careful about who you're gonna fucking back so you don't end up backing this fucking like weird

pedo jacketing dipshit but you know who you should back oh god is it is it not yet not yet almost almost okay oh not almost almost time sorry. Sorry. I have it planned. Matt Gaetz spoke about an incident in Virginia, which the right-wing media sphere has spread disinformation about to falsely frame it as an instance of a trans student abusing inclusive bathroom policies to attack young girls. Just spreading all kinds of misinformation and disinformation from these right-wing hate websites that that is why they exist is to propagate disinformation.

Marjorie Taylor Greene targeted gender-affirming health care, praising her current reintroduction of the 2022 Protect Children's Innocence Act in the House, a bill which would make it a felony to provide gender-affirming care to minors. Greene spread the lies and disinformation made popular by Matt Walsh that gender-affirming health care is designed to, quote, mutilate your kids and, quote, chemically castrate them. Stuff that we've debunked on the show before and many others have debunked.

Trump gave a pretty, pretty bad transphobic speech to close out the conference. On the one side, he said that he would keep men out of women's sports, but then closed out CPAC by saying, quote, he would revoke every Biden policy promoting the sexual mutilation and chemical castration of our youth. And I will ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states, unquote.

I don't want to include Trump's stuff here because i find his voice to be slightly annoying um anyway moving moving on donald trump more annoying than michael knowles shocking so hard challenge level almost impossible speaking speaking of michael knowles uh he gave a speech at cpac where he advocated that transgenderism must be eradicated to thunderous applause. Now, I'm going to play this whole clip here. Bear with me. There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing. If transgenderism is true, if men really can become women, then it's true for everybody of all ages.

really can become women, then it's true for everybody of all ages. If transgenderism is false, as it is, if men really can't become women, as they cannot, then it's false for everybody too. And if it's false, then we should not indulge it, especially since that indulgence requires taking away the rights and customs of so many people. If it is false, then for the good of society, and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely. The whole preposterous ideology at every level. Pretty, pretty bad stuff. Not great to hear a room full of people applaud someone who's very clearly talking about the eradication of an entire group of people. And I want to specifically point out the from public life thing, because that was

something that, you know, like back when the first bathroom bills were happening in 2016, was something that you know like back when the first bathroom bills were happening in 2016 right you know like people like trans people who were following this stuff you know the thing everyone said was they're trying to they're trying to erase trans people from public life right because that's that's what happens when you can't use a restroom in public right it's like it limits your ability to just exist in in in the sphere. And we've gotten to a point now where they can just fucking say what we all knew they wanted from the beginning. And that's terrifying. I remember when I hit the kind of uncanny valley space. Like when I hit the space where I freaked people out no matter what bathroom I used.

It was like a very conscious thing where I remember it. Because I pick which bathroom to use based on safety. And depending on my presentation, it's wildly different. Depending on what kind of space I'm in, it's wildly different. I don't know. I just remember really consciously the first time. I picked the men's room and then got double takes about why I was in there. And it's just like, oh, like can't do anything anymore yeah like no absolutely

after Knoll's speech at CPAC arguing for the eradication of transgenderism quote-unquote Daily Wire hosts including Matt Walsh defended him by saying quote we are in a war against the most deranged ideology ever invented by the human race. We are fighting to eradicate the ideological equivalent of a parasitic infection.'" But is a term like eradicate over the top? Does it have a needlessly militant tone? No, definitely not.

The tone may be militant, but not needlessly so. We are after all in a, and lives are at stake. We are in a war against the most deranged ideology ever invented by the human race, plain and simple. We are fighting to eradicate the ideological equivalent of a parasitic infestation, and the parasite, gender ideology, seeks to not only brainwash a generation of children not only degrade and appropriate womanhood but also and manhood by the way but also and most fundamentally it seeks to eat away at truth itself this is this is coming from somebody who glibly refers to himself as a theocratic fascist and in cases like this when they tell you who they are

you should fucking believe them like the first bit of that clip is like pretty bad very clearly fascistic like it's it's checking all of the boxes um but then i'm going to continue on to the second part of this clip and it is incredibly chilling can we point out about how his poor choice in plaid is also degrading to masculinity? Really, he is the greatest threat to masculinity right now because of his plaid choice. Eradication of gender ideology, total defeat is the only option because there's no compromise with it. There's no living side by side with it. There's no finding common ground. The gender ideologue wants to destroy your culture and your children.

You will either rise up against it or lose everything to it. We're so fucked. It's so Nazi. Like, quote, total defeat is the only option. The gender ideologue wants to destroy your culture and your children. Like, that is less than a stone's throw away from we must have secured the existence of our people and a future for white children.

It's right there. It's like, it's so, it's so clear. I think there's like a tiny grain of truth in it, which is that like, they are very, very, very close to like permanently losing the battle over whether trans people can exist. And that's why they're doing this, right? Because like the only, like, like, so support for trans people can exist and that's why they're doing this right because like the only like like so like so support for trans people getting health care is like 60 is

that like 60 right the the only thing they have left is just straight up genocide because if they don't fucking kill us all now right and they don't right now act to make it impossible for future trans people to be trans right they? They are going to lose. And I will talk about this towards the end of the episode. This is kind of part of my thesis on this. And this is something that Michael Knowles himself actually admits. In one of Michael Knowles' first shows after CPAC, he suggests that eradicating transgenderism would be a simple matter of returning to the state of affairs in 2015. To eradicate transgenderism from public life. And it's a good question. I'm glad people are

talking about that. That was the point of my speech. What would it mean to eradicate the preposterous ideology of transgenderism from public life at every level? Put simply, public life at every level. Put simply, eradicating transgenderism from public life would mean behaving as American society did before, say, 2015. Before around 2015, we did not have any acceptance of transgenderism in public life. Also, in just like a grim moment of sorality, in the middle of that clip, Knowles does an ad read for a company called Rabbit Air, which is an air purifier company who has an office in Pasadena, California. She's fucking crazy. Knowles goes on to blame Obama for leading this wave of trans acceptance in public life now this whole 2015 thing is very funny to me because in a lot of ways it was actually kind of easier to be trans in 2015 than it is right now um but i and i think that this is

mostly that like for for conservatives it's mostly that young trans people are simply more visible now mostly due to things like tiktok like there's just there's a more visible presence of trans joy and trans people living and that is angering conservatives so they think this is like some new recent thing and because michael knowles did an ad break for Rabbit Air, who again has an office in Pasadena, California, I too am going to do an ad break for our fine sponsors. Welcome. I'm Danny Threl.

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I only have like one or two more clips to show. I liked the ad for Rabbit Air that just played. Fuck off. So in Michael Knoll's case, I think he isn't even primarily against just like trans equality. He is against modernity. Now, when I say modernity, I'm not referring to like industrial civilization and its many consequences for humans and the planet at large. Right wing anti-modernism is very different than like anarchist anti-civ ideas. This idea of modernism isn't really

tied to industrial developments. It's more linked to a psycho-spiritual antagonism against modern social progress. It's more akin to the esoteric super-fascist Julius Evola's idea of revolt against the modern world and how liberalism is

like a plague against moral society and causing mass degeneracy. Michael Knowles' own Twitter bio reads, quote, I am completely opposed to the error of the modernists. Again, when these people tell you who they are, you have to believe them. Just this week during a speech at the University of Buffalo, Knowles laid out a plan to attack, quote, the logic of so-called gay marriage, theized by the supreme court sure so like that that like 99 chance that he means like 2015 before gay marriage is the thing that he wants to go back to but here's here's a here's a clip of him talking about how conservatives

have continued to lose lose the battleground on a whole bunch of topics and how he's going to try to win them back. Now, even many conservatives accept so-called gay marriage. And they have to. They have to accept gay marriage if they accept the illogic of the sexual revolution, which held that all sexual relations are fine and dandy so long as they're consensual. After the sexual revolution, the only test for sexual ethics became, if it feels good, do it. For most of American history, nobody believed that. For most of American history, there were all sorts of laws against certain sexual behaviors. There were famously laws against sodomy, but there were lots of other laws as well. Laws against fornication, But there were lots of other laws as well. Laws against fornication, laws against adultery, laws against plenty of other destructive sexual behaviors. Those laws were on the books as recently as 2003, when liberals on the Supreme Court discovered in the Constitution some sort of right to all of those things. he wants all these things to become illegal again. That, that is his political project. And to quote Aerie Drennan,

quote, none of this is a theoretical exercise after banning drag or gender affirming care for minors. The Tennessee house yesterday passed a bill that would allow local officials to refuse same sex interfaith or interracial marriages. Unquote. Now, last year we titled some of our episodes

that cover this wave of anti-trans attacks, quote, like the war on trans people, unquote. And even like considering the origin of this podcast, I am often hesitant to entertain fantasies of actual civil conflict in the United States. But in this case, like they are the ones who are killing us and trying to make our very existence illegal. It is them who has initiated this type of militant language. The last clip I have here is of Matt Walsh talking about just that. We aren't even remotely done, okay? This is honestly only the beginning. We've got a lot more in store for you. I promised you a year ago that we were going to war here and I kept that promise. I'll keep this one too. There's much

more to be done that needs to be done and we aim to do it. So the battle continues, whether you like it or not. The battle continues. So a few days ago, the governor of Mississippi brought Matt Walsh to speak during an official press conference about the signing of House Bill 1125, banning gender-affirming health care for minors. The presence of Matt Walsh at a state of Mississippi official press conference is a clear example of fascism being inserted into the governmental process um and speaking of bills i'm going to hand this over to mia to now talk about some of the legislative stuff yay yeah wow so this is going to be a long one i'm i'm sorry folks yeah unfortunately the the the list of ways in which they are trying to kill us is long so yeah this is this is the inevitable result of that in one of the very early clips right i i think i don't know god i can't remember which one

it was uh one of the maybe it was candace owens talked about like our publicist at media matters right yeah and i and i think you know i think there is in a lot of cases i think there's a lot of merit to not like covering this shit when it's specifically people like very specific. Alex Jones does this, right? He'll say something specifically incredibly inflammatory as a way to sort of get media attention to him. Yeah. But in this case, we can't fucking do that because all of the policy proposals that these people want are getting actually fucking implemented. So here's from the human rights campaign about

how bad things have gotten less than two months into 2023 human rights campaign is already tracking 340 anti-lgbtq bills that have been introduced in state houses across the country i think it's like over 400 oh yeah it's it this yeah i was gonna get this so those numbers are from early those numbers are from early february right or mid February. Now, yeah, it's something like over 400. It's really hard to get actual totals because there are so fucking many of them. 150 of those would specifically restrict the rights of transgender people. The highest number of bills targeting transgender people in a single year to date. They also note as everyone else does every single successive year breaks the record for the most number of bills targeting trans people.

Yeah, those numbers are already out of date. And, okay, so on the one hand, right, there are real problems with projects that just track the raw number of bills. bills and you know okay on the one hand the like the the raw numbers are i think a good way of actually getting people to sort of understand like the level of threat that is happening like just sort of just sort of the raw magnitude of the threat on the other hand okay it it's kind of misleading in the sense that almost all these bills are going to fail because most of these – most, most, and this is the incredibly important thing here, most, but not all, most of these bills are made by just random state lawmakers with no political backing. And this allows organizations, you know, sort of like a lot of the nonprofit groups who work in these sort of legislative spaces to, like, claim credit for defeating, like, 90% of the bills. And it's like, well, no, like, most of those, like 90 of the bills and it's like well no like most of those like almost none of them were ever going to pass in the first place

and the second thing that it does is it puts this sort of cloud out which makes it really really difficult you know if you're just being if you're if you're trying to follow right the sort of legislative process here it gets very very hard because it's it's very difficult to sort out which bills have any chance of passing and which ones are just some random dipshit like first term like i don't know some some like first term lawmaker from like a part of mississippi that is two lawmakers right like but so my my solution to this is we're going to run through the bills that have already been passed.

I guess we should just start in Mississippi because we've sort of already talked about, yeah, Governor Tate Reeves inviting Matt Walsh to give a speech at the bill signing ceremony. So in Mississippi, a law was passed called the REAP Act, which, you know, that's great. That tells you exactly what they fucking mean by this uh this is a bill that bans and this this is a very very common pattern for bills um it bans minors from getting hormones from getting any kind of gender affirming surgery and blocks anyone from getting puberty blockers um we've said this before we'll say it again all of this stuff is good kids should be able to get these things kids should be able to get these things easier they they they just

unfathomably improve the lives of the children you get them all of all of the data supports this notion this has been normalized for literally decades yeah and i mean puberty blockers in particular is is one of the things that's become the focus of like oh it's not safe not safe. It's like, puberty blockers were the compromise position, right? And this is something that I think has been lost in a lot of debate about this, because, you know, we've gotten to the point where everything is being banned. But puberty blockers, you know, were a compromise position, because you could give people puberty blockers without like actually giving trans kids the hormones that they need. giving trans kids the hormones that they need and even that we you know we're at a point where states are just full-on banning kids from getting them uh this sucks it's awful it is killing trans kids um mississippi also has a ban one of the other things about this specific one and not not all the states are doing it do this but this specific bill also bans state money from going to any institution that practices like – does like gender-affirming care for minors. They also have an anti-sports law, so you can see the sort of like how the dominoes went down in terms of like – sorry. You can see how the dominoes fell down in terms of where it started and where it was going, right? First, you get your anti-bathroom law, and then you get your sort of like keep trans people out of sports, and then –

And then you get the healthcare laws. Yeah, yeah. So Iowa also has a ban that's basically an identical ban on hormones, gender-affirming surgery, and puberty blockers. identical ban on hormones gender affirming surgery and puberty blockers they also passed a bill that bans trans kids from using bathrooms and locker rooms according to their gender in elementary middle and high schools and i want to talk a little bit about this because this is going to lead to kids getting fucking raped because it turns out if you force a trans girl into a men's locker room uh things are going to go real fucking bad for them they don't give a shit about this right they they simply do not care um but that's you know that that that's that that that's the actual substantive results um i will also pass uh i've seen it variously refers to as like i don't

say trans or like i don't say lgbtq plus bill this is a bill that prohibits teachers who teach either from kindergarteners through sixth grade from teaching about transness like at all you can't teach about gender you can't teach about like sex you can't teach about you know you you can't teach about the fact that you can in fact change your gender and it's good and cool um the human rights campaign says quote this bill would also prohibit schools from providing gender-affirming accommodations for transgender students without parental consent and would require school staff to out-transgender students. So I read this bill, and it's not clear to me how it requires that, but that's what the lawyers are saying, and I'm not a lawyer. So it may or may not require that. So it may or may not require that. This is another thing, very specifically, this is another thing that's been happening in the sort of newer waves of these laws are laws that specifically require school counselors, teachers, and school staff to bunch of trans people who were just killed by their parents.

And, you know, forcibly outing people is, like, you're exposing them to the risk of abuse, you're exposing them to the risk of unsafe housing environments. No, it's just a little soft whack by your grandma, I remember. Just a little tap on the head. Yeah, yeah, it was going to fucking beat you to death. So, these bills in Iowa

have been passed by the house and the Senate, and they're just like, they're just like sitting on a desk waiting for the governor to sign them. And the governor is going to. So yeah, that's, that's the situation. Iowa in Arkansas,

you have the, the hormone puberty blocker, gender affirming surgery ban. The Arkansas one is on hold because, you know, and this is a, this is true for a couple of these is that people have done legal challenges on it and yeah yeah the arkansas particulars had a huge legal fight

uh we still don't know how that's i mean legal fights are going on for like a year we still haven't gotten a ruling on it yet uh they also have a a ban on trans kids competing in sports um alabama made it a class c felony punishable by up to a decade in prison to give transgender kids hormones puberty blockers gender affirming surgery this was also interesting because it's the only bill so most of these ones when they do when they say minors right it's until you're 18 you can't get it for whatever reason alabama uh also bans 18 year olds from getting any of these things you just have to be 19 that's weird yeah um part part of the bill you know about hormone blockers so okay so specifically the the part of the parts of this

bill that are about hormones and hormone blockers are on hold pending sort of resolution of legal challenges but the judge was like fuck it you can do the surgery ban so that sucks um alabama also has bills that's you know have the whole trans kids in schools can't use the right bathroom and you know teachers counselors and other school officials have to out them uh they also have another don't say trans bill that does a very similar thing about you ban teachers from talking about trans until sixth grade i think a lot of these bills are written by like lobbying groups who just copy and paste the same thing and submit it to a whole bunch

of different states. I will say there are weird differences in them. You'll see different completely scattershot definitions of what hormones are. Some of these bills try to define what a woman is, and it's very funny

because they have to do all this weird stuff about like like clusters of like chromosomes but also there's like chromosomal diseases like you can't do this like fuck off it's uh it's so funny we should also mention that like there will be more reporting on this later uh this bill this episode's already too long but there have been a bunch of emails released from a bunch of anti-trans sort of organizers and fake scientists and stuff about how they've been coordinating all this and a lot of the experts that they use for testimony for all they show up to these capitals are like are exactly the same people and the the big guy they have saying that puberty blockers is unsafe like has never worked with a trans person in their life and has no fucking idea what they're talking about so you know this is this is this is fun uh

utah also bans uh also passed a ban uh banning gender affirming surgeries puberty blockers and hormones they also have a ban i also have a bill forcing students and counselors to out their students to their families uh last year utah governor spencer cox was praised by the media for a symbolic veto of a bill that made it illegal for trans students to compete in sports cox signed this fucking bill signed signed the one signed the one that bans uh uh of gender affirming surgeries puberty blockers and hormones. Yeah. I think we're talking about this last year. Yeah. I want to,

we talked, we talked, we talked about some Utah thing last year. Yeah. Well, we talked to the, yeah, the thing we talked about was, it was him vetoing,

vetoing that bill. Um, I, I want to read his thing for why, why he packed, why? So he vetoed the bill that was less bad and signed the one that's worse. And I'm going,

I'm going to read what he said about this quote while we understand our words will be of little comfort to those who disagree with us we sincerely hope that we can treat our transgender families with more love and respect as we work to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures fuck Fuck off. Fuck all the way off. He's trying to avoid the Nuremberg trials. Look, as a neutral objective journalist, I'm obligated to inform you that Spencer Cox was a full-time missionary for the Mormon church, which is currently embroiled in a pedophilia scandal

after it was revealed to have systematically protected church members and members of the clergy who sexually abused children from church sanctions and legal repercussions. Under Utah law, clergy have the right of penitent privilege, which means they are not required to report child abuse to the authorities as long as the information is revealed during confession. Both the Mormon and Catholic churches, along with Jehovah's Witnesses, have lobbied against all efforts to change this law. Earlier this month, survivors of the Mormon

church rallied in support of a bill that would have ended penitent privilege. Governor Cox publicly announced his support for the bill being considered in the legislature, but did nothing to pressure legislators to vote for it, and as of time of recording, the bill is dead, leaving the church free to protect yet another round of pedophiles.

Also, his name is Cox. Yeah. So, South Dakota also... I could do this for every fucking governor on this list and I decided I was gonna do it once and not do it for all the rest of them but fuck them uh South Dakota has a sports bill they also have a ban on puberty blockers hormones gender-affirming surgery Arizona has an anti-bathroom bill Tennessee has a sports ban it has the basically identical ban on puberty blockers, hormones, and

gender affirming surgery and it also has this it also has what's been kind of a new innovation I guess which is the anti they have an anti-drag law yes this is the one that's gotten the most amount of traction and has sparked some debate over how much of it can actually be applied against just trans people living their lives because it is tied to the state's pre-existing obscenity laws.

So there's been some debate about this. We will learn more about this as it starts being enforced by law enforcement and the court system. Yeah, I want to talk about it. It's not good. Yeah, I want to talk about it. It's not good. Yeah, I want to talk about it a little bit more. So the specific bill, it makes it illegal for anyone to be underage at a drag show. And it basically applies the rules around the sex offender list for where you can have drag shows. So Governor William Brian Lee, who signed this bill, did drag in high school,

which I'm saying here not to point out the hypocrisy. Governor Lee doesn't see any hypocrisy here. But to get across the fact that Republicans who want to do this stuff will still be able to, this bill is targeted at a very, very specific group of people. As Jules Gil Peterson points out in her piece, The Left Hand of the Law, which people should go read, this is an attack on a very specific, precarious class of workers, many of whom are trans, some of whom aren't, who do drag performances. It's a very specific attempt to sort of like neutralize – okay, it's targeting this very specific middle ground between sort of like being in the formal economy and doing sex work. There are an enormous amount of trans people who do sex work. Drag shows provide a way to sort of like not exactly enter the middle class, but it provides a legal way for trans people to like have a job that's not fucking that. And those workers are specifically

the people being targeted by this weirdly i i don't know the other thing that's unclear is for example like if a podcast does a live show where there's trans people like what will happen we don't know but the other thing i want to say about this right is everyone's talking about this fucking drag bill i have seen like basically zero discussion of the, of the fact that they also pass the same fucking ban on puberty blockers, hormones, gender affirming surgery, which is way,

way more destructive and damaging. It's like, but directly attacking. Yeah. So I think I want to push back about the, the like, yeah. Like what you're talking about,

about like what will happen if you do a live show, like what will happen because to trans people who live in these States, the state I live in is a red state. Well, it's not supposed to be, but as a red state and, you know, is considering a drag bill and things like that. And I recognize that they're like aimed, they're targeted specifically at drag performances, but there's a fairly easy interpretation of a lot of these things that literally says, I can't go to the grocery store. And that is how like a lot of trans people in Tennessee are viewing this right now. And so I don't think it's a disproportionate thing that the drag bill is something that a lot of people are focusing on. I mean, we all care

also about the hormone issues or whatever, but Tennessee passing the drag law that other states are considering is a new bad thing that could criminalize our very public existence. Yeah, that is part of the kind of discussion around this law's ties to the pre-existing obscenity laws and that will heavily depend on the discretion that law enforcement chooses to employ this law and if it gets taken up to like the court system how the court's going to interpret this law so it is like the vagueness is part of the point because that causes a lot of fear because you you really just don't know what it all entails and yeah that's fucking weird because you don't know if you going to the store is going to be a felony or not and how are you supposed to live like that yeah and it i don't

know the sort of pervasive atmosphere of fear is definitely like part of the point of this, right? Like part of the way the sort of extermination campaign works is by forcing everyone to sort of live in fear of what they can and can't do and also live in fear specifically of the police increasing the amount of violence that they're deploying. Yeah. I mean, and all this stuff, like we talked about, they're specifically targeting people's ability to exist in a public life, which is whenever you want to do a genocide, that's one of the things you do is you make people unable to exist in public life. This is literally what the Nazis did, right?

Like you section them off into their own little communities where they cannot actually leave and enter into the outside world. Yep. So, so far as of writing this, there are seven states with bans on gender-affirming care for youth. I was about to become number eight whenever the governor gets around to signing the bill. There are 19 states that ban trans athletes from competing. There are a number of states. Oh, so other stuff I forgot to mention. Literally, while I was waiting to record this episode, there were a few things that happened in the legislature. So in Florida, there was a bill that just got out of committee that would ban LGBTQ books in all libraries, not just sort of school libraries.

So I don't know. That actually has a real chance of passing because it's Florida. There's a lot of movement right now. The situation is very, very sort of fluid and bad. Yes. Yeah, I would say it. It is.

I think one closing note, I will save my my kind of my ending thesis to start the next episode just because we're going on so long here. But the last thing I will say is I be wary of social media accounts that depend on ramping up and spreading panic to grow their follower accounts typically news news aggregation accounts are not the best source of information

because their existence is entirely dependent on causing panic um so like look into the things like beyond just a tweet like look into stuff before you spread it, just as a general rule of thumb. I'm not calling anybody out here in any way. I'm just saying it is a good practice to get into, especially when we're looking into stuff that is about our very existence being criminalized, and that can be very depressing. And it can suck to be constantly bombarded with. So it's good to stay connected to stuff that's going on in your own state it's good to stay connected to bills that have a decent

transit passing but but be be wary of of of undue panic spreading just constantly non-stop um because a big part of being trans needs to also be like finding joy in living yeah i think i think the the very last thing i want to say that will lead into this next episode is we're not fucking done yet we are still here we're going to continue to be here we are going to kick these people's fucking shit in and we are going to fight them for every fucking inch and they are going to lose and next episode is going to be us talking about how we can start doing that. 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 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. 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 podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast,

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