The Young Turks - Jason Carter & Plastic Martyr: What Does Pride Mean To You

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

Jason Carter & Plastic Martyr: What Does Pride Mean To You Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Welcome back to TYT's Pride Month special. I'm Adrian Lawrence and I'll be leading the second hour of our coverage. And if you are unfamiliar, Pride Month is really about dedicating the month of June to uplifting LGBTQ voices. culture and supporting rights. And I'm very excited now to be joined by two incredible guests who should be very familiar to you. First, we have Plastic Martyr, who is an accomplished entertainer.

She's also set to star in a new film called Yellowbird and is recording her new single, She Devil, which I am very excited to hear. And for someone I am also very excited to see, let's talk about Jason Carter. That's right, you know him as the pop culture and entertainment commentator. He also hosts hashtag Jason Unleashed, which is a fire show that I have been on. Thank you guys so much for joining us. I'm glad to be here. Yes. Also, I want to remind all of you out there to please shop t-y-t.com. That's right, hitting shop t-y-t.com because we're going to be donating 100% of our proceeds today to the Trevor Project. We need to uplift a number of voices as well as provide support. And it is very, very important, particularly now as it is Pride Month.

And so first I want to kick off our conversation and I will hand it over to you, Jason. What does pride mean to you? Oh, you know, Adrian, one, glad to be here, I'm glad to be back here on the Young Turks celebrating Pride Month. You said it so beautifully uplifting voices and that's exactly what pride means to me. It's uplifting voices because in the, in our community, there is so many different wonderful, I would say, threads in that tapestry, right, LGBTQ plus, IA, and people who are who are still exploring their own, identities. And for me, pride is just being, being vocal, being out there, being unabashed, being unashamed, being very proud, being very present in who you are. And sharing that magic,

you know, I grew up in a time where, you know, as a 90s kid, the only thing you saw about LGBTQ plus on TV and the media was either men of color or gay men dying of AIDS and HIV. you saw violence against trans people. So now I think that it's our responsibility to spread other positive messages to Gen Z younger younger millennials that, hey, that's not the reality. It is a reality, but we can we can also celebrate the beautiful, wonderful elements and strengths that are the LGBTQ plus communities. That's what pride means to me every year. And it's not just a one month thing. It's a 12 month, 365 day, 24 hour a day thing. Really?

Absolutely. Yeah, that's the only way to roll. I can appreciate that very much. And Plastic, please tell us what does pride mean to you? To me, pride is just really a way to celebrate who you are as the individual that you are. And no matter where you come from, who you are, what you identify as, I think it's important to have pride and to show that to the world. And pride is just a great, like, I mean, again, we have pride month, but really I think we need to continue our pride longer than just a month.

And there's such an attack on us right now. And it's really important to not let your pride be diminished. That's right. I completely and totally agree. It is a light that must shine brighter and brighter so others can see it. And something that also is just a very important aspect of pride and having light shine is in part breaking away from this patriarchal culture to make feminism more more trans inclusive. And so when we talk about feminism,

something that I think that a lot of people don't realize is an aspect of the feminism talking about is intersectional feminism. And to give you a good definition on that, we can turn to USA Today. What we know is that if feminism is advocating for women's rights and equality between the sexes, intersectional feminism is the understanding of how women's overlapping identities, including race, class, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation impact the way they experience oppression and discrimination. And from the human rights campaign, we also want to talk about intersectionality.

And what we also know is that intersectionality, it's a term coined by Kimberly Crenshaw, a black American lawyer, civil rights advocate, and leading scholar of critical race theory, to capture the complex cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination, such as racism, sexism, and classism combine overlap or intersect, especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups. It is also often used to refer to the ways in which we hold multiple intersecting identities at once. And I am very familiar with intersectionality, being black and being woman. And that's something that I have to deal with on a daily basis.

It's something I'm very proud to be in both respects. But it's like being hit from two different angles and two different ends, and it is something nonstop. And so what we need to do when we're talking about trans inclusivity is to make feminism more inclusive. And the five ways in which we can do that, according to the human rights campaign, is number one, to remember that trans women are women. Number two, that transphobia is offensive and harmful.

And three, to be trans inclusive is to be intersectional. Four, trans women are feminist leaders. And five, centering the most marginalized is key. That is according to the human rights campaign. And that is something that is very much heartfelt and necessary. All five of those things to know and remember. member. And so I encourage you all to continue to grasp more information. And in the meantime, I'd love to chime in and get your thoughts on this plastic. What are some other ways that we can make feminism more transinclusive? Well, definitely just keep perpetuating that trans women are women. I have to fight this on Twitter every single day. People, you're a man. No, I'm actually not. I go to a gynecologist. I'm not a man. So thank you.

And it doesn't matter what, you know, if you're pre-op, post-up, non-binary, whatever you are, if you identify as a woman, I think it's very important that people need to respect that. And telling someone that they're not, and then I'm going to talk about the turfs for a second, if you're, if you have the audacity to call yourself a feminist, and then turn around and tell another person who identifies as a woman that they are not a female or they are not a woman, aren't you setting like feminism back? I mean, isn't that exactly, you're doing exactly what misogynists are doing to women. You're doing to other women.

It's baffling to me that they don't see the hypocrisy. So I think just continuing to tell the world that women, that trans women are women. Yes, I couldn't agree more. Exactly. And as far as turfs grow, they are right up there with white feminists for me. I do not understand why they keep missing it. And I don't understand why they continue to want to exclude and to oppress. Jason, what are your thoughts on other ways that we can essentially make feminism more trans inclusive?

I think plastic, you hit the nail on the head. I think the HRC and all the information that's readily available online is spot on, right? It's a full stop thing, right? If someone identifies as such, they identify as such full stop. There's no room for interpretation. Or, you know what, take one step further. There are people who I've had conversations with. conversations with I am not of the trans experience by I have a lot of trans brothers and sisters.

And when I am not familiar with things, ask questions and then listen, listen, because they move to the world in that capacity. Who better to get the truth from and be educated from someone who is uniquely qualified to do just that, right? So for me especially, and the conversation around trans for non-trans people has been one that has really been thrust to the forefront now more than never because it shows like pose. And what we're seeing now, Lavernecox as the red carpet hose for E, the visibility is so beautiful and so awesome to see. And so people, the interest also is being piqued by people who haven't

been exposed to the beautiful trans community. There are, I know people who have never, or to their knowledge, have never met someone who is of the trans experience. And so it's like, For them, they're curious. And I would rather, and I'm plastic, I want to chime in on this, I would rather someone be respectfully curious and say, hey, I don't understand this, help me understand, then take the right steps to be inclusive. Because what I did, Asian, I think you said this when we talked one time about diversity and inclusion, right? So diversity is the ideal, right?

And inclusion is the action, is the actual item of that, of those ideals. So if you have someone who I who isn't familiar with what the trans movement is, movement is, even though, I mean, come on, if you're living in Iraq, what's going on with you? But if they want, seriously, like in 2022, we should all be aware of like, hey, there are people who are trans or just like me and you that are trying to live lives, especially being marginalized groups of people. Adrian, about intersectionality. We deal with that every day on so many different levels marginalized groups. You know what I mean? So respectfully ask and you will be educated.

I think that's one way to be more inclusive because I have worked with people who are trans who have come up to me like, I just were someone with. would talk to me about it because instead of it being the elephant in the room, let's have an open conversation and teach me. That's all I can do. Being a gay man, if someone wants to know, hey, Jay, tell me about being a gay man, sure, pull up a chair, let's talk about it. Because then we are also doing the work of as we talked about earlier, uplifting our community. So I think that's another great way for inclusivity is to talk about it. Have respectful open, have respectful open conversations, not these turf people who are just like waiting to say something inflammatory just for the sake of like, as Brett Ehrlich would say, they're masturbating.

They're mad all the time. They are and I hope they go blind. But that was a messerfying joke, I'll leave that right there. But I couldn't agree with you more. What I like to say in my practice as a DEI consultant and counselor is to let people define themselves for themselves. You know, you do not need to impose upon people your idea of who they should should be. That is one of the hallmark peak ignorance kind of activities you could ever engage

in. Let people define themselves and also let them decide the terms under which they choose to interact with you. Don't force yourself on people. And I'm a huge proponent of educating yourself about other cultures, other experiences, other people and their identities at the same time too. You don't necessarily want to push on individuals in the trans community or other members of the queer community to educate you. You have Google. Go do some work. Wait till you build those relationships before you can start asking questions. There are a lot of great individuals of the trans community. One of my closest girlfriends, Kayla Ward is constantly educating on social media. She dedicates her page to

talking about her experiences and also YouTube. She's happy to share and to answer questions, but not everybody wants to do that, nor should they. Because that's a lot of emotional labor. That is a lot of time. So definitely read the room. Educate yourself, stand back, let people to find themselves for themselves, put in some work and build those relationships so you can ask the questions that you may want to ask, but you also might find they be answered if you just stand back and kind of remove your own ignorance or disabuse yourself of your ignorance, shall I say. But anything you have to say on this plastic, please do share. Well, I'm basically, I'm really tired of being what I call cisplained, where I feel like

like you said that like people need to ask trans people their experience rather than telling us our experience. So lately I've been seeing just a lot of trans issues being talked about, but not by trans people. I see cis people putting in their two cents about my life, my community's lives. And it's like, but you don't know. This isn't your personal experience. I'm not going to sit here and talk about things that are not relevant to me. It's like a talk to the people who's community you're talking about rather than a community that has nothing to do with it. So then you have narratives like a Marjorie Taylor Green, who I think today or something just called as trans terrorists or something. And it's like, oh my God, or, you know, the Rob

Elementary shooting, they immediately went to, instead of going to the source of the problem, which was guns, they went to, the shooter was trans. No, they weren't. Stop villainizing us, stop using trans people as your scapego. Like I'm flattered, you're so obsessed with us, but honestly get a life. Like there's more important things to do in your life, I'm sure, Marjorie and the rest of the GOP, then focusing on trans people. Yeah, I wish there were more important things you do like, you know, maybe just go away. But hey, we we stuck with the ignorance for now, but hopefully not for long. But something that we definitely seem to be stuck with a little too long is rainbow capitalism. You know, because when we talk about pride, we know it's rooted in rioting.

It's rooted in pushing back against the man. But in recent years, it definitely seems that corporations have taken over seeing it as a way really to promote themselves and to appear inclusive, as opposed to actually put in the work and do the work. So let's talk about the origins of pride really quick. This is from Vox. So Pride Month, Pride celebrations, and Pride marches are how LGBTQ people and allies address the ongoing work for acceptance and equality, which ultimately brings us to the Stonewall riots of 1969 in NYC, fed up with being harassed and targeted LGBTQ patrons of the Stonewall Inn, who were predominantly people of color, fought back against the police. It resulted in four nights of rioting. Stonewall spurred by the frustration of being targeted and harassed, worked where polite and civil protest had failed. The first Pride March took place in 1970, a year later, to commemorate loudly and without a dress code those who fought for their rights. That's right. But now, unfortunately, we are seeing this advent of rainbow capitalism. Now, that really refers to the behavior of brands during Pride Month,

wherein so many attempt to appeal to queer communities for profit from same-sex ads for jeans to cans of soup. These companies are using promotions and advertisements meant to appeal to queer people's emotions and convince queer people that they're on their side. And here are some examples. You can see Target. Target has been ruthless with the shenanigans. And they've been doing it for years. Years. Oh, you can see these t-shirts and whatnot. And then, of course, Red Lobster decided to get in the tomfoolery with this ridiculous. It's just unnecessary and also low budget.

Really that's the least you can do. But anyways, also some of these offensive examples here you can see from our own federal government, nonstop, from ICE. And the thing is, there's so much hypocrisy. And it is something that is exposed. And it needs to be exposed more, especially when we're talking about politicians who are homophobic, yet they're being funded by these major companies from Walmart to Amazon, Home Depot, AT&T, American Airlines. They are everywhere. Even Fox News is promoting its pride, but it's incongruent with their actual actions. And so this is something we see too often. And I can damn sure tell you it doesn't feel good in any way to see it because it's exploitative. Jason, how are some of these really? egregious examples of rainbow capitalism. How are they seen to you? The exploitative, upsetting, fake, phony lies all the above. I mean, I worked for a major company for 13 years that has given money to certain people who are completely anti-LGBQ plus.

I live in the state of Florida, which is always in the news for everything they're trying to do. That's anti-LGBQ plus. It's because, one, I'll say this, because the LGBTQ plus community, we are fabulous. Everybody wants to party with us because we are. all of that. Okay, one, two, it goes back to, for me, it goes back to the day-to-day behaviors of these companies, because it's one thing to Black Lives Matter. You saw all these people post black boxes who have never talked about anything black in their history, right? So, but it's the day-to-day things when you have LGBTQ plus people, trans people who work at these corporations that have to deal with microaggressions, that deal with poor wages, that deal with bad behavior.

And then they go during Pride Month, oh, we stand in solidarity. We're here supporting. It's like, no, you don't. That's a day to day thing that you have to do. Those behaviors are go, there's layers to that, right? So yeah, we see Target with the T-shirts, but what is Target doing with their employees on the day to day? So I think about those things.

Sadly, this isn't going anywhere because billions of dollars are made every year between June 1st and June 30th for Pride Month because it's easy, it's colorful, it's joyful, it's buoyant, people are going to tie. And again, with media and entertainment really pushing LGBTQ plus content to the forefront, which they should, people are like, hey, this is a hot ticket. The gay community is a hot ticket. It's like being black, black is a hot ticket. People want to be part of the cool thing. And so it's, it comes down to the bottom line dollars and cents. And again, that company I worked for was listed on, I'm not going to say

which one was listed that you listed. And I've seen some pretty bad behavior and some things that have been said about the LGBTQ plus community from people who are in high places. A week later, they're at a rally. Yeah, I see you are gay brothers and sisters. It's upsetting to say the least. Seriously, like the hypocrisy must be fierce, especially when they pretty much boil it down to make you feel like a trend. Plastic, your thoughts. Yeah, the performative allieship, it's exhausting, it's gross, it's nauseating. I'm used to it now. I try to really avoid any

companies that are doing that. Again, it's really hard to do that. But it's not even just during Pride Month. It's in general. I really, I have an issue with things like Coachella. I mean, the owner of Coachella donates to anti-LGB organizations. The Polo Lounge at Beverly Hills Hotel, used to be one of my favorite restaurants. Now it's one of my favorite places to boycott because it's when you eat there, you're actually like putting money into the pockets of the people who oppress LGBTQ people. So I think it's really important to basically not just talk to talk, but walk the walk too. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. And for those of you looking to walk the walk, if you'd like, please purchase something on shop, t.yt.com, because we are donating those proceeds

to the Trevor Project. And so we need people who will uplift members of the queer community, as well as ensure that they are truly walking the walk and talking the talk. And so I really appreciate you guys joining us today. It's so incredibly important to uplift your voices. And I would love to hear the organizations you're looking to uplift. Plastiff, what is it? I'm just looking to uplift love. I'm really tired of all the hate. And I just think that we need to continue to love each other, love ourselves, and spread that love because there is so much hate in this world. And it's like it's hard to get out of bed, truly. Yeah, more beyond an organization, people, connecting with people, just who people reach out to me all the time in my DMs and ask me about, you know, Jay, how did you come out? What did you say to your family? That's though. Those moments are so important. Excuse me. In those moments, more times not save lives. That, that connection there. That's important to me. So yes, there's pride lines here in Miami is really cool. Of course, there's there's glad. But I think it should plastic nail on the head loving everyone taught and uplifting.

everyone beyond an organization. Yeah, yes, absolutely. Thank you guys so much. I really, really appreciate you spending this time with us also in doing the work. Please check out these two wonderful people on social media as you've seen. They were listed below and you can always find them because they are always doing it and then doing it well. Plastic Martyr, the Accomplished Entertainer. Check out her new film that will be coming up that she's in Yellowbird as well as her single coming out, Chee Devil. And then Jason Carter, who you can catch on social media at

times you know he's a busy man but he hosts hashtag jason unleashed thank you again thank you adrian thank you plastic and we'll be right back thanks for listening to the full episode of the young turks support our work listen ad free access members only bonus content and more by subscribing to apple podcast at apple dot co slash t yt i'm your host jank yugar and i'll see you soon