Transcript
WEBVTT
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This is Queer we Are.
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There are some great LGBTQ organizations and through this podcast I've had the good fortune to be acquainted with some of the leaders of some of them, and they have given me hope.
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Organizations you've likely heard of include the National LGBTQ Task Force, GLAAD, Trevor Project, Lambda Legal, and then there are all the equalities, such as Equality California, equality Maine, equality Virginia, equality Michigan, and that list goes on.
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But what do these organizations do?
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I mean, sure you've heard about them in the news, and you know they're supporting the queer community and some are fighting for our rights and you may have even donated to them.
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I know I have.
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But are you like me and not know what it is they really?
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Do, I mean really know?
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If not, how can you appreciate them as much as you probably should?
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On Queer, we Are my guests aren't allowed to come on and just complain about the way the world is.
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They're here to tell us what they're doing about it, what you can do about it, and you get to hear some good news for a change.
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And you know, sometimes they're just here to entertain.
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Simply.
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This is a no-whining zone.
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I have a representative of one of the groups I listed here to tell us what they're all about.
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Sasha Buchert is a senior attorney with Lambda Legal, which was founded in 1985.
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She joined them in 2017 when compelled, when a certain someone got into office.
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No-transcript.
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But also, what is Lambda Legal doing about them and what you can do, and some big wins we've had in recent years and you know things have been tough, but there have been more wins than you think.
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Before we get to Sasha, I'd like to point something out I think is important.
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Before I give to any charity, I check them out on Charity Navigator, which is a charity organization of its own, and what they do is rate organizations based on their financial transparency, their effectiveness in the community.
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A big one is the percentage of money going to programs rather than fundraising and operations.
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I'm going to leave their link in the show notes.
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They give Lambda Legal a whopping 95% rating, which I will say is more than pretty damn good, and I'm happy to hear my dollars have been well spent.
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But don't worry, that's just my little plug.
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She didn't come on here to spend 40 minutes begging for money, so I'm going to shut up now because it's time to get to her and you know where to find us.
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I'm Brad Shreve and my guest is Sasha Buchert, and you don't have to go anywhere because Queer we Are.
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Sasha Buchert, it's a pleasure to have you on, queer we Are.
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Thank you so much for being here.
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Oh, thanks so much, Brad.
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Pleasure to be on the program.
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You know, I know Lambda Legal.
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I know that you guys do great things, but I really don't know specifically what the goal of the organization is and I don't know specifically what you exactly do, other than I see great things that you guys do in the news.
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I'm sure others are just like me.
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What does Lambda Legal do?
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Yeah, thanks, happy to answer that.
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I've been here for going on six years now and every day I'm even more impressed with the work the organization does.
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We've been around since 1973.
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And what we do is to advance protections for LGBTQ people and people living with HIV through impact litigation is what we're most known for.
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We litigated Lawrence v Texas, for example, which was a case that struck down sodomy laws, that criminalized intimacy among same-sex couples back in the early 2000s, for example.
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But we also worked on Obergefell you know, the marriage equality decision landmark cases involving folks living with HIV, like Bragdon v Abbott, and the list is endless.
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And just in the last few years, you know, there's been some huge, groundbreaking cases that we worked on.
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So that's what we're most known for.
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But we also do a lot of work on education.
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We know that it's so important to win these battles in the court, of course, but also to win in the court of public opinion, and that means sharing what we know about the lives of LGBTQ people and sharing stories and really lifting up our plaintiffs, for example, and telling their stories and just humanizing, you know, lgbtq folks.
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So there's a lot of work that goes into education and we also work on public policy issues.
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We are currently working arm in arm with our partners across the country and seeking to push back and defeat the anti-LGBTQ legislation that is growing every year, also working on introducing legislation that will be helpful and shape folks' lives in a number of different areas.
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So public policy, education and, most noticeably probably, is our impact litigation.
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So you've done a couple things here and there over the years.
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Yeah, thank you for all the work you folks have done, and I'm glad you have the educational part in there, because we can get all the laws passed we want, but they don't necessarily change hearts and minds.
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Yeah, you know I'm a trans person and I identify as a transgender woman and it's just, you know, really, really important to me that whenever I do an interview, you know I usually talk about trans folks in particular, just like a lot of other folks.
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You know, we have the same hopes and dreams.
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We want a family, we like ice cream, we like dogs.
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Just the humanization is so important in this moment because the far right, unfortunately, is really seizing the moment of the unknowingness of trans folk.
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Because we're just a smaller population, it's just mathematically really difficult to know a trans person.
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In a lot of cases, a lot of people do, because more and more people have really been bold and have come out of the closet and living openly as who they are.
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We're still a small population, so it's just so important to me we take every opportunity to put a face on the issue and to make sure that people understand that there are real human beings out there who are transgender people, who are living lives, trying to live lives without having to look over the shoulder in fear of discrimination.
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So, just yeah, huge, huge, huge props to all of the people, all of the trans people and non-binary people across the country who are doing this really important work in really difficult parts of the country.
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In some cases, you know where the hostility is so thick that it's just really a challenging atmosphere.
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But people are still, bravely, you know, going to their hostile state legislatures, they're going to work, they're living their lives openly and proudly.
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So just huge hats off to all of the trans and non-binary folks across the country that are doing so much work to shift public opinion and support for trans and non-binary folks.
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Yeah, lgbtq people in general are under attack right now.
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But, oh my God, trans community is just being brutalized and I'll tell you my theory.
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Sure, please.
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My theory is it used to be all about gays and lesbians because trans is such a much smaller community, and then, once marriage equality happened and people were like they live next door to me, you know it's pretty okay.
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I mean, I'm talking in general term here.
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So then the right had to find somebody new to brutalize.
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Yeah, I was watching an old episode of Glee.
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Yes, I'm gay.
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And.
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Sue Sylvester was running for office and she wasn't doing well in the polls and she said you know what I've been pushing for something?
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I think I need to be against something and what comes to the folks on the right, that's really their whole mindset.
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Yeah.
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What can we be against?
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Do you think I'm on the right?
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path I do.
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I think there's a lot of.
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You know I'm not a sociologist, I'm a lawyer, but you know, give me my opinion.
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I do think that there's a number of factors at play.
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I completely agree with you.
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I think it's easier, easier to hate and fear than it is to love and support, and I do think that that's an easier way to gain power to demonize, you know, rather than humanize.
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But I think there's a number of factors at play.
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Certainly there's been a trajectory from going, after I'm old enough now, where I've lived through the marriage equality fights and the way in which the far right talked about LGB people back in the 90s left a, you know, a mark on me seeing the pain and suffering that folks went through during that period.
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And you're right, the targets have shifted to trans and non-binary folks.
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But I think it's really important, especially in this moment.
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I think that that would have happened anyway, but I think it's really been escalated, driven by a number of different factors.
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I think one is loss of abortion as a political rallying.
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It's like the dog that caught the car.
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They got the Supreme Court decision and now they're finding out as the president just said, the state of the union what the consequences of that are going to be, and my point is that they've lost that issue to divide folks.
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So they are certainly going after trans folks, but I think it's also important to emphasize that they haven't stopped going after people of color.
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Racism and discrimination against folks of color in this country, you know, has come a long way, but it's so clear that there is still so much discrimination that exists, you know, on that front.
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In addition, look at the attacks on women still not just abortion protections, but IVF protections or access to contraceptive care.
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It's all at attack from the far right.
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They go after what I view as bodily autonomy.
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In many ways it's just the freedom to live and make decisions about your own body, and it's about control.
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I think too.
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I know that you know we want to talk about what we can do as a community, but I think it's just important to point these things out, because I do think that if you look at these attacks as a whole, you see that they're just.
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You know, it's just this nonstop attack on freedom and liberty.
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It's not just bans on health care, it's bans on sports, it's bans on bathrooms, it's bans on drag queens, it's bans on pride flags.
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I'm surprised they haven't tried to ban dancing.
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It's really clear to me that this is an all-out assault on freedom, and I think there's another reason for it, too that doesn't get discussed as often but feels really important to me, because I feel like it's part of our democracy is the way in which a lot of these places where this legislation is really causing the most harm are places where political gerrymandering has caused the least ability for people to rise up and stand up against these attacks, because of the way in which these state legislatures are formed and congressional delegations.
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So I think that's a really important piece of this our voting rights.
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To make a long story short, I'd definitely like to keep the show on the positive, but we have to talk about what's going on, to know we're going to go Doing what I do here.
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I've gotten to know a lot of folks like yourself that are really out there doing some great things and people need to be reminded of that and that's why I have this show.
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It's funny you brought up racism.
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My husband's a black man and we live with his mother.
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We help care for her, and they do it jokingly because otherwise they'd cry.
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They just roll their eyes and like, yeah, we know what it means to say bring America back again.
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You know, we all know what that means.
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You mentioned gerrymandering and everything.
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The polls overwhelmingly well.
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In some polls it depends on what we're looking at.
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Marriage equality is very high.
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The country supports it.
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Even Republicans are frustrated at what DeSantis is doing.
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But trans is lower in the polls but still shows the majority of Americans support trans rights.
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But they cheat, gerrymandering and all this other garbage.
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It's just.
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It's sickening to run on a platform that people are against because for your own agenda that's not representation, is it?
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No, and they don't even try to pretend.
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I don't know why I was expecting anything different, but after the 2016 election, I was just so stunned to see then-President Trump talking in a way that was really only speaking to one small part of the country, and at least prior administrations, who had fairly hostile views towards LGBTQ people, pretended to talk to the entire country and to speak for the entire country, but this just was a.
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I viewed it as a perspective where the winner takes all and if you didn't vote for me, you're not going to look at, you're not my constituent and I'm not going to do anything for you, and, in fact, I'm going to go after you is the sense I'm getting from a lot of politicians, how they view their jobs as legislators, which is really disappointing.
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It really is.
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I always tell people my listeners have heard me say this before it's Obama's fault, because he was in there for two great terms and they were like, no, we can't have this happen.
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And it was a rebound.
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It was a rebound effect and this minority of people have, well, they've done a great job of getting into our school boards.
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We had our, we had our backstern while they were sneaking into the school boards and and getting the local communities and people don't vote in the local elections and they're they're so important.
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You know, I I don't understand, understand why people don't get, why it's so important.
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You know who's the mayor affects me more on a day-to-day basis than who's the president and, my God, the school boards have changed all these policies and it's insane.
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So, yeah, we know what they're doing and I want to get to some of the good things that are going on.
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But it was in the right, after the 19, the 20, I'm sorry, 19, 16, the 2016 election, that you decided to go with Lambda Legal, am I correct?
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That's right.
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That's right.
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Yep 2017,.
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I came to Lambda Legal in the summer of 2017.
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And I was here, probably like less than a month, and Trump issued his tweets about transgender military service.
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Issued his tweets about transgender military service.
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I was just sitting in my office looking at Twitter and just absolutely aghast and realized how bad things were going to be at that moment.
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I presume you're still on Twitter.
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I am not.
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I haven't closed down my account, but I rarely go and look at it, only when there's some massive news story.
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That's pretty rare.
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I don't really take a back and disgusted by the owner's statements about trans folks and trans issues, so I just don't have the heart to.
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You know, I enjoyed a few great years on that platform and had some amazing conversations and it was a really important tool, but the way in which it's been transformed into this really hostile, unmoderated climate run by a person who is clearly hostile to trans folks, you know, left me with a bad taste in my mouth and I go back maybe once or twice a year, the most.
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I suspend my account.
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You're allowed to suspend it for 30 days, so every 28 days I go back and reenact it and put it on suspension again Because I keep thinking someday either it's going to go run in the ground or maybe somebody saying we'll buy it and I don't want to lose my name.
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Yeah, so I do the same thing.
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The reason I was thinking maybe you were on there.
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I thought maybe your job.
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You have to kind of know what's going on, but you're not getting the pulse of the nation.
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You're getting the pulse of the nation.
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You know Exactly, exactly.
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So you are the director of Lambda Legal's Non-Binary and Transgender Rights Project and it used to be called the Transgender Rights Project and it's been changed to Non-Binary.
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And for me personally and I'm going to assume other people are like me, in fact I'll be very blunt.
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I'm always very open about this, because anybody who knows me will find this hard to believe I was really uncomfortable with trans Once I got to know some trans folks.
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Well, now I'm not going to say non-binary is the same thing, but people like nice little black and white bodies.
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Yeah, and you know, okay, male, female, but non-binary.
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Wait a minute, can you explain a non-binary to us?
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Yeah, for sure.
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What's a society view on binary?
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Yeah, I think it's not the same.
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I think comparisons aren't great, you know, but I think one way to understand it is to understand the experience of bisexual people, who often get erased when talking about, you know, binaries of being gay or straight.
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Well, bisexuals don't exist, you know.
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They have to make a choice.
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They're just really gay.
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They're just really lesbian.
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They're just really straight.
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I'm just really lesbian.
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They're just really straight.
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I'm still floored when I hear that I'm like what?
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Yeah, it's the same thing with non-binary folks to some degree.
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You know, I think that some people just don't identify as male or female and they do fall in between.
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You know, I think that thinking about sex and gender, sexuality and gender as these binary, oppositional poles isn't that helpful.
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I think that, going back to the Kinsey Institute, I think that, whatever people want to admit, I think it's pretty clear that these issues are, you know, fall on a spectrum and there are people that just don't identify as female, they don't identify as male, and that experience should be honored.
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You know, and I'm grateful for you saying you know what you've said, because I think that that's probably the experience of a lot of people and it provides a model for people to see.
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You know and I've experienced it in my own life and with different issues it can be a challenge sometimes to overcome some of those ways in which we frame the world and talk about the trans community being small.
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the non-binary community is minuscule compared to that, you know.
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So it's really important that we in the same way that, you know, the trans community doesn't want to be erased as part of the LGBTQ community it's just really important that we have a broad tent and make sure that we're including non-binary folks as part of this.
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You know there's been a lot of really great policy movement forward on behalf of non-binary folks.
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You know, not just in the US but around the world.
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Asports have had ex-gender markers now for maybe a decade in places like India and Australia as a result of some Lambda legal litigation.
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Actually, we have ex-gender markers here as of I think three years ago now.
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So that's exciting and there's a lot of other wonderful advocacy being done, but it is something to grapple with.
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I think it's helpful for folks Sometimes.
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There's a lot of educational materials out there that can help people understand a little better who non-binary people are, but I hope that helps explain it a little bit.
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Yes, it does.
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I will say one thing I'm happy to see about non-binary like marriage equality is a good example.
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When we were trying to get marriage equality passed, unfortunately, all of a sudden it became LGB, because they wanted to make sure that we got our rights and they didn't think.
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Some organizations I'm going to say some organizations wanted to ensure that we got our rights and they're like you know, we're not going to get it with trans, so we're just going to go forward and trans community got pushed to the wayside and it's paying for it now.
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I'm happy to see non-binary being pulled in, really before that happens.
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Yeah, I hope we learned from that.
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Yeah, I think we did.
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I think the state of the union, state of the LGBTQ union, is pretty solid right now.
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You know, I'm not saying there aren't people that have strong feelings, but overall I think you know there's a lot of, I think there's been a real movement towards that and I hope that continues.
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Yeah for sure.
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If you can elaborate more on that as far as how you see more inclusion today than what it used to be, Well on a number of fronts.
00:19:37.381 --> 00:19:43.151
First of all, I think that people especially since 2020, people have become a lot more cognizant about the.
00:19:43.151 --> 00:19:46.721
You know, we talked about racism a while back and I think it's just really important to.
00:19:46.721 --> 00:20:06.518
I think a foundational understanding that I think is shared by most of the organizations is that the folks that we should be doing work on on behalf of the most impacted and that should drive what we do impacted and that should drive what we do and clearly the folks that are most impacted are folks of color and specifically trans folks of color, trans women of color.
00:20:06.518 --> 00:20:12.510
You know they sit on this firing line between racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism.
00:20:12.510 --> 00:20:14.481
So I think there's been just a lot of work.
00:20:14.481 --> 00:20:23.509
I'm not saying a lot of it isn't performative or just lip service and that doesn't necessarily lead to the change that we would love to see in the world, but I think there's a lot more effort.
00:20:23.509 --> 00:20:38.750
Anyway, I don't know about the results I'll leave that for someone else to assess but I think that there at least is a conversation happening about making sure that there's thoughtfulness around inclusivity and the work that we do, whether it's the litigation, public policy work, whether it's a panel.
00:20:38.750 --> 00:20:46.132
You know you want to make sure that you've got folks of color represented and you want to make sure that there are diverse experiences.
00:20:46.132 --> 00:20:46.895
So I feel like that's one piece of it.
00:20:46.915 --> 00:20:53.553
I think that there's been, you know, a sea change in interest and conversations around trans and non-binary folks across the country.
00:20:53.553 --> 00:21:05.630
You know, I think you know, I talk to law firms all the time and they're super excited about these issues and part of it is their interest in litigation, of course, but I think just generally, and so I think I'm hopeful that that will continue.
00:21:05.630 --> 00:21:12.909
I'm not saying that there aren't problems there are, you know, that need to be worked on, but I think that the trend is favorable.
00:21:12.909 --> 00:21:28.200
You know, I don't want to be overly Pollyannish about it again, no-transcript.
00:21:28.200 --> 00:21:31.529
You know where I do feel like there is a positive trajectory.
00:21:32.799 --> 00:21:40.088
Yeah, as much as it feels like we've been pushed back and we have nowhere near what it was 30 years ago, right, and it's easy to lose sight of that.
00:21:40.229 --> 00:21:40.910
There it is.
00:21:40.910 --> 00:21:42.092
I was just thinking the other day.
00:21:42.092 --> 00:21:45.675
I was like thinking about all of the amazing.
00:21:45.675 --> 00:22:02.828
I don't know them by name Somebody will have to check me on this but I know that there are amazing openly trans performers that you know do amazing pop music and are models and in almost every you know realm of public life.
00:22:03.580 --> 00:22:08.305
When I was growing up, it was pretty much Renee Richards, you know.
00:22:08.305 --> 00:22:21.982
So I think that that's a huge change culturally and I think that this is to some degree, you know, laverne Cox, of course, and Janet Mock, and I just I don't want to start leave somebody out, but there's just endless amount of amazing folks.
00:22:21.982 --> 00:22:30.607
I think part of you know the anti-trans stuff that we're seeing is really backlash, because I think people, wherever you look, of LGBTQ people, is a threat to the view of America as something that it never was.
00:22:30.607 --> 00:22:48.965
So I think that's part of it.
00:22:48.965 --> 00:22:58.948
But, yeah, again, I'm a very optimistic person and, like you, I think that it's a difficult and dark moment, to be sure, but I think the overall arc here is good.
00:23:00.141 --> 00:23:03.852
Well, you brought up the pop figures that are trans and how they're being embraced.
00:23:03.852 --> 00:23:08.269
A lot of that is the Gen Z and some of the younger Gen X.
00:23:08.269 --> 00:23:13.009
Their attitude Are you surprised by how embracing they are?
00:23:13.009 --> 00:23:15.748
They don't even want to be called gay or trans.
00:23:15.748 --> 00:23:19.849
They're like we don't want those labels, we just want to be.
00:23:20.160 --> 00:23:22.842
Yeah, which is amazing, which is wonderful, you know.
00:23:22.842 --> 00:23:26.140
I mean I have gripes, as every lawyer does.
00:23:26.140 --> 00:23:36.253
I think it's wonderful and it's great and it's sweet and the numbers give me a lot of hope every day when I think about the next generations.
00:23:36.253 --> 00:23:38.667
One I would love to see more of them vote.
00:23:38.667 --> 00:23:48.394
I went through a training a few months ago and it was just so depressing to understand how few folks that are under 30 vote.
00:23:48.394 --> 00:23:53.267
The numbers are really really stunning and it's just that's got to change.
00:23:57.907 --> 00:24:06.781
You want to see aed in the New York Times talking about the movie that was released pretty recently with Will Ferrell who traveled across the country with a trans woman.
00:24:06.842 --> 00:24:09.509
I haven't seen it yet but it's a documentary and it's supposed to be pretty great.
00:24:09.509 --> 00:24:19.693
And you know, he kind of paralleled a little bit like the rising visibility of trans folks overall and contrasted that with the attacks you know, and said that visibility.
00:24:19.693 --> 00:24:23.444
I think the thesis mostly was that visibility isn't going to save us here.
00:24:23.444 --> 00:24:26.031
We need to have people engaged and active.
00:24:26.031 --> 00:24:37.945
So you know, as much as I appreciate the way in which the youth have really embraced freedom and have chosen to live openly and authentically and live lives that you know we could have only imagined a couple of decades ago.
00:24:37.945 --> 00:24:47.045
I do hope that they will translate more of that into action, because there's a lot of people suffering in this moment and I know we'll come through it and you know we'll be better for it.
00:24:47.045 --> 00:24:59.640
But I just want to remind people that there's a lot of harm being done in the meantime and whatever work you can do to advance things in this moment will diminish that harm and suffering that people are experiencing.