Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome back to your Wednesday episode of the Nonprofits.
Speaker 1: Texas Governor Greg Abbott had recently called for a special
Speaker 1: congressional session to address some bills that he had recently
Speaker 1: vetoed during the regular session. That special session was interrupted
Speaker 1: by the deaths of, as of July fifteenth, one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty or more Texas citizens. This affected Texas lawmakers
Speaker 1: so deeply that the focus of the special session shifted
Speaker 1: to flood relief, and the lawmaker spent the entire first
Speaker 1: day addressing exactly zero pieces of legislation related to flood
Speaker 1: relief and instead focused on issues like laws concerning public
Speaker 1: bathrooms to protect their citizens not from real threats, but
Speaker 1: from men and women who may or may not have
Speaker 1: the presupposed Genitalia. House Bill thirty two was introduced by
Speaker 1: Representative Valerie Swanson as the Texas Women's Privacy Act, and
Speaker 1: would require transgender people to the bathroom associated with their
Speaker 1: sex assigned at birth, rather than their gender identity in
Speaker 1: sex segregated public spaces. It's unclear how Texas lawmakers intend
Speaker 1: to both enforce this law and protect women's privacy at
Speaker 1: the same time. The story is from NBC News by
Speaker 1: Brooke Sipelsa on July fifteenth, twenty twenty five. So, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: there's really no shortage of perspectives to take on this one.
Speaker 2: I think between the three.
Speaker 1: Of us, like, each of us is pretty well aligned
Speaker 1: but slightly different. So while none of us have lived
Speaker 1: a trans person's experience, Jonathan, you've definitely dealt with some
Speaker 1: of the harassment, biggest bigotry and marginalization and dehumanization in
Speaker 1: your life that trans people are going through today, end
Speaker 1: mass So where are you kind of sitting, you know,
Speaker 1: reading this.
Speaker 3: Sort of angry but bigotry and prejudice and used to
Speaker 3: justify government oppression of already stigmatized citizens has nothing to
Speaker 3: do with the country I was raised in, at least
Speaker 3: after Stonewall and the follow on riots, not to mention
Speaker 3: the civil rights movement that happened before that. This is
Speaker 3: a homophobes dream, you know. We can we with the
Speaker 3: current court system, we can go ahead and do whatever
Speaker 3: we want to anybody we don't like or we think
Speaker 3: is icky, and nobody's going to stop us. And I'm
Speaker 3: beyond disgust. I'm beyond anger anymore. You know, when I
Speaker 3: was growing up, you could joke about gays and call
Speaker 3: each other names as an insult, beat up, or kill
Speaker 3: with impunity. Actually in some cases, you know, the defense
Speaker 3: being but I was so freaked out when I found
Speaker 3: out in bed that she was a he and killed
Speaker 3: in perfectly legitimate defense for murder at the time, you know,
Speaker 3: And I could be wrong on that. I don't know
Speaker 3: if anybody got got off on that necessarily. I don't
Speaker 3: have any examples, but when I was growing up, that
Speaker 3: seemed to be what everybody felt was Okay, I hate
Speaker 3: the gay defense. Actually Dan White did get away with
Speaker 3: it with the but it wasn't that defense. It was
Speaker 3: a twinkie defense. So anyway, that's a whole nother thing.
Speaker 3: I was in San Francisco for that particular milestone and
Speaker 3: gay gay history. The death of somebody is a little
Speaker 3: bit serious, but at that time it wasn't. It was
Speaker 3: just like Strange Fruit, the song that was by Lady
Speaker 3: Sings the Blues, and I can't remember her name now,
Speaker 3: I just slipped my tongue, but was about lynchings in
Speaker 3: the South that were prevalent up until and through the
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties and into the early sixties. I have no
Speaker 3: more I just don't have any disgusted and disdain. The
Speaker 3: limit has been reached, it's maxed out. These are awful
Speaker 3: human beings. They're completely back in the seventeen hundreds. They're
Speaker 3: pensiant for doing the very worst they can to people
Speaker 3: that aren't even that a problem in their society, who
Speaker 3: just want to live their lives. They don't want to
Speaker 3: do any of the made up shit that they say
Speaker 3: we do. You know, like there are almost none no
Speaker 3: child abuse or child molestation trans people who are charged
Speaker 3: with that and convicted of that, almost none. You know,
Speaker 3: who was the ones that were charged with it? Your priests,
Speaker 3: your ministers, your youth pastors, and your uncle's and aunts
Speaker 3: and members of your own family. That's the ninety nine
Speaker 3: point nine percent of the people who will do those
Speaker 3: kind of crimes. Yet they make them about keep other people. Again,
Speaker 3: every accusation is a confession, and when it comes to conservatives.
Speaker 3: So I'm just I'm really sick of having to deal
Speaker 3: with it or hear about these people, and because they
Speaker 3: are just evil. If you think you're righteous or not,
Speaker 3: you're evil. Get over yourselves anyway, I'm ranting. I'm going
Speaker 3: to stop, That's.
Speaker 2: All right, now I wanted to give you your space
Speaker 2: to get that out.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if this is like considered a
Speaker 1: hot take or not, but I think that sex segregation,
Speaker 1: in most cases, generally speaking, is just kind of silly.
Speaker 1: I think that it comes from like purity and modesty culture,
Speaker 1: and I think both of those are kind of silly.
Speaker 1: And I think the humans are the only animals that
Speaker 1: do a lot of things, and in many cases it's
Speaker 1: because we have cognitive context if I can summarize it,
Speaker 1: that other animals don't have. But I think shameful pissing
Speaker 1: is not something that is like a high cognitive context thing.
Speaker 1: I think that's that's just from purity culture, is just
Speaker 1: from modesty culture, and and the idea of like bathroom legislation,
Speaker 1: Like now we're creating laws about how.
Speaker 2: Ashamed we are of using the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Tracy, where does before you get to that, I just
Speaker 1: use this thermometer that was not a hot take.
Speaker 4: It in facts that.
Speaker 2: Error okay, so.
Speaker 1: Has no yeah, it doesn't register, Okay, it has no temperature,
Speaker 1: no molecules, good moles that's data. So when when they're
Speaker 1: meeting for the purpose of addressing flood relief, where does
Speaker 1: bathroom legislation land like on your like are just even
Speaker 1: generally speaking, I can't fathom.
Speaker 4: I'm just going to quote myself and my notes because
Speaker 4: it's just what that is my stance on this issue.
Speaker 4: I can't fathom being concerned about the bathroom thing. I
Speaker 4: can't like, like, here's the deal right here, here's like
Speaker 4: the the very super big. There's some things I can
Speaker 4: I can almost wrap my head around, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, Like I can wrap my head around being
Speaker 4: afraid of an afterlife. I can. I can wrap my
Speaker 4: head around racism. I can't understand it, but I can
Speaker 4: wrap my I can see how you got there, just
Speaker 4: because I'm aware of the of the greater societal effects
Speaker 4: that lead to that. Not not that I have any understanding.
Speaker 2: That you relate, but that Yeah.
Speaker 4: But with the with the bathroom thing, this literally just
Speaker 4: sounds like separate but equal again in my but it's
Speaker 4: not even separate but equal. It's separate. But we're gonna
Speaker 4: beat you up anyway, because any like not any there
Speaker 4: is a large number of trans women who will go
Speaker 4: if they now follow the law that is immediately putting
Speaker 4: themselves in a super dangerous position. There is a huge
Speaker 4: number of trans men who if they now follow the law,
Speaker 4: that is putting them in a super dangerous position. So
Speaker 4: like no matter, it's soup super super intentionally. It's so
Speaker 4: that it's an outing, it's a it's it's it's a
Speaker 4: combination of separate but equal and the wearing of a
Speaker 4: pink triangle. It is a combination of those two things.
Speaker 4: They want to be able to identify you easily, and
Speaker 4: they want to control where you pee, which like, how
Speaker 4: how far are we going to really take this? I
Speaker 4: don't I haven't read the bill, but my mom would
Speaker 4: take me in the women's bathroom when I was a kid.
Speaker 4: Are we but like that is there a reservation for
Speaker 4: for for miners or insinuating circumstances, Like like like what
Speaker 4: are we doing? Are we really just picking on marginalized people?
Speaker 4: Is that all we're doing? Are we really not? I
Speaker 4: don't are they even trying to hide it at this
Speaker 4: point anymore? That's that That's what I'm getting to. It
Speaker 4: seems pretty bald faced. It's like, yeah, there was a
Speaker 4: there was a there was a big old flood, and
Speaker 4: I know everybody wants us to get to that. So
Speaker 4: maybe yes, on my on my fuck the trans people thing?
Speaker 4: How about that? How about that, let's just vote yes
Speaker 4: on that one and then we're good. It does.
Speaker 1: See, they're not They're not framing it that way though,
Speaker 1: and that's why it's landing with certain people, because what
Speaker 1: they're framing it as is, this is what's going to
Speaker 1: protect women. This is how we make sure men don't
Speaker 1: go on women's restrooms and hurt women. But I don't know.
Speaker 2: As I said, I'm.
Speaker 4: Gonna keep ahead because I really think that what I
Speaker 4: have to say is more important. But I'm sorry, Eli, everybody.
Speaker 3: You don't know me and.
Speaker 4: Eli well enough to know how that would land.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Tracy and I have known each other for a
Speaker 2: long time. That's fine.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 4: So the the thing I'm running into is that, you know,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of people on the left side of
Speaker 4: politics who are against firearms, and like just in general,
Speaker 4: they they they they're they're not for it at all.
Speaker 4: And one of the common arguments is that, like, these
Speaker 4: laws that you're bringing up won't even fix what you're
Speaker 4: saying they're gonna fix. That is what a lot of
Speaker 4: people on the right side of politics will say in
Speaker 4: response to the left side of politics. Bringing up arguments
Speaker 4: against arguments to bring forth legislation that they say, we'll
Speaker 4: fix the problem. A lot of the rebuttal is that
Speaker 4: it won't actually fix that. The exact same argument can
Speaker 4: be used for this. Criminals will figure out how to
Speaker 4: attack your wife anyway. This isn't gonna protect her. It's
Speaker 4: not the guy who the same guy who will change
Speaker 4: everything about his life. And did John just die?
Speaker 2: John is a ghost now, ghost of.
Speaker 4: Ale and translucent John. It scared me. But no, the
Speaker 4: same guy who is going to to change how to
Speaker 4: change how he dresses and take hormones and possibly engage
Speaker 4: in surgery, and change how he presents himself to the
Speaker 4: rest of the world, all for that sweet sweet payoff
Speaker 4: of watching your wife, Pete. If he's really gonna also
Speaker 4: attacker now you've just taken away that way he can
Speaker 4: do it, he's gonna still do it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Purpose purpose, The real purpose is very thinly veiled. The
Speaker 3: real purpose is to identify and track people they don't like,
Speaker 3: to out them and to make sure that they are
Speaker 3: embarrassed and everything else. There's a very simple solution to this,
Speaker 3: and a lot of places have it, and that's called
Speaker 3: a unisex bathroom.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's one stom you know, you could have
Speaker 5: one stall bathroom for everybody, and then you can have
Speaker 5: as many of those as you need for the amount
Speaker 5: of people there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, solved And that kind of agrees with well, the
Speaker 2: kind of agrees that is what I was thinking earlier.
Speaker 1: I think, like every every living animal, at every mammal
Speaker 1: at least uses the bathroom, and the idea that we
Speaker 1: have to hide it from everyone else because your body
Speaker 1: is gross and you're a gross and you should be
Speaker 1: ashamed and you're disgusting. It's just it's so silly to
Speaker 1: me and and and I'm using silly to be polite,
Speaker 1: but any number of words could describe it and stupid.
Speaker 2: It doesn't do us any good.
Speaker 1: And I don't remember the last time I even looked
Speaker 1: at somebody in a public bathroom that I didn't already
Speaker 1: know long enough to even have any idea what their
Speaker 1: face looks like, let alone obsess over what their genitals
Speaker 1: looked like when they were born.
Speaker 2: I don't do that for anybody.
Speaker 4: By the way, you don't.
Speaker 3: Know a bathroom laugh at people? Come on, what was it?
Speaker 4: Sophia Vergara could be in the bathroom with me, and
Speaker 4: I wouldn't know because I try really hard not to
Speaker 4: look at people in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Right, And that does come from like we are sort
Speaker 1: of socialized to like give people privacy during that time
Speaker 1: because of how like the societal you know, expectation and
Speaker 1: attitude towards Christ.
Speaker 3: Because if this is better back in Roman times, everybody
Speaker 3: did that together you know where going and you take
Speaker 3: your dump whatever, and you could talk to.
Speaker 4: Each other and you use the communal sponge on a stick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I honestly don't know if that's true or not. It's
Speaker 1: pretty gross. I hope it's not for at least a
Speaker 1: period of time.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna hope.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna say they probably change it out, cleaned it.
Speaker 2: That's let's hope. But it's not that.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, this purity and modesty culture has
Speaker 1: just led to this idea where it's like, no, like
Speaker 1: there are certain times where you just don't look at people,
Speaker 1: and it like nothing bad happens when you see a
Speaker 1: person naked, nothing bad happens when you get seen naked either.
Speaker 2: Like it's just the way.
Speaker 3: That it is well with me that people get grossed out.
Speaker 3: But that's just but that's.
Speaker 2: Once again I'm going to that's exactly.
Speaker 1: It's just this idea of like, oh, bodies are supposed
Speaker 1: to look a certain way or they're supposed to be
Speaker 1: concealed when they don't look that way.
Speaker 2: Or under certain circumstances. And I could rant it.
Speaker 1: That's a view I've held for a while, and I
Speaker 1: could go on about it. I don't mean to, but
Speaker 1: I wonder. My thought was what the real motivation for
Speaker 1: the bill is? And I wonder how much of it
Speaker 1: is how like politicians are worried that they're going to
Speaker 1: like secretly proposition a man in the bathroom for gay
Speaker 1: sex and then find out later on that he has
Speaker 1: a volva, and like, all this isn't what I wanted,
Speaker 1: because I remember I was in like seventh or eighth
Speaker 1: grade and there was some scandal about a politician, like
Speaker 1: there was some I don't know, some symbol he used
Speaker 1: in the bathroom to like proposition somebody for sex, and.
Speaker 2: So I wonder, I wonder how much of that is
Speaker 2: their motivation as the zero non zero non zero. I
Speaker 2: don't know, And I did, did you, either of you
Speaker 2: have any final.
Speaker 3: Thoughts just that oppression is oppression, and if you're using
Speaker 3: your religion or you're firmly held beliefs to oppress people,
Speaker 3: you're wrong and you're evil full stop. Sorry, you cannot
Speaker 3: be called a nice or a good person. You're not.
Speaker 3: And so you get to wear that moniker. You know,
Speaker 3: if you're a human, you have human rights, no exceptions,
Speaker 3: full stop. Nothing else to say on that. I know
Speaker 3: we got time, but you know, hey, I already did
Speaker 3: my rant. I'm kind of like I'm not ranted out.
Speaker 3: I have more. Don't worry people, I had plenty of
Speaker 3: rants left, but this one's kind of like so disgusting
Speaker 3: that they wouldn't help find the children that were washed
Speaker 3: away in a flood, but they will worry about whose
Speaker 3: bathroom you're going into.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: That's to me, says it all about who their legislators are.
Speaker 3: You know that they're just evil people, that's all. They're
Speaker 3: just very evil people who don't know can't They couldn't
Speaker 3: tell the truth if they you know, if it was
Speaker 3: shoved up their ass and they grabbed their ass with
Speaker 3: both hands, they couldn't. They couldn't find it. You know.
Speaker 3: It's just like don't even talk to me about what
Speaker 3: truth is ever again, people, you know, because you don't
Speaker 3: know what it is, So get the fuck out of
Speaker 3: my life. You don't like my apples, don't shake my tree. Okay,
Speaker 3: don't shake that tree.
Speaker 2: What do you think, Tracy?
Speaker 4: Hallelujah? But what I'm gonna say is, I'm just really
Speaker 4: tired of talking about Like I feel like part of
Speaker 4: the strategy is to just to just not let go that,
Speaker 4: just just bring it up again, bring it up. And
Speaker 4: I'm just like, can can we like? Is this really
Speaker 4: that big of a deal to you? I feel like
Speaker 4: I've been having to talk about bathrooms since I was
Speaker 4: in high school, which granted isn't a long time ago,
Speaker 4: but it was like a decade. So we've been having
Speaker 4: this same talk. Yes, yes, I'm young, Yes I am
Speaker 4: a baby. It's fine, but I love hearing it. Please
Speaker 4: say it again.
Speaker 3: You're a baby, but you're a cute baby. Okay.
Speaker 4: I got you to say something about it, got you
Speaker 4: to say something bout my looks. But I'm just tired
Speaker 4: of talking about it because we've been talking about it
Speaker 4: for for for such a long time, and I genuinely
Speaker 4: don't is it it's just it's a fear or a
Speaker 4: lie either these people, and it's it's it's a fear
Speaker 4: based on a lie. If it is a fear, but
Speaker 4: it's either your you're lying or somebody lied to you.
Speaker 4: And that that's where we're getting back to on this.
Speaker 4: Either you don't genuinely believe this, or somebody who doesn't
Speaker 4: genuinely believe this convinced you of it. And and that's
Speaker 4: where I'm getting to. And I'm so sick and got.
Speaker 4: I don't think they've met any trans people. I've met trans.
Speaker 4: I've met a ton trap And let me tell you this,
Speaker 4: there's some trans people that if I met him again,
Speaker 4: I hit them outside the head with a tube by four.
Speaker 4: But that isn't representative of my feelings about trans people
Speaker 4: in general. That's represent that's my feelings about that person.
Speaker 4: I feel like just the basics of yeah, if a
Speaker 4: dog bites you, that's not every dog's fault, Like, like,
Speaker 4: can we get that basic message through? Yeah, a dog
Speaker 4: might bite you, they probably won't if you just treat
Speaker 4: them well. But if a dog bites you, that's not
Speaker 4: every dog's fault. And you can't be mad at everyone
Speaker 4: for something you made up in your head.
Speaker 3: It's or for people refusing to believe what you made
Speaker 3: up in your head.
Speaker 4: And the thing is, even if you didn't make it
Speaker 4: up in your head, if they had accounts that they
Speaker 4: could pull from, if they had this trans woman attacking
Speaker 4: a child in a bathroom, Okay, that isn't every trans
Speaker 4: person's fault.
Speaker 2: Even if you have that example, that's not a symp.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 4: If anything, it might be as simple of being a
Speaker 4: person in a position of power. But that's not even ample.
Speaker 1: And that's not that I have to that I think
Speaker 1: nobody is considering, is that this opens up the possibility
Speaker 1: that at any time, you know, there, any woman could
Speaker 1: be asked to verify that they have the appropriate genitals
Speaker 1: to be in that bathroom, or any man for that matter.
Speaker 1: Anybody can be asked at any time by the law
Speaker 1: to verify they have the appropriate genitals, which is a
Speaker 1: crazy thing to think about passively.
Speaker 3: Weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I do want to say as well, since
Speaker 1: we didn't get to spend much time talking about the
Speaker 1: actual floods, which is what the special session of the
Speaker 1: State Congress was supposed to be about, and since the
Speaker 1: State Congress chose not to address it in their first day.
Speaker 1: I want to direct you all to bit dot l
Speaker 1: y slash Austin Fund, Austin Flood Fund, bit dot l
Speaker 1: y slash Austin Flood Fund, where you can donate to
Speaker 1: the Care County Flood Relief Fund to help those affected
Speaker 1: by the floods in Texas and check back here this
Speaker 1: Friday or down below for more nonprofits