Katelyn Burns: The True Aims of the Anti-Trans Movement

Katelyn Burns: The True Aims of the Anti-Trans Movement

Refuse Fascism Episode 148

Sun, Mar 12, 2023 3:12PM • 41:46

Katelyn Burns 00:00

Last legislative session, you saw dozens and dozens of bills that would ban trans girls from girls sports. I just want you to imagine that this is happening to yourself, and all of a sudden the state has more control over your body than do you do. This actually will ruin lives. The people who invented the term ‘gender ideology’ was actually the Vatican. It was not just meant to talk about trans people, it was supposed to encompass also the right to abortion, feminist thought in general, and gay rights. Just seeing fight and knowing that people who I wasn’t expecting are actually on our side, that gives trans people hope. Speak up. Don’t depend on trans people just to advocate for ourselves because we’re really a small group of people and we need all of you to sort of have our backs on this.

Sam Goldman 01:09

Welcome to Episode 148 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show. Refuse Fascism exposes, analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States. In today’s episode, we share an interview recorded in late February with Katelyn Burns regarding the anti-trans eliminationist agenda, seeking to not only punish and criminalize trans folks and their health care providers, and for minors, their parents, but erase them from existence.

Katelyn is a freelance journalist and streamer. She’s a columnist for MSNBC, and Extra magazine, and the co-host of Cancel Me Daddy podcast. Thanks to everyone who goes the extra step and rates and reviews the show on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. Bill, over on the YouTubes, wrote, “As usual, you hit it out of the park. Living in the fascist state of Florida, this hits home every day. To hear these students speak is just another fantastic support to this country that you provide. Thank you.”

If you appreciate the show like Bill and want to help us reach more people who want to refuse fascism, be a gem, go write a review, and drop five stars wherever you listen to your pods. Tell the people out there in podcast land, please, why you listen and they should, too. Subscribe, follow so you never miss an episode. And of course, keep up all that great commenting and sharing on social media. Oh yeah, and shout out to our new patrons. You can now become a patron of the show for as little as $2 a month. You can support the work of this show and join the community refusing fascism in the name of humanity. Sign up [email protected]/refusefascism.

Before we get into it, I want to give some shout outs and a little bit of news, but just a little, shouting out folks this week that are rising up and refusing fascism, especially the youth’s first step. Lots of love to people who joined International Women’s Day actions around the country and around the globe standing up for the liberation of women. A special shout out to folks in Texas who staged a sit-in the State Capitol with the demand Legal Abortion on Demand and Without Apology, nationwide and everywhere. And a special shout out to our sisters in Miami who staged a die-in at Miami’s Freedom Tower. DeSantis is poised to sign into law a six week near total abortion ban. Already there’s a 15 week abortion ban in effect in the state. This new cruel ban will further decimate abortion access, not only in Florida, but in the entire southeast region.

That’s the sound of the beautiful students and others who were outside and inside disrupting Daily Wires’ Michael Knowles speech at the University of Buffalo this past week. Cheers, Cheers, Cheers to all the badass students who declared “fuck fascists” as they got dragged out, and that they won’t be eradicated. So much love to everyone who declared they will fight for our trans siblings lives and futures.

Last for now but certainly not least, to follow up on last week’s episode, we want to give lots of love to all those involved in the University of South Florida “Stand Up for Freedom Florida” action, where students delivered a letter signed by 29 Student Organizations demanding USF take action against HB 999 at the USF Board of Trustees Meeting. It was followed by a rally co-organized by the USF Graduate Assistants United. We also want to let listeners know that University of South Florida students are calling for the charges to be dropped and the four activists arrested while protesting DeSantis’s attacks on public education. We’re gonna link to their petition in the show notes. So check it out.

I wanted to share two statements from students from that action. First from Liam O’Reilly. He said, “Fascism latches on to the fears people have and tells them that their problems aren’t the problems of this system failing, but that these problems are caused by trans people, by Black people, by gay people, or whatever new marginalized group that will be tomorrow, because that’s what fascism is — an ideology predicated on fear. But we are not fearful.” And from Charles, “You cannot put a price tag on the spaces students create for themselves. Our values, our cultures, and our experience bring us together. These spaces are where we build connections, form friendships, and even find family. We must fight to defend critical thinking and independent thought.”

You can listen to some more from students who led this action on last week’s episode. While we aren’t going to cover all the abortion news from this week, I do want to highlight a couple of things. A belated happy Abortion Providers Appreciation Day, which was started 30 years ago in remembrance of Dr. David Gunn, an abortion provider who was murdered for his work by a Christian fascist. March 10 marked the first of these abortion provider appreciation days in this post-Roe hellscape. Our appreciation goes to all those doing the heroic work of providing abortions, especially at a time where they risk attacks, arrest in fact, defamation, needing to move states to provide care and real terror.

There are bills being introduced in Arkansas, Texas, Kentucky and South Carolina, looking to establish that life begins at conception. Each of these bills explicitly references homicide charges for abortion. And yes, as you can imagine, homicide is punishable by the death penalty in all of those states. We depend on the skills, dedication, compassion and courage of abortion providers every day. We honor their heroism by building a green wave for legal abortion on demand and without apology nationwide.

In the fascist Republic of Texas, three women have been sued for wrongful death after allegedly helping their friend obtain abortion pills. An abusive ex-husband is using Texas’s abortion ban to further abuse his former wife. What the women are being punished for with this lawsuit isn’t the wrongful death of the fetus. They’re being punished for acting as if this woman is entitled to a life beyond her husband’s control. In no surprise to anybody, the lawyer for this abusive ex-husband is SB8 author Jonathan Mitchell. So, it’s happened.

Now the question is, will we allow this? Will we accommodate to it? Well, we say there’s no way he will win. Like people said, there’s no way they will overturn Roe. Or will we resist? We’ll be covering the story more, including hopefully sharing from Rise Up for Abortion Rights – Texas, since I spoke with Katelyn, who you’re gonna hear the interview with just in a few.

A few of the legislative crimes against trans people that we discussed in the interview have advanced. Tennessee signed two bills into law. SB 1 is a categorical ban on gender affirming care for trans young people, while SB 3 attempts to ban drag shows. Meanwhile, Kentucky’s ban on trans health care for youth has advanced through their Statehouse. Tennessee’s law cruelly demands trans youth de-transition within one year. Meanwhile, fascist talking head Michael Knowles said the not-so-quiet part loud enough at CPAC that even the mainstream media and blue checkmark Twitter could not deny that the fascist program is genocidal, an elimination of us.

If this was all that these fascists were doing or capable of, this would be bad enough to warrant people across this country rising up and ejecting them from any ounce of power anywhere, and putting this so-called “reasonable debate” about trans people’s humanity behind us in the trash heap of history. But let’s back up a bit from the individual states and pundits. When we talk about fascism, and on this show we talk about this scientifically, we aren’t talking about a conservative pendulum swing, or some asshole with swastika flags in their basements. We’re talking about a qualitative transformation of the form of rule in this country. This modern American fascism has been building for decades, and it has roots deep down to the very founding of this country.

Just two years ago, they almost consolidated that power in a violent coup attempt which, to be frank, has not ended yet. The prospects of these fascists seizing power nationwide, and consolidating that power is very real. And what we are now seeing in these states will be just a taste of what comes down across this country, a taste of what they mean when they talk about retribution. Look, Trump wasn’t able to overturn Roe while he was in power. Did that stop them? The fascist attacks on trans people while they had federal power did not get very far. Does that mean they won’t be more successful next time?

On the other hand, you have the institutions such as The New York Times with their trademark brand of pluralist American exceptionalism that says, “fascism could never happen here.” Even if we provide fascists the biggest platform in the world, they amplify what about-ism, discount science, give legitimacy and op-ed space to conservative paranoia. They claim allegiance to an elusive objectivity that involves hearing all sides of a debate, while only publishing the sides they want to legitimize. These voices almost always include fascists. The most generous reading of the situation is they’re trying to cover their asses from accusation of bias, but the actual result is merely mainstreaming fascists who will hate them either way, because to fascists the only legitimate voice is their own.

If you want to learn more about The New York Times war on trans kids, go listen to the If Looks Could Kill episode on it, linked in the show notes. Some supportive tweets or yelling at the TV or venting, some isolated outrage won’t stop this. A handful of good op-eds, while important, won’t stop this. Voting alone won’t stop this. The transformations that must happen amongst the decent people of this country are not mere acceptance that they are actively, explicitly fighting back against the whole fascist program. So many people seem to be holding their breath, waiting for the mainstream media or someone in power to declare the emergency and call it fascism. Instead, they keep moving the goal posts. It’s up to us to call it what it is and to act accordingly. Now, here’s my conversation with Katelyn.

Sam Goldman 13:26

There are bills in, now it looks like 27 States, seeking to restrict care for transgender youth. Measures have been introduced this year in at least 21 states. Remember, it’s only February 23. These measures would impose civil penalties for parents and medical providers who provide gender affirming services to minors, and bills in 11 states would take things a crueler step further by criminalizing the procedures. As I was getting ready for this convo, I saw that Arkansas, Alabama, Arizona, South Dakota, Tennessee and Utah have enacted laws restricting access to gender affirming procedures entirely, including South Dakota’s recently passed HB 1080, which bans gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatments for minors.

To get into all of this, help understand what the fuck is going on, and how it connects to this Christian fascist movement in all its glory. I am excited to welcome on Katelyn Burns. She is a freelance journalist and streamer. She’s a columnist over at MSNBC, and Extra magazine, and she’s the co-host of Cancel Me Daddy. Welcome Katelyn.

Katelyn Burns 14:48

Thanks for having me.

Sam Goldman 14:49

I want to just start with a little tiny question. [both chuckle]. The Christian fascist war on trans people is accelerating. It seems to me like every year It breaks the previous year’s record in the amount of anti-trans horror that has been introduced at state levels. I think that with so many attacks, it can be hard for people to understand what to pay attention to, and really what is going on here as a trend overall. I was hoping that you could talk to us a little bit about what’s happening. What do people need to understand that folks are facing?

Katelyn Burns 15:31

In order to understand what’s happening today, you have to understand what happened in the past and how he got here. I think that’s the easiest way to sort of jump into this. If I could just rewind everybody’s brain back to 2015, which was a weird year for me. It was the year before I transitioned. That was the year when the Obergefell Supreme Court ruling came down that legalized gay marriage throughout the land. Everybody in their grandmother was like: “Oh, this issue is like, over now, LGBT rights have won. We don’t have to think about this ever again.” LGBT donors started to be like: “Yeah, I got my marriage, we’re all good in the hood, I’m not going to donate to this anymore. Maybe I’ll even become a Republican, haha.”

But also, later that year, we actually saw the first salvo in the war against trans rights, and it came in Houston, Texas. There was a city ordinance called the Hero Act, which basically provided non-discrimination protections in housing, employment, and public accommodations, along with a couple other things for a broad swath of categories; veterans, it gave rights to people on the basis of race and sex just locally. It included trans people in that and cisgender gay people. What happened was, there was a massive recall effort on the city ordinance.

People who wanted the recall to go through — in other words, they wanted to wipe out the non-discrimination act that city council had passed — they came up with the slogan: No men in women’s bathrooms. This is sort of the baseline of what we’re seeing today. It’s the same pervasive attitude. That campaign won. It came out of nowhere. The LGBT rights organizations were shocked. They thought they had won on gay marriage so they’re not to worry about this stuff anymore, and all of a sudden, they’re dealing with bathrooms? They were not equipped at all for this fight. They had, for years, basically ignored trans people within their own rights movements. Oftentimes, they compromised on trans rights in order to get gay rights passed, and they just completely were not ready for this. Flash forward another couple of months, and you have the North Carolina bathroom bill HB2, and that passes.

This is sort of the glory days of trans resistance that I sort of pined for. It was the first big issue that I reported on as a journalist. Before that, I was in banking, and I hadn’t come out yet, so I had no reason to, you know, write things about this. But there’s a massive interest in trans lives, and this is sort of how I built my own career — I would write personal essays about my transition and things like that, and I also would talk about the bathroom bills and what it would mean for trans people.

There’s this massive sort of revolt against this bill. You’ve had the NBA come in and said we’re cancelling the all star game in North Carolina. Yeah, the NCAA come in and say, we’re not putting any official NCAA events in North Carolina, which is massive, because North Carolina is a huge college basketball state. They frequently play the women’s soccer final four in North Carolina, this is a big deal. You had PayPal come in and say we’re not building these headquarters that we previously wanted to put in Charlotte, we’re not going to build it in North Carolina. So you ended up with millions of dollars in outside investment that was suddenly cancelled in the state.

North Carolina, eventually, after the 2016 election, they repealed that bill. That was a compromise. Nobody was really happy with on either side. Other states had tried to pass bathroom bills as well — there’s a whole national debate about trans bathroom use, and the conservatives just got their asses kicked. They tried to hate on trans people from the military. It was all the stuff that conservatives tried to do, and it basically all blew up in their face.

This leads directly to what we’re seeing today because it was clear after many, many years of trying and failing to pass bathroom bills in places like Texas and Florida, these deep red places, that it just wasn’t going to happen. So they needed to find new issues to be able to continue attacking trans people. There are two things that they focused on. One was trans athletes. You had Leah Thomas, University of Pennsylvania swimmer, who was winning in the ivy Leagues, and everybody thought she’s an unstoppable force in women’s swimming. It turns out she was pretty good for the Ivy League, but she wasn’t gonna go to like the Olympics or anything. But that didn’t stop conservatives from making a huge issue out of it.

So last legislative session, you saw dozens and dozens of bills that would ban trans girls from girls sports. You saw, I think Kentucky, had literally one trans athlete in the entire state. It was a middle school field hockey player who actually lobbied the school to start a field hockey team. So there would be no team without this trans girl doing the work, and Kentucky came in and was like: No, you can’t play. None of her teammates wanted it. None of her opponents wanted it. I read the other day that there are actually more trans athlete bans in states than there are trans athletes in total in high school and college.

That was a very emotional issue. Cisgender people feel very strongly that athletic performance is a fundamental difference between the sexes. And I don’t want to get into all of that. The second one was, they really started to focus on whether or not trans kids should be allowed to transition at all, in any way. Again, you’re seeing dozens and dozens of bills being introduced. They’ve recently added the drag show bans. The first of which passed this morning on the day of recording in Tennessee. They’ve had to evolve over time to get to this point, but I want people to understand that these are the same people who are fighting against gay marriage. Once Obergefell happened, they needed another line of attack against LGBT rights, and they found it through going after trans rights. That is basically the point that I wanted to make.

Sam Goldman 21:46

I think that’s really helpful, and when you look at the obstacles that they’ve encountered, and the ways that they’ve recalibrated in response, there’s new levels of viciousness, it seems each day, based on what they’ve been allowed to get away with the day prior. We’ve talked about this on the show in relation to abortion rights, too. It’s like a monsters Olympics. Oh, we’re gonna outdo what they did. When we were talking about abortion, we were like: Oh, you did 15 weeks, we’re gonna do six weeks. And here: Oh, you criminalize the medical providers, we’re going to criminalize the parents too! Every day, it’s a new form of cruelty — the same cruelty, it’s just more and more sinister.

I was hoping you could walk us through — there’s the scope of things, but then there’s also — what it actually means for real people, and what impact these bills are having that they’re not just abstractions. There’s actual trans folks living in all these states. There’s young people who have their full life ahead of them, whose lives are being impacted right now at state houses across the country. I was hoping you could help us understand a little bit about what you’re hearing what you’ve been learning from folks.

Katelyn Burns 23:01

Understandably, families with younger kids are reticent to speak with the media in general nowadays. I don’t push them too hard to speak with me because I don’t feel the need put a target on people’s backs that have plenty of trolls that weirdly and obsessively read everything that I write. But I wanted to ask your readers to join me in the thought exercise, if we could: Remember back to junior high, which is just the worst. I mean, everybody knows is the worst, your body’s doing weird things. [SG: It’s awful.] All of a sudden, everybody’s just a huge bitch, boy or girl, doesn’t matter. Just imagine yourself back in this time.

Now, imagine that you’ve been going to school for years and everybody in your class thinks of you as a boy or girl, whatever you identify as. Now, I want you to imagine that the state comes in and bans these pills that you take every day, or bans, like, an implant that you got a couple of months ago, and now all of a sudden your body, because you can’t take that medication anymore, your body starts changing into the opposite sex. Now, none of your friends know that you are trans in that situation, and your body just starts its natural puberty. In the meantime, you had kept that a secret from everybody for years because you just wanted to lead a normal childhood.

This is a situation that we face now by hundreds of kids throughout these red states where these things are passed. Thankfully, I believe most of the bands have been enjoined in federal court. There’s actually a case in Arkansas, which should be the first sort of court decision to see, but I think a lot of these have been paused while the courts work this out. I have no faith in the court system. They already proved that they decided that the government can decide what you do with your body when they overturn Roe v. Wade. I don’t really have much hope for this.

But I just want you to imagine that this is happening to yourself, and often the state has more control over your body than you do, and you’re just a middle school child. This actually will ruin lives. I don’t think people get that. I think that a lot of people, they approach this issue, and are like: Oh, you know, this is scientific, and it’s a studied and we don’t know… this, that and the other thing. But there’s real people on the other side of these, they’re real people who have their own hopes and dreams, their own needs, they would rather be worrying about their math homework than whether or not their doctors gonna get thrown in prison.

Sam Goldman 25:32

Well said. It is disgusting to me personally, when people throw out all these things about science — and I love science — and what is being promoted isn’t science, and they’re not actually listening to medical professionals who by and large support. It’s not that everything is understood and perfectly worked out, but it is human beings at play and we need to remember people’s humanity, which seems to be very easily dismissed by those same people. One of the things that I really appreciated in your piece for Extra Magazine — that will be linked in the show notes, folks — was how clearly you painted the stakes for people.

We, on the show, have talked a lot about this triad that fascist movements kind of foment and rely on: patriarchy, American chauvinism, xenophobia, and white supremacy. We have seen this patriarchy trend really, really advance in the past several months with viciousness. This what we on the show would refer to as a Christian fascist movement. They have an aim, an eliminationist aim, where even one trans person is too many. I thought that you just did such a brilliant job at clarifying for people what is at stake.

There was one part that I wanted to highlight for listeners to really just consider Katelyn wrote: “Think about it, no legal recognition, no health care and no recognition within broader society, what kind of life would that leave for us trans people? None.” From what I hear, what you see in the news, and oftentimes in conversations, there’s this dismissing or almost belittling of these attacks: Oh, well, they’re not doing it to trans adults, this is just about kids. Or: It’s just about bathrooms, why are you getting so upset? Or: It’s just about sports, it’s not that big of a deal. Or: It’s just at a state level. Or: It’s just those states. There’s always this way that it kind of gets minimized or accepted. I just wanted to give you the opportunity to kind of speak on that and on why you think it matters that people understand the direction that this leads is eugenics?

Katelyn Burns 28:08

Yeah, I mean, it’s that phenomenon of: Oh, it’s just this, you know, it’s just that. Well, you start chipping away and eventually, that can have anything left. Oh, you know, I’m gonna chop off your pinky. And it’s just your pinky, like, it’s a very small part of your body, like, you don’t need your pinky. And then the next day, it’s, oh, I’m gonna chop off your ring finger, you don’t need the ring finger, and eventually you look up and, oh my God, you don’t have any fingers left, and you can’t use your hand.

So I don’t necessarily buy into: Oh, it’s just this is just that. I’ve had some some sort of deeper thoughts on this lately, and I actually have this recurring nightmare — and I have no way of knowing if this is true, I’m not a historian or anything, but — I think this has happened to trans people before. Of course, we know that the literal Nazis, the German version, under Adolf Hitler, actually burned down the first gender clinic in, I think, world history, which you can read about — Teen Vogue has an excellent article about it.

History.com has another article about the clinic the Nazis literally burned down. People don’t realize that those famous pictures of the Nazis burning books, a lot of those were literally just from this clinic. They don’t teach that part in American history when we learn about World War II for some reason. But I go back even further to that, you know, the word travesty comes to mind because the root of travesty is actually an Italian word for male crossdresser. I think to myself: Gosh, the meaning of that word now — and it makes sense, right, because trans fest is cross dress.

I think to myself, people have been transphobic for years, to the point where literally our word for injustice used to mean men in dresses or whatever. There’s some other thought too, that the English word “bad” derives from the The Old English “Badal,” which also meant men in dresses — that’s more disputed. So I don’t actually claim it. But I keep thinking to myself: What if this has happened over and over and over again, throughout history? We know that there were going indigenous people who, in modern times, would be considered non binary, and we know that Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean and met those people and fed them to his dogs.

I have this nightmare that this has been happening to trans people, every couple of decades, literally, since the beginning of time, and I actually don’t know how to deal with the existential dread of that. You mentioned, like, Christo-fascists, the big thing I wanted to say to readers is: You hear the anti trans side talk a lot about gender ideology, and I want them to know that the people who invented the term gender ideology was actually the Vatican. It was not just meant to talk about trans people, it was supposed to encompass also, the right to abortion, feminist thought in general, and gay rights. So when you hear people saying, we must oppose gender ideology, you should know the root of those words, too, because they came from the pope man himself, even the progressive Pope.

Sam Goldman 31:11

Even the progressive. I really appreciate that context.

Katelyn Burns 31:17

By the way, your readers can learn more about that in a great book called Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing Against Equality. It’s an academic book, it’s very dense, but it’s mind blowing.

Sam Goldman 31:27

I guess what I was thinking about in terms of overall, what you were saying was that this is a attack that’s multi-sided. There’s what happens at the state levels through the government, and then there’s also these shock troops, and they work in tandem. As the anti-trans legislation goes through, there’s also the Proud Boys harassing drag shows. As the legislation moves forward that prosecutes medical health providers who provide gender affirming care, there’s these lunatics who protest outside of children’s hospitals. It’s this multisided effect, and I was wondering if there was anything regarding the relationship between what happens in the legislature and what happens at health care centers, at pharmacies, at wherever people are in their daily lives, whether there’s anything that you wanted to highlight there.

Katelyn Burns 32:23

Extremist movements in general are not my speciality outside of just the anti-trans stuff. I will say that even like the “respectable” anti-trans campaigners, they have no issues sharing protest space with Proud Boys. To me, that says a lot about them. Speaking on the legislative side, we started this discussion with talk about how we got here today, and we’ve mentioned North Carolina and the massive backlash that came to their bathroom bill. Well, conservatives really learned from that experience and that’s why you see dozens and dozens of bills now going through rather than one big one. They don’t just do one test state to see how it goes, they do ten test sets, because what is the NCAA gonna do? Ban athletic competitions throughout the whole South? The NCAA wouldn’t do that.

Is Pay Pal gonna come in and say you can’t do business in 12 Different Republican states? No. So they use the power of the market to their own advantage by hitting as many states as possible. And you also see how they learned from the gay marriage fight in that they don’t make arguments on religious terms at all. They’re almost allergic to it now — you see this a lot with the Ben Shapiros of the world and those lot — but it absolutely is a religious animus that’s driving it. There was a “conscientious objector” bill that was passed in one of the states recently, and for the first time, we saw a bill that said that people could deny medication, healthcare, or even just acknowledgement to trans people, both through religious objections and also moralistic or scientific objections.

So you’re starting to see an expansion of that, but it can never go the other way. I, as a trans person, can’t return the favor on these people, it’s just a completely one sided situation. I forget which legislature passed that — I don’t think it passed the full state legislature, it was just one chamber — but you’re starting to see some really interesting — I use interesting facetiously… [SG: Horrifying] horrifying — ways in which they’re expanding on religious objections because they’re desperate to hide that connection. They do not want people to think that this is a religious thing.

Sam Goldman 34:39

I really appreciate that point. I think that that is part of how it becomes so mainstreamed, and that is very concerning. One of the most dangerous things that I feel that we’ve been seeing, and this is this is true for anti trans laws and attacks, but it’s true for a lot more than that too. To the normalization that has set in, where a lot of good people allow things to continue, that really should have been stopped already. I think that part of it — not all of it, but part of it is the fact that the other side keeps getting legitimized, and getting amplified, and getting a voice on shows that they shouldn’t get a voice on.

Whether someone’s human or not, this is not a two side conversation. I was just wanting to get a sense from you on: What are the things that people who don’t want this to get normalized? And by “this”, I mean, the dehumanization and degradation of the trans community. What should people be doing right now? Or what can people be doing right now?

Katelyn Burns 35:54

I don’t know that I can fix transphobia in one podcast episode. I think one thing that’s really helped is seeing people speak up on our behalf is just a huge thing. Even if it’s just on social media, though, you know, the sort of Twitter activism gets, rightfully so, a bad rap. The other thing too is: Show up for rallies for trans rights. I used to work in DC, and I covered reproductive health, so that was part of my background. For my job, I would show up at these pro-abortion rights rallies, and everybody would be there; I’d see my trans friends there, I see my repro friends be there, there are people of all stripes and communities and all of that. Then a couple of days later, I would go to a trans rights rally, like outside of the White House, or whatever, and it’s literally only trans people.

I can’t tell you how much that sucks, to show up, and it’s like, we are literally on our own. And this was back in the Trump years, this was not recent. I think just being vocal and showing up goes a long way. Trans people notice this. This is the stuff that we talk about when we are on our own, and you all are not around us. I’ll give you a good example: I was feeling quite hopeless, personally, a couple of weeks ago. We were on the backs of multiple sort of New York Times, fuck-ups on covering trans issues, these bills are starting to pass the legislature, and I’m like it’s over. Then we had the response to The New York Times from hundreds of New York Times contributors criticizing the paper just asking them to be fair to trans people.

I can’t tell you what that for my mindset, all of a sudden, I’m seeing names of people who I didn’t even know they knew trans people existed, and they’re out there calling out The New York Times and being like: Hey, this coverage is not like your other coverage on other issues. Can you like maybe make it that way? Of course, The New York Times, like shit themselves over it, but just seeing fight and knowing that people who I wasn’t expecting are actually on our side, that gives trans people hope. If there’s anything I can say, it’s just speak up when you feel that you have to. Don’t depend on trans people just to advocate for ourselves, because we’re really a small group of people at the end of the day, and we need all of you to sort of have our backs on this

Sam Goldman 38:23

Katelyn, is there anything else that you wanted to mention, bring up, touch on, that we didn’t?

Katelyn Burns 38:29

This is gonna sound weird, but I wish I had a different job. So let’s get this over with so I can find some new employment.

Sam Goldman 38:37

Let’s do just that. You can find more from Katelyn. We’ll link to your MSNBC column. We’ll link to the Extra article. Is there anything else that you want to share with folks?

Katelyn Burns 38:52

I would say my Twitter’s probably the best place to keep up with everything that I’m doing and it’s @transscribe that’s with two ‘s’s. I’m a trans scribe, not doing a transcription so…

Sam Goldman 39:06

[laughs] Thank you so much, Katelyn, for joining us.

Katelyn Burns 39:10

Thank you.

Sam Goldman 39:11

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Thanks to Richie Marini, Lina Thorne and Mark Tinkleman for helping produce this episode. Thanks to incredible volunteers, we have transcripts available for each episode, so be sure to visit RefuseFascism.org and sign up to get them in your inbox. We’ll be back next Sunday. Until then, in the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America.