This week, Our Body Politic finishes its month-long series 'Our Body Politic Presents' with TransLash Media, where trans people and allies talk back about what matters most and discuss how to create a fairer world for all. Host Imara Jones interviews journalist Zoë Schiffer of NBC to discuss what’s going on behind the scenes at Netflix after Dave Chappelle’s special 'The Closer' was criticized as transphobic and how employees are organizing and speaking out. The TransLash team investigates the origins of the movement to ban trans women from sports — and the right-wing group driving the effort. On the weekly roundtable 'Sippin' the Political Tea', Farai is joined by regular contributor Errin Haines of the 19th and Imara Jones of TransLash Media to explore trans rights, the culture wars, and Black woman leadership.
© 2022, TransLash Media, Provided under license.
Farai Chideya:
Hi folks. We are so glad that you're listening to Our Body Politic. If you have time, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcast. It helps other listeners find us and we read your feedback. We'd also love it if you join financially in supporting the show, if you're able, you can find out more at ourbodypolitic.com/donate. We are here for you, with you, and because of you. Thank you.
Farai Chideya:
This is Our Body Politic I'm Farai Chideya. For the month of January, we're bringing you fresh voices from the podcasting world in our series, Our Body Politic Presents. This week, we bring you work by TransLash Media. Imara Jones is the host and producer of the TransLash Podcast, and her work has won prestigious awards, including the Emmy and Peabody. In 2019, Jones chaired the United Nations first ever high level meeting on gender diversity.
Farai Chideya:
As America grapples with a multifaceted culture war, transgender rights have drawn political fire. There has been a cascade of legislation. Nearly 150 anti-trans bills in state houses across the country in 2021, for example. And more states are considering new legislation this year. The October release of Dave Chappelle's special, The Closer brought transgender rights into focus from a different direction, culture. In his special, the comedian declared himself a TERF, which is shorthand for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Other celebrities, including Harry Potter author, JK Rowling have made a point of publicly excluding trans women from the category of womanhood. But what happened with Dave Chappelle and his special wasn't just a culture issue, it was a labor issue too. TransLash host Imara Jones interviewed Zoe Schiffer of NBC, who was at The Verge at the time of the interview about how things played out for staff and the broader implications for society. Here's an excerpt from TransLash's episode, Netflix v. The Trans Community.
Imara Jones:
To delve even deeper into what's going on at Netflix, I invited one of the top reporters covering the Dave Chappelle saga and the company's ongoing mishandling of the situation. Zoe Schiffer is a senior reporter at The Verge and has broken story after story about this whole ordeal, making her the ideal person to help us pull back the curtain and get a look behind the scenes at Netflix. Zoe, thank you so much for joining me today.
Zoe Schiffer:
Thank you so much for having me.
Imara Jones:
First off, I'm wondering if you can give us a snapshot of Netflix, how big is it? What's its reach and how important has it become within the realm of entertainment and Hollywood?
Zoe Schiffer:
Netflix has this interesting place in both Silicon Valley and Hollywood. It has enormous sway in Hollywood in particular because it's producing a lot of the content that has become wildly popular in the past few years. And a lot of the major studios and the major talent are now really beholden to it. As a company, it's 12,000 employees, it's one of the fame companies. So it's like financially very, very successful. So it also has that kind of outsized control and sway in Silicon Valley.
Imara Jones:
Content wise, they've committed to releasing or initiating $6 billion worth of content next year, for example. So I think that also gives us a sense. That's just unheard of for entertainment companies in the modern era.
Zoe Schiffer:
Yeah, absolutely. There's no question. I think this really speaks to why we haven't heard a lot of the internal turmoil going on at Netflix because employees are in this position where if you're on the entertainment side of the house, you do not want to speak out against Netflix because you can get put on a list and it can become very, very difficult for you to get hired in Hollywood. We know that Hollywood operates in this way. And then if you're a tech employee, you're aware of the extent to which tech companies will go to, to stop employees from speaking out. You might have a little more insight into the NDA that you've signed. And those NDAs at Netflix are very, very strict. And so there's this dual layer pressure to stop people from speaking out.
Imara Jones:
You touched upon, for example, that if you're a person like Chappelle, you get "boutique treatment" at Netflix with regard to content creation. What is their relationship with Dave Chappelle and why have they crafted this entire area of doing comedic specials, which from time to time has been a landmine for the company?
Zoe Schiffer:
Yeah, absolutely. So they've said outright that the comedy specials that they produce are wildly popular with the audience. So this goes back to 2016. Netflix signed a deal with Dave Chappelle to produce six comedy specials for the platform. I think he was paid around $20 million for each of them. The company has said now that Sticks & Stones was Netflix's most popular comedy special to date. That was Chappelle's previous special before The Closer. And so I think we can get a sense of why they're so committed to him as a performer and comedian. They've paid an enormous amount of money to Chappelle, much more than some of the other pieces of popular content that we know about that have been produced lately. And the content has been wildly successful with the audience.
Imara Jones:
What do you think this says about Ted Sarandos and his leadership style?
Zoe Schiffer:
As someone who worked in tech before becoming a journalist, it is not at all shocking to me that a for-profit organization is prioritizing profits. It's right in the structure, what is going to be important to these people. And so while I think it's very admirable that employees are pushing the company to do better. I think that when Ted Sarandos comes out and the first thing he's saying is, "Look, it costs us this much and it's popular with our audience." I think we have our answers right before us.
Zoe Schiffer:
Fundamentally, as a labor reporter, what I'm interested in is, what is the place that employees have in this conversation? And I actually think the place that employees have in the Netflix controversy cannot be overstated. Because one thing that's really true is, while it might not be shocking that Netflix is prioritizing content that they've invested heavily in over their own employees. It's also true that they, like many other tech organizations have positioned themselves as a very progressive employer. And as soon as we have a hypocrisy like that, we have a company that said, we care about you as a person, bring your whole self to work, we have inclusive values, and then is falling down on those values, I think we have a story. And so the story here is that it becomes an unsafe place for trans employees to work if the content that is being produced from their perspective is directly harmful to their communities.
Imara Jones:
Let's then turn to the employees.
Zoe Schiffer:
I think there are about 40 out trans employees at Netflix at this time, but the actual employee resource group or the Slack channel is well over a thousand employees. It was 400 when all of this started. And so I think that there are real ways. And we heard this firsthand at the walkout, employees saying, "Look, when I first came here, I was the only trans woman on my team. I would go to the trans employee resource group meetings, and there were seven of us in the room and now there's almost 50 and that feels much less lonely than it used to." So I feel like there's a way in which the community itself has grown, support has grown and their influence has grown. They've been able, at least prior to this Dave Chappelle controversy, to have a bigger role in conversations around transphobic content.
Imara Jones:
One out of 12 employees is now on that Slack channel.
Zoe Schiffer:
It's impressive.
Imara Jones:
Astounding. Did it surprise you that none of the demands of the ERG with respect to changes that it wanted to see at Netflix didn't include removing the content, for example, that most of it was focused on ways that the company needs to change with respect to how it operates, who it promotes and the content that gets funded? Because they didn't make it about, as Dave Chappelle is claiming, silencing him. Although I don't know how he's to silenced with a 25 million check.
Zoe Schiffer:
Sounds phenomenal. Would love to be silenced in a similar way.
Imara Jones:
Indeed. At any point, please contact me. Anyone. But did that surprise you with regards to how the employees are approaching this?
Zoe Schiffer:
I thought it was a very savvy PR move, I guess I'll say that. And I think that employees at these big tech organizations have learned from one another. I think Netflix employees were like, "Look, this is already getting bogged down, and this discussion around cancel culture and censorship and we don't even want to touch that. We want to look at the systemic issues of why this content was able to air in the first place and what we're going to do to mitigate harm." And so I think that that was a very strategic decision to not get involved in this conversation around whether or not Dave Chappelle's special should stay up or come down, but really focus on the larger issues at play.
Imara Jones:
Yeah. I think that that's right. And it also puts the onus right back on Ted Sarandos and the leadership to respond on that. Right?
Zoe Schiffer:
Yeah, completely. I think this discussion around who's canceling who, which is just very unfruitful. Right now, we're having a really different conversation because the only person that's lost their job is a Netflix employee who's trans, who's black, who's pregnant. And I think when we want to talk about cancellation, that's the person who's faced some real repercussions after speaking out. And Dave Chappelle's special is still up and he's still getting standing ovations.
Imara Jones:
You made the point that, and this is so true, that people in entertainment do not want to be labeled as difficult, do not want to be labeled as having called out their bosses in any way. Normally it is a career killer, not just a job killer. I think it's important for people to understand that, but it's a career killer. And we have seen however so many people being willing to take that risk.
Zoe Schiffer:
Yeah. I think we have to really look at who actually is speaking out, because one thing we know for a fact is that the majority of Netflix employees who have spoken out are on the software side of the business. And talent who's spoken out are Hannah Gadsby being one. It's like talent that has a lot of power and play in the industry. And so I don't know if we can look at this moment and say, wow, this is an enormous shift for Hollywood, because I think if you're a tech employee, you do have that assurance that you can probably get another tech job. And there is more of a culture of speaking out against wrongs and forcing your company to stand up for its stated values. I don't know if that's true in Hollywood to this point. And I think that you have to really reach a certain level where you can afford to speak out before you're willing to really do that.
Imara Jones:
After all of this, do you think that Ted Sarandos realizes that he has a problem?
Zoe Schiffer:
I don't think they've given us any indication that they regret putting the special up. But I think that they've stuck very, very close to supporting the special and supporting Dave Chappelle. And while I have to imagine that they're rethinking how they give employees a heads up of what content is coming down the pike and maybe rethinking some of their PR strategy around this stuff. I personally have seen no indication so far that they're rethinking their content strategy overall.
Imara Jones:
That's interesting to me because I have had people who are producers and content creators in Hollywood reach out to me and tell me that they have either canceled meetings with them or had decided not to shop their content with them.
Zoe Schiffer:
And this gets back to the previous answer. If it becomes a business problem for Netflix, I think they will change their strategy.
Imara Jones:
Zoe, thank you so much for coming on and for explaining all of the complexities around this issue with regards to tech and entertainment and labor issues. We'll continue to follow it.
Zoe Schiffer:
Thank you Imara so much for having me and thank you for creating a platform for me and the other people involved to talk about these issues.
Imara Jones:
Of course. That was Zoe Schiffer, a senior reporter at The Verge.
Farai Chideya:
That was an excerpt from the TransLash Podcast with Imara Jones. Coming up next, more from the TransLash Podcast team with Imara Jones. Next, they dive into the origins of the movement to ban trans women from sports.
Lindsay Hecox:
Since I didn't really have the full experience, so to speak, I was pretending to be someone I wasn't in high school. It was just sad to me that I never did it as Lindsay.
Farai Chideya:
Plus our round table, Sipping the Political Tea, that's on Our Body Politic.
Farai Chideya:
Welcome back to Our Body Politic. We continue Our Body Politic Presents with a limited run series by TransLash Media, the anti-trans hate machine, a plot against equality. Host and producer Imara Jones and her team investigate how legislators across the country are pushing bills to restrict transgender rights.
Imara Jones:
I was preparing for an interview one morning in February 2020. That interview was for a documentary that me and my team at TransLash were producing called The Future of Trans. It's a fundamentally hopeful piece about what's ahead for trans people. What we can actually look forward to. As I was waiting for all of that to start, I do what I normally do. I was watching and scrolling through the news. Yeah, I do that. Try not to judge me because it's my job. And that's when I caught a glimpse, a glimpse of a potentially darker future in store for trans people. And that came in the form of a bill and it was an anti-trans bill in Idaho.
Speaker 5:
[crosstalk 00:14:08] a lawmaker now introducing a bill that would ban transgender girls from playing on girls high school and college sports teams.
Imara Jones:
It was the second piece of hateful legislation that year. And I thought to myself, this has to be coming from somewhere. I want to find out where and what's going on. We wrapped up shooting the documentary two weeks later, and before I knew it, before we all knew it COVID was upon us. Everything had shut down and more and more anti-trans bills were popping up in state houses all across the country. We were facing more than one epidemic. So I pressed my team to keep going after the story. And we started making calls. I talked to experts, and activist, many of them my friends to ask what's happening and why now. They told me, girl, keep digging so I did. To be honest, I got a little obsessed. And a year after following my gut, I am reeling from what we learned.
Imara Jones:
The truth is that an enormous network of political action groups, billionaires and religious extremists have all come together to form an operation that most of us have never heard of. Their goal is to use trans rights as a way to push a larger crueler vision of the country. Now, we might not have heard of them, but we're all feeling the impact of their operation. More than 100 anti-trans bills have been introduced in over 30 state houses this year. And this anti-trans hate machine is just getting started. My name is Imara Jones. I'm a black trans woman, a journalist and the founder of TransLash Media. Welcome to the The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality.
Imara Jones:
Now I know that all of this sounds like something out of a comic book or science fiction, like I'm describing Hydra from the Marvel world, or the rise of the Sith and Darth Vader in Star Wars. But there's more to this story than a conspiracy of frightening organizations hiding in plain sight. At the center of this are so many brave trans people. They're fighting all over the country. Even trans children are facing off against this machine. Their collective courage and the power of their humanity is the only thing which makes me feel hope that this machine can be stopped and dissembled.
Imara Jones:
Let's start this story in a place where it began for me, Idaho. Idaho is where the anti-trans sports bills really gain traction. And it's the place where we have to go if we're going to understand a key part of the anti-trans hate machine. Come with me to Boise, March 2020.
Speaker 6:
We on? We're on.
Imara Jones:
Lawmakers have gathered for yet another hearing on a bill to bar trans girls from sports. It's called HB 500.
Speaker 6:
I'd like to call the Senate State Affairs Committee to order. We're a little-
Imara Jones:
The bill sponsor is there.
Barbara Ehardt:
Thank you. Madam chairman. I am Barbara Ehardt, Representative from District 33, which is Idaho Falls. And madam chairman and good committee, truly I am grateful that you are allowing myself to come before you to present this bill, which is incredibly necessary. If I may, let me make it very clear that this bill is about one thing. It is about protecting opportunities and continued opportunities for girls and women in sports. Every girl deserves the chance to pursue her dreams, to excel in athletics. Forcing girls and women to compete against biological boys and men has often made us spectators in our own sport.
Imara Jones:
What strikes me watching this is that she's passionate and she totally buys into this nonsense, so much so she names her bill, the Fairness in Women's Sports Acts. But there's someone else testifying at this hearing too, a teenage girl, she's got blonde ringlets and is wearing her high school cross country t-shirt. She's super nervous.
Lindsay Hecox:
If you could not guess already, I am in fact, a transgender girl and an athlete. I ran cross country and track in high school. This issue is so important to me because running is such a core part of who I am. It keeps me fit, it keeps me motivated in life in general, it keeps me alive.
Imara Jones:
Her name is Lindsay Hecox. She's a college first year. She's one of the bravest, most earnest young people I've ever seen. It's the first day she'll face off against the anti-trans hate machine. She doesn't know it yet, but this is just the start of a long fight. Lindsay came to Idaho from California to go to college and to live as the young woman she always knew she was. And a big part of her dream was to run alongside other women on the cross country team. Lindsay had started to transition in the summer between high school and college. Can you talk a little bit about why you wanted to join the team?
Lindsay Hecox:
Running by yourself isn't as fun as running with a team, especially with friends and you both push each other to be the best athlete possible. I was missing that aspect, especially since I didn't really have the full experience, so to speak. I was pretending to be someone I wasn't in high school. It was just sad to me that I never did it as Lindsay.
Imara Jones:
Now, I have spent hours talking to Lindsay, and what sticks with me after every conversation is just how pure and simple her motivations are. She just wants to run and feel good about her body and have friends. Who's opposed to that and why would banning girls like Lindsay be a hill that lawmakers want to die on? Especially when the entire premise of the bill is founded on assumptions that aren't based in any kind of evidence at all.
Farai Chideya:
You're listening to Our Body Politic I'm Farai Chideya. And this week we continue to bring you fresh content for our Our Body Politic to present series. Right now you're hearing an excerpt from a special limited run series by TransLash Media, The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality that's hosted and produced by Imara Jones.
Imara Jones:
Now, I know this is going to be a little wonky, but the people whose job it is to look at the science and decide what's fair say that once trans women reach the same hormone levels as cis women, that there's no difference in athletic performance. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, USA Track & Field and the International Olympic Committee all say that trans women can compete and that it doesn't hurt cis women. So it's not surprising that a lot of lawmakers in Idaho have concerns about HB 500.
Speaker 8:
I would ask that we vote against this. It is singling out folks and putting them on the margin even farther. And that's just not the Idaho way. At least I hope not.
Imara Jones:
Moreover, people in Idaho weren't clamoring for anti-trans laws. Ritchie Eppink is with the ACLU of Idaho, and he says many Idahoans were deeply uncomfortable with the legislation.
Ritchie Eppink:
Idaho's largest employers, Chobani, HP, Micron, Clif Bar came out against the bill. Idaho doctors, Idaho counselors, Idaho school boards association, students, including student athletes in Idaho, they were all calling the governor's office. They were all urging the governor to veto this bill.
Imara Jones:
Ritchie says it just didn't make sense that the bill was still moving through the state legislature.
Ritchie Eppink:
It can't be explained by what Idahoans want or by problems in Idaho. It's something else.
Imara Jones:
There was something bigger at work here than the voices of the people of Idaho. There had to be, because even the Idaho attorney general had issued a formal opinion to say that HB 500 is likely to be found unconstitutional by the courts. So from wavering lawmakers, to corporations, to citizens, to the state's attorney general all were saying, slow down, don't do this. But the sponsor of the bill, representative Barbara Ehardt and her allies were determined to ram it through. Her co-sponsor in the senate began reassuring lawmakers that there's no reason to worry about the fallout because Ritchie was right, there was something else going on.
Speaker 10:
I do want you to know that there is a third party group that has been working with us on this bill and will be responsible for any legal defense fees.
Imara Jones:
And this third party group stayed involved and helped get the word out about it. With this push, HB 500 passes. Governor Brad Little signs it less than a month after Lindsay Hecox stood up and told her story at the state capital. However, the passage of the Fairness in Women's Sports Act raised an important question, who is this outside group who helped push the bill over the finish line? So my team and I started reaching out to Barbara Ehardt, the person behind the bill, because she would know. We called, we sent emails and we left voice messages. We even slid into her DMs. Yeah, I know, but I had to have an answer. Then one day we tried calling her again for what I thought was the last chance. It was a long shot. But this time she picks up and says, "Sure, I'll talk to you."
Imara Jones:
Representative Ehardt?
Barbara Ehardt:
Ehardt.
Imara Jones:
Ehardt. Oh, I beg your pardon.
Imara Jones:
I didn't know how much time I was going to have, so I jumped right in and I ask her who helped you?
Barbara Ehardt:
As you ask that question, can I give a little bit long answer? Is that okay?
Imara Jones:
No, I think that we want to hear a fulsome of an answer on each of the questions that I have, so I would encourage you to stretch your legs if you wanted to do that.
Barbara Ehardt:
Okay. Thank you. I set forth trying to figure out how to do this. Just kept hitting roadblocks and had reached out to quite a few pro-family groups, and literally they were telling me we couldn't go forward.
Imara Jones:
Let me unpack how this normally works. When a state lawmaker wants to draft a bill, especially a relatively new lawmaker like Barbara, they rely on their staff, they rely on their legislative services office, or they reach out to nonprofits in their state for help. But Barbara made a beeline to national conservative organizations outside of Idaho for help.
Barbara Ehardt:
I felt like I'd hit an impasse and that's actually when I had reached out to Alliance Defending Freedom.
Imara Jones:
Well, at least now we had the name of that outside group, Alliance Defending Freedom or as they're commonly known ADF. So Barbara says, she tells them that she wants to ban trans girls from sports in Idaho and needs their help. ADF says, yes, we can do this.
Barbara Ehardt:
And then they decided that they were going to get more serious about this legislation, and then we completely changed it. And this is where you see what of course many are using now in these other states.
Imara Jones:
As I'm hearing this, I'm really glad that Barbara can't see my face because it's totally cracked. And everybody who knows me knows I can't mask my surprise. We've been investigating how the anti-trans hate machine works for months. And within minutes, she's just told me about a big piece of the whole plan. She's saying that ADF not only basically wrote the Idaho bill, but that it's become the prototypes for all of those other anti-trans sports bills that are popping up all over the country. Now, my jaw is also on the floor because ADF likes to mask its role. We reached out to them multiple times and no one would talk to us. They're basically the legal arm of the entire right wing Christian Values Movement in this country. They want an extreme interpretation of the Bible to be enshrined in every aspect of American law.
Imara Jones:
In their drive to do so, ADF goes far beyond the traditional Christian fundamentalism that you might have heard of well, all your entire life. This is not your grandmother's Christian fundamentalism. This is way beyond that. In fact, the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated ADF as a hate group. That puts ADF with its innocuous sounding name, Alliance Defending Freedom in the same category as the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis. ADF's extremist hate is particularly directed at LGBTQ people. But rather than burning crosses or carrying tiki torches, they weaponize the law.
Imara Jones:
How do they do it? They sue governments claiming religious liberty as a reason to discriminate. And y'all should know that they've been highly effective, taking big name cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop and Hobby Lobby all the way to the Supreme Court and winning them. They also push state legislatures to legalize discrimination. ADF wrote the model bathroom bill that a bunch of states used in 2016 to try to tell trans people where to pee. Now they're pushing model legislation, sound familiar, to ban trans people from playing sports. The anti-trans hate machine just keeps doing the same thing over and over.
Christiana Holcomb:
We cannot continue to pretend that allowing males to compete in the girls' category does anything less than spell the end of women's sports. [crosstalk 00:28:33].
Imara Jones:
That's Christiana Holcomb. She's a lawyer with ADF and a leading architect of their strategy.
Christiana Holcomb:
Regardless of where we stand on a variety of issues, I hope we can all agree that turning women sports into a co-ed free for all simply is not a plausible solution for the cultural and the social challenges that we're addressing. When our schools in our society tries to ignore biological reality, people get hurt, girls get hurt.
Imara Jones:
But ADF is trying to hurt girls. Girls like Lindsay Hecox. Even though Idaho's HB 500 has passed into law, Lindsay keeps doing her part. She keeps speaking out and keeps going to protest. At the same time, activists in her circle start working on a plan to bring a lawsuit. They want to hold the state accountable for discriminating against trans girls. In the latest sign of her bravery, Lindsay raises her hand to be the sole plaintiff in the case.
Imara Jones:
And there's a part of this where it seems like your motivation to get involved was truly self-directed. And I'm wondering if you can talk about that overall, and if there was a specific moment where you were like, I have to do something.
Lindsay Hecox:
I don't really feel like there was much of a choice in the matter. I guess I could have potentially declined, but that would've felt terrible for me. I wanted to do something for my community and this is a huge thing. Most trans people never get the opportunity to fight anti-trans politicians and legislature. So I don't know why would I tone it down?
Imara Jones:
Lindsay's this young woman who just wants to run and be one of the girls, but here she is putting her life on the line and standing up because it's the right thing to do. She doesn't want anyone else to have to endure this, and it's a profound thing to witness.
Farai Chideya:
That was an excerpt from the podcast, The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality, a special limited run podcast by TransLash Media. You can hear the rest of the episode and learn about how Lindsay's legal fight to compete with other girls turns out, plus the anti-black origins of the sports ban. Tune in to the The Anti-Trans Hate Machine wherever you listen to podcast. This series was produced by TransLash Media with creator and host Imara Jones. Her team includes Oliver-Ash Kleine, Josephine Jaye McAuliffe, Callie Wright, Alexander Charles Adams, Montana Thomas, Annie Ning, Tyler Wilson, Daniela Capistrano, and Yannick Eike Mirko. Coming up next, our weekly round table Sipping the Political Tea, featuring Errin Haines of The 19th and Imara Jones of TransLash.
Imara Jones:
There's cultural violence against black trans people. There's political violence against black trans people. There's policy violence against black trans people.
Farai Chideya:
You're listening to Our Body Politic. Each week on the show, we bring you a round table called Sipping the Political Tea. And joining me this week is Imara Jones, founder and CEO of TransLash Media. You have been hearing in the earlier parts of the show, TransLash on Our Body Politic Presents. Welcome Imara.
Imara Jones:
Hello. Thanks for having me.
Farai Chideya:
And Our Body Politic contributor, Errin Haines, editor-at-large at The 19th. Hey Errin.
Errin Haines:
Farai, good to be with you as always.
Farai Chideya:
Well, let's begin this week's discussion, talking about the rise of anti-trans legislation and Errin take it from here.
Errin Haines:
Thank you so much Farai. I'm glad to be starting off this topic, which is very important to us at The 19th. Our reporter Orion Rummler has been doing such great work around this. So advocates are predicting that 2022 could bring a record breaking number of anti LGBTQ+ legislation. In 2021, there were already approximately 147 anti-trans bills in state houses across the country. And that was up from roughly 79 in 2020. Already in just the first week of 2022, at least seven states proposed laws that were targeting transgender young people. As we heard earlier in the show, TransLash has been investigating the anti-trans movement. Imara, what is driving this uptick in discriminatory legislation?
Imara Jones:
Well, it's a part of almost a decade long plan by the right to bring us to this moment. For them, they see trans rights as an essential part of their strategy to continue to activate and engage their voters. They see it as an essential part of keeping the apparatus and infrastructure that they've built for the abortion movement, also focused on gender as you know, engaged after what they perceive to be their coming win on Roe v. Wade. So it gives that apparatus, it gives that machine, it gives that money making operation a focus. And thirdly, they believe that it is a way to cleave and to destroy the progressive coalition on the left. And I think that one of the things that we have to understand about this is that this is a central part of their strategy moving forward. So I believe that we're just at the beginning of the formalized backlash against transgender people and communities legally in this country. As you noted in 2020, there was 70, in 2019, there were just a handful of bills.
Errin Haines:
Farai, Imara is already starting to unpack some of this, but how would you say that this anti-trans legislation and this movement fits into the bigger picture of politics today?
Farai Chideya:
I think that one thing that a lot of people understand now that they didn't understand in say fall 2015, when the 2016 presidential election cycle started is that culture trumps logic, culture trumps facts, culture war is a much more dynamic force in American politics than anything that you can link to traditional forms of logic. And I think what's happening here is that anti transgender legislation is being rolled up with anti so-called critical race theory legislation, because it's not actually about critical race theory, and anti vacs sentiment in many cases into this omnibus. We are imperiled. We need to do everything we can to fight against change. And it really is a cosmic clash of how different parts of society want to shape the future of America and the world.
Farai Chideya:
And I've spent years, literally 25 years reading across the ideological spectrum, talking to people across the ideological spectrum. And I saw this fog of culture war rolling in starting in 2015. People didn't take it seriously in the media many times because people assumed that human beings would make logical decisions. I'm like, since when? This is really about a divide and conquer strategy for making people activate their fear centers, what's sometimes called the lizard brain, the fight or flight instincts. And those are useful. Those instincts are useful, but perhaps more useful under immediate life threatening situations than in the context of building a future.
Errin Haines:
Imara, on TransLash, you talk about the issues, but you also do something that we do at The 19th, which is really talk about who your guests are and their journeys to becoming their true selves. We already know that transgendered people, especially trans women of color experience a disproportionate amount of violence. But now we are having this broader conversation, because of the rise of this anti-trans legislation about just the idea that their identity is becoming increasingly political. So how would transgender people that you've talked to, what are they saying to you about how their hoping with being, not just a target of the physical violence that I think has gotten a lot of attention recently, a lot more attention, but also the political hate?
Imara Jones:
I think that the most important thing to underscore here is that all forms of violence work together. So the reason why black trans women are at the center of the epidemic of violence against trans people in the United States... By the way, the United States has more murders of trans people than any other country on the planet, except for Brazil and Mexico. Is that the physical violence against us is a manifestation of the interlocking failures of other institutions in society that then constitute violence. So what do I mean? There's cultural violence against black trans people, there's political violence against black trans people, there's policy violence against black trans people. And so when you have other forms of violence that are the predicate and set the stage for it, then the physical violence is a natural outcome and a manifestation of those other forms of violence that start much earlier.
Imara Jones:
I think that the way that people are navigating it is, in many ways strengthening community, forming institutions like we did at TransLash, but we're not the only one, Black Trans Femmes in the Arts, Black Trans Travel Fund. There are all these other institutions that have been created in this moment where we are realizing that we need our own set of institutions to be able to talk to each other and to the broader world, strengthening mutual aid, which is a very traditional way that we're moving forward, and finding ways to break through in a moment of extreme pressure. In many ways I think that what's happening amongst trans communities and black trans communities in particular is analogous to the creative burst that came forward in the sixties and the seventies under very similar circumstances. And also during the Harlem Renaissance, it's a very similar type of time where there's extreme violence and extreme creativity. And I think that the creativity in this moment is what we're using to get through.
Errin Haines:
Wow. What a hopeful way to think about this. I have to ask, if I can just stick with this for a moment, because we're seeing this rise in political backlash against the trans community happening in the midst of this pandemic. Where we know that folks in the LGBTQ community in particular have felt more vulnerable, have been more isolated as we all have. What have been some of the, I guess, challenges you've had to overcome to create just that community and folks just connecting with each other in this pandemic environment?
Imara Jones:
Yeah. I think that the biggest challenge is in creating institutions that we have or like what everyone has is for people to take us seriously, and for people to actually believe that we exist and we have community and we have perspectives and we are deserving of the same type of focus and engagement and respect and investment as other communities. I think that that's an ongoing challenge for us. I think that's layered on top of all of the other challenges, the pandemic has been terrible for trans people in terms of what it did for people who are not part of the traditional economy in many ways, which trans people are. What it's done in terms of trans people facing extreme domestic violence. People haven't even been able to leave their houses, they're under control of their roommates or the hostile families.
Imara Jones:
And then also just the few that trans people have in terms of going to the hospital, if you do get COVID or do get sick. So there are lots of things. But at the same time in the middle of the pandemic, we had the largest gathering in support of trans rights in the history of the United States occur at the Brooklyn Museum in the summer of 2020 with the Brooklyn Liberation march. So that's what I mean where there's this extreme pressure and extreme pain, and at the same time, extreme creativity that is allowing us to break through and recognize our own power.
Errin Haines:
Farai, you brought up bodily autonomy, and I want to circle back to that because we just had a long conversation on a recent round table about that very issue. Is bodily autonomy part of this conversation?
Farai Chideya:
Oh, absolutely. And I think I was raised Catholic and in a ideologically mixed family with some conservatives and some progressives. And we one Thanksgiving had a debate about transgender issues. And I learned so much from those previous years at the family table. Every Thanksgiving, we would discuss something including abortion. And in the end, with our abortion discussion, I found out that all of my uncles, regardless of whether they were liberal or conservative, did not support abortion access. And all of my female relatives, regardless of again, social conservatism or progressive identification supported abortion access. And I think that sometimes bodily autonomy questions, whether it's abortion or transgender breakdown on how do you understand the harms of limiting someone's ability to control their own body. And sometimes it really is about proximity to harm. I think a lot of the ways that we can understand debates in America are, people who have proximity to certain harms, pay more attention to them.
Farai Chideya:
So again, when you get to the midterms, I think that proximity to harm is really a framework worth evaluating because the way that transgender issues are being framed by people who are anti-trans is often that, okay, your proximity to harm is that your kid will be forced to be transgender by some crusading activist or demonic school system. And that proximity to harm being framed in a way that really triggers people. At the same time, of course, people who are transgender or who support transgender rights are also looking through a proximity to harm framework. So that is integral to the midterms and to politics moving forward.
Errin Haines:
Yeah. I think that's exactly right; proximity to harm, but also proximity to perceived harm is going to be driving this conversation in 2022 and I think beyond.
Errin Haines:
You're listening to Sipping the Political Tea on Our Body Politic. I'm Errin Haines, editor-at-large for The 19th talking anti-trans legislation that is sweeping state houses and what this emerging issue means for the midterms and beyond. I'm joined by Imara Jones, Founder and CEO of TransLash Media and our fearless leader, Farai Chideya. If you're just joining us, you can catch the whole conversation on our podcast. Please look for Our Body Politic wherever you listen to podcast.
Errin Haines:
Imara, were you going to add to that?
Imara Jones:
Yeah. I was just going to say that I think that this link between body autonomy, abortion rights, trans issues, issues around gender identity and gender is one that for the right wing, they see as one fight. And what's fascinating is "progressives" see them as separate; there's trans people, there's gender and there's women. So there's trans people, there's women and then there's abortion. And just because you're a woman doesn't mean you have to support abortion. There are all these things that are in conversation on our side, but for them it's really one fight and one battle over the ability to be able to perpetuate white Christian supremacy. And I think that it's one of the things that people may not be aware of. That for them, this is one fight and they take it very, very, very seriously.
Errin Haines:
I want to shift to a positive conversation around bodily autonomy because this January, Stick With Me marks the 50th anniversary of Shirley Chisholm's groundbreaking run for president. Talk about somebody that had bodily autonomy. First black Congresswoman in history. And then she became the first black person to seek the presidential nomination from a major party. Her slogan was unbought and unbossed. 50 years later, Farai, how are you thinking about black female leadership, both in terms of really what's empowering black women to step forward and the obstacles that still need to be overcome, not only for us to have a seat at the table, but really for us to build that table?
Farai Chideya:
Well, again, I feel like all I'm doing is family story day. My grandmother was a discrimination whistleblower. One of the things she found was that there were plenty of black people who didn't support her just like there were white people who didn't support her. And that comes to mind as I think about Shirley Chisholm, because she was not heavily supported by a lot of different black lawmakers who were her peers. She was a sitting member of Congress, and there were people who did shady back deals to try to keep her from standing up for president. And she was not traditionally beautiful. She was not one of the shiny and anointed people in some people's minds. And she stood for a vision of an America that frankly had that vision been achieved, I would probably feel like this nation was on better footing today.
Imara Jones:
And I just think about the power of her vision, the power of her voice and her courageousness in spite of, as she constantly said, being dismissed by so many people who looks like her and didn't look like her and were of her gender and not of her gender. I think that we have to understand that Shirley Chisholm acted intersectionally before intersectional became coined as a term almost a generation later. That is to say that we have to remember that she was one of the founders of the National Women's Political Caucus, which worked to fight for the Equal Rights Amendment for equality across the board. It was also radical in that it also included lesbian women, people who were out and open at the time. And I think that we have to just remember that she, in many ways represented the fulfillment of American democracy, even though that's never been the way that she's been framed, and certainly wasn't the way that she was perceived at the time.
Errin Haines:
And Shirley Chisholm's legacy, it continues to show up even in our politics today. We know that Vice President Harris, when she ran for president in 2020 was inspired by Shirley Chisholm's historic presidential run in 1972. Her campaign colors were the same colors as Shirley Chisholm's. And you also had Barbara Lee who got her start in politics working on Shirley Chisholm's 1972 run, inspired as a young woman in Southern California to really get into that fight. And the list goes on and on.
Farai Chideya:
Errin, just so grateful for everything that you have done and continued to do to map these intersections of how black women's leadership is connected over time. And I also want to give a shout out to the film by Shola Lynch, Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed. And what a great conversation, so grateful to be with you both.
Imara Jones:
Thank you so much. It's been wonderful to be with you both, and to finally virtually meet Errin after feeling like I know her after seeing her so many times.
Errin Haines:
Well, Imara, we are absolutely connected now, so you won't be able to get rid it of me. Look at us, we're all on the Chisholm trail, walking out of here together, a great way to end this week. So Farai, thanks for having me again.
Farai Chideya:
And thanks Errin for hosting. So we have been speaking with Errin Haines, Our Body Politic contributor and editor-at-large at The 19th and Imara Jones, CEO of TransLash Media and host of the TransLash Podcast. Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week -- and everywhere you listen to podcasts.
Farai Chideya:
Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora Farms. I'm the executive producer and host, Farai Chideya. Bridget McAllister is our booker and producer. Emily J. Daly and Bianca Martin are our producers. Our associate producer is Natyna Bean. Production and editing services are by Clean Cuts at Three Seas. Today's episode was produced by Lauren Schild. Adam Rooner, Roc Lee and Archie Moore are sound engineers.
Farai Chideya:
We’d also like to thank the podcasts The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality and The TransLash Podcast with Imara Jones with creator and host Imara Jones. Her team includes Oliver-Ash Kleine, Josephine Jaye McAuliffe, Callie Wright, Alexander Charles Adams, Montana Thomas, Annie Ning, TilerWilson, Daniela Capistrano and Yannick Eike Mirko [YAH-nick IKE MER-coh]. You can find the TransLash Podcast and The Anti Trans Hate Machine wherever you listen to podcasts. And you can follow @Translashmedia on Insta and Twitter.
Farai Chideya:
This program is produced with support from Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Democracy Fund, the Harnisch Foundation, Compton Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the BMe Community, Katie McGrath and J.J. Abrams Family Foundation, and from generous contributions from listeners like you.