Tag: Trans Rights Are Human Rights

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Episode 46: Music for All Occasions

We take the title for this week’s episode from a 1995 album by one of our favorite groups, the Mavericks. But more on that later.

We start out with an update on our local walking club, which we joined a few weeks back despite some initial … hesitation. Turns out, it’s been a lot of fun and we’re glad we joined. Then we discuss our upcoming schedule. We will be out of the box for most of May, going to our youngest child’s college graduation followed by yet another trip to Ireland. 

At least we have excuses this time. And we’re telling you up front!

After that, we circle back to last week’s topic — mental health. And, in particular, how to manage your mental health on social media. This week’s story begins with an infamous comment by an infamous billionaire author who’s made it her life’s work to trash trans and nonbinary people, and what happens to normal people when they push back. We talk about the positive side of social media (that it can give you a voice when you feel like you don’t have one) and the negative side (that angry mobs will try to silence you if you challenge their narrow-mindedness). And then we talk about the strategies that work for some of us: Don’t engage the haters. Instead, go ahead and block them, mute them, and leave conversations to protect your own mental health. These strategies may not work for everyone, but they give many of us peace of mind while still allowing us to have our say.

We then turn to much happier topics: Seeing the above-mentioned Mavericks in concert this past weekend for what is at least the sixth, if not seventh, time. From the first time we saw them at a small club in the Chicago suburb’s touring in support of their 1994 LP, What a Crying Shame, to this most recent show, they’ve never let us down. Their music spans country, rock, blues, and Latin, but it’s all universally fun. And they’re fantastic musicians, which doesn’t hurt. They also have a new album coming out called Moon and Stars which will be available on May 17. We’re really looking forward to that.

Finally, we talk about an interesting new album called Petty Country: A Musical Celebration of Tom Petty. As the name suggests, the album consists of twenty covers of Tom Petty songs by a diverse group of country artists, including Chris Stapleton, Luke Combs, the Brothers Osborne, Willie and Lukas Nelson, Margot Price, Wynonna Judd, Marty Stuart, Steve Earle, George Strait, and Rhiannon Giddens. We’re not entirely sure what to expect, but we’re looking forward to giving it a spin.

So, we hope you enjoy the show, and please feel free to follow us on Instagram (@jenn_and_dave). You can also follow us on the site formerly known as Twitter, where our joint account is @JennandDave1 and the podcast account is @itsotetPodcast. Until next time! 

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Episode 42: Channeling Difficult Emotions

Since we rebooted our podcast, we begin this week’s show discussing topics we plan to cover going forward, including familiar themes such as LGBTQIA+ rights, family, and music, and new(ish) themes like cooking and physical and mental health.

From there, we discuss the tragic death of indigenous nonbinary teenager Nex Benedict after a brutal attack at a high school in Oklahoma, and the range of emotions their death evokes: anger, rage, frustration, despair. But, more importantly, we talk about how to channel those emotions in a constructive and positive way, because losing hope is not an option.

To that end, we also talk about an important fundraising project we are involved in: the annual Lambda Legal Bon Foster Civil Rights Celebration in Chicago, which takes place on Friday, May 10, at 6:30 p.m. Central at the Art Institute. Please consider joining us if you can, and, if that’s not possible, please consider making a donation to Lambda Legal, one of the country’s oldest, largest, and most successful legal organizations fighting for LGBTQIA+ Americans and people living with HIV.

Above all, to paraphrase the late, great Joe Strummer of the Clash, we urge everyone who’s feeling justifiable anger today to turn that anger into power.

So, we hope you enjoy the show, and please feel free to follow us on Instagram (@jenn_and_dave). You can also follow us on the site formerly known as Twitter. Our joint account is @JennandDave1 and the podcast account is @itsotetPodcast. Until next time! 

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Episode 38: Happy Labor Day!

On this Week’s episode: a rambling conversation about everything from the holiday weekend to running races and training for marathons to … Martha Stewart? 

More importantly, we discuss the Texas Supreme Court’s ill-advised decision that lets the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors take effect despite the overwhelming weight of scientific and medical evidence to the contrary. And, on a related note, we talk about how the “parents’ rights” movement isn’t about parents’ rights at all, but interfering with your rights as a parent. We talk about the Canadian doofus who goes by the name “Billboard Chris,” the anti-queer cult’s complete misunderstanding of “consent” in the context of minors’ health care (hint: parents always have to consent to health care for their kids), and the limited (but obvious!) circumstances where parents lose the right to make decisions for their kids.

Finally, a couple of notes: First check out our friend Jesse Jackson’s appearance on the Bella Grayce Podcast where he talks about dealing with family members’ substance abuse and the uniqueness of losing a sibling. Second, we briefly revisit the firing of a local queer teacher over social media posts and the new GoFundMe to support him. Please consider making a donation!

Anyway, please enjoy this week’s episode, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, and, as always, support the rights of LGBTQIA people everywhere! And follow us on Twitter at @itsotetPodcast and @JennandDave1.

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Episode 31: Transitioning While Famous, and the Supreme Court Strikes Out

On this week’s episode, after reminiscing about being in New York City last year for the 4th of July and giving a shoutout to Garland and Claire Jeffreys for commenting and sharing last week’s podcast, we get down to business.

First, we talk about Elliot Page’s book Page Boy: A Memoir, which Jennifer highly recommends. Navigating becoming famous while coming to terms with being transgender is not an easy thing to do, but Elliot has managed to do it with grace.

And that brings us to a discussion of other people who’ve transitioned while in the limelight, including Grammy-winning artist Wendy Carlos, who brought the Moog synthesizer to Bach and other classical composers in the 1960s and ’70s, and Chaz Bono, who began to transition around 2008 and sat down with David Letterman for a memorable interview in 2011.  

In this same conversation, we talk about Gina Chua, former executive editor at Reuters with a decades-long, high profile career in journalism, who transitioned during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a 2021 New York Times story, she said the pandemic gave her the privacy and time to be able to “grow into her skin.” Chua is the most senior transgender journalist in the country. In the Times article she says, “There are a lot of people who are 14 years old who would like to know that this is not a death sentence.” She continues, “It’s not a millstone. It’s something you can be proud of, it’s something you can celebrate and something you can live with.”

Finally, we turn to the recent Supreme Court decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, where the Court considered a web designer’s challenge to a Colorado civil rights law that might, theoretically, possibly, maybe, someday … require her to create a wedding-related website for a same sex couple. The only problem is, no same sex couple has ever actually asked her to do that, so her entire case is based on mere speculation. That’s the kind of case that courts ordinarily throw out because, without an actual injury, a plaintiff has no standing to bring a lawsuit in the first place. Not so much under the current Bizarro-World Supreme Court, apparently.

But it’s actually worse than that. At some point during the case, anticipating a challenge to her standing, the plaintiff filed a declaration under penalty of perjury stating that a same sex couple named Stewart and Mike contacted her company to inquire about a wedding website. Though the documents the plaintiff filed provided Stewart’s telephone number, no one bothered to verify the story. Except for a journalist named Melissa Gira Grant, who published a piece in The New Republic on June 29, 2023, one day before the Supreme Court delivered its opinion. In her New Republic article, Grant reveals — and other media outlets have since confirmed — that the story is simply untrue. Stewart never reached out to 303 Creative, never knew that they used his name in their case, and absolutely never requested that 303 Creative design a website for him. In fact, Stewart himself is a web designer and was already married at the time of the alleged contact … to a woman, not to a man named Mike. 

Apparently, some folks are so consumed with their own hate that nothing else matters, least of all the truth.

So, anyway, please enjoy this week’s episode, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, and, as always, support the rights of LGBTQIA people everywhere! And if you’re new here, you can also follow our Twitter account, @itsotetPodcast.

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Episode 27: “You’re Not From Chicago”

So, we’re done talking about our Ireland trip and the Bruce Springsteen concert (for now), but we have to mention that our episode of Jesse Jackson’s Set Lusting Bruce podcast is now live, so check it out. We had a great time recording with Jesse.

Turning to this week’s episode, we talk about living in the Chicago suburbs and folks from out of town getting dunked on for mouthing off about our city … even though it’s not really our city. (For context, see this write up of Fox & Friends’ misadventures in suburban Naperville on the morning of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s inauguration.)

But it’s not all fun and games. Picking up on a part of our conversation with Jesse on his show, we also talk about the current status of LGBTQIA rights in America and the increasing threats to the community. Is it just the last angry gasp of a dying ideology, or is there a real danger that our community will lose its hard-fought rights? We take a look at a violent incident in Glendale, California, where far-right thugs attacked supporters of LGBTQIA rights and what it says about the growing desperation of anti-LGBTQIA bigots. But we also share some good news — a US District Court judge in Florida entered a preliminary injunction that temporarily prohibits the state from enforcing portions of its recently-enacted law banning gender-affirming care for minors. The ruling only protects the named plaintiffs at this point, but the court’s decision (which you can read here) is very encouraging.

However, even that good news comes with a word of caution. While this judge got it right, we know there will be further litigation and likely appeals in the Florida case, along with other challenges to these types of statutes around the country, and at some point one or more of those cases could reach the Supreme Court. In the past, we might have been somewhat optimistic about the Supreme Court’s ultimate decision in these cases — after all, this is the Court that gave us Obergefell and Bostock — but in the post-Dobbs world, all bets are off.

So, please enjoy this week’s episode, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, and, as always, support the rights of LGBTQIA people everywhere! And if you’re new here, you can also follow our Twitter account, @itsotetPodcast.

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Episode 24: Kids Know Who They Are

This week, we discuss a recent episode of 60 Minutes Australia on parents who refuse to assign their newborn babies a gender at birth. Though the show suggests that the parents, who refer to their kids as “theybies,” let the kids “decide their gender,” we note that that’s not really true. Rather, the kids are who they are, whether they’re cisgender, transgender or nonbinary. They’re not choosing their identities; they’re just coming to understand them. Ultimately, kids know who they are, whether their parents like it or not. So maybe it’s better to let them tell us, rather than the other way around.

This leads to a broader conversation about the assumptions we make about kids, the ways we effectively indoctrinate them in straight, cisgender “normality,” whether we mean to or not, and how damaging that is to kids who don’t fit that mold. If we don’t teach our kids that other kinds of people exist and have perfectly valid lives, we’re telling them that if they’re not straight and cisgender then they’re broken. 

We also discuss the annoying trend of parents weaponizing their status as moms and dads to demonize queer people, ban books, and bully teachers, librarians, and school boards. They’re not fighting for “parents’ rights” or “protecting kids,” they’re fighting to impose their narrow worldview on other parents and their kids. 

Finally, we couldn’t end the show without gloating — just a little — about Fox News firing Tucker Carlson in the aftermath of the network’s massive settlement with Dominion Voting Systems … not to mention Abby Grossberg’s sexual harassment suit against Carlson and Fox. 

So, please enjoy this week’s episode, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, and, as always, support the rights of LGBTQIA people everywhere! And if you’re new here, you can also follow our Twitter account, @itsotetPodcast.

Just a reminder: We’ll be off the next couple of weeks traveling, but we’ll be back in May!

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Episode 23: On the Road Again

On this week’s episode: cats don’t worry about other people’s chosen names and pronouns, so you shouldn’t either. We also revisit an old classic: the Boy Scouts of America, an organization notorious for its homophobia in the 1980s and ’90s, recently settled decades of child sex abuse claims for a cool $2.5 billion, and yet your favorite online transphobes — you know, the ones who claim to care so much about other people’s kids — remained predictably silent. It’s almost like they’re more interested in distracting attention away from real abusers than they are in keeping kids safe … 

But we spend most of this week’s episode talking about one of our favorite bands, The Mavericks. We just got back from seeing the alt-country, Latin-influenced icons in Milwaukee (a greatly underrated city, by the way), and, as always, they were outstanding. We’ve followed The Mavericks since the mid-’90s and it’s hard to explain just how great they are in concert. You just have to see them for yourselves.

And speaking of traveling to see bands, next month we’re off to Ireland to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in Dublin, which means that we will take a two-week break after next week’s show. But don’t worry. We’ll have lots to talk about, not the least of which will involve driving stick-shift on the wrong side of the road.

Finally, we wrap up the show with a funny incident that happened last week: somebody hacked notorious anti-LGBTQIA troll Matt Walsh’s Twitter account, and hilarity ensued.

So, please enjoy this week’s episode, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, and, as always, support the rights of LGBTQIA people everywhere! And if you’re new here, you can also follow our Twitter account, @itsotetPodcast.

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Episode 22: Let Them Play

How do we go from The Masters to the rights of trans athletes in the span of half an hour? Well, it wasn’t easy but we did.

The conversation winds from birdies and eagles and albatrosses to high school gym class, with a few odd detours (European team handball?) along the way, until we settle on last week’s announcement that the US Department of Education proposed new rules on trans athletes’ eligibility to play elementary, high school, and college sports under Title IX. 

As an important caveat, it’s critical to understand that these are only proposals at this point and we do not know what the final rules will look like, but there are some legitimate concerns over the government giving sports leagues too much latitude to make the rules. For example, leagues may say that trans women and girls cannot play until they’ve undergone hormone therapy for a period of time. While this might seem like a reasonable compromise to some, in practice it would mean that league officials could effectively force trans young people to make decisions about gender affirming care that they are not prepared to make — kind of odd, given that there’s so much (likely fake) outrage about … kids undergoing gender-affirming care too soon.

And more than that, let’s face it: Youth and college sports organizations don’t really have the best track record when it comes to making decisions for kids. Think USA Gymnastics. Penn State. Ohio State. USA Volleyball. Do we want these folks dictating who should play or what gender affirming care kids should get at what age? 

They can’t police themselves; why should they police trans athletes?

In any event, there’s more to our conversation than that, but you’ll have to listen in to hear the rest! The bottom line is, our view is the same as it always has been: Let them play.

So, please enjoy to this week’s episode, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, and, as always, support the rights of LGBTQIA people everywhere! And if you’re new here, you can also follow our Twitter account, @itsotetPodcast.

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Episode 21: Reflecting on Trans Day of Visibility

Since we recorded our last episode, Transgender Day of Visibility happened (it was March 31) and we would be remiss if we didn’t share our thoughts. According to GLAAD, only about 30 percent of Americans personally know someone who’s trans. At the same time, legislators around the country introduced more than 400 bills attacking LGBTQIA rights in the first three months 2023, and over half of those bills specifically targeted trans people. But you can help! Please consider filling out this form on GLAAD’s website and sending it to the political leaders in your state.

But Trans Day of Visibility is more than an opportunity to rehash negative things, no matter how aggravating they are or how important it is to confront them. It’s just as important, if not more so, to celebrate trans and nonbinary people for who they are and what they accomplish. While we have to address negative things like harmful legislation, we can’t let trauma define the community. Like our own daughter who’s living a great life, trans and nonbinary people are making their way in the world and achieving greatness, and they are not defined by the horrible things the bigots visit upon them. Case in point: Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider, who schooled the world in trans excellence over the past year.

We then talk about Kansas’ legislature overriding their governor’s veto of a bill that bans trans girls from participating in sports consistent with their gender. Barbara Wasinger, one of the bill’s sponsors, reportedly said the state would enforce the bill by requiring girls to undergo sports physicals to confirm their biological sex … which most critics interpret to mean genital inspections. 

Aside from the utterly disgusting idea of the state forcing inspections of kids’ genitals, this leads to a broader conversation about sports and how they’re really not the level-playing-field meritocracy that people imagine them to be.

And from there, we tackle yet another deceptive story about the Washington University health clinic that provides gender affirming care for trans youth, this time by Emily Yoffe on Bari Weis’ Free Press blog … er, website? No, we’re not going to link to the offending article, but we will say what we’ve said all along: Utterly unqualified folks like Jesse Singal, Bari Weiss, Matt Walsh, Bill Maher, and the rest of those weirdos need to keep their noses out of the health care decisions other people make for their kids.

So, please enjoy to this week’s episode, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, and, as always, support the rights of LGBTQIA people everywhere! And if you’re new here, you can also follow our Twitter account, @itsotetPodcast.

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Episode 20: What Level of Dante’s Inferno Is This?

Well, we started out on a light note, talking about watching a certain game show only old people watch and setting up our cat “daycare” so we can work from home in relative peace …

And then we went on at some length about podcasting and making videos for our Instagram page and our YouTube channel, talking about the complexity of recording audio and video separately and trying to sync them up (which is why, ultimately, we settled on podcasting).

But then it got weird. We could not, of course, let the week pass without commenting on the principal at Tallahassee Classical School who got fired for showing students the statue of David, as the school had done every year in recent memory. The bright spot, of course, being that just about every news outlet that covered the story, including NPR in the story we link to here, had to show the … uh … Full Monty, so to speak. 

And there’s an even weirder angle to this story: According Peter Schorsch on Twitter, school board chairman Barney Bishop III, the guy who asked for the principal’s “resignation” over the statue of David, has some rather interesting, er, garden statues of his own.

Finally, we couldn’t avoid the other awful story of the week: another school shooting, this time in Nashville, where a semiautomatic-rifle-wielding maniac killed three young children and three school staffers at a private Christian school. We’ve talked about this before — because, of course, these incidents happen so frequently — but, as parents, we and our kids have lived with this insanity almost nonstop since Columbine in 1999. 

And as awful and inexcusable as this latest school massacre was, there is yet another awful twist. According to Nashville police, shooter might be transgender, though that’s not yet confirmed according to Reuters, so, naturally, the worst people in the world are blaming the trans community as a whole for the murders of these innocent kids. They claim that there’s some alarming uptick in trans or nonbinary people committing mass shootings, citing this incident, the December 2022 shooting in Colorado Springs where the murderer may or may not be nonbinary, and a couple of other incidents over the past few years. But here’s the thing: even if those incidents involve trans or nonbinary people, the number of trans and nonbinary people who commit crimes like this is infinitesimally small compared to the endless stream of mass shootings that happen in schools, churches, synagogues, grocery stores … and nearly everywhere else in America.

So you have to ask yourselves: What level of Dante’s Inferno is reserved for the kinds of monsters who use the killing of innocent children as an excuse to promote bigotry and hate against marginalized people? 

Anyway, please enjoy this week’s episode, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, and, as always, support the rights of LGBTQIA people everywhere! And if you’re new here, you can also follow our Twitter account, @itsotetPodcast. 

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