The New Moral Panic

[00:00:10] Speaker A: Alright, pipe down, you beautiful misfits and truth seekers. You've tuned in to critical defiance. And if you're new here, this is where we peel back the crusty star spangled veneer of American life, expose the rot underneath, and maybe, just maybe, arm you before you completely lose your damn minds. I'm Bobbysox here with Nils and Bill and we're ready to kick over some anthills. You ever feel like we're stuck in reruns of society's dumbest moments? Like some B movie director with a budget of zero and a surplus of stupid is calling the shots? Remember Reefer Madness? One token. Suddenly you're a homicidal jazz fiend. Or the good ol satanic panic when your D and D dice were apparently a direct line to Beelzebub and every suburban basement was a ritual sacrifice away from hell on earth. Hilarious in a dear God, were we ever that naive kinda way. The boogeymen were so cartoonish, so utterly fake, yet somehow people believed in them. Well, guess what? The scriptwriters got lazy. Or maybe even just more malicious. America's got a shiny new moral panic fresh off the assembly line of manufactured outrage and it's making Tipper Gore look like a rank amateur. We're diving headfirst into the current full blown orchestrated assault on trans people and on their very right to exist. And let me be crystal clear. There are no secret symbols, no devil weeds, no goat sacrificing PTA moms pulling the strings this time. Nah. This horror show is brought to you by a shocking avalanche of hateful legislation, a non stop fire hose of media bullshit designed to twist your guts, and an absolutely pathetic level of rage aimed at people who make up what, maybe 1% of the population? People just trying to breathe the same air as the rest. For years we've seen the setup, right? The sly whispers, the deliberate misgendering, the framing of basic human dignity as some kind of radical dangerous plot to what, make society slightly more decent. But lately they've slammed the pedal to the floor. This ain't accidental, folks. It's a goddamn playbook unfolding in bright garish colors designed to paint targets on backs to dehumanize and to try and scrub an entire community from public view. And don't let them feed you that saccharine line about protecting the children. That's the oldest trick in the fucking book. This is about control. It's about division. It's about conning the fearful and the ignorant for a few more lousy votes and a bit More power. Pure, unadulterated, cynical bullshit. So today, we're not just pulling back the curtain. We're ripping the whole damn thing down. We're going to dissect this coordinated attack on trans existence. Name the tactics, point out the puppeteers, and arm you with the mental firepower to see right through their smoke and mirrors. Because once you understand how the rigged game is played, you're one step closer to flipping the whole damn table. Stick around. This is one lesson you can't afford to skip. [00:03:47] Speaker B: Hey, Critical Defiance listeners. Niels here. If you're tired of the noise, the spin, and the endless scroll of misinformation, then you know why we do what we do. We're here to cut through it all. To give you the tools to think for yourself and to keep the truth from getting buried. And we can only do that with your support. So if you believe in challenging the status quo and in preserving American freedom, please consider becoming a monthly [email protected] or making a donation over at buymeacoffee.com Critical Defiance. Every contribution, big or small, helps us stay truly independent and keep the conversations flowing. Thank you. [00:04:28] Speaker A: All right, y', all, for our news recap. It's Pride. So all the news is just gonna keep getting gayer. We're. We've had a rough start to Pride Month. [00:04:38] Speaker B: No lie. You know, we're watching all the stuff that's coming out over what happened with Jonathan Joss, the voice actor from King of the Hill. And, you know, one, it's a horrific tragedy. Two, the media is horrifically misreporting it. [00:04:52] Speaker A: They keep trying to say it's not a hate crime, and I don't know if I'm. [00:04:57] Speaker B: They keep trying to say it was a dispute between neighbors. It wasn't a dispute between neighbors. His neighbor had apparently targeted and harassed him and his husband for years. [00:05:05] Speaker A: Yep. [00:05:06] Speaker B: They allegedly burned their house down. They allegedly killed their dogs. Then they murdered him in front of. [00:05:11] Speaker C: His other half solely because he had the audacity to be an openly gay man in an openly gay marriage in a place where it's perfectly legal to do both of those things. [00:05:23] Speaker B: People want to know why we have Pride Month. This is why we have Pride Month. Because we're still fighting this fight, because these things are still happening. [00:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And we are also seeing the first day of Pride. Some people in Utah getting a bit aggressive towards any houses that openly had Pride decorations out. There were reports of houses that had those Pride signs plastered over with white power signs. Straight Pride. God, Only loves man and woman. You know, it's not all the straights because can't include Bill. But the other side's mad right now. They like to call us snowflakes, but seems like they're getting really upset just seeing a fucking rainbow right now. So, yeah, it's been a hard start to Pride, but we're all still here and feels like we're all getting louder the more they try to fuck with us. [00:06:15] Speaker B: Boy, are they trying to fuck with us. [00:06:17] Speaker A: Not the way we want, man. [00:06:18] Speaker C: Here's an intriguing notion from our Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, who has declared that from this moment forward, the Department of Education will formally refer to Pride Month as Title IX Month. I wonder where she got the directive to do that from. [00:06:39] Speaker A: I've done some digging into this whole Title IX thing, and the gist of Title IX is to support women's rights and safety. [00:06:50] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the COVID for protecting the women from the trans people. [00:06:55] Speaker A: I will say the queer community. It's taken this really well. From what I've seen. Reactions from queens, reactions from queer YouTubers and streamers, vloggers, influencers. [00:07:09] Speaker B: Influencers. [00:07:09] Speaker A: Queer influencers or whatever. The reaction's really good. The main thing I'm seeing, at least from the queer community is trans women are women. So this is still pride, which is the exact reaction you should have, because trans women are women. [00:07:24] Speaker B: I don't know how I feel about it. I feel like if we let them get away with it, the next year, they're gonna try and do it with more. It's just a gut thing, but I feel like if we let them get away with it in the Department of Education, then they're gonna try it in other places and we're gonna start seeing the same kind of erasure of the. The rest of the gay community that they're attempting on the trans community right now. [00:07:45] Speaker A: And I wouldn't call it more acceptance, more of a, like, you, you thought you ought us, but you didn't. And I do see how we should try to at least be a little bit louder about this. It's Pride Month. I don't give a fuck. It is. It's Pride Month. It's kind of like how it's always going to be Twitter to me. I don't give a fuck. It's Twitter. It's Pride Month. [00:08:10] Speaker B: It is not Twitter. It is the artist formerly Known as Twitter. [00:08:13] Speaker C: And they aren't necessarily waiting. It's a flood. The zone thing, I think the Secretary of Defense, our illustrious Secretary of Defense, Peter Hegseth, Announced this week that a u. S. Naval ship would be stripped of the name Harvey milk. Because Harvey milk was gay. He served in the navy. He was less than honorably discharged because of his sexual preferences, but he went on to become the first openly gay elected official in the country in San francisco. While serving the city of san Francisco, he was murdered because he was openly gay. And we can't even name a ship after this poor mate. [00:09:11] Speaker B: Talk about dishonorable things. All we have to do is look at hegseth. [00:09:14] Speaker C: We're going to erase that little bit of history. Also because it's gay. [00:09:22] Speaker A: Just a name. I mean, it's more than that. Next thing, all the straight are going to be lactose intolerant of their own accord. [00:09:33] Speaker B: Milk is woke. [00:09:34] Speaker A: As we have throughout history. The queers are persevering and going through it, and we're not letting these jabs at us go unnoticed. Am I technically a mythological creature in this country? [00:09:52] Speaker B: Hell yeah, you are a unicorn. [00:09:53] Speaker A: No, I. Excuse me, I'm a goddox. Thank you. [00:09:57] Speaker B: All right, perhaps a duck, but still. [00:10:00] Speaker A: Take that and we'll get caught. [00:10:01] Speaker B: And that was the news. [00:10:04] Speaker A: So for this episode, I'm gonna run our topics a bit differently than we normally do because I am the resident non binary of our group, and it's time to teach the CIS people about the existence of trans people. I have four main topics for y' all that I want to open some discussion on. The first being that throughout history there have been extermination attempts against trans people. I wanted to start with asking both of you, are you aware that ancient cultures almost always saw way more than two genders? [00:10:47] Speaker C: Very much so. [00:10:50] Speaker B: Oh, hell yeah. [00:10:50] Speaker C: There are not only ancient cultures, but there are still cultures that exist today. Mostly indigenous, very localized cultures that look upon non binary people who identify as both male and female. I don't know what the proper term is here, but they look at these people as representing the male and the female side of whatever deity they worship. These people aren't. Or segregated or oppressed or pushed away. They're held in high esteem. [00:11:28] Speaker A: Bill, you're not wrong. Ancient cultures, especially native cultures, always saw people who were trans or non binary on a different spiritual plane. They were seen as some of the most useful people in their tribes as well. The argument gets given that there couldn't have been trans people in ancient societies because everything was hunter gatherer. You either had penis and went out to hunt or you had vagina and you gather. [00:11:56] Speaker B: It's not actually how things happen. That's A Western conception that we sort of retconned into our history. [00:12:01] Speaker C: That's what's. That's technically known as a crock of shit. [00:12:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And in these societies, those who were gender non conforming, non binary, trans, whatever word they had for it were seen as being on a different spiritual level. And they were also viewed as more resourceful because, let's say one of the men was sick and couldn't hunt. The trans person could and also could come back home and keep sewing clothes for the children. Talk about multitasking. Some notable ancient societies, or even current indigenous tribes like the Navajo, have many different words for different types of genders. [00:12:41] Speaker B: It's not a foreign concept to the human race or to people. It's a foreign concept to a Western way of thinking that rejected it so long ago. It now thinks it was never a part of the experience. [00:12:51] Speaker C: And it is absolutely not a woke concept. Unless you want to trace the history of woke all the way back into prehistory. Get on it, get on it. Let's see the facts. [00:13:08] Speaker B: I call it woke. I call it having an IQ over 73. [00:13:12] Speaker A: So talking about Western civilization and the current views we have on gender, trans people have been here since humanity has been here. So how do we get to where we are today? Two simple words, colonialism and Christianity. The rise of both led to the first rounds of extermination attempts toward the trans community as a whole. When we think about colonialism, we think about getting a group of people under your control to do what you want. An easy way to start controlling people is, is to limit the ways they can identify and express themselves. [00:13:55] Speaker B: When we think about colonialism, some people think about the spread of slavery, some people think about colonialism. They think about the spread of a certain set of social or cultural morals or ideals or beliefs. I think of colonialism as something that comes in and excises and tears away parts of the native culture, at least from what I've seen, more than parts. [00:14:17] Speaker C: Often nearly all of it. [00:14:21] Speaker B: It's a little of this and a little of that, but the whole package is a cultural rewrite that includes deletion, marginalization, and extermination in some cases, in order to seed a certain type of culture into other parts of the world. And that carries with it all this. [00:14:40] Speaker A: Weird morality because, I mean, one of the biggest examples is European colonization, which suppress the than one gender being a thing through laws, policing, and religious dogma. That's how, you know, we got Joan of Arc being yelled at for wearing pants and shit. You know, the church needed to make two very cookie cutter ideas of what people could be and force them into those slots. And when people wouldn't go into their pigeonhole, which trans people have always fought back against. [00:15:17] Speaker C: That's partly because the early Christian church was so determined to keep women from the priesthood. What do we do with something in the middle? I don't know. Let's deny it exists. [00:15:30] Speaker B: Human beings have this false assumption that there has to be a pecking order for society to work, and there really doesn't. And they bring in from the top down, they bring it to the lowest level. Even in the home, they want there to be a husband over a wife over the children. That's not reality. That's not the way human beings are designed. It's just what a group of old men from those parts of the world believed. [00:15:55] Speaker A: Since these harsh lines were drawn in the proverbial sand on gender, it really led to just decades and decades of different extermination attempts on trans people over the centuries. These extermination attempts go back all the way to, well, earlier than this. But in 1513, Vasco Nunez de Balboa killed 40 natives just for being gender non conforming. [00:16:24] Speaker C: 40 natives. How many people were in that tribe where he encountered these 40 natives? Perhaps 200, who knows? [00:16:33] Speaker A: And then later on in history, we've spoken about what happened at the Institute of Sexual Science during the Nazi reign in Germany. It was basically the burning of the Library of Alexandria, but for information on trans and queer health care. Even through multiple extermination attempts, exiles, trans people are still here. We're still fighting and we're still kicking. We exist and we always will. [00:17:02] Speaker C: The resilience is actually monumental. And I picked up an interesting historical note doing some research. Earlier this morning, the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, when it was looted, they moved all the books, there were thousands upon thousands of books into the street and set fire to them. Now, you've gone through the educational system. You've probably seen a picture in a textbook or in a newsreel or in a historical documentary of Nazi book burning. Most of those pictures are from that particular book burning. But nowhere in the photographer credits or anywhere in the text mentioned that those books came from the Institute of Sexual Science because that would open up a whole another can of worms. [00:17:57] Speaker B: Yeah, Wikipedia credits the pictures. It's the only place I've seen do. [00:18:01] Speaker A: It to wrap up the first segment. We've been here forever and we're not going anywhere. And whoever told you that biology has binaries didn't make it past their middle school biology class. I have to say this because it was a funny thing I saw that I wasn't expecting in the few minutes I was scrolling through memes. Trans guy is on a cooking site where people share recipes, right? Just finds out randomly that women are referring to themselves as FTM to mean full time mom. [00:18:45] Speaker B: Oh God. [00:18:47] Speaker A: I would have lost my too if I saw that in like a cooking thing. I would have been like why are all the trans guys sharing restaurants the same cooking form? [00:18:57] Speaker B: Did I discover their secret spot? [00:18:59] Speaker A: Is it the trans cookbook? It's not an agenda, it's just a cookbook. For our next segment I wanted to discuss gender roles and society's current gender roles and what they add to society. Maybe how they fuck with society. I'm non binary. I could have a five hour long podcast episode going off about gender roles. When the creation of gender roles and laws forcing gender roles, like sumptuary laws passed where people were arrested for impersonating another gender did very quickly have effects on the transgender community. We live to go against gender roles, so when they start trying to police them, we are some of the first targets. But where we are now as a society, these roles of women are emotional caretakers and men are void of emotion and are supposed to take care of everything by themselves. The most obvious place, at least for me that I can see, is that these gender roles are negative, negatively affecting society as a whole. If we take a moment look at the difference in suicide rates between men and women, while women do tend to have a higher rate of suicidal thought ideation and depression, men have a higher rate of of completing their suicide success, actual success. [00:20:33] Speaker B: We're good at something. [00:20:35] Speaker C: We are taught to identify the job, get on with it and complete it. [00:20:41] Speaker A: Gender roles completely play into these disparate numbers because while women are more allowed to be emotional and do talk things out when it comes to the threat of suicide, something that psychologists and studies have shown over the years is that when women decide that's a route they want to take, the first thing they do is think about who's going to clean up, who's going to be affected, who's going to find them. So that's why women tend to go toward routes like overdosing, ways that they can get what they want done and not be a burden to others. While men like you said bill raised to get the job done, some men tend to go for guns, jumping off high buildings, things that are more immediate and it doesn't matter who cleans up the Mess. This is something that's hurting everyone. CIS people and trans people alike. If we lived in a society where men were allowed to be human and have emotions because they do have them, even if men hide them, I don't think that having no gender roles would stop suicide. But we'd be seeing different numbers when it comes to how deeply ingrained gender roles are in society. Using this example feels needed because it catches people's attention and I think makes it easier to look at what these cookie cutter molds do to society as a whole. [00:22:08] Speaker B: And not to sound like Tyler Durden, but we've got a generation of men who will never own a home. Most of them will have a hard time getting a car, let alone experience financial stability, handle a $400 emergency, or express any emotion about that, or have any real feelings about it, let alone with other men. And we wonder why they're toxic and broken. Yeah, well, gee. [00:22:36] Speaker C: I don't get it. And these roles, well, these roles are instilled and embedded in children at such an early age. I was not a typical macho boy. I had no interest in sports. I would rather read a book or play a game of chess. I empathized with people and as a result, I was bullied throughout school. I didn't get away from the bullying until I finally got into college. On some level, it was there from the age of 6 till the age of 17. [00:23:13] Speaker A: All in all, society's gender roles are men. The idea that men are supposed to do this and women are supposed to do that goes back to colonialism and Christianity. They wanted people to be one thing or the other to weed out the ones that are too free. In today's society, these gender roles have become extremely limiting to both men and women. It encourages men to bottle up emotions and it's completely fucking mythological. [00:23:41] Speaker B: Gender roles are modern mythology. We've created a shorthand for how we're going to categorize and label people in society and what their roles should be. And, you know, look at what we do socially as little monkeys. We divide and segregate. We have a natural tendency to do it. So we do it at first with gender, then we do it based on things like social dominance, job roles and money, who has what. But we divide and segregate. [00:24:07] Speaker A: In my perfect Star Trek utopia, gender roles would be abolished. If we do get there as society one day, I think we're going to see a rush in innovation, better decision making, and just overall better mental health for everyone. When you don't have to force yourself inside a Box gives you a whole new level of the word freedom. [00:24:34] Speaker C: When the world becomes open to the individual, the individual will open themselves to the world. [00:24:41] Speaker A: So to roll on through to our next segment, speaking of how gender roles are a myth in society, I wanted to talk about the lies they tell about us as trans people versus the realities we actually live. There are a lot of myths and lies being spread about trans people and the trans community as a whole right now. Either of you have one that comes to mind firsthand? [00:25:06] Speaker B: Well, sometimes little Johnny goes to school and he comes back home as little Jane with no penis. You asked the question. There are a lot of people. There's a question that I get from older people in my family. Is, is it true that kids get transed when they go to school? First off, trans is not a fucking verb. Please stop that. [00:25:26] Speaker C: Thank you. No. [00:25:28] Speaker B: For God's sake. No, no, no, no. [00:25:31] Speaker A: The big thing that just adds to this myth and makes it even more disgusting is what about what it means to help a child transition? Because there's a very huge difference between medically transitioning, and that does involve surgeries, medication, things like that, and social transitioning. When you hear anything being talked about children being helped to transition at school, they're not going to the nurse's office, sitting on that shitty little cot and getting a fucking mastectomy on boobs that haven't even grown in yet. That's just not what's happening. [00:26:10] Speaker C: If you're dumb enough to believe that is what's happening. You need to go back to school and figure out what the hell reality is. [00:26:16] Speaker A: All social transitioning to help children is is letting them wear clothes they like no matter what gender it's assigned to. Maybe getting a haircut, letting their hair grow out, and using the correct pronouns and names for them. [00:26:34] Speaker B: Oh, the horror. [00:26:35] Speaker C: And by doing, you significantly reduce suicide rates in these children later in life when they reach puberty. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but as far as I know, the only children who are being transitioned in school are the ones who were going to the bathroom in the litter box. There was an element of sarcasm there. Okay. [00:26:58] Speaker B: I can't. I can't. You know, laws have been passed to prevent furries from having their own litter boxes. [00:27:05] Speaker C: I know. [00:27:06] Speaker B: As if that's a problem. Yeah, as if that's a problem. [00:27:11] Speaker C: I sent little Johnny to school, and when he came home, he had boobies and he pees in a litter box. [00:27:16] Speaker B: I didn't raise cat girl. [00:27:19] Speaker A: I mean, dad didn't raise a cat boy, but I Exist this way. [00:27:22] Speaker C: Oops. [00:27:25] Speaker A: I did not expect that to go there. Because what I was expecting you to say was something about, all right, so where my brain went before litter boxes were brought up was the fact that the whole children are being mutilated myth also ties into, you know, the right. And Fox likes to say that where in that, you know, the liberals are indoctrinating the children into being trans and gay. And what I have to say to that is, please go look at all your Catholic schools and tell me that there's not indoctrination there. We're teaching kindergarten age children that if they sin, they're gonna burn in hell. [00:28:06] Speaker C: Or at the very least, turn to the dictionary and look up the meaning of the word you're using because clearly you have no idea what it means. [00:28:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So for our next myth, Regret, lie. I drives me nuts to lie that there's a huge amount of trans people who get these surgeries, get the medication, and then have regret and detransition. So here's a couple things that have a higher regret rate than gender affirming surgeries. Knee replacements, joint replacements. Those surgeries have a higher regret rate. Harry Potter tattoos have a higher regret rate than gender affirming surgery. [00:28:48] Speaker C: Fuck's actual sake. [00:28:50] Speaker B: The actual regret rate for gender affirming surgery is around 0.03% to the amount. [00:28:58] Speaker A: Of hoops and hurdles you have to go through. Depending on your state. It's harder or easier, but it's never just generally easy. It's a mountain of things you have to go through to even get to the level of being allowed to have gender affirming surgery. Most people don't realize that non binary people and trans people who want top surgery have to not smoke anything and not drink for at least six months to be eligible. That takes commitment, especially in a community known for drinking, smoking, and partying. [00:29:32] Speaker C: I live in New York. [00:29:33] Speaker B: I can't judge. [00:29:34] Speaker C: I live in New York, a purportedly liberal state, and when my child decided they were ready to transition the number of hoops and the number of girls, medically and psychologically, that were placed in front of them, I walked. I stumbled through this obstacle course with him. But nobody should have to go through that. Nobody. It isn't like you just walk into the ER and say, I need a pair of tits. [00:30:07] Speaker A: No, they still don't even know how to give trans guys surgery so that they actually have working parts down there. The regret rate is not what you think it is. There's a higher regret rate from boob implants. On CIS women. All right, so to wrap up our trans discussion today, Trans Agenda. I want us to look beyond the word trans, especially with all of the current anti trans bills and laws that are being proposed because there's so much more to them than just what happens to the trans community. Currently, the ACLU map tracking anti LGBTQ bills across the country shows 588 proposed bills this year. Now, not all of these are aimed at trans people. These are just general anti LGBTQ bills as a whole. But the ones that are aimed against the trans community are vicious, and it's beyond just health care. [00:31:10] Speaker C: They're either vicious or ludicrous. Sometimes they're both. [00:31:14] Speaker A: Most of the time, they're both. In my opinion, they're ludicrous, they're ridiculous, and they go way beyond just health care. And these healthcare bans, I don't even have time to go into them because they're a lot. Some of the most popular ones that are popping up are sports bans prohibiting trans youth from playing sports in the team that aligns with their gender. [00:31:36] Speaker C: I got a little story I want to share about that. Yeah, this whole black and white or either or binary choice fantasy that's being peddled and foisted upon us is exactly that. It's a fantasy. That's just not how biology or genetics, or for that matter, even psychology works. This whole obsessive interest in gender purity for sports actually has a kind of disturbing backstory, though it's not all that surprising. Bobby, you spoke a couple of times today and last week about the 1933 looting and burning of the Institute by Hitler's Nazi party in Berlin. As it turns out, today's insatiable quest to define exactly who or what counts as a woman in sports traces its origins back to Hitler's Berlin Olympics. These games were supposed to provide irrefutable proof of his deranged belief in the superiority of the white northern European Aryan race. Then a black American, Jesse Owens, obliterated all of those superior competitors and collected four gold medals in track and field. Adding Insult to injury, 18 year old Helen Stevens from Fulton, Missouri, was a tall, uncharacteristically muscular girl with an unusually deep voice. She walked away from the women's track and field events that same day, crowned as the fastest woman in the world. Olympics officials had examined Helen and cleared her to compete before the games after confirming that she was indeed female. So the seed planted by one of history's most despicable villains goes on to bear fruit among his acolytes. Just 16 years ago, yet another unusually muscular South African woman, Caster Semenya, came under scrutiny after blowing the doors off fellow racers at a 2009 World Championship event. As rumors began to circulate, she agreed to undergo gender verification tests, but was not prepared for the outcome. Born with a vagina and assigned female at birth, Castor learned that her vagina led literally nowhere. She had no uterus. Genetic testing revealed she had both an X and Y chromosome. [00:34:23] Speaker A: Oh, so intersex people didn't come out of nowhere. [00:34:27] Speaker C: It happens when you stir the genetic soup. Consequently, that led to abnormally high testosterone levels. At the age of 18, having just won a world championship, she was told she'd either have to quit competing or or submit to hormone treatment to lower her testosterone. She submitted. She details her suffering in her 2023 memoir, the Race to Be Myself. Against all odds, she flourished, taking second place in both the 2011 World Championships and the 2012 Olympics against Russia's Mariah Savinova, it turns out, had been one of the loudest voices questioning Caster's gender. Ironically, this Russian athlete was later found guilty of doping, and Caster's second place finishes were subsequently upgraded to gold medals. Moral of the story, kids, biology is a crapshoot. Genealogy is not an amalgam, it's a stew. And between black and white, there are way more than a mere 50 shades of gray. [00:35:45] Speaker A: If the ancient Greeks who invented the Olympics could see how society is trying to gender sports, once they stopped freaking out about the fact that everyone was wearing clothes, they'd be freaking out about that. So rolling it back to some of the other awful anti trans bills and things, we're seeing censorship in education now, this is more than just don't say gay, as we saw in Florida, it goes much further than just don't say gay, don't say trans. These censorship and education bans go into taking out any literature about queer people from schools, to not letting school officials help these kids social transition by using their preferred name and pronouns. Now we're seeing things where the censorship and education laws are adding forced outing to these bills, which as someone who went through that, that's one of the worst things if you want to make sure you take a trans kid and mess them up for a really long time out them before they're ready. This is what we have politicians trying to push. Those types of bans lead into defining sex in discriminatory ways, defining it only on reproductive anatomy, chromosomes, or hormones, which, from the story you just told us, completely takes intersex People and throws them out the window. Yep. Biology doesn't work like that. Please read a textbook higher than grade 6. [00:37:28] Speaker C: You can have a person with two X chromosome expresses as a male because there are other genetic markers that get involved. If there's a mutation on one of those X chromosomes, when it communicates with those other genetic markers on other chromosomes, it could make that double X chromosome person present as a male and vice versa. The same goes for an XY chromosome individual. You would expect a male. Not every time is a mess. And you can't always predict the outcome. [00:38:02] Speaker A: Look at X men. I mean, all of these bans, all these laws are also leading into rescinding non discrimination protections. Iowa, for example, completely rescinded protections for trans people in employment, housing and public accommodation. [00:38:20] Speaker B: Texas has a proposed bill to charge trans people with a felony for informing their employer or the government of their gender identity. [00:38:27] Speaker A: Any. [00:38:28] Speaker B: Basically, they want to call it fraud. [00:38:30] Speaker A: And this doesn't just affect trans people. This affects women who come off as a little bit more masculine if they're trying to redefine the terms of gender and sex. We want to make being trans a felony. We've already seen some examples of it happen in the past few months where cisgender women are using the women's bathroom but a man decided that they weren't. [00:38:57] Speaker B: Woman enough or they didn't look it. [00:39:01] Speaker A: And even further than just affecting people on a personal level, these bans have the potential to affect the economy of these states, worsen the health care crisis, and drive a good 10 to 15% of competent and smart people straight out of the state. [00:39:20] Speaker C: I just want to point out to all the architects of those ridiculous legislative bills that you reap what you sow. [00:39:28] Speaker A: When you don't know your biology and you just start making laws, maybe a few months later you realize that you fucked yourself. [00:39:36] Speaker B: Yep. [00:39:37] Speaker A: To close out our sometimes dark discussion, this isn't just a trans issue. This isn't just a cisgender versus transgender. It's a coordinated attack on bodily autonomy, on freedom of expression, on the very fabric of a diverse and inclusive society. They come for one, they come for all. [00:40:01] Speaker B: When you come for one group, you're paving the way to come for any group. [00:40:04] Speaker C: The phrase slippery slope has been overused to death. They went after women's bodies with abortion. They're going after trans and LGBT people with this sort of legislation. They've already compiled an autism registry, which they're expanding into a chronic disease registry. You don't think they have an ulterior motive for that? Do you? Where does it end? Where and when does it end? [00:40:36] Speaker A: When you see any bill being proposed that is anti trans, anti lgbtq, look beyond those words, read into it, See what the effects for everyone who they didn't single out will be, because there will be ripple effects. It will affect your CIS lumberjack brother in law. Everyone's going to be affected by these things. Don't just see a new trans ban and decide, oh, that can't hurt me. It can. [00:41:11] Speaker C: Sit can. [00:41:13] Speaker B: I think the moral of the story here is that we need to stand up, educate ourselves, and fight back against the manufactured panic. [00:41:22] Speaker C: Stand up for those who are already being discriminated against, because you are just a few steps farther down the line. [00:41:29] Speaker A: All right, folks, so we've talked about some dark things today. We've talked about some deep things today. It's Pride, so things just keep getting fucking deeper. I want to make sure we talk about big wins, because while Pride has had a rough start, we've had some really, really huge wins. One of them, which is near and dear to me, the Puerto Rican Supreme Court, has finally allowed non binary people to update their birth certificates to have X as their gender marker. This is huge. This is. [00:42:09] Speaker B: I want to know how Trump's going to handle that. [00:42:11] Speaker A: I don't care how the orange is going to handle it right now. I want it to just be a win for us. Because not only is this something that the Puerto Rican Supreme Court has finally passed, this is something that was fought for by 6 non binary people coming together. It's a huge win. It's a story of when we come together, we can make change. It's a huge win. It's only in one area, but it's a huge step in the right direction. [00:42:43] Speaker B: Oh, tell me about the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, because you brought this up the other day and it blew my mind. [00:42:54] Speaker A: The Cathedral of St. John the Divine. I believe it is one of the largest cathedrals in the U.S. correct me if I'm wrong, they've started off Pride real well. That entire cathedral was lit up in rainbows and performances by drag artists on the first night of Pride. They have more things planned for the rest of June. They even have Juneteenth queer event planned for black gays. [00:43:26] Speaker B: No, it's big. It's a big deal. And it's amazing to see, you know, a cultural icon kick out that level of inclusivity. So, yeah, it is a big one. I have to agree with you, Bobby. [00:43:39] Speaker A: Anybody who's in the New York City area or can make it to the cathedral this month. Should go on their website. They have a lot going on for Pride. It's wholesome and warming to see a building that most queers feel too unsafe to enter. Just light up in rainbows. [00:44:00] Speaker C: Warming and unexpected coming from that source. [00:44:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the right way to be a Christian, in my opinion. [00:44:09] Speaker B: All right, so every week we talk about stuff you can do or stuff we can all do. This week we've got homework, Bobby. [00:44:17] Speaker A: Yeah. So this week I wanted to give everyone something that they can do whenever. Don't have to spend any money. Just use that thing in your head called a brain. Seriously, all of us should take a moment to explore what our gender really means to us outside of societal norms, outside of what you've been taught. Take a minute and think about what being a woman means to you, what being a man means to you. And try to move away from organs you may or may not have. Don't look at it from a science point of view. Just what does it mean? What does your femininity mean? What does your masculinity mean? Does it really make you happy? [00:45:01] Speaker C: Combination of both of the above mean. [00:45:06] Speaker A: Or neither? [00:45:06] Speaker B: Is it defined by you or other people? That's another important question you have to ask. Does your picture of your own masculinity, your own. Your own femininity, does that come from within yourself? Or does that come from things reflected back at you? From media, from leaders? [00:45:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Think about where your ideas of gender come from and if they really align with you. And another thing everyone can do, because I know for CIS people, it can be a bit difficult to figure out how to really empathize with the trans community. No one is saying that you have to fully understand us, but if you ever want to take a minute and think about what it would be like, don't do the thing where you think about what would happen if you woke up tomorrow in another gender, because that. Let's jump into our hoops. Think about how you would feel if you identified and presented the way you currently do, the way you feel comfortable and everyone else in your world told you that you were wrong. You'll kind of have an idea of what trans people deal with. [00:46:18] Speaker B: And that, dear listeners, brings us to the end of another crucial conversation. Here on Critical Defiance. We've spent this episode, the new Moral Panic, dissecting the unsettling rhetoric and legislation aimed at an already vulnerable community. It's a stark reminder of how quickly fear can be manufactured and weaponized. [00:46:38] Speaker A: It definitely is Nils and frankly, it's exhausting. But here's the thing about Defiance. It's not just about pushing back against what's wrong. It's also about celebrating what's right, what's innovative, and what's fundamentally American. [00:46:55] Speaker B: Which brings us perfectly to next week. We're turning the volume up on joy, resilience, and groundbreaking contributions. Get ready for an episode we're incredibly excited about. Pride and Progress, the Queer Architects of a Better America. [00:47:11] Speaker A: That's right. We'll be diving deep into the incredible, often overlooked impact of LGBTQ individuals throughout history and in the present day. From science and technology to art, activism, and everything in between, we'll shine a light on how queer communities have consistently pushed for a more inclusive, equitable, and, yes, freer America for everyone. [00:47:38] Speaker B: Because true freedom isn't just about the absence of oppression. It's about the presence of possibility, the celebration of diversity, and the collective building of a brighter future. And trust me, the queer community has been building some magnificent structures. [00:47:53] Speaker A: So if today's episode left you feeling a little heavy, next week we're lifting you up. Join us for Pride in Progress, the Queer Architects of a Better America. You won't want to miss it. [00:48:07] Speaker B: Find us wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to rate, review, and share Critical Defiance with anyone who's ready to challenge the narratives and truly think critically. [00:48:16] Speaker A: Because the truth is out there and so are people. Making America better. One defiant step at a time. [00:48:24] Speaker B: Till next time, stay critical, stay defiant, and keep fighting for freedom.