The annual number of anti-LGBTQ bills filed has skyrocketed over the past several years, from 41 in 2018 to 240 and counting in the first three months of this year. Half of these bills are targeting transgender people specifically. At the same time, surveys of the general public show over 70% say they support same-sex marriage and laws preventing discrimination across the LGBTQ community. And Gen Z are proudly and loudly identifying with both gender and sexual fluidity. How do we square these two realities? In this episode, Talk Policy to Me reporter Amy Benziger dives into how the rise in representation of people from across the gender and sexual spectrum in media, business, and government has caused a policy backlash by the old guard to solidify their conservative base.
Our guests include Fran Dunway, Founder of TomboyX; Corey Rose, a student at UC Berkeley Journalism School and former reporter for South Florida Gay News; and Pau Crego, Executive Director of the SF Office of Transgender Initiatives.
Transcript
Amy: [00:00:09] Anyone remember learning about someone named John Scopes when you were in school?
Noah: [00:00:13] That was a whole thing in my fifth grade class. Scopes was the teacher who was charged with teaching about evolution.
Amy: [00:00:18] Right, in 1925, Scopes was charged and found guilty of violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state funded school. It basically made it a crime to contradict the Bible based on parental rights. The ACLU wanted to take it on, and Scopes actually volunteered to be the defendant.
Noah: [00:00:36] The full country followed this at the time. It was huge news. I’ve actually thought about this a lot with the pushback today against critical race theory.
Amy: [00:00:44] Me too. I was reading about it in a recent piece by The New Yorker called Why the School War Is Still Raging, which I highly recommend. It was a really interesting rundown of how the concept of parental rights has been used for decades. Whenever a predominantly white Christian center of power felt threatened, it happened with evolution, with mandatory school attendance, which would bring together the rich and the poor in school integration, which would bring together kids of all races.
Noah: [00:01:07] More recently, it’s been invoked to apply to critical race theory and antiquated legislation. As we’ve seen the profiles of power change in our country, we’ve seen this familiar playbook brought out while people organized to express that Black Lives Matter, the opposition call for bans on teaching the idea that social problems are created by racist systems. And as Gen-Z fades, traditional gender and sexual norms. We’ve also seen a spate of anti-lgbtq legislation across the U.S.. These bills are designed to restrict school curriculum around sexual identity and to limit trans kids ability to participate in school in a way that corresponds with their gender identity. All of this is in the name of parents rights. One bill that’s gotten a lot of press lately has been HB 1557, the Parental Rights and Education Bill, which was recently signed into law in Florida by Governor Ron DeSantis. It’s been deemed the don’t say gay bill by its opponents.
Amy: [00:01:59] So I wanted to think about this issue from outside of the policy box and instead to explore how the rise in representation of people from across the gender and sexual spectrum in media, consumerism and government has pushed the old establishment to new lows and how we can all fight back.
Noah: [00:02:15] On today’s Talk Policy To Me, we’re talking about how you can’t be what you can’t see.
Amy: [00:02:26] First, I wanted to talk to Fran Dunway, the founder of TomboyX, a gender fluid underwear line. The company was founded in 2012, and she’s been a pioneer in the space of using the power of business to influence and challenge this normative culture of two genders and standard body types along those gendered lines.
Amy: [00:02:41] I think you’ve also raised venture capital. I was looking at a study according to backstage, less than 1% of VC funding is given to LGBTQ founders, and more than a third of founders choose to hide their sexual orientation when fundraising. So I’d love if you could just talk to that experience of fundraising through the years.
Fran: [00:03:05] You mean when we sat around a room full of guys and they said, Well, what’s wrong with Victoria’s Secret? Yeah. No, it was. It was very hard. We were a married lesbian couple. I mean, at the time we weren’t married, but we were a lesbian couple. And maybe not being married was more frightening at the time. But, you know, it was it was a long slog. They didn’t understand. They thought that we were a niche lesbian underwear company. That’s when we would get the inevitable question, Where what’s wrong with Victoria’s Secret? And so that whole notion of the external male gaze being the reason or how we would buy our underwear or clothing, it just really was counterintuitive to us. And I think being part of the LGBTQ community, we know what it’s like to be outside or to be othered. And so it was really important to us from the very beginning to make sure that we had extended sizing and that we were inclusive in the people that we showed wearing our product.
Amy: [00:04:03] And how have you thought about your role in the political arena?
Fran: [00:04:09] You know, in the early stages of the company, we were very vocal and we continue to take a stand right now. We’ve got on our website, say Gay, and we continue to get involved in places that we think are important. I’m trying to be very clear about what is the brand versus what is my and what are my views and how to separate those. But the reality is that by nature, the fact that I was born a lesbian or as part or part of the LGBTQ community, unfortunately my sexuality is political just because other people choose to make it their business. And so as long as that’s true, it’s kind of hard to separate the two.
Amy: [00:04:57] I also saw on your website from the Trevor Project that LGBTQ youth who have learned about LGBTQ bias issues are people in classes at school had 23% lower odds of reporting a suicide attempt in the past 12 months. And looking at these percentages of these kids who already are struggling so much, and now the political environment and the news environment is telling them they should be erased, literally. You know, and I’d love to hear your thoughts around that concept of what representation means and what it could mean if it goes away.
Fran: [00:05:30] I think it’s similar to the. LGBTQ plus fight for marriage equality in that a lot of us thought erroneously early on that it was about that we would sway people’s minds by pointing out the fairness of things like Social Security and the inequities of that. And the reality is that what happened was that it came down to is love in connecting with your neighbor and connecting with their your family members that you were talking to about it or that you were hiding for whatever reason. And I think that a lot of us have stopped hiding. And so for people that feel like that, they have to go back into hiding or or kids who are equipped to handle this kind of hatred and maybe getting a loving response at home, and then to have this societal push of telling them that they’re not okay or that there’s something wrong with them now, I just can’t relate to it. And I and I think it is doing a serious disservice to the young people in the LGBTQ community and to their families.
Amy: [00:06:42] But on the positive side, we have seen kids and parents and allies rise up, whether that’s in classrooms, in the streets outside of courthouses. In a lot of ways, this is sort of gone backlash on a lot of these lawmakers in terms of the increase and visibility of queerness has probably never been higher. I think a lot of people who have felt like supporters from the outside that never thought they had to take to the streets are doing that just because this feels like a slippery slope. Right. And that people are starting to understand that if you take away the idea of critical race theory in classrooms and you take away the idea of queer people in general, in classrooms, you can kind of take away anything. Right. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on. Yeah. What’s inspiring you about this movement against these bills and in support of the queer community in America?
Fran: [00:07:34] You know, I’ve been an out lesbian 14 years. And so the change that we’ve seen and the fact that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, that we’re out here and we’re going to fight for our rights because we have never been so empowered and unashamed about who we are and where we fit in. Great corporations can stand up and make a change, and there is a serious impact. Money is power. And corporations have incredible power in that regard. And then the workers like what’s happening with Disney, where they’re standing up and enforcing the issue. I think that more power to the people is really where we’re at.
Amy: [00:08:17] And where do you see it in terms of the representation of all different kinds of love, all different kinds of gender identities? Where is its place in the media right now? Do you think that enough is being done to really showcase all of the different ways in which we exist in the world, in terms of characters, in terms of models, in all of the kind of visual representations that both impact us, but definitely inform our kids of what’s possible and what’s accepted in the world.
Fran: [00:08:46] I would just watching the clip on ABC.com and the first ad was a trans woman that was having a party and promoting a beverage. Nine years ago when we started this company that was not happening, that there was no visibility. And I think that that is the way of the future. And in you know, I do wonder if it isn’t that whole pendulum swinging where as its as as progress changes and as we move forward, there’s a bit of a backlash and then we can move even more clear there ahead.
Amy: [00:09:28] Our next guest, Corey Rose, is a journalist from Florida who came to UC Berkeley’s journalism school after starting his career with the South Florida Gay News, which is a publication that’s part of a larger network of LGBTQ publications across the country. Corey is a unique perspective as someone who’s choosing to fight the system by exposing it to the light of media and as someone whose life would have been dramatically altered by the system if he was born just a few years later.
Corey: [00:09:55] I was doing a national column, and as I started reporting, I think I started in March of 2021, and by April 2021, my column had gone to like 50% anti-trans bills, you know, anti-trans bill in Nebraska, anti-trans bill in Texas, or and then the next week could be anti-choice village for an anti-trans bill and, you know, another southern state. It came up around sports. It came up around access to health care. It came out around. There would be some odd cases about marriage equality. But, you know, that’s we had the Supreme Court for that now. For now. Yeah, I just as I was reporting for South Florida Gay News, I noticed increasingly that across the country these little laws were popping up and they all seemed to follow the same template.
Amy: [00:10:42] I’m wondering, as someone who grew up as a black bear man in Florida at the Don’t Say Gay Bill, a very catchy name that has been assigned to what is the parental rights and education bill that is now passed in Florida would have affected you and would have potentially dramatically altered your life in a lot of different ways.
Corey: [00:10:59] I’ll start by saying Florida is doing an amazing job of suppressing queer youth without HB 1557, without any laws on the books, because the culture in Florida is such already that you don’t talk about queerness on an outright level. And I certainly how it was, you know, in the mid 2000s when I was growing up or when I was coming through elementary school, I would not have had the few glimpses of support that I really was able to cling to in middle school and elementary school. I think about, you know, the small little flags or the small little safe space stickers that are just happen to be rainbow colored. Just knowing that the concept of support existed meant that I could seek it out in other places where I could recognize it. I worry about the students who don’t have access, who are, by the breaches of this law, would not have access to those ideas of accepting queer people because not only was that influential to me in my upbringing and and, and my sense of self, but it also, I’m sure, had some sort of impact on my peers. You know, you hear that gay people are not demons enough times. And then I guess you start to believe that you start to treat people like they’re not demons. And so it it’s a law that suppresses queer youth, but also prevents allyship from really growing and fostering.
Amy: [00:12:31] There’s a few key elements of this bill that are specifically pulling back that idea of safe spaces. Schools have to disclose any questionnaires or health screening forms that they administer to students, and if they violate these requirements, parents can file complaints or lawsuits against the district. And so I’m just I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the potential damage that can do and the spaces that kids have now and what could be taken away.
Corey: [00:13:01] You know, an individual should be in control of when, to whom and how they come out. Point blank, period. And I think to say that, oh, this is in the name of parents ability to do what’s best for their children. You know, not every parent is going to know the best thing to do for your child that is in the closet. And I think it is incumbent on our institutions in that situation to provide those resources, and that’s why they exist. That is literally why they exist. It kind of reminds me of abortion issues in a way such that, you know, anti-abortion law is an anti access to abortion laws, don’t necessarily stop abortions from happening, but they do remove a lot of the safe ways that one can happen. And I think these laws remove a lot of the states ways that are coming out. Process can be facilitated.
Amy: [00:13:58] Well, so I’d like to end on what gives you hope?
Corey: [00:14:02] What gives me hope is when I see clear youth, black youth, POC youth, marginalized youth, first generation youth exceeding despite the odds. I love a moment where I’m just scrolling on Instagram, but I see, you know, the high school kids go up and down a hallway or something because that was something that absolutely would not have flown when I was in high school. And so it’s those simple acts of freedom and resistance that I really hold on to.
Amy: [00:14:47] Last I spoke with Paul Krieger, the executive director for San Francisco’s Office of Transgender Initiatives, to hear what it’s like to build the first governmental office of its kind from the ground up and to try to change the system from the inside.
Paul: [00:15:00] I joined and in July 2017, I was the first staff member to be hired after the director, the founding director. Previously, I would have never thought about being in government myself, being trans. You know, the government has erased my community has forced us to engage in like, you know, kind of forced like therapy and oral access. Health care has completely historically, just like, you know, tried to like, eliminate us, basically. And so it’s not something that I had ever thought I would feel like I wanted to do because of that history. But really, the Office of Trans Initiatives provided this opportunity to really change that dynamic, not just in myself, but I think in our communities. Right. Because our because trans communities have very little trust historically in government for good reasons. I really wanted to go in and kind of do that advocacy from within, both to support trans communities in accessing government and helping to advocate for ourselves with the government and also on the inside, working within the government to kind of educate people on what the needs of trans communities are and how to really make our services and our workplaces safe.
Amy: [00:16:33] So I would love to hear specifically around your experience in San Francisco in terms of your greatest wins and your biggest roadblocks in the pursuit of creating more space for political power.
Paul: [00:16:46] So since our founding at the Office of Trans Initiatives, I think some of the most amazing things we have accomplished with trans community is trans leaders, community organizations and also elected officials has been really advocating for specific needs in our communities. So how we have done that in the last few years is through what we call our Trans Advocacy Week, where trans leaders from San Francisco meet with elected officials to share the recommendations and the priorities for our community. Through that process, we have started the first Trans specific housing program. We did that in 2019. It’s called Our Trans Home SF, and has since grown even beyond what our original expectation was. More recently, last year, we advocated to fund the first trans guaranteed income pilot program in the country. One of the other things I would say has been a big win for us in our office. That kind of relates to like how government works as our office worked with our Department of Human Resources in 2019 to launch our gender inclusion policy, which kind of really set the tone for how our employment and workplaces should be in terms of trans inclusion. I know as a trans person and I hear from trans communities all the time that one of the major things that happens, it’s not just about not being able to access employment and education, all these things, but then it’s about staying in those spaces and not being seen or not being respected. So one of the key things that this policy did was explicitly name misgendering as a form of harassment. So I bring that up because one of the both biggest opportunities and biggest challenges, I think has been that since the creation of that gender inclusion policy, we have seen a really huge need for training within city government on how to really exemplify that policy, you know, live that policy in terms of gender inclusion.
Amy: [00:18:56] So I want to ask you, because there’s obviously an extreme dichotomy that’s arising in terms of we’ve never had more awareness around the trans community. I would say from a positive standpoint, right, You’re we have characters on TV shows and we have representation in the media and we have amazing community initiatives and governmental initiatives. Yet the number of anti-trans bills that have come out has been incredible and awful. So and yet that’s juxtapose against support for LGBTQ issues has never been higher. 79% of people support protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination in jobs and housing and public accommodations. 70% of Americans support same sex marriage, which is up from 54%. So both, I guess, from a personal and professional level. How do you square these two realities?
Paul: [00:19:51] Yeah. Well, first of all, I think it’s important to differentiate between support for LGBTQ cisgender people. And trans people. Right. And we see that. And the bills, like a lot of them, are targeting trans people specifically. There’s also an important distinction to make across other identities like racial lines. And, you know, we see that in terms of the inequity rates between white and bipoc, LGBTQ people are very different. Also, inequities between LGBTQ people with disabilities versus able bodied LGBTQ people, etc.. There’s that really big difference in terms of acceptance. And I agree there is more visibility than ever for trans people, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence, right? For a lot of people, the idea that gender could change over one’s lifetime or could not align with the expectations that were assigned at birth is really scary because we assume that gender is fixed and unchangeable. And so the fact that that is not true and that we start seeing that that’s not true and very visible ways freaks some people out. And so I’m not surprised that while on the one hand we have famous trans people. On the other hand, we have laws targeting trans children. And I think it’s part of the bigger battle for like trans rights and acceptance and really has become an argument around our trans people worthy, are trans people real, are trans people possible?
Amy: [00:21:38] Now I’m wondering how you view your office and potential of the future. Every Office of transgender initiatives that will be in every state in the U.S. hopefully playing a role in combating this type of legislation. A few podcasts ago, I focused on the bounty hunter aspect of SB 8, the Heartbeat Bill in Texas, in which we’re actually deputizing folks to sue each other and to take the law into their own hands for living their life or doing an action that ostensibly offends them enough that they are allowed to sue. That same type of deputizing authority is now being granted on parents to enforce these laws at schools expenses. You know, they’re allowed to sue schools. And that’s been used also in critical race theory. And this has resulted in schools preemptively canceling events, removing reading materials from shelves. To your point, erasing both the history and the current reality of trans individuals in this country. What are your hopes for looking at these type of laws and these type of enforcement mechanisms and how individuals within government could potentially play a role in pushing back?
Paul: [00:22:46] I view the Office of Trans Initiatives in San Francisco and the organizations that do work on trans issues, both in San Francisco, in the Bay and elsewhere, as really being that that place of hope for the trans kids and the trans people who are stuck in those places and have very little agency at this time to show people that we are here, we’re visible, we have lives, we have like thriving communities that will be here to support you. So I think that’s an important one. But secondly, I think the. The investments, the programs that we’ve created in San Francisco and the policies that we have changed really are a way to lead the way for other places throughout the country and the world. I also think there are legislations currently like first them just go in California and other states that will not contract with companies that are headquartered in states that have anti LGBTQ laws. I think that’s also a very effective way to make change because it’s penalizing companies that are supporting the economy of those states. However, at the same time, we know that there are trans people and LGBTQ people in those states. And so how do we support them and really making change within their own kind of local and state settings? I think we want to like fund those other groups that are doing the work on the ground and states that are extremely unsafe because they’re the ones who are going to be able to make the change in those spaces.
Amy: [00:24:45] These bills have been coming so fast and furious that it’s been hard to not get caught up in the political powerplay and forget about the human side of these stories. The folks who are fighting outside of the political arena to claim their place in society.
Noah: [00:24:57] Because the truth is that conservatives believe they can win midterm elections and maybe even the presidency by whipping up a frenzy about cultural wedge issues and parents rights. And they believe that this approach will solidify their conservative base. Corey’s comment earlier that connected the issue to abortion issues remind me a lot of our discussion earlier this season around anti-abortion laws in Your Neighbor the Bounty Hunter episode. Even though the Republican Party poses as a party that’s for freedom and limited government. They’re actually using a lot of authoritarian measures to increase the power of government and restrict the rights of certain communities.
Amy: [00:25:33] So it’s not just parents who should care about this. It’s all of us. As we’ve seen over the last century. This is just a trope used to push against changes in society that are challenging outdated norms and threatening the liberty and body autonomy of anyone should be a threat to everyone.
Noah: [00:25:59] Talk Policy To Me is a co-production of UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and the Berkeley Institute for Young Americans.
Amy: [00:26:06] Our executive producers are Bora Lee Reed and Sarah Swanbeck.
Noah: [00:26:09] Editing for this episode by Amy Benziger and Elena Neale-Sacks.
Amy: [00:26:13] The music you heard today is by Blue Dot Sessions and Pat Mesiti-Miller.
Noah: [00:26:17] I’m Noah Cole.
Amy: [00:26:18] I’m Amy Benziger.
Noah: [00:26:19] Catch you next time.
