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Sam Seder: We are back. Sam Seder, Emma Vigeland on The Majority Report. Joining us now, Erin Reed, independent journalist, author of the Erin in the morning newsletter on Substack. Erin, welcome back to the program.
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Tony: Thank you so much for having me on again.
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Sam Seder: So 2024, been a busy year for the anti trans movement in some of these legislatures across the country. I don't know where we should start. Let's start from, I guess, the most recent back, but there was a piece in the New York Times, not about legislation, but it has been shocking for some, I guess, maybe not so much for others. The insistence on the New York Times sort of like on this sort of anti trans beat for now what feels like a couple of years, but what's the latest that we have? It was an article by Pamela Paul.
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Tony: Yes. So the New York Times published a 4500 word opinion piece by Pamela Paul. It ended up being printed into two full pages of New York Times print, probably one of the longest opinion pieces that they've ever published, and it read like a straight news piece. However, you could clearly tell whenever you, at least any journalist who covers this on a regular basis could clearly tell that it was indeed an opinion piece and not a fact checked piece because many of the citations did not back up her arguments. This led to the piece getting widely disseminated and within hours, actually, I was lucky enough to have caught the piece. Immediately after it was published, I wrote a response, a sort of overlooking of some of the claims in the piece and managed to get it out within a couple of hours. That piece has since then been circulated among academic listserves and major places where this issue is analyzed. The piece had tons of misinformation. It had things like an 80% detransition rate or desistence rate where we just got the national survey of the US Transgender survey today that states that only 3% of trans people regret their transitions. And so it was a bunch of things like that. There were retracted studies.
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Sam Seder: How does the New York Times publish anything, even if it's an opinion piece that states a fact that there's 80% detransition rate when it's 3%?
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Tony: I don't know. And I think that this is a major problem with the times. This has been something that the Times has been called out on before and it's getting know. I will say as a trans journalist, I have submitted pieces to the Times multiple times. I've never gotten accepted there. I'm one of the top journalists in this field whenever it comes to writing on this issue. And so it should say something about which voices they choose to platform. I'm working on a response to Pamela Paul, a broader one, since she has directly addressed another article directly at me and one of my colleagues, Evan Urquhart, on this issue. And so I don't know what it will take to change the culture at the New York Times, but they are content to print out things that are not backed by fact.
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Emma Vigeland: But where does that 80% figure come from? Can you just explain what that distortion, of course, presents?
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Tony: Yeah, so a lot of people will hear this. I've heard this in legislatures. This sometimes gets brought up in republican legislatures where they're going to ban care for any age or something like that. And the 80% figure actually comes from a 1996 Ken Zucker book. And Ken Zucker was a therapist up in Canada. His clinic was actually closed after investigations of conversion therapy. And in specific, the old way of diagnosing gender identity disorder had nothing to do with being trans. Instead, you would take your feminine young boy or masculine tom girl, and you brought them in and you said, they're not acting masculine enough, or they're not acting feminine enough. And Zucker would then go to try to get them to act more feminine or masculine. And so that is where this 80% number comes from. These people were not actually trans. And the standards have actually shifted since then. Now it is required for you to specifically want to be another sex or to identify as another gender. Those standards were not in place back then. Back then, they considered feminine gay men disordered, for instance.
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Sam Seder: So if I understand you correctly, he was measuring, implied, he was basically implying or inferring that they were trans, and then was able to stop them from the inference that he was making.
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Emma Vigeland: Exactly right.
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Tony: And not only that, but it was an active attempt to stop them that resulted in that number. And so we're talking about aversion therapy, we're talking about conversion therapy, we're talking about repetitive therapy, which is what a report, an independent report on his practices stated.
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Emma Vigeland: It's incredible to use those statistics when you see, like, I mean, you say that 3% figure, there are other much broader clinical studies from very recently that are all single digit numbers when it comes to desistence rates.
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Tony: I actually want to bring your listeners and viewers to think about this logically. If 80% of trans people detransitioned or desisted or don't identify as trans anymore, you would see far more detransitioners than trans people, like five times as many. That's just not the case. I mean, it's a problem. Whenever Florida can't find a single detransitioner to defend their law in court, it was cited that they couldn't find one that would stand in favor of the law.
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Sam Seder: There's a real quality to this. I remember for a long time, the right was talking about the estate tax and how many family farms had to be sold because of the so called death tax, they would call it. And when it came time to actually find these people, there were none. There was maybe one or two. But it's amazing how much these sort of zombie figures will continue. All right, well, let's move to sort of, I guess, the product that is generated by these type of lies. You just wrote a piece yesterday in Indiana. Apparently the attorney general launched a tool for parents to report gender ideology in schools. It doesn't seem like it's going very well for them right now.
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Tony: No. And you would think that he would have learned from the previous two times such report forms or snitch forms were introduced into the general public. You see, for Todd Rikita, he launched this form and he's not going to find many responses. We found, for instance, in Virginia, barely anybody submitted responses. And in Missouri, it shut down as well. But what he is going to get is large numbers of people reporting the Bible for teenage pregnancy. He's going to get large numbers of people submitting movie scripts. And that's what we saw. We saw people who were very upset with the sort of observer, sort of snitch form, if you will. And they said that, okay, we're going to start reporting just junk, garbage memes because we don't want this. We don't want people to be telling on our teachers. We don't want people to be telling on our students, telling on our peers.
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Sam Seder: Apparently a lot of people sent a picture of Trump with Rudy Giuliani and drag and Indiana Jones.
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Tony: They did. That was one of them.
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Sam Seder: Indiana Jones slapping a Nazi, which is rude.
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Tony: Yes. And there was a Godzilla with a trans flag that got sent as well.
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Sam Seder: Yeah, that's. And can people do that around the country? I mean, just if they see something they want to send to the Indiana.
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Tony: There is a link to report things to the Indiana attorney general. If you see so fit to report something that you are concerned about, that link is on my website.
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Sam Seder: All right. Well, fantastic. I mean, I think people should get on right away. The, the other sort of like a thing that we're seeing now. I mean, it really, the, the way that this has evolved, it's fascinating to me because I will say this, and I think I mentioned to this to you in the past, but in the wake of the 2022 election, particularly, how poorly things went for the Republicans in Michigan, where they dumped about $50 million into various sort of anti trans messaging as a way of an election strategy, and they got obliterated in Michigan, my assumption at that time was like, okay, they're done. There's no more efficacy for them in this. And certainly there's a sense, like, within the national republican media enterprise, it's not as sort of lucrative for them as it was. But it's still happening in these states because you get these right wing politicians and their constituency are amenable and want this stuff. And so we're still seeing this legislation continue. Yes.
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Tony: And I think that this is because once you fan the flames of moral panic, it's hard to put those fires out. And these fires still burn in places where we have majority republican legislatures. In Missouri, for instance, I was covering a hearing just last week where they had nine anti trans bills heard in a single day. It was by far the most common kind of bill that they were hearing, the most time dedicated to this issue. And Missouri representative Mann said in that hearing, he said that, I am a student of history. I know where this ends. You'll never be satisfied. You'll always be coming back for more. And I think that that's the best explanation for what's going on. I mean, we saw 73% of moms for Liberty candidates lose their races in this last election. They ran on trans issues. We saw Virginia got swept by Democrats who ran against antitrans policies. We saw people swear in on banned books in school board races in Loudoun county and Bucks county. And so they've lost their rational compass on this issue, and instead, they've just turned into this massive moral.
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Sam Seder: To. It feels like it's going to get even more extreme in the reddest of areas and create sort of. I mean, it's going to become that much more of an outlier. It feels.
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Tony: Fact. And in fact, just yesterday we saw in Iowa, the governor, Ken Reynolds, submitted a bill that would end all legal recognition for trans people and require trans people to have special markers on their birth certificates that identify them as trans. And in this bill, it actually redefines.
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Sam Seder: Their birth certificates or on their licenses.
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Tony: It was going to be on their birth certificates and driver's licenses. Right now, it's only on birth certificates. They've amended out the driver's license portion, but they have kept the birth certificate.
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Emma Vigeland: Portion, meaning amending someone's birth certificate with.
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Tony: A little special marker, with a marker that identifies them as trans, it will have, like, both gender markers on there. It's something that a lot of people, compared to the sort of pink triangle laws back in the 1940s where LGBTQ people were forced to identify themselves.
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Emma Vigeland: I need people to sit with this for 1 second. That this legislation forces, basically, a scarlet letter of transness onto a birth certificate to amend someone's birth certificate so that employers potentially, if you're giving documentation or if you're giving it to a bank, they get to determine. Be like, oh, I know what your genitals are. That is the purpose of this legislation, and it shouldn't be astounding to me, but that is very disturbing in what it's trying to do.
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Tony: Absolutely. And not only that, there's another aspect of this legislation that didn't get much coverage until yesterday, and that the legislation actually redefines the word equal. It says the equal no longer means same or identical when it comes to trans people. And then it goes on to say, separate does not always imply equality.
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Sam Seder: So if I understand what you're saying, is that they're changing the definition of what essentially discrimination would be, to say that you can do these things based upon this information that you gleaned from the birth certificate, what ostensibly is the purpose when there is a rationale that if I'm a trans person, I'm in Iowa, I got to go back and change my birth certificate to reflect this new sort of like, this new, I guess, marker, as it were. What is their rationale for why this needs to happen? What is the problem that ostensibly they're trying to fix?
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Tony: Absolutely. And that question was directly posed to the representative, and one of the representatives who was sponsoring the bill stated that, well, it's your birth record, and we need to have an accurate record of that. But then whenever you look into adoption, for instance, we allow people to go back and change their birth certificates whenever it comes to adoption. So that rationale does not hold up whenever it comes to trans people. They don't have a rationale for it, not one that makes sense. For instance, when asked about changing the word equal, the person was asked, what does the word equal even mean now? And she responded, equal would mean. I would assume it would mean. I don't know exactly what it means in this context. That is specifically what she said.
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Sam Seder: Where are they getting these ideas from? Is this like an Alec type of situation, or is there some sort of, I don't know, more conservative cultural version of Alec? These days, of course.
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Tony: So the alliance spending Freedom and Heritage foundation are the two major players right now. We know that the Heritage foundation released a report called project 2025, where they intend to make transgender and lgbtq people obscene and apply obscenity laws towards them, as well as ban lgbtq people online as pornographic and a number of other things, visions for the future of America, such as making the presidency absolute in power. And so this is what they are trying to do with these laws. This model legislation gets shotgunned everywhere. It was called out in Iowa for being from outside of Iowa. And in fact, 300 people showed up against the bill. Only three or four showed up in favor.
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Sam Seder: Amazing. It's amazing, though, the durability of this as an issue within these groups, despite the fact that there doesn't seem to be a significant constituency that is actually genuinely interested in it. I think for a while it was probably providing some clicks for some podcasters across the spectrums. But in terms of just real people, I think mostly people are just sort of baffled by this. I mean, you had a piece, I guess it was a week ago, there was audio from a Twitter whatever they do on spaces type of thing, and where Michigan Republicans, along with Ohio Republicans, said their end game is to ban trans care for everyone. And it's like, as a Michigan Republican, aren't you. Hey, guys, maybe we should work on something else. But no, it's fascinating to me.
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Tony: Absolutely. And this is Representative Gary click out of Ohio, the person who wrote the anti trans ban in Ohio that was vetoed by Governor DeWine. It blew up into national news whenever DeWine vetoed it. He had a meeting with a bunch of Michigan Republicans where they stated that the end game, and this is the words that they used, the end game is to ban this for everyone. Whereupon representative click came back and said, yeah, but you got to do it in small bits and incrementally. That way we can get there. And so they're talking about this openly. They're talking about what they want to do openly, and they don't intend to stop, regardless of how popular it is, because at this point, they've got the dollars, the advertising dollars from the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Heritage foundation. They've got the lobbyist money. They've got the very far Christian right that has attempted to take hold of the country through the extreme wing of the Republican Party.
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Sam Seder: Let's just end with Florida. There's two stories coming out of Florida in the past couple of weeks. One is that the Florida democratic congressional Caucus has appealed to President Biden to essentially block the license ban for trans people in Florida with the Real ID act. Explain to us what that means.
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Tony: Yes, of course. So in Florida, the DMV there, the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles there, stated that any trans person with a gender identity that did not match their assigned sex at birth could be found guilty of fraud, have their license revoked, and even potentially face criminal penalties. This is resulting in all dmvs refusing to change gender markers for trans people and people with changed gender markers wondering if they're going to become criminally liable. And so every single democratic representative to Congress, this is the first time, this is very significant, the first time that this has occurred, signed a letter to the Biden administration urging it to use the powers that it has to reverse this law. The 2005 law, the Real ID act, was actually passed by Republicans, and it states that gender, not sex, gender, must be on driver's licenses. And so the fact that this particular bill doesn't do that, the fact that this provision in Florida bans that and could charge people, this is something that the administration could conceivably do to perhaps fix this issue for Floridians.
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Sam Seder: And would this be the DOJ would step in or how would it work?
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Tony: So there are a number of ways that this could be done. It could be done through a slower process known as rule change, or it could be done by stating that Florida is now out of compliance. It may be the DOJ, it may be another one of the administration departments, but there is a way, a mechanism by which the state can be considered out of compliance with the Real ID act.
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Sam Seder: There's also now a bill in Florida that would force health insurance plans. I mean, just the idea that Republicans are forcing health insurance plans to cover anything is sort of interesting. But it becomes more clear when I finish the sentence to cover conversion therapy, which has been outlawed in I don't know how many states at this point. I still have on my soundboard a clip of one of the most famous conversion therapists who would take his tennis racket and smack his couch as if it was his mother. But what are the prospects for that bill?
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Tony: Very high. It's likely going to pass. This bill is actually the same bill that bans driver's licenses legislatively. So this administrative rule that's going on in Florida has made the driver's license ban work until they can pass this law. And the law is what's moving forward. But yes, it requires health insurance to cover conversion therapy outright. The representative was asked about that, and usually they try to couch it as oh, no, it's not actually conversion therapy. It's exploratory therapy. No, this representative specifically said yes. It allows for parents to choose that option if they see fit.
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Sam Seder: Well, Erin, really appreciate the work you do over at Erin in the morning, and people can go and check out this one other question that I feel like I saw this in a tweet some time back, but there was a lot of talk about the idea that the idea of an increase of people who are coming out as trans was some type of social media contagion or some other type of social contagion. And the counterargument to that is, of course, that our society has become more accepting and it's the right people don't.
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Emma Vigeland: Need left handedness graph.
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Sam Seder: The left handedness graph. But the rate of people who are coming out as trans seems to be sort of flattening at this point. Is that right?
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Tony: It does. And in fact, this came from a recent swedish study that shows that the rate does seem to be flattening. And we are probably getting to the real prevalence of transgender people in society, which has been estimated to be between one and 2%. Up until this point, many people simply have not been able to express their gender identity or their ability to be trans. I knew that I was trans in the 1990s. I explicitly identified online as trans, but I was not able to actually come out in public at that time. And so things have gotten better. I'm living proof of that. And I think many people who have come out in the last five years or so can also attest to that.
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Sam Seder: When you think about the percentage of legislation, of laws that have been introduced in the past two or three years regarding trans people, if people are looking for a social contagion, I think that's the first place they should start. Frankly, anything that's out of balance on that level, it's shocking to me. But again, appreciate the work and thank you so much for coming on. We'll put a link to your substac at majority FM.
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Tony: Thank you so much for having me.
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Emma Vigeland: Thanks so much.
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Sam Seder: All right, folks, we're going to take quick break. When we come back, we're going to be talking to Margie Mason and Robin McDowell, investigative reporters for the Associated Press, who have done a two year investigation into the use of prison labor, some of the big as brands that you use in your daily life. We'll be right back.
It obviously has been difficult historically for humans to tell which other humans have which type of genitals. But now the state is putting it on a piece of paper, revealing that otherwise mysterious information to evildoers who the person gives that piece of paper!
