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104: Advancing and Empowering the Lives of LGBTQIA+ Students w/ Keenan Crow
22 Plays3 years ago
Our guest today is Keenan Crow. Keenan Crow is the Director of Policy and Advocacy for One Iowa, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance, empower, and improve the lives of LGBTQ Iowans through education, advocacy, and collaboration. Keenan has been active in Iowa politics since 2010 when they interned with Chris Hall’s campaign for Iowa State Representative. Since then, they have been involved with several nonprofit organizations including Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and Cedar Valley Citizens for Undoing Racism. They were also involved in One Iowa’s campus group at the University of Northern Iowa, where they obtained a BA in Political Communications and a Master’s in Public Policy. The campus at UNI is also where I met Keenan, now well over a decade ago.
In this episode, we talk to Keenan about their work at One Iowa Action - and how listeners can get involved in supporting similar groups around the country - current challenges that LGBTQ youth are facing, from book banning to bathroom bills, and what allyship looks like, especially for teachers, in 2022. How can we make our schools and classrooms safe and welcoming places for LGBTQ students?
GUESTS
Keenan Crow, Director of Policy and Advocacy for One Iowa and champion for LGBTQ civil rights
RESOURCES
Recommended
Transcript
Unfair Competition: Private vs. Public Institutions
00:00:00
Speaker
Any talk of competition between these institutions and public institutions isn't a competition at all because we're not talking about institutions that are playing by the same set of rules.
00:00:10
Speaker
We're talking about one set of institutions that gets to do damn near anything it wants and another set of institutions that is prohibited from discriminating by law against not just LGBTQ kids, but kids with disabilities, kids with different religious views, kids with, you know, you name it.
00:00:26
Speaker
Any protected class in the Civil Rights Act, for the most part, does not have to be observed by these private institutions.
00:00:33
Speaker
And that's just one thing that doesn't even go for the transparency that's required for public institutions versus private institutions.
00:00:40
Speaker
All of these other things.
00:00:41
Speaker
Again, it's just not an even playing field.
00:00:43
Speaker
And so talking about choice is totally dishonest.
Episode Intro & Acknowledgements
00:00:48
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 104 of our podcast at the Human Restoration Project.
00:00:53
Speaker
My name is Nick Covington and I'm a social studies teacher from Ankeny, Iowa.
00:00:57
Speaker
Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom are Simeon Frang, Gamal Sharif, and Kimberly Baker.
00:01:05
Speaker
Thank you for your ongoing support.
00:01:07
Speaker
You can learn more about the Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org, or find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.
Meet Kenan Crow: Advocacy for LGBTQ Iowans
00:01:21
Speaker
My guest today is Kenan Crow.
00:01:23
Speaker
Kenan Crow is the Director of Policy and Advocacy for One Iowa, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance, empower, and improve the lives of LGBTQ Iowans through education, advocacy, and collaboration.
00:01:37
Speaker
Keenan has been active in Iowa politics since 2010 when they interned with Chris Hall's Campaign for Iowa State Representative, and since then they have been involved with several nonprofit organizations including Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and Cedar Valley Citizens for Undoing Racism.
00:01:53
Speaker
They were also involved in one Iowa's campus group at the University of Northern Iowa where they obtained a BA in Political Communications and a Master's in Public Policy.
00:02:02
Speaker
The campus at UNI is also where I met Kenan now well over a decade ago.
00:02:07
Speaker
You can find OneIowa at OneIowa.org and on Twitter at OneIowa, and you can follow Kenan directly at KF underscore Crow.
Challenges & Advocacy for LGBTQ Youth
00:02:17
Speaker
In this episode, I talk to Kenan about their work at OneIowa Action and how listeners can get involved in supporting similar groups around the country,
00:02:25
Speaker
current challenges that LGBTQ youth are facing from book banning to bathroom bills, and what allyship looks like, especially for teachers in 2022.
00:02:35
Speaker
How can we make our schools and classrooms safe and welcoming places for LGBTQ students?
00:02:41
Speaker
I hope you enjoy the episode.
00:02:50
Speaker
Yeah.
One Iowa's Expanded Mission
00:02:51
Speaker
So for those of you who don't know, One Iowa started out in 2005, primarily as a marriage equality organization.
00:02:58
Speaker
Now, Iowans got marriage equality in 2009 through the Barnum v. Breen decision and then full federal benefits through Windsor on June 26th of 2013.
00:03:10
Speaker
I actually signed my contract with OneEye on June 27th of 2013, knowing kind of that we would be shifting away from marriage, right?
00:03:18
Speaker
Like at that point, the organization was really in a pivotal time and we had a choice of do we...
00:03:26
Speaker
Do we pack up shop and say, great job, we did it, we got marriage equality, everything is good?
00:03:31
Speaker
Or do we start to look at other issues that impact LGBTQ equality?
00:03:37
Speaker
And in my opinion, are in some ways more significant than marriage to people's day-to-day lives, right?
00:03:44
Speaker
The ability to get a credit card without being discriminated against, the ability to rent an apartment without being discriminated against,
00:03:52
Speaker
All these different things that are not quite as as sexy as marriage equality, but are no less important to the overall goal of equal treatment for LGBTQ folks.
00:04:05
Speaker
So obviously I'm still working for them.
00:04:08
Speaker
So we still exist.
00:04:09
Speaker
We did choose to pivot and to go into a more multi-issue advocacy space.
00:04:15
Speaker
And so now our mandate is not marriage equality.
00:04:18
Speaker
It is anything that disproportionately impacts LGBTQ Iowans.
00:04:23
Speaker
And so that's a very broad mandate.
00:04:25
Speaker
It goes from health care to employment to criminal justice to education, really kind of everything because...
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Speaker
LGBTQ people are everywhere.
00:04:36
Speaker
They are part of almost every family.
00:04:39
Speaker
They are our coworkers, our neighbors, our friends.
00:04:41
Speaker
And so anything that kind of impacts anyone is subject to have a disproportionate impact on LGBTQ Iowans, depending on how we construct that policy.
Structure of One Iowa & the Equality Federation
00:04:52
Speaker
I was wondering maybe if you could speak a little bit more about the organizational structure of One Iowa, because I'd imagine some listeners probably aren't in Iowa, but if they want to get involved with similar organizations, is One Iowa kind of its own thing?
00:05:05
Speaker
Is it connected to any national chapter that people could find if I'm in Indiana or Arizona?
00:05:11
Speaker
So OneIowa is its own thing.
00:05:13
Speaker
We don't actually have anybody like above us or anything like that.
00:05:17
Speaker
We do have, I think, technically three organizations just based on IRS codes and what we can do in each one of those organizations.
00:05:24
Speaker
So we have a 501c3, a 501c4, and a PAC.
00:05:27
Speaker
So, but the PAC is pretty much dormant at the moment.
00:05:32
Speaker
So one Iowa is the 501C3, one Iowa action is the 501C4.
00:05:36
Speaker
And that's really where a lot of my work is kind of happening is in the 501C4 area, because that's where a lot of our policy and electoral work happens.
00:05:47
Speaker
If somebody wanted to go and find a great place to find their local or their statewide equality organization, though, we are part of a loose federation of organizations that don't technically have anybody over them, but we're all joined together to share resources and to share information.
00:06:07
Speaker
And this organization also has wonderful organizers and folks that help us with our kind of day-to-day operations, and that's called the Equality Federation.
00:06:15
Speaker
So if you go to equalityfederation.org and then go to the map, you can find whatever...
00:06:21
Speaker
statewide organization is part of the Equality Federation, and that's probably going to be your statewide advocacy organization.
00:06:28
Speaker
Most of them are like equality state name, so like Equality Texas, Equality Illinois, etc.
00:06:35
Speaker
There are some...
00:06:36
Speaker
Some that are not at all like that, like Promo in Missouri or One Iowa and then One Colorado, which was founded by a former staff member of One Iowa.
00:06:47
Speaker
So it just kind of depends.
00:06:49
Speaker
But there's only two One organizations and then most of them are equality states.
00:06:55
Speaker
It makes a lot of sense that if people want to, after this conversation or beyond, get more involved, check out that equality, the federated states of equality there.
Kenan Crow's Lobbying Efforts
00:07:06
Speaker
So I'm glad you brought up the 501C4, the One Iowa Action, because a lot of the conversations that we have on social media really pop up around this time of year when the Iowa legislative session gavels in.
00:07:19
Speaker
I don't know if you want to speak a little bit more specific to
00:07:23
Speaker
that kind of work that you actually do there.
00:07:26
Speaker
Because we talk about just the nitty gritty, the details of how the legislation gets made and the backroom deals, I suppose.
00:07:34
Speaker
Maybe then we can shift from talking to what it is that you do.
00:07:39
Speaker
Because I imagine a lot of people might have some interest in following that work as well.
00:07:42
Speaker
And then maybe we can shift to start talking about issues and especially with this legislative session in Iowa and kind of generalize from there.
00:07:52
Speaker
I actually started as a community organizer at this organization, but for the last six years, I've been lobbying full time for the organization.
00:07:59
Speaker
Now, that means that I do some other stuff when the legislature is not in session.
00:08:05
Speaker
So for those of you who don't know, the Iowa legislature is a citizen legislature.
00:08:08
Speaker
They don't operate year round by any means.
00:08:11
Speaker
They normally operate like four to six months out of the year, depending on how the session is constructed and depending on how long they're willing to go without
00:08:18
Speaker
their per diem expenses because eventually those run out there's not a technical end date but there is an end date for the per diem expenses and that sometimes motivates them to get done a little bit more quickly um so and to our benefit yeah so yeah yeah i mean i wish there was a hard stop date because then we could actually run out the clock on some of this bad stuff but unfortunately they can extend that indefinitely um however they need to to get what they want done done
00:08:44
Speaker
That work basically looks like, you know, reading almost at least the summary of every single bill that comes out, probably the explanation on it and even going into probably
00:08:57
Speaker
quarter of them, I read the entire bill just to make sure that they're not sneaking anything in.
00:09:02
Speaker
Now, we do have a one-subject rule, but we've also been involved in litigation on what's called log-rolling claims, which is trying to get around the one-subject rule, and judges are never willing to take us up on it.
00:09:12
Speaker
So there's kind of this, like,
00:09:15
Speaker
In name only one subject rule thing that goes on, unfortunately.
00:09:21
Speaker
So we do have to watch rather closely, even though we have the one subject rule, there are sometimes still more than one thing involved in a piece of legislation.
00:09:30
Speaker
And so.
00:09:32
Speaker
I'm probably not reading the Ag Committee's bills, right?
00:09:36
Speaker
I'm probably not reading most of the bills that come out of Ways and Means and things like that.
00:09:42
Speaker
But in terms of judiciary, education, commerce, human resources, I mean, those are all things, all areas where we could be disproportionately impacted by.
00:09:54
Speaker
just depending on what happens.
00:09:56
Speaker
And sometimes it's not even necessarily obvious how it's going to impact LGBTQ folks.
Impact of HIV Criminalization & Anti-LGBTQ Legislation
00:10:02
Speaker
One kind of interesting example is last year there was a sex offender registry bill.
00:10:08
Speaker
And the basic premise of that bill was if somebody moves from a different state,
00:10:16
Speaker
that isn't Iowa into Iowa, and they are required to register in their state on the sex offender registry, then once they get to Iowa, they will also have to register under whatever those terms were or whatever the strictest term was.
00:10:30
Speaker
If Iowa has a stricter term, then they have to deal with that.
00:10:32
Speaker
If their state had a stricter term, then they have to go with...
00:10:35
Speaker
with that.
00:10:36
Speaker
It doesn't seem like it's going to impact LGBTQ people, right?
00:10:39
Speaker
Like that just seems like, oh, well, we're trying to make sure that sex offenders don't come to Iowa or whatever else.
00:10:45
Speaker
But here's the problem.
00:10:46
Speaker
So back in 2014, 2015,
00:10:52
Speaker
We overhauled our state HIV criminalization statute.
00:10:57
Speaker
So they used to be here in Iowa that if you could not prove that you had disclosed your HIV status to a partner before engaging in sexual contact, then you were on the hook for 25 years in prison and a lifetime on the sex offender registry.
00:11:14
Speaker
Now, again, that's you can't prove that you had disclosed it, right?
00:11:17
Speaker
So all sorts of people were abusing this people in domestic violence situations, people in all sorts of other situations that were being manipulated, and could didn't have any like written proof or anything that they had disclosed their status, were being prosecuted under this law.
00:11:33
Speaker
Now, the new law isn't perfect.
00:11:35
Speaker
It's definitely better, it changes into a tiered system where you have to prove like
00:11:39
Speaker
intent to transmit or actual transmission, for instance, that it didn't require that you actually transmitted the virus.
00:11:44
Speaker
It just required that you couldn't prove that you disclosed it, right?
00:11:47
Speaker
So we overhauled that, and it is now a much better law.
00:11:51
Speaker
The problem is that a lot of states around us, for instance, South Dakota, still have this law on the books in a very similar way.
00:11:59
Speaker
They have an HIV nondisclosure statute.
00:12:03
Speaker
And that requires sex offender registry requirements.
00:12:06
Speaker
And so we end up in this weird situation where somebody moving to Iowa from South Dakota could be on the sex offender registry for life for something that is not even a crime in the state of Iowa.
00:12:17
Speaker
And that is bizarre, right?
00:12:18
Speaker
Like that's not okay.
00:12:20
Speaker
Unfortunately, that law advanced.
00:12:21
Speaker
And we couldn't stop it because it's very unpopular to say, hey, I want to like make things a little easier on sex offenders, even if it's a completely rational and reasonable argument of this isn't even a crime.
00:12:33
Speaker
Right.
00:12:33
Speaker
Like or the other example was different age of consent laws between states.
00:12:38
Speaker
Right.
00:12:38
Speaker
Right.
00:12:38
Speaker
So one one state has a different age of consent law.
00:12:41
Speaker
And so you get in trouble for it.
00:12:42
Speaker
But in that other state wouldn't even be a deal.
00:12:44
Speaker
So it sometimes takes a little digging to come out with what the differential impact is going to be.
00:12:51
Speaker
And in that case, it's on people living with HIV, which are disproportionately represented in LGBT communities.
00:12:57
Speaker
And it also seems to, I mean, if you just think about the history of that kind of legislation, I mean, the LGBTQ community has been directly targeted by
00:13:07
Speaker
by those things in the past.
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah, those laws were created, right, for LGBTQ people, basically, because everybody assumed that it was a gay disease, essentially.
00:13:16
Speaker
There's the, what the US government thought it was for H's, heroin users, Haitians, homosexuals, and I can't even remember what the
00:13:25
Speaker
what the other H was off the top of my head.
00:13:28
Speaker
Oh, hemophiliacs.
00:13:28
Speaker
There's a fourth slur in there somewhere, yeah.
00:13:30
Speaker
Hemophiliacs.
00:13:31
Speaker
That's not technically a slur, but... Oh, okay.
00:13:33
Speaker
I mean, the battles that you think that you fought and are done, we've kind of learned are just never... You've never finished fighting those things.
00:13:42
Speaker
And those HIV criminalization statutes just don't make anybody safer, right?
00:13:46
Speaker
Because the vast majority of folks who are on appropriate medications are down to what we would consider...
00:13:52
Speaker
an undetectable level, which means when you measure the amount of particles of virus in their blood, the machine can no longer measure it because the level is so low.
00:14:00
Speaker
Now, that doesn't mean you don't have HIV anymore, right?
00:14:02
Speaker
You have to continue taking those medications for the rest of your life.
00:14:05
Speaker
So having HIV is not fun, but it's also not a death sentence.
00:14:10
Speaker
When you are undetectable, you're also untransmissible.
00:14:13
Speaker
There's never been a case of somebody with an undetectable viral load transmitting the virus to another person in all of medical history.
00:14:19
Speaker
It's just not possible.
00:14:20
Speaker
So criminalizing people who are undetectable for, quote unquote, putting people at risk for transmitting the virus is nonsense.
00:14:26
Speaker
It has no basis in literally anything.
00:14:29
Speaker
It is just a fear response.
00:14:31
Speaker
And the way that you can get around that law is by just not testing yourself, right?
00:14:35
Speaker
If you don't know your HIV status, you can't be prosecuted.
00:14:39
Speaker
So it was causing people not to get tested.
00:14:42
Speaker
It was causing people to have this false sense of security around whether or not they needed to get tested because they assumed, well,
00:14:48
Speaker
Hey, it's a crime to transmit the virus to me, so therefore I'm safe.
00:14:53
Speaker
It just had all sorts of really awful negative impacts kind of across the
00:14:58
Speaker
it is very difficult sometimes to kind of wrap your head around like those downstream effects of legislation.
00:15:06
Speaker
And I think, you know, we're fortunate in the case that we have folks like yourself bringing those questions to bear on these kinds of issues.
00:15:14
Speaker
So I wonder too, you know, we're an education podcast, I suppose, and we've chatted a little bit about the education bills that
00:15:21
Speaker
have not just targeted LGBTQ youth, but around the issues of books, but in athletics, elsewhere.
00:15:29
Speaker
We can start with that Iowa context.
00:15:31
Speaker
What are some of the challenges that you've seen facing LGBTQ youth in Iowa?
00:15:36
Speaker
And I don't know, maybe we can kind of draw some bigger context from that too.
00:15:40
Speaker
So Iowa is kind of one of the worst offenders in this regard, at least in terms of the volume of legislation that is being released right now.
00:15:47
Speaker
We're currently tracking
00:15:49
Speaker
23 anti-LGBTQ bills here in the state.
00:15:53
Speaker
And that's just the ones that I believe are directly targeted.
00:15:57
Speaker
So our inclusion criteria for that list are things that specifically name LGBTQ people, things that would have a primary impact on LGBTQ people, not like a secondary differential impact, or things that were like...
00:16:10
Speaker
clearly motivated by stories or myths about LGBTQ people.
00:16:14
Speaker
So things like the banned books stuff, et cetera.
00:16:19
Speaker
And I don't even have that one on the list yet.
00:16:21
Speaker
So that would be number 24, technically.
00:16:26
Speaker
There are all sorts of other things like vouchers or some of this obscenity stuff that don't necessarily directly target LGBTQ people but are going to have a disproportionate impact.
00:16:36
Speaker
But I'm not even talking about that stuff in my list of 23.
00:16:39
Speaker
I'm talking about stuff that is directly targeted like squarely at LGBTQ people for the purpose of discriminating against them in some way or
00:16:48
Speaker
shape or form.
00:16:50
Speaker
And a lot of them have to do with youth.
00:16:53
Speaker
About half of them are targeted squarely at transgender children, like a very, very specific marginalized community of kids who have basically no political power and no ability to fight back.
00:17:05
Speaker
against those things.
00:17:06
Speaker
And unfortunately, that mirrors national trends as well.
00:17:10
Speaker
We've seen an absolute explosion in anti-transgender legislation over the past few years.
00:17:16
Speaker
If you look at 2019, you see like 35 different anti-transgender bills introduced in state legislatures across the country.
00:17:23
Speaker
If you go to 2020, that number jumps to 100.
00:17:24
Speaker
If you go to 2021, that number jumps to 180.
00:17:30
Speaker
So it's just like an exponential growth in this kind of legislation because it's been identified as the new wedge issue that people can motivate voters with.
00:17:40
Speaker
And again, because these kids really have no political power, no ability to fight back, if you're trying to score political points against folks, that's one way to do it in a very cynical way, right, is to take a community that absolutely does not have the numbers to vote against you and
00:17:57
Speaker
And in sometimes is just so scared to speak out because of their own health and safety that they won't do it.
00:18:04
Speaker
It's a really nefarious, honestly, strategy.
00:18:08
Speaker
And unfortunately, in some cases, it's starting to work in some regards.
00:18:12
Speaker
I don't think that this is a sustainable trajectory.
00:18:15
Speaker
I think eventually people are going to get wise to it.
00:18:17
Speaker
Right now, the problem is that our opponents can hit people kind of in the intuition in about 10 seconds, and it takes us about five minutes to unpack
00:18:27
Speaker
all of those assumptions that are laden into their statements.
00:18:32
Speaker
And that makes it really hard when the average soundbite is, you know, six to eight seconds, depending on what you're looking at in the media.
00:18:41
Speaker
They can communicate a lot because of all of the societal biases surrounding gender, surrounding transgender people, etc.
00:18:49
Speaker
It's easy to pack those things in because the assumptions are unfortunately right now on their side.
00:18:55
Speaker
Again, I think
00:18:56
Speaker
As time goes by, that is going to be less and less an effective mode of operation.
00:19:02
Speaker
The other thing to think about is a lot of this stuff is not new in any way, right?
00:19:08
Speaker
Like we used to try to ban gay men from restrooms and from locker rooms because people were like, oh, they're going to gawk at us.
00:19:16
Speaker
Oh, they're going to do all these things.
00:19:17
Speaker
Basically, the exact same arguments that they're making about transgender people now are all arguments that they made about gay people 20 to 30 years ago.
00:19:25
Speaker
And so we know this playbook.
00:19:27
Speaker
We know how this works.
00:19:29
Speaker
And unfortunately, one of the only things that we can do about it is keep communicating what's wrong with these messages.
00:19:36
Speaker
And, you know, time will eventually catch up here and eventually...
00:19:41
Speaker
The assumptions are not going to be as stacked against us as they are now, but it's about kind of limiting the amount of harm that they can do in the time being, because right now they have, especially in the Iowa legislature where they have a trifecta, a whole lot of power.
00:19:55
Speaker
And we can't do a whole lot about it in those instances, aside from, you know, annoy them.
00:20:04
Speaker
is there any way in which laws, say like the divisive concepts law, so-called, that was passed, you know, signed into the legislature last June in Iowa, is there any way that that has impacted, you know, the work that one Iowa has done in schools or with
Divisive Laws & Impact on LGBTQ Activism
00:20:20
Speaker
schools?
00:20:20
Speaker
Because that's not one that would necessarily be targeted in your targeted list of LGBTQ bills, but I can imagine that schools might be a little bit more shy to enlist the help of a knowledgeable organization like that
00:20:33
Speaker
seeing not wanting to face the backlash of, you know, of bringing you into the issue.
00:20:39
Speaker
Yeah, they want to review the slides, right?
00:20:41
Speaker
They want to see exactly what we're talking about before we talk about it and make sure that we don't cross into any territory that they might deem is somehow violating that law.
00:20:50
Speaker
Now, kind of the interesting thing about that law and about its intersection with LGBTQ activism is that that specific law is basically a carbon copy of an executive order issued by the Trump administration that
00:21:04
Speaker
a couple years into office.
00:21:05
Speaker
And that executive order was actually invalidated because of a number of LGBTQ organizations that said, look, this is unconstitutionally vague and we'll restrict our ability to conduct our trainings.
00:21:16
Speaker
So that was already struck down by the work of LGBTQ organizations.
00:21:21
Speaker
And now it is coming back
00:21:23
Speaker
in-state format to try to do this.
00:21:26
Speaker
Now, it's a much narrower construction than the Trump executive order in that they have kind of restricted the amount of venues that it applies to.
00:21:35
Speaker
The reason that those LGBTQ orgs were able to successfully sue against the executive order version is because
00:21:42
Speaker
That applied to anybody who was receiving state funding at all.
00:21:45
Speaker
And that included a whole bunch of nonprofit organizations, et cetera.
00:21:49
Speaker
So we are not necessarily directly impacted in our ability to conduct any training.
00:21:53
Speaker
I mean, I can go and say whatever I want to, you know, any non-governmental organization.
00:21:59
Speaker
It is when I start talking to a state agency or a school or something else like that, that is when I have to kind of observe those restrictions.
00:22:09
Speaker
And so it's not nearly...
00:22:10
Speaker
As linear of a way to kind of litigate against it, it's a little bit more difficult.
00:22:15
Speaker
But I think we have some good ammunition in terms of why it's bad and why it doesn't work.
00:22:20
Speaker
When we look at the ruling in that executive order to say literally verbatim, it's unconstitutionally vague and therefore hard to determine what you're actually allowed to say or not say.
00:22:31
Speaker
And what we end up having to do then is so that the federal executive order gets struck down, but then it's like playing whack-a-mole with, you know, 50 state legislatures when, you know, not 50, but you got half the state legislatures who are then going to try to pass their own version and then go through, you know, the regional state Supreme courts and then, you know, district courts and then.
00:22:52
Speaker
take it all the way up to the Supreme Court.
00:22:53
Speaker
You're going with, yeah, state constitutions versus the federal constitution in some cases.
00:22:59
Speaker
Obviously, you could still bring a federal case against it, but it's, yeah, it's a less clear path toward invalidating it.
00:23:06
Speaker
And of course, every construction of it is different.
00:23:09
Speaker
You know, they change words here and there and they try to specify certain things that maybe the previous court ruling said that they explicitly couldn't say.
00:23:17
Speaker
And so they'll tame it down in that one specific way and try to salvage, you know, the other 90 percent of it or whatever.
00:23:23
Speaker
And you mentioned that vouchers, again, wouldn't even make it onto that list of 22 or 22.
00:23:29
Speaker
22 to 24 explicitly LGBTQ targeted pieces
Voucher Programs and Discrimination
00:23:34
Speaker
of legislation.
00:23:34
Speaker
But can you speak to like the rhetoric around that kind of seems like rock solid from one perspective, right?
00:23:40
Speaker
You're going to give parents the choice for their kid to be able to attend the, you know, the private or public school of their choice.
00:23:48
Speaker
So why would we deny the parents or students this choice?
00:23:51
Speaker
Just give kids the money and let them take it into that space.
00:23:54
Speaker
How could that be?
00:23:55
Speaker
How could that possibly
00:23:56
Speaker
be construed as being anti-LGBTQ.
00:24:01
Speaker
Yeah, and I've heard people legitimately say like, oh, well, you would want this option if your kid was bullied or you'd want this option if you were an LGBTQ kid and you needed to go to a different space or whatever, right?
00:24:11
Speaker
And I think the problem lies in the fact that we don't treat these organizations similarly under the law.
00:24:19
Speaker
And so any discussion about choice is at best a misunderstanding and at worst an intentional misrepresentation of the situation.
00:24:29
Speaker
So we actually last year when the vouchers were going through myself and the interns looked up every non-public school policy that we can find.
00:24:39
Speaker
There are 181 accredited non-public schools in the state of Iowa.
00:24:43
Speaker
We found 176 policies.
00:24:46
Speaker
So about 97% of them, that was a lot.
00:24:48
Speaker
We went through them line by line to see what they said about LGBTQ people.
00:24:56
Speaker
75% of them indicated in some way that they would be willing to discriminate against LGBTQ people.
00:25:01
Speaker
And that was either in an explicit statement saying that they wouldn't allow LGBTQ children or the children of LGBTQ parents to attend.
00:25:08
Speaker
or in more subtle ways by saying that sexual immorality wouldn't be permitted, and then on some other page defining sexual immorality in a way that matches LGBTQ identities, or some just reserved the right to discriminate in the future.
00:25:21
Speaker
That was kind of the most common way that the Catholic diocese was doing it, was essentially saying, well, we probably won't do this, but if we want to, we legally can.
00:25:31
Speaker
So just so you know, you have no legal recourse in that situation if we change our mind.
00:25:35
Speaker
Only 15% of them affirmatively said that they would not discriminate against LGBTQ people in any way, shape or form.
00:25:44
Speaker
15% of those 181 schools.
00:25:48
Speaker
So, you know, Iowa non-public schools have totals loud and clear what they're going to do if they're permitted to discriminate, right?
00:25:55
Speaker
15% have protections.
00:25:57
Speaker
So any talk of competition between these institutions and public institutions is...
00:26:01
Speaker
Isn't a competition at all because we're not talking about institutions that are playing by the same set of rules.
00:26:07
Speaker
We're talking about one set of institutions that gets to do damn near anything it wants and another set of institutions that is prohibited from discriminating by law against not just LGBTQ kids, but kids with disabilities, kids with different religious views, kids with, you know, you name it.
00:26:23
Speaker
Any protected class in the Civil Rights Act, for the most part, does not have to be observed by these private institutions.
00:26:30
Speaker
And that's just one thing.
00:26:32
Speaker
That doesn't even go for the transparency that's required for public institutions versus private institutions, all of these other things.
00:26:39
Speaker
Again, it's just not an even playing field.
00:26:41
Speaker
And so talking about choice is totally dishonest.
00:26:45
Speaker
I think that that is something that is just so lost in this conversation is nobody asks choice for whom.
00:26:51
Speaker
Right.
00:26:52
Speaker
They're just so caught up in that like market logic and that's going to solve all these problems, like failing to realize the folks that the market is going to be allowed to actively discriminate against.
00:27:04
Speaker
Now, when you say discriminate against like the the
00:27:08
Speaker
I'm trying to do the quick math here.
00:27:10
Speaker
The 85% that say they can do that, what would be a concrete example of, hey, I'm a parent, my child is openly gay, I'm trying to go get them enrolled in this private school for whatever reason.
00:27:22
Speaker
On what basis do they have to either admit my kid later on to find out they're gay and expel them, or just to prohibit them from applying in the first place?
00:27:31
Speaker
What are the hurdles that those folks run into?
00:27:33
Speaker
I mean, it's all of the above, right?
00:27:36
Speaker
Like, a lot of them just have initial contracts that you have to sign essentially saying that you're not going to be gay or transgender.
00:27:43
Speaker
I mean, there's literal contracts in there that have it all spelled out in terms of, you know, I will not engage in any sort of gender fluidity or transgenderism, which is not a word.
00:27:56
Speaker
But they say stuff like that all the time.
00:27:59
Speaker
Or, you know, I will not...
00:28:02
Speaker
engage in sex outside of marriage.
00:28:04
Speaker
And then there's a little asterisk and then you go read like marriages between one man and one woman and, you know, like all this other stuff.
00:28:11
Speaker
So it's it's sometimes it's that sometimes it's just in the school policies.
00:28:15
Speaker
And so if they find out later after the fact, you're going to not be allowed to attend.
00:28:21
Speaker
Sometimes it's based on
00:28:23
Speaker
membership on a specific church.
00:28:25
Speaker
You have to go to specific churches in order to attend, and those churches are anti-LGBTQ, and so they're not going to let you be a member, and therefore you're not going to be able to go to that school.
00:28:35
Speaker
It's a lot of different ways, which is why we had to make the criteria so broad.
00:28:40
Speaker
To even study this issue in the first place, because there are so many different mechanisms they're using, because again, they have extremely wide latitude to discriminate in these ways.
00:28:49
Speaker
They can say pretty much anything they want in terms of who can and can't attend their private institution.
00:28:55
Speaker
They're allowed to do that.
00:28:58
Speaker
And kind of turning, I guess, the conversation from the voucher programs specifically, maybe just to education generally, teachers listening to this who want to be able to support students who are in the difficult situation of not necessarily being comfortable being out at school or those who are
00:29:18
Speaker
you know, openly identifying, say, as transgender students in suburban rural Iowa.
Supporting LGBTQ Students: Teacher Guidance
00:29:24
Speaker
You know, how can teachers better kind of navigate those spaces for these kids?
00:29:29
Speaker
And the conversation I remember 10 or 15 years ago was around that concept of allyship.
00:29:36
Speaker
And has that concept changed at all?
00:29:38
Speaker
What can teachers do to be better allies for LGBTQ kids?
00:29:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:44
Speaker
I don't think the concept has changed.
00:29:46
Speaker
I mean, I think our understanding about what
00:29:49
Speaker
support looks like for these kids has maybe changed a little bit, but for the most part, a lot of it's very similar, right?
00:29:54
Speaker
Like number one, you need to be supportive of those kids, but also you need to be visibly supportive in some way.
00:30:01
Speaker
Otherwise they don't know that you're supportive.
00:30:03
Speaker
So, um, and that means, you know, um, doing what kind of whatever your district allows you to do in order to be visible, whether that's having a pride flag in your classroom or having like a rainbow sticker on the outside of your door or wearing a,
00:30:18
Speaker
an LGBTQ inclusive pin on your lapel, or, you know, there's, there's all sorts of ways that you can kind of hint that you're a safe person to have a conversation with.
00:30:27
Speaker
But,
00:30:29
Speaker
if nobody knows that they can approach you, then they're not going to, right?
00:30:33
Speaker
These are kids who are not going to go out on a limb and trust some random adult with that information if they think, A, it's going to get back to unsupported parents or it's going to get out to their peers or you're going to view them in some sort of negative way.
00:30:49
Speaker
They're only going to go to those trusted few first when that coming out process starts because that's how it works with pretty much all of us, right?
00:30:57
Speaker
We go to...
00:30:58
Speaker
a handful of folks who we think are going to receive us well, and we share that information with them, and we kind of see how they react.
00:31:07
Speaker
And then we kind of use that reaction to snowball and think, well, okay, maybe this other person, and maybe this other person, and maybe they can help you with this person.
00:31:15
Speaker
And then at least you've got a couple people
00:31:19
Speaker
to talk to in confidence.
00:31:21
Speaker
And one of the few things that I think a lot of people don't know is that in terms of evaluating suicide risk, one of the things that we see is just having one supportive adult in your life can like have your risk of attempting suicide in the future.
00:31:41
Speaker
50% reduction.
00:31:42
Speaker
That is massive, right?
00:31:44
Speaker
And so just being that one person for that kid can literally save lives.
00:31:51
Speaker
It sounds hyperbolic, but honestly, it isn't.
00:31:56
Speaker
The data backs this position up.
00:31:58
Speaker
That just...
00:31:59
Speaker
being that person that they can come to and talk to in confidence, that has a huge impact on a kid who maybe has nobody in their life aside from you that they can come and talk to about this because they're struggling.
00:32:12
Speaker
Because maybe every other adult in their life is telling them messages about how awful it is to be LGBTQ or how awful it is to be trans.
00:32:20
Speaker
And maybe those messages aren't even explicit, right?
00:32:22
Speaker
Maybe they're implicit messages that they're getting from
00:32:25
Speaker
the way adults talk about LGBTQ people that they see in the media or the jokes that they make or, you know, whatever else.
00:32:32
Speaker
Or they could even be just inferring statements from things that they don't fully understand.
00:32:39
Speaker
So just like in my own personal life, the first thing my father said to me when I was born was, you can be anything you want except gay.
00:32:47
Speaker
Literally verbatim, that is what he said.
00:32:50
Speaker
And I had heard that story for years and years and had always kind of understood it to mean gay people are bad and he doesn't like gay people, right?
00:32:58
Speaker
It actually turned out that the reason was he had a really good friend while he was in the military who was murdered.
00:33:03
Speaker
for being gay.
00:33:04
Speaker
And he was terrified that that would happen to someone else in his life that he loved.
00:33:09
Speaker
And so that was kind of the impetus for making that statement.
00:33:11
Speaker
But when you're a kid, you don't know to inquire any further.
00:33:16
Speaker
You just assume that the message that you're hearing is the message that it's facially communicating, right?
00:33:22
Speaker
So, I mean, imagine a kid like me who is receiving those messages and who might think that they're gay.
00:33:27
Speaker
And even though their family isn't unsupportive, because my family was not unsupportive when I
00:33:31
Speaker
at all.
00:33:32
Speaker
They're very supportive.
00:33:33
Speaker
And I should have realized that sooner.
00:33:35
Speaker
But again, these implicit messages can stack up in ways that you can't necessarily predict.
00:33:40
Speaker
So even with a family that would be nominally supportive if they came out, it's really important for you to still be there to support those kids and to confer explicit messages of support so that they can start unpacking maybe what's going on in their own
00:33:58
Speaker
I actually had a colleague of mine who sent out a survey.
00:34:02
Speaker
He wanted to gather some data about how LGBTQIA students felt in our school.
00:34:09
Speaker
And kind of the biggest piece of feedback that we got about specific behaviors from staff that actually make them feel comfortable and safe were having pride flags, trans flags,
00:34:21
Speaker
just having that physical representation in the actual physical space that's visible to other students, and especially using correct pronouns, asking about that, using them, even just using the correct name often.
00:34:37
Speaker
And those to me seem like the lowest hanging fruit, right?
00:34:40
Speaker
In terms of treating students with basic human dignity is helping greeting them with the names that they prefer and the pronouns that they're going to use.
Pronouns & Language Challenges
00:34:50
Speaker
So I would say like a lot of that, what you just said is borne out by the survey data that I hold up here right in front of me.
00:34:56
Speaker
Right, which is unsurprising.
00:34:58
Speaker
I mean, just like getting somebody's name right is a basic respect thing, right?
00:35:01
Speaker
I mean, if you've ever been like on a call where somebody keeps using the wrong name for you, you know how infuriating that can be and how quickly it can just get under your skin.
00:35:10
Speaker
And that goes triple or quadruple for LGBTQ folks because oftentimes we're getting misgendered 10 to 20 times a day, right?
00:35:20
Speaker
And so I do hear and I understand especially folks who...
00:35:24
Speaker
Maybe this is new for them.
00:35:26
Speaker
I mean, it's a habit like anything else, right?
00:35:27
Speaker
Like if you start brushing your teeth with a different hand than you normally use, it's going to be frustrating for the first couple of weeks that you do it.
00:35:35
Speaker
And these are linguistic habits.
00:35:37
Speaker
They're things that we've done over and over and over again.
00:35:40
Speaker
And so it's going to take a little practice to do something else.
00:35:45
Speaker
But I do hear folks that are saying things like, oh, it's just so frustrating.
00:35:49
Speaker
Like I screw up once and they just explode at me or whatever.
00:35:52
Speaker
It's not just that you screwed up once, right?
00:35:54
Speaker
It's that you're like the 25th person to do it that day.
00:35:58
Speaker
And they're just like overwhelmed and sick of it at the end of the day.
00:36:02
Speaker
As somebody who personally uses they and them pronouns, it is very frustrating to just get misgendered 20 to 25 times a day if you're going out in public all the time.
00:36:14
Speaker
It feels like it's fairly isolating and it feels like your identity is coming across as something that it's not, which obviously it is.
00:36:26
Speaker
Otherwise, those people wouldn't be doing that.
00:36:28
Speaker
So it's just a very disorienting experience.
00:36:31
Speaker
If you've never had it happen to you, obviously it's hard to kind of communicate how that feels.
00:36:37
Speaker
And I understand that, again, it can be
00:36:40
Speaker
hard to even wrap your head around at some level if you've never had that experience.
00:36:45
Speaker
But just imagine that like, whenever you go out in public, people are calling you the wrong name every single time.
00:36:55
Speaker
And you can't figure out why.
00:36:57
Speaker
And you've told them repeatedly that that's not your name and they just keep doing it like it's it would just be so confusing and frustrating.
00:37:04
Speaker
Right.
00:37:04
Speaker
Like it just try to imagine it happening to you and you can maybe start to get a grasp of what happens to these kids kind of every single day and a lot of interactions that they're having.
00:37:15
Speaker
And yes, I can understand that that would not be a fun place to be when you're the person that gets blown up at for doing it once.
00:37:23
Speaker
But I think you also have to extend some empathy to them and say, you know, they're not they're not really just mad at you.
00:37:31
Speaker
They're mad at the situation that they're in.
00:37:33
Speaker
And you're just the straw that kind of broke the camel's back.
00:37:36
Speaker
in that particular situation.
00:37:38
Speaker
So yes, it's extremely important to get people's names right.
00:37:43
Speaker
I think that one's maybe a little bit more obvious.
00:37:45
Speaker
It is also very important to get people's pronouns right though too because oftentimes when you're talking about somebody, you're using their pronouns more than you're using their name.
00:37:53
Speaker
If I'm talking about about Nick, I'm going to say, you know, like Nick went to the store.
00:37:58
Speaker
He got some groceries.
00:37:59
Speaker
Those groceries are his groceries.
00:38:00
Speaker
You know, like I've already used your pronouns twice and I've only used your your name once.
00:38:06
Speaker
So it's it does become kind of important to get those things right.
00:38:09
Speaker
And I understand it can be frustrating and I understand it can be confusing.
00:38:13
Speaker
But just try to think of it from the other end.
00:38:15
Speaker
Try to think of like this is is how you're trying to represent yourself.
00:38:19
Speaker
and other people just aren't getting it and they aren't getting it in some of the most fundamental ways because they're talking about you and they're not talking about you in the way that you would talk about you.
00:38:29
Speaker
That's kind of frustrating.
00:38:30
Speaker
Yeah, I've always kind of just erred on the side of humility and understanding, you know, like, like, I'm just gonna just fess up.
00:38:37
Speaker
Okay, sorry about that.
00:38:38
Speaker
Like, I'm gonna do better next time, you know, but then work to actually do better, you know?
00:38:42
Speaker
Right.
00:38:43
Speaker
Yeah, sometimes it takes practice.
00:38:44
Speaker
Sometimes you have to sit down and just like say it a few times.
00:38:47
Speaker
Again, just to build that habit, because some of this is even, it's not technically muscle memory, but it feels a lot like muscle memory.
00:38:55
Speaker
You know, like, I know you played guitar before.
00:38:57
Speaker
I played a lot of guitar.
00:39:00
Speaker
And there's just certain things that you can't do until you've done them 20 times in a row.
00:39:06
Speaker
It just doesn't click with your hand.
00:39:08
Speaker
Your hand just won't do it, you know.
00:39:10
Speaker
But then that 21st time, your hand just does it and you don't even have to think about it.
00:39:14
Speaker
And that's what we're talking about here is just building up that kind of familiarity with that so that eventually you don't even have to think about it.
00:39:22
Speaker
It just happens.
00:39:23
Speaker
And I think maybe I could add for the benefit of listeners too, like I think a pretty common practice for teachers at the beginning of a semester, at the beginning of a year is roll call.
00:39:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:32
Speaker
And I can't imagine, right?
00:39:34
Speaker
I already get stressed about that.
00:39:36
Speaker
Like as a person on the receiving end of that, like you're just waiting to hear your name, you're waiting to say here, et cetera.
00:39:42
Speaker
But then for a student that doesn't go by that name on that roster, the first conversation, the first interaction they have to have is that like, hey, I go by this.
00:39:51
Speaker
right, or risk, you know, like outing themselves to their classmates, and then they become the center of attention there too.
00:39:57
Speaker
And, and that was a lesson that I had to learn, you know, the hard way several years ago.
00:40:01
Speaker
And I know then my practice has changed.
00:40:04
Speaker
We're on day one, I don't do the big roll call anymore.
00:40:08
Speaker
I let kids sit where they're going to sit for that first day.
00:40:10
Speaker
And I literally just go around with my clipboard and I have students introduce themselves.
00:40:15
Speaker
And so I just, I just sit with them at the table.
00:40:16
Speaker
It takes, you know, a minute per table.
00:40:18
Speaker
I'm like,
00:40:19
Speaker
I'm like, hey, good to meet you.
00:40:21
Speaker
Who are you?
00:40:22
Speaker
I'm Mr. Covington.
00:40:23
Speaker
And they just say their name.
00:40:25
Speaker
So if it's different than what it is in the roster, I'm like, hey, nice to meet you, so-and-so.
00:40:29
Speaker
And then I write down that name.
00:40:31
Speaker
you know, ask them about any spellings and then I'm moving on to the next thing.
00:40:34
Speaker
So that way it's not an issue.
00:40:35
Speaker
They get to introduce themselves as they perceive themselves and there's an issue.
00:40:41
Speaker
There's a comfort and a relationship building thing that begin from day one on that.
00:40:45
Speaker
And then to your comment about using your other hand for the toothbrush there, then when I see, because I'll use the name that they refer to themselves and that's who they are.
00:40:55
Speaker
And then when I go to say like enter grades on Infinite Campus or whatever,
00:41:00
Speaker
I'll see a name in there that I have never once referred to the student as.
00:41:04
Speaker
And I have to sit and think, okay, who is this person?
00:41:07
Speaker
Oh yeah, that's so-and-so.
00:41:08
Speaker
Okay.
00:41:09
Speaker
So then I go through that way.
00:41:11
Speaker
But I will say like, it's been absolutely incredible to see too, just how responsive and
00:41:17
Speaker
kind and like humane high schoolers are about these things today.
00:41:22
Speaker
You know, like I have transgender students who they're, they are who they are to their classmates.
00:41:28
Speaker
And like, that was not an experience that I had growing up in Iowa in the nineties, in the early two thousands.
00:41:34
Speaker
And yeah, I don't know where this comes from, but the kids are just tolerant and accepting as hell.
00:41:40
Speaker
And, and I just loved, I love to see it.
00:41:43
Speaker
It's the adults in the buildings who, who have the catching up to do oftentimes.
00:41:46
Speaker
Yeah, I totally agree.
00:41:48
Speaker
And the other thing that I think is kind of fascinating to think about is I think a lot of folks just assume that like this, this method of like using personal pronouns that we do here in English is like the only way that people do it.
00:42:02
Speaker
And the more exposure that I have to different languages across the world, the more I understand that that is just simply not the case.
00:42:09
Speaker
So I visited Thailand to do some activism over there with trans and HIV positive folks and
00:42:15
Speaker
back in, oh man, was it 2018?
00:42:18
Speaker
And one of the most fascinating things that I found while I was over there is you don't really use pronouns for other people.
00:42:26
Speaker
You use them for yourself.
00:42:27
Speaker
So like when you say thank you, there is a masculine way to say thank you that identifies you as masculine and a feminine way to say thank you that identifies you as feminine.
00:42:37
Speaker
So you are the only person kind of in control of
00:42:41
Speaker
information about your gender in terms of social interactions in that specific linguistic context.
00:42:48
Speaker
And then there are other languages like Persian that there are no gendered personal pronouns at all.
00:42:53
Speaker
It's just like all gender neutral.
00:42:54
Speaker
So it's kind of fascinating when I hear people say things like, oh, the singular they is grammatically incorrect, which first of all, it's not.
00:43:01
Speaker
It's in the dictionary.
00:43:02
Speaker
It's in APA style books.
00:43:03
Speaker
It's like
00:43:04
Speaker
in every mode that you would think of in terms of grammatic, going to a style book and saying, is this grammatically correct?
00:43:11
Speaker
Yes, it is.
00:43:12
Speaker
But second, you know, language is a tool and words don't have definitions.
00:43:17
Speaker
They have usages, right?
00:43:19
Speaker
Like I am totally...
00:43:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:43
Speaker
and it's it's honestly kind of offensive in certain ways it's just saying no this is the dominant understanding and we're going to keep doing it this way because it's more convenient for me um pass that's exactly it i think the takeaway for listeners will be here that you're like a happy warrior on this you know
Motivation in Activism: Harm Reduction
00:44:01
Speaker
despite despite like you said that we are seeing just an avalanche like a
00:44:06
Speaker
unprecedented numbers of particularly anti-trans bills, not just in Iowa, but around the country.
00:44:12
Speaker
When you hit the legislative session, your hair's got to be on fire because there's always something that you're chasing or something someone's trying to introduce, et cetera.
00:44:21
Speaker
And yet you seem tireless.
00:44:24
Speaker
I know, I know, I know that's probably not true.
00:44:27
Speaker
That's not true.
00:44:28
Speaker
Because you're human after all.
00:44:30
Speaker
But again, like it's, it's, it's your laugh.
00:44:32
Speaker
It's the smile on your face.
00:44:34
Speaker
And I don't think there's a better person to be in the position that you're in.
00:44:39
Speaker
A couple of things.
00:44:40
Speaker
What keeps you going in the face of just, you know, the, the constant drumbeat in the barrage of these things?
00:44:46
Speaker
And then,
00:44:47
Speaker
Just to end, how can we, listeners, teachers, just people, citizens generally, support our LGBTQ community?
00:44:58
Speaker
How can we support the work that you're doing?
00:45:00
Speaker
How can we help marginalized folks generally?
00:45:03
Speaker
One thing that I don't think activists maybe talk enough about is how motivating annoyance can be, to be completely honest with you.
00:45:12
Speaker
There is a certain level of irritation that my system cannot deal with in terms of people just making bad arguments and relying on certain assumptions that we can pretty much demonstrate are not true, right?
00:45:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:27
Speaker
And my opponents engage in that quite a bit.
00:45:30
Speaker
And so there is some motivation that comes out of just like being so frustrated with those bad arguments that you can't help but get up the next day and say, no, that's still bad.
00:45:43
Speaker
That's still not right.
00:45:44
Speaker
Like, how can you not see that?
00:45:47
Speaker
And if you can't see that, I will help everybody around you see it in some capacity so that maybe eventually this stinks in, right?
00:45:55
Speaker
Honestly, my entire philosophy is just kind of around harm reduction.
00:46:00
Speaker
And that's been around a lot of the work that I've done, not just with one Iowa, but I was on the Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition Board of Directors for a while.
00:46:08
Speaker
I've done a whole lot of work in...
00:46:10
Speaker
specifically labeled harm reduction spaces, but also I think a lot of this stuff is itself harm reduction strategies.
00:46:19
Speaker
In the current context, I don't think we can probably prevent all the harm to LGBTQ folks.
00:46:25
Speaker
There's just so many different bills and so much power behind some of the people that are promoting those.
00:46:32
Speaker
And so I try not to get discouraged when one of them
00:46:36
Speaker
almost inevitably makes it across the finish line because I don't see it as something that is that I'm even capable of doing of stopping some of the avalanche of bad stuff that's happening.
00:46:49
Speaker
So my job is really to analyze where we can best intervene, how we can best intervene and how we can make some of the truly awful stuff into stuff that doesn't impact as many people.
00:47:02
Speaker
Right.
00:47:03
Speaker
We know that these are eventually going to end up killing folks.
00:47:09
Speaker
I can't be any gentler on that.
00:47:12
Speaker
This stuff is not something to mess around with.
00:47:17
Speaker
It is not something that we can just dust our hands off and go home and feel okay about what's happening because...
00:47:25
Speaker
I know people personally who have not made it through this fight, and I will continue to know folks who have not made it through as time goes on.
00:47:35
Speaker
And there will be a lot of kids that are caught in the crossfire as well.
00:47:38
Speaker
But ultimately, we can only do what we can do.
00:47:43
Speaker
There are only so many...
00:47:47
Speaker
things and ways to intervene that I can personally consider myself responsible for, that you could personally consider yourself responsible for.
00:47:57
Speaker
But we have to hold ourselves to those things.
00:48:00
Speaker
And I think that's really what I try to communicate in these conversations is, yes, maybe you can't stop that particular bill, but maybe you can make one less person vote for it.
00:48:11
Speaker
Or maybe you can change somebody else's mind on the school board so that when it's implemented, something else bad doesn't happen.
00:48:19
Speaker
Because when we all just dust our hands and go home, this bad stuff cascades and it can cascade out of control because there are there are steps along the process and each individual step you can.
00:48:31
Speaker
If you're a part of that step, you can intervene and you can engage in that harm reduction and you can make things a little less bad.
00:48:39
Speaker
you can maybe save one person's life rather than just not doing anything, right?
00:48:46
Speaker
And so that's what I would impose on folks is try to figure out where you can be most effective in these processes.
00:48:53
Speaker
Maybe you don't have control over what passes in the legislature, but maybe you can stop some bit of implementation that makes something marginally better for those kids in that school.
00:49:04
Speaker
That's ultimately kind of my takeaway of my part in this process is I know exactly what kind of impact I can have on this process.
00:49:13
Speaker
I know when to interject.
00:49:15
Speaker
I know how to make a bad bill better or to leave it as bad as possible so that it eventually gets struck down for being so unpopular.
00:49:25
Speaker
And you all can do that too.
00:49:27
Speaker
It's not just a thing that lobbyists engage in.
00:49:30
Speaker
It's not just a thing that policy professionals engage in.
00:49:33
Speaker
It's something that we all engage in literally every single day.
00:49:36
Speaker
There are countless different opportunities to kind of nudge things into a slightly better position.
00:49:44
Speaker
And when we all do that, when we all kind of know our role in the process and know where we can nudge those things, things are markedly better.
00:49:54
Speaker
again,
00:49:55
Speaker
there's a trajectory to it, right?
00:49:57
Speaker
And so we have to be nudging these things constantly, otherwise our opponents are going to be doing their part and they're going to be nudging things in kind of the opposite direction.
00:50:08
Speaker
And if we don't assume those tiny responsibilities, I'm not even talking about like earth shattering things, but just like you said, having a different process in terms of letting your students identify themselves rather than you identifying them, that's one of those things that I'm talking about.
00:50:23
Speaker
You saw that and you were like, hey,
00:50:25
Speaker
That's one little thing that I can do to make these kids' lives just a little bit better.
00:50:29
Speaker
If everybody is doing that, eventually we're going to get to a point where trans kids aren't dying at these astronomically terrible rates.
00:50:38
Speaker
I mean, that's ultimately the goal is to get to a place where these kids don't feel like their lives are so miserable that they are engaging in these kinds of behaviors to...
00:50:50
Speaker
try to end their suffering because that's really what this is about.
00:50:54
Speaker
Trans kids don't commit suicide because they're trans.
00:50:58
Speaker
There's nothing about transness that ups the suicide rate.
00:51:02
Speaker
It's because they're being discriminated against every single day in every single interaction that they're having.
00:51:09
Speaker
And eventually the gravity of that has a really negative psychological impact on them.
00:51:14
Speaker
And so if you can take one of those interactions that would otherwise be negative,
00:51:20
Speaker
and turn it into a positive interaction, well, that's a little bit less burden on them.
00:51:24
Speaker
And as time goes by, those burdens will be relieved by folks who care enough to take responsibility for their part in what is arguably a societally wide problem of discrimination against transgender folks, right?
00:51:41
Speaker
But we can't do that if we just shrug it off and say, oh, the legislature is going to do whatever, and so everything's going to be bad.
00:51:49
Speaker
Yeah, things are going to not be great for the time being.
00:51:52
Speaker
We have to keep doing those those little things, though.
00:51:56
Speaker
And if we don't do those little things, things are going to be much, much worse.
00:52:01
Speaker
They're not just going to be a little bit worse.
00:52:02
Speaker
They're going to be I mean, like, again, just having that one adult.
00:52:07
Speaker
have the suicide risk.
00:52:08
Speaker
That's a big deal.
00:52:09
Speaker
50% reduction in suicide risk is a massive number that you're not going to find in any other public health study probably across the board, right?
00:52:20
Speaker
Those are numbers that are unheard of.
00:52:22
Speaker
And that's just like a little thing that you can do.
00:52:24
Speaker
You can just say, hey, I support you and I see you for who you see yourself as.
00:52:30
Speaker
That's not big.
00:52:32
Speaker
but the impact is.
00:52:33
Speaker
And so try to find those things in your life where you can intervene.
00:52:39
Speaker
Just look for them.
00:52:40
Speaker
You have to keep your eyes open and you have to listen to those folks as well, because they're going to tell you at some point that you screwed up in some way, right?
00:52:49
Speaker
Like I screw up all the time and it's, it's literally my job to do these kinds of things, but we're also kind of we're in the process of,
00:53:00
Speaker
Of understanding who these folks are in the first place.
00:53:03
Speaker
And we're in the process of understanding who we are in the first place as well.
00:53:08
Speaker
I mean, I'm still in the process of understanding my own concept of gender identity and where I fit in that.
00:53:15
Speaker
So don't be afraid of making a mistake.
00:53:19
Speaker
You can always apologize.
00:53:20
Speaker
You can do better the next time.
00:53:23
Speaker
If you don't try, though, that is much worse than making a mistake.
00:53:28
Speaker
You just can't.
00:53:29
Speaker
There's there's no.
00:53:31
Speaker
There's nothing worse than not trying, honestly.
00:53:33
Speaker
And kids can see it.
00:53:34
Speaker
They can see the difference between an adult who is trying and an adult who doesn't care.
00:53:39
Speaker
That's very apparent.
00:53:41
Speaker
Even if the mistake is the same, there's just a valence behind it that is kind of hard to ignore.
00:53:48
Speaker
If you've ever been misgendered, somebody who just doesn't care at all versus somebody who's a little bit hurt that they themselves are responsible for it, that...
00:53:59
Speaker
It comes across very differently.
00:54:00
Speaker
So I guess my message to folks is, is just try to identify where those things can happen in your own life, whether it's conversations with coworkers or whether it's evaluating how you're going to check students in, in a class or evaluating what's going to go up on your wall or,
00:54:21
Speaker
How you're going to respond to somebody that posted something on your Facebook or whatever else.
00:54:26
Speaker
You don't have to engage in every fight, but you do have to at least be thoughtful about why you are or are not engaging.
00:54:33
Speaker
And I think that's maybe what a lot of us don't do enough because our lives are busy.
00:54:37
Speaker
And a lot of the times we're just kind of on autopilot and we're trying to go for the path of least resistance.
00:54:43
Speaker
It's helpful, though, to sometimes take a step back and think, okay, well, am I not engaging in this situation because it's the most beneficial course of action?
00:54:52
Speaker
Or am I not engaging because I'm uncomfortable and it's easier to not engage?
00:54:57
Speaker
you know, actually think through why you're doing the things that you're doing.
00:55:02
Speaker
And especially when you're interacting with somebody like a trans or non-binary person that is maybe experiencing a lot of discrimination in their lives.
00:55:10
Speaker
I think you have to be extra thoughtful in those situations and really think through, like, what is the impact here?
00:55:17
Speaker
And how could I make things maybe just a little bit better?
00:55:20
Speaker
Because again, it's just...
00:55:23
Speaker
the guilt and the feelings of helplessness can be paralyzing.
00:55:29
Speaker
And that's exactly what we want to avoid.
00:55:32
Speaker
If we get into this pit of despair, then we can no longer act.
00:55:37
Speaker
And that's probably the worst possible place to be, is to have that information and just be in a place where you're not even capable of acting on it.
Small Acts, Big Impact
00:55:48
Speaker
Knowing things that are bad, but not able to take action.
00:55:52
Speaker
That's terrible.
00:55:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really long way of saying that even those little things that you're doing on a day-to-day basis matter, and they might matter the most out of anything else.
00:56:08
Speaker
Again, in terms of not necessarily changing my thinking, but activating my thinking into that from being kind of a passive, having a passive role in that to recognizing what you're saying, that something that might cost me nothing might make a world of difference to somebody else.
00:56:23
Speaker
Or even it might be oblivious to the 99% of other people who walk by my school door and see a pride sticker that I've got in the window of my classroom.
00:56:34
Speaker
Maybe 99% of kids walk by that and don't even see it, right?
00:56:37
Speaker
It's not even in their perception.
00:56:39
Speaker
but one kid sees that right and knows that could be a space where they can at least feel recognized and be safe or know that they have like a competent adult in there too.
00:56:50
Speaker
And, and then maybe a matter of in your relative context, kind of identifying what relative power and privilege in those positions that you have.
00:56:59
Speaker
This has been, again, kind of a learning journey for myself as right.
00:57:01
Speaker
A cishet man, I'm six foot four.
00:57:04
Speaker
I'm a
00:57:05
Speaker
big, tall, giant white guy with a beard.
00:57:07
Speaker
And so it really has been a place to say like, damn, I'm in my thirties now.
00:57:11
Speaker
I have a lot of just like implicit social capital, right.
00:57:15
Speaker
Walking around.
00:57:16
Speaker
I have a lot of seniority in my, in my building.
00:57:19
Speaker
And so, right.
00:57:20
Speaker
Compared to you using like the correct pronoun for, for a trans kid, right.
00:57:26
Speaker
That is is kind of a relatively small thing on your part to get right every time.
00:57:31
Speaker
I mean, it might take a little bit of brain power or a little bit of practice.
00:57:35
Speaker
And yeah, you might make a mistake here or there.
00:57:38
Speaker
But the way that that legitimizes that kid's sense of self, not just for that kid, but for everybody else that's around that kid that heard you do it.
00:57:49
Speaker
that has a big impact on not just how they see themselves, but how they're treated by their peers.
00:57:55
Speaker
Because if they see that it's not acceptable from authority figures to misgender that kid, they're going to comport themselves, right?
00:58:03
Speaker
Like they don't want to get in trouble.
00:58:05
Speaker
They also are going to try to, for the most part, kind of take the path of least resistance in a lot of situations.
00:58:10
Speaker
And if the path of least resistance is not misgendering that kid,
00:58:14
Speaker
Wow, you've just like you've solved a lot of the discrimination that that kid might experience on kind of a day to day interpeer basis just by taking the time to get that kid's pronouns right.
00:58:27
Speaker
I mean, like, yeah, it's not like earth shattering.
00:58:31
Speaker
You haven't done.
00:58:33
Speaker
you know, a 50 page thesis on why this is good or like expended hours of your life trying to make this kid's life better.
00:58:42
Speaker
You've expended maybe five to 10 minutes on practicing it or something else over the course of the entire semester.
00:58:49
Speaker
And yet for that kid,
00:58:52
Speaker
that's life-changing i mean just having the people that are around you respect you and and kind of reflect how you see yourself that is is it's night and day compared to the other situation which is just like the pervasive ongoing discrimination and and invalidation and the impact that that has of you seeing yourself in a very specific way
00:59:17
Speaker
and literally everybody else around you seeing you in a completely different way, it's like gaslighting, right?
00:59:26
Speaker
It's just this weird... You feel like a crazy person when everybody around you doesn't share your same sense of identity about who you are.
00:59:36
Speaker
It's just inexplicably one of the most frustrating things that you can go through.
00:59:43
Speaker
Yeah, so I think there is a sense of solidarity then between adults, between students, between otherwise marginalized youth and mainstream normie adults in this case, especially in a public context.
01:00:01
Speaker
Because I think a teen who is already marginalized by society and things is going to be a much easier target for people who are looking to
01:00:11
Speaker
you know, intimidate or bully or isolate or put down, et cetera.
01:00:15
Speaker
And so even, and again, this is a lesson that I've had to learn is,
01:00:19
Speaker
right, just putting myself up there in those situations, I can, you know, much more readily take those attacks without, right, teen brains work in different ways, too.
01:00:30
Speaker
So, you know, they might be spiraling on a comment that gets made that for the person who makes it is a throwaway that's, you know, meant to hurt them in the moment, and they never think about it again.
01:00:39
Speaker
But if adults can kind of step up into those spaces and take the heat, we are hopefully mature enough to be able to weather those blows and help kind of stand up for
01:00:49
Speaker
I mean, not just for kids, I've always talked about my classroom context, but for those communities in general, to just that physical human solidarity, I, I have really have found has been a really powerful tool to, again, leverage my social capital, you know, my relative privilege in that in that context.
01:01:06
Speaker
So it'd be a powerful thing just unpack.
01:01:08
Speaker
Yeah.
01:01:09
Speaker
And I do want to just like, I want to clarify one thing, and I can already hear my opponents saying it.
01:01:15
Speaker
So and that is, that is,
01:01:18
Speaker
that validating those kids' identities is not more likely to make them have one of those identities or to persist in it, right?
01:01:25
Speaker
So there's this weird, what I call hypodermic needle theory surrounding identity.
01:01:32
Speaker
And that is that if you somehow expose kids to gay people or say that being gay is okay, that they're going to be gay or they're more likely to be gay somehow
01:01:42
Speaker
or more likely to be trans.
01:01:43
Speaker
And that's just, it couldn't be further from the truth.
01:01:46
Speaker
We don't actually know what causes people to be gay or trans, and I don't trust anybody that says they do because there's not a clear understanding of that.
01:01:55
Speaker
But what we do understand is, for instance, that no environmental intervention that has thus far been attempted
01:02:02
Speaker
can change somebody's sexual orientation or gender identity.
01:02:06
Speaker
So literally nothing that we can do as people can change somebody's gender identity or sexual orientation.
01:02:13
Speaker
And it doesn't matter how long it happens.
01:02:16
Speaker
It doesn't matter how intense it is.
01:02:18
Speaker
I mean, this has been attempted for years through what is, I think, deceptively called conversion therapy.
01:02:24
Speaker
But it probably shouldn't be called that because it isn't a therapy at all.
01:02:27
Speaker
It's a dangerous, discredited practice that is essentially
01:02:31
Speaker
amounts to torturing people in order to try to change their sexual orientation or gender identity.
01:02:36
Speaker
And it simply doesn't work.
01:02:37
Speaker
And it doesn't work if it's voluntary.
01:02:39
Speaker
It doesn't work if it's extreme or if it involves physical.
01:02:44
Speaker
It just nothing can change.
01:02:48
Speaker
someone's sexual orientation or gender identity.
01:02:50
Speaker
That doesn't mean that it's static.
01:02:52
Speaker
That doesn't necessarily mean that we know what causes it, but we do know what can't change it.
01:02:57
Speaker
And what can't change it are things that people say to kids, books that kids read, attempted so-called therapies to try to alter these things.
01:03:07
Speaker
None of those things work.
01:03:09
Speaker
None of those things have an impact on what somebody's gender identity or sexual orientation are.
01:03:14
Speaker
It just doesn't happen.
01:03:15
Speaker
And so the long and short of it is we can either affirm those identities or we can put those kids in an additional risk for attempting suicide.
01:03:26
Speaker
Those are the only two choices.
01:03:28
Speaker
There aren't any others.
01:03:29
Speaker
I know folks would, on my opponent's side, would say, oh, you know, if we just like insist that
01:03:36
Speaker
that this trans woman is a man or we just insist that this gay kid is straight.
01:03:41
Speaker
Eventually they'll grow out of it.
01:03:42
Speaker
Right.
01:03:43
Speaker
But that's not the case.
01:03:45
Speaker
If you insist on continuing to try to change your kids gender identity,
01:03:50
Speaker
You're upping their suicide risk just by an astronomical amount, and it's not a responsible behavior to engage in.
01:03:57
Speaker
So affirming those kids' identities is literally lifesaving.
01:04:01
Speaker
There's nothing about it that makes them more likely to be trans.
01:04:04
Speaker
In fact, the folks that detransition, which is another buzzword on the right, if you actually survey them about why they did it, they don't ever say, because my identity changed.
01:04:16
Speaker
They don't.
01:04:17
Speaker
They all say, because I was facing so much discrimination that it was just unbearable.
01:04:21
Speaker
And so I finally just decided that it wasn't worth trying to be who I was, that I was just going to conform because it was exhausting and I couldn't take it anymore.
01:04:31
Speaker
And that's not how we treat people.
01:04:36
Speaker
I don't know how to communicate that otherwise.
01:04:39
Speaker
That affirming these kids' identities is not changing who they are.
01:04:44
Speaker
It's simply acknowledging that
01:04:46
Speaker
who they are.
01:04:47
Speaker
Nothing, nothing you can do is going to change their identity.
01:04:50
Speaker
It's not possible.
Get Involved: One Iowa Action
01:04:53
Speaker
Is there a place, Kenan, where people can follow the work that you've been talking about, where they could go to learn more, to get more involved, to support One Iowa or One Iowa Action or One Iowa PAC or any of the organizations that you work for here?
01:05:08
Speaker
Yeah, so if you're interested in the legislative work, definitely one Iowa action dot org.
01:05:12
Speaker
Sign up for the action alerts.
01:05:14
Speaker
You can get all sorts of information about what legislation is moving forward, all the different things that you can do to get involved.
01:05:21
Speaker
We've got easy ways to email your legislators, to call them, to
01:05:26
Speaker
identify when you can be best involved in the process.
01:05:29
Speaker
That's really kind of where lobbyists are most useful to everybody else is like, we can kind of tell you when you're going to have the most impact and then give you the tools to do that.
01:05:39
Speaker
And that's exactly what we try to do over at One Iowa Action is we never want to waste your time.
01:05:45
Speaker
We're never going to send you an email if it's just something that we don't swing at pitches in the dirt is what I like to say.
01:05:51
Speaker
We only try to give you tools that you can use that are actually going to have an impact.
01:05:57
Speaker
And again, we can't promise that your impact is going to be, oh, now we stopped this bill in its entirety.
01:06:03
Speaker
But I can promise you that I will never send you an email to ask you to do something when I don't think we can't at least peel off one more vote.
01:06:11
Speaker
When I don't think we can't at least like change the outcome of a committee hearing.
01:06:15
Speaker
When I think we can't at least have a different kind of conversation than the one that we're having right now and play the long game.
01:06:23
Speaker
Because we can't win everything in the short term.
01:06:26
Speaker
But I do think we're setting ourselves up to over the long game, be successful and to ultimately make LGBTQ people's lives better.
01:06:37
Speaker
Maybe not tomorrow, but next year and definitely in the next five years and even more in the next 10 years, et cetera, et cetera.
01:06:44
Speaker
I think we've demonstrated that in the eight and a half years that I've been here.
01:06:49
Speaker
I think that the conversation is much different than if we would not have been here in a number of different ways.
01:06:55
Speaker
And I can point to all sorts of things that I've done or that...
01:06:59
Speaker
other affiliated organizations have done, like Interfaith Alliance of Iowa, or Planned Parenthood, or Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
01:07:11
Speaker
I mean, there's a whole coalition of organizations that work toward making LGBTQ people's lives better.
01:07:17
Speaker
And again, it's just about harm reduction and trying to identify those ways and forms that we can all
01:07:29
Speaker
Just make things a tiny bit better, a little bit at a time, because that's the only way that real change, sustainable change, actually happens.
01:07:38
Speaker
There are some times that everything lurches forward, but those times also seem to have the ability to quickly backlash as well, and our opponents can sometimes maximize on that.
01:07:49
Speaker
But when we're doing it incrementally, when we're doing it a little bit at a time, and just we keep on it constantly, constantly, constantly,
01:07:57
Speaker
Those changes are much harder to roll back because those are much more enduring than the other kinds of change, than the quick, rapid changes that we sometimes see.
01:08:08
Speaker
The incremental changes, just they can't be rolled back in the same way.
01:08:13
Speaker
A thousand people taking a little bit of an action is much harder to roll back than one person who takes a really big action.
01:08:20
Speaker
Then that can be rolled back by one other person, right?
01:08:24
Speaker
So if you get a thousand people to do it, if you've got a community ready to take little actions here and there, that's impossible to fight.
01:08:33
Speaker
There's no way that you can roll back an entire community of people committed to making their community better.
01:08:39
Speaker
It's not possible.
01:08:41
Speaker
So be part of that community.
01:08:47
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to Human Restoration Projects Podcast.
01:08:51
Speaker
I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to push the progressive envelope of education.
01:08:55
Speaker
You can learn more about progressive education, support our cause, and stay tuned to this podcast and other updates on our website at humanrestorationproject.org.