"Every transgender family has a different story"
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Transcript
Kristen: [00:00:00] It's awful. You know, we're struck with, what do we do with these bills that are coming. Texas is trying to pass, they put on the books, 15 anti-trans bills, targeting kids anywhere from, they want to expand the definition of child abuse to include parents of trans kids that consent to giving them any sort of medical treatment, puberty blockers, hormones, that sort of thing.
Sarah: This is Sarah
Beth: And Beth.
Sarah: You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.
Beth: The home of grace-filled political conversations.
Sarah: [00:01:01] Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics. On today's show, we'll be discussing some of the Supreme court decisions, which came down this week. College players who made the team, cheerleaders who didn't. Then we'll be sharing our conversation with Kristen, a mother of a trans child about the anti-trans legislation that is cropping up in states around the country and outside of politics, we're going to be checking in on our girl, Britney Spears, and there is a, a better than normal chance that I will cry. I'm just going to be honest with you.
Beth: [00:01:27] Better than normal. It seems like promise. Okay. Our summer series is coming up and we are so excited about we can't stop talking about it. This is a chance for us to dig deep on one topic and really spend time with it. This year, the topic is infrastructure. We're not doing the politics of passing an infrastructure bill. This is not going to be a bunch of talk about filibusters and bipartisan group meetings. This is about looking at the fire hydrant in your neighborhood and seeing the people and funds that allow it to be there and we cannot wait to share it with you in July.
We also want to make sure that you can go as deep with us as you'd like to, by being part of our Pantsuit Politics premium memberships [00:02:00] through Apple podcast subscriptions or Patreon. If you're listening in Apple podcast today in the episode notes, there's a link that says click here for our premium content. We want to make this as easy for you as possible, so tap that link and get signed up so that you don't miss out on a thing.
Sarah: [00:02:13] Yes, there is a try free button right at the top. You'll get two weeks for free and you'll immediately get access to lots of bonus content including the Nightly Nuances this week on all the Supreme court decisions that have come through the court this week and we're gonna talk about that up next.
Beth, it's been a busy week. At the high court, we've gotten decisions on the Affordable Care Act. We've gotten decisions on religious freedom. We covered both of those on Tuesday's episode and today we wanted to talk about NCAA versus Alston Et. Al, which is about college [00:03:00] sports and I am thrilled and I can't wait to talk about it with you.
Beth: [00:03:05] Well, I have been immersed in Supreme court commentary and I have to say this was the most fun case to read because when justice Gorsuch gets excited about something, he really gets excited about it and he can tell that he loved writing this opinion and giving us a history of what he describes as our long and complicated relationship concerning money in college sports and so he begins with this really fun story about a train tycoon sponsoring a boating competition between Harvard and Yale and buying free drinks and offering a free vacation for all the athletes and just watching him walk through that history is really fun and this opinion, but ultimately we have here a unanimous Supreme court not divided in outcome or reasoning.
All nine justices signed onto the main opinion saying loud and clear that the NCAA is not above antitrust law and if they don't like the way antitrust law works, they should take that up with Congress, but right now, the NCAA is [00:04:00] functioning as a monopsony, which is the fun corollary for monopoly when we're talking about just one buyer in a market, instead of just one seller in that market and that as a monopsony, the NCAA is artificially lowering the amount of compensation that these players would otherwise get in a truly competitive market and they're unlawfully restraining competition among colleges and universities for that talent.
Sarah: [00:04:27] And just to be clear, this wasn't the Supreme court saying college athletes, you deserve to get paid. It was the Supreme court saying that the NCAA could not restrict additional educational benefits and that can mean a lot of things and because it can mean a lot of things, that's why the NCAA was restricting it in the first place, right. You can make up for a lot in computers and study abroad and postgraduate scholarships and all kinds of quote unquote educational benefits that will sweeten the pot and make it worthwhile [00:05:00] for a player to come to your school and the NCAA knew that and because they have a lot built on very precarious ground called student athletes, they were trying to protect that at all costs and restricting these educational benefits was one of them.
Beth: [00:05:14] And the court was only considering the education related benefits side, because that's all that was in front of it. The student athletes who sued the NCAA challenged all manner of compensation in the lower courts, but they did not pursue on appeal compensation unrelated to education. So the Supreme court really didn't have an opportunity to weigh in on just straight up giving money to these students or other opportunities. They were just talking about those education-related benefits and they said, look, even if we all accepted that preserving amateurism was a noble legitimate goal that the NCAA is actually living up to, the NCAA [00:06:00] hasn't been very clear on what amateurism means or requires for its duration. But even if we all accepted that, that that's really important that the NCAA is doing it, it cannot use education related restrictions to further that goal.
It did leave a lot of leeway though, for the NCAA to regulate education-related compensation. For example, the NCAA said, well, if, if you can give in-kind educational benefits, aren't we going to see colleges, giving players cars to drive to class? And justice Gorsuch says, well, maybe, but like write a definition around that. Have a no Lamborghini rule if you need one. You have lots of latitude here, but you can't just put these blanket restrictions in place and so it'll be interesting to see how the NCAA responds.
This was a weird case for me, Sarah, because you know how I feel about justice Kavanaugh and his jurisprudence. I really found myself agreeing with his concurrence. [00:07:00] So justice Kavanaugh wrote separately by himself to say, we didn't consider compensation unrelated to education today but if we had, I think the NCAA would be in some trouble and I think people ought to pursue those cases against the NCAA and he wrote this really impassioned, strong opinion saying nowhere else would we allow this. In every other industry, if we treated the people who work in that industry, the way that we treat these players, no one would stand for it.
He says, for example, all the restaurants in a region can not come together to cut Cook's wages. On the theory that customers prefer to eat food from load paid cooks. Law firms can not conspire to cabin, lawyer salaries in the name of providing legal services out of a love of the law. Hospitals can not agree to cap nurses' incomes in order to create a pure form of helping the sick. Like, I just think he's right about this and that is not a feeling I have about justice Kavanaugh very often so I want to acknowledge it.
Sarah: [00:07:58] Yes. [00:08:00] Passionately agree with him, which again is not a feeling I'm used to, but I mean, I don't want to brag, but I've been on this tip way before it was cool. Way back in the day when my husband was fully invested in NCAA college football and college basketball, like seriously, 20 years ago when I lived in Lexington, Kentucky, the home of the university of Kentucky and its basketball team, I thought this is bullsh*t. Excuse my language, which we're going to get to in the next case, it's ridiculous to stand up and say, oh, the purity of the sport when the college coaches, the colleges themselves, the television stations, and God knows who else are making millions and millions of dollars on the backs of these players.
It is embarrassing to all of us that it took us this long to get here, honestly, like give me a break. [00:09:00] It's just to me, look, I'm not a sports person and I'm an Enneagram one and that combination does not make me popular at parties because it just feels like how could we not have seen this? How could we not have seen that this is exploitive and has been for decades? You know, I feel like we get blinded by sports and we create these stories in our heads that it just, it serves this higher purpose and look, I think it does, to a certain extent. I think that sports, both college and otherwise bring people together and bring people a lot of joy. They give people enormous opportunities. I'm not blind. I can see all that. I just think that often we create these myths in our head that it's all good and no bad and the idea that like money is going to taint it for the players when everyone else is profiting is truly the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
[00:10:00] Beth: [00:10:00] Part of how I view this as just a fan of college basketball. Is that we need to build an incentive structure for people to finish their education. As you think about the toll on players' bodies that competitive sports takes, it is not good that we have built a system and you see this quite clearly at the university of Kentucky and I love that program, we have built a system that incentivizes them to come play a year and then go to the NBA draft where they can make money and it would be so much better. I think for everybody to have programs where you are being paid your worth to play in those programs, as you finish your education so that if something happens to your body down the line, you have something to fall back on or you have a place to go that makes sense for you.
We know that lots of these players go get into the NBA where they're making tons of money immediately and this is a risk at the collegiate level too, but if you've got one year of college, you go make a [00:11:00] ton of money, you blow it and something happens to you, that is just a tragic story that we see play out too many times and so I get that we have this really fun fiction about this being amateur versus professional, but it's just clearly not and the programs aren't being built that way anymore.
There's a huge racial component to this that cannot be ignored and what we're doing is just fundamentally unfair and so I was glad to see the court take this on. I think it laid the groundwork for other decisions that are going to be hard on sports. I think major league baseball is in trouble. There's an aside in this opinion where the court really questions its precedent, where it sort of carved out an exception for major league baseball. They called it an aberration and I think if that hits the court again, we're going to see a different result, but a lot of these things just need to be shaken up as everything else is in our world. I don't think sports should be insulated from learning what we can learn and doing better by each other.
Sarah: [00:11:59] Oh yeah, for [00:12:00] sure. I mean, I have a cousin who's a professional baseball player and I remember when we met up with him one time when he was in the minor leagues, he said I did the math and I'm making $2 an hour but what else, what other choice did he have to get into the major leagues? Right. Yeah, there's a great documentary called Broke from ESPN's 30 for 30, about the financial impact of professional sports on its players and what happens and let me tell you what I would do. Now that schools can offer educational benefits and yes, there is going to be a huge financial component to those educational benefits, but here's what I would do.
If I was at a top tier school fighting for top tier athletes, I would create a professional athletic major and I would create the most amazing program at my college in the country, on the planet. You come to my school, you play for my team, you get classes on sports agents. You get the best former athletes coming and teaching you classes on how to take care of your body, how to take care of your mental [00:13:00] health, how to take care of your finances. I'm not going to just give you a college education. I'm going to give you an education on the career you want to pursue, which is professional sports fine. That's fine. We want that for you too, but we want you to do it and succeed and so what we have here at UK or what we have here at Duke. God help me for saying those two together is that we will train you. We will train you to take that career and make the absolute best of it and that's the educational benefit we offer you here.
Beth: [00:13:29] And things like, how do you hire people you can trust to help you financially? How do you set up a foundation to do philanthropy work? How do you do like media training, all kinds of things. I think that's a fantastic idea.
Sarah: [00:13:39] Class called don't start a damn restaurant. That would be a good one. I learned that in Broke, don't do that either. That's not where you want to invest your money.
Beth: [00:13:47] So to me, the NCAA case was the most fun decision from the Supreme court in this term. Okay.
Sarah: [00:13:53] We can turn now
Beth: [00:13:54] we're going to take a turn now.
Sarah: [00:13:55] to the next case.
Beth: [00:13:57] I have rolled my eyes [00:14:00] since this hit the court's docket and I read the decisions last night and felt like I was worse off for it. We're going to talk about Mahoney Area School District versus B.L. This is the case where we have a cheerleader who as justice Briar describes it, did not handle with grace, her rejection from the varsity cheerleading squad and her placement once again on the JV squad and who made a Snapchat saying F everything and
Sarah: [00:14:29] Well she used eight words and four of them were the F word.
Beth: [00:14:32] She had feelings.
Sarah: [00:14:33] And also 14 year olds are not exactly known for their graceful handling of literally anything, but yes
Beth: [00:14:39] and she followed it with her second slide explaining that she was very upset that she and someone else were going to be on the JV team and so our 82 year old Supreme court justice Briar is writing about Snapchat. I have to just, I can't even imagine what the conversations at the court were like. This case is at the Supreme court [00:15:00] because adults behaved disproportionately in a scenario where a teenage girl was upset and then as many things do it took on a life of its own, where the concern became less about this one girl and her cheerleading spot and more about what a schools do in this era to regulate students' speech that takes place off campus and justice Briar begins the opinion by telling us, off campus, I don't even know what that means especially post COVID. So many people are doing remote learning. Social media is important for school activities in many cases. So defining off-campus is really hard and he says, we're not really going to do that today.
In the lower courts, the cheerleader won because the lower courts said, essentially the schools just can't regulate students' speech off-campus and the Supreme court took this case, I think, to say, well, yeah, they can sometimes, [00:16:00] but this is too far and they told us, we're not going to give you the prescription today. We don't have a formula for when they can and when they can't, but this one, there is too tenuous, a connection. This was not disruptive to school functions and so the court decided that the school wrongly kicked her off the team, which doesn't help her because she's long since graduated. She doesn't even go there now. These cases take so long, but what we did get for schools is not a lot of clarity, but some that there are times when they can regulate students speech off-campus, this just wasn't one of them.
Sarah: [00:16:32] Here's the thing. Yes. The proportional response should have been Brandy, honey. I'm your cheerleading coach. I bring you in. I teach you a really important lesson about screenshots and that even if it's disappears on Snapchat, other people take pictures and other people want to get you in trouble and you need to remember that and then I sent her on her happy way. Instead of they kicked her off the JV squad too.
Beth: [00:16:53] And can I add, I mean, in addition to that lesson about social media, I think you also say Brandy honey, [00:17:00] we want you to be on this team. I know you're disappointed, but we want you here. We want you to be successful. Can we move on? Can we get over it? Can we knock this off and move on and get to it. Because to me this whole case is a whole bunch of adults acted like they've never worked with high school students before. I mean, if you are touching your pearls about the F word as a high school teacher, you are living a very different reality than all the high school teachers. I know.
Sarah: [00:17:23] What me about the court is, yes, I understand that they gave little additional clarity about courts can regulate speech off campus, which of course they can. I mean, and I understand why they want it to provide that clarification for exactly what you said. What does that mean for bullying? In fact, I think when they, when we've talked about this case before, and we made that point, like with cyber bullying, which even sounds like a dated word to me kind of a little bit, but there's all this reality, not in that was before COVID, not to mention after COVID, when there's going to be even more virtual schooling.
Not every school district is going to [00:18:00] just say, we're not doing that anymore. They're going to keep that option for kids and so, you know, is that off-campus, you know, like I think that there's all these complicated questions and what I don't understand is providing the tiniest amount of clarity, which as the wife of a school board attorney seems like feels a little bit like no clarity at all, why take the case if you're not going to start chipping away at that standard. That's what I didn't understand. Like, why do this, why go to all this trouble, bring Brandy all the way, just to say, well, we need to stay there, but not today. I feel like they've been doing that a lot. Yeah. We need some of them, but not now. Well, when guys what'd you do, what else do you got to do in this, your only job?
Beth: [00:18:37] Well, it seems to me that they take these cases and they both want to establish greater standards and more clarity, but also want to protect the institution and so if you can get eight justices signed onto a single opinion, by making it pretty narrow and ambiguous, I think the courts decided that's more important than laying down a standard. Especially if laying down that standard would [00:19:00] involve, you know, three justices here and three there. So I get why they land on these narrow rulings and I think that's probably appropriate. You have a descent here from justice Thomas that doesn't seem to even substantively disagree with the outcome as much as be annoyed by exactly what we're talking about here. That there's not really a principled foundation.
This decision reads almost like some of the court's jurisprudence in the pornography space where they're like, we just know it when we see it and I think in this case, they said, we just know when we see it, that it's two tenuous to regulate this kind of social media speech, and also impractical. If courts are monitoring what students say on social media about school, what else are they going to do? This is so silly and that's my beef with this case. There are good cases out there to consider students and speech and school restrictions. I just think this one is bananas.
Sarah: [00:19:54] Yeah. And I think when you look at this new approach of the Roberts court, which [00:20:00] in many ways I understand, and I can empathize with and even respect. When you look at these two cases, though, you see the limitations of this particular doctrine, even on the health of the institution and what I mean by that is the NCAA case was great. That's what the Supreme court should do, right? When there is cultural change and there's a powerful player using the law to prevent that change, to perpetuate unfairness, then the Supreme court says, comes in and says, Nope, we're not going to have your back. This is up to you and that's a really good case. That's a really good exercise of the court's power, I think.
I think that there are limitations to these cases, like the cheerleader case and to me, it's not that you find a narrow ruling. You don't take the damn case to begin with. You know, if I could get John Robertson a room, I would say [00:21:00] there is damage to the institution when you keep taking minor ambiguous rulings too, because then people start to say, well, why are you there? You're not actually helping, you're not providing any clarity that damages the institution in a similar way.
Beth: [00:21:16] Especially a case like this. It is bad that the court took an angry cheerleader case. Reading the facts of this case in Supreme court language is embarrassing. I think about the NCAA case. And how justice Gorsuch makes a little bit of this point that you're making Sarah near the end. He writes a paragraph saying, I know people are going to be upset about this from every day because we did not resolve everything that needs to be resolved here, but the core cannot resolve the cultural debate about amateur sports versus professional sports. The court cannot do that. All we can do is look at antitrust laws it's written today and apply it and that's what we did and I think he's right and I think the court did that and did it correctly and then I think Kavenaugh loves to just push things along [00:22:00] further and say, here's how I might decide a future case. That seems to be his favorite thing to do. I just happen to agree with him this time.
Sarah: [00:22:07] Yeah. Stop doing that too. That's not helpful either, but you know what? That Roberts doctrine opens up the avenue for that. If you're constantly taking terrible teeny, tiny narrow cases, then of course, they're going to write concurring opinions, being like, well, you know, what I'd really like to do is this because we don't have any space to do anything cause we're all trying to get to an eight or nine justices so let me just fantasize. I mean, Kagan did that with some of the gerrymandering cases and that's what happens when you're trying to pave this teeny tiny road one brick at a time, people who'd became Supreme court justices because they want to do big things are gonna spout off from time to time. It's not surprising I would do.
Beth: [00:22:44] It's not surprising and it's all a result in my opinion of the politicization of the nomination process and politization is probably the wrong word of treating. It in such crass partisan terms when I think when Mitch [00:23:00] McConnell, particularly it was bad before, but the denial of the Garland hearing to me set the court on this path where justice Roberts feel so squeezed to try to keep the court looking legitimate and above the fray and it got worse and worse and worse from there on. I'm glad that the Biden administration is studying the issue. I know they don't really want to touch this and I understand why too, but someone needs to touch it because this is a mess and it's a pretty unsustainable mess and I saythat as someone who loves the court.
I love reading these opinions, not Alitos okay. But everybody else's, I love reading those opinions and I'm sad about where the court is. Even as I think we've had some decent decisions coming out of it lately.
Sarah: [00:23:42] Well, and let me say this. We tackle this in detail on our spicy Nightly Nuance last night, but this is why justice Briar should retire. Let me say that as plainly, as I can, because the strain on the institution of another [00:24:00] politicized nomination, should it happen after the midterms, if Republicans control the Senate, where Mitch McConnell has already said, well, we just wouldn't put through a nominee. So you'd have two years without a nominee than it would be on the battle during the presidential race. Like don't do that to the court. It can't take it. It truly cannot take it at this point. Give the court a break, make this one easy. You should retire. I love you so much, but you should retire. Okay, sorry. I just needed to get that off my chest. All right. We're going to wrap up our Supreme court coverage and next we're going to share our interview with Kristen.
Beth: [00:24:36] We're going to share portions of our conversation with Kristen and we'll tell you more about Kristen in just a second, but first here's why we talked to her and why we're sharing this discussion. As many of, you know, [00:25:00] state legislatures in their last sessions had bills cropping up about transgender students, transgender athletes, medical care for transgender children. I know many of you have been on the front lines of fighting against those bills. Some of them passed. Fortunately in Texas where Kristin lives, those bills died, uh, with the legislative session, they did not make it across the finish line. They are bound to come up again, absent some real changes in the way that we talk about these issues.
We got an email this week from a listener who was so sincerely saying, I recognize that I am a white woman with a wealth available to me who's married to a man that most of the circumstances of my life create so much privilege and I don't really know how to be an ally to communities that need me and I think this conversation with Kristin gives us one place where we can stand up and be kinder to our neighbors. I hope it also is a place where those of you who are [00:26:00] wrestling with similar issues in your own families can find some language to use that's helpful.
So Kristen reached out to us. She's a listener of the podcast. She is the mother of a transgender child. She is a Texan. So much of her biography resembles many of the emails that we get every single week and so we're really excited to share some of this discussion with you first. Let's let Kristin introduce herself in her own words.
Kristen: [00:26:26] My husband and I, uh, had got married in 2008 and we both went to Baylor university, but we didn't meet at Baylor. We met after at a young adult church event. Uh, we were in the Methodist church at the time and got married just as one does and started a family. We had Olivia who is nine now, as was assigned female at birth and in 2012, and [00:27:00] life was normal for the first two and a half years. We were just living our life. We are in Texas, just hanging out, going to work, being a family and then we decided to have, try again and have another child and I got pregnant very easily and Amelia was born in 2015. So there's about three, almost three years apart to the day actually.
Their birthdays are in November and, um, the summer before Olivia turned three. I was, I was really pregnant and we started noticing that Olivia would say, mommy, I'm a boy and I'm not a girl and I, and I can, I can tell you exactly the, for the very first time that I heard him say that. I was taking him to preschool and, uh, I was in the car thinking about what I needed to do to get ready for the baby and so Olivia was not three yet, so about two [00:28:00] years and nine months at this point and we were going over the rain, the railroad tracks, and I heard mommy, I'm a boy and I said, what? I said, no, you're not, you're a girl. I was like, you're a girl just like mommy and no, mommy. I'm a boy and then, um, I didn't think much of it because you know, didn't seem, it seemed like that's right when they were starting to talk about body parts and things like that in preschool. So, you know, we went on with life and we were noticing that Olivia was saying it a little bit more and a little bit more and so then right before Amilia was born, I did talk to a friend that I know.
So I'm back. My background is I am a physical therapist, but I also have a master's in social work. So something was kind of triggered in my brain a little bit like, Hm, this might what's going on here. You know, I knew enough to [00:29:00] know that this was not typical, I should say. And so I talked to my friend right before I had my second child and she said, well, you know, like just watch it. You know, I don't really, she, I think at the time she knew what was going on probably, but maybe I was about to have a baby didn't want to like, mention anything but she said, well, let's just see what happens and, and Olivia has never been dressing in dresses, nothing like that.
Like there was a red t-shirt that he wore every day for two weeks. Like I could not get him to take off the red t-shirt and w you know, whatever, it's just clothes. It didn't matter to me. So after Amelia was born, two days later, I got home from the hospital. Everything was fine with the birth, no problems and my mom was here helping and I was putting the baby down and my mom came in and said, I think you need to sit down and I said, okay and she, and my mom said, Olivia has been telling me 10 [00:30:00] times that she was, that he's a boy and I said, okay and it escalated from there. So at the time we were like, I mean, I just had a baby. Is he trying to differentiate himself from the baby? Did we prepare him enough for the baby? And so I started doing research mode right after I had the baby. I mean, our second.
I went into like social work research mode. What does this mean? This was 2015 so there wasn't a whole lot of information out there. There was, there were starting to be, but it was, it was nothing like it is now and, um, I came across some websites and some studies that said that like, he could be transgender, but we, you know, we, he might not be. You know, there at the time, there was all these studies that said 80% of kids who say this as a young children grow out of it or not grow out of it but, you know, in alignment with their births [00:31:00] at puberty and so, but those studies are absolutely false. They're debunked. They had included gender nonconforming kids in the studies and that those studies are not credible at all. Like, and that's what the, unfortunately what's happening now is that's what the right wing is trying to pull in is these studies that are just absolutely false.
And I can get into that later because they changed the definition of what the criteria for gender dysphoria and how, how they diagnose someone as transgender. We can talk about that later but, so I did all the research. I talked to psychologist, I talked to therapist. You know, wanting, wanting, not knowing what to do. Do I correct my child? Do I not correct my child? Do I, what, what do we do? Because I knew enough that how we handle that was gonna matter, right away. How we handle that is going to matter and so [00:32:00] actually the, there was one psychologist that a friend talked to me, talk to me about, which was, that said the most, I think sound advice was, well, some kids know that young. Some kids just know, and, but if it's not, it doesn't sound like it's an emergency.
There's, you know, no self harm or anything. It sounds like you do. There's a lot of stress just having a baby, so, you know, see what happens and that was actually that kind of put me at peace cause, um, you know, I'm like, okay, we don't need to do anything now and I would say that this is just our story. Every transgender family has a different story. I will say that the kids that know really young and, and the parents are listening and paying attention to it, they have similar trajectories. Meaning the little boys will say, I want to cut my penis off. The little [00:33:00] girls like assigned female at birth will say, when is my penis gonna grow? You know, like those sorts of talk happens in addition to just absolutely affirming this is who I am. So we have just journeyed with Olivia. Olivia does not want to change his name. We've talked to him about it and we feel like that is just because he's felt comfortable. Fortunately, we live in a blue part of Texas and it hasn't been easy, but we have been able to carve out our own support network and our own support system.
We did change churches because I know that God loves my child. God made my child. I did not want my child to hear from the pulpit, anything different than God's love. So we joined the Episcopal church a few years ago go, and that has been an amazing experience for us. We did a lot of church hopping, trying to find my [00:34:00] church that was supportive and in fact, you know, I think the cool story there is that I was taught. We took a year, like we weren't going to put our kids in Sunday school for a, because we don't know how they're going to treat my child and b, like I didn't, we just wanted to, before we introduced a new church or something, we just wanted to, uh, check it out first and so I was tired. I had been the one church church hopping, and I was just really tired. All of the questions at the end. Did you just move here?
All of that and finally, I was in this, we, my husband and I were in this beautiful sanctuary and I, this sweet dean walked up and said, well, why are you here? I'm here to welcome you and I, and I just broke down and I said, this is why we're here. I have a transgender child. What does your church can offer us? Are we safe here? And she looked me in the eye with tears in her eyes and she said, you have a home here. Oh. And. That was it, you know, that's, that's the church that we've joined. Um, our [00:35:00] school has been supportive. We've had, we have lost friends and, and I, you know, that's, it's, it's, it's a hard thing. It's just a hard, having to change, I think, your whole life and wanting people to be supportive, but not knowing if they will be or can be.
As far as Olivia is concerned, I think one thing that people don't understand about this is that there's a lot of mental, like anguish that they go through and the reason that some kids do a social transition really, really early is because they are going to start self-harming, meaning trying to cut off body parts. Anger is a big theme for these kids if they're not supported. There's a lot of anger and we saw that even with Olivia and how we have been supportive of him. Not once has Olivia ever said, I'm a girl, not one time.
[00:36:00] Beth: [00:36:00] Kristen really generously shared some background about Olivia's story and as we were talking with her, you kept referencing Far From the Tree, a book that you sight off in the sitting on my nightstand right now. I'm going to dig into it in July and I wonder if you could share again with the audience, some of what you learned from that book about how we think about transgender children.
Sarah: [00:36:23] Yes, regular listeners of the show are used to me mentioning Andrew Solomon's Far From the Tree. I finished reading it this year. It's 800 pages long. Listen, I've been reading it for a while, but the last chapter is on transgender because he's really exploring what happens when a child has an identity separate from their parents. He calls them horizontal identities. What happens when your child the fundamental thing about them that is different and he starts to talk about transgender and he opens the chapter and I love this quote. He says, "Western culture likes binaries. Life feels less frightening when we can separate good and evil into tidy heaps. When we split off the mind from the body, when men are masculine and [00:37:00] women are feminine. Threats to gender are threats to the social order. If rules are not maintained, everything seems to be up for grabs and Joan of arc must go to the stake."
And I think that is so key. It feels like we are just talking about kids, but to the people who are perpetuating these laws and fighting so hard, they perceive it as this like threat to social order. This threat to everything because gender props up everything and why I think it's so incredibly valuable to hear from people like Kristin to hear her very personal story, to hear her family story, to hear about her actual child, is to remind ourselves and to remember, that's the paradox. That's the struggle. That's the difficulty of these issues is that both things are true. Right? We have these people who feel like everything is the world is crumbling underneath [00:38:00] them and it's about actual kids, just kids, individual kids, wanting to live their lives and thrive and flourish as themselves and parents struggling and working so hard and doing everything they can to make that possible.
Beth: [00:38:21] I listened to several podcasts from The Bulwark, a group of former Republican strategists who have fully embraced Democrats running for office, given the big lie and the Trump presidency and something that comes up a lot when they discuss these transgender discrimination bills, that's really what they are right there. They're discriminatory bills right? They say, you know, for every transgender person in the country, like 50,000 words has been written in some conservative publication about this topic. That this is a small percentage of the population, a vulnerable percentage of the population that is being exploited and Kristin tells us about that [00:39:00] here.
Kristen: [00:39:00] 1% of the population is transgender and I think a lot of times people have a hard time recognizing that transgender adults were transgender children and they absolutely were and if you talk to trans adults, they will say, man, I wish I had the, I wish I had an affirming family when I was growing up. I wish there was language to talk about this. I wish I had the help that I need because the suicide rates are off the charts. So my child, trans boy, has a 50% chance of attempting suicide. 50% chance that number decreases dramatically if there's an affirming family. It doesn't go, it doesn't completely go away but there was a study recently that kids between the ages of 12 and 17 who were affirmed, because trans boys have a 50% chance of attempting suicide. [00:40:00] Trans girls, I think it's 33%. Non binary, it's 22%, but the average is 42% so that you'll hear that number a lot. But if, if there's an affirming family, it goes down to almost normal and normal our typical for suicide attempt in kids is 4%.
Sarah: [00:40:19] and it's still too high.
Kristen: [00:40:21] and it's still too high but you go from 50% to 4% with an affirming family. Okay. And so, I mean, you can't tell me that I'm not going to move heaven and earth for my child, not to set my child up for, to not be that 50%, right and they there's this misnomer that there's like, kids change their mind and that's just, the research just does not bear that out. There was a study recently of 25,000 transgender people and 13% detransitioned. And what that meant that means is that they went back to their other [00:41:00] gender, but if you talk to them about the reasons that they did that it was, my kids might be taken away, I couldn't get insurance. I couldn't get a job. The discrimination was too much.
Beth: [00:41:13] So Sarah, as we think about how to be allies, to answer our listeners question that was posed so sincerely that it really warmed my heart. We're going to let Kristen answer that in her own words but something that I think about is just being willing in your community, in your circles, to be the person who can calm those folks who see this as a threat to the social order. To be the person who can say, what are we really talking about here? What's really going on.
Sarah: [00:41:40] Not shame, not shutting down because that just fuels it and not because we're making space for discrimination or ignorance, but because in an effort to protect these kids, we don't want to fuel the fire. I don't want that. Right. I want to make space. I want to [00:42:00] listen. I want to deescalate as much as I can because this isn't just a cultural battle, although it is that. It is impactful on the everyday lives of real children and so as best as I can, especially as an ally, to deescalate that, to find spaces where people can exercise some of those cultural fears with me and not with their legislator or their school board, our actual families with transgender children.
Beth: [00:42:30] And I think it makes me a better parent to consider these issues. I'm always asking, you know, how do I develop the most loving children I can? And I think developing the most loving children, I can means opening conversations with my kids, with the parents of kids that my kids spend time with, with our family members about things like sports and about the role that sports play in our lives and how seriously we take them and how we prioritize the outcomes in sports versus [00:43:00] the way that we love other people. I think talking about the decisions people get to make with their healthcare providers, the decisions people make about their names and their clothing and what they ask to be called. I mean, these all seem like places to me where we can really work on, how do we develop the most love in each other that we're capable of? And here's, Kristen's call to action for us.
Kristen: [00:43:23] We're a small group. We need allies that are willing to speak up and I had a friend recently that said, how can I, how can I support you? How can I be, you know, a good ally in your life? And I said, teach your kids about kids like mine. You know, that's how you can be a good mom to my kid is to, to make it safer for my child to go to school, make it safer for them. You know, if there's someone picking on my kid, like talk to them about being transgender and it's, it's, there's been transgender people [00:44:00] since there have been people. It is not a new, it is not a new thing and what's so heartbreaking for me in this is that science has figured out how to help this vulnerable population because the trans adults were trans kids and I know that that's a hard thing to think about.
I, it challenges all of the gender norms that we've, that we know about in the west. It challenges all of that but we've we figure it out how to help this population to go on to happy healthy lives and they're trying to take that away. Trans kids just want to live their lives. They do. They don't want the idea that there's some, that they're trying to be predatorial or they're like. The trans kids just want to fit in. They want to play with their friends. They are, [00:45:00] I don't know how to say it any other way. They are just not a threat to other kids. They like, and they want to be loved and cherished for who they are just like everyone else and I think what's so heartbreaking is that we, the, the stats on their mental health, that's not up for debate.
Sarah: [00:45:23] We're so honored that Kristin trusted us to come and share her story, her family story, her child's story. We thought it was essential and important to share that story with all of you and we thought it was particularly appropriate during Pride month to think about these things in a complex way, in a nuanced way and with someone who is actually experiencing them. Next up, we're going to share what's on our mind outside politics.
[00:46:00] Beth, have you read Britney’s court statement?
Beth: [00:46:06] I read it this morning and I was really surprised by how much it impacted me. Honestly, I've cared about this as we've talked about before, since I saw the documentary. I'm exactly the right age to care about it. Britney Spears has been a looming figure in my life, you know, since I was a middle schooler, I suppose and when I read this statement, I could not shake that this is not outside of politics at all. This is not about Britney Spears at all, that she is speaking into a dynamic that is really pervasive in the United States and I think what was so brave about her telling the court, what is happening to me is wrong. What is happening to me is unacceptable. The state is allowing people to take advantage of me, to create trauma for me every single day and if that can happen to Britney Spears, you know, that it's happening to other people.
[00:47:00] Sarah: [00:46:59] Yeah. I was heartbroken reading the entire thing. I gasped. I cried even as somebody who has assumed the worst of this conservatorship, assumed the worst of what her, what her father and the people surrounding him and profiting off her work we're doing, I had already assumed the worst, but hearing it from her was just heartbreaking. Britney Spears is our age. She is also turning 40 this year and so it is just so hard to think about everything that she's been through and to track her life alongside mine and I think about the last 13 years of my life, and I think about how much I've learned and how much I've grown, how much I've been allowed to travel and have children and explore new career paths, how much time I've spent with family and friends laughing, how much struggle and burden I've had and how I've learned to deal with that [00:48:00] and depend on other people.
And the fact that this woman has been robbed of that is so heartbreaking to me, especially because she's given so much to so many people and I know it's easy to be flippant about famous an artist, but. It's just true. She wasn't just out there shaking her ass. She was making people feel seen. Like, look, if you're a Peloton rider, I know you've done Cody Rigsby's Britney Spears ride and to hear him talk about watching her and seeing her and feeling seen and feeling like there was a life out there for him as a gay kid, that stuff matters. People heard her music, people watched her performances, they brought them joy. They brought them awareness. They brought them just happiness and she did all that enormous personal sacrifice at an incredibly young age and I'm not saying she was like, like a soldier. Like she knew what she was staying she was signing up for and did it willingly knowing she was going to bring joy to other people [00:49:00] but the sacrifices were made just the same. And at this point in her life, like when she said, I just want, I've been working since I was a kid. I just want some time off. I just want years to do what I want to do. I've made so many people, so much money. I deserve this and it just, my heart broke for her, my heart totally and completely breaks for her.
Beth: [00:49:22] And I know that you can not tell everything about a situation from one statement. As I read her statement and reading it, of course is different from hearing it as well. There are things in it where you can tell, you can hear the trauma. You can tell that there has been real arrested development. That there has been a real constriction around what she's been exposed to and what she's been able to learn and practice, but she didn't sound very different from a lot of people walking around doing exactly what they want to all day, every day. You know, she sounded coherent. She sounded like someone who was really trying to [00:50:00] understand what was happening. She sounded like someone who was as 90% of people are probably more than that, at a serious imbalance of power in the courtroom, right. That she has a serious lack of knowledge compared to the judge she was speaking with and she was still assertive and like powerfully speaking into what she's entitled to as a human being and that really moved me to thinking about how many people walk into those totally intimidating environments where it almost feels like a different language is spoken than yours and sometimes a different language is being spoken than yours and this person has so much power over you and for her to just so earnestly say to this judge, I need you to know this. I felt like you didn't hear me the last time we did this and I came back to try again, that is a beautiful thing and I really hope the court hears her on that.
Sarah: [00:50:58] I think we do this all the time. [00:51:00] We assume that being an elite or having social status in one particular area translates across all areas. We assume that because someone is a rich, successful business person, that they are smart and worked hard and deserve it and we assume because somebody is a celebrity, that they are also an intellectual elite, which is often not the case. When exactly what a Britney Spears have gone to college? She was too busy working her ass off, entertain all of us for a decade. So it's just, I felt that reaction to myself. I know a lot of people had it. You want her to stand up and make the most articulate case humanly possible, never repeat herself and it's like, that's not the kind of status she procured for herself. The status she even procure for herself wasn't enough to keep her out of basically bondage for 13 years.
So like it just, I think we do this a lot. We assume based because [00:52:00] someone is beautiful, they're smart. We assume, because someone is smart, they're well educated. We be assumed because someone is well-educated, they are deserving and none of those things are inherently linked and you know, the other thing I think is really key, when I was listening to her and this is hard, but I think it's a conversation we need to have. I was struck by how this conservatorship began with a mental health crisis and how the story in this country that we say that we tell ourselves is true, right? That we don't take mental health seriously enough, that we allow crises to perpetuate that mental health experts are always there and always help.
And I think what you see from Britney Spears is sometimes mental health expertise is used to control people and not necessarily, like it's not this one size fits all magic wand. We just get people, mental health care and everything is [00:53:00] solved and like, I talk like that. I say that all the time, well you just need therapy as if that's going to fix everything as if that's a magical solution? I mean, she, it sounds like she has been perpetually in therapy and also we use therapy as one word to include a lot of things, which is going to sweep up terrible therapy, abusive therapy, great therapy, comprehensive therapy, holistic therapy, right? Like there's a whole fit. Lots wrapped up in that word. Does a lots of rat blot wrapped up in mental health. Those two words, but I was struck by how we all, you know, this whole time I was telling myself, God, she just needs really good therapy. And this whole time she's been in therapy. She's like, I don't, I want out of this and I shouldn't have to go to therapy to get out of it and I thought that was really interesting too.
Beth: [00:53:41] And I think she's right. It broke my heart to hear how abusive therapy has been for her and it made me think about how, like fundamentally, if I think about what kind of country do I want to live in, I want to live in one where we truly prioritize freedom. Freedom for people, even if they are [00:54:00] struggling with a mental health issue. There's a way to help people and come alongside them and value their independence. I worry about this. Honestly, I even worry about it when people who I believe to be people of good faith are talking about big mental health packages. I worry about it when we talk about mental health and guns. I worry that ultimately what we're talking about is taking rights away from people who are struggling through a time that could be around the door for any of us, right?
It's mental health is an everybody all the time issue and it scares me. I want to prioritize freedom of people who've committed crimes because I believe there is a better way to work through criminality than through incarceration and for our conservatorship system to allow someone to be micromanaged to the level of, even in her area of clear expertise, she's having people threaten her over, wanting to change a dance move? Like what are we even doing? The state is sanctioning them. We need to [00:55:00] take a giant step back and get to fundamentals on what are we trying to do here and why?
Sarah: [00:55:05] And Freedom has it relates to fame, which I am just not sure can coexist. The reason I am invested in Britney Spears is because this is something I think about a lot. We've talked about this on the show with Whitney Houston, who I adored. We've talked about this on the show with Michael Jackson and his predatory behavior and the effects of fame and it's certainly something the state can make worse, but it's not something the state or the law can fix and that's just something I think that we have to continue to explore as a culture. When we love someone's art, when we make someone famous at what cost does that come to the individual? And the more I see people like Britney Spears, I thought her referencing Paris Hilton story was so interesting and the more we see this fallout in their individual lives. She is a real person. She starts to not feel real because [00:56:00] we see her so much, but she is a real person and I just, I wonder if it's ever worth it.
We believe that fame is freedom and so when famous people say I'm suffering, my freedom is restricted, we blow it off but I really think it's the opposite. I don't think fame is freedom. I think fame and money and influence and all that comes with it is often its own type of thing. Okay. So that was a lot. I'm going to keep Britney in our thoughts and prayers and follow very closely along with that judge decision. Thank you as always for joining us for an ever wide ranging topics here on Pantsuit Politics. We will be back in your ears on Tuesday until then keep it nuanced, y'all.
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