Relationscapes
MINI EPISODE: Pace Yourself and Brace Yourself (with Katelyn Burns of 'Cancel Me, Daddy')
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Intro – 00:00
BLAIR HODGES: What’s up everybody? Welcome to another mini-episode of Relationscapes. We’re mapping the stories and ideas that shape who we are and how we connect with each other so we can build a more just world. I’m journalist Blair Hodges joining you from Salt Lake City.
In this episode, I’m excited to introduce Katelyn Burns, journalist and podcast host of Cancel Me, Daddy. Katelyn was the first openly transgender Capitol Hill reporter in U.S. history and she continues to be a leading voice among journalists on trans issues. It’s not the cushiest job there ever was. I wondered how she was holding up under our excessively transphobic regime. Let’s dive right in.
Cancel Me, Daddy – 00:55
BLAIR HODGES: Katelyn Burns, welcome to Relationscapes.
KATELYN BURNS: Thanks for having me.
BLAIR HODGES: I first heard about you on the Cancel Me Daddy podcast. This is a great show. Tell people a little bit about what you're doing.
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah, so I co-host this amazing podcast, Cancel Me Daddy. People tell me it's the best-named podcast in history. I'm not sure—
BLAIR HODGES: I dunno, I believe Relationscapes is pretty good. [laughter]
KATELYN BURNS: Um, but I'm on there with my co-host, Christine Grimaldi, and we've been doing our show since about 2021, I want to say. My old co-host Oliver Ash Kleine and I planned it during the pandemic year and we launched in February 2021. This is at the height of the “cancel culture” panic, which I think has sort of died a little bit over time.
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, it's been replaced by anti-DEI and other stuff. It's related, but they needed to kind of rebrand.
KATELYN BURNS: Right. And it's sort of evolved over time. Like, the show's intro is, “We give thoughtful analysis and verbal sh*t-posting,” and at the beginning it was all verbal sh*t-posting, and now it's almost all—I mean, we still have a lot of fun with the show, but it's a lot more thoughtful analysis. And it's gone so far beyond cancel culture, where we've had very deep and meaningful conversations about how social media affects our lives.
One of my favorite episodes is we had a grad student and assistant professor from the University of Washington on and talked about why Twitter is designed to make you act like an assh*le.
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, it's true! [laughter]
KATELYN BURNS: Which is totally true. But there's real science behind it. So we have those types of conversations. We had an episode where we talked about this guy who got canceled on TikTok, which I don't even use, by the way. I'm too much of a boomer for that.
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I just started. We'll see.
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah, we just created a Cancel Me Daddy TikTok account.
BLAIR HODGES: Right. You'll probably post little clips and stuff?
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah, but I don't know what I'm doing on there.
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I feel the same. I feel like the gif of the old guy that's like, “greetings, fellow kids!”
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah. I’m like, “It's like YouTube shorts.” And that immediately outs me as somebody who doesn't get it.
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, exactly. [laughter]
KATELYN BURNS: But, yeah, we have a ton of fun. We have a fairly recent new co-host, Christine Giraldi.
BLAIR HODGES: You two have a great dynamic. The episode I was just listening to was about private equity. You frame it kind of tongue in cheek by saying, “This week we're canceling private equity,” but really you're saying "We're going to kind of talk about the problems with private equity, let people know what it is." It's a cool framing. I like it.
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah. The term “Cancel Me Daddy” was originally designed to make fun of the people who go out of their way to get canceled for attention. Right?
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, they like it. They're like, “Oh, noooo, please don't.” But really, they're like, “This is awesome. I love this.”
KATELYN BURNS: They know it's good for them. We coined a term called the “cancel culture grift economy, where it's like, “Oh, I was canceled. So here’s my book, and here's my podcast, and here's my TV show, my YouTube show. And by the way, I have a Patreon!” And they make thousands of dollars. I'm like, who's giving these people money?
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. [laughter]
KATELYN BURNS: It's got to be like a money laundering scheme, right?
BLAIR HODGES: Like, I sense a little bit of kink to it, too. The phrase "cancel me, Daddy" is sort of like, they like this.
KATELYN BURNS: Yes. I start every episode by saying, you're listening to Cancel Me Daddy [sexy voice].
BLAIR HODGES: exactly. So people can check out that show.
“The Current ‘Mindf*ck’ of Being a Trans Journalist” – 4:16
BLAIR HODGES: I want to talk to you here about a column you recently wrote. As a journalist, you're not just doing podcasts. You're freelancing. You're writing a lot of journalistic pieces. And I recently read a column where you talk about what it's like being a trans journalist right now, covering trans issues in particular. And you said, this is a real “mindf*ck.” Here's a quote from you:
“I can't help but feel guilt at profiting from the suffering of my community while also feeling like I deserve to be fairly compensated for my work covering all these horrible new policies.”
KATELYN BURNS: This is a space I've occupied for just about the entirety of my career. And I think the quintessential example of this was back in the first Trump term. The first time around, he also tried to ban trans people from the military. And I remember it was a big thing. It was one of the few times that he actually directly addressed trans issues in his own statements in his first term.
The second term was completely different. Like, they're all obsessed with us now, but it was a groundbreaking thing. And I forget the exact number, but I tell people now that I wrote twelve articles in two days about the first trans military ban. I didn't sleep either of those two days. I was basically up for 48 hours straight writing columns because there are very few freelance journalists who are actually covering trans issues.
So all these editors from all these publications, you could tell they were in these editorial meetings going, who can we get to write about this? And they all had my name on their mind. And, like, I'm a freelance journalist who's struggling to write and pay rent. I'm not going to say no to any of them.
So I went ahead and I wrote twelve articles in two days. I think I paid for three months’ rent with two days’ work. And I remember getting paid for those things. And I'm like, one of the most horrific government policies in modern times, at least presented against my community, I just turned into money to pay rent.
And like, that kind of feels in some way—like I'm not a trans member of the military. I'm not a veteran or anything. None of this affects me personally. And here I am getting a couple thousand dollars for work on it.
I have a running joke with editors where it's like, "You don't call me for good news."
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, oof.
KATELYN BURNS: And it's been this way my entire career because this is almost exclusively what I write about. Thankfully, actually, the podcast has allowed me to write a little bit about cancel culture and online free speech discourse, too. Which, like, it's frequently related to trans rights, but isn't completely about trans rights. So it's given me sort of another beat that I can say, “Hey, I'm like a knower on these things.”
But still, the vast majority of my writing, my freelancing income comes from covering trans issues. It's just really weird. It's like Trump could announce tomorrow that they're gonna start executing a trans person every minute on the White House lawn for public viewing. And I could make thousands of dollars on that.
BLAIR HODGES: Also, don't give him any ideas.
KATELYN BURNS: [laughter] I mean, listen, it's not like I wouldn't be the first one, or one of the first people he would put out there.
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.
KATELYN BURNS: Before I go, I could make my kids a lot of money.
Passport Restrictions and Executive Orders – 7:42
BLAIR HODGES: Okay. So you've seen a big difference between that first term and this term.
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah.
BLAIR HODGES: And you said in this piece that the first two weeks of Trump's second presidency were by far the worst weeks in your professional career in terms of how much was happening. What were you seeing and what seems to be sticking at this point?
KATELYN BURNS: You know the expression "trying to drink from a fire hose"?
BLAIR HODGES: Oh yeah.
KATELYN BURNS: That's very much what it felt like for me. It was very clear they had a plan of every step they wanted to take in the first month. They immediately rolled out and said, no more passports issued with anything other than your birth sex, which is a huge deal. You saw it with the actress whose name I forget off the top of my head. I call myself a journalist, and yet I can never remember names.
BLAIR HODGES: Well, I'm Blair.
KATELYN BURNS: You’re Blair. I'm Katelyn. [laughter] But there's an actress, she's in Euphoria. She's trans and she's one of the most gorgeous women—not just trans women, but women on the planet.
BLAIR HODGES: Hunter?
KATELYN BURNS: Hunter Schaefer. Thank you.
BLAIR HODGES: Google helped out.
KATELYN BURNS: And she renewed her passport and they gave her “male” for her sex marker. I can't imagine her flying to Germany and having to explain to the poor German passport officer what's going on with this.
It's like it's a huge restriction on our travel. It disincentivizes us from leaving. And there were some cases where these passport offices—and we're not quite sure if this was purposeful or if it was just because they were unclear on policy—but they were seizing the passports of trans people who were trying to get renewals. Even if the trans person said, “Give me the marker you want.”
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, "go ahead and misgender me, I just want the ability to travel."
KATELYN BURNS: They were seizing passports and refusing to reissue them. And that's a really scary thought. Like, governments don't typically restrict international travel for certain minority groups unless they have bigger plans. So that was like the first big thing. And there's been, G-d, a dozen executive orders?
BLAIR HODGES: There's the great executive order that defined everybody accidentally as female when it said that we're like, at conception, our sex is determined, and our gender.
KATELYN BURNS: So the sex determined at conception thing is an interesting phrasing. It actually comes from anti-abortion activists because they believe life begins at conception, not at birth.
So, yeah, I was not a fan of the, “Oh, so we're all female” responses—
BLAIR HODGES: Oh, you didn't like it?
KATELYN BURNS: No, I personally didn't like it. I know a lot of people did like it. I saw representative Sarah McBride make that joke and I was kind of like cringing.
BLAIR HODGES: Tell me, like, what's the cringe?
KATELYN BURNS: I just. It's funny. I get it. I do. But also, it's kind of like the “lib gotcha” of it all. Like, “ha ha ha, you're an idiot. We got you again.” And it's like, okay, but like, I can't renew my passport. Come on, man!
BLAIR HODGES: Okay, fair. Like there's bigger things. Why are we all focusing on—Okay, that's fair. That's good.
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah. Literally, my passport renews in two years. And as of right now, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that.
BLAIR HODGES: That's fair. So you’ve got passports, you have attempts to legally define what gender is.
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah.
Sports, Health Care, Public Funding, and More – 10:58
BLAIR HODGES: You also have trans athlete bans. Are there other ones that came through in the, in the first little while?
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah. So the athlete ban. There was another one where Trump signed an executive order saying that we need to refuse travel visas to trans athletes. And then the State Department took that and said, no, we're going to deny everybody with a, quote, “false” gender marker on their foreign passports, visas. Which is an overreach.
I mean, the athlete thing, I don't really want to get started on it, but—
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, and you've done a lot of reporting on it. So I'll link in the show notes to some of the work that you've done on trans athletes in particular.
KATELYN BURNS: I think the public is grossly misinformed about trans athletes in general.
BLAIR HODGES: And we'll have other episodes about that too. I'll let listeners know, we are going to dig into that issue.
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah, but it's just too much. We could spend the next hour talking about just that. But I don't want to do that this morning.
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, exactly. Okay.
KATELYN BURNS: Like just recently, there's another policy, the Health and Human Services Department or agency proposed a rule that gender affirming care would no longer be listed as an essential service. So that we could see a return to the exclusions on health insurance policies against gender affirming care for ACA plans like the Obamacare plans. Which I'm on and have been on for eight years. If there's a state requirement, the insurance companies cover gender affirming care. The states now have to pay for it, which might not affect me because I live, you know, in a blue state.
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.
KATELYN BURNS: But a bunch of red state folks will be directly impacted.
BLAIR HODGES: And then they're pulling funding from places that won't—
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah, they erased us from websites. They erased all mention of trans people—
BLAIR HODGES: From Stonewall!
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah, they erased trans people from Stonewall.
Dems Should Support Civil Rights Maybe – 13:03
BLAIR HODGES: They're being very creative and attacking every angle they possibly can.
KATELYN BURNS: It's purposeful, yeah.
BLAIR HODGES: And in response, I think some leading Democrats, including that representative who delivered a response to Trump's first State of the Union, have tried to sidestep the issue.
And Kamala Harris during the campaign didn't address all the anti-trans ads that the Trump campaign ran. She just kind of thought, “oh, I'm not even gonna touch that.”
Some Democrats are calling this issue a “distraction.” I wanted to hear your thoughts about that kind of framing. “Now this is a distraction. Let's talk about kitchen table issues for Americans.”
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah, well, guess what I talk about at my kitchen table? Oh! But I guess that doesn't count.
BLAIR HODGES: “Yeah, well, we didn't mean that kitchen table.”
KATELYN BURNS: I moved here two years ago. I'm just now starting to make local friends because it's really hard to make friends as an adult. It turns out.
BLAIR HODGES: You're on the East coast. Where are you at?
KATELYN BURNS: I am in an undisclosed location in Massachusetts, but I've gotten, you know, some local friends, and some of them have trans kids. But what do you think they're talking about at the kitchen table? Kitchen table issues? “For who” is my question back when they say we need to talk about kitchen table issues.
We should talk about economic issues? Well, guess what? My health insurance is an economic issue to me. If they're treating this as something that's not important, then that lets me know as a voter that my vote is not important to them.
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.
KATELYN BURNS: And if that's the decision they want to make, that's fine. But that decision has consequences because there's a lot of people in this country who either are trans or care very deeply about the trans people in their lives and will punish Democratic politicians who don't defend us.
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. You've mentioned there are varying estimates about the number of total trans folks in the US. It's hard to get numbers because not everybody's out. We don't know, but they range from like 1.6 million to over 4 million. And if those trans folks have loved ones or friends, at least one loved one, you could double that number of people who cared about it. And maybe more.
And so you point out that, like, that would be a city like LA or Philadelphia?
KATELYN BURNS: Somewhere in between. Yeah.
BLAIR HODGES: Somewhere in between there. And so I do think Democrats are like, “Uh, they're spread out enough to not make much of an electoral difference.”
I think if they're trying to make a political calculus on, like, how many votes it would affect in swing states or something, that might be the calculus they're making.
The reason I think that's wrong is because it's a fundamental civil rights issue. And the more trans rights are under attack, anyone's civil rights can come under attack. And Democrats could just ignore that, or they could be the party that says, “Actually, we care about civil rights, let's actually care about that and make that part of our platform. It’s at the kitchen table.”
KATELYN BURNS: I will point out that Democrats lost the White House by a smaller margin than the total number of trans voters in this country.
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.
KATELYN BURNS: So to say that we don't matter, that they can do without us, I don't think is the correct political calculation.
But again, you're right. The civil rights thing. And there's an interesting sort of civil war brewing within the Democratic Party over this.
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.
KATELYN BURNS: Because the next presidential election has already started for Democrats. I don't know if you've noticed. [laughter]
BLAIR HODGES: I have! Our “good friend” Governor Gavin Newsom has launched a presidential platform podcast. And episode number one was throwing trans people under the bus.
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah, we did a Cancel Me Daddy episode about it. We titled it, “We've Got Some Bad Newsome,” which I thought was kind of clever.
BLAIR HODGES: Maybe did you ask ChatGPT for help on that pun?
KATELYN BURNS: No! Actually, I have a group of trans ladies I play first-person shooters with in the evening. And we had a little brainstorm sesh while we were shooting heads. One of my friends was really mad I didn't go with “Gruesome Newsome” as a title, but yeah. [laughter]
So you have Newsom, who's throwing trans people under the bus. I think Tim Walz is kind of a middle-ground guy. I mean, he's always been supportive of trans rights. Like, I would feel very comfortable with him at the top of the ticket, but he's kind of like, you know, “We made mistakes and we need to learn from them,” but he's kind of non-committal about what he thinks those mistakes were, necessarily.
And then you have J.B. Pritzker who's like the great [inaudible] of the Midwest, who's like, he's out here at the Human Rights Campaign dinner going, “There's trans kids all over the country who are worried that nobody's gonna stand up for him. And for that reason only, I'm gonna be that guy.”
And it's like, well, okay. So you have a range of presidential white guys taking different approaches to this issue.
BLAIR HODGES: Do you think Pritzker means that? Do you think he's sincere?
KATELYN BURNS: I actually do.
BLAIR HODGES: Okay, good.
KATELYN BURNS: He strikes me as kind of, like he has that sort of New York—well, I don't know that New York only has it. I think the outer boroughs of New York has this—or like Boston or Philly, or there's also, like, a Chicago tough guy, like a liberal tough guy thing that happens sometimes in these cities, where they're like, “Yeah, I make fun of my trans friend over here, but that's my trans friend and I will defend her rights.” Right? Like, “I think she's a piece of sh*t. But she's my piece of sh*t!”
BLAIR HODGES: "All in the family" kind of thing.
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah. And I don't think you have that necessarily as strongly in California with Governor Hairdo over there. So, I don't know. It's interesting. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out within the Democratic Party.
Transphobia Isn’t a Political Winner – 18:53
BLAIR HODGES: The other thing I'd point out to Democrats is I don't think being anti-trans is an electoral winner, even pragmatically. So if Democratic leaders wanted to make the case and say, “Well, we have to do this. We're going to help trans folks, we're going to stand by them, but in terms of how we run, we're going to have to kinda throw them under the bus here,” I also don't think that's a political winner. What are your thoughts?
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah, so there's been a lot of talk lately about how being anti-trans is not necessarily an election winner for Republicans. I think I was the first person to make this argument back in the day, and I first saw this in 2016. This was the “red wave election” that swept Trump into office. It swept Republicans across country into office. But who was the big loser on election night? Do you remember?
BLAIR HODGES: No. Well, Hillary Clinton. Oh, you mean Republicans!
KATELYN BURNS: Oh. Oh, that hurt. [sad laughter]
BLAIR HODGES: I know, I know. As soon as you said it, that's what came to mind. And it was a painful thought!
KATELYN BURNS: The big Republican loser was North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, who was like the champion of the HB2 bathroom bill in North Carolina that triggered so much backlash.
And you saw it kind of repeatedly over the years until this presidential election. And I think what the evidence shows at large is that when Democrats stick up for trans people and they're not afraid to fight over it, and they respond to attack ads, voters respond to them. But when they put their heads in the sand and they duck the issue, they let it fester. They let the transphobia grow and fester. Right?
Because if you look at, like, Joe Biden, Republicans tried very hard to get Joe Biden to say something outrageous in favor of trans rights. Joe Biden has been, is one of our sort of OG political allies. He wrote the foreword for Sarah McBride's book where he called trans issues the “civil rights issue of our time.” And I remember early in his campaign, there was conservative grifter media guy who carries around a camera, you know, like a GoPro, and he was like, “Mr. Biden, how many genders are there?” And Biden goes “There’s at least three,” and turns to walk away. And the guy says something in reply, and Biden's like, “Don't start with me, Jack!”
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.
KATELYN BURNS: And then you flash forward to this past year, and you get Kamala Harris being asked about these attack ads Trump is running incessantly, and she's like, [passionless robot voice] “I will follow the law.”
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, and here's the thing. The way she answered seems suspect. And it seems like Republicans are making a lot of smoke about this, and Democrats aren't doing anything about it. So people think, “if there's smoke, there's fire.” And public perception begins to change because the Democrats who aren't ready to go out there and be like, “actually, no, this is smoke. Look, I can show you this is fake. Look what's happening. Here's reality.”
They're just like, “I will follow the law. I will answer very strangely to you about this issue and make it very uncomfortable for everyone.” And then people are like, “oh, crap, that smoke probably is fire.”
KATELYN BURNS: Right? I mean, Kamala Harris needed to find her version of “Don't try this with me, Jack.” And she didn't. And I think that's the lesson Democrats should take away.
But again, I have my own views on this, and I know that others very much disagree.
BLAIR HODGES: And they could take it up with you in your video game group you mentioned, while you're playing first person shooters. [Laughter]
All right, we're talking with Katelyn Burns, a freelance journalist and host of the Cancel Me Daddy podcast.
Brace Yourself and Pace Yourself – 22:21
BLAIR HODGES: I want to conclude by asking if you have any reasons for hope right now, what's keeping you going? What are you looking at to stay awake but also not completely burn out on all of this?
KATELYN BURNS: Yeah, it's interesting you should ask that, because literally minutes before we started this interview, I filed another piece about this. So my story is, I burned out hard during the first Trump administration. I burned out so hard that I was still burnt out in the middle of the 2024 election. And it wasn't until a couple months later that I was like, “Okay, I'm ready to tackle this again.”
And it was that pace I mentioned earlier, the twelve articles in two days, you know, that was the most extreme example. But I was writing three to four politics pieces a day for Vox in 2020, as the election was in the heat of it. And you know, I was writing feature stories also on the side about trans rights. And I know now that pace is unsustainable. I wasn't able to cover everything in the first couple months of this new administration. And I've given myself permission to say that's okay.
And I just ended a two-week break from serious social media use. I still use social media, but I was not scrolling for every last bit of information. My brain could not take it. There would be whole days where I would just leave my phone in another room and I would play—not a first person shooter. I'd play a different type of game. I'm a big fan of so-called map painting games, which is like Europa Universalis. So it's like a civ type of game.
And I would just play that all weekend and not look at my phone once. And then on Sunday night I open my phone and there's like, my mom has texted me twenty times going, are you still alive? Did the government come and take you? And I'm like, no, no, I'm okay!
BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. We need an AOL away messages, like for our phones. That's like “ding!” You know, you could put something like “I'm off listening to emo music” or something.
KATELYN BURNS: I like Sabaton, “When the winged hussars arrive.” I play that when I attack the Ottomans in that game.
Anyway, by the way, I had an outlet pay me to fly to Sweden to cover video games. It was like the greatest thing ever. That's a dream that actually really helped me reset just before Trump took office.
BLAIR HODGES: Oh, good!
KATELYN BURNS: But I don't know that I have a message of hope. I think I will leave it by saying, if you have trans listeners, our community has been in worse places in the past and survived.
Not all of us survived. I will say that we do have to take care of each other, but give yourself permission to not consume everything. We have good people like me, like Erin Reed, and other trans journalists who are keeping track of the bad stuff. If you need a break, you can come back and catch up. Give yourself permission to not engage when you need it. And I know it's like an overused statement, but touch grass every once in a while.
BLAIR HODGES: How about any advice for allies, friends, loved ones who want to be here for our trans friends?
KATELYN BURNS: I think the biggest risk right now is Democrats abandoning us. I think that's the one firewall we have against Republican cruelty. So when you see Democrats debating whether or not to throw us under the bus, I would say get in touch. Be loud. Let them know, “Hey, I'm not trans, but this is something that I care about. This is something I will remember when I go to the polls.”
And be sure to tell them that you vote in primaries, too, because I do think that we're going to see an unusually high number of primary challenges to incumbents, and we're going to have a chance to make shakeups with our leadership. And I do think that is something the Democrats who are in office right now are a little bit scared of.
So, yeah, let them know. There are people on BlueSky who, like, give out call scripts when certain specific trans issues come up. But otherwise, go to town halls. If you speak to your electeds or their staff, let them know trans issues are something you think about at the kitchen table.
BLAIR HODGES: Good. That's Katelyn Burns, freelance journalist, and she was the first openly transgender Capitol Hill reporter in U.S. history. She hosts the Cancel Me Daddy podcast and you can see her bylines all over the place. She's also the co-owner of the Flytrap, which is a feminist blog, right?
KATELYN BURNS: It is, yeah.
BLAIR HODGES: Excellent.
KATELYN BURNS: Me and ten other amazing writers.
BLAIR HODGES: People can check that out. And hopefully you don't sell out to private equity firms anytime soon. Thanks for taking time with us, Katelyn!
KATELYN BURNS: Thank you!
Trans Resources – 27:18
BLAIR HODGES: It’s important to stay up to date on issues impacting trans folks, not only because they matter in and of themselves, but also because civil rights abuses against trans folks often connect with civil rights abuses against other marginalized people, and threats to American democracy more broadly. One of the best ways to stay informed is to listen to trans folks themselves. There’s a saying I picked up from Disability Activists, and although being trans itself isn’t a disability, the phrase fits perfectly: “Nothing About Us Without Us.” We shouldn’t be making laws and policies without trans folks being directly involved. We shouldn’t be forming opinions without listening to trans folks. And we should be especially careful about news coverage on trans issues that fails to include trans perspectives. New York Times I am looking at you. So I’m going to point you to a few great journalistic sources and encourage you to subscribe to their work and follow them on social media.
First, journalist Evan Urquhart started his own independent news outlet, Assigned Media. He provides daily coverage of anti-trans propaganda and its effects. assignedmedia.org is the place to go. He's also on BlueSky.
Second, Erin Reed is another terrific independent trans journalist who covers news about legislation impacting trans folks. Her Substack newsletter is called Erin In The Morning. She's a great follow on BlueSky as well.
Third, I’ll point you to Nico Lang, a nonbinary journalist who you should follow on Instagram @queernewsdaily. Nico released a book last year called American Teenager: How Trans Kids are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era. I’m happy to announce Nico will be joining us in an upcoming episode of Relationscapes to talk about that terrific book. And I’m doing a book giveaway with a signed copy of that book! Follow me on Instagram to find out what that’s about.
Finally, I’ve published 4 episodes talking about trans issues. If you haven’t heard these, queue them up! A nice little starter pack. There’s Eris Young, their episode is called “Nonbinary Thinking.” There’s Abi Maxwell, mother of a trans kid, she wrote a terrific memoir about their family. The episode is called “The Challenges of Parenting Trans Kids.” There’s Laurie Lee Hall in the episode “Trans In the Latter Days,” and then there’s award-winning author Kyle Lukoff’s episode, “A Haunted Trans Story.”
I put links to all these sources in the show notes, the episode description, and at the Relationscapes website.
Outro – 30:12
BLAIR HODGES: We’ll hear from more trans guests in upcoming episodes. As always, I beg you to rate and review the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can email me your thoughts or send a voice memo, email address is blair@firesidepod.org or DM me on Instagram or TikTok.
Thanks for listening to another episode of Relationscapes, where we’re mapping the stories and ideas that shape who we are and how we connect with each other so we can build a more just world. Mates of State provided our theme song. Relationscapes is part of the Dialogue Podcast Network. I’m journalist Blair Hodges and I’ll see you next week for our next full episode.