The Power of Trans People

During our break between seasons, reviewing past episodes has revealed a few recurring themes. For the next few weeks, we’re compiling some of our favorite moments from Season One of It’s Open and reorganizing them around those themes. This week, we’ve focused on a topic we discuss at length on the pod: transness, the fluidity of gender, and the ways we can liberate and support trans people as a way to liberate and support all people. Featuring interviews with Chase Strangio, Jay Jurden, Matt Bernstein (Matt XIV), Jinkx Monsoon, Zoe Lister-Jones, and Elliot Page.

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Host: Ilana Glazer
Producers: Amanda Jane Stern, David Rooklin, Annika Carlson, Madeline Kim, Kelsie Kiley, Glennis Meagher
Video Producers: Lexa Krebs, Louise Nessralla
Audio Producers: Nicole Maupin, Rachel Suffian, Rebecca O’Neill
Lighting Director: Kevin Deming
Editor: Tovah Leibowitz
Graphics: Raymo Ventura
Outro Music: Don Hur

All Things It’s Open: linktr.ee/itsopenpod
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@itsopenpod

Transcript

SPEAKER_08 0:00

Hey openers, welcome to It's Open with Alana Glazer. Um, I'm in workout clothes. If you're listening to this, it might be worth hopping on YouTube to see me in an industrial strength sports bra. This sports bra allows me to not double bag them. Okay, anyway. So, welcome to our first compilation episode ever. Season one is officially over. And upon reflection, we here at It's Open realize that we have some like serious themes that have arisen, and we wanted to kind of dive into them deeper by organizing them together. Thus, a compilation. Cha-ching. So this first episode is about trans power, the power of trans people living their truth and how that empowers all of humanity to live truly. You know, transness is indigenous to humanity. And in this moment where trans people are under attack, it is because fascism is on the rise. It's one-to-one tide. And for fascism, authoritarianism, dictatorships to gain power, people have to be reduced often into binaries, black and white, man and woman, Christian or not Christian, whatever, and then kept in the dark and kept fearful. But human diversity is powerful and healthier, stronger, strengthening. Diversity within an individual is powerful and strengthening and healthier. And it was just a pleasure this season to talk about masculinity, femininity, and the fluidity between the two with all different kinds of people. And it was interesting putting this episode together how organizing the same components that you've seen in season one differently has a different impact. It's uh a dank episode, and I hope you enjoy it. And um hear some poignant voices on this significant phenomenon. And can we paint a picture for what it looked like, sounded like, and felt like to be an openly trans person in 2013? It feels like, oh, 2013. Yeah. But it's then it's it feels actually it's so long ago.

SPEAKER_05 2:10

Yeah. No, it's it is so long ago in the like context of being a public, openly trans person or just an openly trans person being in public. I mean, so this it was a time when for the most part, um, you know, there were not media stories about trans people. I think the most common way that trans adults at the time learned about transness was from growing up watching Jerry Springer and other talk shows in which we were sort of ridiculed, um, and the sort of exposure slash disclosure of it's really a man, it's really a woman. And that's like how we all came to understand ourselves. That is so painful. But you have two things. You have that, and then for me, the next thing is boys don't cry. So you have you're disgusting, worthy of mockery, or you're murdered. You know, this is pre-Orange is the new black. So there's no Laverne on television, at least not in that way. There's, you know, no, you know, for better for us, it's pre-Caitlyn Jenner coming out, pre-you know, Janet Mock being in the public discourse, um, you know, very much pre-posed. So there's not really, you know, sort of positive, even even human. Even human. There's human representation. Human representation. You, you know, if you're if you're a legal advocate trying to make change on behalf of a community who hasn't reached the point of being depicted as human, you know, this stuff really matters. You can't have a legal strategy that is not working in concert with a strategy to shift the way in which there's an empathy, uh, you know, sort of pathway. And that happens through art and culture. There, there's no other way. I mean, empathy is not built through a legal argument, not at all. Um, and so we have to be in that in that space. And that that became very clear to me very quickly when I started working at the ACLU.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

What happened today? Okay, there's talk of the FCC chair and Trump basically saying that they want to look into seeing if it's okay or permissible or like hazardous to have non-binary and trans representation in TV shows for children under 12. So they like essentially ripped off another layer of the actually we're just gonna be very transphobic mask. And it's so upsetting because I saw this news, and then one of my first reactions to this news was to be like, okay, that's why I say jokes about trans people are never just jokes. It always informs the public and trickles back down to harming actual trans people. And what's crazy is that anyone who says, oh, they're just jokes, they have to also somehow say, Oh, that the fact that legislation is being passed after there's been an environment created where these jokes are not only comfortable, but people are seeking them out. That legislation, that's just a coincidence. And it can't be. It just can't be.

SPEAKER_08 5:05

It does the bidding for the policy to happen. It makes it normal. And also, like what I don't think lands always for people as trans people are so othered culturally and then in policy, people don't realize that they are just the scapegoat to climb whatever ladder of manufactured hierarchy to get to you.

SPEAKER_02 5:24

Whoever you didn't hey, guess what? They didn't take your job away from you, they aren't the reason your hours got cut at the plant, they aren't the reason that big company didn't decide to move to your city, they aren't the reason you don't have healthcare, they aren't the reason you don't have public transportation. They actually experience harm by not having those things to an even greater degree than you. As a person who's not trans, as a person who doesn't know a trans person, you are experiencing arguably one-tenth of what these people are going through in America right now. It's just, it's, and that's like, especially as a comedian right now, as a queer person, and I know like I harp on this a lot, but if you can at least say, hey, these individuals who I love, some of these individuals who are so helpful and so philanthropic and give back to their community 100fold, if you think these people are bad just because they put on different clothing than you, just because their identification, their expression is a tiny bit different than what you're used to, what are you doing with your time? I just listed all those problems that are much bigger and much scarier. And people are like, nah, it's that very tall, confident lady. That's why I messed up.

unknown 6:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:41

You're like, it can't be her. She's taking care of three kids she adopted because their parents kicked them out. It can't be her. Yep.

SPEAKER_07 6:50

For me, when I hear a lot of these uh right-wing media people talk, which I do spend like a good portion of every day listening to them talk, I'm just like, did you like did you not go to preschool? I know. Like where you where you talk about bullying, like when I see Riley Gaines, who's like beating up on the same transgender woman who doesn't even have a public profile for years and years and years and years and years and years, and grifting millions of dollars off of just bullying people with no societal capital at all. I'm like, we're I don't know, like at what point did our lives become so different?

SPEAKER_08 7:31

Um You and Riley Gaines, for example.

SPEAKER_07 7:34

Right, yes.

SPEAKER_08 7:34

I know I know, and I'm I'm like, were all these right-wing people, is it the you know, one percent of people who were actually like hurting the other children in preschool who have a natural, predetermined sociopathy? Like these people seem sociopathic. They do. I I did not, I knew the name Riley Gaines. And like in the way that like I haven't watched this, I haven't watched that, I don't need to watch the vow. I I really try to protect my sweet little brain from garbage and and garbage messages and garbage spirits. I just try to keep it out as much as I can and just focus on the good because I think that actually can move forward. So I didn't know what Riley Gaines was until a nice, a really helpful unfolding of her recently. She is mad that she lost fifth place. She is mad she lost fifth place in a swimming competition to a trans woman. So now she is making millions of dollars off of anti-trans messaging. That is so stupid. That is so uncreative. That's literally stealing. You're just stealing money that could be used elsewhere to evoke anti-trans messaging, which genuinely leads to violence against trans women one-on-one, violence. It liter and and of course this mass mobilization to erase trans people from our country.

SPEAKER_07 8:55

Yeah, but it's fucking insane. Why get bogged down in like the facts or statistics or reality or truth of anything when you could just profit off of, you know, inducing fear into people about the most minoritized people in this country.

SPEAKER_08 9:09

When you're talking about uh, you know, I want to wear these clothes and your family being like, okay, let's talk about context. We were talking the other day about being a woman walking down the street and you know how it's I'm laughing because it sucks so bad. It does. It says because it's inherently dangerous. It's inherently dangerous. I'm like the other night, I was um driving home. I did a set or a couple sets, and I'm driving home, and I see a woman jogging against traffic on a busy Brooklyn, not even a street, like a road. And I was like, Yeah, you are safer driving against traffic than on the sidewalk. And then I park my car, I get out, I'm creeped out, and I walk home in the street, not on the sidewalk, because as a woman, it's safer to walk among giant vehicles, heavy machinery.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

So there's all of that when you're walking down the street as a trans woman, and then also the what's gonna happen if they can tell that I'm a trans woman, and is that gonna matter? Right? Like, and then it's like sometimes I'll hear cat calls and I'm like, I better, I better keep myself as small and anonymous as possible because even though they decided to cat call me, if they had a problem with the fact that I'm trans, it becomes my fault.

SPEAKER_08 10:30

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Right because I tricked them or something, you know, and that whole rhetoric that still persists. And so I'm not trying to say it's worse for trans women, it's there's that and the layer of this. You know, there's different layers for cis women, and it's like I'm 6'2, so I try to make myself small to just kind of blend in. Whereas I'm sure small women, small cis women, are worried about being so small, you know, and so it's like you just can't fucking win. You're too tall, hunch. You're too small, wear heels. So, you know, it's like, but men, come as you are, factory settings are good. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 11:16

Like the third and final act of your career that I wanted to discuss is like the most recent hearings, legal proceedings that you've led regarding trans health care and trans kids in sports, which is just like oh Jesus.

SPEAKER_05 11:34

I know it's just it's painful because people are just like not getting it.

SPEAKER_08 11:38

It's so absurd. And um, the thing that I'll say again and again about uh cis people caring about the trans sports bands is that they're trying to make it legal and normal for some grown up who isn't part of a school system to check all children's genitals.

SPEAKER_05 12:01

Is that that's right, that's right. Because we normalized through Jerry Springer, through these other media tools, that transness is a fraud that you can uncover. And through this repeated media suggestion that you know who is trans, you have a right to know who is trans, and you have a right to expose who is trans. That opened a norm of deciding that you can just look at anyone and say, I don't think you're the right kind of man, I don't think you're the right kind of woman, and I'm gonna figure it out. And that has been so normalized. And the reality is, is you cannot look at someone and know their genitals. And in fact, you should not look at someone and want to know their genitals. That's right. And yet we're normalizing this type of exchange with children through these anti-trans paradigms.

SPEAKER_08 12:51

And trying to bring, I like, I, I like parents don't, I think a lot of people like don't understand this. They're also trying to normalize it in schools. Yeah, having somebody who isn't a teacher, which by the way, no teacher should know the students' genitals or be inspecting them. It was weird enough that we had, remember the scoliosis test? Yeah, that was fucking weird, dude. Bending, bending. I know I was just thinking about that.

SPEAKER_05 13:14

I had a weird dream about scoliosis. I don't know why, but I think maybe it was all related.

SPEAKER_08 13:18

Bending over in a gym teacher's closet for somebody to run their finger down my spine, like that was weird. Now we're talking about kids' genitals. It doesn't matter what they identify as, that is fucked up. But when the administration is all over the Epstein files, then the connection really makes sense. And and the Republican Party shut down the government so as not to look in these files. Wasn't it December 19th, 2025, that these files were supposed to be exposed? Like this is all connecting in a way that is insidious. It's sexual abuse of children and adults, and it's fucking psychotic.

SPEAKER_05 14:04

I I mean, I literally couldn't agree more.

SPEAKER_07 14:07

The people freaking out of this about this, none of you even care about women's sports when you can't relate it to trans people.

SPEAKER_08 14:13

That's right.

SPEAKER_07 14:13

You guys don't watch it. Yep. You guys don't invest in it, you guys don't care. You mock it when they're at the Olympics winning.

unknown 14:20

Fuck.

SPEAKER_07 14:20

So it's let's be real. It's you know, you just hate trans people a little more than you hate cis women, and that's what this is about. But when you have the opportunity to support women's sports in the same way that you support men's sports, you don't take it. That's right. So this isn't about women's sports.

SPEAKER_04 14:38

The manosphere is like a perfect example of the way that the patriarchy oppresses men. Because all these men are so clearly in so much pain because of the patriarchy. That's exactly right. And then they're sort of like weaponizing it from this complete place of desperation because what else do they do? Um and so many of them, at least in this documentary, shout out, I have no nothing to do with it, um were raised without fathers. You know, and so like there's already they're victims of this oppressive system. Truly. Here's here's where I'm like after watching this documentary and really like uh unfortunately learning more about the manosphere, but I think it's important too because it's like really it's huge. Um they're all like subscribing to like the matrix. They they use the matrix, like the actual movie, and like red pilling, directed by two trans women, right, and a trans allegory and red pilling, which is what all these men who are so transphobic and um and homophobic are like espousing. Was really about like if you uh see uh the illusion of gender, you cannot unsee it. And they're like that's they don't even they can't even see that this is the thing that they're like well, they just haven't they don't know, they don't know enough about the movie that they're referencing, you know. Oh my god. But I've just been really like spinning on it because I'm like there's so much to unpack here.

SPEAKER_08 16:16

Um the anti-transness of this moment is so whether it's anti-trans femmes or anti-trans mask, it's so anti-trans, it's so anti women, yeah, because the female spirit is about fluidity and flexibility, totally and it's and community. And it's so self-punishing because we all have both uh spirits in us. It is just so fucking obvious that it's this that anti-transness is a device to disempower everybody. I mean, I I find it to be so obvious. Totally. I I hate to be I honestly I'm honestly embarrassed about being an optimistic person, but I honestly have to be I really believe that this is um I I believe that like um this is just a disgusting, ugly moment that we're pushing through. You know, you you should you shit when you give birth, you shit when you die. Yep. And I really think that like we're just in the shitting ourselves, dying, yeah, yeah, and giving birth to a new world. Like I I hate to give these these men the benefit of the doubt, but it's it's the men on top, just like the billionaires. It's the men at the top. LOL, they're like topping everybody else. And it's like you're like they're gayer than you realize. Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, it's I don't, I really don't believe it's like these victims. Uh I mean it's they have free will, like grow the fuck up. But it's like it's just sad, and they're being like abused. But I do think a lot of them, which I think is happening politically too, are going to extract themselves from the system and be like, oh, I was in a cult. You know, God, I hope so.

SPEAKER_06 18:00

Healthy masculinity to me is or even just something I've felt as trans like transitioning is like leaning away from whenever there is some sort of impulse or expectation you've put on yourself to like shut down or or conform in a way that usually feels like this. Like I am closing off. I remember kind of being like, Oh, Elliot, maybe you should, you know, talk with your hands a little less, or uh, you know, maybe in pictures you're because all ever since transitioning, now I'm like Johnny, I am smiling. I am smiling in those photos. Whereas I used to be so I could barely look at a photo of myself. I was always like, you know, and now and I'll be taking say a dude's like, hey, are you are you Victor from Umbrella Academy? You know, and we're doing a photo together. He's very yeah, and like having that moment where I'm like, oh, should I also not like should I also be close? It's just like, what the fuck, Elliot? What are you what are you talking about? Like, oh honey, you're the part of the problem. So I think it's to me, healthy masculinity would be well, you know, a healthiness for anyone to just, you know, love themselves, be able to care for themselves, I ideally get rest when they can, you know, like just the practical basic drink water, like eat a banana, you know, like and also just you know, doing what you can to be intentionally and mindfully not letting yourself get like swayed or twisted by um the the the rules that I I feel like end up like leading to so many of the the problems that we see that are you know do get inflicted by toxic masculinity and um violence and um abuse um just general cruelty and uh yeah I think it's just like a healthy masculinity can just mean a really good cry and like I just wanna make sure I'm always like leaning away from that pull to shut off emotionally.

SPEAKER_08 20:29

We had um James Talerico on the podcast, and he's so legitimately truly Christian. We've been talking so much about faith, and I was we were we were kind of talking about like demons and all this, and we kind of broke it down to being like, no, these are human beings. And it's very useful in the fight because it's just human beings. They actually want to dehumanize themselves. Yeah. And they do so successfully because they're all looking so crazy, and they're not like they're not looking like human beings. They they are looking like Dick Tracy characters from the early 90s videos.

SPEAKER_02 21:01

So many extra hormones. I mean, we talked about that last night. It is funny to be like, these trans people are crazy anyway. I need my testosterone shot now.

SPEAKER_08 21:12

And how would you define gender-affirming care? I would imagine thickening your neck with headphones as gender-affirming care.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

Imagine being like, I'm so sick of these trans women using the bathroom as you pull down your pants to get a tee shot in your butt. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_08 21:28

It's so crazy.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

And it's it's you go to the endocrinologist more than these girls do. That's right. You are in the doctor's office more than the dogs.

SPEAKER_08 21:35

And it's part it's partially like what's giving you millions and millions of dollars. You're fulfilling this um this poster. You're becoming the the figure on the poster to make so much money. And for your for that preoccupation to be with trans girls who are being so violated at every level, and trans men to be violated on every level.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

And the and the wild part about that is these men, not only do they understand. The power of men in a sexist society, they understand it so much that they weren't satisfied being a kind of normal man. This is uh uh I can't in the spectrum of male, right? They have to take it all the way over because they understand your proximity to this alpha male masculine acme, this zenith, you have to be here or else you're not as respected. So, wouldn't it stand the reason anyone who is over here on this side of this gender spectrum, don't you understand they're experiencing harm in a way that you never will? Because you understand if you know the payoff for being more manly in society is I get more stuff, then from a math standpoint, wouldn't this reaction be equal and opposite? The payoff for being more womanly in society is you get less stuff.

SPEAKER_06 22:51

One thing I feel really fortunate about, about like, you know, getting nominated for an Oscar when I was 20 or whatever. And having that happen when I was so young, and in that period, feeling the worst, like absolutely just not okay, and those in those years following. And to learn that lesson so young like to go, like, I actually don't care, that's not what I care about. And something's not okay here. And like to be in a place now where I can like reflect on that and like just sort of where my priorities are, where they are creatively, like there's just I feel so lucky to have learned that young that you could have this thing that everyone's saying is the dream come true, and people's obsession with fame, and oh you know, or what success means, or and don't get me wrong, of course it comes with act, you know, it helps your career, of course. But I just mean like it gave me such a I think profoundly important lesson so young. And in some ways, I feel like that relates to like, you know, conformity or you know, how people think they should, you know, approach life or or they get lost in an idea of what success means to them or what have you. And and like in terms of my transness, I feel so lucky because I feel like I've gone from a place where I it could barely function. I was so uncomfortable to now, kind of no matter what's going on, like my feet are on the ground. And I had to do all that digging, and I had to like scrape through all those layers and not worry about what people were gonna say or think and all that. And gosh, when you do get like feel like liberated from that and that shame that you've been carrying, like that is what I would wish for everybody. For everybody. And I do think that's what trans and gender non-conforming people can can offer. And I and of course they, people in power, what have you, these like you know, white supremacist patriarchal structures don't want people to feel liberated and feel that sense of power and feel that sense of possibility.

SPEAKER_08 25:30

So that was our first compilation episode. This is in our interim between season one and season two. We're figuring it out. Um, but I hope you enjoyed it. I know I did. Um, this has been a Starfix production. It has been an exclusively human-made production. I want to thank our producer, Amanda Jane Stern, for curating this content and our editor, Toboliebowitz, for making it so good. I want to thank Ramo Ventura for making the beautiful graphics and intro, musical intro. I want to thank Don Herr for this outro music. That's Elliot Glazer, Jimmy Hines, and Derek Miro. Listen, I'm not telling you what to do, but I invite you to subscribe, comment, and like this show on YouTube and wherever you podcast, because it makes the difference in us being able to bring this show to you. And also, it keeps the internet human. Let's keep listening to each other and watching each other. Hope you enjoy your summer and can't wait to see you next.