Trans Rights, Legislative Hurdles in Nebraska, and the Supreme Court's Impact

Have you ever wondered what it truly takes to create a more inclusive and equitable America? 

Join Shane Ivan Nash and Jessie McGrath as we unpack the multifaceted challenges and aspirations of this monumental task, especially focusing on the trans community. 

We tackle tough issues like gender-affirming care, the legislative hurdles in states like Nebraska, and the strategic targeting of trans youth by certain groups. Hear firsthand about the potential long-term impacts on healthcare and legal rights, and the critical role of the Supreme Court's composition in shaping future decisions. Personal stories of advocacy and the relentless fight for trans rights provide a deeply human perspective on these pressing issues.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Progress and Challenges in America
• 8:47 Transgender Identity and Childhood Experiences

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

the child. True, I want that America for people, not necessarily utopia, because I think every book that's ever been written about that there's always something that goes wrong. I don't know where we're going in this human experiment or this American experiment that we're going, but we've got to progress towards more rights and hope for folks, because there's the idea that we're taking care of our most vulnerable is what shows a successful society in general, like how you treat your most vulnerable is how successful and how longevity and and also investing in infrastructure.

Speaker 1: 0:39

I mean there's yeah, there's a lot of things that we need to fix and stop, you know, wasting money on stuff.

Speaker 2: 0:46

Social issues, yeah, I mean we just got done with a special session here in Nebraska about property tax relief, because they wasted almost an entire year of the legislative session to prohibit the 200 kids who received gender affirming care from being able to get it. And so it tied up everything. That's just not natural and that's just not right. I do have hope for the future, you being patriotic. I am also my first night at the DNC. I wore a flag dress the Olympics also helped too.

Speaker 1: 1:24

I'm not going to lie. Seeing us win first and then having the DNC, I caught myself being like, yeah, America.

Speaker 2: 1:34

We had a lot of USA placards. We had a lot of flags. It was a very patriotic experience, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:51

You know, I don't know, it's this scary like. Maybe it's hope, maybe it's just great marketing, maybe it's this it is so, but I do know that so a trump, you know, presidency for so many different communities Would be disastrous.

Speaker 1: 2:06

Would, would I mean, because my big focus, too, is the Supreme Court. So is, from my understanding, we've got some justices that are going to be retiring. So if Kamala gets in, she's going to be appointing new justices, correct? Which would, yes, we would be able to kind of balance this out, and I think we'd actually be a four to two, I think at that point, with how many were I could be misquoting the numbers. It's getting late for me.

Speaker 2: 2:33

Well, it's a 5-4 kind of break right now, but it's not a solid 5-4 because Gorsuch is actually somebody who does come over to the other side. He's the one who wrote the opinion on the effect of Title VII and whether you could discriminate against employees on the basis of their being gay or being trans, and he's the one who wrote the opinion on that. So I am kind of hopeful. I've been to the Supreme Court twice in the last two years. Two years ago in December I was sworn in along with a group of 10 other trans lawyers, as the first group of lawyers from the Trans Bar Association to be group admitted. Last year I was able to sponsor 10 more.

Speaker 2: 3:20

I don't think we're going to have enough to be able to do our small group ceremony this year. I don't think we're going to have enough to be able to do our small group ceremony this year, but I am planning on being there when they hold the oral argument on the Scrimetti case out of Tennessee on the gender-affirming care bans and what standard of review they use in looking at that. Is it strict scrutiny, is it intermediate scrutiny or is it just a rational basis? And they've seen me stand in front of them a couple times. Amy Comey Barrett has looked at me for 20 minutes on two separate occasions and smiled at me pretty memorable face, I don't think you know at six two. I'm somebody that she would probably remember. I want her to see me in there when they're arguing this case to let them know that there are real trans people that this affects.

Speaker 1: 4:15

Yeah, because I mean, from what it looks like strategically is that they're using the kids as the roadmap to basically end up with adults, which it already sounds like they're already doing that.

Speaker 2: 4:28

Oh they've publicly stated that Terry Schilling has said that we're coming after kids because it's a little bit easier, but make no mistake about it, we're coming after everybody.

Speaker 1: 4:38

Oh my God, your kid's in danger in this which you know something that I found again from TikTok, but it's great, make no mistake about it, we're coming after, we're coming after everybody. Oh my god, your kids in danger in this which you know, something that I found again from tiktok. But it's great, because I love how much information you can actually get on there. The thing is you got to learn how to filter it, because some of it's all you know, but the most gender affirming surgeries actually go to cisgender boys for pop surgery, yeah, the glastomy or whatever, and I know parents who have kids that have had to have that.

Speaker 1: 5:08

The crazy thing is they're going to be affecting cisgender boys with gender-affirming surgery, not realizing again the ripple effects of the laws that they're creating?

Speaker 2: 5:23

although no that that will be excluded because it's. It's not. It's not changing from one gender, it's gender affirming surgery for the gender that they're born in so that's okay well, what about?

Speaker 1: 5:36

folks come in then still like there's going to be such a oh, it's already, it's already a mess oh my god, it's going to be just a mess for doctors.

Speaker 1: 5:44

We're in insurance, getting approval when it's already hard enough as it is, even with all the progress that we've made as a community. You still get, you know, three rejection letters and the fourth one you finally get, accepted. It's, I just wish the ideology that it's so easy to be trans and so easy to get these surgeries and so this, that and the other, those cases that people find and fly the four people around the country to say the same story to Congress over and over again. It's just not true. The most of the trans people that I know either wait a very long time for them to get their surgeries or if they get their surgeries, it's through, you know, means of, sometimes sex work. Sometimes, you know it's it's like survival work for them to be able to get safely in society and it's there's not this just like oh, let's just all go to the McDonald's and everybody just becomes trans because they ate a Big Mac.

Speaker 2: 6:42

Let's see, can I get a forehead reduction?

Speaker 1: 6:44

I mean I wish you could. A nasal job and a boob job. I'll take that, I'll call them one. It doesn't happen, no it doesn't, but also if it did happen. My thing is like here's another flip side too. Like why are these politicians so worried? Like are you afraid that, like you want to transition and like, if it was for you, like you got to keep the barriers for yourself?

Speaker 2: 7:05

Like it's, it's like a gym If you don't want boobs, you don't have to get boobs. Okay, yeah, but I don't want them.

Speaker 1: 7:13

I I don't understand the the need to really just police trans people and it just seems like this political card that people have gone. Trans people, they're the new thing that we can use. That's shiny and distracting, because people have never seen trans people in this way before and they're used politically so much that I mean, we just had a stock market crash, we had this, we had that. We had none of those things get as much attention as trans people and I'm sorry, there's not that many trans people in the world. Yes, there's more young people that have come out through transition because of social media exposing them to who they are, through learning the language, finally, which that's all it is, because trans people will always be trans.

Speaker 2: 8:04

We've, we've always been here, it's just we didn't have the we didn't have the language and we didn't have.

Speaker 2: 8:10

When I, when I came out to my kids, uh, I spoke with them and I said you guys are extremely lucky and they go. Why dad? Why, dad? And I'm like. Well, if the information that exists today existed when I was a kid, if the technology that exists now existed when I was a kid, if the acceptance that exists now, that existed back when I was your age, y'all wouldn't be here, because if I had known enough I couldn't have done it. I would have transitioned as a kid. Are you kidding me? It would have been, you know, great. I wish I had had the fortitude even back then to even recognize it, but there was a large part of it where I wasn't even recognizing it, you know.

Speaker 1: 8:59

No, I mean, I even technically transitioned young, because I'm 35 now, but I transitioned at 17, 18 years old, and even then I felt like I could have been transitioned younger. I mean, I had to deal with huge breasts, and that's not something a boy wanted to deal with, you know. Huge breasts and that's not something a boy wanted to deal with, you know. And I like, uh, there was a lot of what I missed out on as a kid because of that. That even I had to later on catch up on things and and I'm still struggling it's, it's, it's beautiful to see the trans kids come out and come out safely, and it's nice to know that it's nice to watch them grow up, something that I never got, in a way, that it's like, oh my God, you're actually like you're getting straight A's in school, You're attending school.

Speaker 1: 9:52

You're you're taking care of yourself. You're you have a friend group. You're you're doing things, you have business ideas. You have a friend group. You're you're doing things, you have business idea. I don't know like kids getting to be kids fully themselves, safely. Because, again, trans people have always existed, will always exist. It's just we've now got the language to explain who we are, which we even had the language even previously with. You know magnusschfeld's whole burning of the library that happened. We've had the research time and time again and it's been ripped away from us because trans people, to a degree I feel, are sacred in some ways to be able to be a trans person and basically do in the womb, outside of the womb, what you can do to your body and almost prove that men and women, in some way, shape or form, are exactly the same. You know it's, it's there's there's differences in this, that and the other, but at the end of the day, we're all human, you.