So I woke up this morning to discover that apparently I'm upset about something.
That something being Aretha Franklin's 1986 classic, A Natural Woman.
Now, this story got my attention because it came up in my Instagram feed
where I write a comment after comment saying that the trans community
has gone too far by trying to cancel an American icon.
So I decided to do a little
bit of research, and I looked up the earliest occurrence of this story,
and it appeared on a website called chf03 60 and the story had been since deleted.
The second earliest mention that I could find of this story was on a website
called The Western Standard, which is a very subtle title indeed.
The website describes itself as a independent source of news and commentary,
fighting for a free Western Canada committed to the truth even when it hurts.
Now, in their article, their source for this claim is
a Twitter post by a trans advocacy group that calls itself
the Trans Cultural Mindfulness Alliance.
And the tweet was calling for the removal of the song from Spotify and Apple Music.
Now, if you were to go to the TCM AI's Twitter page,
it immediately tells you that it's a parody site.
And apparently they've made that even more clear since this story has broken,
at least at the time of me filming this video, it's pretty hard
to look at the page and not immediately get that it is a parody page.
Now, as an aside, I just want to say that this stupid ness
is the exact reason why I'm no longer on Twitter.
I don't see the purpose of a parody page like this.
I suppose maybe there's people out there having a good old time.
But this story is a pretty good example of the kind of brain
rot bullshit that's kind of pushed me away from these platforms.
I think that they only exist to sow discord.
And as we will discuss, this tweet ended up becoming one of the most popular
talking points of the past few days, and I wanted to dissect that.
Now, I don't know who is behind this completely fucking stupid account,
but if I were to go out on a limb, I would say it's probably a conservative.
And I feel that way because they've made a few tweets condemning Wokeness
and they've also gone out of their way to make it seem like conservative websites
like The Daily Wire
are the only sources actually doing their due diligence on this story.
They seem to actually really not like the idea that people have been using
the fact that this was a parody account as a reason to dunk on conservatives
now, because some faceless dumbass decided to make a tweet.
There have been story upon story about how the trans community at large
has been calling for the cancellation of this Aretha Franklin song.
And, you know, I just got to say, that's one of my favorite songs of all time.
Love that song. Love. It's a bit.
I have never even thought of it as being an offensive song to me,
but obviously it doesn't really matter how I feel about it
or how many other transgender people feel about it.
These people are obsessed with being fed the narrative
that transgender people are pushy, indignant, irrational,
and want to force their way of life on you.
One of the stories quotes a woman from the organization called Standing for Women,
which is an organization that, of course, opposes the idea of people
like myself describing themselves as women.
And they said it's really hard to ignore the misogyny of the trans rights movement.
Well, like I said, I saw this story on Instagram
where the people who were reading it were completely unaware of it being a parody.
They genuinely felt that this was something that transgender people believed
in, and they were arguing against the fact that transgender people
should even be allowed any sort of dignity, any sort of respect.
So in the past, when stories like this have happened,
I would spend a lot of time trying to debunk
every one of these articles and making snarky remarks while we go.
But you know what snark is really not going to stop.
What I see is on the horizon.
So I want to get a little serious with you guys.
Like I said, I think being offended by this song is pretty fucking stupid.
And I will go out on a limb and say, most transgender people
I know probably haven't even thought of it as a offensive song.
Right.
But we have to waste our time and entertain these dumb ass arguments
so that people, I don't know identify with us more.
Now, unlike this parody Twitter page that got a bunch of articles written about it,
I've been a front facing transgender blogger
for the past almost two goddamn decades, and I have often felt like
I'm screaming into a void because the reality is society at large
does not give a fuck Stories like this that are based in complete fabrication
are treated as truthful and worth entertaining
because it maps very neatly to the status quo.
The status quo where transgender people are the great disruptors of society.
Our very basic desire to survive in this society is warped and parodied
into something that only makes us seem unhinged for advocating for ourselves,
unhinged, for wanting the ability to exist in public space.
Go to school, go to work. Survive.
Live in this world as everyone else.
And the conservative machine has a lot of money to put into these stories.
Right now, I don't know if anyone's heard about this.
There is an ongoing debate between Steven Crowder and Ben SHAPIRO
over his $50 million.
Let's repeat that $50 million
contract that he is rejecting because he can't be viciously racist
and transphobic in a way that would get him removed from YouTube.
Now, I'm an independent transgender creator
who has never even seen $1,000,000 in their lifetime.
Right. I've never even seen that money.
But people like Ben SHAPIRO, people like Steven Crowder are getting paid
millions of dollars to peddle these fake stories that only sow discord
and make people believe that transgender people who are advocating
for themselves and advocating for their right to survive in this society
are unhinged and crazy and should never be respected.
And I'm just going to be real with you guys.
A lot of times it feels like I am fighting a losing game.
I'm never going to be able to pump out that much content.
I am never going to be able to compete with conservatives who are willing
to invest millions of dollars to create content.
That apparently speaks to how I actually feel about things as a trans person
and the harsh reality and I can say this because I've done this for this long,
is that the vast majority of people do not want to listen to a trans person.
They prefer hearing how transgender people actually feel from cis people who,
of course, are more rational than I will ever be just by virtue of them
identifying with the gender they were assigned at birth.
It really doesn't matter that I like this song and many other
people like this song and the website is a parody account.
People still believe that there's probably someone out there
that does feel like this, and that's why it's worth all of these articles.
Plenty of people are reading these articles and saying,
Hey, those transgender people are getting a little bit too pushy.
And of course, that's going to impact
voting, which is, of course, you know, one of my primary concerns.
We can dismiss this as a silly story, but there's people that are reading this
and believing this and deciding to vote accordingly based on this.
Now, I'm perfectly aware of the fact that this is the exact moment
where a lot of you guys are going to check out.
But if you give a fuck, I would definitely suggest
you hear what I have to say here, because this is actually a concern of mine
and I'm not going to talk about this a lot on my channel
because I'm trying to move on to some more joyous things on here.
But it's a real concern. So let's talk about it now.
I mentioned this in passing on my channel,
but I foresee fascism on the horizon.
And when I look at the way
that we're starting to discuss transgender people in our society, it's really,
really hard for me not to see that there is a concerted effort
being made to remove transgender people from public life completely.
For example, there are people on the left and the right who believe that
if I were a teacher and I decided to openly discuss
that I was transgender, that would be akin to grooming,
which effectively argues that if I had any proximity to children,
that would be the same or similar to sexually violating them.
There's all of this outrage right now about drag queens, which is resulting
in people pushing anti cross-dressing laws that would criminalize people
who choose to wear clothing that is not aligned with the gender
they were assigned at birth, which, of course, would essentially criminalize
transgender people dressing in a way that affirms their gender identity.
And then there's the constant ongoing argument about transgender people
using the public restroom and which bathroom they should use
and whether or not they should be
allowed to use the restroom that aligns with the gender that they identify with,
which, of course, means that if you're a transgender person who leaves the house
for more than a few hours and needs to use the restroom, there's no legal
way for you to use the restroom without drawing attention to yourself.
Now, the thing that frustrates me about
this stuff is I've been talking about this shit for a while
and people have often given me the response that
I'm making a big deal of nothing, that conservatives are idiots
and they're not going to actually get any legislation passed.
But we're seeing that now.
We're seeing that they're making headway in certain states
and that a lot of the things that we thought not that long ago
was completely impossible is indeed happening.
Now, like I said, I know that a lot of you guys are going to say
that I'm a conspiracy theorist, right?
I have been saying this stuff for a while.
And for the record, this is probably the last time y'all
will hear me talk about this on my YouTube channel because I'm tired of saying it.
Because what I have done for years is yell
into the void and feel like everything I'm saying is crazy.
And I've been on here again for damn near two decades.
And I have seen I've seen it.
I have seen the increase in transphobic legislation.
It's happening.
You cannot pretend it's not happening.
It is indeed happening.
And they are winning in some states.
They are winning.
And there's a lot of liberals who are expressing a lot of indifference
to this shit while these people ramp up the violence against us.
Stories like this feel a little, but they're one of the many stories,
one of the many fake stories that adds on to the pile.
And slowly but surely,
there's a denigration of transgender people over and over and over again.
Almost every single day.
These people open up their social media and see yet
another example of why transgender people are stupid, annoying,
pushy, irrational and should not be given any respect.
Where is that going to go?
Where is that going to lead?
We've seen this happen with other groups.
We've seen the concerted effort being made to slowly but surely enter
the cultural consciousness and say these people
don't deserve rights, these people don't deserve freedom.
We've seen where that goes.
And I really don't think I'm personally being too much
of a conspiracy theorist here in saying that it's fascism, right.
That it's going to lead to fascism.
And let listen, I hope I'm wrong.
I really, really, really hope I'm wrong.
I want to be wrong.
There's no part of me that wants to be right about this.
I want to be completely incorrect about this.
But all I'm saying is it happened more and more and more.
And every day I go and see a story where I'm apparently offended by this,
a trans person. I'm apparently offended by that as a trans person.
And I read these comments, people who are just so annoyed with the fact
that they have to even acknowledge transgender people's existence.
Now, it doesn't actually matter
if a transgender person like myself is offended by Aretha Franklin.
They're going to continue
to create these stories because there is a demand for that, right?
There is a demand for people
to see what transgender people are pissed off about today.
There's people who are eager, excited by the idea of finding yet another excuse
why they shouldn't allow transgender people to have any space in this society.
Now, I want to point out that one of the websites that I found this story on
cites Western culture as one of the main things that they're trying to defend.
And what a lot of people don't want to talk about is the fact
that what these people are trying to fight for is gender
assimilation, gender assimilation that aligns with colonization,
a.k.a one of the foundations of Western culture.
Transgender people present a challenge
to people who want to protect Western culture.
Transgender people inherently contradict the prevailing narrative
that many cis people have bound themselves
to this idea that gender is binary.
There could only be two, and that these two roles
are specific, unique and set in stone.
That idea is fundamental to Christo fascists who need the gender binary
to reinforce the patriarchal structures that they believe in.
And like I said, they're working overtime, spending millions of dollars who slowly
but surely give you stories that denigrate the existence
of transgender people and reinforce the idea of the binary.
That's intentional.
It's not a coincidence that the Western standard is posting a story
about those annoying transgender people who are disrupting the very fabric of all.
We believe in.
Now, there's a way more I could say about this,
but I'm just going to leave it here.
I want people to really think about this, but I'm not necessarily optimistic
that you will.
I want to be a less pessimistic person.
And one of the reasons why you won't hear me
talk a lot more about this on my channel is because I am deeply pessimistic
when it comes to this point.
I've lived the life as a transgender person
screaming into the void for most of my life.
I've listened to people tell me over and over again that it's
not that big of a deal, that I'm making, a big deal of nothing.
And all I've seen is shit get worse.
It's gotten better in a lot of ways, but it's pretty bad right now.
It's pretty bad right now.
And I don't want to bog you down. Okay?
Like I said, these conservatives have a lot of support.
They've got a lot of money.
If you like what I do on YouTube, if you support what I do on YouTube
and you want to continue helping to expand the way that I currently am,
I have a patriot.
If you
want to support what I'm doing on here, that's one of the best ways to do it.
I am really going to be dedicating myself to creating content that captures
a lot of the amazing things that trans and queer people are doing.
I'm working on a video essay series about representation
and I'm pretty excited about it,
and I really want to start having those discussions about our joy
because one of the things
that I'm realizing is that in a society that actively represents
our existence, us living happily and successfully is radical.
Our joy is radical.
It shouldn't be, but it is.
So that's going to be one of the focuses of a lot of the content
that I'm going to be making this year.
So if you want to support it, patrons are way to do it.
I also want to take this as an opportunity to plug my podcast
through tea with Kat Black.
It is a show where I give my opinion and then I have my audience call in
and give me their opinion.
We did a whole show about the Don't Say the gay bill, which speaks to queer
teachers and teachers who are not queer, who are supporting queer students.
And it's a really, really great episode.
I'll link it to the description box below if you're interested,
but we have a lot of conversations like that about interesting things,
and one of the main goals I have with that series
is to capture as many perspectives as I can.
As long as we still can.
Again, I really hope that I'm wrong about everything I said in this video, but
I'm getting kind of tired of seeing the patterns
and people treating it like it's no big deal.
I think that that's how if they win, they will win.
So I'm asking people in my audience to fight against this stuff
because I've been doing it for a really long time and I'm tired.
So on that note, I want you guys to stay educated
and hydrated, and I'll see you guys next time. Bye.