Imara Jones of TransLash Media joins Errin live at South by Southwest. She talks about highlighting trans voices, the importance of intersectionality, and the policy changes that should be made to create an equitable future for transgender people.
Listen or subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
On today’s episode
Our host
Errin Haines is The 19th’s editor-at-large and writer of The Amendment newsletter. An award-winning journalist with nearly two decades of experience, Errin was previously a national writer on race for the Associated Press. She’s also worked at the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.
Follow Errin on Instagram @emarvelous and X @errinhaines.
Today’s guest
Imara Jones, whose work has won Emmy and Peabody Awards, is the creator of TransLash Media, a cross-platform, non-profit journalism and narrative organization, that produces content to shift the current culture of hostility towards transgender people in the US. Time Magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People on the planet in 2023.
Follow Imara Jones on X @imarajones and Instagram @imara_jones_.
Episode transcript
Errin Haines:
Hey y’all it’s Errin. At the beginning of March, we recorded our first live episode at SXSW – it was a truly special experience, and this week I’m excited to share it with all of you. Hope you enjoy this conversation!
Alright, so let’s get started! Let’s make a podcast! What do you think?
Haines:
Hey, y’all. Welcome to the Amendment. This is a weekly conversation about gender, politics and power from The 19th News and Wonder Media Network. I’m your host, Errin Haines. Just a reminder about why we are here: It is because our democracy is still unfinished business. There are still way too many people who are unseen and unheard in our politics, and we want to bring them into this conversation. So that’s what The Amendment is about. That’s who The Amendment is for: anybody who has been marginalized in this democracy. So together we are gonna get to a better understanding of why our democracy remains unfinished business and what we can do about it. So today, again, we are live at South by Southwest EDU! Yes, yes, yes! And I am so excited to be joined by the iconic Imara Jones. Now, I know we throw that word “icon” around way too easily these days, but Imara really is the real deal.
Haines:
In April of 2023, she was literally named an icon on the Time 100 list of most influential people. Okay, go ahead and clap for that, yes. And just a month earlier, Imara won an outstanding podcast award from GLAAD for the TransLash podcast with Imara Jones, which I encourage everybody to listen to if you are not already listening to it. It is truly outstanding. So, as the founder and CEO of TransLash Media, Imara has made it her mission to educate folks about the trans community and uplift trans people through storytelling and inclusive journalism. She has certainly made us sound a lot smarter at The 19th. Imara’s work is critical in the moment that we find ourselves in now. Since former president Donald Trump was elected, our trans brothers and sisters have been the target of an organized political attack. So I wanted to talk to her about how she’s addressing this attack, what we need to do to create a world where trans lives flourish — not just survive, right? — and why there is no better place to talk about this work than here in Texas. So welcome, Imara, and welcome to this stylish Austin crowd as well. Everybody is looking good today.
Imara Jones:
Thank you, Editor-at-Large Errin Haines. I love the “at-Large” part.
Haines:
Thank you. Yes, I’m definitely at-Largeing right here now in Austin. I think I wanna start by just getting in the way-back machine. I want to take us back to 2018 when you created TransLash Media. I mean, we know transgender people have long been marginalized and oppressed in this country, but what about that moment made you decide to start TransLash?
Jones:
Well, it was in the very beginning phases of the coordinated attack on trans people by the Trump administration. I mean, they had made intimations, they instituted the trans ban very early on, but there was a question about how that was actually gonna unfold. And then there began to be the news, reports — and I started TransLash actually before it was formally reported — that they were going to weaponize the federal government against trans people. And that’s specifically what happened and exactly what happened. And it was the first time that the extreme violence and marginalization that trans people face was then layered upon by a focused attack to exclude trans people from the prospect of gaining any equal rights. And they did so through a very methodical and a very systematic way, right? Starting with the military, moving to education, moving to health, sort of moving to housing, supporting active discrimination against trans people in jobs.
Jones:
And so there was something about that moment for me that mobilized me as a journalist because I’ve been really focused on non-mainstream journalism for a really long time. I’ve always thought, like you at The 19th, that the people who aren’t included in the news are the people who most need the news and are also the people that are gonna be essential to saving democracy, right? Because the people who are participating aren’t the answer. And so I think that that’s why I started TrashLash: It was a combination of my skills and who I am as a person.
Haines:
Yeah. It was a response, and also you wanted to leave that record for folks about what is happening in this country in this moment. You are certainly one of the people that is getting that story right. But what is the media getting wrong about the trans narrative?
Jones:
Everything.
Haines:
Sure.
Jones:
I mean, I think there’s so many things. I mean, we could just do the whole hour on that.
Haines:
Sure.
Jones:
But for me, what I would say is the main thing that the media gets wrong about us is “othering” us.
Haines:
Yeah.
Jones:
I think that that’s the fundamental — if I had to place a name on it. It is the otherization. And that happens to anyone who isn’t seen as a “typical voter,” right? In quotes? And if I say that word, you probably had an image that sprung into your head, right? And that’s also by design from a lot of our colleagues in the media. But aside from that, I think that for me that “otherization” happens to anyone who’s not seen as a typical voter. And it’s just compounded the closer you get to trans people.
Haines:
And how do we fix it?
Jones:
Well, we fix it through things like this. We fix it through things like you’ve done at The 19th: By hiring trans people to be in your newsroom. You fix it by holding our colleagues accountable, like we did through our investigative series, which ultimately ended up and zeroed in on The New York Times. And we were the first media organization to ever get The New York Times to respond on the record to their trans reporting. They didn’t respond to anyone else but us. So I think it’s by holding people accountable who are in the mainstream press and by including trans people to actually help write these stories.
Haines:
Yeah. So we’re here at South by Southwest EDU. I have to ask about how you see the role of education and awareness building in really promoting understanding and acceptance of transgender identities.
Jones:
Well, it’s essential, and it’s one of the reasons why trans people are under attack in schools.
Haines:
Mm-Hmm.
Jones:
Right? Because people understand that a huge part of getting people used to each other is acculturation, right? I think that a lot of the people who wanna keep America a certain way see the impact of what happened when, for instance, White and Black students started to go together.
Haines:
Yes.
Jones:
Right? You started to have relationships, you started to have friendships. You started to have people get married in many parts of the country — Blacks and Whites, in this case — but all others went to school together. And it just changed the way that you saw people. And so the key to education is to center, again, both the history and the reality and the humanity of trans people. And they understand that if you do that, trans people will be accepted. And that’s why there’s an assault on trans people in education.
Haines:
The classroom, we know, has long been kind of the battleground for a lot of the culture wars. And that includes, you know, what we’re seeing happening right now around transgender rights and just really dignity and humanity. You know, I think it’s important to acknowledge that we are having this conversation in Texas, right? Which is birthplace of some of the most egregious and aggressive legislation when it comes to minority groups, education, voting, health care, you name it. So I wanna ask how you see Texas really shaping this national culture war that we’re having and the lessons that we can learn about the rhetoric and the policy that we’re seeing here.
Jones:
Yeah, I think it’s really interesting because I think in Texas we see two things: We see the terrible assault and we see the beginnings of how to respond, right? So the first thing that I think that’s really important is that Texas, like Florida and a few other states, are kind of the laboratories of Christian nationalism in this country. It’s where they go to test out the laws and the combination of rules that they think will exclude people that they don’t think should be included, writ large. And I think that what you see for trans people in this state is a really toxic mix of laws that, if they get passed — well, as they’re passed here and they’re trying to be passed in many parts of the country — will effectively remove trans people from public life. And I think what you will see is those laws, if they gain power further still, will be replicated amongst other communities because you’ll understand the cocktail of laws that you need. Essentially what we are seeing is a 2024 version of Jim Crow, right? Like, what are the mix of laws you need to exclude people from public life?
Haines:
And relegating them to second class citizenship.
Jones:
To second class citizenship. So they’re doing that now. So it’s about excluding trans people from education, excluding trans people from health care, excluding trans people from being recognized as people through IDs. It’s about allowing the state to declare that parents who love their trans children are actually abusing them, and ripping those kids from those homes and putting them into foster care, right? Those are all of the things that we are seeing here. And then you see what is increasingly happening here, which is an organized intersectional — uniquely amongst progressives, because progressives talk intersectionally, but don’t fight intersectionally — I think that you see a beginning of an intersectional pushback here. And that coalition is actually what’s been closing the gap in every election. So I think that, um, you know, Donald Trump only won the state by six points. I think it was 16 before, and then it was like 24 before that under Obama. And so what you see is the possibility for how you put together a coalition here that can ultimately culminate and seize back power, but it’s still gonna be a fight. So I think you see in Texas both things.
Haines:
I want to come back to something that you just said that really struck me. And that is, you know, the idea that the left talks about intersectionality, but the right fights intersectionally. Intersectionality is crucial in understanding the experiences of marginalized groups. So, I mean, how are we seeing both parties really thinking about intersectionality, especially as it comes to a political strategy?
Jones:
This is another hour-long conversation.
Haines:
Bonus episode!
Jones:
Bonus episode! I’m like, “Condense, condense, condense.” You know, the Democratic Party in many ways still is very much organized like it was in the 1980s. So it’s Latinos for Biden, Blacks for Biden, women for Biden, gays for Biden, right? Everything is siloed, right? And what that does is that it allows people to say, “As long as we have a group with a name, that we’re actually including those people, we see them equally, and we include them in their analysis within power.” And if you talk to Latinos, for example, they say one of the reasons why we’re struggling increasingly, in the Democratic party to win over voters is ’cause y’all don’t actually listen to us about the things that our voters think are important. You only talk about immigration, but our voters think education is extremely important and a whole host of…and you don’t talk about it in that way.
Jones:
So that’s what I mean, where it’s intersectional, we have all these groups, but in terms of integrating those groups into a coherent whole, there’s a struggle. And the right doesn’t do any of that. Like, there’s not a right wing of the Republican Party. The Republican party is now a Christian nationalist party. And they don’t do all of that, but they understand the way in which, for example, trans rights and the rights of bodily autonomy for women are equally tied, which is why they migrate tactics from fighting in one to the other. It is why they’re putting equal pressure on them at the same time. It’s why the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is a mainstream, Christian-national legal organization — kind of the Christian nationalist version of the ACLU — is the one that’s pushing all of these laws. And so it’s really interesting that they have an intersectional power analysis where the Democratic Party has kind of an intersectional appearance analysis.
Haines:
Yeah, wow. And a lot of that is happening right here on the ground in Texas. So it sounds like maybe we do need to mess with Texas. Okay. So this is, you know, a red state that people think, “Oh, well, you know, politically maybe, you know, it doesn’t really matter that much,” but in terms of it being a proving ground for so much of this legislation, like that is the way in which Texas is politically relevant. So what would it look like, really, for Texas to be the firewall against these kinds of efforts instead of the fuel for it?
Jones:
You know, these are just things I think about all the time. One of the things that you don’t do if you’re trying to win is that you don’t allow the other side to have cost-free victories, right? You don’t allow them to just be able to run the table and not have to consider what you’re doing. And by ceding totally Texas, what you’re doing is you are basically saying, “You guys can have the run of the table here.” And it’s one of the reasons why they don’t actually fear Democrats. They’re not actually afraid of Democrats. They believe that Democrats are paper tigers because Democrats don’t actually match them, kind of effort-for-effort in key places. And, at a minimum, by doing more in Texas, you would get them to rethink that equation. If you are a Democrat, if you are smart, I think — this is just my analysis hat on — you want to make them pay for everything. You don’t want to allow them to do anything where they haven’t really had to fight for it. And so not only would doing what you’re suggesting, Errin, you know, perhaps set up an eventual flip in this state because the demographics are there — it’s just the politics haven’t come together — it also would get the other…it would also get Republicans to recalculate their ability to be able to do these wild things cost-free. And because what happens is they’re done here and it encourages them everywhere.
Haines:
That does send a message to other states, the Republican Party certainly watching to see what happens here, to see what possibly can be replicated. They’re workshopping here, right? You talk about not having cost-free victory. So how can advocacy efforts really kind of better address these overlapping oppressions that are faced by Black transgender individuals? Including racism, including transphobia, including economic disparities, healthcare disparities,
Jones:
I think that one of the things is that everyone who is marginalized has to stop eye-rolling when someone else who’s marginalized wants to talk about their issues. And that happens all the time. So, for instance, in Black communities, you bring up trans people and they’re like, “Oh, here we go.” You know, like there’s a dismissiveness, or “Oh, Lord, these people…”
Haines:
Or it turns into the oppression Olympics.
Jones:
Yeah, yeah. But not only oppression Olympics, which is a discussion, but I think that there’s a dismissiveness. Like, “Those people don’t know anything. What about our stuff?” Or, “That’s not really real, child. Those people aren’t really real. Like, this is what’s actually the real thing. I’m the real thing.” Right? You see it between Blacks and Latinos. You see it increasingly between various Asian communities, you know. So I think that one of the things that has to happen is that everyone has to understand that we’re all…our destinies are equally yoked. Are equally yoked.
Haines:
Shared faith, right?
Jones:
Yeah. And so the only thing that happens, right, is the only question that will happen is, “Which person’s the first over the cliff?” Even though you all are roped together. So everybody’s going over — it’s just a matter of who’s going first, who’s going second, or who’s going third. You know what I mean? Like, if we’re all tied up and one of us goes over the cliff, we’re all going. You know? But if you’re at the back of the line, you can be delusional and say, “Well, that’s not gonna happen to me,” even though you see it happening right before you. And I think a lot of that happens. So I think that a lot of these groups and a lot of these legacy groups, like a lot of the, you know, the old standing groups like… I’m sorry, I’m gonna name names. But like La Raza and NAACP, these kind of old-school legacy groups, like, they have to change and understand that everyone is equally yoked. So the conversation and the action has to be totally different.
Haines:
This is the danger of kind of siloing folks. And you get the idea that you’re trying to build coalition, and yet, if you’ve still got people compartmentalized, how are you actually building the true coalition where people really do feel like their fates are tied? That we all either get there together or we’re going over the cliff together?
Jones:
Right? And that’s also the … so I’m being critical of this right now, but also I have to practice empathy too. And so, like, the empathy part of me says, “This is a natural consequence of white supremacy, which draws a circle and says, ‘All right, 80 percent of this is ours and we have the power. Okay? And then y’all get the rest.’” So if you accept that dynamic, then you get what we are describing, right? Because everyone is not realizing that you’re actually operating within a series of false choices. And the answer to that is to actually come together and then to say, “Well, honestly, instead of you saying that the pie is this small, we believe that the pie is actually enough for everybody. So what we’re gonna do is advocate for policies and laws to expand the pie, rather than to say that what y’all are defining is what’s possible is what is.”
Haines:
Yeah. There’s enough pie for everybody.
Jones:
Just bake bigger pies. Get a bigger oven.
Haines:
Yeah. All the pie for all the people. This election is in full swing now. There’s a lot of conversation around President Biden — and also former President Trump’s — kind of mental and physical fitness. We have to be honest: They are old white men, right? But how are gender politics playing out and how we view them?
Jones:
Yeah. I think that this is really interesting because they’re basically the same age. So this idea—
Haines:
Yes.
Jones:
—Is that Biden is old. So Trump is old too, right? And Trump’s mental acuity strays — I’m being very kind here — but strays, you know, believing that Nancy Pelosi…
Haines:
I was gonna say my mental acuity strays.
Jones:
Yeah, right?
Haines:
Especially if I don’t have any caffeine.
Jones:
Right? Right, right. But you don’t believe that Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi are the same person. You understand that they’re two different people. So I don’t think that age should be an issue. That’s why I get confused. But I think that the conversation makes sense once you think about it through gender, because Donald Trump can feign muscularity and masculinity, and we automatically tie that with vitality. We automatically tie that with youth, right? And so the fact that he can get up there and bluster and shout and scowl makes people think, “Oh, he’s vital. He’s high energy.”
Haines:
Yeah.
Jones:
You know, and Biden is the exact opposite, right? Biden’s brand is empathy, right?
Haines:
He was Uncle Joe.
Jones:
Yeah, Uncle Joe. “I care about you. I know what it’s like to lose a child. This is how it impacts you emotionally…” Like, talks emotionally and, in a way that someone would if they were trying to comfort you in sitting next to you. That’s something that we attach to femininity, and something that is considered to be “low energy,” or we associate it with weakness, right? And I think that actually is what we’re seeing when we’re talking about age. It’s actually their clash of styles and we just use age as a proxy for that.
Haines:
Yeah. And part of this, you know, for us as a media, the performative aspect of the presidency, you know, which came about, you know, in kind of the television age. So we are used to expecting people to present a certain way as president. And the reality is that we have not really had to see former President Trump in public since he left office, right? Like, we haven’t really seen him on a daily basis in the way that we did, you know, between 2016 and 2020 every single day. We do see President Biden every single day: Walking back and forth to that helicopter, coming down off of Air Force One, walking up on stage, you know. We see him and it is a constant reminder for people of his age, right? In a way that we don’t really get with former President Trump.
Haines:
But I wonder if that is going to maybe even come more into the conversation as we do continue to see former President Trump on a campaign stage, right? Him being in a courtroom doesn’t necessarily make you think about his age. But I think, you know, as we are having the conversation, are we also having a conversation about not just vitality, but competency and ability to govern. President Biden may not, you know, look like the most vital person to someone, but he’s done a lot of things in these last four years, for an 81-year-old man, legislatively, right? I mean, Trump did a lot of things legislatively to be somebody in his upper 70s. So, you know, I think we need to think about what somebody’s ability to govern is, as we do for people who serve in Congress, who certainly are, you know, up in age, and people who are sitting on the Supreme Court, for example, who are up in age.
Jones:
I think that this is a really good point. I mean, I think that in so many ways, like we lose sight of the fact – whatever you think of what was done or passed — it’s argued that Joe Biden may be the most successful legislative democratic president since LBJ, right? Definitely the most consequential legislative president overall since Ronald Reagan. Those are just facts if you look at the things that have happened. And it’s the reason why, on a list of like ranking of all of the presidents, his presidency isn’t even over, and I think it came out a month ago, and Joe Biden ranked 14—
Haines:
Already. Yeah.
Jones:
— out of all of the presidents, right? So people who actually are scholars and know this stuff are like, “No, this is a really impactful president.” And I think that, I was just thinking about this, you know how like a lot of older people, like if there’s a crisis in the family, who does everybody call?
Haines:
Yeah.
Jones:
Who gets everybody together?
Haines:
Absolutely.
Jones:
Who has the authority to call everybody? Who has the, you know, like … you have those skills as an elder, right? And we forget that, that you actually have skills as an elder, and a lot of those skills are what you actually need to govern. They’re not what you need to be able to perform the presidency.
So we’re on now the role of media and journalism. And I wanna talk about that in transgender advocacy work because we know that the media has a role to play in representation, how that can shape our national narrative around all kinds of topics, right? So, in your view, talk about the role that media representation and storytelling plays in shaping perceptions of transgender individuals. I know we have seen that at The 19th.
Jones:
Yeah. So actually this is a good moment for me to plug my new political podcast called “The Mess.” It’s called “The Mess: Imara’s Guide.” That’s me. It’s where we are working to unpack, kind of, this intersection of what you’re saying in the way that the media is portraying trans people and the way that these things are playing out politically and how what’s happening political is indicative of so many things that are in our world right now. So go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe. Storytelling and journalism are essential to move the needle on the way that trans people are seen. And the reason why is that trans people are — on a high count day — are one percent of the population. One percent. One out of every hundred people. And so because you are an actual small group of people, it is very easy for people to not know who you are.
Jones:
And so, according to Pew, two out of three people in the country say that they don’t know a trans person. Well, that lack of knowledge is fertile ground for people who wish to exploit that lack of knowledge for their own purposes. So one of the key ways to be able to respond to that is through storytelling, which takes the voices of the one percent and amplifies them in such a way where people can understand who we are and what’s happening and why it matters. And I think that that’s one of the reasons why the way that the press portrays us, largely, as we spoke about in the beginning, is so detrimental, right? Because you’re so small. That megaphone is the only way that you can begin to tell people who you are. And if that megaphone is somehow corrupted, then it undermines your ability to do so. This is an essential connection because we are uniquely small.
Haines:
Yeah. And the power of story, not to otherize folks, but to actually show people as your family, your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, your kids, parents, your kids’ friends’ parents, all of that. And again, as people who are not just single issue voters — or voters, period. Hello. People with all kinds of interests, but also, yeah, just people. People that are in your life.
Jones:
This point about voters I think is really important. We know that, you know, American elections are extremely close. Out of 150 million votes, roughly, cast in the last election, if 45,000 votes had changed in three states, Joe Biden wouldn’t be president, right? Like, that’s just a fact. There is an estimate that there are possibly up to 200,000 trans people that through really harsh voter ID laws — which were aimed at everyone, but also disproportionately impact trans people — so this intersection that we were talking about, 200,000 trans people could be disenfranchised. So, like, the small numbers, because of the way American elections work, can have an important impact, right? So when you were talking about people as voters, like people would dismiss trans voters and be like, “They’re just one percent of the…” — I can hear the DNC right now — “They’re just one percent of the voters. Who cares?” But you know, when you’re talking about 45,000 votes changing an election, a couple hundred thousand people voting can be a matter of life and death for you..
Haines:
Yeah. And, and certainly it is. This election is existential for a lot of folks this year, including transgender folks. But also just the idea that, um, this is a fight that should not just be on transgender people. Anybody who cares about democracy, anybody who cares about people having free and fair and equal access to the ballot should care if that access is being restricted, no matter who it is, right?
Jones:
Like, if people have humanity. But we know that most people vote, you know, voting is very selfish.
Haines:
Well, we know, you know, the power of story to really, kind of, change hearts and minds potentially, right? But I also wonder how the media impacts not just the narrative around trans lives, but the ability to affect legislation to affect policy. How can the power of story do that? Well, we’ve seen how it’s negatively doing it, but…
Jones:
Yeah, the way that these laws are covered is so terrible. First of all, I think that they’re like, “There’s a new trans bill.” And so you might automatically think, “I’m not trans, so I don’t care,” right? Like the way that you set up the story. Um, all right, so you immediately turn them off and then it becomes technical. It’s covered technically. “Well, the law will, you know, mean that you have to use the gender that you were assigned at birth.” This sounds all technical, right? When the reality is that the state is deciding who gets recognized, and it is deciding that this group of people won’t be recognized. And if the state decides that about this one group of people, then by extension they can decide that by anyone — you get to be recognized. What if the state was like, “We don’t actually recognize biracial. You have to choose White or Black.” They could do that. You know, there are all these things that the state can decide, and those decisions have implications. And the decontextualization and the marginalization and atomization of even the way these trans bills are covered, I think are the reason why people underestimate the threat and underestimate the way in which they’re dragging us through authoritarianism because they’re being actually poorly reported. And then that’s on us, right? That’s our job. And the fact that we are not providing that context is another way that we are letting the country down.
Haines:
I want to talk about what a Black trans future looks like, right? Because we’re not just talking about surviving, we are talking about thriving.
Jones:
I have written about this, and I have given speeches just on this. So like, this is something that I get excited to talk about and I’m not asked enough about. I mean, I think that the thing that I find really inspiring about imagining Black trans futures is that a future where Black trans people thrive is a world where everybody thrives because it means that you have actually fixed the fundamental impediments and barriers to everyone realizing their full potential without obstruction. So it is a world where people are actually able to be healthy. They are actually to live powerful lives. They are able to live without fear, right? They are able to live with enough resources. They are able to be fully educated, right? They are able to feel as if they can exist as themselves in the world without fear. And I don’t know about you, but that’s the world that I wanna live in. That’s the world that I want everybody to live in. And so, if you actually are able to imagine a world where there are Black trans astronauts, that’s a world where there is the idea of possibility for everyone. We have removed the idea that there “can’t be” and only certain people “can be.” And that’s what’s most exciting about imagining a future where Black trans people thrive.
Haines:
I love that. From a world where Black trans people are being increasingly restricted from public life to a world where there is no place in space where Black trans people cannot be, and not just can be, but can be there and be thriving. Black trans astronaut. I’m here for that.
Jones:
And that means that then is a world where there’s possibility for everybody.
Haines:
Yes.
Jones:
There are, like, no limitations. That’s what’s exciting. Like we remove that.
Haines:
Yeah. So we have imagined this now. You have waved the magic wand. How do we make those dreams into reality? Like, what specific policy changes do you believe are really essential to assure the kind of equality and protection for transgender people that we’re talking about?
Jones:
Well, I think that you get there through every type of social change, which is imagination and incredibly hard work, right? Those are the only two ways that you have a future that’s worth fighting for. Otherwise, it will not come. The arc of the universe does not bend itself towards justice. It is bent, right? And the bending is incredibly difficult. So I think that’s the first thing. And then I think that like, there’s so many different laws that we could pass, and there’s an incredibly long list. But can we just start with a basic one? How about passing the Equality Act, which says that LGBTQ people, and in this case, trans people, are actually human beings who have equal rights in America. Why don’t we just start there? Let’s just get on first base. How about, everybody is a human being in this country, right?
Haines:
Radical.
Jones:
Radical, radical, you know? Um, and we know that acts like this — like, for instance, the Civil Rights Act did that for African Americans and a whole host of other people — we know that that still has lots of holes in it, and we know that it’s not perfect, but it does actually shift what people can do and how they think. It just does. There’s no discrimination that’s allowed because these people are human beings. Wow. I think another thing that we really need to think about is ERA. I think that we need to enshrine in the Constitution the recognition of gender and the inability enshrined in the Constitution to discriminate against people because of gender. We need to do that. That would fix a great many things. And here, again, is an area where the interest of trans people and the interest of cis women and traditional feminists are highly aligned.
Jones:
And then I think after that, you just begin to kind of work your way down the list to make sure that we do things like, I don’t know, teach LGBTQ history in schools, right? That trans people have always exist[ed]. The erasure is a part of the violence. So let’s remove that. And then I also think that lastly, we really need to think about violence against trans people differently. There’s actually a study overall that the FBI has done, which says that you are more likely to be a victim of violence, essentially, the more marginalized you are in the country socioeconomically. So if we actually want to end violence against Black trans people, that means Black trans people need equal access to education, which people don’t have; need actually equal access to housing, which people don’t have; need actually jobs where they can live in places where they can be safe. It comes down to very basic things. We always want to avoid what the actual answers are, because those answers mean that we actually have to change the way that we do things in this country. So we make it about something else.
Haines:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you’re just making me think about the power of story just to even normalize people’s lives and normalize people as part of this country. And the idea that gender equity is so key to what it means to have a healthy democracy.
Jones:
Absolutely. Like, first of all, it’s half the country, duh. And the country can’t be healthy until women are healthy, duh. Like, it’s, you know, these are very basic things that are not complicated. And I think that, again, all of these alignments between groups that are seen as each other. So one of the things I did in, like, I think 2019, I did a deep dive into violence against Black trans women. And one of the things that came up in that research is the way in which the violence against Black trans women and violence against Black cis women almost exactly track. What do I mean by that? In the United States, if you are a Black woman, you are more likely to die at the hands of a person that you know intimately than any other group in America.
Jones:
Including slightly Native Americans, right? It is a place where Black people, Black women, Black cis women overindex. In almost every single case where a Black trans woman is murdered, it is also because of someone that she knows. It is because of a partner, or someone that they have been in some sort of a relationship with. And that, again, shows that actually the way in which Black trans women and Black cis women are moved through the world and the obstacles that we face are actually really similar. And because it shows up in literally the way that we die.
Haines:
I think this has been a really robust conversation. I’m so glad that we, I mean, we have unpacked a lot of stuff up here today. But before I let you out of here, Imara, I want to invite you to do something that we do, uh, as part of The Amendment. Every week we have something that we call The Asterisk, in our news. And The Asterisk is a nod to the asterisk in our logo at The 19th, which is in recognition of, uh, the Black women, frankly, who were thrown under the bus — hello! — in 1920 when the 19th Amendment was passed. But it is a reminder of the people who still remain kind of unseen and unheard in our democracy. But the asterisk here for The Amendment is, you know, maybe the way, uh, that we’re seeing a story where there’s a racial or gender lens that we’re not thinking about, or, you know, whatever you’re looking at in your social media that sticks out to you. I mean, we are in the land of our Lord and Savior Beyoncé here in Texas. Maybe you have some thoughts on country music. I don’t know. I want to ask you though: If you had an asterisk for The Amendment this week, what would it be?
Jones:
I’d have two asterisks.
Haines:
Okay. Bonus asterisk!
Jones:
My first would be, or my first is, rather, that you’re not going to be able to fundamentally save bodily autonomy and abortion rights without also preserving and fighting for the equal access of trans people in health care. It’s not going to be possible. It’s just not gonna happen. I got really bad news for you. And the reason why is that, one, the main driver of these laws — even in the Hobbs case, and these lawsuits, is the Alliance Defending Freedom. They are behind almost every single anti-trans effort. A lot of the anti-trans health bills. And they are also behind the attacks on abortion rights. And they see how these two things are linked, and a lot of their legal arguments can be used in both places, right? And so they’ll advance one in one place, and you can then do it in another.
Jones:
So you’re not gonna be able to do it. And so, to the degree that you’re talking about preserving bodily autonomy and abortion, and you’re not also thinking about and realizing that the preservation of trans health care, which is also about accessing healthcare due to gender, right? Like, then it’s not gonna be preserved. And I don’t think that people make that connection, but it’s just not gonna be possible. I think that the second thing that I think about is the way in which this election, again, is really going to come down to what women do.
Haines:
Yes. Agree.
Jones:
And it’s gonna come down to not the women who you hear from, but the women who you don’t hear from. It’s going to come down to working-class women of color, and whether or not they’re gonna show up, right? That’s the first thing.
Jones:
We also know that at least in Black communities, that a lot of the way that Black men actually end up voting is due to the way that—
Haines:
Hello, yes.
Jones:
—Black women in their lives encourage them. So all this stuff about Black men leaving the Republican Party, I think you need to … I would do a deeper dive and make sure that you were doing things for Black women and specifically Black working-class women. And we’ll also come down to kind of silent suburban women. You know, women who don’t declare, don’t normally see themselves as political, don’t talk about things that are political. But when they get in those voting booths, they’re not gonna tell their husband how they voted. They’re not gonna tell their church how they voted, but they’re gonna go in and they’re gonna make a very specific choice. And I think this election is gonna come down to those silent women in the suburbs and to Black working-class women.
Haines:
Wow. Well, those were both really good. So I will allow two asterisks this week because I think we needed both of those. Listen, Imara, this was fantastic. Thank you so much for being here
Jones:
Thank you so much!
Haines:
—with me today. I so appreciate you. And y’all, that is this week’s episode of The Amendment. Thank you. Just a reminder, the amendment is also a newsletter, which I write, which you can also subscribe to at 19thnews.org, where you can read all of our amazing journalism around gender, politics and policy. Uh, you can subscribe to The Amendment — the podcast — wherever you follow your podcasts. Thank y’all so much for being here, and thanks for being a part of our first live episode. The Amendment is a co-production of the 19th News and Wonder Media Network. It is executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, Terri Rupar and Faith Smith. Our head of development is Emily Rudder. Julia B. Chan is the 19th’s editor-in-chief. The Amendment is edited by Jenny Kaplan, Grace Lynch and Emily Rudder, and was produced by Adesuwa Agbonile, Grace Lynch, Brittany Martinez and Taylor Williamson, with production assistance from Luci Jones. Our amazing theme music was composed by Jlin.
