00:03:06.620Well, in part, it's hateful online rhetoric, fear-mongering, and baseless conspiracy theories about trans and queer folks.
00:03:13.680And Alejandra Caraballo says we all need to be paying attention.
00:03:17.280My name is Alejandra Caravaggio. I am a civil rights attorney and currently teaching at Harvard Law School's Cyber Law Clinic as a clinical instructor.
00:03:28.600Alejandra has spent her entire life building power for and with marginalized communities online and off.
00:03:34.520As we talked, she sat in her office at Harvard, flanked by posters of historic power builders like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson.
00:03:42.200so you are one of the first trans women of color to ever teach at harvard i guess my first question
00:03:50.600is what has that been like for you and how did you get here how did you get to be doing what
00:03:54.820you're doing yeah i mean it's been surreal i mean i've been very fortunate i know you said one of
00:04:00.400like i was very fortunate to start at the same time as my my dear friend anya marino um who's
00:04:06.420working at the LGBTQ advocacy clinic. We started within like a day of each other at, you know,
00:04:12.720at the clinic. So we kind of both started at the same time. So we were both the first
00:04:16.000trans women of color to teach at the clinic or at Harvard Law. I mean, it's been quite an
00:04:22.380interesting experience. Like I've never been so close to like these kind of centers of power
00:04:27.140in this way. Like I grew up in a very middle-class, like Florida suburb, like, you know, like Harvard
00:04:33.460just seemed like this like pipe dream out there. And even then, you know, I went to Brooklyn Law
00:04:38.360School and I did three years of direct legal work doing immigration, family law with trans Latinx
00:04:44.540immigrants, and then two years of movement impact litigation at the Transgender Legal Defense
00:04:50.760Education Fund. And then I've always been a bit of a tech nerd. So, you know, this kind of was a
00:04:56.440nice way to kind of give myself a break. I kind of really burned myself out on movement work after
00:05:02.260five years and especially during the Trump administration it was just it was a lot so it's
00:05:08.000been great my students are my favorite thing about teaching here like they like I mean one of the
00:05:15.240things I always say is that you know law students come to school wide-eyed with a lot of hope and
00:05:22.220and enthusiasm for the law and a lot of people once they leave law school and actually practice
00:05:27.420law become very jaded and cynical and like it's hard i fought it but i in very many ways i've
00:05:33.640become very jaded and cynical about the law and when i see like the next generation of lawyers
00:05:38.760and i get to work with them on on projects and cases and really see like how they develop
00:05:44.340throughout the semester in terms of their legal writing skills and everything else like and just
00:05:49.100see like the passion and enthusiasm they have for the for the work and also just like the diverse
00:05:54.220backgrounds of the students that I'm teaching all of those things like I just it fills me with hope
00:06:00.880and like this you know right now like to recording like I've been doing final evaluations with
00:06:07.140students and this is like one of my favorite times because it's it's really an opportunity
00:06:11.440not just for me to help students improve but like to help build them up because I have a lot of
00:06:15.080students that come from disadvantaged backgrounds that are not the typical you know what you think
00:06:21.140of, why do you think of Harvard Law? And they are rock stars. And as like someone here who's like
00:06:27.200not typically represented, I feel like really realized the power of visibility, right? Like
00:06:32.040just even being visible here means like, you know, students that come and tell me things that like
00:06:36.780they probably can't tell to like their 70 something year old cis white male professor,
00:06:41.860right? That just doesn't get it. And so that is just really huge, like that visibility. And I
00:06:47.560think also like I take it to the next step like I have my my Sonia uh poster behind me or my Sonia
00:06:54.420portrait I also have uh you know just like drew a Puerto Rican flag of Judge uh Jackson and Marsha
00:07:01.500and Sylvia Rivera and then of course Pedro Alviso Campos I call it like my wall of power yes
00:07:08.240I love it I would be so beyond stoked if I came to college or came to law school and
00:07:15.740you were my professor and I was in your office looking at your wall of power that's incredible
00:07:21.220yeah because you you don't see these faces typically in the law school right like you see
00:07:27.400a lot of older white folks like you know famous alumni stuff like that it's rare that you see
00:07:33.980like people of color and like in that way and it's like I can point that we have two supreme
00:07:39.160court justices one who's an alumni of the school and brother aviso campos who a lot of people don't
00:07:44.120know about, but he was the Puerto Rican independence leader, supposed to be the valedictorian of the
00:07:49.520class of 1921 of Harvard Law School as an Afro-Latinx Borinqueno. And Harvard couldn't
00:07:58.380at that time stand having an Afro-Latinx man be the valedictorian, so they withheld his grades
00:08:05.940to delay him graduating so he wouldn't be valedictorian. But I have him here, and I am
00:08:12.360working to make sure he is more visible on this campus.
00:08:39.220But, you know, what is Twitter, the experience of being on Twitter, on social media been like for you as a trans woman?
00:08:44.900Yeah, I mean, it's been it's been something else.
00:08:48.140Right. So I've been on Twitter for like 12-ish years, but I didn't really use it.
00:08:54.700I mostly just kind of had a Twitter to just check every once in a while, whatever was trending.
00:08:59.860And when I started running for city council, which I ultimately did not win, obviously.
00:09:06.040but when I, you know, I started heavily using Twitter as an organizing tool and as an ability
00:09:11.820to connect with others in a political way. And I really started building up a following like two
00:09:17.520years ago, I had like a hundred followers, um, on Twitter and now I'm like at 16,000. So it's like,
00:09:25.320it's just like, it's ballooned. And that experience changes, right? When you're an
00:09:29.100anonymous account with a hundred people and you just kind of interact, like nobody really cares.
00:09:34.460Right. But the minute you start getting a following and you start getting a lot of engagement and stuff like that, like the experience changes, you really start getting singled out for people that if you like, like, for instance, on Monday, like I criticized Elon Musk buying Twitter and called like called into question, like a lot of the things that he does are that come off as very like white supremacist, like him flashing the OK symbol on SNL.
00:10:04.460him having like a segregated workplace at Tesla,
00:10:08.420his parents having wealth invested in an emerald mine
00:10:25.980the family's wealth is built on colonialism,
00:10:28.260like explicitly, but, you know, things like that.
00:10:33.160And then, you know, just a history of transphobic jokes and statements on Twitter.
00:10:38.900And, you know, I think like calling into the question that and my God, I got like hate mail on my personal working email, which like that almost never happens.
00:10:47.260And like I had to go private because like I was getting not just bombarded because I have my notifications filtered.
00:10:54.720So like if they don't follow me, I don't I don't see it.
00:10:57.960you know so like people can go at me all they want and you know what a ratio whatever the
00:11:03.020hell like I don't care like I don't see it that way but what ends up happening is I do have my
00:11:08.020dms open so I can usually tell when something's going sideways when I start getting a ton of
00:11:13.400actual like hate dms um and those get filtered as well right like um so it's it's just like
00:11:19.120message requests so I don't even see them um unless I like specifically go like it doesn't
00:11:23.960even send me a notification it just like it's just when I'm checking my messages so I might
00:11:28.160check them like once a day or something like that um and yeah and like flooded with messages on on
00:11:34.580Monday and it was just like a lot and it was overwhelming and I was like you know I'm taking
00:11:38.960this private and the only other time I've gotten that dogpiled was when I criticized Joe Rogan
00:11:47.120there's something about these like white men that just like drives others to just go to all
00:11:56.960these lengths to defend them i i don't understand they don't need to be defended they have elon
00:12:04.020musk is the richest man in the world with 85 million twitter followers joe rogan has the
00:12:07.640most listened to podcast in the world at like 200 million dollars like he's gonna be fine he
00:12:13.600doesn't need a personal army to defend him yes have you ever seen that meme where it's um
00:12:19.640it's like the simpsons meme where it's like um elon musk you know valid criticism and like
00:12:25.860internet weirdos diving in front of the bullet to save him from any kind of valid criticism
00:12:31.240i feel like joe rogan elon musk they're two they're two men who really i feel like people
00:12:37.000must search on twitter for their names to be like yeah like someone criticizing him not on my watch
00:12:43.420and if you notice a lot of people who start criticizing Elon Musk or even Joe Rogan like
00:12:47.900what they'll do is they'll misspell his name like I've seen I went like on my subsequent posts I
00:12:52.780was like using the name Mellon Husk because like they were but they literally that's what they do0.77
00:12:59.580like how like how much of a loser do you have to be to sit there and search the name Elon Musk0.64
00:13:04.380so that when you see negative criticism you dogpile that person and you like attack them like0.99
00:13:10.000it's just oh it's it's just like ridiculous like get a life get a job do something definitely
00:13:17.600sounds like the behavior of someone who calls themselves an advocate of free speech so for sure
00:15:50.060Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:15:54.560I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:15:59.120I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:16:06.560They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:16:10.380But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:16:14.040They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:16:17.100Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:16:27.460There Are No Girls on the Internet is doing a live show on May 28th at Caveat in New York City and virtually from wherever you're at.
00:16:35.020We'll have amazing guests, a meet and greet, and much, much more.
00:16:38.100Go to tangody.com slash live and get your tickets, and I cannot wait to see you there.
00:16:47.100at our back. We've seen increasing attacks on LGBTQ folks using the label groomer. According
00:16:57.080to Research for Media Matters, on Twitter, the number of tweets with groomer-related language
00:17:01.420increased by over 60 percent in April, with over 870,000 tweets and retweets,
00:17:07.360compared to nearly 545,000 tweets in March. Now, grooming is a serious thing. It's used to
00:17:15.320describe the actions an adult takes to build a relationship with a child that makes that child
00:17:19.640more vulnerable to sexual abuse. And today, both online and off, extremists imply that LGBTQ folks
00:17:26.660or those who affirm LGBTQ youth are actually pedophiles who present a dangerous threat to
00:17:32.500children. It's a resurgence of a well-worn tactic of extremists. In the 70s, anti-gay activist Anita
00:17:40.080Bryant ran the Save Our Children campaign aimed at repealing a local Florida ordinance prohibiting
00:17:45.140discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. And a key component of her campaign was suggesting0.96
00:17:50.380that gay teachers were a threat to the safety of kids. And it's not just fringe extremists.0.87
00:17:55.840Mainstream Republicans have passed legislation attacking marginalized identities, like laws
00:17:59.860criminalizing trans youth or Florida's Don't Say Gay bill that puts vague restrictions on talking
00:18:05.120about sexual orientation in classrooms. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' press secretary,
00:18:09.940Christina Pushaw, described the legislation as, quote, the anti-grooming bill, tweeting that if
00:18:15.500you did not support the Don't Say Gay bill, quote, then you're probably a groomer or at least don't
00:18:20.360denounce the grooming of four to eight-year-old children. Honestly, it is not difficult to see0.77
00:18:25.220the influence of the QAnon conspiracy in her comments. And it should not be surprising to0.99
00:18:29.900find that this moral panic has accompanied a wave of violent in-real-life threats against LGBTQ
00:18:35.220people? It's already been kind of toxic. I think there's definitely been a vibe shift
00:18:40.640since February that I've noticed. And it's been unlike anything I've ever seen,
00:18:46.800the kinds of attacks on LGBTQ people, specifically labeling LGBT people as groomers
00:18:53.280and pedophiles. I never thought that would happen in that way. And it's just absolutely gross. It
00:19:02.260It is one of the grossest things I've ever seen.
00:19:05.000And so we saw, like, in February, like, libs of TikTok, James Lindsay, some of these, like, right-wing trolls, Jack Pasoviak, and eventually got all the way up, you know.
00:19:14.060And then what really changed was DeSantis' press secretary, Christina Poushaw, labeling the Don't Say Gay bill as an anti-grooming bill.
00:19:23.420um and like that was the first time we had like a government official put the imprimatur of like
00:19:28.760you know this is a government message that like we're you know if you oppose don't say gay you're
00:19:34.600a groomer kind of thing and um it was terrifying like like i think for for pretty much all the
00:19:41.540trans people i know on twitter like it's like blaring red siren like this is getting bad like
00:19:47.860this is going to lead to people getting killed. And we've already seen someone walk into a bar0.73
00:19:53.580in Brooklyn with kerosene and set it on a gay bar and set it on fire. Just like two days ago,
00:20:00.680someone threw bricks through a pride center in Burlington, Vermont. And this comes about two
00:20:06.420weeks after, I believe it was, her name was Feather Fern, was murdered in Vermont, like a
00:20:14.640trans woman um and the person tried to initiate like the trans panic defense and so like we've
00:20:22.380already seen that and like the the attacks on like this gay couple on an amtrak train in california
00:20:28.320being called pedophiles and child stealers because they adopted two kids like it's just horrific
00:20:33.280stuff and this is directly as a result of the toxic online discourse and because of this like
00:20:42.560So Twitter has generally tried to do the right thing, but any time it's specifically around trans people, any time they try to make it better for trans people, the right-wing ecosphere just goes into overdrive.
00:20:57.480They feel like it's their constitutional right to go on private companies' websites to harass trans people.
00:21:06.600It's really not surprising to me that Twitter has emerged as this new battleground for the so-called culture wars.
00:21:12.560Traditionally, marginalized people use Twitter to carve out power and a voice for ourselves.
00:21:17.580We built movements like Me Too and Black Lives Matter on Twitter.
00:21:21.220And I think the idea of marginalized people building power on Twitter
00:21:24.480is incredibly threatening to people who have traditionally had all the power.
00:21:28.660For instance, Elon Musk said that he was inspired to buy Twitter
00:21:32.060after the right-wing parody site The Babylon Bee was suspended
00:21:35.880for refusing to delete a transphobic tweet misgendering Admiral Rachel Levine,
00:21:40.880who was a trans woman and the assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and
00:21:45.640Human Services. And, like, that's what we saw. Like, we saw what was reported, right? The Babylon
00:21:51.740Bee being suspended for its joke about Dr. Levine was supposedly one of the last straws for Elon
00:21:57.600Musk. And so, like, they pushed the envelope. They pushed this hatred. And then when a site
00:22:03.300tries to step in and say, like, this is leading to violence, this is causing harm, they, you know,
00:22:08.960cry free speech or whatnot. But what it really is, is they want the freedom to bully, right?
00:22:14.160Like, cause if you want to say like, I hate trans people, I don't believe they should exist.1.00
00:22:18.760You can say that to the cows come home, right? Like you could just go on a street corner and1.00
00:22:23.340yell it. That is free speech. The government cannot stop you from saying that you can scream
00:22:28.580it at a corner. You can write manifestos. You can like do it, write a novel, how much you hate
00:22:34.300trans people knock yourself out right but a social media company is different they are not under
00:22:40.960those obligations and people fundamentally do not understand that and the problem is is like if you
00:22:45.260make a social media company hostile to people you're not going to stay around very long
00:22:50.660like we've seen what sites with no moderation are like 4chan hh and acoon um you know all these
00:22:59.500sites like they don't have advertisers no like typical person goes on there because it is filled
00:23:07.060with racial slurs anti-semitic slurs homophobic slurs like just the worst of the worst like it
00:23:13.620is literally filled with actual nazis like posting nazi memes so like we know what that looks like
00:23:21.560and so at some end like twitter has to engage in moderation and it really what it is is like0.88
00:23:27.900they're trying to use trans people as a wedge to basically destroy a social media site for daring
00:23:35.520to protect trans people. The way that I see it is that, you know, in the last five, 10 years or
00:23:42.440whatever, social media platforms, I would say all of them, but really Twitter is like a special
00:23:46.980platform. People who have been traditionally marginalized have been able to, you know,
00:23:52.840have a little bit more of a voice and have a little bit more power that institutionally we
00:23:58.700didn't really get to have. And I think that that's maybe one of the reasons why we're seeing
00:24:02.980Twitter be this big battlefield right now, because I think people who are threatened by that,
00:24:08.620people who are threatened when they see, you know, people who have traditionally had a harder time
00:24:14.020making their voices heard, get those platforms, get those voices. And even if a platform like
00:24:20.040Twitter does the bare minimum to make their platform a little bit hospitable to these
00:24:24.840voices, that feels very threatening or threatened. Yeah, that feels very threatening. And therefore
00:24:29.200they have to sort of go out of their way to remind folks, no, this platform needs to be
00:24:36.060hostile toward people who are traditionally marginalized. I want that status quo back where
00:24:40.260I can say whatever and they can't say anything. Right, right. And like, it's like the classic
00:24:46.680saying, right? When all you're accustomed to is privilege, equality feels like oppression.
00:24:52.400And that's very much what it is. Libs of TikTok is a Twitter account run by Shia Raychek with
00:24:59.520over 1.2 million followers that basically exist to spread lies and fear about teachers grooming0.74
00:25:05.080children. The account is called Public Schools, quote, government-run indoctrination camps for
00:25:10.840the LGBTQ, spread outlandish lies about LGBTQ youth and teachers, while also singling them
00:34:59.360Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.0.98
00:35:03.540I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:35:08.340I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:35:15.400They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:35:19.860But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:35:23.320They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:35:26.920Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:35:35.380If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:35:40.360This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:35:53.780I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:36:00.760I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:36:04.020from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments
00:36:08.920nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling
00:36:15.460characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart
00:36:20.740pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much
00:36:25.500you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever
00:36:31.960you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Let's get right back into it.
00:36:46.000Just in case you needed any more proof that we're in the middle of a full-blown moral panic,
00:36:50.440last month Florida's education department accused publishers of trying to indoctrinate kids
00:36:55.000with math textbooks by trying to sneak in lessons grounded in emotional and social learning,
00:37:00.300which is basically a classroom methodology that helps kids understand their emotions around
00:37:04.360subjects and demonstrate empathy for others. For example, if a math book said that sometimes math
00:37:09.860problems can look scary, or if a book said it's good to work together to solve problems,
00:37:14.420those would be examples of social and emotional learning. The Washington Post reports that
00:37:18.560Florida's education department said that it rejected 41% of books, the most ever in Florida's
00:37:23.740history, even though at least 24 of those books scored high marks from the official state reviewers
00:37:28.600for conforming to Florida's standards,
00:39:08.600Like, it's erasing any sense of queerness.
00:39:10.680And this is what, like, is frustrating about mainstream coverage around this whole debate, right?
00:39:15.900Like, we constantly see op-ed after op-ed about, I don't feel like I can say what I want to say in classrooms and, like, what they mean in, like, college classrooms or, like, college courses or college campuses.
00:39:31.240Like, I feel like if I say something, my classmates might ostracize me.
00:51:45.840and she's talking like she's like um you know i always expect disappointment so that way you know
00:51:52.040if it happens then you know i won't be disappointed um and that's the kind of attitude i have which i
00:51:58.580feel like a lot of people like that that doesn't work for them and that's fine like some people
00:52:01.880need to be optimistic nothing wrong with that my the way i function the way that i cope is pessimism
00:52:08.080because if i'm wrong which i always hope i am things worked out much better than i anticipated
00:52:14.500And so that's always kind of served me well. And so for me, I see this going down a very dark path. And I don't think there's anything changing. And it's only accelerating and getting worse. And I fully believe by 2024, by November 2024 or early 2025, I think we'll see a basically collapse of democracy in the United States.
00:52:36.400and things can go very south very quickly.