Lex McMiniman
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
But, like, I think so much of liberal and right-wing talking points about, like, young people in general, like, sees them as so humorless. Like, they are like, eh, cancel culture, na-na-na.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Whereas Vivian is so funny. Like, we actually struggled to cut jokes out of the piece. Like, Ella and I, Ella could tell you we went back and forth for hours about so many jokes that did not. And just one-liners. Like, she's so quippy.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Dude, the amount of cursing. I much love, but also that was the editing process for this was much less like stress and more just like, how many F-bombs are we keeping today?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
I'd like to clarify, I was not involved in the grammatical edit of that. There were multiple editors whose hands that touched.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Okay, whatever. What I'm here to say is, as someone who actually watches Drag Race Ella, that is actually not that uncommon to refer to it that way. But you know, we had two different roles. As the two trans people whose brains were wiped by the story, Ella's job was to actually raise the peace in mind was to interface with Vivian.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
We unsurprisingly talked a lot about how we were going to structure this piece and Partially landed on Q&A format for like, we knew this was going to be a behemoth, like no matter how we tackled it, given the subject matter, and then ultimately how long the transcript was. There were many aspects of this that we were like, okay, how do we do this in a way that's going to read well to people?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Because something we also think about a lot is like accessibility, like young people famously hate reading now. But we wanted this to actually be something that like a young person could sit down, dash through, still get some like, you know, historical political context out of and still come away being like, haha, team PETA, team Gale or whatever the hell, right?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Um, and then I would say the, the, I want Ella to talk about the transcript and like interview stuff, but like the intro, I think is probably where I spent the most of my time editing this piece and like adding stuff and, um,
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
a lot of adding stuff it ballooned like we wanted this to be a lot shorter than it was and then it just kept feeling like there were more pieces to really tie it together but i would say like the reason that was the case is because it was a really hard line to walk to acknowledge that like people would be clicking on this in part because of elon but that we wanted to like trick them into coming for elon but staying for vivian yeah like it's not about elon nor like should it be yeah
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Right. And so, like, Ellen and I had a Zoom with Vivian in, what, November was the first one?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Yeah, November, December. So she could kind of get our vibe and just kind of suss out if she was willing to consider this at all. And one of the earliest things she said was, like, I don't really want to talk about him. I don't want this to be about him. And we were really down for that. Like, we don't think that her story is about him, ultimately.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
It felt really important and it was also challenging to make sure that... we felt like people were coming away with it from this without like a garbled interpretation of what the stakes were for her to be coming forward.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Like we wanted it to be, especially right now, while so much of mainstream media is really fumbling their coverage of like politics at this moment, it felt really important to be like super trans politics, especially, especially. And then also just like, All of it. All of it, and then especially trans politics.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
We just really wanted the intro to be as strong and also informative and also kind of funny and also just all the things. And I would say that probably took the most time. Ella, correct me if I'm wrong.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
And I would say the most, like, it wasn't that many people adding text. It was mostly me.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Yeah. And so do you Ella. And so like, it's like, that's really the strength of the piece in so many ways is that like people come away with it. It doesn't feel like you're in the background or like hiding behind something when you're writing this piece. Like it very much feels like the success of it is because you are a part of it. And, um,
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
The New York Times reported that this was Ella's first freelance article. So I just wanted to add that, you know, Ella kind of did her big one with her first article.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
And it's so, like, transparent. Like, and I... Again, I feel like I keep bringing the cis into the space. I'm really sorry. One of my, like, cis colleagues was like, this is disgusting. Why did they write this, like, a feel-good story? And it's like, my thing is, if, like, if anyone with some amount of critical thinking skills can see exactly through what you're doing, why even do it?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Like, it's so transparent, like, the way that that story was written. Because it gets...
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
clicks i mean i guess we you know what got clicks was vivian so i actually don't know about that's true and say that and say that i did and i will do you want to talk about the length of the transcript because i am curious how long vivian talked for am i am i allowed to say that i think i'm legally not allowed to say can we explain why uh when we're not recording i can explain why
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Oh, yeah. I don't know if anyone's heard. Actually, so frequently people haven't heard of it, so it's actually fine. Yes, you can find us at TeenVogue.com. We have no paywall. We have a fact-checking department. Most of mainstream media is not doing it like us, if you consider those two points. So, yeah.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Yep, so true. If you love Kim Kelly, she is our labor columnist, so come through. I also do some of our labor coverage, but definitely not to the extent Kim does. Yeah, I'm on the things. I'm on the socials. Yeah, that's it. That's all I had. Lol.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
That is so not the vibe. I wish it were, but it's not. Blue Sky.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
From our perspective, you know, I don't know that like everyone is aware of this. And certainly I don't know that all of my friends in our various trans subcultures know this. But at Teen Vogue, we've been covering like trans politics and trans rights for a long time, like far before I got here.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
But I've been here for almost four years and it's been a pretty big part of my beat in part because of it being like a very unavoidable thing. thing within following like U.S. state legislatures and then obviously like at the federal level, which has only intensified more and more in the last year. And so that's like one aspect of it. But at the same time, we love young people that shitpost.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
And so Vivian had been on her radar for a while. Totally. I also think people are maybe more aware of this whole like comrade teen Vogue vibe of like, we're really interested in talking to people that have a clear political leaning that have like a sense of how they see themselves in the world in a political context.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
And Vivian sort of came right out the gate as someone who was really eager to share her thoughts on these things. So from last summer, like within like a month of when Vivian was kind of introduced to the world through her, her, father talking about her on Jordan Peterson's podcast.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
We were trying to get in touch with her and it was something I was talking a lot about within the office and we didn't really know what to do because she just kind of emerged from nowhere onto the internet. And so I had been talking about it a lot including with Ella, because we talk a lot. And so Ella eventually revealed, like, oh, that's oomphie. I am mutuals with Vivian. Not oomphie.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
You did kind of, I mean, substantively. Are you threads oomphies? What are you oomphies on? Instagram.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
So over to you. That's my Teen Vogue intro, but Ella, if you want to... Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Yeah, I was just going to say trans people club, but also deep state, yeah.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Who amongst us does not want to do a live comedy show?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
And it's also like Conde Nast as an institution, which is like Teen Vogue's parent company, is only one of multiple media conglomerates that will very proudly use trans people in a representative way and sell magazine covers with trans people on it. You can think of Hunter Schaefer, for example. She's been on the cover of several Vogues, but at the same time,
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Hunter Schaefer also received a misgendering passport after the Trump admin.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
So, like, I think that if legacy media is unwilling to connect the dots between, like, profiting off of, like, the aesthetics of trans people, but not actually, like, talking about the political underpinnings of, like, why trans people are even able to be visible at this time and, like, what the, you know, trapdoor, as Termaline calls it, of trans visibility means, then it's, like, why even do this work in the first place?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
so Vivian was like a really great opportunity for us to like build on like we've done several photo shoots particularly with trans women because I and trans girls at Teen Vogue because we like feel very strongly and Ella makes this point in the piece that like the way that trans femme people are like objectified and commodified and also like the target of such extreme vitriol is something it feels really important to take a stand against it just felt like
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
doing this with Vivian who's so high profile but also hadn't had the opportunity yet to take control of her own narrative in the public eye and with this being her second ever interview first ever photo shoot like it just felt like a really big opportunity that was worth using as a big swing, you know?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Yeah, no, I've just been thinking a lot about this because, you know, Trump released yet another executive order. I think that this one was today basically trying to codify allowing trans youth to access gender affirming care as abuse, quote unquote, which is like something that the Republican Party has been flagging for months that they were going to do at the federal level as well.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
It has already shown up in the rhetoric around trans youth health care, which obviously is going to be used as justification for abuse. targeting trans adults, access to healthcare.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
And something that, you know, I'm the only trans person on my team, something that kept coming up in Vivian's story was that it was almost like anyone could relate to this because anyone can relate to having like a shitty parent, an abusive parent, like a bad dad, whatever.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
And so I think there's an extent to which this story has, like, a lot of value in, like, forcing cis people to really be confronted with the fact that, like, how trans youth are treated, like, objectively is, like, abusive. And it's not the access to healthcare that is the abuse. It's, like, the way that they're dismissed. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
the way they're belittled it's the way they can't even be like trusting their own parents to be looking out for them and to the extent that they have to push themselves out into the world to clarify that point so like that's one aspect of it i totally agree with what you were both saying that it is like a microcosm of the trans experience but i do think there's like this other valence for like allowing her to like control how this is being perceived or received sort of by cis media and like cis
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
like, the cis political sphere, which is, like, how trans people are just getting shoved into that over and over and over again with very little context, felt like a really valuable thing to be able to do given how, like, frankly, so much of my coverage right now just feels like it's, like, trying to raise attention to the fact that, like, These are kids. These are young people.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 177
Everyone should be able to relate to a young person saying, I have a bad parent and that sucks and is a formative thing for me. That is something that other children are afforded the ability to do. And we just don't let trans kids have that as something that's part of their truth when it's such a key part of growing up trans in a hostile household.