Mira Lazine
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
Yeah, even in L.A., they'll, like, sometimes they'll accidentally, quote, unquote, arrest journalists, but then they'll be like, okay, we'll let you go because you're a journalist.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
Yeah, I can speak to it a little bit too. I've been a journalist for, I guess, what was it, six months? Because it's a long story, but I kind of got into it more out of fear for myself. Sometimes people think I'm selfless and maybe I am a little bit, but a lot of it is really selfish and just feeling like I have to do stuff to protect myself and my friends, basically. But...
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
Even in that short period of time, I have faced a lot of bad stuff from, honestly, predominantly the left and liberals and sometimes even other queer people being a trans woman of color. And that wasn't really initially what I was afraid of. You know, I was afraid of, like, I'm going to get death threats and Nazis up and, like, friend dox me. And actually, none of that's happened.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
I can't really explain why other than I just don't use Twitter. And I guess they don't know I exist. It helps. It helps. But I have one of the first national news stories that I broke, or one of them, I guess. It was about Meta AI being super racist, and I kind of figured that out. I proved that it was racist, basically.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
I just used my brain to make it tell on itself and explain its prompt and all that. And it became this huge international news story, but... It was like immediately co-opted by a Washington Post journalist who retweeted me and then recreated the conversation and posted it again. And then I had to go on like this weeks long like kind of campaign to try to just get basic credit for that.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
And eventually she did credit me in the column to give her credit. But that was not something that was forgiven. And a lot of others that I said the thing to also didn't credit me. And that's just been a recurring trend that, yeah, like, I'm kind of invisible, even though I make a lot of important news. So that kind of sucks.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
It's not just liberal media, or it's not just, like, the cis-liberal media, too. Sometimes, like, I had a similar thing with when I broke the story of RAINN and some other sexual abuse nonprofits removing all of the trans people from their websites. That became a national news story, and the Washington Post picked it up also.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
And I think part of that was because I complained so much about the previous time where they almost didn't cite me that maybe they were a little bit more cautious about me is my theory. But anyway, after that initial news story that cited me, same thing happened where it's like, everyone's like, oh, well, we can just cite the Washington Post now instead of this person no one knows.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
And the first website to do that was like a queer news outlet. And then I just kept watching as like, I think it was like three or four different queer or like feminist websites women-focused news outlets did the same thing of not citing me.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
And there was even like a really long piece from this other outlet that felt like it was going out of its way not to cite me because it was talking about this entire issue about nonprofits censoring people.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
And that was an entire conversation that was started specifically because of a news article I wrote, but it specifically did not cite me, even though they mentioned how one of the organizations that I reported on had reversed course, which is something that they emailed me and said it was because of me. So that's how That's how deep this goes.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
They will like go out of their way to like carve you out of a story that exists because of you, even if they are ostensibly, you know, not just a liberal like a New York Times outlet, but like a left wing, like progressive facing outlet that's trying to like market itself like that. They just they just want to exclude trans women from their own stories. It's kind of crazy. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
Yeah. I'm, I'm kind of in a similar boat in terms of my publication, Maddie cast news. So I'm in one of the categories you mentioned, actually I'm in two of them where I find what I'm doing, not from my work, but from my, uh, my first job, my main job, I guess, which I got, I guess, pretending to be cis or maybe, you know, non-binary or whatever, and then kind of jump scare them. Uh,
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
But anyway, that job pays pretty well, thankfully. It's software engineering, one of the lottery professions for trans women. You get your healthcare, you get your money. But I've been trying to go beyond just me and try to help other people as well. So recently we just applied for fiscal sponsorship with...
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
501c3 which hopefully let us become a charity tax deductible and all that and I've also been putting a bit of my own money and I've also been you know pretty much begging all my readers to give us money because one of the
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
the biggest goals of my publication has, it kind of started off more about like, you know, reporting on the news, of course, but now it's reporting on the news and also, you know, making sure the people who report on the news aren't homeless, actually, maybe that's a bad thing.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
Everyone I know in my life knows people like all these journalists who report on this news, but a lot of them probably don't even know how much like they suck. They struggle just like getting through their daily lives. So yeah,
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
I'm really trying to hopefully create some structure for us to have at least one nonprofit that will fund trans journalists at a living wage of at least $25 an hour, which I honestly don't think is a lot, especially in a place like LA, but $25 an hour is probably more than you can get. almost anywhere as a trans journalist also.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
I've heard a lot of jokes about, you know, we're passing around the same $20 in the trans community. And it's a little bit more of that. But I'm also hoping to see if I can try to fundraise from other people and try to, you know, raise awareness for this issue. Because I don't have a lot of time myself to be writing articles these days because I do have a full-time job.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
But yeah, hoping to kind of make a dent on this issue and raise awareness. And it's really a win-win for all trans people that, you know, if we're paying people who need this money to survive. But they're also creating really important news coverage that literally is like life-changing for everyone. hundreds of thousands, millions of people at many times.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
And that's how I see it's an exceptionally important issue that is completely unaddressed.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
One of the most expensive articles that we did at MaddieCastNews earlier last month was about Maryland prisons and how they're basically torture chambers for trans women, as most prisons are. But it seems like they're especially bad in Maryland, despite it being... supposedly a safe transfer, you know, 70% Democrats.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
And that was kind of an example of just like how, uh, unprofitable, how impossible to not, not just unprofitable. Cause when you think I'm profitable, it's like, Oh, you're not making money. It's not about that. It's like, it's, you're losing like 80% of the money you put into these articles because it takes so many, like, I'm, I'm very strong believer of paying people, you know, a living wage.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
So, um, I was paying the journalists like well over $25 an hour for, you know, dozens of hours of work. And that adds up really fast. And then court fee, like a pacer fees, every, all these other costs are adding up and it ends up being like around a thousand dollars for the single article. And it's a really important article that, you know, raised a lot of awareness.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
Everyone in Maryland in the trans circle, they're talking about it. But at the same time, it's basically a charity project, right? This is why I'm trying to become a nonprofit because there's simply no other way to be able to fund this stuff. There's no capitalist model for reporting on trans women in prison.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
It's not something that people are, you know, like I definitely get, there's a lot of people who support us out of the goodness of their hearts. And that's really nice. But even that is not enough because of, That's just how it is. There's just not enough people who care about these issues, sadly, especially the more intersectional it is.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
You know, even a lot of people in the queer community aren't as worried necessarily about people in prisons. They're more worried about people not in prisons. And, you know, of course, everyone matters. But I think it's really important to focus on those most intersectional issues, because when you really think about it, like prisons are basically, you know,
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
where they do everything they want to do to trans women who aren't in prison. That's where they get to do all of it. And no one's looking, no one's watching them, no one's holding them accountable. But yeah, I think it's basically a complete failing of capitalism. Like it's, there's definitely some outlets that, you know, maybe they could be doing better, but at the same time,
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
a lot of the time it's basically, you know, be really shitty to people or close down. And neither of those are great options. And personally, I would close down, but I can't tell other people what to do.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
And I think really it's a systemic issue that society doesn't care about us, that the cis people who really should be funding these things and trying to solve these issues, just pretend like we don't exist and, you know, go out of their way to even erase our presence, even when we do, you know, create national news.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
I guess, yeah, for me, as I'm also kind of in that spectrum of being a little bit more privileged as far as trans women go financially, and my message to other people who make, especially if you're a cis person, you make over $100,000, you're comfortable, and you're feeling bad listening to this, you know, go give a trans person money, go give Myra Lazine money, go give David Forbes money.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
Like, we have to, we really need everyone to start pitching in, especially people who aren't trans, and we really need, like, it's literally life-saving, the money, like, and I think one thing to consider is, you know, $1,000 to someone who makes a lot of money is completely different from $1,000 to someone who is, like, a month away from being homeless. $20 functions like that?
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
Yeah, $20 even. No, I know so many people who like $1,000, like they'll go, they'll spend $1,000 in a couple of weeks on restaurants, right? And then there's people, there's trans people with $1,000. It's like changed their life forever.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
Holy shit. There's people who spend, and I don't even joke, $20,000 a year on sushi.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
So if you spend $20,000 a year on sushi, please spend $19,000 a year this year instead and give $1,000 to a trans person. That's my advice for you.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
Yeah, so if you ever want to support MaddieCastNews, to be clear, I don't take any income from the website. I actually have plans to put lots of money into it. But all of your money will be going towards supporting other trans journalists. So that's one way to contribute to the cause. Or even if you just give me your email, I appreciate that too.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 181
But my website is MaddieCast.com, and that's only one D. So M-A-D-Y-C-A-S-T. And RoundBlueBlueSky2 with the same website name. And, yeah, thank you.