Nov 3, 2026 by Madison Butler (adapted from her May 12, 2026 Crash Out With Me podcast)
It’s 2026, and apparently, we’re still having conversations about whether trans people deserve basic human rights.
Not how we can make the world safer, not how we can create more opportunities, we’re literally debating whether people should be allowed to exist as themselves.
Somehow, the people screaming the loudest about freedom are the same ones trying to take everyone else’s away.
This week on Crash Out With Me, I’m joined by Bryce Celotto, a Black queer transgender man, equity and inclusion consultant, and someone who has spent his career advocating for communities that are increasingly being treated like political punching bags. We’re talking about what it means to exist at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities in a country that seems determined to make your existence everyone else’s business.
Bryce shares his experience being laid off from his DEI role in tech, spending nearly two years searching for work, and eventually moving from Seattle to Florida. Yes, Florida. Because despite what some people on the internet seem to believe, marginalized people don’t always have the luxury of choosing where they live based on which politicians hate them the least.
And that brings us to another conversation we need to have: the way people talk about the South. There’s this weird assumption that everyone living in a red state must somehow deserve what’s happening to them. That queer and trans people should just leave. That blue states are automatically safe.
As Bryce reminds us, queer and trans people have always existed in the South. They have families, careers, communities, and lives they’ve built. And telling people to simply move ignores the very real financial, political, and systemic barriers that make leaving impossible for many.
We also get into the absolute circus surrounding trans athletes. Bryce, a former openly trans college athlete who has also worked in DEI in professional sports, shares what it’s actually like to be part of the conversation rather than just another talking point in someone’s culture war.
We talk about how fear becomes misinformation, misinformation becomes policy, and policy becomes something that directly impacts people’s ability to work, access healthcare, find housing, and live safely, and we get into something that doesn’t get nearly enough attention: the people who claim to support marginalized communities but disappear the second that support becomes inconvenient.
Bryce draws on his experience organizing for marriage equality in Maine to explain why changing hearts and minds requires more than statistics and corporate statements. It requires actual relationships, conversations, and a willingness to challenge the narratives we’ve been sold.
We also unpack how gender expectations are socially constructed, why policing gender expression hurts everyone, and how rigid ideas about gender have historically been used to control people.
And of course, we’re talking about allyship. Not the rainbow-logo-in-June kind. The kind that requires you to actually do something.
Hire trans people. Pay Black trans people. Support queer-owned businesses. Book LGBTQ+ speakers in months that aren’t June. Stop asking marginalized people to educate you for free while you congratulate yourself for being inclusive.
Trans people have always existed. What’s new is the level of effort being put into convincing everyone that their existence is a problem.
And if your version of freedom requires taking someone else’s away, maybe freedom was never what you were fighting for.