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months of sticker club at popwink.co. Welcome

0:42

to Gender Reveal, a podcast

0:44

where we hopefully get a little bit closer

0:46

to understanding what the hell gender is. I'm

0:49

your host and resident gender

0:51

detective, Tuck Woodstock. Hey

1:01

everyone, hope you've all been hanging in there.

1:04

This week on the show, I am very

1:06

excited to share my conversation with Dr.

1:08

Kasia Sedare. If you've listened to

1:10

this podcast for a while, you may have

1:12

heard Kasia's name before. He's popped up in

1:14

the credits a couple times as, like, a

1:16

producer. He was the guest in

1:18

one of our very first Gender Conceal episodes.

1:21

He was actually an on-mic producer

1:23

for a very silly special episode

1:25

with Justin McElroy. Kasia's

1:27

also my business partner at Sylveon

1:29

and one of my closest friends.

1:31

And honestly, I'm just so happy

1:34

that we finally sat down for

1:36

his official Gender Reveal interview. Today

1:38

on the show, Kasia and I talk about

1:40

a little bit of everything, honestly. Topics

1:43

include, like, how Kasia got into trans studies

1:45

as an academic field because he got on

1:47

the wrong flight once in 2011, and

1:51

some of the fun trans hot

1:53

takes he's written into peer-reviewed academic

1:55

articles. So we really wanted to put on

1:57

paper, like, hey, we don't have to constantly pretend that this is a

1:59

real thing. The happening. In order

2:01

to like fit into the liberal

2:03

narrative of born this way like

2:05

we can be really really honest about

2:07

the satellite some people get trans

2:10

by like a hot animator or

2:12

like by their tumblr be as as

2:14

and to simplify it does not

2:16

matter. Third and we also talk

2:18

about like whether T for Tea is

2:20

getting water down as a phrase

2:22

and have has was in a

2:24

Netflix called documentary and also trans fertility

2:27

and trans guy pregnancy experience as

2:29

get your preferred gender right. Right

2:31

where I'm like i'm hungry Genders and

2:33

pray all the time. Gender and like

2:35

me to take a bath right now.

2:37

Gender: I do acknowledge I did make

2:39

cast record This while he was very

2:41

sad because the options were sick and

2:43

eight or nine months pregnant or we

2:45

would never ever going to dine adverse.

2:47

So sorry to cats are making record

2:49

Was sick for so long. Sorry to

2:52

all of you for the slightly six

2:54

audio. Also a disclaimer: if you're wearing

2:56

really good headphones you will hear my

2:58

radiator has saying in the background. Of

3:00

this episode and honestly. Most of the

3:02

rest of the episodes of the season because the truth

3:04

of the matter is I am making a podcast in

3:06

a New York apartment in winter and that's simply what

3:08

is going to happen. By. The

3:10

Way: if you enjoy this conversation A

3:12

Cast you want more Tuck and Cast

3:14

Friendship Contents: Great News We have a

3:16

full gender conceal episode because coming out

3:18

later this week and it features all

3:20

sorts of silly little questions are just

3:23

too full of secrets are the main

3:25

feed like. What's. One fact about

3:27

me tuck that you think listener should

3:29

know and do you think the d

3:31

I work we do is real and

3:33

helps anyone and what is your most

3:35

can syllable tree and state. So listen

3:37

through to the end credits for more

3:39

details on how to sign up for

3:41

that would basically his teacher and.com/gender. But.

3:43

Before we get to all of that, just wanted

3:46

to let you know that everything and armored shop

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code trains. And. Now it's time

4:07

for this week. Engender. This.

4:15

Weekend Under. I am talking about a

4:18

short piece made by another trans person

4:20

and then masterpiece is actually about another

4:22

Sharpies made by another chance for themselves.

4:25

Let's start unpacking those layers. I have

4:27

a friend named Chelsea last then, Jesse

4:29

lives over in the Uk and like

4:31

many, many many trans people all around

4:34

the world does the has had a

4:36

really nightmarish time finding their way of

4:38

have medical term phobia, broken helplessness, damn

4:41

access, gender affirming cat and as they've

4:43

been navigating all of his obstacles and.

4:45

Dealing with all the disorder that comes

4:47

from being denied access to medical transition,

4:50

they came across a pamphlet called Information

4:52

for the Female to Male written by

4:54

One and Lose Sullivan in Nineteen Eighty

4:56

Sino very quickly. If you're not familiar

4:58

with Lethal then please pull up your

5:00

local library website right now Lisa, hold

5:03

on the book. We both laughed and

5:05

pleasure. Anyway, this pamphlet has a sex

5:07

and call them how to look thirty

5:09

would you are thirties and just made

5:11

a really wonderful shirt radio piece about

5:13

their experiences with this him fled. And

5:16

these instructions for hautelook. Third, you in

5:18

your thirties and also about medical transition

5:20

and you know gender if he theatergoers.

5:22

A little cameo from Student Striker and

5:25

also look cameo for me. So like

5:27

truly a really incredible range of qualifications.

5:29

There is a really great Keys It's

5:31

less than ten minutes on, so easy

5:33

breezy to listen to. It Originally aired

5:35

a couple of weeks ago on the

5:38

Bbc. Radio Four is sort Thoughts so

5:40

you can find it on the circuit

5:42

podcast feed, which I recommend generally for

5:44

couples. Amazing. A lot. Of my friends

5:46

of that fun trans work on their

5:48

or you can find just just these

5:50

these I just the loss and.me I

5:52

will link that the Senate I will

5:54

also linked to lose for pamphlet tissue.

5:56

Want to peruse the archives. So.

5:58

ideally you pause this podcast now, you

6:01

go listen to Jesse's piece, and then you come back,

6:03

but just in case you're like, off

6:05

of Wi-Fi, or your hands are busy or whatever,

6:07

I will close this out by reading one of

6:09

Lou's instructions for how to look 30 when you

6:12

are 30, and also transmasks

6:14

and also not on T. I

6:16

tried to choose a section that was least

6:18

predicated on being like a rich white guy,

6:20

but as always, retweets are not

6:23

endorsements. It was 1980. We're just gonna

6:25

cut him some slack. Okay, here we

6:28

go. Above

6:31

all, walk tall. Head up, shoulders

6:33

back, stomach in, while the temptation

6:35

is strong to slouch the shoulders

6:37

forward to minimize the breath, rather,

6:40

get an effective binder. Your

6:42

shoulders will appear broader when thrown

6:44

back, and walking tall will project

6:46

a serious, responsible demeanor and that

6:48

all-important air of self-confidence. Learn

6:51

to move slower and look them straight in

6:53

the eye. It is a well-known fact that

6:55

if you expect to be well-received, you will

6:57

be. If you act as though something is

6:59

wrong, others will look to find out what it

7:01

is. If you act as though you have a

7:03

perfect weight, even the most aggressive male will

7:06

hesitate to comfort you. Blasting into

7:08

and dashing out of the men's room

7:10

will cause alarm among the other guys.

7:12

You'll blend in better by sauntering in,

7:14

glancing at the mirror, using the stall,

7:16

washing your hands, and sauntering out. This

7:18

attitude on your part will put that

7:20

unsettling hint of uncertainty into anyone who

7:22

might question your status, and while they

7:24

may decide you're a pretty sorry excuse

7:26

for a man, hell, at least you

7:28

are one. Be sure they see there

7:30

isn't any doubt in your mind about

7:32

that. Thank

7:34

you, Lou. Thank you, Jesse. And good luck to

7:37

Jesse on their top surgery later this week. I'm

7:39

so excited for them. This has been

7:41

This Week in Gender. We've

7:49

got a Vaymail message for you today. Vaymail messages are,

7:51

of course, tiny messages from listeners. There is a link

7:53

in the show notes if you want to sign up

7:55

for one yourself. This message is from

7:58

Nat Coyle Nelson, and it says They'll

8:00

laugh, they'll cry, they'll turn into a

8:02

fly! Fly, fly, fly! A queer sci-fi

8:04

comedy visual novel is now on Steam

8:06

and itch.io. When Finn Flynn,

8:09

a closeted trans man, wakes up as a

8:11

house fly, he'll have to come out to his

8:13

dad and solve the mystery of his transformation,

8:15

all without having a voice.

8:18

That's fly, fly, fly, spelled

8:20

F-L-I-E-S. Okay, one more quick

8:22

ad and then we'll get to the interview. Here we go.

8:26

Believe it or not, I'm a pretty

8:28

private person. I don't like to share

8:30

intimate details with people I just met.

8:32

I certainly don't want strangers to be

8:34

able to look up my home address

8:36

or my family member's names or any

8:38

other personal info, really, and that's why

8:40

I continue to use Delete Me. Delete

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Me routinely scans hundreds of data broker

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websites to make sure that my personal

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information is not easily available online. Delete

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Me can also scrub info tied to

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dead names and other aliases. You

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can join today at joindeleteme.com/gender

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reveal and use the code TUCK20 to get 20%

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off your entire order. That

9:00

is TUCK20 for 20% off

9:02

at joindeleteme.com/gender reveal. Tasha

9:16

Tader is a writer, academic, and audio

9:18

producer from Virginia. He currently teaches

9:20

at the New School in New York City but

9:22

lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Some of

9:24

his scholarly work is very serious stuff

9:26

about trans history, white supremacy, and histories

9:29

of technology. And some of it is

9:31

about how trans gay sex is hot. The

9:42

way we always like the show is by

9:44

asking, in terms of gender, how do you

9:46

describe yourself? My

9:48

favorite thing to say is I'm a boring guy.

9:52

I'm just a boring guy. Great. You

9:54

wrote a scholarly paper where you talk about describing

9:57

yourself as a chronic transsexual. What does that mean?

9:59

Yeah. I love to take

10:01

my medical diagnosis and make it into

10:03

an identity, but actually because

10:05

I think it's really funny to recontextualize a

10:09

dumb idea that doctors had as a serious

10:11

thing for me to say about myself. And

10:14

I also think that both words are very

10:16

fake, like chronic doesn't really mean anything in

10:18

the context of transness, and transsexual is a

10:21

game that we're all playing about what does

10:24

sex mean and what does transing it mean. So

10:27

that's my other fun, I think, self descriptor.

10:29

I mean, I think if I had to

10:31

fill out a form, I'd probably be like,

10:33

fine, I'm trans. I would just

10:35

use trans. Yeah.

10:38

You're also a scholar, you're a

10:40

doctor, Cassius Adair. That's right. How

10:42

did you get involved in trans

10:45

studies? So I got into

10:47

trans studies in part because I got on the wrong flight

10:49

in 2011, which is that

10:53

I got into graduate school

10:55

in Bloomington, Indiana.

10:57

And then I bought a flight

11:00

to Bloomington, Illinois to attend the

11:02

like welcome weekend for graduate students.

11:06

And then I called them the morning of and

11:08

I was like, hi, I actually cannot come to

11:10

your graduate program because I am too stupid because

11:12

they bought a flight to Bloomington, Illinois and your

11:14

university is called University of Indiana, a different state.

11:17

And they were like, that happens all the time. No

11:19

worries. What we could do is like

11:21

fly you out a different weekend where there happens to

11:23

be a trans studies conference. We get

11:25

the vibe from your application materials. You might be into

11:28

that. And I was like, cool, clocked by the admissions

11:30

committee. Love it, love it, love it. But

11:33

I did end up at this conference. It

11:35

was like the 20th anniversary of Sandy Stone's

11:37

famous article, The Empire Strikes Back, which

11:39

is her response to Janice Raymond's article

11:41

or rather book, The Transsexual Empire, which

11:44

is like a turf book. Anyway, it

11:46

ended up being in a

11:48

room with Sandy Stone, Susan

11:50

Stryker and Kate Bornstein, which is like I

11:53

think just like a very funny combo of

11:55

like the founding mothers of trans studies. And

11:58

So I kind of got like. Brought

12:00

in to this collective of junior train

12:02

three scholars hanging out with Lakes the

12:05

old mom's of trans that he is

12:07

right before I started my graduate program

12:09

end up not going to Indiana on

12:11

Bay. It was really interesting sort of

12:14

Lakes understanding that trans that he is

12:16

is both an academic field and kind

12:18

of a survival clicks of trans academics

12:20

trying to take care of each other

12:23

and figure out like what the whole

12:25

world doing here and none of our

12:27

programs actually one is to exist and

12:29

it. Will be better for a lot of

12:31

our schools if we last and did not

12:33

produce work that made them feel uncomfortable or

12:35

challenged and did not demand health insurance that

12:38

covers our bodies and stuff like that and

12:40

so it's could have solidarity under those conditions.

12:42

Yeah. Some of your scholarly

12:44

work has to deal with raise White

12:46

supremacy, anti blackness things like that. As

12:49

a white scholar, how do you approach

12:51

that work and lox? How do you

12:53

view your role in all of that?

12:56

Yeah, that's a really good question. I

12:58

was actually recently as thoughts in a

13:00

conference today. Where. I'm fairly

13:02

sure he was the only white scholar. Fair

13:04

at all and the wave my

13:07

think about it is died. I

13:09

think that my job is not

13:11

to explain how blackness works. I

13:14

think that my job is to

13:16

explain how likeness works. And.

13:18

A lot of the way the whiteness works is by.

13:21

Deciding. That blackness. His.

13:23

Appointees: Right is is bad

13:25

is something that we should try

13:28

to eliminate, and I think that

13:30

and I'm somewhat uniquely positioned to

13:32

help. Translate. That information impact

13:34

this is. My family has been in the

13:36

United States for like hundreds of years. Like

13:39

I might. Descended. From Settler colonialism

13:41

like one point. oh in the United

13:43

States on I also come from Southern

13:45

family and Lick My family is definitely

13:48

part of the legacy of slavery and

13:50

as a scholar what that means is

13:52

that I really think that my job

13:55

is to write in such a way

13:57

of i can tell the best truth

13:59

some. That means telling. Truths.

14:02

That actually invite my own sort of family

14:04

or my own legacy And I think that's

14:06

correct. I think this is like be honest

14:08

thing to do and if I were to

14:10

not do those things now it's right. A

14:12

bunch of articles that somehow didn't touch that

14:14

I feel like are simply wouldn't be accurate

14:17

about for example, places, history or these two

14:19

agenda and I don't think that everybody has

14:21

a fairly lake. A. Moral

14:23

obligation to do x type of scholarship.

14:25

This a lot of ways we can

14:27

contribute knowledge to the world are actors

14:29

into the world but I think that

14:31

for me if I'm asking a question

14:33

laid hey, how did this race or

14:36

formation come to benefit people like me.

14:38

I. Have to answer that Honestly I

14:40

cannot be like oh it's all good

14:42

like bull's eye culturalism we have held

14:45

hand for not what happens in.of a

14:47

loose end of coming to that place.

14:49

release it over. I

14:51

was a many years of my graduate for

14:53

yeah I mean player That was like I

14:55

went to a conference and I was talking about

14:58

oh late racism works like this and someone race

15:00

or him a like nothing about racism you'd fremont

15:02

anti blackness in particular know like oh shit

15:04

I called out like in a big room.

15:08

With a lot of people m S and

15:10

actually like I know who that scholar is

15:12

now like I met that person later and

15:14

we've exchanged email and I was like hey

15:16

you are super rates you may that article

15:18

good instead of crap be like you made

15:20

may work better on. And I also

15:22

like salt. Really nervous when you said that and

15:24

they relate. Yeah, we should have felt nervous because

15:27

you Iran Maybe this is believe you know they

15:29

geico us when it's it's why. Like, we actually

15:31

kind of worked it out now that a lake.

15:33

Once I got over the anxiety of baby being

15:35

wrong if I try to talk about something that

15:37

isn't my identity. And. Realize that oh

15:39

I can trust that a call out is something I

15:42

can send all and make me work better. I was

15:44

able to tell the fifth more more him as guy

15:46

said. Of yeah I

15:48

really don't like. I actually did all the coursework for like.

15:50

The. Like African American studies certificates in

15:52

grad school by didn't sign up to

15:55

get the piece of paper's I was

15:57

like a feel kinda lack really. call

15:59

me. an AFAM scholar, when actually I'm

16:01

a scholar of like why my own people are

16:03

bad. Like I'm not a scholar of African American

16:06

history and culture and I

16:08

think that's like a really important distinction to me

16:10

as like someone who takes, who

16:12

thinks that anti-racism is a product of justice

16:15

requires like a certain amount

16:17

of unearthing of white supremacy and

16:20

like making it clear

16:22

and black people aren't people who need to

16:24

know that right? It's like white people need to know that. Yes,

16:27

absolutely. I was

16:30

trying to decide which of your scholarships

16:33

to ask about

16:35

and prioritize and I

16:37

felt like the easiest way to do that is

16:39

to just ask what you feel like your proudest

16:42

or most influential moment of

16:45

scholarship has been. Yeah, I

16:47

mean I'm trying to write

16:49

this book but I have to have

16:52

a baby first because my brain doesn't work until the baby's

16:54

out of it so let's just like put the book aside.

16:56

One day the book I hope will be the thing I

16:58

care about the most. It's also where I'm

17:00

trying to work out some of these issues around whiteness and

17:02

I'm kind of being like why is the

17:04

history of transness so white? In

17:06

the United States we have like so many

17:08

archives of like trans stuff and

17:11

a lot of that stuff is like newsletters from

17:13

old like trans communities and it's like white women

17:15

in upstate New York talking to each other right?

17:17

Like very like you look at all those old

17:19

photographs like they're really really white that's because when

17:21

we use the word trans or we tell trans

17:24

history a lot of times we're relying on archives

17:26

that are generated by white middle-class people who

17:29

had things like self-publishing resources like it's just

17:31

like very very clear and evident. On

17:34

the other hand if we are like

17:37

we're good trans scholars and we're gonna

17:39

write down the history of the United States and

17:42

transgender lives or whatever we really want to start

17:44

with Marsha P right and with Sylvia

17:46

and I'm a little bit like that feels like

17:49

just so weird it feels like we're

17:51

doing this like Google Doodle version of

17:53

trans history when we're trying to like

17:55

look like we've always been really racially

17:57

integrated and I'm like in what universe?

18:00

would trans community be

18:02

the only racially integrated community of the 20th

18:04

century? I mean, that just isn't true. We

18:07

have to take seriously how

18:09

racial segregation in class warfare

18:11

fundamentally creates multiplicity within

18:14

transness. There isn't one trans history,

18:16

because in the United States we can never

18:18

have one community history that isn't bifurcated by

18:21

race. So one thing I'm trying

18:23

to talk about, I think, in this larger project, I

18:26

think of stuff that's out. I mean,

18:28

I really... Let me separate.

18:30

I think that my Tea for Tea

18:32

article with AS is probably my

18:35

most read article. It is

18:37

full of sex jokes. It

18:39

has a catchy title. Which is? All the

18:41

trans guys are just dating each other, colon,

18:43

the transgender craze seducing your sons. Or is

18:45

it the other way around? It's one of

18:47

the two. It's the other way around, but

18:49

it doesn't matter. It's fine. We wrote two

18:51

titles and we liked them both. Yeah. We

18:54

talk about that article on

18:56

Gender Concealed, the second episode ever of

18:58

Gender Concealed, our Patreon-only bonus podcast. So

19:00

I don't want to ask you too

19:03

much about it, but I do want to underline

19:05

that you did write an article subtitled, all the

19:07

trans guys are just dating each other with a

19:09

trans guy who are dating, which is very funny.

19:11

Yes. Yeah. Do you want to say

19:13

more about that? Yeah, no, that was a good joke. We hadn't

19:16

been dating for that long when that happened either. And so a

19:18

little bit in my head, I was like, cool,

19:20

glad I'm putting my new relationship

19:23

into peer review. Let's

19:25

see how that goes. Academic publishing

19:27

takes so long that I was like, I hope we're

19:29

still together when this comes out because otherwise it's going

19:31

to be real awkward and everyone's going to gossip about

19:33

us. But honestly, who

19:36

cares? Who cares if we're gossiped about? It's

19:38

fine. But yeah, I mean, that article was

19:40

also like a piece

19:42

where we both put on the table, I think

19:45

a lot of big contentions about

19:47

how we feel trans this works. One

19:50

of which is like, it's totally fine if you

19:52

see a trans person and you think they're cool

19:54

and hot and that makes you want to transition.

19:56

And like that feels like an obvious thing to say to

19:58

you, my cool hot trans. Rand Re. It's

20:00

but Lake to says people that the role

20:03

threads that like we actually might be influencing

20:05

is other. We went actually like form social

20:07

relationships with each other that make it feel

20:09

fun and normal to turn the said that

20:12

so we really wanted to put on paper

20:14

like hey we don't have to lead constantly

20:16

pretend that this isn't happening in order to

20:18

like fit into the liberal narrative of Born

20:21

the Flag. Like we can be really really

20:23

honest about the fact that late some people

20:25

get trans by like a hot animator are

20:27

like by their tumbler be as and. To

20:30

simplify it does not matter it's because

20:32

says he will come to the genders

20:34

as ways to likes a super allowed

20:36

to be like oh that's a cool

20:38

girl I wanna wear the same skirt

20:41

as her like entrance who blather experience

20:43

as a concept of models a fashion

20:45

model language I exaggerate yeah i felix

20:47

so that that sort of get into

20:49

it's really important and also the contention

20:51

that like principal fuck each other and

20:53

that late but also as. Aberrant.

20:56

Or weird, or even surprising plague.

20:59

Trans. People having sex with one another

21:01

is like a pretty literal interpretation of

21:03

T for Tea and we also don't

21:05

think that we should water down T

21:07

for T to exclude the erotic the

21:09

legs. We should have a conception of

21:12

Lake Train Cdm solidarity that allows us

21:14

to fuck and doesn't have to be

21:16

all like T for Tea Party Friends

21:18

Awareness Week by Microsoft right when we

21:20

kind of wanted to be on a

21:22

similar ball to says people and so

21:24

we wanted to put fucking on the

21:26

table as lakes. Something that says people

21:28

have to accept. About Us are making it

21:30

a little bit harder for us to be like

21:33

corporate ties and flattened out. Do you think that.

21:36

Were. Getting close to that because as. You.

21:38

And I unless nice on side has no well tea

21:40

party and sad. Craig's. List fucking

21:43

times has been sense used

21:45

rally things. Yep, Thanks in

21:47

large part to tie Peters and others.

21:50

That. Do you think that maybe the sexes

21:52

getting taken out of it? Entirely Now.

21:55

i really entirely i do feel like there's

21:57

a lox sixty sam of a lot of

21:59

stuff same house So there's like a

22:01

way in which people's desire

22:03

for community spaces not built

22:06

around sex reflects

22:08

anxiety about sex and sexuality

22:11

in a way that I find a little bit misplaced and

22:14

that sometimes it's just coming from 19 year olds, right?

22:16

And they're just like, oh, like you're like, you want

22:18

to find a place that doesn't feel like sexually fried

22:20

because you're 19. That's okay.

22:22

But that doesn't mean that all of

22:24

us need to like excise erotics as part of who we

22:26

are. I mean, it's really no kinkit pride discourse at the end

22:28

of the day, right? And

22:31

I think that like, you know, I am like

22:34

famously a person who is awkward about sex,

22:36

who feels weird about it actually a lot

22:38

of the time and who's like, entrance

22:41

into like having sex while sober is like pretty

22:43

recent to be frank, like those would be like

22:45

very real about who I am. And I

22:48

think that like, isn't really important to me to

22:50

like, realize that some

22:52

of my knee jerk

22:54

anxiety about like, oh, no, we're not allowed to

22:56

be sexual is actually social oppression.

22:59

And some of it is my like my own trauma that I can deal with

23:01

in therapy. And none of it is like, good

23:04

politics. Me

23:06

being like, oh, no, we need to clean ourselves up

23:09

for the mainstream is like ultimately about

23:11

me and not a good prescription for like,

23:13

how we get free. Like liberation does not

23:15

mean we like have to keep it in

23:17

our pants all the time. And I think

23:19

that like, it is true that

23:21

like T4T originated in erotic way. But like, I

23:24

think that there is an impulse to

23:27

like, make sure that whatever we

23:29

put on our flyer, can be

23:31

found by like our parents on our

23:33

computer or something like that. I just don't think that's

23:35

like a good strategy. I didn't

23:38

want to ask you about your book. I know it's not

23:40

finished. But can you give people

23:42

just like a general concept of vaguely what

23:44

it's about? Yeah, sure. I mean,

23:46

one of the things that I'm fascinated by

23:49

is the mix of

23:51

meme and statistically true.

23:54

That is a lot of white

23:56

trans women are computer programmers. Taking the

23:59

last five years this is expanded

24:01

to have more non-binary people and transmasculine

24:03

people, but historically it is like a

24:05

very trans-seminate phenomenon. And I

24:08

got really interested in this when I started, you

24:10

know, just telling people in digital studies, like, oh,

24:12

by the way, like, did you know that, like,

24:14

a trans woman invented this thing or invented that

24:16

thing? And people who did history of

24:18

computing were like, no, we did not know that. And

24:20

I was like, that's really weird because, like, I know

24:22

that from like Wikipedia. Like, I haven't done like deep

24:24

research on this. This was like 10 years ago. And

24:27

people were like, oh, you should like write

24:29

about that. That's so interesting. And I was

24:31

like, oh, it's interesting to you because you

24:34

think that trans people don't exist outside of

24:36

sex work or outside of entertainment. Like you

24:38

think that trans people have a very particular

24:40

slot in our economy and in our social

24:42

world. And so you can't imagine a trans

24:44

woman like working in an office. But

24:47

I know that white middle-class people work in offices,

24:50

right? And some of them might be trans. Like,

24:52

wow, what a surprise. And it's again, it's that

24:54

problem of like, you know, sometimes

24:56

when we talk about trans history, we talk about

24:58

like these cool radical activists. Meanwhile, we have all

25:00

of these archives of people who are not cool

25:02

or radical or activists. They're like people who worked

25:04

in offices. And nonetheless, we're trans, right?

25:06

We're like just as trans as the people who

25:09

are cool radical activists. So how

25:11

do we talk about that as a community and be

25:13

like, hey, you know, like some of these people worked

25:16

in these big companies, like making computers

25:18

and some of the computers were used

25:20

for bad stuff. Also,

25:22

like computer industries are not

25:25

morally good necessarily. Like, it's

25:27

cool that we have email. It's

25:29

not cool that we have like

25:31

drones, in my opinion. So

25:33

how do we talk about this really complex

25:36

sort of like morally fraught space in

25:38

a way that also acknowledges that marginalized people

25:40

have worked in those spaces? And how do

25:42

we like, tell the truth

25:45

about that without being like, well, these were

25:47

just bad people who work in these bad

25:49

companies, because that's not what I believe either.

25:52

And I say this also as someone who works in a

25:54

university, and I'm like, wow, it's like actually really equal

25:56

to work in a university that is

25:58

actively people

26:00

out of their neighborhoods. And also my job is

26:02

to teach students how to have feelings. So I

26:04

don't think that's evil. So I'm trying to hold

26:06

the complexity of big institutions when I write this.

26:09

But I think that

26:11

what's really important to me about the book

26:13

is I want people to know

26:15

how many trans people are involved in these

26:18

industries. I want people to know that

26:21

these industries, in part because they had

26:23

trans employees advocating, became some

26:25

of the earliest spaces that had trans-inclusive

26:27

benefits in the United States. So the

26:29

private sector took over where the state would

26:32

not in terms of giving people health care

26:34

and stuff like that. And I also want

26:36

people to know how those histories of basically

26:39

money and whiteness shaped what we think

26:41

transness is. Because a lot of the

26:43

people who worked in those companies went

26:45

on to sound or to be part

26:47

of trans rights organizations in

26:49

the 1990s and 2000s. And

26:53

so transness started to look like we're not smashing

26:55

the state, right? Because we actually are kind of

26:57

doing fine in the state during the Clinton administration.

26:59

And so I really, like

27:01

it's really, really important to me that

27:04

people understand that narrative, like that sort

27:06

of like corporate middle class

27:08

white narrative as

27:10

not something that we should just pretend doesn't

27:12

exist because it makes us look too moderate

27:14

or whatever. But it's something that we

27:16

should really take seriously as something that like implicates

27:19

how and when we get integrated into

27:21

like mainstream culture, like when we're allowed

27:23

to be like at the Democratic National

27:25

Committee or whatever the fuck, you know?

27:28

Yeah, I think that's a really

27:30

good takeaway about how we

27:33

think about transness today. Is

27:35

there anything so far that

27:38

you think is an important takeaway about how we think

27:40

about like tech today? Yeah, I

27:42

mean, tech has really been allowed in the

27:45

last, I would say, 40 to 50

27:47

years to

27:49

seem like it is an inclusive,

27:51

cool, innovative space. And

27:54

tech companies, I think we're very early figuring

27:56

out that like if we integrate parts of

27:58

the counterculture, right, like the long long-haired

28:00

hippie or like the feminist woman,

28:02

we can hire those people. And a lot

28:04

of those people are smart and they've got

28:06

new ideas and they're really good at like

28:09

making cool posters that can become part of

28:11

our marketing and our branding, right? There's

28:14

really good scholarship on this actually by some

28:16

vigils of these people. But

28:18

in part because tech was being like

28:20

built up in California in

28:23

this geographic heart of the counterculture,

28:25

they figure out how to make

28:27

diversity into corporate advantage. And

28:30

they kept doing this and it

28:32

was never true that those tech

28:34

spaces became like bastions of inclusion.

28:36

And so trans people were just

28:38

like another wave of like, oh,

28:41

we can integrate these weirdos. We

28:43

could hire a handful of them and put them on

28:45

posters and it'll really make us seem like we are

28:48

so progressive, right? And maybe people will look the

28:50

other way when we do things like sponsor apartheid,

28:53

right? Or like we do things like generate

28:55

huge amounts of like surveillance technology. Like we

28:57

can't be doing that if we're also the

28:59

good guys with the trans awareness week, right?

29:02

And so I think there's like

29:05

a real sort of classic balance

29:07

that these corporations are striking between trying

29:09

to look good on the one hand

29:12

to liberals and then using that

29:14

to do whatever they want. Right? I

29:17

just think that's so interesting because you

29:19

know, and I know from

29:21

our work together that

29:23

often tech companies that

29:25

employ trans people are

29:28

so much further behind

29:30

in 2023 understanding even

29:32

the basics of transness than other types

29:34

of companies. So I'm like, if

29:37

they were doing this before everyone else, like how

29:39

did they go backwards even? But anyway, we can

29:41

talk about that another time. One more question before

29:43

we can talk more about our

29:48

business. But the

29:50

thing about the Academy is to

29:52

me seems bad. But also other jobs are

29:55

bad. So

29:57

what can you do? It's bad. I was wondering. once

30:00

again, if you have advice

30:03

for trans people thinking

30:05

about entering academia and I'm curious

30:07

within that if the advice is

30:09

any different for like trans people

30:11

who are like I'm thinking about entering trans

30:13

studies or something adjacent versus people who are

30:16

like I'm trans and I want to study

30:18

like something completely different but I am trans

30:20

and going into academia. Yeah I mean I

30:22

think that like for people

30:24

who are in the sciences

30:26

to some extent there's a

30:29

really different setup because you join a lab and

30:31

then you kind of have this like weird

30:33

like a boss hierarchy structure and also the

30:36

hiring and firing is really different and so

30:38

in the STEM world a lot of times

30:40

how people survive is that they find like

30:43

a PI or like somebody who is their lab

30:45

director who was like not shitty and then that

30:47

person protects them for like seven years and

30:49

then if that person leaves you follow them

30:51

to their school right because that's you're working

30:53

on their project that has a really different

30:55

setup. There's also like kind

30:58

of akin to the way that there are like

31:00

surprising numbers or surprising

31:02

such unsurprising numbers of like trans

31:04

STEM folks in computer programming

31:06

there's also like trans people all throughout

31:08

STEM fields. I'm like I don't

31:11

know them right because we don't publish in the

31:13

same journals we don't go to the same conferences

31:15

but I'm like oh like you're trans and you

31:17

like know everything about Saturn like dope. Like that

31:19

rules like that means there's a pipeline now right

31:22

because everybody can work in your Saturn lab and

31:24

go study Saturn's rings and they probably

31:26

won't be kicked out for being like a trans person so there

31:29

is some amount of just like informal mentorship that

31:31

happens very differently in STEM fields.

31:33

In the humanities

31:35

in particularly in trans studies I mean I think

31:37

that there's still a lot

31:39

of theory and a lot of

31:43

discourse in the humanities that is explicitly

31:45

transphobic in the guise of feminism so

31:47

I work with a lot of trans students and there

31:50

are many people who will say to me I won't

31:52

apply to a women's studies PhD program or

31:54

I won't I don't want to do gender studies

31:56

but I'll be sitting in classrooms having to read

31:59

like turfism basically. that will be

32:01

in my intro to Grad Cities

32:03

101 seminar as if we're all supposed

32:05

to be like, yes, this is how feminism works, right?

32:07

And I'm like, yeah, you're right. Like, that's probably true.

32:10

And there's some departments that are aware

32:12

of that and are trying to make

32:14

their curriculum not so

32:16

explicitly, I think, trans exclusionary. And then there

32:18

are others that are like, well, this is

32:20

just how feminism works. You gotta read these

32:22

terms. And

32:24

so I think sometimes trans people can even find it

32:27

more comfortable to be in a field

32:30

that is less explicitly about gender. So

32:32

I think that like, one thing is just to think

32:34

very carefully about like, who's in

32:37

the room, who's around you, like what

32:39

that department is signaling its values are.

32:41

You can often see that right now by like,

32:44

who has a like department statement up about Palestine.

32:46

It's actually a pretty good proxy for who's gonna like

32:48

cover your ass and who's gonna actually protect you. So

32:51

I would actually like read those department statements because

32:53

that means everybody voted on something that isn't horrible.

32:56

But one thing that's been

32:58

really interesting in the last, I would

33:00

say like six or seven years, is there's literally a

33:02

Facebook group that's called Trans PhD Network. And

33:05

it's people from all different fields that's set up

33:07

by this person named Avery Everhart, who is now

33:09

a professor in Canada. I've actually

33:11

gotten a lot out of that group, just meeting

33:13

other people who are in the academy who are

33:15

trans, including people who are like, I

33:18

happen to be trans and I study Saturn, but also

33:20

people who are like, I am a trans studies person

33:22

and I need to like build my network. And

33:25

building those relationships has been so, so, so

33:27

important and valuable. And like, you can't make

33:29

it in this field if you don't know

33:31

like 10 other people like you. Like

33:33

you really need to have a group, you have to have

33:35

a click and like, that click doesn't

33:38

all have to be trans people, but it does have

33:40

to be people who like are not transphobic and like

33:42

finding those 10 people. It's like, you can

33:44

make a whole academic career out of 10

33:46

friends, because that's the number of people who ever read

33:48

academic articles anyway. You gotta have 10 friends. So

33:52

maybe that's not real advice. Really important

33:54

tip, thank you. So

33:57

famously we have a business together

33:59

called Sylveon. where we help

34:01

newsrooms and other businesses be more normal about

34:03

trans people. And one of the things that

34:05

you've gotten to think about is a weird

34:08

freaky cult. Oh yeah. So one of

34:10

your Soviet jobs is to work on

34:12

this podcast about this gendery cult that

34:14

later turned into a

34:16

Netflix documentary that you were famously in and

34:18

then also a different

34:21

documentary about the same thing that you weren't in which has

34:23

led to a lot of confusion on my part. A

34:26

lot of people texted me about this documentary.

34:28

So I have heard bits and pieces,

34:30

but for the most part whenever someone would be like, have

34:32

you heard about this? I'd be like, yeah, Cass worked on

34:34

it. But then I didn't

34:36

ever look into it or ask you to explain it to

34:38

me. So here's my question. What's the deal with that cult?

34:40

Like what's going on? Right? It's so weird. I

34:43

went to preface this thing. I'm not a cult expert at all. But

34:47

I believe there was a Vanity Fair article that

34:49

actually started to break some of these stories. And

34:51

so a lot of this is sort of downstream of original

34:53

reporting. And I don't want to steal that from the journalists.

34:55

But what seems to have

34:57

happened is that there's a cult called

35:00

Twin Flames Universe that

35:02

purports to help you find your soulmate,

35:04

right? Everybody has their twin flame out

35:06

there and they have trainings

35:08

and seminars and it's sort of classic

35:11

multi-level marketing, right? The fun

35:13

twist to this one is that if

35:16

you are going after the sort of typical

35:18

like multi-level marketing audience you're gonna get a

35:20

lot of like, I

35:23

would say middle-class, like

35:25

middle-aged women, right? And you're not gonna get as

35:27

many men. But if your whole deal

35:29

is we're gonna help you find your heterosexual partnership,

35:32

you literally like cannot not have

35:34

men involved, right? Like heterosexuality is

35:36

like the main core concept of

35:38

this group. And they really

35:40

believe that everybody's twin flame has to be

35:42

in the sort of gender opposition to you. So

35:44

like, if you're a woman, you're gonna find

35:46

a man. And as

35:49

they kind of realize that there weren't enough men

35:51

joining the group and as they realize they had to

35:53

set you up with someone in the group so they

35:55

could keep these matches seeming

35:57

authentic, right? To like their spiritual.

36:00

faux beliefs, they kind

36:02

of adjusted their ideology so it was

36:04

like okay well it's fine if you

36:08

aren't dating a man as your twin flame

36:10

you just have to be dating someone with

36:12

masculine energy and so that changed

36:16

some of the vibes a little bit where

36:19

suddenly you could be

36:23

assigned a twin flame because the group did a lot

36:25

of like assigning like oh this is who you're meant

36:27

to be with you could be

36:29

assigned a twin flame who was also a female

36:31

assigned at birth person even if

36:33

you were like I'm a heterosexual woman like

36:35

looking for true love like true heterosexual love

36:38

which you and your group have said is the only

36:40

kind of real love so clearly it has to be

36:42

like straight right and then the

36:44

person who would be assigned the role of like

36:46

the masculine partner would allegedly

36:48

be pressured to do things

36:51

like bringing on new names or in some cases

36:53

taking testosterone in order

36:55

to sort of set up this like seemingly

36:58

heterosexual balance which

37:01

like to me I was like that's

37:03

like really not what I'm

37:05

all about in terms of

37:07

like why I wanted to take testosterone

37:09

it was not because somebody told me

37:11

that I needed to be

37:13

in heterosexual partnership and express my masculine

37:15

energy to find my true feminine twin

37:17

flame like that was not my whole

37:20

deal right but I also sort of

37:22

saw in this story the

37:24

risk that somebody would

37:26

see this story and say see look at

37:28

this this is proof that transness

37:31

is part of homophobia

37:33

right like if you people are being forced to be

37:35

straight by being trans that means that transness is a

37:37

way to trick people into being straight and

37:40

that transness really is part of this like

37:42

creepy cult that you can be coerced into looking

37:44

trans or being trans or taking tea or whatever

37:46

it is by these external forces and then you

37:48

can be unbrainwashed from it because it's just brainwashing

37:50

and I was like yeah I think that's not

37:53

true in like 99.99999 percent

37:56

of cases it just like does seem vaguely

37:58

true here on this YouTube cult. So like,

38:01

let's talk about that. So what I was

38:03

really trying to do first in the work

38:05

with the podcast and then in the doc

38:07

was basically say like, hey, transition,

38:11

as I know it, and those trans people know it, is

38:13

not about conforming to a masculine or feminine

38:16

energy in order to find your heterosexual life

38:18

partner. It is about trying to figure out

38:20

who you are. And so if somebody is

38:22

telling you, hey, you, you're supposed to be

38:25

more gay, gay, and that's actually

38:28

exactly the same as like the whole cisgender

38:30

straight world telling you, hey, hey, you, you're

38:32

supposed to be more X and that like,

38:35

therefore it could not be more opposite to

38:37

what trans people are trying to talk about.

38:39

Because I just wanted people to really understand

38:41

that like, the deal here is not, oh,

38:43

they took T and you took T, therefore

38:45

you're the same, but rather I took T

38:47

because I wanted to, some of

38:49

them took T because they were told they had

38:51

to, that's actually the opposite. So,

38:54

but here's where people understood that like,

38:56

intention and choice matters a lot

38:58

more than like, hey, did you take the same meds? I

39:01

think it worked because people from like middle school

39:03

have been emailing me being like, good job. And

39:05

I'm like, oh, like, cool. I

39:07

guess you understood what I was trying to say. It does seem

39:09

like easy to misunderstand how weird

39:16

cults are different from the sort

39:18

of like pretend trans cult that is a

39:20

made up right wing lie. But I

39:23

think we'll figure it out. Okay, great. So

39:26

as long as I've known you, you've been trans, you've

39:28

also been like, organizing your

39:31

life about being pregnant someday. Was

39:33

there a moment? I guess that's true.

39:35

Yeah. Was there a moment in

39:37

your entire gender journey where you thought you'd have

39:39

to pick one or the other of these two

39:42

things? Or have you always been like, I

39:44

will have it all. Lean

39:46

in, baby. No way. I mean, I

39:49

was told the day I got my first

39:51

shot in 2011, they said, Well, you know, before

39:55

we even talked to you about testosterone, we should probably

39:57

let you know that you're going to be infertile and

39:59

get married. you should think about freezing your eggs first."

40:02

And I was like, I am 22, and

40:06

freezing your eggs costs $10,000, which

40:09

is an amount of money that is like an

40:11

absolutely astronomical amount of money to me

40:13

at that time, and even still, I'm like, what is $10,000? And

40:16

there's no way that like, I'm

40:19

gonna make a choice that is about one

40:21

day having a baby, if literally

40:24

in your other hand, you're holding a syringe full

40:26

of testosterone and being like, or you could have this,

40:28

which is basically what it felt like. I don't know

40:30

if the doctor was literally holding tea in her other

40:32

hand, but it really, really felt that way. And

40:35

as soon as I was like, nah, I'm good. They

40:37

were like, cool, you wanna take your shot? Like pull

40:39

down your pants, let's do it right now. It was

40:42

like very, very immediate. And I actually thought like, when

40:45

they started asking me those questions, that it was

40:47

gonna be a little bit more gatekeeping, but it

40:49

was literally like, if you agree that it's fine

40:51

that you will never have a baby, we'll shoot

40:53

you up right now. And I was like, all

40:55

right, it's fine. And it's really

40:57

funny, cause that's all bullshit. It's like not true at

40:59

all. Yeah, I mean, that's what

41:01

I wanna ask about. So there's so much

41:03

misinformation about medical transition fertility,

41:07

which I would argue is a combination of straight

41:09

up transphobia and doctors not being told anything

41:11

or taught anything at any point. And

41:14

I wanna be clear, I definitely

41:16

have had trans friends who have struggled with infertility,

41:18

but in those conversations, all of them have been

41:20

like, I do not

41:22

have any indication that this is a

41:25

result of transition. It seems

41:27

like that's just how I was going to be, regardless of

41:29

sort of what my sex or gender was. Can

41:31

you talk about your experience and

41:34

process with actually getting pregnant

41:36

after being told at 22 that

41:38

you were gonna be infertile? Yeah,

41:41

I for some reason at about age 28,

41:44

which maybe that's why, cause that's around the time I

41:46

met you. If my body started saying

41:48

like, hey, you're supposed to have a baby, which

41:50

is like the weirdest experience, like I don't even

41:52

think I recommend it. Cause it is like something

41:55

is taking over your brain. And

41:57

like, I was like, oh, I guess biological clocks

41:59

are real, but that's... too stupid and fake? I don't

42:01

know. I don't have any explanation for it. It's just

42:03

like weird sci-fi shit. But I started

42:05

having these like persistent thoughts that like, oh, I

42:07

should like, at least learn if I'm able to

42:09

do this. And if I'm gonna like be infertile,

42:11

I could probably just like deal with this in

42:14

therapy and like have a grieving period and like

42:16

move on with my life and like have more

42:18

money. You know, so I went to the endocrinologist

42:20

and they were like, Hey, we'll refer you to

42:22

like a reproductive endocrinologist. They'll literally just tell you.

42:25

And I went to this doctor who turned

42:27

out to be the best doctor I've ever

42:29

had weirdly in Virginia, which like, again, not

42:31

known for like trans rights or whatever, but

42:33

like, actually, this like dope

42:35

endocrinologist. And she was like, Oh, that's so

42:38

interesting. I really was like curious about transmasculine

42:40

fertility. And I'd read you all these papers

42:42

about it. Like, come on, come on through.

42:45

And she hooked me up to like an

42:48

ultrasound and basically

42:51

just like counted on my egg follicles. And she

42:53

was like, Oh, you just have like a weirdly

42:55

high number of egg follicles. There's nothing wrong with

42:57

anything. All of your anatomy is incredibly normal. And

43:00

actually, I'm gonna stop counting your follicles because you have

43:02

so many that you're like beyond the bell curve, a

43:04

fertile, and like, you're

43:07

just kind of genetically like that. And there's nothing we

43:09

can do about it. You're gonna have a baby if

43:11

you feel like you have a nice day, you know.

43:13

And she was like, I can't guarantee that

43:16

like, there aren't other parts of your anatomy

43:18

that might make this complicated, like hormone levels

43:20

and stuff. But like, at least physiologically, like

43:22

you have all the parts to do this.

43:25

And in fact, you have weirdly too many

43:27

of the parts. You have lots of the

43:29

parts. And so I think from then

43:31

on, I was like, Oh, I'm carrying on this

43:34

knowledge that like, the doctor that I first

43:36

saw when I was 22 was

43:38

wrong, that my egg

43:40

reserve is really high. So I could have

43:42

lots and lots of tries. Like it's not

43:45

like I'm going into early menopause. And

43:47

if you haven't had a period in a decade, you

43:49

don't really know, right? If you're going into early menopause,

43:51

because you're kind of on permanent applause. So you kind

43:53

of have to figure out what's going on on the

43:56

inside, we got to look under the hood a little

43:58

bit. But it turns out that it's not going I thought

44:00

I was like totally good. And really like I

44:02

just needed to be in a place where I

44:04

can make those things happen. Like my partner at

44:06

the time was not super stoked about having a

44:08

kid. I was living in like

44:11

a group house where like most of

44:13

what we did was smoke weed. Like it wasn't

44:15

necessarily the place to have a baby. And

44:18

I was like, okay, well, I'm just gonna put this

44:20

information in my back pocket. I

44:23

remember coming out of that doctor's office and I actually like

44:25

recorded a voice remote that was like, holy fucking shit. Like

44:27

I can actually just do this whenever I want to. Like

44:30

the choice is not up

44:32

to that person who prescribed me testosterone. The choice is

44:34

not up to me. And like, I don't know, it's

44:36

like, I think

44:38

the feeling of like reproductive freedom, like

44:41

really, I don't know

44:43

how to describe it. It's like super, super powerful. It's made

44:45

me into like such an intense like reproductive

44:47

justice person. Cause I'm like, everyone should get to feel that

44:49

they can have a baby if they want to. They don't

44:51

have to if they don't want to cause it's such an

44:53

important feeling. Cause I do feel like

44:55

I only just doctor a men's tube. I feel like

44:57

I had this coercive experience of being like, you

45:00

don't get to have babies because you're trans. Like

45:02

don't even think about it, like cast it aside.

45:04

I'm like, that was really, like I

45:07

couldn't comprehend that as painful at 22, but like looking

45:09

back, I'm like, oh, I feel so sorry for me.

45:11

Like what a sad thing that I had to feel,

45:13

you know? Totally. And not to immediately

45:15

make this not about you, but it's also so

45:17

dangerous because there's so many trans people that get

45:19

pregnant because they were told by their doctors that

45:21

they're gonna be infertile. So they're like, well, why

45:23

would I need birth control? And

45:27

then they're pregnant because it turns out it's

45:29

fine. No, totally. It's like,

45:32

I mean, like I remember when I started prep, I was

45:34

like, I guess I still

45:36

need condoms, right? Like I guess, right?

45:39

But like actually, yeah, the answer is yes.

45:42

I'm very glad I did not get pregnant. During

45:45

the many times I had sex without condoms,

45:48

I was lucky not informed, right?

45:50

During the period of time when I, yeah. Yeah.

45:55

I'm sure we've all heard or experienced

45:58

horror stories of being in a guy

46:00

or other masculine presenting person

46:02

who needs to go to the OBGYN for whatever

46:05

reason and being like turned away or

46:08

questioned or mistreated. What has your experience

46:10

been like as a pregnant guy in

46:12

the medical system? Yeah my

46:14

experience is so funny because

46:17

the main like trans

46:19

physician in town is also an OBGYN who

46:22

has a lot of baby delivering experiences and

46:24

so I was like oh I'll just like

46:26

go to her the weird

46:28

thing and why I'm not working with her anymore

46:30

is she's also like very

46:33

fat phobic so

46:35

and like I've never been fat before so I

46:37

like didn't have the experience of knowing this about

46:39

her and I've really never

46:42

viscerally experienced anti-fatness like on my

46:44

body and so I kind

46:46

of like had heard this rumor about her and I

46:48

was like oh that doesn't apply to me like you

46:50

know how privilege works when you're like this doesn't apply

46:53

to me so I'm kind of gonna ignore it a

46:55

little bit like this like stupid privileged boy shit where

46:57

I was like I'm gonna be fine but

46:59

actually like I saw her

47:02

and got really picked on

47:04

about how much weight I had gained

47:06

in the first like 12 weeks of

47:08

pregnancy and yeah I was eating

47:10

only cheeseburgers because I needed to constantly eat or

47:13

I would feel like I was gonna throw up

47:15

and like cheeseburgers were around like it was food

47:17

that was there and my body

47:19

was craving really high

47:21

protein really high sugar food and also it's

47:23

fine to gain weight when you're pregnant it's

47:26

also just fine to gain weight period like

47:28

who cares but it was

47:30

really striking to have this experience of

47:32

being like oh you're like the best

47:34

doctor at trans baby

47:37

having but you also don't

47:39

know that it's okay for me to be 20 pounds

47:41

heavier like that doesn't make any sense to me so

47:44

we ended up working with midwives we kind of left

47:46

that system even though that was like trans inclusive system

47:49

but there weren't other like you know I mean it's like

47:51

the same problem where it's like if there's one person who

47:53

does trans med and that person

47:55

like isn't a great fit for you for whatever reason

47:57

like culturally or like whatever then

48:00

you don't have other choices. You're in their molecule,

48:02

exactly. Exactly, precisely, right? So yeah, so we really

48:04

had to get out of the medical system because

48:06

there was none of the other

48:08

doctors who did labor and delivery were

48:11

trans competent enough. But

48:13

the midwives were, because they benefited

48:16

basically from this the whole time. All these other

48:18

trans guys are like, wait a second, fuck this.

48:20

We're gonna go with midwives, and all the

48:22

midwives were like, great. We'll just catch them

48:24

all. We'll grab them.

48:27

So now I'm working with this really cool team

48:29

of people who I super love, who I'm obsessed

48:31

with, who have super dope politics. The

48:34

only annoying thing is I'm in credit card debt because I have to

48:36

pay them. And my insurance does not

48:38

cover seeing the cool people. I

48:41

just happen to have the financial privilege to put that

48:43

shit on the credit card and pay it off over

48:45

time, and not a lot of people do. Yeah,

48:48

so in addition to the midwives, where

48:51

have you looked for community

48:53

resources, information, stuff like that? Because I

48:56

know that there are a lot of

48:58

individual trans guys thinking about

49:00

pregnancy and having a hard time finding resources

49:02

and finding each other. Yeah, there's a couple

49:05

of different Facebook groups. I

49:08

don't remember the name of the Facebook group

49:10

offhand, but it's like trans, like birthing and

49:12

breastfeeding, or trans birthing people or something. And

49:15

there's one that's like the same group

49:17

name, but colon no allies, which actually

49:19

I kind of like better

49:21

to be honest. I love a colon no allies.

49:24

And those groups are pretty helpful, or were helpful at first.

49:26

And a lot of what that was helpful for, for it

49:28

was like, hey, how long did it take

49:31

you to be able to get pregnant after stopping T?

49:34

Which was the question that no one can answer,

49:36

because it's different for every single body, but it

49:38

was really helpful to see the range, for example.

49:40

So my expectations were kind of like, oh, somewhere

49:42

in this bucket, that's useful.

49:44

Or just seeing a lot of people's

49:46

stories. I spent a lot of time

49:48

on there before I actually got pregnant.

49:51

Since I've gotten pregnant, to be honest,

49:53

it has been more helpful to connect

49:55

with people who are really

49:57

close to where I am and due date.

49:59

So I'm. I'm part of a Discord

50:01

server of mostly cisgender

50:03

women. I think there's like one trans guy

50:05

and some non-binary people, but it is like

50:07

probably 80s cis women. And we

50:09

all have due dates in January, 2024. And

50:12

so like every week we can all kind of post

50:15

the same stuff. We're like, oh man,

50:17

like this was a really hard week. Did everyone

50:19

start vomiting this week? And you know, or like,

50:21

hey, does anyone have like the

50:23

weirdest vaginal discharge right now? Damn, it's so

50:25

fucking gross. And

50:28

that's actually like, like I needed

50:30

that more than I needed people to like talk

50:32

to me in particular about my gender. Because

50:36

a lot of what you're going through, it

50:38

isn't actually gender specific. It's like, it's

50:41

like pregnancy is its own gender, sort of.

50:43

It's like, like I

50:45

feel like I'm pregnant gender right now, right? Where

50:47

I'm like, oh, I'm hungry gender. I'm crying all

50:50

the time gender. I'm like, need to take a

50:52

bath right now, gender. And so I

50:54

think in terms of like solidarity

50:56

and support, I've

50:58

been so lucky that the people on this like

51:00

discord channel have been trans inclusive. I

51:02

really can't imagine the last nine months without people to

51:04

just like, who live in my phone,

51:07

who I'm like, wow, I just ate so

51:09

much pizza. And they're like,

51:11

yes, same. I'm just like, I like

51:13

so much pizza support, you know? And

51:15

like, I don't

51:17

know. And it doesn't really matter that much that my nipples are

51:20

different from theirs. Like at the end of

51:22

the day, like it's really fine. Like

51:24

some people on there can't chest feed either. So

51:26

it's just, we're just part of a different group

51:28

and it's not a big deal. Sorry,

51:30

we have to go back so I can say I

51:33

need to take a bath, gender, splish, splash pronouns. I

51:36

try to ask this every

51:38

time we talk to a transparent. So

51:40

my last question before the last official

51:42

questions and then Patreon rapid fire questions,

51:45

but you know, we're getting there. My

51:47

last question, what's your plan for

51:49

sort of handling the baby gender of

51:51

it all? God, I know.

51:53

I think I have this all the time.

51:57

I know what the baby genitals are. because

52:01

when you go to an ultrasound, unless they tell

52:03

you, unless you ask them, please do

52:05

not tell us about baby genitals, they will tell you

52:08

about baby genitals. And we were both

52:10

kind of like, well, like, who cares? We should

52:12

probably just know, maybe just

52:14

for like anticipating what we need to learn.

52:17

But we also made a decision to like

52:21

use they-them pronouns for

52:23

the baby out with people.

52:26

And at some point, my partner was like, you

52:29

know, I kind of feel like I want to

52:31

practice other pronouns too, because like they might not

52:33

end up being a they-them, and they-them is not

52:35

actually like a universal neutral, you know, like some

52:37

people aggressively are not a they, and actually both

52:40

of us are aggressively not they, so we're like,

52:42

hmm, let's not do this thing where we assign

52:44

them they, like that's also an

52:46

agenda assignment. So when we talk about

52:49

the baby now, we

52:52

intentionally mix up pronouns, so we do a mix of

52:54

like he, she, and they. We

52:56

did not do any pronouns for the baby,

52:59

but maybe we should. Maybe we're being- Yeah, English Flash

53:01

coming soon. English Flash coming soon. Maybe we're just being

53:03

really biased and fucked up. We

53:06

are the oppressors. I

53:09

think that as the baby has gotten bigger

53:11

and bigger, and it's more and

53:14

more real that they're actually going to come out, I

53:16

think both of us have kind of like gradually shifted

53:18

to using pronouns that are closer to what we know

53:20

is their sex assignment. And I think

53:22

that's kind of just subconscious. And I'm like, hmm, we should probably

53:24

go back to mixing it up a little bit more, so we

53:26

don't forget to mix it up. As

53:28

of this moment, I actually don't know what we're going

53:30

to do when they come out. I think that like,

53:32

I'm so used to saying they, that

53:34

I might use a lot of they

53:37

for a while. And I

53:39

don't think we're going to put like, it's a

53:41

boy or it's a girl on their like birth

53:43

announcement email that we send to our jobs or

53:45

whatever the fuck, you know, but like, I

53:49

feel strong annoyance by people who make all

53:52

of the choices. Like I'm annoyed with like

53:54

all of the choices for baby gender. So

53:57

I think I'm just going to have to pick one that like, to

54:00

me at the moment of birth and just like vibe

54:02

because like I don't want to choose my baby's gender

54:05

but they can't talk yet like nothing I can

54:07

do about that this

54:09

is how I feel I feel like me as a

54:11

parent deciding how to introduce

54:14

my baby to people

54:16

who will take that gender really

54:18

seriously is annoying to me and

54:21

me just telling people hey you know we're all

54:23

trans here can you be cool like

54:26

that's the best I could do I think as

54:28

a parent and

54:30

who knows my genetics are so strongly trans

54:33

you know that like if there

54:35

is a trans gene it happened in three out of

54:37

the three of the siblings in my family so I'm

54:39

a little bit like well I passed that shit on

54:42

yes inevitably you know that's a really good point

54:44

and I'm gonna talk to you

54:46

about that more in a minute but

54:48

first I must ask is there anything else

54:50

you want to talk about here in the

54:52

main sort of canonical feed

54:54

I will say that

54:57

like one thing I have been very surprised

54:59

by in my hashtag

55:01

pregnancy journey is how

55:03

much I have

55:06

needed support that

55:10

women usually get or are

55:12

denied right and so I've found

55:15

myself like suddenly doing a type

55:17

of like working woman feminism that

55:19

I have like not engaged in

55:21

for my entire life because

55:23

I transitioned when I was like a young person right

55:25

and so I like didn't have the

55:27

experience of encountering sexism like on the

55:29

job it's just like new for me

55:32

and I think in pregnancy people don't look at me

55:34

and see me as a woman I think they just

55:36

see me as a fat guy which is fine but

55:39

I do need to like ask my job for things like parental

55:41

leave or like I need to disclose to

55:44

people hey I'm really tired or

55:46

I need you know these types

55:48

of accommodations based on gender and it

55:51

is very very difficult and I like know

55:54

it is like a no shit kind of

55:56

thing to say like oh man discovers that

55:58

women have it rough in workplace. But I

56:00

think there is something that I just want to

56:02

like, you

56:05

know, make clear that like, even those of

56:07

us who are like transmasculine and are exempt

56:09

from sexism are still like one

56:12

life's change away from experiencing all that

56:14

stuff again. So like being, like,

56:17

being feminist is important, which

56:19

like is a stupid thing to say, but like, it

56:22

has been really eye-opening to me, like

56:24

how much other

56:27

pregnant people have my fucking back

56:29

in a way that like non-parents

56:31

and non-pregnant people simply don't. The

56:34

most like normal ass moms are

56:36

fucking like kicking ass to like

56:38

support me and then there's some

56:40

like radical queers who like simply aren't getting

56:42

it. So I would just say that like

56:45

some of my politics are realigning to be

56:47

a lot more I think, coalitional and open-minded

56:49

on this issue and a lot

56:51

less identity-based because they've had to be.

56:54

And everybody should

56:56

have paid leave forever. Yeah.

56:58

Yeah. All right. We gotta

57:00

do it. The way we always on the

57:02

show is by asking in your ideal world, what

57:04

would the future of gender look like? Oh

57:06

my god, I really wish we would stop talking

57:08

about it. I'm like so over gender.

57:11

I think that like a

57:13

kinder answer to that is that I think

57:17

that I would really like gender to be

57:20

flexible. I think I would like

57:22

for it to be potentially temporary if one wants it

57:24

to be. I think I would like

57:26

gender to be more frivolous

57:28

like in a funny way like and I sort of like

57:30

oh I can just like put this on for a while

57:32

and see how that goes. I would

57:34

like there to be fewer drag kings who

57:36

all have to do Justin Bieber. I would

57:39

like there to be trans

57:42

people who are trans in

57:44

ways that I do not understand because I would like

57:46

to be obsolete. I would love it if the kids

57:49

figured out some cool shit that I don't know about

57:51

and I would love for them to be mad at me

57:53

about me not knowing what is happening. I actually

57:56

think it was a realistic future of gender because I

57:58

feel like both of my children are going to. I

58:00

think I am like a big dumb bigot in like 15

58:02

years and frankly like good like

58:05

if they're not doing better than us I'm like we

58:07

failed so I hope they come up with genders I

58:09

don't get and I hope they teach me about them

58:11

and I hope that I like look them up on

58:13

Wikipedia so that I don't sound stupid in public and

58:15

um, I Wanted to be

58:17

sort of youth led and creative and

58:19

I wanted to keep changing and I don't want to know in

58:21

advance What that what that gender is? That's

58:29

gonna do it for this week's show. If you had

58:31

a good time or learned something, please share this episode

58:33

with folks in your community And also

58:35

don't forget to listen to the gender conceal

58:38

episode that Cass and I recorded immediately after

58:40

this one when we were both Fully delirious

58:43

that episode will be out later this week.

58:45

It's available exclusively for patrons So join us

58:47

at patreon.com/gender and when you do that, you'll

58:49

automatically get a little link You can paste

58:51

into your podcast app and access every bonus

58:54

episode we've ever made including to the cast

58:57

Speaking of you can find Cassius at cassiusadair.com

58:59

and you can typically also find both

59:01

of us at sylvion.co That's s-y-l-b-e-o-n.co. But

59:03

Cass is out of office and definitely

59:06

because a couple of weeks ago. He

59:08

had a baby By

59:11

the way Cass was doing great. Baby's

59:13

doing great Everyone is safe

59:15

and home and perfect and also Baby

59:18

is it just a she her now and

59:20

that's gender baby Anyway, we

59:22

are also on Instagram and at

59:24

genderpodcast.com where we've got transcripts of

59:26

every episode We're also at vita.ly

59:29

slash gender merch where you can get 10%

59:31

off your entire order through the end of

59:33

July with the promo code train This

59:37

episode was produced and edited by Ozzy Williams

59:39

Goodman and by me at Quickstock Our

59:41

logo is by IraMly. Our theme song

59:44

is by Breakmaster Cylinder Additional

59:46

music by our friends at V We'll be

59:49

back next week with more feelings about

59:51

gender People

1:00:04

on this podcast have had sex with each other and

1:00:07

I encourage that and we

1:00:09

love when that's... This

1:00:12

is a dating show. Yeah. People

1:00:15

on this podcast have gotten divorced. So

1:00:17

you know, it's like, this is beautiful.

1:00:24

Like I am at least 50 pounds bigger.

1:00:27

Only five of that is babies. I don't know

1:00:29

what is happening in there. Some of it is

1:00:31

blood. Some of it is placenta. Traditionally, some of

1:00:34

it would be tits, but not necessarily for you.

1:00:36

So now we have to take that one out.

1:00:38

I think some of it is though, because I

1:00:40

got some real like titty action going on right

1:00:42

now. They're growing back. Yeah, they're

1:00:44

really... Top surgery too in your future. No, it

1:00:46

turns out that all damage is reversible. That's

1:00:51

beautiful.