0:14

Welcome to Gender Reveal, a podcast where we

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hopefully get a little bit closer to understanding

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what the hell gender is. I'm

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your host and resident gender detective,

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Tuck Woodstock. Hey

0:30

everyone! Hope you've all been hanging

0:33

in there. You

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may have heard that Gender Reveal is

0:38

currently on hiatus, which again, is true.

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But you may also have heard that we

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make a separate podcast for patrons called Gender

0:45

Conceal that never goes on hiatus. And

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that's also true. So today, I

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am bringing you an extended excerpt of

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this month's Gender Conceal episode, which features

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my interview with author and historian Solomon

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J. Breger. Sol is the

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author of the graphic memoir, Heavyweight, a Family

1:01

Story of the Holocaust Empire and Memory. And

1:04

I understand that you might hear that title and be like, well, this

1:06

isn't going to be a fun one. But you know what? There's

1:08

like a lot of giggling in here. So

1:10

don't underestimate our ability to have a

1:12

good time. It'll be fine. In

1:15

this condensed version of the episode, Sol and

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I talk about the intersections of Zionism and

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transphobia, the claim that Jewish people are indigenous

1:21

to Palestine, and the need to make up

1:24

true things when writing stories about history. If

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you would like to hear the rest of the interview, you

1:29

can subscribe to Gender Conceal via patreon.com

1:31

slash gender. And in that full version,

1:34

you will also hear us talk about stealing

1:36

boxing valor, teaching a class called

1:38

Graphic Sex, and navigating our mother's

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feelings about our hair color. I

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cannot stress enough that Sol's book

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Heavyweight comes out today, June 25th.

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So when you're done with this episode, you can

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immediately pick up a copy at your local bookstore

1:53

or request one at your local library. Before

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we get going, though, I have a fun announcement. I

1:58

am reopening the merch shop, which I swore. for

20:00

many, many, many hundreds

20:03

of years. I don't know, I'm bad at time,

20:05

but the problem

20:07

is that the modern nation state of

20:09

Israel as an ethno-nationalist

20:12

project is not

20:14

good. Right? Like,

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it's like, like, you know,

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I mean, honestly, like, even if it was,

20:25

even if they were like, we are

20:27

the reclamation of like an indigenous project,

20:29

it's like, so then you're going to displace

20:31

the people who are living there from their

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land, and you're gonna like kill a bunch

20:36

of people, and you're gonna create

20:38

an apartheid system. Like, those are bad no

20:40

matter what. But also,

20:42

like, the contemporary

20:45

idea of indigeneity as

20:48

it's used, like the modern idea

20:50

of indigeneity is very much about

20:53

people's relationship to

20:55

colonization. And so

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it's not really

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within the rubric of indigeneity to

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be like the

21:04

religion that we're a part of,

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or, you know, the people that

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we're a part of, however you

21:10

want to conceptualize Jewishness, came

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out of this part of the world at a

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particular time, and was like centered in that

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part of the world at a particular time.

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Even if everyone has just like a

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little bit of genetic

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evidence that we were from there at

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some point, which is, you know, very contested. That

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still means like our relationship to

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modern colonization is very

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distinct based on what

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part of the world your family

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has been in for the past like thousand

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years. And for me, that was mostly

21:45

Germany. You

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said in the pre-interview, I'm

21:51

happy to talk about anti-Zionism and why Zionists

21:53

are so weird about trans stuff. So

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what are you talking about? What are you talking

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about? This is, I think that- you've

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talked on this show a decent amount

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about the like slide from transphobia

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into fascism and it's

22:07

pretty deeply related

22:09

like often people

22:11

who are like really hardcore

22:13

Zionists of all stripes

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you know like Christian Zionists, Jewish

22:17

Zionists, right wing Zionists, liberal

22:20

Zionists like they'll be like oh

22:22

you have pronouns in your bio

22:24

totally think you're an anti-Zionist which

22:27

is it's like what what do

22:30

you think is the relationship between these

22:32

two things you'll see this

22:34

a lot with the encampments it's like

22:36

these blue-haired zoomers with their strange

22:38

genders like they're just getting on the

22:40

bandwagon I think there's this sort of

22:42

sense that like these two things are

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a trend that are moving together like

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people are being more interested in

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having a unique sense

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of their own gender and then

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are like also hopping on the

22:55

like hating Israel game with like

22:57

a sort of similar level of like well

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we just like got this from TikTok so we're

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gonna do it which is a

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very false sense of of what's happening

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even if you got it from

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TikTok like doesn't mean it's wrong exactly

23:10

there's an implication that's like you got it

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from TikTok and you don't actually believe it

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you're just saying it for clout in terms

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of both like anti-Zionism and transgender like it's

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like oh they're doing the blue hair and

23:20

the pronouns and the encampments because they want

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to look cool you know and it's

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like there's a lot

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of easier ways to look cool

23:29

I gotta say yeah it's

23:31

it's really fascinating to be accused I mean

23:33

on both ends of like in terms of

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like trans stuff and uh or like you

23:37

know being gay or whatever and

23:40

in terms of anti-Zionism stuff of like

23:42

doing it for clout or doing it

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like look cool or to be like

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accepted by like some sort of social

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group or whatever and I'm like my

23:50

sense of humans as a

23:53

species is that we do a lot

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to be accepted by our communities of

23:57

origin like people make really like

24:00

self-harming choices to get to

24:02

hang out with their families

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and their religious communities and

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their neighbors. There's

24:08

no reward

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to doing this except to

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live authentically and ethically

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in the world to sleep at night. In

24:23

as much as anyone believes it, I think

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it's pretty ridiculous, but I think a lot

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of people don't believe what they're

24:29

saying. It's just a very convenient

24:32

target because transphobia is

24:35

very real. Yeah. Okay.

24:39

I have three things that are all completely unrelated,

24:41

but one is, did you hand letter this book?

24:44

I did, yes. It looks like

24:46

including the newspaper article fonts? Yep.

24:49

That's nuts. Yep. Really

24:51

incredible work. Thank you. Yeah. The

24:54

toxic trait is that I chose

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to hand letter. I

25:00

could Photoshop these newspaper articles

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into this book, but instead I'm going

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to meticulously copy them by hand with

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an ink pen. I

25:09

like the way that hand letter things look, so that's

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what I'm going to do. I had no

25:13

perception of what that would

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actually require, but

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now that I've done it once,

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I feel like I can never go back.

25:22

Totally. Maybe you'd be selling out somehow to

25:25

big fonts or something? Yeah.

25:27

Okay. At the time, I was like, you

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know what would be easier than making a font? Hand

25:32

lettering the whole book. Definitely.

25:36

Save some time there. Totally.

25:40

Yeah. I don't know, but

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it looks cool. It looks cool. It looks

25:44

cool. Thank you. That's what

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matters. And you know what? That's why I

25:48

do everything, including being trained. That's

25:57

going to do it for this bonus episode. If you

25:59

had a good time. or learned something, please share this

26:02

episode with folks in your community. You

26:04

can find Sol at solomonbraker.com and

26:06

on Instagram at jbbraker. Their book

26:08

Heavyweight is out now wherever you

26:10

get books or comics. If

26:13

you enjoyed this excerpt, you can find the

26:15

rest of this episode via our Patreon at

26:17

patreon.com/gender, which will also get you access to

26:19

our entire back catalog of gender conceal episodes.

26:21

And when you sign up, it will give

26:23

you your own RSS feed so you can

26:25

plug that into any podcast player. You don't

26:27

have to listen to it on Patreon. That

26:29

sounds really annoying. We are also

26:32

on Instagram by the way at gender reveal

26:34

and I'm increasingly also on there at

26:36

tuckwoodstockjr. We also have merch in our

26:38

merch shop for once at bit.ly slash

26:40

gender merch. Go get it. This episode

26:42

was produced and edited by Ozzy Lunas

26:44

Goodman and by me and Tuck Woodstock.

26:47

Our logo is by Ira M. Lai.

26:49

Our theme song is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

26:51

Additional music by our friends at Blue

26:53

Dot Sessions. We'll be back next month

26:56

with more feelings about gender. Free

26:58

Palestine and throw a brick at a cop. Did

27:08

I record any of that?