0:00

Queer Candle Co. is a queer and trans

0:02

owned business that makes small batch soy wax

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candles topped with a variety of botanicals. Queer

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Candle Co. recently sent me their special Fireside

0:09

Multi-Pack, which features basil and amber, sea

0:11

salt and orchid, and redwoods candles. It's

0:13

a great trio, very well balanced. My favorite was

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the basil and amber, and then I looked it

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up, and basil and amber is a Sagittarius candle,

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so astrology real? Anyway,

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Queer Candle Co. donates 10% of profits to

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You can use the code GENDER10 at checkout

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to get 10% off your

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first order at queerkindleco.com. Welcome

0:49

to Gender Reveal, the podcast where we

0:51

hopefully get a little bit closer to

0:53

understanding what the hell gender is. I'm

0:56

your host and resident gender

0:58

detective, Tuck Woodstock. Hey

1:08

everyone, hope you're all hanging in there.

1:10

Welcome to the season 12 finale

1:12

of the Gender Reveal podcast. I really hope

1:15

you've enjoyed this season, it really just kept

1:17

going and going and going.

1:19

We had originally planned the season to end

1:21

in mid April, and then we added like

1:23

four extra episodes as we dealt with various

1:25

incidents, and now we are here wrapping

1:27

up the season just in time for June, the one

1:29

month a year where we should be really putting out

1:32

a bunch of new episodes. But I

1:34

never said I was good at marketing, and also

1:36

I do genuinely believe that gay people should get

1:39

all of June as paid time off, so there

1:41

will be no new episodes of Gender Reveal in

1:43

June. Of course, if you

1:45

come to our live show or subscribe to

1:47

Gender Conceal, you will in fact hear new

1:49

content, but we will talk about that in a minute. First,

1:51

we need to talk about today's very

1:53

special guest. This week on

1:56

the show, I am thrilled to share my

1:58

conversation with the wonderful Jules Gil Peterson. You

2:00

probably already know Jules from her work as

2:02

a historian and author as well as from

2:04

her previous gender reveal episode. This

2:06

week we are talking about Jules's new book, A

2:09

Short History of Transmisogyny, which came out at the

2:11

beginning of this year. As part of that

2:13

conversation, we talk about how trans

2:15

misogyny predates contemporary trans womanhood and how

2:17

Jules is increasingly skeptical of transgender as

2:19

a term in the first place. They

2:22

invented the term transgenderism to talk about

2:24

people who deliberately chose not to medically

2:26

transition so that they could conserve their

2:28

wealth. We also talk about

2:30

terms like TMA and TME, which

2:33

I don't think we actually explained in the

2:35

episode. It's trans misogyny affected and trans misogyny

2:37

exempt, I think. We also talk about

2:40

Muharisima, the DMV, the most

2:42

trans dinosaur, and of course,

2:44

whether a certain trans clothing

2:46

company is actually co-intel pro.

2:49

The entire point of like

2:51

trans culture today is like

2:54

helping people buy pants. But

2:56

before we get to the interview, let me

2:58

circle back to stuff about June. There are

3:00

still some tickets left to our live show

3:02

on June 20th in Brooklyn at the Bell

3:05

House. If you have not been to one

3:07

of our live shows before, they consist of

3:09

many very short, very fun segments, and this

3:11

time the theme will be villains. So what

3:13

is that gonna look like? Well, we will

3:15

be speaking with Alma Avaye about unionizing Condé

3:18

Nast and I believe personally fighting Anna

3:20

Wintour. I also don't know if

3:22

you've seen the videos going around of Chiki Pita

3:24

disrupting the GLAAD Awards to draw attention to GLAAD's

3:26

lack of Palestinian solidarity, but Chiki will be at

3:29

our show, we'll be talking to her about that.

3:31

She will also be playing a villain-themed round of

3:33

Duck Duck Gay, which if you know you know,

3:36

and we might also have another game about,

3:38

you guessed it, brands that sell pants to

3:40

trans people. Avaye has

3:42

even been working on a villain-themed playlist

3:45

for the pre-show time, which we will

3:47

be eventually sharing on our Patreon. And

3:50

speaking of, if you are bummed that gender reveal is

3:52

going on hiatus for a little bit and crucially,

3:55

you have five dollars, there is a

3:57

solution. We make a separate podcast called

3:59

Gender Concealed. that comes out every

4:01

single month, no skips, and that's available

4:03

exclusively for the patrons who make our

4:05

work possible. It is like a special

4:07

little treat for essentially employing Ozzy and

4:09

me. So if you would like

4:12

to sign up for that, you can head

4:14

to patreon.com/gender, where five dollars gets you access

4:16

to more than two years of gender-concealed episodes.

4:18

It also gets you access to many many

4:20

years of our weekly newsletter, which always crucially

4:23

features a picture of my cat. I want

4:25

to see that. Also, if you

4:27

don't like all of this, you can just cancel, no problem

4:29

at all. It's like five dollars total, and then

4:31

you can download like every episode we've ever

4:33

made and then leave. That's fine. You can

4:36

do that. By the way,

4:38

now that the season is wrapping up,

4:40

I will be catching up on physical

4:42

Patreon rewards, so if you are a

4:44

new-ish patron at five dollar level or

4:46

above, you will be getting stickers in

4:48

the mail from me, including gender reveal

4:50

and gender-concealed stickers, as well as trans

4:52

and Palestine solidarity stickers, and probably some

4:54

other stuff too. Again,

4:56

that is all. Five dollars

4:58

at patreon.com/gender. You can also

5:00

get just the newsletter for

5:02

one dollar. We've

5:05

got a they mail message for you this week.

5:07

This message is from Thirst Pebble, and it says,

5:10

written with love, grief, and perspective,

5:12

collecting myself, the debut album from

5:14

trans girl DIY artist Thirst Pebble,

5:17

combines orchestral and electronic sounds to

5:19

express the feelings that remained and

5:21

bloomed in the aftermath of one

5:23

particular long-term relationship. Listen

5:25

to collecting myself on

5:27

streaming platforms or at

5:29

thirstpebble.bandcamp.com. Jules

5:38

Gil-Peterson is a historian at Johns Hopkins

5:40

University and the author of two books,

5:42

The Histories of the Transgender Child, published

5:44

by the University of Minnesota Press in

5:46

2018, and

5:48

A Short History of Transmisogyny, published

5:51

this January by Verso. So

6:04

we usually start by asking people how they

6:06

describe themselves in terms of gender. We've already

6:08

asked you that. So I guess I'll just

6:10

ask like any major changes in the

6:12

way you think about gender in the last two years

6:15

that we should be aware of before we proceed. Absolutely.

6:18

I'm pretty confident. It's

6:21

my learned opinion that gender is

6:23

a middle class project of

6:25

certifying everyone's individual good

6:28

taste and it's a direct attack

6:30

on my existence as

6:32

a beautiful, glamorous transsexual woman. Great.

6:35

That's the update. Cannot wait to get into it. We

6:39

will dig into the specifics of

6:41

your book, but I want

6:44

to start with just a classic gender reveal question

6:46

of who is this book for? What

6:48

did you want it to do? This

6:51

book is actually genuinely for like

6:53

hashtag everyone, but I have

6:55

sort of a couple audiences in mind.

6:58

I'll give the origin story to this

7:00

book as just like extreme irritation. In

7:03

2021, like probably for a

7:05

lot of us, but at least

7:07

for me, my most chronically online

7:09

year in my personal history due

7:11

to COVID, I

7:14

just started to experience a degree

7:16

of sexual harassment and

7:19

gendered antagonism that was, as

7:22

we say, trans

7:24

misogynistic to the point where I was like,

7:27

you know, I don't want to keep doing my job. I

7:29

don't want to be on the internet. I don't want to

7:31

talk to anyone ever again. If

7:34

I can't have the Capricorn get my

7:36

good revenge, which is to lecture everyone

7:38

until I'm satisfied to show them why

7:40

they're wrong and mine right. And so

7:42

that was kind of the origin story

7:44

for this book. And so if you

7:46

can imagine the groups of people that

7:48

I wanted to sit down and

7:50

give a long history lesson, of course, you

7:53

know, right wing ideologues are

7:55

there. Of course, you know, liberal

7:57

journalists and both siders are there.

8:00

of course, the median suburban white

8:02

woman voter is there. But you know,

8:04

at the end of the day,

8:06

and this is sort of what I think made

8:08

the book actually spicy and interesting to me,

8:11

is I really have a bone

8:13

to pick with white college educated

8:15

queer and trans culture. And that

8:17

is the hegemonic culture. So even

8:19

if you're listening, that you think

8:22

of yourself as a queer or trans person,

8:24

but you're like, hey, I'm not white, or

8:26

I'm not really middle class. The

8:28

point is that the culture that is hegemonic

8:30

represents those particular interests. And so I wanted

8:32

to write a book about how I thought,

8:35

actually the past 200 years has

8:37

been prebessed on singling out targeting

8:40

and degrading, not just trans

8:42

women, but certainly trans women in a

8:44

particular style called trans misogyny. And you

8:46

know, really the lesson there is

8:48

not just for JK Rowling, and it

8:50

is not for Ron DeSantis alone. And

8:53

it's not just for your parents who

8:55

are still kind of weird, right, about

8:57

pronouns. It's for you. It's

9:00

for listeners of this show, I guess, I mean,

9:03

or I imagine. Yeah, so

9:05

something that really struck me about

9:07

this book is how much it

9:09

talks about class and specifically

9:12

how it's telling stories

9:15

about gender that

9:17

are not rooted in middle class white people.

9:19

And we've had so many conversations on this

9:21

show with people

9:23

about how, yeah, all of their research

9:26

is about middle class white people, but that's just the

9:28

limits of the archive. That's how it is. So it's

9:30

really fun to see you be

9:32

able to go beyond that and talk about

9:34

other stories. And, you know,

9:37

I have specific questions, but I think at this point,

9:39

the listener is just asking, wait, can you go back

9:41

to when Jules keeps talking about how middle class queer

9:44

and trans people are betraying transsexual women? So I guess

9:46

I'll just ask you, hey, Jules, what do you mean

9:48

by that? No,

9:50

totally, totally. And, you know, just to

9:52

say, right? it's like, for me wanting

9:54

to talk about class, which gets us

9:56

to talk about how queer and trans

9:59

culture has been. Basically disavowed, integrated, part

10:01

transexual women. That's not my opinion,

10:03

right? And it's also not just

10:05

my life experience. I believe it's

10:07

an objective source of fact and

10:09

we can understand how it came

10:11

to be and therefore how we

10:14

might change that if we understand

10:16

what caused it. United States as

10:18

a famously a country that pretends

10:20

there are no classes, rights or

10:22

the we tend to talk about

10:24

an inch. In other terms, a

10:26

generational terms are in fact, in

10:28

identity term thrice what's. The sort

10:30

of predominant explanation for why in

10:33

our country is obsessed with destroying

10:35

chance people's ability to do anything.

10:37

Today it's because be inherently transgress

10:40

gender norms. right? Now

10:42

that there are you meant that was

10:44

created by, you know, Phd educated professors

10:46

of the nineteen Nineties who kind of

10:48

sort of knew how to read the

10:51

Fred Stinker Michelle For Cove who wrote

10:53

about Norm threats. But it's the academic

10:55

theory. It's Judith Butler's gender trouble and

10:57

the way we've digested.rights. It's obvious

10:59

to me that any of that is correct.

11:02

Impact the think that's all in cracked. I

11:04

don't think that's why the state is coming

11:06

for transport right now, but if you have

11:08

a group identity or a group on us,

11:10

understanding of yourself based on identity right than

11:12

Trans is a word that snacks all of

11:14

us regardless of our other differences. Whether wear

11:17

a mask or Sam's right, whether you're white

11:19

or brown ray and such hands as a

11:21

word that whoever is another, I'm listening to.

11:23

This if they identify as Trans is the

11:25

way for them to imagine out the end

11:27

of the day. they're more like me. Than

11:29

they are unlike me. Cry And and you

11:31

know, there are a lot of ways in

11:34

which we might if we put it that

11:36

way. feel very concerned all of a sudden,

11:38

right? First of all, you know if you're

11:40

a why, even if you're like a white

11:42

trans lady? Okay, are you really. That unlike

11:44

me as a brown template he accepts

11:47

am I really like other brown translating.

11:49

like i'm a tenured professor and i

11:51

think i'm doing pretty good you'd out

11:53

relative to both people who share the

11:55

same identity coordinates as me and so

11:57

you know in that sense i think

11:59

that that college educated queer

12:01

and trans people who have

12:03

dominated as all college educated

12:05

people do the cultural conversation

12:08

and concepts around transness, they

12:10

basically are pretending like we're a group

12:12

of people who exist without class differences,

12:15

which would make us the only people in the United States

12:17

who do. Now, either we

12:20

really are the only people in the United States

12:22

who don't have class, or it's just better, it's

12:24

more politically correct not to talk

12:26

about that, right? And so we can talk

12:28

about things like violence against trans women

12:30

of color, which is bad. But we

12:32

can't ask, why do trans women of

12:34

color live in a criminalized underclass? Why

12:37

do they do sex work? Why

12:39

is it so hard for teenage

12:41

trans girls to transition, but actually

12:43

relatively easy by comparison for teenage

12:45

trans boys to transition without losing

12:47

everything? Why do trans boys not

12:49

historically do sex work, right? Like

12:52

all of these kinds of questions

12:54

that are fundamentally about what kind

12:56

of job you have, your income,

12:58

right, where you live, what your

13:00

standard of living is, questions of

13:02

class are not the central questions

13:04

of trans culture and politics. And

13:07

the reason why historically, I argue,

13:09

is just after stone, while you

13:11

did have poor street queens, right,

13:14

the street transvestite action revolutionaries in New

13:16

York are the most famous example, but

13:18

they were not the only ones who

13:20

were like, hello, what matters in our

13:22

life is not that we are trans,

13:24

not our gender identity, it's not our

13:27

pronouns, not even what we call ourselves.

13:29

But what we do give a shit about,

13:31

right, is that the police harass us, sexually

13:34

assault and rape us in jail, that

13:36

were, you know, put at risk because we

13:38

do sex work, not because sex work is

13:41

bad, but because of the way sex work

13:43

operates in the United States. And so we

13:45

would like to partner in a coalition with

13:47

gay and lesbian people. And you know, what

13:50

happened is predominantly college educated kids in New

13:52

York City, or just the kids going to

13:54

NYU, who are in the gay liberation movement,

13:56

we're like, nah,

13:58

I don't think So that's trashy.

14:01

I don't want to fight the police.

14:03

I'm scared of the police. Also, like,

14:06

I'm out here trying to get my bachelor's

14:08

degree. The police are here to protect me

14:10

and my family, right? You know, so there

14:12

was just this radical split right after Stonewall,

14:14

which was the birth of the modern gay

14:16

and lesbian movement out of which the trans

14:18

movement emerged. And that was a middle class

14:20

movement. It was a movement that was middle

14:22

class because it projected the poor street

14:25

queens and said, we don't want to

14:27

fight for your material needs. We

14:29

want to fight for being recognized as

14:31

healthy, well adjusted people. Like we want

14:33

the right to be, you know, men

14:35

and women in America. We want the

14:37

right to go to school and have

14:39

jobs and get married, you know, all

14:41

the kinds of things that the liberal

14:43

state tells you are good. It's not

14:45

unusual that this is what happened, but

14:47

we never talk about it this way,

14:49

right? So ultimately, I think like we

14:51

act like queer and trans history teaches

14:53

us about this like radical insurgency

14:57

against society, right? This vanguard coming

14:59

out of the 70s where we

15:02

were going to have revolution and

15:04

maybe we didn't achieve the revolution, but baby,

15:07

we are doing it today when we deliberately

15:09

wear gender bending clothing or you know, don't

15:11

shave our chest hair, right? And so part

15:13

of all I want to say is like,

15:16

guess what? Trans people have behaved on

15:18

the whole mostly like all people. They've

15:20

mostly behaved based on their class interests.

15:22

But the thing I think you could

15:24

sort of detect there is that the

15:26

person who is always that we've hung

15:28

all of this on all

15:31

along has been the poor trans woman. I

15:33

mean, poor as in impoverished, but also that

15:35

poor trans girl, you know, she has been

15:37

the one that we've all been like, well,

15:40

if we could only get rid of her,

15:42

then the rest of us could be normal.

15:44

And unfortunately, it was not just doctors, right?

15:47

It was not just, you know, policymakers

15:49

or politicians that came up with that

15:51

idea. It was also gay people and

15:53

it was also trans people, including I

15:55

will just say middle class trans

15:58

women, middle class white trans women were also like,

16:00

no, no, no, no, no, none of those trashy sex workers.

16:02

We got to get rid of them so I could be

16:04

normal. And I just think it

16:06

really changes how we think about

16:08

whoever we are today, right? It

16:10

really changes how we think about

16:12

the stakes of the political crisis

16:15

we're facing today. But it also

16:17

really changes how we think about

16:19

history. And it really asks us

16:21

to confront just how fundamental and

16:23

constitutive trans misogyny is to the

16:26

entire world, including the supposedly most

16:28

progressive inclusive segments of

16:31

contemporary US culture. I mean,

16:33

this is all connected to what you've talked about all

16:35

before about how liberal trans inclusion is

16:38

what you've called the kissing cousin of

16:40

fascism. You've talked about, you know, the

16:42

liberal project of making trans people useful

16:44

to the state. So how would

16:47

you like to see trans

16:49

people, all people not only

16:51

resist fascism, but also refuse

16:53

and resist this liberal pressure

16:56

to become like good, upstanding

16:58

transgender citizens? Oh,

17:00

I mean, that is the question, right?

17:02

I mean, have some initial thoughts. I

17:05

mean, one is to be really, really clear about

17:07

where we have come from, and therefore where we

17:10

are right now. Liberalism

17:12

is not the opposite of fascism.

17:14

Everyone knows this line of reasoning, because we

17:17

hear it all the time now today, right?

17:19

Oh, they're not going to take away Roe

17:21

versus Wade. Chill out. Hillary is totally going

17:23

to win the presidential election. Relax. No,

17:26

no, when Trump says those things, he's just

17:28

joking, right? All of these kinds of like

17:30

liberal platitudes that are basically like sit

17:32

down, shut up and let experts control

17:34

your life. Don't worry, the technocrats are

17:36

in charge. Joe Biden is very healthy

17:39

and happy. And he's vigorous, baby. He

17:41

has the best advisors, right? We follow

17:43

the science over at the Biden administration,

17:45

right? So any

17:47

argument in favor of trans

17:50

people That is liberal

17:52

in the sense that it involves

17:54

some expert or custodial relationship, or

17:56

someone is still ultimately in charge

17:58

of trans people. Right to

18:00

keep everything safe and cool and reasonable.

18:03

And that's already giving away half the

18:05

game. The fact that it's so harsh

18:07

or to medically transition in this country

18:09

before it even becomes illegal means with

18:11

the fascists is doing right is just

18:13

say oh yeah, you are ready. Love

18:15

regulation. I'm just gonna regulate this. Tell

18:17

you can't do it anymore. I mean

18:19

that's what's happened in a lot of

18:21

states, right built like Florida will just

18:23

change the regulatory rules under the law.

18:25

The state medical board will just say

18:27

oh, there's not enough evidence for this

18:29

procedure. It's not safe for people under

18:32

this A tracks And the problem is

18:34

you can't ask the good doctor's you

18:36

think are on your side to protect

18:38

you because they already agreed that it's

18:40

up to them to decide what it's

18:42

okay for someone to fuckin' change the

18:44

hormone molecules they already have in their

18:46

own body or got her bed cap

18:48

fucking plastic surgery. So those kinds of

18:50

defense's of trans people in my professional

18:52

opinion will all feel they have been

18:54

sailing consistently for a long time. And

18:56

also by using them to oppose fascists,

18:59

we let these people. Off the hook

19:01

for the extreme violence they've been to. hints

19:03

enough for very long time. mates sets like

19:05

there's a epidemic or according to the right

19:07

of young trans masculine people. Again, top surgery.

19:10

My credo seen t are just using they

19:12

them pronouns. The whole lot easier to get

19:14

hot surgery and it is to get that

19:16

in a party because top surgery takes less

19:19

time, easier to the technically can do more

19:21

of them in the day and so it

19:23

scales on a private healthcare markets in a

19:26

much better way to much more profitable. That's

19:28

why there's a lot more top. Surgery

19:30

kind on the say. it's should be

19:32

so obvious to us in a society

19:35

that deeply values masculinity more than femininity

19:37

that we would see many, many many

19:39

more young, trans masculine people. Especially in

19:41

an era in which trans masculinity has

19:44

drifted away from maleness and towards deliberate

19:46

androgyny and non binary. Know where it's

19:48

actually better not to be a man?

19:51

So it's even easier to become trans

19:53

masculine ever. It's like Pave the More

19:55

the merrier, right? But. notice how

19:58

it's not have is super the girl Okay,

20:00

great. What are we going to do

20:02

about that, right? Like, we're going to

20:04

affirm that really liberal idea that what

20:06

progress equates to is people getting to

20:08

decide what their pronouns and haircuts are

20:10

or getting to make like decisions in

20:12

a private healthcare market. All of that

20:14

is to say, I think the strategies

20:16

we're employing have failed. But

20:18

ultimately, what I genuinely think, and I'm

20:21

still thinking about this, it's

20:23

also not for me to tell us what

20:25

freedom is. But I think

20:27

the answer is that we don't really need

20:29

trans-specific politics, right?

20:32

We've already had those. They are

20:34

liberal. What we need is a

20:36

fundamentally different society, right, in which

20:39

you don't have to feel like your pronouns

20:41

and your hair and your clothes are the

20:43

only place you have any power and control

20:45

in your life, right? We

20:47

need collective change. All

20:49

that is to say, it's a completely

20:52

different paradigm shift. And so it means

20:54

like the state and the law, the

20:56

market, your doctor, language,

20:59

those are not our saviors.

21:01

Those are just like waypoints

21:03

of harm reduction on the way to

21:05

a fundamentally different world for everyone, where

21:08

the point is like, and you can

21:10

think about this in the old black

21:12

feminist sense of, you know, if you

21:14

start with the people who are getting

21:17

screwed over constantly and improve their lives,

21:19

everyone else's lives will improve. So genuinely,

21:21

if you create a politics in which

21:23

poor transsexual sex workers enjoy

21:26

the greatest degree of freedom in

21:28

the society, everybody else is fine. But

21:31

I guarantee you that's not going to involve

21:33

the liberal states, not going to involve settler

21:35

colonialism, but it's probably not going to involve capitalism.

21:38

So you know, I don't know how to get

21:40

there, but yeah, something big. Totally.

21:42

But that's exactly what I was asking, because on

21:44

top of every single thing you just said, I

21:46

just want to emphasize for

21:48

people who haven't read it yet, like the

21:50

book argues persuasively that trans misogyny was introduced

21:52

by the colonial state and then like trickled

21:54

down from there. So reading that, I

21:57

just felt like it was hard to imagine a path to equity.

22:00

in liberation for trans women, trans feminized people and

22:02

everyone else that didn't involve like overthrowing or dissolving

22:04

the state at some point. And I was

22:07

sort of assuming you would feel the same way.

22:09

Because you don't seem like a big stand of

22:11

the state, I guess is what I was thinking.

22:15

How could I be I grew up in

22:17

Canada, one of the worst states ever. And

22:19

then I so foolishly immigrated to the United

22:21

States, like some of the worst states ever.

22:23

But like, knowing how to oppose the state,

22:25

I just want to say I think it's

22:27

genuinely very hard because the state is an

22:29

abstraction. Like who is the state? There is

22:32

no the state. The state is every single

22:34

fucking beat cop. It's every border guard. It's

22:36

every employee at the DMV. And the thing

22:38

is, like those people don't have to be

22:40

transphobic to make your life hell. They're literally

22:42

just doing their jobs. And they probably don't

22:44

think about it very much, right? The

22:47

sad thing is, it's like the state

22:49

is this like impersonal entity, much like

22:51

capitalism, that completely determines our social relations

22:53

and determines who we are from the

22:55

inside out. It's so like, yeah,

22:58

it sucks, especially in settler colonies. I mean,

23:00

you know how much work it took to

23:02

convince us that it's totally okay, that

23:05

we're all living here, right? I mean,

23:07

I don't really have to make this

23:09

point anymore, because it's playing out dramatically

23:11

in Palestine with the way, you know,

23:13

that Israel is able to behave. And

23:15

the discourse of right to exist for

23:17

stealing land, right, just shows how much violence,

23:20

but also just like how powerful the idea

23:22

of state, of

23:24

the state is, right, and the way it

23:26

gets conflated with a people, right? I mean,

23:28

it's really tricky. So it's going to be

23:30

hard. But I do think

23:32

that, you know, again, the same social class

23:35

of queer and trans people who have been

23:37

the cultural tastemakers have this sort of fantasy,

23:39

I would call, like cosmopolitanism,

23:43

that actually being queer and trans is

23:45

really special, because it gives you membership

23:47

in this like imaginary community that actually

23:49

might span the entire world, right? And

23:52

it's actually like bigger and better and

23:54

cool, because it's not part of nation

23:56

states, right? And sometimes that leads people

23:58

to feel like, yeah, we're really against

24:00

the state. And part of what my book is saying

24:02

is like, no, that's what actually

24:05

defines your perfectly colonial mindset. This is

24:07

how we've been taught to think that,

24:09

no, no, you're not part of some

24:11

state that like is prepped, you know,

24:14

on a history of chattel slavery and

24:16

the theft of land and genocide, right?

24:18

No, no, no, no, no, you're part

24:20

of this cool international community of

24:23

gender transgressors. Anyways, I

24:25

digress. So your book creates this

24:28

distinction between

24:31

trans womanhood, which is this like felt

24:33

sense of identity, right? Or a series

24:35

of decisions, however you wanna think of

24:38

it. And then trans feminization, which is

24:40

imposed upon you by whoever the

24:42

state is and society and all of that. And I feel

24:44

like to me, that's a big issue with kind of how

24:46

we've all constructed gender is it's like this internal self sense

24:48

of identity. And then also this thing that everyone's building together

24:50

and like slathering all over each other in public and how

24:52

is it both of those things at the same time? And

24:55

it's really hard for people to understand that because why do

24:57

we do it that way? And

24:59

so you touched on this a bit already, but

25:02

I am interested in how we hold both

25:04

of these things at the same time and

25:07

how we acknowledge that, you know,

25:09

trans feminization is for example, like what's

25:11

directly affecting people's ability to like exist

25:14

safely in the world, but then we

25:16

don't wanna take away anyone's right to

25:18

self identify, cause we also do want and need

25:20

that just as you know, people in the world.

25:24

And so we can't be like, it's only how you're

25:26

treated by cops, but it is largely how

25:28

you're treated by cops, you know? So how are you

25:30

holding both of these things at the same time? Oh,

25:33

it's such a good question. We

25:35

have this sort of understanding of a kind of

25:38

primal scene of violence that that

25:40

trans women experience. It is like the

25:42

sort of street violence, right? Walking down

25:44

the street and maybe it's from a

25:46

cop or a sex economy

25:49

or dating interpersonal intimate partner

25:52

violence, right? That there's something

25:54

about a trans woman's presence

25:56

that people claim after they

25:58

beat the. up or kill them,

26:01

that caused them to panic and thus justified

26:03

that that's the actual trans panic defense, which

26:06

is just a remarkably successful legal defense, you can

26:08

ban it and people still use it and they

26:10

still get away with murder. And so I was

26:12

sort of like, okay, what's the

26:15

history of trans panic? That was the start

26:17

of the actual start of my research. And

26:19

so I was like, okay, let me think

26:21

back, like, how far back do I see

26:23

trans women talking about like going on a

26:25

date with a guy, and then the guy

26:27

like getting stressed out and then attacking her,

26:29

robbing her or whatever, right? And I was like,

26:32

okay, like I see it in okay, 1880s, 1890s,

26:35

say New York City, I don't see

26:37

it before that. And I was like,

26:39

okay, so probably trans panic came into

26:41

existence in the world sometime around then.

26:43

I don't know why yet, but okay.

26:46

But then I was reading this book about

26:48

British colonial India. And you

26:50

know, about tijitas who are not trans women,

26:52

and the British hated them, you know, because

26:54

the British were like, first of all, women

26:56

shouldn't really be in public. And we don't

26:59

like that about India in general. But

27:01

second of all, like people we think

27:03

our men cannot wear women's clothing, that's

27:05

gay. And so they, you

27:08

know, started targeting tijitas, targeting them with

27:10

police violence, trying to destroy their way

27:12

of life, actually, they tried to commit

27:14

genocide, they tried to eliminate them. And

27:16

thankfully, they failed. But they

27:19

basically apprehended tijitas in exactly the same

27:21

way, like trans women 20 years later

27:23

would talk about right that these police

27:25

officers would go out into their districts,

27:27

stop tijitas in the street, because they

27:29

could clock them, right? They had been asked

27:31

to by the state, they would stop them,

27:34

forcibly cut their hair, rip off their jewelry,

27:36

force them into men's clothing and make them

27:38

stop doing the work that they were doing.

27:41

And I was like, what the fuck that's

27:43

a trans panic, but these are not trans

27:45

women. Like this is also before trans women

27:47

are having this experience of trans panic. And

27:49

I was like, oh,

27:52

trans panic got invented before it

27:54

started happening to like trans

27:57

women who are I would call trans women

27:59

because they like transition and start living

28:01

as women, right? Like they change their clothes,

28:03

change their name, right? They live consistently as

28:05

women, they're trans women. And this is happening

28:07

to a population that isn't trans

28:10

women, like to this day. So,

28:13

fuck. And so I was like, okay,

28:15

well, obviously, the kind of violence that

28:17

we would call trans misogyny or trans

28:19

panic that affects trans women also affects

28:21

people who aren't trans women, right? And

28:24

it can happen to you regardless of how you identify,

28:26

right? And a great example actually still is the police.

28:28

Please don't give a shit how you identify. They don't

28:30

know what's in your head. They're going to arrest you

28:33

because they clocked you. If they think you're hustling on

28:35

the street, it doesn't matter if you're on your way

28:37

to the office, right? You're going

28:39

to get arrested if they think

28:41

you look like someone who should be. And

28:43

so I just felt like we

28:45

needed, you know, a separate term,

28:47

which is that term transseminization to

28:49

describe what gets done to people,

28:52

right? So sometimes trans women get

28:54

transseminized, but not only trans women

28:56

get transseminized. And I think ultimately,

28:58

to answer your question, what that

29:00

suggests to me, because we should

29:02

be really mindful, like, yeah, we

29:04

live in a time period where

29:06

self-identification is so highly valued. It's

29:08

like written into the law, gender

29:10

self-ID. It's like the gold standard

29:12

of good lawmaking around the world,

29:14

right? Yeah, gender self-ID is actually

29:16

kind of great because it means

29:18

like, when you go to the DMV,

29:20

you can be like, please change the gender marker on that. And

29:22

I don't have to pay $10,000 million to

29:25

have someone do genital

29:28

surgery on me, whether I wanted it or not, and

29:30

then bring you a certificate that tells you what my

29:33

genitals look like. So like, okay, fine. Or like in

29:35

Europe, you actually had to be sterilized to do that

29:37

in the past. So like, that's not cool, right? But

29:41

we live in a culture that prioritizes self-identification,

29:43

in part because we have so little freedom

29:45

to do anything else ever in our lives.

29:48

And so I think part of what this

29:50

history of trans feminization reminds us is two

29:52

things. One, self-identification

29:55

or being able to identify is actually

29:57

not important to everyone. Again, It's

30:00

something that tends to be important to middle class

30:02

people. But that's just not

30:04

true of everyone. It's not always true of working

30:06

class people. It's not culturally consistently

30:09

true around the world. And

30:11

it also isn't true historically. And I just

30:13

think if we admit that, I

30:16

think partly what we get to do is broaden the

30:18

definition of who is

30:22

in the struggle. So then

30:25

it becomes a problem of solidarity. So

30:27

that, to me, is why I think self-identification is

30:29

like, all we have to do is put in

30:31

context and say, for whom is it important? Like

30:33

I talked about in the book in Argentina when

30:36

they passed the gender self-ID law 10, 15

30:38

years ago, a

30:41

group of trabates, we're like, we don't like this

30:43

law. We don't want self-ID because the state said

30:45

you could only self-ID as male or female. The

30:47

whole point is some of us don't really like

30:49

that. And also the state made it easier

30:52

to self-ID without having to totally

30:54

medically transition. But it also doubled down

30:56

on Western medical transition as the correct

30:58

way to be transgender. And that just

31:00

doesn't work for these working class people

31:03

who are mostly sex workers. To me,

31:05

the thing is not just to point

31:07

a finger and be like, aha, you're

31:09

a bourgeois asshole, oppressing people. It's more

31:11

like, no, I think solidarity is just

31:13

really hard. So if we want to

31:15

figure out good politics, we ought to

31:17

find a politics that speaks to both

31:19

of those classes. That helps out

31:21

the people for whom going to the DMV is

31:23

one of the most significant challenges for getting a

31:25

passport is a really big deal in their life.

31:27

I don't mean to minimize it. I've had to

31:30

go through that. But you need

31:32

a politics that also is paying attention to

31:34

people who don't even have a driver's license.

31:36

And that's not on their radar. You've got

31:38

to be real about that. And I think

31:40

finally, if there is an existential kind

31:43

of thing for everyone to chew

31:45

on here for whom self-Id is important,

31:47

I include myself. I'm a middle class

31:49

person. I famously did

31:51

not transition until after writing my

31:53

first book. And one

31:55

of the ways that I'm so middle class is that

31:57

the more educated I got, the harder it became. to

32:00

transition. Right. And so I wish

32:02

I had been given an education that was like,

32:04

by the way, sometimes people, especially in the past,

32:07

just transition because they like felt something and they're

32:09

like, I gotta change my clothes. Right.

32:11

Like I think the history of trans men is really,

32:13

I think, as a connoisseur

32:15

of trans men, also very sexy, where like in

32:17

the past, they were just like, I have got

32:19

to put on some flax and get a beautiful

32:21

femme and take her out and give her the

32:24

best night of her life. And I'm just like,

32:26

wow, that's so cool. I

32:28

wish like, and you know, I understand

32:30

one of the reasons I also avoided,

32:32

right, the trans feminine working

32:34

class version is because I understood what it meant.

32:36

It meant you're more likely to drop

32:38

out of school, end up in jail,

32:41

right, be doing sex work as a career.

32:43

And I had grown up being sold middle

32:45

class dreams, I'd gotten into college, even though

32:48

I grew up really poor. And I was

32:50

like, I don't know, it's a

32:52

big risk. And so I didn't take the

32:54

risk, right? I'd like the point is, these

32:56

are not moral, like evaluations of individual people.

32:58

I just want to dramatize right that sometimes

33:00

the fact is like, not everybody thinks the

33:02

same way that you do. In fact, not

33:04

everybody thinks about their gender as much as

33:06

you or I do. And

33:09

I just think that's really worth ironically

33:11

thinking about. No, I

33:14

love it so much. Because what I

33:16

would love everyone to do,

33:19

who listens to this show is just think

33:21

about it less. Because I'm reading kind of the

33:23

questions that come in. And I'm like, stop, don't

33:25

think, nope, you got to just

33:28

do something. Just do something. You've been thinking about

33:30

it for years. Just do something.

33:32

Try it out. Try it. You can't just

33:34

keep thinking. Well, the more you think about

33:36

it, actually, the less you'll know anything, like

33:38

specifically about gender. And again, it's

33:40

very hard to come to these realizations, because

33:42

everything is fighting against you getting to this

33:45

point. So as someone who's spent so many

33:47

fucking years thinking about this, and totally, I

33:49

love what you're just saying, let me put it this way, right? If

33:52

someone asks you like, okay, whatever

33:54

your gender was assigned at birth, like, do

33:56

you really feel like a woman, the

33:59

longer you think about the answer, the more

34:01

it will be no. But

34:04

then if they also ask you, okay, so

34:06

do you feel like a man instead? The

34:08

more you think about it, the more the

34:10

answer will be no because man and woman

34:12

are abstractions. Like what the fuck? I don't

34:14

mean like men and woman is anything you

34:16

want to be. No, but they're genuinely abstractions.

34:18

They're idealizations. They're not, they're concepts, right? And

34:20

so it's like the more you think about

34:22

it, the less you'll know the answer, right?

34:24

But we're actually instructed to think about it

34:26

for a really long time. Actually it's an

34:28

obligation and it's actually really uncool not to

34:30

think about it, right? To be too rash,

34:32

to make decisions too quickly or to do

34:34

things for other reasons because it feels sexy.

34:37

Because I, or like, you know what, like

34:39

reasons people used to transition in the past,

34:41

let me say, as a historian, some of

34:43

my favorite ones. Oh, I want to fuck

34:45

those kinds of people, but I can't fuck

34:47

them unless I'm a different sex. So I'll

34:49

just change sex. Does that mean they

34:51

were less trans? No, that means they were really fucking good

34:53

at it, right? Or like, I want to do that job.

34:56

But that job is only for men. But

34:59

like, you know, on the way to doing that, you're like, yeah,

35:01

yeah, I'm a man. Why not? Those

35:03

are great. Like, there are versions of

35:06

transition that are just like, stop thinking, right? And I

35:08

just think we live in a culture where again, we

35:10

actually live in an economy where we have no fucking

35:12

power to do anything. So all we can do is

35:14

sit around and think all night. And the internet is

35:16

all discursive. So all it does is ask you to

35:18

think and think and read and read

35:20

and look at pictures and compare yourself. And

35:22

that's just like going to make you anxious and

35:24

it's going to make you confused and it's not

35:26

going to give you clarity. And

35:29

I think like a great thing, for example, about

35:31

hormones is like, it takes like

35:33

quite a few months before anything like that

35:35

you can't take back happens. And like, who

35:37

cares if something happens that you didn't love,

35:40

like that's just called being a person. But

35:43

also like, just do it. Like after

35:45

three months on on changing your hormones,

35:47

like you'll know exactly. You'll know or

35:49

just change your clothes. Like just I don't

35:51

know, just do it. Like just

35:53

really commit, right? Like commitment to the

35:55

bit as Andrea Long Chu famously said,

35:58

she as usual was right. You

36:02

at some point in there were talking about

36:05

men and women being abstractions. And I just

36:07

wanted to say that's what I really, really

36:09

appreciate about your book specifically is like I

36:11

struggle a lot with theory and gender theory

36:13

specifically because of the abstractions on abstractions and

36:15

abstractions. And I really love how this book

36:17

is about like state power, colonialism, class, labor.

36:20

And the way you illustrate that is by telling us

36:22

about some stories about some girlies that you found. And

36:25

it's like, that's actually exactly how I want to learn like that's

36:27

perfect because that makes sense to me. And

36:30

I guess to unfortunately, like

36:32

linger in sort of abstraction

36:34

language for just like one more question, I know

36:36

that you have sort of a bone to pick

36:38

with the terms trans and transgender. And

36:41

also in the book, near

36:43

the end of the book, one of the figures in

36:45

your book advises queer trans and feminist movements to quote,

36:47

give up the quest for the perfect language or law

36:49

to govern identity. The good enough keeps us present attuned

36:52

to what is here in the world. And

36:54

so I'm wondering, like, in your mind, what

36:56

would be like good enough language or good

36:58

enough framework that we could like

37:00

kind of set that issue aside and focus on

37:03

the material parts of the struggle? Oh, that's great.

37:05

You know, I didn't have the answer to that

37:07

when I wrote the conclusion to the book, but

37:09

I have it now. Great. And

37:12

I think that the good enough answer, this might be

37:14

provocative, because I don't think everyone will like

37:16

this answer. I think the good enough language

37:18

is not transgender, it's transition. But

37:20

let me come back to that by first

37:22

telling you why I don't like transgender. Okay,

37:24

now, I have two buns to pick with

37:26

transgender. And I hope they're devastating. It's becoming

37:28

to the point where I think I might

37:31

be writing like a three book trilogy against

37:33

transgender and a short history of trans misogyny

37:35

was only the first volume. So like, stay

37:37

tuned people if they're already trans people, we'll

37:39

be there. But

37:45

okay, first bone to pick is conceptual.

37:48

Transgender is an umbrella category, it's supposed to

37:50

include a whole bunch of groups of people

37:52

who did not see themselves as belonging to

37:54

the same group prior to that era. Right?

37:57

So it tends to claim that anyone who departs

38:00

sex assigned at birth or anyone who's just

38:02

sort of gender variant, right, to some extent,

38:05

has nothing common that we can overlook

38:07

all the other differences between them. Namely,

38:10

the differences between men and women

38:12

in a culture that is hello,

38:14

patriarchal and sexist, hold on a

38:17

second, transgender supposed to include both

38:19

men and women, but actually like

38:21

in a culture where one of

38:23

those groups is like systematically, politically,

38:26

economically, socially, culturally dominant over the

38:28

other one, that's a really weird choice

38:30

to make if you put it in those terms.

38:32

Okay, so first issue is

38:35

conceptual transgender is a gender neutralizing or

38:37

neutering term. So I don't like it.

38:39

It's anti woman. Because guess

38:41

what the history of Western thought

38:43

tells us over and over again,

38:45

anytime there's a universal singular concept

38:47

that's supposed to represent everyone. It's

38:50

a masculine concept. It's for men.

38:53

Okay, so I'm gonna lump non

38:55

binary in here too. That's why

38:57

it tends to correlate to white

39:00

androgynous masculinity. It is not radically

39:02

inclusive. It's the most male masculine

39:04

thing you can do. So

39:07

that's an issue I have literally baked into

39:09

the concept, you cannot say transgender for me

39:11

because that is in its definition. That is

39:14

what it is designed to do. But the

39:16

second bone to pick is actually historical. And

39:18

this is what I'm writing about in my

39:20

next book, like who invented transgender, right? Like

39:22

here's the story I was told. And I

39:24

actually believe this for a long time. Because

39:26

why would I not have known transgender

39:29

was invented by radicals in

39:31

the 1990s, who were saying,

39:34

medicine doesn't define us anymore. We don't

39:36

have to be transsexual. And I refuse

39:38

to let psychiatrists tell me who I

39:40

am. Yeah, that's not true. I mean,

39:42

like those people did exist. They did

39:44

not invent transgender. People

39:46

who are interested in deep cuts probably

39:49

know the actual specific history of the

39:51

term is transgenderism

39:53

or transgenderist was invented

39:55

by really rich, highly

39:57

educated white transvestites, the

40:00

1960s and 70s. It's

40:02

a history that transpires a lot in

40:04

New England, you have these waspy people

40:06

with PhDs who are transvestites, not transsexual

40:08

women. And by transvestites, they mean, well,

40:10

I only dress part time, right?

40:13

And they'll often say really interesting things like,

40:15

it's because I have like a man and

40:17

a woman living inside of me, a brother

40:19

and a sister, and I'm actually really gender

40:21

fluid, because I can swap between them, right?

40:23

That sounds very suspiciously like what's

40:26

really progressive today. Okay, why did

40:28

they live their lives like that?

40:30

Because they were rich, white married

40:33

men, the wealthiest. Talking about

40:35

I've looked at their incoming class

40:37

demographics, the wealthiest people who looked

40:39

like white men in the workplace,

40:42

in all of America, except for

40:44

like, you know, people who owned corporations, okay,

40:47

these people developed a culture of part time womanhood

40:49

so that they did not have to lose anything

40:51

for transitioning because if they had transitioned, they would

40:53

have lost their marriages, that was their number one

40:55

concern, they would have lost their jobs, they would

40:57

have lost their wealth, they would have become poor,

40:59

they might, God forbid have had to do sex

41:01

work, right? And so

41:04

they invented the term transgenderism to talk

41:06

about people who deliberately chose not to

41:08

medically transition so that they could conserve

41:10

their wealth. Okay, I'm compressing

41:12

a very long, complicated history. But

41:14

suffice it to say those people

41:16

invented the literal first transgender organizations

41:19

in this country, they invented the

41:21

term the gender community, the transgender

41:23

community, they invented all the compusurve

41:25

listserv things that people are coming

41:27

back to in web 1.0. They

41:31

invented all the main conferences,

41:33

they invented all the lobbying

41:35

organizations, they invented that very

41:37

basic idea that what is

41:39

politically cool is deliberately

41:41

blending gender, they loved androgyny.

41:44

So the history of transgender is actually

41:47

the history of the whitest wealthiest social

41:49

class within the so

41:51

called transgender community, figuring out

41:53

how to become the dominant

41:55

social tastemakers and political agenda

41:57

setters and introducing a universal.

42:00

concept where everyone could adopt their

42:02

habits and their styles and they

42:04

called that transgender. That's the actual

42:07

history. It kind of blew

42:09

my fucking mind when I realized that over

42:11

the past year looking through the records of

42:13

these organizations and just following these people's lives

42:15

where people who in the 60s are like

42:17

very conservative and they fucking hate transsexual women

42:20

so much. They hate them more than doctors

42:22

hate them. In the 1990s are winning lifetime

42:25

achievement awards for being the

42:27

ultimate champions of social progress

42:30

in liberal America. Okay so that's the second

42:32

reason I don't like transgender. So if we

42:35

don't like transgender because Jules said so and

42:37

you know if you don't believe me yet

42:39

read this book and let's say two for

42:42

the next one what might be a better

42:44

term right and I think transition is right

42:46

because transition is not an identity

42:48

term right it's not so

42:50

bourgeois. So the transgenderists that become

42:53

the avatars of trans culture they're

42:55

the ones who say what we

42:57

all have in common is our

42:59

private identity which we can express

43:02

through clothes through pronouns and you can express

43:04

it through medical transition but that's just like

43:06

your taste your choice it's your private decision

43:08

we're not going to help you we don't

43:10

give a shit how much it costs right.

43:13

So instead of that we could talk

43:16

about transition because transition is a term

43:18

that lets us understand all these differences

43:20

what is the difference between a transvestite

43:22

and a transsexual it's how they transition

43:25

not just part-time or full-time but why

43:27

what's the benefit right what are the

43:30

differences between trans men and trans women

43:32

historically mostly about how they transition what

43:34

happens to them when they transition what

43:36

the consequences are of transition and it

43:39

also helps us like be more specific about

43:41

actual medical histories surgeries things like that one

43:43

of the questions I want to answer in

43:45

my next book is like why did trans

43:47

men start transitioning medically in the 1970s that's

43:49

when they just suddenly

43:51

started doing it in huge numbers that's when

43:53

the term F to M emerges

43:56

literally no one has ever looked into this no

43:59

one no one wants to know the

44:01

answer because it's not a great answer.

44:03

It has a lot to do with

44:05

like class and political economy and education

44:07

and all these sorts of things that

44:09

are very politically incorrect. So like, you

44:11

know, basically, I think transition is a

44:14

really interesting possible alternative. I don't mean

44:16

like stop identifying as trans and identifies

44:18

transition. I mean, like transition is a

44:20

better term because it's not an identity

44:22

term. Transition is a material term that

44:25

draws this attention to people's conditions of

44:27

possibility for changing gender in the world.

44:30

Right. And that's actually the

44:32

site of material struggle. That's the site

44:34

of inequity. That's the site of internal

44:36

differences between different transgender people.

44:39

And so that's why I think it would just be

44:41

a better term. But of course, I

44:43

would say that because that's literally the argument of the

44:45

next book I'm writing. But I think the short history

44:47

of trans misogyny in some ways is kind of like

44:49

the preface to that argument, because I'm just showing you

44:51

how trans sexual poor transsexual

44:54

women and people who are just trans

44:56

feminized. What happened to them? What choices

44:58

did they make? Right? Like I have

45:00

a chapter about Mary Jones who transitioned

45:02

in the 1830s in New York. She

45:05

was a free black woman in antebellum

45:07

America. You think she said at home

45:09

questioning what her true gender was? She

45:12

just made some fucking decisions, which are mostly

45:14

like I put on these clothes and I

45:16

strolled and promenade on Broadway and sold

45:18

sex to men and that made her a woman. I

45:21

made her a black woman, a free black woman

45:23

in antebellum America. Like transition.

45:26

That's the only thing that works across

45:28

time periods, across cultures. It's the only

45:30

thing that allows us to be specific

45:32

while not having to like throw away

45:34

huge parts of the people we consider

45:36

trans in order to talk about it.

45:38

But I just have a feeling that

45:40

it will make people anxious because it's

45:42

really popular today not to transition. So

45:44

like if you, if part of what

45:47

people are hearing right now is like, wait a minute,

45:49

I was told like you don't have to transition to

45:51

be transgender. It's like, uh-huh, I'm

45:54

trying to stir that pot. But

45:56

not because it's up to me to decide who's transgender. I just mean

45:58

like it says more about your clothes. class

46:00

than it does about who you are. I

46:03

just think there's a key distinction to be pulled out for people

46:05

who are like, oh, about

46:07

people who are choosing not to transition

46:10

in order to maintain wealth and status

46:12

and people who can't access specific forms

46:15

of transition. And I just want to

46:17

point that out to people that there's

46:21

the category of people that is growing

46:23

by the day. That's like, I can't

46:25

access medical transition that I'm

46:27

trying to access. And that is a completely

46:29

different category than what you might be

46:31

speaking to. And I just kind of want to underline,

46:33

underline, underline. And

46:35

then it creates an interesting political opportunity,

46:37

right? If you're someone who suffered very,

46:39

very little to no real world consequences

46:42

for your identity because

46:44

it doesn't involve making demands on

46:46

the world or changes in legal

46:48

status or doesn't imperil your career

46:50

or family acceptance or any or

46:52

your relationships or anything or your

46:54

wealth, then maybe you actually

46:56

are the best person to devote your time

46:59

to solidarity with people who are having their

47:01

choice to transition taken away. Because

47:03

in this sort of class analysis of transition, like,

47:05

oh, you have the most. So like, you should

47:07

give it, right? That's,

47:09

yeah, exactly. I think that's like really helpful. And

47:11

again, the word transgender will not help us get

47:13

there. It will just tell us we're all the

47:15

same and we're all being oppressed. Totally,

47:20

totally. I read

47:22

you had a brontosaurus tattoo because it's the

47:24

most trans girl dinosaur. Please tell me more.

47:28

Yeah, I mean, real

47:30

talk because she got a

47:32

little something extra in her neck. OK,

47:35

she has the length and

47:37

there's nothing wrong with that. A lot

47:39

of very well paid dinosaurs in executive

47:41

positions. They appreciate what brontosaurus

47:44

is bringing baby and they are willing to

47:46

pay extra for that and people might not

47:48

talk about that in polite

47:50

dinosaur society. But we know what

47:53

those girls can do with those necks. I mean, if

47:55

you don't know, then all I can suggest is that

47:57

you go down to the west side of Manhattan and

47:59

find out. Something

48:04

else that you and I agree on is that

48:07

the company both and is a PSYOP created to

48:09

destroy society. Would you like to say anything about

48:11

that? I would.

48:13

I would because, look, algorithms are

48:15

actually a really funny example of

48:18

why transgender is stupid because

48:20

transgender is so gender neutral that

48:22

tech algorithms can't tell the difference

48:24

between trans men and

48:27

trans women. Also because I

48:29

date a trans man and I'm obsessed with

48:32

trans men and I'm overwhelmingly attracted to trans

48:34

men. Instagram

48:36

algorithm doesn't know if I am

48:38

a trans man or

48:40

I just like them. I constantly

48:42

get ads for both ends. I just

48:45

think it's so funny because I

48:47

don't know. I don't

48:50

think that their copy or

48:52

ad campaigns are generated by chat

48:54

box. I think they are generated

48:56

by real people who probably live

48:58

in East Bushwick. But by

49:01

PSYOP, right, I think what

49:03

we mean is that the

49:05

entire point of trans culture

49:07

today is helping people

49:09

buy pants. And the other part of

49:11

the PSYOP, for me, again, this is

49:13

why I think transgender is dumb.

49:15

It makes us less intelligent than

49:18

we are. If we

49:20

look at what that brand is selling,

49:22

they will say things like you

49:25

can't buy the cis fit. Okay,

49:28

first of all, what the fuck

49:30

are you talking about? All cisgender

49:32

men have the same body? That's

49:34

outrageous. That is an outrageous denial

49:36

of biological, sociological

49:40

differences between bodies, height,

49:42

weight, shape. What are you talking about?

49:44

And then they're like, you need the

49:46

mask fit. And all trans masculine

49:49

people have the same body. What are you talking about?

49:51

If the issue is that men's

49:53

clothing doesn't fit the range

49:55

of men's embodiment, then that seems like

49:57

a men's problem, not a transgender. gender

50:00

problem. And so like, one thing I've noticed

50:02

that, again, psy-op, was like

50:04

when that brand existed, of course, at

50:06

first, it only showed like one type

50:08

of guy, right, like the New York

50:11

City, very skinny, white trans

50:13

faggot-y kind of guy who like

50:15

definitely could fit into most men's

50:17

clothing, like, at the level of

50:19

like model or fashion, but yeah,

50:21

probably does have like, it's too

50:23

small, like height wise and waist

50:25

wise to like easily shot, but

50:27

then they just like very strategically

50:30

started showing people at different weights,

50:32

I feel like to be like, no, no, no,

50:34

no, we were not just like a brand for like

50:36

skinny white guys, which is like the only thing men's

50:38

clothing has ever been about. No, no, no, we're actually

50:40

really cool. Hey, it's Tech

50:42

just popping in to the episode to

50:44

say I have actually spoken with multiple

50:46

black fat trans models about

50:48

the way they were treated by this company.

50:51

And the way that the clothes did not seem to be

50:53

actually made to fit them. I won't

50:56

get into it more here because it is not my

50:58

story to tell. But I just want to flag that

51:00

because Jules brought it up and yikes,

51:02

is all I have to say. Okay, I'm

51:05

just like, what's going on? What

51:08

is going on that corporate headquarters? If you're

51:10

if the head of both and is listening

51:12

to this podcast, please reach out. Please find

51:15

my email address. I

51:17

have so many thoughts on both and that

51:20

cannot be contained to this

51:22

time we have. So instead, I'll just say

51:24

one thing, which is the pants are only

51:26

a 28 inch in seam. Oh,

51:29

what? That's it. That's

51:31

it. I can't buy both

51:33

fan pants, even though I get add constantly that say

51:36

a fab trans mask denim is here. Oh,

51:39

we didn't even

51:41

get into that whole a fab. Well, we can't. This

51:43

is a whole other episode. Um, God,

51:45

I did also want to get into and

51:47

then we ran out of time that on

51:49

page two, you really neatly take down TMA

51:52

and TME and that moment on page two was

51:54

when I was like, and we will be inviting

51:56

Jules back to the podcast having

51:59

a great time. with a book. Oh my God,

52:01

can I say that? Because yeah, that was

52:03

like, that was in the preface

52:05

or something. And then I put it into

52:07

the introduction. It was just because like, again,

52:09

before I quit a lot of social media,

52:11

I was like, if I see one more

52:14

person use this term, then I was like,

52:16

okay, but they might be in high school,

52:18

or they might be like 19, I can't

52:20

actually be mad at them individually, because that's

52:22

totally, it's totally not their fault. Right? Like

52:24

this is just a funny contradiction is that

52:26

because transgender tries to do this thing, that's

52:28

not possible, right, which is like neutralized gender

52:30

differences in a country based on a hierarchy

52:33

of gender and sex, what

52:35

we end up doing is constantly creating indirect

52:38

sex terms. So AFAB and AMAB

52:40

are just like, literally our fucking biological

52:42

sex terms, like what are you talking

52:44

about? Right? The fact that you were

52:47

assigned at birth is like a very

52:49

nice slate of hand, but so is

52:51

affected and exempt. It's literally 1970s

52:53

lesbian feminism, that's like the

52:55

source of all evil in the world are penises,

52:58

and male people are bad evil,

53:00

evil, evil, evil racist oppressors. And

53:02

women are beautiful, vulnerable, very scared, very,

53:04

very, very imperiled people. And so you

53:06

know what, it doesn't even matter what

53:08

gender you are, if you were given

53:10

the grace of female ness at birth,

53:12

you're vulnerable, and people who were told

53:15

their male at birth are evil. And

53:17

then sometimes we can reverse flip it

53:19

and reverse it, because that feels cool,

53:21

but we're actually just being retrograde. But

53:23

I will say one of the most

53:25

validating things, and thank you for validating

53:27

me, which is not a verb I

53:29

ever used, because I had

53:31

to fight with Verso over my use of italics

53:34

in the text. So they were like, so

53:37

usually, you know, when you use

53:39

italics in a text, right, that's

53:41

actually to demean the word, right,

53:43

or in a pretty disparaging way.

53:45

And one of the things they

53:47

said was like, you keep italicizing

53:49

the word transgender. And so we think, isn't

53:51

that transphobic? And I was like, yes,

53:54

I'm doing that on purpose. And so I also wanted

53:56

to like be disparaging about this discourse, and a number

53:58

of people have been like, And like that was

54:00

the moment when I opened the book that I

54:02

was like, Ooh, I am already. And I was

54:04

like, I did my job. That's

54:07

so good. Now that we really don't

54:09

have time, I'm gonna ask you this

54:11

question. Would it be

54:13

realistic to say that all transphobia is rooted in

54:15

misogyny? Yes

54:19

and not because I'm an improviser, but yes, it

54:21

is always rooted in misogyny at the level of

54:23

gender. But that's usually

54:25

a derivative effect of racism and

54:28

state power and colonialism.

54:30

I think totally. But

54:32

yeah, like if part of what the question

54:34

is asking is like, is

54:36

whatever happens to trans men that's

54:38

really fucked up and bad, sometimes misogynist,

54:41

the answer is unfortunately us. And

54:43

I think we have to learn how

54:46

to work with that fact better so

54:48

we can fucking stop this bullshit moral

54:50

panic around trans masculinity. I

54:53

just really appreciate how many

54:57

sort of beasts I have with online posts that

54:59

you managed to sort of take out one by

55:01

one in this interview without really pointing to them

55:04

directly. Mostly I'm having a really good time. Okay,

55:07

so we always ask at the end what

55:09

your ideal future of gender would look like.

55:11

You write about this so beautifully at the

55:13

end of your book, though, that I want

55:15

to kind of direct you

55:17

a little bit and say, can you talk

55:19

about mujerísima and what you

55:21

think a future that embraces mujerísima would

55:24

look like? Yeah, thanks.

55:27

I love that. So there's

55:29

this term that's utilized in

55:32

Latin America, mujerísima or

55:34

mulereísima in Portuguese. So

55:37

you could think of mujerísima as the

55:39

most woman or superlative woman, extra

55:41

woman. These are travestí

55:44

concepts that basically are

55:46

about saying, I'm

55:48

not trying to be a regular, degular woman.

55:50

I'm not trying to be included in woman.

55:52

Honey, I got more than just woman. I

55:55

am giving the most, right? And that comes

55:57

out of a sex work culture where it

55:59

literally does. mean, oh baby, I got the

56:01

goods, you know, the thing that costs a lot

56:03

more on the private

56:05

market but the thing that you get in trouble the

56:08

most for having. Okay. Now,

56:10

I just think that it's a beautiful,

56:12

beautiful place to hang our hats and

56:15

to meditate, right? Most

56:17

feminism in the West hates femininity, which

56:19

absolutely hates femininity. To become equal to

56:22

men, you have to become like men,

56:24

right? And I just think

56:26

that that's so sad and so fucked up, but

56:28

also it's impossible for poor trans

56:31

women or thetabestis, trans feminized people, right?

56:33

They're the punished the most. So like,

56:35

why not embrace the thing that they know?

56:38

And this is the truth here, right? Why

56:41

is everyone so obsessed with trans women and

56:43

so fucking scared of them? It's because we

56:45

turn you all on so much because we

56:47

are much more interesting than regular women, sorry,

56:50

to regular women. Shout out to regular women.

56:52

I love you. Trans women

56:54

have that little something that gets

56:56

people really wild, right? And then

56:58

makes them try to kill them

57:00

later because it's too intense, right?

57:03

They basically broken the scarcity economy that we

57:05

live in in this world, including the scarcity

57:07

economy of gender that says we all got

57:09

to find our rightful place and we only

57:11

have so much gender to go around. So

57:13

we all have to be equal and we

57:15

all have to figure out who gets what

57:17

and can't be greedy. Mujeh-ri-simah says, fuck you.

57:20

Baby, I already have the most. And if

57:22

you can't handle that, that is on you

57:24

and you are responsible for the way that

57:27

you react to that. But if we understand

57:29

recreating the world, right,

57:31

for the people who bear Mujeh-ri-simah,

57:33

or if you want to think about some

57:35

of the U.S. versions of it, I'm just

57:37

talking about glamour. And one

57:39

thing that pisses me off, I have

57:41

to come on for another episode, it's

57:43

like the way people have abused and

57:45

abused serving cunts. Honey, not a single

57:47

person out there is serving cunts today

57:49

except the legends of past and present.

57:52

I am talking about the black and brown

57:54

transsexual women. I am talking about the women of Balram.

57:56

I am talking about the girls on the corner. Those

57:59

are the ones who... invented and have served

58:01

hunt. Okay? We

58:03

live in a world that is so fucking

58:05

terrified of the fact that trans femininity

58:08

promises the most. So why

58:10

don't we make our political desires and

58:12

our ways of life in the world

58:14

make your transition the most. I'm not saying

58:16

you have to become feminine. I'm

58:19

just saying what would it take if

58:21

you were not as afraid and if

58:23

you're willing to be as bold or

58:25

as big or as desirous and as

58:28

fucking beautiful, whatever that is for you

58:30

as any one of those travesties or

58:32

ballroom queens or legends or sweet creams

58:34

of yesteryear. Let's think about that for

58:37

a second. I really genuinely think it's

58:39

both a powerful political way to ground

58:41

a coalition, to break the

58:43

scarcity economy of the world, to

58:46

break the stranglehold the state and austerity

58:48

has on our imagination. But it's actually

58:50

if I ever in my life had

58:52

personal advice or been given personal advice,

58:55

it's the closest thing to it. How

58:57

could you live up to that kind

58:59

of extra in your own life? And

59:01

I don't mean acting out. I mean,

59:03

could you actually be courageous enough to

59:05

demand more than you are told you

59:07

deserve in the world? Would you ever

59:10

be willing to act in the world in such

59:12

a way that you could value the

59:15

girl turning tricks on the corner for the fact

59:17

that she is the most woman of all? Because

59:21

if you can, I'm just worried our politics, our way

59:23

of life is not going to be enough. And we're going

59:25

to find out that at the end of the day,

59:28

everyone else who was miserable, sad, isolated,

59:30

feels deficient, and like they didn't had

59:32

enough and it's going to be the

59:34

girls, it's going to be the dolls

59:36

who get the last laugh because we

59:38

always have. And so I just say,

59:40

why not pay your respect, think

59:43

about solidarity and learn something from

59:45

that. That to me is the last new movie. That's

59:53

going to do it for this week's show and

59:55

the season of gender reveal. You

59:57

can find Jules on Instagram at

59:59

GPJules. with three S's. A

1:00:02

short history of trans misogyny is available now

1:00:04

from Verso Books, and if you're

1:00:06

not familiar with Verso, they are constantly running 30-40%

1:00:08

off sales, so if

1:00:11

you want to pick up a book for cheap, keep an

1:00:13

eye out for those, or just like go to your local

1:00:15

library, request it there, why not. You

1:00:17

can find us at the Bell

1:00:19

House in Brooklyn on June 20th, tickets

1:00:22

are available now at thebellhouseny.com, come

1:00:24

see me, Alma Ovei, Chiki Pizza, Benedict

1:00:26

Wind, Maddie Lomchansky, and a special guest

1:00:28

to be announced. We

1:00:31

are also on Patreon at patreon.com/gender, that's

1:00:33

where you can get access to our

1:00:35

weekly newsletter as well as our bonus

1:00:37

podcast, Gender Conceal. We are

1:00:39

also on Instagram and at genderpodcast.com where we've

1:00:41

got transcripts of every episode, and we also

1:00:43

have starter packs for new listeners, so if

1:00:46

you're new to the show and you're like,

1:00:48

okay, this was great, where do I go

1:00:50

from here? The truth is you should do

1:00:52

whatever you want, but we have some suggestions,

1:00:54

if those are helpful, they are at genderpodcast.com/a

1:00:57

starter pack. This episode was

1:00:59

produced and edited by Ozzy, Linus Goodman, and

1:01:01

by me, Tech One Stock. Our

1:01:03

logo is by Ira M. Lai, your

1:01:05

theme song is by Breakmaster Cillinder, additional

1:01:08

music by our friends at Blue Dot Sessions. We

1:01:11

are going to take a break, but we will

1:01:13

be back soon with more feelings about gender, in

1:01:16

the meantime, free Palestine and throw a

1:01:18

break at a cop. It's

1:01:28

one of those things where like the same

1:01:30

way where like it makes me

1:01:33

feel personally disappointed when I see

1:01:35

like a translistener of my show

1:01:37

say something weird and racist because

1:01:40

I'm like, but I've been bringing

1:01:42

you content to try to

1:01:44

make you stop being so racist. I

1:01:47

failed. It's like the same

1:01:49

thing where like if both and listen

1:01:51

to this show, it's like, well,

1:01:53

I fucked up because if you're putting out

1:01:55

those ads after listening to this show, like

1:01:58

it's time for me to retire. I'm not a. anything.

1:02:00

Right.