Analyzing Archives with Jamie Lauren Keiles (@sexchange.tbt)

This week Carmen is talking with the writer Jamie Lauren Keiles about his Instagram account @sexchange.tbt which archives the written trans history of the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. First, we get to know Jamie and the book he's writing The Third Person about non-binary gender in America, then Carmen and Jamie take a look at some of their favorite posts on his account, with fun discourse to follow! 

 

For more from Carmen and Beauty Translated follow @thecarmenlaurent & @beautytranslatedpod

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
But also I just like these sort of artifacts of
like vintage transphobia, because like transomid today is so strategically
organized in this top down way from the right, where
like they have a playbook about how we're going to
mobilize people around these fears.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello, Beauty Translated listeners, Welcome to another episode of the podod.
This week, I am talking with the writer by the
name of Jamie Kalis. Jamie is a contributing writer at
the New York Times magazine. He's also writing a book
called The Third Person, which is a book about non
binary gender in America, which will be out in twenty

(00:41):
twenty four. We discuss it in the interview coming up.
And he also runs the trans archival history account known
as sex change dot tbt on Instagram. This is how
I came to know Jamie through his Instagram account and
the trans archival posts that he makes as a part
of research for his book on non binary gender in America.

(01:04):
I wanted to talk to him about his experience researching
for his book and also archiving trans history essentially for
all of us to enjoy on the lovely Instagram. He's
really posted a great community on his Instagram page. Of
some awesome people who just love the history. And we're

(01:24):
here because we love our history. So please enjoy my
conversation with Jamie Kayless about his Instagram page sexchange dot tbt.
All right, listeners, today, my guest is a writer by

(01:44):
the name of Jamie Lauren Kayless. I came to know
them through the Instagram account they run, which is at
sexchange dot tbt, which is an amazing archive to the
trans experience and the community as it was pre and
earth Internet. Many of the posts I have found on
this page have resonated deeply with me and have even

(02:06):
been an inspiration in the direction I'm taking the podcast.
Please welcome my guest, Jamie.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Hi, Jamie, Hi, Carmen, thanks so much for having me
on the show.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
So, Jamie, before we get into the Instagram account, which
I love. Sex Change tbt is an awesome archive and
it has both showed me a bunch of new things
that I never knew existed from our history, but it
also has reminded me of some old things that I
had forgotten about. So it's been a really awesome Instagram account.
I love it. But can you tell us about who

(02:36):
you are?

Speaker 3 (02:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Sure, I guess the easiest way to get into that
is to go backwards from getting into the Instagram account.
So I'm running this Instagram account. I'm not like a
historian or anything. I'm a journalist by training or a writer,
I guess. I work at the New York Times magazine,
which is a whole other can of worms. I'm from Pennsylvania,
so like about an hour outside of Philadelphia in a
town that's sort of rural, sort of suburban.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
The town is called Doylestown.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
It's like one of the places that's always on electoral campaigns,
like profiled as like the quintessential swing district. So definitely
like felt kind of far from cities and like didn't
know gay people, but also had exposure to kind of
like arts and culture and like assorted other types of
freaks that I've been in New York since twenty fifteen,
and I've lived in Chicago, LA a couple other places.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Tell me a little bit more about being a writer
for the New York Times. Tell me a little bit
more about that. You said New York Times, correct.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, Yeah, I write for the New York Times magazine
and was doing that pre transition, and I'm still there.
I'm currently on booklya of working on my book, but yeah,
trans stuff was like not my interest when I got
into writing, Like not that it wasn't my interest, but
I'm very much a generalist. I do a lot of
culture stuff, celebrity profiles, things about technology, and obviously like

(03:48):
I am trans. But in the beginning of my transition,
I was like not that interested in transh history, intercommunity
discourse kind of stuff. But then as I started thinking
about writing this book, and basically my book is about
history and present of non binary identity in America, I
was drawn to it partly because I started getting really
afraid that someone else was going to write a worse
version of this book. And I was doing a lot

(04:09):
of complaining to friends and saying, oh my god, someone's
going to write this book.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
It's going to be for idiots.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
And my friends kept saying, well, why don't you write this,
You like really have the skill set to do this.
Your journalists you sort of are asking the right questions.
And I said, oh my god, I'm never going to
write a gender book. I don't want to be one
of those people. But then the more I started thinking
about the subject matter, like what I really like about
trans stuff, and maybe a lot of people knew this
before me, but it took me like a while to
come around to it. But like trans history really overlaps
with everything, so it's like it's gender, but it's also

(04:36):
like history of media, history of medicine, history of culture,
history of the arts. So when I started looking into like, okay,
like what would it mean to put this book together?
I was just one delighted by like how much it
overlapped with other things I had written about and the
other things that I think make a good story. And
also just like the depth of archival material. Obviously there
are tons of people doing really good work in transistory,

(04:57):
but compared to all the other historical things that have
ever been research, the archive is relatively unexploited, right, Like
you can still go in and find a corner that
no one has really had the time or the interest
in going through. So I've just become really like sucked
into archival research in a way that was not really
foreseen when I started working on this project at all.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, And I think that correct me if I'm wrong,
But it seems to me like the Instagram account sexchange
dot tbt has been a way of keeping track of
the research you've been doing for this book, right.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah, yeah, so it's I mean a lot of it
was just like I was accumulating all this material when
I was going to visit archives and like taking pictures
of stuff or like using some of the online resources
like Digital Trands Archive. I was just having like tons
and tons of screencaps and like no one to really
share them with, and was becoming sort of lonely in
my research. And then I started thinking, Oh, I can
put this stuff online. And obviously there's like the sort

(05:46):
of cynical like, oh, I would love to have a
huge platform to promote my book. So like I was like,
this is a really good way to gather the audience.
But also I just think most of the people synthesizing
this material are academics. There's obviously people all over the
place working in it. But I was like, oh, there's
like not really a great Instagram account that's like putting
this out in a way that people can really access.
The negative side of that is like it really does
currently reflect a lot of the biases of like the

(06:08):
current chapters that I'm researching. Rights, Like a lot of
what I've been working on is like trans mail conferences
in the late nineties early thousands, and a lot of
what I'm writing about is kind of like the whiteness
of those conferences or sort of like who they did
and didn't represent. So like the archival materials I'm working
with kind of reflect all those biases, And when you
move it from one platform to another, it's like not
necessarily like I think in the ideal vision of the

(06:31):
Instagram account, it would be a lot more expansive, but
right now it's like a side project of a different
project that I'm working on.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
Well, maybe it's just reflective of, I guess, the limited
visibility that trans people had at the time. But I
want to also, I want to back up to something
you were talking about earlier, and how when you first
started journalism, how transnis and trans issues weren't really like
super that important to you. But it sounds like at
a certain point it's like your transition coincided with these interests.

(07:00):
Do you care to talk maybe just a little bit
about your own journey with your gender before we dive
more into the Instagram.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Yeah, And I haven't quite figured out like the good
way to narrativize this because I lived like most of
my life as like a somewhat beautiful heterosexual woman. I mean,
like I dated men, had long hair, got to blow out,
like all that kind of stuff, and like somehow, in
the course of the past however many years, like I've
ended up being essentially a man, And when I look back,
it's like I can narrativize it all these different ways.

(07:27):
But like, I don't know, kind of was just like
always felt like something was off. I had like a
lot of other various journeys before this one. I spent
a couple stints in the looney bin. I got sober
in twenty fifteen, So like this was not my first
big narrative arc of my life, and in some ways
it like crept up on me as like a little
bit of a surprise. At some point I started thinking, okay, well,
like what if instead of kind of like resisting those questions,

(07:48):
I just started following my desires and see what they yielded.
So like I very much did not set out to transition.
I think I had like things of like okay, well,
like what if I dressed a little more this way?
And then I was like, okay, well, like do I
want tops or are hormones for me, and these things
kind of just compounded into what, in hindsight was a transition.
But like for a while, I felt very frustrated by

(08:09):
that because it didn't seem to be what I saw
represented as the quote unquote trans narrative arc. Now I
think I'm meeting a lot more people that like were
straight women or like transitioned kind of by accident and
ended up being happy. But I think I found that
really alienating at the time, when like back then it
was very much like born in the Wrong body type discourse,

(08:30):
which was not my experience at all.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
And as the discourse has opened up, I think a
lot more people have realized that they are not as
sis as they thought they were, and that they are
really a lot more trans than they thought they were.
When did that journey start for you?

Speaker 1 (08:47):
I think I started like thinking about transition pretty seriously
in like twenty seventeen, when I moved back from Los
Angeles because I had just broken up with my boyfriend
at the time and can't come back to New York.
And it felt very much like, okay, like let's like
some of these questions that have been annoying me, Like
it's time to just sort them out and get on
with my life. And then since then I haven't really
kept track of like when I started hormones and I

(09:10):
had top surgery during COVID. I guess I don't know.
I'm not like a big milestone celebrator, but yeah, I
think twenty seventeen conceptually is like when I would pin
it at.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
So around that time, you were talking to all your
friends about wanting to write this book, and I just
love the fact that it came out of a passion
of not wanting someone else to mess it up. Do
you have any idea of when we can expect that.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Yeah, I'll give you the little spiel. So it's called
The Third Person. It's going to be out from FSG
right now. It's scheduled for winter twenty twenty five, so
like maybe January twenty twenty five, we'll see. It's like
weird because you're writing and then they're always moving the
deadline depending on how fast you can write it. But
it's for a general audience reader, whatever that means, So like,
it's not a gender studies book, it's not for academics.

(09:57):
I noticed there was like a lot of books that
are like memoirs from non binary people, and then there's
a lot of books that are like guides of like
give this to your parents so they know how to
use pronouns. But there isn't anything that's like looking seriously
at like what is arguably a major cultural shift happening
and kind of trying to historicize it. Right, So, like
a lot of the way people talk about like non
binary identity is like, uh, this is like a new

(10:17):
thing that's happening all of a sudden, and then like
the backlash to that from trans people is always like
We've been here all along, and it's like I think
I'm like looking for this middle ground where it's like, yes,
gender variance or gender diversity has existed all throughout history,
but the particular categorization non binary is like a very
specific thing. It's not just saying that like people can
be all different genders. It's like a particular way of

(10:39):
like packaging identity and talking about it. So like what
I wanted to do is like look back into history
a little bit and say, Okay, well, like what are
all the people who are in this category, Like where
have they been in other points in time where they
butch lesbians, were they like super effeminate gay men, were
they transmn? Where they trans women? Like kind of where
were these people before? But then also kind of like

(11:00):
what are like the political or cultural shifts that happened
in order to like bring these people together under the
specific category of non binary. It's not the same thing
as saying I'm gender queer or I'm androgynous, or I'm
like fem or whatever. Like there's a lot of there's
a lot of baggage associated with non binary identity, and
like it's very much tied into like corporate diversity culture

(11:21):
or like marketing schemes. Like I wanted to kind of
like give that some serious thought in a way that's
both like trans affirming but also sort of asking like
big conceptual questions about like what types of problems does
it raise for us as a community, or like who
does it affirm and who doesn't an affirm, and like
is this kind of like the way forward or not.
So that's become a lot bigger of a project than
I thought, And I don't know if I have the answers,
but it is coming along and hopefully I'll pull it off.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
We'll see.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, I'm excited to read it because I think these
are also questions that as somebody who is not a
member of a non binary community, as a trans woman,
I've I mean, I consider myself to have had like
a non binary phase at one point in my life.
But everyone is trying to understand and find points of
reference for these concepts.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Yeah, I think it's like a really it's kind of
a bizarre category, right, because it's like non medically transitioning people,
medically transitioning people, people coming at it from both directions,
people passing through it in a temporary way. So it's
like for me, who essentially lives in the world as
a white man ninety nine percent of the time versus
like someone else from any number of positions coming to

(12:25):
non binary. Like our experience of the category and sort
of like what it does and does not do for
us is so different, and I don't think we quite
have a good way of talking about that within the
community or outside of it. So that's just been really interesting,
like talking to people that have come at it from
all the different directions about kind of like what do
you think you're getting out of this in sharing this
category with all these other people who have essentially nothing
in common with you.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, that's a good question, and I'll get to that
a little bit, like when we talk about language and
stuff like that and how language has evolved and how
the word trendsexual has re emerged for that reason. Yeah,
we'll talk about it here in a second, but let's
talk more about the Instagram accoun sex change dot tbt.
What does the name mean? Just tell us about the
name itself.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
I think like, and this is maybe tied in a
little bit to like the resurgence of transsexual but like,
I feel like so many of us are like so
exhausted by kind of like mainstream you're so brave like
empowerment discourse. So I just thought it was a funny
name because like it feels so extreme and like inappropriate
to be like I got a sex change. And also

(13:26):
it like kind of like the sex change sort of
circulates like on daytime TV talk shows in the eighties
as like the most fringe thing a person can do.
But also it's like today normal people that just like
shop at Target and get married and whatever. So I
wanted to pick a name that kind of like was
in conversation with that historical thing, and then I just
put tbt on the end because I thought it would

(13:46):
help people maybe understand that it was an archive account.
Although I noticed people share stuff and they'll get mad
at it because they'll think it's like contemporary discourse. So
I don't know how effective the name is, but I
like it.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
That's funny, I mean, and I think that's the interesting
thing about the page is that a lot of the
posts do kind of mirror some of the contemporary discourse.
But yeah, I'm a huge fan of it. And like
I said up top, like you've through the page, You've
introduced me to a lot of transfigures that I never
heard of before, and also reminded me of things that

(14:19):
I had like long forgotten about as somebody, I've been
transitioning for more than fifteen years, and you've reminded me
of things that like are from my past and my
history where I was like, oh shit, I forgot about that. Hey, listeners,
we're going to go on our first break here. We'll
be right back with more from Jamie Kayliss. So yeah,

(14:49):
let's get into some of those posts that we like
from the account. And I didn't categorize mine as well
as yours, but maybe we can kind of do this
as we go, But yeah, we have some of the
posts from the I thought you and I could talk
about and just kind of give our commentary on them.
So the first one is one that you posted recently
as this the Garfield.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, so I guess joint to back up and tell
you a little bit about like where I find this stuff,
because I feel like that's like a key thing. So
like there's this amazing website that I feel like everyone
should know about because like it looks like I'm doing
a lot of work, but actually they've saved me a
lot of time. Which is Digital trans Archive, which sort
of like corrals all the trans materials from different collections.
So like there's trans archives at New York University, there's

(15:30):
trans archives that like USC and digital trans archives like
scans all the gender newsletter periodicals, so like between kind
of like the seventies and like the serious dawn of
the internet maybe in like nineteen ninety six, like the
main way that trans people talk to each other was
through print newsletters, which are all scanned on digital trans archives.
So like, most of the work I'm doing is not

(15:50):
like unearthing this stuff from a closet somewhere, although I
do do a little bit of that. A lot of
it is just like sitting down for twenty minutes and
like reading something and like taking screencaps of what's interesting.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
Before we move on, I want to say first just
about Digital trans Archive, because you have also introduced me
to Digital trans Archive. Next week, Well, I'm interviewing Dallas Denny.
So I've oh nice, I've been I've been reading all
of like Aegis and Chrysalis and stuff like this and
just being like mind blown. So thank you for introducing

(16:21):
me to Digital trans Archive. And if you haven't checked
it out, please check it out. You could spend hours
on that website just sifting through old posts and stuff.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
Okay, I'm so jealous you're talking to her. She's like,
she's such a good writer, and I feel like, like reading
all this old stuff, it's like it doesn't feel like
homework because it's like people bitching about like whatever their
problems were, yeah, which are like quite similar to our problems,
so it's like it doesn't actually take a lot to
like get interested in it. She comes up in my book.
I've kind of been meaning to try to talk to her,
so you should.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
She's very prolific, so sorry, let's talk about this Garfield post.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah, so this is kind of this is like a post.
I'll describe the post first. So it's a cartoon. It
says a ts' is worst Nightmare. And on one side
it has like a sort of plump and happy Garfield
and it says before srs. And then on the other
side it has a kind of ragged looking cat and
it says, yeah, I think this cat is a famous cat,
but I don't know. People in the comments are calling

(17:15):
it build a cat, but I've never heard of this cat.
But this like falls into like a bigger category of
posts that I like from trans newsletters, which is like
when they take a comic strip or a cartoon from
a normal like mainstream newspaper and they change the text
or sometimes they don't even change the text, but like
they put it in a context that makes it trans right.

(17:36):
So this is like it's very like shit posty contemporary
feeling of like, oh, like we're looking at a thing
that everyone else in society is looking at it, but
like we're seeing it in a distinctly transway. So like
another one that I posted on the game, yeah, yeah exactly.
And like sometimes like like this other one that was
actually the.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
First post on the account.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
It's like a cartoon and it's on the one hand,
it shows like a woman scubbing the floor and it says,
ten years ago, I was just another oppressed housewife. Today
I'm a successful corporate executive accepted by my peers. Sure
it worked for me, but a sex change is not
for everyone. Like this is just a normal comic that
appeared in the paper, essentially making fun of people who
get a sex change. But like if you put it
in a trans newsletter, all of a sudden, it becomes

(18:16):
this like sort of like yeah, so, like I love
stuff where it's like things taken out of context and
like put into another context. And I think that stuff,
like for the most part, plays pretty well on the account.
There's like another one that I found that was like
a Tellytubby's fan site that was like, here's why all
the different Teletubbies are trans. And I think people like
do that a lot, right, Like you see that meme

(18:37):
today where people will see like a kind of like
short chubby man and a tall beautiful woman and they'll
be like, it's Steve for T.

Speaker 3 (18:43):
It's ste for T, and.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
It's Sandy Debdo and like, yeah, Cameron Diaz, Yeah, yeah,
it's it's like we've been shit posting and meming this
whole time basically, Yeah, but through like print newsletter and
stuff like that and like these online Like it's amazing
one that I have that kind of mirrors that. It's

(19:05):
not a comic, but it does mirror the advertisements of
the day. It's the aegis PSA, which AGIS is the
American Educational Gender Informational Service used to be known. I
discovered by looking through some archives. It was originally the
Atlanta Educational Gender and Informational Service and Dallas, I guess

(19:30):
between the year of nineteen ninety one and nineteen ninety
two changed it to American. So I thought that was interesting.
So yeah, this one mirrors a car ad of the day.
It says, before trading in your old equipment, go for
a test drive first, and it goes on to talk about,
you know, before you get a sex change, make sure
that you have you know, lived in your chosen gender

(19:53):
for a time to you know, make sure that you
don't regret it basically, and it says, don't be sorry,
be sure, and then you know, for more information you
can visit Agis, and I just thought this was fascinating
because it mirrors like car ads of the day of
the nineties, but it's also like kind of an important

(20:14):
informational I don't know, for the time, especially because Agis's
philosophy was all about depathologizing transsexualism and their philosophy was
all about bodily autonomy. But make sure you know the
risks and the benefits and things like that. So I
love it.

Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, I love how this went.

Speaker 1 (20:34):
It's funny because this did not do well on the
account at all, I think because people hate the message
of it, which is like you have to do this
real life test. But like, I think a lot of
trans people in that time, and like probably some even
today are like like people in their time kind of
were thinking about things in terms of like what were
the norms available to them?

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Right, So like it.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
Doesn't seem that far fetched to me that like trans
people would be like, actually, like the real life test
is good. But I just think it's so funny because
it's like so like eighties guy car, Like it sounds
like it's like advertising a bulick, but it's like advertising
a sex change, which I just think is like that's
the kind of stuff I love when it's like you
can kind of see the like print culture of the

(21:15):
time being reflected in like the transprint culture at the time.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, And so yeah, it does talk about
the standards of care for the Harry Benjamin International Gender
Dysphory Association, which I don't we don't use the Harry
Benjamin scale anymore basically informed consent as the way to go,
but I think it's still something important to think about
and talk about, you know, because we do have people
that detransition and end up regretting having surgeries and things

(21:41):
like that, and it's one of those things that I
don't think gets talked about in a way that is
like free of judgment, free of politics and things like that.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
Enough, unfortunately, Yeah, I mean, like I feel like this
is maybe a controversial opinion, but I'm just like, I mean,
partly I hate the message of this ad because like,
would it be the worst thing if you made a
mistake and you changed your mind? Like to me, that's
like the ultimate in bodily autonomy is the opportunity to say, like, wow,
I've made a grave error and it doesn't end my
life and it's not going to make me an outcast

(22:09):
from society. I can just like revise my choice and
move on with my life. Right. Like the idea that
like if you end up being some type of like
not passing individual, that it would like necessarily ostracize you
from society, I think that's just like an insane way
to look at transition, right. I think if detransitioners very
much as an ally, no matter how much society wants
to like frame them as the enemy of our people

(22:31):
or something.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
Right, Yeah, no, I agree, But personally I don't hate
the messaging. I think people are still going to make
the decisions they want to make, but it's like pause
maybe for a minute, and have a thought. Right.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
I feel like most people I know are like wrapped
up in the anxiety of like, oh my god, if
I make this choice, Like like like people will spend
years mired in the decision. I know I did, like
years miired and kind of the questions about like should
I really do this or not?

Speaker 3 (22:56):
And it's like it's not like do or don't do.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
I feel like there's so many points at which you
could back out and be like this is actually not
the right path for me.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Absolutely, Yeah, let's talk about the transphobic stuff.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
Yeah, so this is another category of thing that like
people don't like to consume but that I'm obsessed with,
which is like old transphobic mainstream culture garbage. So like
I love like Sally Jesse Rafael appearances where like trans
people go on TV and like like this is like
a transcript from the talk show I think it's Heraldo

(23:31):
and the title of the episode is Transsexual Regrets. Who's
Sorry now? And like I just like this stuff because
I guess there's two reasons. One, like sort of transphobic
talk shows were like some of the main ways that
future trans people came into contact with the idea of
transnis or like not the idea of it, but like
the actionability of transition. Right, So, like you're sitting in

(23:53):
your town and being like I have these weird feelings
but I don't want to do it with them, and
then like you see this horribly offensive TV show but
like you can pull out kernel of it being like, oh,
like this is the future that like could possibly exist
for me, and like maybe there's a positive thing within that.
But also I just like like these sort of artifacts
of like vintage transphobia, because like transphobia today is so
like strategically organized in this top down way from the right,

(24:17):
where like they have a playbook about like how we're
going to mobilize people around these fears of like trans
women in bathrooms or like our daughters being mutilated and
having their breast taken away by surgeons. Right, Like there's
a very sort of like prefabricated playbook, but like the
transphobia of the past, which still exists today, like the
same flavor, but it's very like idiosyncratic rights.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
Like part of it is just like really.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Prurient interest in like what's going on there, and other
parts of it are like this kind of like erotic
fixation on like wow, we're like attracted to trans women,
but also we like don't know what to do with
that feeling, but also we find it abject. Right, It's
like kind of all these different feelings that are tied
up in this like way that's like not part of
a right wing political strategy. It's just like people trying

(25:02):
to cope with like exposure to what is to them
a totally new phenomenon. And I just find that like
so interesting and like obviously offensive, but like there's some
like emotional distance from it where you can like see
it to be like wow, there like was a time
in which like the type of transphobia that exists today
that feels so like inescapable was actually like part of
this sort of like broader question about like how do

(25:23):
we like integrate diversity of all kinds into society.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah, and I mean they have I mean it's like
a panel of like different people on here. They have
some people regretting section change. I have Kate Boornstein on here,
which I find interesting.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
She's a lesbian transsexual in the program.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, I love that, And I'm actually very curious to
go back and like watch this and almost see what
Kate because I know Kate Bornstein's probably like extremely uncomfortable
about all of this because you know basically what they're
doing as they're pitting you know, people who have detailed
de transitioned regretted having surgeries, which I agree, like that

(26:05):
is kind of the pinnacle of bodily autonomy, is to
be able to have that ability to make that choice
and then eventually regret it if that is the case.
But yeah, you have people pitting de transitioners against a
trans woman and one transsexual psychologist and one psychologist for transsexuals,

(26:25):
which is a very obvious point they're trying to make
there is that one as a trans woman.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
Yeah, it's right.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
It's like they've gathered up people that are actually maybe
on the same side of an argument, but they've put
them as like the two opposing sides. But I wonder
like if at the time, like is Kate Bornstein interacting
with these people as if they are the enemy. I
don't think she would, but like, yeah, I'd be curious
see the episode, and I haven't been able to track
it down.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
Yeah, I think what would be interesting to see is
just how they're all dealing with like the narrative that's
trying to be pushed by this, you know, by this episode.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Yeah, And like when you go into like the archives
of trans newsletters, like there's people talking a lot about
like okay, like should we go on these talk shows
or not. They're obviously trying to push a narrative like
to what extent can we like use this as a
way to do outreach, And like there's a very like
sort of in the eighties and early nineties, like it's
the same like twenty five people doing the talk show
circuit and they're always like running into each other in

(27:17):
elevators and being like oh you again, like good to
see you. So it's like funny that it's like sort
of a scene of like who were the public facing
transsexuals at that time, and like they were refining their
like talk show appearance skills.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, and it's i mean not too much different from today.
Like today we have like the trans people who are
like really visible and the ones that are like always
out there on the forefront. But now with like social
media and stuff like that, it's much easier for more
trans people to be visible. I just think it's really
interesting because even recently I saw an interview from it

(27:50):
was like Jubilee, which produces like these they produce like
these video interviews of it was three D transitioners talking
to three people who've transitioned and decided, you know, that
that was right for them. And it's fascinating because that
was released literally like last week, and then this transcript
here is almost the exact same thing, but just like

(28:13):
a different color of it from February fourteenth, Valentine's Day
of nineteen eighty nine, which is mind blowing.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
You know, I would love to write something about de transitioners.
I'm like, I'm obsessed with how they're like used like
trans people are. Yeah, Like I think it's I I mean,
there's I think there was a pretty recent story about
I forget the woman's name, but like she was a
de transitioner and then she got kind of like mobilized
by the right and then she retransitioned and then kind
of like has been that's been her project, exposing the

(28:42):
right wing architecture.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Well, it's kind of like the ex gay movement of
the of the nineties. I think it mirrors that quite
a bit in this sense. Not like you've got all
these like outspoken anti trans detransitioned and I'm not saying
everyone who's de transitioned is like that, but you know,
those are the people that go on Tucker car go
on like Fox News and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
No, I mean I feel like there's like this weird
thing too, where it's like no one really seems to
talk about the fact that like the vast majority of
de transitioners, at least in my understanding and like from
people I know, are people who still stay like trans
or like queer. It's not people that like they de
transition into like norm cis life. A lot of people
just like go in one direction and they say, actually, you know,

(29:24):
like hormones aren't for me or.

Speaker 3 (29:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Like so it's like I think, like the argument has
been framed totally wrong, and it just really mobilizes this
way to be like, oh, like this is a permanent
choice that will ruin your life, and ideology has affected
these crazy.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
People and it's I don't know, it's a load of bullshit.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
And maybe the ages, maybe the ages add that we
were looking at before as kind of a the trans
community's way of like trying to like protect from that. Okay,
do we want to look at the next one? Do
we want to look at that?

Speaker 3 (29:57):
Yeah, let's see super commercial.

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Oh yeah, this was just another one kind of in
the in the Transphoba.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Category in the sense that I consumed this kind of
shit as a child and thought that this was what
I wanted to be.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
So the commercial, I'll describe the premise. It's like a
woman's coming home for her high school reunion and she's
like sort of an earl. She's like a mid nineties hottie,
like tight cheetah print dress.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Nineties supermodel type.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
Yeah, like very sort of like statuesque beautiful, and she's
like walking through high school reunion. Everyone's checking her out,
and then like she sees a guy and he's like, wait,
who are you? I never forget a face, and then
it's like Bob Johnson and then she's kind of like
m hmmm, like good to see you, like a little
bit flirty. And it's funny because like there's nothing outwardly

(30:49):
transphobic about the commercial, Like it's like, oh, so she's
a hot girl and her friend remembers her and then
she like kind of flirts with him. But like just
the fact of someone being trans is supposed to be
the thing that you're scandalized by. And it was an
ad for Holiday Inn and it compares sort of like
the money you spend on your sex change with the
amount of money that's been spent on Holiday in renovations.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
I guess that's the transphobic thing.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
They released like a copy like a I guess like
a brief description of it where it says and Holiday
Inn's first super Bowl appearance since nineteen eighty six, So
this was their first super Bowl commercial in eleven years
that they had made and they decided the transsexual women
was like the perfect punchline for their commercial. The transsexual's

(31:34):
physical changes since high school are a metaphor for one
billion dollars in system wide upgrades.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
Wow, that is bleak.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
I wondara this this actress. I wonder if she trans
or SYS.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
She's probably so if I had to gues.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
I wonder how they like cast that. I mean, I
would the casting call, I'm sure is awful.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Well, I mean, like for Felicity Huffman, Rebecca Remain. I mean,
you know, clockysis allies have been haven't been betraying us
for years? I say, like as a trans woman, I
used to watch those things as a kid and be like,
you know, that's me, Like I used to like identify

(32:19):
with that. And it's interesting because it does kind of
like leave like scars on your psyche almost like just
like these uh, like I've talked about before. How like
one of the first things in like trans media I
consumed was Silence of the Lambs as a kid.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
Do you feel like now you can look back on
this stuff and see it in like a kitcher camp
way or is it a little bit like oh okay,
so like it does sort of feel like formative.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
It does. It does like as I can acknowledge that
it's transphobic, I can acknowledge that it's definitely problematic, and
but I look back on it with like rose colored
glasses almost like I'm like, wow, this is fun, you know,
Like for me watching into twenty twenty three, maybe at
the time, if I was a trans woman at the time, yeah,
I probably would have been pissed off. You know, I

(33:10):
probably would have been like, Wow, they made a fucking
Super Bowl commercial with a trans woman as the punchline.
But now I'm like, wow, you know, this is a
moment in trans culture. But yeah, it's camp. To me,
It's just all fun and games. All right, listeners, We're

(33:31):
going to go on our last break before we wrap
up our conversation with Jamie Kayless. Okay, now this one.
I'm excited to talk about this one because this one
you posted recently, and this one is the Inner Community drama.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
So this one is from Tapestry, which is a It
was sort of like the big trans magazine, and it
changed titles a lot, which I feel like you'll see
reflected in the drama. But it was Tapestry. It was transgender,
transsexual tapestry. It was transvestite tapestry. It was just ts tapestry,
like it's been every different combination of trans. So this

(34:17):
is a letter to the It's two letters to the editor,
and the first one is titled too much about Transsexuals,
and it's a person complaining that, like, oh my god,
the most recent issue it had too much information for transsexuals,
like what about cross stressers and like transvestites. And then
the other letter is titled too much about cross dressers,
and it's someone who's a transsexual saying, oh my god,

(34:38):
everything was about cross stressors. There was nothing for transsexuals.
So it's like kind of these two camps that like
both read the same magazine jostling for like who's the
magazine actually for which, Like people loved this post, I
think because they're seeing a lot of like non binary
versus transsexual drama sort of within it.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
Yes, absolutely absolutely, That's why I lived for it. I
was like, this is fucking incredible, and it was posted
two days ago. It has one thousand and forty six
likes because so many people have resonated with this one,
because it really really does echo what's going on today.
Except I just wish they would cross dress.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Cross dresser has like sort of disappeared from the discourse
as a category, and like I don't.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
Really know, like it's still.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
And there's older cross dressers. Yeah, there's people like in
their sixties and seventies to cross dress, but like, yeah, like,
who do you see as like the analogus to cross
dressers boys?

Speaker 2 (35:36):
I was gonna say, like timboys, gentrified sissycds.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
It's funny because I've been looking like I'm dying to
like read some femboy discourse, and I think, because like
I'm coming from like trans guy social media, I'm not
seeing it. But like, is there like a corner of
the Internet where like trans women are doing femboy discourse?

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yes, there is, and I don't personally care about it.
I'll be honest with you. I'm much more interested in
going after the people who are not gender bending in
the slightest and still waving around the trans flag like
every day all day, because to me, it's like those
are the CIS people that are calling themselves trans that
I'm just like, baby, you just have pronouns that's not

(36:19):
being trans. But yes, there are trans women who are
mad about femboys, and I'm not one of them personally.
I like it because I think we need to be
encouraging this type of gender bindy activity that doesn't necessarily
mean that somebody has to be non binary or even

(36:40):
has to be a trans woman, you know, like why not.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, I mean I think that what gives people anxiety
is like it's like a category scarcity thing, right, Like
there's no problem with femboys. It's like, I think people
start getting anxious when they're like, well, those people are
like someone's gonna mistake me for being in the category
that they're in, or like these people are just like
not realized versions of what I am or vice versa, right,
and people start arguing over real estate when really it's like,

(37:07):
I mean, I think what's nice about fenboys is like
they've cordoned off their own category and they're not like
they they seem sort of like a verse identity politics stuff,
and they're very much just like we want to have
twitch dreams and like that's kind of the extent of it.
So I sort of love them, but like, yeah, they
don't seem really like jostling to be in the trans
community at all.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
They don't Yeah, but the trans women love to come
after them.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
I think cross dressers it's like a little more complicated, right,
because like a lot of cross dressing organizations, like in
the mid twentieth century to late twentieth century, a substantial
number of those people became trans women eventually. So then
like they're already sharing kind of like the same institutional space,
but like it's a little bit different in the present, right,
because like it's very easy for a community to like
go off and have their own corner of the Internet

(37:53):
and like not be part of the same newsletter and
like have to argue over like who owns it.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
Yeah, and so this is an interesting little like relic
of the past that wouldn't really make sense in like
today's context, because yeah, people would just go find a
new sub reddit or something like that. But yeah, there's
a lot to be said about like cross stressors becoming
trans women and stuff like that. But that's a whole
other conversation. Okay, let's look at some of you the

(38:18):
and this relates to a lot of your research recently
for FtM gatherings and things like that.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah, so like a lot of and I don't think
I necessarily expected my research to lead me here, But
like I became really interested in gender queer because like
that was the first category that I had exposure to
that like was neither what was caught at the time,
like FtM or MTF right, And there was sort of
like gender queer, which was this other category. And my
book has like a whole chapter kind of getting into

(38:45):
like okay, like to what extent is this the same
as non binary and to what extent is it different,
but like at the same time as gender queer and
like predating it a little bit. There was all these
other categories that were like circulating in FtM spaces, mostly
white FtM spaces. Like one of the big categories was
tranny fag right. So like I was trying to figure out,
like I mean, obviously it's like pretty self evident what

(39:06):
it is, right, it's like a gay trans man, but
like it's not quite right because there was all these
like before we had sort of like intermediary categories to
describe people that were like going in one direction but
maybe not going all the way to becoming like a
man or a woman. There was like all these ways
that like FtM guys were like softening sort of like
their relationship to manhood. Right, So, like people were identifying

(39:27):
as like a trans boy or just a boy, or
like all these kind of different ones that were circulating,
and one of them that I found a lot in
the archive was tranny fag or transfag. And this kind
of like existed before the big community tranny gate, Like
it's a racialized category, we maybe shouldn't use it. And
there was lots of sort of like young trans guys
in their twenties identifying as tranny fags. And there was

(39:50):
a huge AOL email list that like was one of
the central FtM sort of like communication networks, and like
not even all these guys were gay necessarily, but it
is like sort of a category that like you could
put on FtM to either like soften the sort of
madness of it or like mark it as a distinctly
queer masculinity or kind of like make it somehow seem

(40:13):
like more subversive in a way. Right, Because a lot
of people came into like FtM culture in the nineties
with a lot of anxieties about like like feminist concerns
about like okay, well, like I don't want to be
like a man in the way that man exists today.

Speaker 3 (40:23):
I want to be a man in the way I
want to be a man.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
So like I'm obsessed with like archival things that document
these like bizarre little categories that have died out, and.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
Let's talk about because the bizarre little category has definitely
the name for it has died out, but I think
it exists still within trans mask culture even just you know,
and this I definitely want your perspective on. This is
my These are my observations as a trans woman. But
my observations as a trans woman are that there are

(40:52):
a lot of people on the masculine spectrum of transness
that are conflicted about associating with maleness and masculinity. And
that's where I find, like I see, I personally see
more trans masculine people using the term trans mask. I
very rarely see trans women using the term transfem because

(41:15):
we don't have any like reservations. I guess about the
word woman.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
It's it's fraut, right, because yeah, I like, I don't love.
I think I like the categories trans mask and transfem
as like if you're looking to talk to like a
specific broad constituency of people, right right, But like personally,
I don't. I did, Like, so I would say, I'm
just looking to talk to transfem people, or like the
other day I was looking to talk to like medically
transitioning transfem people, right, So like that could be someone

(41:41):
non binary or a trans woman. So like it's good
for like drawing these big categories. Like I don't identify
as like trans mask personally. I mean I know a
lot of people do. I think it's like it's obviously
a category that I'm in. But like I think, because
I was once a woman, I don't see women as
an inherently virtual category. And I also don't see man
as an inherently a moral category. But also like we're

(42:04):
a lot deeper into sort of like many more waves
of feminism since the wave of the nineties, right, So
like in the nineties, we were like still in sort
of like the end of like lesbian separatism and like
sort of all these anxieties about like who's really a woman?

Speaker 3 (42:18):
Right? What are the right ways to be a gay woman?

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Whereas now I feel like we've had like third wave
feminism and sort of we've had like it's like normal
for a man to be a feminist. So like I
think personally, I don't have a lot of discomfort about
the idea of being a man, but also like I
love men, so like I'm not like I don't have
a lot of hang ups about it, but like I
don't know. It's like it's hard to like condemn other

(42:41):
people for like having these sort of like fraud relationships
to it, because like none of the gender positions are
like great.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
Right, No, I agree, and I'm not necessarily condemning, but
I just notice that sometimes those people tend to also
hold views that maybe like kind of trans misogynistic because
they see people still as like a bio essential view
of like male and female even though they're using trans language.

(43:07):
Does that make sense? Have you ever seen the Instagram
account Worst of Lex.

Speaker 1 (43:12):
Yeah, it's funny. I just followed it this morning. It's
such a good account.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
It's a good example of what we're talking about too.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
Yeah, And it's weird because I do think there's like
degrees of this, right, Like there's people that are like
a very like AFAB core, where they're like I accept
any gender and I put it all into the umbrella
of AFAB and it's like kind of transphobic in a way.
But then there's also just people that are, like I
like everyone to the right of man. So it's like
it could be a trans woman, it could be a
non boundary person, but like, uh fuck this men, right,

(43:40):
And like I'm just like very opposed to this thing
that like seems to purport that like trans people have
some inherently more enlightened relationship to gender. Right, So, like
I know lots of trans women that are like total
idiots about gender, and I know lots of trans men
that are idiots about gender, and I know lots of
CIS men that are enlightened in some way that I
find like polit respectable. So to me, it's like patriarchy

(44:02):
is the enemy, not like men or like male socialization
or like whatever you want to call this like sort
of like category that people most us in this annoying way.

Speaker 2 (44:11):
Male socialization. My favorite, my favorite dog whistle that they
love to which is basically like just call me a tranny, okay,
like right, right, it's like say what you mean, right,
say what you mean, penis wielder, you know whatever, But yeah,
thanks for getting into the discourse with me on that
a little bit. And I agree, like it is silly,

(44:32):
and I personally have seen lately in the trans community
that I feel like there are certain transactivists that are
almost trying to like present transness as like the morally
right way to be. And I don't personally agree with that.
I just think it is just a way of being.
I don't think SIS is any better. I don't think
trans is any better. I don't think non binary is

(44:52):
any better. I just think we are.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
And I think it's funny because it's like people forget that,
like trans people just start off as people.

Speaker 3 (44:59):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
This is like like one of my big sort of
like drama viewpoints is like I'm really skeptical of like
T for T as an ethos, like I love trans
people dating each other, but like my my friend Asa Saransin,
he's a writer, he calls like sort of like T
for T as a politic, like it's the queer of
trans right, like people that think of it as like
if you'r T for T, it's like somehow the more
enlightened position, Like I think anyone should date anyone, and

(45:23):
like if you're in a loving relationship, that's great, and
like I think it is nice when trans people date
each other or like to non binary people date each
other or whatever. But it's like, I don't know, you
see it like circulating as this like enlightened political position,
and like I'm just very skeptical because like I've even
seen like transmit and trans women date each other and
sort of treat each other like shit.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
So like, yes, yes, absolutely absolutely, but yeah, it's just
another relationship.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
Like I don't know, I think love can be like
very political, but like I also don't think it is
inherently so like a lot of sort of like desires
tangled up in like all these things that are like
not necessarily like virtuous.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
Right, right, Okay, let's look at I had a couple
other ones that I wanted to look out. Okay, this
one is problematic, and there were things I hated about
this one. There were things I liked about this one,
the ten Steps to being a Successful transsexual, which I
thought some of it was hilarious. Some of it I

(46:21):
hate it. But first of all, I love the image.
It says, take a walk on the stupid side instead
of the wild side, and it's a trans presumably an angry,
pissed off trans woman wearing a blue Cross Sucks T
shirt and like you know, blowing making raspberries. Yeah, and

(46:43):
it says be the obnoxious cry baby you always wanted
to be.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
Ya.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
So this is from twenty Minutes, which is an amazing newsletter.
I forget who the author is, but like this newsletter
is like always running sort of like drama, like like
they're always like saying what they would other people don't
want to hear, and then like people write in and
they're mad, and it's like it provides a lot of
great content. But this is like a list of ten
steps to a successful transition.

Speaker 3 (47:08):
Do you want to do some of them?

Speaker 1 (47:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (47:12):
Okay, So I liked the first one just because I
do know some trans woman with some ridiculous fucking names
and it has nothing to do with passing or anything
like that. But I'm just like, great, another transo woman
with a crazy name. But if you're if you're really tall,
muscular and overly male appearing, damn, just call me a brick.
Don't pick a frilly, fussy name like Felicia or Betsy Ann,

(47:36):
which I just I just thought was hilarious. This third
one was a good one. It says do everything you
can to ensure success, but be prepared to deal with rejection.
Getting all bit out of shape if you get red
is counterproductive. So like when they say if you get
red getting clocked, if somebody sees you clock to you,
just let it roll off your back, baby water off

(47:59):
a duck's back, honestly the best way to deal with it.
As a trans person.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
Usually I feel like it's great advice, but like easier
said than done too.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
Oh yes, oh yes, it's great advice, easier said than done.
I've certainly gone off on people before. I like number
four because this is just no matter if your trans
or cysts, this is true. Like, no matter who you are,
this is true. Don't force yourself down people's throat. Just
as you have every right to be who you are,
the rest of the world has every right not to
like you. And at a certain point I disagree with

(48:29):
that because obviously, you know, they don't have the right
to like take away my rights, but they don't have
to like me. Then there's like some respectability politics.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
And here I think it's funny because it's like this
is written as a list of someone being like here's
how you should be, but it's also very clearly this
person working through like whatever their own anxieties about like
sort of like the public face of trans people in
America are, which is what's so much Internet discourse about,
like someone being like, here's the way you should treat
trans people. It's like, oh, this is actually just like
you wanting to say how you want to be treated.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
Which I think is very Like.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
That's why I always try to take it with like
a grain of salt when I see people doing these
sort of insane threads on Twitter about like here's all
the things you need to know about trans people, and
I'll be like, actually, like I don't agree with this,
and I'll be like, oh, right, this is like for
this person's own edification. It's not necessarily a declarative statement
of truth.

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Yeah, And it's interesting to look at those kind of
posts through that lens because I think that's very true.
And then, of course, just the last thing I like
about your page or the trans home pages that you've shared,
it's trans home pages. These are just different screenshots that
you took, I'm assuming, like on the way back machine,
and one of them is reasons to cherish being a transsexual.

(49:38):
I read this sometimes for my own betterment and to
uplift myself. It says, because being transsexual is often so hurtful,
so filled with sadness and longing, with shame and loss
and difficulty, it is easy to come to the conclusion
that the whole thing is utterly a curse, perhaps inflicted
by arcane and evil ancient gods. Oh probably, But there

(50:00):
is an upside too. Most human lives are utterly mundane,
devoid of any real uniqueness, and the average person supplements
through an existence devoted to filling the rules expected of them. Oh,
then there's like the FtM Pride Ring. Then you have
the trans teene Hangout. It's all of these different homepages.

(50:21):
I loved different like trans teens talking about like looking
for other people to connect with.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
Yeah, I mean I love it. A big chunk of
my book is about sort of like ale homepages. And
there's a really good book coming out called The Two
Revolutions that I think the subtitle is The Transgender Internet.
It's by Avery Dame Griff and he writes a lot
about like kind of like how homepages and geosites were
sort of some of like the first open ended places
like where trans people could document their experience. Right, It's

(50:50):
like you had the trans memoir before that, but it
was very sort of like this linear narrative of like
realizing your trans suffering, transitioning then the book ends, or
you had sort of like these talk show appearances. But
like on homepages people could kind of like organize their
experience in these really chaotic ways, right, So like you
could have like yourself dressed in your women's clothes, but

(51:11):
you could also have men's clothes, but you could also
have like stuff about like how you like to watch baseball, right,
So like it was like a way to bring together
kind of like all the different parts of a person
in a way that was like a lot more holistic
than anything that had existed before. But I also just
love them because they're like I mean, also, it's like
some of the first time you see like young people
really be part of trans media, right, because like kids

(51:31):
don't have addresses to receive like a trans newsletter, So
like you start seeing like nineteen year olds or like
seventeen year olds making these kind of websites and they're
very sort of like comic sands, like bad HTML like
selfies on like a grainy camera. I just love this stuff,
and this is like I feel like people love to
see this on the account because like they remember kernels

(51:52):
of it from being much younger.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
Yeah, when you shared I think you've shared screenshots before
Susan's Place, which was one of my first ever websites
that I ventured to learn about myself, and that just
like took instantly took me back. But yeah, it's a
great Instagram account. Thank you so much for sharing those
posts with us. Before we close out the episode, I've

(52:15):
been talking a lot of my guests about this. I've
had Julia Sarano on recently. I've had Calpernia Adams on recently.
I've had a bunch of like trans elders on recently,
and we've been talking about the euphemism treadmill, that activist language, carousel,
whatever you want to call it, and on the podcast
we don't really We just use whatever language that we
want to use to describe the trans experience. What are

(52:38):
your thoughts as you've been writing your book, as you've
been going through these archives on the evolution of language
in our community.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
Yeah, I mean it's something I now spend probably ninety
percent of my time thinking about, just like on a
personal level, I started writing this book very much identifying
as non binary and kind of as I've like sorted
out what that category is, like I go back and
forth on a day to day basis of like am
I in this pool people?

Speaker 3 (53:00):
Am I not? Something?

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Also I've been really delighted by is like the resurgence
of transsexual and thinking about that because when I interview
older people, they're always sort of like scandalized or delighted
in this like funny way. And I think people like
it a lot because, like I mean, I think there's
a camp of people that like it because it like
delineates them from non binary people, as like we are
sort of like medically transitioning people that have a distinct experience.

Speaker 3 (53:25):
But then also there's people that.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
Just like it because it feels so like scandalous in
comparison to sort of like liberal inclusivity discourse, to be
like I'm a transsexual and you can't say that because
you're not trans. And so that's been really fun to
kind of track. But like on a I don't know,
I think like on a personal level, I'm a lot
less concerned with sort of like identity terminology, and I've

(53:47):
started to frame it a little bit more around questions
of like desire and solidarity, right, So like the first
question would be like, well what do I want? Right,
Like what are my specific desires for myself? And like
those don't have to really square with categories, and then
sort of like who are my people?

Speaker 3 (54:00):
Right?

Speaker 1 (54:00):
And like who am I in solidarity with? Like when
I think about myself, like I don't know, I'm like
a worker and a communist before I'm trans, right, so
like my solidarity is with like working people, or like
my solidarities are like against capitalism, and like there are
plenty of trans people who I would like not think
of myself necessarily as in solidarity with, and like those
things sort of transcend identity categories a lot for me.

(54:21):
I don't know, I think trans just like as a
big umbrella is good because like it's confusing. So it's
like like I don't know, I think like my my
girlfriend is a non transitioning, non binary person, and like
we have really different experiences, right, And like I think
a lot about like Okay, well, like are we a
tea for tea couple? No, but we're also not a
transfer cist couple. So it's like I think a lot
of times like categories sort of fail to describe like

(54:45):
what sort of the dynamics between people are. And I
think it's a lot better sometimes to just say, like, Okay, well,
who are we actually talking about here, Like who are
we addressing? What do these groups have in common? What
don't they have in common? And like that just demands
like a much more ROBUSTI course, than I think we
have on the mainstream right now. But I don't know,
I kind of have faith we're going to get there,
because like, what's the alternative? We never get there and

(55:06):
we just like have hair splitting arguments forever.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
Right until the end of time. Yeah, I think usually
when I talk to the trans elders about the resurgence
of the word transsexual, they're surprised because they're afraid to
use the word transsexual because, you know, for the past
I don't know how long it's been beaten in their
heads that like that's like not the word anymore, and
now people are using it again to talk about our

(55:31):
specific experience, as I like it for both reasons to
be able to talk about my specific experience and also
because it is a more scandalous it's a less marketable term.
It's a less you know, it's it's just it's just
I just like it for those times.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
I think it's those things when I scan through all
the accounts that I follow from the account, because I'll
follow back like I don't know anyone that seems kind
of interesting, or like when I'm in the mood to
fall people, and like I think it's just so funny,
Like I felt there's like probably two hundred accounts that
are like TS Britney Spears, TS whatever, right, Like I
feel like everyone like wants to attach it to sort

(56:11):
of like it's like a way to make a normal
pop culture thing trans.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
It's like that always makes me laugh.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
Like some of the accounts, like if you scroll through
who who I'm following, like it's just some of the
best most insane user names ever. It's like it's just
I don't know. I feel like like being in the
archive has made me a lot more sympathetic to people
in the present, but then also scrolling through the feet
of the account makes me be like I hate every
trans person who's not me, but also I love all
of them, and like I think it it's like a

(56:39):
very It's been a lot of fun and I'm just
learning so much and a lot of times people comment
and they know a lot more than me, which is
really cool.

Speaker 2 (56:45):
I love the account. Thank you for following me, Thank
you for finding me interesting enough.

Speaker 3 (56:50):
So compelling, eminently compelling.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
Ah, thank you. I appreciate that. Well, Jamie, would you
like to give us your socials and any other places
people can find you?

Speaker 1 (57:02):
Yeah, so you can just follow the account at sex
change dot tbt on Instagram. That'll kind of connect you
to all my other things. I on Instagram, I got substack.
If you can stand to open the New York Times,
I'm in there a lot.

Speaker 3 (57:17):
Yeah, That's that's about it. I'm all over the internet.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
Awesome. Thank you so much for being here today, Jamie.
It was great to be with you.

Speaker 3 (57:24):
Yeah. So good.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Yeah. I had a lot of fun. All right, listeners.
That brings us to the end of this week's episode
of Beauty Translated. I hope we'll enjoy. As we are
wrapping up this season, the next few episodes I have
planned for us. We spoke with Jamie about our trans history,
and next week I'm going to be speaking with a

(57:47):
woman who actually was creating the history. Her name is
Dallas Denny. She is the woman behind Chrysalis Magazines and
TSTV Tapestry, which were trans publications the eighties and nineties,
long before we had internet to be able to learn
about the trans experience. So stay tuned for next week's episode.

(58:10):
I hope you'll enjoy it. As we close out this
Pride Month, we're going to be extending our Pride Month
programming into the month of July, because we celebrate Pride
here at Beauty Translated Podcast three hundred and sixty five
days a year, not just during the month of June.
So I hope you'll enjoy our Pride programming that we

(58:30):
have coming up in the month of July. Stay Beautiful Bye.
Beauty Translated is hosted by me Carmen Laurent and produced
by Kurt Garan and Jessica Crinchinch, with production assistance from
Jennifer Bassett. Special thanks to Ali Perry and Ali Canter

(58:52):
for their support. Our theme song is composed by Aaron Kaufman.
Beauty Translated is proud to be part of the Outspoken
Network from iHeart Podcasts. For more iHeart Podcasts, listen on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.