Queer Joy Isn't Easy

As we approach the end of Pride 2023, "producer extraordinaire" (Danielle's words!) Andrew Marshello joins once again for a reflection on how different this year's Pride feels from recent years past.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Me your Girl. Daniel Moody recording from the home bunker, Folks,
I am very excited about today's episode. For five or
six years, I can't even think about how much time
has passed. And let me be one hundred percent sure,
because you know, time is I don't even know what

(00:36):
do they say? Time is a construct? But for a
really long time, let's see, for six years, for six years,
I just I had to do the math. For six years,
Andrew Marcello has been the producer extraordinaire behind WOKF, behind
WOKF when WOKF was that serious, then when it moved

(00:58):
to DNR and d CP, and now with me still
at iHeart and I can't tell you how much of
a pleasure and just an extraordinary opportunity to work with
someone who is just as passionate about the topics that

(01:21):
you cover, about the work that you do as you
do right. And it isn't often to have a colleague
who just gets it and gets you. And that's how
I have felt about Andrew for the last six years.
In the work that we've done to build woke F
into a brand, into a show into something that has,

(01:46):
you know, a footprint and robust commentary on the world
that we are living in. And so today I'm very
happy to welcome Andrew back on Mike to have a
conversation about what pride means to him this year. And
you know what, how do we we at WOKF have

(02:10):
made it our theme this month to say you can't
ban queer joy, But we also recognize that being joyful
holding joy in this moment of great despair and stress
a job in and of itself. And so we get
into a very real conversation about how we hold these things,
how we hold the complications of this moment, and give

(02:34):
some advice and some thoughts on how we can all
do our part to help things feel a little bit
better and look a little bit better. So coming up
next my conversation with my producer extraordinaire Andrew Marshella. Folks,

(02:55):
I am so excited to welcome to the show. This
is not and it's weird to welcome in front of
the camera, I guess on the actual microphone, not to
the show, which is my producer extraordinaire of WOKF for
the last Oh my God, five six years one does
not even know Andrew Marcello, who is the person that

(03:18):
makes wok F tick and happen, and it's here and
queer with us as we wrap up Pride. You can't
ban queer joy on WOKF. Andrew, Welcome in front of
the mic.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yes, it's good to see you.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
It is good to see you. So all month long,
we've had amazing people come on and talk about Pride
and they're feeling about Pride in this season, and we've
made it our you know, theme to talk about joy
and how difficult it is right how difficult it is

(03:56):
to find joy during this time. So I want to
ask you, how has Pride landed with you this season?
How do you have you felt about Pride this season?

Speaker 2 (04:11):
I think to start, I would say that when we
were just to pull the curtain back a little bit
for the audience, when we were discussing the theme for
this month. You know, last year, if you were not
a okay if listener back then, or you know, if
you recall last year, our theme was Pride as a

(04:32):
Riot because at the time there was a lot of
what we referred to as rainbow capitalism and just you know,
literally like banks and all these institutions putting up rainbows
for you know, on June first, and then on June
thirtieth they go away and everything goes back to the
status quo. So, you know, at the time, it was like,

(04:52):
let's remember that pride started as like a fight for
our rights, and now here we are a year later
and we don't have to be reminded. And so I
think the idea of emphasizing queer joy was great and
admirable in its intent, but the not But at the
same time, the unfortunate reality is that we are fighting

(05:15):
a lot, and so if anything, it should be a
reminder that, like queer joy is a necessity. And like
you know, some people have said this month that queer
joy can also be a tool for fighting, and I
believe in that as well. But it's also this year
strikingly difficult two be joyous in the face of everything.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Yeah, I just feel I feel you, and I feel similarly,
I feel like you know, I long for the days
where the conversation was about the critique of the corporatization
of pride and not the erasure of pride. And I
feel like we have now moved back into a space

(06:01):
where we are being forced back into the closet in
so many ways, and or just targets, actual literal targets
being placed on the backs of trans people in this
country and trans youth in particular. And I wanted to
get a sense from you. You know, you have been

(06:21):
a part of a time where you've both witnessed marriage
equality happened, were old enough to like be like, oh
my god, look at this marriage equality it has happened,
and then also watched the fierce backlash that has happened
in less than a decade after that momentous day. And

(06:44):
I want to know, like, for somebody who you know
has witnessed this at a younger age than myself, like
how that happened? Like what are all those emotions of like, oh,
it's possible. I guess it's not like, oh, we're making
feel like it's not possible.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
So I definitely wouldn't say, like, I to be clear
for the audience, I'm thirty. I turned thirty within the
last year. I and a lot of people who are
around like my mindset and my age, we still believe
that a better world is possible. But we've been slinging

(07:24):
the phrase a better world as possible since twenty fifteen,
and I'll be honest, compared to how we felt in
twenty fifteen, it's a lot harder to feel that a
better world is possible. I still want to feel that.
It's not just a desire to feel that way. I
can't possibly not believe that a better world than this

(07:45):
is not only possible theoretically, because like, how can a
better world than this not be possible, but also that
a better world than this is possible, a better society,
a better America, whatever. But I really think a better
world than this is possib in reality, but it takes
so much, And that's that conversation is like so beyond

(08:06):
I think the scope of what we're talking about today
and the scope of my own knowledge and expertise. But
absolutely I believe a better world is possible. But it's
I think if we had started on the path to
a better world eight years ago compared to now, the
fight would have been a lot less difficult. And I
feel that a lot of ways. I feel that in
regard to climate change and all this other stuff. But yes, unfortunately,

(08:28):
you know, you said a decade. I even feel like,
you know, maybe five years, because I don't even feel
it was, because everything was, but I don't even feel
like it was a big focus of the Trump administration.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
It's right, you, Yeah, that's true, that's true. No goad.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
But but you've called this out, and I'm glad you
you mentioned trans people specifically, because I don't in this
conversation when a center just myself, I am a pan sexual,
CIS white man right now in a hetero relationship, even
though I can be in relationships with people of any gender,
but I'm I'm sis and the whatever I'm experiencing, whatever

(09:03):
emotions I'm experiencing, is nothing compared to the oppression and
the repression that and the depression to be frank that
trans people are facing around the country. And I do
think that that sort of started to be a focus
of maybe not like the Trump administration, but certainly the
right wing movement. And this is something where I think

(09:24):
the US is often a leader around the world and hate,
but I feel like this is something where like maybe
there was trans not maybe there was transphobia in the US, absolutely,
and it's sort of it. It diminished from if you
think about like the nineties and the two thousands, comedy
movies and the things that were like to punchlines. We
still have progress from that time, but we had definitely

(09:45):
like progressed. We weren't in that society anymore. And that's
a good thing, and for some people that was not
a good thing. But what I'm trying to get at is,
like I think, when this stuff that we saw coming
out of Great Britain and the UK, and like I'll
call them by their name because they're proud of it now,
TERFs the trans exclusionary radical feminists who shouldn't like that

(10:05):
term came from Tumblr because at the time that was
people who like were in the radical feminist movement, which
is a fringe of a fringe. And then also those
people were radical feminists who excluded trans women. That is
all that turf, And now like turf is almost like
euphemistic to refer to anyone who's transphobic. You don't have
to be a feminist, you don't have to be a

(10:26):
radical feminist. If you hate trans women, you're a So
that's trans misogyny, that's not terfism, yep. And you should
call things by their name. And I'm not like calling
you out. I'm just saying, like I'm on a big
stream of consciousness. Now, there was so much I wanted
to say.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
No, but I mean, I but I think that it's Look, one,
you brought up a couple of really important things. I
think it's really interesting that during the four years of
the Trump administration, for as horrendous as it was right
for people of color, for undocumented people, for you know,
for a whole for you know, our national security, all

(11:01):
of these things, the crowning, you know, jewel of the
Trump administration was not to go after the LGBTQ community
Like that was not what Donald Trump spent the last
the four years of his administration doing and so for me.
But he's doing it. He's doing it now in order

(11:22):
to keep pace with the other Republicans, namely Ron DeSantis
out of Florida, who has made it right, who has
made it his like his entree into politics in a
real way. Look how big and bad I am. Look
how tough I am to take on this marginalized community
and be as cruel as possible. Look, I can be

(11:43):
cruel too, Right, He needed a target because when Donald
Trump came down the escalator, he said, my target is
Mexicans and Muslims, and you know, and these people of color.
Rond Desant is like, oh, that was taken, so I
got to find another group that I can target and right,
So I think that that is really interesting, but also

(12:04):
a throwback to the nineteen eighties, to the Save Our
Children campaign, to all of the things that this set
of people white Evangelical Christians were doing in the eighties.
They've just remixed it for the twenty first century. And
when I think about that, I think about everything that

(12:25):
is old is always new again if you refuse to
teach history and you refuse to create guardrails to make
sure that those things can't come back and don't come back.
And I just you know, you said that you like
remain hopeful in terms of wanting to believe that we
can do better than what we are doing right now.

(12:46):
And I swear to God if I didn't believe that,
I wouldn't get out of bed. However, do you what
are your feelings about the generations that preceded you and
the mistakes that were made to not guard and ensure
that we weren't going to continue to backslide every time
we made a bit of progress.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
That's a big question, because as you were talking and
I actually wanted to address this before too, because you
asked me a question previously, and I thought about so
many things when you were asking me that. So I
kind of want to go back to like my own
story just really quickly, because I was born in the
early nineties and I grew up in this sort of
like post Reagan slash hw Bush. Like Clinton was a

(13:31):
very post Reagan president. I feel that, you know, having
learned American history, the Clinton years were sort of a
post Reagan society and through pros and cons of that,
but socially, you know, my uncle is gay, and that
was the era of don't ask, don't tell, and I
think the don't ask, don't tell policy in the military

(13:52):
kind of set a tone socially at least for what
was going on in my white suburban world. Because my
uncle had a domestic partner. They lived in a house
together and had two dogs, and it like so I
would ask, you know, is uncle Tom married? Are they
are the two of them married? And I would get
told no. They would tell me, as a child to
my face, that that my uncle's domestic partner was not

(14:17):
his husband, which it was true, but like you know
what I mean, and they at a certain point when
I learned more, it became he's not gay, which was
a lie. They were lying to me as a child.
And so I think about like when people say things
like how am I going to talk teachers? How am
I going to tell my children? How am I going
to explain this to my children? It's the explanation, isn't
the problem? You just don't want your kids to know?

(14:39):
And we're going back to that. And I see so
much of that, and then we went through the Bush
years and all this other stuff. But ultimately a society
I alluded to, like you know, transphobia in movies, and
I think just in general as a society, you know,
we stopped using the f slur. There were things that
were progress, and now I feel that progress is being
clawed back, and maybe even to an era that I
didn't exist, which is scary, like to think about the

(15:02):
desire to go back to like the Reagan era, or
even on like abortion rights, you know, back further like they.
But but to address your direct question, which is how
do I feel about the previous generations, it's complicated because
I tend to think that like people on a on
a on a micro scale, on an individual scale don't

(15:25):
have a lot of power. And I think there was
a lot of institutional uh erosion of the power of
the people in the decades before I was born. And
I don't entirely think of that as society's fault. I'm
sure you know, people were voted into power, there were
desires that voted in people into power. I blame really

(15:48):
those people, the people whose desire it was to take
society backwards. It's hard for me to fault people in general,
because you know, some people were beaten down. Some they
they you know, the move in Philadelphia. It's not like
some people weren't trying the Black Panthers. There's stuff that
people were doing and they really got beaten down by society,
even like in my lifetime the free speech zones during

(16:10):
the Iraq War protests, And it's easy to it's easy
to be a younger person, either who was alive and
young at the time, or who maybe even wasn't alive
at the time during the Iraq War and look back
at that and be like, well, how did people let
that happen? How did people let their First Amendment rights
get taken away? How did it get reduced to a
punchline on the rest of development, and it's like that
wasn't you know, there was a combination of factors that
led to that. It's hard for me to blame the

(16:33):
populace for getting whipped up in Iraq War hysteria after
a national traumatizing event. People took advantage of nine to
eleven and used that to sell the populace on this
horrible ideology that was already in green from the Reagan
years and not He Man, G I Joe and all
that bowl crap, and you know that carried through to

(16:55):
the nineties, and this whole idea that the military are
heroes and the police are heroes and everybody's good guys,
Like we're just as a society coming like a mainstream
society coming around to the idea that, like, maybe the
police aren't the good guys, Like that is a mainstream
idea in maybe like the last four years. So it
is really hard for me to fault people in the
past for not breaking out of their mental bubbles. You know,

(17:15):
I once went off on my grandma, bless her when
when she was still around and I was full of
piss and vinegar in my college punk rock years, and
I really went off on her and I was like,
what did.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
You all do?

Speaker 2 (17:27):
What have you done?

Speaker 1 (17:28):
What have you done?

Speaker 2 (17:29):
And she was like, you know, she was mortified at me.
She was really upset, and she was like, I voted
for John F.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Kennedy.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
I was doing all these things. I really tried, and
it's hard for me to fault individuals. It's really the systematic.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, yeah, but I think but I think that that's right, right,
because you have a lot of and I'm thinking about
gen Z and I'm thinking about the alpha generation coming
behind them that are looking at their parents and their
grandparents generations and they're like, you were giving us a
planet that will be out of natural resources, air that

(18:02):
we won't be able to breathe, water that we won't
be able to drink, that will then be sold to us, right,
that we won't be able to afford because we don't
have jobs because of you know, the climate of capitalism
and greed that you all have bought into. Right, So
like there is yeah, and it's natural to have and
it's right. I think that it's righteous. Right, it is

(18:22):
it is righteous anger to be like when you had
the opportunity, not again, individuals, right, but when the collective
has the opportunity to make change. It's like, it's how
I feel right now as I look back on the
Obama years, and I think, wow, I really was a
part of this collective that thought that we made it.

(18:45):
I really like got super complacent and thought that the
sky's the limit from here. It did not occur to me.
And I'm a fucking student of history and politics that like,
oh no, the white lash, the backlash, all of it
was coming right and it was actually happened happening concurrently.

(19:07):
I don't know for you, Andrew, I will ask, like
I talk about this on the show all the time,
about how I try and hold on to joy, about
how I try and center self care and emotional wellbeing
in a time where anxiety and depression are so high.

(19:31):
I mean, the amount of people that young people and
older people that became medicated during the pandemic and beyond,
I think went up like I don't want to say,
but it was like over half of the population. It
went up in percentage in terms of In terms of that,

(19:51):
I talk about the fact that I'm in therapy and
have been for many years, and thank God, because I
don't know how I get through this time. So how
do you center your self care? What does that look
like for you? And how do you try and remain

(20:12):
I don't know, somewhat balanced at a time that wants
to like every headline, every tweet, every moment can literally
throw you off.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
I'm gonna address something real quick and then I will
definitely answer your question and just what I want to.
You've you've talked about young people, and like I've you know,
I've aged out of the young adult generation. But when
I think, like you mentioned the righteous anger, and I
think that righteous anger is it's righteous and it comes
from a just place. When I think about that righteous anger, though,
it's like we have to remember and not just young people,

(20:46):
we have to remember that that anger, you know, does
need to be directed systematically, Like I think about like
just as an example of the story of Kitty Genevieve's
and for years it was presented as a psychological study
in this this concept of the bystander effect. It turns
out the cops made that shit up. They just like
that story was totally doctored and the cops were incompetent,

(21:08):
but they went, well, you know, thirty eight people or
however many washinged and did nothing, so it's not our fault.
And so all this time we were mad at the innocent,
not innocent like I'm sure some people. Some people tried
to call the cops and the cops didn't answer. But
you get told a story and then it becomes well,
thirty eight people washed and did nothing, So it's the
thirty eight people's fault and not the NYPD whose actual

(21:29):
job it was to help that person. And that also
now to spring off that I am not a mental
health professional. If you are a younger person listening to this,
first of all, thank you tell your friends. Second of all,
i've seen the age demographics. Please tell your young friends.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
Tell you.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
But second of all, you know if you're talking to
your kids about if you have young people in your
life and they're struggling with mental health, because Danielle, you're right.
I saw this scene the other day and it was like,
like it's it's leaped horribly. I think it is like
half of high school males, and I can only assume
it's worse for girls. Yeah, knowing what I know about
high school, I think they made a movie about that

(22:12):
twenty years ago. I can only imagine it's worse for
high school girls. But yeah, it's like half so one
two One in two high school students is dealing with
anxiety or depression. I'm not an expert, but what I do,
I'm in therapy. Having miners in therapy is tricky with
the parents stuff and disclosure. But if you are a

(22:33):
good parent and you have a trusting relationship with your
child and they're having issues, you know, try looking into
psychiatry and psychology if you haven't already. I'm very much
in that as well. I've been in therapy for years.
It's never ending. Some of it comes from my own stuff,
but sometimes it is the horrors of the world. When
I started therapy, I would go to my therapist and

(22:55):
I'd be like, what am I supposed to do? I'm
just one person and the world is falling apart, and
one person of the population has all the money, like
one percent of one percent of the population has all
the money and all this and you can't So here's
what I do. You can't do anything about it. That
does not mean that a better give up on the
idea that a better world is possible. That does not

(23:17):
mean stop doing stuff. That does not mean stop caring
That does not mean stop being active in community. That
actually means be more active in your community, because all
you can do is the change that you can create
as an individual person is the change in your community.
If you get collectively organized with a group of people
in your community, and you are a type of person

(23:38):
who is a leader, even if you are a young person,
you have a community, get your community organized, or if
you have a friend who is a leader type and
is like minded, link up with them and organize with them.
The more we get organized, the more we can do
things on mass and then we can start to affect things.
But all we can do is individual Like you know,
I know that you're into plants, Danielle, I'm not so

(23:59):
much into plants. The community garden is important, you know,
community kitchens or food pantries, like being involved with the
people around you. If you're a person I think who
thinks like Danielle and I do, and you care about
the world and you're compassionate and you're sensitive to negativity
going on in the world on a massive macro scale,

(24:20):
try making the little world around you better. Where you are,
plant things, feed people, take care of those around you,
get to know the people in your community if you
don't already, and I'm not talking about it's a good
first step, but I'm not talking about getting on nextdoor,
like actually know your neighbors, know what they're If you
live in an apartment building, know the people around you.
If you have leftover food, don't just throw it out,

(24:41):
ask your neighbors if they want some. You know, just
the little things that I wasn't alive in this society
for that. I grew up in the era of lock
your doors, no one is trustworthy, but my grandparents came
from it. Can I borrow a cup of sugar? I
bake the pie and I have way too much? Would
you like a slice of pie? There's nothing you're not
gonna hurt anyone with that. You're not going to hurt anyone.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
Bye.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
This is a real thing that happened, and there's a
real article in the Washington Fils about it. You're really
not going to hurt anyone by baking a big pot
of chili in your apartment for the three hungry college
students that live next door and going over and going, hey,
I've got a big bowl of chili. You guys want
any It's no one else's business.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
It's you know, and I think a lot of that, honestly,
he started to come back during the pandemic where people
were at home, who had the privilege to be at home.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
And like to be human beings.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, I needed to rely and connect with the people
around them. And I think that that is because we
all had the you know, some of us had the
ability to slow down. And I think that everything that
you're saying is absolutely right. It becomes a daunting place
to think that you, as one individual, is going to
stop the greedy one percent.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
We're not Superman. You're not You're not Bruce Wayne whatever.
You're not that person. You are a big thing in
our society right now. So that's important. No one person
is going to save us. It's not going to be you.
It's it's not gonna be Elon Musk or any of
these other people that are no media. But no one,
it's not Joe Biden. No one person will save us ever.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
No, But like what you can do, like Andrew just said,
around your own community, around your own life, to make
things a bit more beautiful, a bit more joyful, a
bit more connected. Just that little bit, if we all
just did that little bit around us, we would begin
to feel better right about how we are perceiving and

(26:35):
looking at what is being fed to us on the
largest scale. Final question for you, Andrew, which is, you know,
we did this big Pride month, you know, special every
single day, but Pride is three hundred and sixty five

(26:57):
days of the year. So for those people who you know,
like the corporations that will take down their rainbow flags
or just put it away, what do you want people
to sit with in terms of like how we look
at Pride for the other eleven months of the year. Uh.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Weirdly enough, I actually want to start on Pride this year,
just because I meant to say this before and it
slipped and we talked about this during our sort of
pre show conversation. One thing I do want to note
is that something I noticed in twenty twenty one and
twenty twenty two was, you know, more companies were actually
listening to criticism of like don't take your Pride flag
down on June thirtieth, keep it up. You know. In

(27:39):
some places like the these are fringe examples, but like
the gaming subreddit has had a Pride banner for like
over a year because Pride ended and enough people were like,
don't you fucking change that? That they just never changed it,
and why not? And that's I think that was a
good focus to like, because queer people don't stop existing
on June and the Yeah, and like you mentioned before,

(28:01):
now we're seeing this backlash where companies like bud Light
and Target and not even the ones that are facing backlash.
But in the face of that, you know, Starbucks is
telling stores not to put up pride displays. They're being
preemptive about it. That's horrifying. They do want to put
us back into the closet. And so an important thing
I would say, even if it's not joyous, if your
queerness doesn't manifest, enjoy it this time, that's okay. It's

(28:22):
just be out and loud and proud if you can.
You should be three hundred and sixty five or three
hundred and sixty six days a year. I stream on
on Twitch. I play video games and give commentary, and
I'm on camera and I have some people I very
much emphasize I'm in the lgbt Q tag, I'm in
the queer tag, I'm in the pan sexual tag. And

(28:45):
you know, when I talk on stream, I will openly
you know, like thirst over characters of any gender that
are in games. I'll make jokes about it. I'll make
references to it. And some people who know me, like
in real life, who I've known for years initially, like
would message me and be like, you know, why are
you playing up your queerness on stream? Like why are you?

(29:06):
Like are you making that part of your image? I
would get these different questions. It's like, no, this is
who I am. You just didn't see it so much.
And this is a place for me to be me
and for me to show myself to the world. And
so if you want to know me better, this is
like authentic. This isn't a performance, and this is me
using my platform, unfettered by anyone else, to be myself.

(29:29):
And so that's what I would say for anyone else
out there in whatever way, that you have the power
and the ability to self express and be yourself and
be loud. And hey, if you're pushing back against something,
push back as far as you can whatever is safe
for you. You should try to push back because it's the
only way that you know, we all get out of

(29:49):
the closet. We thought the closet, I mean I thought
I thought the closet was like done for I didn't
even think about it anymore. It was like, well, when
you're you know, when you're ready, you come out. It's
I didn't like they're they're trying to bring back the
closet and then shove it us all back in it,
and we can't let them. That's what we say.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
One hundred Andrew Marshall, thank you so much for coming on,
Mike Uh for this episode of wok Philly. Always appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
Thank thank you so much for having me. I'll talk
to you later today.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
That is it for me today. Dear friends on Woke
app as always, Power to the people and to all
the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.