SMNTY In Conversation with Margaret Killjoy

Friend of the show Margaret Killjoy joins us to dive into all facets of intersectional feminism and why it is for everyone.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm not going to
Stephane never told your protection of I Heart Radio, and
today we are so excited because we get to have
a true friend of the show. Like I've already claimed
her as one of my best friends. I said this

(00:26):
a while ago. Margaret killed Joy to the show. Yeah,
thanks for having me. I'm trying to do like songs
and such, and people don't like it, but I still
do it. It's okay people don't like it. So then
I got something like, you're actually a musician, so I

(00:48):
feel like this is better coming from you. But yes,
we do have the wonderful Margaret killed Joy on our show.
Can you introduce yourself for our listeners? Sure? My name
is Margaret Killjoy. I use sheet or they pronounced, and
I am a podcaster and an author and I guess
the aforementioned musician. I have another I Heart Radio podcast

(01:11):
called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, where you might
have heard Samantha talking in uh back in the Utopian
past before the Fall of Roe V. Wade about what
might happen after the fall of Roe V. Wade. Yes,
it was one of those that we had to come
back very quickly. To be like, all right, we have
to redo somethings. Yeah, And we knew it going into it.
We were like, this might sound utopian and outdated by

(01:33):
the time you hear it, and it was. It was.
But I loved what you had brought because it was
such a hopeful turn and even though it was really
sad to come back to revisit it, but at the
same time, I was like, at least there's a spotlight,
like a nice light at the end of that conversation. Yeah, yeah,
that's true. There is a lot of hope to accidentally

(01:56):
dive into that. There's a lot of hope for what
people can do even when things aren't strictly legal. Um,
there's and we have a lot we've come a long
way in terms of like what we can do in
a post Roe v. Wade world than what we had
access to in a pre Roe v. Wade world. So right, Um,
And for the listeners who may not know because I've
mentioned it before, but yes, I got to be a

(02:18):
guest with Margaret when we talked about the Jain Collective
and the many people behind I guess the rebelliousness of
going against the anti abortion people. Um, and what it
looked like before abortion was legal at that time, which
we were back to square one. But it was some
amazing stories and I learned a lot. So if you
haven't checked that out, you really should go and check

(02:40):
it out. But we're not necessarily here talking about that, No,
we're talking about the media. Yeah, you have so many
titles under your belt, Margaret, and I looked you up
on the interwebs, which you're everywhere you're ever. I'm like,
oh my gosh, you's so famous. But it has so
many titles between the writer, musician, are narcas, activist, podcaster.

(03:02):
You are out there doing some things and right now
you're actually not near your home. Correct, that's true. I'm
on book tour while I'm on pre book tour, and
I decided to start my book tour on the West coast.
I live on the East coast, so I drove out
to the West coast and in a couple of weeks.
I don't know when this will drop, but I will
be on book tour starting in September twentye talking about

(03:23):
my new short story collection book. Can you tell us
about that? Yeah, I have a book out coming out
called we Won't be here Tomorrow. And other stories that
comes out from a K Press, And it's a collection
of while I've been writing short fiction for a long time,
and I've been writing it at I guess I would
say a professional level for a little while now. And

(03:43):
so this is my first collection of the stories that
have been published in various magazines and science fiction anthologies
and things like that, and also some stories that were
previously only available too. I used to have a personal
Patreon and I had stories that were only available to
my patrons. Um, but now they will be available to everyone.
And I write a lot of queer punk, radical protagonists

(04:05):
who run around and feed men to mermaids and squat
buildings and try to stop bad things and and all
of that living the apocalypse. I don't know. Um, And
so yeah, so that comes out soon. That sounds great.

(04:27):
Future book club pick. I know, so we do book clubs,
So now we're your books. And I know you also
did horror as well. Am I wrong? Did? I just
picked that outs aware because we we're a huge fan
and it's coming to the season. Okay, yeah, No, it's
funny because I, um, it's kind of by accident that
I started writing horror because I basically I was like,

(04:48):
I wrote these novellas. I have this series of two novellas,
the Daniel Kane series, and basically I was like, oh, okay,
I'll do this thing set in basically now, but there
will be demons or magic you And then I'm like, oh,
and if there's magic, it's it's harror. Because you know,
most of the time, I think urban fantasy often way
too much is like and then the elevators are just

(05:09):
run by magic instead of you know, electricity or whatever,
and that's not very interesting. I think magic is a
lot to do with power, and I think that when
you introduce incredibly skewed power dynamics into the real world,
you end up with things that are horrific. And so
I didn't set out to write the first book is
called The Lambole Slaughter of the Lion, which I suppose
does sound like a title of a horror thing, but

(05:32):
I actually just set it out to be like kind
of adventure. And then I was like and the publisher
was like, this is this is hard, and I was like, okay,
I guess that makes sense. I'm very um squeamish, so
and uh, you know, I I used to live alone
in a van, and then before that, and then after that,
I lived alone in a cabin in the woods, and
all of this stuff. So I avoided hard for a

(05:53):
very long time because it didn't fit my lifestyle. And
so I can read it and I can write it,
although I've also given myself nightmares with my own right before.
Oh that's a testament right there. If you can give
yourself nightmares with your writing in a good way, even
you know you're doing it right. Yeah, yes, well that's awesome. Congratulations,

(06:18):
because writing a book is no no small thing. Yes,
that's true, Thank you, thank You've done it multiple times,
and sometimes they get slightly longer than the other ones.
Actually the longest books I've ever written. I can't I'm
legally not allowed to say that I wrote. Because there
are romance novels I ghost wrote for a while. I

(06:39):
made my living ghostwriting trashy heterosexual romance novels um And
it was like, right after I came out, they were like,
can you write this male protagonist stuff? That is fascinating.
I know. At first I was like, it's kind of annoyed.
I just came out, But then I was like, well,
it kind of makes sense. Because male protagonist romance novels
are still written for a woman audience, you know. And

(07:01):
so I'm like, Okay, I think I can straddle this
divide better than some other people. Yeah. Absolutely, you it's
very obvious. And we've talked about this before and we're
going off subject, but before we go back to the subject.
But how often times when you see romance and it
has specific language, you're like, this is definitely a woman
who wrote this, or someone who are understands that gender

(07:23):
level of this is a male gaze, this is a
female gaze. Especially when it comes to a head of
normative conversations, there's very big differences, and so it seems
very obvious, like someone understands. Someone really understands what we're
talking about here, and it's not your sismel dude doing Yeah,
Which is why I think that the like the Nicholas
Sparks is of the world and stuff are so successful

(07:46):
is because if you if you kind of figure out
how to do that while still being like a man
or presenting as a man or I don't know anything,
but Nicholas Sparks as a person, you know, Um, I
don't know whether he's goes written or not, Um, I
have my sister, but controversy. But but you know, if

(08:06):
you can, if you can tap into that, it's a
it's a powerful mark. I mean that's why I got
all right, it was right. I didn't go straight in
Nicolas Sparks saying you heard it here first, just kidding,
but yeah, coming back to what we're talking about, and honestly,

(08:28):
this kind of all links because this is kind of
how we look at different entertainment that seems just so blase.
And we've talked about romance and how it does, how
it is affected by gender stereotypes or those who have
a bias, what is placed by misogyny, Like our understanding
of romance is laid down by a foundation of misogynistic

(08:49):
ideals based by the patriarchy. Like this is about the power.
And I know again people can back you're reaching, but
we talked about how this really does affect uh, the
society at large, and this is kind of your forte.
You've come under this conversation. You have identified as a
feminist for a long time now, Um, I believe before

(09:11):
you came out you were already Yeah, feminism is real,
is effective. Can you kind of talk about your journey
with feminism. Okay, but can I tangent to talk about
romance a little bit more and I'll tie it back together. Yeah,
when you're talking about the tropes and the stereotypes that
bleed into it. Um, Since I wrote for someone else,

(09:32):
they told me these rules, and so I can And
I don't know whether they're like secret or not. I
mean I can. I know they're not in my n DA.
I know I can say them. Um. But one, the
protagonist has to be over six ft tall. I was
told to write an average sized professional football player, so
he was five ft ten and they were like, no,
he has to be at least six ft tall. Um.

(09:54):
He has to be dominant in every sexual situation. And
he also um, which was awkward and one of the
ones I wrote because he was injured, which actually was
kind of fun to write. Did he calls himself more
injury because he had to be dominant no matter, because
I don't know the age of your all his usual audience,
but he managed to become dominant verbally. And but uh,

(10:23):
and there were just like so many of these weird
rules and like, and some of them actually really annoyed me, right,
because you know, I wrote, um, you know, in one
of these books, he's he's dating um a mom, right,
And I wrote that he was like into her stretch
marks and they were like no, no, no, no, she
doesn't have stretch marks. And I'm like, audience, right. I
thought the point of this was to make these like

(10:46):
middle aged moms feel really good, you know, And so
so that got edited out, and there's all these things
like that, and then it gets into like real specific
stuff around like the way that you described like the
bad woman as the following sexual acts and the good
woman is the following guy. It's it's real. It's in
some ways, I feel dirtier about having written that than

(11:07):
like anything else I've done. Um, but I needed the money, um,
and I like tried my hardest to make them passively
feminist and possibly you know, like um like right, And
they were like, weren't gay characters in the outlines they
give me? And I'd be like, whatever, you can have
a gay best friend, I don't care, you know, And
I'm like, oh my god, I'm at the point where
I'm like, oh, gay best friend. That's edgy of me.

(11:29):
And I'm like, I think I understand nineties writers better now.
You know, is the best that they were like allowed
to do. Okay, your question was about my journey into Yeah,

(11:54):
I'm sorry. Um, I was really excited because I don't
get to talked about romance novels much. We can do
a whole second because, like I said, we did. I
think we did a two parter because we were so
I want to go back and listen to that because
I might have also just told you all things you
already know. Well, you went to a whole different we
went down a whole different route. Okay. Sometimes I think

(12:14):
about trying to write some really intentionally now, but life
is very short. So uh, you know, I grew up
being told I was a boy, right, And I have
these early memories of I wish I was a girl.
But all of the early presentations I saw I grew
up in the eighties and nineties, and all of the
early presentations of trans women I saw were very monstrous, right. Um.

(12:37):
They were the butt of jokes, or they were to
be pitied, or they were like they had destroyed themselves
or you know, and I just I have these very
early memories of being like I wish I was a girl,
but I cannot become a girl, I cannot become a
trans woman, that is not is better to be a
boy than to be one of these pitable creatures. And

(12:58):
you know, and I held onto that for a very
long time time, and it was very confusing, right because
I kept um dating gay girls and we would all
be confused, you know, we'd be like, why am I
attracted to you and be like, I don't know. I
honestly couldn't tell you. And you know, and it's kind
of this like thing I've talked to other trans women
and other trans folks about this, where like kind of

(13:20):
like on some subconscious level, people know this when they
even don't know this, you know, and it's not just
about like who I would date or whatever, although it
also be you go the other way. And I did
very confused straight girls who are like, what, this doesn't
work right? And but I got and I also got
really into LGBT stuff as my first politics. You know.

(13:43):
I joined the Gay Straight Alliance UH of Maryland when
I when I grew up. And and actually, one thing
I think that people don't realize is that the gay
straight Alliances of the nineties, the reason they were gay
straight alliances was plausible deniability. Because if you don't want
to come out, you can still you know, join organization.
And the way that we started our Gay Straight Alliance

(14:03):
and my school was really funny. I had these two
there were these two teachers who in retrospect were very
obviously lesbians, um, not dating each other, but you know,
one of them had a hyphenated last name, and one
of them was the super butch gym teacher. And they
just kind of cornered me in the hallway one day
before school started, and they were like, did you know
that teachers aren't allowed to start student groups? And I

(14:23):
was like huh. And they were like, here's a clipboard
with a forum that's already filled out to start a
gay straight alliance. Do you want to start a gay
straight Alliance? And I was like I do, I do
want to start a gay straight alliance because they knew
that I was involved in regional Gay Straight Alliance politics
and and no one was out in our gay Straight Alliance,

(14:44):
and in retrospect, we were all almost all queer and
the random straight guys very actively politically engaged in leftist politics. Now, um,
so so yeah, I kind of you know, I was like, Okay, well,
I'm really interested in, and as my oldest sister is
a very active feminist who currently does clinic escorting, um,

(15:06):
and you know, it's kind of a hero around a
lot of that stuff still, and so it was always
something I was interested in, and and I always has
this very ally position, even on some level, I was like, well,
what is what's going on here? Like why why do
all I care about is like women's issues and gay issues?
You know. And then slowly the category of what counts

(15:28):
as trans started to expand, um in that people who
don't necessarily medically transition, or if they do, like quote
medically transition, it's you know, not to necessarily the same degree.
It's like it's no longer like you become a woman
when you like undergo surgery, right, you know, Um, I
rarely see people talk about being like, oh I'm pre
op M to F or whatever. That is terminology that

(15:51):
I'm not trying to shame anyone who uses any terminology.
I don't care, but it is like terminology that no
longer seems to be the dominant discourse around it. And
you know, and and the more I came to understand this,
this work that that feminism, feminism has done, for a
very long time to draw the distinction between sex and
gender and use that to understand both sex and gender

(16:13):
based oppression. That lens allowed people to to kind of
realize that, I mean, basically, if I am a trans woman,
I'm a trans woman already rather than like waiting to
become a trans woman. Um. And I don't personally experience

(16:34):
much in the way of body dysphoria dysmorphia, and so
I don't have a strong desire to quote unquote like
medically transition or surgically transition or whatever language you know
people want to use. But I have a very strong
desire to socially transition. And so when that became available
to me, when that was included under the umbrella of

(16:56):
trans it's like the umbrella of trans expanded to include me.
For a while, I identified as like a transvestite, um,
you know, which is not a word that people tend
to use right now. But I was like, oh, I'm
just a cross dresser, you know, it's like all of this.
When I'm like, oh, I was Assis boy, I was
like Assis boy where I took the name Margaret and
published books under the name Margaret, and like war Women's

(17:17):
clothing almost exclusively. Um, But but yeah, it kind of
expanded to include me, and I think that there's a
lot of people who that happened to. And any other
really big important thing is that it stopped being perceived
as monstrous by um a large trunk of society, and
now things have swung back the other way. And um,

(17:41):
you know, I feel a little bit like I'm waiting
in my castle for the pitchforks and torches to show
up outside these days, um, especially living rural like I do.
But you know, I don't know. That's how I you know,
and it's and it it leaves me in this funny
situation where I like, do I look back and perceive
my childhood as a girlhood, you know, or do I

(18:02):
perceive it perceive it as a boyhood or do I
just perceive it as a childhood. And the ways I
feel about that change different times. It helps that, you know. Um.
Sometimes I like, by the end of high school, like
my closest group of friends was just like the girls,
and it was like the girls and then me, I'm here,
you know, and I wasn't dating any of them. When
we'd sit around and paint her nails and like skip

(18:25):
Jim class to sit in the corner and talk about
goth bands or whatever, you know. And I'm still friends
with some of those people. One of my best friends
is still from that time. It was one of the
people who really encouraged me to come out. I remember
I was like thirty and I was like, oh, it
was too late. And someone I had known since I
was like thirteen was like, why is it too late?
And I'm like, I don't know, because no one would
believe me. And she's like does that matter? And I'm like,

(18:47):
I guess it doesn't, you know, And and now I'm
kind of rambling, um, but some people will believe me
and some people won't. And you know, it's like I
don't pass right, but I don't try to. You. Um,
it's possible that if I transition when I was younger,
I would have put more work into that. But as
it is, and then and then that's the the beautiful,

(19:10):
the horrible thing, right as you realize it's like no
one passes for under this feminine standards. You know, it's like, um,
this is feminine beauty standards hurt everybody, and so so
now it's just like, well, you know, I I walked
through the world and people perceive me largely as a
man in address UM. And that's fine. I mean it's
it's fine when it's fine, it's not fine when it's

(19:31):
not fine. But fortunately I'm also UM a scary punk,
so for the most part, people don't mess with me.
A lot of people say things behind my back, but
not to my face because I also often walk around
with a very large knife. That'll do it, so I'll
do it. I like it. I think that's a lesson

(19:53):
to be told. Yeah, yeah, I mean where it's legal, UM,
it is a useful visual indicator of like, hey, it's
not worth it. It's just not worth let's not start UM.
I love that. I love that conversation about being on
a spectrum. I think we talked about that a lot

(20:14):
on the show. When it comes to gender, it's not binary,
it is. It is a spectrum, and it is fluid,
and it should be. It doesn't make sense that it's
not UM, and the idea that it has to be
in order to fit a standard it's absurd. It is UM.
When you really kind of come down on the same
thing with love and relationships UM and understanding that this

(20:35):
is as fluid, And why wouldn't it be if it's emotion,
if it's uh not gender, but necessarily but like about
feelings and who you love who, why wouldn't it be
the person that you connect to? That makes the most
sense because at the very least it's honest, and then
the very most, it's happiness and that's something that we
should strive for an individual individual lives and just for happiness. Again, Yeah,

(20:58):
it has nothing to do with everybody else. Has everything
to do with who you are and coming out, uh
to whether it's with your gender, what whatever what it is,
or coming out being independent in their political stance. Like
that's even a big conversation. Um understanding that it's for
you and that at any point in time, things change,
circumstances change, events change, and whatever that might be, it

(21:22):
doesn't affect anyone else, So why should you be bothered
by That's such a bigger conversation. And again, yeah, this
goes back to what we were talking about with romance novels.
This is like this layout that's existed for years and
years and years, and it's not really helpful and though
people have accepted it, there's no reason to remain in
that habit I love because when you talk about what

(21:45):
you're going through and you're coming out and even what
that looks like for you coming out as trance, but
not only that, realizing the inner person of who you
are has always been there. So whether it's your political stance,
whether understanding feminism, whether it's calling yourself an anarchist, which
I want to come back to because I still need

(22:05):
an understanding of that for myself. Who understands the binary
liberal and conservative? Like that's what I know because my
parents throw it in my face often. But all this
is a platform for you like this. The reasons that
you are writing books, the reason that you were in
a band, the reason that you are in a podcast
kind of has everything to do with these foundations. Yes,

(22:28):
there was a question that I didn't reference as a question.
Can you kind of expound upon that? Yeah? When I
was younger and I was like, I want to do art,
and I was like what kind of art? And I
was like I don't know, And I was like, are
you any good at an? Even? No? And I'm like
what am I gonna do? You know? And I I tried.
I was like, I'm gonna learn how to paint and
I'm okay painting, but no one's gonna m that's not

(22:49):
my career path. And you know, and and writing more
than anything else, writing fiction was was something that was
more interested and I actually, when I was youngest roy
poetry and I aspired to become good enough to go
back to writing poetry. But um, I don't write much
of it right now. But and so I started kind of, Yeah,
I like sorted doing all of these things and slowly

(23:10):
expanding the list of things that I do, the number
of plates I have spend in unfortunately, and usually what
I do is if I have something I want to say,
I think about what the best medium to say that is,
and then go out and try and say it in
that way. You know, there's certain things, certain ideas that
come across in different ways better. And for example, I
think that music is a really good way to put

(23:31):
someone in an emotional space or put yourself in an
emotional space. It's not a particularly good way to be pedantic.
It's not a very good way to teach someone something.
It's not a very good way to um express complex
political ideas or interpersonal ideas. However, it's not terrible at
those things. I think that Riot Girl has shown us,
and anarcho punk and uh and hip hop and a

(23:54):
lot of different very direct forms of communication have come
through from music, right. But but overall, I tend to
use it when I have something sort of more emotional
to say, um, And then if I have something cult
cultural to say, I often write it in fiction about
like how can people interact with each other? Right, because

(24:15):
a lot of my political ideas they are a little
bit less about, like and here's how the legislative branch
or in my case, it would be like, here's how
the anarchist federation, you know, disseminates goods across the different
collectives that control the work around cooperatives of you know,
these areas or whatever. Right, Um, we should be like
the political or economic structure of anarchism, as is sort

(24:37):
of understood in the twentieth century at least context. But
I'm much more interested in for me to to use
anarchism as the example, because this is what I'm more
familiar with. Ways of relating to each other, ways of
creating cultures of consent and consensus is what's interesting to me.
So I like writing characters interacting with each other more

(24:58):
than I like writing nonfiction, because if I was writing nonfiction,
it would just be like, we should, um be consensual
in our relationships with each other, you know, And it's
much easier to just like draw that right and and
you can, and then you can get into the fun stuff,
like like what is a romance novel look like in
a you know, culture of consent? Where like, even if

(25:18):
it's a monogamous relationship, it's monogamous in the context of
polyamory as available to these characters, but they choose monogamy,
What does that look like? What does it look like
to consent to that? You know? Um? And in this case,
I'm actually literally quoting Ursula Lagwin is my probably my
main role model of an author, and actually wrote specifically
about that in this book called The Dispossessed about like,

(25:40):
you know, these characters who could absolutely it's even the
norm to be polyamorous, they choose to be committed to
each other and it it creates this type of romance
that you're not going to run across even though it's
a monogamous relationship, it doesn't it doesn't look like what
the monogamous relationships we get presented with are. So that's
why I like writing fiction, and then with podcasts, you know,

(26:03):
I mean it was different. I have one podcast called
Live Like the World's Dying, which is a preparedness podcast.
And and my stated goal here is to take preparedness
culture away from the right wing because this individualistic everyone
hiding their bunker and stockpile AMMO and food things is nonsensical.
It will get everyone killed, it won't stop the crisis

(26:23):
of the world, and it won't even help those individuals
live very long because unless all of them are surgeons
and have another one around, they're not going to be
able to do anything when their pent experts. And what
I want to be able to communicate to people is
that society is what creates safety. Uh. And society is
what allows us to live full and happy and free lives.

(26:44):
Right Because freedom, as I understand it, is not something
that exists in a vacuum. Freedom is a relationship between people.
Freedom is something that we give one another. Uh. And
So to be totally alone, I'm not free because I
can't do everything I want to do. All I can
do is try not to die if I'm just totally alone.
The only way in which freedom becomes a liberty is

(27:06):
if your rich as hell, because then you can hire
everyone to do everything for you, so you're still not
actually alone doing things. You're just making all the decisions
yourself anyway. Okay, so that's so if I want to
get across that idea, apparently what I do is come
out of your podcast and say it. But but in
general what I do is, you know, I run this
podcast where I interview people about compost or I interview

(27:27):
people about you know, community gardens or you know, activist
modes that are working for them or whatever. And then
the other one that I do is called cool People
Who Did Cool Stuff. And it's how I try to
show people that we can have agency and that we can,
you know, because we keep getting told by society that
we don't have agency, that we can't do what we want.

(27:50):
We have to appeal to other people in power to
get things done. And and that is my work um
as an anarchist, but even in responsibility and freedom as
the two sort of core concepts, and so my work
is to try to help people understand we can have agency.
And here all these people in the past who have

(28:11):
taken agency over bad situations and they don't always win,
right Unfortunately, they often don't win. But but winning and
losing is a really weird concept when we're mortal, because like,
I don't know the difference between dying trying to make
things better or dying in a world that didn't make
things better. I'm still dying, you know, Like, like we

(28:34):
can't have dying be a massive negative in our lives
because we're stuck with it. You know that's going to happen.
And and so I just I wanna so if I
want to try and get across this concept of agency,
that is the other format I use for it. And
I don't know, I just love all of the different
way all of these different formats work, and I don't

(28:55):
do all of them right. There's so many good ideas
that are just not you know, I I probably won't
write a like I do write nonfiction. Actually, now that
I say that, I like, as soon as I started
saying that, I'm like, no, but I want to do
everything I was gonna say, you do a lot of things.
I get released. I was watching I was rewatching The Hobbit,
which I like more than almost anyone I know, and

(29:18):
and I was just like thinking about the elves being
like man if I was an elf. I'd be like,
for twenty years, I'm just gonna be a blacksmith. I'm
just gonna make swords for twenty years. Okay, that's done,
all right. Now I'm gonna write poetry for twenty years,
and like now I'm gonna go and like do childcare
for my friends for twenty you know, just specializing all
these different things. Anyway, that's okay. Yeah, I love it.

(29:42):
I get it. Maantha has already mentioned it, You've alluded
to it a lot. Can you explain what being an
anarchist is and uh, what you think that has to

(30:04):
do with feminism? Sure? Um, so I understand. Anarchism is
two separate things that are related, and one is a
sort of ideological movement that came out of European socialism. Um,
and it it actually predates Marxism and a lot of
the other very specific is ms within socialism. It was
basically people who were like, well, the state and capitalism

(30:25):
are bad. They're both oppressive forces, and we should do
without them and we should do things as communities. And
then the sort of argue the like sub sects that
come up within that ideological position that was originally kind
of mid nineteenth century eighteen forties or so, there's like
mutualist anarchism, which still uses markets and banks, but they're

(30:45):
like people's banks and there's no ability to maintain capital
and wield it against other people versus like a communalist
or a communist anarchism, which are not the same but
are like much more what people imagine of like leftism,
where we all that kind of get together and share um.
And it was positioned within the sort of ideological framework

(31:06):
of socialism, which is the general overall capitalist shouldn't run
everything and overall like society should run things instead, right,
like the who owns the means of production is the
big thing, Like who owns the factories is that the
people who own the factories? Is that the workers who
own the factories, et cetera. UM. And so that is

(31:27):
the anarchist sort of tradition that I come from, and
anarchists have are kind of the most I would I
would claim probably the most misunderstood of these different positions,
because originally we kind of had this the stereotype of
where the people who like throw bombs and kill kings. UM.
I am not embarrassed the fact that we used to

(31:47):
kill kings. Someone says that they're in charge of everyone else,
and someone says, no, you're not. Um. That's okay by me, right,
But you know that if that is people have this
perception of anarchists as only the people who are trying
to destroy the exist instant rather than create a society
based on equality, based on non hierarchy. And so the

(32:09):
largest example of an anarchist society that is the most
that we have the most information about, at least as
a consciously anarchist society was during the Spanish Civil War
in the nineteen thirties, when anarchists were the majority, I
believe of the labor movement in Spain. And so when
this war broke out, when Franco invaded and tried to

(32:30):
declare fascism within um and had tried to do a coup,
basically anarchists were on the front lines and prevented that
from happening. And then in that lack of the republic
having state power, the anarchists started running everything and they
had a lot of organizations in places. The other misconception
that people have about anarchism, so anarchism is not anti organization,

(32:53):
and anarchism is purely anti authoritarian organization where someone tells
you what to do in a way that you don't
have a say over UM. And they still create structures
that that, but their bottom up structures instead of top
down structures. So a lot of anarchists talk about federations
and so goods can still be transported everywhere, and you know,

(33:14):
things can be made and things can be done in
society can function UM. I believe within this type of
framework UM. And one of the other main distinctions of
it is that anarchists don't tend to separate the means
from the ends. So they so theoretically a state communist
or a communist Marxist communist and Marxist Leninist, etcetera, believe

(33:36):
in the creation of communism, which is a society without
a state, but they create a state or take the
state in order to do that. Anarchists believe that the
means and the ends are inseparable, and this is where
it ties into feminism. For me well one, anarchist feminism
has been a large part of the feminist movement throughout history,
and feminism has been a large part of the anarchist movement.

(33:58):
But this idea that means in the ends are inseparable. Uh,
you know the idea of like. Our goal is to
give more people more agency over their own lives. Our
goal is to teach consent and teach ways of relating
to each other as equals um whether or not even
like we win and we get an anarchist society. Our

(34:18):
goal is to infuse our interpersonal relationships with this sense
of equality. Uh. And agency and so and and so
direct action is often a major focus of anarchism and
so and actually a thing that came up in my research.
I researched the Jain Collective, who are amazing and they
mostly come from a socialist position, and that allowed them

(34:39):
to think, we don't care about legality, We're going to
get this done. And you know, Jaine Collective, I presume
most people are aware, but as a as an underground
abortion provider in Chicago, that did an amazing work. I
later discovered that anarchists in Germany in the nineteen twenties
and thirties ran three hundred different illegal abortion providers um

(35:02):
all across Germany. And they didn't do it in the
name of anarchism. It's just that this feminist movement that
was providing abortion came out of the anarchist organizing tradition.
Um And because they had that we're good at illegal stuff,
we care about agency, we care about all of these things.
They set up three hundred clinics. I'm going to have

(35:24):
my numbers fuzzy when I say this stuff. I don't
have my notes in front of me. Please don't quote
me direct what you all. But I mean, like anyone
listening at home, you know, don't be like exactly three,
you know. Um And and I read that, and I
was just so excited, and I want to know more
about that, you know. And I only know the like
cliffs nose versions because well because there's a lot of

(35:45):
really old books that I have to read in order
I can order to really understand it. Yeah. So and
so that's what it is for me. You know, there's
it's a thing that means a lot of different things
to different people. Oh but at the very beginning said
it's two things. And one it's this specific ideaological trade
Asian and then to it's its own concept, which has
existed long before it's had a name. Um. And there's

(36:06):
a lot of people doing work, especially from non European backgrounds,
about Antarctic organizing that has very similar like means and ends,
but doesn't come from well this old dead white guy
with a beard said this, and instead are like our
traditions that are coming from North America or our traditions

(36:27):
that are coming from you know, West Africa or whatever,
like tie in very well to this, and this is
how we see things. You know. Yeah, that's I don't
know if that was a good one on one or not,
but that's that's where I'm coming from politically. Very good.
I love that because yeah, I don't, like I said,
the history is very fuzzy for me, because, like I said,
I grew up in North Georgia, where everything's very bonary anyway,

(36:50):
and when it comes to politics, either you're with us
or you aren't. Kind of conversations and having this level
of like, oh, anarchist has always been not a bad
word necessarily, but not necessarily good one either. So it's
kind of like it's it's you know, it's with the foreigners.
You just you gotta put it out there. It's not
it's not part of the US culture and especially Mountain culture.

(37:11):
That's from me. But like that's a lot of like
learning lessons of like, Okay, this is exactly where I
am in my standpoint. I didn't know what it was necessarily,
not necessarily like bombing kings, I'm not talking about that,
but in general, just like uh, finding out what it
is to be autonomous in understanding that as a group
we do things better the societal aspect of everything. Of course,

(37:33):
you know we're not gonna talk about communism and how
that does lie within the patriarchal ideals, but like what
I'm talking about in an understanding, I became a social
worker because I wanted to work for the collective. I
wanted to want to be one who did a macro
practice over a micro ideal. And that's a big debate

(37:54):
within social work when I was in social work. I
don't know if it's changed because it's been a minute
since I've been in school, but that was a big
debate about the macro micro of helping a community in
society and what does that look like and what did
social work began to be. It came out of a
macro practice in helping communities, That's where it came to,
and then it got you know, dissected into while I'll
be a therapist, which is not a bad thing, please understand.

(38:16):
I believe that helps as well a community when it's
done correctly. Um. But yeah, this like understanding, Like, oh okay,
I've been practicing this, this makes sense. Oh okay. When
we talk about feminism, especially when we talk about intersectional feminism,
which is where we are today, and it's shifted a lot.
When we talk about feminism, feminism from the origins of

(38:39):
the word to today has shifted greatly in a good way.
I hope, um as we are. You're right where we
have tracked backwards. As now we can at least differentiate
those who are bad, bad players when it comes to feminism,
such as terse uh circuits such as the Rawlings fan
base that sticks with her, um with her stupidity. I

(39:03):
like that outlet that. But I think there's a whole
level of conversation when we talk about politics and understanding
our platforms and growing together and what does feminism look like.
We had to revisit that often, um Andy, and I
honestly probably every year. So come back and have a
conversation of Okay, this is the things that we've learned,

(39:24):
This is what we can see in society, This is
what we know that is changing vastly with the Black
Lives Matter, uh, massagren nooir. You know, you have to
revamp that conversation about feminism. And I think as we
are going back to seeing the negativity towards the queer community,
the negativity towards the trans community, we have to come

(39:46):
back and revisit this conversation. What does feminism look like today?
So in your opinion, and this is a big question,
and I'm sorry for this, and this is how I do.
Do you think when you came out you're perspective of
feminism changed in a positive negative manner? As Part one B,

(40:08):
what do you see uh as a positive in feminism
today and as a negative in feminism today? So I'm
gonna answer the second part first, I think I think
that intersectionality is the main beautiful thing that is happening
to feminism, uh, you know, and having people understand the

(40:29):
way that well just literally how intersections work, and how
the issues that affect rich white women are very different
than the issues that affect rich black women, that are
very different from the issues that affect you know, poor
people of color, and and and it allows us to
hopefully be better to one another and to understand that
like instead of this, like that we're all fighting in

(40:52):
solidarity with each other rather than as a united mass, right,
because we are all coming into feminism with our own
own needs and our owns uh priorities. Um, but we
can stand together because we understand what we do have
in common and what we don't and how we can

(41:14):
you know, and how I can assume that we're like Okay,
for example, rov wait affects me, but it does not
affect me bodily, right, Um, I mean if it destroys
the right to privacy and it gets used to prevent
people from medically transitioning, yes, but like I I'm not
having an abortion anytime soon unless medical you know, unless
medical technology advances. Uh. And there's always that joke about

(41:37):
like wanting to be the first trans woman to get
an abortion, you know, just to to fist off everyone.
But and while abortion is more than a woman's issue
because it affects people who are not women bodily. You know,
it affects trans people's, certain intersects people, certain non binary people.
You know, it affects a lot of people right who
are not women. It also is gender based discrimination, and

(41:59):
that gender discrimination looks real similar to the people who
are telling me what I can do with my body,
and even if it wasn't something that affects most women,
affects me, right, And so being able to say, like
this matters to me, and like, I don't know, it's
just like finding these points of solidarity. I think that

(42:20):
this is like what intersectionality is is really good for
I think that especially now, and I think this is
a newer addition, we're starting to see class introduced to
it into this intersectionality as well, and I think that
that's vital. Um. I think one of the problems of
the old left is they reduced everything into class, right.
But but one of the problems with the sort of

(42:40):
essentially liberal feminism is that it cuts class out of
intersectionality sometimes. Um. I don't actually believe the average person
who identifies as a liberal does, but the sort of like, yeah,
the the larger, you know, there's such a difference between
like liberal politicians and liberals, right, um. And so I
think that the introduction of class is very important because

(43:03):
it's all related to power. It all comes back to
power as far as I'm concerned, and class is a
very strong indicator of power. But so is race, so
is ethnicity, so is gender, so is the sexual orientation.
So that there's so many other things that also relate
to power in terms of what I think feminism or

(43:33):
feminism is like misstepped or the things that are going badly. Fortunately,
I think the U S has like largely avoided this
because well because the right wing has a monopoly on
hating trans people in the United States, you know it,
because it became a culture war thing to not allow
anyone being I'm non binary, not allow anyone to be
trans or whatever within the United States, um along right

(43:56):
left lines. So by and large, I don't run across
feminis US who are like they them that's awful or whatever,
you know, or like you're not a real woman, You're
a you know, man in drag or whatever. I'm like,
I honestly don't whatever. I'm actually me my my pronounser
i um, you know, like, but in terms of how

(44:17):
society views me, like I'm finding the best possible, the
most useful description to provide for other people, you know.
But it is a problem I think with feminism internationally
and specifically in thew K right now. Uh, and it
it could creep in in the United States, and so
I really, um, I feel like I I try to,
you know, I think we'll kind of have to, but

(44:39):
we all try to kind of like keep that from
creeping in. Is is the turf thing. Is the idea
that feminism excludes trans people, which is just historically myopic.
You know, all of these things have all been related.
Even if you look at the history of understanding homosexuality,
you know, transness was not a distinct category for a
very long time. Um. Of course, the people who started

(45:01):
to distinguish it were some Germans who then the Nazis
game and burned all their books and killed the first
woman to medically transition. The famous book burning photos. Whenever
you see that famous photo of Nazis burning books, it
was the Institute for Sexual I don't have it off
the top of my head. Is Hirschfeld's institute where he
studied homosexuality and trans Nissin, you know, was one of

(45:24):
the first medical practitioners to say, like, hey, if you
allow trans people to live as their shows and identity,
everything is better and they are medically healthier, you know. Anyway,
I don't know, I'm rambling about that, but so so
I guess I would say that's like the advantages and disadvantages.
I think feminism is mostly just doing well and has it.
It has more it needs to do, It has more,

(45:46):
especially I think continuing especially along race lines. Um, there's
like way more of the feminism needs to do. But
what was the first of the two questions. I was
asking that since you transition came out, has anything changed
in your perspective of feminism? Yeah. It took me a
really long time to feel comfortable eyeing myself in conversations

(46:08):
about feminism. I spent a very long time and put
a lot of work into being like an ally right,
Like I used to write scenes and stuff that were
like feminism for men, you know, um, and and not
taking up conversational space was very important to me, and
so I like very much all of my attention was

(46:29):
focused outward towards like non feminism or towards particularly towards men,
to be like, hey, here's ways to be more feminist.
And so you know, there's like this outsider syndrome, right
that I have around it, and I actually really appreciate
the work that the folks like you do, I mean
even like inviting me here on this, you know, and um,

(46:51):
and the degree to which like so many you know,
SIS women and a fab people in general have this
this work they've done to be like no are you
talking about Like no, it's it's actually totally fine, you know.
And I remember the first time I was invited to
like in all women's full Moon circle, you know, and

(47:11):
and they were just like, hey, we're and I was
kind of their test case, right. They had like they
actually and actually I really respect them for this. They
had just split they were all SIS women like you know,
full Moon like ritual collective, right, and they they had
this hypothetical conversation about whether or not they should include
trans women, and it got so heated that it split

(47:33):
into two groups. And I really appreciate the people who
were like, this is so important to me that even
though it's a hypothetical, we will like stander a ground
around this, you know. And I felt a little bit
like recruited where they were like like come joined us,
you know, but like it was mostly just good, like yeah,

(47:55):
so yeah, I guess that's how my my my view
want to change this is literally like including myself in
it in a more direct way and then allow allowing
myself to because I think when you're an ally to
a movement, you can um promote the work of people
within that movement, but you generally don't try to like
shape it or direct it or whatever. You know. And
allowing myself to feel comfortable having a say is really

(48:20):
interesting and still something that I like, I still don't
totally know, and it helps that at the end of
the day, I'm like, well, I have to say about me,
right and my perspective. I'm really not trying and not.
Actually that's where it comes with intersectionality in a good way, right,
because I can't I can't speak to the experiences of
most women. I can speak to my experience, you know, um,
which is as a white trans woman, which is a

(48:42):
specific set of things. You know. Well, as we've been
discussing throughout this, you are so so busy. You're doing
so much, um just out of curiosity because we we
like to ask this, is there anything that you do
to kind of balance those things out, like self care wise,

(49:03):
how do you make sure that it's not too much? Well,
my idea of relaxing is doing projects. So mostly I
try to do projects that don't make any money. It's
one of the main ways I do it or like
I don't know, Like right now, I'm like trying to
help my friend is a single mom, like make their

(49:23):
watering system in their garden work so that they don't
have to work as much. And the gardening thing just
goes and it activates all the parts of my brain.
I like where I'm like puzzles and like playing. I
can't believe it's a part of my brain that loves plumbing.
But I lived in an off gride cabin for a
long time, so I you know, I like doing things
I'm vaguely good at. And so in terms of all

(49:46):
self care, I kind of gotta get drag kicking and
screaming into it. I like hiking. I like, you know,
my my truck is built out into a camper. My
dog is very needy because he's a puppy, and so
I gotta go on walks with him a lot. Yeah,
I don't know. I actually honestly need to get better
in self care. Um, I have too many plates spinning. Uh,
But sometimes the thing that seems fun is setting up

(50:07):
new plates to spin. So maybe my idea of self
care is is finishing projects right, because then they're done
and then you don't have them anymore. Um. And then
the other thing I did is I I require all
new hobbies to be physical instead of on the computer,
because everything I do for money is on a computer.

(50:28):
So all hobbies would working, gardening, anything like that. That
is a good tip. That's a good one. I like
it to unplug. Yes, we know you need to go
on and move on to the bigger and better projects
in the ten thousand places you've got going on. But
where can our listeners find you? Well, first of all,
this is not this is a bigger and better I

(50:50):
am so excited that you all have me on this show.
I'm like, I really think it's cool that what you
all do. But where can people find me? Can find
me on Twitter at Api kill Joy. You can find
me on Instagram at Margaret kill Joy. Instagram is like
mostly mean posting pictures of my dog or like instruments
I make, whereas Twitter as me pretending like I would
never fall into arguing about discourse on the internet, No, sir,

(51:13):
not me. And you can pre order my book from
a k Press. If you pre order it before September twenty,
you'll get an art print that is done by my
friend as the same person who did the cover art
and you can order that from a K Press or
a number of participating bookstores, including cooperatively run bookstores like
Firestorm Books in Asheville or Red Emma's Books in Baltimore.

(51:35):
Heading cooperatives are cool. Workers, worker cooperatives are awesome, and
you can find me on whatever you listen to this
podcast with. You can find me at cool people who
did cool stuff. And you can go back in time
and look up the Jane Collective episode in order to
listen to Samantha as well, and you can listen to
Live Like the World Is Dying, which is also on

(51:56):
your podcast app. Yes, thank you so much for being here.
It was such a delight. Please come back because there's
so I was like, oh, resonating with me my best
friend as well. I feel like we had three other
subjects that we need to tackle, Like I want to
talk about this, but I want to I can't talk
about the hobbit right now. Okay, oh, but but we
should sometimes. I would love to also prepared this. That

(52:18):
would be great. Okay, yes, well until that date. Thank
you so much for joining us. Come back anytime, listeners.
If you would like to contact us, you can. Our
email is Stuff in Your Mom Stuff and I Hurt
mea dot com. You can find us on Twitter at
mom Stuff Podcasts or on Instagram and Stuff I've Never
Told You. Thanks as always to our superroducer Christina, Thank you,
and thanks to you for listening so and never told
you Protection I Heart Radio from more podcast from my

(52:39):
Heart Radio. You can check out that heart Radio app,
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