Podcast appearances and mentions of evan urquhart

On this episode we're joined by Evan Urquhart. Evan covers anti-transgender propaganda and transgender news issues for Assigned Media (AssignedMedia.org), an organization he founded. He is also the community manager for Slate's comments section and is a freelance writer with many prominent bylines. And he's currently doing a Knight science writing fellowship at MIT.We interviewed Evan, who is transgender, on Trans Day of Visibility (March 31)Evan talked about why he started Assigned Media and the kind of stories it covers. He discussed covering news and writing personal essays. He also explained the kinds of things that mainstream media, like the New York Times, gets wrong when covering transgender issues and the kind of stories that are currently getting overlooked, with all the attention given to whether transgender women should play high school and college sports.Evan's salute: The Trans Journalist AssociationCoverage examples:Stories about the New York Times and its mistakeshttps://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/you-betrayed-us-azeen-parents-of-trans-youth-reeling-after-speaking-to-the-nytThank you as always for listening. Please send us feedback to journalismsalute@gmail.com Visit our website: thejournalismsalute.org Mark's website (MarkSimonmedia.com)Tweet us at @journalismpod and Bluesky at @marksimon.bsky.socialSubscribe to our newsletter– journalismsalute.substack.com

Thanks to Jules Gill-Peterson (jgillpeterson.com) and Julia Serano (patreon.com/juliaserano) for help researching this episode and Evan Urquhart, Parker Molloy and Katelyn Burns for fact-checking!Support us:Hear bonus episodes on PatreonDonate on PayPalGet Maintenance Phase T-shirts, stickers and moreWatch Aubrey's documentaryBuy Aubrey's bookListen to Mike's other podcastLinks!Origins of "Social Contagion" and "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria"The "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria" Controversy at AACAP's Annual MeetingMethodological Critique Of The Cass ReviewMethodological Critique of Littman (2018) Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoriaA critical commentary on ‘rapid-onset gender dysphoria'.Foundations Of The Contemporary Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience NetworkRapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria: Parent Reports on 1,655 Possible CasesOpinion: England's Anti-Trans Cass Review Is Politics Disguised As ScienceTavistock v BellActually Nothing: The Non-Starter Non-Story of the WPATH FilesAs anti-trans legislation proliferates in 2024, community fears erasure from public viewStates Passed a Record Number of Transgender Laws. Here's What They Say.Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!Support the Show.

Eris Young is author of the go-to book on everything non-binary. They break down the basics of the gender binary, painting a more expansive, inclusive, and accurate picture of human identity. What is it like to be nonbinary? What challenges do people face? What about healthcare for nonbinary folks? All this and more, as we talk to Eris Young about their book, They/Them/Their: A Guide to Nonbinary and Genderqueer Identities. About the Guest Eris Young is a queer, transgender writer of fiction and nonfiction. Their books They/Them/Their: A guide to nonbinary and genderqueer identities (2019) and Ace Voices: What it means to be asexual, aromantic, demi or gray-ace (2022), are published by Jessica Kingsley. They were the writer-in-residence at Lighthouse, Edinburgh's radical bookshop, from 2019 to 2022, in 2020 received a Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award for fiction, and are a 2023 IPSE Freelancer Award finalist, in the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion category. Transcript ERIS YOUNG: When you step away from the norm in any way, it's going to influence the way people interface with you, the way people treat you, the assumptions they make about you when they see you. I think it just made my childhood that much more complicated. BLAIR HODGES: That's Eris Young, and the norm they stepped away from in middle school that caused some difficulty was the gender binary—the idea that there are two discrete genders, boy and girl, man and woman, end of story. Today there's a growing chorus of scientists, biologists, psychologists, and other specialists who are making it clearer than ever that the gender binary doesn't capture the diversity of human experiences. This includes trans people and all who don't fall so neatly into one category or another. In this episode, Eris Young joins us to talk about their book, They/Them/Their: A Guide to Nonbinary and Genderqueer Identities. There's no one right way to be a guy or a girl, or someone else entirely. I'm Blair Hodges, and this is Family Proclamations. REACHING THE AUDIENCE (01:31) BLAIR HODGES: Eris Young, welcome to Family Proclamations. It's great to have you on the show. ERIS YOUNG: Thanks for having me, Blair. I'm really happy to be here. BLAIR HODGES: We're talking about your book, They/Them/Their. These are pronouns obviously, and they are pronouns you use. Your introduction to this book starts off with a glossary of sixteen terms. But you manage to actually keep it interesting! We'll talk about those terms, but I think it says a lot that you had to spend time right off the bat with direct definitions. Talk a little bit about that decision for the book. ERIS YOUNG: It is a bit odd. You don't often start off with a dictionary or a glossary. Because of the nature of the project and when it came out—this book came out in 2019 and I started writing it around 2017—and at that time we were at the very beginning of our understanding, at least in the Anglophone West, of nonbinary and genderqueer identities and trans identity in the mainstream. For the book I wanted to get into the nitty gritty. I wanted to go deep as quickly as possible, but it meant there was a lot of explaining I had to do in a short space of time in order to be able to get past that basic stuff. I'll talk a little bit later how I feel about glossaries and dictionaries and how that's changed over time. It's very much a product of where I was at and where we as a society were at when the book was written. BLAIR HODGES: You say your target audience is people who want to understand but might not have the means yet. This isn't necessarily for people that have already been in all the online discussions about nonbinary and different gender identities, but for people trying to wrap their minds around it. It can be a little intimidating for people that aren't used to those discussions in those spaces, and you identify some of reasons. It might feel like people are afraid of making a mistake so they're afraid to ask questions, or they might feel like they're virtue signaling if they're going overboard and trying to show how knowledgeable they are. Tell me a little bit more about those dynamics because your target audience was for interested and well-meaning people that just want to learn more. ERIS YOUNG: It is funny how much has changed in the time since I wrote the book. It's only been a couple of years, so when I first wrote it I was very much—and I think that's the strength of the book—I was really doing what I could to reach as many people as possible. That meant I had to do a little bit of explaining and a little bit of making sure my readers were on the same page as me from the very beginning. I've seen the book described as “accessible.” I've had a lot of cis people come up to me and enthuse about the way they were able to use the book to get to know the nonbinary people in their life, or to make their workplace more inclusive. I really value having been able to do that for people. BLAIR HODGES: You mentioned cisgender folks. I'm cisgender. For people who aren't familiar with the terminology, that means my gender identity aligns with the sex I was assigned at birth, the assumptions people made based on what my body looked like back then. I fit into a typical male identity and my body aligns with that. The term “cis” is basically trying to get people to think about how cisgender itself is also an identity. To be nonbinary is an identity in the same way being cisgender is an identity, and it's trying to avoid hierarchies of comparison of better than or less than. It seems to serve an equalizing purpose. ERIS YOUNG: It's absolutely an equalizer, and it's absolutely a way of challenging this otherness. Trans and gender non-conforming people, we tend to get placed into this "other" category, but really it's about repositioning cis and trans as categories of being on an equal footing with each other. ERIS GETS PERSONAL (05:54) BLAIR HODGES: We'll expand on definitions as we go, but let's start here with more about your own personal biography. This book explores your own experiences. You're very personal here. You talk about what it was like growing up. You say you realized as a young child there was something different, or something uncomfortable maybe about how you were encouraged to act and dress and speak and play as a child. Tell people a little bit about how that felt, about how you were. ERIS YOUNG: This is something I've thought about a lot over the years. I think in comparison to a lot of genderqueer and nonbinary people I was fairly lucky. My parents are very liberal in the sense of being quite flexible. They weren't very prescriptive. I did karate. I did art lessons. I managed to avoid a lot of the gendered activities—not to say I was very good at karate or art! I dodged a bullet a lot of people in my position don't always manage to avoid, so I'm very grateful to my parents for that. When I was a little kid, especially an adolescent and in high school, I did feel different. This has to do with my sexuality, my gender, my neurodivergent stuff going on. There were a lot of times when if the adults in my life had had the opportunity to read a book or watch a TV program about transgender or about nonbinary identity, that would have helped me a lot. This is what I'm trying to give to the nonbinary children, the trans children of the people reading my book. I don't think it's going to make a huge difference, but I have had quite a few parents reach out to me, and I've had some intense emotional conversations with parents who, as you say, they're really well-meaning and they're trying to understand, but they've been taught their whole lives gender and sex work a certain way. They're finding it difficult to try and engage while trying not to hurt the nonbinary or trans person in their life. PARENTAL APPROACHES (08:20) BLAIR HODGES: That's right. There are a lot of different reactions parents can have, coming from a lot of different places. Some people might have very rigid ideas about sex and gender being inflexible, and gender assigned at birth is paramount, and so any kind of deviation from that is uncomfortable, or even evil or whatever to them. Then you have people who are more open to it but might see social discrimination and might worry for their kids if they're nonbinary or trans, and they worry about discrimination kids would face. Or maybe even the dreams a parent has for their kids, where in theory they're alright with trans identities or nonbinary identities, but they also have built this story of who their kid was going to be and then they have to let go of that story. I think parental anxiety can come from a lot of different directions and it's not limited to "conservative" or traditionalist, anti-trans feelings, but can also come from people who are open and believe and accept trans identities as well. ERIS YOUNG: I think so much of parenthood and family is—you know, we're so close to it. For some people family and parenthood is the most fundamental and personal thing in their life. That means ego plays into it a lot, whether we want it to or not. I see this talking to a lot of asexual and aromantic people as well. We'll have parents who are good, supportive, loving parents, but when they encounter something that disrupts their own ideas of what their family should look like, it can cause a lot of conflict. Something I'm really hoping for, an idea that makes me quite emotional that I'm hoping for the future, is I'd like to see more parents approach their child's gender journey as not a challenge to them as a parent or as not an obstacle to their idea of their child's happy and stable future. Instead, I'd like to see parents approaching their child's gender exploration and potential transition as an adventure you're going on together as a family. I think for a lot of people this practically isn't possible because society right now makes it hard to be trans or nonbinary or genderqueer. I'm hoping we can have incremental social change, such that in ten or twenty or fifty years we can celebrate it when our children decide they're something other than they were assigned at birth. I think that's a beautiful potential future. I'd like to work towards that. SOCIAL PRESSURES (11:23) BLAIRHODGES: In the book you also talk about some of the ways you felt anxiety, even though your parents were generally supportive and, it seems, flexible and open to different things. You also felt anxiety around public restrooms or different social situations. What were the pressures? Did you feel pressure to conform to the gender binary that you had to resist? What did that pressure look like? ERIS YOUNG: No matter who you are, there's a lot of pressure on you to conform to the sex assignment you were given at birth. Restrooms is a thing. We talk about it a lot. I still have to navigate that, although nowadays when you're an adult you can get away with pretty much anything by walking in and looking like you know what you're doing. But as a kid I was—I don't want to say a little weirdo, but I was quite a shy child. [laughter] I was a nervous little kid. Not really knowing anything about the community that I would later enter, it added this extra layer of complication. I had a good childhood, but I was a funny little guy. I've definitely had some anxiety throughout my life, a lot to do with being neurodivergent. What did it really look like? It kind of really started to come to the fore when I was in middle and high school, so in my early to mid-teens in California, in Orange County. We didn't have strict dress codes or anything. I was dressing in boy's clothes from high school. I think it more influenced the way people treated me and looked at me. When you step away from the norm in any way, it's going to influence the way people interface with you, the way people treat you, the assumptions they make about you when they see you. I think it just made my childhood that much more complicated. BLAIR HODGES: This speaks to the idea of nonbinary people being thought of as egocentric or self-obsessed in presentation and stuff, and what interests me about you is you were not like that. It seems like you didn't want attention. And you also needed to express your gender identity in a way that made you feel comfortable in your body and in yourself. But you weren't going for attention. It seems like if anything, you wanted to not get extra attention. ERIS YOUNG: It's funny because that is the stereotype, isn't it? Pretty much all of the trans and gender non-conforming people I know, myself included, we're just trying to live our lives and because we're now able to be visible and open in a way we never were before, going from invisible to visible is now being transformed into this perception of us being attention-seeking. When you look at the ways some cis people act out and perform their gender, like don't even get me started! It's very funny we do get painted with this paintbrush and it all has to do with visibility and change. It's not that we're visible or trying to be obnoxious about it, it's that we exist and our existence challenges the status quo and makes people think about things they haven't had to think about before. BIOLOGICAL SEX AND GENDER (15:12) BLAIR HODGES: Your book also drills down on gender, sex, and the binary. For people who aren't familiar with this way of thinking about sex and gender your explanation is really helpful. The most common understanding of sex and gender is a binary understanding. The idea is gender is determined by a person's physical body parts, their body morphology, maybe chromosomes, or whatever. That's also supposed to determine sexual orientation as well. Gender identity, sexual orientation, and sex are all thought to be one singular thing. In your book you talk about how humans are loosely a “sexually dimorphic” species. There is a general view of a sex male, a sex female, and so it's easy to understand how we've arrived at these assumptions about sex and gender. But you complicate that for us. Talk about why that binary understanding is problematic. ERIS YOUNG: This is a fun question with a lot of deep potential. One of the things that happened for me, while I was writing They/Them/Their the more research I did, the more it complicated that understanding. I was a twenty-year-old starting to write this book and I approached it with an understanding of: There is biological sex and some people feel they are not whatever they were assigned at birth. In reality, the more you look at it and the more research you do, and the more you look at history and actually biology, that rigid, contiguous binary we've constructed and we've put on this pedestal in our society, it starts to crumble really quickly. It kind of broke my brain and put it back together, and that's part of why I'm so pleased I was able to write this book when I did because it made a lot of things make much more sense to me very quickly. For example, I'm picturing three boxes with arrows between them, and you've got biological sex equals gender equals sexuality. Well, a good hundred years ago we started to disrupt this idea of gender equals sexuality. There are all sorts of different kinds of historical categorizations of homosexual people—as inverts, hermaphrodites. These are the quite pathological words placed onto us or claimed by us at different times. We've pretty much disrupted that connection. We've also managed to start—with some setbacks, there's still backlash against homosexuality, but we're starting to be able to decouple this idea of biological sex equals gender. We've got trans people, we've got nonbinary people, all sorts of people who aren't cis. We're also starting to come to understand biological sex is not as much a scientific reality as we're taught to believe, or as some people would want us to believe. This was something revelatory for me as I was writing the book, is it turns out that intersex conditions—so people who are born with what we might call ambiguous genitalia, or secondary sex characteristics that develop differently from how we would expect them to based on that person's assigned sex, those ways of being, and there's actually dozens of different ways a person can be intersex—they're way, way, way more common than we're led to believe. I didn't know a person could be intersex. I didn't know that was a thing until my late teens. Mid to late teens. BLAIR HODGES: Me too. It may have even been my twenties. ERIS YOUNG: No one talks about it. The only way I was able to learn about it is through the trans community because historically trans and intersex communities have been allied and we share a lot of lived experiences, though we're not always overlapping Venn diagram circles. Intersex people exist and are around and we know them. It's not a marginal experience by any means. BLAIR HODGES: That's even on a chromosomal level, right? It's not the case that it's a simple XX, XY. There are different combinations. ERIS YOUNG: There are women who would present as cis women and who would never be seen as anything other than a cis woman who have a Y chromosome. THE BINARY IMPULSE TO CLOCK (20:30) BLAIR HODGES: Alright, so I think one of the reasons this can be hard for people to grasp is, I think humans in general need these shortcut ways to sum each other up. We want to be able to look at each other, we want visual cues, and just to be able to get a picture of who a person is. Perhaps even a lot of transgender folks, I think, want to present on one end of the binary or another. There's still a lot of social pressure or social expectations or social conditioning. To transition kind of happens on a scale, some people really want to transition in a way that helps them present as female, very female, feminine, femme. Other people want to present as masc, masculine, more male. But nonbinary folks don't always really feel comfortable at either end of that pole. Here's a quote from you: "A genderqueer person will most likely have been raised as either male or female, and most likely will have either a penis or vagina and attendant chromosomes and hormones, but will not feel that either of these labels suits them wholly. They might feel that both or neither of those labels applies." So even with many trans folks the binary is strong, and we have genderqueer or nonbinary folks that challenged that polarity. ERIS YOUNG: That's why we're here, isn't it? We do like categories. We like binaries. As people, we like to be able to make quick assumptions. I don't know if that's an inherent thing for human brains, or if it's something we're taught, but it does take a lot of work to get beyond. For me, I had to do a lot of thinking, a lot of research, a lot of writing and talking to people. I had to be on Tumblr for quite a long time before I could get my brain out of these rigid categories I had been thinking in. In a way that's a privilege, but the more you do it, it's a skill. It's critical thinking. This way of being able to question the categories you're given. As a nonbinary person, I'm quite grateful I'm able to exist in between. I feel like it gives me a lot of freedom to play, to question, to challenge. BLAIR HODGES: I think the more nonbinary and genderqueer folks we get to know, the more automatic it can become. I think even with pronouns. I have a coworker, they/them pronouns, and they're the second person I've spent a lot of time with. It took a little while to be able to automatically think—instead of “translating” it, instead of looking at them and having to decide to use their preferred pronoun—to it becoming automatic. I also found that using they/them more generally helped do that as well. Referring to people as they/them more broadly. Familiarity helps a lot, but also it can be challenging because we don't necessarily know we're running into people who might be nonbinary all the time. As you say in the book, it's hard to even get estimates of how many people identify as nonbinary. That's part of the challenge. ERIS YOUNG: I agree. That's one of the problems. That's why it's so hard to be genderqueer or nonbinary, or one of the reasons is a lot of our social systems are built around these very rigid categories. When you break them, you stop being intelligible to the system you exist in. If I am nonbinary, but I have to choose M or F on a form, I get erased as a person. BLAIR HODGES: That's right. You're facing this on forms, you're facing this as people are interacting with you, and from my perspective as a cisgendered person encountering a nonbinary person, my impulse has been to think, “What are they really?” Basically still thinking in terms of what gender they were assigned at birth and then triangulating from that. So I think people are tempted to ask invasive questions about that. It's not my business what gender you or anyone else was assigned at birth, and the more I've been familiar with actual nonbinary folks and hanging out with them, the less that impulse exists to try to see them initially as "What are they really?" Or where's their transness? Where are they transitioning away from, instead of just seeing them as they are. ERIS YOUNG: When you were taught that binary gender is the only thing, your brain is naturally going to go and try and fit the person you're talking to into one or the other category. The only way to do it, the easiest way, is to get to know people and talk to people, as you say. BLAIR HODGES: Do you have to resist that, too? Does the impulse I'm talking about sound familiar to you? When you see someone and as they present your brain starts to automatically do this processing of what their gender identity is. Because we're in such a cisgender-heavy society, it seems that would be a default. I'm just guessing. I'm interested in your thoughts, maybe even for genderqueer folks, that they might have that same kind of impulse. What do you think? ERIS YOUNG: We're subject to the same social conditioning everyone else is. It's different from individual to individual, but I had to do a lot of, I guess you would call it unlearning, as I was writing the book and as I was getting to know myself. I had to let go of all those impulses. I can't even say I did let go of them because it's an ongoing process. I had to do a lot of unlearning and I have a lot of these harmful or unproductive instincts of trying to once I've clocked someone, my brain automatically wants me to try and wonder their sex assignment at birth. It's quite a harmful instinct and a hard one to get rid of. I have managed to get rid of that instinct by being myself and being with other people in my community. I also wanted to loop back to the instinct of thinking what is the person's sex assignment at birth. That instinct to try and wonder about a person's sex assignment at birth, a lot of that comes from, or at least I think it comes from the way our society as a whole is really obsessed with bodies and specifically with categorizing bodies and medicalizing bodies and pathologizing difference. This is an instinct that exists on a lot of different levels, most often in the medical system, but it permeates throughout society. It feels like a very Western, very Anglophone instinct to seek some kind of essential truth about a person. I use that phrase “essential truth” not on its face value, but what we're seeking is what we're taught to think as the truth of a person, when in reality the truth of a person doesn't have to have anything to do with what's in their pants. I think there's this deep historical process that's kind of still ongoing, that contributes to this instinct we have to clock people. IGNORING VERSUS EMBRACING (28:24) BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, I find myself in such a strange position about it, because there's this weird tension of, it shouldn't matter all that much, but it also should matter because I also want to support folks, especially marginalized folks. I want to understand their experiences. There are legal issues, social pressures. I would shy away from a “gender blindness,” I guess. Or a way of erasing gender identity. ERIS YOUNG: Right. I was at university for undergrad in mid-2010s, I guess, I don't know. There was a lot of discourse around, can you be race blind? Can you be post-racial? I mean, no, because you're a person who exists now. Regardless of whether biological sex or gender or even race, regardless of whether those things are actual "scientific realities," they affect the lived experience of real life people today. It's not possible to be gender blind. I think you're right to shy away from that impulse because I don't think it's necessarily a productive one. That's kind of like saying, "Oh, can't we all just get along?" when you're talking about social inequality. At the same time, I don't want to be gender blind. I want to celebrate people's genders. I want to celebrate a trans woman's ability to joyfully embrace femininity and womanhood. I want to celebrate my own in-betweenness and my own playful way I live my gender. I think there is a well-meaning impulse to "not see gender." I don't think that's necessarily the most productive thing to do, because rather I think we should be trying to celebrate difference. BLAIR HODGES: I think the idea of ignoring it is probably coming from a place of privilege. What it really means is I'm not comfortable with it and so let's just not talk about it-- ERIS YOUNG: I think you've hit the nail on the head. LANGUAGE NERD (30:49) BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, when other people don't have that luxury of ignoring it. Okay, so Eris you're also kind of a language nerd. You have a chapter in here about your linguistics I wanted to talk about, because this is a huge consideration. Language itself can be one of the biggest obstacles to social and legal acceptance of nonbinary and genderqueer identities. Let's talk a little bit about that, including the ways different languages are structured. Sometimes gender is literally baked into language. ERIS YOUNG: When I wrote the book, my publisher sent me a list of topics they wanted to cover and I think pronouns were on the list. But then I rubbed my hands together like, "Something about language, you say?" [laughter] I am a big language nerd. Any chance I get to talk about it I will take. We've had the pronouns debate. I think we're coming to the end of that debate, maybe? I guess my political instinct would be, can we stop talking about pronouns and start talking about suicide statistics? Obviously we can talk about both. But I think this "debate" around, "Oh, is it okay to use they/them pronouns?" Like, whatever. But language does have a huge effect on our lived realities. Anyone who's studied any other languages knows this can be totally different depending on what language you're speaking. Your ability to maintain your own autonomy when it comes to gender presentation—what does it mean for someone to be genderqueer or nonbinary in a language like Spanish, where if you speak about someone else you basically have to assign them a binary gender? That was the kind of question I had been trying to get at. There's other languages like Japanese, for example, and obviously there are caveats here because Japanese society—I'm not an expert—but it's not a wonderful place to be trans or nonbinary or queer, but the language itself just taken in a vacuum, you are allowed to basically claim gender for yourself based on the personal pronouns you use because you refer to yourself with a gender. You can use different forms of the word "I" based on how you see your own gender. I haven't studied it in a while, but it's broadly gendered. That's something you can exercise autonomy in. I could use boku if I wanted to be slightly more masculine, but not as masculine as saying ore, for example. BLAIR HODGES: That's interesting because these Japanese words could be seen as over-gendering things, but it also gives people the opportunity to play with language or to identify themselves in their gender identity more on the fly and more subtly than having to say, "My gender pronouns are this." You can just refer to yourself. ERIS YOUNG: You can signal to people on the fly. BLAIR HODGES: If I was saying “I'm glad to meet you,” I could say that in a way that says “I being a cis person…” They would look at me and what I look like and I can give them gender clues just by saying, "I'm glad to meet you”? ERIS YOUNG: It comes down to a part of gender presentation. One of the people I spoke to in writing They/Them/Their is Japanese and I asked them what their pronouns were, and they use they/them in English and boku in Japanese. Depending on the language you're speaking, the way language shapes gender experience is different. I think a lot of the ways we ourselves use language is so gendered. There's a lot of ways, at least in English, a person is able to signal their own gender in the language they use. BLAIR HODGES: You talk about “natural gender” in language, which is the basic meaning of a word, like "woman," "man," and different languages have these natural gender words. And then there's “grammatical gender—all the ways gender is embedded in language arbitrarily. Like in Spanish, there's your ways of signaling male and femaleness and there's also, as you said, in Japanese this way of signaling gender associated to other words, and even in phrases you might use. And you say there are some “social convention” phrases that are more coded as masculine or feminine. I can't think of any examples, but I guess it might be like, let's say in English saying "holy cow" would be like, "Oh, that's kind of like a boy thing to say. Girls don't really say that." There's coded ways of even sending signals about your gender identity and phrases you use. ERIS YOUNG: You're absolutely right. When I'm saying I don't think we need to have the pronouns debate anymore, I mean I don't think we need to debate about whether it's grammatical anymore. PRONOUN GO ROUND (35:36) BLAIR HODGES: I guess even swearing in English. It used to be more so in the past, but it was not "ladylike" to use certain words. In English too. You mentioned the pronoun debate, I do think it's important to talk about why that is important. Why that does matter to people. There's a quote here I highlighted from the book: "The question at the heart of the pronoun debate is really fundamentally one about autonomy, the ability of a demographic, especially a marginalized one, to name itself and to claim agency or control over how it's referred to, and by extension treated." I think this is what makes some opponents and critics so uncomfortable with the pronoun debate. They don't want to give up control over defining other people. They perhaps feel it's some sort of indictment even of themselves. It's really a control issue and a dignity issue. You talk a little bit about that history too, because they/them/their for a singular, people say, "Oh, ‘they,' that's plural. It's not right to use that singularly." Your book is like, "Well, actually." [laughs] ERIS YOUNG: I do a bit of "well, actually." English has actually had neutral pronouns in it. Old English had them and various times throughout history. People may not know this, but language changes a lot over time. English has had neutral pronouns at various times. I think Shakespeare used them. Jane Austen used them. So to say it's ungrammatical and it's a newfangled thing is pretty disingenuous. BLAIR HODGES: People should note "they" as a singular pronoun actually is older than "you" as a singular pronoun. It was being used earlier than "you." Let's talk about neopronouns too. This is where I feel I have to resist being the old man on the porch shaking my fist at the youths, because when I start seeing all the differences, people might see pronouns like ze and xe and ve, I'm not even a hundred percent sure how to pronounce a lot of these, but so it's easy for me to be the old man on the porch. Give us some info about these newer pronouns. ERIS YOUNG: At the time I wrote the book, there were and still are people who use pronouns like ze/zir, ze/hir, which is a combination of him and her. They get conjugated, or they declined any other set of pronouns. But truth be told, I don't personally know many people that use neopronouns, and I wonder if that is because it's quite difficult to assert that. We're barely able to get people to not mis-gender us and to use they/them. BLAIR HODGES: Like you said, there was a learning curve in being able to learn how to use they/them/their in the way I can now. It's a bigger lift when we're completely unfamiliar with new pronouns. I see the utility of them. I think it's cool. I like how language changes to adapt to new realities. Maybe a hundred years from now someone will be like, "You didn't know? These pronouns have now carried the day." That'd be cool. But I feel that future would be a long way off. ERIS YOUNG: It does feel a long way off. I'll probably talk a little bit later about backlash we're experiencing, especially here in the UK, and I wonder if a lot of people who would otherwise be using neopronouns because they feel that most accurately reflects who they are, are just sort of like, "I can't fight with people anymore. I'll just use they/them." MISGENDERING MISTAKES (40:01) BLAIR HODGES: This speaks to a broader issue of the kind of fights people are willing to have, and the rights that are at the forefront at the moment. That's a political calculation, which also means some people get hurt in the meantime, and pain exists in the meantime. But there are priorities that are set and there are imbalances of power. People get to kind of decide, "Let's rally together. What are we going for right now?" Choices have to be made. I think that can be tricky, but it speaks to the fact that language is a power game. All of this is wrapped up in power. Not that everybody is even necessarily trying to exercise mean power over others, but sometimes we make mistakes. Now I'm looking for tips from you about how people can handle accidentally misgendering somebody, for example, what's a good approach when that happens? ERIS YOUNG: Going back to this idea of we're not really trying to be the center of attention, even just because being the center of attention is quite dangerous, the best advice is to approach the interaction with good faith, understand you may be hurting someone more than you personally can empathize with, and there are certain situations where it's no one's fault. I guess my advice would be if you accidentally misgender someone or deadname someone, you don't need to make a big deal out of it. Make sure the person knows you're sorry and you're trying, but you don't need to necessarily go, "Oh, God, I'm the worst! Oh no, I f*cked up so bad!" Don't make it about you, but also don't put them in the spotlight. You can correct yourself, say sorry, and then move on with the conversation. Maybe you can check in with that person later and say, "Are you okay?" We're all adults here and there are ways of doing it sensitively just as long as you're being as respectful as you can be. BLAIR HODGES: One thing I've been encouraged to resist is to say something like, "I hope you can be patient with me as I learn." Because again, that's making it about me and putting an obligation on that person to police their own feelings or to maybe even feel shame if they feel angry or upset about it. ERIS YOUNG: Because sometimes I can't be patient with someone. I just need to step away. That's a good point. BLAIR HODGES: I love this in your book where you talk about that, how does it feel to get misgendered? And you're like, "Well, it depends on the day. There are some days when I'm feeling fine and I see that as an annoyance and it's like, okay that's not really cool but I can move on." Then you can be in a different space at a different time when it hurts more. And it depends on your relationship to the person who's doing it, or the situation. There's no one way it's received when someone gets misgendered. It really depends. I liked what you said of just being subtle about it, of being straightforward, apologizing, and not making too big of a deal out of it either. That otherwise puts more labor on a nonbinary or nongender conforming person. ERIS YOUNG: I guess understand also you can apologize, and you should apologize, but the other person doesn't owe you forgiveness. BLAIR HODGES: And don't feel resentful if they don't. They have a whole backlog of experiences that your one comment one day can be added to. I think that's all about not making it about me again. I would be making it about me if I was like, "Well, they should forgive me and if they don't then that's a problem," or “they're a bad person,” or whatever. That would be centering myself. I've been working at not centering myself as much, especially coming from a more privileged position, being cis-het, being a white male. I'm perceived as the default or with all the privilege that brings. It's helpful to keep in mind that misgendering can be really hurtful, and other times it can just be annoying. I think being attuned to that is helpful. I want to remind people Eris Young is our guest and we're talking about the book They/Them/Their: A Guide to Nonbinary and Queer Identities. This is a great book. Eris, I'm so glad we're able to sit down and talk with you about it today. And we've got more stuff to cover.  NEGOTIATING UNITY IN THE COMMUNITY (44:28) BLAIR HODGES: I want to talk about the community aspect. It's Pride Month, by the way. Happy Pride, Eris! ERIS YOUNG: Happy Pride! BLAIR HODGES: Let's look at this acronym: LGBTQ. I've also seen it expanded to LGBTQIA+. There are different iterations of it. It didn't occur to me until pretty recently the way the acronym breaks down, the first few letters pertain more to sexual orientation, lesbian, gay, bi, and then we start to get to gender identity. Trans, queer, the T and Q, and I is intersex, A, asexuality, the plus means it can extend to pansexual and aromantic. There's all sorts of things. But it's interesting to me that it's not fully distinguishing between sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and so on. It's all kind of lumped together as these marginalized identities. What that means is the LGB part of it can be really binary and even transphobic as well, even though the letter T appears in the bigger acronym. Let's talk about the LGBTQ community, and how you address that in the book, and some of the nuances people miss who aren't really in those communities. ERIS YOUNG: LGBTQ+, etc. It's an umbrella term. It is an expression of a shared experience of marginalization in terms of sex, gender, and sexuality. Naturally that means it's not a monolith. There are always going to be conflicts within the community. What do I want to say about this? — BLAIR HODGES: It can be a touchy subject. The fact that you paused a little bit, what is that coming from? Just trying to organize your thoughts? Or are there some anxieties about unpacking this stuff? ERIS YOUNG: There definitely is a little bit of anxiety there in terms of, as you mentioned earlier, we're under a lot of pressure, especially right now, to present a unified front to the rest of the world. We have to act in solidarity with each other. The same people who are trying to take rights away from transgender people, if they succeed in five years, they'll be coming after gays and lesbians who only recently managed to secure any kind of real legal or social security. We all need to be acting in solidarity with each other, but that's not always possible. There is a lot of conflict. When you see LGB, and then you go T, and then you go Q, and queer sort of articulates a division within the community that I can see, which is you have assimilationist, usually LGB people, most often cis, and then you've got queer, trans, ace people who are more often likely, at least from my view, to be anti-assimilationist, who are more likely to want to reject the entire institution of marriage because of an understanding that marriage is a part of a heteronormative system. It can't be decoupled from that. I think there are divisions within the community and a lot of the communities I belong to, the genderqueer and trans communities, I do consider myself to be queer. I think that's a more capacious term a lot of us use to describe ourselves. I'm trans, and I'm also asexual. I'm a triple threat of anti-assimilationist queerness because those are the identities that don't really slot in easily into the existing system. There's been a lot of campaigning historically for gays and lesbians to be able to marry, though there is "marriage equality" in a lot of countries now, nonbinary people who don't have one or the other gender marker, often we are excluded from those so-called equal marriages. I think it's inherent to some identities, and obviously these identities don't have firm boundaries between them, but there's a lot of types of ways of being, of lived experience that don't have the luxury or the privilege of being able to assimilate. You see a lot of corporations getting involved with Pride now because the corporations have realized the gays have money now, and a lot of us don't have money yet. The T, that's the poorest subgroup within the LGBTQIA+. BLAIR HODGES: Economically speaking you can see lower incomes, more difficult job opportunities, education, violence committed against— ERIS YOUNG: —Housing, incarceration. BLAIR HODGES: I think there's been some temptation by old school LGB to throw that under the bus a little bit. They would say, I've heard this, "We fought for certain rights and we've got to protect those. We don't really get this other thing and don't feel obligated to it." They want to separate that out and even maybe display blatant transphobia. It's not the case that just because someone identifies as lesbian, gay, or bi they're going to be an ally of trans folks. That's just not a guarantee. ERIS YOUNG: I think that's something that at least I, maybe naively, have been quite surprised and disappointed at. I come in good faith to the community and then I find some people don't want me there. It can be quite frustrating. It undermines the solidarity we're going to need in order to survive the next ten, twenty, fifty years. It's quite disappointing to see. I do want to say at this point I think the handful of gays, lesbians, and “question mark” bisexuals—I think it's mainly cis gays and lesbians who are exhibiting transphobia. That's a very vocal, very limited minority. I think the vast majority of cis gays and lesbians are wholly supportive of the trans community and fully understanding our rights and our rights to dignity, health care, stability, security, they're all interconnected. I think most people within the community do understand that and are working alongside us. But there is a vocal and influential minority within the LGBTQ+ community working against full equality, the full equality of the umbrella as a whole. It's quite hard to see. BLAIR HODGES: These are folks who are going to get platformed, too. One of the dangers is there's a kind of extra credibility in the eyes of transphobic folks. ERIS YOUNG: “We have a gay we can wheel out who hates trans people, that means the whole community does.” BLAIR HODGES: Exactly. This happens with people who have detransitioned. A very small number of folks who transition and detransition in some way for any number of reasons, and then an even smaller subset of that then become spokespeople against trans rights and are platformed and given huge audiences. ERIS YOUNG: Simply because they are able to pander to that transphobic ideology. BLAIR HODGES: It's heartening to hear that solidarity continues, and is more prominent. Your book does a good job of talking about the necessary community building that has to happen if people are going to advance rights and protections. And celebrations too. It's not just about protection. It's also about celebration and embracing and acceptance and curiosity and exploring. That's important as well. ON MENTAL HEALTH (52:45) BLAIR HODGES: As your book talks about mental health issues, I think that's a good transition into that topic, your chapter on mental health is especially careful because some people believe identifying beyond the binary or outside of it, is itself a mental health problem. This has been pathologized even in scientific Enlightenment thinking, as scientists in the late 1800s are trying to classify things and start seeing nonbinary and trans identities as pathological. Talk about the trickiness of mental health. Because on the one hand, it's been pathologized in negative ways. On the other hand, mental health issues do exist within the trans and nonbinary communities, in part because of the pressures that surround it. Mental health is a real concern, but it can also be deployed in really negative ways. ERIS YOUNG: I think you pretty much said it. The mental health chapter in my book—that was one of the topics I knew from the beginning I wanted to talk about, because I wanted to know what was going on. I think that chapter for me was all about trying to pick apart where these negative mental health outcomes actually come from. On the surface we've got these two facts that seem to contradict each other. We have on the one hand documented, disproportionate experiences of mental illness within the trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer communities. On the other side you have this understanding—and this was intuitive for me—this understanding that there is nothing wrong with being trans or being nonbinary. It's not an illness, it's just another way of being in the world. I really wanted in while writing that chapter, to try and dig a little deeper and get at what was really going on. What I basically found was it's a combination of gender dysphoria and marginalization stress, which is this experience, this way of describing the negative mental health outcomes—anxiety, depression—that come when a person is living as a marginalized person. Any kind of minority might experience this. It's the stresses of dealing with microaggressions. The everyday stress of being misgendered, of feeling like you don't fit and that society isn't built for you. BLAIR HODGES: These are physical things that happen. You talk about blood pressure elevation, more stress hormones being released, which is hard on the body, and it impacts mental and physical health. When people feel these marginalized stressors it has physical impacts. As you said, if you were to set a group of nonbinary folks or trans folks and a group of cis het folks next to each other, you're going to see a disproportionate amount of marginalized folks with depression, anxiety, and other things. It would be easy to say those people are broken people and their gender identity issues are because they have mental problems, or they're depressed, or it's part of all that. Instead of saying there's nothing wrong with who they are, but what they experience causes these negative outcomes. That's a crucial distinction to make. ERIS YOUNG: It's a really crucial distinction, but it's also quite a pernicious assumption. I can easily see where it comes from. When you have someone whose existence challenges people in positions of power, I can see why it was very convenient for people in medical institutions to be able to say “It's an illness, look how depressed they are,” and just in that way sort of brush queers, trans people under the rug. ON MEDICAL APPROACHES (56:38) BLAIR HODGES: There's also a chapter here specifically about medical issues, which is another touchy subject. As you've already hinted at, there's some distrust between genderqueer folks, trans folks, and medical resources and medical practitioners because of a history of diagnosis, this history of assuming these identities are disorders, and a history of attempts to cure them. We think of conversion therapy today as a religiously grounded thing, and obviously there are religious groups still trying to practice it, but it also grew out of the medical industry and out of psychology. It wasn't just religious fundamentalists who wanted to fix gay people or trans people, but rather medical industry saying, "Is there a way we can fix this problem for them so their gender aligns with their sex?" That's a long history— ERIS YOUNG: So they reintegrate into society. BLAIR HODGES: Exactly. This is where it's tricky because medical advances have helped, with hormone blockers and helping people medically transition, whether it be through hormones, whether it be through surgical procedures, but behind all of that is a lot of baggage and ongoing distrust. ERIS YOUNG: I think trans people who decide they want to transition medically, whatever that means for them, are put in this contradictory position where you are forced to rely on a system that has consistently dehumanized and pathologized you and people like you. That can create a lot of trauma. It's like being in a position where someone has hurt you and you have to see that person every day. It can be quite harmful. That really does come down to this post-European enlightenment shift in mindset that made us start to see biological sex as a kind of scientific reality and to uphold that as the most important thing. It also comes down to the way we have this system of capitalism that exploded after the Industrial Revolution, and you had men and women's social roles become more and more divergent from each other. Women were increasingly relegated to the home and men were increasingly placed in positions of economic power that were now outside the home. What that meant was, for men in power, it was very convenient for them to use this new scientific knowledge to make claims about the people they wanted to exclude from power. Usually this was women, but it's been weaponized against trans people, colonized people, queer people, generally since that time. BLAIR HODGES: As though there's something inherently inferior about them. ERIS YOUNG: Inferior, broken, and somehow being unwilling or unable or refusing to conform to a very specific norm is a moral failing and an illness. BLAIR HODGES: And hey, we can fix it! Using science. ERIS YOUNG: That's why in the community we have these assimilationist and anti-assimilationist groups getting in conflict with each other, because society offers you a way to re-enter society. Come back to the bosom of society. All you have to do is promise not to challenge the people in power anymore. It's really tempting and I can see why people fall into that. BLAIR HODGES: That can even happen in the process of transitioning too. We're staring down the barrel of all these new laws people are trying to pass that prevent gender affirming medical care, especially for young people. It's at a critical time. The idea of puberty blockers is to prolong a time when a young person can come to terms with who they are. ERIS YOUNG: Just some breathing space. To get to know yourself a bit better. BLAIR HODGES: They want to be like, "That's too dangerous. Let's just cut that completely off and then they can decide when they're older." But that means a body has undergone changes it didn't necessarily have to to begin with. The medical community is offering options now for people to take more control over their identities and their presentation in ways that alleviate suicidality. This part fascinated me where you talked about, for example, a care provider you had who thought you were transitioning to male and was prescribing testosterone and was like, "Your levels aren't where they should be." You're like, "Oh, interesting," but you also felt like you couldn't say like, "They're where I want them to be." ERIS YOUNG: It puts you in this position of having to misrepresent yourself. I think this is not as common anymore. Here in the UK we do have gender identity clinics, for how much longer we'll have those I do not know, but I do know a few people I've spoken to have accessed those services. There are people who are being very open about their nonbinary identity and their desire to transition in a way that isn't strictly from one end of the pole to another. BLAIR HODGES: I'm pausing the interview for a quick second with an update because Eris's words about care being under threat were prescient. Since we recorded the interview months ago, the UK has paused the prescription of puberty blockers for minors, under the advice of a partisan report produced by Dr. Hilary Cass, who other reporters say has worked with anti-trans activist groups and conversion therapists. To get a better sense about why prescriptions are being paused, I suggest following independent reporters who've been covering these stories. Erin Reed and Evan Urquhart are two of my favorite resources to go to. I hope to cover more about these recent studies and these laws later on the show. Back to Eris Young. TRANSITION OPTIONS (1:02:30) BLAIR HODGES: Give us a sixty second snapshot of what the process generally looks like for a young person who, let's say from a very young age they've talked about not being a boy or a girl, or maybe they've talked about being a gender they weren't assigned at birth. What does the process look like to transition? There are many ways to transition, so just give us a snapshot of what people go through. ERIS YOUNG: It varies a lot between the US and the UK and from state to state, obviously, and country to country, region to region. I think rural trans people will experience, for example, using gender identity services in the UK a lot differently than someone who's based in a city. If they're very young they might be able to access puberty blockers. That would only be for a short period of time they would be prescribed. They are not generally prescribed longer than a few years from my understanding. That would just give them a little bit of breathing space, because generally at the point of access of the first point of entry into the gender identity medical system, that's the moment at which a child is able to declare there's something going on with me and I want to explore it in more depth. At the point of being prescribed puberty blockers, that would just give them a little bit of breathing room to talk to people, hopefully. I'm of two minds about speaking to a cis therapist about gender stuff, but explore the community, explore their options, think about what kind of gender presentation feels right for them, think long and hard about what kind of medical transition they might want to undergo or not undergo at all. Then after a few years, they would then in an ideal world access hormone replacement therapy, so either and/or testosterone or estrogen, while this whole time they'll be transitioning socially, ideally, if it's safe to do so, exploring different names, different pronouns. I actually don't know if this is the lived reality of people right now. I'm sure in very progressive cities it probably is. The reality I'm sure is much more difficult than I'm making it out to be. BLAIR HODGES: This is the impression I think opponents have, is this idea that it's super easy and these kids are being manipulated, or the word people use is “groomed.” This term that has been rightly used to talk about adults pressuring children into sexual situations or conversion therapy, but they're trying to use it as though these people are trying to brainwash kids into thinking they're different. ERIS YOUNG: That's the same kind of bullsh*t that was said about gay people back in the eighties or nineties. “They're grooming our children and making them gay.” No. No, we aren't. BLAIR HODGES: Opponents of gay marriage would say, “we can't have gay men in particular father children because what they really want to do is abuse kids” or whatever. We're seeing those exact same arguments play out here. For anyone who has spent any time with a kid who identifies as trans, good luck trying to convince them of something else. I can barely get my kid to brush his teeth every night. There's the claim that it's way too easy, that it's coercive, that kids aren't interested in this really. ERIS YOUNG: It's the reverse. It's the kids that are educating themselves and coming to this with clear eyes and letting go of the social programming they've had. The kids are so much more conversant with all of this stuff than I was at their age. They should be supported in that. BLAIR HODGES: The parents I see are involved. There's nervousness, there's anxiety, and fear and love and all kinds of emotions they're dealing with. It's not this simple process. Your book is helpful in laying out why these processes are necessary and helpful, and also some of the downsides. It's clear eyed about some changes that could improve the system, more patient-centered informed consent models, where medical professionals are laying out options and talking about drawbacks and talking about side effects and talking about possibilities. ERIS YOUNG: I think the biggest change that needs to happen within the medical community is to understand or to acknowledge trans people are the experts on their own lived experience and are capable of making informed decisions for themselves and are best placed to make informed decisions for themselves. Not some faceless gender recognition panel of old cis people. I think that's the biggest change I'd like to see in the medical system. I have no idea if we'll ever get there. LEGAL ISSUES (1:07:19) BLAIR HODGES: Speaking of changes, let's also talk about legal issues. So you say nonbinary folks are most concerned with two factors. First, they need basic legal recognition of their identities, especially on official documents, birth certificates, and other things. Then second, with greater visibility will come a greater need for legal protection from discrimination, from violence. Those are the big things. Tell us what legal protections exist now, and what legal protections you'd really like to see happen that don't exist mostly. ERIS YOUNG: It's a little tricky. These things are changing all the time. They vary by country, they vary over time, they walk forward and get knocked back. Just last year in the UK, we saw Scotland vote by a pretty solid majority to reform the Gender Recognition Act in Scotland. This was the Scottish people voting in favor of making the legal process and medical process for transitioning easier and more humane. It would allow people to start the process younger, and it would eliminate some of the more dehumanizing and traumatic aspects of the current UK gender recognition system. Then what we saw was that Westminster, so the overarching government in the UK, which is a conservative government run by the Tory Party, Boris Johnson or whoever they've got down there now, they simply decided to ignore it. They saw that Scotland had voted, exercised the democratic process, and they decided not to uphold it. The Gender Recognition Act has not been reformed, even though Scotland voted to do it. We've seen even in the course of one year massive progress and massive walking back of that progress because of a transphobic government the UK has. It really varies a lot and it's all extremely in flux right now. I'm pretty excited that I've now been able to, I think at the beginning of last year, I applied for a passport just at the time Joe Biden announced you can now get an X on your gender marker, so I got that which was very cool. I filled out my application and then had to come back to the UK but in my mom's house right now there's a driver's license for me with an X gender marker on it that I have to go and get. I've got these nonbinary friendly, inclusive gender markers on my driver's license. In California, literally all I had to do was fill out a gender declaration form. It took a minute to fill it out. It was super easy. I'm grateful my family is based in California. We have a lot of rights other queers in other states don't. Something I'm wondering is, the more we see progress being made in one area, for example in legal documentation, what then does that mean, for example, to the criminal justice system? Or I should say, the quote-unquote "justice system"? This is all theoretical. What happens to somebody with an X gender marker on their documentation if they get arrested, if they become incarcerated? BLAIR HODGES: If they're incarcerated, where do they go? If prisons are separated by binary where would they go? ERIS YOUNG: Is it possible to change your birth certificate right now? I'm not sure. I haven't looked into it. If it is, how much longer will we have that privilege, or that right of being able to do that? But the more we change things, the more we start to see how entrenched binary gender is throughout the entire system. Obviously, what passes for a criminal justice system in the United States is fundamentally broken and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Part of that is going to be, how is sex and gender treated within that system. I don't know if anyone has done any formal study of people with nonbinary legal documentation or just of nonbinary people within the criminal justice system in the States. I'd be very interested to see what they're finding because it would be another layer of complication on an already horrific experience. BLAIR HODGES: We're also seeing general access to care being affected in places. Utah, where I'm meeting you from, has passed legislation to prevent gender affirming care for minors. It's causing so much pain and damage. Hopefully the courts can help address that, but that remains to be seen. Legally it feels like we have a long way to go, and I think it's going to be a heavier lift in some ways than gay marriage because cis het people could more easily wrap our heads around gay marriage. It was just like, oh, these people want to get married. Cool. ERIS YOUNG: This is us asking for a separate thing. It's not an assimilation. We're asking for actual change, not just to access something existing. IS THERE REASON TO HOPE? (1:12:54) BLAIR HODGES: To be yourselves. Let us be us, not let us be like you. ERIS YOUNG: Yes.  BLAIR HODGES: With that in mind, are you generally optimistic? Let's close on that. What are some reasons for optimism, some things to keep our eyes on? ERIS YOUNG: Something I find reassuring is, it's not the same all over the world right now. We are seeing backlash, but it's not the same. One of my friends here in Scotland, they're nonbinary and their son is trans. They just went to Canada and stayed there for a few weeks. They said they felt safer and more seen and more understood than they had in years of living in the UK. It wasn't just that there are legal recognitions over there. It's the way they were treated in the day-to-day by normal everyday cis people. Just regular people treated them with respect and understanding. They didn't want to leave. In a way, it is cause for optimism because it makes me think it's not this way everywhere and it doesn't have to be. At the same time, it's quite depressing because we can't all move to Canada. There's space there, but you know. [laughter] I want to believe it won't be like it is in the UK or certain parts of the USA forever. I have to hope, but at the same time, and I think directly correlated with the increase in visibility that trans and nonbinary people have had in recent years, we've become really visible or we've been really visible and uncompromising when it comes to claiming space and claiming language for ourselves. What that means is there are a lot of people, especially people in power, who are made upset by that, who are afraid of it because it makes them think about themselves and think about their own position in the world. If they acknowledge us then they have to question a lot of the things they've based their whole lives around. Because they're people in power they've applied an equal and opposite pressure to our own attempts to demand rights and equality. I think the next ten years is going to be difficult. BLAIR HODGES: From where I sit—this is complete theory, there's no study backing this theory I have—but I have a theory that there are more people who would be supportive of nonbinary identities, that there are more people who could come to easily understand trans folks and their experiences, and the opposition is a very dedicated, vocal, and powerful minority of voices who have a disproportionate impact on what policies are passed, on how people are treated. What that means to me is if that's true, that puts more onus on me to use my voice and my position to advocate for equality and for greater understanding. It really becomes the sort of middle grounders or folks who are like, "Yeah, that sounds fine to me. But I'm also living my life over here." That's who I want to start paying attention. Because most queer folks are already in the fight. They kind of have to be. Some take breaks here and there or want to hop out because otherwise they might end their lives or something. For me, I want these folks who are interested, maybe kindly curious, to be more

Panic! At the endocrinologist.Thanks to Jules Gill-Peterson (jgillpeterson.com) and Julia Serano (patreon.com/juliaserano) for help researching this episode and Evan Urquhart and Parker Molloy for fact-checking!Support us:Hear bonus episodes on PatreonDonate on PayPalGet Maintenance Phase T-shirts, stickers and moreBuy Aubrey's bookListen to Mike's other podcastLinks!Origins of "Social Contagion" and "Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria"What does the scholarly research say about the effect of gender transition on transgender well-being?Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming CareFresh trans myths of 2017: “rapid onset gender dysphoria”Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria in Adolescents and Young Adults: a Descriptive StudyThe Detransitioners: They Were Transgender, Until They Weren'tHow the idea of a “transgender contagion” went viral—and caused untold harmMental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming Care'Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria' Is Biased Junk ScienceA careful step into a field of landminesDetransition, Desistance, and Disinformation: A Guide for Understanding Transgender Children Debates Recognizing and responding to misleading trans health researchThanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!Support the Show.

On this episode, we're joined by Erin Reed. Erin is an independent journalist. She covers transgender issues and anti-transgender legislation for her newsletter, Erin in the Morning, available on Substack. She also does video pieces on Instagram and TikTok. Erin is transgender and uses the pronouns she/her.Erin explained her entry into journalism, what it's like to cover and track anti-transgender legislation across the country. She told us about the stories she's most proud of, ranging from a rebuttal of an erroneous New York Times piece that got more than 4 million pageviews to a personal story about her engagement to Montana state representative Zooey Zephyr (who is also transgender. And she shared the names of other people doing a good job covering transgender issues.Erin's salutes: Evan Urquhart of Assigned Media and Karleigh Webb of Outsports, as well as the Trans Journalists Association.

In the Missouri legislature, 2023 was the year of bills targeting trans people. But there is a bigger picture here: For observers of the national picture, Missouri is a bellwether and a trendsetter. We sit down with two trans journalists to talk about what they're seeing in Missouri in this movement, and this moment. Joining the discussion is Erin Reed, the author of the newsletter Erin in the Morning; and Evan Urquhart, founder of Assigned Media.

On this episode, Ashleigh and Alyx go over; The Hackney by-election A new hormone clinic for young people The EHRC (again) And Alyx interviews Evan Urquhart from Assigned Media about the many difficulties facing trans people in the USA References: https://whatthetrans.com/ep97/  

This week Bryan Lowder sits down with Evan Urquhart of Assigned Media, a news site dedicated to daily coverage of anti-trans propaganda and its effects to discuss his latest article ‘The Outing of Bubba Copeland' for Slate. Bubba Copeland was the Mayor of Smiths Station who was outed for having an online trans-identity by a conservative news website and later that week committed suicide. Bryan and Evan discuss how this outing reflects the wave of anti-trans legislation. Podcast production by Palace Shaw. Email us at outwardpodcast@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week Bryan Lowder sits down with Evan Urquhart of Assigned Media, a news site dedicated to daily coverage of anti-trans propaganda and its effects to discuss his latest article ‘The Outing of Bubba Copeland' for Slate. Bubba Copeland was the Mayor of Smiths Station who was outed for having an online trans-identity by a conservative news website and later that week committed suicide. Bryan and Evan discuss how this outing reflects the wave of anti-trans legislation. Podcast production by Palace Shaw. Email us at outwardpodcast@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week Bryan Lowder sits down with Evan Urquhart of Assigned Media, a news site dedicated to daily coverage of anti-trans propaganda and its effects to discuss his latest article ‘The Outing of Bubba Copeland' for Slate. Bubba Copeland was the Mayor of Smiths Station who was outed for having an online trans-identity by a conservative news website and later that week committed suicide. Bryan and Evan discuss how this outing reflects the wave of anti-trans legislation. Podcast production by Palace Shaw. Email us at outwardpodcast@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week Bryan Lowder sits down with Evan Urquhart of Assigned Media, a news site dedicated to daily coverage of anti-trans propaganda and its effects to discuss his latest article ‘The Outing of Bubba Copeland' for Slate. Bubba Copeland was the Mayor of Smiths Station who was outed for having an online trans-identity by a conservative news website and later that week committed suicide. Bryan and Evan discuss how this outing reflects the wave of anti-trans legislation. Podcast production by Palace Shaw. Email us at outwardpodcast@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week Bryan Lowder sits down with Evan Urquhart of Assigned Media, a news site dedicated to daily coverage of anti-trans propaganda and its effects to discuss his latest article ‘The Outing of Bubba Copeland' for Slate. Bubba Copeland was the Mayor of Smiths Station who was outed for having an online trans-identity by a conservative news website and later that week committed suicide. Bryan and Evan discuss how this outing reflects the wave of anti-trans legislation. Podcast production by Palace Shaw. Email us at outwardpodcast@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week Bryan Lowder sits down with Evan Urquhart of Assigned Media, a news site dedicated to daily coverage of anti-trans propaganda and its effects to discuss his latest article ‘The Outing of Bubba Copeland' for Slate. Bubba Copeland was the Mayor of Smiths Station who was outed for having an online trans-identity by a conservative news website and later that week committed suicide. Bryan and Evan discuss how this outing reflects the wave of anti-trans legislation. Podcast production by Palace Shaw. Email us at outwardpodcast@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mia and Gare talk with journalist Evan Urquhart from Assigned Media about how the New York Times pushed the lies of anti-trans ex-clinic employee Jamie Reed and helped get trans healthcare banned across the country.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the last of our Pride month mini-episodes, host Jules Gill-Peterson is joined by Evan Urquhart, the community manager for Slate's comments section who also covers anti-trans propaganda on assignedmedia.org. They discuss Evan's piece “Don't Look Away From Queer Despair,” which was part of Slate's “Not Quite Pride” package. In a galvanizing conversation, they discuss the need to resist putting on a happy face in these genuinely challenging times; the compulsion to create work that will leave breadcrumbs of hope for the next generation of queer and trans people, and supporting one another. Items discussed in the show: “Don't Look Away From Queer Despair,” by Evan Urquhart Slate's “Not Quite Pride” package of stories Assigned Media This podcast was edited by Emily Charash and produced by June Thomas. Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the last of our Pride month mini-episodes, host Jules Gill-Peterson is joined by Evan Urquhart, the community manager for Slate's comments section who also covers anti-trans propaganda on assignedmedia.org. They discuss Evan's piece “Don't Look Away From Queer Despair,” which was part of Slate's “Not Quite Pride” package. In a galvanizing conversation, they discuss the need to resist putting on a happy face in these genuinely challenging times; the compulsion to create work that will leave breadcrumbs of hope for the next generation of queer and trans people, and supporting one another. Items discussed in the show: “Don't Look Away From Queer Despair,” by Evan Urquhart Slate's “Not Quite Pride” package of stories Assigned Media This podcast was edited by Emily Charash and produced by June Thomas. Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the last of our Pride month mini-episodes, host Jules Gill-Peterson is joined by Evan Urquhart, the community manager for Slate's comments section who also covers anti-trans propaganda on assignedmedia.org. They discuss Evan's piece “Don't Look Away From Queer Despair,” which was part of Slate's “Not Quite Pride” package. In a galvanizing conversation, they discuss the need to resist putting on a happy face in these genuinely challenging times; the compulsion to create work that will leave breadcrumbs of hope for the next generation of queer and trans people, and supporting one another. Items discussed in the show: “Don't Look Away From Queer Despair,” by Evan Urquhart Slate's “Not Quite Pride” package of stories Assigned Media This podcast was edited by Emily Charash and produced by June Thomas. Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the last of our Pride month mini-episodes, host Jules Gill-Peterson is joined by Evan Urquhart, the community manager for Slate's comments section who also covers anti-trans propaganda on assignedmedia.org. They discuss Evan's piece “Don't Look Away From Queer Despair,” which was part of Slate's “Not Quite Pride” package. In a galvanizing conversation, they discuss the need to resist putting on a happy face in these genuinely challenging times; the compulsion to create work that will leave breadcrumbs of hope for the next generation of queer and trans people, and supporting one another. Items discussed in the show: “Don't Look Away From Queer Despair,” by Evan Urquhart Slate's “Not Quite Pride” package of stories Assigned Media This podcast was edited by Emily Charash and produced by June Thomas. Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's show, we are joined by journalist Evan Urquhart, who is transgender, to talk about a topic that's rarely covered by the legacy media: The psychological and emotional toll that the right's relentless assault on the LGBTQ community's rights--and in many cases, on their very existence--takes on queer people. It is hard to be the target of an energized neo-fascist movement with a lot of power. Then we take a look at a more positive side to the same story, as veteran legal reporter Chris Geidner tells us about some important recent wins that civil rights activists have secured in the courts against some of the laws that red states have passed to punish their perceived enemies in the queer community and beyond. Playlist:  The Cramps: "Goo Goo Muck"The English Beat: "Save It For Later"Music Machine: "Talk Talk" 

Joshua Holland kicks off this week's show with a look at how Republicans always derail every effort to combat America's top terror threat: White supremacists and anti-government extremists. Then Heather "Digby" Parton joins us to talk about the deal Joe Biden cut with Speaker Kevin McCarthy to raise the country's borrowing limit and avert a catastrophic default. There's a glass-half-full reading and also one that's not so rosy. And journalist Evan Urquhart explains how the legacy media tends to obscure the dangers of the right's campaigns of harassment and intimidation against companies that dare celebrate Pride Month.PlaylistCage The Elephant: "Cold Cold Cold"Wild Child: "End of the World"Stevie Nicks: "For What It's Worth" 

On this episode: Zak and Jamilah are joined by Evan Urquhart. Evan covers anti-trans propaganda on Assigned Media, writes for Slate, and manages Slate's comments section.  Today we're going to be talking with Evan about his recent piece, There Are Two Sides to the Debate on Health Care for Trans Kids. Here's What You're Missing About One of Them. People and resources mentioned: Julia Serano, Assigned Media, and Trans Safety Network.  Recommendations:  Jamilah recommends the Dear Culture podcast.  Evan recommends the Washington Post-KFF Trans in America survey.  Zak recommends letting kids watch TV during breakfast on school days.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you'll also be supporting the work we do here on Mom and Dad are Fighting. Sign up now at slate.com/momanddadplus to help support our work. Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today's show, and give us ideas about what we should talk about in future episodes. You can also call our NEW PHONE LINE: (646) 357-9318!  Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson and Maura Currie. Make an impact this Earth Month by helping Macy's on their mission to bring more parks to more people across the country. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode: Zak and Jamilah are joined by Evan Urquhart. Evan covers anti-trans propaganda on Assigned Media, writes for Slate, and manages Slate's comments section.  Today we're going to be talking with Evan about his recent piece, There Are Two Sides to the Debate on Health Care for Trans Kids. Here's What You're Missing About One of Them. People and resources mentioned: Julia Serano, Assigned Media, and Trans Safety Network.  Recommendations:  Jamilah recommends the Dear Culture podcast.  Evan recommends the Washington Post-KFF Trans in America survey.  Zak recommends letting kids watch TV during breakfast on school days.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you'll also be supporting the work we do here on Mom and Dad are Fighting. Sign up now at slate.com/momanddadplus to help support our work. Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today's show, and give us ideas about what we should talk about in future episodes. You can also call our NEW PHONE LINE: (646) 357-9318!  Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson and Maura Currie. Make an impact this Earth Month by helping Macy's on their mission to bring more parks to more people across the country. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode: Zak and Jamilah are joined by Evan Urquhart. Evan covers anti-trans propaganda on Assigned Media, writes for Slate, and manages Slate's comments section.  Today we're going to be talking with Evan about his recent piece, There Are Two Sides to the Debate on Health Care for Trans Kids. Here's What You're Missing About One of Them. People and resources mentioned: Julia Serano, Assigned Media, and Trans Safety Network.  Recommendations:  Jamilah recommends the Dear Culture podcast.  Evan recommends the Washington Post-KFF Trans in America survey.  Zak recommends letting kids watch TV during breakfast on school days.  If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you'll also be supporting the work we do here on Mom and Dad are Fighting. Sign up now at slate.com/momanddadplus to help support our work. Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today's show, and give us ideas about what we should talk about in future episodes. You can also call our NEW PHONE LINE: (646) 357-9318!  Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson and Maura Currie. Make an impact this Earth Month by helping Macy's on their mission to bring more parks to more people across the country. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode: Zak and Jamilah are joined by Evan Urquhart. Evan manages Slate's comments section, covers anti-trans propaganda on assignedmedia.org, and has experience fostering teens, which will be extraordinarily useful for today's questions. We recently got two letters from listeners who are thinking about becoming foster parents and are specifically interested in caring for teens. We'll dive into what they should know. Then on Slate Plus, we are talking about Utah's new laws restricting minors' ability to access and use social media. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you'll also be supporting the work we do here on Mom and Dad are Fighting. Sign up now at slate.com/momanddadplus to help support our work. Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today's show, and give us ideas about what we should talk about in future episodes. You can also call our NEW PHONE LINE: (646) 357-9318!  Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson and Maura Currie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode: Zak and Jamilah are joined by Evan Urquhart. Evan manages Slate's comments section, covers anti-trans propaganda on assignedmedia.org, and has experience fostering teens, which will be extraordinarily useful for today's questions. We recently got two letters from listeners who are thinking about becoming foster parents and are specifically interested in caring for teens. We'll dive into what they should know. Then on Slate Plus, we are talking about Utah's new laws restricting minors' ability to access and use social media. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you'll also be supporting the work we do here on Mom and Dad are Fighting. Sign up now at slate.com/momanddadplus to help support our work. Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today's show, and give us ideas about what we should talk about in future episodes. You can also call our NEW PHONE LINE: (646) 357-9318!  Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson and Maura Currie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The nation's most prestigious newspaper insists on asking a very stupid question. So for this month's bonus episode, we decided to answer it. To hear the rest of the show, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPodAs we mentioned at the top of the episode, we're donating this month's support to three of our trans journo-friends! They've been unbelievably patient with Mike as he's navigated the science and politics of this issue over the last year. Here's where to find and support their work:Parker Molloy (readtpa.com) Katelyn Burns (patreon.com/katelynburns)Evan Urquhart  (assignedmedia.org) 

This episode was recorded before the Nov. 19 attack on Club Q. Outward stands with our queer family in Colorado Springs. This month, Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder discuss two major trans news stories from recent weeks. First, the New York Times' latest article about trans kids and gender-affirming care, this time about puberty blockers and bone density, and how it plays into the ongoing, manufactured, and weaponized conservative panic about trans existence. Then they are joined by James Roesener of Concord, New Hampshire, who earlier this month became the first out trans man to be elected to a U.S. state legislature. They talk about why he ran and what he hopes to achieve. Finally, the hosts add some new items to the gay agenda. Items discussed in the show: The American Library Association Rainbow Round Table The Lilly Pharmaceutical Twitter impersonation AMC's new version of Interview With the Vampire World Pride 2025 in D.C.  “They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost?” by Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett in the New York Times Michael Hobbes' Twitter thread responding to the NYT story “The NYT's Big Piece on Puberty Blockers Mucked Up the Most Important Point About Them,” by Evan Urquhart, in Slate Gay Agenda Brian: Queer for Fear on Shudder Christina: The Secret to Superhuman Strength, by Alison Bechdel Jules: Gossip Girl Fanfic Novella, by Charlie Markbreiter This podcast was produced by June Thomas. Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode was recorded before the Nov. 19 attack on Club Q. Outward stands with our queer family in Colorado Springs. This month, Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder discuss two major trans news stories from recent weeks. First, the New York Times' latest article about trans kids and gender-affirming care, this time about puberty blockers and bone density, and how it plays into the ongoing, manufactured, and weaponized conservative panic about trans existence. Then they are joined by James Roesener of Concord, New Hampshire, who earlier this month became the first out trans man to be elected to a U.S. state legislature. They talk about why he ran and what he hopes to achieve. Finally, the hosts add some new items to the gay agenda. Items discussed in the show: The American Library Association Rainbow Round Table The Lilly Pharmaceutical Twitter impersonation AMC's new version of Interview With the Vampire World Pride 2025 in D.C.  “They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost?” by Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett in the New York Times Michael Hobbes' Twitter thread responding to the NYT story “The NYT's Big Piece on Puberty Blockers Mucked Up the Most Important Point About Them,” by Evan Urquhart, in Slate Gay Agenda Brian: Queer for Fear on Shudder Christina: The Secret to Superhuman Strength, by Alison Bechdel Jules: Gossip Girl Fanfic Novella, by Charlie Markbreiter This podcast was produced by June Thomas. Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode was recorded before the Nov. 19 attack on Club Q. Outward stands with our queer family in Colorado Springs. This month, Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder discuss two major trans news stories from recent weeks. First, the New York Times' latest article about trans kids and gender-affirming care, this time about puberty blockers and bone density, and how it plays into the ongoing, manufactured, and weaponized conservative panic about trans existence. Then they are joined by James Roesener of Concord, New Hampshire, who earlier this month became the first out trans man to be elected to a U.S. state legislature. They talk about why he ran and what he hopes to achieve. Finally, the hosts add some new items to the gay agenda. Items discussed in the show: The American Library Association Rainbow Round Table The Lilly Pharmaceutical Twitter impersonation AMC's new version of Interview With the Vampire World Pride 2025 in D.C.  “They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost?” by Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett in the New York Times Michael Hobbes' Twitter thread responding to the NYT story “The NYT's Big Piece on Puberty Blockers Mucked Up the Most Important Point About Them,” by Evan Urquhart, in Slate Gay Agenda Brian: Queer for Fear on Shudder Christina: The Secret to Superhuman Strength, by Alison Bechdel Jules: Gossip Girl Fanfic Novella, by Charlie Markbreiter This podcast was produced by June Thomas. Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode was recorded before the Nov. 19 attack on Club Q. Outward stands with our queer family in Colorado Springs. This month, Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder discuss two major trans news stories from recent weeks. First, the New York Times' latest article about trans kids and gender-affirming care, this time about puberty blockers and bone density, and how it plays into the ongoing, manufactured, and weaponized conservative panic about trans existence. Then they are joined by James Roesener of Concord, New Hampshire, who earlier this month became the first out trans man to be elected to a U.S. state legislature. They talk about why he ran and what he hopes to achieve. Finally, the hosts add some new items to the gay agenda. Items discussed in the show: The American Library Association Rainbow Round Table The Lilly Pharmaceutical Twitter impersonation AMC's new version of Interview With the Vampire World Pride 2025 in D.C.  “They Paused Puberty, but Is There a Cost?” by Megan Twohey and Christina Jewett in the New York Times Michael Hobbes' Twitter thread responding to the NYT story “The NYT's Big Piece on Puberty Blockers Mucked Up the Most Important Point About Them,” by Evan Urquhart, in Slate Gay Agenda Brian: Queer for Fear on Shudder Christina: The Secret to Superhuman Strength, by Alison Bechdel Jules: Gossip Girl Fanfic Novella, by Charlie Markbreiter This podcast was produced by June Thomas. Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bryan Lowder is still out on book leave, but hosts Christina Cauterucci and Jules Gill-Peterson summon him back to discuss Bros, the gay rom-com of the moment. The film lingers on questions of queer history, shows what happens when a nerdy podcast guy dates a beefy gay bro, and is a fascinating meditation on what it means to be a cis gay man in a time of both progress and prosecution. (This segment lasts around 31 minutes if you want to skip ahead to avoid Bros spoilers.) Then they are joined by Meg Metcalf, an LGBTQ collections specialist at the Library of Congress, to discuss how the world's biggest library is surfacing the plentiful LGBTQ resources that can be found in its building and in cyberspace. Finally, they add some new items to the gay agenda. Items discussed in the show: The Problem With Jon Stewart, “The Problem With Gender”  “Why Jon Stewart's Humiliation of an Anti-Trans Official Is So Important,” by Evan Urquhart in Slate A new report from the Human Rights Campaign and Bowling Green State University “Billy Eichner's Curious Claims About Bros,” by J. Bryan Lowder in Slate “Was Eleanor Roosevelt a Lesbian?” by Heather Schwedel, in Slate The Library of Congress' Collections Policy Statement for LGBTQIA+ studies If you have a question for Meg, or other Library of Congress librarians, go to ask.loc.gov Chronicling America, the Library of Congress' database of historic newspapers   Gay Agenda Christina: The episode of NPR's Code Switch in which Kumari Devarajan profiled comedian and playwright D'Lo, who has a role in Bros Jules: Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn't My Rapist, by Cecilia Gentili   This podcast was produced by June Thomas. Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bryan Lowder is still out on book leave, but hosts Christina Cauterucci and Jules Gill-Peterson summon him back to discuss Bros, the gay rom-com of the moment. The film lingers on questions of queer history, shows what happens when a nerdy podcast guy dates a beefy gay bro, and is a fascinating meditation on what it means to be a cis gay man in a time of both progress and prosecution. (This segment lasts around 31 minutes if you want to skip ahead to avoid Bros spoilers.) Then they are joined by Meg Metcalf, an LGBTQ collections specialist at the Library of Congress, to discuss how the world's biggest library is surfacing the plentiful LGBTQ resources that can be found in its building and in cyberspace. Finally, they add some new items to the gay agenda. Items discussed in the show: The Problem With Jon Stewart, “The Problem With Gender”  “Why Jon Stewart's Humiliation of an Anti-Trans Official Is So Important,” by Evan Urquhart in Slate A new report from the Human Rights Campaign and Bowling Green State University “Billy Eichner's Curious Claims About Bros,” by J. Bryan Lowder in Slate “Was Eleanor Roosevelt a Lesbian?” by Heather Schwedel, in Slate The Library of Congress' Collections Policy Statement for LGBTQIA+ studies If you have a question for Meg, or other Library of Congress librarians, go to ask.loc.gov Chronicling America, the Library of Congress' database of historic newspapers   Gay Agenda Christina: The episode of NPR's Code Switch in which Kumari Devarajan profiled comedian and playwright D'Lo, who has a role in Bros Jules: Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn't My Rapist, by Cecilia Gentili   This podcast was produced by June Thomas. Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bryan Lowder is still out on book leave, but hosts Christina Cauterucci and Jules Gill-Peterson summon him back to discuss Bros, the gay rom-com of the moment. The film lingers on questions of queer history, shows what happens when a nerdy podcast guy dates a beefy gay bro, and is a fascinating meditation on what it means to be a cis gay man in a time of both progress and prosecution. (This segment lasts around 31 minutes if you want to skip ahead to avoid Bros spoilers.) Then they are joined by Meg Metcalf, an LGBTQ collections specialist at the Library of Congress, to discuss how the world's biggest library is surfacing the plentiful LGBTQ resources that can be found in its building and in cyberspace. Finally, they add some new items to the gay agenda. Items discussed in the show: The Problem With Jon Stewart, “The Problem With Gender”  “Why Jon Stewart's Humiliation of an Anti-Trans Official Is So Important,” by Evan Urquhart in Slate A new report from the Human Rights Campaign and Bowling Green State University “Billy Eichner's Curious Claims About Bros,” by J. Bryan Lowder in Slate “Was Eleanor Roosevelt a Lesbian?” by Heather Schwedel, in Slate The Library of Congress' Collections Policy Statement for LGBTQIA+ studies If you have a question for Meg, or other Library of Congress librarians, go to ask.loc.gov Chronicling America, the Library of Congress' database of historic newspapers   Gay Agenda Christina: The episode of NPR's Code Switch in which Kumari Devarajan profiled comedian and playwright D'Lo, who has a role in Bros Jules: Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn't My Rapist, by Cecilia Gentili   This podcast was produced by June Thomas. Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bryan Lowder is still out on book leave, but hosts Christina Cauterucci and Jules Gill-Peterson summon him back to discuss Bros, the gay rom-com of the moment. The film lingers on questions of queer history, shows what happens when a nerdy podcast guy dates a beefy gay bro, and is a fascinating meditation on what it means to be a cis gay man in a time of both progress and prosecution. (This segment lasts around 31 minutes if you want to skip ahead to avoid Bros spoilers.) Then they are joined by Meg Metcalf, an LGBTQ collections specialist at the Library of Congress, to discuss how the world's biggest library is surfacing the plentiful LGBTQ resources that can be found in its building and in cyberspace. Finally, they add some new items to the gay agenda. Items discussed in the show: The Problem With Jon Stewart, “The Problem With Gender”  “Why Jon Stewart's Humiliation of an Anti-Trans Official Is So Important,” by Evan Urquhart in Slate A new report from the Human Rights Campaign and Bowling Green State University “Billy Eichner's Curious Claims About Bros,” by J. Bryan Lowder in Slate “Was Eleanor Roosevelt a Lesbian?” by Heather Schwedel, in Slate The Library of Congress' Collections Policy Statement for LGBTQIA+ studies If you have a question for Meg, or other Library of Congress librarians, go to ask.loc.gov Chronicling America, the Library of Congress' database of historic newspapers   Gay Agenda Christina: The episode of NPR's Code Switch in which Kumari Devarajan profiled comedian and playwright D'Lo, who has a role in Bros Jules: Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn't My Rapist, by Cecilia Gentili   This podcast was produced by June Thomas. Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus and transgender journalist Evan Urquhart pose the question: Do we really need to separate sports by sex? The pair discusses Maggie Merten's recent piece in The Atlantic, “Separating Sports By Sex Doesn's Make Sense” and what role biology does (and doesn't) play in determining who the top player on the field is. Later in the show, Shannon and Evan talk about why co-ed sports would be great for transgender youth.  In Slate Plus, is the Adam Levine sexting controversy feminist?  Recommendations: Shannon: Adopting a dog. Evan: The Power Wash Simulator game.   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus and transgender journalist Evan Urquhart pose the question: Do we really need to separate sports by sex? The pair discusses Maggie Merten's recent piece in The Atlantic, “Separating Sports By Sex Doesn's Make Sense” and what role biology does (and doesn't) play in determining who the top player on the field is. Later in the show, Shannon and Evan talk about why co-ed sports would be great for transgender youth.  In Slate Plus, is the Adam Levine sexting controversy feminist?  Recommendations: Shannon: Adopting a dog. Evan: The Power Wash Simulator game.   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus and transgender journalist Evan Urquhart pose the question: Do we really need to separate sports by sex? The pair discusses Maggie Merten's recent piece in The Atlantic, “Separating Sports By Sex Doesn's Make Sense” and what role biology does (and doesn't) play in determining who the top player on the field is. Later in the show, Shannon and Evan talk about why co-ed sports would be great for transgender youth.  In Slate Plus, is the Adam Levine sexting controversy feminist?  Recommendations: Shannon: Adopting a dog. Evan: The Power Wash Simulator game.   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus and transgender journalist Evan Urquhart pose the question: Do we really need to separate sports by sex? The pair discusses Maggie Merten's recent piece in The Atlantic, “Separating Sports By Sex Doesn's Make Sense” and what role biology does (and doesn't) play in determining who the top player on the field is. Later in the show, Shannon and Evan talk about why co-ed sports would be great for transgender youth.  In Slate Plus, is the Adam Levine sexting controversy feminist?  Recommendations: Shannon: Adopting a dog. Evan: The Power Wash Simulator game.   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate senior editor Shannon Palus and transgender journalist Evan Urquhart pose the question: Do we really need to separate sports by sex? The pair discusses Maggie Merten's recent piece in The Atlantic, “Separating Sports By Sex Doesn's Make Sense” and what role biology does (and doesn't) play in determining who the top player on the field is. Later in the show, Shannon and Evan talk about why co-ed sports would be great for transgender youth.  In Slate Plus, is the Adam Levine sexting controversy feminist?  Recommendations: Shannon: Adopting a dog. Evan: The Power Wash Simulator game.   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the recent Anti-Transgender actions taken by the Texas State Government, among other states in the USA, I am excited to welcome Evan Urquhart to the show. A Journalist who writes about issues facing Transgendered youth, Evan is here to share his story and insights for parents, youth, and others. Please listen, share, and get involved in equal rights and protection for the Transgendered individuals in your community.  Follow Evan @e_urq on Twitter to read his work. 

On this week's episode of The Waves, we're talking Texas. Slate community manager Evan Urquhart and author and co-host of Slate's Outward podcast Jules Gill-Peterson dig into the Texas governor's directive to treat gender-affirming health care for transgender youth as child abuse. In the first half of the show, they explore what's going on in Texas and the harm it's already causing. Later they talk about how the problem in Texas is symptomatic of a much bigger trans obsession by the GOP.  In Slate Plus: Is Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism feminist? Recommendations: Evan: Do your research “What does the scholarly research say about the effect of gender transition on transgender well-being?” “U.S. Transgender Survey” “Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming Care” Jules: Support on the ground organizations in Texas and contacting lawmakers to demand they support trans kids. Donate to TENT Equality Texas Campaign For Southern Equality    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus and June Thomas.  Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, we're talking Texas. Slate community manager Evan Urquhart and author and co-host of Slate's Outward podcast Jules Gill-Peterson dig into the Texas governor's directive to treat gender-affirming health care for transgender youth as child abuse. In the first half of the show, they explore what's going on in Texas and the harm it's already causing. Later they talk about how the problem in Texas is symptomatic of a much bigger trans obsession by the GOP.  In Slate Plus: Is Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism feminist? Recommendations: Evan: Do your research “What does the scholarly research say about the effect of gender transition on transgender well-being?” “U.S. Transgender Survey” “Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming Care” Jules: Support on the ground organizations in Texas and contacting lawmakers to demand they support trans kids. Donate to TENT Equality Texas Campaign For Southern Equality    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus and June Thomas.  Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, we're talking Texas. Slate community manager Evan Urquhart and author and co-host of Slate's Outward podcast Jules Gill-Peterson dig into the Texas governor's directive to treat gender-affirming health care for transgender youth as child abuse. In the first half of the show, they explore what's going on in Texas and the harm it's already causing. Later they talk about how the problem in Texas is symptomatic of a much bigger trans obsession by the GOP.  In Slate Plus: Is Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism feminist? Recommendations: Evan: Do your research “What does the scholarly research say about the effect of gender transition on transgender well-being?” “U.S. Transgender Survey” “Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming Care” Jules: Support on the ground organizations in Texas and contacting lawmakers to demand they support trans kids. Donate to TENT Equality Texas Campaign For Southern Equality    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus and June Thomas.  Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, we're talking Texas. Slate community manager Evan Urquhart and author and co-host of Slate's Outward podcast Jules Gill-Peterson dig into the Texas governor's directive to treat gender-affirming health care for transgender youth as child abuse. In the first half of the show, they explore what's going on in Texas and the harm it's already causing. Later they talk about how the problem in Texas is symptomatic of a much bigger trans obsession by the GOP.  In Slate Plus: Is Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism feminist? Recommendations: Evan: Do your research “What does the scholarly research say about the effect of gender transition on transgender well-being?” “U.S. Transgender Survey” “Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming Care” Jules: Support on the ground organizations in Texas and contacting lawmakers to demand they support trans kids. Donate to TENT Equality Texas Campaign For Southern Equality    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus and June Thomas.  Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate's news director Susan Matthews talks with Slate writer and community manager Evan Urquhart about the phrase, “pregnant person.” What started as an effort to be inclusive of transgender men has devolved into an argument that at times has become transphobic. Susan and Evan unpack what's going on with this “debate,” and, later in the show, get into more productive ways to be a trans ally, the perils of the health care system, and how to better include trans and nonbinary people in coversations about them. In Slate Plus, Evan and Susan talk about the Torrey Peters novel, Detransition Baby. Additional Reading:  “Words for Every Body” by Ray Briggs and B R George “Should feminists talk about ‘pregnant people'?” by Jennie Kermode “You Can Still Say ‘Woman' But You Shouldn't Stop There” by Irin Carmon “BIPOC or POC? Equity or Equality? The Debate Over Language on the Left” by Amy Harmon “Healthcare avoidance due to anticipated discrimination among transgender people: A call to create trans-affirmative environments” by Luisa Kcomt, Kevin M. Gorey, Betty Jo Barrett, Sean Esteban McCabe Recommendations: Susan: Kiese Laymon's book Heavy and Laymon's The Ezra Klein Show interview with Tressie McMillan Cotton. Evan: The “best game of 2021” Inscription and Metroid Dread for the Nintendo Switch.    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Susan Matthews and June Thomas.  Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate's news director Susan Matthews talks with Slate writer and community manager Evan Urquhart about the phrase, “pregnant person.” What started as an effort to be inclusive of transgender men has devolved into an argument that at times has become transphobic. Susan and Evan unpack what's going on with this “debate,” and, later in the show, get into more productive ways to be a trans ally, the perils of the health care system, and how to better include trans and nonbinary people in coversations about them. In Slate Plus, Evan and Susan talk about the Torrey Peters novel, Detransition Baby. Additional Reading:  “Words for Every Body” by Ray Briggs and B R George “Should feminists talk about ‘pregnant people'?” by Jennie Kermode “You Can Still Say ‘Woman' But You Shouldn't Stop There” by Irin Carmon “BIPOC or POC? Equity or Equality? The Debate Over Language on the Left” by Amy Harmon “Healthcare avoidance due to anticipated discrimination among transgender people: A call to create trans-affirmative environments” by Luisa Kcomt, Kevin M. Gorey, Betty Jo Barrett, Sean Esteban McCabe Recommendations: Susan: Kiese Laymon's book Heavy and Laymon's The Ezra Klein Show interview with Tressie McMillan Cotton. Evan: The “best game of 2021” Inscription and Metroid Dread for the Nintendo Switch.    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Susan Matthews and June Thomas.  Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate's news director Susan Matthews talks with Slate writer and community manager Evan Urquhart about the phrase, “pregnant person.” What started as an effort to be inclusive of transgender men has devolved into an argument that at times has become transphobic. Susan and Evan unpack what's going on with this “debate,” and, later in the show, get into more productive ways to be a trans ally, the perils of the health care system, and how to better include trans and nonbinary people in coversations about them. In Slate Plus, Evan and Susan talk about the Torrey Peters novel, Detransition Baby. Additional Reading:  “Words for Every Body” by Ray Briggs and B R George “Should feminists talk about ‘pregnant people'?” by Jennie Kermode “You Can Still Say ‘Woman' But You Shouldn't Stop There” by Irin Carmon “BIPOC or POC? Equity or Equality? The Debate Over Language on the Left” by Amy Harmon “Healthcare avoidance due to anticipated discrimination among transgender people: A call to create trans-affirmative environments” by Luisa Kcomt, Kevin M. Gorey, Betty Jo Barrett, Sean Esteban McCabe Recommendations: Susan: Kiese Laymon's book Heavy and Laymon's The Ezra Klein Show interview with Tressie McMillan Cotton. Evan: The “best game of 2021” Inscription and Metroid Dread for the Nintendo Switch.    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Susan Matthews and June Thomas.  Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, Slate's news director Susan Matthews talks with Slate writer and community manager Evan Urquhart about the phrase, “pregnant person.” What started as an effort to be inclusive of transgender men has devolved into an argument that at times has become transphobic. Susan and Evan unpack what's going on with this “debate,” and, later in the show, get into more productive ways to be a trans ally, the perils of the health care system, and how to better include trans and nonbinary people in coversations about them. In Slate Plus, Evan and Susan talk about the Torrey Peters novel, Detransition Baby. Additional Reading:  “Words for Every Body” by Ray Briggs and B R George “Should feminists talk about ‘pregnant people'?” by Jennie Kermode “You Can Still Say ‘Woman' But You Shouldn't Stop There” by Irin Carmon “BIPOC or POC? Equity or Equality? The Debate Over Language on the Left” by Amy Harmon “Healthcare avoidance due to anticipated discrimination among transgender people: A call to create trans-affirmative environments” by Luisa Kcomt, Kevin M. Gorey, Betty Jo Barrett, Sean Esteban McCabe Recommendations: Susan: Kiese Laymon's book Heavy and Laymon's The Ezra Klein Show interview with Tressie McMillan Cotton. Evan: The “best game of 2021” Inscription and Metroid Dread for the Nintendo Switch.    Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Susan Matthews and June Thomas.  Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reflecting on the toppling of some statues and the protecting of others, Charles Adrian shares what he remembers of three books given to him at the beginning of the second season of the podcast.   Books discussed in this episode were previously discussed in Page One 52 (http://www.pageonepodcast.com/season-2#/52-vera-chok/), Page One 53 (http://www.pageonepodcast.com/season-2#/53-paula-varjack/) and Page One 54 (http://www.pageonepodcast.com/season-2#/54-catherine-payton/).   Correction: Edward Colston’s Royal African Company was active in the 17th century and not the 18th. You can read Gurminder K Bhambra on Edward Colston and the glorification of the British Empire in the New York Times here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/edward-colston-statue-racism.html?smid=tw-share and Priyamvada Gopal on the relationship between statues and our idea of history in The Huffinton Post here: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/statues_uk_5ee33c50c5b609f241c952b7?sl9. You can watch Afua Hirsch talking to PoliticsJOE about Black Lives Matter and British history, including some reflection on the theatrical boarding-up of the Churchill statue in Westminster, on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXY5BfpcAlQ&feature=youtu.be.   Between recording and releasing this episode, the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol was briefly replaced by a statue of Jen Reid by Marc Quinn. You can read about it in the Guardian here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/15/the-day-bristol-woke-up-to-a-new-statue and you can read thoughts on it by Thomas J. Price in The Art Newspaper here: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/comment/a-votive-statue-to-appropriation-the-problem-with-marc-quinn-s-black-lives-matter-sculpture   You can read more about the Rhodes Must Fall movement, meanwhile, in The New Statesman here: https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/06/rhodes-must-fall-oxford-slavery-statue-oxford-university-oriel-black-lives-matter   For some reflection on racism and anti-racism in Europe and the UK, you can read Musa Okwonga in Byline Times here: https://bylinetimes.com/2020/06/05/white-complicity-matters-the-nazis-by-the-lake/ and Gary Younge in The New York Review Of Books here: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/06/06/what-black-america-means-to-europe/   You can read June Tuesday writing about J.K. Rowling and the so-called reasonable concerns in Medium here: https://medium.com/@june.tuesday/jk-rowling-and-the-reasonable-bigotry-43bc2c6d3c2b, you can read Evan Urquhart on J.K. Rowling and her obsession with trans men in Slate here: https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/06/jk-rowling-trans-men-terf.html and you can read an open letter from the charity Mermaids to J.K. Rowling here: https://mermaidsuk.org.uk/news/dear-jk-rowling/   And, in case you are worried about how the kids are doing, you can read Katelyn Burns’ profile of New York’s Gender And Family Project in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jun/15/trans-transgender-children-gender-family-project   The Page One podcast began as a project recorded at the Wilton Way Cafe for London Fields Radio, which is now called Fields Radio (https://fields.radio/). From the second season onwards, however, the podcast was produced independently by Charles Adrian.   Correction: The film adaptation of The Talented Mr Ripley Charles Adrian talks about seeing came out in 1999.   You can read about the theatre adaptation of The Master And Margarita made by Théâtre de Complicité here: http://www.complicite.org/productions/TheMasterandMargarita   Episode image is a detail of a photo by Charles Adrian   Episode recorded 13th June, 2020   More information and a transcript of this episode is at http://www.pageonepodcast.com/     Book listing:   Shopgirl by Steve Martin (Page One 52) The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (Page One 53) The Master And Margarita by Mikail Bulgakov (trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) (Page One 54)

On this week’s episode: Elizabeth, Jamilah, and Dan answer a question about a 3-year-old who forces himself to pee immediately after drinking water. We also have a follow-up question from a parent whose child recently came out to her as trans. Slate’s Evan Urquhart joins the hosts to help advise the parent on how to best support her son.  In Slate Plus: We have a plethora of fun, achievable outdoor DIYs for you to try with your family this summer. Slate Plus members get a bonus segment on MADAF each week, and no ads. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Recommendations: Dan recommends Perfect Tunes by Emily Gould.  Jamilah recommends Women, Race, & Class by Angela Y. Davis.  Elizabeth recommends the game Tiny Polka Dot. Additional Recommendations and Resources:  Catch “Living Single But With Barbies” on Jamilah’s Instagram.  Get your kids hooked on Oliver’s favorite math game, Prodigy.  “My Parents Still Struggle to Know Me After I Transitioned Late” by Evan Urquhart.  Check out PFLAG, which is a great organization for LGBTQ+ people, their families and allies.  Watch Disclosure. The documentary is currently available on Netflix. Read Hurricane Child and Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender. Watch ContraPoints YouTube videos with your (probably older) kids as a way to prompt conversations about trans issues. Here are two to start with: "Transtrenders” and Gender Critical.   Get creative outside with Buggy and Buddy free, printable scavenger hunts, Youth Squad badges, and Tinkergarten® activities.  Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today’s show, and give us ideas about what we should talk about in future episodes.    Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week’s episode: Elizabeth, Jamilah, and Dan answer a question about a 3-year-old who forces himself to pee immediately after drinking water. We also have a follow-up question from a parent whose child recently came out to her as trans. Slate’s Evan Urquhart joins the hosts to help advise the parent on how to best support her son.  In Slate Plus: We have a plethora of fun, achievable outdoor DIYs for you to try with your family this summer. Slate Plus members get a bonus segment on MADAF each week, and no ads. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Recommendations: Dan recommends Perfect Tunes by Emily Gould.  Jamilah recommends Women, Race, & Class by Angela Y. Davis.  Elizabeth recommends the game Tiny Polka Dot. Additional Recommendations and Resources:  Catch “Living Single But With Barbies” on Jamilah’s Instagram.  Get your kids hooked on Oliver’s favorite math game, Prodigy.  “My Parents Still Struggle to Know Me After I Transitioned Late” by Evan Urquhart.  Check out PFLAG, which is a great organization for LGBTQ+ people, their families and allies.  Watch Disclosure. The documentary is currently available on Netflix. Read Hurricane Child and Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender. Watch ContraPoints YouTube videos with your (probably older) kids as a way to prompt conversations about trans issues. Here are two to start with: "Transtrenders” and Gender Critical.   Get creative outside with Buggy and Buddy free, printable scavenger hunts, Youth Squad badges, and Tinkergarten® activities.  Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today’s show, and give us ideas about what we should talk about in future episodes.    Podcast produced by Rosemary Belson.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month on Outward hosts Christina Cauterucci, Bryan Lowder, and New America’s Brandon Tensley explore how we learn to be queer. June Thomas joins in for a quick game about queer tropes and culture before the hosts discuss what being queer and embracing queer culture means, and their first experiences establishing their queer identities. Then Slate contributor Evan Urquhart and trans activist Andy Bowen sit down with Christina to think through what it means to be a trans person. Finally, they end the show by answering an advice question about presenting as bi, and of course a round of the gay agenda.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month on Outward hosts Christina Cauterucci, Bryan Lowder, and New America’s Brandon Tensley explore how we learn to be queer. June Thomas joins in for a quick game about queer tropes and culture before the hosts discuss what being queer and embracing queer culture means, and their first experiences establishing their queer identities. Then Slate contributor Evan Urquhart and trans activist Andy Bowen sit down with Christina to think through what it means to be a trans person. Finally, they end the show by answering an advice question about presenting as bi, and of course a round of the gay agenda.  This episode is brought to you by RXBar. For 25% off your first order, go to rxbar.com/outward and use promo code outward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month on Outward hosts Christina Cauterucci, Bryan Lowder, and New America’s Brandon Tensley explore how we learn to be queer. June Thomas joins in for a quick game about queer tropes and culture before the hosts discuss what being queer and embracing queer culture means, and their first experiences establishing their queer identities. Then Slate contributor Evan Urquhart and trans activist Andy Bowen sit down with Christina to think through what it means to be a trans person. Finally, they end the show by answering an advice question about presenting as bi, and of course a round of the gay agenda.  This episode is brought to you by RXBar. For 25% off your first order, go to rxbar.com/outward and use promo code outward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mom discovered a portable pussy sex toy in her teenaged son's backpack. Are you a mother? Do you plan to be one someday? What will you do when you discover a portable pussy in your teenaged son's backpack? A man and his girlfriend see each other every few months. And when they do, hoo boy! They have sex every few hours. By the end of their time together she feels sore. Right? She wants to try pegging him so he can understand what it's like to be penetrated so frequently. He wonders if this is even analogous. Dan brings a bit of clarity to this fraught situation. And, oh my god speaking of fraught! A father asked his daughter to lie to mom about the earring in the hot tub and say it was hers, when it WASN'T. At first the daughter agreed to lie for her dad, but then wisely changed her mind. Now what? And, on the Magnum, Dan chats with Slate writer Evan Urquhart- a trans guy who covers LGBTQ issues about dating trans folk. 206-302-2064 This episode is brought to you by Hims, the one-stop shop for hair loss, skincare, and sexual wellness, for men. Get a trial month of everything you need to keep your hair - for just $5 by going to For . This episode is brought to you by #Open- a NEW, inclusive approach to social networking and MODERN dating. #Open needs Savage Lovecast listeners to test their app before they “come out” to the rest of the world. Test now at and earn “Community Founder” status for life. This episode is brought to you by MVMT Watches: Good looking watches, bracelets, sunglasses and gifts at great prices. Get 15% off today —WITH FREE SHIPPING and FREE RETURNS—by going to

Mom discovered a portable pussy sex toy in her teenaged son's backpack. Are you a mother? Do you plan to be one someday? What will you do when you discover a portable pussy in your teenaged son's backpack? A man and his girlfriend see each other every few months. And when they do, hoo boy! They have sex every few hours. By the end of their time together she feels sore. Right? She wants to try pegging him so he can understand what it's like to be penetrated so frequently. He wonders if this is even analogous. Dan brings a bit of clarity to this fraught situation. And, oh my god speaking of fraught! A father asked his daughter to lie to mom about the earring in the hot tub and say it was hers, when it WASN'T. At first the daughter agreed to lie for her dad, but then wisely changed her mind. Now what? And, on the Magnum, Dan chats with Slate writer Evan Urquhart- a trans guy who covers LGBTQ issues about dating trans folk. 206-302-2064 This episode is brought to you by Hims, the one-stop shop for hair loss, skincare, and sexual wellness, for men. Get a trial month of everything you need to keep your hair - for just $5 by going to For . This episode is brought to you by #Open- a NEW, inclusive approach to social networking and MODERN dating. #Open needs Savage Lovecast listeners to test their app before they “come out” to the rest of the world. Test now at and earn “Community Founder” status for life. This episode is brought to you by MVMT Watches: Good looking watches, bracelets, sunglasses and gifts at great prices. Get 15% off today —WITH FREE SHIPPING and FREE RETURNS—by going to

Aisha Harris talks to trans Activist Victoria Cruz about her role in the Netflix documentary, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson. Also, Slate’s Evan Urquhart joins us to unpack the controversy the documentary has ignited over who gets to tell trans stories. For links on what we discuss check out our show page. Tell a friend to subscribe! Share this link: megaphone.link/represent Email: represent@slate.com Facebook: Slate Represent Twitter: @SlateRepresent, @craftingmystyle Production by Veralyn Williams Social media: Marissa Martinelli Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Aisha Harris talks to trans Activist Victoria Cruz about her role in the Netflix documentary, The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson. Also, Slate’s Evan Urquhart joins us to unpack the controversy the documentary has ignited over who gets to tell trans stories. For links on what we discuss check out our show page. Tell a friend to subscribe! Share this link: megaphone.link/represent Email: represent@slate.com Facebook: Slate Represent Twitter: @SlateRepresent, @craftingmystyle Production by Veralyn Williams Social media: Marissa Martinelli Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices