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Brian:  It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. It's Thursday, June 1st. It being June 1st, it's the first day of Pride Month. On this show, we'll be doing pride-related segments every Thursday in June that we hope will be fresh and illuminating, and both for LGBTQ+ listeners and straight cisgender listeners as well. We'll start by turning to a term that many of you have heard by now and turning it on its head.

Even if you don't know any trans people, you've probably heard the term gender dysphoria. The National Institutes of Health defines gender dysphoria as a marked incongruence between a person's experienced or expressed gender and the one they were assigned at birth. Wikipedia defines gender dysphoria as the distress a person experiences due to that mismatch. The Cleveland Clinic website notes that many insurance companies require you to submit specific documentation of consistent gender dysphoria before they will cover a gender-affirming surgery.

In an oversimplified nutshell, that's gender dysphoria, and many of you even with no trans folks in your life probably had at least heard that term and had a vague sense of what that is. Let's turn that term and the distress that comes with it on its head because there is also such a thing as gender euphoria. You all know what euphoria is, that feeling of extreme happiness, and elation, and joy that I hope everyone listening right now has experienced at least sometimes in your life.

If you do a Google search for gender euphoria, you'll find millions of hits. One of the first to come up, the website Healthline, which defines gender euphoria as feeling right in your gender, when you can look at the way your gender is presented and received and feel happiness or joy. As we begin our Thursday Pride Month series here on the show, amid all these laws and policies being passed and all these states trying to erase non-binary and trans people in one way or another, we will talk about those hate laws some of the time and gender dysphoria some of the time.

Let's start on the idea of gender euphoria, feeling right in the way your gender is at least presented and sometimes hopefully perceived. We'll invite your gender euphoria calls in a minute, and we're very happy of two guests for this. Imara Jones is back with us, a former journalist and resident at WNYC's The Greene Space, a Peabody and Emmy Award winner.

She is the creator of TransLash Media, which includes the TransLash Podcast with Imara Jones and much more. She was also on Mayor Bill de Blasio's New York City Commission on Gender Equity.

Also with us, Tuck Woodstock, whose bio page starts with journalist, educator, audio producer, and alleged former mayor of Portland. What? Maybe we'll find out about that alleged former mayor status, but actually, he's based in Queens and is probably best known as host of the award-winning podcast Gender Reveal. He is also consulted for This American Life and many other productions. Imara, welcome back to the show. Tuck, welcome, and welcome both of you back to WNYC.

Tuck: Thank you so much for having me.

Imara: Thanks for having me.

Tuck: It's an honor.

Brian: Tuck, would you be okay starting us off by describing gender euphoria either as a journalist, an educator, or in personal terms about yourself?

Tuck: Sure. Honestly, I think you did a great job explaining it, Brian, but as you said, we hear so much about gender dysphoria, this dissonance between how we're feeling or maybe how other people are treating us and the gender we know ourselves to be. Gender euphoria is simply the feeling of all of these things going right for us. I think that people who aren't trans, because they might not experience the same levels of gender dysphoria, don't feel these same levels of gender euphoria.

When you're used to having a hard time being seen as your gender either by yourself or others, these moments where everything finally aligns and feels right can be really, really powerful. It's something you may have seen if you're on TikTok or other social media. Will be, for example, photos of someone who has just had a gender-affirming surgery revealing the results of those surgeries for the first time. That can be a huge moment of elation, but it can be little things too.

For example, yesterday, I had to go get passport photos taken at the place on my block who takes the photos. The guy was insinuating to me that I might want to fix some stuff about my appearance. He kept being like, "Do you want to fix your hair? Is your face okay?" I got my photo, I'm like, "No, I look great." [chuckles] I was comparing that photo to the photo I took 10 years ago for my passport, and it really did bring me a lot of joy to see those photos in comparison. I just thought the photo that was taken for my passport, which is so silly, really made me feel exactly like who I am. That could be just a small moment of gender euphoria.

Brian: Nice description. Imara, same question, gender euphoria. Is it more than just the absence of dysphoria?

Imara: I think, for me, and of course, my experience is individual and unique because one of the amazing things about trans people in our community is how broad and diverse it is. For me personally, what I can say is I think it was the day that I didn't wake up having to think about my gender. For me, it wasn't necessarily a balloon drop, but I'd say this feeling of crossing a threshold in that way marked by some celebratory moment.

It was really when I began to notice that I wasn't thinking about my gender anymore, I wasn't second-guessing myself, and other people were starting to interact with me in a way that was consistent with the way I've always been inside of myself. I think, for me, it was much more of a quiet revolution. It's like that joke, that Heron quote where the revolution isn't seen, it's because it starts in the mind. For me, that was much more the plate that I remember being-- that's how I experience gender euphoria, is the ability to live and to be as myself in the way that I've always been.

Brian: It's really interesting to me that you put it in that way that includes not having to think about your gender because I was thinking about this and the word pride as well as in Pride Month in relation to myself, and I identify as a straight cisgender male. Cisgender for people who don't know just means I identify and feel myself to be the gender I was identified as at birth. I was realizing that I think I don't experience gender euphoria or dysphoria in the sense of distress or elation about my gender, it's just who I am.

Same with the idea of pride. I feel like I'm neither proud nor ashamed of being straight and cis. It's just the way I came out. I'm proud or ashamed of things I choose to do, not of something that I didn't control. My next thought is that I have the privilege of not feeling pride or shame about my gender or sexual orientation because nobody is hating on me or thinking I'm weird or of questionable morality or trying to fix my appearance for my passport photo, or questioning my mental health just for being those things that I had no control over.

If people are marginalized in those ways, of course, they're going to experience pride in their identity because their identity is embattled, and others sometimes think you should be ashamed of who you are. All of that is just my musings. Imara, you want to follow up on what you said a minute ago, and maybe talk about the meaning of pride as in Pride Month to you, living in your skin and doing the work that you do?

Imara: Yes. A couple of things. I think that that's right. What's fascinating, I think a part of the freak out in many ways that being stoked about trans people is based in the fact of what you just said, which is that most people don't wake up thinking about gender, and then suddenly, you have to think about something that you've never thought about before can be shocking. It can be unsettling. For trans people, that's all we've ever done our entire lives.

What alignment can mean for some people, this is not true for everyone, but what alignment has meant for me is the ability to be able to, again, live as myself without the same questions that I often had before transition or even earlier stages in my transition. I think that that's exactly right. I think that what gender euphoria for me is that it means a certain level of peace that I never had before.

With regards to pride, I think pride is so many things. I tell people every year that I think that pride is a recommitment of the vows that are committed to the equality and human rights of our community. It's grounded in the commemoration of the Stonewall uprising and what that meant in terms of galvanizing our community as a whole, of course, led by trans women and, in many respects, trans people of color to that larger project.

I think that it is a time for us to reflect and to feel good about ourselves and to support each other in really important ways. A part of that is expressing joy and celebration, but it's also a commitment to the unfinished business that still remains.

Brian: Listeners, first trans or non-binary listeners, we invite your calls describing your experiences of gender euphoria. 212-433-WNYC. You can also describe your experience of pride. 212-433-9692. First priority for trans or non-binary identifying folks.

In addition to that, our guests, the journalists and creators, Imara Jones and Tuck Woodstock have also been generous enough to volunteer for this segment to answer some trans 101 questions, if you will, from you and from me, for people not in the community trying to understand trans and non-binary identity better these days because it's so in the news, because it's under attack, or maybe because you're realizing for the first time that there are actually trans or non-binary people who you know.

Trans and non-binary listeners, you're invited to call with your experiences of gender euphoria. Anyone else with a trans 101 question, also 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or you can text us at that same number. Tuck, do you think it's important to acknowledge and publicly discuss gender euphoria as a thing because it's real and there's so much discussion of gender dysphoria in the media, some of which is supportive but which still makes it sound like being trans comes mostly with distress, not also with a lot of joy.

Tuck: Yes, absolutely. Again, you said it so perfectly already, but I think that folks who maybe don't know a lot of trans people and are just hearing about us in the news are hearing so much about us suffering and being persecuted and generally having a bad time. It's true that trans people are generally having a bad time right now because of laws that are being passed, attacking us across the country, but being trans includes so many moments of joy, both personally and by building community.

As Imara said, also just the joy of realizing that you don't have to wake up and think about your gender anymore because you've gotten to a place where that's not the biggest problem in your life. You actually feel good and you can move on to having hobbies.

I think it's really important to talk about the fact that trans kids and trans adults can be, not just surviving, but absolutely thriving especially when we are allowed to live as the genders that we are without fear of persecution because it's this reminder that if we're seeing all these depictions of sad or struggling trans folks, it's not because being trans is inherently negative or sad or hard, it's really just because of the way that society is treating us.

When left to our own devices, we're having a great time. Not to plug my own work, but I host this podcast Gender Reveal in which trans people talk to each other. We very rarely talk about the type of laws that are being passed, and we really try to focus on other parts of our lives. It's such a treat to just get to talk to each other about the things that we're passionate about or that make us happy without having to focus on all of the struggles and the dysphoria of it all. I really appreciate you centering that as well to a larger audience.

Brian: Here's Rachel in Philadelphia with a gender euphoria call, I think. Rachel, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Rachel: Hello, Brian. Thanks very much for doing this segment. I'm going to make this really brief because this is one of those things I've been dying to say every time you've done a segment and unfortunately I haven't been able to ring through. The moment of my euphoria after decades of dysphoria was the night before my surgery 35 years ago when I said Kaddish for my old self.

Brian: You said Kaddish for your old self. For people who don't know, Kaddish is the Jewish Prayer for the dead.

Rachel: Exactly. I felt for 30-some-odd years, every time I heard the name that I was given at birth, that they were talking to somebody else. It's as if I kept calling you Fred all day long, Brian, and you kept saying, "No, no, no, my name is Brian, not Fred," and I kept saying, "Oh, that's nice, Fred." [laughs]

Brian: I hear you.

Rachel: That's the way I felt for 35-

Brian: Isn't there an expression in the trans world also a term "dead name"? People say my dead name, meaning their name that you left behind?

Rachel: Oh my Lord. I have worked hard. I was a fairly well-known actor and voice actor and producer in Los Angeles and broadcaster for many, many, many years. I started my career at WNEW AM as an engineer. As a matter of fact, I even interviewed at WNYC once. Anywho, long story short, I had to work hard to get rid of that dead name. I have been so lucky that I have not been called that in years.

Brian: I'm going to call you Rachel, and thank you very much for your call. That was wonderful. I hope you get through again. Please call us again. Thank you very much. We're going to go right to I think another gender euphoria story from Meg in Bordentown in New Jersey, south of Trenton there. Hi, Meg, you're on WNYC.

Meg: Hi Brian. Thank you for having me. Longtime listener, first-time caller. For me, gender euphoria is-- for me, the first moment I felt it was-- I'm a trans woman, and the first time someone looked at me. It was in a store and I was presenting. Someone looked at me and said, "Can I help you, ma'am?" I know that sounds unbelievably trivial, but the fact that someone saw me for who I am and I didn't have to invite it, that was so, so powerful.

There's a place and an importance in making these sorts of things and pronouns explicit, but sometimes it's really just nice to be seen for who you are. Something I wanted just to add is for cisgender listeners who maybe aren't familiar with this concept, you've experienced gender euphoria. When you lean into something that's associated with-- or you associate, I should say, with the gender you were assigned at birth, like a guy with sports or a woman with sports for that matter, or someone who you were a great girl boss at work today, you did a great thing as a woman, that's gender euphoria too. We just don't necessarily always name it that because it just seems so obvious that you should feel good about it.

Brian: It doesn't come to your awareness like being a majority of many kinds in your society that just feels like normal. It doesn't even feel like a thing. It's the people who are in the minority in one way or another who realize because they walk around being othered in so many ways that there are even those differences. Thank you very much for that, Meg. Imara, what are you thinking as you listen to either of those calls?

Imara: I think, again for me, it's the quiet moment, and that's what we just heard. I think that one of the things that gets lost in, again, the manufactured debate about who we are and then the strong feelings that are unleashed as a result is the fact that we are human beings. That, for most human beings, no matter who you are, a lot of your life is about the quiet, boring moments that no one ever sees. For me, I know that a lot of those quiet, boring moments were always tormented.

The ability to be able to live without that torment is something that I can't put a price on. It's hard to describe it unless you've ever experienced it and it left you. I just wanted to also say, excuse me, to Rachel's experience that entire thing of, the older that I got and the more that my body changed, the more that the world began to interact with me with the gender that I was assigned at birth, the more and more distant I actually felt from the world.

I felt that there was this Russian doll effect where there was a person inside of a person and that people were seeing the exterior but there was something that was so much profound and so much deeper that began to be more and more hidden away. The entire process of transition is about removing those layers so that the world can actually see you for who you are.

That for me is gender euphoria, for us to be able to see the brilliance and the beauty, and even the banality of every single individual human being without the layers that we keep upon them. I think that that's what everybody wants, and for trans people, that task is just so much greater.

Brian: It brings me back to the definition that I read at the top about gender euphoria or of gender euphoria from the website Healthline that I think the last caller brought up. It was when people were perceiving her as a woman, and that Healthline definition was feeling right in your gender, and when you can look at the way your gender is presented and received and feel happiness or joy in that.

When I first read that definition, I thought, "I'm not sure I really like it because it still gives power to other people when you can look at the way your gender is presented and received and feel happiness or joy." I'm sure a lot of trans people have gender euphoria, even though they're being perceived hostilely in one way or another, but you're laying that out too. It's the presentation, the feeling internally, and the reception can add to it.

Imara: Yes. Can I just add one more thing, Brian, which is I think that one of the things that really helps me is that I think about the fact that, for most of human history, our existence as trans and gender-nonconforming people was a natural part of human society in that it's really over the last 500 years with the imposition of a certain type of economic structure and ideology that had developed in Western Europe and then was exported around the world that we've become a controversy.

Even our experience of pain and anguish is manufactured, and so much about what we're doing revealed in a tough conversation is what we're doing is we are undoing that damage and being ourselves in a way that for most of our time as human beings, we've been able to be.

Brian: We're going to take a break and we're going to continue with Imara Jones and Tuck Woodstock. By the way, I just found out, Imara, I'm not telling anything you don't know about yourself, but I'll tell everybody else. I just found out that you're on the TIME100 this year, which is that magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. I think you're in the Time Magazine TIME100 icons section. Congratulations on being recognized and perceived in that way.

Imara: Thank you so much.

Brian: We're going to continue in a minute and we're going to move to the trans 101 section of the conversation now that we've taken some trans euphoria calls and had that conversation for a while with our guests Imara Jones and Tuck Woodstock. Cisgender people, any questions you have about being trans? I have a few here that I will kick it off with, but if you'd like to ask something that you're curious about because this is just in your awareness more than it was maybe a few years ago, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or text us at that same number with your question. Of course, trans and non-binary people can continue to call as well. Stay with us.

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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC on this first day of Pride Month as we continue to talk about trans euphoria, not just trans dysphoria, and other aspects of trans life with Imara Jones, a former journalist and resident at WNYC's The Greene Space, a Peabody and Emmy Award winner, creator of TransLash Media, which includes the TransLash podcast with Imara Jones and someone who's been named to the TIME100 for this year, as I said before the break.

Also with us, Tuck Woodstock, whose bio page starts with journalist, educator, audio producer, and alleged former mayor of Portland, really based in Queens. He is probably best known as host of the award-winning podcast Gender Reveal. Tuck, what is that about being the former alleged mayor of Portland?

Tuck: Sure. I lived in Portland for 10 years and I grew up in the area. I was a journalist there for a long time, and I was covering the 2020 protests in Portland that went on for more than 100 consecutive nights. Some people were having some feelings about the current mayor, Ted Wheeler, who was also mayor during that period, and somehow it just became a joke online that I was the true mayor. Then when I moved to New York last year, I abdicated my unofficial Twitter mayorship, but I kept it in my bio just as some fun flavor for interviews like these.

Brian: There you go. Former alleged mayor of Portland, among other things, Tuck Woodstock. I have a question for you. I'll call it a one-on-one question. I really appreciate, by the way, both of you volunteering to do a little Trans 101 because, on one level, it's rude to even ask other people to explain themselves or to do the work for other people to understand you. Just know I don't take your generosity on this for granted.

I think a lot of people don't yet understand the difference between being trans and being non-binary, or sometimes we hear the term gender fluid. Tuck, can you make that distinction or describe the spectrum a little bit as you see it?

Tuck: Yes, absolutely. The word transgender just describes anyone whose gender does not neatly match the sex that they were assigned at birth. That is an umbrella term that can include trans men, trans women, as well as non-binary people. Non-binary is just another umbrella term under the trans umbrella that describes anyone who does not feel themselves to be neatly a man or a woman.

You might hear all sorts of different terms; non-binary, genderqueer, gender fluid, agender, various other terms that you or I may not have heard yet. These would all fall under the non-binary umbrella, but really, non-binary people are also trans because trans simply means your gender not being what you were assigned at birth. If you weren't assigned non-binary at birth, which almost no one is, then non-binary falls under the trans umbrella.

Brian: Another 101 question, Imara. The word transition, now that we've talked a little bit about the word non-binary, would it be accurate to say there are social, legal, and medical aspects to transitioning, and you don't always have to be engaged in all three to be a trans individual?

Imara: That's right. First of all, I would love to just take text definition and carry it around with me for anyone who had questions. It was such a brilliant succinct overview in a way that everyone can understand. Transition is about aligning yourself with the gender identity that you have. The broad series of terms and umbrellas that Tuck just took us through. Transition is about you aligning yourself, moving from however the world labeled you or saw you or raised you with what your actual gender identity is, whether or not it be trans, masculine transfeminine, gender-nonconforming, non-binary.

There's so many layers and aspects of transition, and if we had it visually, you would have a wheel with all of these different sections. There's medical transition, which not everyone engages then. Then under medical transition, there are options in terms of whether or not people go on hormones or not, or whether or not you have surgeries and which type of surgeries because there is a range of them, so that's medical. There's legal, do you change your name, do you change your gender marker.

For some people, the source of their dysphoria may be their name but not their gender marker. Again, there are options there. There's dress and presentation which is another area of transition. There's also voice. People can transition their voice as well. I think that we have to think about transition, again, not as a set of things that happen where a person is moving from one thing to another, from one binary to another, but rather it is a variety of options and tools that people have in order to be able to align themselves with their gender identity, and so we have to complicate transition is the point.

Brian: Getting back to the question of non-binary as opposed to trans, Tuck, here's a text that came in from a listener that asks why are non-binary persons being shoehorned into binary infrastructures. The infrastructures need to be expanded, and I'm not sure I totally understand the question or the sentiment, but maybe you do.

Tuck: Sure, I can make it work. When we're talking about those different types of transition that you and Imara were both discussing, non-binary people, like anyone really, can pick and choose what elements of those transition care that they choose to receive. For example, some non-binary people may want gender-affirming surgeries like top surgery or bottom surgery. Some may not. Some may change their names, some may not. Some may go on hormones, some may not legally, blah, blah, blah.

I will say that this infrastructure was made for men and women. In fact, when we're talking about transition-related care, everything that trans people are doing is stuff that cisgender people also do and also have access to. When we're talking about particularly medical care that trans people access including non-binary people, cisgender people also have access to all of that care. In fact, it's much easier for them to do so. Because of that, all of the medical care, the legal systems, the bureaucratic systems, they're all built for men and women.

That's changing just a little bit. We see non-binary gender markers becoming available in certain states and in fact on US passports, for example. It's still pretty binary. When I was signing up for surgery and was going through that process, I was actually asked on the call, "Is your surgery male-to-female or female-to-male?" I was like, "That's not how I describe my body actually."

I would call it a gender-affirming top surgery. I could call it a double mastectomy if you want to get really technical, but I don't consider myself going female-to-male. That's not the language I use for myself. If that's what the caller is talking about or the texter is talking about, then I certainly agree. I do think it's improving a little bit, but we still live in a very binary system.

Brian: Let me ask you a follow-up question along those lines because if you are-- well, let me just get you straight first in the way you're describing yourself. You use he/him pronouns. Do you call yourself a trans man?

Tuck: I do at this point. Back when I was pursuing surgery, I identified more with the word non-binary, which I would still use to describe myself. Why not? At that time, I was very much more of a they/them non-binary person. That language really rubbed me the wrong way, and now I'm more in a he/they space. I'll take whatever people give me, to be honest, which is, I want to also say while we're talking about this, a really common experience with trans people in that our pronouns might change multiple times, and the words we used to describe ourselves might change multiple times because we're all exploring ourselves as we go along.

Brian: As a follow-up, what does being a man feel like to you, Tuck? Imara, I'll ask you next about feeling like a woman. Tuck, having been identified at birth as a girl, what's masculinity, if that's even the right word, in terms of how you have experienced your gender identity in adopting he/him pronouns?

Tuck: Yes, that's such a good question. I'm not sure that I or anyone really know. When I'm teaching workshops to cisgender people, which I do often, I will ask cisgender people to tell me without describing your body or the words that other people have assigned to you, how do you know what your gender is? If you can't look at your genitals, you can't look at your birth certificate, how do that you're a man or how do that you're a woman? People can almost never give a good answer because, at the end of the day, gender is really something that we're feeling in ourselves.

We're using context clues like, "People who are described as men look like this, act like this, and like these things. Women look like this, like these things. Do I fit in those? Do I want to follow those rules? Is something else speaking to me?" We're using all of these different societal clues plus our own internal feelings to figure out what gender feels best for us at any given moment in any given part of our lives. Because of that, it's really hard to answer questions like that. Yet, in order for trans people to access gender-affirming care and even legal and social transition, we're often asked to answer those questions.

When I challenge cisgender people to answer them, it's to prove that there aren't easy answers for any of us, including cisgender people. At the end of the day, it's just the gut feeling of what makes the most sense to us in the system that we're living in right now. That doesn't mean that it always fits perfectly, but it's just what feels right out of the given options.

Brian: Imara, same question for you. As a trans woman, what are those female gender traits or feelings you recognized in yourself once upon a time?

Imara: Yes, really early for me. For me, when you first asked it, I was like, "Oh, how does it feel to be a woman?" I was like, "Oh, it feels like how I've always been." That was also an interesting first thing that popped into my head. I think it's a variety of things and it's really hard to talk about these things without devolving to stereotype. That's because gender is this weird face, this weird amalgamation of, as Tuck said, biological contact clues with cultural traits that we as a society have said and assigned to women, but in other societies haven't been. Again, we have to know that it's an amalgamation, which means that it's hard to define.

For me, some of the traits are people who are concerned with nurturing. Nurturing can be in a broad sense, it can be community, it can be society, people who are concerned very much with the emotional lives and emotional health of people, I think a focus on beauty and aesthetics. I think people who are fundamentally concerned with life outside of construction, life outside of enforcement, life outside of imposition. As I describe these things, people who are cisgender male may listen and say, "I feel those things." That's because if you are a healthy person, then you have a combination of masculine and feminine traits. People who are not healthy don't have some combination of each.

I hope that in describing these things if you are a cis man and you identify with what I said, that you realize that that's a sign of health because if you didn't have that, you would most likely be a psychopath. I think that we have to understand that as well, even if you are a cis, if you're a healthy person, you contain what we call masculine and feminine traits that are balanced in a way that help you be a positive human being.

Brian: That's interesting because, Tuck, I'll admit my own bias here I guess as a straight cis man, I've been steeped in feminism enough to think that generally women are maybe a little more whole than men. That's a generalization, so take it for what it's worth. I came to believe long ago that it's more likely that a woman can be strong and be a provider quite easily, some of the things we identify with masculinity traditionally, but also tend to be more relational, more cooperative, less competitive. Maybe more whole, in more cases, the way that humanity has evolved, and men have a lot of work to do.

Again, as a generalization, and not to overstate it, but we talk about toxic masculinity for good reason. There really isn't toxic femininity in the same way, I don't think, it's not a term in the lexicon. In the context of gender euphoria, what is it about being a man that makes you feel good and proud about that?

Tuck: Totally. Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you asked. Everything you're saying is true. I think that's what's such a delight about being a trans guy, is getting to carry all of the lessons we learned from being socialized as women, being taught the lessons that girls are taught, experiencing what it's like to be perceived as a girl by men. In fact, something that I've noticed now that I'm being read as a man by other people is that men are so much nicer to random men than they are to random women.

It's messed up that an experience that I can have of gender euphoria is just a guy being nice to me at the coffee shop, but it really is true. That's not why I chose to transition. That's not something that I knew would happen, but it really has been bizarre to see the way that men act and treat men compared to women and other people.

Brian: I'll admit being a little surprised by that because I would think, traditionally, men-- what's the word? I'm trying to think of a word. There's a word, but it means that men are going to treat women with a certain difference.

Tuck: Like chivalry, maybe.

Brian: Chivalry is exactly the word. If you're talking about strangers online in a coffee shop or something like that, but your experience is the opposite.

Tuck: Totally. I think that as women or people who are being perceived as women, we're used to being a little bit suspicious of men with good reason. If a man was being chivalrous or nice to me and he was perceiving me as a woman, I might be thinking, "What is his motivation here? What does he want from me?" and I wouldn't really be able to trust it at face value. Whereas a guy is just being nice to me as a guy, I'm like, "Okay. He's not trying to do anything weird."

I think that's the difference, is this level of safety. Again, that's not the reason that I would transition, but it is a good feeling, I have to say, to get to move into to the world and feel less like I'm looking over my shoulder at all times for at least one reason. Now I just have to do it for being trans. There's always something.

Brian: Michael in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Michael.

Michael: Hi, Brian. Thank you for hosting the conversation. I guess I'd like to bring up a bit about the pushback and what I've noticed time and time again, the same refrain you'll get from people who were part of the not having it spectrum to just straight homophobes and transphobes. They say, "We're fine with it. Just don't throw it in our face. I don't want it to be shoved down my throat."

Basically, it's an argument for going back into the closet, so I'm wondering what your guests have to say about that, how they respond. I think it has something to do with a reluctance and a resistance to do work on themselves and to evolve in whatever direction they want. I see the gender evolution as something where humanity is coming into, to touch on what you're saying, a wholeness in many, many different aspects that we need.

Just one more thing about enforcement and the closet. So much of the time, even primarily, I would argue, it's not interpersonal, it's the institutions of the society, specifically, policing and over-policing. A word of support and solidarity to Qween Jean and few other people who were arrested yesterday at Washington Square Park for the Black Trans Lives Matter march, the NYPD through ungodly amount of hundreds of SRG protest cops, basically.

The arrest was over a megaphone that Qween Jean had not a permit for. In a sense, you could read that as saying she was too loud. She was too loud for the gentrified area, she was too loud for the cops, and spent the night in the 7th precinct for it.

Brian: Michael, I'm going to leave it there. Thank you for all of that. Here's a trans 101 question coming in from a listener via text. The question is, "Cis, straight white guy here. A question about refrain." Oh, no, no, no, No, wait. Sorry, that's not the text I thought I was going to. Here it is. "My trans 101 question. My son reports most of the kids in his high school are LGBTQ, of whom many are trans or non-binary. This seems like a great increase from the past. Why are the numbers going up so much? Are people just more open about who they are?"

I'll just say, he wrote it as, "My son reports most of the kids in his high school are LGBTQ." I imagine it's not most, but Imara, it's still the premise of the question. The numbers seem to be going up so much. A generation ago, most people may have known gay and lesbian people, but not trans and non-binary people.

Imara: I just also want to echo the sentiments of concern about Qween Jean and her arrest yesterday. I think that one of the things that we have to realize and this is one of the things that I've spent a lot of time reporting on over the last year and a half. This is a hard thing for people to understand, but that our very conversation, the conversation that we have about trans people is actually heavily shaped by an intentional disinformation campaign by the Christian nationalist movement.

One of the ideas that they have deliberately released into the bloodstream of our culture and conversation is this idea of trans contagion typically amongst young people, the idea of rapid onset gender dysphoria, that there's a popcorn effect where one person is coming out and then all these other kids are saying that they're trans as a way to be distinct and all the rest of it. We know that that entire concept is based on totally debunked and discredited science.

Now, it's pseudoscience, but because it seems an easy answer for why there are more trans kids now than ever that we know about, it's really been picked up and embraced. The problem is that it's leading to trans kids to be harmed because their parents are believing that this is a "phase" and are denying them care and it's increasing the harm including the suicidality of trans kids who don't get this care.

I think it's a very easy answer, Brian. I think that over the last 10 years, and it really is over the last 10 years people who have been born are able to see trans people in the world and society. That's certainly not something that I saw growing up in the '80s. You didn't even see that even if you were a kid in the early 2000s. It's really past 2014 where there's been trans people who are visible. Once you're visible, you're able to say, "Oh, I know who that person is. That person is like me," and that leads to your journey of self-revelation.

Look, we know that trans kids are still in the very low single digits in this country just statistically, and so if you see it going from 0.5% to 1%, it seems like an explosion because it's doubled, but it's still extremely, extremely a small number of people in terms of being a minority. I think that what we have to do is to understand that the world is opening, the world is changing, and what was brutally repressed and erased in even harsher terms is less so, and that small crack in our society is what is allowing more trans kids to say, "This is who I am," and to be seen.

I think that it's not new. We're not new. The only thing that's happened is that trans kids now have created a space for themselves where they're able to say, "This is who I am, so please accept me."

Brian: Listeners.

Tuck: I could just say very quickly anecdotally.

Brian: Real quick, Tuck. Real quick.

Tuck: Yes, so quick. I went to high school like 15 years ago, and no one was gay, no one was trans. That was simply not allowed socially. Now, so many of my peers are also queer or trans. We really were queer trans the whole time but we just did not have the space to know that about ourselves and know that about each other. It's not that these kids are gay or transer than us, it's just that we didn't have that space, but we grew up to be queer and trans anyway. That's all I want to say.

Imara: That's exactly right.

Brian: Listeners, that's our segment for the first day of Pride Month. We will be centering trans and other LGBTQIA+ identities in this weekly Thursday series as the month goes on. For now, our great thanks to Imara Jones, creator of Translash Media, including the Translash Podcast with Imara Jones, and Tuck Woodstock, host of the podcast Gender Reveal, among many other things. Thank you both so much. Happy Pride.

Tuck: Thank you so much.

Imara: Happy pride.

Tuck: Happy Pride, Brian.

 

 

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