QPOD - queer journeys podcast

What’s it like to sell your art at conventions? How do you get into yarn work, resin work, and making enamel pins? Can you sustain yourself financially or how do you split your time between your day job and your art creations?  Today I’m happy to be chatting with Sanjicat about their yarn work, resin pieces, pins, and artistic inspirations. Although their family was not initially supportive, they were able to turn a personal tragedy into providing art and merch at conventions.

I’m excited to be chatting with An, a queer Asian-American person who’s really passionate about national parks. We talk about her interest and life goal of visiting all of the National Parks in the United States.

Today I’ll be interviewing Laura about her personal experience growing up as a queer, Vietnamese-American child of immigrants here in the San Francisco Bay Area. We’ll be chatting about her experience growing up in San Jose, her journey working in tech at Google, attending UC Berkeley, and now as a Masters of Social Work candidate at Columbia University.

We’re interviewing Livvie Lin, 1 week after their double incision top surgery, to chat about their experience. This is our Part 3 video in our surgery recovery series as we wanted to increase the visibility of Asian-American queers, especially those who are non-binary.  As reference, this is a gender-affirming surgery option for FTM (female-to-male) and FTN (female-to-neutral) who wish to alter their chests and reduce dysphoria. Some choose to undergo this surgery to have a gender neutral chest and some prefer a more masculine result. This surgery was done with Dr. Scott Mosser in San Francisco, California who is a Bay Area transgender specialist.   --- More about Livvie --- Twitter: https://twitter.com/livvielin  --- IG: https://www.instagram.com/livvielocks/ --- Resources for queer women / trans folks --- Online support Facebook (SF Bay Area focused but open to all): https://www.facebook.com/groups/nqp.sfo/

Today I wanted to highlight a lesser known part of the LGBTQ+ spectrum. We’ll be highlighting one of the A’s in the community which stands for asexuality. It’s actually an umbrella term, so there’s a range of where people may identify. Some asexuals also called “Aces” may have low or no sexual attraction or interest in sex. Some enjoy being in emotional relationships, and some do not. Some aces identify as gay, straight, bi, or any other orientation to describe their attraction while some don’t experience attraction at all. This is by no means a chat explaining every asexual person’s life, this is just one experience, one story. Find more about Mary and local resources: --- 

Her blog - https://nextstepcake.wordpress.com/  ---  

Local SF asexuality group - https://www.asexualitysf.org  --- 

Useful info about aseuxality - https://acesandaros.org/  --- 

Asexuality week website, in 2020 its October 25th through 31st - https://aceweek.org/  --- 

In the video we’ll be answering:  --- 

- To start off, how did you first figure out you were on the ace-spectrum? 

- Where can people find resources about being ace or getting involved with the ace community? 

 - Has there been any interesting experiences when coming out for you? 

- Are your family and friends accepting? 

- I heard that in the asexuality community, you can signal visibility to each other through a black ring, do you know a little more about the origins of this?  

- To wrap up the conversation, do you have any other tips or recommendations for people coming to terms with their ace identities?

Today we're interviewing Ellie about her experiences as a petite woman climber. Rock climbing is currently a male-dominated sport, so I wanted to highlight a woman's experience as a climber. Ellie is an SF-based queer climber, backpacker, and photographer. Thanks again Ellie for being on the show! -- We answer these questions during our chat:  - How did you get into climbing?  - For our viewers who aren’t as familiar, what are some types of climbing people can get into? I’ve only done indoors climbing: bouldering and top-roping. Bouldering you’re not climbing as high up but you don’t have a harness attached and you’re climbing freely to the top. - What’s been your experience as a shorter person who climbs? For those who don’t know, Ellie is 4’10”.  - What has your experience been as a woman climber in a male-dominated sport?  - I know you’re involved with a couple of organizations, Board member for the bay area climber's coalition, and a team member / ambassador of the Petite Ascension and Lady Crush Crew. What got you interested in giving back to the community?  - You’re also a certified wilderness first responder- how did that come about and what was the process like?  - Since it’s part of our pride month series, what’s been your experience as a queer person in the climbing community?  - You’ve mentioned a bit in the past about how there can be body image issues in the climbing community, do you mind elaborating a bit on that.  - So for our last question, what’s next for you in your outdoors life?   Thank you again Ellie for being on the show. I learned a lot about the climbing community and hopefully some of the listeners feel inspired to give the sport a try. If you want to find out more about Ellie’s climbing check her out on Instagram. Check out Ellie's IG here: https://www.instagram.com/climbingwalrus ---

We’re interviewing Livvie Lin, 1 week after their double incision top surgery, to chat about their experience. This is our Part 2 video in our surgery recovery series as we wanted to increase the visibility of Asian-American queers, especially those who are non-binary.  As reference, this is a gender-affirming surgery option for FTM (female-to-male) and FTN (female-to-neutral) who wish to alter their chests and reduce dysphoria. Some choose to undergo this surgery to have a gender neutral chest and some prefer a more masculine result. This surgery was done with Dr. Scott Mosser in San Francisco, California who is a Bay Area transgender specialist.   --- More about Livvie --- Twitter: https://twitter.com/livvielin --- IG: https://www.instagram.com/livvielocks/ ---  --- More about Irene --- IG: https://www.instagram.com/baywellness/  --- Website: https://www.baywellnesscoaching.com/ --- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/baywellness  --- Resources for queer women / trans folks --- Online support Facebook (SF Bay Area focused but open to all): https://www.facebook.com/groups/nqp.sfo/

As part of our Pride Month queer conversations series, I’m interviewing J about their experience traveling solo as a woman to many countries from Central and South America to Europe and Asia.   J is an engineer that works in Biotech and lives in LA.  During our chat, we’ll cover how J stays safe while traveling solo as a woman, how to make friends traveling, planning logistics and coordinating her trips, tips on converting currency in other countries, and exploring the LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) scene in other countries and visiting their Pride marches.

Happy Pride! Today I’m excited to be interviewing Jessica about her experiences being out in the Midwest, Southwest, East Coast vs. her experiences now on the West Coast. She and I were talking recently about travel and her move to California so I figured it’d be great for me to learn more and share this discussion with our listeners.

This podcast celebrates Asian Pacific Heritage Month as well as the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia 2020. We’re interviewing Livvie Lin, 3 days after their double incision top surgery, to chat about their experience. This is our Part 1 podcast after surgery and we’ll be doing a follow-up Part 2 in a month.  As reference, this is a gender-affirming surgery option for FTM (female-to-male) and FTN (female-to-neutral) who wish to alter their chests and reduce dysphoria. Some choose to undergo this surgery to have a gender neutral chest and some prefer a more masculine result. This surgery was done with Dr. Scott Mosser in San Francisco, California who is a Bay Area transgender specialist.

--- More about Livvie (Twitter: https://twitter.com/livvielin) (IG: https://www.instagram.com/livvielocks/) (Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCslnZxbKqvZLjNe2zcK7Slw) --- More about Irene (IG: https://www.instagram.com/baywellness/) (Website: https://www.baywellnesscoaching.com) (Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/baywellness)