Queers and Co.

In this episode of Queers & Co., I’m joined by Cynthia Rodriguez, a Mexican-British writer and performer who is constantly experimenting with the possibilities of spoken word. They are international, intersectional and interdisciplinary.

We chat about being an Anglophile, the reality of life in the UK compared to the image of Cool Britannia, racism in the queer punk scene and being a person of colour in the UK. We also talk about the importance of speaking the truth, how to look after yourself in times of burnout, queer storytelling and how Cynthia is bringing more of their roots into their work to counter stereotypes of Mexican culture.

If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.

To book your ‘by donation’ coaching session, visit here.

To donate to the London Bi Pandas COVID-19 fund, click here.

Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D’Souza

Resources

Check out Cynthia’s website to find out about their upcoming performances and events. Their debut poetry collection, Meanwhile, is out on 7th September 2020, via Burning Eye Books.

Follow on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

Heather Love, Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History

Some articles on #dignidadliteraria can be found here: LA Weekly, Tropics of Meta and Hip Latina

Cynthia recommends the incredible band, Big Joanie

Photo of Cynthia by David Wilson Clarke of DWC Imagery

Full Transcription

Gem: Hi Cynthia! How are you?

Cynthia: All right! Just at home, looking at the rain, working with my cats.

Gem: Oh nice!

Cynthia: Well, the cat is not working, but I am…

Gem: You’re working with your cat. It sounds like a nice Friday.

Cynthia: Yes, excellent!

Gem: It would be really great if you can just tell everyone a bit more about yourself and what it is that you do.

Cynthia: Well, my name is Cynthia. I’m a poet and a spoken word performer. And I also do a bit of music here and there.

I’m British and Mexican, double nationality. I’ve been living in Britain for almost 10 years. I’m based in Leicester, but I do loads of stuff in the Midlands and London and stuff. I’m currently studying a masters on cultural events management to just make more things happen in the community. I do a lot of work about different topics that are intersecting like queerness, feminism, self-preservation, the migrant experience.

My first book coming out soon in September through Burning Eye Books is called Meanwhile. And it's exactly about living in the in between, like in between rites of passage, just not being easily pinpointed within one identity, one gender, one nation, nationality, one body, one state of mind, and so on.

Gem: Yeah. And what was the inspiration behind writing the book?

Cynthia: I've always written since I was tiny. But I've been doing the poetry/spoken word stuff for almost five years now, publishing fan zines here and there a couple of anthologies. Brigette, from Burning Eye Books, they've been telling me for years. A couple of years ago, they had a contest for people of color. And I submitted my work. I was shortlisted. I wasn't one of the winners. But Bridgette again said, “We really, really want your work. We would like it if you submitted something for a collection.” I did it. They accepted it. And I’ve been working on that collection for about a year.

I was thinking of all the subjects I've been talking about in the past five years of experience, and I just thought, “Oh yeah, this is this is connective link, the thing that joins them together,” the fact that they are all about passing through life and time, and how it's like not the normal, but expected milestones from a capitalist, hetero-patriarchal, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant wife, blah-blah-blah, society fest. It needs to be a citizen or a human, an adult. I’m thinking, “What about those people whoever reached that state, including me, including a lot of millennials?”

I'm in my early thirties. I’m 33 now. I’m nowhere near where my parents were when they were 33. They already had me. They had a house. They have a car. They had a job that pays the bills. They seemed a lot more mature by achieving things that I've found a lot more difficult because of the economy and because of the social panorama… or simply because it's not our ambition. But we are forever in that journey.

Gem: Yeah. And so, it's kind of that experience of what happens—I guess this is my interpretation of the title. It's like while you're waiting for those things to potentially come about, it doesn't mean you’re any less of a human or that you're any less valid.

Cynthia: Yes, definitely. Just because you don’t have a full-time job, it doesn't mean that you are flawed. Margaret Thatcher used to say that if you were over 26 and still using public transportation, you were a failure.

Gem: Wow! I didn’t know that.

Cynthia: Horrible stuff! Well, that's not true. You're doing fine.

Gem: So, I had lots of different questions. But I'm wondering about when you talk about being international, intersectional, and interdisciplinary in your bio, how has that come about? And how do you see that in your work?

Cynthia: Well, it's mostly out of necessity…? Well, I just feel like I cannot speak from one type of experience and one discipline and one point of view because of my journey through life.

I was born in Mexico and raised in Mexico for the first 24 years of my life. I was an anglophile when I was a teenager. And I was like, “Oh England! Oh Britain” because it was like the Cool Britannia time, like you have Spice Girls, Trainspotting… yeah, it was like all that! Britain looks the coolest!

For example, in Mexico, people really love those things, Blur and Oasis. They weren't very successful in the US. But in Mexico they were huge. And even in sports, in football, you ask them about good football, and they say, “Oh yeah, British football… Manchester United, Chelsea, and very recently, Leicester.”

After Leicester won the premiership in 2016, I think it was, after Leicester won that, before that, my relatives were like, “Oh, where is it that you live? Is it Leicester? Where is that? How close is it to London? How close is it to Manchester?” But once that football thing happened, now they're like, “Oh Leicester, good football! Yeah!!!” I was just surprised by that—not exactly by the football when I was younger, but by the media, the music. I thought it was just the coolest.

I don't know if you remember the series As If. They didn't have a lot of sex or drugs, but it was still like, “Look at these cool British people having fun and having boyfriends and girlfriends and going to the club and having their drink spiked” and horrible stuff. But they just looked so cool to a tiny Mexican in the room.

So, it was like, “Oh yeah, I want to be British. I want to go to England.” And I ended up in a long-distance relationship with a British guy.

And I then had gotten a scholarship for a masters degree at Bristol University in History of Art. I came and did that thing. I got married and just stuck around and lived for a bit and so forth. And then, I moved to Leicester. And I've been here ever since.

Gem: Cool! And what was it like, the actual reality of coming to the UK compared to what you thought it might be like from seeing it on programs and stuff?

Cynthia: Well, it's a lot more miserable than what we saw. Even the things on television and the movies that were meant to be grim then, they didn't look that grim. Even Billy Elliot, I guess it was like, “Oh yeah, the miners’ strikes, poverty, horrible living conditions. But at least he's got the music and the dancing.” So that looks like very glamorized and very “you can be anything you want. You can be a ballet dancer,” and things like that.

And with Trainspotting, even if they were like doing drugs, it was like, “Oh, it looks so cool! Listen to Iggy Pop on the background” even if really horrible stuff was happening.

Like doing heroin in Edinburgh looked better than sniffing glue in La Morena, I don’t know.

Gem: I felt like that could be the title of the podcast.

And I guess there's also that experience of being a queer person of color in Britain. And that's clearly not depicted in a lot of media that gets sent around the world. So, what has that experience been like?

Cynthia: It's been so-and-so. It was certainly not in the media. A lot of the people were white and straight. Even like for example the Spice Girls, they were just added with each other. And they were very gay.

But it was just like, “I wasn't ready for this.” I wasn't ready for the micro-aggressions. Fortunately, Leicester is a bit more multicultural. Half of the population is not white. So, they don't see me as a weirdo as like in […] Manchester. There were times when we used to go to restaurants, and they wouldn't take my order, unless my husband said it for me because they said that they didn't understand my accent and things like that.

And then, all the terrible so-called democratic decisions that have been taking place in the past five years or so (and even before that)… like right before I was coming in, there was that liberal conservative alliance thing in power, right? It was no more Cool Britannia. Yeah, that's all I've known, like conservative austerity threatening the environment.

And even for example as a queer person of color like getting involved with the local queer punk scene and starting to make stuff happen, eventually, it turned out to be very ugly. And I won't go into a lot of details about that. But racism and ableism and classism, they were very visible, like things like, “Oh, don't pay attention to them. They are drama queens because of telenovelas… these people feel too much… these people complaining about terrible things that we do are crazy.” And it wasn't even like thinly-veiled racism. You’re seeing the kind of people that got cancer, we’re always people of color, like bands breaking up because a person of color did something. But when a white person does something worse, it doesn't matter. They actually invite them to join in more bands.

Gem: Yeah, yeah…

Cynthia: And thanks for that.

Gem: And that’s fucked up. It must have been really hard to—well, ongoing, it must be really hard to experience that.

Cynthia: Yes, it was terrible. It was my life at some point just to be like, “Oh yeah, we’re the queers. We are friends and we play together… children everywhere.” And then, these people are just trash talking about anyone they don't like. And it turns out that, anyone they don't like, is not white and/or not thin and/or not a trust fund baby and/or not educated. It’s very, very insidious. It’s terrible.

Gem: Yeah. And that makes me think of one of the videos that was on your website where you talk about speaking truths and speaking truths for yourself and for other people that are often unspoken. And I'm just wondering… was that kind of fuel? Did that kind of help you to feel empowered to do that because you could see so much injustice?

Cynthia: Yes, definitely… yeah, it was. Yeah, that video was for the National Poetry Day. And the topic was truth. And it really resonated. We have to call out something that is not very good that is going on. But especially in certain areas and circumstances where it's kind of common sense part of the ethos apparently that you're meant to call out this horrible thing that are not tolerated, but it turns out that what is not tolerated is us speaking up against those things.

With the queer punk scene, we used to do a lot of safer spaces policies, things like, “Oh yeah, we won't tolerate racism, ableism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, fatphobia, classism,” and so on and so on. And we were about that. People were thinking, “We never saw that it could happen within the community,” or at least I didn't naively. It was just, “Oh yeah, if there's a drunk bloke harassing someone, we’ll kick him out.” And that was what it was intended for. And we did it a few times. And it was like empowering. And it would help the survivors of the harassment. They’ll be like, “Oh, thank you so much, blah-blah…” But if it happens within the organization, and you call it out, and this person who does the things is someone with higher social capital, higher power, or persuasion, persuasion techniques, then you have everything to lose.

And you can even see this on mainstream media, like how long it took for Harvey Weinstein to be condemned.

Gem: Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot of I guess performative stuff going on as well, isn't there, even if for example an organization says, “Oh yeah, we have a safest spaces policy,” but actually, when it comes to it, the people who are overseeing it are themselves not able to be held accountable, that’s just really problematic.

Cynthia: Definitely, yes.

Gem: And I guess maybe this makes me want to ask you about mental health. You talk about self-preservation. And people should go to your website and check out some of your poetry on there or performances because there's one that you do called How to Leave the House in Times of Trouble. I wonder how that came about and what it is that you might do to kind of help support yourself when you're experiencing these micro-aggressions and just this general bullshit when you're trying to make changes?

Cynthia: Well, I've wrote that… there used to be this project called Pangea Poetry. They had this international spoken word slam. It was like an internet contest. But it also included workshops and talks. And it was very nurturing.

A lot of the workshops were led by Dean Atta who recently released The Black Flamingo, a really good young adult poetry/story… very, very recommended. And one of the exercises for the workshops was to write a user manual to do something—how to be a poet, how to be gay, how to do this. And I thought, “Oh yeah, how to leave the house in times of trouble” because that's something I really struggle with, a lot of fear of stepping outside, a lot of anxiety, agoraphobia… just really struggling and fearing that something off might happen if I just go outside into the crowds.

And some people might say, “Oh, nothing's going to happen, you'll be fine.” But then you look at the news. And you see that, a lot of the time, it's not fine. A lot of people leave the house and never come back. So, it’s like how do you get ready to do these things? How do you physically and psychologically and psychically strengthen yourself to be able to go on into your day-to-day life?

So, I wrote that poem. And it’s just like waking up. If you don't wake up, then you're going to miss out on a lot of things. And just taking the medication, having your breakfast, getting clean, putting on makeup a bit to hide yourself up, kind of like armor-like wear, things that make you feel confident, take your umbrella and take your sunglasses because, in Britain, that’s the kind of weather (you never know which one you're going to use, but you're going to use one of them)…

Gem: Century!

Cynthia: I keep following those steps to just leave the house when it's necessary to do it.

Gem: And so, it sounds like, for you, that is part of your self-care. And I just wondered if there's anything else that you do?

Cynthia: Well now, I’m trying to take more vitamins because I am an old millennial. A lot of people who are not white during the winter particularly, we tend to have a lot of deficiency on vitamin D. And that can manifest as fatigue, depression and so on. So, I just started taking vitamin D.

In the morning, I wake up, take my regular meds, and then make a cocktail of vitamin C, tonic, apple cider vinegar on a gin glass from Sainsbury's that says Gin-vincible. It’s not gin, but it’s a tonic. I use that to swallow the vitamin D.

And I have a coffee. I have whatever there is for breakfast. And I just play with my cat!

Oh, my cat! The cat is a really good alarm clock. It really helps to have a cat. If you have a lot more energy, and you have a child, that also works. She just like meows at me at eight in the morning to wake up. And she comes and she just cuddles up around my face for five minutes. And that's a really good way to get loved up and get that energy to move forward and be like, “Yes, I'll do it for you, Shirley.”

Gem: That’s really cool. I've never thought about that before. Something waking you up every morning that isn’t an alarm clock would be quite nice.

Cynthia: Yes, it’s amazing!

Gem: Yeah, I guess I'm wondering with that, you talk about self-care. And obviously, it’s really important to you. I just wondered if there are periods where you've experienced burnout and what you've done in those periods.

Cynthia: Yes, a lot of the time because of my conditions, including ADHD, hypothyroidism, dyslexia. When I manage to do things, I always end up with a...

In this episode of Queers & Co., I’m joined by Cameryn Moore, an award-winning playwright/performer with seven solo shows under her belt but perhaps best known as the founder of Smut Slam, a global network of community dirty-storytelling events.

We chat about becoming an activist in the mid-80s, the power of learning to dance later in life, sex positivity versus being sex aware, how people who have a problem with sex work really have a problem with capitalism, growing up Mormon and undoing our issues around sex. Plus, the joys of creating personalised smut on the street for passers by!

If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.

To book your ‘by donation’ coaching session, visit here.

Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D’Souza

Resources

Check out Cameryn’s website to find out about upcoming performances and events.

Follow Cameryn on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

Follow Smut Slam London on Facebook here and Smut Slam International here

Watch Juno Mac’s TED Talk - The Laws that Sex Workers Really Want here

Cameryn’s recommendation: Little Women (2019)

More info on performer and fat activist Heather McAllister can be found here and here

Full Transcription

Gem: Hi Cameryn, thank you so much for joining me.

Cameryn: Oh, it’s good to be here. Thank you!

Gem: So, it’ll be really great if you just tell us a bit more about you and how you identify.

Cameryn: I am a playwright and a performer and a facilitator of smut. That’s kind of my professional designation I guess. I identify as an activist in a lot of ways around sex and fat and sex work. And phew, I’m just a middle-aged lady that didn’t really get the memo on how to be middle-aged sometimes is how I’m feeling like, yeah.

Gem: And so, there’s lots to explore there. I’m just wondering how you first got into activism.

Cameryn: I first got into activism when I was 16 actually. This was back in the mid-80s, so 1986. Nuclear war was kind of the constant looming thing. I don’t know how it was for other places, but certainly in the US, there was this constant sort of—it just hung over everything right? I started a peace activist group at my high school in a very conservative town. And that was probably also the time when I started shedding my introvert tendencies and found myself becoming an extrovert in support of causes that I felt strongly about.

Before that, I was very shy and definitely still the same geek that you see before you today. But I was really shy and not wanting to put myself forward. And nuclear disarmament was something I felt so strongly about that I just made myself go out and do things. And I think that I definitely had become that extrovert in real life. But most of the causes that I’m loud and brassy about are… they’re causes. They’re not just me. It’s things that I feel strongly about.

So, that all started when I was 16. It’s gone from nuclear disarmament to queer rights. I came of age as a little baby queer in the late ‘90s when Queer Nation was big on the scene in North America. And so, I moved through that into fat activism as well in the mid-90s in the San Francisco Bay area which is kind of the epicenter at that time for North American fat activism certainly.

So, I’ve been fortunate to be in areas where there’s kind of high visibility activism already happening that I can get involved with. And the activism has definitely moved around. It’s not to say that I leave those beliefs behind. But where I had put my activism has definitely changed over time a lot.

Gem: Yeah. And how is that developed in terms of what you were actually doing, what forms it took, and then also the different themes?

Cameryn: I would have to say, at first, it was almost more of an intellectual pursuit—not abstract, but I used my words. I wrote about it. Sometimes, I would speak. But mostly, it was in writing—either in paper writing, print writing, or when the internet came about, then I would do that. As a journalist when I started in the mid-90s, I would write about fat acceptance for a magazine there in the Bay area.

So, it was all very—yeah, I would say almost of the mind. It was activism of the mind—which is an important kind of activism. I’m not dismissing it. But that’s where I got my start a lot.

And then, what really shifted for me, one thing that really shifted everything for me was when I started dancing at the age of 28. It was just purely—I’ll confess, at the beginning, it was my last ditch attempt to try to lose weight. I tried out some things at a gym where I was living. And I couldn't stick with the gym at all. Gyms are terrible sometimes. But I was exploring the different classes offered, and I found a cardio hip-hop class. There was a rocky start, to begin with certainly. I definitely almost did not continue. But my teacher saved me. My teacher came out and said, “Look, don’t give up. Give this a month. I guarantee, you’re going to love it.” And she was right! I kept dancing.

And then, finding the strength in myself to just dance and move and function as a dancer was life-changing for me. It helped me get really into my body in a way that I had not in the decade before that. That was all the life of the mind. I was not really present in my body. And dancing and learning how to get my body do what I want it to do artistically and functionally was such a mind-blowing connection for me to make. And it changed my sense of fat activism. It changed my sense of “Am I worth being on a stage? Do I have value as a performer? And where does that value lie? And what can I do as a performer?”

Through dance, I found that I wanted to perform. Before that, I was always kind of in the orchestra. I never danced! I was playing French horn in the orchestra in high school. So, I was always backstage, off the side. And through dance, I found that I could perform, I could be present, and that my presence was striking to people and entertaining and good.

And so, I had to say, the pure act of learning to dance and feel good in my body has affected almost all the activism that comes after.

Gem: Yeah. So, I don’t want to dwell on it, but I guess, just quickly, you mentioned that that was your last ditch attempt to lose weight. And then, through getting into the world of dance, am I right in thinking that then you became more involved in fat activism and left behind that desire to lose weight?

Cameryn: Yeah! Just to get clear on the timeline, even while I was thinking, “Oh, I’m going to try doing this gym to ‘get fit’”—and that’s in quotation marks, right?—only in retrospect do I realize that that was my last ditch attempt to lose weight. I was really covering that under layers of euphemism: “I just want to ‘get fit!’”

I had gone on for the whole eight or nine years before that definitely intellectually involved in fat activism. But this was kind of me being sneaky to myself. And after this, I definitely was like, “Oh, I’m fine like this. This is great! I can do this.” And it definitely, at that point, shifted entirely away from “Oh, I’d like to get fit” to “Oh, I’d like to learn how to do a double pirouette… oh, I’d like to train myself so I can drop to the floor and do this move, and then get back up quickly.”

So, for me, I learned to associate what it was that I wanted to do with the training and with that kind of focus rather than be like, “I need to lose weight, and then I can do what I want to do.”

Gem: Yeah, absolutely.

Cameryn: And so, learning that I could bypass this other harmful, ridiculous step and go straight to the “This is the shit that I want to do,” that’s a very radical piece of knowledge that we can have, that you don’t need to set aside things for this mystical, magical day that will almost certainly never come. Just go for what you want now because life is too short to spend it going after that mirage.

Gem: Absolutely! It’s so empowering as well, that idea of like, “Oh, hold on! I have a shortcut here. I just don’t have to do that anymore.”

Cameryn: Exactly, exactly.

Gem: And so then you went on to write—I think you said eight plays of different themes. And you’ve won awards for those. What has that been like? You’ve gone from I guess being very much behind-the-scenes potentially as a journalist and having your work for people to come along and you won awards for it?

Cameryn: There’s some stuff we’re skipping for the sake of space. But I did work for quite a while doing community dance and theatre with fat people, with other fat people, in size diverse groups. And that was community-based. We weren’t striving in a professional way in that group.

When I went off on my own and started doing a solo career and working on those pieces, that was a real test of personal stamina. Before that, I had been working in a group and I had other people to work with. I had other people’s bodies to work with as a canvass for like dance work or whatever. And when you go off on your own to do the performances, when you’re onstage, it’s all on you. So I would have to say I developed a rather strong streak of independence or contrariness. I don’t know what it is. It’s not always easy for me to work with groups now because I’ve gotten so used to being solo.

But what it also does is it puts me and my body in focus all the time on the stage. And other people are focusing on that, but that’s just the nature of the stage. And that’s the nature of the stage lights. And so it becomes yet another step of like, “I am worth this. I am worth your attention. I am worth the awards. I am worth listening to because the things that I do can change you.” And so, coming to accept that kind of power has been great… challenging, but also great!

Gem: And you’re continuing to make work. So, how has your work evolved with that learning, like learning that you have power and that people are captivated by you when you’re performing?

Cameryn: I go back and forth… So, what I’ve tried to do is go with the themes that definitely interests me at the time. I’m not trying to stick to one area because that’s professionally where I’m known. But I will confess, the first, I don’t know, five or six or seven, like a good chunk of my pieces, they are about sex. That is to say they use the language of sex to explore other things.

So, that’s been an interesting thing, to put myself out there as a person who has a voice and experience in those matters. Sometimes, when I’m performing in festivals, and I’m talking about sex, and there are mainstream people in the audience, you can almost feel their sense of disbelief like, “Who does she think she is? She’s a fat person. How can she possibly have anything to say about the subject of sex and desire and lovers, multiple lovers?” People don’t always get my authority at first.

I still d… occasionally, I’ll do standup comedy as a way to reach new audiences. I’ll do short, little pieces that are more funny. And this thing that I was just talking about, people’s disbelief, that I could have anything to say, one time, I got onstage at a comedy open mic, the room was quite full, but this person was loud enough for me to hear them from all the way in the back, they said, “Oh, my God!” when I got onstage, and all I could think of in the moment was like, “I know! It’s amazing, right?”

But that’s the sort of thing where people don’t quite—I don’t know what was going through her mind, the idea that someone could come up and be onstage and speak with authority about these subjects. It kind of is mind-blowing to people. And that, in itself, is enough to kind of already push people.

So, I guess what I mean by that is like, in a lot of my plays, I don’t directly address my body necessarily as a fat body. I’m just present as I am. When I was working with community theatre, we did mostly stuff that was explicitly about fat acceptance and body positivity. And that was the space that I was in then.

When I went on to do solo stuff, most of my stuff doesn’t really talk about it at all. I’ll mention it in passing. But it’s never self-deprecating. It’s just mentioning it as a thing. And I feel that, for myself, the space where I am now is this sort of place where— I don’t know if you know Heather McCallister. Do you know that name, Heather McCallister?

Gem: No, I don’t think so.

Cameryn: Okay. She founded, she was one of the pioneers of fat acceptance in—I would say “second wave” maybe, fat acceptance in the San Francisco Bay area, North America. And she did a plus size burlesque troop that I collaborated with very early on. And she said once that just the act of being onstage as a fat person without being the butt of a joke or deprecating yourself, that in itself is revolutionary.

Gem: Yeah, I’ve also come across that before.

Cameryn: There’s different kind of places where that comes from. And that’s definitely paraphrasing, but that’s the sentiment that I have been approaching a lot of these with. It’s enough for me to go up on there, stand tall, deliver what I have to say about sex or relationships or about the geek cultures or about—mostly, yeah, those are the ones. What about phone sex and sex work? And I just deliver that without a whole lot of reference to this body.

And it’s not that I’m ignoring it because I’m up there sometimes in clothes that are revealing, sometimes quite naked. I’m up there and moving through that. But I’m not going to spend my time talking about it very much because I don’t spend my time worrying about it very much anymore. There are other things that I want to talk about too. And I have just as much authority to talk about those things.

Gem: Yeah. And I think for some people, it’s the idea that fat people can’t be three dimensional. They have to just be constantly explaining about their fatness or justifying it before they can actually then do anything that they actually want to do.

Cameryn: Right, right, right. It’s also one of the reasons why I… Because people have asked me, “Why don’t you audition for other plays? Why don’t you get out there…?” Because I know what’s out there. I know what’s out there for people my size. I will be cast in jolly friend roles. I will be cast as comic relief. I will be cast for roles that are 20 years older than me. I want to write the work that I perform. I want to create the roles that I can because no one else is going to create these roles for me.

Gem: Yeah. And you mentioned that your activism has taken different forms around fat and around sex as well. I just wondered where did that first come about for you? Do you identify as being sex positive? Is that a term that you’d use? And if so, when did that come about?

Cameryn: I used to identify as sex positive. I now call it more as sex aware, so that people—

For me, my feeling about that is like sex positivity carries with it the burden of being positive all the time. And I know that that’s not true. But it’s kind of the tinge that it’s taken on. I prefer sex aware in that I’m being aware of all the ways that sex can impact our lives—it can be negative, it can be positive. And there’s room under that umbrella for that whole range of experience. In more mainstream environments, I will say “sex positive,” but I prefer, for myself, “sex aware.”

Gem: It’s not a term I’ve heard before. And it makes so much more sense. It’s the same with body positivity, this idea of like you’re supposed to love your body all the time. It just is completely unrealistic. Whereas, yeah, if it just makes it more neutral, like it’s a subject that I’m aware of and working on, that sounds really…

Cameryn: Yeah…

Gem: There’s some kind of relief in that.

Cameryn: Yeah, I think it gives it a little more room. For body positivity, what I prefer always is fat liberation, body liberation and fat liberation, because that’s where the body positivity movement kind of grew out from. They conveniently forget that that’s where it’s from. But fat liberation is my kind of background where you’re talking not about the need for individuals to find their own self-help solutions, but the need to address systemic structural problems and inequities and stigma, things that really fuck you up.

So, in the world of sex awareness, I would say that I’ve always been kind of along that path. I came out as queer when I was 19 and kind of moved through that space. And I figured out that I might be kinky quite late in life, like early thirties (late twenties, early thirties).

But really, everything came to a strong head when I started doing phone sex work when I was 39. And I ended up learning a lot at that job. And I ended up, I would say, developing most of my current kind of perspective around how people can be fluid and how people can change and how people can want one thing but do another… and all these things. That’s a lot of where I developed that perspective on for sex awareness, through my work doing phone sex.

Gem: And what was that experience like for you? I guess there was a lot of learning in that?

Cameryn: It was seven or eight years of rather intense immersion in other people’s heads, right? That’s what phone sex is. Whether you’re getting paid for it or not, you’re in someone else’s head. And I was spending a lot of time there, being kind of confused by it because my adult sex life has been a pretty mixed bag in terms of being with women, being with cisgendered men. I honestly had not spent that much time in the heads of men. There I was like, “Oh, God!” all day, you know… all day being on call and talking to men about the dicks and about what was going on in their heads.

I spent a lot of time blogging about it and talking with other people about it and trying to figure out what the hell was all these stuff because there’s nothing out in the world that prepares you for it. We don’t talk about our inner sex lives very much at all in our world.

We...

In this episode of Queers & Co., I’m joined by Imogen Fox, a queer Disabled femme who serves up radical body politics, anti-diet talk and non-judgemental compassion.

We chat about Imogen’s first foray into disability rights activism as a teen, the trauma of eating rice cakes and cottage cheese and being indoctrinated into diet culture by those closest to us. We also talk about radical Disability politics, the co-opting and white-washing of movements and whether it’s really possible to use your privilege for good.

If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.

Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D’Souza

Resources

Follow Imogen on Instagram

Read Imogen’s self-proclaimed ‘dusty’ blog here

Watch You on Netflix here

Full Transcription

Gem: Hi Imogen.

Imogen: Hello my lovely! Yeah, I’m not too bad, thank you. I was just saying to you I’ve got a really bad tummy ache, so I’m like in a massive jumper with a big hot water bottle… and a kitten actually, just curled up on the sofa, nursing myself.

Gem: I’m sorry that you’re not well. But that sounds like a really lovely place to be in to recover.

Imogen: It’s not not wellness. The annoying bit about it is that it can be quite a regular occurrence. It’s just that my tummy is part of my impairment. So, things like this are kind of, sort of normal. And my go-to coping strategy is to—especially when it’s cold. Just to huddle up and nest myself a little bit…

Gem: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think I came across your work maybe a couple of years ago. I’ve definitely been following you for quite a while…

Imogen: We’ve been in touch for a while.

Gem: Yeah! And we met at Body Kind last year.

Imogen: Yeah, yeah…

Gem: So, I’m really excited to get the chance to ask you all my questions. And I guess what I generally start off with when I’m chatting to people is just asking them to introduce how they identify, and I guess what different intersections play a role in them as a person.

Imogen: Yeah, okay. I would say I’m a queer disabled femme. I haven’t really kind of started using the term non-binary, but I don’t really identify as being part of a gender binary particularly. I still use the pronouns she/her although they’re not particularly comfortable. But then I don’t find they/them any more comfortable. So, I tend to use a mixture of both of those things.

I live in Bristol in the UK. And I have been a disability rights activist for most of my life actually. But I found an online community through Instagram a few years ago. So, I’ve just been writing and sharing stuff there for a while.

Gem: Yeah. And I’m really interested in how that came about. You talk about radical body politics which is really powerful and obviously has so many different sides to it. I know you say that you’re anti-diet as well. And sort of your relationship with the medical industry and all those kinds of different aspects… So, it will be amazing to start maybe at the beginning. You say you’ve been involved with disability rights activism for a really long time. How did that come about?

Imogen: Okay! Well, I went to into an integrated school. So, I went to school with other disabled children. And whilst my impairment hadn’t been diagnosed, I was already having symptoms. So, I had some learning support needs.

It was integrated to a point because we still had this designated building. Maybe now, it might be different. There might be accessible toilets in the toilets. But back then, we had to go back to the pavilion, it was called, in the middle of the school grounds. There was like bathtubs and physio rooms and there was like the little mini flat where you could learn cooking skills and that kind of stuff.

So, I was part of that little community. And so, I already had a reasonable experience of difference.

So, when I came out as queer, I was like, “This is an absolute nightmare! I couldn't be more different if I tried.” But back then, there was no Tinder or dating stuff. So, when I finally got the internet in my house—which I was nearly 17—I found a pen pal website where you could pen pal with people because that was a thing.  And I met this incredible woman who is still one of my absolute best friends today.  And she was a woman with an impairment. She’s 10 years older than me. And she was working for the Disability Rights Commission. They don’t even exist anymore, the DRC. And we just hit it off straightaway. There was never anything romantic. We were just really good friends. And we started spending loads of time together.

Well, she was part of the Direct Action Network. And so, when they were doing demonstrations, she’d just be like, “Right! We’re going!” So, I just started going to all these demonstrations. We did some in Birmingham over social care. We did some in Manchester. Actually, we did the Disability Rights Commission. But she did quit her job before we did that one. She didn’t just rock up and be like, “I’m not working today. I’m tying myself to my desk. Please still pay me.”

Yeah, we did loads of demos and stuff. But this was pre-18, so still quite kind of formative. I was forming all my political and identities. I was like, “This is what the social model of disability is.” And I was like, “Yes!” I was completely indoctrinated from the minute I heard it. I totally got it!

So, many of your listeners may well already be aware of what that means. But in society, we live in the medical model of disability which implies that our bodies are to blame for the situation that we find ourselves. However, the social model of disability flips that completely and says that society is to blame for the situations that we find ourselves in.

So, for example, the fact that we don’t have physical access to things isn’t our fault because we can’t physically access them. It’s society’s problem because they don’t make it accessible to us. And obviously, that stretches way beyond physical access, but also financial access or attitudinal access even, all the ways in which disabled people are marginalised by society. It is essentially society’s fault.

Gem: Yeah, and it’s just a completely different way of looking at things, isn’t it? I mean I’ve been lucky enough to work with one in particular disability rights activist who takes legal cases. And starting to work with her… it just shows my privilege. I didn’t realise that that is what people experienced. And yeah, it was really eye-opening.

Imogen: Yeah, I think when you live as a disabled person, you don’t realise either. I guess, in some ways, we’re so genuinely caught up in the belief that we’re to blame, that we just have a problem that is our fault—that we are too big and ask for too much and have too many needs. You don’t realise that you’re worthy of better than that.

And to be clear, I really lost my way in the middle. During my twenties, despite the fact that my impairment was probably—I was probably the most obviously physically impaired I’d ever been in my life, I started dieting. Funnily enough, that’s how I started my Instagram account. I was just doing little posts, but it very quickly turned into this is what I’ve eaten and all that kind of bullshit.

And I really didn’t realise until I clicked with anti-diet that the social model of disability stretches way, way, way beyond disabled people in the way that we might kind of assume disability to mean, that actually encompasses all queerness of bodies in general. It’s about a general societal attitude towards others that is the problem.

And when I finally realised that by thinning myself and dieting and restricting, I was actually suddenly part of the society that was so harmful. It all kind of clicked back into place. And it really reignited my politics. And that’s when my Instagram really took off, because I was angry again and mad about being sucked into something that I was so anti. But you don’t realise how desperate you feel to assimilate when you are already asking so much of the world around you.

So, I had 24-hour care needs. I had a host of medical things that needed doing absolutely every day. And I also wore a dress size 28. I was a full-time power chair user. And I guess a massive part of me just felt like if I can just look different, if I could just be more socially acceptable in my wheelchair with my 24-hour carer and everything else that comes with me, maybe that would make it more bearable? Maybe society would make more room for me? Maybe I could take a little bit more of what I need? And actually, in reality, that is so never the case. It’s never what happens. You just end up killing yourself for no good fucking reason.

Gem: Yeah… and be miserable in the process.

Imogen: Yeah! Yeah, absolutely. And the bastards will never, ever, ever change how they feel because as soon as you tick one box, they’re like, “Yeah, but babes, here are all the other boxes you don’t tick LOL. I’m still going to fuck you over.” So, I knocked that on the head pretty quickly—well, not quickly enough to not have to quite a raging eating disorder in the process, but quickly enough that I didn’t do any horrific long-term damage hopefully.

Gem: Yeah! And what was your experience of being around diet culture as a young person. On the one hand, when you were 17 and 18, you were really active. And you were all about making these changes with these different organisations and different actions. Was diet culture something that was there in the background at the time? Or was it not part of your life then? Obviously, I know it’s like, in a way, part of all of our lives, unfortunately.

Imogen: Yeah… obviously, you just don’t realise. I think probably primarily, I’ve been brought up with a very kind of average baby boomer. So, my mum was born just after the World War II. They were very, very working class and had lived without food. But as a baby boomer, she just hit the right times and my parents were eventually middle class. And there was a lot of pressure—or she felt a lot of pressure certainly amongst that white, middle class, little village-y…

We lived just outside of Cambridge. So, it was incredibly white and well-spoken.

Do you know what I mean? So yeah, I think she felt a lot of pressure to look different despite the fact that she, from memory, dieted almost constantly and never really looked any different…

So, I guess it wasn’t overtly conversational. I don’t remember her saying things to me specifically. But I remember eating Ryvita’s for lunch and thinking, “Nobody enjoys a Ryvita. What the fuck is this?”

I mean maybe you might! If you enjoy a Ryvita, you crack on babe! But I know for a fact my mom doesn’t love a Ryvita. Do you know what I mean? Or maybe like if it was smuggled… you know the sweet ones with the raisins in? If you cover those with jam and peanut butter, maybe I could get onboard with that. But the other ones, it’s a no from me. Thanks!

Gem: Yeah, same here. I think it’s the idea of being forced to—I’m not saying your mum forced you, but with diet culture, expecting you to eat something. It just takes away all its enjoyment. It’s something you have to eat.

Imogen: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Actually, my nieces and nephews, they go for rice crackers. They smash rice crackers. Oh, my God! They fucking love a rice cracker. I’m so traumatised from eating rice crackers with cottage cheese on.

Gem: Oh my God! Me too.

Imogen: But do you know what I mean? Literally, I’m like, “Oh, God! Get that rice cracker away from me.” I’d be karate chopping a 4-year-old, “Get it out of my face! I don’t want your fucking rice cracker, dude.” Yeah, no… ugh! No, thank you.

But yes, I remember the first time my mum said the word “calories” to me. We bought some Pick & Mix. And I think my grandma was probably down. And she was a notorious northern grandma. She bought us lots of sweets. She took us to the bakery every day. We were allowed to pick a doughnut. And she always bought these amazing rolls from Marks & Spencer’s. Oh, my God! They were so good. I don’t know whether those rolls do exist. But if they do, I might actually walk there later!

Gem: …just to see!

Imogen: Yeah, those were so good! And I remember she had bought us a big bag of Pick & Mix each when Woolworth’s still existed… remember that?

Gem: Oh yeah… good times!

Imogen: Yeah! And I remember my mum saying, “You know, you shouldn't eat all of them now. You can have some more later” and her saying sweeties have got a lot of calories in; and me just being like, “a) what is that?” I didn’t really understand it as a thing. And b) I remember thinking, “Well, if I’m going to eat them later, the calories are still the same? So, what difference does ‘later’ make in terms of calories?” It didn’t make any sense to me at all.

But I guess she was probably trying to educate me in a world that she was indoctrinated in because I was already… I look back now, I would say I was a chubby kid. I was definitely a fat teenager. And I think my two much, much thinner, much more naturally sporty and active sisters, I think my mum probably felt like she owed me an education in order to prevent me from probably being her. Do you know what I mean a little bit? She didn’t want me to have to experience what she did.

But in reality, we share a body type. So, I’m going to have those experiences. What would’ve been better, would’ve been maybe fuck the patriarchy.

Gem: Yeah, that’s always better within pretty much everything. I think that’s really common though. That’s certainly my experience, that the reason a lot of people end up with issues around food or being very indoctrinated into diet culture is they’ve kind of had someone be like, “Hello, welcome! In order to keep you safe, this is what we need to do.” And like you said, it’s not from a place of unkindness or anything. it’s just simply like, “I want you to be able to survive as best you can in the world. And this is what you need to do to assimilate.”

Imogen: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes, it’s really frightening, isn’t it, that those come from the closest people that we ought to be the safest with, and yet I think it’s the most dangerous message I think I’ve ever received in my life.

Probably the only other message has come from medics, that I’m not worthy of treatment, of life, of medicines, of all the things that they provide. But actually, to some extent, their messages make a lot more sense than the diet culture ones do.

Interestingly, when I started hanging around with lots more disabled people from the Diet Action Network, diet culture took on a really different kind of twist. They as a community are probably quite anti-diet really because they’re quite “fuck you”—certainly, the radical crips definitely.

But kind of quickly as my impairment progressed and changed, I moved into a much more chronic health rather than a capital D Disabled people movement. And I find that I still actually—

Actually, I’ve never written about this. I’ve got to be quite careful how I talk about it because I don’t want anybody to feel like I’m personally attacking or offending. But the chronic health community actually have a really different approach to the world than the kind of capital D Disabled community. And I think that’s because they’re very indoctrinated into the medical model, into medicine, but also incredibly invested in health. And actually, disabled people— And I’m using the word “capital D” and saying that specifically because lots and lots and lots of people would say that they are disabled, but they wouldn't share the kind of radical politics that I do. I am a capital D disabled person because I am invested very specifically in a certain type of radical politics. And those two things have to be separated out because I don’t want to lump in a load of disabled people who think, “Well, I don’t feel like that.”

So yeah, the kind of more radical progressive group of disabled people aren’t particularly invested in health because they’re like, “Well, LOL… that’s funny. That’s not really attainable. We’ve known from the beginning that that wasn’t ever a thing that was going to be a privilege that we experience. We don’t go out of our way to make life any worse for ourselves. But we also don’t go around trying to kill ourselves in order to be #fitspo,” do you know what I mean?

Whereas the chronic health community are very different. They have often experienced health privilege for big chunks of their lives, and then all of a sudden are now experiencing quite a sudden spin of like deprivation on that front and want to get back to healthy. So, they do all these—I don’t want to say ridiculous diets, but also a little bit ridiculous diets to regain health.

It’s so hard though, isn’t it? If you’re properly lactose intolerant, if you’ve got Coeliac disease, what are you going to do? It’s such a minefield. I just have no idea how you’re going to have those conversations. But I find that the chronic health community is really difficult to be part of. And it definitely fuelled my orthorexia and restrictive eating patterns because I was so desperate to eat myself well, like food was some kind of medicine that I had been… And equally, that food had been some kind of poison the previous couple of decades. Obviously, I don’t really subscribe to those feelings now. I think that bodies react differently to food based on your body rather than the food itself. It’s much more about working with your body to make food manageable rather than demonising certain food groups and being super restrictive and on diets and stuff.

But I found that was really challenging. And I’ve definitely kind of moved away back into that radical disability politics rather than being part of that chronic health community.

Gem: And you mentioned that, during your twenties, you kind of lost your way a bit with being involved with that more radical body politics. What kickstarted or facilitated you moving back into it do you think?

Imogen: It was definitely discovering anti-diet. I was like, “Oh, yeah, fatness is a fucking access issue, duh.” All of a sudden, it kind of clicked in. It’s about being socially acceptable. And all those years, I’ve been really caught up with it, about being impaired very specifically. And actually, now I realise that it encompasses queerness in the broadest sense of the...

In this episode of Queers & Co., I’m joined by autism and neurodiversity support specialist, speaker, writer and creator of inTune Families, Kristy Forbes.

We chat about embracing autism as an identity and culture rather than a disorder, moving away from pathologising behaviour, the importance of being able to self-identify as neurodivergent, the deeply problematic nature of compliance therapies and radical honesty as a form of self-care.

CW: This episode contains talk of ABA and compliance therapy

If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.

Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D’Souza

Resources

Follow Kristy on Facebook and Instagram

Find out more about Kristy and her work through her website inTune Pathways

Find out more about Amy Sequenzia via her blog and at Ollibean

Kieran Rose aka The Autistic Advocate’s blog

Tickets for Kristy’s upcoming PDA Perspectives tour are available here

Full Transcription

Gem: Hi Kristy, how are you? 

Kristy: I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. 

Gem: Thank you for being here. I'm really excited. So we've known each other for about 18 months because my family did some work with you. And, and I guess it would be really cool if you could introduce yourself and what kind of work it is that you do?

Kristy: Yeah, sure. So I'm Kristy Forbes. I am an autistic person. I support neurodivergent people and their family. I work in private consultation online, with families because some of them are at crisis point and can't leave their homes. I offer education around the lived experience of autism to allied health professionals, educators, parents. And I also write and I speak about autism.

Gem: Great and what has your journey been to get to doing all these things? I know you say in your work that you were diagnosed at 33 as being autistic but obviously it's been quite a journey to get to the point of actually being a full-time advocate and doing that as your main focus. 

Kristy: Yeah. Oh gosh, what a huge question. It's been one hell of a ride really. When I came into this work, I already had a background as working as an educator in early childhood and primary and secondary schools. And having no clue I was autistic, knowing I was different but thinking there was something wrong with me. So I knew something was going on. I worked in the field because I worked with families, with children who had social emotional and behavioural challenges. So when I came into business for myself because I have four autistic children, and it became difficult for me to work for other people and raise my children and care for them. I kind of hid behind the whole childhood behavioural specialist title. And I didn't tell people I was autistic, and I had been diagnosed by that stage. I still didn't really know what that meant for me so it was something I was still unravelling. But then after some time, I would just see so many things online about autism and just cringe inside and go, "Oh, my God! No, no, no, we have to start talking about autism differently. This is not okay for non-autistic people to continuously observe behaviour, focus on physical expression and then translate it in comparison to theirs, and think that that's enough." I couldn't cope with it anymore. I'm autistic, I couldn't stay quiet for long. So I wrote this post one night, outing myself, and talking about how painful the journey has been and then I deleted it. Then I posted it again and I thought, "Okay, I'm just going to leave it for 10 minutes and see what happens." And I could not believe it, the people just came. The people started to come and they were like, "Oh, my God, yes!" It's because of my community that I've been empowered to stand in my truth and have this voice, and it's just crazy to me. It's surreal to me. 

Gem: And how long ago was it that you put that post up?

Kristy: Two years ago.

Gem: Okay, wow.

Kristy: So it's all happened very, very quickly. And honestly, there's no such thing as a comfort zone for me anymore. It's just constantly – as soon as I get a bit comfortable and go, "Oh yeah, this is nice and cozy now." Someone comes along and goes, "Can we talk about this?" And I go, "Oh my god, how confronting but yes, okay. Let's do it."

Gem: I relate to that so much, that like, "Oh, everything's okay, I can do this." And then oh my god, no, I can't!”

Kristy: I know!

Gem: And, something that I just wanted to, two things actually, that I wanted to share from your website and from a talk that I heard you do. The first thing was that you embrace autism as an identity and a culture and you don't view it as a disorder. And I just think that is such a powerful statement because for us as a family as soon as we experienced that, like, as soon as we knew there were other people out there that agreed that that was a way of being, it was completely life-changing and felt so much less isolating. When everyone thinks there's something wrong with you, or that needs to be changed in some way. Yes, huge.

Kristy: It's everything. It's everything. And actually, it makes me really angry, to be honest. It makes me really angry that we live in a society that just consistently pathologises human beings, and that goes for all cultures and all identities. It goes for race. It goes for gender diversity, everything. The labels that autistic people have put on them, like rigid, black and white, I mean, "Hello. We're not giving ourselves these labels other people are," and then they stick to them for 70 years and have the gall to say that autistic people are black and white in our thinking and rigid. My community are the people that have these beautiful expanded hearts and minds and accept human beings as human beings. I don't care about how person identifies but everybody else seems to and it's devastating to human beings and the way that they live their lives. And what changes as we move from a medical perspective of autism to actually understanding it for what it is, an identity and a culture, we give people permission to live in their full expression. Because for me, for 33 years, I lived in this world thinking there's something wrong with me. There's something wrong with me. There's something wrong with me. I don't do like everybody else does. I don't think like everybody else does. I don't feel like everybody else does. When I was diagnosed as autistic, or identified as autistic, it was the first time in my life I stopped thinking there was something wrong with me. That I was a broken version of a non-autistic and a whole and complete version of a particular kind of human being. I thank the universe for the autistic community and those people out there who challenged me because there were... The thing about being autistic is that sometimes the way we communicate with each other is quite blunt and quite confronting, and it comes across as rude and sometimes it comes across as mean. There's so much trauma, so much trauma in our community, and in our intersectional communities because people are only just able to start being who they are, who they were born to be now and people are angry. So when I came along as a parent, and believing I was a non-autistic parents of autistic children, and saying all kinds of misled and misguided things, I was challenged by amazing advocates like Amy Sequenzia, who is a non-speaking advocate. At the time, I was devastated and I thought, "How dare you tell me?" but she changed my life. These people changed my life. They helped me to begin my own healing journey and to be able to identify as who I am. So, identity and culture is everything - telling me that I have a medical disorder it's... Telling anybody how to identify or who they are, is not okay. It's not okay.

Gem: Yeah. And that brings me on to, well, a couple of things, actually. But one of the questions that someone in the Queers & Co. Facebook group asked, which was, there's a massive divide between parents of autistic children, who believe that they're neurotypical and potentially not always. For anyone who can't see this which is everyone, Kristy has a wry smile on her face and actually an autistic adults. So this person has said, “I often find that my experiences as an autistic person and minimised and parents have a negative view of us. How can we get more people to listen to our preferences, refer to the autistic community for learning and education, etc?”

Kristy: Yeah. I guess I'm in a unique position because I've been a professional. I'm a parent of autistic children. I'm married to an autistic person, and I'm autistic myself. And I have experienced believing that I was a non-autistic person who was parenting autistic children. The amount of families I've worked with... When you're autistic, you have a radar for other autistic people, like any kind of identity or culture, and I see it all the time. So with the 12 week online program I run, inTune Pathways, many, many parents get to the end of that and go, "Oh, my God". People need to be presented with information about, actually, this is what autism looks like in real life, get out of the textbooks, and talk to autistic people. Because it's so unfortunate that the initiation process, I guess, when a child is diagnosed as autistic, is that usually that's through a paediatrician or a psychologist or allied health professionals who have training, very specific training. There is a process where parents are then referred on to other health professionals. Sometimes they're referred on to therapies that are harmful, sometimes they're helpful. It begins this path of medical pathology and so they're not exposed. Families are not exposed to actual autistic people. Some of them are actually shocked to know that we exist out here and that we drive cars and that we might have a university degree or not. And so I think the divide is so difficult because there's people coming in also with children who might be non-speaking or have higher support needs, and I identify with that. One of my children is very much in need of constant support, and she's not speaking, and then I have other children who are different than that - we're all very different. But sometimes families believe that if we present like me, then that's not the same as a child, and therefore we cannot be autistic and we don't know what we're talking about. And the thing about the spectrum, it doesn't just mean that we all present differently, it also means that we share characteristics, but they look different, and they vary. So just because I'm sitting here, articulating like this, often this is what lets me down because people think that I don't have support needs or I don't have challenges, or I don't struggle in my daily life, because I can speak fluently. And that is so shallow. It's so shallow, and it's such a superficial understanding of what's underneath. People are surprised when adults present like me, and they assume that we must always have been able to speak fluently, and that's not the case. They assume that we didn't engage in behaviours that their children with higher support needs do, and that's not true either. Just like anybody, autistic people grow and develop at different rates and we learn and our brain changes as we grow because we're still human beings. So making the assumption that we've always been the way we are now, it's so unfair. And the information out there about the way an autistic person moves their body or the sounds they make being congruent with their intelligence is so damaging. It's so damaging, because it means that those people that do have higher support needs, whose bodies don't follow the intention of their mind, whatever it is, they are often… their intelligence is completely undermined. So, everybody right across the spectrum, we have these assumptions made about us that are really unfair. And so then we get into this division with parents. There's a lot of trauma in the autistic community. There's a lot of fear and panic in the parent community about their children's futures and their children's lives. And that's because of the information that's fed to them when their children are diagnosed, unfortunately.

Gem: Yeah. And I'm conscious of like, not sharing things that might be not my things to share from our family. But I guess from my perspective, one member of our family went through the diagnosis process in the UK and I actually cried when I read their report, because it was just so... The people who did the assessment are very, they were very nice. They seemed very knowledgeable of what they were doing and stuff, but the pathologising language that was used in the report did not describe the person that they had assessed, or the person that I know, and I really hope that that person never ever reads the report because it's horrendous.

Kristy: Yeah.

Gem: And just seeing that stark difference between, say working with someone like you who is all about support and what does the person need rather than what's wrong with them. What needs to be changed? It's just a completely different way of looking at things. It's revolutionary, really, isn't it? Because you think how many people are just resigned to "Oh, well, it will never be any different or there's something wrong with me," and it's just not the case.

Kristy: Yes, and that's devastating to me. Do you know how many adults I come across who are autistic who… This is how we get to the space sometimes where we have chronic health issues, where we have really poor mental health amongst the autistic community. It doesn't have to be that way. And the information that's out there is, "Oh, this is just normal for autistic people. They have really poor mental health." What rubbish! I mean, let's have a look at the quality of life. Let's have a look at the equity around anybody who is differently in our world. Let's have a look at the way that autistic people are considered. Let's have a look at, just the model of disability. So if we compare the medical model of disability and the social model of disability. The social model really is about well, a person's disability fluctuating dependent on their environment, how are they supported? How much is a school, or a university or a workplace or someone's family? How willing are they to make accommodations for this person so that they can join in, so that they can be active participants in their environment and in their lives? Whereas we seem to stick with this medical model of disability where we go, "Oh, yeah, they're just autistic and everything's their responsibility, and we can't really do anything about that because they have a disorder." And it's so wrong, it's so wrong. And it's not just autism. It's any kind of diversity.

Gem: Yeah, and I think that makes me think of consent when you're living as a family in a consent-based way, and actually sort of negotiating, Okay, well, for example, this member of my family finds this particularly difficult, like loud noises, for example, but then this member of my family really likes going to this place because they're familiar with it. And talking to everyone and understanding what everyone needs in a situation. And yeah, it takes a bit longer, but actually, making sure that people are consenting and making allowances for each other rather than one person wants to go and do this, and everyone has to go and do that. And everyone's going to suffer and it's going to be horrible. But just because that one person, generally an adult, decides that that's what's being done. Whereas when you're actually talking, communicating with your children, what do you need? What can we put in place to make that feel easier or more supportive for you? It's just a completely different way of living. And I think it's not from a place of lack. It's more from a place where we all should be living, consenting to things and expressing our needs, whether neurodiverse or not.

Kristy: Absolutely, and especially in parenting, especially in parenting. 

Gem: Yeah.

Kristy: We have this really unfortunate approach to parenting, where children just shouldn't have any rights and they really aren't seen as human beings. And we sit around thinking that by being controlling and authoritative that we're going to teach our children about boundaries and we're going to teach them how to be confident and empowered. But we're taking all that away from them. So when we give them choice, and when they say no and we hear their no, then we teach them that they're valid and they're important and it's okay to say no. And we also help them to feel okay about accepting no from other people and respecting that. And then - I know with my children I have far less panic and fear around them being vulnerable to people who may take advantage of them because they have strong voices and I do not challenge that. I don't. There's just so much fear in society around, condensing people into these packages and particularly children and again, it’s damaging. It's so damaging.

Gem: Yeah, with that in mind, one thing that people, I guess probably quite often ask you as well is that should they seek a diagnosis if they suspect either themselves or a member of their family is autistic or neurodivergent in any way? Quite often, there's this deliberation period where people are thinking, "Oh, it doesn't matter. I don't need to get a diagnosis." And then maybe they swing the other way and think, "Oh, maybe I should. Maybe it helped me understand things better." What would you say to those people? What do you normally recommend in those circumstances?

Kristy: I always support people to do what feels right for them and what feel safe for them. There's a lot of... This is a really difficult thing to process for people because many people will say to me, "You know, yeah, I do self-identify, but I feel like a fraud and I feel guilty for saying I'm autistic when there are actually real autistic people out there." And I sort of go, "What is real autism? It's not..." Again, the unfortunate thing here is that non-autistic people have gone away and gone. "This is what we observe the most." And they've written down this checklist of what somebody needs to present like, which means that literally thousands and thousands of people miss out on diagnosis who are actually autistic, because they have...

In this episode of Queers & Co., I’m joined by Lady Blue Phoenix, burlesque performer and member of the Rock with the Foxes troupe. When on stage, she's been described as a force of nature!

We chat about Columbia - the long-forgotten personification of the USA, our power to make social change, creating safer spaces in burlesque, learning to live with mental ill-health and what happens when we can no longer vault our pain away, embracing our shadow side and her experience of coming out as bisexual.

CW: This episode contains a description of a racist incident.

If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.

Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D’Souza

Image by V’s Anchor Studio

Resources

Follow Lady Blue Phoenix on Facebook and Instagram

Rock with the Foxes Troupe

Lady Blue Phoenix will be performing at the following events:

• 29th Feb 2020: Lift Every Voice - Black History Month, Gothenburg, Sweden
• 25th March 2020: The Yes Yes Yes Showcase, Royal Vauxhall Tavern, London, UK
• 11th July 2020: Woodstock Freedom Festival, Hipley, near Portsmouth, UK

Full Transcription

Gem: Hi Lady Blue.

Lady Blue Phoenix: Hello.

Gem: How are you today?

Lady Blue Phoenix: I'm good. I'm just relaxing after a busy week at work.

Gem: So, we've just been chatting about quite a lot of interesting stuff already actually, so we haven't recorded it. But I've got a few things that I am keen to ask you, but it'd be really cool first if you could introduce yourself so we can learn a bit more about you.

Lady Blue Phoenix: Okay. Well firstly, my name is Lady Blue Phoenix. I originate from Seattle, Washington in America. I've lived abroad now since 2008 - five years in Japan and Oh God…  eight years here. I did a lot of dance in the States, so fire belly dance, things like that. I've always loved the dance industry. I'm never actually majored in it, but I just loved that freedom. So when I came to England, after living in Japan for five years, I got into burlesque. Me and my partner went to a show. I saw these amazing people on stage bearing their souls, baring their bodies to the world. And I was literally floored. I was like, I want to do that, but then in the back of my head I had the whole, but I'm not a size zero. None of the girls on this stage were like size zero. Even in my head it was that whole, I have to be small to do it. And my partner, he just kind of looked at me and said, can you please just go ask about it?

Gem: Amazing.

Lady Blue Phoenix: And I asked about it and got involved and have been doing burlesque now since, well 2016, when I decided to start doing solos. Beforehand, the first year and a half I was doing lots of lessons and little bit of troop work and things. But then 2016 I decided to branch out and do solos. And that's how Lady Blue Phoenix was born.

Gem: Amazing. And does your work have any kind of themes or are there specific stories that you tell when you're on stage?

Lady Blue Phoenix: It's a variety. Some of my acts have a story. Some of acts are just me kind of expressing that freedom of movement that you don't get to see in daily life. Some of my acts are just me being free on stage and just showing the world that freedom, but some of my acts or really just showing the confidence that anyone can do it and kind of letting people see that no matter who you are you can do it and it's safe to do it.

Gem: Yeah, it's really powerful to see. I guess if you weren't seeing yourself represented as well when you went to see it, giving that representation to other people who might come along and be empowered to try it themselves?

Lady Blue Phoenix: Yeah, and that is one of my acts, as I am, it's what I call my neoclassic, cause it's not the classic of burlesque. It's kind of classic with a twist. That act is pretty much, I'm bearing my soul, I'm bearing my confidence, I'm burying, well, I bear everything pretty much. I think that act is pretty much, let's just say it's as close to naked as possible without being naked. But that act was inspired by me just wanting people to realise that everyone has natural beauty in them and that you have to love yourself and it's okay to love yourself. It's okay to show the world that you are confident, that you are powerful, that you love yourself and how you don't hold society standards on yourself, that you don't care what the world thinks, that you're just free and happy to be in your own world and showing that world to everyone.

Gem: Yeah. And you mentioned that when you kind of first saw burlesque, you saw that people were all different sizes, but you were feeling that you weren't a size zero?

Lady Blue Phoenix: That was I think especially when I first started to do it, it was a lack of confidence in myself. Society, media, you know, the stereotypes are you have to be a certain shape and size to do lots of things. And for me it's that this is beautiful. This is beautiful, this is beautiful. This is not. And trying to break that mould in my head, trying to be willing to get through that glass ceiling that's been put on us from the young ages of youth and from when we were little up to the teenage years where you're trying to figure out who you are to then come out the other end of adulthood and be like, okay, so if I want to be beautiful I have to be like this, but I don't want to be like this. I want to be like this, but that's not going to make me beautiful in the eyes of the world. And just coming to terms with it, coming to terms with the fact that no matter what the world says that I am beautiful, you know, I am confident, I am fierce and just wanting to share that bit of me to other people and say, look, if I can do it, you can do it.

Gem: Yeah. And we were talking before about one of your acts that I'd seen kind of an advertised on some of your posters and posts online, and it's called Columbia. It'll be amazing to hear more about that piece. It sounds great.

Lady Blue Phoenix: Columbia, was born out of the lovely political events from 2016 and it was just the angst of watching the world kind of just go in this odd direction from where we've been quite equal, quite kind of like morally sound. If this is wrong, this is wrong. And kind of coming to that whole turnaround of where everyone's equal and seeing it kind of start going backwards for some reason. It was from seeing, obviously Brexit happen and that vote and then it was seeing Trump get elected in America. And I mean, that hit me the hardest because being an American, we always screamed out how America is equal, how you know it's free and how we're able to express ourselves. But then seeing that slowly get taken back over the years kind of just shocked me and I kind of wanted to make people realise that you can't just sit and watch. You can't just sit and be an observer and not do anything because the more we raise our voices and say, look, this is not okay, the more we'll be heard. And I remember sitting in my lounge and thinking to myself, I want to make an act that's going to ring that strength to stage and want to bring an act that's going to hit that message home. And well, there's other statue of Liberty acts out there. There's loads of Trump acts and political acts and things like that. And I said, I want my act to be different. And my partner found out about Columbia who is actually a historical figure who's been forgotten over time.

Gem: Okay. Yeah. I've never heard of Columbia before.

Lady Blue Phoenix: She was before Lady Liberty, Columbia represented America and the truths of America, the justice in America. She fought for those people who were in the minority. Most pictures of Columbia, you see her actually defending people who were the minorities or standing up for women's rights and things. And she was either in armour or in very feminine clothing, but she still looked very fierce and she was an inspiration. And sadly when we hit world war, I think it was two, she disappeared. They got rid of her and it was Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam.

Gem: Do you know why it was that they got rid of her?

Lady Blue Phoenix: There is no actual reason why. I think it's just because obviously Lady Liberty got put in America as this massive statue and obviously people start to associate Lady Liberty with America more so they kind of changed the dialogue.

Gem: That's so funny, isn't it? Because it feels like it's always been that way, but it obviously hasn't.

Lady Blue Phoenix: Yeah. Phillis Wheatley, who was a slave back in the times of slavery wrote about Colombia. There's poems about Colombia, there's songs about Colombia, but in school we learned nothing about her. I didn't even know about her. Columbia is based on her actually coming back to speak to a politician, to make him listen, to make him realise what he's doing is wrong. It's not the American way, it's not the way politically forward, that it's quite corrupt and dark and that instead of doing it, he needs to listen to the voices of the people and the politician ignores her completely. It was very interesting how that came about. Originally I was going to do the act by myself. Then my partner kind of said, you can't, there's no way the message will hit home. You need a villain. And I sat there and I said, well, I don't trust anyone to be a villain. The only person I would trust is you. And he sat there and he's like, well then I'll do it. And so I've done the worst thing ever. I've cast a British person as a villain in a political act. Every time we've performed this piece, we've done it, I think about five or six times now. It moves the audience to either tears or silence and the message hits home. Everyone understands the message by the end of the night. And the thing is, cause I don't want to give too much away. The ending though is not Columbia broken or down or beaten. It's her coming back from what happened in the first bit where he's actually at, to then her saying, you know what? I'm not gonna let that hurt me. I'm not going to let that keep me down. I'm going to come back and stand up and be fierce and keep going forward. But I need everyone in the audience to join me. I need everyone in the audience to agree to come forward with me, to stop this hate, to stop this evil. It's that whole, I can't do it by myself, but I'm willing to lead the way. It ends on that note, and oddly enough, I don't get a full naked strip and that one I actually stripped down to a tank top and some utility trousers or utility shorts. And it's the whole, looking at the audience and it kind of making them realise, you can help me stop this. You can stop this. You have the power. And giving them that power and that knowledge in hopes that they'll use it.

Gem: Yeah. So powerful. I've got goosebumps just hearing that. It sounds amazing. So because your work or certainly some of it at least sounds really political. I just wondered, I know you said that some people are maybe a bit reluctant to book that act because of how powerful it is, how do you kind of navigate doing such powerful work and also looking after yourself at the same time?

Lady Blue Phoenix: Well, usually when I do get a booking for Columbia, I do try to pair it up with one of my less political acts. So I will do my classic act, which is kind of seen as a very body positive, very, you know, standard burlesque act. Or I will do it with my mad hatter act which is called 'Fractured Imagination' which I use LED play. But again, that one touches on a bit of the mental health battle of going from this. "I'm so happy" to inside- I'm in turmoil, but I'm fighting it off. I usually take care of myself by just meditating, especially after Columbia. I will go and take a few minutes to breathe to get some air to just relax from it because it is such a hard hitting act. But what we've also decided , as this is a duet, me and my partner, have decided and it's great idea, that we are actually going to start advertising and tell producers, Hey, if you book one of my acts and you let me bring Columbia, half the fee that I get, if not the majority of the fee that I get will go towards the charity 'Hope not Hate' because that's how much we want to get this message out. Because it sounds sad but with the rise of social media and stuff and the rise of the white right wing thoughts and everything else, we need more people to be aware that they can help stop this kind of rise. They can stop this hate.

Gem: Yeah. I think people feel so powerless, don't they?

Lady Blue Phoenix: Yeah, and the act does point that out. I mean the act points out the whole, you feel powerless but you're not. You can do something.

Gem: Yeah, and I'm wondering where you find all of that power? You're giving your power away to these rooms of people, showing them that they need to make a difference and they can stand up and make a change. Where do you get your power from?

Lady Blue Phoenix: I get my power from a lot of the experiences I've been through in life. I mean being black American, you kind of at an early age sadly realise that you are different and that those differences be played up to you. Those differences will be tested and how you deal with them is going to decide your path in life. And I come from a military family and my dad, bless his heart, he helped embed in me a lot of power. He helped embed in me the whole, you know, there are people who are going to treat you wrong but pay them no mind. Instead pay mind to the people who are going to be there to have your back. Who are going to be your voice when you don't feel like you have one. Who are going to be there for you and support you when you do have a voice, when you do have your strength. I have this collective community of friends in burlesque. Like I just became a member of the 'rocks with foxes' troop and they're an amazing group of ladies. I've been performing with them on and off since, 2016, at different shows and events. And they asked me last year to join and become an actual troop member. And I've been with them now since December. And honestly, I couldn't ask for a better group of girls. We had an incident recently, which kind of made me realise how the community is really trying to work around how to be good allies. Cause there are some people who do want to be allies to the community. They just don't know how, it's not explained, it's not talked about and such. And the incident we had was we had just finished performing a show and we went out, packed the car up, we're going to go back and have a few drinks and such. And the troop leader went in and came out and said, I'm not gonna let you go back into a place where someone's doing blackface. And I looked at her stunned and I said, what are you talking about? Because we had seen a gentleman earlier who was dressed as prince, not in blackface. I was totally down for that. I was like, ah, yeah, you look awesome and I'm loving it. And I saw another guy come in who looks like a guy from the blues brothers, James Brown character from the blues brothers movie. And I'm like, Oh, that looks good again. He did really well. I can see him as that character. And sadly it was him who decided to go into the bathroom and black up. The troop leader. Madeline Solei, bless her heart, she pointed out to the security guard. The security guard went in and talked to him. We went in cause it was cold and he kinda just looked at me sideways and I kind of looked at Madeline and my husband was there at time. I said, I'm going to go talk to him. And they were in shock. And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, I'm going to go ask him why he did it. Cause these are conversations that people don't have sometimes and I think it's important that we ask people, look, what was your reasoning for doing this? Because sometimes when you get that reason, it's still explained to them, well the one that was a good reason, it's still kind of wrong. And do you see how it's, how it can affect me sometimes that's the best way to tell people versus the screaming, the yelling, the "Oh my God, it's wrong!" Being kind of neutral versus combat it as all right. So I talked to him and he explained to me why and said, James Brown is his idol. And I said, well that's great. But when you walked in the door the first time, I understood who you were. You didn't have to do this to yourself. And he understood and he left. No fights, no nothing. He understood and left the pub. His friends, however, did not. Immediately after he left, I was ganged up on, I was called racist. I was called "the problem of this country are people like you because it's people like you who are too overly sensitive about thing". "It's a costume, get over it" "If you walked around in white face, we wouldn't care" "There's reverse racism" blah blah blah. And the other thing that got me was the woman who's birthday is, because she was having her 40th, I explained it to her and she understood. So she then tried to explain it to the friends and it wasn't working. It got to the point where I had 30 people screaming at me and telling me how horrible the wrong guy was even though I wasn't the one who reported it. My troop leader reported it, yet, she was also standing there...

In this episode of Queers & Co., I’m joined by Hannah Rose, a non-binary trans woman of colour and London-based activist and event organiser.

We chat about activism, marrying three men and a dog, the lack of trans POC representation, procrastinating as a form of self-care, how to create safe and supportive community events, how to be a better ally to trans folks and some of the hottest events on the London queer scene.

If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.

Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D’Souza

Resources

Hannah Rose’s Instagram

Book recommendation: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, Rick Riordan

London Bi Panda’s Three men and a dog wedding action

LGSM - Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants

London Bi Pandas website

London Bi Pandas Instagram and recent campaign, 50 Ways to Leave your TERFer

The Outside Project

Aisha Mirza’s Instagram

Mental health collective and sober club night, Misery

Queer Masala food popups

Healthy Filth plant-based catering

YouTube channel, Trans 101

Travis Alabanza’s article, “Why does every achievement have to be a ‘first’ to matter?”

Other nights in London: Them Fatale, Inferno, Crossbreed, Pxssy Palace, Bar Wotever

Full Transcription

Gem: Hi Hannah. How are you?

Hannah: Good, thank you.

Gem: Thanks so much for taking part. So if anyone who hasn't come across your work before, it'd be really great if you could introduce yourself and a bit about what you do.

Hannah: Yeah, sure. So I'm Hannah Rose, I'm German-born, London-based, Iraqi, trans non-binary, woman of colour, neurodivergent. I think that's all the intersectionalities so it's a long list and it's quite a struggle. I do a lot of work in organising activism and queer spaces here in London, and in some other places like occasionally Berlin and yeah, my goal in London right now is just to help the queer community as much as possible and bring as much positive political change about as I can.

Gem: Yeah. And how did you get into and be involved in activism?

Hannah: So, it all started with Bi Pandas actually. Bi Pandas is this London based group. They started off last year. They were at pride when Monroe, who's quite a prominent drag performer and use to be a DJ. I was like, Hey, there's no proper bisexual representation, actual queer, bisexual representation at pride. Let's change that. And them and their partner Max, they did so, so, so much work. And spent so much money on getting a float for Pride. And it was just amazing. It was the most queer thing. The pictures from there are so amazing. We're going to do the same thing this year. So you'll see us around pride. And, Monroe was looking on the Bi Pandas page, they were running a visual for queer and specifically bisexual refugees, and I am a queer refugee, and I'm a child of two refugees, and they were looking for speakers and I didn't do too much public speaking before that, I use to do theatre so I use to talking to big crowds but I never did much political speaking. But I was like, yeah, sure, I'd like to do that. And I wrote something up and I don't know why, but I think I just had like, I don't want to play myself up too much, but I think I just had a natural talent for writing speeches because it was honestly a very, very moving speech because obviously it's issues very much related to me, made multiple people cry, which I think is a good guideline on how good the speech was, how many people did you make cry? And people loved it. [inaudible] especially as I said, that speech was amazing. Phew. LGSM (Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants) were like "Oh you should speak more" And it’s kind of just escalated from there. Just trying and more groups. Got more opportunities to speak. People started actually knowing me and inviting me to things to speak there, like here. And I just love it. Like I just left preparing it. I just love putting all my heart and soul into speaking these words. Convincing people and making people emotional.

Gem: So, it's really not long at all. Like it's not even a year since you've been doing that? I didn't realise.

Hannah: I moved to London four months ago.

Gem: Oh really? I thought you'd been in London for much longer than that? Okay. Wow. So this is all really recent then?

Hannah: Yeah, I'm very quick and everything.

Gem: Yeah. Very efficient. Clearly. So what's that been like for you? Such a kind of rapid change and increase in doing all this political work?

Hannah: So back in Germany. I did help out. I used to live in West Germany. In a town called Essen, it's near Dusseldorf. It was like 500,000 people town, so not too big. And I did work with the local, LGBT groups there. We did a little thing for our pride parade, a little tiny float with a speaker. So, I wasn't completely new to it exactly, but my life did change a lot in like the last year. My political opinions, I don't want to say use I had bad political opinions, but I did.

Gem: I think we all did at one point until we realised otherwise, right?

Hannah: So, that's changed a lot and I've always advocated a lot online. On social media and chat groups, about my political stances. And this was just kind of bringing it on paper and then bringing it, using my voice. And obviously the theatre actually helped quite a lot because speeches have a lot of similarities to acting.

Gem: Yeah, absolutely. And I don't want to spoil for anyone what might be in your speech if they go and watch you. But I wonder if you could share maybe like the main themes that you talk about when you give speeches.

Hannah: The last one I did it made the news quite a bit. It was 'the three men and a dog wedding' by lesbians and gays support the migrants. So there was this Boris Johnson quote , about yeah, gist of it was, Boris Johnson said that if we start letting same sex couples get married, we might as well let three men and a dog get married. So that's exactly what we did. So we got a whole band to play wedding songs. We got a dog and three guys, one wearing a Boris Johnson mask. We got a pagan Satanist priest to commemorate the entire wedding and we wed those three men and a dog and then we walked down Downing street and we stand at the Tory HQ and then marched down Downing street, block the streets off there and then did speeches there. So, I did a speech there for LGSM and a bunch of other people from Bi Pandas who did speeches there. And that was basically about being trans in this country and how it affects me. How the whole Brexit thing is affecting me. Just talking about how hard it is to get hormones here. How the UK ignores my German trans diagnosis. How I might get kicked out of the country or not get hormones anymore after Brexit. Because there aren't a lot of trans women around in activism, sadly, a few prominent ones are, obviously a lot of people have heard about Lucia Blake, Emily Cricket, two of them, they did trans pride, they do quite a lot of stuff. But you don't see a lot of activists. You don't see a lot of trans women around in a lot of cycles, sadly. So I always try and put that at the centre front, the trans experience, and to talk about and to educate people about it. I think that's the most important thing right now because that's the most important thing I can do because there's just not enough trans voices out there.

Gem: Yeah, and when you said that those speeches are really well received, I guess when people from the community are around. So like London Bi Pandas people, for example, who are awesome. How have your speeches travelled further than that? And what has their reaction been to that?

Hannah: So I did, as I'm sure a lot of you still remember, the LGB Alliance, when that started out, we did quite a big protest called LGBT with a T, and I did a massive speech there, which is like, I personally think it's my best work. I'm extremely proud of it and it's basically about how we need to stick together. How trans woman started the started queer rights. The first brick was thrown by a trans woman of colour. And that made it on to Diva mag, which is quite a big lesbian magazine. It made the rounds on Twitter and people were destroying me. Like people hated me. I didn't mind in all honestly, I thought it was quite funny because the picture of me was, I held a sign that Monroe made, which said, 'too cute to be cis' and people were very annoyed. They were like "Oh, this is cis- phobic". "This is horrible". And like just mis-gendering me and calling me tons of names. I didn't know about it. One of my friends from the Netherlands of all places was like, "Hey, I saw you on Twitter. People are really shitting on you. Other than that, most of the speakers I do, which I think is also a problem is, in front of other queer people that already agree with me, so preaching to the choir, obviously, but that's not always the point. The point is also to inspire people. I am speaking, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to say it, but I'm speaking at citizens advice in two weeks. I'm giving a speech on trans activism and activism in general, so we'll see how the reception there's going to be. They've been great, honestly. Like they were asking for my fee and I named a quite cheap, like 40 quid and they were like, "Oh no, we usually pay people way more, let's pay you that" And I'm like, Yes please. Other than that, I haven't had much negativity surrounding it. Obviously it's always going to be critics, but this is a pretty good community in London.

Gem: So, I know you said that that it didn't bother you so much and hopefully I think quite often when we're doing activism, people try not to read the comments anyway. Right? Cause it can be pretty soul destroying. With that in mind, like how do you look after yourself and I guess it's not just looking off yourself when there's negativity from people outside of the queer community, but in terms of doing your activism and getting the energy for those big speeches that you're delivering, how do you prepare for those and make sure that you navigate or try and navigate burnout in some way?

Hannah: Honestly, my speeches, I think it's just procrastinating. I feel like procrastinating is a form of self-care, a good amount of speeches I have just like a finished writing while we're setting up or on the train there. A very good amount. If I'm getting paid for something, I will take a week or two weeks beforehand to prepare and research, But if it's something like Bi Panda so are one of my groups, then I'm just kind of going to wing it because these are very emotional topics, and the approach that I go with speeches is just put emotions in and use good rhetoric. So make it interesting, make it captivating, not make it too long. So, I don't worry too much about my speeches, which is I guess part of self-care and sometimes just taking a break. So I've, I'm doing, the London Bi Panda float for pride, probably going to be doing stuff for trans pride this year too, and talk to people about that. So I've been taking a break off some other groups. I've been taking a break from leftist organising, so Antifa and that sort of group after taking a break from that and I've been going to meetings. It is allowing yourself too rest. So I know I know Monroe works a lot on activism. What they try and do is just live the most comfortable life they can outside of the activism and then go very hard on the activism. So hence sleep, treat yourself to some food, treat yourself to Uber back home, but then also spend four hours a day on activism. I think I'm quite resilient in terms of how much work I can do and how much stuff I can take. So people always say I have quite a lot of energy, which just seems to be correct. I can manage to do quite a lot of stuff without burning out.

Gem: So, we actually spoke to, and people would who know Monroe under their Bae Sharam name. I interviewed Monroe last year for the zine. So if anyone's wondering or wanting to find out more about Monroe, then they can go and look in zine two and they'll find out all about them.

Hannah: Monroe is a great and amazing person.

Gem: So, we've talked a bit about self-care, and it sounds as though you're getting this not only for yourself. Self-care is really important, but you organise these amazing other events where mental health and self-care is a big part of those. It'd be great to hear about those as well.

Hannah: Let's talk a bit about self-care at the protest themselves. For the LGB with the T one, we had the outside project at the outside project is an amazing group led by a few friends of mine here in London. They do a weekly sober meet up event. It might be monthly. They provided accessibility and ramps and they provided noise cancelling headphones. In case the noise and people got too much for someone. They could just have noise cancelling headphones and talk one of our welfare officers. So you had a bunch of welfare officers walking around and wearing hi-vis vests that are purple. So I was one of them, so people could just come up to me and be like, "Hey, I'm not feeling great" and we'd just go off to the side. I had water with me. I had oranges that I was giving out. Um, little easy peelers. I loved doing that everywhere. Water's a very important one, especially in the coming months when it's getting hotter. You just need to have water and be giving that out constantly. So, about the events I run, I help run an event called 'misery', which was started by the amazing, amazing Aisha Mirza or @uglyinahotway on Instagram. It started out, them and a friend were like, "I wish I could go out to places more, but I feel like I don't fit in anywhere" And it's like, okay, let's make a space where we fit in then because there's not a lot of queer POC spaces and that's especially no queer POC, sober spaces. So what we focus on is, on a sober aspect, the POC thing and then mental health is a big part. People always love the parties. They always say they can they just feel so comfortable there and like they can be their authentic selves because we don't pressure people to do anything. So a lot of other club nights, always the focus is on dancing is always also quite a big flirting thing, which can make some people feel uncomfortable. Obviously we have DJs, we have a dance floor, but we have so much other stuff. So the most amazing part, what I think is we have a therapist right on site, a trained therapist, who's also queer and POC. And you can book a free a half hour session with them to talk about whatever you like to talk about. Any problems you might be having, completely free of charge. I should also mention that the event is completely free of charge. It's completely based on donations. So if you have the money to give, help us run it, then amazing. But if you don't have the money that you can just come anyway. We have activities. So last time we did it at the yard, at the art theatre, if you know the venue? We had an art corner so we had a little thing of suggestions of stuff you can draw, And like colouring, and we had a ton of zines around in a reading corner that you can do. We had a friend of ours do nails, pay what you can nails. So it was a sliding scale from like two to ten pounds for getting your nails done, which is incredibly cheap. Tattoos also on a sliding scale. We always serve food. So we usually have 'Queer Masala' which is a queer Indian group of people who make amazing food. Last time we add 'Healthy Filth' who are also queer vegan group. Everything's vegan obviously, who caters food. It's very affordable food compared to anything else you can get here in London. We have chai at every party we've had tea cause you gotta have your tea. I've never seen a party with people walk around with tea. So that's our thing. Obviously we hide all the alcohol. The bar only serves non-alcoholic cocktails and you can do whatever you want. There's no pressure to dance. There's no pressure to socialise. You can just sit there and draw and if that's all you wanted to do on that night, then that's completely okay. Everyone's. always so friendly to you. Like you can just go and sit down with 10 strangers and make 10 completely new, awesome friends.

Gem: That's incredible. And how does it feel to create that kind of space for people?

Hannah: It feels very rewarding. I feel like at this point I enjoy creating spaces more than I actually enjoy going out. I know Aisha loves after the party or the messages we get on Instagram like, "Oh, it was so amazing. Thank you so much for hosting it" And yeah, it's just their self-care, talking about self-care and organising. That's their self-care going through all the messages we get and replying to them and seeing how much people are loving it and just seeing on the night people enjoying themselves. It's...

In this episode of Queers & Co., I’m joined by Chiron Stamp, trans artist, writer, facilitator and femmboy alien.

We chat about non-binary thinking beyond gender, intersectional collective care in practice, navigating the brutal legal system, neurodiversity as being like biodiversity, how capitalism tells us to move really fast, the difference between boundaries and limits and whether all queers are from another planet. Plus, an incredible and rare performance of Chiron’s work, “A Love Poem to my Transness”.

If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.

Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D’Souza

Resources

Chiron Stamp's website

Chiron's Instagram: @stampchiron

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy is available here

Rhys’ Pieces / Queefy

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Adrienne Maree Brown, is available here

Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Adrienne Maree Brown is available here

Photo of Chiron by Paul Samuel White

Full Transcription

Gem: Hey Chiron. So we've been chatting a bit before, but we decided to switch the recording on because we're getting really into it and it would be great to share this rather than have to repeat it again. So first of all, thank you so much for joining me. I'm really excited.

Chiron: Thanks for having me. I'm excited and nervous, but in an excited way. They're quite similar feelings. Maybe they're the same.

Gem: As we talked about before, we've kind of agreed some of the things we wanted to talk about, but I wondered if we should jump straight in with what we were talking about just before we started to record.

Chiron: Yeah. Oh, I was talking about how I'd seen this thing on Instagram, which was andI can't cite it. I'm really bad at that anyway, remembering the names of people, but on Instagram, someone had done some medical research into the link between people who identify as non-binary or trans in some way and being on the autistic spectrum and I haven't read it all, but it did that thing in my tummy where I felt strange about it. And I guess I'm really excited that somebody did some research, but then my automatic questions are like, who did the research? Is it a cis person asking a lot of non-binary people questions? Was it a trans person themselves? Or who is the research for and who makes money out of it? The usual questions about most things. And also it's a thing about the medical model isn't it? And if that is in relationship to the medical model, which is kind of like my artistic area of research, or like my biggest frustration with the world, I guess that we're in relationship to this idea that some people's ways of being are wrong or disordered or need to be fixed in some way. Sometimes ways of being can be really difficult but the world is not... I just think that people can actually do quite a lot if they're supported in the right way, but that means that we have to be much more flexible. I get that like fear of, "Oh, if people understand that research or engage with that research without being critical of the medical model because maybe they're a person where that medical model actually works for them quite fine, what does that mean about how people view trans people in society?" But those are all of my instinctual fears. I also try to challenge that quite a lot as well. I don't want to be cynical or fearful, but I do want to be critical. And also hopeful. Yeah, those were my thoughts. That was a bit of a rambling and I was asking you if you had seen it and what you feel about it and if it's... I'm talking about something I haven't engaged with properly, but there we go.

Gem: Well, I think it's an important thing to think about as well. And yeah, we can try and find the sources, but as with anything it's important to question stuff. I think the thing that comes to my mind when I hear you say that our family worked with an autistic advocate in Australia and she is amazing. She does really great work. I don't know if you know her, Kristy Forbes. In some of her work, she talks about people doing research at the moment in order to identify the genes that "cause", and for anyone who can't see me, which is everyone apart from Chiron, I'm doing air quotes... That "cause" neurodiversity or autism, whatever neurodiversity we're thinking about in order to remove that gene so that we are less likely to have people in society who are neurodiverse and 1. What the fuck? And 2. It reminds me of what you're saying about it depends who's looking at it, who is the audience for the research? Because I'm thinking, well, what the fuck? You're going to just curb all our chances of changing anything if you are aiming to have less neurodiverse people in the world because as I said before, generally people making changes and living outside of binary society are neurodiverse in some way. And I feel like around me, I have the community to show that like pretty much all my friends are neurodiverse who are activists and who are making actual change. So I don't know how you feel hearing me say that?

Chiron: I feel many things. Oh, what do I feel? I feel conflicted. I guess. I mean it makes me rage to think that someone thinks that they should remove... So my way of thinking about neurodiversity as an artist who's always made work about feeling uncomfortable about labels and queer was the only one that ever really felt comfy because it's the one that's really spacious and means everything and it doesn't mean anything. And then non-binary for me, I guess I had been using they/them pronouns that I don't consider to be gender neutral, but maybe we talk about that in a minute.

Chiron: I liked non-binary cause it basically said no, not that, none of the above. And I quite like that it has no in it. Now I've lost my train of thought, which also happens when you're nervous, right? That neurodiversity for me, I understand it a bit like biodiversity. A lot of my artwork is about non-binary-ness and mountains which don't go together, but for me they do but that you need diversity in biology and especially as things grow, if we think about plants in order for there to be land and you can't necessarily plant the same thing in the same place over and over because the land needs to be regenerated. And these are like ideas from first nations and indigenous people that we forget and have been erased. So, to me it makes no sense... The medical model seems to me to be striving for monoculture or the idea that everyone's the same and those ideas... So my like specialist area of research as an artist has always been trying to understand the medical model, how medicine or other big systems were built. And that also includes the legal system and the justice system and those things that govern our lives. And the medical model came about with the rise of colonialism and the idea that everyone becomes white or the ideas of whiteness; that you behave in the proper way and this is the way to be healthy and all of those ideas are a form of oppression and conforming. So the idea that I think that people don't realise about history. I'm a bit obsessive. I need to know lots of information. I think that if people had more information about how things were built, they might question why they still engage with them without being critical of them.

Chiron: So yeah, I guess it just makes me a bit scared. I've been a person who's not very quietly really talking about fascism for a long time and people get really scared when you throw this word around cause they're like, "That's a very extreme way of viewing the world." But I don't really think it is and people don't know about eugenics or how that worked in the UK especially. And how those were ideas that people upheld, that the idea that some people's biology and their brains and the colour of their skin means that they are better than and these ideas allowed for people to destroy other people's lives very actively. I'm kind of going off on one based on the fear of what you just said, but I guess I wonder, and then I do this thing where I wonder who is listening to this and if people are like, "Yeah, I know those things already or those things affect my life because I'm a queer person and that means I have intersections with neurodiversity and health problems and trying to be recognised by the state as an actual person trying to access trans health care, etc." And I often wonder, how people who are not directly affected by those things understand them or get the information. And I don't know the answer to that.

Gem: Yeah. Hopefully places like this where different things overlap. So maybe someone hasn't experienced or doesn't know much about neurodiversity because they don't think they've come across it. Because also in society we're told that such a tiny fraction of people are neurodiverse, and I do not think that's the case either.

Chiron: Should we maybe explain that term though? So for me, it's not from the medical model of pathology, like a diversity of difference, but for me a neurodiversity includes anything that the medical model would consider to be a mental health issue, a learning difference or difficulty, cognitive processing. Basically what I understand is it's anything that we can't see which is loads of things, right? So I found this place or this word comfortable for me. I've talked about mental health for a long time as someone who manages their own and cared for other family members and has had direct and indirect relationships with the systems that govern that. And I have said before, if you have a body and you have a mind, which is most people and that's not saying how that body looks or how it functions or any of those things, then you have mental health, right?

Chiron: The historical separation between the body and the mind happened between some white dudes whose rise in their own medicine made them think they were the most important. And as men have this ongoing problem of not being able to decide who is the best at something, they couldn't come together and realise that they're different forms of understandings were necessary for each other to function. So they remained separate. And this problem has affected millions of people's lives because instead of looking at people with their bodies and minds being in relationship to each other, or the fact that your mind is inside your body, they can't resolve. And so we look at them separately, which means that often people who have mental health problems, their physical needs are ignored or people's physical health is not seen in relationship to that.

Gem: I think it's definitely true that we see them as separate. As you heard on the Charlotte Cooper episode, when you're talking about how separated we are from our bodies by diet culture, that's another thing, another layer that came in later to further separate people from what actually goes on below. In my work, I talk about feeling as though you're (and I can't remember where I read this. I wish I could find it, but it's not my idea) a pair of eyes on sticks that walk around in the world and you have no connection to what's below. You just experience the world out of your eyes. It sounds as though our work's really similar in that kind of like thinking of them as one whole thing rather than two separate things that have no relation. Like if you're anxious, well for me, if I'm anxious, for example, I instantly get stomach ache. There is no better proof in your body that when you have a thought or a feeling, where does it show up in your body? It does trust me. We're just trained not to listen to it.

Chiron: Yeah. In the last year... this thing of different levels of knowing. Right? So I'm an artist that makes things that people see sometimes like performance things and poetry things and music things. But I guess mainly what I'm trying to do now is bring together lots of thinking, which usually has happened through conversations or I write letters to some of my collaborators and we have years worth of these engagements and letters. And I guess the big thing for me is about non-binary thinking. So I am non-binary. For me that is not gender neutral. I am not neutral anything. But this idea of non-binary thinking, about trying to hold complex things at the same time and not putting them into binary opposition and not thinking that one thing cancels out with the other thing, but they are both simultaneous and at the same time neither, which is a very complex thing.

Chiron: It doesn't really make any sense. Because our whole world is not built like that. But it's not a competition between my body and my mind where one has to win. It's not an understanding of I'm a man or a woman, but also none of those terms have ever made sense to me. But yeah, how do you exist in the world practically? Not just theoretically. I'm interested in like trying to build tools or use tools or use them in real time to create groups or to solve problems or build communities as well as our work, which is I guess the bits of "artwork", I call them in inverted comments, that people don't see cause they're not the 'here is me doing a thing'. Like how I just went through this huge legal process for five years and there is no joy there.

Chiron: The more you know about that system, the darker it gets and it's built to make you stop, right? So it's really isolating and it's infuriating. It doesn't work. It talks about systemic failures, but it won't look at problems in a system. It just looks in very narrow parameters. So at the same time it was like, how do I also have joy in the situation and how do I look after myself and how do I let other people look after me all at the same time? Whilst not pretending that this thing isn't extremely heavy and difficult and painful. And a lot of that also came from people always telling me I was really strong and I was like, "Well, I'm not really." What does it mean to be strong and hard and soft and weak all at the same time?

Chiron: Like I don't have to choose. And I think for me, when people talk to me about their transness and I'm very fortunate that a lot of people do come and talk to me. I'm often saying, you don't have to choose to prove to anyone anything. My transness is for me. And the words that I use are for me to understand. And if other people don't understand what they mean, maybe you have a more complex conversation, but I don't think we should be able to understand everything about something just by this one singular name that it's given. I'm just going off into my little thoughts and I'm very conscious. So this is another thing about having a neurodiversity right, is that I often am like, do I make sense? Am I understood? Because obviously when you're the person... either I've misunderstood or people have misunderstood me. What I'm trying to do at the moment with my art practice is try to capture those complex things into words even though I don't like words. And I find them really hard to process, like reading is a really difficult thing for me. So I guess I'll probably end up making them also into dialogue at the same time. Like an audio thing you can listen to. Cause I don't imagine that I would understand what I was talking about if I was just reading it. And then I wonder if anyone who's listening to this is like, "Oh, that makes sense or Chiron is just whiffling."

Gem: Okay, I'm right here and I can tell you that definitely makes sense.

Chiron: Okay. So let's check. Another thing in the last year I've been trying to do... try to also live your practice right? So let's talk about it. So I've communicated something and now what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask you what you have understood from what I have communicated. Cause I think a lot of queer community is like, "Communicate correctly", but actually we also have a responsibility to understand if you have understood what I said.

Gem: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, cool. So I guess I'm obviously paraphrasing, but my understanding is around moving away from this idea of binary thinking and that you've said terms like male and female have never made sense to you. And it fits in with what you said before about the idea of diversity, like a bio diverse place or in nature needing different components, different plants, different things in order to make up a whole as well. And I know you didn't just say that, but that kind of reminds me of what you said before. And then the idea of when people come to you and share what they're feeling about their transness and not feeling the pressure for them to either choose one thing or the other because it isn't like that. And I loved what you said about the idea of non-binary not being gender neutral. It's not a neutral word, you're not a neutral person. That's also really powerful way to think about it. I think it also ties in, and we can come to that later if that feels better, but it ties into the thing you were saying in your Love Letter To Your Transness, the poem that you wrote. You think about this idea of transness often being described as a lack or something missing. So yeah, I guess it's a more complex way of thinking, just a whole thing. We're taught so much as, as humans to think about it's this or it's this, it's good or it's bad, it's right or it's wrong and there's no in between or balance. And even at school, I don't know if this was your experience, but I think it's a pretty generic experience that people learn from a young age that... I'm just thinking of...

In this episode of Queers & Co., I’m joined by Sophie Christophy, feminist, children’s rights activist and co-founder of a self-directed, consent and rights based education setting called the Cabin.

We chat about children’s rights and how the dominant parent culture is a representation of patriarchy, how schooling is not designed to allow for individuality, queering education and the importance of ed positivity.

If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.

Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D’Souza

Resources

Sophie’s website: https://sophiechristophy.wordpress.com/

Twitter: @schristophy

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/schristophy 

The Cabin: https://www.downatthecabin.com/

The Phoenix Education Trust: https://www.phoenixeducation.co.uk/

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC): https://www.unicef.org.uk/what-we-do/un-convention-child-rights/

Ban the Booths campaign: https://banthebooths.co.uk/

bell hooks: http://www.bellhooksinstitute.com/

bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Teaching-Transgress-Education-Practice-Translation/dp/0415908086/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=53999208955&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI56Som4S45wIVTLDtCh0Ylg6YEAAYAiAAEgISDvD_BwE&hvadid=259061695134&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1006984&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t2&hvqmt=e&hvrand=5078044356646694407&hvtargid=kwd-299674323339&hydadcr=10364_1752646&keywords=teaching+to+transgress&qid=1580823978&sr=8-1

Full Transcription:

Gem: Hi Sophie.

Sophie: Hi Gem. How are you?

Gem: I'm good, thank you. How are you?

Sophie: I'm fine, thank you. I'm fine.

Gem: Good and so I'm really excited to talk to you and it feels a bit weird because we're friends in real life. It would be really great for other people than me if you could introduce yourself.

Sophie: Yeah, sure. Okay. So I'm Sophie. I have a few hats. I'm a children's rights activist fundamentally but I am also the Co-Director of a consent-based self-directed education setting called The Cabin. And I'm a trustee for an education charity called the Phoenix Education Trust as well as being a parent to two children who are unschooled and yeah, living life basically. I'd say that's probably a summary for the moment.

Gem: There's lots to explore there. I guess lots of new terms that people might not have come across if they're not familiar with unschooling or home ed for example. So I guess my first question will probably be the fundamentals of what are children's rights.

Sophie: Okay. Sothere's a legal document, which is helpful, called the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. And it was created over a couple of decades actually and finally ratified in 1990 by the UK but every country in the world has, symbolically at least ratified the treaty apart from the United States.

Gem: Interesting!

Sophie: I know it's a long story. The UNCRC lays out a whole bunch of rights that apply to all people aged under 18 and it was created largely to recognise the fact that that group have particular vulnerabilities in our society that other groups may not have in quite the same way and are deserving of a list of rights basically to help support them in living in a dignified and respected way. Like I said it was ratified by the UK in 1990 so it's been around for a while now but what I've found over my time of engaging with this issue is that it's not that widely known and it's not that widely practised, is the kind of important part. But I mean the basic principles of it are that children are people, they're not property of anyone, that their rights holders, that they are entitled to a voice, that they're entitled to be themselves and to live a full life. I would say that's the basics.

Gem: Yeah and I guess they sound like obvious things, but when you dig a bit deeper, you realise that children actually don't benefit from a lot of those rights in multiple scenarios.

Sophie: Yeah, definitely. I mean, traditionally family culture the culture we have in schools, kind of general social norms and values don't accommodate children's rights. The norm doesn't sit in a place that makes the UNCRC easy. You know? And so it was realising that that my activism, I would say, because I think it's one thing to feel as an individual that perhaps our culture around childhood and children isn't right but it's another thing when you realise that actually there is kind of a legal consequence to that and the responsibility that people have mutually agreed to that isn't being upheld. And that's the point at which I sort of realised that this is a social justice issue and not just an opinion

Gem: Yeah and I know we've talked before together that, well I definitely have come across it and I don't want to assume that you have, but I imagine you might have, that when you're in other circles with other activists doing work in other spheres, they're generally aware of potentially other movements or other marginalised groups, but not children. And I find it really frustrating when I come across people, particularly queer people so in my own community who wouldn't dream of saying something about another marginalised group but will be really negative about children.

Sophie: Yeah. It's, it's really fascinating actually. And I think even when you get into intersectional feminism and are working towards appreciating how different identities and different circumstances and oppressions overlap and converge and affect each other to, you know, create an overall experience it's not common at the moment for the condition of childhood to be included in intersectionality. Like you said, it will usually include issues around race, issues around gender and sexuality, issues around ability and disability. But children are not included generally in that approach and that lens which is fascinating because it's the one experience of oppression that everyone has. And it's also the space where we learn all the others. So in a way childhood should be the base starting point to understand why we have all of these other issues in society. And knowing that because of discrimination and prejudice against children, knowing that that's what makes these other oppressions possible is critical. Because if you don't, if you're not taking that perspective, then you're essentially trying to fight the fire by throwing water at the flames rather than coming to the root cause of it. And you can't make lasting change unless we address how children are socialised.

Gem: Absolutely. And this idea of like having agency that all of a sudden when you're say 18, now okay, you can make decisions for yourself and you can live the life that you want to, but you haven't grown up understanding how that actually looks and so everyone's sort of re-learning or I guess just making it up for themselves as soon as they get to adulthood and then they return their experiences on their children if they have children and just think it's like normal parenting. I wonder if we could give some really kind of clear examples of where maybe parents might be going against the UNCRC basically.

Sophie: Well, I think probably every parent, unless they're actively and consciously engaging with the idea of children's rights, will not be behaving in a way that's in accordance with rights because it's contrary to our mainstream culture of parenthood. And it's very difficult to be in relationship with your children in a way that's different to the relationship you were in with your own parents, unless you're making a really intentional effort to think critically about your own childhood experience and to allow yourself to explore alternatives. Our dominant parenting culture is literally a representation of patriarchal dynamic. It's a power-over dynamic where the parents are in a position of unaccountable authority. I mean that's not necessarily true or what will happen in their relationship life if they behave in that way, but that's the perception that a parent has unaccountable authority and the child is a passive recipient of that authority and isn't entitled to a voice. I mean they might be privileged to some agency and some voice, you know, in the relationship at times, but it's not seen as their fundamental rights. And yeah, I mean it's, it's difficult. The relationship between the parent and the child is, I think, the most difficult place to be activated in because it's so emotional and it requires people to engage in a lot of personal exploration at a time when they are really busy and quite vulnerable because they've just become a parent. Yeah. Sorry, can you remind me of your question?

Gem: No, it was great. I was just going to ask if there were to sort of... We can both do it, whether there are any real life examples where... because I think talking about this in the abstract, people would probably be on board, but if they realise maybe what parenting they experienced or potentially what parenting they are giving to other children, what does that look like? What are those examples?

Sophie: Yeah. I guess anytime a parent feels that they are acting in an identity that is other than themselves in order to be a parent, that's a warning sign. So if they feel like they're having to behave like an authority or a police person or you know, but that they're moving into that place. So it's like things for example around policing your child's body, telling them what they should or shouldn't wear, what they should or shouldn't look like, you know, controlling how they have their hair, controlling what food they put in their mouth, how much of it and when. Those are all areas where you think, "Hang on, what is the power dynamic here? Is this between people that are considering themselves to be equitable or is this where one person is really considering themselves to have authority over the other and to essentially own the other one? I think it looks like also when the parent is engaging in a good or bad binary with that child; that something that they do could be good or something that they do could just be bad and punishable. Then that's also another example. Also when there's a response to something that a child does or says that looks like wanting to make them feel worse to change their behaviour, then that is another example of behaviour that isn't rights respecting. I think when I first became aware of this issue, I was just a bit overwhelmed because everywhere that I went with my own children and was with other families, it was like triggering constantly because of how normalised it is for parents to behave in a way that isn't respectful to their children. I mean, if a parent grabs that child and pulls them across the place, you know, unless they're in imminent danger, right? Like unless there's a genuine, real threat. If they're just taking their child, as if they're an object like that isn't rights respecrting.

Gem: Yeah. And the thing that I found really useful when I first sort of started looking into it was to think about how you talk to say a friend or a family member compared to how you might talk to a child. And if you wouldn't say that to a friend or a family member, then why the hell are you saying it to a child?

Sophie: Yeah, definitely. I mean, language and speech is so important with this because we have a tendency to have a really patronising way of interacting with children, like a diminishing way, even if you're saying something nice, you know?

Gem: Oh aren't you cute?

Sophie: Yeah, when you think you're being complimentary and oftentimes that's the thing is, you know, none of this behaviour generally speaking is coming from a place of malice or unkindness or ill intent. It's not that people want to be mean children, quite on the contrary. I think generally people feel within themselves that desire to be loved by and show love to children, but it's about how that manifests in behaviour and what impression that leaves on the child and the extent how that then affects that child's perception of themselves. And if you're constantly being patronised or you're constantly having your own identity reduced to like really strict gender binary for example, which is so so common where I think maybe for want of something else to focus on an adult will really emphasise their perception of a child's gender identity in the interaction. So everything's centered around, "Oh, you're such a good girl" and has a strong lean towards stereotypical girly things, for example, in that relationship.

Gem: Or "He's such a typical boy isn't he? He's so wild or like running around all the time. A typical boy.

Sophie: Yeah. And you just wouldn't, you don't see that in adult life. Like if you walk down the street, and you look around you, you're going to see a huge diversity in the people that are there. I mean, I think we'd see a lot more if children were raised in a rights respecting way because they would be a lot freer in adulthood to express themselves than they currently are. But even now, you see women with short hair, with long hair, dressed in more masculine ways, dressed in more feminine ways and the same for guys, but the fact that there's such a gap between that and how children are allowed in our society to be and to present themselves is another example of how adults project and control children into a particular way that doesn't acknowledge their individuality, doesn't acknowledge their own potential exploration of themselves.

Gem: Yeah, absolutely. And so I guess that feeds into the idea of schooling. So we've talked... Well, the thing is, I feel like there are so many questions that it'd be useful to cover. I guess it would be good maybe if we can chat a bit about how that feeds into school. We have this kind of situation at home where children are oppressed essentially by the traditional parenting methods and then they go to school and then what?

Sophie: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, there's a couple of things to mention as we get into this. Firstly, I want to acknowledge that there are definitely people within the mainstream education system that have strong desire for change and there are people within the system who are doing their best to create a more respectful culture for children that are in their schools. So I want to just make that clear because when we talk about this, we're talking about an institution and a system, you know, rather than wanting to cause pain to individuals, right? So that's really important to say. Second thing I think that is important to say is that the tradition of schooling was never designed to be rights respecting. So in its construct, the design of it, doesn't make it easy for children to be respected. That's due to lots and lots of factors. Traditional schooling started before children's rights existed, a long time before and it was created through definitely a patriarchal lens. And there's lots of limiting beliefs about children that went towards how schooling manifested and loads of things we can explore in the history of that. But those two factors are important before we start doing critique. Schooling is not designed to allow for individuality. It's not designed to allow for curiosity, really. Not in a broad sense. There's often policies in place that limit and police children in ways that are unnecessary and aren't for health or safety reasons. They're not in their best interests. You know, the whole dynamic of schooling as a principal doesn't account for the personhood of a child. It requires children to be the property of the school because they're being coerced and forced to learn particular things that are decided by other people. That relationship isn't mutual. It's not collaborative. It's one where it's one of imposition and that is a big problem if you want it to be rights respecting.

Gem: Yeah. And I know you've shared quite a few things recently around isolation or the removal of toilets or the conversion of toilets into isolation units and I just wondered if you could say a bit more about that maybe.

Sophie: Yeah. I mean I think one of the things that came up for me in my research around the education system was how unprotected children are actually in school and how much free reign schools have in terms of giving out or delivering on what they would see as like punishment or consequences. At the moment, schools aren't regulated in their use of isolation rooms, isolation booths, which is really worrying and I mean, it's in breach of human rights. You can't put someone in isolation for just an arbitrary amount of time, it's just not right. And lots of places outside of schools you wouldn't be allowed. So the problem that is happening is that some schools are putting young people in isolation for long periods of time in conditions that are unacceptable for perceived misdemeanours that are quite nominal. For example, if they have the wrong colour socks on, if they have the wrong type of shoe on, if their hair is looking a particular way, I mean other things which are also rights issues. But it's awful. There's research to suggest that it's very bad for children's mental health. It should be obvious that being isolated in that way isn't good. It's not healthy. And what's great is that a campaign has emerged from within the system to challenge this and to ask for guidance around it from the government to try and protect children within schools. It's called Ban the Booths if you want to look it up.

Gem: Great, I'll put that in the show notes as well. And so I guess we could talk a lot about school and the different ways that children's rights aren't respected, but maybe it'd be interesting to talk instead about what the alternatives are. We both are not sending our children to school. And yeah, there, there are different options available. I guess if people are listening and thinking, " Okay, well you're saying school is so bad, but then what's the alternative?"

Sophie: Yeah, definitely and I'm a solutions-oriented person so for me, once I realised that there was a problem with school in terms of rights and children's experience and that that was such a big problem - it's a systemic...

In this episode of Queers & Co., I'm joined by dancer, choreographer, dynamic relationship facilitator and heart centred dance & embodiment educator, Rachel Sparks.

We chat about gender-neutral partner dancing, the importance of consent, the experience of making the short film, Swivel, as well as the lack of representation of LGBTQ+ folks in mainstream shows like Strictly Come Dancing.

If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.

Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D'Souza

Resources

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

• Rachel and Henri's dance duo, Iron&Sparks
• You can follow Rachel's work on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter
• Rachel holds Sunday Afternoon Tea Dances throughout the year. The next one is on 2nd Feb 2020
• Rachel recommends the dance duo, Thick and Tight
• Find out more about Swivel, the short film starring Iron&Sparks here
• Catch an upcoming screening of Swivel at the Love Story Film Festival on 20th Feb 2020
• Photo of Rachel at the Royal Opera House by Laura Aziz

Full Transcription

Full Transcriptions of every episode are available here.

Gem: Hi Rachel. Thanks so much for joining me. How are you?

Rachel: Yeah, no problem. I'm great. I'm feeling good today. Having had a nice workout this morning, I'm feeling really kind of full of energy.

Gem: Awesome. so there were quite a few things that I'd love to chat to you about particularly around your work with gender neutral dancing. But for anyone who doesn't know your work, I wonder if you could just tell us a bit more about what it is that you do before we start?

Rachel: Yeah, sure. So most of my business is teaching people to dance. And my focus has always been on how to make dance a safe place for more people. And in particular, I, as part of the queer community, I saw that there was a need for a safer space, particularly for partner dancing. As I was a Latin and ballroom dancer, I decided to start teaching and to find a way to teach it so that the gender roles were just not an issue and a problem. So that's, that's how gender neutral partner dancing and came about. There are other people doing it. I just wanted to put my spin on it. Another important thing for me in that is creating good spaces that help people to be autonomous in their bodies and feel that they're making choices rather than just being told what to do. So consent is really big in my classes and I try to work mindfulness and self-awareness into my teaching as well. That's the bulk of my work but I also teach couples to prepare for their weddings - queer couples, but also straight couples and always given the option to swap roles or mess it up a bit. I like to mess with the traditions. And I also coach as well now. I've trained in Embodiment principles. I now coach people on basically learning how to listen to themselves, to their bodies and their intuition better. For me it's about freedom, finding freedom in themselves and freedom in their choices.

Gem: Yeah and you can see how all of those things link together really well. I know on your website, you mentioned that other people are doing it as well, but this is your spin, but you said that there are records going back to the 1980s of gender neutral dancing.

Rachel: Yeah. So it's been called same-sex dancing really. And it was out of necessity. People like Jacky Logan who's just recently been given an Honour in the New Year Honours List for her work. Her and Ralf Schiller did this incredible thing of starting same-sex dance classes for queer people, for gay and lesbian people mostly, cause that was the language that people had at the time. They wanted to be able to dance with their own partners so they created spaces for that. That was a risky time to do that as well. They're the pioneers really. We've shifted in culture and in society in lots of ways but there's still a need. For me it's a slightly different angle because just linguistically saying 'same-sex' you're also assuming gender, you're assuming gay or lesbian really. I was thinking about the broader community and particularly because my personal partners have been trans or non-binary and I was thinking about what makes these spaces unsafe. Even the same sex spaces are they unsafe or at least they don't feel necessarily inclusive or welcoming? Not to diss people who are still doing those things. For me I guess it's very present in my life. I surround myself with great people of different experiences and different gender expressions. So it became a priority for me.

Gem: Yeah. And I really liked what you said about who you dance with doesn't have to represent your sexuality because historically, I guess one, we assume everyone's straight when you see a straight couple dancing and two, there's often some kind of romantic implication by dancing with someone rather than dancing alone and to take the kind of romance out of it and to actually... I think you talk about it's being a conversation rather than anything else. And that seems different as well.

Rachel: Yeah... It can be both though. You can think about it as being like a ritual. It can be a dating ritual to dance together. And at one point in time, you could look back tribally, that's important in some cultures to dance and do ritual. But it's not just about mating, it's also about creating connection and keeping community alive. I think it's just the sexualization of things that we just do in our society at the moment... I don't want to take away from the fact that actually it can be incredibly bonding and it can be useful to people who are in romantic connection to try dancing as a way of exploring their relationship. And that's something I offer as well. And... I guess it's not but, it's and... there's real value in us as individuals exploring how we communicate with other people. Dancing really shows stuff up. It's super obvious as soon as you start looking at it as to how people communicate and partner dancing requires this listening and this paying attention to ourselves and to another person. For me there's value in it across different configurations if you like. So the configuration of a couple finding value for their relationship but also the configuration of just an individual person exploring what it's like or what their habits are in relationship to another person and that could implicate or impact positively how they then think about their work colleagues or how they communicate with their friends, do you see what I mean? It's about relationship in general and how we relate. It's what I'm super curious about and what I've been exploring. So I diverted a bit but there's the potential for romantic connection to be explored and really nourished by partner dancing. And it's not the only thing cause any person we come into contact with we are in some kind of relationship with straight away.

Gem: Yeah. That makes so much sense. And so with that in mind, I know that you've obviously been dancing since you were really young. I think you said age 3. I guess it's been a real kind of evolvement of different dance styles and different things that you've been exposed to. But what do you feel you've learned about yourself through dance?

Rachel: Mmm. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's a great question. It's really interesting cause I learnt some very classical styles like ballet and then I also did partner dancing but in a different dance school and they had a very different emphasis. Up until about the age of 17, I was very used to just being told what to do and instructed. I became very, very disciplined as a person. It really shaped me as a person. It was only when I was about 17, I had this massive change in my life. I had a bereavement, my brother died and everything in my perception shifted. What mattered to me changed and it really woke me up to realising that I had for so long just been good, done the good thing or followed instructions and always been very well behaved. And something in me was ignited and I was like, "Fuck this."

I didn't want to be bullied and I felt that some dance teachers do have a tendency to push their students in unhealthy ways. So that was a big wake up call and I had started to do contemporary dance at school. I was very lucky. I just went to an average comprehensive school in Kent, in Gravesend. We were very lucky to have a great dance department. And my dance teacher at the time was super encouraging of me taking contemporary dance further. Because it's a thinking style of dance, well it depends who's teaching you but for us it was about becoming thinking dancers, not just vessels to move to someone else's goal. So that shifted a lot for me and basically I decided to focus on contemporary after that and I went to uni and studied that and then that became almost therapeutic to me because I was dealing with this massive bereavement and I'd moved away. I went to Leeds Uni and that particular course was really good at exploring dance beyond the elite. We really looked at the value and the healing properties of dance. They didn't use that word, but that's how I see it now is the value of dance to everyone and how it can be accessible to pretty much everyone.

Gem: I was just going to say that ties in so well with what you said earlier about consent, because quite often in spaces, particularly as children who've been to dance classes. I started dancing at the age of three and I remember just not feeling like I had a choice a lot of the time and I thought that was normal obviously because quite often in patriarchal societies that's how people are brought up. Right? You do what you're told. But as I got older, and I guess now when I look back, I think how much enjoyment was taken out of it just because I didn't consent to what I was doing quite often. And I wonder when you bring that into your classes that people come to, how is that received that people have control over whether they say yes or no when a partner asks them to dance or whether they can choose to move their bodies in certain ways or choose not to.

Rachel: Yeah, I've had feedback about it that it's unique and it's very helpful. This is the reason why some people come to my classes, it's because they get the choice. And most people still say yes, but then if they're saying yes from a place of autonomy and "I am choosing this for me because this is what I want to do", it's so different to "I'm doing this because the teacher told me". The quality of that in ourselves. Basically for me its about self-love. It's such an overused thing right now but how can we be kinder to ourselves? How can we be way more compassionate to ourselves cause I really do think we make better choices that way in life. And we are fed so much shit all over the place from all angles, from social media mostly and TV and newspapers and everything. We're just so consumed by all of this and we consume it without even realising we're doing that. So for me, if we can come back to our bodies and come back to what's really true and what our choices are, then we may start to wake up a bit more to where we're actually making conscious choices or where we're just habitually going along with life. It does feel like there's a shift going on right now. Just the very fact that we've got Extinction Rebellion, we've got young people, young kids going out to protest. It's like they're taking control. It really feels like there's a shift going on because we have to, because we're destroying our planet this way. This feels like it's beyond the individual. It's broader than that for me.

Gem: Yeah, absolutely. I don't think I told you, but I have two children and they're home educated for the very same reasons and they're involved in a very good consent-based project that I'm going to speak to the Founder of in a couple of weeks. But it's all about the children. Making a choice and choosing what they opt into and what they choose not to do rather than in a school environment where you know they often don't have choices. And I think young people actually realising that their consent is a thing that they have ownership over. I guess that's not really something that our generation or older generations realised. That's a really powerful, powerful thing and hopefully a powerful tool for change.

Rachel: Exactly. And thinking back to the original question that you asked me, I had some lovely words come from one of my students the other day. Unprompted she just shared something and it really touched me and it was just that she had come to my dance classes because she wanted to explore a connection with people but also our connection to our body. And even though the dancing has been super valuable and she's enjoyed the dancing, you can see that as the external, the aesthetic. The most valuable thing has been what's been going on internally and what she's learning about herself. And I was like, "Woah..."

Gem: It's everything hoped for!

Rachel: Exactly! It's just perfect and I think that's the thing I realise that I almost used to separate these interests that I had. I teach dancing to people and I was always so interested in how do we reconnect to our bodies. I always felt like they were somehow separate and now of course they're not. Dancing is a route to that. It's a pathway to that. So I realised I could really combine and... even though I really simply promote my classes as a dance class with these ethics that are really holding it up - the ethics of consent and the focus of having mindful approach - , it's actually having effect that people are having deeper experiences than I could anticipate and it is wonderful.

Gem: Yeah. And I guess just holding a space for those people to come. I know you mentioned about your classes being open to everybody, for example, so every shape of body, every size, every gender or no gender. And just making a space where people can reconnect to their bodies is really powerful because quite often with things like diet culture, we don't have that space. And people who exist in larger bodies often don't feel like... It would probably be the last choice for a lot of people to choose to go to a dance class. Because in the past they may have found that really problematic or traumatic in different ways. But to actually have that is really radical.

Rachel: Yeah, it's super important to me. And actually I'm starting to see how other people are sharing the possibilities for safe spaces for dancing bodies, whatever the shape and whatever their experience. I'm quite interested in how I might reach more people who have found the idea of a dance class to be so, so painful. I would love to reach more people really. That's my hope because I've had discussions with friends who are fat activists and they talked about how they value what I'm doing but the process for them to get from thinking about coming to my class to actually coming to my class... there's a process there for them. I'd love to have conversations with people about what I could do more or what needs to be there, what needs to be supported so that more people with different bodies can come and feel safe. Just as I talk about it, I feel this sense in my heart. I feel sad that so many people get restricted by what pains they've been through and the traumas they've experienced from the way society treats people with difference. Yeah, it ignites my mission even more whenever I think about it.

Gem: Yeah. I don't know if you know Dr. Charlotte Cooper, do you know her?

Rachel: Not sure. Tell me...

Gem: She was my podcast guest last week. She is a fat activist and over recent years, part of her work has been around dance and she did an incredible dance at the Wellcome Trust. They had a horrible exhibition on obesity. So her and her dance partner did this amazing dance in the hall, I think where the sculpture was. And actually since doing that, the sculpture has been removed and they've sort of re-framed how they have the exhibition. And just hearing from her what her journey around dance has been really empowering to realise that I thought at a certain age, that dance was something I had to leave behind because I was told that I was too fat to dance essentially. And so from age 13/14, I stopped but to see people like Dr. Charlotte Cooper who are doing it and who are I guess just pushing the boundaries of what people think that fat bodies can do is really, really encouraging and I think the more people hear about it, the more they'll want to explore it as well. Cause there aren't many other better ways than dance to get in touch with your body, just to move it. It's something that as fat people we're so disconnected from, you're kind of like a pair of eyes walking around in a body just seeing the outside world and not really feeling, which is I guess where our work overlaps because a lot of the work that I do is around tuning into your body and where the feelings are. And it's something that we're very often very disconnected from, aren't we?

Rachel: Totally and I think it's a symptom for many people for many different reasons. This sort of...

In this episode of Queers & Co., I’m joined by Dr. Charlotte Cooper, psychotherapist, cultural worker and the author of Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement and the newly updated Fat Activist Vernacular.

We chat about what it means to be a good ally, how climate activism is yet to get its act together around fat, what it means to be queer, punks who hate “normals”, the role of dance in exploring your body as a fat person and Charlotte’s encounter with a fat femme tomato lady doing a high-kick.

If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.

Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D'Souza

Resources

In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

• Dr. Charlotte Cooper’s website
• Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement by Dr. Charlotte Cooper
• Fat Activist Vernacular by Dr. Charlotte Cooper. Also available here (some of the proceeds go towards supporting live art in the UK) or other main ebook retailers
• Fat and Proud: The Politics of Size. Available here
• The ebook launch of the Fat Activist Vernacular on 29th January 2020 at the Live Art Development Agency. Get your free ticket here
• No Lose
• Dr. Charlotte Cooper’s Twitter account
• Alice Coltrane’s Journey in Satchidananda is available here
• Fat Cabaret's Facebook page
• Photo of Charlotte on a motorcycle by Substantia Jones. Check out the Adipositivity Project

Full Transcription

Full Transcriptions of every episode are available here.

Gem: Welcome to the Queers & Co. Podcast. I'm your host, Gem Kennedy, and I'm very excited to be recording the first ever episode. My guest today is someone whose work I've followed and loved since first hearing about her in 2016. She's a psychotherapist and cultural worker based in East London, as well as the author of books like Fat Activism and the Fat Activist Vernacular, which we're going to talk about today. I'm very excited to welcome Dr. Charlotte Cooper. Hi Charlotte.

Charlotte: Hi Gem. What a pleasure is to be here.

Gem: It's so nice to have you. Thanks for agreeing to do it.

Charlotte: My absolute pleasure.

Gem: So, I've got lists of questions. I don't want to bombard you, but it would be really cool if we can start off with hearing a bit more about your work and then we'll chat about the Fat Activist Vernacular that's coming out soon.

Charlotte: Yeah, sure. How to describe my work? I have fingers in a few pies. My main work is as a psychotherapist and I specialise in working with people who are on the edges in some way. I work with lots of queers and trans people, neurodivergent people, sex workers and also the occasional Normal comes along and I don't turn them away. I guess that's my day job, but it is a vocation as well. It's really important to me and I really love the work. I've also been making stuff for a long time so I call myself a cultural worker cause I think of making stuff as a political act. I started off making performances when I was in my teens and twenties and I have been making zines for a long time as well, probably for about 30 years cause I'm getting on a bit now.

Charlotte: Lately, I've been returning more to performance and I'm sort of exploring, making different kinds of things as well. A lot of my work is about fat and I've been doing that for about three decades or so. I started off with my own body and my own life and thinking about what it was to have grown up fat. But this turned into scholarship quite quickly. I did a Master's degree and the product of that was a book. I published a book called Fat and Proud in 1998 and then I got a bit burnt out, but then I got more involved in fat activism in the States through a zine called Fat Girl in 1994, which was this really fantastic fat queer publication that came out of San Francisco. I also started going to No Lose, which is a kind of conference that takes place in the States every now and again. I became part of that community and then as luck would have it, I met some people who knew of my work and they said that they had some funding available for a doctorate and was I interested that. So I applied for that and I got it and went to do a PhD for a few years in Limerick in Ireland. The product of that was the book Fat Activism, A Radical Social Movement. Although I'm interested in queer performance and queer publishing and DIY-zine making, I'm also really interested in fat and what that means and fat as a cultural experience. That's rather a wordy answer to a simple question, "What do you do?" but those are the main things.

Gem: That's a great answer. It's really useful to hear the background as well because there may be people listening to this who haven't come across your work before.

Charlotte: No, I'm really obscure and even though I've done a lot, people don't know much about me. One of the things that strikes me very much about the world of fat (and I guess people call it body positivity now, but it has lots of names and lots of genealogies too), younger people won't have heard of older people like me, but I wasn't the first. There were people who came before me as well and I'm interested in creating more intergenerational discussions about what it is to be fat.

Gem: Yeah. And I really love how you reference at the beginning of the Fat Activist Vernacular the people who came before you. It's something that's often forgotten in activists movements.

Charlotte: Yes, that's right. Everybody thinks they're the first, but they're not. In fact there's an entry in the Vernacular for the Rebel Wilson Effekt. It's about that feeling that you're always the first to discover something, but sorry mate, you're not the first. There are many, many people who came before us.

Gem: Yeah, absolutely. Maybe if we start with that first actually talking about the Vernacular. For me, it feels as though it's part of that having conversations with younger generations actually showing the history of the words that are used and how they've developed over time. I'm 32 now, no I'm 33. I lie. I'd say I recognise 80% of them, but there were a few references that I wasn't aware of. And so just having that kind of continuing conversation between different generations is something that's so helpful about having a vernacular available to actually continue those words and tell future people what they actually meant.

Charlotte: Oh, that's great to hear. I'm really excited to hear that there were bits that weren't familiar. I mean, there will be bits in it that aren't familiar because I've just made some of them up. I think of it as a glossary of terms that are familiar to many fat activists, possibly of my generation. And also it's got this kind of queer feminist sensibility to it as well. Some of them I just made up and they're just a product of my imagination so you won't have heard of them. I think it's important to try and instil an idea in people that there were others who came before, and not that the others who came before were stupid. These are sophisticated thinkers and activists who were organized. And I guess one of the problems is these histories get forgotten very easily and they're very ephemeral so another part of my practice that I've come to as I've got older, is thinking about archiving and how to transmit and preserve these stories. And I think the Vernacular is a part of that. It's thinking about language and how language shapes your understanding of things. It's also very irreverent, so it's taking the Mickey out of official language and the official view of what it is to be fat. I'm interested in slang as well so it's about other ways of seeing, not the the mainstream way. I think it's a survival tactic actually. I think fat people are really good at looking at things [inaudible] and I hope that's what the Vernacular does.

Gem: Yeah, absolutely. I guess now's a good time to let people know how they can get hold of it. I know that you published it as a zine a while back and I'm guessing that you had quite a few requests from people to make it available again.

Charlotte: You guessed right. It was a paper zine and I sold out of that and my practice with zines is usually I don't really do reprints so once it's gone, it's gone. But also when I thought about it, there were so many entries that I wanted to include that I didn't. So this current version, and there may be more in the future, I'm not sure, but this version has over 600 entries in it. It's quite a whopper. You can get it directly from me from my website, which is www.charlottecooper.net. I also work with the Live Art Development Agency and they have a bookshop, which is, www.thisisunbound.co.uk. You can get it from there and if you buy it from them, then a portion of the money goes towards live art in the UK or you can get it from all the usual ebook retailers online.

Gem: Amazing. Thank you. Doing my job for me. So I guess it would be useful to actually look at a couple of the entries. I've written down a few because there are loads. I highlighted all the pages! I'm just gonna pick out a couple that feel really relevant to the kinds of things that we've have discussed in the zine in the past. One of the first ones was Ally. I just want to read it out and then it would be great to hear a bit more about that...

Charlotte: Okay, cause it's such a cynical entry, but anyway go ahead Gem.

Gem: Yeah, it's a great way of thinking about it though. So it starts "Someone who's supposed to stand by you and help. Often someone who exploits and betrays you, uses you to prop up their privilege, doesn't understand and doesn't help. Maybe this model for people in social justice is not that great."

Charlotte: I guess that entry was born out of a lot of disappointment really. And around fat... I don't know, it's such a complex subject. People have so many different feelings about it. There's a lot of pressure... It's not just a pressure to be thin or normative. It's also pressure to be a really good fatty as well. I think finding supporters around that or people that you can really rely on is quite difficult because it's quite a confusing thing to talk about for a lot of people too. So there are inevitably disappointments around it. It's rather a cynical and disappointed entry, but maybe there could be other models as well.

Charlotte: One of the things that I tried to do a while back now... I had a project called the Chubsters, which was a fictitious girl gang, which was also kind of real as well. And the idea with the Chubsters was that anybody could be a Chubster, but it was a girl going for fat queer, badly behaved women, but you didn't have to be fat or queer, remotely badly behaved or a woman to be a Chubster. And if you just wanted to be a Chubster, you could be one. You'd get a little badge and a membership card by writing me an email or asking to ask me to join. Sometimes we had workshops where people would join en masse and sometimes we had little events as well. The idea of that was that it wasn't an exclusionary space. That was a much more productive way of thinking about fat and including people rather than this idea that there's a line between a fat person and an ally.

Charlotte: But I know I'm out of step with most people because the concept of ally is super mainstream and popular and that's how people think about activism at the moment.

Gem: Yeah, but it doesn't mean to say that there aren't better ways or more useful ways of doing it.

Charlotte: Yeah, there could be other ways. You're right.

Gem: Yeah. I really like the sound of the Chubsters. I'd like to join if it was still going.

Charlotte: Well, it's on hiatus at the moment, but again, you never know it could come back. I mean it was an important project for me because until that point, I'd thought of fat activism as really hard work. And the Chubsters was something that was really ridiculous, imaginative, really playful, silly, but also meaningful to people as well. We had a symbol called the Screaming C, which I have tattooed on me. Sadly a couple of Chubsters died recently and their partners returned their cards and badges to me. Even though it was this really irreverent and silly project, it also had these deeper resonances and meaning to people.

Gem: Yeah, that sounds amazing. There are two others that I wanted to look at in the Fat Activist Vernacular. As I said, there are lots that I would choose, but I guess one that really pissed me off - not what you'd written - but one that really pissed me off that I come across a lot in my work is this idea of Protective Layer Theory.

Charlotte: Oh God. Yeah.

Gem: Yeah, fuck that. I'll probably not explain this as well as you, but I'll just really quickly say for anyone listening if you don't know what it is, it's essentially what you read about in Fat Is A Feminist Issue. So the idea that people have kind of put this layer of fat around themselves to protect their bodies, particularly following sexual assaults. I'm just going to say this really quickly. One person that I know of who is a coach suddenly announced one day that they'd realize they'd been living in a fat suit and that they were going to 'lose the weight' and 'finally live their full life'. And obviously I was horrified. But it seems to be quite a common idea that people are protecting themselves from something in some way. It feels very spiritually bypassing and bullshit basically.

Charlotte: Gem, it is total bullshit, but it's a really popular view amongst people who absolutely should know better. My understanding is that it came out of psychoanalysis and it also came out of these feminist takes on psychoanalysis, hence it's in Fat Is A Feminist Issue, which draws on those ideas. That book was so popular, so phenomenal that this has just become taken as fact, but it's not, it is bullshit. I realised actually after I wrote that entry, what I forgot to put in is that it's really victim blamey and it relies on an idea of sexuality as something that's about genitals rather than a social view or a sense of identity or a different way. It's very genitally focused and I just thought, "Yeah, what bloody out of date, useless nonsense." I don't know who it helps really, that idea. I did find that entry really hard to write because it's one of those ideas that is so pernicious and that people really internalise and it's bullshit but it's so, so fat phobic, it's misogynist, it's really anti-sexuality. I think it has so many problems with it and I really wish people would stop using it. And you're right, it also draws on this idea of your fatness is some kind of fat suit that you wear and that there's an authentic thin person inside you. It's bloody nonsense actually.

Gem: Yeah, it really is. I was actually really pleased to see it because sometimes I think it can feel quite isolating doing the kind of work where you're telling people that there are layers of oppression involved and there's nothing wrong with fatness and then you have other people spouting this kind of stuff. Also I've recently seen even on Instagram I've seen a pile of books, which actually includes your Fat Activism book but with Fat Is A Feminist Issue kind of lumped in with it as though they're of a similar thought and they're clearly not. So I think that's really important to distinguish as well.

Charlotte: They're very different books and they come from different traditions, certainly. Yeah I find the book Fat Is A Feminist Issue extremely problematic and I've written many places why that is but one of the things that you said that sparks hope in me is a sense of not being alone with it. And one of my greatest hopes actually for the Vernacular, is people will recognise parts of their lives in there and won't feel isolated and will know that somebody else might be thinking about it and that there are others too. One of the things that has influenced me in my life has certainly been a feminist practice of naming things, giving things form instead of them being abstract or unknowable. And once you name something, then you can talk about it and work it...