Closing out Pride month, Cori Cohn and Lauren Leggieri sit down with pseudonymous writer Jack of Shadows — a cancelled public health professional, gay man, and contributor to our Substack — for a real conversation from inside the LGB about what happens when trans and queer politics collide with gay life.

The conversation centers on “Odd Girls Out: Trans-Identified Women in Gay Male Spaces (Part 3: The White Knight and the Wallflower),” the final piece in Jack’s three-part series. Drawing on a firsthand account from a gay men’s retreat, Jack argues that gay male affinity spaces are built on shared orientation — and that well-meaning efforts to include trans-identified women in those spaces, however kindly intended, don’t resolve the underlying mismatch so much as paper over it. It’s a meditation on chivalry, honesty, and what’s lost when spaces built around one thing are asked to become something else.

We’ll also touch on his earlier piece, “How a Private Conversation about Gender Got Me Fired from My Dream Job” — our most-read piece to date — about the professional cost of dissent in public health.

*

*

If you liked this episode, like, subscribe, and share Informed Dissent — it genuinely helps more people find us. And check out our merch, available now, if you want to rep the show.

Got a story from inside our community that isn’t getting told? Send it to us through lgbcourage.org. Know someone we should be talking to? Send that our way too.

Informed Dissent is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit informeddissentpodcast.substack.com/subscribe