Welcome. Welcome to Gender Reveal, a podcast where we ask intrusive personal questions and hopefully get a little bit closer to understanding what the hell gender is. I'm your host and resident

gender detective Molly Woodstock.

Hi sweet friends. It's so nice to be speaking to you again. Today I am

really excited to share an interview between Dr. Z. Nikolazo and

Rachel and Melody from the Feminist Kiljoy's PhD

podcast.

If you like gender reveal, which presumably you do,

I think you're really going to love this discussion

of trans resilience and research in academia.

But before we get to that, just a few other thoughts from me.

First, wow, big week on social media.

Wednesday was World Mental Health Day, Thursday was National Coming Out Day, and I have a few quick thoughts on both of those subjects.

Regarding mental health, I just want to say that mental illness has this way of making us feel totally alone and

uniquely broken like we're the only one struggling while everyone else has

their shit together and I just want to say that that's absolutely not true.

Recent studies have shown that one in three adults

experienced mental illness and that trans folks experience much higher rates of

psychological distress and suicidality than cis folks do.

Honestly, I think it's an absolute miracle that there are literally any queer trans folks on earth who don't struggle with their mental health.

Because we live in a society that systemically teaches other folks to hate us, teaches us to hate ourselves,

and systemically denies us equal access to housing, health care, education, and employment,

among other things.

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