Bystitual offers a wide range of beautiful queer and or Canadian indie dyed yarn and handmade accessories.

They also offer beginner and not-so-beginner knitting and crochet zoom classes so you can join from anywhere in the world.

Visit them in person at Annette Street in Toronto or shop online at bystitual.ca with free international shipping for orders over $100.

Welcome to Gender Review, a podcast where we hopefully get a little bit closer to understanding what the hell gender is.

I'm your host and resident gender detective, Tuckwood Star.

Hey everyone, hope you're all hanging in there. This week on the show I am thrilled to share our conversation with author, film critic and Filthcore Queen, Gretchen Felker Martin.

I've been looking forward to this chat for a long time and it was such a treat to talk with Gretchen about the turfy world of gender plague novels, horror as a tool for personal growth and whether art can do harm.

I think when we call art dangerous, what we almost always mean is that it made us uncomfortable.

But before we get to that, just a reminder, we've got a robust array of merch for you this month including our new trans musicians are hotter shirts and the return of our more king at pride tank tops.

I personally wear my more kick at pride tank top all the time so if you get one we can match. That's all at bit.ly slash gender merch.

Also, I know it's a weird time for everyone, but I'm just throwing this out there. We run almost entirely on listener donations so if you have one or five or $10 to spare, you can support the show at patreon.com slash gender and it would really mean a lot to us, but no pressure.

And now it's time for this week in gender.

This week we've been staying away from this topic, but I'm recording this on the day that the New York Times magazine published yet another feature story on whether we should let trans kids be trans hot off of a New York Times article that said, hey, more and more kids are trans these days.

And while I don't want to talk directly about these articles because who has the time, I do want to equip you with some handy talking points about these topics because it seems like we're simply not going to escape them anytime soon.

So, new data shows that the total number of self identified trans people in the United States is up compared to a few years ago.

Yeah, of course it is. As more and more people learn about the possibilities of being trans in ways that feel relevant and accessible to them, whether that's through real life encounters with trans people or resources such as this very podcast, we will continue to see those numbers rise, not infinitely, but for a while.

It's like if there was a secret soccer team in your town that nobody knew how to try out for or even how to watch, and then one year, that soccer team decided to give out free tickets to every game and also hold public tryouts.

And then, all of a sudden, soccer was way more popular in your town. You could say, it's so weird that so many people are interested in local soccer compared to last year, but you would be ignoring the obvious difference in visibility and accessibility.

Of course, for this metaphor to where you'd have to get two doctor's notes in order to get shin guards or whatever, but that's beside the point.

So, why does it matter that increasing numbers of people describe themselves as trans? Great question. It literally doesn't matter.

A growing trans population is only an issue if you think that trans people do not deserve to exist in society. The same way that a growing immigrant or refugee or non-white population is only an issue if we think that those people do not deserve to be here.

Trans people transitioning does not threaten cis people's ability to be cis, nor does it change cis people's lives in any meaningful way.

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