Welcome to Gender Reveal, a podcast where we hopefully get a little bit closer to understanding

what the hell gender is on your host and resident gender detective, Tech Woodstock.

Hey everyone, have real hanging in there. When we arbitrarily decided that November 14th was the

start of Labor Week here on the podcast, I did not expect for it to line up so perfectly

with Union efforts across the country. But only a few days after we released our Starbucks

Worker's Union episode, more than 110 Starbucks workplaces went on strike for Red Cup Day.

We are almost two weeks into strikes across 10 University of California campuses where

bargaining units represent nearly 48,000 academic workers. Part-time faculty are striking

at the New School in New York as our HarperCollins employees also in New York. And I got to say,

those people on those picket lines are tough as hell because it was so goddamn cold here

last week and they were just truly out there, rather than the troops. So it is perfect

that in this episode, we also talk a little bit about unions, albeit in a little darker

way than our other labor episodes, but it's important nonetheless. And speaking of unions,

we also just released a new episode of our Patreon only bonus podcast, Gender Conceal,

and we spoke with Saraya Shockley about union organizing in the radio and podcasting space,

as well as about the gender politics in the new season of Love is Blind. That's available

exclusively for patrons at patreon.com slash gender. Meanwhile, on today's show, I'm excited

to share my chat with Joan Summers. Joan is a former writer at Jezebel and the longtime co-host

of the podcast Eating for Free. In this episode, Joan and I talk about implicit versus explicit

representation. Oh, I want to be Laura Croft Tomb Raider because she's strong and hot and

gets to wear leather cat suits, not because she had a conversation with her butler about her

Australia prescription. And whether it's possible for queer celebrities to not be annoying,

...