Episode 196: Aren Aizura
Gender Reveal
Tuck Woodstock
4.7 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tuck chats with trans studies scholar and Minneapolis resident Aren Aizura (he/him). Topics include:
- How a protest camp in the Australian desert helped free dozens of immigrant detainees(!!)
- How Aren's kids are reacting to ICE occupying their neighborhood
- How Twin Cities organizing has remained leaderless and decentralized
- Being subjected to archaic HBIGDA "true transsexual" guidelines and a political background check while trying to access top surgery!?
- Plus: Australian hippies, tear gas, Tim Walz, the YMCA sauna, and audio of a baby talking to a cat in a bag :)
Through The Wire, a 10-min independent documentary about the 2002 breakout from Woomera Detention Center, is available to stream here. (cw: incarceration, injury, police violence)
Find Aren on Bluesky @incommensurati. Aren's book, Mobile Subjects, is available from Duke University Press.
Join our Patreon to access our weekly newsletter and monthly Gender Conceal episodes.
Find transcripts and starter packs at genderpodcast.com. We're also on Instagram @gendereveal.
Senior Producer: Ozzy Llinas Goodman
Logo: Ira M. Leigh
Music: Breakmaster Cylinder
Additional music: Blue Dot Sessions
Sponsors: Max Burns UX (mention Rhubarb!)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to gender, feel, a podcast where we hopefully get a little bit closer |
| 0:19.2 | to understanding what the hell gender is. |
| 0:21.9 | I'm your host and resident gender detective, tuck woodstock. |
| 0:33.1 | Hey everyone. Hope you've all been hanging in there. Today in the show, I am so, so excited to share my conversation with Aran Izura. |
| 0:40.6 | Aran is a really important scholar. He's like a father of trans studies. And it really would have made sense to talk about that on the trans podcast. |
| 0:47.8 | But we did not have time because we were busy talking about life in South Minneapolis. This is the second episode in our two-part series |
| 0:55.2 | this month about the federal occupation in Minneapolis in the surrounding areas. There are a couple |
| 0:59.9 | of moments of overlap from last week's episode, but for the most part, these two episodes cover |
| 1:04.7 | completely different topics, and I really think they complement each other really well. In this |
| 1:09.2 | episode, Aran talks about what it feels like to be doing ice patrol and rapid response |
| 1:15.6 | and mutual aid on the ground in Minneapolis right now. |
| 1:19.2 | He talks about how his kids are reacting to the violence in their neighborhood and why |
| 1:23.4 | it's so important that Minneapolis organizing stays decentralized. |
| 1:27.8 | Because everything is based on material action, no one has to agree with each other about |
| 1:36.2 | ideology. Before we dive into what's going on in Minnesota, Aran also shares his experiences |
| 1:41.8 | being denied top surgery in his 20s due to like general medical |
| 1:46.0 | malpractice. And we also talk about some really ambitious activism that Aran was part of in Australia |
| 1:51.1 | and how it affected the whole course of his life going forward. And this is definitely the most |
| 1:57.0 | dramatic thing that I've ever been involved in. This interview was recorded on February 2nd, |
| 2:02.0 | and between then and now, you may have seen news that ICE was pulling out of Minneapolis. |
| 2:06.2 | According to Arn and others, however, that hasn't actually happened. What's going on in the ground |
| 2:10.1 | seems more or less the same as it was before. So what was said in this episode still applies, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tuck Woodstock, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Tuck Woodstock and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.