Episode 268: Irina Rivkin

Coming Out Pod

Health & Fitness, Sexuality, Comedy, Mental Health

4.9 • 584 Ratings

🗓️ 27 September 2023

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lauren has a beautiful conversation with singer-songwriter Irina Rivkin, who identifies as "a lesbian queer femme dyke with disabilities" as well as ambiamorous, which for her means "my heart is capable of loving more than one person...but also doesn't mean that I *must* be in multiple relationships." Irina's family had to flee Russia in the '70s, and subsequently settled in the U.S. as refugees when Irina and her twin sister were just five years old. But despite being in a safer country, Irina didn't feel safe within her strict, conservative family, where there were "a lot of consequences to non-conformity." As a result, Irina's same-sex attraction didn't really register for her until she went off to UC Berkeley...and suddenly found herself in a progressive environment teeming with eminently-crushable butch women! Irina's coming out story involves *literally* bursting through a closet door, not to mention a queer kissing booth! She also discusses accidentally outing herself to her parents, and graces us with a GORGEOUS live performance of "Ya Eyo Lublu," her self-described "Russian-Jewish-lesbian-émigré-coming-out-love-song," which won the 2003 Outmusic Award for Outsong of the Year!

You can listen to more of Irina's beautiful music (and find out about her virtual performances!) on YouTube at youtube.com/irinarivkin, and on Facebook at facebook.com/IrinaRivkin.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everybody. Welcome to the coming out pod. This week, we, well, kind of spoiler alert,
0:14.0	we're going to have a little bit of a 90s coming out story, I believe. And so I'm trying to
0:19.6	thematically weave in my queer root shout-out. So this week,
0:23.9	shout out to the 1993 Vanity Fair cover where Katie Lang is in a barber chair with like shaving
0:33.9	cream on her face and Cindy Crawford is shaving her. We did discuss this cover at length
0:40.1	in episode 202 with Victoria Albina. If you're not familiar with this cover, if you're one of
0:45.4	our younger listeners, you absolutely must Google it. It was very foundational for our community.
0:51.6	So shout out to you if that Vanity Fair cover was your queer awakening.
0:57.9	All right, let me introduce my guest. I am here today with Irina Rivkin. Did I say your name okay?
1:06.2	Yes, yes. You do. Thank you so much.
1:08.3	It's beautiful when you say it, though. Would you say it? Sure. I'm
1:12.0	Irina Ruskinna. Oh, that's so much prettier. So Irita is a singer-songwriter, a community
1:20.0	college counselor, and a disability advocate. And I will note that we met not too long ago,
1:25.9	just a couple weeks ago, in a virtual mixer.
1:30.2	So it was on Zoom, and it was for COVID-cautious, creative folks.
1:34.7	So as you know from previous episode that I did, I am still COVID-ing, as they say.
1:42.6	And you know it is as well.
1:44.3	And some folks in the community organize this really cool Zoom mixer,
1:49.1	specifically for creative people in the COVID-Causius community so that we could meet
1:54.0	and possibly, you know, talk about our projects or collaborations or something like that.
1:57.9	And so that is where we met.
2:01.1	It was so great to meet you. It was so great to meet you.
	...

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