Episode 81: Kai Cheng Thom
Gender Reveal
Tuck Woodstock
4.7 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 January 2021
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tuck speaks with author and community worker Kai Cheng Thom (she/her) in our longest episode ever. Topics include:
- The harm of problematic/pure and perpetrator/victim binaries
- The evolution of "femme" and "transsexual"
- The future of trans kids and class solidarity
- Losing faith, but not hope, in community justice
- Plus: Spicy trans memoir takes, Kai Cheng's secret Goop life, and being the only masters-credentialed trans woman therapist in Canada
This Week in Gender: A federal judge strikes down a transphobic policy in Ohio; Argentina now has a 1% employment quota for trans people in the public sector; and Joe Biden transes his transition team.
Authors referenced: Mariame Kaba, Sarah Schulman, Porpentine Charity Heartscape, adrienne maree brown, Janet Mock, Imogen Binnie (Nevada)
Buy Kai Cheng's books: A Place Called No Homeland (poetry), Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars (fiction), I Hope We Choose Love (essays) and From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea (picture book).
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Find episode transcripts and other resources at genderpodcast.com. We're also on Twitter or Instagram @gendereveal. Our host is @tuckwoodstock.
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Special thanks this week to Erin Wade!
Producer: Isaura Aceves
Logo: Ira M. Leigh
Music: Breakmaster Cylinder
Additional Music: "Donnalee" by Blue Dot Sessions
Sponsors: YOU! Thank you!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh, Welcome to Gender Review, a podcast where we hopefully get a little bit closer to |
| 0:19.6 | understanding what the hell Gender is. I'm your host and resident gender detective Tuck Woodstock. |
| 0:27.0 | Hey everyone. I hope you're all still hanging in there. Welcome to |
| 0:37.5 | 2021 baby we did it. Even if this year is just as bad as last year somehow, you survive 2020 and nobody can take that away from you. |
| 0:47.6 | So, good job. |
| 0:49.7 | This week on the show, one of my very favorite interviews of the season, and that is saying a lot. |
| 0:56.0 | Author Ka Chang Tom is here to talk about, well, obviously her books. |
| 1:00.0 | I wish I could rewrite, I hope we choose love actually, all the time. |
| 1:03.2 | But we also talk about Kai Chang's secret life in the white goop lady world, |
| 1:07.9 | why she stopped being a therapist, the history of the word fem, |
| 1:12.0 | surviving in various leftist spaces? |
| 1:14.8 | What's going to happen when we are problematic? Well, we'd have to be gotten rid of. |
| 1:18.4 | So then we develop a complex around, well, I can never be be problematic it's such a good conversation and it is spicy this is a daring thing to say so you know I take responsibility for if it's a you know wrong I do want to warn y'all that in the interview we touch upon the concepts |
| 1:35.5 | of assaults and violence and suicidality. There are no details shared but just a heads up. |
| 1:40.4 | Please take care of yourselves. But first a different heads up. A heads up. a |
| 1:43.7 | different heads up. |
| 1:44.7 | a heads up that our merch shop resets at the end of every month as you probably know. |
| 1:48.9 | So we've got three new designs in the site now including one by gender reveal alum Maya Kobabe. |
| 1:55.2 | In addition to the new designs, we've got a hoodie version of Beth. |
| 1:58.8 | Trans Kids are Wonderful. |
| 2:00.6 | A beautiful Fanny Pack version of Ariana's gender is a boundless expanse artwork. |
| 2:05.4 | I promise I got the like printing boundaries right this time. |
... |
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