Hello and welcome to Live like the World Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm not actually your host today, I'm just inserting this little segue because we are taking one of the Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness podcast episodes and cutting it into a Live like the World Is Dying episode because it's very applicable. And also that is also a cool show that you should check out if you haven't already. I'm usually hosting it, but it is being hosted by Miriam this month and we have this really cool piece that Miriam will tell you about. Thanks for listening.

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Welcome to Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, a monthly podcast of anarchic literature where we take our monthly zine, turn it into an audio feature, and then interview the author. I'm your host, Miriam. Our monthly zine this month of August 2025 is a letter to the Trans Teen Thinking about Giving up and the author who we will be interviewing is Andy Eisenson. If you want to read along, go to tangledwilderness.org and check it out for free. If you would like a copy of the monthly zine, you can get it by signing up for Our [email protected] Strangers in Tangled Wilderness or as I said, you can read it for [email protected] we are a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts and here's a jingle from another show on that network. People need ordering principles.

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A letter to the Trans Teens Thinking About Giving up by Andy Eisenson Narrated by B. Flowers Published by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness about the Author Andy is a transsexual wizard who lives in a trans commune in the Hudson Valley. By day, Andy is probably your lawyer. Working with the National Lawyers Guild, the Chosen Family Law center, and the Harvard Law School. By night, they co facilitate such endeavors as the Hudson Valley Sorceress Arts Society, the Reeve and the Anarcho Surrealist Jewish Ritual Collective, Faggots Against Empire Dear friend, throughout all of human history, three things have always been true. One, there are trans people. Two, there are boring assholes who try to make there not be trans people anymore. Three, they fail. The words we use to describe ourselves and the weapons they try to hurt us with have changed over the centuries. The landscape of what we do and don't have access to changes all the time. How we find each other, what it looks like when we do find each other, how much the government knows that we exist, and whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. None of these things are the same as they were a thousand or one hundred or twenty or even five years ago. The thing that never changes is this. They can't stop us from existing no matter how hard they try. And holy cow, are they trying right now. We got the decision back in US vs Skremetti this week, the Supreme Court saying that it's fine for states to make it impossible for people under 18 to access gender affirming care like puberty blockers. I'm going to give you two short paragraphs of legal analysis, which you can skip if you want to, and then talk about what I think it means for all of us. The plaintiffs in the case were suing the state of Tennessee for its law banning gender affirming health care for people under 18. They argued that the law was discrimination on the basis of sex, which would violate the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. If the court had agreed that the law discriminated on the basis of sexual that would have meant that it had to be analyzed under a standard called heightened scrutiny. The government would have to prove that there's some really good reason that they have to make these restrictions in order for the law to stand. If the court ruled that the law did not discriminate on the basis of sex, which it did, it would have to be analyzed under a less stringent rational bias. The government would only have to prove that the law is sort of related to some governmental interest. In practice, most laws meet the rational bias standard, and a lot fewer laws stand up to heightened scrutiny. And so the court deciding that Tennessee's ban isn't sex discrimination and therefore only needs to meet the rational basis standard means that the law will stand in practice. This means that the 27 states that have already passed legislation banning gender affirming care for people under 18 can keep doing that, and that any other state that wants to pass similar legislation can currently do so without having to worry that it will be overturned as unconstitutional. If you live in one of those 27 states. This probably means that if you are still under 18, it will become a lot harder for you to get gender affirming medical care through the channels that you would have been able to before. If you live in a state that has not passed one of these bans, this ruling does not change the law in your state. I know you're probably tuned into this news, and I know it's scary because it feels like something really important is being taken away from us by the government refusing to recognize and protect us. I know that many of the organizations that are supposed to be supporting you are talking a lot about whether you want to be alive, even using it as an argument for why people should give them money instead of sitting down with you and saying, hey, I love you and I'm here for you. I also know that trans community is creative and resilient and crafty. And if you haven't already found ways to get what you need, those ways are growing all around you like roots in soil and will soon blossom. I know my therapist just told me their teenager went to a punk show and came home with a year's supply of estrogen. I know hundreds of parents who will move heaven and earth to make sure that their children can access what they need to access. And I know networks of thousands of queer and trans people all over the country who are reaching out for your hand, your hand in particular, to say, hey, I love you and I'm here for you. I also want you to know that if you're looking down the barrel of a puberty that feels like the end of the world, or if you're already in it and. And you can't get your hands on the medications that will keep it away from you, I want you to know that you will get through it and you will come out the other side and we'll all be here to catch you. Because nearly every trans person who is an adult today went through the exact same thing. And we know exactly what you're feeling now. When I was 13, I had never heard the word trans. I also didn't know there was such a thing as changing your gender or liking your life. All I knew was that I felt like there was something terribly wrong with me. Like there was nobody else like me in the world and like it was just going to be like that forever. As my body started to change, I felt like I was becoming a monstrosity and I would have done anything to keep it from happening. I stopped eating. I wanted to disappear. I was so sure that everything would be Better if I didn't exist. I was so sure that I was never going to feel any other way. I was so sure. But I was also so wrong. I got access to gender affirming healthcare in my 20s. More importantly, I found community. I found other people who felt the way I feel, who I could talk to without feeling like an alien, who I could show my heart to and hear them say, me too. I want you to know that whatever happens, there's a future for you, because there is a future for us. I don't know what that future is going to look like, but I know that you're not going to face any of it alone. We've had a couple years of this really lovely reprieve where sometimes in some places a person of any age can say to their parent, to their doctor, to the government, I'm trans and here's what I need. And the care they need is made available. Sometimes in some places, if there are barriers to that access, the government will even step in and say that the barrier is illegal, that the law requires that trans people be allowed to exist. It looks like that period is ending and like things are going to get harder again. I think it's been easy to feel like we need that government protection and so when it's under threat or taken away altogether, it's easy to feel like everything is lost. I also think that terror and dread can obscure something really important, which is that this reprieve is very, very recent in the living memory of people who are not that old. It wasn't possible to go to your doctor and say, I'm trans and here's what I need. Section 1557 of the Affordable Care act, which created the first nationwide non discrimination protections healthcare for LGBTQ people, came into effect in 2016, only nine years ago. Up until 2012, the majority of people who were able to access gender affirming surgery or other kinds of healthcare paid out of pocket because insurance companies wouldn't consider covering it. Lady Gaga's song Bad Romance is older than comprehensive insurance coverage for trans care. For the vast majority of human history, when we wanted to do this stuff, we had to do it ourselves. The obstacles were different over the years than they are now. But the outcome that we have to go through first, a puberty that might suck real bad, that we have to fight and hide and travel and meet someone who knows someone, who knows someone, and get tips from folks who have been out longer than us about what loopholes and tricks we can use, and that when we do these things, we get what we need and live lives that are beautiful in ways they can't possibly imagine. That's the same. The memory of when it was hard before is still alive. All the skills and networks and loopholes and intergenerational information sharing and the ways we show up for each other are also still here, ready to be reactivated. The boring assholes didn't stop us then, and they're not going to stop us now. Between you and me, the right wing narrative about us isn't really about us at all. It's about what our existence means for the systems of power that are trying to extract everything they can from the beautiful world that we live in. If gender isn't what they think it is, then their hierarchies get wobbly. If people of all ages have bodily autonomy, then their grip on reproductive control, which they mean to exert, over cisgender women too, of course, starts to slip. If they don't own the children they parent and can't control their bodies, then their propagation of racial hierarchies is in danger. The people driving those machines are old and frightened and miserable. And seeing us, seeing you being so free, engaging with your bodies and your community in ways they could never imagine, doing a backflip off of their systems of power and giving them the finger is. It drives them up a fucking wall. But they are boring assholes and they will fail. I get asked all the time, what gives you hope? And I know a lot has been written about hope and despair and nihilism and belief, and I don't need to recreate that whole argument here. Instead, I want to propose that the kind of hope we need today is not the belief that things will get better, but rather the commitment to finding meaning and connection and beauty all around us, even if they don't. I promise you that the ruling in Skremetti is not the death sentence it feels like, or that you might even have been told it absolutely is. It's just the fascist state telling us what we already knew, which is that we can't ever count on it for protection. But that's okay, because we can count on each other. Samuel Alito was never going to show up for us, but we will always show up for each other. I really wish that the circumstances were different and I was writing you this letter to say, great news, friend, the Supreme Court gave us a break today. Or to say, guess what? Here's how to run your endocrine system on manual without having to ask anybody's permission, or to say, the state has given up Trying to destroy us. From the bottom of my heart, I'm so sorry that this sucks so bad. I wouldn't blame you if you feel scared, because I'm scared too. But listen. There's a story of a future that has you in it. That story has some scary parts and some parts that hurt, but it also has some beautiful parts. There's a future you, who is surrounded by meaning and connection and beauty, and who has people around them that will catch them when they stumble and hug them when they get up. There's a future you, who doesn't depend on the state for anything because they are seen and held and loved by community, who can reach out their own hand to the next generations of queer and trans people and pass along some of this stuff to them, just like I'm passing it to you now. There's a future you who is living a life that's cooler than you can even imagine in the present, and who doesn't feel the way you feel in the wake of this decision. And I am determined to meet that person and high five them. All my love, andy and Bea. P.S. thank you to Andy's comrades, Corey, Kai, Ellie, Yellow and the Bean, who Test. Read this for me.

Hello again. Thank you so much for listening to a letter to the trans teen thinking about giving up. And now we would like to introduce the author, Andy. So, Andy, would you like to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about how you came to write this piece?

Hi, everybody. My name is Andy. I am. I'm recording this on a Sunday. You know, we're, we're. We're chugging along. We're still alive. They didn't get us today. And I don't know, you texted me the list of questions earlier, and the first one is like, what's your deal?

Yeah, what is your deal? Tell the people who you are.

How.

How do you come to this subject?

Well, I know this may come as a shock to you, Miriam, after we've known each other all these years, but I am, in fact, a transsexual.

I have come to suspect that over the years.

Damn the lavender scare. I have been in trans community for, like, 15 years, and I have been very blessed to be in connection with people who have been in trans community for a lot longer than I have and have been sharing wisdom with me from generations past. Although, as we all know, a trans generation is like three years, which is one of the things that we're talking about, right? That the experience of each successive generation of queer and trans people changes very, very Rapidly. What else? I'm a lawyer. I do a lot of legal work with trans people, trans families and trans young. I mostly do direct representation, but I do a little bit of legislative advocacy as well. And I live in an all trans commune.

Part of your work that I have observed you doing quite a lot is because you are who you are and because you are a lawyer. You are often the person who people call or reach out to when laws change and they feel feelings, often feelings of panic, often feelings of despair, and they want you to either fix or validate those feelings. I think it depends on the situation. But you are often kind of the first to get those reactions sort of spilled out to you. I wonder if that had something to do with this piece.

I think that's very astute. And I think, I think that because a lot of us, even those of us who have really put effort into, you know, identifying the ways that we are enculturated to like valorize the law and conflate it with justice, you know, we've put a lot of effort into recognizing those things and trying to sort of deprogram ourselves. I think it's still, there's still a lot of gravity to that idea that law and justice are one thing. And so when we encounter data points that suggest that that might not be the case, it's very destabilizing for a lot of us on a fundamental level. And I think in the last, let's say, six months or so, just to pull a number out of a hat, I think a lot of people have encountering, have been encountering the gap between law and justice in a way that maybe wasn't as personal before and is becoming, is sort of approaching their doorstep. And that, that's feeling destabilizing, it's feeling scary. You know, a lot of people are leaving the country and yeah, when that feeling of like, wait a minute, I thought the law was supposed to reflect what's right and what's good. That idea is sort of the, one of the fundamental pillars of how I've been taught to live in society. And now the law is reflecting something else. What do I do with that? A lot of people, what they do with that is Facebook message.

Andy Eisensen Yeah, I do think that that's a lot of the people who are reaching out to you are people who are lucky enough to have felt protected by the law.

Yeah, yeah, that's the case.

And I, I think that there is a huge population of people who have, you know, I mean, I don't Think I know there's a huge number of people who have never felt protected by the law. And there are also people who have critiques of the law and understand it to be not synonymous with justice, but who have bought into an idea of linear progress. Yeah, I think. I think we're feeling that, like, well, things were bad in the past, but they're getting better, and we have to keep working to keep improving things. But the way things are going is ultimately good. We are better off now than we were in the past, and we will be better off in the future. And that is something that. It really, really destabilizes your, you know, your sense of safety and your worldview to have that taken away. The idea that, like, oh, the future could be worse than the past, the future could be worse than the present. This, the progress that we made could be undone very quickly. That's not necessarily something that people were as prepared for. And not all people. Right. Like hashtag not all people. But. But the people who. Who are reaching out to you. The people who are. Because I think, you know, obviously everybody understood the. The Supreme Court case as a bad outcome. Everybody. And when I say everybody, I mean everybody. I want to talk.

Everybody we talked to.

Yeah, yeah. Understood it as bad. And I also think that a lot of people understood that it might happen. Right. That it was some degree of likely.

In the circles that I Like in the sort of trans law circles, you know, and they're not. They're not big circles, but in the trans law circles, there wasn't really any doubt that Scarmetti was going to come down the way it did.

Yeah. And I mean, I'm not in the law circles, which implies I'm in the outlaw circles, which sounds cooler than it is. I just mean I'm not a lawyer, but. But it's not. If you expect it, it's bad, but it's not sort of destabilizing. And I think that, like, the. The people for whom this was the most destabilizing were not necessarily. There were people who. Who thought that they could count on a little bit more progress and a little bit more protection, which, you know, they had every right to expect. Everybody has the right to expect that they will be protected. It's just not always the fact that they will be.

Yeah, I mean, I think. Look, I know I say this. I've said this to. I say this a million times. I've said this to you specifically a million times when my students. So I was. I teach at a legal clinic, and I was Teaching at a legal clinic when the Dobbs decision came down, which was the decision that overturned Roe versus Wade. And so my students at the time, right, were taking constitutional law. They were learning about how the court functions. They were learning about stare decisis, which is the principle that, like, once the Supreme Court decides something, it stays decided. And then they were looking at the news and they were seeing that the court actually doesn't work anything like what they're being taught in their constitutional law class that is supposed to prepare them to practice the law. And they're like, what do I do with this? Right? It felt like such an honor to be with them through that moment, because I got to say to them, look, every radical lawyer has this moment at some point in their career where they go, oh, I think everything I'm being told about what the law is. Might be. Can I swear on your podcast, please do. Might be fucking bullshit. What does this mean for my representation of my clients? And then they have to figure out how to be a lawyer in a world where the law is not what they thought it was and what they were told it was. And most radical lawyers get that, like 10, 15, 20 years into their career. These students are really getting a jump on it. I was like, the thing that has changed is not something fundamental about the nature of the law or the nature of the Supreme Court.

Right.

The thing that has changed is how much you personally know about the fundamental nature of the law and the fundamental nature of the Supreme Court. Now you have more information. More information is going to better arm you to fight for your clients in the circumstances that they are in and have been in this whole time. Now you are going in with a better toolbox to serve them. So it hurts because losing an illusion always hurts. It's always really painful to, you know, have sort of your. Your child self's understanding of the world get broken. We are grown ups now and we have to engage with a grown up version of the world, which is not the world where, like, if some. If you get lost or scared, you call for a policeman and they come and they walk you home, you know, and if someone hurts you, they get put in a box and punished. And that makes everything better.

Yeah. This piece in particular, though, you did not write it to law students, right?

No, I actually wrote it to younger people than that.

Yeah. So talk to me about that a little bit, please.

A lot of the people that I was talking with in the lead up to Skremetti and in the aftermath of Skremetti were people who were in the generation sort of younger than me on account of I am now an old head. And a lot of those people, you know, who have been living as a trans person in the world for like, let's say 10 years or less, and often like five years or less, were responding to the Scoremetti decision with panic. And we're saying things like, you know, this is, this is going to kill trans kids. This is a death sentence for trans kids. Not being able to access the gender affirming care that they have been able to access will be deadly for trans kids.

Which is not untrue. Right. There is a serious.

I don't think that it's fully wrong. Yeah. But I think that, I think that that being the only public and visible response, particularly from trans adults, I think that's also dangerous because they can hear you. Like, the young people are looking to us for information and for guidance and for community and to be there with them. And the overwhelming response from the sort of adult trans community was like, welp, that's it for you, kid. Bummer. And like tearing their hair and like grieving and like, oh, these kids, like, they're dead. That's it, they're dead. I was like, they're not, they're not fucking dead yet. Like, be here with them, you know, like, we don't, we don't need to buy into, we don't need to propagate this narrative that there is no future for trans kids without a Skremetti win. Like, do you really think that the trans community, the existence of transness, the ways that we care for each other, the ways that we, like, bear each other up and make space for each other and get each other what we need in ways that have already been invented and have been being used for decades and decades and in ways that haven't been invented yet. You think all of that was resting on Skremetti? Come on. I started off by being like, hey, fellow adults who are understandably quite stressed about the legal situation, let's be thoughtful about what we are saying to the young people in our lives, because I think that we have a responsibility to show up for them and not just direct our panic at them. And then Scarleteen, which is, it's been around forever. Like that, that is, that site is as old as the Internet, you know, and does like sex ed and community education and sort of general health and body and world stuff for young people in particular, for, like tweens and teens. They reached out and they said, hey, we think that what you want to say to trans young people is important. Would you like to speak directly to them on our website? So I just sat down. I spent all. I spent an afternoon. I just was like, you don't have video, but this is me frantically typing with Muppet hands. I spent all afternoon frantically typing with Muppet hands. And then I sent it off to the editors at Scarlatine, and they were like, you have to stop starting every paragraph with a conjunction. But other than that, great. No notes.

Yeah. I mean, I think it is absolutely imperative that people, especially like, young people who are the most affected by this, hear both adults are very upset on your behalf and will do everything they can to secure you the legal rights to the health care that you need and the health care that you need. Regardless of what the Supreme Court might be saying at this particular moment, we will ensure you get health care. And also, you are. You know, you. You have the ability and the support. We are here for you.

We.

We will get you through this no matter what.

Yeah. I mean, the number one thing that makes a difference in how much a trans young person wants to die is not whether or not they have a. An official prescription from a doctor for medications. Right. It's whether or not they have supportive adults in their life. Like, that's the thing that makes the biggest difference.

And the Supreme Court does not get to tell you not to be a good parent. Like, they. They're actually. That. No one. No one gets to rule on that.

The Supreme Court doesn't get to tell us shit. The only thing the Supreme Court gets to do is, like, make life a little harder for the doctors who are giving us care. And, like, that sucks. That is a big bummer. And it would be cool if we could, you know, not have that be the case. However, there are so much. There's so much outside of that. And you know what? I was. I was thinking about it this morning because we just. We just had a power outage. We just had a big storm, and a tree fell on the. On the power lines on our street and knocked out our power. And, like, you know, as. As the climate becomes harder to predict and more dramatic, that sort of thing is likely to happen a lot more. And it was making me think about how when we lose power, we have this experience of, like, oh, something I was relying on, something that I was getting from this external authority that I was relying on for the general running of my life has been taken away from me by a circumstance beyond my control. What do we do about that? And the first time it happens in A place that you're living, it's scary. You know, it's maybe it's cold, you can't get your, you know, house lit. You don't have any of the infrastructure you need to accommodate losing access to the larger infrastructure that has been being provided for you. But after a while, if you live somewhere where that happens and if you personally don't currently live somewhere where that happens, I think you're about to. Seems likely you like, get the hang of it, right? And you start knowing, you start being able to tell, oh, this is the kind of storm that's going to knock out our power. Let me do the 15 things that I and my family know are the ways that we prepare for and respond to losing access to this infrastructure. And it becomes less scary because it becomes more familiar and because, you know, like, okay, that neighbor three houses down has a generator. I can go over there and charge up my phone. This neighbor over here, their well runs on electricity, so they can't get water during a power outage. So I'm going to bring over some of the water that we went to the spring to get. You know, when infrastructure fails, the thing that catches us is community. And I think that the, the initial instinct of like, infrastructure has failed. We're all fucked. Everybody run around screaming like, okay, I get it. But we are going to have to get past that pretty fast because infrastructure is going to keep failing on us more and more. And if we haven't like up until the point that we figure out like, oh, we actually do know how to do this, like our community actually knows how to respond to crisis. It's actually like the number one thing that community is really good at. Until we get the hang of that, we're going to have a really hard time. Yeah, like, I don't want to understate that it sucks that states are able to restrict the access of people under 18 to gender affirming health care. It sucks. And I also, I think that it is, it has been necessary and now it is inescapable to move away from reliance on infrastructure that can be taken away from us because it was never going to be reliable in the first place. And I think that people who have spent all of their adult life, or at least all of their adult trans life in a world where that infrastructure is available, where you can go to a doctor and say, hey, can I have some hormones? And the doctor goes, sure, no problem. And writes you a prescription. Prescription for hormones and your insurance, which covers it, not which has been the case for like three days. Yeah, right.

And also like, not that even in the best of times and best of circumstances that that was easy for everyone or, you know.

Oh, for sure, for sure. But like we're talking about. Exactly. But that's the thing that we're talking about that like the, the story of it is that like, it, it has been possible and now it's not going to be possible, but like that those circumstances where it is as possible as it is and as easy as it's been. One of the things I said in the Scarlatine article is like, comprehensive health insurance coverage for gender affirming care is younger than the song Bad Romance and also a banger.

Right.

Both of them are bangers. But if you came out as trans or came into adulthood in the time since Bad Romance dropped and you don't have the experience of what it was like before that, I think this moment is scarier than for those of us who are like, I know what it was like before, I know what it's been like during this nice little reprieve. We're like, you don't have to lie to your doctor quite as often. And now, you know, things are going back to, you know, the way that they were before and you can't get medicine from your doctor quite as easily. And like, alas. But when infrastructure fails, what catches us is community. And that has been the case since before Bad Romance. You know, that's always been the case. That's what being trans is about. And I think we've gotten very used to this sort of through the infrastructure of the medical system and through the infrastructure of the legal system. Like those two things being what being trans is about. And I think as we see those two things sort of fall apart around us, it's necessary to return to what, what we have that can't be taken away from us, which is each other. Right.

Right. I think, like, what I hear you saying and what I think is, is so important is I. Okay, first of all, like, I get why so much of the rhetoric that people use around this stuff is this will kill kids. And I think that the reason that that message is out there is to emphasize the importance of this, to make sure that everybody is as angry about it as they should be, because I actually don't think that anybody is the wrong amount of angry about this decision. Right. Like, everybody should be maximally angry that they can do this to us and that they're trying to do this to us, but that among, like, among ourselves and internally, the, the message needs to be. And the thing that the focus needs to be on the fact that they can't destroy us, this won't destroy us, and we will keep going.

There have been trans people for as long as there have been humans, okay? And for as long as there have been trans.

Maybe longer. Maybe there were trans Neanderthals. Probably. Probably there were.

I'm certain there were.

Oh, absolutely.

And as long as there have been.

If they had gender, if they had gender, they had trans people.

As long as there have been trans people, there have been boring assholes that think there shouldn't be trans people anymore. And for as long as there have been humans alive on this earth, those boring assholes have failed. Like, they have been trying to make there not be trans people since the beginning of time. And they have been failing since the beginning of time. Like, do you really think with that track record they're gonna start winning now? Come on.

It's actually pretty embarrassing for them that they're still trying.

It's so embarrassing for them. Like, babe, go do something else. I mean, that does sort of speak to the. You know, I try not to. I try to try not to make guesses about other people's motivations. But, like, I do actually think that a lot of the anti trans stuff. Well, you know, a lot of the anti trans stuff is coming from a, like, white supremacist. You know, we have to maintain the reproductive capacity of the white race in the face of the assault on it coming from the Jews and the homosexuals. But I do actually think that, like, a lot of where it's coming from is all of these people who, like, have felt the desire to live in a way that's more authentic and more joyful and more expressive of what they feel and have clamped down on it and beaten those desires to death with a tire iron because they felt like they couldn't step outside of what was expected of them and what was needed of them. And so when they see other people starting to blossom into joyful and authentic and beautiful lives and being loved and being happy and, you know, living embodied and free, it hurts them so much because they're like, if I'm suffering like this, then why aren't you? And if you're living so freely and so joyfully, that means that all of my suffering was, like, for nothing. And that's a really intolerable feeling, right? Like, I get this from CIS women a lot where they're, like, very weird and icky at me, and it's very clear that they're like, wait a minute. If all of the parts of femininity that I hate so much are actually optional, then I have been suffering for no reason for all of this time, and I'm so mad about that, and I am gonna take it out on you.

A healthy response.

Absolutely.

And one that must make your life just that much more delightful.

You know, I feel like there's a little bit of a responsibility because, look, the. Everyone. Everyone. That's like trying to move a needle, any needle, in any direction, like, at the base of it, what you're doing is telling a story about the world you want to live in, right? And the fascists are telling a story about the world they want to live in. And it is a really appealing story for a lot of people. It's very sexy to imagine that, like, you could have true and perfect domination over, like, the unruliness of nature and earth and body and other people and, like, just have everything be sort of clean and orderly and make sense and nobody says anything to you that makes you feel weird in your tummy. Like, that's appealing to a lot of people. In order for that to work. The story that we're telling can't be sexier than that. Right. If the story that we're telling is sexier than that, is more appealing than that, seems like more fun than that, then no one's going to want to live in that world anymore. They're going to come and want to live in ours. And so I think it's actually, like, really important that we be living joyfully and, like, spreading trans joy just as hard as we fucking can. Because if we aren't building a world where being transformed has anything in it other than, like, suffering and suicide, like, why I don't want to live in that world? Why would anybody else. Like, the world that I want to build around us is one where we take care of each other and we get each other what we need. And also, we are having a good time and we are loving each other and we are being loved by each other. And, like, that's a really important part of it.

Yeah, no, I really. I love that because. Well, and as somebody who does not find the. I mean, when you say that the world the fascists talk about is appealing, it's appealing to the people who are allowed to live in it. And we know, we all know it's not an option for us, right? And I think there is kind of a joy in that. And to be able to say, like, oh, actually what you're talking about sucks. I Know that it's not for me. Like, you've already defined it as not for me. I get to. I get to come up with something so much better because honestly, your shit sounds awful. It's just. It's just like a blonde couple staring across a wheat field forever and a food stamping on a human face, you know, just not good. And I think that, like, yeah, not only is the future that we dream of better, but the. The future that we. The future and the present that we actively create are better. And what, what do you envision us doing for trans kids now? Like, now, post. Post scrametti. As adults, as. As queer adults, as trans adults, as CIS adults, as. As anybody to whom this might apply. Like, what are we doing? What should we be doing specifically for these kids?

Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things, right? And not all of them, can I say, on a podcast. So, like, for sure, look into the trans community in the area that you live in, because I promise you, there's really important and thought out and strategic mutual aid happening that probably needs most likely your dollars. But, like, take the word of the people that are organizing in the place where you live. This is just like my opinion, man. But I think that when a young person feels like they have no option other than to be dead, one of the most helpful things that a loving adult can do is provide other options. And so being a. Being a queer or trans adult, living in a world where the young members of our community are being constantly bombarded by the message that the world would be better off without them, that there is no future for them, and that they just might as well fucking die. Right. I really think that the message that I want us to be rallying around is telling and showing them that there is a future that has them in it and that the future that has them in it is better, is more beautiful, is more powerful than one without them. And, like, we don't know what the future is going to hold, you know? And I know a lot of young people, right? This kind of intersects with, like, climate grief and climate anxiety and the ways that a lot of younger people feel, like, deeply abandoned by older generations around climate stuff and feel like they've been left with a world of, like, hopelessness by people who could have protected them and were supposed to protect them and didn't. And I think, you know, we are responsible now to the next generations for, like, jumping into it with them and just being with them and saying, like, I know it sucks, I know it hurts. Um, but Like, I survived it and you will too, basically. It is possible to survive this. It is, you know, and, and, and there have, you know, we don't know what the, we don't know what the trans community would like, look like today if all of us had survived to adulthood when you and I were young. Right. But we know that it's possible and we know that one of the things that's necessary for it to be possible is to know that it's possible. And that's true about surviving to adulthood. It's true about being trans in general. That like, just the knowledge that it's possible is not always enough, but it's always necessary. And that's, you know, that's the message that I want to make sure that our younger community members are receiving as a counterpoint to all of the, like, right wing propaganda that they're getting of you should just die because you are everything that's wrong with this country. And the left side propaganda that they're getting is like, well, you should just die because I guess there's no hope for you. You have other options. There's other stuff you can do other than die. There's actually so much stuff you can do. Some of it's really awesome. There's gonna be a whole lot of weird stuff happening in the future and like, it will be cooler if you are there. Which is the same thing that you say to any young person that's not sure if they want us to keep being alive, you know, and that's what a lot of us, I think a lot of adult trans people needed to hear that stuff and didn't. And that also hurts. Right. And that makes it harder to give that care when you also feel like, I needed that when I was young and I didn't receive it. And I think that's like one of the things that's really painful and really beautiful about being in our generation is that there's a lot of stuff that we needed that we were suffering without and that no one was able to give to us, that we are now in the position of being able to give. And it hurts. And it's really beautiful. Right. Both that, like, we can be the elders that we needed.

Yeah. And to not accept the inevitability of doom.

Yeah.

Is just too easy to do.

You know, it's really easy. But like, anyone that tells you they know for sure what's going to happen is talking out their ass. Like, we have no idea what we have is like, what's the next right thing that I Can do. What's the next beautiful thing that I can do? What's the next loving thing that I can do? You know, I think about the thing that Margaret says about Back to the Future, like, seven times a day, that we can't. We can't know how what we do today is going to ripple into the future. Just like Marty McFly couldn't know how the changes he made in the past would ripple into the present. Like, we have no way of knowing what's going to be the thing that we look back on in 50 years and go, that's it. That's what turned the tide. And so we, We. We just, like, it is our responsibility and our privilege to just, like, keep doing stuff. We can't judge whether or not it's the right stuff based on whether or not it turns the tide, because we're not going to know that for a really long time.

Yeah.

And like, for, for people in our generation, for people in younger generations, older generations, like, it's the same. It's the same message. Like, no matter where you are, it's just like, keep doing stuff. There's so much stuff you can do. You know, make. Do a bake sale, like, write a poem, make a friend. You know, trying to think of other stuff to say that you're not gonna have to bleep out. Do stuff. I would have to bleep out.

Just. Just insert, like a really long bleep out here. But. Well, and just to accept the idea that a. A major setback is not the end, it is a. Now the way that we keep going has to look different.

Oh, yeah, It. I mean, it's, It's. It's a new world, but, like, every day is a new world. Right. We are going to have to shift our strategy, but we have to shift our strategy every day. The things that you're gonna have to do to get what you need are not the same things as they were last year, but they weren't the same thing last year as they were the year before that or the year before that. Like, everything is always changing. And this, this one, this one hurts. This one's kind of a kick in the dick, but like, oh, my God, what. What can we do as trans people if not roll with the punches? That's like our whole thing.

Oh, yeah, it is hard, but we persist. Like, we gotta keep doing it. We can't. You know, the option to give up does not exist, I think is like, a big part of this. Like, as adults, it is incumbent on us to be the ones to not give up. And if kids need to do nothing but focus on their, you know, kids often must focus on nothing but their day to day getting through it, you know, and like, if that's what they got to do for a while, cool, that's great. We'll handle some other shit for them because that's our job. Because we're fucking grown ups.

Because we're grown ups. Let them play Breath of the Wild. Like, we can do the scary stuff. It's fine. We're ready, you know.

And the nice thing about the world prior to Skremetti is that there was a little bit less we had to do because some kids in some places could more easily get access to some medical. But this isn't the end of us acting on this issue, you know, this isn't the end of us protecting kids.

This isn't the end of anything that I can think of. It's just a strategy shift. And we've done a million of those and we're gonna do a million more. And the thing that stays the same is where we're going, you know, which is taking care of each other, which is what we've always done. It just, you know, it looks different every day, it looks different every year, it looks different every generation. But like, that is what we do. That is what queer community is. And it is genuinely embarrassing for the fascists to think they can damage that in any way.

It is. If they were capable of embarrassment, they wouldn't be fascists, I think. God, they're, they're so embarrassing. You know, there's a lot to fear right now. There's always a lot to fear. And like, despair is understandable, but it is never useful. And I really thank you for articulating that so well.

I think let's talk for a second about like despair and panic. Because I feel like if, if there's one thing I've learned in my travels on the Internet, is that like saying don't panic to people who are already panicking is not functional.

Gonna tell ya. Andi. True. Off the Internet too.

Yeah, yeah. And I think similarly, like, don't despair. Like, that's not. But despair and panic are like, they're emotions. Okay. And when you are a grown up and you understand how emotions work in your body, you need to use your emotional skills with the emotions of panic and despair. Just like you need to use them with the emotions of sadness and anger and happiness. And you know, it's. They're all, they all work the same way where they're just chemicals that go in your body and make your body feel ways and then you make you do meaning making out of those sensations. And then you're like, this is what that means about, like myself and about the world. And it's the feelings of panic. And the feelings of despair are important indicators and they're things that require and deserve care and gentleness and love, but they are not information about the world.

I think that's a really, really useful way of framing it. You're.

Yeah, it's really valuable to be. To get to a point where you can say, I am feeling panic right now instead of saying everything is fucked. Or I am feeling despair right now instead of saying we're doomed. Right. You are experiencing those emotions, but they are not information about the world. And I think that that starts to move you towards a place where you're like, I'm feeling panic right now, but I have felt other ways and I know that I will feel other ways. Sometimes I am not feeling panic. Sometimes I'm not feeling despair. Sometimes I'm feeling hopeful. Sometimes I'm feeling loved. Sometimes I'm feeling anxious. Sometimes, you know, like, lots of feelings happen and knowing that they sort of. The feelings happen, they come in like a ocean wave and out like an ocean wave. And we surf that wave and then we continue on to the next one. And we, that's. We're just sort of going through that process over and over again. Like, none of that means anything about, like strategy, about political advocacy. Right? Those are emotions. They're both important, but they're not the same thing. And I think that, I think that if we could just get a little bit more of a low emotional center of gravity amongst all of us, I think that we would have an easier time making strategy and making strategic decisions in a way that is not just about trying to alleviate emotions that are not pleasant to experience. Because if the question is, is this strategic choice making me not feel panic, is it making me not feel despair? Like, of course it's not going to do that. You're feeling panic because of what's happening in your nervous system. It has nothing to do. You know what I mean? It's not a direct connection with the strategic choices. And, and if we try and make it be a direct connection, if we try and make. If we try and aim our strategic choices at alleviating our emotions, we're gonna make bad strategic choices.

Right? It's become very like, I don't know, fashionable is the right term or like trendy, but like, it's it's very accepted now and I've engaged in it myself to sort of do this ah, we're all fucked, like, way of talking about the world and like, hey, on a long enough time scale, we are all individually fucked, but we are all also part of something and can be part of something that need not be. And like, I'm not sure how great it is for us to go around saying we're fucked sort of as a. As the end of where we start. I think. I actually think we're fucked can be. A good starting point to a conversation is saying like, okay, well, what do we do about this? But on its own, I'm not wild about it. And I agree with. I don't believe. I don't believe that our efforts are doomed. And I'm not sure even if I did believe would be a stupid thing to act on because then our efforts definitely would be doomed, you know.

Yeah, I mean, look, I think that those of us who are living in the United States in various, you know, in, in a portion of the income brackets of the people living in the United States have been living in for at least, you know, my lifetime up until this point, for a couple of decades, have been living in a state of sort of artificially inflated, like, safety and comfort. Right. We've been living in circumstances that are safe and comfortable and insulated from things like extreme weather and violence and fear in a way that is very, very out of step with the way most humans live currently and have lived throughout human history. Like, our experience is kind of an aberration. And I think that it's reasonable to expect that that's going to equalize a little bit over the next while and that our lives are likely to have an amount of fear and suffering and danger in them that is a little bit closer to what's sort of normal for humans. But I think that to suggest that that means that our lives won't be worth living means that no life in human history that isn't in that sort of insulated bubble has been or will be worth living. And I don't think that's right.

Yeah.

And so I think we can simultaneously say, you know, we want, you know, we want fully automated luxury gay space communism for everybody. And that whether or not our individual lives change in a direction that we find frightening can't be the only marker of whether or not there's any point to doing anything. You know, I think a lot of people use the word hope to mean that there is a direct causal relationship between what I'm doing and the perceptible betterment of the circumstances in which I find myself. And I think that that's not a definition we can really use anymore, if it ever was. And I think that the kind of hope. And I also wrote about this in the Scarlatine piece, the kind of hope that I am finding it more possible to hold on to is not the factual belief that things will get better as a result of my actions or at all, but rather the commitment to finding connection and meaning and beauty all around me all the time. Whether or not the circumstances get better, whether or not my life gets more pleasant or less pleasant, whether or not there's danger and fear and suffering, there is still also meaning and connection and beauty. And I think it's really important to hold both of those things in your two hands, because otherwise it makes sense to feel like maybe you should just be dead. And I don't want trans people to feel that way.

Yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate the way that you articulate these things, and I think these are really important ideas. Thank you so much for your piece. Thank you for coming and talking to us about it. Do you have anything that you want to make sure that you plug or share before I start wrapping things up here?

I guess I want to plug. Making zines. You should make a zine.

We are big fans of that around here.

Yeah. And in particular, like, with scissors and a glue stick.

Hell, yeah.

And. And. And making. Making stuff generally, like making bread and making art and. And gardening and just doing. Taking little moments to be like, I have changed something about the material world with my hands. And now I can see the change is actually very helpful for that urge. That feeling of, like, is everything I do pointless? Like, not everything I do is pointless. I just made a loaf of bread where there was not previously a loaf of bread. This zine exists, and it didn't before I wrote a poem that wasn't written before I wrote it. Like, oh, my God, you made a change in the material universe. That's sick as hell.

He's sick as hell.

Yeah.

Also sick as hell is our Patreon.

So sorry.

If you want to, you can support our Patreon at $10 a month and we will mail you a zine. We don't make it with scissors and glue sticks because we're making a bunch of them. But honestly, make. Make your own zines with scissors and glue sticks also. But if you want a copy of zines like the one that you heard here today, every month, we will mail it to you. If you get on our Patreon for $10 a month, you will also get access to an archive of old strangers content as well as discounts on things like merch, T shirts and books. Mostly books. We are at patreon.com strangersinatangled wilderness you can find our other podcasts like Live like the World Is Dying and the Spectacle where we talk about other things. And before we go, we are going to acknowledge some of our patrons because if you give us $20 or more a month, we will thank you or thank someone you love or an organization or a fictional concept or a theoretical abstract concept or usually a cat. Whatever you write in the line, we will thank whatever you ask us to. Unless it's like the state, we're not going to thank the state. But I will thank the following people. Nicole and Tikva the Dog Micaiah, Chris Kirk, Jennifer Starro, Chelsea Dana, David Paige, S.J. hunter, Theo Boise, Mutual Aid, Millica Paparuna, Allie, Janice and Odell Princess Miranda Community Books with Stone Mountain, Georgia, Lord Harkin, Carson Marm Catgut Julia, People's University of Palestine, Eric Pitoli E. Boldfield, Portland's Hedron Hackerpace Appalachian Liberation Library Ephemeral Amber, Sunshine, Aiden and Yuki the Dog Jenny and Phoebe the Cats Jason Shulva, Blink Cat Farrell In West Virginia, the New Hampshire IWW the Massachusetts Chapter of the Socialist Rifle association, the Canadian Socialist Rifle Association, Renegade Lens and Inc. Astoria Food Pantry Karen Sir Reginald McFluffyboat III and Madame Valentine Lancaster chooses Love Prodigal Maestro, Enchanted Rats of Turtle Island, Max Hyunhi A Future for Abby Alexander Gopal the Incredible ren Arai, the Ko Initiative, Jonathan the Goose, the Golden Gate 26 Tiny Nonsense, Mark Hunter, Vale Phyro and the Immortal Hoss the Dog Help us make that list even longer and more hard for me to get through in one take. Thank you. Thank you, Andy.

You did that. Amazingly, I was very impressed.

Thanks very much and thanks for talking with us today.

Bye. Thank you, Miriam.