Unabridged: We’re in a Gender Straitjacket with Emily St. James - Transcript

In this episode of The Stacks Unabridged, we’re joined by author and critic Emily St. James to discuss her new book, Woodworking. We explore the recent evolution of anti-trans legislation, what it tells us about the current political moment, and trans rep in pop culture. Plus, Emily offers us her entries into the trans literary canon.

TRANSCRIPT

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Traci, hey everybody. It's Traci Thomas, host of the stacks here with another bonus episode of the stacks, unabridged for you. Today, I am joined by cultural critic, TV writer, journalist and now debut novelist Emily St James, whose brand new book, woodworking is out now today, Emily and I talk about trans rights, trans representation and anti trans rhetoric in both pop culture and politics. Emily shares her thoughts on how we got here, where we're headed, and together, we craft a trans pop culture canon from books to TV, film and more. Okay, now it's time for my conversation with Emily St James.

All right, everybody stacks unabridged. Here we are. Bonus episode for March. I am really excited today because I am joined by a brand new novelist, but a tried and true cultural critic, pop culture writer, Emily St James. Emily, welcome to the stacks. Hi. It's wonderful to be here. I'm so happy to have you, I think we should. Let's start with your novel, because I want to make sure we give your novel a little bit of time before we start digging into pop culture. It's called woodworking. And why don't you tell people in about 30 seconds or so what the book is about. Woodworking is about a trans woman who comes out to herself at the age of 35 but she lives in Mitchell, South Dakota, a town of 15,000 people. So the only other trans person she knows is a 17 year old girl who's one of her high school students. It's about the unlikely friendship that sort of emerges from there, and then also how they both get roped into a local election for a state senate seat. It takes place in the build up to the 2016 election. So, dramatic irony, dramatic irony. Dramatic iron.

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We love a literary convention. And you're from South Dakota. I am. I'm from South Dakota. I'm actually from a town called armor, which is about 40 miles from Mitchell, if you set things in a town that small people don't believe towns are that small. Even smaller. Yeah, armors. Armors, like 600 people. Now, it was about 800 when I was living there. It i My graduating class was 16 people. Stop, yeah, from high 16. High School, 16, and I know where all of them are now. I mean, not in the creepy way, just in the sense of, like, tracking all of their locations,

but I Mitchell was the nearest big town, and it did feel to me like I tried to come out as a child, and it never quite worked, because it was the 80s and 90s, and it was a weird time to be trans. I mean, it's always a weird time to be trans, but especially then and Mitchell was always like the closest big town. So I sort of had in the back of my head, like a trans kid might be able to find, like, somewhere to live there. So like that was, that was kind of where my mind went. Also, it has a it has the corn Palace, which is an enormous palace decorated with corn. Every year they change the murals and like it's in the book, like once, but it just, it just felt too good to like I need, I need this. I need something to anchor the place, the cornice. The disappointing thing is, if you ever go on the inside of it, it's just a basketball gym.

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Wow. So it's not really a palace like Meghan Markle is not there. It's Palace shaped. There's no, like, corn, yeah, there's no king and queen made of corn. It's just a gym, okay, we gotta work on that. We gotta, we do. We need to. We need to move on.org petition to, like, get us royalty in the corn palace or whatever. Yeah, once we, once we've fixed this country, then we're gonna fix the corn palace. But maybe we're starting like, maybe we're starting too big with like,

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like healthcare. Maybe we should start with small things like the corn palace, and then like, see, like, we did this. Now let's move up to protecting Social Security. My toddler watches this is not a new saying. This is from a lot of places, but my toddler watches this this Miss Rachel on YouTube, and she says all the time, you can do hard things. And that's us with the corn power. Yeah, that's Glenn and Doyle. She really took, she took you can do hard things, and made it her whole personality, her new book, actually, yeah, that is where I first heard it. And now I associate with MS Rachel, because I have a two year old, right, right? Yes, when you have small children, everything, I quote bluey a lot. Like, yes, there's an episode of bluey where the mom keeps telling, like, Bluey to run her own race. Or maybe it's bingo, I can't remember which one, and I say that.

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All the time, to myself, to my adult friends, to my children. I'm like, look in the mirror. I'm like, Traci, run your own race. Like it's hard. That's a hard lesson to learn. Yeah, that's a hard one. Absolutely. Okay. I want to stick with it all for a little bit. I want to know because you we talked about this a little bit off air, but also, you're really well known for your TV writing you used to do, like, tons of recaps of America's favorite shows from like, Big Bang Theory,

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Buffy, right? You did Buffy. I never did Buffy. I wish that I had it. It was a very formative show for me. Got it. The ones people sort of remember me foremost are community, community and Mad Men and Game of Thrones. But I recapped so many things. I recapped America's next great restaurant, a show you've never heard of, show I've never heard of.

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Those recaps were getting a lot of clicks for you. I had a great time. Had a great time, yeah, but then you write this novel, you know, fast forward, what's, what's it like going from recapping someone else's creative output to creating your own output? Sure, yeah. I had kind of a I started work on this book in the fall of 2020, and at that point, my TV criticism career obviously wasn't over. I continue. I do still occasionally write it. I'm in a weird place now where I write for television. Now, yellow jackets, right? Yes, yellow jackets. So

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it makes it makes it complicated to critic, critique TV. But there are times when I still do it for, you know, various reasons. But in 2020 my criticism career had sort of largely given away to writing features, longer pieces, and that was just sort of a nice gap in which to like. Start to think about this. When I started writing TV criticism. I came at it from the perspective of someone who wanted to be a TV writer, and I moved out to LA and was writing scripts, and they weren't very good yet, because I was 2324

and they just, they just weren't good. Because at that age, stuff is often unless you're a preternatural wonderkind, it's, you know, but like, people would tell me, they had a lot of voice, or whatever. And so I started a blog, because at that time, blogging was a way to, like, get to know people. And I started a blog that was going to be about my adventures in TV writing. And I started writing about the TV shows I was watching. I just started doing very brief episodic like recaps, and that became a side quest that went on for 15 ish years. And what I realized is that, like, I one of the reasons that I ended up having real success at it and then at TV journalism, is a lot of the people who read bad reviews I wrote still were, like, respectful of, Oh, I get where you're coming from, or, Oh, I agree with you, this didn't quite come up match up, because I was not coming at it from a place of like, I was most interested in critique. I was most interested in like, how does this apply to my own writing?

And so I kind of had to teach myself to write criticism and journalism. I didn't have to teach myself to write fiction. And obviously everyone has to learn how to write. But my first language really was writing fiction writing scripts. And so when I wrote down to write this novel, I certainly had some like, very, uh, basic principles of novel writing. I had to, like, really internalize. But it was, it was, I don't want to say it was easy, because it wasn't, but it felt natural to me in a way that, like the criticism and journalism never did, where I, like, had to slip into a I talk about this fairly frequently when people ask me if I write to music, and I could never write criticism or journalism to music, and I tend to write first drafts of of novels and scripts to just endless pop music. Okay, specifically, give us some artists that you're loving too. Woodworking. Well, this, yeah, woodworking a really like to to start. I wanted two very different artists, two different women artists to like, get into the brain space. So I wrote, I initial draft. I wrote most of of Erica to Taylor Swift, and then I wrote most of Abigail to mitsky. And, you know, there was cross pollination, and things were like filtering in. You know, I, I'm very much musical polyglots.

It. It has a, I have a list of like, 10,000 songs on Spotify, and I just shuffle it, and if I then, when I hit one, lately, it's been the Elton John song better off dead, over and over. But a couple weeks ago it was do cheese.

A denial as a river, just like, hit me just the right way. So, and it's never like a planned thing. It's just like a thing that, like, this is a vibe that I need to catch totally. I do this all the time, and it's like some vibes are like, annual, like, all of a sudden be like, Oh my God, it's time for the chicks ready to run album. Like I feel it in my bones. Yeah, that's a question that I asked so many writers about how they write. So I want to ask you the rest of my version of that question, which is, sure, how do you write? How often, obviously, you've talked about music or no. But the important part of my question is snacks and beverages. Writing snacks and beverages, I tend to write with with coffee. Okay, how do you take your coffee? I take coffee with a little milk. I don't take any sugar or anything like that. I tend to take very black coffee, or

very black coffee with just like a couple drips of non fat milk. Or I do like

an Americano, if I'm out and I actually write, I actually write in coffee shops a lot that is all that is always a roll of the dice, because you might get to a place and it might be too loud that day or too busy that day, but it does. It does tend to help keep me from getting distracted. But I tend to write in the afternoons, and then often I will write late at night, but not it's it doesn't always happen because I have a toddler and will sometimes need to, like, go to bed. Yeah? Sometimes you need to sleep on unfortunately, yeah, but yeah, my ideal writing day is I'm writing from like, one to five and

10pm to 2am oh my gosh, to 2am Emily, I grew up writing into the middle of the night for various trauma related reasons, and it's just like it is still the time when I'm most creative, oh my gosh, and still the time when I'm like, have the best luck at just focus. I've taught myself to write in afternoons. It really was, it really was a struggle. But, you know, you talk about the AV Club days I was often working. I would start work at like nine and work until like six in the morning. That was after watching everything, and that was not sustainable. But I was like 26

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I've always been a morning person, so for me, like these hours. I mean, I have to take my kids to school, which really fucks up my flow. But if it were up to me, I would get up at 6am and work until like noon and then do, like, stupid email stuff from noon to two and be done, like, usually after two. I'm pretty useless. I can still interview after two, but any like, writing or, like, real thinking, No thanks, and that that's 2pm till the next day at 5am you know what I mean? Like, I do not get that second win from 10 to two, that's for sure. Yeah, it's I honestly, I don't know why, outside of just like, when I was a teen, I used to write all my papers. Yeah, at that time, well, there's, I mean, one of the things that I love about doing this podcast is I get to ask all these different writers of various degrees in their career, you know, written 10 books, written their first book has been writing forever, just picked up, writing whatever won a Pulitzer. But, and it's like that answer to that question, there's no there's no pattern, like some people are like you, there's some people like someone was telling me they do the thing where they wake up in the middle of the middle of the night for a few hours like that, like two chunks of sleep thing, yeah, yeah. And I'd never even heard of that like, and I'm just so fascinated with the idea of, like, there is truly no correct way to be creative. It's just so antithetical to, like, other careers where there is a correct way to do things, and so that's what I love about asking that question. Okay, so the reason that I wanted to bring you on the show today is to talk about trans representation and trans life in pop culture. I think you know, everybody who's listening to this podcast, my audience, they're at least somewhat politically conscious, and also, for the most part, I've got a pretty great audience who is pretty good on all sorts of human rights things. So you're talking to an audience of people who who, you know, these are things we're thinking about a lot, and I struggle with what the fuck is going on, and sort of the right decision that trans people are the current boogeyman of the moment. I think a few years ago it would have been critical. Race Theory was the boogeyman of the moment. And right now, it feels like trans people in sports and like trans people, period. And so I want to know, sort of just really broadly, what do you make of this moment politically as it pertains to sort of like trans representation? Yeah, so I think that the answer to the politics question is really quite basic in the.

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Wake of Obergefell, the the Supreme Court ruling that made marriage equality legal throughout the United States, the right was very much licking its wounds. This is the period before Donald Trump. So this is they have lost the 2012 election, and the in the wake of the 2012 election, the Republican parties like analysis of itself was we need to sort of appeal more to people of color, and we need to sort of back down on some of our rhetoric on immigration and queer people and all of this. And anytime they would try to do that, their voter base would just go nuts, you know? So 2014 you see some primary challenges. They don't moderate at all. They have a very good midterms. And in 2015 Obergefell comes down, and like, marriage equality had been one of the animating issues on the right they they were pushing back against it very hard. So they were like, What is our new what is our new queer rights pushback thing? Because they were, you know, they had abortion rights to yell about. And, yeah, yeah. And trans people were immediately the thing they sort of seized on. And the thing is, it took them a while to figure out an angle. They tried bathroom bills first, and bathroom bills. If you look back at 2016 there is a bathroom bill that passes and is signed in North Carolina, and the legal challenges and the boycotts and the NCAA moves part of the basketball tournament to another state from from North Carolina, it is very much like this is a backwards, bigoted bill, and it needs to be stopped, and the new governor comes in a couple years later and gets rid of it, and it is very much a loss for the right and they sort of look at that as like, Well, what else can we try? And they try a bunch of things, and what sticks is sports. Sports is the thing where it is based in a internal prejudice. I think all of us have having grown up in society and like noticing the average man's body compared to the average woman's body. And we all know there are outliers. You know? We all know, well, most of us do. There are those guys who think they could take Serena Williams at tennis, and you're like, fellows, I'm like,

Yeah,

it's so you do, you know, you do have that sort of built in prejudice, probably in your own brain, which to some extent is like a natural outgrowth of, like being part of a social species, And like also needing to understand your imminent safety, especially if you are a woman. And it is, it is a prejudice that is so deeply ingrained that it's sort of easy to like play off of, and they couldn't really do it in the bathroom bill, because it's hard to make people leap from

if, if a someone is in the bathroom, you don't want them to be there, you're in danger. Right? In sports, though, we have this idea that things are supposed to be fair, and we can talk a lot about if we want to, I It's a very long and we'd be on a long tangent. But basically, the idea, in the idea that immediately leaps to people's minds is not necessarily an eight year old trans girl who hasn't even approached puberty yet playing soccer with her friends, who, in many cases now would be banned from doing that. What they're thinking of is, you know, LeBron James being like, I'm a woman now I play for the WNBA and, like, without doing any, like, actual transition related stuff, yes, just like saying I'm a woman, yeah. And so this, this really, really, really takes off in the early 2020s and it becomes kind of their wedge. Now we're seeing a lot of pushbacks on health care for trans kids, which is really scary. I don't want to say that sports fans aren't scary, but they are ultimately, they affect a small number of people, and they ultimately are more effective as a wedge to sort of, yeah, get people thinking about trans people as something very scary. And now we're seeing bathroom bills back, and many of them are passing, and many of them are not being commented on at all. We're seeing Texas try out a couple of new strategies, which is banning trans healthcare for all trans people, for all people everywhere. And also a new one that I don't think is going to pass, because I think it's just, it's one of those things that goes a little too far, but basically, all trans people would be guilty of fraud, for for saying for living is themselves, because you're lying or whatever. But yeah, that like, if that law passed as a prominent trans person, I could no longer go to Texas. You know, I would be arrested again. I don't think it's going to pass. I think to some extent, being trans right now is being a state of constant alarm, but not being so paranoid that you think all these things are going to.

Happen because some of them aren't. We're seeing a lot. We are starting to see pushback at the statewide level. Montana, very red state, recently defeated a couple of trans bills, and a bunch of Republicans flipped to vote against them, because they have two trans reps in their state legislature there who were very good at sort of getting their colleagues to listen to their voices. So we are starting to see pushback. But Legally speaking, this has been very successful for the right. One reason this has been very successful for the right is, again, it's built in that ingrained prejudice. Societally speaking, we have that idea in our brains. But also, I think it is hard for cis people to conceptualize of being trans. I think it is, obviously, there was a time when it was very hard for straight people to conceive of being gay, but that was a switch that was, I think, easier to flip in many ways, because a we all remember sexuality turning on. We all remember being 11 or 12 and being like, that is like. I have a new feeling. What is yes, okay, and like, we all also understand that somewhere in the depths of our brains is like a thing of us that is not entirely you know who we say we are, sexuality wise and like, that doesn't mean anything gross. It just might mean that, like, if you are a straight woman, you might have a big crush on Kristen Stewart and be like, this is not quite right, who I am right. So like, we understand that, I think, in a way, that it is hard to understand gender because gender identity is formed somewhere around two or three, and it is, it seems to be a combination of something innate, there's something deep inside of you that is your gender, and then a learned set of rules imposed on you by society. So it's, you know, one of the, one of the classic arguments against trans women is, well, why can't you just be a feminine man and like, Okay, say I tried to do that. I'm a trans woman, by the way. I don't know if I've said

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that. I don't know if you said it either. But okay,

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guys, I wrote a book about it, book about it, and now I'm thinking about it so much like, Could you imagine if I, like, brought on, just like some like, cis man to, like, talk about this though, like people,

yeah, no, I'm just a really good ally. No, I,

yeah. So I do think that, like, if, if I wanted to say I'm, I'm still a he, him, dude, but I dress like I dress which is very fam, yeah, they would still be upset.

It is, it is the idea is not just policing,

you know, trans people, it's policing gender across the board. It is this idea that there is a way to be a man and there is a way to be a woman and there is no space between them. And that is the thing everybody on the planet hasn't has an argument against. Even if you are part of it, there is a thing of it that you don't like. Yes, that is like, I, you know, I'm a woman, and I just don't love putting on makeup every morning, but I have to, because blah, blah, blah, or I'm a man, and I hate wearing neck ties. I don't I. I have yet to meet a man who's, like, neckties, yeah? But like,

but like, yeah, there's, there's a, you know, some it is the thing that is expected if you're in, like, a certain scenario. I think what's interesting also is, like, the real just, you know, as a person who's online too much, watching and reading about a lot of the like policing of trans people, specifically trans women and the rise of the TRad wife. Yeah, I think these things are super connected. Yeah, because I think it is, even though, you know, Trad wives would tell you, like, I love it here. Blah, blah, blah, there's a policing of gender that leads to that kind of a woman and like, that performance of womanhood and that performance of gender that I like, I just want someone to write that essay that's like, that says Trad wife, trans woman, like we are this. It's the same spectrum, and it's the same rules of misogyny that are like that are attacking or supporting these groups. Yeah, there isn't. This is accidentally a theme that's in woodworking. It's a thing that I am very drawn to. Is this idea of, like,

I mean, the title of the book woodworking, woodworking is this concept in the trans community from the 70s and 80s, especially the trans woman trans feminine community that is, you are you transition to such a point that you pass well enough to sort of assimilate into society, and then you usually find a husband.

And you get maybe you get a job, but you cut off all contact with your old life, and you live life as a presumed CIS individual. Probably there are legal records that would show what has happened, but you are very much able to just sort of disappear into the woodwork, as it were. And so that's this idea, and it was tremendously isolating. A lot of those women forced themselves into a very over the top portrayal of femininity in order to try, you know, there's, there's a YouTuber named Blair white, who's a right wing trans YouTuber, and she she's out about being trans. She's open about it. She will go on like streams with other right wing people, and they'll, like, misgender her, and it's the saddest thing ever. I want to, I'm always like, Girl, come on. But, but she very much is, like, I've got all these like surgeries to look as feminine as possible. And like, it goes beyond, like, facial feminization surgery. It's, it's, you know, it's very like, it is stuff that, like a lot of cis women, are having to look more feminine. You know, most plastic surgery is gender affirming surgery. We just don't think of it that way.

But yeah, she's, she's living that very Trad wife life,

you know, before having an enormous compound in Wyoming somewhere to call her own. But it is, it is this like tension within transness that is like I am, I am sort of like fighting the gender binary every step of the way. And also it's in the case of, like trans women and some trans women and some trans men, it can be the most important thing in your life. I like presenting femininely. There is a part of me that is, like, very drawn to the idea of, like, what if I just, like, lived on a farm and cooked for my husband and like, you know that part of that is how I grew up. I grew up on a farm where my mom just cooked for her husband and like, it it is. It was a lifestyle that, like, I sort of glommed onto, because I grew up there. Would I feel differently if I'd grown up in New York City? Almost certainly, but like I have in the back of my brain, this is what woman it is, because I learned it from not just my mom, but all the women in my life, you know, growing up in that town. So it, it is, it is something that that really is sort of gets stuck in your brain. And I think that the TRad wife phenomenon is part of that. And I think that just to sort of like, loop back to this, this earlier point, I think, I think people cannot remember their gender identity turning on, because nobody does right. Some trans people remember when they're like, three, and they're like, they I just knew I was a girl because it's a jarring moment

and it's but most cis people, you know, they end up in a sort of a straight jacket that is, their gender identity innately matches up with the outward presenting sex of their body. Biological sex is actually very complicated, but another tangent, we don't have to outwardly, they seem to be who they are in their brain. Yeah, and that means that now they all of those rules that are like, this is what a girl is, or this is what a boy is, all of them now like, they're just like, I guess this is true, because they're two or three. When you're three, you accept what the world presents you. So it is very hard to remember that you had a thing in your brain turn on, and you actively said, you know, I have to start learning how to be a boy, because I'm I'm a I'm a boy. You didn't think of yourself as a cis boy. You were just like, I'm a boy or a cis girl. You were just like, I'm a girl. And so I think that that is sort of where we end up in this space where gender roles are so strongly enforced and reified and reified and reified. And I always use reified wrong, so I hope I used it right there, but it's but I think, like, then we end up in places like the TRad wife or these guys on the x.com platform who are constantly like, is it gay to love your wife? And they're like, because, like, showing any vulnerability is considered unmasculine, and to love someone, even like when you're in a heterosexual the world's most heterosexual relationship requires vulnerability, and so we end up that we sort of have ended up in this gender straight jacket, and trans people are like a constant hammer against that. And I want to say like for as open as we are now, I think about gender roles and talking about them, and even talking about them within the CIS context of the ways that women are disadvantaged within spaces like this and men have again, men have certain things they are not allowed, heavy air quotes to do that lead to, like, immense epidemics of mental illness that they're not getting treated that is like a man specific problem that we often don't talk about because it's like a tricky thing to discuss, and it's because of this underlying system of gender and trans people here, like sort of knocking at.

The door of that, and it's very threatening, because the second you realize that most of gender is made up, a lot of society falls apart. Yeah, it's so much of what we have is built atop the family unit

and gender and just this conception of money that we sort of arrived at 1000s of years ago, and we are in a moment in history when people are strongly questioning all of those underpinnings, and that frightens people. And like, I don't want to say that we need to, like, we can't tear all of this down, because obviously we're humans and like we need to build a society somehow. We need to have a way to structure it, but opening the door to those larger conversations about, how has this hurt people? How is this hurting me? Is necessary, but scary, and I think that's the space we're in. And I'm hopeful, I really am hopeful, that we're gonna get to a point where people are like, Well, I understand, not necessarily being trans, but what it means to me that my gender sometimes feels like constrictive, sure. And you know, it is very sad to me that so many of the people who are the pushback the hardest against trans rights are feminists? Yeah? Because so much of this is about policing gender in a way that is like women belong in the home, wearing skirts, having seven, eight children. And I think people are starting to make that connection. But it certainly is. It certainly has been a hard road to walk. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think the like turf, the, you know, or just the feminist who's anti trans or or regurgitates anti trans led language in order to bolster women, or whatever, I don't, I can't that's talk about things I can't get my head behind. I just it's very hard for me to understand, like, the feminist who is anti trans, because, like you're saying to me, it feels so connected that I'm just like, how are you? How are you missing this? And like, there was, there was pushback from feminists against lesbians, and then there were also push. There's also pushback from some feminists against, like, straight women. Like, yeah, it is sexuality and gender has always been like a fault line within the feminist coalition. I The one of the nice things, I want to say nice things, but like, one of the like things about living in the United States is our feminist coalition has been more resistant to turfs than in the UK. And the best explanation I've read of for that there's two, actually. The first is that trans trans rights have gotten so polarized so quickly, and we live in such a polarized country that it is a considered a right issue. There are certainly people on the left or in the center who are who are sort of curious about pushing back against trans rights, but have yet to like forthrightly do so. And the second is that our feminism has always, by the nature of our country, had to be open to people from outside the white upper class, right and the UK feminism has not interesting as resilient in that way. So there is a, there's a strain of American feminism that is much more open, that it tends to be, if not predominant, at least very vital, within our conversation. Yeah. And for people who don't know, I guess we should have defined turf is a trans exclusionary radical feminist. Yeah. For people who don't know, I should say, if there's anything that I say where I'm like, we can't talk about that, that's too long of a tangent. Please don't assume I'm ducking it and go look at the website assigned media.org, it's written by trans journalists who go dig into all the data they have, all the stuff that you might want to read. And they, if a thing says something that is like, inconvenient to like the trans argument, they will state it outright, but for the most part, the stuff that is said about us is entirely made up by people who have ideas about who trans people are from watching bad movies, right? Okay, I want to get into that. I want to say about the point about American feminism, and it like having to some, in some ways, be more open to like building coalitions with other women and other groups that aren't just like rich white ladies. I think that's really interesting, because this month on our book club for the podcast, we're reading this book called they were her property. That's all about white women who own slaves, and not as widows or inherited, like after a parent's death, but as their own slave owning mistresses, and how like that that reading this book has been so eye opening as sort of the building blocks of so much of American culture, including feminism and the ways that white women.

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Are really like, are resistant to having to build any coalitions, even though they have eventually, like, given in and done it. It makes so much sense. Yeah. Like, some of the questions I have where I'm like, why is like, why is this woman in 2025 doing this? I'm like, oh, there is a very clear line between 1842

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and 2024 whatever. And I think that's like such an interesting idea, because, you know, at every turn in this country, white women have tried their hardest to exclude other women and other groups until they absolutely could not. I mean, obviously the right to vote is one of the most famous examples of this, yeah, the white suffragettes were like, No way, babe, yeah, go be black somewhere else, but not at the ballot box. If you look at the folks at Seneca Falls like the most famous foundational feminists of American suffragette feminism, first wave, whatever you want to call it, a lot of them were outright racist, yeah. And the ones who weren't were often like, well, asking for equality for black women is just like, a step too far, right? Wait in line. Yeah? And it's, uh, it was. It's a constant tension in American feminism, but especially in those early decades of it when they were pushing for the right to vote, and when, you know, just basic equality was sort of like on the on the table between women and men, and like it's it was a constant tension within the coalition. It continues to be, certainly their their white feminism is always a problem, but it has taught American feminists to have these conversations even when they resolve badly, or even when they're like fractious, or even when white feminists are racist or outrightly or sort of in a sense that it's like more more insidious, where they don't realize it within themselves, we're still able to have those conversations, because we live in a country where there's lots of people with lots of different voices. For now, for now, I mean, one of so this is, as you know, a book podcast. And one of the biggest issues that I've been concerned with recently in books is this the new release of Chimamanda Ngozi adich, a book that came out the same day as your book, March 4. Her book's called Dream count. And sure she would love that we're debut twins. Yeah, I think so. Well, she's not a debut, but

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I'm sure, I'm sure she's very excited about that, but it's brought up this really interesting question to me in the book community, and I think broadly, like, what do we do with turfs who are publishing and

why does it matter? Why do Why does their Why do their beliefs matter? This question that I kind of both engage with and also roll my eyes out of separating the art from the artist and this whole thing and and, you know, I wrote a little bit about this on my sub stack, about, sort of like, what does it mean to create our own canon in real time, and if we celebrate a book from someone that we know is transphobic, like, what does that say about us in the future? And all of those things. So I'm curious, sort of what, what your take is on this kind of conversation. I think, I think that she is a brilliant writer. She has written stuff that has lodged itself deeply in my brain.

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And I remember when, like, her comments came out, I want to say, 2017 20 Yeah. 2017 that's when it started, yeah, and it was very

Yeah. It was hurtful. I like, I was not when they came out. I remember I was not yet out to myself. So I came out to myself in in March 2018 Okay, so it's, it was a period when I was just like, I'm very concerned about trans rights, but I'm not trans myself. So like, I saw that, and was like, that is just unfortunate, and she should not have said that. But whatever I think there, I think that one thing it is worth sort of thinking about is because I think this is going to be a conversation we're going to have to have in like 10 years. Is what is the difference between a J, K Rowling who is actively going out there and using her platform to spread trans hate all the time, and someone else who maybe made insensitive comments, or clearly was like in immersed in turf theory. But maybe there comes a point where they're like, Oh, this is wrong, and I think this is a conversation we're gonna have to have throughout the world with these reactionary right wing groups that have sprung up everywhere, especially in the United States. We're gonna have to have that conversation in 10 years, because God willing, will move out of this moment. That's the thing. We always get out of the moment, and then we're like, how do we deal with this? Well, yeah.

Let's just not they will think, we'll think about that in 100 years, when this cycles back around.

So I do have this like thing in my brain of I don't know that the

that, necessarily,

what some folks have said, has been cancelable, if you will, sure. Like, certainly. JK Rowling, I don't want her in the conversation, yeah. But I do feel like we get to a point where people are able to say, you know, I was wrong and I moved on, but, but what if they don't gotten to that point? Yeah? What if they double down and support? JK Rowling, yeah, I think. And the reason I sort of am thinking about this is I do think there is that innate prejudice that we all have. And I think that if you are a strong feminist, it is very easy to get into a place of someone saying, well, aren't trans women actually men? Entertain that thought for a while and get yourself to a darker place. And when I wrote those comments in 2017 it did feel to me like that was what had happened, right? And for people who don't know, what she said, was she, she refused to say that trans women were women. She said trans women are trans women. And the person was like, but are they women? And she was like, they're trans women, as if that that is some as if that they are separate from Yeah, it's women. Women. It's a rhetorical trick that a lot of turfs like to try, which is basically that we are a separate class of person, and therefore we don't have access to the same legal protections because we are, we are not women, but also not men. Thanks for that, I guess. And certainly, we have an entire like, we have an entire gender spectrum full of people who are not women are not men, but in this case, that is not what she's talking about. I those comments are hurtful, but they are comments that like, I could imagine someone moving past. I could imagine someone being like, I was wrong. I hadn't read enough, or what she hasn't is the thing, and we haven't seen that happen. And so, you know, I haven't picked up this book for that reason. And I again, have loved a lot of her writing in the past. And like, you know, I again, I'm open to being convinced I'm a very flexible person, I'm a very I'm a very nice lady, but yeah, it, it does feel to me like because we're living in an era when this is a political hot button issue, it is more imperative on cis people to speak up about it, and if they're speaking up about it, in the direction of JK Rowling, as opposed to, you know, trans women or just just people who believe in a more equitable world. Yeah, they're not. Yeah, they're certainly not helping things. Yeah. So it feels to me like if she were to make again, if she were to make a statement like that, I'd be inclined to take it at face value, but she's a, not making that statement, and be not making it at a time when it would be immensely helpful. Yes, you know, and she's promoting a book, so that would be a great time to do it, when people are paying attention. I mean, I think one of the things that, you know, the book came out the same week as I'm sure, you know, our governor, Gavin Newsom, just Mr. G is a piece of shit. I'm so sorry if people like him. I'm just so mad at him right now. I just I he's got this new podcast where he's like, doing the Emmanuel acho thing, like having uncomfortable conversations with like, people who don't agree with him. And I'm just like, come on, bro. He's Yeah, and he's not, like, there are people who can do that and are very good at that. And it turns out Gavin Newsom, it's not even like he's trying to take them down. It's like he's giving them a like, it's like the idea was, like, you're gonna fight with these people on your podcast. But what it turns out is he's just like, giving them a platform and being sort of kind and welcoming to Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk and he on his podcast. Basically Charlie Kirk played him. Charlie Kirk set up the trans kids and sports thing that is their favorite thing to talk about over there. And Gavin Newsom was like, yeah, it's unfair, yeah, yeah. And I'm just like that happening in the same week that uh, chimamandas book comes out. Like, these things are so connected to me, and I feel like the pop culture representation and conversation around trans people and the political one are to being harmful together, and we're not like connecting the dots as responsible consumers or trans like people who support trans people's rights and like it's very unsettling To see to me, and I'm curious what it's like for for you. Well, us, someone who has, who has always not liked Gavin news, right? I have never been a Newsome fan, okay? I like after the election, after Donald Trump was, after he was re elected. I.

Was like, I don't like gavid Newsome. I don't trust him to have my back, but I do trust him to like to make Republicans mad. That was his favorite personality is big the anti Trump people like, besides sharing a wife with one of them, his whole thing was like, I fight with these people. And so this has been

not surprising to me, but also a very strange heel term. Yes, just if I'm, if I'm Gavin Newsom's political strategist, I'm wondering what he's doing. He's fumbling the entire bag. What have we been working on with you for the last 12 years? If not this, it's so like, it is so funny to me how, like, I can never get into really high Dudgeon, even when I'm, like, really mad at a person, because I instantly start going to, like, well, what are their character motivations? Let's try to understand their psychology. What if this person is in a book I'm writing? It's, uh, it's disappointing to say the least, yeah. And I think the reason that he's able to say things like, yeah, it's unfair for kids sports. Or you will see a lot of Democrats or left leaning advocates be like, we should cave on this one specific issue, and then we'll be better off for it is because of this long string of pop culture representation of here is a man putting on a women's sports uniform and playing women's sports, but the Rodney Dangerfield Ladybug ladybugs, I was just gonna say ladybugs is was one of my favorite movies as a kid, but now it is anti trans propaganda. I re watched that, I think, last year, and was sort of blown away by how it's just the entire conversation we're having. In a nutshell, it's like, there's a it's it to, if you've never seen it, which I don't know why you would have it's about a guy who takes over his this, this girl's soccer team, and his future stepson, who is also who's actually not, like, really good at soccer, is like, uh, he persuades him to join the team, and then he just dominates, because he's a boy. And this is about again, kids on the cusp of puberty. Yeah, it's not about one or 12. Yeah. It's not about like, like adolescents or whatever, but that is how ingrained this idea is that boys are faster and stronger and better than girls when we know we have ample science that says before puberty, none of that is even close to true. It's like, just like, it's, it's very close to parity. But yeah, that's how ingrained we have this idea in our head. And there have been so many movies that are about this question, this idea that a man might put on a women's uniform and join a team. There have been even more movies that are like, here's a very pretty person in a dress, but oh my gosh, they're secretly a man. And it becomes,

you know, it's, it's the classic thing of throwing up a lot in the toilet, in The Crying Game, and the Crying Game, actually, which is patient zero for all of this is a really trans affirming film. I've never seen it. I'm not familiar with that. Yeah, it's, it's so the big twist in that movie is that the woman that he's fallen for is a trans woman,

and then he has, like he has the moment where he vomits profusely after realizing that, and that's the midway point of the film. And the rest of the movie is like him realizing she's a human being and that like her gender is a part of her and like, but this is all happening in the background of, like, a crime thriller. Okay, so like, it's not like the first and foremost, I think people, people are, like, more engaged in the like, crime story. It also happens in Ace Ventura pet detective. Ace Ventura pet detective is by far the biggest offender. In this regard. I've never even connected the dots, but as you're saying this, I'm like, right? Because there's the throw up scene again, everybody's like to parody, not their mouth or whatever it is, a parody of The Crying Game, which, at the time, was everywhere. And yeah, but Ace Ventura is far more when people talk about that scene, they're talking about the Ace Ventura scene often, yeah, you're not talking about it in The Crying Game, where it's on like, it is not a great scene. I'm not going to defend it, but it certainly is, like, more rooted in something human, instead of like a big over the top joke, right? I want to ask you about the queer canon or the trans canon, because this week or recently, my friend Cree sent me this link to the Center for fictions, queer literature, top five. And

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I don't know, we don't have to go through their list. It's not great. Am I on it? I should be. No, you're not on it, which is so rude. I was like, Wait, where the fuck is Emily

and and I was thinking, like, the reason a list like that can exist is because there isn't really, I don't feel that.

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Like a canon, either of books or even of like just pop culture generally, of like who are, who goes on the trans Canon for literature, TV, film, music, even like who, who's on your list? What's on your list? I want to start by saying a big blind spot in every entertainment industry is representation of trans people of color, especially black and brown trans people, is terrible. You see some of it on television, but it tends to be on programs that are written and show run by cis people. Pose is the famous example, a wonderful show. I do like that show, but it is like a show that is talking about trans people, and they had trans people in the room, but it's very filtered through a cis gaze, yeah, which is fine. Sometimes. I don't want to say that that's awful if it's done respectful, right, but also if it's not the only representation we get, yeah, yeah. And another show in that regard, is on P Valley, on stars, which has a very, probably my favorite gender non conforming character on all of television. So television, there's, it's, there's a little bit of it, but you're not seeing as much of it in publishing, in film. You know, do you know that we see each other by travel Anderson? I do, yeah, so travelle Did the podcast, and we talked about this so much on that episode with them. Yeah, so, and they're, they're a former co worker of my wife's wonderful, wonderful human, yes, obsessed, and a wonderful writer, but, but also a wonderful human. And so a lot of the when you look at fiction, a lot of the trans voices we're seeing in published fiction are white trans women. There are some trans men, it does seem to me, and this may be on an unfair opinion. So if you are a trans guy or a non binary person who wants to shout at me about this, please do so genuinely. It does seem to me as though it is harder for trans women to break out of the writing about transness box than it is for

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trans mask people, or more generally, if you are on the trans feminine side of the spectrum, it does seem to be a little bit trickier to do that. Like, certainly true for all women in writing. Yeah, right. Like, men can write about anything, but women have to write women's fiction. So I think that's in line with the misogyny broadly, and I'm sure it's even worse in trans communities. But like, as you're saying this, I'm like, Where have I heard this before? And like I everything I've written so far, including my second book,

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my second novel, I should say, has been, has had trans protagonists. Like I am interested in that world, but I'm also not interested in writing constantly transition stories, which is like the thing that people, that says people are most interested in reading. So I'm kind of like leaning away from transition stories in sort of these, these pics, even though my book is a transition story, broadly speaking, it's not that, but like, it starts there, it's, it's a it's that for like 70 pages, and then it turns into another thing, sort of,

but, yeah, so I think one thing that we're seeing right now, literally right now, is we're seeing a huge boom of trans books being published here, quarter 120, 25 and that is the long tail of Tory Peters de transition Baby being a best seller, yes. And everyone being like, well, we can trans books are best sellers now, yeah, and that's a, that's a brilliant novel. Tori's a brilliant writer. I actually think her second which is that, right now, stack dances is better as people are listening to this. Tori's episode actually will have just aired on Wednesday before this. So, wow, hi Tori back in time.

I love that book, and I think it's Yeah, so, but yeah, this is the long tail of that. So we are living in a space where, if you want to pick up great transfiction, there's a lot of it out there right now,

and that you should do that, obviously. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna be focused sort of on the trans femme experience. Because, again, I think we are too often unfairly shoehorned into just writing about being trans. Yeah. And I think a lot of us do that in fascinating ways, but it is, it is like a weird situation a lot of us find ourselves in. So yeah, obviously the works of Tory Peters, I think Imogen Bennies. Nevada is the trans novel, okay, it is one of the great American novels. If you read Nevada, you will see a lot of Nevada in woodworking. You'll see a lot of Nevada in the transition baby. You'll.

See a lot of Nevada in every trans book written because it is so fundamental to the DNA of that of that form.

It is also a book about an unlikely friendship between a trans person and someone who is in that book not yet accepted their transness, but the trans woman is like, I'm going to get you there. And it's written in such a smart, caustic voice. And Binny is a wonderful writer,

I think, like the works of gene Thornton, it might be Gian. Gene Thornton and Casey Platt are both like very wonderful literary writers and Casey puts little fish. Is the book I always sort of point to. It's, it's

very beautiful, well, very beautiful story about sort of transness that I think looks at it more, I don't say obliquely, but looks at it in a more impressionistic way than than like a book like mine, which is a little bit

more direct. My book's a little bit, yeah, more direct. And then Jean Thornton, her new one, ASL, I think is terrific. I just caught up with it, and it is about four trans it's about some trans women who three. I don't know why to the wrong number. It's early, but it's about trans women who used to design games and now are, like, coming back together and like, sort of in conversation about that. And Emily Xiao, girlfriends is a wonderful short story collection about being trans. I think she's a really exciting young voice in this space. There's a ton of great trans genre fiction too. Just gonna rattle off some names, and you can look at Gretchen Felker Martin's the biggest name in this space. Her man hunt and cuckoo are wonderful. Allison rumfit, I think her tell me I'm worthless, is a book that, like, got deep into my soul. Allison Greaves is sort of a self published writer who's writing a lot of cool genre fiction premises. And Charlie, Jane Anders, of course, is all is genuinely has published stuff that's not about being trans, and I'm so glad that she exists, but she writes a lot of sci fi and fantasy. And finally, the book that was the biggest influence on woodworking in the spaces Hazel, Jane plants,

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Little Blue encyclopedia for Vivien, which is a, uh, Encyclopedia of entries about a fake television show that is a trans woman like trying to understand the life of her dead friend, which I think is a beautiful book and had a huge influence on woodworking. So I love it. This is a great this is a great start to our canon. I think we're gonna where you and I, and then, of course, woodworking by Emily St James, well, we're like over time. I just looked at the time. I'm having too much fun talking to you, but this was amazing, Emily, thank you for doing this and taking the time to talk with us about this. I think you're just really smart and interesting. So I appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. It was wonderful to be here, and wonderful to be next door to to Tori Peter, yes, just next door neighbors. I'm a little, I'm a little starstruck. I'm like, Hi. She can't see you. No, she doesn't know you're there. She might, she might feel you. She, I think she feels all of us, um, and everybody, go get your copy of woodworking. Wherever you get your books. It is out in the world. Now you can get it wherever, and we'll see you in the stacks.