Alex Iantaffi: Hello and welcome to another episode of gender stories. I know I'm always like, excited, delighted, delighted.
Alex Iantaffi: But what can I tell you? I have the best guests, and today I am thrilled to be interviewing Oliver Radclyffe, who is part of the new wave of transgender writers unafraid to address the complex nuances of transition, examining the places where gender identity, sexual orientation, feminist allegiance, social class and family history overlap. His work has appeared in The New York Times and electric literature.
Alex Iantaffi: He currently lives on the Connecticut coast, where he's raising his four children. He has two books. Well, two books almost out by the time you read this adult human male, a brilliant monograph from unbound edition press, which came out last year and frightened the horses, a memoir forthcoming from Roxanne Gay Books in on September 17. So by the time you listen to this episode, you can either pre order or order the book, and if it's half as good as adult human male, I know it's gonna be fantastic. So welcome Oliver, so wonderful to have you here for gender stories. Thank you for making the time.
Oliver Radclyffe: I am so happy to be here. Lovely to see you.
Alex Iantaffi: Yes. So, oh, I have so many questions for you.
Alex Iantaffi: I don't even know where to start honestly, because as I was reading, you know, the first book, adult human male, I was like, yes, yes. I was like, highlighting, you know, and I wanted to, like, talk about pretty much everything that's in that book.
Oliver Radclyffe: Yeah, it's a book about gender, for sure.
Oliver Radclyffe: Let's face it, is, and it
Alex Iantaffi: is a book about gender. And I love the way you look at gender, you know, and that's humans are my special interests, or one of them, and gender is definitely part of that. So why don't we start from Why did you write the book? I'm always so interested in why writers, you know, why we write the books we write, basically, and so I'm very interested in your motivation. First of
Oliver Radclyffe: all, okay, well, it's, it's kind of a weird story, I have to say, because the book that got published first is actually the book that was written second, fascinating.
Oliver Radclyffe: So I spent, I don't even want to say publicly, how many years writing a memoir that's coming out with Roxane Gay books in in a couple of weeks or now, by the time you're listening to this.
Oliver Radclyffe: And when I while I was writing that book, I wanted to write it in a very experiential way. So I my journey was from somebody who was living in a completely sort of upper middle class, white, cis hep bubble in England, and I didn't have any understanding of queerness at all. I mean, I really barely knew a single gay person. And then I got married, had four children, and then I went through the memoir covers this 10 year period where I first come out to my husband, and then to my friends and my family, and I leave my marriage and I have a relationship with a woman, and then, and then I start coming to terms with my trans identity, and I wanted to write that in such a way that it was really showing a cis het audience, what this experience is like, because there seems to be so much misunderstanding about the processes we go through and the questions we ask ourselves and how it actually feels, not the transition itself, because so many people have written about transitions, but what leads you There, the kind of chaos and the questions and the doubt and the confusion and what is this, and who am I?
Oliver Radclyffe: And how does this all fit together? I really wanted people to understand that this is what trans people go through. We don't just wake up one day and go, Hey, I think I'ma die pop to the endocrinologist to get my hormones. So that was my purpose with the memoir, which obviously it took many years to write.
Oliver Radclyffe: It's a 370, page book, you know, it's kind of a big project. But what I didn't do with the memoir was include anything that I considered to be part of the political conversation. I wanted to keep it really personal, so I didn't talk about any of the conversations that are going on because I'm British and I live in America, you know, I'm kind of hearing this transphobia coming from these two different places, you know, the gender Christian feminists in England and then the Evangelicals and the hard right over here. And I really wanted to speak. I really wanted to be part of that conversation. And so once I'd finished the memoir and it was off out being submitted, towards the end of writing the memoir, I had started documents that were sort of UN. Them essays on my computer, of all these ideas that I had that I wanted to write about. And just as the memo was being submitted, I got contacted by Patrick Davis, who is the editor of unbound edition. And he said, I've read an essay of yours in literature, literature I'd like to hear.
Oliver Radclyffe: Have you got anything more? What are you working on? So we had a two hour conversation. At the end of he was like, Okay, I want you to write this. This is a very long story. I nearly at the
Alex Iantaffi: what happens next?
Oliver Radclyffe: Story in its own, isn't it? Exactly So what happened next was, Patrick commissioned me to write this book. I wasn't sure that the memoir was even going to get published, because the whole story about how the memo got published has got its own separate kind of narrative arc.
Oliver Radclyffe: So I thought, well, that's fine.
Oliver Radclyffe: I'll write this book of essays.
Oliver Radclyffe: We'll get it published, and if the memoir doesn't get published, I'll write a novel or whatever. It's fine. And while Patrick and I, while I was writing, and Patrick and I were editing the memoir, then got bought by Roxanne Gay books. So then we were like, Okay, we've got two books potentially coming out at the same time. Luckily, Roxanne acquired it way before she could actually publish, because she had, like, a backlog of other books. And so we said to Grove, look, if we can rush out this adult human male, you know, with at least a year's gap between each book, are you happy for us to do that? And they were like, yeah. So Patrick and I were like, Okay, we've got three months to get this book done.
Oliver Radclyffe: But in a sense, that was kind of fun, because it meant that I really had to pour all this stuff onto the page, and it's a short book, and it's tight, and I had to just like, really get it kind of tight and succinct and get all of my feelings about this onto the page. And I didn't, I think if I had had longer, I might have started to tie myself up in knots about it, because I'm not I didn't do Gender Studies at college. I'm not a scholar, I'm not an academic. I don't have a background in this. These are really just my ideas that have come to me because of the conversation that's going on.
Oliver Radclyffe: And I think if I'd had longer, I might have been consumed by self doubt. Yeah, you know, like, who am I to enter into this conversation that all of these extraordinary people have been having for such a long time
Alex Iantaffi: that is such a great book. I'm so glad I've asked that question, because, first of all, this is a great story so and and you you could go for as long as you want. I love long stories, and I think that gender stories listeners really appreciate the nuance of the conversations, right? But I really relate to that feeling that if you have longer like, all those other feelings get in the way, right? I remember with gender trauma, it lives for so many years in my head, and that my editor was like, Alex, time to get this book out in the world, right? Yeah, you know?
Alex Iantaffi: And then I was like, Okay. And even when I was writing, I was like, Oh, am I to write this book? Am I Malene? Am I not in my lane, you know? And so I can imagine that having such a tight window of three months, it's just like, No, just get it done, get it on the page. And I think that's a gift in some way, like I think it was, yeah, one of the things I love about the book it is that it's succinct. It does weave the political scene with the personal and with the political and the scholarly in this really beautiful and very accessible way. I think, you know, yeah, and yet engaging with really complex ideas at the same time, right? Yeah, that is such a I was like, This is so skillful and wonderful, actually. So thank you. I'm even more amazed that you wrote all of that in three months. If anything,
Oliver Radclyffe: you should have seen the state of my office. It was, it was a frightening place in here for a while.
Alex Iantaffi: I know that the state of my office is always frightening, but people can see it. I keep it off camera, so that's something very wise. I really want to go back to the first memoir, which is gonna, which is about to come out, really. And like you said, Folks who pre order it already have it, but I want to stay with adult human male for a little bit, if that's okay, because there are so many brilliant things that you have in there, right? Even I was like writing down quotes as I was reading reading it. And I love kind of the introduction to it is you talk about your mom writing those letters. And I lived in the UK for 15 years before moving to the so called United States and and it was almost like I could picture it, if that makes sense, right? I could picture this, like your mom writing those letters, and then this moment where, you know.
Alex Iantaffi: Know, she's asking for, like an opinion that your dad would buy into it, which is really, you know, and then you go into this beautiful conversation about, how can there be like, this neutral opinion when we're talking about, like, our bodies, our existence and all of that, how did it feel to kind of have such a almost intimate, almost felt like I was like, you know, looking into through a window, into the that intimate moment of kind your mom at the desk writing the letters and, you know, can be tricky sometimes for us to write about our families, yeah, as writers, as trans people. So I was curious.
Alex Iantaffi: It
Oliver Radclyffe: was, it was really intentional that that that was my opening chapter. And the reason I wanted to write about my parents my opening chapter is because if my parents can get this, then really anybody can. Because, I mean, my parents couldn't be further from the queer community, both emotionally and geographically, if they drive, they really couldn't. And what, what has been so amazing about my parents is that they have proved that even if there's stuff that they don't understand, they can still accept and love yes across the board. And really, they've been like that since day one. And what I the reason I wanted to put them at the beginning of the book was because I wanted to write the book to people like that to say it's okay if you don't get a lot of this stuff.
Oliver Radclyffe: It is complex and it is messy and it's new for a lot of people, and I'm not here to chastise you for not understanding, and I'm not here to shame you for not knowing, and I'm not here to be aggressive with you in any way at all. I'm just here to say, Hey, this is what is going on.
Oliver Radclyffe: This is what it looks like from our perspective. You're getting it all from the cis perspective, because the majority of the journalists who are reporting about our lives are cis, and that filters what people are seeing and reading and understanding. You know, there are a few amazing cis journalists, I will shout out to Lydia Paul Green here, who you know, just writes as if she knows intimately what's going on. But the cis, the cis public, does not get enough access yet to trans writers, and it's something that is slowly beginning to change, but we need to be able to tell our stories Absolutely.
Alex Iantaffi: And then those stories also need to be uplifted, right, but often by journalists or mainstream media.
Alex Iantaffi: And unfortunately, they keep uplifting this more, I would say, sensationalize also.
Alex Iantaffi: Versions of lifestyle, you know, and so even kind of gender scholar, I say in air quotes, because I think it's questionable some of the gender scholarship that some of those others you know, are putting out there, they are the ones who tend to be really amplified and keep kind of fueling the the spire, right? Yeah. And I think what I liked about adult human male is that you take some of those arguments really head on, even just the title, right, like even taking this kind of phrase that is often used by gender critical folks, trans exclusionary feminists, whatever word we want to use for people, of like, you know, adult human female and kind of
Oliver Radclyffe: claiming, exactly Yes,
Alex Iantaffi: exactly, yeah, I love that exactly.
Oliver Radclyffe: And you know what I didn't do, thank God, because Judith Butler has just done it far better than I possibly could, is go directly at each of their arguments. And if you read Judith Butler's book, she just tears them a new one, in a way that was, I mean, I was like, there were times when I was leaping up and down with excitement reading this book, because she does such a great job. But what I wanted to do with adult human male, rather than go, rather than counter attack each argument, I wanted to show people how they were being manipulated. Yes, exactly, you know, I wanted people to understand that what you know, whether, whether it's a gender critical feminist or an evangelical Christian or a bar still conservative, you know what they're doing is trying to create fear, and when people end up in a fear mindset that. Takes over, and that's entirely human.
Oliver Radclyffe: If you believe there is something to be afraid of that becomes the predominant emotion, it's very difficult to get through with logic. Yeah, and that's the position that we're in at the moment. That's what we're fighting at the moment is, firstly, trying to stop these people from stoking this fear mindset. And secondly, trying to get past that, to say to people, this is literally all invented, all of these fears. None of these fears exist. None of them.
Oliver Radclyffe: Literally, none of them.
Alex Iantaffi: Oh, absolutely.
Alex Iantaffi: And it's so absurd. Some of the like you said, it's just like the absurdity of some of those fears that get fueled, right?
Alex Iantaffi: And I love that you talk about.
Alex Iantaffi: You know, as far as I know, no trans people are trying to eradicate women. You know, nobody. In fact, we're all fighting the same fight for bodily autonomy and sovereignty over our bodies and our reproductive systems. And you know what we do with our bodies.
Alex Iantaffi: It really is about autonomy. And I love how you talk about being the authors, you know, of our own bodies and stories in many ways, right, in the book as well. And but it's hard because people are so fearful, and they're so flooded with this things that speak to some of their core fears, right? That it's done very hard to to have reasonable conversations. And in the book, at one point you say, also nobody likes being asked to see the authority, particularly to a trans person, yeah. And that I I was like, Yes, when I read that sentence, right? Yeah.
Alex Iantaffi: Because in my own life, I see that happen over and over, even sometimes our allies, you know, or people who even care for trans folks in terms of medical providers, are much more comfortable with trans people being in the seat of almost objects, right, objects of care, objects of study. But when we become subjects, right? When we become subjects, when we become authors, when we become scholars or experts, very uncomfortable for folks who are like,
Oliver Radclyffe: that's when the transphobia really starts to rear its ugly head. And that's the, you know, that's the kind of secondary transphobia, not that you don't exist. You're making it all up, or we want to eradicate you. But just yeah, I'm kind of all fine with transgender people, but I'm also, like, really uncomfortable around them, and in their kind of internal hierarchy, the trans person just gets moved down
Alex Iantaffi: exactly as long as you're a little bit less human, you're
Oliver Radclyffe: a little bit less human, and this is particularly true of trans women, much more so I think, than trans men, just because of misogyny, absolutely. You know, there is this sort of automatic mindset that this person must be somehow a little bit deficient, yeah, because otherwise, why would they do this and that? And yet, some of the most brilliant people writing today are trans women. I mean, the most brilliant minds, Andrea longitud and Gillian Branstetter. I mean, these people have extraordinary brains. It it's a, it's a tough one to get through and and, of course, the media is so gatecapped, yeah, that trying to get, you know, I mean, thank God. Andrew longshoo is getting a platform, finally. Well deserved platform, absolutely,
Alex Iantaffi: but it is so much harder, exactly because nobody's gonna see the authority or make space and sometimes even kind of the voice of our allies, so to speak, kind of supersede the trans, non binary, gender expansive stories and that that can be really challenging to witness over and over, you know, again, and especially in this moment of rising anti transphobia on both sides of the pond, really, yeah, you know, I Oh, I have so many thoughts that just catch one and go in one direction rather than all the different directions I want to go into. And I also love what you say, even though you mentioned Judy Butler, I think at one point in the book, you say something about, you know, gender being just this very complex thing that nobody understands, or maybe Judy Butler seems to but nobody can read Judith.
Oliver Radclyffe: That got a really good a lot of people identified with that.
Alex Iantaffi: I think that was pretty brilliant.
Oliver Radclyffe: This latest book that she's done is not academic, it's much more accessible. So, you know, I keep sending it out everyone.
Oliver Radclyffe: Everyone's like, Oh no, no, it's Judith Butler. And I know I'm saying that, no, but it's not Judith Butler, Judith Butler.
Oliver Radclyffe: It's like, kind of accessible Judith Butler. You guys. Got to read as it's really important, their reputation precedes them
Alex Iantaffi: exactly. I was like, Don't be scared. It's okay this book, because exactly, don't be scared to read the same sentence 15 times. I
Oliver Radclyffe: promise to understand it. I know we've all been there exactly.
Alex Iantaffi: I mean, I don't know if I have even understood after reading some sentences 15 times, but yes, this latest book much more accessible, but I love the point you make that it's like, we demand too much from gender, right? There is like, you know, gender is just the simple one word, but it can mean so many things, right? Identity, social constructs, cultural constructs, right? All this expectation, this taxonomy, that we have put on many things, and we could have chosen a different nomenclature, a different categorization, right of for humans, that we put this much pressure on gender, and, yeah, I'm curious about that. Just some more thoughts about the idea that we demand too much from gender that we have
Oliver Radclyffe: Well, the reason I think that we demand too much from gender is because one of the things that prevented me from understanding that I was trans was that I understood trans as your sex and your gender are not aligned. So if you're trapped, if you're trans, if I, if I, if I was assigned female at birth and I'm trans, in order for me to justify transitioning, I have to be able to say that my gender is male, is like categorically. My understanding was that I had to be able to say my my gender is categorically 100% male. And I know this, and that was not my experience. My experience was that my gender was kind of everything. So it absolutely wasn't categorically female, because when I put myself into a heterosexual marriage, I thought I was going to die very quickly.
Oliver Radclyffe: But looking back over my whole life, my gender is very fluid, and it depends what it is, what part of my gender we're talking about. It depends on the circumstances. So, for example, my role as a as a parent, is much more of a mother than a father. My role in the in the household is much more of a father than a mother. And some people would say those are the same things, but they're not, and both of these sides of me are active within that same environment all the time. So what I had to figure out, which is what I figured out during the course of the of the memoir, is that I didn't have to align my sex with my gender. I had to align my sex with my sex. Yeah, so my body is male. And before I transitioned, I would say my body was meant to be male, and it got born wrong. And so now I have to fix the stuff that's wrong and align it as closely with the male body that it knows it it is supposed to be, through surgery, through hormones, through, you know, clothes, haircuts, whatever I need to do.
Oliver Radclyffe: And once I understood that, and then I transitioned, I was like, Okay, now everything makes sense. Everything makes sense.
Oliver Radclyffe: So when people ask me how I identify, obviously I code switch depending on who I'm talking to, but the truth is, I identify as a gender irrelevant transsexual, because I really do think that my gender is completely irrelevant. I simply behave how I want to behave, and I do what I want to do, and I speak how I want to speak, and I parent how I want to parent. And I have relationships. All of my relationships are slightly different, depending on who the person is. But my transsexuality is real, because that is testament to the fact that in order to feel whole, I had to change my body.
Alex Iantaffi: I resonate with so many of the things you said, also on a t shirt that says gender irrelevant transsexual now,
Oliver Radclyffe: yeah, exactly,
Alex Iantaffi: please. Can somebody print like some gender relevance transsexual? You know that gliff quote, and I love the the simplicity and the complexity of everything you just said, right? Because like, and there is so much simplicity in how you talked about it, because it comes from that authentic kind of lived experience. And there's also so much complexity, right? If we kind of break it down
Oliver Radclyffe: and look, part of the complexity is that the thing that I really struggled.
Oliver Radclyffe: With was everybody around me was saying gender is a social construct, which I understood, and yet I still understood myself as deeply trans, yes, and when I tried to be non binary, you know, I figured, okay, well, if my gender is non binary, then I should surely I will feel comfortable presenting as non binary. So I tried to be non binary by having top surgery and, you know, changing the way I dress, but not going on hormones. And it just didn't work for me. Yeah, my body kept saying, no, no, you have to have a male body in order for any of this to work, you've got to be as as male as you can be in order for any of the other stuff to work, which doesn't make any sense, unless you re frame this particular type of transness as somebody trying to align their sex with their sex. And obviously I'm not beginning to say that this is true of all trans people, but there are obviously so many different ways to be trans, and my particular way to be trans really doesn't have anything to do with gender,
Alex Iantaffi: exactly. And I love, you know, and even if it had to do with gender, it's more about like, it's just, I love it because my brain is like exploding in 500 different directions right now, right?
Alex Iantaffi: Because there is like that, what Merlot T would call, that embodied cognition, that way of knowing that you can only know when you're in your body, like I knew, like I had a fair gas, that I wanted top surgery. But honestly, it wasn't until I had it that I knew this feels right.
Alex Iantaffi: Yeah, my body right? And I've, I have a complex relationship with the hormones, but, you know, it's really interesting, because even the lowest dose of testosterone, my body is just like, like a duck to water, right? It's like, I can be the lowest dose, and I will still go through changes very quickly.
Alex Iantaffi: Wow, you know, which is really interesting. And so my body knows what it wants, right? Yes, yeah. Again, I did not have that simpler narrative. Maybe, you know, I was not a tomboy as a kid because I have a very queer masculinity, which already kind of confused matters in some ways, right? Yeah, and I'm attracted to masculinity, regardless of the person's gender. Actually, it's more of, for me, like a role in energy or something that's even hard to describe, right? And so none of this fits into, you know, the traditional transsexual or transgender narrative, let's call it, right, which is why it took me so long right to figure it out, even, and why I was so fascinated by this idea of gender, whatever gender is right, and because there is the physical experience, and then there are all these roles, expectations, expression. But I so relate, because the more I masculinize my body, the more comfortable I feel expressing my femininity in airports, so to speak, more like my queer masculinity, right? Because I don't get misgendered as much, yes, and so, because people tend to look out with certain things.
Alex Iantaffi: And so it is so simple and, yes, so complex, and I think that people have a hard time getting their head around it, because we, you know, colonialism and white supremacy and Christian supremacy have made gender so rigid, yes, right, where there isn't that spaciousness. Or even when you said Yeah, I was like, Yeah, I'm very much more like a father in terms of being the main breadwinner, you know, being the having certain role in the household. But at the same time, I was a gestational parent for one of my kids, right? And I have that kind of emotional, like mother daughter relationship, as well as being more of like a dad at the same time. Yeah, that can be hard to explain to people or like, but there is a role. And yeah, people should fit into just one role, yeah, because otherwise my brain will explode, basically, and
Oliver Radclyffe: that is, that is what it's come down to. It's like, it's too much data. My brain can't take all of this and I get it because it was too much data for my brain too. When I was going through this, I was like, I do not understand what is going on here. The only thing apart, the only part of this that I understand is my body needs to be male, yes, and but it was like I felt like I had to have a clear theory of why, in order to justify doing it, like I can't do this, you know, because there is so much fear about you know, you're going to make the wrong decision and irreversible changes and regret and this kind of stuff and and, you know what you just said about you didn't know that you you didn't know how much you wanted top surgery until after you had it. I mean, I think every single trans person I've ever spoken to has said the same thing, absolutely is that you.
Oliver Radclyffe: You kind of know, but you can't really know until it's done.
Oliver Radclyffe: Then you're like, Oh, my God, thank God I was, you know, I was right about that. And you know, when I meet people who are like, I don't know, I don't know, do I want to? Do I want? Do I not want to? And I'm like, Well, okay, how much of your time is taken up thinking about this?
Oliver Radclyffe: You know, give me a percentage, is it like above 50% of your day, every single day, and they're like, yeah, pretty much.
Oliver Radclyffe: And I'm like, Yeah, you probably want it. That's a lot of energy.
Oliver Radclyffe: And people who don't, people who aren't trans, do not spend that much time thinking about whether they want to have top surgery or have hormones. And that was what finally got me, because I had top surgery first, a year before I started hormones, and that was what finally pushed me into hormones, is that I was just thinking about it all day, every goddamn day. And finally I was like, I think this is something I want to do, yeah. And then, of course, after the first show. I just never looked back. Yeah,
Alex Iantaffi: and then it frees up so much kind of mental space, so much creative energy, you know, like, what Absolutely, and I think that's something that I say also to friends, but also like clients. As a therapist all the time, you it's okay not to be 100% sure, yeah, most humans are rarely under presented or about any decision, even like becoming a parent or getting married or jobs or career, you make a good guess, and then you kind of go for it, and hopefully works out. And I feel that's a very human experience, yes, and I wonder if we would spend so much if it would be so much agony or so much anguish, if it wasn't made to be such a big deal, right?
Oliver Radclyffe: Yes, and if it wasn't weaponized against us, you know, weaponized, and that's the danger is, not only do you internalize that weaponization, that like you're going to make a mistake and you're going to regret it, but also as a trans or non binary person, I hear a lot of people saying, What happens if I do it? Yeah, and then I kind of want to kind of roll back a little bit. Am I adding to the detransition narrative? Am I betraying my community? Am I reinforcing their belief, which is crazy, because sometimes you kind of have to, like, figure out where you're going to land. And sometimes the pendulum of the grandfather clock does swing a little far, and then you have to swing back a little bit. That's normal, and to make that into such or D transitioning, and you regret and irreversible changes is, you know, it's, it's very detrimental to the freedom that is an inherent part of being trans, absolutely.
Alex Iantaffi: And I think, you know, you'll, I believe that you also talk about, you know, in the book, like being trans as a gift, which I also really appreciate and agree with. And I do feel that if people, if we didn't feel that weight right?
Alex Iantaffi: And I've worked with a lot of clients who really feel that weight, I need to be a good trans person, so I need to be sure. I need to have no doubt, right? When I make a decision, am I you're asking yourself to not be human? Yeah, it's okay.
Alex Iantaffi: It's okay to have doubts. It's okay to have some ambivalence.
Alex Iantaffi: It's okay to even, you know, with top surgery, there is a part of, there is some grief when your body changes, or some vulnerability that gets in, right? It's like, all of a sudden, I remember feeling like my heart and my chest was exposed to the world, you know, and like, I remember looking down, I was like, What happened to my stomach? Is it like, weirdly inflated from, you know, my spouse, you've never seen it before. Exactly, it was, like, so hard news to break to you.
Alex Iantaffi: Yeah, this is how your stomach.
Alex Iantaffi: You just couldn't see it so directly. And I was that took me, like, a long time to get used and I had to kept, you know, especially transitioning older. You had to look at like, cis men in their like 40s, and go, This is how they look. This is how I look. We kind of look the same, yeah. But, you know, I had internalized so much kind of body fascism as well, as, you know, because of the way I was brought up. And so it's just this, almost all this, like Mac to sort through, right, yeah?
Alex Iantaffi: And that's what I love about the your book, is that you seem to go straight to the heart,
Oliver Radclyffe: like right muck straight into the pit of muck, straight
Alex Iantaffi: into the pit of muck. And there is, like, this beautiful clarity in the complexity, yeah, and I thought that was brilliant. How did you manage that? Was it just like you just went for it, or was it like a conscious process? I'm really curious about that. Um,
Unknown: I think it's because these ideas had been kind of swirling around my head for such a long time while I was writing the memoir. And. They really did want somewhere to go, and they couldn't go in the memoir, because they would have ruined the story. The memoir is like, it reads like a novel. It's like pure narrative. And putting any of these kind of, there are tiny bits of, kind of ideological, slightly, I mean, really, almost nothing, to be honest, because it's just story, because the story is kind of wild to be honest between you and me, and I don't transition until right at the end of the book, because the book is about somebody who is trying really, really hard not to transition, and everything that goes with that, and all of the kind of processes I went trying not to do that, and when and when and when and when we're speaking five minutes ago about the sense of freedom. What eventually happened in the end was when I finally let go of everything. It felt it felt like I had jumped off a cliff or out of a plane. It was absolutely terrifying. I felt like I was like spinning in space because I had nothing left to hold on to.
Unknown: You know, everything about me that had once been true was now known not long I was no longer heterosexual, I was no longer a woman, I was no longer a biological mother, I was no longer married, I was no longer in a relationship. I didn't even live in my own country. I had, at that point, been pretty much rejected by the environment in which I grew up, at least a lot of my parents friends, if not the younger ones. And so I was like, there I have. We don't realize how this is not answering your original question, by the way. I'm totally going off on a task. Oh, way, we don't realize how much of a scaffold around us societal expectations are until we take them away, because we all have as part of our most of us have as part of our internal identity, something external in society that aligns. So you're like, Okay, I'm this, or I'm this, or I'm this, you know, whether it's your job or your relationship or where you live, or, you know, the hobby that you do, and when you take all of that away and you're just kind of left with no scaffolding, it can be really frightening to start with, until you start to realize how liberating it is.
Unknown: And I think the thing that has brought me most joy about transitioning apart from the fact that every single morning when I look in the bathroom mirror, I see somebody that makes sense to me is the fact that I feel like I can I don't belong anywhere, so now I can go everywhere. Yeah, I don't belong to any. I mean, the trans community is just so what is the trans community? I don't know.
Unknown: It's just a bunch of trans people, but it's so wild and diverse and, yes, you know, indescribable and uncontainable, that it doesn't really kind of make sense as a community, apart from fighting together against, you know, people who are trying to take away our rights. But you know, now I can, I can be friends with men. I can be friends with women. I the way I present makes no sense to anybody. I look like a gay man, but I'm not attracted to men, but I I'm clearly not heterosexual. I mean, for God's sake, don't call me straight, because that's the weirdest thing in the world. I you know, nothing about me makes sense. So everything feels right, because I don't have to conform to anything anymore. I don't have to compromise my identity in any way. And you know, it's one of the reasons why I'm not in relationship at the moment, because moment, because I, at the moment, I'm taking such pleasure from that, and I know that the minute I enter a relationship, I will have to compromise a little bit. And at the moment, it's like I have waited for years to be 100% myself. And I just want to kind of wallow in this for a while.
Unknown: Oh,
Alex Iantaffi: absolutely. And, and, you know, as you were talking, I was like, oh yes, this, there's just so much beauty in the unraveling, even though it's painful at the time, at least it was for me, like, I related a lot to the like, you need to let go of the lot of things, yeah. And also to the confusion that people are like, sir, I mean, ma'am, when I opened my mouth, I mean, and I'm like, it's all good. You know, that's why I was, like, gender irrelevant, transsexual, yeah, I feel that that is like three words that explain everything.
Alex Iantaffi: I'm like, Yes, I'm for that because, you know, and then people have to get to know you, right? And it's like, where in on what other human level do we connect? Yes, if we take those boxes, yes, right? What, what shared interests or experiences we might have, and they expand.
Alex Iantaffi: Positiveness of that. And that is beautiful. Yeah, there's
Unknown: a, there's a fascinating Jordan Peterson clip where he, you know, he's doing his typical thing, and he's like, staring into the camera, going, you know, if you don't have a gender, how can I connect with you? How do I know you? How can I speak to you? And I'm like, wow, poor Jordan. Yes, poor guy that's really rough, that he just needs to have his hand held to that degree in order to be able to connect with another human being. It's kind of like, wow, that's really eye opening. And
Alex Iantaffi: I think he speaks to like that kind of toxic cisgenderism, toxic masculinity, that tells us like we are going to be safe and we're going to know how to connect if people are in this two boxes of male and female and it's a lie, right? Or we're going to be safe if we put people in those two boxes and it's a lie. First of all, any fan person knows that no sign on a bathroom door has ever stopped any man assaulting anybody you know. And we know that intimate partners are the highest risk in terms of violence, and not any person, which is like absurd. But I do feel like the sadness in a way, especially for cis white men, where it's like, this is the only way I know how to relate to the world, yeah. And I think that a lot of times it is this fear that the world will explode and they will not understand it anymore. And in a way, we are proof of that as trans people, because we're like, yeah,
Unknown: and we do, we do shift the ground under their feet. You know, we can't. We can't pretend that we don't know, you know we do say, look, it's you just do your You mind your own business and let us mind ours. But the reality is, is that we are shifting how society works
Alex Iantaffi: absolutely and the reality is that we are a threat to like more dogmatic, colonial kind of fascist ways of governing bodies or nations, right? Because we will not be governed by those categories, right? And so we're proof that, like, look, you can actually be who you are. I remember going to my oldest kiddo school when she was still in elementary school, and the kid was like, Are you a boy? And I was like, No, are you a girl? And I was like, No. And it was like, you gotta pick one.
Alex Iantaffi: I was like, Oh, actually, a Don, nobody has to pick one. Isn't that great? And you could see that it must have been like, six or seven. This little boy was just like, the wheels were turned right, like, oh, and it doesn't matter what people's identity is, right? And I'm sure that some people would feel threatened hearing of an adult saying something like that to a child, but I think it's so beautiful that we can be expansive, right? We can be ourselves and and why would we want to put children who are just such amazing, fascinating little beings that are coming into their own, like into this tight boxes, rather than listen to them and in relation to them as they grow and kind of make sense of themselves? You know what I mean? It's just like, in a way, we we are a threat to our society. Is, but, I think, but
Unknown: we're, yeah, I mean, 100% the point is, is we are.
Unknown: We're a threat to the power systems that run society, at the moment, exactly a threat to the little kids, because little kids can open up their minds and heartbeats. The little kid was like, this is fascinating. This is wild, exactly. It's like my little next door neighbor when I moved into this house, and their kid came running over into our garden, and I write about this in the Mun one, and jumped onto the trampoline with my daughters and and she was, I don't know, she was, like, five at the time, four maybe. And she just said, my mum says, Your mum's a man.
Unknown: And my daughter said, Yes, he is. And the little girl was like, oh, okay, and that was it.
Unknown: I mean, it's like, that's that easy. And this is the thing is that, you know, we, as liberals, I would can't speak to the hard right, but as liberals, we want, we want the next generations to have more and to have better and to have wider and to have greater freedoms and autonomy.
Unknown: And this is part of that, but that, you know, obviously, that does destabilize these people who think that they're in power at the moment, absolutely, the status
Alex Iantaffi: quo, exactly, exactly. And I love that, that example, because I, yeah, I resonate. I've seen it again again with kids, like they get it. It's like, oh, okay, this is what your pronouns are. This is who you are. It's not, it's not a big deal. I. My oldest taking one of their friends to look at the the belly cast that I had made when I was pregnant with her. And she was like, See, I told you that my mom is a he had used to have breasts, right?
Alex Iantaffi: Here's the proof, right? And we're like, oh, cool, you know?
Alex Iantaffi: And it was like, so, you know, because it's like, kids are just trying to make sense of the
Unknown: world with kids, is that, yeah, everything in the world is weird to a kid, exactly. I mean, a tree is weird to a kid, a raccoon is weird to a kid. I mean, everything is like, and what kids do is they look at the adults around them and go, is this kind of part of our world? And if the adults go, yeah, the kids like, oh, okay, is that? The fact that they're seeing a raccoon out in the backyard doesn't mean they want to be a raccoon. They're just like, Okay, that's a raccoon.
Unknown: And it's the same with the Trans and Queer people around them.
Unknown: It's like, all of those people are trans and queer. So that's something that you get to choose to be. If that is something that resonates with you, and if it doesn't, then it doesn't it's fine, this whole idea that somehow kids are being trans or the social I mean, it's just all such nonsense. Really is pure, pure, distilled transphobia. Oh,
Alex Iantaffi: it really is. And it's so ridiculous. If anything, knowing all the options makes a kid much clearer, yeah, about who they are. It's like, both of my kids have been surrounded like by trans, non binary gender, expensive people their own lives. They're very clear about their gender, actually, in a much easier way, because it's like, oh, yes, you know, yeah.
Alex Iantaffi: Like, Oh, I see all these options, right? You know. And same with the queerness is like, coming out, then it's not a big deal, because it's just like, oh, this is the buffet of options. Yeah, I think this labels might describe me, you know, and I can pick them up and put them down, because I don't have to be my labels. I'm just a human, just like it, you know, in this fenceless I love that you talk about fences. In the fenceless society, right? You know, as an abolitionist, the heart was always hated, geopolitical, social borders, yeah? That really spoke to my heart. I was like, yes, a fenceless society in every way is the
Unknown: dream. Yeah. And that partly happened because when I first started transitioning. I was dating somebody who, who was, I mean, I don't think she would have called herself a lesbian separatist, but that's essentially what she was at the time. She she, you know, she really wanted to separate, yeah, the women from the men. And if I was transitioning, I was moving out of one camp and into another, yeah. And I'm like, yeah, no, I'm just No, I absolutely refute that narrative on all levels. None of that is my experience, and it's such a
Alex Iantaffi: narrative of separation, you know, I remember even I was brought up a second wave feminist. I used to teach women studies, and I used to identify as a dyke, specifically politically and yet, the separatism I could never get my head around, because I'm like, it's such a rigid facts, and it doesn't make sense to me, even before I expanded, you know, my ideas of gender, thankfully, because It was agonizing to try and deal with the my identity.
Alex Iantaffi: And I was like, it's just internalized misogyny. I'm just not loving myself, right? And then I'm like, No, it's not. But
Unknown: it's just
Alex Iantaffi: such a rigid fence that separates us from our humanity to some degree, and I've seen that suffering the some of the more separatist, you know, separatist lesbian udana fallen in love with man, or separatist lesbians or Diana to come to terms with, like a trans identity, right? That's not easy if you've built your world around this rigid fans, yeah, this heartbreak. And
Unknown: also, I mean, I think that what I struggled with a lot at that time, because I was kind of questioning everything. Was one of the hardest things, I think, that I've had to deal with in my transition is the recognition that by transitioning from female to male, I have kind of moved myself down the hierarchical ladder because I'm trans, but I've also moved myself up the hierarchical ladder because I'm male, and it's very difficult to reconcile that in some people's brains, it's very difficult to reconcile the fact that I had to transition because it wasn't a choice. And with that transition comes privileges that I didn't have before, that the people who are the gender that I was assigned at birth do not have, and yet, I will fight with every fiber of my body for bodily autonomy and rights for everybody. You know. I just saying, okay. Say, Well, I'm fine, Jack, you know, so do you?
Unknown: I don't need to worry about you anymore. It's like, this is my whole life now. Is is fighting for the right for people to be able to do and be exactly who and what they want to do and be.
Unknown: But it is, it is it is hard for some people to get over that slight resentment of the fact that, yeah, I do. I mean, I pass as a cis man, and that comes with immense privilege. There's just no question about it. It comes with and, you know, sometimes I'm like, am I so happy now because I transitioned, or am I so happy now, because I'm kind of getting all this male privilege that I wasn't getting before. And my trans femme friends, they have the opposite experience, absolutely. And when I say to them, oh my I remember having one conversation, which I regret in retrospect, after I had transitioned, and I had a friend who hadn't, and she was scared, and she was did it, and I was like, No, I promise you, once you transition, it's all gonna feel amazing, and I hadn't factored in the amount of transphobia that she was then going to be subjected to. And that was very eye opening to witness her go through that.
Unknown: Yeah, was very eye opening. Oh,
Alex Iantaffi: absolutely, because there is kind of the the loss of social status. Yeah, I've supported a lot of folks through that. It's, it's very, very real, right? And
Unknown: it's not just the loss of the social status. It's also that they become just, you know, fundamentally more vulnerable.
Unknown: Oh, absolutely, yeah.
Alex Iantaffi: I mean, and that that comes with a vulnerability, it comes with a level of dehumanizing, right? It comes with, like, come it's, it's very impactful, yeah, absolutely.
Alex Iantaffi: It's not just the, when I say loss of social status, there is so much imbued in there, right?
Alex Iantaffi: Because, in a way, it's like, you know, and especially trans trans women of color, right? I think and and often I find that with trans femme folks of color, there's already an understanding of the system of power, privilege and oppression. But with some of my white trans feminine Yeah, folks is like, of course, like, right? It's like, it's that, again, that embodied experience of what does it, you know, to be treated in kind of trans misogynistic ways or misogynistic ways? It's, it's really impactful. And being in that liminal space that's, it's fascinating, because honestly, people like read me in all sorts of ways, and then to see how you get treated. And the intersection also with disability, like when I use mobility aids, getting treated again differently, and even in terms of gender, I get misgendered way more if I'm using like a rollerator versus like a cane, it's Wow. It's just fascinating.
Unknown: It really is fascinating, isn't it? It's just like our guys, I'm the same person underneath. I mean, you know, I've had people who, you know, not even acquaintances, just people who I come across in in my normal life, who just treat me differently because they don't know that I'm the same person that I was before.
Unknown: Yes, so my car mechanic, for example, you know, does not know because I transitioned during the pandemic. They just didn't kind of register that this person who had this car before and was a woman is the same person as this car who has now and as a man. And, you know, it's, it's just, it's crazy to, you know, we all know that male privilege exists, but there's nothing like transitioning to get, like, a really direct experience of that, absolutely,
Alex Iantaffi: to really have that kind of embodied experience like with that, and I love that you even question whether like is transition even the right word right in some ways, because it's like, I don't know like, or maybe I was thinking, is transition even the right word when I was reading your book, yeah,
Unknown: I mean, I've written, I've written more about that recently, because, you know, for me, it felt like alignment. It didn't feel like transition, because I didn't transition from female to male, because I was never female in the first place.
Unknown: So I just aligned my male body with what a male body is supposed to look like. So, and I think, you know, we use the term transition because it was created by a CIS, head white doctor, and that's what they saw. What they saw was somebody who was a woman and then became, in fact, in his case, it was somebody who was a man and became a woman, and that they transitioned across this, this sort of gender bridge, as it were. But that's just really not how it feels for most of us.
Unknown: Absolutely. You know, even back as far as we can remember, trans people have saying, have been saying, No, I just I there was something wrong with my body, so I just aligned my body with what it was meant to look like. Yeah,
Alex Iantaffi: and I love the idea of alignment, because whether people are going through physical changes to align or social change. In terms of pronouns, names, everybody close, it's, it's sick. We, we all want to feel more coherent, more aligned, more who we are, right? And that's all it is. And isn't that such a human experience it is? And
Unknown: this is what we've been this is what feminists been talking about forever. When we talk about, you know, I was reading a thing about, you know, the sort of metrosexual men from the where was the early 2000s or whatever, when metrosexuality came in. And, you know what, what we've been talking about forever is like, you know, let's, let's loosen the parameters that are so tightly placed around then as well. You know that men, you know they're not allowed to cry, they're not showing emotion, they're allowed all these ridiculous rules that they have. It's so restricting, and it's so unfair and it's so deeply damaging for them. And so when, when you know, if we could, if everybody could, embrace the idea of alignment and take gender out of it, then what you don't end up with is this kind of gray, flat, boring, genderless society. What you end up with is the opposite, where everybody can be whatever they want to be at any time for any reason, and then just change their mind and just do something else, this complete freedom to for everybody. And that doesn't make everybody trans. It doesn't mean everybody needs to go it, just if everybody, all I want for everybody in the world is for everybody to have access to everything. Yeah,
Alex Iantaffi: it makes everybody free. Yeah, that's why, you know, I often talk about, like, I don't want an androgynous society. I mean, androgyny is awesome and hot and, you know,
Unknown: but nobody's being the kind of trans fascist that people we think exactly gotta be androgynous, exactly.
Alex Iantaffi: I just want a liberated world where everybody you know can wear whatever they want and whatever clothes they want, put makeup or not if they want to, and it's not a big deal, and express
Unknown: their emotions the way they want, and choose their roles within their families the way they want and have relationships the way they want, in an all effect. Why do we set such rules upon ourselves? And we know why. Because of Christian ways, patriarchy, it's the point. It was trying to govern us. It was policing, was trying to govern the society so we understand. It's just that trying to get people to understand we don't have to do this anymore. Exactly. We really, genuinely do not need to police our society this way anymore. Yeah. But people are so conditioned into this type of society, it's really hard to get people to wake up from that.
Alex Iantaffi: It's just so kind of, so in it's in the air we breathe. I often say it's in the air we breathe, it comes into our lungs, becomes part of we are. And it's a real hard process. I'm learning that, yeah, you know, if we have kind of, if we are part of a culture that is kind of lost, that Yeah, and
Unknown: it is. And this is why, this is why I kind of go, I mean, apart from the people who are obviously sort of violently transphobic, this is why I tend to go easy on cis people who are having a hard time with this.
Unknown: Because, you know, I am trans, and I had a hard time with it, absolutely, yeah. And so if this is who I am, and I had a hard time deconditioning myself, imagine, if you didn't have that incentive, you know, imagine if you know it's the same, it's the same, it's the same conversations that we're having around, we were having around anti racism, you know, back in, well, in 2020 confined to 2020 but you know, those conversations about anti racism was like, you know, guys, you really have to understand what is going on here, and it it takes a while to, like, go, Oh, okay. But if you're black, that's urgent. That's like, necessary and important. You learn that stuff early and fast and quickly, because you have to to survive. But for the people who can just calmly go around their lives just ignoring it, yeah, it's that protection of privilege. It's the protection of privilege, exactly. And so, you know, I get it, it's learning about gender and you know what, in air quotes. And I'm doing very obvious air quotes here, everybody calls gender ideology. You know, for people who don't have a vested interest in that conversation, or for people who, as you say, are going to lose their privilege and power if that conversation becomes too prevalent, yeah, you know, it's trickier.
Alex Iantaffi: It is. And you know, I've even seen trans folk sometimes be afraid of, like, too much, right? Is it gone too far, right? And I'm like, What are we afraid of?
Unknown: Yeah, exactly No. You know,
Alex Iantaffi: what are we afraid of? It's like, we don't need to reproduce the same system, yeah?
Unknown: And that's like saying, Okay, we don't want to have a fence in here, but we'll put a fence out there. The point is, we want no fences. So we really do at this point have to go all out, yeah, and that's I am behind that 100% is just like we just have to go all out at this pace, because now is the time exactly.
Alex Iantaffi: We could be much freer, and we could really and I think that helps us see also how all of those things are interconnected. You know, even we just had the Olympics and this constant scrutiny of black female athletes, right? It's just another reflection of the cisgenderism. And so our our struggles are all interconnected, whether it's racial justice, gender justice, reproductive justice, yes, right? Immigration justice, like all the struggles are not separate. They're not really connected. They really are, yeah, oh, I could have this conversation for like, the next three hours, but I want to be respectful of your time. And I realized that we got in so much into adults because I was so excited to be talking with you about it that we've hardly talked about frighten the horses, which is the memoir that is coming out, yes, this month in September. So maybe if you do have a few more minutes, I would love to hear the story about your first book, which is about to come out now, to come out now came about because you said, oh, there's a story there too. So if you have the time, I would love to hear it. If not, I'll just have to have you back some other time. But well,
Unknown: I mean, the story is really that the day after I came out to my therapist as a lesbian, which I kind of knew I wasn't, but was trying to be, at that point, I was married, I had four children. I was living here in the Connecticut suburbs. I was living the life of a very wealthy heterosexual housewife, and I was utterly miserable, and had been for many years, well for decades. And when I when I moved to America, I reconnected with an old friend of mine who was living in New York and had been living in New York for 10 years or so, and she was, like, deeply submerged in the kind of counterculture, punk performance art music scene. And when I came over here and met up with her, I it was like the scales fell from my eyes. It's like there's a different way to live. And I didn't know this because I was, I was brought up in such a sheltered environment, and so after nearly having a breakdown, trying to contain all this stuff about myself because I was so I was heavily in denial, and trying to stay I wanted to stay in denial, because I didn't want to blow up this life that I had.
Unknown: I finally came out to my therapist, and then that started this 10 year journey from telling my husband that I was a lesbian to finally transitioning and I wrote while it was happening. I journaled obsessively, and then started to think I'd always wanted to be a writer. I didn't think that that was something that I could be. I had no idea how that was a thing that even happened. It just it seemed like completely improbable to this the person that I was. But as I was writing more in my journal to start with, I started writing in the third person because I was so afraid. Of what was happening that I think I felt that if I could sort of write it, almost as if it was a story, I could remove myself from it for a bit.
Unknown: So this memoir started to form.
Unknown: And, you know, it took me 10 years from the day I started writing it to the day it got acquired by Roxane Gay was 10 years because I was teaching myself to write, yeah, because I didn't, I didn't have an MFA. I didn't, you know, I had no formal education. My creative writing education had finished when I was 16, because there's no creative writing in your junior or seniors at school in England. So it's a very, very, very long process, and at many points during that process, I really didn't think this thing was ever going to get published, but that kind of almost stopped being my aim by the end, my aim was I need to have written the book that says exactly what happened, that is that is really deeply truthful about What happened, and that includes not just the journey, but everything that I went through and everything that I was responsible for, and all of my shame and all my weakness and the bad decisions that I made, and, you know, all the kind of humanity of it and the confusion and the chaos and the fact that other people were damaged. But because in English, everything is written with a sense of humor, because that's what the English do. It's like, you know, if something's really tough, let's just kind of make a bit of a joke about it. So it's very much written in that style, where there's kind of wit and humor, but there's some fairly dark stuff going on there as well. Yeah. Yeah, so. And just as I was about to start submitting it, Roxanne Gay announced that she was starting this imprint, and she said in her announcement, I'm probably not going to be interested in sad white people marriages. And I'm like,
Alex Iantaffi: you're like, great.
Unknown: I'm like, great. Okay, that's kind of the whole first part of the book. But okay, maybe I get a pass because I'm queer and trans and thank God I did. Thank God. I mean, this is the, like, the first time being trans had actually worked in my favor. Because previously, when I was looking for an agent, agents were turning me down because it's like, oh no, we've already got a queer or trans, right? Yeah, we've got one of those. I'm like, oh, sorry that she hates the game here. So, yeah, this was the first, I think. I mean, I don't know whether that's why she bought it. Obviously, I've never asked her, but yeah, so, and obviously, being published by Roxane. I
Alex Iantaffi: mean, what an honor. I mean, I'm pushing out.
Alex Iantaffi: It goes, it's brilliant, right?
Unknown: I mean, oh my god, the editing process was so easy. I mean, she got exactly what I was trying to say. She knew exactly what we needed more, or she knew exactly what we had to cut out.
Unknown: I mean, it was like, oh my god, I'm in the hands of an expert here. So the, I mean, she, she, she 100% got what I was trying to do with this book. And she just, you know, moved to up that extra level in the editing process. It was amazing. Was really fun. That's
Alex Iantaffi: amazing. I'm so happy for you and and I come, I so understand when you would, like, there's just, like, this Highlander syndrome. We already have a trans person. I'm like, that doesn't work like that exactly.
Unknown: There's not just one of us. You know,
Alex Iantaffi: No, exactly.
Alex Iantaffi: That's one of the reasons why I love publishing my nonfiction with Jessica Kingsley, because they have so many translators.
Alex Iantaffi: Actually, they're really cultivated like a whole stable of trans and minor, gender expansive, trans authors. And it feels, it doesn't feel like that, tokenizing that experience so much of in academia. So I'm so happy that you are such a great experience with the with the book that just about to kind of come out into the world,
Unknown: is just about to come out into the world. It's got some great pre pub reviews, and you know, it was on the best recommended for fall with Oprah daily and with People magazine.
Unknown: So, you know, it's just so exciting to start getting feedback from it, because, you know, when you're when you're someone like me, I just been writing into the void for the last 10 years with no idea what anybody's going to think about this book. And you know, my beta readers, or all my friends. So while I trust them to give me good feedback, they're also going to be saying, Yeah, you know, they're cheerleaders as well. So there's a little bit of like, Yeah, I kind of know you like it, but you're in it, so you probably like it because you're in it, you know. So it's really, it's really fun, kidding. Absolutely feedback from people who have to owe me nothing. Yeah,
Alex Iantaffi: it's so satisfying. You know, absolutely, I completely understand that feeling of like, oh, I don't know how this is going to land. And then when absolute strangers say nice things about my non fiction books, I'm always like, that's amazing. Like, this person I don't know has gotten all of this out of these things I've written in that relation of me and my computer, you know? So it is a beautiful moment. Well, like I said, I you know, I can't wait for gender stories listeners to read both of your books, actually, both of your brilliant books. And I could keep having this conversation, but I will be respectful, and so I'll ask you the question that I always ask at the end of my interviews, which is, is there anything we haven't talked about that you were hoping we would touch on or talk about?
Unknown: That's I did not know you're gonna ask that question.
Unknown: So sorry.
Alex Iantaffi: Before recording by like time you need no,
Unknown: it's just like, I feel like we've covered so much in this conversation, you know, I feel like we, you know, we kind of went there, yeah, I honestly, I don't think there is, I think, I think all I would like to say is, if you want To read my more kind of academic thoughts about gender, pick up human adult, human male. But if you just want a crazy story, pick up frightened horses because the story is kind of crazy.
Alex Iantaffi: Well, we live, in any way, in a very, you know, crazy world, or in that context of Mad pride, right? It's a world that doesn't make sense.
Alex Iantaffi: And so how could our stories not be that way? But, you know, you could also read both, because they're both. I'm just saying, I mean, they
Unknown: kind of go well together, let's say a little bit like a main course. You know, exactly, exactly, you know, I.
Unknown: Would say that adult human male is the main course and frighten the horses is the dessert. Yeah, I
Alex Iantaffi: love it. So they came out in the right order in some ways,
Unknown: before dessert. There you go. There you go.
Alex Iantaffi: And you know, given that, like I took you by surprise with that question, maybe let's just stand on how are you finding joy or comfort in this days of rising transphobia on both sides of the pond? What gives you joy nowadays? If, no matter how small it is,
Unknown: I think what gives me joy is, honestly, it's the writing, it's, it's, it's finally having the confidence to know that I have finally developed the skills to say what I want to say, and and that I'm that I that I'm not going to run out of things to say, because there was That kind of strange writer's feeling of like, okay, I'm sort of, I've got these ideas of these essays, but once I write them, what happens if that's it? Well, I've got this memoir, what happens if I write it and then that's it? But I'm, you know, I've already started on a novel, which I'm very excited about, and the ideas for the essays just never stop coming. And having spent 10 years like conducting my own personal MFA in gender studies and reading every single book I can get my hands on, and reading all the novels, teaching myself about structure and style and all the rest of it, you know, I have a lot more confidence now my writing, which is a really nice place to be in, because, to start with, I was like, I don't, you know. I know I love writing.
Unknown: I know I have a kind of a vague innate talent, but how does one develop the skill, and how far can one develop that skill? You know, what is going to be my ceiling? And now I'm feeling like, Oh, I think my ceiling might just keep moving up, and I'm hoping that just each book will be just slightly better than the last. Yeah, that's, I think that's what brings me joy.
Alex Iantaffi: That's beautiful.
Alex Iantaffi: I love it. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I don't have an MFA either. You know, in I've got my PhD in what used to be women's studies, actually, not even gender studies. But I know that feeling of like, is anybody going to get this, and is anybody going to read this? And just the joy that comes and but then we do it, because sometimes it's just that joy in that, in the writing process,
Unknown: in the writing process, exactly. I mean, just getting a sentence, right? Yes. So it's so little. But you know, there are some sentences that are tricky, and I could work on them for a while, and then suddenly I get it right. And I was like, that's exactly what I wanted to say. I know that sentence has nailed it. I know it's saying what I want to say. I know it's communicating exactly what I'm feeling. And that is a really, really great experience. That's very that's the mindfulness of writing
Alex Iantaffi: so beautiful. And if people wanna, of course, people can order your books at any independent bookstore. But if people wanna, kind of follow you and find out more about your writing, do you have, like, a website or social media?
Unknown: I do so. My website is just my name, Oliver radcliffe.com I also have a sub stack called brevis scriptor. So if you look up Oliver Radcliffe, hopefully it will take you to brevis script or and I have Instagram, which is the only social media that I do. I think it posts on Facebook, but I do not understand how I once opened up Facebook recently, oh my god, this is terrifying. I just closed it down again. I do not understand what's going on with that site. So yeah, I'm the end.
Unknown: I'm I'm an Instagram person, fantastic.
Alex Iantaffi: So we'll make sure that all those links and all those handles are in the absolute description. Dear listeners or viewers, if you're watching this on YouTube and Oliver, thank you so much for this. Just I feel nourished by this conversation, and I feel so grateful and and thank you for sharing the joy of your writing with the gender stories listeners and viewers. So
Oliver Radclyffe: much for having me this has been an absolute delight
Alex Iantaffi: dear gender stories, listeners or viewers, if you're watching on YouTube, I'm so grateful for each and every one of you, and I hope that you find that beautiful freedom, no matter what your gender identity is, and until next time you.