Introducing Gender Stories

In this episode you can learn more about the podcast. Alex Iantaffi, the host, talks about why they decided to launch this podcast, what you can expect and how often podcast episodes will be released.

Instagram: GenderStories
Hosted by Alex Iantaffi
Music by Maxwell von Raven
Gender Stories logo by Lior Effinger-Weintraub

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Hello and welcome to the very first episode of Gender Stories the podcast. I am your host Alex Iantaffi. I use pronouns he/him or they/them and I'm both really excited about being here recording the first podcast you're listening to and also quite nervous because even though I've been interviewed on a couple of podcasts – great shout out to Meg-John and Justin for their podcast and thank you for interviewing me * and having me on their podcast. And also to Megan Speciale on the Thoughtful Counselor podcast for the special series on sexuality that they did. So yes, I've been interviewed on podcasts but this is my first time having my very own podcast and as a host. 

So what can you expect from this episode? Well, you can expect to learn a little bit more about me as your host but more importantly you can expect to learn a little bit more about what Gender Stories is. And at heart it is really about what the title says. Gender Stories is really about all of the different stories about identity, expression, and our relationships with gender. One of the things that I found out as an educator, trainer, as a therapist and as somebody who talks about gender a lot is that everybody has kind of a different gender story. Everybody had moments where they realize that maybe they could or could not do something because of the expectations that people had around their gender. So maybe they were not expected to wear certain clothes at school or they were not expected to play certain sports or they might be expected to behave in a certain way or even to identify in a certain way and to use specific pronouns because of how their gender was being read by other people. And what I wanted to do was really have an outlet where people could share their gender stories and how they impacted them in the past but also how they still impact them every day. And so that's really why I'm starting this podcast. 

2:17 

If you're sitting there wondering what do I mean by gender, that's a really good question. Gender is such a fascinating word right? We think about gender in terms of our identities, so does somebody identify as a man, a woman, as a transgender person, as a non-binary person. And don't worry if I'm using words that you're wondering what they mean, we're going to have a whole episode dedicated to language and terminology. * But so yes, gender can be around somebody's identity but its also around expression. So when we say that somebody looks particularly masculine or feminine depending on our culture and where we live, * we might have certain expectations of how they might look or if they look androgynous for example we might have a picture in our mind of what they might look like and sound like or move like.  

3:13 

And then gender is also this really big kind of social and cultural idea right of how we should be doing gender as a society, how we should be bringing up our children and all of that. So for example Meg-John Barker and I * when we wrote How to Understand Your Gender we talk about gender  as a bio-psycho-social construct and what that means is that gender has a lot of components. Part of those components are about * our bodies and not just our genitals but also our chromosomal makeup, the way our brain works, and all of those kind of things but also about culture and when and where we were born in the world. And they're also about the way we interact with one another and how that shapes the way we think about ourselves and the way we think about other people.  

4:13 

And gender is also complex because usually it's not like we just have a gender right, * our bodies are also read in the context of race, ethnicity, class, disability, education status, citizenship, accents, *4:31 disability. For example you might have noticed that I have an accent because I'm Italian and English is my second language.  So we have this * intersection of identities. Intersectionality is an idea that comes  from Black feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw but we have this complex intersection of identities that interact with gender. So when we're talking about Gender Stories we're not talking about Gender Stories in isolation I”m really interested in how those stories interact with all those other identities and experiences.  

5:10 

And why I started this podcast as I was going around doing trainings * I'm an educator I'm also a writer and a therapist I talk about gender with people quite a bit and I'm an activist. And so as I was talking to people more and more about gender, people were sharing their stories of gender. Stories around disappointments that might have had or joys or the first time they realized they maybe they could be more expansive in their expression than they initially thought and and I really wanted an outlet for all of those stories. And * the reason I wanted an outlet for all those stories was because they helped me understand gender better and I know that there has been a lot more visibility of * specific genders in the past few years in the media. For example I'm a trans-masculine non-binary person. I know that is a lot of words, reminder that there is going to be an episode about language and terminology. But what that means is that I was assigned female at birth which means that people thought I was a girl when I was born and then as I grew up I realized that actually I was more comfortable presenting as masculine and then I realized that I did not identify as a man though and I did not identify as a woman but I identify more a a a non-binary person with a masculine expression, hence trans-masculine non-binary. 

6:45 

So basically there's been a lot more visibility for trans people in the media and often people think about gender as other peoples' gender or genders that are not their own. There is also ongoing and not just for the past several decades but for a very long time, lots of ongoing conversations about what is gender and how does it impact different people, right? There have been television shows about gender and television shows based on gender ideas and so I really wanted to have a place where we could talk about some of that. So what you can expect from the podcast are a mixture of reflections from me your host, I think about gender quite a bit but also interviews with experts, people like feminist scientists, writers, authors * 7:47 , therapists, trainers and educators and * 7:50 everyday life experts. What do I mean by everyday life experts? Pretty much everybody * we are all experts in our own life and I'm really interested in all of our stories.  

8:08 

So if you as you're listening to this if you think I absolutely have a gender story I'd like to share, please don't hesitate to contact me at genderstoriespodcast@gmail.com and I'll repeat this at the end of the episode. And you can also find it in the information about the podcast. So you can expect some interviews, some reflections * and the interviews will be like I said with both experts and everyday life experts so it could be anybody. 

8:39 

*At this point you may be asking yourself do I have an agenda? As your host and as somebody who is trans? Yes! I do have an agenda and I'm a very transparent person so I am so excited to be sharing my agenda with you. And my agenda is really for more gender liberation for everyone. I really think that this idea of gender as a binary which by the way is not an idea that's always been around. Sometimes we think about this idea of the gender binary, male/female, as something that is natural, as something that has been around forever, that is actually not true. So from science we know that even sex isn't binary – there are animals and beings in nature that shift sex as needed, or they don't have that differentiation into a binary so we know that is not inherent in nature. And from anthropology we know that different gender identities and expressions * have existed all across the globe and all across time – there have always been people of different gender identities and expressions.  

9:55 

* This idea of gender as a binary is much more modern, it's much more tied into settler colonialism and even in * the land on which I stand which is now called the US and which is  - I live in Minneapolis so I'm actually on Dakota and Anishinaabe land right now. On this very land tribes in my understanding, indigenous tribes had a multiplicity of names for different kinds of gender identities and expressions and that seems to be true across time and all across the globe. For example during the Roman Empire, I'm from Rome, Italy, so in the area I'm from originally, * there are priestesses who were called the Galli who were priestesses of the Phrygian goddess Cybele who usually were male assigned at birth but dressed in a feminine manner but would be considered trans-feminine people today probably so people who where assigned male at birth but expressed themselves in a feminine manner. So this idea of the gender binary has not always existed.  

11:10 

I'm not sure why I started talking about that. Oh yes, my agenda! So what is my agenda? Well my agenda is first of all to let you know things like the gender binary has not existed forever and it is not a universal idea. And humanity works in this beautiful way where there are myriads, multitudes of gender identities and expressions. And what my agenda is is for everyone to feel a little bit safer, for everybody to have a little bit more breathing room. And talking about breathing room, take moment to notice how you're feeling right now as you're listening to me speak. You might be feeling a little bit activated which means maybe you might have an opinion, you might not like anything I've been talking about so far, you might really like it, and probably somewhere in between that. You might not at all be sure you really want to be listening to this but gender is something that we all feel passionately about because its something that is core to us.  

12:15 

When people are pregnant for example, often in dominant culture one of the questions that they are asked is if it's a girl or a boy. I used to really confuse people when I was pregnant because I'm also a parent, and I would say things like “I really hope its a baby hippo, because those are kind of my favorite animals, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be a human.” And people got really upset because there was something that they wanted to know about this baby right, and it's something that I generally didn't know because my baby was really wiggly and they could never really quite tell what their genitals might be. But regardless, that would not necessarily mean that that was their gender, right. There are so many things that I wouldn't know about myself or that baby like the chromosomal makeup or how their brain worked or all of those things right? And then even when my baby was outside of me and become their own entity, people would interact with them very differently depending on whether they were reading them as a boy or a girl. And there's actually some really good studies about how people react  and talk differently to babies and young children depending on whether they perceive them to be girls or boys. And so that is a lot of pressure to put on ourselves and on our littles as they come into the world right.  

13:54 

There's all these family stories about gender, cultural stories, social stories, it's just quite a weight to put on each other like I said. And so if I do have an agenda, which I do, it's just that we can hold all that weight that we put on each other a little bit more open-handedly that we can kind of look at it and think What are the pieces that I find useful, fascinating, exciting, that I want to keep? And what are the pieces that really don't fit for me? And what does that mean if they don't really fit for me. And also how do those pieces interact with all those other pieces of identity like I was saying earlier. We are not just our gender there are all these other pieces around our bodies are read on the basis of our skin color, our race, our ethnicity, our class, our disability, our citizenship, all of those kinds of things. And the idea of Intersectionality which comes from a brilliant Black feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, really helps us kind of to look at those in more depth. And those are the kinds of conversations and stories that I”m really interested in. Our everyday stories but I”m also really interested in how those everyday stories help us understand one another a little bit more. And I”m also interested in kind of what science has to say about this so I'm also excited about bringing in experts to talk about this.  

15:47 

 * People write about gender there is so much more writing for example young adults about people with all genders and what does it mean for people to see themselves reflected in literary characters for example. As humans it is so meaningful for us when we can see ourselves in someone else's story. And so this is why I'm here. 

So hopefully that has told you a little bit about what to expect from this podcast. Other things you might be wondering about is how often will the podcast come out? So to begin with to keep it sustainable I”m aiming to get one episode out per month on the first day of the month so this is the first episode and you can expect the next episode on April 1st. And if you want to let me know what else you would like to see on this podcast, please do comment or email you can email me at genderstoriespodcast@gmail.com as I said earlier. Also if you're intrigued by some of the things I've been talking about I do have a book that I've written with Meg-John Barker called How to Understand Your Gender. I've also done an interview with Meg-John and Justin for their brilliant podcast, Meg-John and Justin's Podcast which you can find on Sound Cloud. And so there is an episode of the podcast where they interview me and Meg-John and I talk quite  little bit about the book. I've also been interviewed by Megan Speciale for The Thoughtful Counselor when they did the series on sexuality and that's more specifically about gender and mental health. And then of course you can buy the book if you want to How to Understand Your Gender: A Practical Guide For Exploring Who You are by Alex Iantaffi and Meg-John Barker. It is published by Jessica Kingsley both in the UK and the US and you can find it at your nearest local independent bookstore or through * Amazon and order it online and it's available both in paperback and Kindle format. So if you're interested in that please do check it out.  

18:48 

I'd like to for this episode since it's the first episode, I would really like to give a special shout out to my launch team! I actually took part in the 28 Days Podcast Movement Challenge which was basically in 28 days launch your podcast. Yes it is as terrifying as it sounds but it's also just this amazing community online of people sharing information and supporting each other. So I'm really grateful to the folks who setup the 28 Days Podcast Movement Challenge and also everybody who participated. It's just been so much amazing support! And then I've asked people I know to be on my launch team and I just really want to thank them for supporting and encouraging me and helping me promote this * podcast. I want thank my friend Leora for the logo that that made that you can see on whichever platform you are using to listen to my podcast and you can check out their website at leora.carbonmade.com. And I also want to thank my friend Maxwell for their music, their awesome music that you can find out on Sound Cloud and Spotify under Maxwell von Raven. And finally I want to thank you for listening and if you want to for giving me feedback. I'm sure there is plenty of feedback to be had since I”m such a new podcaster so I”m really * genuine and direct when I say that I would love to hear from you. You can tell me what you would like to see on the podcast moving forward and if there are any things you would like me to change. You can find the podcast website at genderstories.buzzsprout.com and you can also find me on a range of platforms, hopefully you found me on your favorite platform for listening to podcasts. So thank you so much. I hope that my ramblings have made some sense to you and that you will keep joining me in this adventure as I move forward. 

Thank you for listening and, until next time, good bye.