Episode Four: Joy as in Fuck Transphobia

[Opening theme]

Sophie: Hey y'all, Sophie Ziegler, they them pronouns with the Louisiana Trans or History Project and the Solidarity History Initiative.

Natalie: Hey y'all. It's your girl, Natalie Nia Faulk. I use she and they pronouns, and I'm a co-director with the Last Call Oral History project.

You're listening to Mais Jamais: the rise of Louisiana's anti-trans legislation and the story of our resistance, which is our podcast based on our joint oral history project that documents the 2021 and 2022 legislative sessions.

And this is episode four, Sophia, it's our last episode.

Sophie: What a run. What a good time.

Natalie: OK. There's plenty for y'all to listen to y'all in episode one, as you might remember, we did a sort of pre-history from the onslaught of anti-trans bills.

In episode two, we heard some of the bills that appeared in 2021 and 2022. In episode three, we heard about the birth of the Legislative Organizing Coalition for all LGBTQ plus Louisianas locALL, which brings together experts, activists, organizers, ,and healers, and all kinds of other folks who combined their various talents and interest into a big, beautiful tapestry.

Sophie: You know I love doing all those episodes and there was so much joy to be found in all of those. But also, you know, doing this podcast and reliving these interviews that we've done over the last few years has been kind of surreal, right? Because we are doing this during the 2023 legislative session, and this session is really hard, right?

We've got a lot of bills going on now. Most of them are progressing, and it's not clear that they're not gonna become the law. And so it's just hard not to feel terrible about the state of the world right now in a lot of ways.

Natalie: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. And which is why we thought it would be a good idea to end with an episode about Joy, to talk about joy, to listen to others talk about joy. Because joy is the main theme that came up in almost every single interview we did, despite our, maybe because of the heaviness of the work, joy shines through.

Sophie: And I know a lot of us have been thinking about joy in a number of different settings and in a number of different projects. And in fact, Natalie, you and I have been involved in joy related projects outside of this podcast. We are, here's a plug, part of the Mapping Trans Joy Project, which is you can find a mapping trans joy.org, which is a joy as resistance project to counteract the hate and to reimagine our geography through a lens of trans joy. This started several years ago, I guess now. And

Oh, time flies.

It started off focusing on Louisiana. We're now going national. We're building community partners around the country and we're bringing folks in and we're mapping joy and we're having a pretty good time.

Natalie: Yeah. Make sure y'all add y'alls coordinates into the map. And of course, last call for the last year has been working with six black trans organizers, artists and fellows in our inaugural creative fellowship. And so what we've been doing is capturing stories of black trans joy in New Orleans, and we're excited to announce that on June 25th, if you're listening to this in 2023, we're gonna be having a showcase of all of our oral histories creatively interpreted.

So yeah, joy has been the name of the game and this project is really rooted in uplifting and amplifying forgotten black trans histories in our work. And so much of it has been about laughter and skill building and investing in black trans arts and mapping trans Joy in and of itself is connected to that, and that's also about uplifting and amplifying the beautiful places in spaces that we have as trans people.

Sophie: And in thinking about joy and talking to folks about joy, I think there are two main threads that we see a lot of the time, right? So one is that joy can be a relatively passive thing, which is to say that sometimes joy finds you. You might be sitting outside under a tree on a beautiful day and just feel joyous and that's beautiful and certainly worth celebrating. We love it when that happens. And also, right, like just joy, like I love, just like minding my own business and like Joy falls on me. There's also a more active type of joy though, right? Like a way of purposely cultivating a space for joy, even demanding a space for joy. Joy in this sense is often a type of resistance. It's a way of refusing to allow other people to say and define your position in the world.

Natalie: Yes, god, y'all. In this episode, y'all, we are featuring segments of interviews that deal specifically with joy. We'll hear how people are finding joy during difficult times, how joy interacts with and supports and is intertwined with activism and organizing. Let's start with some reflections about how working with locALL is a source of joy.

First, we'll hear from Corrine about the joy of seeing locALL grow and evolve. The audio here is a little rough, but we think the beauty shines through.

Corrine: One of the things that brings me the most joy is seeing.

Seeing the coalition that has been formed to work on our issues. How many people show up to it? How many people were at the lobby day, how people have stepped up one thing that I was always worried about, and so were other kind of folks who, who were doing this even several years ago, Was worrying about not training up the next generation of leaders well enough.

seeing the locALL coalition come together seeing real name campaign working on their, actions has just filled me with, joy and hope

yeah. Corrine, thank you. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that wisdom as we create a Leaderful movement in our organizing spaces. Staying with the theme of locALL as a site of joy. We'll hear from Dietz and Pearl both talking about the role of the coalition in supporting each member and the joy that comes with it.

Dietz: If this is feeling like too much, we owe it to each other and the work to slow down and stop.

If this is feeling like we need to take a moment just to laugh about something stupid for a minute so we can shake out the lethargy of all of this negative energy, let's do it. Let's start with something joyful. Let's come back to something joyful. Let's take a break when we need to take a break. Let's not let tenants of white supremacy seep into our work so that we forget how much we get from each other while we're trying to fight.

If we're gonna do this work, we have to stay as healthy and as whole collectively for and with each other, as we can or we're gonna burn the fuck out and then we're gonna lose anyways, and then we're gonna be exhausted and sad and mad while we have less. I have been really inspired by the intentionality in particular to fight just as hard for each other, maintaining our wellness mentally, physically, spiritually, as we were fighting against the bad things. What beautiful, positive modeling that is for how we ought to fight for that and curate that in other spaces in our lives. So I'm really grateful for that.

We keep each other giggling and laughing and like at least able to laugh at the fucking absurdity of it, even if it's potentially got violence on the other end of it, how do we stay whole and excited to be in partnership with each other to survive this, whether we're successful in the ways that are easier to point to as successes or whether we lose, but we're still successful because we built a stronger coalition because we showed up for each other harder because when someone felt too tired, they were able to go rest and someone else was able to step in. I feel like these are the queer futures we're building because we wanna live in them. And that's, that's, that's about as powerful as we can be, I think. We can't control all of the legislation, but we can control how we show up for each. We have all of the control over those relationships.

Pearl: These groups in coalition and it's, it was really healthy for me because it offered me an opportunity to get some of that back and in an unapologetic way and around people that were happy for me doing it.

Um, it's no joke when they say, I give you permission to rest. I give you permission to love. Like sometimes getting that permission, even if you already have it from yourself, getting it from the world around you just makes it a little less anxiety filled. You know, I get to love on myself and I don't have to feel bad for what that looks like.

Sophie: I think Natalie, then you and I feel about the same when we work with locALL.

Natalie: Yeah, I definitely would agree. I'm like, there's nothing like ending the first day of the week on, or an organizing call with a bunch of people who also know what it's like to navigate the world, um, in the trans and queer bodies, and then come and just kind of. Be silly with each other, even through the deep severity of the things that we have to face when people are kind of coming for our existence.

We're kind of laughing at the face of it. It's like, oh, we, you're a joke to us. And like, we're actually here to celebrate each other and to kind of like build this sweetness. And it's been a core question, um, in the locALL space, how do we cultivate joy and how do we like make structural healing justice a thing that exists.

And now we'll move away from locALL specifically, but we will stick with organizing. We were really fortunate to talk to Mar, who is part of the Real Name campaign with an important reminder about the need for levity.

We'll then hear from Clifton, a doctor that works with youth, and they'll talk about the joy and hope that comes from working with younger generations

Mar: For me, I think, is being able to have humor about it, especially when it comes to legislative session out of like the various arenas you could be organizing in.

Because it is pretty comical how our country runs politically and the amount of power that these politicians have and, going to the state house and seeing all of the pomp and circumstance silly ways that people are just being like respectable in that space, but making horrible decisions with smiles on their faces and like laughing about people's rights being taken away. I think it's really important to have some like levity around that and being able to like, Make fun of the whole situation, because at the end of the day, like they are going to do what they're going to do in our organizing definitely has an impact, but it might not have an impact on many of their votes, so being able to just recognize that isn't something that we have control over all the time. Just maintaining some distance and like boundaries from that cruelty toxicity is really necessary. I know it can feel pretty wearing for many activists, like who are doing various forms of work just to be in the state capital.

Looking back at how I was feeling at this time last year. And I knew like, all right we're gonna do this again. I would like to go into this as much as I'm able to not burn out I going into it well rested to the extent that is possible, and that would probably get harder over time and like afterwards being able to rest.

Like what might make this a bit more sustainable?

Clifton: I have the privilege of working with a lot of youth. I'm really enthusiastic about this next generation of kids. They're pretty awesome.

And they're finding ways to thrive and find joy, and find community, and find pride in that. And as, someone who came out a little bit later in life myself, I just appreciate when people can just rock their authentic selves. I know everyone is on their own individual journey, but just seeing how much easier it is and just wishing that I had that and just being so happy that they can find so many kids like themself so easily and there is more people who look and think and act and identify like them.

I do have a lot of hope. I know that we might be going through a really difficult time and it might feel like, Okay, here we are again. Didn't we deal with all this kind of stuff in the nineties?

I have a lot of hope but I also know that hope only exists because I know that there are people who are gonna have to fight for it.

And so as long as we can keep getting people excited about just being involved in whatever that looks like at the community level, at the legislative level, at the civic level, and their own cities and advocating for change, I think that's how we get there. So I think we got a lot of work to do.

And I think we got a lot of people aging into a phase in their life where they can start getting more engaged. I'm really looking forward to what the future brings for us.

Sophie: In addition to the joy that comes from being supported and uplifted through locALL and other organizing efforts, we also heard a lot about the need to seek your own joy about giving yourself permission to feel joy and to cultivate the required conditions for that joy to flourish.

Let's bring back over to Pearl to get us started on this thread,

Pearl: I like that I have energy to fight. And I also found at some point that I had so many fights around me, I needed to be choosy and I didn't wanna fight everything and I didn't wanna fight everyone.

So like what are the things that like, I'm definitely going to be heading on into battle with and what are the things that I am battling with?

I, I think if I have a one line takeaway, it's: Do not martyr yourself in a world that would be happy to do it for you.

Somebody, somebody was like, they canonize people as saints for less than the work that you're doing. I was just sitting with it and I'm like, Those are martyrs, aren't they?

I mean, like those are people that like, Yeah, I guess they do. Like, I don't need to, I don't need to go hungry to prove a point. Like I can find ways to get paid, make ways to get paid. Like I've always been, um, like of a hustle mentality. But I found at some point, like I was just doing that because I was used to having to get everything done and not being able to always change my environment.

So yeah, don't martyr yourself in a world that is more than happy to do it for you. And I started to look at the ways in which, I don't know, maybe it was habit, um, maybe it was concern, but I wanted all this liberation for the people around me, but wasn't mirroring it for myself. I wanted all of this freedom and all this access for the people around me, but wasn't mirroring it for myself.

And I was like if every single person in this world has everything they need, to be healthy and to be loved, and I don't, I still am not done with my job. So why am I leaving myself out?

Sometimes my desires are desires that were built within capitalism. So how do I struggle with, "I want this" and because I live within a capitalist society, because I live in a harmful society, an oppressive society. Here are the other things attached to it. But does that mean I just like consistently go without?

How do I keep my well full? I'm consistently pouring into others. How do I mitigate the harm to myself as I mitigate the harm that's happening in the world? And it doesn't take away from who I am. I can, I can go and have a fancy meal if I wanna go have a fancy meal, if I want those shoes, I'm gonna get those shoes. If I want to save and put it in an investment account, then I can save and put it in an investment account.

I can learn new ways to show up for myself because the ways I've shown up before were under someone else's circumstance. The ways that I showed up before were in someone else's world. But as I start to create my own circumstance, as I start to create a world that I want to be living in, what does it look like for me in the here and the now?

So I also feed people a lot. I love cooking. That is a joyful thing. Um, my magic is in my food. That's a tip. So anybody hearing this, you know what a lot of people don't know. My magic is in my food. Um, and I just, I love having people feel good. You know, I love spinning around my kitchen and communing with my ancestors and creating something that I don't quite understand right now, but it tastes phenomenal when I'm done and I get to thank whoever joined me in the kitchen.

So there are a lot of ways that I'm finding joy, but this is definitely finding ways of healing myself and my community that don't feel obligatory. They don't feel like I have to. It's because I choose to.

Sophie: Here's Anaya talking about the permission to just take some time to move back a little bit as needed to be sure that we don't burn ourselves out.

A'Niya: I've become even more intentional about caring for myself. I can't magically make things better on my own for my people in this state overnight.

And to be honest, I'm not even sure that would even happen in my lifetime, but what I can do is I can at least plant the seed. To where people feel emboldened enough to take up that work themselves. And for folks coming after me, there's at least already a path for them to build on. And so just become very honest about that and also being very clear eyed about what I can offer this moment and this movement. It's really allowed me to give myself grace and permission to take a couple days off, to turn off my phone. It's that old familiar saying you can't pour from an empty cup. So I really think of rest and also joy and pleasure.

I think of those things as necessities, not rewards

Sophie: I really appreciate both Pearl and A'Niya here, and what they're saying together and the permission that it gives us, because not everyone can do everything

Natalie: syeah, I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. In the way we think about creating change, it's typically like seven generations before us and seven generations after us. And so what A'Niya is talking about to some degree too, is the people who come after me are gonna know that I took care of myself, that I was like, I, I wasn't just giving myself up for the cause and that I have built up this practice of resilience in restoration in my own self and in my own body.

and I've done the work and that this work is life's work and that it might not be done with me. But know that I have pushed a needle forward and know that I remained well in it too.

And I think a good place to close out with these quotes might be with Dylan. Dylan has done so much for the trans and queer activism landscape in Louisiana over the last decade plus, and we really love his reflections here on embracing more fully his identity.

Dylan: Oh, this is gonna be publicly available, I'm having a lot of adventures right now. I'm exploring a lot of new things for myself. I have like gone back into my gender, which is really like, that's a really weird way of thinking about it maybe, but it's like I've existed sort of outside of my, outside of my gender for a while now because, it is, it can be so much easier in these kinds of spaces to just like to just fit yourself into whatever the, the closest mainstream presentation might be to how you feel. And I'm like, fuck that, not doing it anymore. And instead I'm like leaning into my sort of like self-expression, which has been really, really fun and really healing for me.

I'm like letting go of of what other people think or the shame that can be attached sometimes to like having interests that you think other people are gonna judge. And it's like, we're not doing it anymore, we're done with it.

And so I've just sort of decided that this year is going to be about setting myself up to live life without compromise. And that means so many things, but it means in particular not holding myself back from doing things just because of what's expected of me.

And also like learning how to be in relationship with people in different ways and like learning what, what are other kinds of commitments that I can be making to people or other kinds of relationships that I can, What is like, how do we like, also, like what is the, like, as queer people, like what does it look like for us to blend these lines between friendship and romance and like stop seeing everything as like one or the other or separate and yeah.

So all of those things, those are, those are the, the reflections I'm living in right now and I'm very excited about.

Sophie: Now, it seems like a very, very good time to give a big thanks to everyone who took the time to talk to us over the course of this project.

Shout out to Dylan and Pearl Anaya. Sarah Jane. Peyton, Corin.

Natalie: Ed. Serena Mar Clifton. Dietz. Wendy and Toni.

Sophie: Nathalie, now that this is all wrapping up, I would love to ask you since we're thinking of joy, where are you finding joy these days

Natalie: yeah, that's a good question. I think the places where I'm finding joy is in, I think it's always been in my, people, like always celebrating my good, like Creole Lafayette roots and eating good food with people has always felt really good. Um, and then there's these things that are like super expansive, like within the trans community, like always being nebulous.

In I like, The way I live and the way that I work and the way that I identify, allowing myself to be this, like always shifting nebulous cloud of like growth and love to myself. Um, and in being forced to like take rest, like a lot of, there's a lot of big themes this year and rest is definitely one of them.

And so I've been told by many people to sit my ass down, take a rest. And so I'm lucky enough to be loved so deeply that people are carving out space for me to chill out and take the time to be.

but mostly just being able to like carve out communities of care that are rooted in bringing what I have to bring to the table and not worried about like what people will say about it, or not having to bring all the plates to the table.

Um, and honestly, this podcast and these oral histories have given me so much joy. Sophie, you have given me so much joy, laughter, and yeah. Yeah. I think being in a cooperative creative space with you has been really fun and interesting because we've been able to like, fuck the mold and just do like, completely do it in a completely different and random way.

I mean, it felt really good.

Sophie: I completely agree about this project. It's funny cuz no matter how grouchy I am, and I am, like I go back and listen to these interviews and prep of these episodes and everyone is just so wonderful, right? Like everyone is so thoughtful and open and interesting to talk to that it's hard for even for me to stay grouchy and I, I'm finding a lot of joy in, you know, family life.

I've got kids, we're doing kids stuff. It's the summer now as we record this, so we're like outside doing stuff, riding bikes, seeing movies in the theater.

Natalie: I will say too, I think that's one of the questions that this, this podcast was trying to pose. Like, I would encourage everyone listening to this to continue to be reminded that like all the interviews you've heard, all had different skill sets, experiences, um, but we're able to then contribute to the overall bigger picture of what we came to do.

So the call to action that I think we have for folks is, A) what skills do you already have? Who do you already have in community? And how can you show up? Whether it's in the legislative spaces, if it's on the streets, if it's in the kitchen tables, how can you show up to be part of this larger giving and offering that locALL and that this podcast is about?

Um, I think the other question that call to action is to like, How are you cultivating joy in your life, in the lives of your fellow trans kin? And I think those are the big questions that this podcast series has been asking this whole time. How do we celebrate trans life? How do we protect trans life?

Sophie: And that's how joy is resistance, right? We're thinking about, how many people don't want us here, and we're thinking that joy is repositioning ourselves as central to the story of this state, central to the stories of every location that we live in.

I love it.

Natalie: Broadening the narrative. It's not just struggle.

Sophie: Well, you know what, and I loved what you said about finding rest. I love working with you, but also it's time to rest, Natalie, we're done with this. It's time to rest.

Natalie: Yeah. We've put in some work, y'all, we've been interviewing people since 2021 .

We've been doing this work and we've cultivated this beautiful offering for y'all. But inside of that is the Mapping Trans Joy project is all the various appearances in the oral history and social justice spaces, and then the movement journalism spaces and the like facilitations and the like workshop building.

And so like this project is one creative output, but our collaboration has been so expansive. Um, and yeah, it's time for us to rest.

Sophie: I hope you get rest too, everybody.

Love y'all. Thank you so much.

Natalie: Bye y'all.