#things are scary for queer people in the UK and the US at the moment | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stereogeekspodcast · 4 years

Text

[Transcript] Season 1, Episode 2. Flashback Favourite – Supernatural

Supernatural came to an end in 2020. We look back at 15 years of the show and discuss why we loved it. Spoilers ahead for the finale of the show.

Listen to the episode on Anchor.

Read more about Supernatural here: Best Supernatural episodes Best Dean moments Best Sam moments The food of Supernatural Revisiting the Destiel scene on Supernatural

[Continuum by Audionautix plays]

Ron: Welcome to the second episode of Stereo Geeks! Today, we'll be talking about Supernatural. I'm Ron.

Mon: I'm Mon. In 2005, the world was introduced to Sam and Dean Winchester and their family business—hunting monsters. This year, in 2020, we said goodbye to the Winchester brothers and their lasting legacy. In this Flashback Favorite, we talk about Supernatural.

Mon: We’ll be discussing the entire series, including its finale, so there will be spoilers ahead.

Ron: We didn't we didn't start watching Supernatural in 2005.

Mon: No, I was too scared of horror stuff, so I refused to watch Supernatural

Ron: But I do remember us seeing the ads. I was quite intrigued. We eventually started watching it around the third or fourth season?

Mon: Yeah. I think it was after Mark Shepard attended the first Comic Con in Dubai.

Ron: That was in 2012.

Mon: He talked about it. And then we started following the show in earnest.

Ron: And then we went back to the first season and started watching it again. And yeah, it was quite the experience!

Mon: It's draws you in, especially with the dynamic between Sam and Dean Winchester.

Ron: Yes, the two brothers are similar in many ways to us.

Mon: Yes, I think so.

Ron: They're sweet. They're funny. They're sarcastic. They get into trouble a lot. But they always come back for each other.

Mon: And I like how it's always the little moments, which I like the most about their character dynamic. And the way they fight with each other. They get angry but then they have their backs, supporting each other at every turn.

Ron: That's exactly how you and I are. We fight. We get angry with each other. And then there's just a reason for us to come back together.

Mon: Absolutely. The show has been problematic at times and has a lot of issues. And we will touch on some of that in this episode. But honestly, it's really that central dynamic that keeps us coming back.

Ron: It's not just Dean and Sam that carry the show. We also see them grow their family. In the sense that they bring in Crowley, who is, for a long time, the King of Hell. Castiel joins them in season four, and he becomes an integral part of the show. He also becomes their family.

Mon: He's like a third brother.

Ron: He is a third brother. But, as we learn, he feels a lot more than that.

Mon: What do we enjoy about Supernatural the most?

Ron: Sam and Dean! Well, I like the fact that when we first started watching the ads for the show, we had very clear divide. I very much liked Sam, and you were very drawn to Dean.

Mon: I liked Dean because he’s snarky.

Ron: I liked Sam's sweetness. He was very sweet. He still is very sweet. He's also very much a younger brother.

Mon: He always needs to be protected and taken care of. But he's always very earnest. He's more responsible.

Ron: And he has a particular way of doing things. Whereas Dean is very much ‘let's just go and do something’. And sometimes, he doesn't plan. But Sam is very booksmart.

Mon: He's very meticulous. He's very organized. Dean is much more of the doer.

Ron: Sam is the researcher. And I am the researcher.

Mon: Yeah, I do.

Ron: You do things, I research things. So, that's definitely one of the biggest draws, that we saw parts of our personality in these two characters. But it was also the stories.

Mon: Yeah, it was very entertaining. We had so many different kinds of creatures from myths and legends. I would say I preferred when there were mostly vampires and werewolves. When the show really went into the biblical stuff? I've always struggled with it.

Ron: I guess I agree with that, as well. I do like how they handled the biblical elements. Angels are dicks. Demons can be friends. Those are unexpected ways of handling these elements. I really enjoyed that.

Mon: I think they worked really hard to subvert some of the expectations of it being seen as a religious show. I remember seeing an interview or something a long time ago, where Jared Padalecki was saying, when he saw the script, it was talking about angels and demons. He said, Oh, my God, is this becoming a religious show. But it wasn't. It was still the same show, just different characters and creatures being added to it.

Ron: And they really expanded their roster. Initially, the main antagonists were demons, and I enjoyed the way they were bringing in that kind of mythos. But I like the other kinds of creatures that they brought in from around the world.

Mon: I think we learned more about their interpretation of djinns and other creatures who, you know, you really had research!

Ron: Yes, we don't know that much about all the other places outside of India. We do know some of the legends from the United States and from the UK. But it is good to see some elements from South America.

Mon: There was that episode with the Japanese ghost, remember? Who's tied to that beer or wine? That was a funny episode.

Ron: Ma Kali ends up in one episode, played by Rakesh Sharma, who is very cool. So yeah, that was fun. Not many Indian elements in the show, but still enough to for us to enjoy.

Ron: But we need to talk about the fact that the show was supposed to end in season five.

Mon: You can clearly tell the demarcation between when they had a full plan and when they went off the rails. Eric Kripke, the creator of the Supernatural, he had a five year plan, and it was supposed to end with Sam making a sacrifice and taking Lucifer down with him to hell, and essentially saving the world. However, the show was renewed for another season.

Ron: Which is usually good news!

Mon: Unfortunately, that means that Sammy came back and they had to come up with a whole new plan. And you can see how varied and inconsistent the stories and seasons are from that point on.

Ron: I think season six still works. They had soulless-Sam, which was a very interesting interpretation of the character. But season seven, you can that it was laboured.

Mon: I don't think anybody thought the Leviathan were interesting or scary creatures. And it was probably the most forgettable season, aside from maybe a few episodes here and there.

Ron: True. Dick Roman as a villain would have worked in 2020. The corporate douchebag definitely is a villain right now. In season seven? Not so much.

Mon: You're right. And he didn't have that kind of charisma. They didn't pad up that mythos. It really did that season a great disservice.

Ron: And remember, this is the season where Bobby died.

Mon: Oh, really?

Ron: Yes. He died at the hands of Dick Roman. When we look back at it now, Bobby, who was basically Sam and Dean's adoptive father, going down to somebody like Dick Roman is so unfair.

Mon: Oh, wow, that is unfair. And then we move on to other seasons, which honestly, they're a blur from eight to 15. They really are a blur. We had purgatory, that was an interesting the concept. I loved it. Dean being stuck in purgatory, fantastic concept, and him befriending a vampire, Benny? Dean, of all people, who hates anything which is not human, almost sacrificed himself to bring a vampire back to Earth. That was quite an arc for him.

Ron: It was a great way of changing the character. And it cemented Dean and Cas' relationship while they were in purgatory. Despite the fact that they were separated for a very long time, Cas comes back to him when Dean prays to him. It is a very beautiful moment. And now that we know how Cas felt. A lot of people have been pointing to that moment saying, this was one of the one of the earliest indications about how Cas really felt about him.

Mon: Actually, that does make sense. Because Cas bends every possible rule in the angel-rulebook to save Dean and Sam and the rest of the Winchester family.

Ron: Yes. Cas was obviously a rule follower for a very long time until he met Dean. And then his entire concept of what was good and bad completely changed and it's quite touching.

Ron: Of course, the show wasn't without its problematic moments.

Mon: In the early seasons of Supernatural, I have to argue that Dean may have come across as a creepy dude. Just because he has that sweet face and general charisma, and of course, he has a good heart. He would lie to a lot of the people he would meet to get his way.

Ron: I actually don't remember that. I'm kind of relieved that I don't.

Mon: He used to go around telling ladies that he was a producer or something. That is textbook, 101, creepy guy behavior.

Ron: The problematic elements that I was thinking about was the fact that they do not have enough people of color on the show.

Mon: Okay, we are talking about systemic problems.

Ron: And also, the ladies on the show almost always ended up dead.

Mon: They're all dead. We don't have any in the finale.

Ron: If you go back to the very first episode, not only did we lose Mary Winchester in the past, we also lose Jessica, Sam's girlfriend. Later, we lose Jo, and her mom, Ellen

Mon: They are fellow hunters and were series regulars for a while, but they died in a blaze of glory.

Ron: Later on, Charlie joined the show, played by Felicia Day. She was pretty much a little sister for them

Mon: Charlie was the first queer character of note on the show and she was a regular for several seasons

Ron: She was a great character. She brought out such a wonderful side to them. Made the brothers very protective. They were very friendly. They enjoyed having her around. She's so smart. so helpful and Then she died.

Mon: She got killed by the least-memorable characters on the show ever! It was an ignominious death because she was killed by Frankenstein's descendants. Let's not even go there.

Ron: Very unfortunate.

Mon: Apart from Charlie, there were very few queer characters on the show, in latter seasons. We did see a few more but they were never there for more than an episode.

Ron: Dean did pair up with a couple of hunters, who we learned during the duration of the episode, that they were a married couple. They were also two men of color. So, it was a bit surprising considering the show had been not very friendly with queer characters before.

Mon: They were downright homophobic time to time.

Ron: I have to agree with that. If you remember the Supernatural convention episode, where a pair of Sam and Dean cosplayers turn out to be a couple. Dean did not look happy.

Mon: Yeah, Dean was very homophobic in the earlier seasons. But I think he got over it.

Ron: I hope that that was a criticism from the fans that the show actually understood and they worked towards overcoming. But I feel like now, when we rewatch older seasons, there will be elements that will be a bit more jarring than when we first saw them.

Mon: I worry about watching a lot of stuff from a few years ago, simply because there are so many elements which may have been considered the norm, but right now would be horrible to watch.

Ron: The show tended to focus mostly on white, male characters.

Ron: If you look at the posters for last maybe seven or eight seasons, there were only white men.

Mon: There was Sam, Dean, Cas, and Crowley and then it changed to Sam, Dean, Cas, and Jack.

Ron: There was room to change that. But the show never seemed to take it.

Mon: I don't know if it was because they were just blinkered or they just didn't care. But they didn't try hard enough. We started seeing more characters of color among the extras, among the episode regulars but even then, we could probably count them on one hand.

Ron: Unfortunately, that's been a problem with not just Supernatural. A lot of the CW shows, and a lot of shows in general.

Mon: Especially genre shows.

Ron: They do skew very white and male.

Mon: All that being said, I think a lot of Supernatural fans love the dynamics and the character arcs. Which is why it's lasted 15 seasons. It has attracted fans from all over the world, across races and orientations, which is a testament to how hard they've tried to make it an entertaining show.

Ron: It's definitely entertaining. Mainly because Sam and Dean find new ways to get out of situations.

Mon: There's action, there's drama.

Ron: There's a lot of heart. And I think that's why people like the show so much. That's why we like the show.

Ron: A great story can attract people, but great characters keep them watching.

Ron: What are some of your favorite episodes?

Mon: I started with ‘Mystery Spot’. That was the first full fledged Supernatural episode that I watched. It was probably not the best introduction because it was hilarious. But it was a great introduction to the two characters, and the differences between Sam and Dean. Dean's antics and his many, many deaths in that episode were just too good. Sam's reaction to having to relive that particular day. Brilliant. Also, the final arc of the episode is Sam desperately trying to figure out a way to save Dean, which gave me an inkling into how interconnected and dependent there relationship was. And also that it was the first of many, many resurrections after.

Ron: ‘Mystery Spot’ is also one of my favorite episodes, it is absolutely hilarious. But another episode that was also very funny was ‘Yellow Fever’.

Mon: That episode, it's just too good.

Ron: Jensen Ackles kills that episode. He is so good.

Mon: That guy has so much range. He can be so emotional, so dramatic. And yet, so funny.

Ron: He has excellent comedic timing. My favorite moment is always going to be him finding that cat, and losing his mind screaming.

Mon: I cannot not laugh at that. Even now, just thinking about it is making me laugh. And he makes it work. He really makes those silly moments, that slapstick humor work.

Ron: What are the other ones that you like?

Mon: Something that I have always found interesting, especially in the latter half of the series, they've tried to shake things up a bit, do things which are unconventional.

Ron: One of the bolder and probably more successful choices they made was the ‘French Mistake’.

Mon: It’s the first time they went meta.

Ron: Apparently, they were quite concerned about how people would react to it. I have read some pieces about how ‘French Mistake’ doesn't work. But as fans of the show, ‘French Mistake’ definitely works!

Mon: Yes, I recall reading about Jared Padalecki talking about how when he and Jensen Ackles were called into the writers’ room, they were quite worried. And then they found out that this episode was going to be transporting Sam and Dean into the real world, where they will become Jensen and Jared. And it was basically a caricature of all these actors, they loved it, how the episode turned out, it was hilarious. It was funny. It was a joke-a minute. And it worked.

Ron: Everybody plays these really odd versions of themselves. Misha, is so good as this mousy outsider who doesn't quite fit in. It's brilliant. I definitely love that episode.

Mon: We have seen it so many times.

Ron: It's actually embarrassing, the amount of times we’ve seen it but I don't care because it makes me happy.

Mon: Two of the more unconventional episodes, which really shouldn't have worked, but are brilliant, and I would say the top two episodes in the entire series, and they are ‘Baby’ and ‘ScoobyNatural’.

Ron: ‘Baby’ is an episode where the entire story is told through the car's eyes. It's amazing.

Mon: The camerawork, the story itself. It's everything and they don't miss a beat. There's action in there, there's drama, there's bonding between the brothers. It's so beautifully played out because baby has been a character in the show for a very, very long time.

Ron: The season five finale did something similar. It made the story about how baby had seen Sam and Dean grow up. But this episode took it one step further by showing it from her point of view. And it was just so engaging. It is beautiful.

Mon: It was really beautiful, especially because sometimes a gimmick is just a gimmick. But this is not. This was a story seen from the point of view of an unconventional character but a very important character in the show.

Ron: And anybody who's watched the show from the very beginning will love this episode, because we love the car.

Mon: Yeah, that's for sure. And what about ‘ScoobyNatural’? When I heard about it. I was so scared.

Ron: I didn't want to watch this episode. We grew up watching Scooby Doo. We enjoyed the show, but it was very much a child’s show. We didn't think that we would actually engage with it as adults. And then ScoobyNatural came along, and we completely changed our mind.

Mon: I don't know how they made it work. It is so good. It has the ethos of Supernatural, but it maintains the tone and style of the original Scooby Doo cartoons. I think it's a testament to the fact that it's just entertainment. That's all that it is. And it still got those character moments, not just for Supernatural fans but for Scooby Doo fans. It was so good.

I love the fact that they were still able to include those silly little Scooby moments, like them running through the doors in the corridor, them getting scared by a ghost which is actually a human being. And the main story itself is in line with how Scooby Doo episodes used to be structured, but it still has the ethos of Supernatural.

Ron: The way they marry these two completely different shows, which are intended for different audiences, is just so incredible. And it's one of our favorites.

Mon: I can't imagine anyone who’s a fan of both the shows to go into that particular episode and not come out loving it. I was definitely worried about this very odd marriage of concepts. But while it was that, it was so entertaining.

Ron: I think our top five favorites from Supernatural are always going to be the most entertaining episodes and ‘ScoobyNatural’ has to be on that list because of that reason.

Mon: Well, let's talk about how confusing that finale was.

Mon: Well, a lot of people were confused by the ending of season 15, episode 19, because they had a little montage saying goodbye to all the characters who had appeared on the show. And Sam and Dean were basically riding off into the sunset.

Ron: It felt very much like a finale.

Mon: The boss fight had happened. Chuck was gone. Jack was God. What else did you need? But there was still one more episode. We were all confused. A lot of people on the internet were confused. You and I definitely were.

Ron: We actually had to Google it.

Mon: We were certain that we had got it wrong. Anyway, the next week, there was the actual finale, which started off as any other Supernatural episode. It began with the boys in the bunker, going through their daily routine, eating food, being silly, Dean finding a pie fest to enjoy some pie. And then they ran off to hunt some vampires. Everything was going just like the old days. And then Dean got impaled!

Ron: And you and I held hands and cried silently, because we could not believe it was happening.

Mon: So, this is how they set up the shot. You saw that giant nail sticking out of the pylon. And I was convinced, like most people, that yes, Dean is going to use that to impale the vampire so that Sam can cut off his head. And then when somebody did get impaled, I was like, yes, they caught the vampire. No, I was wrong. It was Dean who was impaled. And there was no getting out of it. It was such a shocking moment.

Ron: And we realized what had happened before Sam.

Ron: Because Sam didn't see that nail. So, he cuts off the last vampire's head, and he's just asking Dean to come along. And Dean can't, he's literally stuck.

Mon: Okay. I found that scene overlong, but it was literally made so that it would eke out our emotions along with the characters’ emotions.

Ron: I agree, because Dean's death speech would make a Bollywood film proud.

Mon: It lasted 15 minutes.

Ron: I think it was a very, very long scene. I was literally thinking to myself, how are you not dead yet?

Mon: He hasn't bled out. He hasn't gone ashen. That being said… the tears! It is a tearjerker.

Ron: There's a lot of emotion, on screen and off screen.

Mon: The restraint that the two actors showed as they delivered their lines was brilliant. But then when they finally… we're coming to the close of the scene, and the two of them, they touch heads, they hug each other, and then they really just let it go, let go of their emotions. Fantastic. It was a roller coaster ride.

Ron: Can I just say that Jared Padalecki has been astounding this season. From the very first episode of season 15, it feels like he's not actually acting, he's just there.

Mon: He's so natural. That scene where he’s half-sad, half-angry at Dean? That scene in the car when he's so furious at Dean for lying to him about Jack. Amazing. He should be given an Emmy just for that scene.

Ron: Because that kind of scene can be easily overacted. We have seen that kind of scene being overacted even on Supernatural. But everything is much more restrained. Much more organic this season. And especially the second half, which obviously had to be shot during the pandemic. You could see that they didn't have the kind of time or the luxury of reshooting sections. So they did their best when they had the opportunity.

Mon: I wonder if the break because of the pandemic also helped them reconnect with the characters and reconnect with their own talents, which is why the latter half just felt more natural?

Ron: I have to agree with that. In fact, I read that Jensen and Jared didn't actually get holidays for most of their run on Supernatural. So, the enforced break from the pandemic would have given them an opportunity to just reconnect with themselves.

Mon: I'm not surprised, actually. The schedules they have are insane on The CW.

Ron: So how did you feel seeing Dean die for good? Since Dean is your favorite?

Mon: Shocked! I couldn't believe it. No, seriously. You remember when the ads came on? And I was like, ‘no way did they kill Dean. No way!’ And I went on and on, because I was sure that this can't be happening.

Mon: My one argument would be that at one point, Sam says, ‘okay, we'll figure it out. We'll find a way to resurrect you’. And Dean says, ‘no, no more resurrections’. I feel like they needed a stronger line over there. Perhaps one that says there are no more resurrections anymore. Something to say that the world has reset. Because when you leave an opening, it seems really sad. And we'll get into why it seems even sadder that that if Sam had the option to go and resurrect him, why wouldn't he? So, I would argue that that's the only point where I really needed a stronger hand in the script.

Mon: But it still didn’t diminish the impact of what happened to Dean. He goes out exactly the way he thought he always would. In a fight, dead at a young age.

Ron: That is actually even sadder when you say it.

Mon: That's precisely what he says to Sammy, that this is how I was always meant to go.

Ron: Dean's trajectory was always going to be a young death. But it doesn't mean that that it doesn't hurt.

Mon: For sure, for sure. And I think because we were all expecting a happy ending and we will talk about the happy ending soon. We were all expecting a happy ending for these two brothers who have fought so hard for each other and for the world, that it comes as a real shock that the creators went for it. The world is cruel.

Ron: This is true. The world also goes on, no matter who you lose. I feel like this episode hits different because of the pandemic.

Ron: People have lost a lot of people. I don't think there's anybody who doesn't know somebody they've lost. We people who are gone now because of COVID. And everybody else is left behind. I think the finale was trying to tell us that people die. And the people who are left behind are grieving in their own way. But they don't have a choice.

Mon: And they go on with life, which is what we see Sam do. From the montage that we see, it seems obvious that Sam has lived a very full life. We can't know for sure whether it is a very happy life. We can just hope.

Ron: From what we see, Sam does have a happy life. It just has a Dean-shaped hole in it.

Mon: Well said. Who do you suppose Sam's wife is?

Ron: I don't know. I really, I really wanted to see who it was. You see a shape in the back when he's playing with baby Dean. But I couldn't tell who it was.

Mon: I feel like because they cast an extra with long dark hair, she has to be Eileen. I'll tell you why. When Sam gets a call on Dean's phone for another case, the person specifically says Donna mentioned that you can help. Which means that Donna is back alive, which means Eileen is alive. And we know that Eileen and Sam were together before she disappeared, thanks to Chuck. So, I think Sam and Eileen had a happy life together, had baby who becomes grown up Dean. But as you said, there's always going to be that Dean-shaped hole.

Ron: And we know that Sam still misses Dean, because, well, he calls his son Dean. But he keeps the Impala. He does not drive the Impala. He leaves the bunker. And we see a much older Sam rip of the cover from the Impala. And when he sits inside, he is so full of sorrow and anger. And it's a great scene. It's so moving and all I could think was so many years have gone by and he still misses Dean. That is never going to change.

And I also like the fact that obviously, young Dean has been told stories about his lovely uncle. Because when Sam is on his deathbed, he is still holding on like Dean did. And young Dean then tells Sam the same thing that Sam told Dean so that he could go.

Mon: I think the episode was actually really good.

Ron: It's been very frustrating seeing what's been written on the internet about it.

Ron: I know people have different points of view about the show. The fandom is varied. The fandom has different reactions to it. There are a lot of people who stopped watching the show, understandably, after season five. It was a bit of a slog at times, but we hung on and this season finale, it rewards people who stayed throughout. Because there are a lot of moments in the last two episodes that call back to moments after season five.

Mon: One of the things that really worked for me with the finale, especially with Sam and Dean, their history really comes to the fore. The finale was a celebration of the central love story of this show, which is Sam and Dean and them being brothers for life, irrespective of how their lives actually turned out. The fact that Sam spent probably half his life without his brother, it is still a celebration of how much they loved each other, how much people in reality continue to love the people that they've lost.

We also have to remember that this finale was shot in the middle of a pandemic. There are going to be constraints, and you can see it. There is no way that the original finale, whatever storyline that they planned to go with, would have had such a limited cast of original characters.

Ron: Very true. There were also a few makeup moments that were very strange.

Mon: Let's be honest, Sam's old wigs were terrible.

Ron: And there was absolutely no makeup on his face.

Mon: It's like he grew old, but he didn't. Where can we get that superpower? That being said, Jared Padalecki, the way he held himself as an old man? Brilliant. He was trying so hard to make the lack of makeup work and the lack of a good wig really work for him, to show how many years had passed.

Ron: That scene in the Impala is the one with the bad wig and the no-makeup, but it still hurts when you see him so upset and still missing his brother.

Mon: What I feel is sometimes some people get so stuck in the technicalities of moments and scenes that they lose the bigger picture. We all want everything to be perfect. But if you're going to lose the essential message, the essential feeling, then maybe you’re missing the whole point of why this finale exists?

Ron: There were way too many people weighing in on the finale, making memes about the Impala going to heaven and not Cas. And I can't help but think, did you watch the finale?

Mon: I did not know people were doing that. They literally talk about Cas being Jack's right-hand man. He helped shape the new version of heaven. How are people not seeing that? And I understand some people's grievances. Let's briefly mention the Destiel moment from Episode 18 of this season. Cas and Dean are running away from Death. And the only way for them to survive is for Cas to sacrifice himself to the Empty.

Cas knows that the only way to successfully call the Empty, he has to be at his happiest moment. And he is the most happy when he confesses his true feelings for Dean. He says he loves him. So finally, after several seasons of the two of them making goo-goo eyes at each other, we know that Cas actually does romantically love Dean. And then he dies. And Dean doesn't react. Dean’s only reaction is that he starts crying, and he's alone, and he's despondent.

Ron: In my reading of the scene, Dean did react. He didn't tell Cas that he loved him. But his reaction when he lost Cas was unlike anything that we had seen Dean do before.

Mon: I couldn't agree more. If people want him to say, ‘I love you’, then, Dean has to accept that he's going to lose Cas forever, and he wasn't in the mood to do that at that time. But he does lose Cas. So, when we go back to the finale, and Bobby tells Dean that Cas has helped create a version of heaven which is actually heaven. Then, Dean makes this characteristic Dean-smirk because he's kind of saying to himself, yes, okay, Cas is alive, Cas is around, so yeah I get to meet him again. That's how it is. We don't get to see Cas in heaven, but no, Cas is there in heaven. I don't know what people are reading into the scene for them to think that Cas didn't make it there.

Ron: It was very, very frustrating.

Mon: I understand the frustration that they would have wanted to see more of the guys in heaven. Dean and Sam meeting these people who are their family, including Cas, Jack, their mom, their dad, I get it. But it was shot in the pandemic. We got a full-fledged season, a beautiful finale, which dragged a little bit, fine, but we got a finale, which does justice to the characters. And it hinted at what more we could expect for their lives in the future.

Ron: One of the things that I've been reading is that Andrew Dabb, who has been the showrunner since Eric Kripke left, he has been working very hard towards resolving some of the storylines from earlier seasons.

Mon: That makes sense. Because we do see a lot of characters returning in latter seasons. I guess that makes sense then.

Ron: Yes, that's what he's been doing. His idea for the finale seems to have been, we started Supernatural with the two brothers, we end it with the two brothers.

Mon: That moment when Dean has had a great ride in baby and she's on the bridge, he's just enjoying this beautiful scenery, and he just knows when his brother's behind him, and the look on Sam's face, and the body language that finally he’s got to be with Dean?

Ron: It's been what we’ve been waiting for, not just in the finale but the entire show, for the two of them to get their ending. The thing is that the two of them have been to heaven before. And it is very different. Heaven under Chuck was you reliving your favorite moment, which as we saw in 12 Monkeys recently, that’s not really anybody's idea of heaven. Tasting sushi for the first time is amazing, but tasting sushi for the first time for the hundredth time? That's not so great.

Mon: Everything loses its charm. With Jack's version of heaven, they're making new experiences for eternity. That's the best kind of happy ending that we could have thought of for the Winchester brothers. That is absolutely why this finale was good. Could the finale have been better? Of course, everything could be better! The whole show could be better! But this is what we got. And in a way, it's so sadly realistic. It's tragic. But they always intended it to be a happy ending.

Ron: Absolutely. And it has to be said, this is what happens to real people. Sam and Dean were able to continue living, despite going to hell, going to heaven, despite going to purgatory. The amount of times that they died and came back.

Mon: It was a joke by the end. It was rightfully a joke because there was no ending for them.

Ron: But we know why, it's because they were Chuck's favorite characters. But that also meant that they were Chuck's favorite marionettes. Freedom meant freedom to die, as well. And as difficult as that was for Sam to process, I think it is also a realistic approach that we probably needed in 2020. That was the best way to do it in 2020. Had it been the two of them growing old together, I think that's what the fans would have wanted, that would have been great to see.

Mon: We don't have to like it but I would just say it is a choice made by the creators. Ron: I think it was the right choice.

Mon: Let us know what you thought about the Supernatural finale and how you would have written, Sam and Dean's ending differently.

Ron: You can find us on Twitter @Stereo_Geeks. Or send us an email [email protected]

Ron: We hope you enjoyed this episode. And see you next week!

Mon: The Stereo Geeks logo was created using Canva. The music for our podcast comes courtesy Audionautix.

[Continuum by Audionautix plays]

Transcription by Otter.ai and Ron.

#supernatural #supernatural finale #flashback #podcast #geeks #stereo geeks

0 notes

fyeahjeaninnocent · 7 years

Text

So it occurred to me that some people in the Rebecca Front fandot might be hesistant about reblogging yesterday’s really great interview with her, since it was posted on The D@ily M@il. So, I’ve taken the liberty of copying the transcript here (below the cut) so that people can still read it without that controversial site in their browser history.

'Sex symbol? I’ve still got it!': Actress Rebecca Front on body confidence and what she's got in common with Theresa May

By KERRY POTTER FOR YOU MAGAZINE

From The Thick of It to War & Peace, REBECCA FRONT’s talent for portraying powerful women has won her legions of male fans. She tells Kerry Potter about body confidence, her (teenage) fashion mentor and what she’s got in common with Theresa May.

Rebecca Front is fixing me with The Look. Even the most cursory of TV viewers will be familiar with it: stern and authoritative, as seen on Chief Superintendent Jean Innocent in ITV crime drama Inspector Lewis (three years on from Rebecca’s departure, her co-star Laurence Fox still calls her ‘ma’am’).

She also deployed it in her role as cabinet minister Nicola Murray in the BBC political satire The Thick of It, as well as in her matriarch roles in period dramas War & Peace and Doctor Thorne. And now The Look is back for Rebecca’s turn in Kay Mellor’s new register-office-set BBC One drama Love, Lies and Records. She plays Judy, an awkward, jobsworth registrar who is furious when she gets overlooked for promotion in favour of her nemesis: gregarious, chaotic working mother Kate, played by Ashley Jensen.

Right now, I am nervously witnessing an impromptu demonstration of The Look up close. We won’t call it ‘resting b**ch face’ because Rebecca doesn’t like the word b**ch: ‘We wouldn’t call a man that.’ We settle for ‘resting angry face’.

‘It’s useful to be able to look quite scary,’ she says. ‘I’m really bad at complaining about things in shops or restaurants because I don’t like confrontation, but sometimes I don’t need to complain because you can just see it in my face.’ And with that, The Look is gone as she breaks into a grin. ‘I am quite a smiley person; I’m actually not stern enough. I’m quite soft and woolly by nature.’

She’s also a million times sexier than many of her characters. ‘I’ve got much more body confident as I’ve got older. I’m fitter and more muscly. I go to the gym three times a week. My teenage daughter [Tilly, 16] has given me more self-assurance. We shop together a lot and I pick up clothes and say, “I don’t think I can get away with that.” And she says, “What does that mean? You’re setting yourself a rule and that’s ridiculous. You tell me not to do that, so why should you?” So I’ve upped my game: I dress more confidently, I carry myself more confidently. You only live once.’

She’s about to get her ears pierced for the second time in recent years, egged on by Tilly, having previously been too scared. That’s the only needle she’ll tolerate though – cosmetic surgery is a big no. ‘Women are under so much pressure: the thought that you have to change your body to be accommodated in society seems wrong to me. I’m hesitant to say I hate it because I don’t want to judge people for doing it – I understand the impulse – but it worries me.’

At 53, Rebecca is happy to look her age. ‘It bothers me that people aren’t allowed to grow old naturally because there’s a beauty in that. I know it’s a cliché but confidence is the sexiest thing and if more women felt confident about the way they looked, they wouldn’t need to have those procedures. It takes guts to say, “I’ve got wrinkles and crow’s feet and I’m not bothered about it. I quite like them, actually.”’

Her tendency to play powerful, brusque characters has won her a legion of male fans. ‘Some men are really drawn to authoritative women, aren’t they? I occasionally get messages from men asking for photos of my shoes because they probably imagine I’m wearing really scary stilettos. I mean, I am today, but usually I think, “Erm, do you want a picture of my trainers?”’

Her turn as Chief Superintendent Innocent especially caught people’s imagination, reportedly inspiring erotic fanfiction about the relationship between Innocent and Laurence Fox’s character DS James Hathaway. ‘I try not to engage with that stuff,’ Rebecca hoots.

Kay Mellor, creator of big-hearted, women-centric dramas such as Band of Gold and Fat Fighters, had the idea for Loves, Lies and Records when she attended a register office to record the death of her mother, noting how the location was a microcosm for life’s highs and lows. Accordingly, the first episode is a rollercoaster of emotion, as sad as it is funny, taking in births, deaths and marriages.

Despite appearances, Rebecca says she’s not made of stern enough stuff to work in that environment. ‘I wear my heart on my sleeve too much for a job like that. With all the deaths and babies, I wouldn’t last more than five minutes. I cry very easily since having my children.’ (As well as Tilly, Rebecca and her TV producer/writer husband Phil Clymer have 18-year-old Oliver.) Being a cry baby does have benefits though: ‘I’ve become a much better actor since I had children. It’s made me less self-conscious and opened up a fast-track to accessing my emotions.’

Creating Judy was a welcome challenge: ‘I thought, how on earth am I going to play this woman as I have nothing in common with her? She has no sense of humour, she’s antisocial, she’s judgmental. We would not get on at all. But I didn’t want to play her like a cartoon villain. She’s just complicated. She’s a human being and it’s my job to understand why she does what she does and find a way into her head.’

The careers of Rebecca and her co-star Ashley Jensen have bloomed in a similar way, with both making the successful transition from comedy to drama. On graduating from Oxford, Rebecca began her career in radio comedy in the early 1990s, working with Armando Iannucci (who went on to create The Thick of It) and Steve Coogan.

Moving into TV, Rebecca starred in the Alan Partridge canon, with shows such as The Day Today, and later in Nighty Night, Queers and The Catherine Tate Show. Ashley, meanwhile, made her name in Extras and Ugly Betty as well as, more recently, in Catastrophe.

‘I’m in awe of Ashley – those shifts she makes between comedy moments and moving moments are effortless,’ says Rebecca. The two bonded so well off-camera that at one point they had a giggling fit so epic, crew members filmed it on their phones.

The current state of politics, however, is less of a laughing matter for Rebecca. Does she wish they were still making The Thick of It? ‘Things have gone so mad it would be hard to find fictional ideas that were crazier than what we’re going through,’ she says. ‘Even Armando couldn’t top this.’

Having played Nicola Murray, she says she has more sympathy for politicians, especially female ones. Indeed, she’s more charitable about Theresa May than you might expect a left-leaning actor to be: ‘We judge women in public life in a different way. She gets criticised for her hair, for what she wears, for being unemotional – I don’t think that would get levelled at a man. I suspect she’s probably a very nice woman. I don’t know her but I don’t look at her and think, “She’s evil.” It’s not a job I’d want in a million years in this toxic political environment. She’s doing an incredibly difficult job.’

And the two women share one characteristic: being a bit square. When asked to share a secret, Rebecca pauses: ‘I’m hesitant about saying anything that will sound like May admitting that running through a wheat field was the naughtiest thing she’d ever done. After she said that, my children said, “Mum that’s you! That’s the answer you would have given!” I’m such a square. I was head girl at school and I’m so law-abiding. If I saw a wheat field I would only enter it if there was a sign saying, “Please run here.”’

Having suffered from anxiety since she was a child, growing up in Northeast London, Rebecca now campaigns on mental health issues as an ambassador for the charity Anxiety UK. Her claustrophobia was written into her role in The Thick of It in a scene where Nicola refuses to get into a lift and is memorably blasted by her spin-doctor colleague, the legendarily vitriolic Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi), as an ‘omnishambles’ (a word, she notes with glee, that’s now in the Oxford English Dictionary).

How did Rebecca feel about her private, real-life issues becoming the butt of a joke? ‘I’ve found humour is the best tool to deal with anxiety. You can’t afford to take it too seriously because it just gets worse,’ she smiles. She still struggles a little with lifts and can’t see herself ever travelling by tube. ‘These days I check in every so often with CBT [cognitive behavioural therapy], maybe once or twice a year if I feel I need a reboot.’

With the tube off limits, she often travels to and from her North London family home by bus. ‘I find them very relaxing and you get great material on buses: people do and say funny things. Nobody expects to see actors on the bus so fans often tweet me to say, “I saw your lookalike on the bus today.” No, it was me!’

She is heartened by Princes William and Harry speaking out about mental health issues. ‘I thought it was great, bless them for doing that. I don’t think the stigma has entirely gone, but it’s really improved.’

But back to business. When it comes to work, Rebecca has never been busier. She’s just finished Down a Dark Hall, a supernatural movie starring Uma Thurman; she’s filming a TV comedy pilot next week, and she recently delivered the draft of her second book of personal essays, following 2014’s Curious. What’s left? ‘Oh, I’m still hugely ambitious,’ she says. ‘There’s loads of stuff I want to do: some Shakespeare, a lot more theatre and drama that will really stretch me as it’s only been in the past few years that I’ve really started to use my drama chops.’

What about playing a femme fatale? ‘I’d love to do that,’ she sighs. ‘But I don’t know if that’s going to come up because there’s still this ageist culture. People don’t think of you like that when you’re over 40. We had a lunch party at our house the other day and I was the youngest woman there. I looked around the table and thought, “Just look at all these fabulous, well-dressed, attractive, funny women in their 50s and 60s.” Why don’t we see that on TV very often?’ I can imagine she’d only have to give a room of casting directors The Look and that would change.

And regardless, she’s blazing a trail as the thinking-man’s sex symbol. ‘I’d be flattered to think that. I’ve still got it going on!’ she grins, slinking out of the door to her waiting car. The Prime of Ms Rebecca Front? You had better believe it.

Rebecca rates

Fashion picks-- I’m too cheap to spend thousands on a frock. When I won a Bafta [for playing Nicola Murray in The Thick of It], I wore a £100 dress from Coast. I like AllSaints, Zara and Asos, and I live in jeans and shirts.

Reading-- The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer. It’s told from the perspective of a young man trying to make sense of a life-changing event.

Best beauty product --My daughter introduced me to Mac’s Prep + Prime Fix + finishing spray. It sets your make-up and gives you a bit of a glow.

Listening to Political podcasts – Pod Save America and West Wing Weekly are my favourites. My son, who is travelling, listens too, and we message each other about them.

Breakfast --Avocado and poached eggs on toast – and it’s got to have chilli flakes, otherwise forget it.

Watching --The Shop Around the Corner, a little-known screwball comedy with James Stewart. It’s my favourite go-to feel-good film.

Guilty pleasure-- Hollywood Medium with Tyler Henry. I don’t believe it for a minute but I don’t care, it’s so much fun. I snuggle up with my daughter and watch it.

Most treasured possession-- A book in which I wrote down sweet things my kids used to say at bed time and bath time when they were little.

Tipple of choice-- A dry martini with an olive.

Describe yourself in three words-- Thoughtful, kind and funny – at least, I aspire to be.

Dream dinner-party guests-- We have quite a lot of them over already. Frances Barber is great company and a friend of mine. Ditto Barry Cryer – he’s hilarious. And Jane Austen would have been a hoot, I reckon.

How would you like to be remembered?-- As someone who brightened people’s day.

#rebecca front #inspector lewis #the thick of it #non-jean #hathocent #i'm still in shock about them mentioning the hathocent fanfiction and that she now knows it exists #i mean the d@ily m@il from what i gather is complete trash of the f@x news variety but still #as pathetic as both are it still feels like i'm being called out #like they're k*nkshaming me #but whatevs

16 notes · View notes

mouldyinlondon · 6 years

Text

first post!

after fucking around with the editing of custom themes that was made ever so difficult by the tumblr theme, i think im finally done setting up my blog and its theme! i might try to mess around with the html a bit to insert a pic in the header or smth eventually or change the background, but ive been fighting with this website for like an hour and a half now and i am t i r e d.

who are u!

i’m camille! im 19, an aries and a white queer cis girl (she/her). i have a boyfriend that i luv very dearly and i’m from québec! my university is in ontario and it’s bilingual, as am i (my first language is french, and yes, i do have the french canadian accent, if you’re wondering). i am double majoring art and art history and i love it a lot! i’d love to specialize myself in english medieval history, especially in the fields of christian iconography and hagiography.

so, what is this blog?

this blog will be used to document my student exchange in london and the trip to the uk i will make preceeding that exchange. i’ll also document a bit of the process of applying for the exchange, bc it is quite a long one indeed!!!! i’ve been working on it since last semester and it honestly took a lot more time than i expected, especially because i have to make a preliminary schedule and some uni websites are especially hard to navigate. i might also talk about the planning that’ll go into the trip my boyfriend and i want to have before my semester.

what am i gonna do?

-travel across the uk with my boyfriend

-then study during the fall semester of 2019 in london in history

what’s the plan?

basically, i have quite a bit of money put aside for the trip and the exchange. i will continue to work this summer (im already pretty much guaranteed to have one, but it’s a haunted walk tour guide job and, although my hourly salary is quite good, i have very few hours; ill have to find another job if the one i have at the moment is only seasonal). then, in early august, my boyfriend and i will leave canada together and travel all across the uk. i have already traveled with him to his homecity (manchester, uk) and it was absolutely lovely! we’ll spend around a month/a month and a half traveling together and i’m pretty sure it’ll go extremely well, as our last trip did. we traveled pretty early on in our relationship, so i feel like after around 2 years and a half of dating, this trip will be even better than the first!

after the trip, my boyfriend will go see his family in manchester and go back home to canada. i, on the other hand, will be staying in europe. the university i will attend for the semester is the queen mary university of london. the semester there starts on september 16th, so idk if there’ll be some introductory activities or when i can start living on campus. i might just travel on my own or go see some family friends in france if i have to wait around. all i know is that it’ll be quite lonely. then, i’ll go back to london and try my best to have a great semester.

obstacles

there are a few obstacles that i’ll have to face to first of all be accepted but also to live there. first, there is the language barrier, which i dont think should be too much of an issue but??? who knows???

my first language is french and the accent in english that im used to is like the most basic, neutral, slightly canadian accent. anyone who deviates from that, i might have a hard time understanding. also, handing in essays in english is a bit scary. ive done it before, as my university is bilingual and i attend french and english classes, but it still makes my work a bit longer to do and my english doesnt have the same quality as my french. it also makes the process longer since i have to write my motivation letter in the language of the university ill be attending (so english) and i have to PROVE that i can speak/understand/write english....i mean i get the incentive but also....anyway, i can just basically show ive had more than a B+ in a class in english and it counts as a proof. good thing 3/5 of my classes were only available in english i guess.

also, my university does exchange programs in a way that you have three choices of university and depending on your gpa and your motivation letter, they give you either your first, second or third choice. my three choices are:

-queen mary university of london

-royal holloway university of london

-reading university

of course, reading was a filler. i would have wanted to put manchester as a choice instead, but the choice wasnt available for my program. i have a pretty high gpa (so far i have 3 A+ and 1 A, waiting for my last grade) and im trying to writing the best motivation letter that i can. ill have to upkeep my gpa to be able to participate in the exchange so fingers crossed???

where are you now in the process?

not many things are left for me to do for the application, and that’s perfect because i have until the 22nd to send in my finished application form (and we are the 9th, and my term has started). there are other things to take care off AFTER the application (like some meetings and obviously doing my schedule and booking my dorm room) but im not there mentally now,,, its a bit discourageing when i know how much work ill have during the term lmao.

so NOW what i have left is:

-receiving my last grade from last semester so i can enter my gpa and a copy of my grades’ summary

-take a picture of myself in front of a white background (lowkey waiting to get a haircut for that)

-i had to prepare schedules for each school with like what classes id be attending. i have to get approved my first school choice by my “department counsellor”. that was very unclear so i basically sent a message to two people + my department so like démerdez-vous lmao. when i get the schedule approved, i’m pretty much gucci!

-also my bf and i have to figure out the whole trip, but we’ll prolly start planning in april, after finals and when we have most of the money we want/know what kind of income we’ll be making this summer

-finally, ill miss everyone, especially my boyfriend...itll feel a bit lonely so i rly wanna keep busy so i dnt get too mopey. i always told myself i wouldnt stop myself from going away even if i had a significant other and i wanna stay true to that but it doesn’t mean it wont hurt...i know we’ll last for very long tho so this is just a few months out of many many more and we can withstand it for sure!

so that was a rly big post!!! had fun writing this and im excited to see what’ll happen! i should know if i’m approved in around march, so i’ll probably not update this blog a lot until then... can’t wait to be able to update it with lotsa good news, hopefully!

-camille

#preparation #personal #studyblr #student exchange

0 notes

theteej · 8 years

Text

6. Four Year Flight

On January 16, 2013, my plane touched down in Chicago, ending another winter visit home to California. As I picked up my bag in baggage claim, my heart thudded in my chest. I was about to be picked up by Ben Bascom, and I was anxious, excited, overwhelmed. Ben had decided to make the nearly 300 mile (482 km) round trip between Champaign-Urbana and Chicago to pick me up, have dinner in the city, and then ride down together. It was our first date.

I’d met Ben at a grad student party a little over a month before, just after Thanksgiving 2012. I’d spent ten months in South Africa and had just returned from a month in the UK, doing research for the dissertation. I’d newly started the anxiety-ridden adventure of actually writing a book-length project; the day I met him I had just started work on my second chapter and desperately welcomed the distraction. We’d hit it off relatively quickly; he was simultaneously quiet and energetic, somewhat shy but also deeply interested in people and ideas. More than that, he was kind, and he made me want to know more about what was happening behind that smile of his. We chatted over the next few weeks, and stayed in touch daily while we were both home for the December holidays. When he offered to pick me up and arrange a date, I eagerly—if anxiously—said yes. Neither of us had really dated someone of the same sex before; we were both new to a lot.

I’d known that I was queer for a long time, but my self-identification was a long and complex process. By my mid-teens I’d come to realize that I was attracted physically to both men and women, and as an evangelical kid this terrified me. I decided I shouldn’t date anyone at the moment, but I found myself only romantically interested in women. For years I found myself physically attracted to men and women, but emotionally drawn only to women. I wasn’t sure how one should ‘identify’ in such a fashion, and I decided to just go with straight(ish) for the time being. Or at least not queer. My adventures in dating post-college weren’t extraordinarily great, either. I’d had a long on-again, off-again with a college friend, but the distance (she was in San Francisco, I in San Diego), and my own myriad insecurities made sure that never really became something solid or reliable. I dated a law student while a high school teacher, but that was marred by our busy schedules, intensive travel, and too much pressure. After the spectacular implosion of that relationship just before I started graduate school in 2008, I vowed to remain single for as long as possible. Relationships were scary and unknowable and caused nothing but pain. I buried myself in work, in research, and in graduate school in Illinois, finding close friendships and intensive research to be preferable to any more painful entanglements.

Yet, by 2012, after nearly a year abroad in South Africa and the UK, I’d returned with new eyes. I was openly acknowledging my queerness, as it were, and had finally decided to live openly in multiple senses: I was not only open about not being straight, but I was open to the idea of meeting and loving someone of the same gender as me. Ben was one of the first people I met in this new time in my life, and I found myself surprised by how hard I fell for him. He was kind. He was thoughtful. He was witty—brilliantly and caustically and wonderfully so, a side of him that I felt not nearly enough people who knew him saw. When his car pulled up in front of the airport in Chicago, I beamed with excitement and hope and a good measure of fear.

We both had a lot to learn: about ourselves, about relationships, about how to let someone into your life when you weren’t used to such a thing. Ben was soft-spoken and secretive in all the ways that I was profoundly loud and up-front. We clashed, we misunderstood each other, we fundamentally misread each other’s intentions. But we also cared, we built something, we learned to be open with people in a way we hadn’t been before. For eighteen months I got to know a beautiful, complex, wonderful human in the cornfields of central Illinois, and learned more about who I was and the kind of person that I wanted to be.

Without a doubt, Ben and I are very different people, despite our shared penchants for irony, spectacles, and the folly of pursuing a doctorate in the humanities. One of the many incredible things that Benjamin taught me was about the fundamental need for kindness and good faith. I tend to take a relatively hard line with actions and interpretations. If things feel wrong or unjust or dishonest, they shouldn’t be accommodated. They should be called out. They should be named. This is how transformation happens. And truly, it’s worked for me in a lot of ways. It can be abrupt and blunt, but it is also really powerful. For someone who grew up as a person of color and tasted firsthand feelings of powerlessness and despair in the face of structural fuckery, this sort of outlook felt safe and right. Ben didn’t live like that. Ben loved people in a unique and individual way; he sought to know them, to care for them, and to know who they were inside. In the midst of my angry dismissals of people, he’d say, “but you have to remember why they’re doing this” or “yes, but they’re also acting this way because of this.” And I’d angrily have to concede the point. This didn’t mean that someone’s actions were any less wrong, but did mean that I was forced to acknowledge a shared humanity with someone that I was often not willing to do. Ben taught me in a lot of ways to see good in people, and to care for them. He never blunted my intuition or told me to stop caring about justice, but he also asked e to be softer, to be kinder, to love people in a far more holistic way. It’s one of the things I remain the most grateful for in knowing him, that he cared for people in a meaningful, individual way, and really tried to know them. Every now and then I find myself echoing his questions about people’s motivations or concerns when I’ve jumped to a fully self-righteous conclusion, and I know that I was lucky to have such a kind teacher.

A year and a half into our relationship, I moved to Virginia to take my current job. I was terrified that this would cause us to breakup. Ben travelled with me for the move and stayed the first week and a half in my transition to the heart of Confederatelandia. He reassured a scared new professor that this was possible. He loved me, and I loved him. We encountered so many strange and unfamiliar parts of life in the Shenandoah together in those first few days, and when he left on a plane back to Illinois, my eyes filled with tears as someone I loved flew away. Before the flight, Ben looked me in the eyes and smiled, “Don’t worry,” he said. “This is an adventure. Think of how we’ll get to know each other in new ways over this distance—it’s a new journey!”

“I’m scared,” I admitted. “I’m scared that this will all end.”

“I don’t think that’ll happen. But we’re in this weird, wonderful thing together,” he answered.

And it was a great first year together over distance, spending time learning about each other in new ways, communicating over great distances, and catching each other up on different parts of our lives in ways we hadn’t expected. That second year, however, was far harder. Work on Ben’s dissertation was stressful; being a new tenure-track professor was as well. We had less time. We heard each other less. We misunderstood each other more. Our times felt heavy with a new tension, or importance—we had to make things count, or we’d miss our few times together. We’d fight and then be mad that we’d wasted precious time. It was hard. It wasn’t anywhere near the adventure of the previous year. Ben briefly moved out to Virginia and then came back to Illinois to finish the dissertation. We kept going on. We were each other’s people. I didn’t know how I could really be in Virginia without Ben’s reassurance, or Ben’s kindness, or Ben’s love. I couldn’t imagine a different reality without him here. But things were changing. We were changing.

On June 1, 2016, we talked on the phone, a regular nightly tradition. But he sounded different. It didn’t take long to get to the heart of it. He didn’t want to try any more. And it took time, but in the middle of the conversation I had to realize that one person’s interest could not sustain a relationship. That we weren’t going to be able to continue as us. It was hard to say goodbye. Fuck, it was devastating.

The first few days after were by far the hardest. I’d learned how to be a grown-up academic in some ways because of the constant love and support of a brilliant and beautiful person. I didn’t know how to be T.J. without that person every day. I also wanted to immediately, intuitively retreat to who I’d been in the years before knowing Ben; someone that sealed his emotional core, someone that didn’t think he could date people, someone who thought emotional entanglements were too much. But if there’s anything I’ve learned in the last seven months, it’s that you can live through a hell of a lot of change in your life. You can learn to be different and to see people differently. Relationships that end aren’t failures; rather, they’re the end of a formative time in your lives and they can be the beginning of something new. I don’t’ have to jettison all of the change and all of the learning because of a relationship’s end. Instead, I have to continue to learn how to love people, to see their contexts, to not only privilege my intuition or reading of a situation and to see the humanity in others. I’m a far, far way from being together or whole or not broken by this experience, by this end. But I’ve learned so much from it, and I’m really fucking grateful to have been loved by someone and able to love them back. And so, four years later, I think back on that first airport date with sadness and gratitude. And I continue to be open to the idea of new growth, and new learning, and remembering that I have and will survive so many changes. I’m going to keep these memories tinged with joy, heartache, and hope.

------

This is the eleventh of sixteen short essays about things that have changed for me this year. Stay tuned for the (finally) remaining few as time goes on. #Teej16

2 notes · View notes

pridemonthpsa · 5 years

Text

Pride Month Day 7: We Still Need Pride

During Pride Month, we often hear the argument ‘why do you need pride month these days, gays have equal rights.’

Perhaps, on the surface, compared to many other countries, it seems as though being LGBTQ in the UK is easy. That it’s no big deal in our society anymore. After all, same gender couples have the right to marry and adopt, and there are legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. However, if you look beneath the surface, the UK is not as LGBTQ friendly as you’d hope.

Men who have sex with men are still not allowed to donate blood unless they have been celibate for six months.

Transgender people still need permission from their spouse to transition, suffer fallout from a mainstream media that despises them, and are forced to wait years for basic healthcare.

Women who love women are still getting harassed in the street, in nightclubs, on public transport, everywhere.

Today a story emerged in the news that a lesbian couple were beaten on a night bus in London after refusing to perform their sexuality for a gang of cisgender men. These men sexually harassed the two women, called Chris and Melania, before beating them bloody. [Source: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/06/07/london-night-bus-attack-gay-lesbian-couple/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Buffer&utm_campaign=PN ] The news has since come that the men involved have been arrested by police, but the fact that this attack happened in the first place has shocked a lot of allies celebrating Pride Month.

It has not shocked anybody who has ever been perceived by cisgender men as a sapphic woman.

Though these days I'm an out trans man and ‘pass’ a lot more, during my late teens and early twenties, I was perceived as a sapphic woman. I've experienced some truly terrifying things at the hands of cis men while perceived to be a sapphic woman. There are two particularly scary ones that come to mind, and both happened in nightclubs while I was a student.

The first one, I was trying to protect my friend, who was tiny and friendly and was too scared to say no to a man trying to dance with (on) her. I tried being subtle, pulling her towards me and putting my body in between hers and mine, but he just got more aggressive, grinding on both of us. My temper flared and I shoved him off and yelled at him to stop touching my girlfriend. She wasn't my girlfriend, but I'd seen a lot of my guy friends pull this trick with me and I didn't think that this would be any different. I could not have been more wrong. His eyes literally lit up and he looked over somewhere and suddenly there was a circle of men around us.

This circle was designed to trap us and cut us off from the rest of our friends. It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. All of them were yelling at us to kiss, demanding that we prove we're girlfriends. Luckily, my ‘fight or flight’ is generally ‘fight’, and they didn’t expect this from me, since I was skinny, feminine and delicate-looking, so I had the element of surprise on my side. I kneed the original guy in the balls with all the force I could muster. When he went down, I grabbed my friend and ran for the door. We disappeared out of the club and lost them. I could not believe how co-ordinated that group of men was. They clearly had a plan for that situation. It was TERRIFYING. This was in 2013. Me and my friend were shaking for hours after it.

The second time I'd met a guy in a club (read: he'd started dancing with me and I was mostly okay with it) and we went to the smoking area to 'talk' (read: I wanted a break from his groping). We were talking and the conversation turned to how long we'd been single. I (stupidly) mentioned that I'd broken up with a girl I'd been dating a few weeks before, and again, his eyes lit up. He made me put his number in my phone, took my phone and called his number 'so you can't give me a fake one', and took my wrist. He said he wasn't going to let go until we got back to his. At this point my heart was in my throat, I had no idea how I was gonna get out of this situation because he was very strong, his grip left bruises on my wrist. That time, I didn’t have the anger brought on by a threat to a friend, it was just me. I’ve never been very good at getting angry when I’m the one in danger.

Luckily, one of the guys from my flat that I'd come with had sensed that I wasn't into the guy I'd been dancing with and came looking for me. When he found us, he asked if I was okay and I said no. My friend then told the guy to let me go, and he refused. My friend forcibly, literally, prised his fingers off my wrist and told me to run and meet him at our bench. We had a bench that we always sat on to eat our post-club chips, and I ran for it. He appeared about 20 minutes later, but the guy had started calling my phone leaving voicemails abusing and harassing me. My friend answered the phone and pretended to be my boyfriend. After almost an hour of them shouting at each other on the phone, the guy hung up. I never heard from him again, thank god.

This was in early 2014. It was really scary. A lot of people will say that the kind of homophobia and lesbophobia evidenced in the original post has been emboldened by brexit or the tories but the truth is, cishet men have never stopped being a serious threat to queer women in this country. Straight allies, and especially straight man allies, you still have work to do. You know the kind of men who pull this shit. Call them out, tell them off, beat them up when they put hands on sapphic women. Protect lesbians and bi/pan women.

And for the love of god, stop asking us why we still need pride.

#pride month #pride #lesbophobia #lesbian rights #homophobia #misogyny #pride month psa

0 notes

kivablog3 · 8 years

Text

Spring Repost of “Why I Am Not a Pagan”

March 2017 -- I’m reposting this since the Spring Equinox is coming up, along with the festival of the goddess Eostre, whence derives our word for it: Easter. Along with the eggs, and bunnies too, I think. Fertility, at any rate. In wicca it’s the winter solstice which starts the new year, but for me it was Spring when the light truly came back: Daylight Saving Magic. So I think of it as the start of my own year. Also, I attended an open Dianic Goddess circle for the first time in my life. So I may even have to change the title. Maybe put the predicate in the past tense. Idk, maybe nothing will come of it, but I want to try. Happy Eostre, everyone.

Fall 2016 -- I wrote this for an anthology, about trans wicca and paganism, which was triggered by a conflict between terfy witches who wanted to have a ceremony for “all women” at a large pagan conference on the West Coast, but for “women-born women” only, and everyone else was appalled, not just us, and a conflict resulted over whether this was right or even acceptable behavior anymore. At the time I was convinced this was a hopeless cause, transfolx and Dianic Wicca, and thus wasn’t sure there was any point in arguing about it. That may be changing too, there are a lot of changes I am still unaware of.

So, I wasn’t even a pagan, and kind of relieved about that when I heard that this conflict was still going on in the pagan community, fifteen years after it helped convince me I had failed, because I was just born wrong, and that was that. The Goddess did not see me. It certainly helped convince me I wasn’t a pagan; I had less than no use for a binary divinity, a Goddess with a God. And I wasn’t allowed to just follow the Goddess, so that was that. It was a long time ago.

But I had a story to tell that might be interesting to a few other people, since this still seemed to be a raging conflict ffs. Somehow this conflict at the pagan conference on the Coast resulted in a trans pagan anthology being planned by way of response in the UK, which my friend in Boston tipped me off to; she’s written books which have actually been published, some of them on paganism, and is just generally networked with everyone fun, queer, kinky and/or just interesting in New England and a lot of other places. So I just started writing this, which I’d been trying to do for months. It’s about an important turning point in my life, but the ending is mushy and incomplete because I was afraid of writing my own truth and not caring if someone else was upset by it. This is why the ending is sort of abrupt. It has to be revised and extended and tied together with other stuff that happened then. (And is happening now. There’s a bad case of abrupt going around lately. Alyssa Harley told me I should just write from the heart, and not worry about who else might or might not read it and how they might react. That my writing is first of all for me, explaining myself to myself; and it turns out I learn a lot of things about myself that I wasn’t aware of. Like most advice she gives me, she’s right about this.) [note: This all helped me see that what I really love doing is writing and then editing what I wrote. Some effort will be involved in figuring out things like where to submit finished work and how to write brief, informative cover letters which might get the submission passed up to an editor. Where to do open-mic readings, and which six minutes and forty-five seconds of my work did I want to read? This may all turn out to be very interesting and unexpected things may happen. But I love writing now, I do it most nearly every day So that’s a start.]

After I wrote this piece, sort of all at once, I looked at the publisher’s site, and saw that their catalog runs toward books which have lots of footnotes and a scholarly approach toward the subject at hand, and I have a feeling they’re not going to use this because it so isn’t that. [Note: In the event, it didn’t even merit a rejection email. ] But it’s the most important part of What Happened to Me, how I was out for years, how in the end I couldn’t keep going after 2001, and hid again, in plain sight, for a long time.

So I’m going to keep working on it. I have a printout of Parts 2-3 I want to mark up and then incorporate those changes into the new version. But right now I’m in maintenance mode, learning about myself and trying to love myself and waiting for it to get warm. I’m much happier then, and it’s easier to be out, somehow. Coming out publicly caused a rebound, and a few days’ worth of migraines (tension + pollen + dry air = M, where M is any migraine bad enough that you have to turn all the lights off and you throw up). It’s taking a while to get up off the canvas and clear my head enough to continue to fight back. I don’t feel like fixing the paragraph breaks right now, sorry for any confusion. Anyway, here it is:

Why I Am Not a Pagan by Kiva Offenholley (The section letters/numbers are placeholders and not meant to be consecutive or even logical.) Part One A. So how do I tell this story? Where do I start? When I was poring over books on lesbian feminism in the library? [note: upon reflection, this is probably the point at which I lost the attention of the editor of the anthology. I assume it will get published at some point.] In the 1970s while I was in high school, reading everything I could find at the branch library and then becoming a page at the central library, when did I first run across witches? Who first mentioned the Goddess? I remember how powerful that particular idea felt when I first ran across it: that God was a woman, that there was another way. She wasn’t constantly promising punishment as well as or instead of love (so she wasn’t my mother, or G. the Father). She wasn’t scary—well, She wasn’t male, for one thing, and males scared me to death. I was supposed to be one, and I was really, really, really bad at it, and in Texas that still matters even now, a lot more than it should. It was worse then. I read some books that involved witches, even though I didn’t believe in magic per se (my sister kept trying spells and nothing much seemed to happen), which I understood then to be witchcraft. It wasn’t clear to me why belief in the Goddess necessitated not just ritual activities for their own sake, but ones which enable or prevent the use of invisible forces (the existence of which I have yet to be convinced of) to cause or prevent change in the real world, summoning spirits (see above) or even magic defined as creating change inside yourself using a Jungian approach to archetypes and ritual actions to focus intentionality and release energy. Maybe it’s because I was never in a Dianic coven, or any other kind, and I probably would’ve changed as I learned more. But possibly not. As it was, I just wanted to experience rituals because they are beautiful, and they are for Her. Ritual for its own sake. I may not believe in a deity—that’s Southern for “I’m an atheist”—but I have loved Her instinctively and completely, from the moment I learned of Her, and the idea of Her. And I hoped that maybe I could learn why I was made this way, why in my soul I felt like a girl. And it seemed to me that, if I tried, I could feel loved. Because I love the Goddess. B. It was clear even to me that one thing I definitely could not be was a lesbian separatist, which was a shame because I needed that too: I had nothing but rage and fear from men and for them, and wanted to live in or at least envision a world where we were in women’s space. I had only ever felt safe when I was with other women, or some of them at least. Most of them. Someone once called it “swimming in the safe sea of women.” I just wanted to count as a “woman” of some sort, maybe not fully female yet, if it was a problem, but I’d sit in the back and not get in anyone’s way…. They had somehow gotten undisputed custody of the real-world carrying into concrete action of the idea of the Goddess, and despite having read histories like The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner, or Starhawk or Merlin Stone, of course, anything I could find, my only connection to the other universe, I wasn’t supposed to feel like I belonged. Avidly reading, and thinking and feeling all this stuff that made me feel like I not only belonged inside the circle, that it was the place I would be safe, but that it was the only place outside a classroom that I could ever discuss Gerda Lerner with someone else. I just kept reading, and tried to understand why some radical feminists hated us so much. We were less than or other than women, according to the women who hated us; we were less than or other than human. We were used for ideological target practice. It was like the inverse of being hated by Southern Baptists, the result was the same. It was a part of why I finally skidded to a halt, and detransitioned in 2001, after the period described here. It seemed that Goddess-centered religion was destined to be controlled by those unknown women, like the music festival in Michigan: my spouse, having attended once, assured me that I would consider it close to hell on Earth, between the mud and the rain and the bugs and the heat and the mud, given that my idea of roughing it is a hotel room with no minifridge. But I would’ve liked to have had the option. Around that same time, 1999-2000, I had a nasty encounter in a local institutional setting which I can’t or won’t really identify here. It was with two of the people we now call TERFs: an angry ideological one, who’d just joined the institution, to attack me viciously—none of my friends, no one, ever told me what she’d said while I was out of the room, so it must’ve been awful—and a reflexively 70s-grounded person in a position of authority to unthinkingly and unknowingly privilege TERF 1’s painful past, which was bad, over mine, which was pretty goddamn awful but which never really came up since it still wasn’t really clear to TERF 2 what the hell exactly I was, anyway, even though I had been around for nearly ten years. For a long time it seemed like she could barely greet me civilly when we on occasion ran into her on the street. But she never turned up at parties, which was what mattered, and so it really didn’t seem to matter, at the time. Years of work, living out as a woman among women who loved women in our wonderful little neighborhood: making and deepening friendships, learning to love our little world especially after our son was born, since we still had large lunches on Saturdays then, and he was so darned cute, and everyone loved him. And then I began the estrogen, and it was like I’d had my finger in a light socket for decades, had sort of learned to put up with it, like chronic pain, but it felt so good when I got to take my finger out finally, I felt so relieved when it stopped. All this time I’d been preparing myself, learning to not be afraid, not afraid to let myself Be. To do what someone has described as the most difficult thing you’ll ever do. But that was apart from this story, and it all started just as the getting-TERFed part (for which we then still didn’t have a term) was getting truly awful, so I truly needed something good to happen. And I thought I could finally use all this learning, all that reading I’d done for decades. And I was looking for a spiritual guide, too, it turned out. B. I took a class called Women & Religion in 1987, at Hunter College (from Dr. Serinity Young, who is now at Queens College CUNY and is still a wonderful teacher and human being), and one day while I was enthusiastically talking with the professor after class—it was the only way I talked with her, enthusiastically; I think she even taught me the origins of the word “enthused”—I casually let drop that not only did I want to major in Women’s Studies, I actually would really kind of like to become one someday. Like, medically, you know? And so she had the sad duty of letting me down as gently as humanly possible, but clearly someone had to tell me, I think she must’ve thought, and so: not only would I not be welcomed by a Dianic coven, any of them, she explained, I would face open hostility from radical feminists in general. That what I really wanted wasn’t feasible after all. That the team I wanted to join didn’t want someone like me as a member. That it was genuinely impossible, apparently; some of them hated us. At least I learned this from one of the gentlest souls I have ever known, it hurt less that way. I used to read a lot of those expensive little scholarly/theoretical radical feminist quarterlies they sold in the 80s for like $7, in the newsstand in the Pan Am Building back in the day. I had run across this hatred toward trans folks before; I just didn’t realize that it was so prevalent. That it was widespread, for some people it was an ideological litmus test. What Serinity told me did not completely surprise me, but the extent of what she described did. My best friend back then, who was from Long Island—think “where suburbs were invented”—said of course she was “a feminist, but not the kind that goes to demonstrations.” She may have even used that old saw about being in favor of equal pay, everyone said that back then if you asked if they were feminists. Her girlfriend at the time said that she wasn’t one, and that moreover she didn’t date feminists because she didn’t like women who don’t shave their underarms. (I do. I’m Old School. But I have to admit I was confused by all this.) So this idea and ideal, “Feminism,” had given me hope of a kind for years, feminist thealogy providing a Great Mother figure which I really needed when my own mother was beating me, sometimes unconscious, but never quite killing me; and I never quite killed myself either. I wrote stories and drew sketches and imagined a science-fiction future where there was a Lesbian Nation, a refuge for women of any orientation and a force in the world fighting for women. I had this belief that the world could be different or we could build a new one even, a better one, this escape hatch from the hatred of a world full of men, and most of them had hated me practically since I was born, it seemed to me. Because I wasn’t nearly enough like them, and far too much like a woman—the escape hatch was useless, it wouldn’t work for me because under the rules I could never ever be a woman. I would have to live the remainder of my life as a man because there was no such thing as “transsexual lesbians.” I might as well have spent years studying a dead language. Because the women who spoke it apparently wouldn’t talk to me. I tried to not care, but it involved a lot of nights of crying, and after that one class I gave up on Women’s Studies, on the idea of finishing my degree, and on the idea that I could even possibly not be male. I must be some kind of a gay man, then, I thought yet again, dejectedly, struggling with the limited rôles “permitted” in the old order. I guess I’m gay, I’m just not sexually attracted to men…I spent years in painful solitude, rarely dating (and always women) because I didn’t fit anyone’s pattern. I was born in the Friend Zone and apparently would die there. I just kept wishing I’d been born a girl, not a boy, like always: the existential mistake that felt like grief, that I wore like a suit of armor you can never take off, like walking in sunlight in a darkness that would never lift. Again, I didn’t quite kill myself. I wrote some simple performance art pieces, just monologues really, about how much I hated it all, and delivered them on open mic night at the old Dixon Place, Ellie Covan’s apartment on First Street. Maybe I could express this misery through art, squeeze some of the pain out onstage, writing monologues I wouldn’t have been able to sit through if I hadn’t written them myself. And then, in 1991, when I was 33, I met my future spouse. I invited her to come see my performance at Dixon, and we suddenly fell for each other, and everything changed. C. When I officially finally came out as trans—or “transsexual” as we used to say—it surprised absolutely no one. My wife identified as lesbian when we first got together in 1991, and being part of the lesbian/bi women’s community in the Slope in the 90s gave me a context and a place to want to be, since unlike most trans folks I was “transitioning in place.” Meaning that coming out as trans didn’t automatically destroy my personal relationships, as happens to so many of us then and now, and so I didn’t have to start over somewhere else, creating a new identity as if you’re in a Gender Relocation Program. It also meant (and now it means, again) that people who knew me as male before, not friends but deli clerks, auto mechanics, the bagel store staff, everyone, will have to adjust. It was the hardest thing I’d ever try to do. But it finally seemed doable. It seemed perfect, not just doable. We lived in Park Slope, in Brooklyn, which was a wonderfully diverse and welcoming lesbian community in the 1990s, and the Slope was still a place young lesbians starting a career in New York could move to and find an apartment at a reasonable price. All that new energy kept the neighborhood interesting. The lesbian social universe was arrayed around the karate school, and my wife had been at the school since before we met. I saw people I knew every day, just walking down Seventh Avenue. We had a baby, then I started taking estrogen. We were so happy. Then, as it happened, in the Spring of 2000 I met a cis woman who was already a witch and we tried to start what she assured me was indeed the First Trans-Friendly Dianic Goddess Circle, which ended up being the Last Trans-Friendly Dianic Goddess Circle, sort of. There are others now, I am told, who don’t even care what gender you are or aren’t, but this was the turn of the century, and it was still well-nigh unheard of.

Part Two A. The Center—once upon a time, a long, long time ago, it was the Gay Community Center, hence the venerable web address: gaycenter.org, then the Gay and Lesbian Etc., then the Lesbian and Gay But Not Bi, Definitely Not Bi Center, then the Lesbian, Gay & Alright, Already, Bi Center, then they finally went to LGBT, this was along about when they—whoever “they” were, the ones who ran The Center, and whoever they were, they seemed to arrive a tad tardily to each of these transformations. And as I recall they were still coming to terms with the whole adding-the-T part, and it hadn’t happened yet, or maybe it had already happened but I sincerely didn’t notice, I was busy: the spring of 2000, a beautiful warm spring with a lot of sunny days, at least as I remember it. The Center was in the Swing Space, the temporary building that they were operating out of around the turn of the century, so that the old school building could be turned into, in time, the space station command center-&-caffeine bar-fronted miracle of architecture and fundraising you find there now, over at 218 W. 13th Street. But this was the between-time, somewhere out near where the old “The Vault” S&M club had once been, around the corner of this triangular wedge of real estate just below 14th Street, around Ninth Avenue. I am told that there were rather a lot of directions given then that began, “You remember where The Vault used to be? You walk a block down past it, hang a right….” So I was on my way out of the Swing Space one day, after trying to do some kind of transgender networking, and I passed a woman with beautiful eyes, in warm fuzzy hippie clothes and interesting jewelry, with Tori Amos-like long wavy red hair and some kind of energy or sense of purpose about her. She had some kind of small bag or satchel with her. We passed, she smiled, I smiled. She saw the “Trans Dyke” button I had on—possibly the only such button extant at the time in the US if not all North America, unless the inspired artist/buttonmaker had made more of them. It was drawn by hand, in colored pencil, with TRANS DYKE written across it in large, friendly letters. I’d found it quite by accident among an assortment of handmade radical buttons in a cigar box, at an alternative bookstore in Montréal when I’d visited with K. the previous winter. I couldn’t quite believe my luck: I was still hesitant to say what I was aloud, but buttons were no problem. [K. had very supportively agreed to come with me to freaking Canada during hockey season so I could see a Canadiens game at the Centre Molson (now Centre Bell). I was clearly out of my mind. We lost a set of keys and came back two days later to the same parking spot on a hunch, and we found them in the snowbank, two feet down, where they’d landed. It was cold. I love Québec, but go in the summer.] That button was just perfect at the time for me, still a novel idea a decade after Kate Bornstein came out as lesbian and trans in OutWeek magazine. That was the first time I asked myself that ages-old queer question, “So you mean I’m not the only one?” So just wearing the fucking button around the Center felt somewhat defiant, improvising a sort of pronoun-sticker years before they existed, saying who I was. It mattered. I was wearing it on my jacket, all the time since it wouldn’t stay on my backpack, and she turned around and asked me one of those life-changing questions: “Hey! Would you like to come help me with a transsexual-friendly Goddess circle? I’m going to hold one upstairs!”

Well. I had sort of been waiting 25 years or so for someone to ask me that. So sure, yeah, I’d love to, I may even have said something like, “I’ve waited years for someone to ask me that!” and I headed back with her into the Swing Space elevator, and up. I helped her set up the altar furnishings. Candles (couldn’t actually light them because of building regs plus sprinklers going off) and statues, I think, pretty scarves and cloths and jewelry. It wasn’t anything complicated, but it was amazing to me just to be there, suddenly, seemingly by chance. Friends of hers came, a trans couple from New Jersey showed up, and we held our ceremony, greeting the Spring Equinox and thanking the Goddess for the new season. I forget details from there, just that I helped her clear up afterwards and the two of us talked. What sort of thing are you into, she asked. Going way back, really, I said, I’ve read about the Sumerians and their religion. “Inanna.” “Right. The earliest written records we have of Mesopotamian religion. And they mention servants of Inanna, they’re like two-spirited, I mean, both-gendered or something…” She knew the word for them. We talked some more, about sort of Jungian stuff, like what images spoke most powerfully to me? The Great Mother, primarily, “possibly since my own mother was, um, she was nuts.…” She nodded to let me know she “got it,” as far as survivor stuff, then I went on: “I hope you don’t think this is weird, but I’ve always been fascinated by the temple prostitutes in Sumeria. The service of the Goddess, through the celebration of sex itself.” She gave me one of those dazzling smiles. “No,” she reassured me, “I don’t think it’s weird at all. In fact, it’s also sort of what I had in mind….” Wow. “What’s your name?” I asked, finally. “Yana.” “I’m Kiva,” I said. And so it began. B. She had come to New York a few years before, and with her fascination with the Goddess already intertwined with the Marian devotion she had learned growing up in the Roman Church. She was Catholic, but not Christian, I think she said, Catholic to the extent of the Marian practices which she’d been taught and had read about. Then she became a Dianic witch and studied all sorts of other women-focussed practices across denominations that all fed into Goddess history. She felt the church was the people who turned up, all of us flawed, but it wasn’t her primary interest. The Black Madonnas, devotions related to marriage and a safe delivery, “churching” women after a birth, implying they were impure afterwards; different beliefs from Eastern Europe, the Orthodox, from all over, but mostly she’d read a lot of what I had, particularly European and Middle Eastern religious history and especially the odd or neglected corners of it, the backwaters like the three villages in Syria that still used Aramaic in their services, the witches of the mountains in their different forms, Babayaga, all this off-the-beaten-path stuff. Ishtar, Istar, Ester. Enna, Enana, Innana. Timelines, conjectures about periods without written or archaeological records, or ambiguous sites like Çatal Hüyük. It was more or less pre-Google, so any kind of conjecture could possibly be true, depending on how late at night it was. We talked about labryses, and Crete. We talked about goddesses, and witches, and magic, none of which, I explained, I really believed in, I was just sort of fascinated by it all, you see. I was just stubbornly atheistic as a default setting, since I was a recovering Southern Baptist. We touched on Bokononism when I brought it up; I don’t remember if we got around to the Cathars. I’d never met anyone before her, outside of that class at Hunter in 1987, who’d even heard of Çatal Hüyük. We talked and talked, for hours, for days and days, about all of these things, and all of them at once, it seemed like. Everything was connected. We’d read the same books. A lot of the same books. We talked about who we were, how we identified, how we got to where we were. She talked about how she got involved so deeply in trans women’s activism (and, “no,” she replied when I asked, “I’m not transgendered;” it was clearly a question she got sooner or later from each of us.) We didn’t have the words “cis” and “trans” as such then, “cis” still dwelled quietly as a prefix in old Latin and French dictionaries. At the time we called cis women “GGs,” genetic girls, or “biogirls,” both of which were self-deprecating, self-devaluing, and inferiority-reinforcing terms we came up with all on our own, as a community; as for ourselves, I learned soon that to save time and avoid arguments over changing terminology such as “transsexual” (“ss,” not “s”, dammit) and “transgender,” and who was and wasn’t really a whatever, we called each other by this diminutive term no one outside our little world seemed to have heard of: “trannies”…. She’d been homeless not all that long before, and it was trans women, sex workers out working the street in Manhattan, who kept her from starving, let her sleep on couches, nursed her to health, and I gathered that somewhere in there she’d fallen in love, too, and by that point she’d come to love us as we were. And so she was an ardent lesbian trans ally at a time when we didn’t have many (we didn’t have the term “trans ally” yet, for example) and a lover of other trans women when few cis women openly were—for a while she and K. wanted to start a support group but I think they’d have been the only ones there. Like K., she was was a gem cut in a distinct pattern. She was unique and unafraid. And she loved us. Yeah, I had sort of a crush on her. She was magical. She asked me to help her start a pagan meeting circle, a stable, ongoing Goddess-focussed Dianic circle. A Dianic circle like any other, except this one would welcome trans women. It was dedicated to lifting up trans women spiritually, meeting what in Yana’s eyes was an obvious need. I said okay, and set to work. We were going to call it Two Spirit Moon Circle but I wondered if it might be appropriating a Native American term outside its cultural context. So I kept accidentally calling it Two Moon Spirit Circle, as if we were on Mars or something, and eventually we decided to call it that. Yana had a phone list of people who were supposed to be either interested or potentially interested. It was a handful of names and numbers, some of them names you weren’t supposed to use to ask for them with because they were still closeted, as transgender or as pagan or as both even, and in the (as it transpired, extremely unlikely) event that someone answered the phone, I said something vague, some preset phrase like, “I’m calling on behalf of Yana.” Several of them had no surname, just a name and a phone number. Some of them never did answer, a couple of numbers proved to have gone out of service, two or three of them didn’t need to be called because they were close to Yana. I still have the list around here somewhere, I saw it recently stuck in a book, and I was amazed by how much of it was blank space. There was no social media, no smartphones, and the Web was still in its toddler stage. It was all we had to work with. Somehow Yana had talked the NYC Metropolitan Community Church into letting us use their basement room after their services were over on Sunday afternoons. The MCC was originally organized as a gay-friendly church because there weren’t any other ones, except the Unitarians. Yana attended services there, which may have helped. And for a few months, we held circles nearly every Sunday. Yana tried to find more members; she knew the folks at what we shall refer to here as “T-House” on 16th Street in Brooklyn, which turned out to be three blocks up from me (the Slope was like that then). It’s gone down in history as “Transy House.” We never did get many people from T-House to attend our circle, or if we did it wasn’t more than once. The circle didn’t grow. C. I happily took on the task of writing up a ritual we could use for a special occasion, like the solstice. As it happened, I was enrolled at the New School for one semester, taking some class on religious symbols. So I had access to their library, and way back on the bottom shelf, full of the dusty volumes of history which no one used for research and which hadn’t been opened in decades, there was a really old series of books with the translated Sumerian scriptures in them. It looked ancient, so I checked the indicia and it was published in 1912 or something like that. In the 1900s, but before 1914. I forget now what they were called, and don’t particularly want to try googling for 20 minutes looking for it, but they were special messengers of Inanna, and they were both female and male together in one. There was a passage where Inanna made a promise to them—and we argued, by extension, you could include us, trans people, and gender-variance of all kinds too, I believe, although we didn’t quite have the freedom to imagine all that at the time. Inanna made a promise to Her two-gendered beings, who were special to Her, that she would protect them. Nothing complicated, nothing that other divinities wouldn’t subsequently promise to their special peoples, except that it’s hard to find one where the Goddess says she will protect us. But Yana and I both knew how far back you had to go to find a strong Inanna figure: as far as possible, in early Sumerian theology, some of the first written records of a religious belief system. I think it was from reading The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner that I learned the story of how Inanna had gradually been weakened and eventually subordinated or sidelined in later Sumerian and then Akkadian theology; this weakening and subordination reflected the same thing happening to Sumerian women in reality, losing rights to buy and hold property, rights in inheritance, independent social existence gradually subordinated to the control of the father: patriarchy. This wasn’t the only society and time when this happened, but the Sumerians had left detailed real estate and inheritance records. I remember how exhaustively she went over and cited her source material, all those footnotes. My copy is still in the basement. I just brought up the laundry and I forgot to bring it up with me, but I guess the point is it touched on the area of ancient religions. So I looked in it for a reference which would help me find the huge old rebound-in-green volume of forgotten Sumerian scriptures that I needed: the story about Inanna trapped in the underworld. But I think in the end I just went down to the New School library, and pulled out a volume. It was one of those old-school, 2000-large-pages volumes that voluminous scriptures used to end up in. Bound volumes of Theravada Buddhist scriptures are about the same size and weight, you can probably find them in the 200s section of your public library, depending on how large it is. They have a very nice set at the Brooklyn Central Library. So I opened up the book, spine on my knee, and it more or less opened to the place I needed, the story of Inanna in the underworld and the transgender messengers she sent, and the promise she made. I took it to a table and started to make notes. Yana maintained that this was a small example of divine intervention, that She guided my hand, helped me pick the right volume, open it to the right chapter. I said I thought it was a coincidence, although I wasn’t too sure at the time. It’s possible also, I argued, that I wasn’t the first person to ever go looking for that particular story, and so the book opened to that page, more or less. Because the spine, mostly unspoiled through the decades by the routine damage inflicted by readers of books, probably had a single crack left in it from before. It’s possible that the volume, if it had been used before, was reshelved by the user sticking out slightly instead of flush with the other books, and so I unconsciously chose it (I used to be a library page—a minion—long ago). I recount this to illustrate what a stubborn subject I was and am when it comes to faith and belief. Yana knew about Jungian archetypes and self-actualization and so on, but I think deep in her heart she totally and sincerely believed in Her, that She exists, that She loves us, and that She had agency in the mundane world which she used to help us, if we but asked her. I was just never able to let go, to trust in someone I didn’t think existed. Archetypes, schmarchetypes: I needed Her to *exist*. I needed proof. 5. I read online a couple of years ago that there was some kind of all-pagan conference on the West Coast, where a group of Dianic witches held an “all women-born women welcome” Goddess ritual from which trans women were of course angrily and ostentatiously excluded. It was instructive to me, when I read about it, of something I’m trying to learn over and over until I believe it: apparently nearly everyone else had the decency to be appalled and regarded it as bigoted and ignorant of who we actually are. This book is itself one consequence of this conflict, I am told. In some parallel universe, maybe even nearby, where radical feminists and lesbian separatists of every kind had welcomed trans women into the community from the beginning, valued us, maybe even cherished us for our unique critique of masculinity, our courage in crossing the river of fire, I might be some kind of elder by now, possibly even considered wise. That, along with having transitioned, successfully, long ago. They do feel like they should go together, at least for me. It always felt logical. But I can’t claim a pagan identity now, retroactively, and have it become something that provided comfort and joy over the years, because it isn’t. It didn’t. It never happened. Just like I was never really a Christian after the Southern Baptists chewed me up and spit me out. Past age eight, I never really had the feeling that when I said my prayers, there was someone on the other end listening. By adolescence I knew that they hated people like me, even if whatever the hell it was that I was had not become clear yet. They hated just about anything related to sex that had happened after 1960. The various kinds of baptist churches were gradually taken over in the 1980s by fundamentalists, who had been kept at bay by conservatives for decades (sound familiar?) but now overran the Baptists and other evangelical churches. They voted for Reagan and gave birth to the generation which is now smitten by Trump. They are the real reason I left Texas. I tried for years to make Christianity work for me somehow—you don’t read Tillich on a whim, I spent months checking out everything I could from the library on theology. Fascinating subject, but to me it is fascinating largely as history and supposition. Yana used to say that it didn’t matter if I didn’t believe, it wasn’t a matter of belief; it was a matter of trusting in Her even though you don’t believe it will help. I tried to take the rituals into me, let out that little spark inside, let out the little kid in me. She’s still there, and she’s still scared to come outside, afraid of being slapped again. And for a while it was better. I even tried to meditate. I can’t meditate for shit, but I tried. Our little circle met until it didn’t. It wasn’t like herding cats so much as trying to teach kittens to march down Broadway in lockstep and chanting, “The kittens/United/Will never be defeated!” Only you can’t find enough kittens. And around then, Yana began to vanish into what became an opaque relationship: a glom-on girlfriend who would never give her messages or call her to the phone, she was always “not here,” who eventually closed her off from everyone, or at least everyone at T-House, which was, like, everyone, but apparently the girlfriend thought it included me for some reason; and, long story short, after a couple more times I never saw Yana again. What really kills me is, I introduced them. For political purposes; Glom-on was trans and in a position to help. But the next thing I knew, Yana was telling me the old, old story: “well, you know, we worked all those late nights together on the protest, and next thing you know….” It was the greatest unforeseeable mistake I have ever made, to this day. 3. The Goddess lives in my heart, of course, some kind of small (yet apparently inextinguishable) light, otherwise I wouldn’t have had the strength to survive growing up and getting beaten, a few times nearly to death, by my mother the psycho vodka-swilling pillhead, or to survive living in New York for years with nothing but my sheer uncrushableness and a talent for proofreading. Without Her I could never have embraced my trans identity, then somehow detransition yet not fall apart completely, in a time when it seemed impossible after all to make it through transition as an out lesbian who didn’t pass (2001), and to survive until a time when it does seem sort of possible (2016). Without Her I wouldn’t be able to come back and embrace my trans identity, a choice which saved my life. But that light mostly doesn’t sustain me or reassure me or whatever; it just is me, it feels pain, too. It feels like She put it there, subjectively; like She made me, somehow. She lives in each of us, that light is the You that you hope to find if you look inwards far enough. Maybe that’s what the argument is really about, whether She lives in us, made us the way we are, whether that light is inside us and she really did make us women. Instead of monsters. I’ve met some boring trans people, but I’ve never a monster who wanted to destroy womenspace by demanding admission even though it has a penis. Mostly, we’re just kind of reticent, afraid of sounding too femme, or not enough, or just reminding people we’re different. Like clearing my throat, always comes out sounding deep. It’s like the current bathroom nonsense: as has been true already for decades, we’re just looking for a place to pee. Only now, everyone knows we exist. Maybe it’s the estrogen-wash theory, that high E levels plus maybe really wanting a girl can prevent a fetus with a Y chromosome from fully changing into a male, at least in the brain. I read a study that suggests there are genetic signatures of some kind in some sort of brain cell, and ours differ from men’s, they’re longer yet there aren’t very many testosterone receptors. (Sorry, I don’t have a footer for that.) I have enough material from age five up for another book or two. It took them years, until around age eight, to convince me that not only was I not a girl, but I wouldn’t turn into one later, it didn’t work that way, and when I grew up I wouldn’t be a woman. I’d wear one of those suits, like Dad, not a dress. I hated those suits. I thought this would be an essay about an attempt at forming a circle in the intersection of Goddess religion and trans women’s culture, because you want academic papers with footnotes and everything. But it turns out it’s as much about Yana as about the Goddess or Dianic wicca or other stuff you’d research and footnote and make a biblio out of. It’s all just from me; it’s my story, and what it is, too. My close encounter with having a pagan religious identity, my pagan identity, the one I wanted to at least try, before that identity zoomed past me, then looped around the Sun and shot back out into space, probably all the way to the Oort Cloud. It should be back in a few thousand years. It was Yana who embodied Her for me, and made Her seem real; so once Yana was gone from my life, that sense of the numinous, of spirit in everything, went away too, leaving behind a fondness for a hill with a circle of trees on it in Prospect Park where we used to go to talk and be. I don’t believe that in any of this I was in point of fact a pagan; I was an acolyte of Yana. I trusted her, I learned from her, I believed her, I miss her.

Part Three A. I am 58 now. I used to care so very intensely about this, I was so proud to be co-organizing a Goddess circle for women like us. That was 2000, and so much else was going wrong in my personal life that year, so this was special, something I tried harder to keep hold of even as it slipped further out of my grasp. When I was forced by events to detransition in April of 2001, it hurt like I was dying. I had to cut loose a lot of things to survive, and caring so intensely about this, since I was spiritually on my own once again, became one of them. Like with anything transgender, I didn’t want to know, I turned away, shamed by what felt like my epic failure, and I didn’t want to hear about it anymore. If I couldn’t have it, I couldn’t bear to look at others who could. Because they’d learned to go out dressed without trembling. Because they were living. I felt like the kid with her nose pressed against the glass again, looking in, like before, and it started to seem normal again to feel like I was permanently wrong, or at least I was too emotionally exhausted to fight. I suspended my transition, for 15 years it turns out. A lot of things have gotten better in the meantime, a lot more than I could’ve imagined. Like marriage equality isn’t a Thing, it’s the law. Hating on trans folks of all stripes on modern gay/bi women’s sites, like Autostraddle.com, isn’t acceptable behavior anymore, or at least TERFy posts draw multiple posts from allies. This is the generation we gave birth to, and they mostly as a rule just don’t believe in hate; and there isn’t an exception made to that rule for trans people. Yet it turns out this, the reason I’m a cynical atheist instead of a somewhat less cynical witch, is still a Thing in 2016. So many awful Things, Things that seemed unchangeable for queers for so very long, have changed in the last fifteen years, but this isn’t one of them. And we do this to ourselves. Queers who obsessively hate certain other queers. It seems so wrong now, when I think about it like that. So a friend of mine who is a writer and a witch told me about the call for papers. I intended to write something more like I might have written for an academic paper, and if I were still taking college courses I probably would have, MLA format and all. This is not that story, this is the story that wanted to be told. So I have I decided to try and tell the Tale of Yana and Kiva. I would’ve made a lousy pagan anyway. There’s the indifference to magic. I can’t meditate for shit. I feel antagonistic toward religion in general. I’m hopelessly cynical. I’m an atheist, for Chrissakes. B. Last week my wife K. and I went to Massachusetts to visit old friends. We stopped at my favorite used bookstore in the world, the Raven Used Books in Northampton, on Old South Street. Most of what I found in LGBT or Women’s Studies was from the 80s or 90s, when I was reading some of the same books I found there. I asked about transgender theory—I murmured “trans” and she thought I said “trains”, so I said, “transgender” in this slightly apologetic way I still do. She thought for a second and said they are largely a used book store (“academic” being a given) and that since the field has started growing so recently and so quickly, they didn’t have them in great numbers, yet, but when they did it would be shelved in LGBT. Which makes sense to me, really, since the oldest of the new wave of major works I have read are from about 2005 on. They haven’t had time to finish the cycle: first migrate in signifigant numbers onto syllabii at Smith, Holyoke, Hampshire, Amherst and UMass, to wax and wane in popularity and utility, and thence in time make their way to Happy Valley’s used bookstores, particularly to Raven. Where people like me buy them. Maybe they’re still waxing in popularity. I hope so. But this visit I wasn’t into languages or mediæval history or Buddhism, I was back where I began, at LGBT and Women’s Studies. And the future is so new here that the books I was hoping to find are still being used, rather than having been used. They have some mugs and bags for hardcore fans like me. But I already have two mugs. So I bought a nice copy of Carol Christ’s Laughter of Aphrodite, since I haven’t read it and thealogy is really sort of timeless, even if some of the people she was discussing and critiquing advocated then-current arguments which have become dim with the passage of time. (Remember, everyone: if you have a used book you haven’t read before, it’s new.) Laughter of Aphrodite came out around the time Christ (pronounced “krist”, with a short i) was co-editing the now-classic anthology which we used as our principal textbook for the Women & Religion course at Hunter College in 1987: Womanspirit Rising. I’m looking forward to reading it.

But, like I said, I’m not a pagan. Go figure.

#trans #gender #transgender #paganism #neo-Paganism #dianic wicca #wicca #trans history #transgender history #lgbtq history #queer pagan

1 note · View note