Building a Web of Care with GenderMeowster

GenderMeowster (they/them) is a white, trans masc, nonbinary, AuDHD, mobility aid using, disabled content creator on Twitch, YouTube, and social media platforms. They, along with their friends, curate and maintain the Meowster’s Clowder discord server, Trans101 content on social media, and host and produce the Genderful Talk Show! Their online community is an intersectional 2SLGBTQIA+, neurodivergent, disabled, BIPOC-forward, plural, and alterhuman friendly space and we welcome people with these identities and our allies.

Gender Federation is a stream team and mutual aid fundraising entity created by GenderMeowster that hosts events to raise direct mutual aid for trans people seeking gender affirming surgeries. Please follow us on socials for both @GenderMeowster and @GenderFederation to learn more and keep up with our events and activities.

Recurring events:
Nov 20 every year - Trans Day of Remembrance (stream)
March 31 every year - Trans Day of Visibility (stream)
Mon-Thursday weekly - streams on https://twitch.tv/GenderMeowster
Daily - discord community: https://discord.gg/meowster

Links:
GenderMeowster links: https://linktr.ee/GenderMeowster
Gender Federation links: https://linktr.ee/genderfederation
Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/GenderMeowster?fan_landing=true

Transcript

Musical Intro: 0:35

There's a whole lot of things I want to tell you about. Adventures dangerous and queer. Some you can guess and some I've only hinted at, so please lend me your ear.

Narrator: 1:00

Everyone has a relationship with gender. What's your story? Hello and welcome to Gender stories with your host, Dr. Alex Iantaffi.

Alex Iantaffi: 1:06

Welcome to another episode of gender stories. And as ever, I am delighted and excited to introduce our guest. And today, we have GenderMeowster with us who is a transmasc AUDHDer disabled content creator with comfy cozy moderated spaces, and they really do 500 gazillion things. So I don't even know how to summarize it in your bio.

GenderMeowster: 1:34

That's fair. Me either I ran out of characters, that's why it's like half a word. Shorten half words,

Alex Iantaffi: 1:43

As a fellow AUDHDer, I really feel the doing too many things. But I would love for you to start by saying some of the things that you do, because you do so many wonderful things from podcasting, to streaming to mutual aid. So yeah, give us an overview of all the wonderful things that you

GenderMeowster: 2:00

Sure. You know, the A friend of mine helped me do. summarize this recently as an online peer support network for disabled trans people. I might have missed the word intersectional in there, but it's, it's basically if you think of any LGBTQ Center in any major town you walk in, and there's a bunch of stuff going on, right? And there's like, there's the living room where you can kind of hang out, there's special events scheduled, they have special pride events, what have you, maybe they have mental health services, or, you know, medical services for people accessing HRT, or surgeries, and it's all kind of happening in one place, right? It's a community building. And so the combination of like, the GenderMeowster brand, and Meowster's Clowder, which is our Discord server, is an online version of all of that. So it really is like 15 projects in a trench coat. But it all serves the greater purpose of taking care of the trans community and all of our intersectional identities along the way.

Alex Iantaffi: 3:08

That is beautiful. I also love the description of 15 projects in a trench coat. I feel familiar with that. Let's start from kind of one of maybe most straightforward project, which is your podcast, which is the Genderful podcast. I'm always curious, because there actually are, there are not that many podcasts run by trans podcasters. And so I'm always curious about when you started it, why you started it. What was your intention with the Genderful podcast? Yeah, all of those questions.

GenderMeowster: 3:42

totally. Well, I started streaming nearly three years ago, it'll be three years in July of 2023. I started streaming nearly three years ago, because we were making tabletop games that were really fun. And I wanted to share our like trans queer storytelling with the world because I'm like, you know, we're telling our stories, this needs to be documented. Well, eventually, just burnout. And, you know, a bunch of stuff happened, including Dungeons and Dragons being racist in a lot of anti racism back in 2020. As a group, we decided, okay, we're going to take a break from this, we're going to do some research and figure it out, whatever. And, you know, we did find some other some other like game systems to try out. And we just got to a point where we're just tired. We just couldn't keep producing that type of show. And so I realized I needed to pivot. And I had already gotten a taste for making podcasts and how fun that can be. You know, for me, as an ADHD person, it's way easier to listen to something while I'm doing things than to like sit and read a book with my face, or just like, Be still and do one thing. It's like, I need to be doing three things at once. Always like. So podcasts are a great way to

Alex Iantaffi: 4:54

(Laughing) I don't what you're talking about, yeah,

GenderMeowster: 4:56

Yes I have my I have my fidget too. Mine's not quite as gay colors as yours, but I have my little thing. I'm squishing my hands. It's quieter than other toys. So I like to use this one when I'm doing podcasts. So, you know, I, I wanted to capture stories of gender diverse people. But also I wanted to focus on our special interests, because so often the trans and I'm using trans expansively here, not just trans, like all gender diverse, blah, blah, for me is lumped into trans not everybody agrees on that. But I'm just gonna use it as a shorthand so that I don't have to say all of that. When

Alex Iantaffi: 5:36

I say trans and or non binary and or gender expansive every time,

GenderMeowster: 5:39

right, right or agender or gender, there's so many so many genders. For more information, all of that you should read Alex and MJ's book about gender. It seemed curate. There's an audiobook version that you can listen to while you do your Legos. That's what I did. It's wonderful time.

Alex Iantaffi: 5:59

Thank you. I know, I'm so excited that we convinced our publisher to do an audio version of that book. I'm trying to get them to do more audiobooks,

GenderMeowster: 6:07

audio always audiobooks forever. That's my opinion. It's such an important accessibility need, like Yes. You know, if you're reading about neuro divergence, you just should always do an audiobook. That's my opinion that nobody asked for, but I'm getting it anyways.

Alex Iantaffi: 6:22

I like it. Because, you know,

GenderMeowster: 6:24

I, how many? How many books have I read with my face in the last year? In the last decade? Maybe one?

Alex Iantaffi: 6:31

Maybe?

GenderMeowster: 6:32

How many audiobooks have I listened to probably three to 20 a year, depending on which year we're talking about in the last 10 years. So it's just it's way easier for me to listen to a book, and I'll relisten to books too, because there's so fast it's like, Oh, my God, I can read a book in five hours. Are you kidding? Just listen to this on a long drive. That's fine. Yeah, so So I wanted to, to make the show because I wanted to not only tell our stories, which is important because we need more representation in the world, but to to invite people to talk about our special interests, because when I realized I was non binary, I, I had this other pile of identities crashing on my head over time, as I as I found myself in that awakening, like I was like, Oh, I'm autistic. Oh, I'm ADHD. Oh, I'm pansexual Oh, I'm sort of also a gay man. Sometimes, oh, maybe there's some like pluralities, something's something going on there too. I don't know. Like, just like, so part of me is a gay man. But then part of me is a lesbian. But then also part of me is pan. And that's a fun time. You know, it's gender is a journey. So is sexuality. And, you know, so often, if, if we're represented at all, in major media, it's either our coming out stories, or it's tragedy. And so I just want to like, be a little guy, like, let's just be a little guys together, like the cute do whatever. You know, I feel like talking about our special interests, not only is is the Venn diagram of, like neurodivergent people, like and trans people, almost a circle, in the Venn diagram. So most of us can info dump about something. Right? Most of us have a special interest that we can just go on and on forever about, because we're excited. And so I figured, spending time with trans people not only hearing their stories, and how they got to where they are today, but also have them talk about their interests. It highlights trans joy, and highlights trans thriving, like, not only do we get to educate each other about things like there have been people, but like, I have no idea what plurality is. And then No, we've done a few episodes that are like, Oh, my gosh, I miss so much more now. But like, it gives us an opportunity for us to be in a trans space. But that's not the point. Like the point is, whatever our special interest is, and getting to share our hobbies with one another or share special projects or what have you. And we get to be whole people holistically. It's not just about the identity, but it's like that identity piece being established first is kind of what makes the space safe for us to coexist, because there's all of this stuff that we culturally understand. We understand deadnames who understand misgendering, we understand like that, people might want different flavors of gendered complements, regardless of their gender presentation. And it might be important to know someone's like preferences and keep track of that, and have a culture around keeping track of that, like in the discord server, we have rules about gender identity, and all of those things so that when you're addressing someone, you can address them correctly, every time it's written down, they have a whole pile of notes attached to their profile, you can look at any time. And so you know it, it gets easier to address people each other correctly. Because all the information is there, and you don't have to spend 30 minutes explaining it every time you interact with someone, it's just written down for you. It's great.

Alex Iantaffi: 10:04

I love that it feels like the Genderful podcast in a way it's kind of this container. And then, you know, within that container, like you said, it's exploring all this wonderful special interest that we all have. I love that you have special interests. It's like when I first kind of explored my own neurodivergence I was like, I don't think I'm autistic because I don't have a special interest in my my whole family looked at me and I was like, you can go on let me think oh humans humans are my special interest. So it's around understanding people, whether it's like my gosh, degrees in linguistics, and then, you know, studying to be, first I was a researcher and then studying to be a therapist. I was like, oh, yeah, humans are endlessly fascinating to me. Yeah,

GenderMeowster: 10:49

yeah. Well, and what I love about that is I got two degrees in religion, I think for similar reasons. And I also think part of that has to do with autism and trying to understand why I'm different from everyone else like, like, why is there this default expectation and language and set of rules that both are and are not spoken? That people seem to know except for me, that I get it? Because I'm not following. There's not spoken rules, or rules. Yeah.

Alex Iantaffi: 11:20

And I was so glad to be out of academia, I felt whenever I cracked one set of rules, there was another set of hidden rules that we've never crack even after 20 years and talk about that being stressful.

GenderMeowster: 11:33

There's so much energy we can reclaim for other things. Like if you're not spending your whole day autistically masking, you can like, come up with cool ideas instead.

Alex Iantaffi: 11:44

Exactly. Spend your energy doing 15 projects in one trench coat like? Well, and as well, you know, your podcast, what was really interesting when I came as a guest on your podcast is that your podcast is kind of streamed on Twitch. And I will be very clear that I don't know anything about streaming. And you're a twitch affiliate, and you're part of this disable content creators collective on Twitch. So yeah, like you said, there's this whole community, it's not just the podcast is not just streaming, it's this whole community of people. So tell us a little bit more about what, you know, what does streaming mean for you? Like, why are you a Twitch Affiliate? Why streaming? Yeah, let's start from there. I've got more questions. But let me ask one question at a time.

GenderMeowster: 12:35

Yeah. So what I love about live streaming, is it it's hacks, my perfectionism. Like, if you produce something live, it cannot be perfect. There's no way it just can't be. And I so all the time that I would spend editing, making it perfect shot, polishing it up making it, you know, whatever, I don't have to spend that time and energy anymore. Let's go, what happened is what happened, we get to move on. And okay. Like, you know, the podcast itself, it's live streamed, and we do edit it for publishing. But I have some friends who are very generous with me and have decided to be my podcast editors. So I don't have to do that part. Because if I do that part, one, I'm not very proficient at operating the software two, I will get so like, inundated with trying to make it perfect that I don't make progress on things. And so being able to hand that off to others who like, you know, if you're editing your own VODs, you may stumble into gender dysphoria as a trans person, if you have vocal dysphoria, you're hearing your own voice, you're seeing your face. And if it's like, my face doesn't look to my eyes, how it does in my mind, you have all of this disconnect, and you just get caught in spirals about it. And so, you know, one of the most beautiful things that's happened to me is trans people on the internet editing each other's VODs. Because we cannot stand for gender dysphoria reasons. So it's just like, I don't care what you look like, like, that doesn't affect my heart and soul. Like I'm here for you, I will compliment you on how handsome or beautiful you are, depending on your gender flavor, but like, you know, it's it's, it's different, right than your own stuff. Because, you know, you don't have to deal with other people's inner critics, you only have to deal with your own. So ya know, it's, it's just so yes, I live streaming. You know, I, we do the talk show on Mondays and that sort of like super gendery content, but then the rest of the week. So we stream Monday through Thursday. We have like video games, and sometimes it's cooperative with friends. And so then I get to hang out with friends on stream. And I grew up, I was born in 89. So I grew up in the 90s, playing video games, and my sibling was there. And we'd play together and I do the controller part. And like, she would give me like instructions like, Okay, try what look at the thing over there that you missed, or what about this. And so we'd like play it together. And it's really nostalgic for me to be able to do that with other people and to share a game and that experience. You know, there's also folks who either aren't proficient enough at a particular game to play it themselves, or they don't have the money to buy the game and so then there's like, community about it because we all get to hang out together and have this shared experience. And because it's live there's instant communication between me and the audience, right? It's not I make a video people leave comments. I come back a month later and there's a comment and I write back it's it's the conversation And so it just, it really does feel like that living room of the like LGBTQ Center where we're just vibing somebody turn that Xbox on, we're all sitting there, you know, eating chips will do and whatever. So it's, it's nice to have like a community space that's focused on fun. We also do a ton of activism, and I'm sure we're gonna get there soon. But like, you know, it's, it's nice to have it not only all be activism, it's nice to have fun and be relaxed and like, practice play together, as well. There's so many things to be stressed about, especially with how trans rights are going in the United States right now. And having a space where we're not ignoring that. But it's like, it's it has its time in its place. And the rest of the time, you know, we're focused on the fun and rest because that's what we need to regulate. Is that rest and that fun. So that's, that's what we do. It's I don't know, I would almost call it sacred clowning. But I feel like I don't know enough about clowning to say that with authority.

Alex Iantaffi: 16:34

I don't know if it's sacred clowning. But it sounds pretty sacred to me. Because like you said that, you know, there was a lot to worry about, there was a lot to get stressed about right now. And always I feel in a way. But having those spaces where we can just connect, where we can relax, where we can play games, like you said, is so important. And I also love what you said about live streaming hacks your perfectionism. And that's one of the reasons why I've done produce my a. I would be very bad at producing my own podcast. Because I'm not the most, I am pretty good with technology. But I feel like I'm getting to the point where technology is just keeps growing. And I'm getting older, and it's harder to catch up. The whole. So I love what you said about gender dysphoria, because that's how I feel whenever I listen, you know, people are always, oh, I could listen to you for hours. And I cannot stand to listen to my own podcast, because I don't want to hear my voice. You know, guest voice. Great. But you know, whenever I listen for a bit, I'm like, Oh, is that our sound? That's not our sound in my head, which is interestingly, both about gender and my accent. With English not being my first language. I always sound like I don't sound like I have a heavy accent in my head. And then when I listen to myself, I'm like, oh, oh, that is so different from what I hear. It's fascinating. Anyway, yeah, that was a total tangent. So it makes sense. It was just a response. It wasn't a total tangent. It was a response. Yes. So let's, let's go back to that piece of also community building and mutual aid, you've been doing a lot of mutual aid organizing, really supporting people, whether they're fundraising for body modification interventions or other things. So yeah, how did that start? Was that organic from the community? Was that your idea? Yeah, how did you start,

GenderMeowster: 18:24

it's, you know, it's that type of activity has just been in my heart and soul, as long as I can remember, to be honest, it's just part of who I am. It's part of like, you know, for things to be right and fair in the world, we need to share it's very Robin Hood Yes. And so, you know, even as far back as that tabletop group, like, there was a member in the community who had some, like, housing needs, like I need furniture, I need stuff like, and when you're trans, you know, chosen family, family of origin may or may not be cool with it, sometimes you lose access to ancestral wealth. And it's a huge summary of that whole problem. But you know, sometimes we have to do for ourselves what what the rest of our society or family or other methods won't do, especially if you're a trans woman of color, and you don't have access to funding and banking, and whatever the way that a white able bodied cis het person would. And so, you know, even even as far back as then I was organizing our little d&d group to like, collectively get some money together to help this person with some housing stuff. And so, you know, in any community, if you have a community that has any degree of like, emotional intelligence and sharing and intimacy, people's needs are going to arise, you're going to hear about them because you're sharing about your life, and that includes your struggles and your hardships. And so, you know, is I mean, even as far back as two years ago, we were doing events for someone needed FFS. So we did a special stream to help raise money for her FFS. You know, we we did charity streams to try and raise money for like the, the Black Trans Women's Network in the greater Seattle area. There's all kinds of these little pieces. I've gotten better at this skill with time and practice because, you know, I've learned several Things one. Anytime you donate to charity, there's always some of that money gets eaten up in fees, right? Because charities have a burden of tax documentation, they have to do all of this stuff. Plus, if they need their, they need to pay their staff. Right. Yeah. And that's general. Right. And that's, that's not bad, like those people are doing great work in the world. And if your option is nothing, or charities absolutely do charities, but there's this, this additional option that I would say many white people in particular don't know about. There's plenty of other demographics and reasons you might not know about it. But I have noticed, especially in white spheres, we tend to go, oh, I have extra money for work, I should give it to a charity. And it's like, there's this other thing, though, that you're not thinking about the maybe you should consider. And so I'm trying to lovingly invite our audience today to think about that. There's other pieces called mutual aid in mutual aid is basically giving money directly to the person who needs it, you don't have an in between, you don't have a charity, you don't have, you know, a broker in the middle. And, yeah, you don't know how that person is going to spend that money at the end of the day, right, they might say they're gonna do use it for XYZ, and then use it for ABC over there. But like, you know, all the all the, the people know what they need. And if they are participating in community, if they show up, if they communicate, you know, they know what they need, just like me as a trans person, like, I know what I need medically. Like, transition wise, I know what I'm looking for in a surgery, I don't want a surgeon who's gonna offer me things that I'm not looking for, you know, I'm okay to hear options I haven't heard of or considered. But if I've made up my mind, I don't want to be talked into something else. Like because the surgeons weren't comfortable with that option, for whatever reason. And so, similarly, all people have the dignity and human worth to know what they need, and to be able to ask for it. Without a bunch of caveats, without a bunch of what will give you the money, if you guarantee you spend it this way, if it's like credit to a specific store, or specific place, whatever any of that stuff. And so, you know, when you when you engage in mutual aid, you are giving the person who needs the money that money directly, and often they get it faster than if they would go through these other charity based entities, because there's not all of that processing time. So the turnaround on our events is somewhere between seven to 10 days, because the payout is like it's on a Monday, and there has to be seven days since you did it. So it might be if you if you do it on a Monday, it'll be the next Monday, if you do it on a Saturday, it'll be two Mondays from that, you know, to me, it depends on where we get lands. But, you know, waiting, waiting 10 days is still way less waiting time than most charities if if you are a recipient of money from a charity, you know, it's not this huge months long process and all of the paperwork and all this stuff. And so, you know, the other thing is like, you can raise money for anything, if it's mutual aid, like when it's a charity, they're pretty locked into whatever their topic or special focus or whatever is. And there's very specific rules about what we can pay for this, we can't pay for travel, or whatever it is. And so, you know, I founded this stream team called Gender Federation. And our goal is to use is to put on mutual aid events to fund trans gender affirming care, specifically surgeries. You know, there's a lot of a lot of trans needs, including housing and HRT. But we're focused pretty heavily on surgery specifically, because it's my experience personally, that getting to have your procedure, or procedures, let's be real, there's almost all trans people could have more than one procedure, if they, you know, qualify medically right. And some people have enough pre existing conditions, they're not a good candidate for surgery. But for those who are seeking a top or a bottom surgery, you know, even if your insurance covers the procedure itself, or 90% or 80% of the procedure itself, there's still time off work. They're still paying anyone who's going to help you there's buying any sort of pillows, materials, binders, packers, like other medical devices, you need to take care of your body afterwards. There's the food, there's time away, there's travel to and from the hospital. You know, if you need to stay in a hotel or an Airbnb for one to four weeks or six weeks, even after your procedure, depending on how, you know huge that is. You know, my wife's bottom surgery. I think we were in that town where the surgeon was at least two weeks. Oh, yeah. And then she had to travel out again three months later and you know, All of that. And so like, there's just all of this stuff that insurance doesn't cover. And if you are working class like many audio HD people are right, like we have a hard time getting high paying jobs because our brains are a certain flavor. And the only wealthy AUDHDer I have met is software engineers, basically, the rest of us are just doing 100 projects, and we make beans. And we're lucky if we end up marrying a software engineer. But a lot of us, not all of us, but a lot of us tend to be working poor, we tend to be working class. And so you know, taking multiple time off for surgeries can be hard. So it's like, you know, tell your physician like I want more than one surgery at one time or in one window of time. So that I'm only taking off work for one time. And, you know, that has varying levels of approval or not, because some surgeons are like, I don't want to take that risk, you need healing time in between it's like, but I will literally not be able to have the other surgery ever, or for five years, because I can't take time off like that again. And so there's this, there's this microcosm of all these different pieces to consider at once and you know, different surgeons are have different levels of willingness to accommodate that intersection. Absolutely. Yeah. So. So yeah, so why mutual aid mutual aid, because there's all of these type of needs that, you know, it's not as easy for a nonprofit to cover and flex and meet, and it's faster, you know, it still takes time to plan the events, but they still, you know, get the money directly.

Alex Iantaffi: 27:12

And there's some fewer hoops to jump through as well, right? Because there can be so many hoops to jump through when it's a charity. And like you said, it's so restrictive where, you know, if you have surgery, maybe you need to get more takeout, because you can't cook and you're or you don't have enough local people to do a meal train or something like that. And so, yeah, there are all sorts of needs that are not covered by insurance. And yeah, and, and I know how stressful it is, when you I was lucky enough to be in a job that allowed me to take the time I needed for top surgery, I was still an academic at the time. And even then when I got back, I was exhausted, I couldn't do full days for like, another two or three weeks. So it takes a long time to recover. And like you said, a lot of people, a lot of trans people are very underemployed. They're often in kind of more gig economy or paid hourly. And so there's actually, you know, no money coming in while they recover. And we still live under capitalism rent has to be paid. Bills have to be paid. And it's a lot. And I love that you do mutual aid, kind of as part of this community and like you said, it really is this kind of online, LGBTQIA2+ center for trans and disabled folks. And I know that it's, you know, you have this kind of ethos, it looks like that to really centers, you know, some of the people are most impacted, like trans disabled folks, folks of color. And so how would you manage to maintain a community where there really is a sense of connection online, because I think sometimes people online can feel a little bit disconnected from others or be a little bit sharper to other people, because it's almost there's an aspect of not seeing people in their total humanity, maybe on social media. And so how do you manage to maintain a community that that center kind of care, and respect and mutual support?

GenderMeowster: 29:16

Yeah. Great question. Thank you for asking. I'd say it's twofold. The first part is, you know, the main sort of community conversations are either happening on my Twitch live streams or in the discord server. And both of those spaces are moderated. That's why a moderated is in my bio, because, you know, we have, we have our community agreements, and there are people keeping an eye out and calling people in, or banning people if they're just being totally belligerent. But, you know, we have mods tracking the space and taking care of us. And so, like, you know, that Plus, my community tends to be neurodivergent, disabled and trans, often all three. The, the BIPOC piece is not as strong, but I'm white. So that's fair. It makes sense. We are we are, we are definitely anti racist and, you know, have components and pieces of the community that are tending to those pieces, and usually communities tend to reflect the leadership of The community. And so I am non binary, trans masculine, autistic, ADHD disabled, you know, in a couple, a couple of different flavors. And so like, I've, I have the power to make my community fit me, right. And so my community is friendly to people who are like me. And so you know, where we have a lot of autistic folks. So we use tone tags, which expresses, you know, what's the intention or tone behind this, and since so many of us are autistic, there's not a lot of double language, secret, hidden agenda, whatever. Like, if people are mad, they'll be like, you know, slash frustrated or something. Like, they'll just tell you straight up like in the tone tag, like, I'm mad, like, yeah. What's more common is people get in their heads and have all of this trauma from being in a neurotypical world. And so they think people are mad at them when no one is mad at them. That is way more common than people actually being mad at each other. And it's just the like, the this anxiety, stress and fear of people being frustrated at each other. And then you know, what comes with that. And so there's a lot of like, you know, people being able to say, like, hey, my RSD is flaring, which that's shorthand for rejection sensitivity dysphoria, which there's also arguments on the internet about if dysphoria is the right word. I'm not trying to get into that argument. It's just, that's the phrase people are using, I do think RST is actually just trauma. But trauma is a big umbrella. And RSD is an easier shorthand. So if someone's, you know, feeling rejected, and the feelings that go with that, you know, we can communicate that, or take space and come back later. And the beauty of having an online community is it's always available, so you can take time and think about your response. That's part of why having community in writing is great, because you can edit it, you can think about it, you don't have to say the next thing that pops out of your mouth, regret it later. And you can't take it back. Right? Like you can actually, like, figure it out. And so it's moderated and our neuro types are similar. And so our communication styles are similar. It's not identical. But like, more than one of us are stimming we even have a channel that's just about, like, noises and sounds and words that we think are fun to say because it's a stim. And so it's just like, this, like trans autistic Joy lands where we hang out and be all autistic at each other.

Alex Iantaffi: 33:17

It's great. I love that Trans Austic Joy Land I think I want that on a t shirt or something. You do also have cute merch I think

GenderMeowster: 33:30

Thank you.

Alex Iantaffi: 33:30

So I was like, Oh, that would fit in really well.

GenderMeowster: 33:34

I love that. Yeah, you're gonna be giving away the the cat hug. emotes that's like this design. That's so this is my mouse pad. But I'm gonna be giving away stickers with this design on it that say GenderMeowster at the bottom, at Trans Pride Seattle, which is the middle of June, and then towards the end of June might be the fourth Friday in June. And Seattle. Yeah, if you're

Alex Iantaffi: 33:59

in Seattle, go get up by the booth. Yeah, those are

GenderMeowster: 34:03

cute stickers.

Alex Iantaffi: 34:04

Exactly. And for those of you who weren't listening, you'll just have to follow the links in the episode description to go and look at all the cute merch if you want to. It has all the stuff. I think that the mat that you showed us like just the cutest drawing of a cat holding a heart with the non binary flag.

GenderMeowster: 34:28

Yeah. Calico because my cat is calico Neferkitti.

Alex Iantaffi: 34:32

Makes sense.

GenderMeowster: 34:33

She's 11 this year.

Alex Iantaffi: 34:35

Oh, wow. Yeah. Super cute. Super cute. So talking about care and community. I was thinking about the fact that you you know you mentioned you have two degrees in the divinity right and divinity smaller would almost sound in a way it's an online kind of Trans and Queer center. But it almost sounds like in a way it's a kind of ministry. I don't know if that's the right word or spiritual care or spiritual community of some kind, just because of the element of care. I don't know. Does that ever feel like that to you? Or does it feel like totally separate

GenderMeowster: 35:10

I think I think like the energy of that is there. But we are we are definitely a multifaith and or interfaith community.

Alex Iantaffi: 35:24

That's why I was like, I don't know if that's the right word or Yeah,

GenderMeowster: 35:25

we have. We have as like a spirituality channel. We have everything from pagans to Christians, to Jews to Muslims to To, you know, haven't seen anyone posted anything about Yoruba traditions, so that doesn't mean they're not around. Yeah, so I, we actually a couple of us have been having a chat about what if we had like pagan sabbats in the server and had like Fullman rituals in the server, and I have not gotten my act together to plan that. I wish I could just deputize some other person to plan that and just show up. But I think I probably need to help out for at least the first one to three of them. Before we just hand it off. It's something that I've noticed is I typically need to help with the design of a thing before it can become sort of automated, and someone else can do it for a while. And so, yeah, so new things are often I'm the, I'm the, I'm the the hindrance. I mean, if it's a trusted person, and they feel like they have a plan, I'm happy to just be like, go for it. But oftentimes, I've noticed people are more likely to want to do things, if there's already an outline, there's already a plan, that sort of a new new thought creating a new thing is challenging for people, but following a format is easier. So yeah, but I mean, so my undergraduate degrees in comparative religion, which is really studying people, like, I switched my degree four or five times before I picked religion. I think I think psychology, music, theater, and gender studies would have been my major if that was offered as a major at the time, it was only a minor, they might have a major now. But I do have a my a minor in theater and gender studies on top of my religion major. Yeah, it's yeah,

Alex Iantaffi: 37:21

I'm glad they immediately they didn't have all those options is like this is your degree, because otherwise I would have like five or six minors. And our oldest is like, with our current joke with each other, including her is that she just keeps adding minors to our degree. So I love that. It's really fun. I was like, go for it, you know? Yeah. And I, there's so many things I want to talk about. And I also want to be respectful of your time. So I'm gonna take a moment to like, take a breath and kind of pick something to kind of ask you one more question around. One of the things that you're a part of is also this disabled content creators collective on Twitch? Could you say a little bit more to people who are listening and don't know anything about the disabled content creators collective? What is it? Why did it feel important for you to be part of it? All that good stuff?

GenderMeowster: 38:16

Yeah. So. So Twitch is a live streaming platform, and you have three different levels of users, you've got just a basic account, and then you've got a twitch affiliate, which means you have to hit certain milestones in terms of your streaming, right. And so you have streamed seven days in a month, you have at least 50 people following you five, zero, and you have a concurrent viewership of three people. So you're on average, so usually, you want to aim for five to seven to get that that average of three. And then beyond that is tWitch partner, which has even more challenging things. 75 concurrent viewership. We don't I don't know if there's a follower requirement. And there's also a bunch of you have to do a certain number of hours and a certain number of days. But the concurrent viewership is often the most challenging for folks to hit consistently enough for it to count, because I think it's over a full month that you need that viewership at a certain spot. And so there's this other thing on Twitch called teams where you can create a group of people that are working together, you have a web page that's on Twitch's website that lists everyone who's on your team. And typically, those teams will organize to support each other, and do what folks have to do. Yes. So because we are a disabled collective of people. We are more understanding about energy and spoons and being inconsistent. A lot of teams are not as Justice oriented around disability. And so they have other expectations, because what the algorithm wants is consistency. And a certain size, you know, certain community size a certain concurrent viewership. And so, you know, being on a team and with a group of people who work together to make these things happen without all of the expectations that a more able bodied group would have. is way better for me.

Alex Iantaffi: 40:33

Oh, absolutely, yeah. So, yeah, that makes sense to me. Yeah, yeah.

GenderMeowster: 40:39

So at the end of a live stream, typically what you do is you raid a community. So you take your audience and you plunk them in front of whoever you choose to go see. And so you can kind of build viewership like that. And so over this last weekend, I'll tell you about the event we just finished because it was wildly successful. And I would like to brag.

Alex Iantaffi: 40:59

I love a good brag.

GenderMeowster: 41:03

So we did an event with DC three, which is disabled content creators collective for my friend Kaemsi, who's a streamer out of South Africa. And I don't know if you know this, Alex, but South Africa has had rolling blackouts every day for the last 16 years. It's called load shedding. It started in 2007. And anywhere from eight to 13 hours a day. Kaemsi doesn't have power in her house every day for life. And you know, it has to do with the infrastructure in South Africa in the reason the infrastructure is crumbling has a lot to do with governmental corruption. And it's a whole whole big sob story. We have the last video on Kaemsi's YouTube Channel Games, Kaemsi spelled K-A-E-M-S-I for anyone who'd like to go check out Kaemsi's YouTube. But Kaemsi's last video is on there, it kind of explains the situation. And so we planned a big mutual aid raid was a combination of the clowder, which is my community, and my community is, is larger than average. You know, I, at first I look like I'm a streamer, and it's just me, but then if you stick around and pay attention, there's actually I have like several friends that will stream to my channel for me, like when I'm away for one of me, or my wife's trans surgeries, or whatever, like, there's so many reasons, right. And so I almost run my channel, like it's a broadcasting network instead of just a me channel. And so, so this event was put on by the clowder, which is my community. It was also put on by disabled content creators collective, which is my stream team, which has a bunch of different streamers in it. And then it was also put on by plains meld, which is these three streamers who decided to make one Discord server together, because that's easier than each of them having to make their own. And they're all friends with each other. So they kind of share the work of that community, moderation and maintenance with each other. And so those three plus me and my crew of people, plus my stream team came together and recruited a bunch of our friends. And we had 27 streamers that streamed for it was supposed to be 72 hours, it turned into 75 and a half hours because we added a marathon stream at the end. And we raised, I just saw the numbers over $17,000 in a weekend. That's amazing, which is ridiculous. So and we we funded all of Kaemsi's goals, including the stretch goals for like, stuff for streaming hardware. And then we like we're like as our pie in the sky we're like, and if we all of these needs are met, maybe we can buy a Nintendo Switch, and Zelda for Kaemsi, because all of us have been really wanting to see games, you play Zelda games, but there just haven't been the games to play. And so. So we even got that in the budget. It was amazing. And so the last stream of this big raid train, we told folks, you know, if we hit these milestones, will add time to the final stream, that'll be your incentive. And chat decided to be amazing and do that. And it was like, the day before, I was like, Look, I was making a budget. And I was like, looking at what's all the streamer gear that Kaemsi needs and let's price it out. And Rand, which is the South African currency of how to like, translate that into US dollars and then add 15% For like, taxes, and like wire exchange fees, and all of all of that other stuff. And so it was just like, I had to do a big math TM, and I am not a math gay. Thankfully, there are math gays who are around and they made me very fancy spreadsheets, and I just had to plug and drop things. And I was like, Thank you math. Everything. So, you know, I came up with a budget, we we like I recorded a new incentive video in the middle of the night and my son even put captions on it for me at like three in the morning. And there came a point where I realized that the during that time when I was doing all of that the community without being incentivized further, it was already hitting some of those goals. And I realized, Oh, heck, we're gonna run out of stuff for people to throw money at which is fine. But also, I also realized there's a lot of energy in the community at that moment, and I had a chance to throw it and ask for something that I've been waiting six to 12 months for, which is a wheelchair. And so and so at three or four in the morning in my pajamas in the living room. I'm very tired and I just hold my phone up to my face and record A short video that's me explaining, you know, Hey everyone, I need a wheelchair I've I started fundraising credit funding for it back in November pride is next month, I would like to have the chair for pride because it'll make tabling and transport a lot easier for me to participate and be present. And and so we like threw it in in that last the last three hours of this 72 hour event. And the community decided to go hard. And one of the anonymous donations was over $1,000 It was like $1,020 or something ridiculous. And so we raised like an additional two or three grand, I think it was 2.2, maybe thousand dollars For my wheelchair, like as an add on. Like, that wasn't even what we'd been planning, like, whatever. But we literally ran out of things for Kimzey that we could think of. And it was like, Well, I was gonna plan this mutual aid event in two weeks. But my wife's having surgery on Friday, which is still true. Like in two days, we leave tomorrow to sleep overnight in the city what's happening. You know, my wife's having surgery on Friday, and I'm actually not going to have the time to plan this event, I was led to have the chair for pride. So like, this might be our moment, if you're willing, and the crowd is willing. So even said in my video, like, I know your wallets are tired. Like if we don't do this now, I'll just do a thing later about it. But if you're willing, here's my need. And you know, it was it was amazing. I couldn't believe it, I totally cried on stream. Because not only was it just amazing that we funded Kaemsi's thing, but like, I thought I was gonna have to do all this additional work for my thing. And it's like, no, actually, you can just put them together. And we'll we'll just fund both of them for the lols. And so it was so wild. And it was so it was so amazing. And you know, I, it made me realize that there are some strategies about this mutual aid fundraising thing, where you have streams, you have milestones and incentives on each stream. So each streamer and their micro communities have their goal, right, which was$120 an hour. And so, you know, they would set their goals and their milestones based on that amount. But there were some streamers that are bigger names, or have bigger communities that way overshot that goal. And so even even there, there might have been two or three of our 27 streamers that didn't hit their goal. But the bigger streamers and the bigger energy of the event, like it didn't matter, like we carried through and we got all of our stuff met. And, you know, it, it made me realize, you know, in the future and organising events for my stream team, the disabled content creators collective, what if we had a group of us who, you know, let's get, let's get six people who need wheelchairs together. And maybe one or two of those people are well known and well loved. And maybe four of those people are unknown entities, they're on the team, but people don't know them. Cuz they're small streamers, you know, it's hard for them to get on stream for whatever their disability reasons or what have you. But people are going to love those one to two big names enough that they're going to go hard for those people. And all of those little guys, quote, unquote, are going to get to get the benefit of that energy, even though they're not big names, right? It's like, it makes me think of opening acts for major, like concert events. Some unknown person is on stage, and all of a sudden, they're getting all of this exposure, because everyone's there to see Lizzo. And so it's like, oh, well, now we know about you to, like,

Alex Iantaffi: 48:46

buy our CDs, that's great.

GenderMeowster: 48:50

So it's just, you know, finding ways to use community and working together to get these needs solved. Because if everyone does their own individual event that goes one way. But if we pool not only our energy together, but like our social communities together, not only are we raising the money piece, which is kind of where it starts, but there's this community of people that gets formed in the the pressure and intensity of the event, right, because we're working really hard together for a focused amount of time. That like those communities, like we tend to visit each other's channels more often, ever since the event, we tend to like, support each other in an ongoing way. Whatever that is, you know, like, with? Oh, yeah, sure, I can start modding for your community. Oh, yeah, I can raid into your channel. Oh, my gosh, so and so is like, let's because ahead of them, like, there's just this, like, it's building community. It's building connection. It's building our web of care. And because it's online, like it's not as vulnerable to physical attack, right, which is me getting back to the politics in the United States. So that's one of the major differences between having an online community be it Trans, disabled, both or or something else. Like, by being physically in different locations, it is much harder to tear the entire thing down. Absolutely. It is much harder for any one of any one and like organization to lose all of its steam because we're like, my GenderMeowster crew, like we're in Japan. We're in Germany or in Canada, we're at the United States. We're in South Africa. Like, we're all over the place. And you know, we're in the UK as a bunch of people in the UK I know I'm forgetting countries. So if any of my Clowder contributors are listening right now, I'm sorry if I forgot your spot. But it's just, it's so beautiful to have this international community of people who love each other and like work together on things. It feels really special. You know, to two or three years ago, I was working at the family business. And frankly, I don't know if I could have transitioned while I worked there. Like I was already going by my name and my pronouns, but I don't think I could have medically transitioned while I worked there. Because, you know, the person in charge of HR was this Catholic guy who teased me about my pronouns when I was like, Hey, can we do pronouns and our email signatures, he actually, like, ridiculed me.

Alex Iantaffi: 51:20

I'm sorry.

GenderMeowster: 51:21

And my father, the president, like, in my opinion, did not do an adequate job of correcting him. Like, you know, it was not really wasn't, I don't feel like there was a strong enough call out or call in or you need to go learn some things, or we're going to have a training about read your stuff. Yeah, yeah. And like, Meowster isn't going to be the one teaching it like, we're going to get a specialist in here to train every day, like, none of that happened. And so like, thank goodness, my wife came along, and introduced herself at a summer solstice ritual that I invited her to .

Alex Iantaffi: 51:57

Lovely.

GenderMeowster: 52:01

And, like, She, It was really hard to leave that job. But we had a long talk about it. And we decided that she earns enough money that she could support the both of us and never in my life did I imagine I'd be a house spouse, like, I always thought I was going to be, I was going to be poor and working hard. And my partner was also going to be poor and working hard, we're just going to do our best. And that was my plan for my life. And like the universe decided, how about we give you a wife who is not only hot, but also incredibly smart, and has a great job and loves you wildly, and you can just do your thing. It's like, every day I wake up, I'm so grateful for that, like, series of events that led to me being in the situation I'm in right now. And so, every workday, I show up and advocate hard for the trans community, because I know, I know, not every trans person has the type of privilege that I do. not every trans person has the type of financial security or support from their spouse or partner or family that I do. And so I fight hard for everyone else who doesn't have the kind of support I do, because I would hope, if the roles were reversed, that whoever else was in a position of privilege would fight for me to I'm still disabled and trans. Like, I'm not the most privileged, but I have a lot of privilege comparatively. And so, you know, i That's why I go hard at work. Because it's, it's, you know, it's a special interest, almost level of thing.

Alex Iantaffi: 53:35

That, and I think that that is a reminder for that we're getting towards the end of our time, which is a beautiful place also to land on to land to the in this place of like, care and support. And now you're taking your care and support and then bringing it out into the world. Yeah, yeah. Is there anything that the last question always ask, is there anything that we haven't talked about, that you really wanted to share with the Gender Stories listeners, and if there isn't, it's okay. But always like to ask, just in case I missed anything.

GenderMeowster: 54:11

You know, one of our newest things that I'm not very good at talking about is our substack. We have a piece of writing that goes out, I think it's every week, my, my co conspirator, Lee puts those out, it's pronounced really. And it collects, collects, like we have our solidarity resources piece, which has to do with intersectional solidarity resource information. We also have the writing about what's going on with the Clowder. And hopefully soon, we will also have a monthly piece that goes out about our past Genderful guests. So like, hopefully you Alex will perhaps receive a monthly email. It's like, Hey, do you have any projects you want us to tell the clutter about? And so our sub stack is a great way for folks to get sort of that written digest in your inbox. But what's happening if you're not really a discord person, if you're like me, I don't know about twitch. But you you want to be included. And I believe, at least some of that writing has voiceover. I don't know if the solidarity resource posts do or not, and I can go ask about that. But we do try to make it as accessible as possible. So of course if at any time you notice an accessibility need, let us know and we will do our best to do something with that. One of the one of the most supportive things any of the listeners could do is go drop file follows and likes and subscribes places like even if you don't have the money to support the work that we're getting up to, which, you know, we also need money, we need to pay for the software we use. You know, I don't personally take a paycheck right now, because my contributors are working so hard that if we have a little money leftover for payroll, I would rather tip them, you know, $10 across the 20 of them or whatever, instead of me taking money home. One time I did, and it's because my wife was having surgery and we didn't have her paycheck. And so it was like it was at the time. But I think I think in three years, I've taken home about $1,000 from this project. So it's, it's this is not about putting money in Meowster's pockets. This really is about you know, just keeping the community going and those sorts of things. So I mean, people if anyone who supports on Patreon like that is recurring income we can count on and if we hit a certain threshold and Patreon we are hoping to build a pay our talk show guests for their time and energy and I would love to be able to do that. So you know, drop a subscribe on YouTube, we're about 300 subscriptions away from half of the requirements for monetizing on YouTube, you know, we're already putting all this energy and all this time to publish there. Wouldn't it be great if we could earn ad revenue or something, you know, like to feed our cats or pay for HRT or whatever? You know, drop a follow on the substack leave a comment Lee works really hard on the sub stacks and almost no one is commenting on them because everyone's used to the audio video stuff. And so if anyone is more of a writing person like you know leaving a comment even if it's not every every single one is really a thoughtful thing to do. You know if you'd like to be included in the community and get the the fastest updates about events being in the discord server is the best way to hear announcements about live events you can be joining, you know, we have events in the server in addition to on the Twitch stream. And you can drop follows for the the Twitch channel and all the social media channels to there. It's all in the Linktree, which Alex has and will hopefully put in the description for you all. Yes, yes. Link tr.ie. Forward slash gender mailster Is that link tree? And it's possible we'll be adding more stuff that I haven't talked about today since the recording of this like if you're hearing this a year from now check the link tree there might be like a whole new thing I didn't even mentioned.

Alex Iantaffi: 57:56

Exactly. Maybe it will be 16 or 20 projects in a trench coat. Yeah, next year. And we'll exactly have you on the show again. I will put the link tree link in the episode description on YouTube and the episode description because now we're both on YouTube and wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you so much. I feel this interview was so full of community care, and trans autistic disabled joy and just like my heart is really full. And I'm really grateful for for your time and all the beautiful community care that you provide. Thank you so much for coming on gender stories and sharing all the beautiful work you do with us. Thank you Alex. It's been a pleasure. Don't forget to subscribe to this show and leave five stars Okay, bye. Thank you and don't forget to subscribe to GenderMeowster's show and the Genderful podcast and all the things