Nobody Needs to Know with Pidgeon Pagonis

Pidgeon Pagonis is an activist on behalf of intersex and marginalized people. They have advanced youth advocacy with interACT, launched an intersex YouTube channel, written for Everyday Feminism, cofounded the Intersex Justice Project (IJP) and the #EndIntersexSurgery campaign, and introduced the intersex and nonbinary clothing line Too Cute to Be Binary. They’ve created two short documentaries, The Son I Never Had, which premiered at Outfest, and A Normal Girl, which screened at the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival; appeared on the cover of National Geographic’s “Gender Revolution” special issue; and been honored as an LGBT Champion of Change by the Obama White House. They are currently documenting intersex people of color for Physical Record, a new photo series subsidized by Astraea’s Intersex Human Rights Fund. NOBODY NEEDS TO KNOW  is their first book. For more information visit www.pid.ge.

Transcript

Musical Intro: 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: Everyone has a relationship with gender.  What's your story? Hello and Welcome to Gender Stories with your host Dr Alex Iantaffi.

Alex Iantaffi  
Hello and welcome to another episode of gender stories. I know that I will say that I'm super excited, but I really am super excited about every guest that I have on the podcast. And today I'm incredibly honored to be interviewing Pidgeon Pagonis who is an activist on behalf of intersex and marginalized people. They have advanced youth advocacy with interACT, launched an intersex YouTube channel, written for Everyday Feminism, cofounded the Intersex Justice Project (IJP) and the #EndIntersexSurgery campaign, and introduced the intersex and nonbinary clothing line Too Cute to Be Binary. They’ve created two short documentaries, The Son I Never Had, which premiered at Outfest, and A Normal Girl, which screened at the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival; appeared on the cover of National Geographic’s “Gender Revolution” special issue; and been honored as an LGBT Champion of Change by the Obama White House. They are currently documenting intersex people of color for Physical Record, a new photo series subsidized by Astraea’s Intersex Human Rights Fund. And then they have a book that's coming out, which is a memoir, called Nobody Needs to Know which I got the privilege to read. And it's amazing. I couldn't put it down. I picked it up and I just read it all in one go. I mean, I originally got up to pee that was So engagement is so well written Pidgeon. I loved every bit of it. So you all should get this book when it comes out. And that was very lucky to get to read it. But yeah, welcome, Pidgeon. Thank you so much for coming on gender stories. I really appreciate it do. 

Pidgeon Pagonis  
thank you.

Yeah, I know, you said you're excited about me. But you literally say that to all your guests. So I do.

Alex Iantaffi  
But like, I'm always extra excited for the current guests. What can I say? I'm just a very excitable kind of person. I can't help it. But I am really excited about talking to you. So I know I've read the memoir, and I know what it's about. But maybe let's start from there and maybe even start with why did you decide to write a memoir? Like what made you feel like that's what you wanted to create in this moment in time.

Pidgeon Pagonis  
Honestly, it changed evolved over the writing of it the purpose or the reason. At first I I just needed money. And I had no jobs anymore because the pandemic started. And all my jobs were usually speaking in person to groups of people. So I lost all my contracts overnight. And opportunity presented itself to write a memoir. And I said, will they pay me money. And they said yes. And so I said, Okay, I'll do it. So that's how that started. Part of what I think is important or interesting that over time as I'm writing it the past three years, the attacks on trans people, the legal, the gender, the trans exclusionary legislation has been ramping up. And, you know, currently there's over 800 bills or 750 bills nationwide, if you count federal and state that are centered on taking certain taking trans people's certain certain rights away from trans people, or just, you know, just like horrible stuff. I'm sure your listeners No, I'm not gonna explain them. But what I think is not being talked about is these bills are called trans, trans, exclusionary, or what do they call it? By the way I keep forgetting what the term is. What do you know what the general umbrella term is?

Alex Iantaffi  
I just called them like anti trans

Pidgeon Pagonis  
Anti trans. Thank you. Yeah, that's the word I keep forgetting!

Alex Iantaffi  
At home. I just called them the hate bills, you know, because why do people hate us and have to do this twice, but they okay.

Pidgeon Pagonis  
The anti trans anti trans legislation. Thank you. I think something that's not being mentioned is that these are also anti intersex beliefs. And not just because intersex people can also be trans and many of us are, but more specifically because a lot over 81 percent of these bills on average. So over the last four years, 81% of them have specific carve outs to allow and maintain doctors rights, and surgeons rights to continue harming intersex people in order to, quote unquote, normalize us, push us into a binary box of either male or female with mutilating surgeries on our genitals, on our reproductive organs, etc. And hormones. And so my book is going to come out in this very interesting time in a few months in August 2023. When not only are there are over 800 bills, you know, attacking trans people. But there's 81% of them, have carve outs to continue the harm that's been happening to intersex people since the 40s, and 50s 1940s, and 50s, because pretty soon, it'll be the 40s 2020s, the 2040s, I should clarify. But what's, what's really wild is that this is the first time in history. So these surgeries and the harm that's occurred with an intersex people has happened almost 100 years now. But it's never been written into law. And so, four bills passed, I believe, last year, which had the intersex exclusions or the intersex carve outs. So this is the first time we've seen now that intersex anti intersex language has been written into a piece of legislation never had that before. So what I think this shows is that these bills I know I'm preaching to the choir of everyone in this room are listening. But, um, these bills are not about protect, as the proponents would have you would have you believed that these these bills, as they say are about protecting young people. These bills are not about protecting children. They're purely and solely there purely and 100%, about transphobia. And, like you said, hating trans people. And it couldn't be clearer, because if it was about protecting children, they wouldn't have the 81% on average of these bills would not have carve outs for for intersex people to get the exact things that they claim they're protecting trans people from. And I can't say any what I just said without underscoring the fact that because I don't want people's minds to then jump and say, well, Pidgeon, if you're saying the surgeries are bad for for intersex kids that aren't as bad for trans people. And it's like, no, because there's a difference, there's a huge difference. The difference is consent, and desire. Trans people desire these gender affirming procedures. And they can give informed consent they and their families together. And willingly are giving informed consent and desire these procedures desire these hormones desire these procedures that are life affirming for them. Now with intersex kids, the surgeries that I and other intersex people are against are not for like adults that can consent or young or young adults or teens that can consent. It's for the kids that can't speak it like literally, for infants who cannot talk for toddlers who cannot really, you know, and even like young young kids who like are super young and can not give informed consent about what decisions that are made about their bodies. So even though these are similar procedures, and they actually come from the same world, like they were these types of surgeries, and these hormones come from the same source back in the day. Yeah, they're very different because what is wanted and what is like, well, we don't know if someone wants it because they're too young. When I'm talking about intersex people. So my book, I think, is coming out without me knowing. And the reason I wrote it without me knowing at the beginning, is to hopefully change some people's hearts and minds and shifts a little bit of the discourse and the conversation about trans rights, bodily autonomy, well, basically about bodily autonomy, because I think that's what my story highlights and that's what all intersex people, stories, highlights and trans people's stories highlight is the need and the ways in which we don't some of us don't have bodily autonomy and how we should all have bodily autonomy So I think that's why I wrote this book. I didn't know back then. Even though it probably should have, I should have seen the writing on the wall, and I did see the writing on the wall, I just didn't know it'd be this quick and this vast. And when I say I knew I did see the writing on the wall, it's becauseI started to see lot of chatter in like the Q anon right wing, like super right wing groups, about gender and about pronouns. And it's like, it's a start started to dominate their their thinking and things that they were talking about. And there was an example that I saw that kind of stays with me, which is on January 6. I forget what the year was, but the time that Trump was still like, well, Trump had lost the election. And yeah, you know, what I'm talking about the insurrection from the Capitol. Yeah, direction. Yeah. So when that happened, there's people that got into the Capitol. And one of the things, the ones that got into the actual chambers, I remember, like the ones with the horns on the head, and the face paint, and then his other guys. One of the things they said when they were in there was like, they were just like making fun of pronouns, and talking about pronouns and trans people. And just like, I was like, What the hell is going on? Like, they are really, not only like, I guess about conservative politics, which these people are not really about conservative politics. There are right wing extremists, but um, they're also just, they're really the glue that holds them together is really like transphobia. lately. And as we see from that day, I think that was 2020 that that day, January 6 2020. So that was three years ago. And three years ago, I remember thinking like, This is bad. And now it's gotten really, really bad for trans people, and also intersex people. And I will also say that this is a beautiful reason or not a beautiful reason. But this is a reason why intersex people and trans people should work together and be together and fight together, alongside our, you know, LGB que, tu spirit and plus community and people with disabilities like disability justice community, I think, but especially for trans and intersex people right now, I think we have a lot more in common than we have have not, that we don't have in common. And it's a really good moment to fight for each other and to stand up in solidarity with each other. Yeah. So I think that's why my book came out now.

Alex Iantaffi  
Yeah, I think the timing is really perfect. Like you said, you know, that was not necessarily the driver. The driver was surviving under capitalism in a pandemic. Yeah. But you know, the timing is, is just right. Because, yeah, and I think that cross movement, solidarity you talk about is so important, you know, because a lot of your book, you know, as I was reading it, there is so much about how invested the system, especially the medical system is in maintaining, you know, this idea of a rigid gender binary. Right? Yeah, there were a lot of like, you were lied to as a child. Yeah, you were straight up lied to by healthcare providers. You know, and a lot of it was like, you know, this is for when you grew up, and you have sex, you have sex with your husband, right? You know, this is like what we expect of you, right? And so it's all this kind of trying to uphold cisgenderism, really, which hurts both, which hurts everybody, I think, right, but definitely hurts intersex folks and trans folks and non binary folks. And so one of the one of my favorite sentences in your book is at the end of towards the end of part two, and you say "performing normal, was no longer the only path to happiness." This was once you were like, right in college, and I think you've just broken up with your broken boyfriend at the time, and you're really starting to come into your own, you know, in your 20s. And that sentence really resonated for me as a trans and non binary person, this idea of performing normal was no longer the only path to happiness. What was that like for you that moment of going from this is what's expected from me to hang on a minute. This is not the only way to exist, if that makes sense.

Pidgeon Pagonis  
It was... It was a big adjustment. Um it's when I started really abusing alcohol and drugs. Like we, I mean, for like people that don't really say they can abuse weed, but the way I was smoking and drinking was just to pass out the blackout. Actually, I started that in high school. But in college I remember got really bad after I was really bad in high school, too. But it was a time when I just wanted to be dead. After I found out when I got my medical records, I didn't want to live. So I was trying to kill myself, like every night and we can with alcohol or kill the pain I should say. And so it was really, really, really, really difficult. It was really difficult. Especially the first year or two after I found out because I didn't tell anybody. So it was just, I had like, lived with secrets before but I didn't have the complete picture. So I was living with like partial secrets. And then when I got the full picture, and I lived with that alone, like Secretly, I mean, like kept it as a secret. That was really hard. Yeah, so it was a really difficult time when I went from that transition from performing normal. Um, in one way, like, before I knew everything and then after I found out stuff, it's like performing a whole different kind of normal, which was really at that point, it was just like I'm okay enough to go to class sometimes that was my normal because I was a mirth and and then I also knew that I had X Y chromosomes, I knew that I was I had a clitorectomy I knew that I had testes that I was born with, that were taken out. And so I had a walk around with people that know me as this like normal girl cisgender normal girl, a straight cisgender normal girl. But in my head, I knew I was born with X Y chromosomes had internal testes that were taken out, had an enlarged clitoris that was removed, was given a vaginaplasty when I was 11. And so whereas in high school, the younger version of me before I knew all that stuff, I only knew I only knew a version of it a lie that was told to me as a kid, which was I couldn't have babies because I had cancer, my ovaries and the doctors removed them to save my life. And I couldn't have a period because the ovaries were gone. So I lived with that quote unquote secret which really wasn't a full like a real secret but it kind of parts of it were true but not the cancer and not Yeah, I didn't have ovaries I don't I checked so I perform normal to like cope with that in high school. Like I went to an all girls Catholic high school. And my performer normal was lying that I had that I got my period I started that in junior high when everyone else started getting their period and then in high school, I started lying about sex that I loved it. It was so great. Oh my god, I love sex with my boyfriend. But meanwhile, like I was wishing I was dead every time we had sex like I was talking to God like why why I hate you. Like I hate you God and why did you do this? Or this? Like why? Like I don't even like just like, Yeah, I hate you and why you're gonna hate me and I hate life and I hate you hate everything. But I'm like performing for my boyfriend. Like I love the the sex is so good. So years and years of that just faking it, faking it faking. And then you get your papers, my papers, my medical papers. So it just crushed me. Um, so when I finally broke free of that was kind of maybe two years after college started, or I started to break free of that that started to put the pieces to a different life together. was when I met a girl basically. Well, when I started Yeah, when I met a girl girlfriend started dating her. She taught me about queer what queer meant that she identified as queer and what that meant and I remember like learning that there's like her like she said that she's not attracted to people's body like genitals but to their hearts, and their soul. Even though I'm pretty sure she's also attract people's genitals because she's like, a straight up like, she's just like 100% lesbian, like Butch like traditional butch lesbian. But anyways, I like she would. I don't think she'd ever dated, cis man, but Oh, Have you been hearing someone say that and having all of this shame about my body, my genitals, my reproductive organs and all this and thinking there's nobody that ever loved me. And then hearing somebody say that opened the door for me into this world of people that are not only queer, but trans and non binary and at different stages of transitioning their bodies or have transitioned their bodies, with surgeries with hormones, etc, with, you know, even non surgery, things like chest binders, or wearing or packing and all types of things. So I entered this world started to realize I might have a home here or place here. And so that's when I think I started that quote was more relevant about what I did when I started to realize like I didn't have to perform not normal wasn't like the only path towards i did i say happiness? Yeah,

Alex Iantaffi  
I think you did say happiness. Yeah. So yeah, I

Pidgeon Pagonis  
found happiness with queer people and trans people and that community. And women and gender studies, you know, that that department, I was in college and having professors who were teaching us about these topics as well, trans, the trans. Learning, we were learning about trans histories and trans I don't know what the word is, but you know, academic papers from trans people and books, about transmis transness. Yeah, and queer, queer, queer theory, trans. And I think it's trans theory. And I was even studying intersex at the time. So I was, yeah, it kind of that's when it started to realize that maybe I have a chance, at happiness by just be me. And that's only possible because of the queer community. If there was no queer community in the world, and trans community, I would still be that person who was well, either be dead now. Or I'd be that person that's just like, numbing themselves and trying to black out every single night or every single weekend as much as I can. Because the pain was too difficult to deal with a being so abnormal, or different than everyone else. Yeah.

Alex Iantaffi  
Yeah, I'm just taking a deep breath, because I could feel myself tearing up when you were talking about queer community, because I really feel that like, if I hadn't found queer community, honestly, I don't know where I would be right now. I don't know. That would be my 50s, you know, with my family and a happy life, and they're embedded in community. But that was so important. Because, you know, as somebody was, like, brought up in Italy, my mom is from Sicily, that's you. You know, I knew that there were some people who were queer, you don't talk about it. One of my friends was sent to conversion therapy, you know, like, disappeared when I was in high school, basically. And it was like, if I hadn't found queer community, I don't know how I would have survived. Yeah, honestly, I think that's true for a lot of us. And yeah, I think that is just true for a lot of us that often we focus on the celebration piece. But there is the heart crushing piece of when you're like, coming to terms with everything, right. Whether it's being intersex where you, you know, or being trans, you know, or queer for other folks. I think there is a moment you know, what I mean, like a transition of sorts, from all these expectations, the worlds put on us into a whole different way of being in some ways. Yeah, there's a beautiful scene in your book when you I think it was feminist in action, the student class fee. Yeah, that's right. And everybody's saying name and pronouns, and you're like, This is the first time that somebody you know, and that was like, Yes, I remember the first time that somebody asked me, like, what are your pronouns? You know, when I moved to the States, and I was like, exactly.

Pidgeon Pagonis  
And then I was, first of all, I'm like, not good at grammar. So I'm like, What is a pronoun? I don't even know English grammar to begin with.

Alex Iantaffi  
Second of all that question, yeah.

Pidgeon Pagonis  
But then again, it's not for me if you actually knew my history, yeah, my everything. Yeah.

Alex Iantaffi  
Yeah, sometimes people don't understand how complex that question can be. Right? Yeah. Simple and yeah, complicated question. I got I love that kaleidoscope. Yeah, I was there was another question I wanted to ask you. But then I got really good at all other track and that's, well, I

Pidgeon Pagonis  
want to say something about queer community that you reminded me. I was at a concert last night I was telling you and it was like, really queer lot of queer people there. And the energy was so electric and beautiful, that the performer kept up their thinking I was like, like, they couldn't even catch their word sometimes because they were feeling so much gratitude to the energy in the crowd the crowds energy towards them. And then afterwards, there was a queer party that was just like three doors down. So it's called Boots. It's like a monthly queer party, it's in a different place every time an excerpt, they put it in that neighborhood, so it can be read by the con, there's a few concerts going on. I was at Caroline Polachek. And like, across the street was also Callie hoochies. And there was just a lot of concerts last night. So I was thinking when you were talking about that, like, I was thinking about how much we're culture is seen as like a party. Like you think of pride or you think of the club scene or drag or whatever. And, and I'm like, yeah, it is because there's so much suffering that we had to do to get to survive, that I think we celebrate extra hard when we can. And if you think about cis straight people, like they literally cannot dance most of them as they like, can't have fun. Like, I mean, they don't their idea of fun is like just like getting drunk and listening to like top 40 music sometimes, but like, like hardly moving their hips like. Yeah, yeah. Like, they literally don't know how to like, let go and have fun. And there's like, this is so boring. Like, they were like, Patagonia vests out to the club with like white button ups or something, you know, like, just like, no color, no Zeze, no glitter, no nothing. And it's just like, that's another thing that I love about the queer community is like, we celebrate so hard, because we've suffered so much. And we've gone well, most of us have gone through such trials and tribulations, to even be alive right now. And we know that so many people in our community didn't make it to this point to adulthood or, you know, some people didn't even get through their teenage years, whether it was violence and acted on them, where they were stripped and taken to conversion camps, and brainwashed or attempted to be brainwashed, or they committed suicide, which is also huge in the intersex community as well. Yeah, so yeah, the queer community is life saving. And it's also it's literally under attack right now like, like, especially in places like Florida and some other states where I just saw that the governor passed a bill or signed a bill yesterday that says you can, medical providers can conscientiously object to giving anyone health care, as if it if it's like, makes their that makes them makes, you know, goes against their religious beliefs. Yeah, so now, it's not legal to discriminate against people for their race for their disability, et cetera, et cetera, or their sex, but it is now legal to discriminate against somebody if they're transgender or queer. So it's like we're literally under attack. And so thank God, for queer community, queer communities under attack, we need to keep it. Yeah, we need to do all that we can to protect it. And we will, like, I think this is just going to backfire for them, for the people that that are trying to push this stuff forward. It's just going to, we're just going to come out of it stronger and better than before, just like we did in the past, and we always will. But um, it's an important it's just a hard time right now. We're gonna have to get through it, though. Yeah. Yeah,

Alex Iantaffi  
I believe that to that we're gonna get through it. But it is a hard time. And it's great to get to celebrate with community when you can, because it is that how precious life is. Yeah, I've been watching Eurovision. And you can always tell which ones are the straight musicians and the queer musicians from how they move. Sight Yeah. Yeah, so much more to say about that. But I do want to take a moment to talk about another thing that's in your memoir, which is, as well as of course talking about your own experiences as an intersex person and that kind of a history that you have, and then all the advocacy that you were part of, to really kind of shut it down, especially the hospital, you know, where a lot of those procedures were performed for you. Another aspect that's really rich in your book, it's class and culture. I feel like when you talk about like moving neighborhoods and moving houses, and you know, and moving farther away from your extended family closer, you know, there was a lot as somebody who comes from a more collectivist culture with like more extended family, you know, I was really following that journey of class and culture as well. And there was a moment you know, when you start talking to your mom when you find out about all those things that happened to you and all the lies that you were told, and really my heart when really out to your parents as well, and all the pressure they've been put on. Yeah. And the lies that they were told to probably may work from where they were. Yeah. But yeah, exactly. And so I don't know if you want to share anything about that, because I think sometimes people don't realize how much pressure doctors can hurt on parents, you know? Yeah. And especially, you know, I think especially parents who are not, Anglo, you know, were not upper class. Yeah, I think there's just so much pressure. Yeah. So I don't know if you. Yeah. Wanted to talk about thatat all or not? 

Pidgeon Pagonis  
Yes. Um, I really tried to infuse my memoir with my my upbringing and my childhood and how it felt and how it was, um, and just Chicago in general. Like, I love I grew up here. I still live here. I love Chicago. Like, yeah, it's such a part of beautiful city. Yeah, it's a beautiful city. And it's just, it's in my bones. Like, my grandmother was born in Chicago. So I'mon my mom's side, I'm third generation. My dad was born in Chicago, even though his two siblings were born in Greece, but him and his brother were born here. So I'm very rooted here. And yeah, and family was such a big part of my life as as a child, like, like, there was a time when I lived in an apartment building with five apartments. And each apartment was different members of my family, except this one apartment that was always like a random person. But all four of the rest were like my aunts, my uncles, my great grandmother, and my grandparents and my mom, my aunt, me and my sisters, we all lived in a building. And like, at the time, I hated it. I mean, there was part of my life, but like, I mostly hated it, just dream to live in the suburbs, and like a big house with like, my own bedroom and all this stuff. But looking back, I was like, wow, like, this is things me and my friends dream about now, like, let's all get a building and live in different built apartments, or let's, you know, get a compound like basically a component of different houses. On some land. I would prefer a building because I want to stay in a city. But I would love to, actually, I am living that dream right now because my friend lives downstairs in the apartment below. But I would love to have more like a like, like, like I had growing up in a way. But not like family more like chosen family. Because when it's your family can not be that great sometimes, um, but chosen family that with queer culture, queer politics, queer, like, it would be better to live together that way. So, um, I'm glad that that came across in the book. And then the class thing yeah, my parents. In the culture, my parents are working class people with no college degrees. My dad barely oops, sorry, my dad, that's the best turn away from my neighbor. Um, my dad barely finished high school. He says he only did it. Basically to like, I don't even know how you did it. To be honest, he did it just to make my grandma like, proud or something. But like, I don't know how he probably scammed his way through to get his degree or whatever, his diploma, but um, you know, and then my mom, she did finish high school, but she dropped out of college to like a community college because she saw my dad working across the street on a car. And she's like, oh, you know, she got the look. So she ends up having a kid right away with him, which is me. And then they get married. And so she's a young young parent, and he's young. They're not college educated. They don't speak formally like, like, fancy, like rich people. They don't come from money, they don't have a lot of money. And so then to go to these hospitals, where these are supposed to be experts, and the best in the nation, and they're surgeons, so these people are already assholes, because all surgeons are assholes. Like, there's been a survey and it's like, 90% of them are assholes. Like, it's not a real survey, but it's, it's real.

Alex Iantaffi  
I feel like it's real, as a disabled person that feels real to me, like

Pidgeon Pagonis  
I've been told, you know, by people that work with surgeons, they're like, you know, they're there. They're just, they're not great in terms of personable person, like, skip people skills, but they have like, good surgery skills. And that's all that really matters. You can't really ask for more. So, my parents have me this intersex kid where they don't even know the intersex at the time. And, and they're. And they're like, you know, presenting me to these doctors who are experts. Now. Even if you are rich and you have all this educational background, you're still going to be intimidated by surgeons and doctors unless you went to medical school. And you could like when you know what you're talking about, but most people already feel this. But now imagine yourself you don't have those degrees. You're not in college. You're not formally educated in that way, blah, blah, blah, um, and establish like, this is what needs to happen. And that, like you said, the doctors are giving my parents only part of the picture, and then tell you, my parents to give me even less of the picture. Meanwhile, the surgeons are the only ones and the doctors who have the full picture. So they're enlisted enlisting my parents as accomplices in their lives and in their, their harm. Yeah. And it's really messed up, because they claim that they claim back then, and they probably still do today to a certain degree that they want parents to bond with their child. So if the child is intersex, the parents they believe cannot bond with them, if it's not a female or a male 100%. So let's do surgery and do all this stuff. So the parent can bond with them. But what ends up happening is you ruin you ruin a lot of the bonds between parents and child and parents with other people, the family, because they tell the parents not to tell other people in the family not to tell friends that the tow neighbors, and then they tell him not to tell the kid a lot of stuff. So you're forcing a culture of secrecy and lies from the beginning between parent and their child is heartbreaking. Because then my mother, for instance, carried a lot of guilt that ate away with ate away at her and ate away at her and ate away at her and and then when I grow up and find out what happened, I'm pissed off at the doctors are pissed off at my parents. And my parents were just doing what the doctors told them was what was the only good thing to do the best thing to do. And so I can totally, I totally empathize with my parents. I understand how they could so easily be swept up into that because it's scary, especially. Some people might be thinking, well, if I was a parent, I would have just stood up to my child. But they also easier said than done, but also these doctors are smart. And they will they told my parents, they tell many parents, if we don't do this surgery, your child will develop cancer. Exactly they scare, they scare them with cancer, they scare them with the threat of your child might commit suicide if we don't do these surgeries and they don't feel normal. But and the cancer thing just to explain if anyone's like you're over exaggerating, no, I'm not what they do. And what they say is especially for people with me who are born with undescended testes is they'll say, oh, like 90% of these kids will grow up and have cancer if we don't take these out now, which is a completely inflated statistic. And just completely untrue. And so by paying your parents are like, I don't want my baby to get cancer, do whatever you want, you know, of course .
yeah, so then the other surgeries they did, they were telling them with like, Oh, your child will grow up with. Like, I can't remember the word but my mom described it as say like, that the doctor said I would grow up. Basically, like, insecure about my body, if they don't let them change the shape of my clit or the size of my clitoris, or things like that. So it's like, they make your parents complicit in the harm. And then your parents don't even know they're doing that. Really, they think they're helping you. And it's a really messed up dynamic. But yes.

Alex Iantaffi  
When they make them feel like bad parents, if they're long, they say yes. Right. It's like you're a bad parent. You know, if you don't listen to those doctors, and it was yeah, you know, when in the book you talk about, like your mom bursting into tears, you know, once it starts dawning on her right, once she gets out of that denial, and how painful it must have been for her as well. So, you know. Yeah, I think that is something that a lot of people don't realize, like, you know, they think well, like you said, why are the parents not protecting their children? It's actually very, very hard to push back on the medical industrial complex. It's not easy at all even for as much as you know.

Pidgeon Pagonis  
I know so much about it and I still will turn into sometimes like a defenseless rabbit praying More when I'm in this doctor's office, like, I'll come with my questions, I'll have my friend with me on the phone, and they will just railroad me. And I'll just leave you feeling like I couldn't even say what I wanted to say I didn't get to ask questions. I forgot what I wanted to say. It's, there's so it's such a it's such a power dynamic, usually that they have more power than you in the room. And they, they just railroad you. And, and this is someone who's been to college who studied this whole thing I've been I have a master's degree. I've studied how the medical Industrial Complex has harmed intersex people, and I still get harmed, I still, I still don't understand sometimes how to stand up for myself, or how to assert my rights. And so, for my parents, I can imagine it was, and for a lot of parents of intersex people, it's really hard. And especially like, the cultural thing to like, my family was taught a lot of families, a lot of people are taught to just respect doctors. They're like gods, like, they, especially surgeons. Yeah, you know, like this country. You know, it's part of the reason people come to this country, they think, you know, like your grandparents. So you live with this, this legacy of like, well, we came to America, and, you know, we have the best everything here, doctors and medicine and culture and everything and everything and everything. And so to challenge these people, is you just don't you wouldn't do that. Because it's such a privilege to have the best health care in the world, etc, etc. And Exactly, yeah.

Alex Iantaffi  
Yeah. And it's unthinkable.

Pidgeon Pagonis  
It is, yeah. Like, why would a doctor want to hurt a kid? It doesn't make any sense.

Alex Iantaffi  
And, you know, the dead you did experience a lot of medical trauma, on top of being lied to on top of, you know, finding out kind of when you were 18. I think, right, that you were intersex. Like when you were at college, like, there's also a lot of medical trauma that this doctor is inflicted on you. That was unnecessary. It's really just about making you fit into this idea that they had,

Pidgeon Pagonis  
Yes. Completely it was all on us.

Alex Iantaffi  
Yeah. And that that's horrifying to think about how might you know how comfortable like going back to what we were talking about with conservatives who want to protect kids in airport but didn't exactly because actually, they're fine with intersex babies and young children being you know, going through all this unnecessary procedures. And then they're trying to tell us Oh, trans and non binary and gender expansive kids shouldn't go for any medical procedures. They're too young, like the poppers is mind blowing. Yes. Yes, it's definitely my it shows the

Pidgeon Pagonis  
hypocrisy, and it shows that it's all BS. It's all like, it's all about transphobia.

Alex Iantaffi  
Well, it's all bullshit bullshit. Okay. We can say. Yeah. Oh, my God. So true. There's so many things that I want to talk about. But I also want to be respectful of your time. Oh, I do want to talk about one thing. One thing that I love is that before your book starts, you have a quote from Battlestar Galactica. And you also talk about space. Yeah, in like a couple of points in the book. And as somebody who's like, a big like science fiction and fantasy fan and like space, like, you know, person was into space. I was like, I think there are a lot of like, Trans and Queer People were really into, like, space, the star science fiction. I, for me, I think it's something about imagining a world where we are possible, right? I mean, we are possible, but in a way that's not you know, in a way that's easy and celebrated and inclusive. Right. And so I was curious about why you chose a quote from Battlestar Galactica to start your book and what space means to you?

Pidgeon Pagonis  
Well, to be honest, I've never seen an episode of Battlestar Galactica in my life, or Star Trek. But I am obsessed with space and thinking about space and the universe and quantum mechanics, quantum physics and molecular micro I like to think about the big vastness of everything and also going inward like micro is it called microbiology or like, molecular biology, like thinking of things on molecular nano scale to, like on the atoms, like, I guess, yeah, so the atomic level, um, I, it's not just like I like to think about it's like I am obsessed. It's usually what I think about and what I do It's usually what I think about and what I talk about the most. And the like, I've always contemplating. And I'm always in shock, like, I'm always on my knees, almost crying in fear and also like, Joy. It's just like, how big the universe is, I cannot, well, you cannot fathom it. Nobody can. And it's, it's mind blowing literally hurts my head sometimes think about. So, I was looking at quotes that can, like, open the book that were not like representative of what I was trying to talk about, which is the vastness of gender and the vastness of sex too because I think sex is just as Yes. borderless as gender, and boundaryless. And so I've just like effort, I was just like, searching quote, unquote, nothing was really, oh, this was okay. It's okay. And then I saw this quote, and I'm like, Well, I've never seen Battlestar Galactica, but this quote is amazing. It's so great. I haven't watched Battlestar Galactica. Yeah.

Because I've heard it's good. And so I want to watch it. So let's, I just finished another sci fi show called Foundation, like this week, and really good. And I want to read the books now too. But I want to watch Battlestar Galactica too. But I, I mean, I have a friend and like, they're trans. And we, like we just nerd out like everyday in the group chat, we are texting about something about space, about the galaxies, about whatever. And so it is just, I don't know. And I think where I got stuck on it in the book, where I got hooked on that metaphor was there's a character or a real person who's a trans person named Ellie, but their stage name when they play electric guitar is Supernova. Supernova, okay, and ova. And so I started doing a little research on supernovas. And I'm like, Oh, my God, when you see a supernova, like if a scientist or anybody has telescope records, or sees a supernova that happened, sometimes millions of years ago, and it's taken, it's so far away that the light just gets to us, the image of it, which is light. And that was mind blowing to me, because it started to open my mind up to how big the galaxy is. I like I think, so as I'm writing this book. I'm also like, learning so much about the universe. And so I use that metaphor in a few different ways about space and about time, and things that could start a long time ago. And you could see them happening today and think, oh, it's happening. That's what's happening right now. But actually, the building blocks for that happened a long time ago. So when in the book, I'm talking about intersex activism, you might think like, oh, we had this amazing win at Lurie in Chicago, as the intersex justice project took about five years, six years. But know, that started in the late in the early 90s, with another group of people called the intersex Society of North America. And then for 30 years, the intersex activism ballooned and spread all over the world. And it took so many different forms of iteration. And so the super nova, the person that I met, that also helped us with the way that Larry, but also the concept of, I wanted to let people know that it wasn't just us that day and age or that year and time, it was everybody that came before us. And we were just building from that, like, and so that's why I talked about supernovas a lot in the book. And I also used to whenever I gave presentations, I would have this these two slides, and I would say, a lot of people see gender, or sex as black and white. And I think I'd have like a sky with some stars in it that just looked like a black sky with white stars. And then I would say but gender and sex is as vast as the cosmos there's as many colors and as many like celestial beans and forms as there is just ways of showing up and your gender and sex and then I would show a picture of like, say the Milky Way, it has a whole spectrum of color and different types of you know, comments and stars and whatever. In the sky, asteroids and planets. And so I've just always I think like you said, like, it represents possibility for me it represents a different it's a fantasy. It's a fantasy to get out of here where everything's freaking binary and like, not really but like the way society has structured things is so rooted in a binary false binaries of everything, not just sex and gender, but, um, there's good people and there's bad people. wrong, we're all good or all bad. Like, there's evil and there's good Nope, we all have evil parts we all have good. Well, I wouldn't say evil, but let's just say like, you know, we all do we all do. We are all capable. We all do good as well. Thank you. And, you know, we can go on and on and on about all these binaries that society is structured around. And to think of the unknown this like places in space, we're just getting off of this planet. Like, we're just, you know, not in the like, Elon Musk way. Like, let's just, you know, let's go colonize Mars like that colonizing way. But it felt to me like I don't want to go to a red hot, dusty ass planet and live in like a dome. But, like thinking of alien cultures, and civilizations, like other places, and like, radical new ways of being and expressing ourselves and yeah, I just, I love space. I love the cosmos. I every chance I get I tell people like, do you know how big space is and then they're like, what? And I'm like, Okay, watch this video on YouTube. And then I'll be like, Judo how big a lightyear is, or how long like, I, it's just, it's amazing. And I think what it helps me because I'm a person that doesn't believe in God. And I don't have that, like, Oh, when I die, I'm gonna go to heaven. But I think believing and knowing not believing, but just knowing about the cosmos, the limited amount that we do know which the lot we know a lot, but there's so much we don't know and understand, like black holes and what is actually in one and what, what actually happens when you cross the event horizon. But um, I think that, that gives me a sense of wonder, and joy about the present life that I have, or this, this form of life that I have in this body right now. Is just as magical. As thinking about like, Oh, God up there that made the earth in seven days, and I'll meet them when I die like that gets some people through, but I think space, knowing about space and the cosmos is like my faith is like my form of faith and what gets me what keeps me alive and keeps me going is just like the quest to know more about the ever the never ending cosmos and all the secrets and crazy things about it, learning about it. Yeah, I'm obsessed with it. And I love science fiction as well. Like I love Octavia Butler. Yes, and I just I don't, I'm not very well versed in a lot of sci fi, but I know that when I watch it, I love it. And when I read it, I love it. And I'm excited to learn more. And read more about it. Yeah.

Alex Iantaffi  
Oh, I'm so excited that asked you about space because I saw in the book, I was like, Ooh, space here and supernovas here and I was like, I need to talk to feature about this because I'm with you. Like, just the expansiveness of our Multiverse. You know, I'm like, how can people think we are so small when there is all of this right? And how can people right?

Pidgeon Pagonis  
It's like why are you over here making laws against us when you could be like, thinking about the universe and like helping fund research into the universe and getting to know more, but rather, you'd sit around making laws so that trans kids can't be on a sports team or use a bathroom like how little is your life? And how little is your mind like that? That's what you worry about and think about is like how do I harm a trans kids today?

Alex Iantaffi  
Exactly are interested in first when exactly or an intersex person on a queer kid or honestly, anybody who doesn't fit into this idea, this control really it's about control. Right? You know what this desire to control my

Pidgeon Pagonis  
My friend India Moore just said the other day on red carpet, that they're out here. dehumanizing trans people and humanizing robots, or humanizing AI and dehumanizing trans people. And I think that is literally what's happening like trans people are being trans and intersex people have always been dehumanized. And so of trans people, but we're seeing it enacted in legislation now. So it's such an interesting time to see people, you know, celebrating AI, and robots and things like that and electric autonomous vehicles, and then literally dehumanizing people, human beings that are trans or intersex. So, of course, like we aren't my religion, our religion my religion is, is the cosmos is you know, that's how I that's, that's my like I said that's what I have faith in is the universe and that there's so much more than this like petty stuff that happens here on Earth.

Alex Iantaffi  
Absolutely. And we're and I love that and I love that connection also of like, you know, like you said even in your own activism, right like it's not it didn't take five years it took decades, right of building up on like that collective work. And for me, that's how I feel when I connect with the cosmos. It reminds me that we are connected were connected with each other were connected with like the green Bloods, you know, trees. Yeah. And no one you we are the cars we aren't we aren't that you'd like to see that

Pidgeon Pagonis  
last week. Like, I know, other people have said this, but like I finally understood like, ike, just the way I think like a tree is part of nature. I'm a part of nature, because I'm here to Yes, I'm a part of this world, the world is part of the galaxy, the galaxy is part of the universe. So I'm literally the universe in the universe is me, etc, etc. Like, everything is the trees are that you know, and it's like, it also hit me that we all came. See I want to ask you what your thoughts are about the Big Bang Theory versus multiverse theory versus whatever. I have questions about that. I yeah, I have my own idea now. But it's just you know, it's just the best guess. But I, I was thinking the other day that humans started from one common ancestor, let's say. But then, even when you go back in time before humans are homosapiens, before homosapiens there was single celled organisms. And then there was like multiple celled organisms, and then evolution, you know, and we keep going, we keep going. And then we finally get to Homo sapiens. But we all started from like, one single celled organism. Yeah. So we actually are all from the same life source or like source. And so I started to realize, like, I started to see humans as like coral, in the ocean, where coral has like, these appendages that reach out into the water for like food. And yeah, and like, I think humans, I think of us as the appendages and coral, we think were these like individual things. And we're like living our own lives. We're all disconnected from each other. We're disconnected from our source, not like God, but like, the source of whatever gave us life, like the things that came before. And I started also think about humans, as plants or trees, in the way that are sad to realize, like, What's unfortunate about humans is you can't see our growth. So we don't look like we did when we were babies. We look different, like I'm an adult, I'm bigger, whatever. So but a tree, if you hit that tree, or tie something around it as it's like a young tree, it grows up, and it has that Mark still in the tree. Or if somebody like cut off the limit, it might grow like a big, almost like a scar over it. Yeah. So you get to see all the stages of the tree in today's present tree. But in a human, like, a lot of that stuff is like say, if it's an emotional scar, or emotional trauma or pain, it's it's hidden in the brain. And the body inside. There are some scars on the skin, I'm talking about the more invisible ones. And it's kind of unfortunate, because then we don't get to see the full picture of the human being we see them just as a snapshot today, which I think gives us way less empathy for others. If we're unable to see them. As the child they once were, as the kid they were that was getting abused or getting isolated from from people are getting made fun of or whatever. And I started to realize like myself, and others, all of us. Like, I think I've been walking around thinking, I'm this different person than I was as a kid. Like, like I'm today. I mean, I'm an adult, but I was like, oh, no, like, I'm literally still that baby. And I'm still the child and I'm still the young adult. And I just like my cells I've just shared and I've grown, but I'm literally like a piece of coral that's grew slowly got taller. But unfortunately, humans like we're not stuck. We don't have roots and we're not stuck to anything. We're like, we're like detach. But it's literally still there. Like, like it doesn't go it's not like it's gone. Like it's literally there. And I think that that gave me a new understanding. though, myself and humans to see each other as like, we're all connected. And like, I know it's really cheesy, and I've heard a million people say this, but like, if I heal you, or if I hug you, if I love you, I'm actually hugging myself loving myself healing myself. And the same goes if I hurt you, whatever I hit you, I break your piece of coral of the main tree. I'm doing harm to the entire world, the entire community, the whole galaxy, basically. Because we are we are we are it. We are the universe. We are the galaxy. Um, so, yeah, that's what I think I think a lot about this type of stuff. And so yeah, I wanted to know, because I was wondering this week, like, I've been really thinking about this is the thing that really gets me is like, this might even turn me into a God believer one day, because it's like, I can't figure this out. But it's like, where, okay, say the Big Bang is your theory that you believe in? A lot of people just start at the Big Bang, they say, oh, there was this, this ball of mass entire mass of the universe in one thing exploded. It's still exploding today. That's the universe. Cool. But where the hell did that ball of mass come from? Everything in the universe come from? And okay, so that's where no one ever really gets to like, the science side, they just start there. They end there, whatever. They don't care. They're not gonna talk about God. And I think that sometimes, people that believe in God are like, yeah, because where did this shit come from? It's so it's like, it's like, to me, it's just as crazy to say that there's a fucking ball floating. And who knows? What was it floating in nothingness? Was it float also? Well, it wasn't even floating. Where was it? And then who the fuck made it? And why was it there? It's almost as crazy to say there's a ball of mass that the whole universe was in and it exploded one day, saying there's a guy in the sky that created the earth in seven days. I'm like, You know what, we're all equally as crazy. Because all this shit is crazy. And you don't want at least you guys have salvation and thinking about heaven and shit. Because I don't have that when I don't have religion. So. So one day, I might just become like a crazy evangelical Christian. No, I'm not gonna become evangelical. But um, I would like to know, like, the latest theory that I think you cut all this out if you want, but the latest thing that I believe this is like, the theory of continual death and rebirth. So where a universe eventually dies, like, although like matter, like, the energy, the stars expand, yeah, like, there's gonna be one day where the last star burns out. And then it will be complete darkness, or dark energy or black holes. And then it will, like you said, collapse, and then it becomes like that ripe device or whatever not device but state of being where then explodes again and becomes another universe. And that cycle of continual can just happen over and over and over, or over and over and over again. So that's cool. But again, like, I'm like, that makes sense to me. I get that now, because I didn't realize everything's gonna die. And then what happens bla bla, um, but it's like, when the shit come from,

Alex Iantaffi  
though. And where did this start? And where?

Pidgeon Pagonis  
And Why is life so fucking amazing? Like when you really think about it. And so, and then there's the multiverse thing, which I'm just like, Whoa,

Alex Iantaffi  
I love the multiverse, everywhere all at once is

Pidgeon Pagonis  
crazy. But it's not as crazy as anything else, you know? So it's like, exactly. That's just Yeah. And I think I heard a quote or something that somebody said that, like, the universe just is, and that's it. That's all it is like, and I'm like, You know what? That's where I have to get to because I could like, calm down and stop thinking about this stuff. Like, it just is, and I'll never know, I'll never have the answers. So yeah, just because

Alex Iantaffi  
we'll never have the answers doesn't, doesn't need to stop us asking the question. Because it is amazing. When we think about the multiverse or when we think about things expanding and contracting. You know, I really feel like our heartbeat, right? Our heart expands and contracts all the time. That's like the pulse of the multiverse, right? That really, for me, that's where it's at. It's like expansion and contraction, life and death, just distraction creation. It's

Pidgeon Pagonis  
thinking about our heart, like this. Muscle made of blood and tissue. It's just pumping everything. I give up our lives without being plugged in, like our bodies are not plugged into anything. There's an electrical current going through our bodies pumping our heart Exactly. We are able to think, conceptualize, love, cry, we move and we pee, which my friends so that's the reason they believe in God because they said something like I don't know why they thought that that made gods makes sense for them. But I was like, that makes me not believe in God. Because if God is this perfect being that he would have made us in His image, so why do we have to take a shit all the time and pee like we would have just been these perfect things that didn't need to eat and like poop and pee. So like, to me, I'm like, we're just literally animals. But like, every time I poop and pee, I'm reminded of like, what an animal I am and how I'm like, me evolved from you know, other animals that shit in person, you know, outside. And so it connects me to my brother in the East and the gorilla is so um, yeah, I, I love. I love thinking about things. And there's people that haven't left Chicago that I know that people have never been to New York City and lived in this country, their whole lives, there's people that have never been to another country. And there's so many more people who have never even been taught or allowed to know what space is. I didn't know until very recently, I didn't realize what stars were, I thought they were literally just glowing. The shape of a star we drew in school, I thought there were literally just these glowing things in the sky. I didn't realize those are suns. That's I didn't realize the sun was a star. I didn't really start with an umbrella term. And I didn't realize that what we see are in different galaxies, sometimes. They're like stars of different galaxies, and they're just, and the light is taking light years to get to us. And it's just, it's just, I think when you can start thinking on that scale, and start to understand or try to wrap your head, it opens your thinking up to so much more, which then makes I think more possible for people to start, be like a little bit more understanding and accepting of humans when they don't fit into like a binary. Because when you start to think about space, the thing that tripped me up though, in my book when I was studying supernovas is that there's one type of there's three types of ways that supernovas can happen. And one is when a binary star system is like spinning around each other. And eventually, one gets collapsed into the other. And I was like, god dammit, I don't want to talk about a binary star system. Trying to talk about the vastness of gender and sex. But um, those are just humans that yes, like,

Alex Iantaffi  
even that system is like, a collapse into each other and create something else. Right? And so is it really binary? That binary is maybe momentary,

Pidgeon Pagonis  
it's literally just like people, people just using their limited language to say, oh, there's two things up there sadly, or call it a binary star system, but I was like, this is really inconvenient. I'm not talking about this in my book.

Alex Iantaffi  
But that's only one way yeah. See, so even that it's not a binary because there are multiple

Pidgeon Pagonis  
binaries that minority anyways, yes, exactly.

Alex Iantaffi  
So yeah, I feel like I could have this conversation me two hours an hour. And I love it. And I do want to kind of honor your time you and so I'm gonna ask you the last question that I always ask which is, is there anything else that we haven't talked about that I have not asked you about? That you really would like people to know? Whether it's about your book, whether it's about intersex activism, whether it's about space?

Pidgeon Pagonis  
No, no more about space.

Alex Iantaffi  
no more about space.

Pidgeon Pagonis  
I would say that I have a few.So I have executive functioning, what I have problems with executive functioning stuff. I'm the master of starting projects and not finishing them. And I have finally become well, you're very consistent at this though. I have finally become. I've been in I was in a pretty dark depression for a few years and it started before the book but the book made it the book times the lockdown multiplied by the lockdowns and being living alone and putting myself how having to constantly revisit my childhood and some of the darkest parts of it. And that ended a very different way than I usually do. Like I had to like be in my body and see Like, how did I feel when I was a little kid, and the doctors were lifting my shirt up or when I was getting the surgery, and I woke up from you know, like, it was very dark, very dark time. So a lot of traumas. Yeah. And there's a lot of I at the end, was gonna cancel the book, like, various, the book was basically done. And I was having such a breakdown and meltdown. And I started to worry about how would my mom feel when the book comes out? And how would other people's feelings, I worried about kids, I don't even know who went to the local high school that I didn't go to. Because I described the high school as like a school I didn't want to go to and I'm like, Well, what about the kids that went there, and then they read my book, and they're gonna feel bad that I'm talking crap about their high school, or in a negative way. I cared too much about everything else. But I think it was a product of like, I was so mentally exhausted and traumatized by writing the book. And it was dark, it was just a dark period. And my therapist was like, Look, this is not normal, what you're going through deep diving into your history, your trauma like this everyday on a daily basis for years, it's not normal, and it's going to end soon, it's gonna have, it's gonna, you're gonna be over with this too. So, I've built long story short, I've been depressed for a long time, and especially the past few years. And it's been hard to like, I pulled away from social media for a few years, especially while writing the book. I thought I was gonna just stop doing intersex related anything. I planned on not doing any interviews for the book, I was done. I was just, I was so burnt out. And I have this renewed sense, like since people have read the book. And you're not the first one to say but I'm glad because you're the first one who I don't know personally. That said they read the book in one sitting.

Alex Iantaffi  
It's a it's an amazing book. It really is

Pidgeon Pagonis  
 honestly it's giving me like this renewed sense of purpose. And we talked about this before, but I'll share it because I want everyone to have access to this healing if they can get it is I'm currently doing ketamine treatment. At the hospital twice a week getting ketamine infusions, which is supposed to be very helpful for, for PTSD and depression, for treatment resistant depression and PTSD. And one of my ketamine sessions, I often I'm very, I give myself positive self talk, I'm like, Pidgeon you got this, oh, my god budget, you can do it, whatever it is, like, it's, whether it's I want to finish my film and put it online for free or I want to finish this photo project and work, whatever it is, I'm like, everything just feels so much past so much more possible when I'm under, when I'm on ketamine. And one of these sessions, I was like, Pidgeon, Trans People are fucking amazing. We are the shit. We are like, like, Fuck everybody who says we're not who's trying to make these laws. Like, we are literally so special. We are so fucking amazing. We are the shit we are like that I just like was so blown away by us. And then I was like, and why would you throw away your work that you've done so long for for the intersects community? Like, why would I stop and quit? No, this is my purpose isn't my calling this is I can do it. Like I, I have already done good stuff in my community. And I could do more. So what I would say to people listening is I have some projects I want to finish, I have a renewed sense of commitment and vigor to the to the cause. And one of the projects is my initial film that I made. My first film called The sunny never had made it when I was a senior. I mean, when I was graduating Grad School at DePaul, I went to the same school twice for grad school and undergrad. No, it means some I need someone that helped me. It's finished. But for instance, I like took animation work from Disney, and I don't have permission. And I like inserted in the film, or I have music that might not be completely what's it called, like royalty free in it, or Yeah, I would like to finit fill in some gaps. Like with animation or video, I just want someone that knows like that can like mentor me or give me account like an accountability partner. That would be like this is what needs to be done to release this to the public. And this is what you need to do. Let's do it. Because I want that film to be accessed by as many people as possible. But I want to do it in the right way that are I'm not going to get like a legal letter at my door from Walt Disney or whatever. So but this is a beautiful film and that the whole thing I wanted to do with it was to put it out there for free so people could have it. The other project is called called physical record. It's a film photography project I started years ago where I went around and took pictures of intersex people all over the world on black and white film photography because I wanted to create a physical record of existence on actual physical film. And I have all these pictures. They're all scanned, they're beautiful. They're on black. They're on medium for I'm at film. And the stage of like, sharing them I got stuck years ago and never did. Because I don't know how to, I don't want to just put the pictures online, I want to, like collect stories from the people that I took photos from, and maybe put them together as a book or a zine, or like, think of a way to show them like exhibits, but also then just put them online, but I want them online, like with the stories of the people. And I also want like a physical copy me like a book. So if anybody wants to help me with that, or just send me money, because then I can get the help myself. What's the other projects, and we working on a film soon? A new documentary where we're gonna actually, because it was birthed out of the trauma stuff, I wanted to focus on the highlights, I mean, on the successes of intersex people and like positive stories. So we're gonna go around the world, and we're actually probably going to go away. Are we going to Italy? I don't know if we're going to Italy. Well, we're going to Greece. Well, I hope. We're going to Greece and other places. Because wherever there's been like a success, like a legislative success, or, or otherwise, for intersex people, we're going to document those stories and ask how did you do this? What happened? Tell us the story. The collect those into a documentary. So if you want to help fund that film, we need money for that as well. We have funding we have some funding from an endowment like a national endowment or so I always forget the word but something from the government for the arts or something endowment? Oh, yeah, nice endowment, something like that. Yeah, we have something like that we but we always use more money and experience if you have experienced production experience, or whatever you want to learn. So that's the last thing I would say is like, I have a lot of these projects, I want to finish and get out. I think there's one or two, I'm working on a podcast pretty soon. Awesome. That's going to be hopefully with like a trans co host. And we're going to I don't wanna get into it right now, like, give it away. But it's going to be very timely to the things that we've talked about what's going on in the legislative and the legislation around the country. So I have all these projects, but I need, I'm one person. And I need help. So if you can help me, if you have a skill set that's like, you can help me get my first film out there. Or you could help me or you if you're at the skill of having a lot of money, and you could donate me some money. Whatever it is just, you know, hit me up. My website is www dot P ID dot GE it's very weird. But it's my name. That's exactly. It's that GE because the country of Georgia has a domain name that GE. So I was able to put PID that GE which is my name and nickname. And that's awesome. You know, my emails there hit me up with what you could do. And yeah, that's the last thing I would say is like, I need your help. And thank you for caring about intersex people, for ya for working hard for us as well as allies. And we need you and you need us. So let's go. Yeah, thank you.

Alex Iantaffi  
Thank you, Pidgeon, that was so beautiful. And listeners and viewers now because this is also going to be on your podcast. That's right. If you've got skills, if you got money, you heard it. Hit Pidgeon up, their website is going to be in the description as well. P ID dot G E is an easy one to remember too. So hit them up with your donation with your skills, let's make this happen. Because all those projects sound awesome. And thank you, thank you so much for your time to join us. So appreciate you. Appreciate you the beautiful words in your book, the amazing work and activism that you've done and continue to do. And I can't wait to see what you do next. So thank you so much. 

Thank

Pidgeon Pagonis  
you, and you could pre order. Nobody needs to know my memoir. Um, I didn't know the discount, if you preorder it. I never understood why people did pre orders. But now I do. If you do a pre order,

Alex Iantaffi  
there's a really important discount. So if you want so

Pidgeon Pagonis  
you want the book and you want a discount, you should preorder it. But it comes out August 15. I hope you guys read it. I hope you share it with people in your life. And I hope it changes helped change, opened some people's hearts up and it also makes other people feel seen because growing up I didn't have a single person to look up to I didn't have a single role model that was intersex anywhere. And this book will change that for a lot of intersex people. And I mean, it's already been changing, but this will add to that as well. So thank you so much for having me to talk about the book. And thanks for reading it. Oh,

Alex Iantaffi  
it's so beautiful. So yes, people. Preorder this book. Read this book. Share it, gift it. It's beautiful. Nobody needs to know. Oh,

Pidgeon Pagonis  
I don't know if you notice that there's little stars on the cover and the head of the galaxies. Yeah.

Alex Iantaffi  
That cover is so beautiful. For those of you who are listening, it's just like shapes of hands, but like this cosmos and stars inside and it's like pinks and purples and reds and blues, and it's a beautiful cover. So get the book, get the physical copy if you can, because the cover is beautiful.

Pidgeon Pagonis  
And invite me to speak. That's how I make my most of my money is I'm an intersex, lecture lecturer, guest speaker, panelist, consultant, etc, at universities, companies I've worked, you know, for everybody you could think of, and I need more jobs. So please hit my inbox up with with speaking requests, and I would love to write back to you and come speak to your group in person or virtually. And that's it. That's everything.

Alex Iantaffi  
I love it. So you heard it here, preorder the book, read the book, hit page on app for trainings, consultation, speaking reading now that I have readings. You got to do some read? Yes, exactly. So and either with was some paid gigs and some skills and some donations for the beautiful yesterday. Thank you.

Pidgeon Pagonis  
Thank you very much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai