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  • 1 day ago
Genderation 2021
Transcript
00:00:16You
00:00:40I've always felt a deep kinship with trans people.
00:00:45I had gender identity confusions from early on.
00:00:49Here you see me as a kid with my mom, wearing a skirt, unhappy.
00:00:54And here I'm with my dad, going fishing, very happy.
00:01:03More than 20 years ago, I spent a lot of time in San Francisco.
00:01:09There I shot the film Gendernauts, with and about the pioneers who were on a journey through shifting identities.
00:01:19I was infatuated with their playful experimentation in what was, arguably, the Western Hemisphere's most creative city back then.
00:01:31Now I'm visiting my protagonists again.
00:01:35How do they live today?
00:01:37And how are they coping with a greatly changed world?
00:01:54Anni Sprinkel has been an inspiration for me since more than 30 years.
00:02:00She always reinvents herself.
00:02:03Anni has supported the trans movement for a long time.
00:02:07In the 80s, I had an apartment.
00:02:10It was kind of a laboratory for people to explore gender and sexuality.
00:02:16I had a lover, Les Nichols, who was an F2M, very much a pioneer.
00:02:23I made a video called Linda, Les, and Annie, the First Female-to-Male Transsexual Love Story.
00:02:31These days, she lives with her partner, Bess Stephens, in the south of San Francisco.
00:02:45She lives with her partner, Bess Stephens, in the north of San Francisco.
00:03:18When I first met Annie, she was doing her performance art, but she was very well known as a sex
00:03:24worker and a prostitute.
00:03:25And I met her in New York and did a photo project with her, but then I invited her to
00:03:29come to my sculpture class with eight students at UC Santa Cruz.
00:03:34And she, I didn't tell her what to do, right?
00:03:37So she decides she's going to show these eight sculpture students, like welders, how to have an energy orgasm.
00:03:43So she has this energy orgasm.
00:03:45These kids are like 18 years old, and they're just like, they had never seen anything like it.
00:03:50I didn't take my clothes off.
00:03:51No, right, yeah, well, whatever.
00:03:53Anyhow, she blew their minds.
00:03:55And then after the energy orgasm, she says, okay, now you can ask me any question you want.
00:04:01And she passed a little hat around, and they could write their questions down so you didn't even know who
00:04:06asked what question.
00:04:07And one kid wrote a question and said, how could you have been a sex worker?
00:04:12And Annie answered, and this is when I fell in love with her, she said, everybody needs to be touched.
00:04:34Well, come on, boy, I'll show you the house of love.
00:04:39It's just a little shack on the street.
00:04:44It's good now that we're here.
00:04:45It's so good, too.
00:04:46I haven't seen this on so long.
00:04:48It looks good, doesn't it?
00:04:49Hi, hi, hi.
00:04:50Yeah, no, I love it.
00:04:51Yeah.
00:04:51It's been a minute since I've seen you.
00:04:52Javi is the patience of a saint.
00:04:55And the eye of a connoisseur.
00:04:58That sounds lovely.
00:04:59It is true, actually.
00:05:01Is it up here?
00:05:02She's in the back.
00:05:02Yes, of course.
00:05:03I bought all my show clothes here for 38 years or something.
00:05:08Like, I bought my wigs here.
00:05:11I bought everything here.
00:05:21Come inside this house, you'll never get enough.
00:05:25Oh.
00:05:26Cause the second you slip inside, your temperature starts to rise.
00:05:31And you're a permanent guest in the house of love.
00:05:35You see, here's Annie's poster.
00:05:37And here's our postcard.
00:05:41This is my happy spot.
00:05:43It makes me happy, too.
00:05:45Bye.
00:05:46Bye.
00:05:47Bye.
00:05:48Bye.
00:05:50Bye.
00:06:05Stafford has built a moving business in Oakland.
00:06:09When I first met him back then, he worked as a model, photographer, and web designer.
00:06:16Together with Jordy Jones, he also organized the Spectacular Club Confidential, the meeting
00:06:23place for San Francisco's gender benders.
00:06:32I've never felt male, and I've never felt female, and I don't really concern myself with gender.
00:06:38I just let people go the way they will with it, and if they're confused, then I let them
00:06:42be confused.
00:06:43And, you know, I don't really have an answer for them.
00:06:48So, are you a boy or a girl?
00:06:50Yes.
00:06:51You know.
00:06:53So, I made a conscious decision.
00:06:56When I moved to New York, I was escaping kind of a bad relationship, and I had a lot of
00:07:01time
00:07:02to think.
00:07:03And that's when I had chest surgery, and then I went on full doses, and it just is such a
00:07:12nice, natural part of me.
00:07:14I like to say it's the most normal thing about me, is my transition.
00:07:37San Francisco has changed in a lot of ways.
00:07:41Well, 20 years ago, the arts were huge.
00:07:44The gay and lesbian, the queer community was huge, and tight, and finely woven.
00:07:51And through the whole tech boom and the taking over of San Francisco by tech companies and big
00:07:59money, they've just squashed a lot of the arts.
00:08:05San Francisco seems to just be, it's about the money now.
00:08:09And it's about gig culture, app culture.
00:08:14You don't call a taxi anymore, you order a Lyft or an Uber.
00:08:27I was so lucky, you know, to be surrounded by my community.
00:08:32Cool.
00:08:32Cool.
00:08:34What has changed is, I'm now having to work a lot harder.
00:08:39My social life is not just second or third, it comes after everything else.
00:08:45And I guess when you're young, you don't, you know, I didn't think ahead, like, you're
00:08:52going to be 55 someday, you're going to need to make money, because you won't be able to
00:08:57work your whole life.
00:08:58Um, so that's what I'm doing now, I'm trying to build a business that will sustain itself
00:09:03and, um, social life and community, it's second.
00:09:09Uh, it seems like the, the apps, you know, again, Facebook, uh, seems to be my social life.
00:09:33Susan Stryker is an internationally renowned gender theorist.
00:09:38She founded the Institute for Gender Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
00:09:46I feel like I have the right or the ability to exercise complete control over this, this
00:09:51flesh here.
00:09:51It's mine, you know, I live here, you know, I don't, I don't rent.
00:09:55I'm not borrowing it from someone, you know.
00:09:57It's like, I didn't have to pay a damage deposit.
00:09:59It's, you know, it's mine to do with as, you know, I see fit.
00:10:03And if I, if I wreck it or ruin it somehow, then that, that's my responsibility.
00:10:10Nowadays, she spends a lot of time traveling to conferences, and she's a visiting professor
00:10:16at Yale.
00:10:18When we talked 20 years ago, it's like, I had finished my PhD in US history at Berkeley,
00:10:26but I mean, honestly, because of the, um, the stigma attached to being trans, uh, and just
00:10:33sort of how weird people thought it was back in the nineties, uh, I had a lot of trouble
00:10:39finding academic employment.
00:10:42You know, it's like for, for 15 years, I never had a job, um, that I did not create for
00:10:49myself.
00:10:49And, you know, I do have some nostalgia for the nineties.
00:10:54I mean, I think everybody has nostalgia for these like, you know, peak moments in their
00:10:59lives.
00:11:00And I, I think queer San Francisco in the early nineties was this really, really special place.
00:11:09You know, I think people were, you know, ripping up identities and culture in this really interesting
00:11:16way, a lot of culture hacking going on.
00:11:19And it felt exciting.
00:11:27It was a scene, you know, that I think has not been as sort of romanticized or celebrated
00:11:34as say, you know, Warhol or downtown punk scene in Manhattan, but it was something, you
00:11:40know, it felt like, you know, at the time it's like things that are happening here now, ways
00:11:46people are figuring out how to live, ways to be.
00:11:50I miss that brief cultural moment of like, you know, five years or so where I really felt
00:11:56like the gender scene here was hot, hot, hot, um, loved being part of it, making my little
00:12:03contribution to it.
00:12:05Um, but you know, everything moves on.
00:12:21Max Wolf Valerio is a poet and writer.
00:12:25I followed Max since his first steps on his journey from female to male.
00:12:31In Gender Noughts, he reads from the manuscript that later became his trans men biography, The
00:12:38Testosterone Files.
00:12:42For 32 years, I lived inside a woman's body.
00:12:46Although I resisted femaleness on and off throughout my life, I learned to speak the language of
00:12:52women to pass on scene among them.
00:12:54I was both part of their world and apart from it, alien and peer, feeling male inside, yet
00:13:01living the life of a woman, I learned a lot.
00:13:11Hey there.
00:13:11Hey there.
00:13:12How are you?
00:13:13Pretty good.
00:13:13How are you doing?
00:13:14I'm good.
00:13:15Yeah.
00:13:15I was wondering if, um, you had my book in, in stock, it's called The Testosterone Files.
00:13:22Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, actually I do, I think I have one left, uh, but, you know,
00:13:31I was wondering if you could sign it.
00:13:33Sure.
00:13:34Should be happy to do that.
00:13:36Yeah.
00:13:36But I'll get more in.
00:13:38Yeah.
00:13:38Oh, that'd be great.
00:13:39Great.
00:13:39That would be fantastic.
00:13:41Yeah.
00:13:41Yeah.
00:13:42All right.
00:13:43Sure.
00:13:47And it is really the story, I wrote it in the 90s, it's about my first five years on,
00:13:53in transition, on testosterone, and it centers around the testosterone.
00:14:00There was a lot more activity in the 90s, that was a really exciting time, I think, to
00:14:04be trans and to be doing medical transition, even though it was really different, there
00:14:09wasn't as much support.
00:14:10But we were pioneers, I think, in the sense of getting, changing things around that, getting
00:14:16more, you know, getting, helping to get things like the medical clinic started.
00:14:22I have no interest in destroying or irrevocably changing the binary gender system.
00:14:33I didn't transition in order to do that.
00:14:36It was part of my own individual journey.
00:14:40I think it's more related to radical individualism than to some kind of movement to change the
00:14:47way people see gender.
00:14:51As far as I'm concerned, I'm a man.
00:14:53Everybody who meets me just takes me as a man.
00:14:56I live my life as a man 24-7.
00:14:59I am a man.
00:15:00At some point, you really feel like it's happened.
00:15:03It's real.
00:15:03You walk through that magical door.
00:15:24Sandy Stone was a professor for New Media at the University of Texas in Austin.
00:15:30In another earlier life, she was a sound engineer for, among others, Jimi Hendrix and Van Morrison.
00:15:39Her essay, The Empire Strikes Back, a post-transsexual manifesto, is regarded as the groundbreaking text
00:15:47for transgender studies.
00:15:50Today, Sandy lives in Santa Cruz and is a co-founder of K-Squid, an alternative radio station.
00:16:14This is a radio station that we have built out of the ashes of another radio station.
00:16:20We had a pile of equipment that wasn't good for anything.
00:16:24So I had to figure out, what do we need to add?
00:16:28How do I build it?
00:16:29Because we couldn't afford to buy anything.
00:16:31She's the heartbeat of the station.
00:16:34Absolutely.
00:16:37Oh, they're up like 30 seconds.
00:16:40So that I can keep the American economy going, and maybe if you'll buy some stuff from America.
00:16:44Let's go back to transition.
00:16:47Transition is a term meaning when you move from one gender to another.
00:16:53When I was in transition, I thought it was interesting to ask the question,
00:16:59what is my sexuality likely to be like later?
00:17:04And I had no idea, and I thought about it and I decided I didn't care.
00:17:09Since I seemed to spend a great deal of my sexual time with women, I assumed it would be similar
00:17:18later,
00:17:19but then again, there were expectations that I would naturally, after transition,
00:17:26I would meet a man and get married and settle down and da-da-da-da-da.
00:17:31And then I came back to Santa Cruz and became involved with a group of women that called itself, ourselves,
00:17:40the Amazon Nine.
00:17:42And the Amazon Nine was a group of women that was physically very active.
00:17:48We were mountain climbers and hikers and adventurers.
00:17:54That way of being funny and active and vital and strong.
00:18:00That way of living in the real world.
00:18:04I was captivated by that.
00:18:06I mean, I wanted to be that way.
00:18:26I have felt that the San Francisco that I knew and fell in love with had been slipping away
00:18:32because of huge infusion of Silicon Valley money and, you know, just sort of a whole new demographic of people
00:18:39living in San Francisco,
00:18:40people in my community being displaced.
00:18:44It's become a lot whiter and a lot wealthier.
00:18:47So many of my friends feel like they can't afford to live here anymore.
00:18:53I feel fortunate in that I feel very stably housed in the Bay Area,
00:18:58largely because my partner bought a home here more than 30 years ago.
00:19:03We own the house outright.
00:19:05It's actually very cheap for us to live here.
00:19:08But my community is moving away.
00:19:11Here we are, you know, 23 or 23 years later.
00:19:17Yeah.
00:19:18Still.
00:19:19Still.
00:19:19Still involved in everything.
00:19:21Yeah, still clicking.
00:19:22And still.
00:19:23Still.
00:19:23Still movie nerds.
00:19:25Still liking to be out for a long hike in nature is like the favorite kind of, you know, recreation
00:19:34activity or vacation activity to do.
00:19:37And yeah, still trying to keep it real politically and find ways to plug in where we can.
00:19:45Yeah.
00:19:46I know.
00:19:47Yeah.
00:19:51Have to give it a try.
00:19:57Kind of depends on what to buy.
00:19:59All the new people in the neighborhood, the gentrifiers, they buy these houses, which are different colors,
00:20:05and they paint them.
00:20:06Well, a lot of them paint them black.
00:20:08This one is a dark gray.
00:20:09It's a little bit better, but they all look the same, and they all have the same font for the
00:20:18numbers.
00:20:19It's sort of a very clean font, and it just, now that I've pointed it out, you'll notice them around
00:20:26the city.
00:20:26These black, black houses, I hate them.
00:20:30Are these techies?
00:20:31Yes.
00:20:32I would say tech bro modern.
00:20:33Yeah.
00:20:33I think it's a style.
00:20:34Yeah, no, they're definitely all bought by these people who are making these terrific sums of money.
00:20:41They're all very young, and they move into the neighborhood, and with no sense at all about the culture of
00:20:49the neighborhood.
00:20:50And it's like, you know, we're here, and so much for the gig economy.
00:20:55Success is killing San Francisco.
00:20:58Yeah.
00:21:14I still love San Francisco.
00:21:17I always will.
00:21:18But she's pretty expensive now.
00:21:21Basically, the rents are too high.
00:21:23The cost of living here is insane.
00:21:25It's the groceries.
00:21:26It's the heating.
00:21:28A city can't just be for the very wealthy.
00:21:32Obviously, something is wrong.
00:21:35But it's happening all over the country in a lot of different cities.
00:21:38But here is sort of the apex, ground zero.
00:21:42San Francisco, as usual, is ahead of the curve.
00:21:47Like a lot of people, I've been squeezed out.
00:21:50I'm living in the Denver area now.
00:21:54Such a great little boy.
00:21:57Yeah.
00:21:58Good Aussie.
00:21:59Oh, boy.
00:22:02I'm living with my parents.
00:22:04They're elderly, so I try and help them out as much as I can.
00:22:08I'm a treaty Indian, a Canadian treaty Indian, on my mother's side.
00:22:13Essentially, she lost her treaty rights when she married my father.
00:22:17My father's an American.
00:22:19He was in the military, and so none of us kids had treaty rights.
00:22:23And at that time in Canada, if a Native woman married outside, married a non-Native, she lost her rights.
00:22:30They changed that in the 80s.
00:22:33My mother got her rights back, and I got treaty rights.
00:22:37You do get some treaty money to go to school.
00:22:39I'm waiting for that bureaucratic process to play out.
00:22:44And at that point, I'll have enough money to afford living in Boulder.
00:22:49Haha!
00:23:22I go to University of Colorado in Boulder.
00:23:26I'm finishing up the degree that I started in the 70s, believe it or not.
00:23:31I attended what's called the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.
00:23:36It was incredibly creative.
00:23:38I got to hang out with Gregory Corso.
00:23:41I met William Burroughs, go to parties where he would sit in the room.
00:23:45He was very quiet in his suit in the room.
00:23:48And I also studied with Allen Ginsberg.
00:24:02My writing, it's not identity-based.
00:24:05In fact, there's not even necessarily a person in a lot of these poems.
00:24:10There's not always a stable narrator.
00:24:14It's not about talking about my personal problems or any political issue I'm trying to push or discuss.
00:24:22Even though I think those things come in.
00:24:26Radio Freeway.
00:24:29Laws passing at night in the wind.
00:24:33Little words in my ears.
00:24:36Whistling at the sprinkling of white dots on the road.
00:24:41The crescents and skulls.
00:24:43People in their cars going past, floating as they ride, drunk and full of the moon or television.
00:24:52Police in their heads on the radio.
00:24:55Or Dr. Laura.
00:24:56Some spiritual sensation.
00:24:59A t-shirt slogan.
00:25:01A self-help book.
00:25:03Or a talking preacher.
00:25:05Something they can hear and feel but not describe.
00:25:30In 20 years' time, I hope to still be healthy.
00:25:34I plan on writing more poetry.
00:25:38I'm working on a novel about identity politics, featuring the theme of identity politics.
00:25:45Hopefully, I'll have a little stability.
00:25:46I won't be living in a tent.
00:25:50You know, because things are getting tough out there.
00:26:01I call San Francisco the clitoris of the United States.
00:26:05It's very tiny.
00:26:07We're not even a million people in San Francisco.
00:26:11It is surrounded by water.
00:26:13It's very electric.
00:26:16Luckily, Beth bought a house.
00:26:18So that makes us kind of gentrifiers on some level.
00:26:23You know, this was a real working class neighborhood.
00:26:26Now you can afford to buy a house here, most people.
00:26:29Oh, I would never be able to afford to buy a house here.
00:26:32Yeah.
00:26:32Yeah, even as a full professor, she couldn't do it.
00:26:39So this has been a real sanctuary for a lot of artists.
00:26:42We have three guest rooms, and we'd like to share our space.
00:26:46We have dinner parties.
00:26:48So it is kind of a Sprinkle Stevens salon.
00:26:52And we have a garage where we can do painting and photography.
00:26:57And we're making films.
00:27:00We're making ecosexual documentary films.
00:27:16This is the forest that I worked on the longest,
00:27:19is the San Bernardino National Forest that we'll be seeing today.
00:27:21And I was here for 30 years.
00:27:24The water is actually being taken from a series of wells and tunnels
00:27:28that Nestle has put into the mountain up here to get that water.
00:27:32Nestle is the company that's doing this.
00:27:34Yes, Nestle, and they're bottling it as Arrowhead spring water.
00:27:39They only pay, I think, $562 a year or something like that
00:27:43for all that water that they get, 65 million gallons of water average.
00:27:47And then that gets split into liter bottles
00:27:49and then sold for a dollar and a half,
00:27:52making millions and millions and millions of dollars off of it.
00:27:55That's worse than stupid.
00:27:57I'm trying to fight that every chance I get,
00:27:59but it seems like it's a losing battle.
00:28:01No, we keep fighting.
00:28:02Yeah.
00:28:03I'm going to keep fighting until I'm six feet under.
00:28:05Me too.
00:28:05Me too.
00:28:06Me too.
00:28:31Me too.
00:28:31This is my department.
00:28:33All of this.
00:28:37I teach at University of California, Santa Cruz.
00:28:41So we started the Earth Lab.
00:28:44And the Earth Lab stands for Environmental Art, Research, Theory, and Happenings.
00:28:49And it's really a place where Annie and I can bring visiting artists.
00:28:53We do symposiums.
00:28:55And we're going to do a symposium up in the Sierra Nevada this coming summer
00:28:59about looking at the forest with scientists and ritual and art and performance.
00:29:10A lot of environmental art can be very dry and boring and depressing.
00:29:15So the Earth Lab is a place we can have fun and celebrate
00:29:18and make environmental art with joy.
00:29:21And to try to engage these young people, they're the ones that are facing a future
00:29:26that's a very precarious future.
00:29:28And so we try to, you know, both encourage them, support them, mentor them.
00:29:33Oh.
00:29:35Beth?
00:29:38That's...
00:29:38Oh, yeah.
00:29:39This was when I married the sea in Venice.
00:29:43Yeah.
00:29:44What else, honey?
00:29:46This is when we married Lake Calavesi in Finland.
00:29:52That was in Finland.
00:29:52In Finland.
00:29:55Ooh.
00:29:55Yeah.
00:29:56We should air these out.
00:29:58Yeah, we should.
00:29:59We should sell them.
00:30:01I was smaller then.
00:30:08There we go.
00:30:09Is that right?
00:30:10Yeah.
00:30:10Yeah.
00:30:11That's amazing.
00:30:12Ooh.
00:30:12And there she is wearing it.
00:30:14Yeah, there's the picture of us wearing those.
00:30:21I'm very interested also in redefining what sexuality is,
00:30:26because I think it's become kind of a bit certain norms and stereotypes
00:30:31that are not so interesting, especially if you're genderqueer
00:30:36or menopausal, postmenopausal, or in cancer treatments or in prison.
00:30:41It's about a sexuality that goes beyond the body, even.
00:30:47It's about a sexuality with everything, with earth, sky, sea, connecting,
00:30:52and expanding our pleasure potential through our senses.
00:30:57Smell, touch, taste, sight.
00:31:00The beauty of nature can be incredibly erotic.
00:31:05And people are part of nature, so all sex is eco-sex,
00:31:09but it's much bigger than between humans.
00:31:29We are eco-sexuals.
00:31:31The earth is our lover.
00:31:34We collaborate with nature.
00:31:38We treat the earth with respect, affection, and sensuality.
00:31:44We are skinny-deepers, sun-worshippers, and stargazers.
00:31:52We are artists, sex workers, sexologists, academics, environmental and peace activists,
00:32:02feminists, eco-immigrants, putos y putas.
00:32:09We talk about anthropogenic climate change, you know, the Anthropocene as this new geological era that we live in.
00:32:18And, like, one way of, like, moving past or dismantling the anthropogenic part of that,
00:32:27the, you know, human, man-made part of it, it's like, what if we changed the human?
00:32:34You know, like, and I do see transgender as something that, that is, like, contesting our beliefs about what the
00:32:44body means,
00:32:45uh, contesting the way that bodies get kind of conscripted or enrolled into societies,
00:32:50become parts of populations, become resources that states use.
00:32:55And if you're, like, messing up the categories, if you're changing the relationship of social categorization to biology,
00:33:04if you see, if you see trans as part of, like, kind of, like, pulling the binary gender system, like,
00:33:11out of your body,
00:33:12you know, like, I think about that scene in The Matrix a lot, you know, from 1999,
00:33:17where the Keanu Reeves character recognizes that he's, you know, living inside this computer-generated reality,
00:33:24and there's this scene of him, like, you know, kind of, like, pulling the, the, the apparatus out of his
00:33:31body,
00:33:32you know, um, you know, it's like, I think transgender can be kind of like that.
00:33:36Yeah.
00:33:52Yeah.
00:33:53Yeah.
00:33:54Yeah.
00:33:55Yeah.
00:33:57Yeah.
00:34:04Yeah.
00:34:07Yeah.
00:34:10Yeah.
00:34:14Here in Northern California, global warming means more fires.
00:34:20Lots and lots of fires, and they're burning around areas where there are power lines.
00:34:30And last year, it turned out that sparks from the power lines had actually started some of the fires.
00:34:37So PG&E decided instead of cutting back the trees around all the power lines, they decided to give their
00:34:47executive bonuses instead.
00:34:50So now what they do is when they're high winds, and when it's very dry and hot, they turn off
00:34:56the power to large parts of Northern California.
00:35:00So we're next.
00:35:02The share of citizens who believe it would be better to have a, quote, strong leader, who does not have
00:35:08to, quote, bother with parliament and elections.
00:35:12The station lose power sometime over the weekend.
00:35:16It's a radio station, it's digital, and we'll be off the air for two days, perhaps, and then we have
00:35:22to get back on.
00:35:23And that process for us takes about anywhere from two to five days.
00:35:29I'm gearing up for this right now, I'm writing a manual, an instruction manual, that the other engineers who help
00:35:37me can maybe make sense out of.
00:35:42You know, it's trial by the real thing.
00:35:46We don't have any trial runs at this.
00:35:48The power goes off.
00:35:50Oh, we're in the dark.
00:35:51Now what?
00:35:52Now we have to get us.
00:35:53We wait, and then we get back on line when the power comes back.
00:35:57So that's where we are.
00:36:00Okay.
00:36:01Okay, Darcy, you're on the phone.
00:36:03Hey, Dar.
00:36:04Hello, Darcy.
00:36:05We're making a film, and you're on the air.
00:36:08Okay, hi, everybody.
00:36:10Hi.
00:36:11Hi.
00:36:11I just want you to know that Sandy Snow just got into a contract for Geekhaven Estates.
00:36:21Darcy is my ex-partner, and she lives in town, and we're very close, and she is also a realtor,
00:36:31and she's been helping us try to buy our own home, which we just did, apparently.
00:36:40You just did, my friend.
00:36:42You are in contract, man.
00:36:45We are in contract.
00:36:48My ass is now officially on the line.
00:36:51Oh, my God, Darcy.
00:36:54Congratulations, Sandy.
00:36:56That's what I have to say.
00:36:57Congratulations.
00:36:59Congratulations.
00:37:01Thank you very much.
00:37:04We'll talk more when I'm not in the middle of being interviewed.
00:37:08You celebrate today.
00:37:10I'll go to work.
00:37:10By the way, I'm your beloved ex.
00:37:12Your what?
00:37:13I'm your beloved ex.
00:37:16Yes.
00:37:17I'm sorry.
00:37:19I was being rather formal.
00:37:21Darcy is my beloved ex.
00:37:24Yes.
00:37:25There we go.
00:37:26It's true.
00:37:27Woo-hoo!
00:37:28Yeah!
00:37:29We did it!
00:37:31We did it!
00:37:31We did it!
00:37:32We did it!
00:37:34You don't know what a struggle this was to make this happen.
00:37:39On everybody's part, Darcy probably more than anybody, but anyway, how can I talk about
00:37:47this when I'm on camera?
00:37:50All right.
00:37:51Here.
00:37:52Woo-hoo!
00:37:57Wow.
00:37:58Wow.
00:37:58Wow.
00:37:59Well, come down again.
00:38:01Okay.
00:38:02Come down here.
00:38:03Okay.
00:38:04Down here.
00:38:05Down here.
00:38:05Yeah.
00:38:06All right.
00:38:07So this is Leslie, my son-in-law.
00:38:09Hi.
00:38:11Hey, John.
00:38:12Yeah.
00:38:13I'm still on the phone.
00:38:14One other thing.
00:38:15There were four offers.
00:38:16Say that again?
00:38:17Four offers.
00:38:18There were four offers.
00:38:19Woo!
00:38:20I am a single 80-year-old woman who will do nothing but sit in the corner of your house
00:38:26and take care of it.
00:38:27You've got a gracious nature yard.
00:38:29And I have no children and no pets.
00:38:33That's the way we got this house.
00:38:38So I'm, oh, I need to really, I'm not kidding.
00:38:42I need to let this sink in.
00:38:44Yeah.
00:38:44We're homeowners in the worst market in the world.
00:38:49Maybe not in the world, but the worst market.
00:38:52No, we're now the second worst market, I think, in California.
00:39:00After San Francisco?
00:39:01San Francisco's number one.
00:39:03We're number two.
00:39:05Then I think San Diego.
00:39:07I mean, it's almost impossible for a real human being to buy a house here.
00:39:13We're number two.
00:39:43My father was in a similar business.
00:39:45He was a truck driver.
00:39:46He was a teamster, you know, good union truck driver.
00:39:50It must be in the blood.
00:40:03The shock of going from Obama to Trump has been horrible.
00:40:11And Trump and his entire administration, it is their goal to erase trans people.
00:40:19They are one by one knocking down every gain we've had.
00:40:25They are hacking away at our medical care.
00:40:29They're hacking away at our right for employment.
00:40:33They're hacking away the right to use a bathroom.
00:40:36They're hacking away at our right to grow.
00:40:46Today we're moving one of my long-time clients.
00:40:49He needs to move his entire studio.
00:40:52So we're moving all of his artwork from one studio to another.
00:40:56All of his paints, all of his brushes, his easels.
00:41:00Everything you need to be an artist, we're moving it.
00:41:11the other thing I like to do is I like to make friends with people who normally if they knew
00:41:16about me wouldn't be my friend and then when they're relying on me and they're just like
00:41:22Stafford you're the best and blah blah blah and I'll go yeah by the way I'm trans you know and
00:41:27they're like what so I educate in that way because once they know you once they like you and they
00:41:34see
00:41:35that you're you know basically just the same as them you know it's sort of sort of a little
00:41:43guerrilla marketing for trans people so I like to call myself the ambassador of trans you know
00:42:03yeah it's the best absolutely the best yeah he'd moved all my art and to another place and for
00:42:12storage and now he's moved everything here so yeah
00:42:38so how long is it Mimi that we've been together now 23 23 and a half years yeah
00:42:51I remember depending on how you can depending on how we count you know yeah I think queer
00:42:57relationships often don't have the same you know what was our first date you know kind of landmarks
00:43:15likewise yeah that's one of the things that I actually I like about being in a
00:43:19relationship with her is that she as we get older you know it's nice to be around a lot
00:43:25of younger people and a lot of really cool younger people so the conference I'm actually here in San
00:43:34Francisco to attend right now it's called the National Women's Studies Association and it's the
00:43:39major professional organization for people who teach in gender studies do women's studies in recent
00:43:46years the conference has actually been a very good place to do transgender related work
00:43:56Dr. Susan Stryker is the author most recently of transgender history the roots of today's
00:44:02revolution which I saw over there she's a visiting professor of women's gender and sexuality studies
00:44:06at Yale University founding co-editor of the academic journal TSQ transgender studies quarterly and co-director
00:44:13of the Emmy-winning documentary film screaming Queens the riot at Compton's cafeteria we can foreground the
00:44:20immense impact that Stryker's work has had on scholarship between and across disciplines she's
00:44:25an archivist of trans life offering countless contributions across platforms vast and for reaching
00:44:31she's an architect both in the conceptual crafting of concepts in the literal forming of spaces for trans
00:44:37life she is someone who has not only formed the field but moved aside to make way for different kinds
00:44:42of
00:44:42thinking I was out of the academy for 15 years and you know so you know props to all y
00:44:51'all who are you
00:44:52know in the precariat I was there for a long time figuring out how to pay my rent by writing
00:44:58stuff that I knew
00:44:59about and working in the nonprofit sector and learning how to be a filmmaker and you know making my art
00:45:04and
00:45:04doing the politics and you know just trying to live my life I knew that like I could not make
00:45:11it on my own it's
00:45:12like that I needed to have kinship networks intellectual networks I need I mean I lived in a you know
00:45:18collective household it's like and I do have like deep affinities for you know like anarchism and
00:45:24collective practices and that was life sustaining and rent paying and you know food buying and
00:45:32you know that that you know I wanted to create networks around me it's like we have to like pull
00:45:40ourselves up by each other's bootstraps kind of mentality and so for me it's like it's it's like I
00:45:46think when you operate from a model of scarcity it's like you're just like you're operating from a model
00:45:51of scarcity it's like you do have to like be be generous it's like you give things away and things
00:45:57come back
00:45:57to you and I really look forward to the conversations that you have about what it's like to be trans
00:46:05in the
00:46:05academy right now and where this field or subfield is going because you are the ones who are are making
00:46:11it
00:46:31what are the politics of trans studies I think understanding the way that trans issues get framed in this much
00:46:41bigger
00:46:41struggle over things like you know the form of government and whether or not you know a right-wing movement
00:46:48captures the state apparatus and how it demonizes minority populations or foreigners or those people
00:46:55who are not really citizens of the nation I think unpacking how trans plays into that much bigger story is
00:47:05vital it's like it's vital not just for trans people but it's vital for understanding you know some of the
00:47:11really scary dimensions of global geopolitics right now
00:47:44my jobs are in the Bay Area every second I can get away I come to the desert
00:48:00when I'm headed to the desert there's a set of mountains and every time I pass through them
00:48:06I relax and it's like a filter between the rest and the desert I just feel like that's gonna be
00:48:17my home
00:48:18the vast expanses where there's no footsteps there's no assault of sound and there's no neighbors for miles
00:48:32it's just space space to think and space to feel unassaulted
00:48:54when I first came out I thought people are crazy here there's no way no way I would ever live
00:49:01in this heat
00:49:02and but the more I came out and the more I met the people and the more I figured out
00:49:06well you can be
00:49:07very comfortable you can carry your ice water you can you know stay inside when it's too hot
00:49:14and I realized you can live here without being rich
00:49:33and you can buy land very cheaply out here so I'm hoping that I can get people together to buy
00:49:39some land
00:49:40and build small houses do co-housing so that as we get older we take care of each other and
00:49:47I think it
00:49:48can be done very economically and as long as nobody has horrible medical conditions I think you know we can
00:49:57take care of each other really nicely out here into our 90s you know why not
00:50:05there's a well on the property you have to dig down about 500 feet and the water is extremely bad
00:50:14so if you want to drink the water you have to put a whole house filter and then the water
00:50:21is better than
00:50:2299% of the drinking water in the country once you have a well you never pay for water again
00:50:29so if
00:50:30you think about what water bills are you know it can be a hundred dollars a month twelve hundred dollars
00:50:35a year so you know it pays for itself over time but in general the area is so dry I
00:50:44keep wondering how
00:50:45it's possible that there is so much water running there's big aquifers underneath underneath the ground
00:50:52here different aquifers really far down our water comes out steaming hot and we have a tank so it cools
00:51:01down but you never get truly you can't take a cold shower you can take a warm shower and that's
00:51:07it
00:51:15online I met this amazing person I had no idea what their gender was because they sign themselves
00:51:25Cindy which doesn't immediately suggest anything so I this person was writing to a mailing list I was on
00:51:37for the technological implications of virtual community and how to build more socially
00:51:50productive and creative and emergent virtual communities through software you know through
00:51:57how we wrote the code the very beginning of the idea that code creates community code creates
00:52:06community so we were doing that it's a very high calling maybe crazy but we were doing it
00:52:13and in the middle of all this on the mailing list this person posts a brilliant paragraph on
00:52:23particle physics and then the anthropology of particle physics and how this relates to computer code and
00:52:30logic structures and logic structures and community and virtuality and all wrapped up in this lovely little package
00:52:39and my eyes are bugging out like malaga grapes I'm looking at the screen going oh my god
00:52:47so I post an answer I say that's quite a thing you just said who are you nothing happens
00:52:55a day or two go by and nothing happens and then I get an email that says thank you
00:53:07and then simultaneously with that note there's this beautiful post on that list again another paragraph that
00:53:17goes in three completely different directions goes in three completely different directions
00:53:20and I'm going oh who is this I still don't know what it is who it is if it's a
00:53:30robot
00:53:31and I write back channel again I say you know that was really an amazing two posts you did who
00:53:39the hell are you
00:53:41a day goes by a day goes by nothing and then I get a text back that says
00:53:49just another humble bit pusher ma'am
00:53:54so we started a communication but we're both geeks we're both shy and we're both fresh from
00:54:04relationships that ended in really bloody you know terrible ways and neither one of us
00:54:11wants really any kind of relationship but there's a strong pull so we talk and then we decide that
00:54:20instead of meeting the best way to meet would be to meet online I was very busy so Cindy who
00:54:28had more
00:54:29time wrote what we call the move for two which was a virtual environment that we could live in
00:54:36and in the bedroom we actually slept in the same bed but we had a no sex rule because you
00:54:42could have
00:54:43virtual sex but we didn't want that so we would get up in the morning we would go to our
00:54:49virtual workrooms
00:54:50and then and that was represented as a little window in the right hand upper corner of our
00:54:57computer screens and whatever we did went on in there and so every once in a while while I'm working
00:55:05in my real room my physical room Cindy would tiptoe in to my virtual room and look over my virtual
00:55:13shoulder to see what I was doing and then sometimes he'd kiss me on the neck and go back to
00:55:20his workroom
00:55:22and we did this for one full year and at the end of that year we each independently said
00:55:31this is so sweet it it feels so right for us to be doing this are we going to die
00:55:40without actually
00:55:41knowing if there's a physical component
00:56:01I said if we're really going to try this you have to come here
00:56:05so Cindy said okay and a few weeks later he flew down I picked him up at the airport
00:56:13we drove to my house he went and sat on the far end of the couch I hid behind the
00:56:20chair physically
00:56:22behind the easy chair and in that way we talked to each other for probably an hour
00:56:29and after about an hour and after about an hour I remember coming out from behind the chair and
00:56:36sitting on the far end of the couch and we must have talked that way for another half hour or
00:56:45so
00:56:45and then we began moving toward each other on the couch and after about another hour we were
00:56:52sitting next to each other sitting next to each other and as strange as this may sound eventually
00:57:01the two geeks wound up kissing each other and we discovered that there was chemistry between us and then
00:57:09this absolutely astonishing thing happened where we clicked together like two pieces
00:57:22of a jigsaw puzzle and
00:57:27I discovered
00:57:30parts of myself that I had no
00:57:33idea existed
00:57:36I said to myself quite consciously remember I'm a theoretician of gender this is not
00:57:44going to happen to me accidentally or unconsciously behind my back or
00:57:49any other way and in my head I'm going you've been a lesbian separatist since you became a woman
00:57:56you are a theoretician of gender you know how all this stuff works and yet all of a sudden you're
00:58:04thinking of yourself in relation to this other guy this geek as a heterosexual woman and it works it just
00:58:15works what the hell is going on here and I never found out this this is a question I've asked
00:58:25myself
00:58:25continually in one form or another ever since 1994 when Cindy and I started our absolutely wonderful
00:58:37loving
00:58:39loving
00:58:39glorious
00:58:40relationship and it never
00:58:42let up
00:58:44we never had a moment when we weren't wildly in love with each other
00:58:50there has not been a day when something in my head hasn't gone
00:58:56why why is this happening
00:59:25we never had a moment when we were in love with each other
00:59:30So, I was in the sex industry for a long time, in pornography, prostitution, every kind of
00:59:36sex work.
00:59:38People always thought that porn stars and prostitutes end tragically, but I feel like
00:59:43I really came out a winner, and that's largely because I met Beth.
00:59:54I do have enormous gratitude for having found this amazing partner, and relationships are
01:00:01really great.
01:00:02They don't have to be lovers.
01:00:03They can be, you know, family, friends, animal companions.
01:00:09You know, Joan Rivers says, never go to bed alone.
01:00:12At least have a cat or a dog, you know?
01:00:14Oh!
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01:00:56.
01:00:57five years so for me this was I can die now. I want to first start by introducing you to
01:01:08my
01:01:09partner collaborator Elizabeth Stevens. She has a PhD in environmental aesthetics. She is a
01:01:18art and artist and environmental activist and a real live hillbilly girl from the mountains
01:01:24Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia and we've been together for 15 years doing art and life.
01:01:38So this is Annie Sprinkle, the first porn star to get a PhD. We like education. Annie's also been on
01:01:49the forefront of the sexual evolution for over four decades. She's an artist, she's a political
01:01:55activist, she is an environmentalist and she's my beloved wife.
01:02:06Well a lot of us think of the earth as a kind of mother figure, someone that will just take
01:02:12care of
01:02:13us no matter what we do we get forgiven and we can suck from her forever and ever and she
01:02:20will just
01:02:20continually be our mother. But you know the earth is in menopause now I would think and and and we've
01:02:29been really hard on her and so we have tried to think of other ways of imagining the earth.
01:02:38Actually we we know that the earth is not it's not innately male or female. I mean the earth is
01:02:45probably more transsexual than anything else. And in thinking about you know the sort of transsexuality or the
01:02:53non-binary way that the earth is we've come up with a third way of thinking about the earth and
01:02:59that is
01:03:00earth as lover.
01:03:13This is going to be one of the traits of climate change in the coming years is there's going to
01:03:17be mass migration
01:03:19because there's going to be drought in some places and the oceans rising in other places so we need to
01:03:25take care of this precious resource as well as we can. What is the biggest environmental pollutant of
01:03:44all? War! War! And what is war good for? Nothing! Nothing! So here we are standing in front of this
01:03:55amazing war memorial this is a
01:03:57war memorial to three different sets of wars. In 1983 a plaque was put up here and it was very
01:04:03controversial
01:04:04because most war monuments never acknowledge the resistors. And eco-sexuality aligns itself with war resistance.
01:04:14You know bombs hurt the earth and war causes horrific pollution and it not only kills people it kills all
01:04:22living things.
01:04:23Plants, animals, grass, everything.
01:04:27You know it's up to us to kind of remember what can happen. My cousin emailed me last week my
01:04:35last living relative
01:04:37that survived the holocaust and survived the concentration camp passed away and he said we have to remember
01:04:45we have to remind people what can happen when fascism really takes over and it's happening in a lot of
01:04:53places.
01:05:04A slogan that came out of the US revolution from Benjamin Franklin where he says if we don't
01:05:10all hang together we're all going to hang separately. Progressive radical values are you know very much
01:05:18under assault right now by a whole wave of right-wing quasi-fascist authoritarian movements and that you
01:05:27know we really do need to stick together and it's unfortunate when there's you know what gets
01:05:32called horizontal hostilities you know like people who are in the same position fighting with each other
01:05:37instead of addressing the thing that is actually attacking them. You know it promotes a kind of
01:05:44factionalization you know it makes identity the ground where we struggle with each other over it rather
01:05:50than sort of struggling against the system that like so divides and fractionalizes and fragments us.
01:05:59We have to shift we have to move we have to kind of try to you know outrun or outflank
01:06:06the things that are being deployed against us you know we have to be yeah agile, smart,
01:06:15and find ways to be imperceptible to not be seen you know to like appear in ways that are productive
01:06:26or disruptive.
01:06:36And we have to say we've been really lucky very privileged to be artists on the level that
01:06:44we're working now. To be white artists. It's very a privilege a lot of people are just trying to survive.
01:06:51A lot of people I know my age that I've known for decades are really struggling. So I know that
01:07:01we're all going to die. I just had lung cancer removed. I'm very cancer prone at this point. So how
01:07:10do I
01:07:11spend the rest of my time?
01:07:25In November of 2016 my husband, my partner, my soulmate died. We knew it was going to happen but
01:07:38we thought it would happen six months later. So it was something of a surprise. And then I went
01:07:46completely off the air. My essentially I pressed the stop button on my life. And I haven't been
01:07:55on the road since then. I haven't done anything until I retreated into a cave for about two years.
01:08:17I was very angry. I pushed a lot of my family away. And I bit them if you will. It
01:08:25took a long time to
01:08:26negotiate that for me to get over that stage and let people in to help.
01:08:52You know, I spent a couple of years like a little animal in a big tank of water with slippery
01:08:58sides going
01:09:01and keeping my head just above the water. And then eventually I got my claws on the edge and pulled
01:09:09up and
01:09:10and breathed for a while.
01:09:37And breathed for a while.
01:09:40This is our nuclear family group. Here's me and my husband, Cindy, who recently died.
01:09:51I was, before Cindy, I was married to Darcy, with whom, with Darcy and I had Tani, with sperm from
01:10:01Larry,
01:10:01who is married to Tom, who's, after Darcy and I broke up, Darcy married Sharon. And Darcy and Sharon had
01:10:13the
01:10:13twins, Bodie and Mackenzie, with sperm from Tom and with a donated egg from an egg donor in Arkansas.
01:10:23And then Tani, with a person who is not in this photograph, named Pedro, had Nayo. And Tani is
01:10:35currently married to Leslie, who is also not shown in this photo. I think I got everybody. That's our
01:10:45little nuclear family. It's actually a little larger than that. There are about 15 of us. But this is a
01:10:52good
01:10:52start for you to think about for a while.
01:11:28Well, that's a good point. It is very aesthetically appealing.
01:11:32Yeah, that's the problem. These walls look nice. Like, not 10-5 of them. Looks solid.
01:11:40Yeah. What's this here?
01:11:44So, as per for the future, there's fog. There's fog? You'll see the beauty, but we have a beer.
01:11:56We're known as, by our combined daughter, as Light Mama and Dark Mama. Can you tell why?
01:12:05Actually, my mother named us that.
01:12:08Do you need three years? And they replace the pump?
01:12:10Yeah, that's about right. Here, let me put my shoes on. I'll open the door.
01:12:14They get silted up, whether you want them to or not, and they burn out.
01:12:18Bunny says the water rally is fabulous. Allow us to continue to do our business,
01:12:22because she's going on an international tour. And so we have a four-week escrow,
01:12:28and she's gone three of those weeks. This you may put in the real of her snip.
01:12:32So now I'm trying to figure out how to cover her. Now, my principal is here for a week,
01:12:37and then she's leaving for three weeks. So we're conducting business as we go.
01:12:41Can I have a week to button this up before she leaves? No, baby.
01:12:45Okay. Oh, do we not have electricity? No, we do not.
01:12:49Air. I should have brought my cell phone. You can't get it, Mike?
01:12:58Oh, well, it doesn't lock very well, does it? Oh, maybe, yeah, maybe it just opened on sound.
01:13:04That'll be a problem, but we do want to replace all those doors.
01:13:11So there's two ticks? One? Everybody shares one more upward pressure, so I'm going to get rid of it.
01:13:17Apparently, Graham.
01:13:18They're having a thousand, they're having a train to get rid of it.
01:13:22Yeah.
01:13:22Yeah.
01:13:22Yeah.
01:13:23Yeah.
01:13:25Yeah.
01:13:25Yeah.
01:13:29Yeah.
01:13:44These two were partners.
01:13:46For a number of wonderful years. I hope you are great.
01:13:51Absolutely. Absolutely.
01:13:53Yeah.
01:13:54The family text thread was all about,
01:13:57what are we going to, who's going to take Niall?
01:13:59Who's got Niall?
01:14:00Yeah.
01:14:01Who's got Niall?
01:14:01Who's picking Niall up?
01:14:03But man, if I had been more attached to my parents, oh dear,
01:14:07I'd have like a fit every time I went to someone else's house.
01:14:11One minor political statement at this point, which is, I get a lot of noise about how
01:14:19difficult and impossible it is for trans people to have normal lives and any kind of life with
01:14:29a family or anything like that. And my argument is always that, okay, I have a counter example.
01:14:36Here's a family that leads a rather happy, abnormal life, or however you want to.
01:14:45We're actually a very all-American family, unless you look at the structure and then it's pretty wild.
01:15:11This trailer over here, we're hoping to fix up so guests can come and stay.
01:15:18There'll be a kitchen in this area and sort of a great room, as great a room as you can
01:15:27have in a trailer.
01:15:29I was wondering why there is so few solar panels.
01:15:33They were affordable and the government was helping people to put solar in, but when the Trump
01:15:40administration came in, he killed the solar programs, I think in favor of the oil industry and the coal
01:15:47industry and put tariffs on the panels that you could buy. He used to be able to buy cheaply from
01:15:55countries like China, and now there's high tariffs on them, so it puts it out of reach for a lot
01:16:00of
01:16:00people. You can't afford to put the solar in.
01:16:23So back here on these shelves is all boxes of diner dishes and mid-century
01:16:33modern dishes. All the way back four feet to the wall, all the way up nine feet.
01:16:41It seems a little hoardy, but I'm very organized and I have a plan and I will sell them when
01:16:47I can't
01:16:48drive anymore. I can just come pull out a box of dishes, list them, sell them, have enough money to
01:16:55live on for a month. I've gotten to have a very tight little community here. Oddly, not all of them
01:17:06from the LGBT community. My tight buddies out here are straight guy hermits and just amazing people.
01:17:15I think I've expanded acceptance of who a friend can be. Michael and Georgene are lovely and generous,
01:17:23and we're very generous with each other, and so I always have a place out here.
01:17:31We have a rule. Whoever cooks doesn't wash dishes, so we sort of fight over who cooks.
01:17:36Lots of motivation there.
01:17:39And you know, we're really far away. When Stafford comes to town, he'll contact us and say,
01:17:46what do we need from Trader Joe's? Or do I need to go to Costco? And you know, we'll give
01:17:52them the list
01:17:52of things because you have to provision. You have a cooler in the back of the car, you go to
01:18:00town,
01:18:00you go down the hill. The nearest decent grocery is an hour and a half away.
01:18:02Yeah. For a really...
01:18:05There's a supermarket in town, but it's just standard supermarket stuff. And
01:18:09you know, we can barely find ingredients for the kinds of foods that we like. I mean,
01:18:14we cook Moroccan food. We cook European food. We cook Japanese.
01:18:20Japanese. We cook Jägerschnitzel.
01:18:22Jägerschnitzel, yeah.
01:18:24And your Thai food.
01:18:26Thai food, yeah.
01:18:27Thai food.
01:18:43Wa
01:18:45Well
01:19:29This is the mural outside our house.
01:19:32I had this commissioned this for Mimi's 60th birthday.
01:19:36We got the Prasita Eyes mural project.
01:19:38That's us in the corner.
01:19:40That's my take on what's going on here.
01:19:43It's definitely the best birthday present I've ever, ever had.
01:19:51Well done.
01:19:52It was a good idea.
01:19:54Yeah.
01:19:54It was a good idea.
01:20:07You know, I do feel like some of the changes I want to make in my working life just have
01:20:13to do with getting older.
01:20:14You know, the body is not as elastic as it used to be.
01:20:20The joints are a little achier.
01:20:22The sleep is a little more fragile.
01:20:25The pounds go on, you know, easier than they come off.
01:20:29You know, it's just like there's a, as much as I enjoy kind of being in motion, there's a way
01:20:34that, yeah, I kind of want to be a little bit more of a homebody than I've been in recent
01:20:39years.
01:20:42I'm going to retire.
01:20:43As of July 1, 2020, I will be Professor Emerita of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Arizona.
01:20:51I'm happy with what I've been able to do, and I'm ready for a change of pace.
01:20:55You know, like, I'm not ready to stop thinking or being a public intellectual or writing or making media.
01:21:02I would actually like to have more time to do that sort of work.
01:21:07I just feel like I don't have to have a full-time professorship at a university to support myself.
01:21:32Some people settle in their identity.
01:21:35I certainly have not.
01:21:40I think I could still be anywhere in that spectrum, depending upon how I'm relating to whoever the other person
01:21:49is.
01:21:50You know, identity is partly constructed in interaction, but I think as people grow older, they grow into themselves, but
01:22:02that means differently for different people.
01:22:06Some people are very happy to settle into something, and they don't have to worry about that part of their
01:22:14lives anymore.
01:22:15They can put it on automatic pilot, but some people never give up searching.
01:22:21They never give up adventuring or questioning.
01:22:24That's a journey that they take all their lives, and they are always going to be gender-naughts.
01:22:32I think I'm probably one of them, and I don't think it's volitional, but I don't necessarily think that's true
01:22:42for everyone.
01:22:42It's certainly true for me.
01:22:57Annie made her bucket list, and on her bucket list, which is what she wants to do before she dies,
01:23:03she mentioned going whale-watching for her birthday.
01:23:06We love whales.
01:23:07We just love them.
01:23:08We are whales trapped in women's bodies, actually.
01:23:15We live on two planets, really.
01:23:18We have the above water and the underwater.
01:23:21So to get to see the underwater creatures come up, and you can sometimes get so close to them, you
01:23:26can smell their breath, which smells like baby poop.
01:23:29I love it.
01:23:30It's awesome.
01:23:31It's awesome.
01:23:32It's awesome.
01:23:48It's awesome.
01:23:50No hold, no hold, no hold, no hold.
01:23:57You got a red pair.
01:23:59Oh, okay.
01:24:00Yeah, we're back in.
01:24:02Okay?
01:24:03That's it.
01:24:04Good tight, man.
01:24:05Woo-hoo!
01:24:06Woo!
01:24:07Okay.
01:24:08We made it.
01:24:11Woo-hoo!
01:24:12Very bouncy.
01:24:13I like it.
01:24:17I know I do too.
01:24:18I love this.
01:24:33Oh, God.
01:24:35I don't know, it might be interesting to be an octopus trapped in a woman's body because of that weird
01:24:40neurology.
01:24:42They're really smart.
01:24:44They're smart.
01:24:45You know, your limbs would have lives of their own.
01:24:48You'd have a beak.
01:24:49You'd wake up to find them off in the other room.
01:24:52It'd be the white vagina.
01:24:54Oh, this is serious.
01:24:57There's our whales.
01:25:03We're going to sing to it.
01:25:05Uh, how it's in a call.
01:25:08It's a mermaid siren song.
01:25:11Puppy, too.
01:25:17Come here.
01:25:24No matter where I'm found.
01:25:27Wow.
01:25:29Come here.
01:25:30Come here.
01:25:30Come here.
01:25:30That's a whale.
01:25:32There's a whale.
01:25:34Yeah.
01:25:40There's a whale.
01:25:41Oh, yeah, I saw a blow over there! Look, and I hear ya!
01:25:44Woo!
01:25:46Hello!
01:26:11Oh, yeah, I saw a light!
01:26:12Sex divine, leave your leather and arms and whips aside.
01:26:21Cold heart Henry! Cold heart Henry!
01:26:30Venus, deliver me. Love is such a shame!
01:26:39And burning in water
01:26:45Drowning in a flame
01:26:49Drowning in a flame
01:26:52Peace
01:26:54Delivery
01:26:57Love is such a shame
01:27:01And burning in water
01:27:07Drowning in a flame
01:27:11Drowning in a flame
01:27:35Drowning in a flame
01:27:39Drowning in a flame
01:27:40Drowning in a flame
01:27:41Drowning in a flame
01:27:41Drowning in a flame
01:27:42Drowning in a flame
01:27:44Drowning in a flame
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