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A bibliography for this episode is obtainable on the finish of this transcript.
Nicolas Shannon Savard: Good day and welcome to Gender Euphoria: The Podcast, a collection produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. I am your host, Nicolas Shannon Savard. My pronouns are they, them, and theirs. At the moment I’m joined once more by Raja Benz and Pleasure Brooke Fairfield for half two of our dialog on queer trans intimacy work. The first episode centered particularly on the workshops they’ve designed, Working with Trans and Nonbinary Artists and Staging Intimacy Past the Binary with Theatrical Intimacy Education.
On this second episode, we have taken a broader overview of Pleasure and Raja’s work. I requested how their artwork and their intimacy work is knowledgeable by and in dialog with queer idea and important idea. And expensive listeners, strap in. It’s a journey. We’re going to be bouncing between queer of coloration and decolonial and incapacity idea and the dim glow of the nightclub; between previous, current, and future; between the concepts we’re positive of and those we’re figuring out in actual time.
Usually on this present, I add in some extra context or clarification when the interview dives into the theoretical or traditionally or politically particular. There’s a bit an excessive amount of to cowl right here with out turning this right into a full-length audiobook. So as an alternative I’ve determined this episode will simply include a bibliography. I am going to embrace a hyperlink within the transcript on howlround.com for that, and auditory footnote markers. That could be a observe I’m borrowing from Dr. Anna Williams’ scholarly podcast collection, My Gothic Dissertation, which by the way in which, is fabulous. Lit nerds, anybody who’s been to grad college, verify that out on Spotify later. Whenever you hear the web page flip, you may know there’s an article, an essay, a e book on the subject, on the studying listing.
So with none additional ado, right here is a component two of Queer-Trans Intimacies with Pleasure Brooke Fairfield and Raja Benz.
Rebecca Kling: Gender euphoria is…
Dillon Yruegas: Bliss.
Siri Gurudev: Freedom to expertise masculinity, femininity and all the pieces in between—
Azure D. Osborne-Lee: Getting to point out up as your personal self.
Siri: With out every other thought however my very own pleasure.
Rebecca: Gender euphoria is opening the door to your physique and being dwelling.
Dillon: Unabashed bliss.
Joshua Bastian Cole: You may really feel it. You may really feel the aid—
Azure: Really feel secure—
Joshua: And the sense of validation—
Azure: Celebrated.
Joshua: And actualization
Azure: Or typically it means—
Rebecca: Being assured in who you might be.
Azure: But in addition to see your self mirrored again.
Rebecca: Or possibly not, however being excited to search out out.
Nicholas: Good day and welcome again to Gender Euphoria: The Podcast. I am your host, Nicholas Shannon Savard. My pronouns are they, them, and theirs. I’m right here right this moment with Pleasure Brooke Fairfield and Raja Benz to speak about intimacy course and their practice-as-research in and round that. So, for each of you, I simply needed to start out off with the query of how did you make your method into intimacy course?
Raja Benz: Effectively, I do not thoughts beginning as a result of that is going to be an incredible little HowlRound plug, and they’ll be very joyful about this. I used to be so fortunate to speak just a little bit about this lately with Ann James in an article. I really was working as a DIY form of artist in Chicago on the time, making storefront theatre in concerning the 2016-2017 period, notably across the time that the #MeToo motion gained a brand new resurgence. It was not began and shaped in that second, this we all know.
However there was form of this cultural second wherein #MeToo gained fairly a little bit of consideration, and that is typically cited as the start of intimacy work, and I do know we’ll discuss that after we get into it and that form of false narrative. However on the identical time, the #MeToo motion was occurring and I used to be making my very own artwork, I additionally got here out as a trans girl at the moment and there was simply this form of soupy dialog going round about “what’s my physique? How does it need to present as much as work? What does it imply to clock in?” I discovered myself—on the time, I referred to myself as a “man”—once I was the one man engaged on the present.
Nicholas: Air quotes.
Raja: Large air quotes, as a result of really, I imply the indicators have been there. And coming right into a dressing room—we have been small little DIY theatre, there wasn’t quite a lot of dressing room area—so we have been all in the identical area and I used to be sitting subsequent to those individuals, these girls that I simply beloved and appreciated. And I used to be considering to myself, I used to be like, “I clock in and I really feel like possibly I am having a distinct expertise,” which in fact now looking back, I do not know what their expertise was. I have been fortunate to maintain up with a lot of them, they usually’re good buddies, however I did not know. However what I did acknowledge that within the dialog round intimacy and gender and all this stuff, I stated, what’s my gender? How do boundaries apply to me? How do I need to present as much as work?
Abruptly, increase. I am listening to about this new area referred to as “intimacy course.” I in the end then met Rachel Flesher, who’s a really well-known intimacy coordinator/choreographer/director—interchanging phrases—they usually have been engaged on a present referred to as 50 Shades of Shakespeare on the time. Finally, I acquired to satisfy them whereas I used to be engaged on this form of DIY arts journal piece, they usually have been very, very beneficiant with their time and taught me just a little bit about this area that is developing. And from there I simply sort of researched it and determined that is what I actually need: to start out trying into this. So, that is sort of my origin story, if you’ll.
Nicholas: Pleasure, how’d you make your method into intimacy course?
Pleasure Brooke Fairfield: I like this—our villain origin tales.
Raja: I used to be going to say villain, however…
Pleasure: Yeah.
Nicholas: How I will ask individuals to introduce themselves now. What’s your villain origin story?
Pleasure: Simply to cite what Raja simply stated, there have been indicators early. I used to be a consent and intercourse schooling educator with Deliberate Parenthood in highschool, and as I returned to this type of work extra lately in my life, about 5 years in the past at this level, I used to be like, “Oh yeah, I’ve been doing this. I’ve completed a few of this in numerous methods.” Additionally, inside the form of intercourse constructive, intercourse radical tradition that I transfer inside as a queer individual, I’ve been doing a few of this. And so it felt like a extremely thrilling option to apply a few of these issues which were necessary to me from my complete life to a few of my work professionally as a theatre and media maker and scholar.
So, the who, what, the place, when of my origin story is about in 2018, I went to an American Theatre in Larger Ed convention [edit: this is the American Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) conference] in Boston, took a workshop with Chelsea Tempo, instantly linked together with her afterwards and was like, “Sure, that is stuff that I additionally do and care about,” and form of got here then into the TIE [Theatrical Intimacy Education] circuit of individuals and conversations.
I additionally acquired invited to a convention that was referred to as the “Intolerant Artwork of Efficiency” that was up at Amherst, sponsored by Christopher Grobe. And it was about Efficiency Research’ strategy to what can we do about efficiency within the age of Trump, and within the age the place we insult issues by calling them a efficiency? We insult the Congress by calling them a “circus.” So I wrote this paper. We insult Trump by calling him a clown. So, I wrote this paper that was form of “in protection of clowns” and in addition a form of assault of the issue of violent sexual patriarchy. And I launched to this tutorial area a number of the concepts that I had been studying about with intimacy choreography and staging and course by way of Theatrical Intimacy Schooling. And there was quite a lot of uptake and curiosity on this room of principally Efficiency Research students about this new, specialised observe.
After which, from that convention, I acquired invited to try this editorship at JDTC for the particular part on intimacy choreography, which was a extremely great transition into enthusiastic about this work in a scholarly method. After which after doing that I used to be like, “I need to do that as a observe as nicely.” So I acquired linked with TIE and began in as an assistant college member with them in 2019. And now it is now! After which the pandemic occurred. All of us went on-line, after which it was abruptly… we might had all of this, the #MeToo motion, which Raja talked about. The way in which that I used to be moving into this was additionally understanding the urgency of the second in that. So it was very attention-grabbing to go from this heightened query of contact and embodiment to no contact and all the pieces on-line and all the pieces on Zoom. After which, how can we use this downtime to unfold the phrase? How can we use this downtime to get it on the market extra? And yeah, it has been a journey.
Raja: Mm-hmm.
Nicholas: Very cool. I simply realized that I had not shared my very own villain origin story round this work.
Raja: I’d love to listen to this.
Nicholas: So, I come from an utilized theatre background, principally with youth. In order that was sort of the lens that I used to be bringing to quite a lot of these discussions that intimacy course is having about energy and consent and simply taking care, within the room, of different individuals and considering by way of vulnerability. I believe I used to be additionally at ATHEin Las Vegas about to direct a manufacturing of Scorching ‘N Throbbing by Paula Vogel and was like, “I would like some abilities to strategy this with actors.” As a result of I would assumed that I would be working with different graduate college students who have been both my age or older, after which realized as they have been getting increasingly more busy, I used to be like, I am not going to have the ability to fill the solid with all people who find themselves not considerably youthful than me and probably my very own college students. How do I make this actually sexual present actually secure for them? I believe I went to each considered one of Chelsea Tempo’s displays and Kate Busselle‘s that yr at ATHE. I used to be simply taking notes furiously.
So I believe it is sensible to strategy the dialog from each instructions, of each the idea and the observe. And I need to begin with a number of the broader ideas that you simply’re constructing from in your work. You’ve got each written about and talked about energy crucial pedagogy and the relationships between queer intimacy practices and these a lot bigger sociopolitical constructions of racial capitalism, settler colonialism. And someway that elements into staging a kiss—very massive to very, very intimate, very particular person. So, I need to discuss just a little bit about: in your personal work, how are you enthusiastic about these energy constructions in dialog with queer-trans intimacy observe? What kinds of questions does idea, different crucial theories, convey to your work as an intimacy director? That is a really long-winded query.
Raja: That is okay. That is so good. I am so grateful. That is the stuff I like speaking about, really. It is actually pertaining to one thing that I am having a tough time with as someone who retains one foot in academia and at all times one foot out of it, as a result of I am very crucial of the system. As quickly as I got here into understanding myself as a tutorial participant, if you’ll, I at all times saved a foot out as a result of I used to be actually conscious of needing this work to stay in each locations. However extra importantly, these days, the query for me has been: what am I doing as a queer individual when academia form of necessitates that I pin my queerness in time and area and analysis, if you’ll? At occasions it may be form of antithetical to queer ways in which we expect as a result of if queerness is changing into, if queerness is concerning the potential, José Muñouncestalks about queerness is just not right here but.
Nicholas: In his introduction to Cruising Utopia, José Esteban Muñounceswrote, “Queerness is just not but right here. Queerness is an ideality. Put one other method, we aren’t but queer. We could by no means contact queerness, however we will really feel it as the nice and cozy illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We now have by no means been queer, but queerness exists for us as an ideality that may be distilled from the previous and used to think about a future. The long run is queerness’s area.”
It is like constructing queer efficiency from queer idea that was constructed on queer efficiency. It is this type of cycle. I am joyful to be within the movement of it.
Raja: And I keep in mind the primary time I got here throughout that in a graduate research course, I used to be like, “What do you imply? I am proper right here. I am within the flesh. I am on this queer physique.” And as I sat with it longer, it made sense. And so now I sit right here, and the fence I discover myself leaping so continuously is, why is academia basically so completely different than my observe within the area? And is a part of that as a result of when I’m really a queer physique, particularly once I get to navigate areas, once I get to work with individuals like Pleasure, we’re speaking about our experiences, we’re having these conversations, however it’s not a way to documenting in time and exactness?
By creating this researcher-researched mannequin, it is actually simply reenacting quite a lot of the violence that’s so antithetical to how we expect, and so I am at all times negotiating how do I put what I really feel into phrases understanding that these are non permanent, understanding that that is however a second? And that is been one thing that simply influences… I’ve to be nonetheless in queer neighborhood and queer tradition. I study as a lot as I do in tutorial areas as I do within the nightclub, and that is been actually huge for me.
Nicholas: Simply need to word each Pleasure and I had bodily reactions of glee to that.
Pleasure: It was so onerous to not be like, “Sure. Sure.”
Raja: No, Pleasure, I would like that. I do know. Pleasure, I simply need everybody and also you to listen to, you by no means interrupt me. I like listening to you discuss. Soar in, please. I cannot really feel stepped on, I promise.
Pleasure: That is how we’re in our class. I’ve some issues to say, however I simply actually love that you simply introduced in Muñoz, and I believe Muñouncesis somebody that you simply and I bonded over very early, and I simply assume that quote, this concept about queerness as a “horizon of risk” is simply so highly effective and one thing that now we have to maintain coming again to, this concept that we don’t but know what queer means. And now I really feel like I ought to pull up the quote in order that I am saying it proper, however…
Nicholas: Okay, there’s a number of completely different concepts we’re working with right here from Muñoz, so I will provide you with a pair completely different quotes.
“Each the decorative and the quotidian can comprise a map of the utopia that’s queerness.”
“Queerness is a performative as a result of it’s not merely a being however a doing for and towards the long run. Queerness is actually concerning the rejection of a right here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete risk for one more world.”
The crux of the e book itself is a response to Lee Edelman’s work, No Future. Muñounceswrites,
To some extent Cruising Utopia is a polemic that argues in opposition to anti-relationality by insisting on the important want for an understanding of queerness as collectivity. I reply to Edelman’s assertion that the long run is the province of the kid and due to this fact not for the queers, by arguing that queerness is primarily about futurity and hope. That’s to say that queerness is at all times within the horizon. I contend that if queerness is to have any worth in anyway, it have to be considered as being seen solely within the horizon.
Pleasure: A part of queer idea is that we aren’t pinning down queer idea as being a factor. I am attempting to stay within the movement of changing into to grasp what queer idea would possibly really feel like sometime, proper? To my queer trans-cestors down the street or, what can we name them, generations to return. However thanks for bringing in Muñoz.
And I believe that one factor that is so magical about his work, in fact, is that he was theorizing to a point from queer efficiency. So his queer idea arises from his deep appreciation and evaluation of queer efficiency and queer efficiency areas and nightlife efficiency, queer efficiency tradition and queer relations, the relations that we’re in a position to construct between us. So it is like constructing queer efficiency from queer idea that was constructed on queer efficiency. It is this type of cycle. I am joyful to be within the movement of it.
I believe essentially the most helpful factor about my scholarly background in gender and sexuality research and idea and historical past is that it permits me to higher problem norms and stereotypes, partially simply because I’m very aware of them. I am aware of them in some circumstances by way of the lived expertise of them and in different circumstances by way of the studying and research of different individuals’s writing and artwork round their very own lived experiences. So, I believe that familiarity that I can convey to one thing could be very a lot reliant on that. And I have been in IC for about 5 years now, form of give or take. However I have been a director for twenty years at this level.
And a few of my very first exhibits… I hope my buddies from undergrad are listening to this as a result of they’re like, “No, Pleasure was making performs about queer idea in like 2002.” It was simply due to what I used to be enthusiastic about. I acquired to school, and I used to be studying about queer and radical historical past and idea and tradition as a result of it had been saved from me as a baby in quite a lot of methods, even in a comparatively progressive state and a comparatively progressive metropolis and county space. I grew up on Wiyot territory in Northern California within the Redwoods, and there was quite a lot of progressive academic elements at play. I used to be working with Deliberate Parenthood. Nonetheless, I did not get queer historical past. I did not get trans historical past. I did not get quite a lot of radical political cultural understandings. So, once I acquired to school they usually have been there, it was all that I needed to make artwork about.
Nicholas: Pleasure, I lately simply learn your particular subject on the Journal of Dramatic Principle and Criticism as a result of it was despatched my method once I was writing my very own article for the Journal of Consent-Based mostly Efficiency. And considered one of my reviewers was like, “You need to verify this out in your revisions.” And I used to be similar to, “I do know that individual! Superb.”
Pleasure: Such a superb praise. Thanks to whoever Reviewer Two despatched you my method.
Nicholas: They have been a really beneficiant Reviewer Two and launched me to conversations I had not discovered but. However in your introduction, you describe intimacy choreography as “all kinds of artistic and pedagogical practices that prioritize consent and physique sovereignty of the actor.” And I used to be questioning, may you inform me just a little bit about your phrase alternative there with “physique sovereignty?” I’ve heard it because the actor’s “company,” “autonomy.” “Sovereignty” holds a distinct weight.
Pleasure: I actually admire you giving me a chance to speak about this and it actually affords me an opportunity to form of proper a citational fallacious that I ought to have caught earlier. The reality is, once I used that time period, I had simply been listening to it in informal dialog with different individuals. So I did not essentially consider the 2 phrases collectively as one thing I wanted to dig into an evaluation of. However definitely it’s, and I would like to. I believe the very first thing is that anytime proper now in justice-oriented work, after we discuss sovereignty, that discourse and lineage comes from Indigenous North American fights for liberation and autonomy. Because the form of first time of contact to start with of settlement, the demand of Indigenous communities has at all times been sovereignty, which is the correct to make one’s personal selections. And that has a cultural factor and in addition an interpersonal and private factor.
So, the sovereignty motion normally, I believe, connects to quite a lot of points like land again and cultural rejuvenation practices. That is not my space of experience, so I do not need to converse too far in that course. However after I wrote this text, I used to be really attempting to assign some studying for my college students, and I dove just a little bit deeper into the time period. And one of many citations I did discover that I needed to ensure I put out here’s a paper referred to as “Our Coming In Tales: Cree Identification, Physique Sovereignty and Gender Self-Dedication,” by Dr. Alex Wilson of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation, who’s a affiliate professor on the College of Saskatchewan. And that is from 2015. I had not learn it once I wrote this in 2019, however I learn it later. And it, I believe is a extremely helpful and attention-grabbing useful resource to get into.
Extra lately, should you do only a Google search… That one will come up. For those who do like a JSTOR search, a tutorial analysis search, For those who do a Google seek for the time period “physique sovereignty,” the large utilization of it proper now has to do with consuming dysfunction tradition and attempting to assume by way of new fashions for therapeutic and different kinds of care practices from that state of affairs, and attempting to consider physique sovereignty as a method—and I believe in addition they pay credit score, if to not Alex Wilson particularly, then to Indigenous thinkers normally—for understanding concepts of sovereignty.
So yeah, thanks for asking about that. And I am nonetheless not a 100% positive about tips on how to use that phrase and that idea in a method that is not appropriative, however I believe that there are some resonances in there which are lacking with a number of the different terminology. And I believe it is necessary for these of us working in consent politics to have quite a lot of completely different phrases and languages and avenues to strategy what it means to be an individual in a physique that’s yours and can also be at all times socially constructed inside no matter else is just not yours round you.
Nicholas: I believe what actually struck me about it was a few of these resonances that you simply have been describing, and in addition it appears to name a extra express connection to these greater energy relations and never essentially simply the one-on-one, however contemplating all of the politics round our bodies in area. And now I’ve acquired an essay that I get to go learn.
Pleasure: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Raja: At all times extra. At all times discovering new ones, proper?
Nicholas: Yep.
Raja: On this concept, I am working with what you are placing down, Pleasure, right here. And I am considering by way of the significance of there being a number of phrases to explain what it means to have a physique and make selections over it, as a result of I believe our default is to at all times return to the phrase “consent.” I believe the phrase “consent” has gotten actually, actually muddy these days. I have already got these methods of considering by way of issues in an anti-binary method, so I am not attempting to place consent into this sure or no field. However actually rapidly, individuals began considering that consent means “sure, I need to be touched right here or no, I do not need to be touched there.”
Queerness is, I believe, a type of attentiveness.
After which quite a lot of nice thinkers actually expanded on that, and also you get these actually nice fashions of, okay, so what’s consent? Proper? And the issue is that almost all fashions for consent got here out of sexual assault prevention continuously in faculty campuses. And whereas a few of these phrases are actually nice, in addition they are comparatively particular. The factor I at all times return to, and I imagine was Deliberate Parenthood who began with the FRIES metaphor that will get used fairly a bit. It is like…
Pleasure: Freely given, reversible, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic, and …
Raja: I do not know, however I can already let you know that proper now, “freely given” is basically onerous whenever you stay below capitalism. I had a collaborator lately say to me, “Can consent really exist below capitalism?” Most likely not. However what we will do is create programs on which we negotiate this as greatest we will and we make individuals conscious of the choices they’re making. It feels just like the change in queer communities round, or I am sorry, significantly queer kink communities who stepped away from the phrases of “secure, sane, and consensual” and in the direction of phrases like RACK (risk-aware consensual kink). As a result of we’re problematizing even the concept of consent of being one thing that you simply get. You hear that time period quite a bit, proper? You have to get consent from someone—
Pleasure: Yeah. The objectification of consent, turning consent into an object that you really want or want or don’t desire. ?
Raja: Okay, nicely I acquired consent for this, so we’re good. I used to be like, no, consent is one thing we should be navigating day-to-day, moment-to-moment right here, as a result of it adjustments and it is rare, and the concept of it needing to achieve the brink of enthusiastic is basically onerous, as a result of I consent to quite a lot of issues in my day-to-day life however I am not precisely smitten by it. As a trans individual, I am systemically pressured to take action. I do not consent to going into locations which have gendered bogs, and but, once I go to a fuel station, I’ve to make these selections. I’ve to navigate these borders between what lavatory do I exploit? And it will be issues like, how many individuals are on this fuel station proper now? The place am I? How shut am I to someone who may assist me if I used to be in a state of affairs? What am I sporting right this moment? what I imply? So, the concept that I’ve to be enthusiastic is sort of onerous for me.
Pleasure: And it is definitely not possible for… Not not possible, however it’s not an incredible concept for fictional eventualities on stage and movie. I do not really need my co-star to be too enthusiastic, so I at all times really feel prefer it’s humorous to make use of the FRIES metaphor after we’re speaking about onstage or simulated intimacy. Anyway, pet peeve.
Nicholas: And quite a lot of the tales that we’re telling, we’re not depicting, essentially, conditions that slot in that mannequin.
Pleasure: Yeah. If somebody’s taking part in Isabel in Measure for Measure, they do not need an excessively enthusiastic Angelo coming into rehearsal too excited a few sexual assault scene.
Nicholas: And the actor taking part in Isabel might be additionally not very smitten by that scene.
Pleasure: You may nonetheless consent. You may consent unenthusiastically. That is the magic of consent. SA Jones, within the JDTC subject, has an article referred to as “Intimacy Choreography for Sexual Justice: Contemplating Racism and Ableism as Types of Sexual Violence.” That essay does quite a lot of wonderful issues, however one of many issues that Stefanie factors out is the idea of entry intimacy, which comes from Incapacity Research. This concept that folks over time can and over intimate publicity can study and know your physique and have the ability to interface with it in ways in which have a specific sort of specialised care.
Nicholas: Fast apart, I am going to discuss this idea in depth within the subsequent episode, however I need to spotlight this connection right here. Author, educator, transformative justice activist Mia Mingus coined the time period “entry intimacy” in a put up on her weblog, Leaving Proof, in 2011. She does specify that she didn’t invent it, simply put a reputation to “the elusive expertise of one other individual simply getting your entry wants” or “holding your hand when you each stare again at an inaccessible world.” It comes out of years of labor with different disabled queer girls of coloration activists, organizers, Patty Berne and Stacey Milburne.
Collectively they crafted the preliminary framework for incapacity justice and shaped the Incapacity Justice Collective. That is all to say the language of entry intimacy comes from grassroots, explicitly anti-capitalist, feminist, queer of coloration, incapacity justice organizing. It appears to have made its method into the academy after Mingus gave a chat at San Francisco State College in 2017. That discuss was titled “Entry Intimacy, Interdependence and Incapacity Justice.” And I hear resonance with a few of what we have stated about Muñouncess work, theorizing from the margins, from the nightclub and right here with buddies in a front room, in your private weblog. And in addition with utopia, queerness, intimacy entry as one thing not but arrived, at all times on the horizon. Anyway, again to Pleasure’s level.
Pleasure: I believe one of many different ways in which we will consider processes of radical consent coming from queer and trans communities is that now we have at all times needed to work in the direction of a sort of intimate entry understanding of one another’s our bodies when it comes to what we like and what we do not like. After which listening each together with your ears and together with your physique to what another person likes is a sort of expertise that clearly cis hetero individuals ought to do too. However due to the particular uniquenesses of queer intercourse, now we have had much more alternatives to discover what it means to be having intercourse exterior of the way in which that possibly the Queen of England and the Pope have advised us that we’re presupposed to have it.
Raja: Proper. Queerness is, I believe, a type of attentiveness. And if we’ll pull it again to this Muñoz, so this concept of the horizon, the horizon is what’s simply past what we will see and what we will interpret. what I imply? The horizon is the purpose wherein issues turn into obscure. The horizon is the purpose wherein we cease understanding and begin theorizing what’s past. And I’ve to stay in that form of queer intentional ambiguity. And I believe when individuals work with consent of us, they get actually nervous listening to about ambiguity. And it has at all times been how we as queer individuals have organized ourselves and our lives, and that is one thing that is actually onerous to promote when consent will get bought as a security product.
And that is one thing I am spending most of my profession pushing again on. Individuals within the room that work with me report feeling secure. I’ve practices in place to scale back the chance and severity of hurt when it occurs. I am additionally deeply impressed by the works of mutual help networks and hurt discount organizing as a result of what they do is that they acknowledge the lived and actual experiences which are occurring and base it off of that and never this idea of this form of utopian imaginative and prescient of what it might be.
So, when you’ve got an id that is not promised a future, I believe you have got a really completely different conception of what meaning and the way onerous it’s important to struggle for that future. If it is a given, in case your physique is protected by a collection of privilege and you already know that there’s a future for you, it is very easy to be like, “Fuck the long run. What’s occurring proper now? Inform me what I have to do now to not offend you. Do I name you “she”? Do I name you “he? Do I name you “they”? What do I do?” what I imply? That is a really here-and-now mind-set about it, as a result of security… The factor that folks assume that they are attempting to get as security, actually what meaning is how shut or far am I from the chance of hurt to occur? And it will be completely different for all of us.
And it is one thing that Chelsea talked about—Chelsea Tempo, who you may hear us reference fairly a bit—talked about within the design of the course, Energy Play, that is supplied with TIE. I now educate it as nicely. I preserve going again to this concept of energy is just not inherently unhealthy. Energy is at all times current, and our relationship to it’s so continuously how shut or distant are we from hurt? How insulated from that hurt can we be or are we? And as queer of us, as individuals who must envision utopia in some ways, it is as a result of it is a guiding gentle for us of the place we’re going. And once more, that horizon, we do not know what’s past it. We do not need to management what that’s, however we do need to be transferring ahead in the direction of it, as a result of frankly our lives rely on it.
Pleasure: Cheers to that. Sure.
Raja: I knew as quickly as you began speaking it was going to return again, proper? I used to be like, all proper.
Pleasure: Proper. Forwards and backwards. Yeah. I really feel like what I used to be going to say, you sort of lined, however I simply love the way you have been veering from a sort of security as a product imaginative and prescient of absolutist utopia that folks need to know what is correct to do, to carry onto, so they will not get in hassle, versus a Muñozian utopia, which is foggy on the fringe of our consciousness and talent to understand that you simply nonetheless have to achieve for. And once more, cruise, his complete metaphor is cruising, which is that this queer cultural observe of being typically in outside areas, however in wherever, looking for one another with the facility of our eyes and our gestures and our actions and our withholdings and givings. And so this concept that utopia is not one thing that you simply get to have a Jetsons episode; utopia is one thing that comes at nice potential price, after we take into consideration police brutality and violence and the way in which that queer our bodies have gotten in quite a lot of hassle for cruising, and that’s simply out of attain and nonetheless in course of.
I invite cis individuals to additionally ask these questions: What did it imply to be a person in 1850 on this character I am taking part in versus right this moment in 2023 once I’m taking part in this function?
Raja: God, I like these things. If we’re going to consider utopianism too, so continuously it appears to be like like a physique free, or a world the place our bodies by no means expertise illness or distinction. And that basically troubles me as a result of, once I was taking a category and we have been discussing the concept of visions of utopia, someone had talked about primarily like, “And nobody would ever get sick and die.” And I am like, “Okay, so the place can we begin?” Individuals with all kinds of our bodies who work together with this world in all kinds of the way must be a part of this utopia too. I can not create a utopia for able-bodied individuals solely, as a result of that is not utopia. That is a nightmare. That is a nightmare.
And I believe tying that into the emergent technique of all of it, the small results of the entire. And I believe we need to get all of us to that place, proper? As a result of whereas I’m out right here combating for queer illustration and trans illustration within the area, I additionally acknowledge that cis persons are additionally struggling below these actually inflexible, archaic gender roles. I do not know, I imply, I assume possibly some individuals really feel actually good and affirmed by it, however I believe in the event that they felt what it meant to really embrace the horizon, they’d have a really completely different expertise and a distinct understanding of that.
Nicholas: I’ve spoken to Rebecca Kling about this within the final season. I do not assume it made it into the episode, however we have been questioning if cis individuals ever expertise gender euphoria.
Raja: I believe they do on a regular basis. I believe they get to expertise gender euphoria on a regular basis and by no means even have to consider it. I imply—
Nicholas: After which I requested my buddies who’re cis they usually have been like, “I can not consider a second.” And I used to be like… that is upsetting.
Pleasure: It is onerous. Cis girls are at all times failing by the requirements of the patriarchy it doesn’t matter what. So, you in all probability expertise quite a lot of attempting to really feel euphoric or attempting to really feel validated and really feel euphoria within the validation. However you aren’t getting it quite a bit. Perhaps it is the identical for masculinity. It is at all times partial.
Nicholas: I ought to specify, my cis girls buddies. I’ve but to ballot the cis males in my life. However I’m curious. So dudes, do you expertise gender euphoria? Let me know.
Raja: Yeah, I am sort of musing on that too, as a result of it is like what is the distinction of feeling euphoria below the confines of cis heteropatriarchy and what’s euphoria exterior of that mannequin? And would that be basically… I do know it could be completely different for queer of us. I’d enterprise to guess it could be completely different for cis of us as nicely. And by which I sort of put ahead this instance: I educate a interval kinds class at a college, and I used to be speaking to Pleasure by way of all of this and I keep in mind they requested me, they’re like, “How do you not simply educate a category on race, gender, and sexuality?” And I used to be like, “That is the trick, I’m.”
As a result of one of many issues that got here up for me lately is quite a lot of actors play characters which are in keeping with their gender. And the gender of a personality that you simply’re taking part in, even when they use the identical language, could be very probably not related, or might be dissimilar I ought to say, to your personal gender. As a result of time and area are articulated in another way on this function versus your actual lived expertise. And it’s a privilege to imagine that these are so shut that you do not have to do work. And it is a cost that so many queer artists are requested to leap so continuously. And I invite cis individuals to additionally ask these questions: What did it imply to be a person in 1850 on this character I am taking part in versus right this moment in 2023 once I’m taking part in this function in my appearing classroom? As a result of should you’re simply assuming that these imply the identical factor, you are fallacious. They do not.
Pleasure: One thing you have been saying earlier jogged my memory, and I need to discuss considered one of my different necessary lecturers in my life who’s Anna Deavere Smith, so I solely acquired to check together with her for one semester. It wasn’t a very long time, however she stated one thing to me which actually caught in my thoughts that jogged my memory a little bit of what you have been saying simply now, Raja, which is her model of efficiency could be very finely detailed simulation of the vocal, bodily, and form of energetic have an effect on of real-life people who she’s interviewed and talked to. And so that is the pedagogy that she teaches her college students with. So we study that model, together with doing it ourselves and attempting to embody distinction, embody individuals’s life experiences who’re completely different from us. And so quite a lot of edgy and difficult, significant work working throughout race and ethnicity and gender and sexuality and provocative methods.
And he or she advised the category that there’s one particular character that ladies, I assume she form of meant cis girls, however that ladies at all times need to work on taking part in in her class. And he or she described it and it’s like excessive, excessive femme. And each girl who enters into her class to study this system of growing personas, they need to learn to play excessive femme. And I believe that that’s a few of this fantasy of gender that exists in a sort of cultural building that as a performer you are like, if solely I may try this, maybe I’d get employed. Maybe I’d—
Nicholas: I’d get all of the roles that these lifeless white males wrote a whole bunch of years in the past.
Pleasure: Yeah. Maybe I might be the ingenue without end. I do not know.
Nicholas: I like to finish my episodes with a few questions. First, most important thesis of this podcast from the start of it, one is that trans persons are in every single place. Two, now we have at all times been right here. In that vein, I wish to invite every of you to present a shout out to a member of your queer, trans creative household tree.
Pleasure: I am joyful to start out. I like this query. Thanks for asking, and I already acquired to call a few of my lecturers who’ve made such a huge impact on me, however I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to Cherríe Moraga who I used to be so honored to get to check and study with and TA for throughout my time at Stanford. I’d say that Cherríe Moraga is likely one of the most impactful professors I’ve ever had the expertise to work, and a part of that’s her simply knowledge and brains and coronary heart. And in addition, she has this magic capability to convey wonderful individuals round her, so I discover that I already know each D’Lo and Leanna Keyes, each of whom who’ve been in your present, as a result of we sat collectively in a circle with Cherríe Moraga in school collectively. Additionally an expensive pal and gender expansive playwright, Will Gutierrez, one other of my buddies. So there are many individuals for whom Cherríe Moraga was influential for, and I’m considered one of them.
I’m additionally within the Tim Miller archipelago, now that is in all probability much more—
Nicholas: Me too!
Pleasure: So I listened to a bunch of episodes of this earlier than approaching, and I heard that Tim Miller was form of a by way of line on this present, so I felt like I ought to shout out that he is additionally in my galaxy and particularly due to the work of two wonderful, great queer artists that I am grateful to have additionally realized with named Helen Paris and Leslie Hill who have been working at Stanford once I was there. They, collectively, make up an organization referred to as Curious that makes efficiency on each side of the Atlantic, they usually curated a yr of the efficiency artists at Stanford once I was there. So I acquired to check with Tim Miller, additionally Cut up Britches and Guillermo Gomez Peña, La Pocha Nostra, multi functional yr. And I do not assume my life was the identical afterwards. So I am actually grateful for that impression.
Nicholas: What a crew.
Raja: Yeah, what a crew. Significantly. For me, I believe who I need to shout out is the anonymous queer and trans of us. I made my world with so many individuals whose title I do not know as a result of within the ambiguity of queer area the place I discovered myself, in these locations like queer bars and queer kink areas and trans-inclusive areas, I made myself alongside individuals who possibly I did not carry on the journey. I believe it is actually necessary for me to call that these individuals have been actually significant and important as a result of I am resisting the concept of how a lot time I am with someone as being an indicator of how necessary or insignificant it’s. And I acknowledge that I, in some ways, get advised I am a queer elder by my college students who’re a bit youthful than me now, which I am nonetheless processing.
And what I’ve to clarify to them so typically is, I want I knew precisely who my queer elders are. There was a immediate lately that was concerning the Unimaginable Theatre, the Theatre of the Unimaginable. And what I saved considering of is, what was the theatre that died, so many individuals who we misplaced, how a lot theatre was by no means made by the hands of police brutality and state-sanctioned violence and the resistance to acknowledging the experiences of queer individuals? And so, it is to not be like Debbie Downer about it, however I want I knew extra names. And I embrace once more that my job was to not know them by title however by spirit. After which I actually imagine I stand on the shoulders of such necessary, important queer and trans individuals. and I like them even when I can not title them.
After which in fact, once I have a look at individuals I actually can title, I actually do need to shout out Chelsea Tempo, who has been extremely crucial for me as deliberately in so some ways, made positive that the obstacles I confronted into this trade have been one thing that she may leverage her privilege in getting me throughout. After which we have talked about Leo, however I actually need to acknowledge them. They’re very a lot the third a part of this form of Pleasure, Raja, Leo trio.
Pleasure: Yeah, Leo Mock. Yeah. Leo Mock, discover them.
Raja: Leo Mock. They’re the glue that holds a lot of what the three of us are doing collectively, and I actually need to title them as so crucial in most of what we have mentioned.
Nicholas: And to shut us out, a second of gender euphoria, courtesy of Raja Benz.
Raja: I believe gender euphoria for me has felt like not needing to know the solutions. I grew up in predominantly white communities the place understanding the reply to one thing was the best factor one may do by way of my schooling system. And as of current, I am transferring by way of quite a lot of actually huge issues in my world; my life is altering fairly drastically proper now when it comes to skilled and private issues. And what I’ve discovered lately is that this physique will turn into. This physique will change. This physique is at all times in flux and needing much less to pin it down, to present it language and to make it digestible has given me such a euphoria that I can now say, “I do not know.” And for as soon as, euphoria appears to be like like “I do not know” as being a constructive reply and never a damaging one.
Nicholas: Love that. Thanks a lot for approaching and chatting with me on this huge, sprawling, winding dialog.
Raja: It is so typical of how we do it. Significantly.
Nicholas: This has been Gender Euphoria: The Podcast, hosted and edited by me, Nicholas Shannon Savard. The voices you heard within the intro poem have been Rebecca Kling, Dillon Yruegas, Siri Gurudev, Azure D. Osborne-Lee, and Joshua Bastian Cole. The present artwork was designed by Yaşam Gülseven. This podcast is produced as a contribution to HowlRound Theatre Commons. You could find extra episodes of this collection and different HowlRound podcasts in our feed on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you discover your podcasts. Make sure you search “HowlRound Theatre Commons podcasts” and subscribe to obtain new episodes.
For those who beloved this podcast, put up a ranking and write a overview on these platforms. This helps different individuals discover us. You may as well discover a transcript for this episode together with quite a lot of different progressive and disruptive content material on howlround.com. Have an concept for an thrilling podcast, essay, or TV occasion that the theatre neighborhood wants to listen to? Go to howlround.com and submit your concepts to the Commons.
Time stamps point out the second when the auditory footnote maker happens within the episode. All sources are listed in chronological order. For extra, take a look at the complete Zotero library for Gender Euphoria: The Podcast.
01:40 Scholarly podcast observe: auditory footnote markers, My Gothic Dissertation
03:20 HowlRound interview between Raja Benz and Ann James
12:30 José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia
15:50 Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Principle and the Loss of life Drive
19:00 Pleasure’s particular subject of Journal of Dramatic Criticism and Principle
24:20 Critiques of Consent Discourse from Schooling, Gender Research, and Theatrical Intimacy in Melanie A. Beres’ “Spontaneous Sexual Consent: An Evaluation of Sexual Consent in Literature”; Stacey Novak’s “Intercourse Ed in Larger Ed: Ought to We Say Sure to ‘Affirmative Consent?’”; Elsie Whittington’s “Rethinking Consent with Continuums: Intercourse, Ethics and Younger Individuals”; Chelsey Morgan’s “Visions for Justice and Critiquing Consent: On Taking Performativity out of Efficiency”; and Laura Rikard and Amanda Rose Villareal’s “Concentrate on Affect, Not Intention: Shifting from ‘Protected’ Areas to Areas of Acceptable Threat”
24:40 Deliberate Parenthood’s FRIES consent mannequin
25:20 Threat-Conscious Consensual Kink (RACK)
28:00 Readings on entry intimacy and incapacity justice, together with Mia Mingus’ weblog posts “Entry Intimacy, Interdependence and Incapacity Justice” and “Entry Intimacy: The Lacking Hyperlink” Sins Invalid’s curriculum for political improvement on the subject of incapacity justice; and Leah Lakshmi Pipenza-Samarasinha’s Care Work: Dreaming Incapacity Justice
31:30 Queer our bodies, no assure of a future through Jack Halberstam’s In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Our bodies, Subcultural Lives
35:10 Adrienne Marie Brown, Emergent Technique
38:30 Movies of Anna Deveare Smith’s efficiency model, “4 American Characters” and Let Me Down Straightforward.
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