At 4zzz, we acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we broadcast. We pay our respects to the elders, past, present and emerging of the Turbul and Jagera people. We acknowledge that their sovereignty over this land was never ceded and we stand in solidarity with them.

You're listening to transm on 4zzz amplifying the trans and gender non conforming voices.

Of Brisbane and beyond. Hello. Hello. Good morning, Meanjin. You're listening to transmission on 4zzz. My name is EZ, I use HE, him pronouns. And I'd like to begin this episode by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land in which 4zzz broadcast every single week, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the Yuggera and Turrbal people. This is stolen land. And this land never belonged to me. It never belonged to most people in this station. It doesn't belong to this nation. It belongs to indigenous people. And over the weekend we went and marched alongside our first nations community to talk about land back, to demand land back and listen to speeches. If you tuned in 24zzz on January 26th, you would have heard the speeches broadcast live from Queen's Garden as well as continued broadcast from Musgrave park later on after the march across the river. It's important to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land because this isn't ours and it never was and it always will be Aboriginal land. So the theme for today on Transmission is I have a special guest in studio, a good friend, longtime friend and recently has discovered her mob as well where she belongs and is also part of the trans community where she belongs as well. Hi, how are you? How are you doing, Heidi?

I'm good, baby, how are you?

It's nice to have you in here.

Good to be back.

I'm so glad you're here. Today we're going to be having chats about trans solidarity with first nations communities. We're going to talk about the intersectionality between trans experiences and indigenous experiences. And yeah, we're going to be talking about how our fight is the same fight. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm ready.

You're ready?

Yeah.

Let's do it.

Amplifying the voices of the trans and gender non conforming community of Meanjin, Brisbane and beyond. Transmission on 4ZZZ brings you the latest in trans community news, music and events. Every Tuesday from 9am till 10am Join our team of hosts for an hour of celebrating the unique perspectives of the trans community. Transmission Tuesday mornings from 9am to 10am on 4zzz. You're listening to Transmission on 4zzz. My name is EZ, I use he.

Him pronouns and I'm Heidi and I use she her pronouns.

And we're about to chat about trans solidarity with first nations communities, not just here in my engine, but also around the world. We are all together, we are all in this together. We are all suffering under the same patriarchal systems. And today we're having a bit of a chat with Heidi. Heidi and I are chatting about trans solidarity with First Nation communities, but also mainly some of Heidi's recent experiences, especially coming off of January 26th. Go on, you share a little bit about what's happened.

Sure. So, because we're talking about, you know, like intersectionality and also like one thing that I guess we wanted to talk about was just white people and CIS people and people who are not part of these shared kind of experience. Minorities and their reactions to being challenged, not even being called out, potentially even just being called in. Like there, there's this visceral response and I'll give you a good example. So I run a local online group for the trans community and it's a progressive space. It is trans focused, indigenous and people of colour. Trans people of colour. Our voices are elevated, especially around specific topics that affect us. And so I made a post on the 26th of January the other day just reminding people that the 26th is not a day to celebrate. And I made a little joke about if you celebrate it, then you should start whistling at night and.

Go on.

And I had, and I had a couple of responses which I wasn't, I was not shocked by at all. All it was. And the interesting part about this was that this is an all trans group, but we do let in, you know, like some parents of transgender kids who are looking for, you know, support and connection and stuff for their kids, fully support that. I mean, the admin in the group, we were a little hesitant about it because of the potential of things like the other day happening where I made this post about, you know, why, why Australia Day is not a day to celebrate, why 26 January is not a day to celebrate. And the very first comment I got was from a CIS hetero white mum of a trans child explaining to me how offended she was that I made that suggestion or made that point. And one of the other ones was, you've, you've just dropped down a notch in my opinion of you and my opinion of what you or what I thought you stood for and da, da, da, da, da. And my response to it really was just like, I Genuinely don't care what you think of me. Yeah, like, that's the really interesting part is, like, she came into this space, which was not designed for her, with a really reactive and just quite a pathetic response. And like, I always try to meet people where they're at, but it just, it was so embarrassing, secondhand embarrassment, watching these people react to this. And it was such a spotlight on. This reaction has been the same anytime and in any space where I have challenged the idea of celebrating the 26th of January. And I'm also at the point now, too, where I'm like, I'm not interested in debating facts about it and providing historical, you know, facts about that date because that information is out there. And I think people are just willfully ignorant at this point.

And it's so easy to access this knowledge.

It really is.

It's also free. You know, NITV is free. Turn that on once in a while.

Exactly, exactly.

You know, the ABC is free. SBS is free in terms of accessing free content. If you want to watch something visual, you can go to a library. They're still accessible. Yeah. You can even just Google things on your phone, find out some answers. You know, it's not up to every indigenous person to also educate you on the on and fill in your gaps because you are unwilling to do the work on stolen land. Yeah.

And the interesting thing too is that I even had pushback from people in the trans community around how I handled that and how blunt I was and how I didn't baby these people. And that person that had an issue with, quote, unquote, my tone ended up leaving the group because I said, I'm not going to police my tone about this. I don't need to meet racists where they are. To me, that's not a progressive stance. Obviously, yes, we accept pluralities, we accept other people's difference of opinion, but I don't accept a difference in fact. So when it comes to these things, I don't pull any punches anymore. I don't hold back. I'm not rude, but I'm not going to baby people anymore. And I think that should be something that we really take on.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

We should be considering how, you know, and the. And the battle for this kind of thing. Right. Like the battle to. To continue to stand your ground, hold your boundaries and, and fight racism where you can in ways that you can. Also means that we have to protect the spaces that we're in and, you know, as yourself, as like a leader in that space and that online community. It's like, well, no, these are the values that intersect with the trans community as well.

Yeah, well, and that's. That's exactly. That's exactly it. Like, I am adamant. Like, I, like, I don't consider myself like a leader. I kind of. I reject that notion purely because I just don't like that idea of, like, those hierarchical positions. I don't think I'm more competent or more deserving than anybody else or anything in that group. It's literally just like, I had the bandwidth to start this project and I have a team that helps me maintain it, but we maintain it with that. We have a bit of an iron fist. But it's never directed at the trans community, so to speak. It is always like, this is our space as a community. We direct this because we need those spaces because they are very hard to come by.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I'm. I've been called militant about it and I'm like, that's fine. That is totally fine, because there are plenty of places out there for the cishet white community. There's not many for the rest of us. And so when we have those spaces, I protect that with my whole heart and I don't care how I come across.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's either a cis hetero white space or it's. Or it's a small corner somewhere.

Yeah.

So I completely understand being defence, you know, standing in defence of that, but also standing in defence of the communities that we're. We're part of and looking after, especially if we have the capacity to, you know. Yeah. And that's a bit like this show, this broadcast is all about amplifying the trans voices of the community and creating a space for us on air, which I'm very grateful to, for Triple Z for allowing this space to exist. But it's also. It's a space that we exist in all the time, you know, and the same, you know, like a correlation between first nations communities and transness, unlike certain aspects of queerness, is you can. You can kind of be invisible as a gay or a cisgendered queer person. You can be like, oh, you know what? I'm gonna not disclose this. And. And therefore I'm safe.

Exactly.

But as a trans person, you're visible. You're visible a lot of the time.

A lot of the time.

And so when you're visible, you know, you never know. You don't just go home and stop being trans. You don't just like, okay, cool, well, I'm done doing that now. I'm gonna go back to whatever quote, unquote normal or default is.

Yes.

No, this is my defaul. Default state. I am in the state all the time.

Yeah.

And it's a similar experience as an indigenous person. You know, we're not, we're always, we're always in this discourse, we're always in this conversation. You can choose to tap out when you want, but we don't get.

Exactly. Exactly. And that's, that's the thing I think a lot of people don't realise is like, I'm at the point where I'm at when it comes to challenging some of these like, ideas and mainly these, you know, like white centric ideas. I'm at the point where I'm at now because I haven't had a break. I don't get to stop. I don't get to, you know, process, you know, I just don't get a chance to stop. And so I'm at the point now where I am the way I am and I approach things the way I approach them because I've tried every other mechanism in my, in my arsenal and it's just not effective. You can't meet people where they're at. If the people that you're talking to are racist. Yeah, we should not be doing that.

Yeah. At what point, you know, a question that we can ask ourselves is, you know, at what point is enough enough?

Exactly.

And what have we got to do exactly? Paradigm Shifts podcast is available online and via your favourite podcasting app. Challenging the assumptions of our current society to investigate alternative ways of living for a world based on justice, solidarity and sustainability. Tune in to the Paradigm Shift podcast. Just search the paradigm shift for triple. You're listening to Transmission on 4zzz. My name is EZ, I use HE, him, pronouns. And Heidi and I are chatting this morning a bit about trans solidarity with first nations communities. And my housemate was hanging out on TikTok and found this pretty incredible explanation of a question that was given or posed by a middle aged CIS white woman around why is the right wing so obsessed with trans people? And this explanation is probably the most succinct explanation I've heard in of how we can understand transphobia, racism, ableism among a myriad of other isms and segregations in the world. So I'm going to push play on this. It's from Decolonization Coven. You can cheque them out on TikTok and on Instagram as well. Decolonization with a Z. Yeah, we're going to listen to that. Now answering a question and then when we come back, Heidi and I will chat a little bit on the topic. Could somebody help me understand what is this obsession with trans people?

The right has.

I have been waiting for a CIS white lady to sincerely ask this question for so long and this is like the deep, mind blowing real answer to this question. The perspective changing answer to this question. They cannot uphold the patriarchy, they can't do gender based oppression on you guys if we are allowed to exist freely. Let me explain what trans people, what gender non conforming people, what intersex people do by existing is challenge gender as a binary, as two rigid inherent categories. We are a proof that that's not real. So any gender based oppression that they try and subject you to is fucking meaningless. Because if you stop believing that because you're born in a body, you have some inherent qualities to you, they can't tell you what you can and cannot do. Their justification for punishing you for doing anything that they deem incorrect falls apart completely. Because if people can switch categories and exist in between them and redefine them as they would like for themselves, it's no longer an exclusionary category, it's just a word that describes things. And we're gonna go a layer deeper now because to understand all this, you have to understand the history of colonialism and how we got to where we are in our systems of oppression as a whole. Christian European nations began to expand out of Europe. They genocided and colonised a bunch of indigenous people all over the world and began to enslave them, wipe them off of their land and take all of their resources in that process. They also wanted to enforce the values that they believed in, the ones taught specifically by the Roman Catholic Church, which included ways of enforcing sex and gender binaries for the purposes of keeping women in a subservient place in society and wiping people like me out of European societies or like post Roman conquest societies after Rome converted to Christianity. So back to like the 1500s, these colonists are genociding a bunch of indigenous people. Genocide by definition includes destruction of the culture. Included in these cultures were places for non binary intersex trans people to exist, hold positions in society. The colonists put an end to that violently as they subjugated the places they conquered. They murdered us, they aligned us with demons, with the devil in the religion that they imposed on those indigenous people as a control mechanism. And they also passed laws against our existence that they would enforce through heinous violence. And that's how they got us to go Underground. They forced us out of public society and killed anyone who didn't conform to that. Examples of that in the last century are Hitler, starting with us, using the book burnings as a way to generate support for the Nazi party by targeting us. And then when the concentration camps were liberated, they left us behind after that. In America, you have the lavender scare, you have queer bashing, you have all the police raids on gay clubs and bars leading to the Stonewall uprisings and the movements that got us a lot of our rights that we have today. It's why they let us die to the AIDS epidemic without saying a goddamn word. And our oppression wouldn't be possible had they not also subjugated entire nations of bipoc people. And that's why they're coming after us today. If you ever realise that gender is made up, you might realise that race is made up, you might realise that ableism, ability is made up. And the judgments, the dismissals, the dehumanisation we subject these groups of people to becomes less and less easy to tolerate because it's clear that it's not inherent to them. It's inherent to how we treat them, how they treat us. They have to ban us from public bathrooms because otherwise people might notice that we're more free than them. They have to make it true that we are less free by passing laws or risk feeling threatened in their power, risk losing their mechanisms for control. Which is why anyone who calls themselves a feminist, an anti racist, a disability rights advocate, also needs to be a trans advocate. And it's why anyone who's a trans advocate also needs to be all those other advocates. Our liberation is tied together. You can't be free from patriarchy until we're free from transphobia. You will not be free before that happens. And we won't be free until we free black people from the racism and carceral system. And all three of us won't be free until the three of us stop trying to kill disabled people and give the land back to the indigenous people who we stole it from. Otherwise none of this heals and they're gonna keep coming after us one group at a time, because that's what fascists are all about, control. And it inevitably concludes in controlling who can and cannot exist. So there you go. Hope that answers your question. Have a nice day now.

So there you have it. Answering the question there. Decolonization covenant. Answering the question, why are right wing people so obsessed with trans people? Patriarchy. Yeah, yeah, there you go. There's the answer to that.

That sums it up nicely.

Yes. If you're tuning in, you're listening to transmission on 4ZZZ. My name is EZ, I use HE, him pronouns. And I'm in studio with Heidi, and.

I use she, her pronouns.

Oh, I like that. Heidi.

Hi.

With a breath. Yeah. We're chatting about intersection between trans experiences, First Nation experience, and how our fight is the same fight, which is, you know, when you. Wherever you find segregation or separation in society, that's where you have discrimination. And so, you know, we've seen it with things like, you know, blacks and browns have their own bathroom and you have whites only and so on. And that separation, it's always about bathrooms. It's always like the bathroom is like the centre of this thing.

Yeah, I know. I've heard people talk about why that is, but I've lost that in my memory because I think it's so unimportant. But also, there is a reason. I just still don't get it.

Yeah, I mean, it's wild. It's this notion whenever you have separation at any point. So there's this Guarani. So Guarani is a tribe north of Trua people, which are my people in South America, in Uruguay. And this leader, she talks about, and she speaks Spanish, but she also. She also speaks her native language, Guarani, and she was talking about how many First Nation communities in the Americas don't actually have a word for nature. And the reason they don't have a word for nature is because when you do that, you actually create a division between humanness and humankind and this otherness. And when we do that, we create the room for discrimination.

Yeah.

And that is what this elder, she poses, that the reason we have this disconnect with our natural world is because we've created a word for it. We've created a separation. We've decided that there's them and us again. And this fixation with colonisation have all these words and different labels and categories and boxes, and every time you have categories and boxes and separation, you have separation, which leaves room for discrimination to grow in between.

Yeah.

And that's what's happening here. We have these bathrooms, we have men and women in separate bathrooms. We even have disabled people in different bathrooms, you know.

Yeah.

We have all this segregation and that's how that breeds discrimination within the community. And then you have trans people like us, God forbid that they're black as well, coming in, going, well, I should be able to use whatever I need to use. Yeah, but no, you can't. You're not free enough to do that because this system that we live in, these bathrooms, this is a literal, visual, interactive example.

Yeah.

Of why we are not free and why, why so many CIS hetero people are out there being like, men and women, men and women. I'm like, you're both so obsessed with the wrong fight.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. This is the point that I was making before that we need to stop arguing about the facts because the facts are out there and they'll keep saying the same thing over and over again, even if you provide them with scientific fact. Because that's the thing, right? Like we, we can have this conversation a thousand times and we're not changing anything we're saying, but they're not listening to a single word of it. And it's because it's going to challenge the power structure, it's going to challenge their position in society. So even if they aren't a person in politics, in power, just generally as a white person, as a CIS person, as an able bodied person, they are in this position of systemic power. So they're never going to listen to us because it threatens their position. They're never going to hear us out. It's willful ignorance because it is a challenge to their authority.

When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

100%. Yeah.

And we're now going to have a bit of a chat about how do we go forward, what do we do as a community looking out for each other and how can we look out as trans people? What can we, what can we, Heidi, look out for in standing solidarity with first nations people?

Yeah. Okay. So on a more broader scale, Right. I think that because things are looking and feeling quite dark, especially what we're witnessing overseas in America and its trickle down effect to here in Australia, it's, I think more than anything, a lot of people are really scared right now. So there's two things I want to say. Firstly, we need revolution. That's just a fact. It just needs to happen. We're at the point where the way we are going is not sustainable. Regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, it's just not. We have to understand things like class solidarity, that's another thing that's very important and we have to be able to learn how to take down this current structure that we're in. However, we can't do that without first putting something else in place and that is direct community care. We have to be engaging with each other in groups. We have to be organising how we take back the means of production, how we support each other in our communities so that we don't have to rely on a government that is hell bent on killing us. We have to be able to rely on each other. That is the first thing. And one of the ways that we can do that is just start looking for these groups. Start looking for groups like the trans collective Brisbane Mean Jin on Facebook. If you are trans, find us, come join, say that you heard this, this episode of Transmission and we'll let you in. But the reason I say things like that, it's not just the group that I admin, but any, any social group that is focused on community care, taking care of each other. Like, we have to be able to do that. We can talk about revolution all we want. We can talk about, you know, tearing down the system and building a new one, but we have to start building it as we're doing it. We have to be taking care of each other currently. And I think the issue that we have is that because of the way that the world is, the way that technology has turned out, we are both very connected and very disconnected. We've got all of these things in place in theory, but it's about coming together in person, in groups, organising locally, switching off from the. The. This doom and gloom idea of the world we have. We have to be able to think locally and act locally so that we're not getting overwhelmed and burnt out and we're stopped in our tracks before we can actually get anywhere. The practical steps are connect with your community, find out who they are.

No, who's who, exactly.

Find out who your community is, connect with them and talk about what you can do to support each other. It is not about, you know, it is mutual, which means that, you know, if somebody gives something to you to support you in the moment, it's not like you don't owe them. They're not better than you. They're going to need you at some point. And the point of that mutual aid and that community support is that we can rely on each other.

Skill swap. Skillshare.

Exactly. Yeah.

You know what you've got to offer.

It doesn't just have to be monetary, it doesn't have to be. It can literally be anything. Like you were saying.

It can also be showing up. Yes. You know, like some, I know some people listening might be like, I don't know if I've got skills to offer or what. Can I contribute in a communal sense? Just be there. Just be there.

Your presence is enough.

Your presence is important.

Yes.

If you're Trans and living. Right now, you are literally. You are rebelling against the system by existing 100%.

You're doing some of the most radical forms of resistance that there is.

You're free, baby.

Exactly.

It might not feel like it just, but you are.

Just find your mob, you know, like, find the people that you align with that you know are going to support you. Because we are out there. I'm right here, you know.

Yeah.

I'm one of them. As us too.

Yeah, that's right. We're around. We're here, we're queer. We're loud.

Very, very loud.

And. Yeah. So the main thing is like, I guess, like, looking out for each other. Find your community. Get offline, you know?

Yeah.

I'm actually really tempted to jump off of Instagram. Anything meta at the moment. I've been looking at Discord servers. There are. They're like. Discord is not owned by any mass conglomerate. They are their own business, they are their own organisation and they refused to sell to Microsoft a couple years ago, which made me feel good. You can create your own little servers and you have your own little community spaces that doesn't have these algorithms and this bombardment of, like, capitalist depression, which is what I'm calling it. Advertisements, making you feel like you're missing out on something and then you feel this constant loss, like you're never complete. That's because it's a manipulation and it's an entire. That's how these apps work. Yes. A little bit of my background is I worked in some in development and, like design, particularly with apps and video games. They are designed to make you feel bad.

Yeah.

Tell you from the inside that that's. That's how they work. Get off those apps. Find other ways of communicating. Get Telegram or Signal. Good old phone numbers are pretty effective. You can give people a call.

Blue Sky. I just created a. Like a personal account on Blue Sky. It's still. I've got like three or four followers at the moment, but it's there because I'm planning the same thing. I want to move away from Meta and its algorithm and the way it's designed to make us feel like crap all the time.

Yeah, yeah.

Like a good example. Right. So if you'd like a bunch of Trans pages or whatever, it will automatically put in your feed. Transphobic. Like articles and all the comments are so transphobic and so triggering and so abrasive. And it's designed that way to get people to engage. So that's the point of it.

It's all about reach. You Too Right. And get in your head.

Exactly. And it's a way to weaken us as a community. So I think it's just gotten to the point where it's, you know, it's. It's flying a bit too close to the sun, and I think a lot of people are waking up to that.

Yeah.

And that's why I'm making that. That move. I actually had, like, a year off social media. Bit over a year, about a year and a half, actually. And it was the best decision that I ever made. I only came back because of my business, and I kind of needed it to run it, but now I'm like, I don't even care anymore.

Yeah, Yeah.

I got my own ways. I don't need meta.

Yeah, we don't. And. And we look as we're both the same age. We're both. We're both 31. Right? Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm like, I don't remember how old I am, but, like, we come from that. We grew up without social media in our pocket. We went to a computer and sat down and engaged with it. And then when we were finished being cyberbullied, we got up and left.

Exactly.

You could get away from it, and you still can, actually. And for the younger generation listening, it might seem a little bit more challenging because you've grown up with this in your pocket, but honestly, you can stand up and walk away. Books still exist.

Oh, God, we are sounding so old now. I'm like. I remember being lectured by older generations about the use of the Internet, and I was like, no, it's fine. Now I'm like, okay, I get it.

Oh, boy. Well, you know what? I'm gonna. We're running out of time. We might end it there. But thank you, everyone, for tuning in to another episode of Transmission. Thank you so much, Heidi, for coming in.

Oh, thank you for having me.

Yeah, we'll definitely have you back. Trans people standing in solidarity. First nation communities, not just here in Myanjin, but around the nation and beyond. Thank you so much. Love you all and goodbye. Bye.

Thank you so much for listening to Transmission. See you next Tuesday, 9 to 10aM on 4 triple Z.