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. Good morning. The Engine. You're listening to transmission on 4zzz. Oh, station manager Jack's giving me away from the studio. Hello. Yes, it's a wonderful morning here at 4zzz. And it's particularly wonderful because it's April Atonement, which means if you haven't subscribed to 4zzz, you should do so within the month of April and you could win some fantastic prizes. I'll go through all of those with you through this episode today of Transmission. But first I'm gonna mention a couple of events that are coming around this week that you might like to attend, particularly if you're part of the trans or gender diverse community of the city, or maybe you're an ally and you'd like to come support some local communities and organisations. We're gonna have a chat this morning with young people from Open Doors Youth Service, including a couple of their staff about what's going on today down there. Fortitude Valley. And we'll also talk about this event happening at the Cave in tomorrow night which is Wednesday 9th April. The cave in is based in Woolloongabba, if you're wondering where it is. Doors from 6pm and music from 7. The event is called Orion and the Cloud Killers Book Launch and Music Night. So to celebrate the release of Orion and the Cloud Killers, Harry D. Gordon's debut novel, come down to the Cave Inn for a night of queer music and joy. Featuring local queer musical acts such as Red Hill and Georgie Taylor, as well as an author led book reading. It'll be sure to be a fun and heartwarming night. All the proceeds from ticket and book sales will be donated to Open Doors youse service. So paperback books will be available for purchase directly from the author and every ticket holder will receive an ebook discount code as well. You can head to humanitiks events Humanatics and check out Orion and the Cloud Killers book launch. You can purchase your ticket there. You can also get tickets on the door, I believe so, yeah, make sure to head down for that one. If you're interested in the book Orion and the Cloud Killers, it's about. I'll Read a bit of the blurb here. So starting university in a new city after coming out as Trans is Orion's best chance to repress Reset. It's an opportunity to join clubs, make new friends and forget what he used to be. But before he can find his feet at his very first Pride festival, he bumps into Sebastian Homestead, the drummer for an all queer local rock band called Cloud Killers and a childhood crush. His not so over jealous exes, asexual crises and bubble tea abound in this heartfelt story of identity, self acceptance and love. So, yeah, head to the Cave in tomorrow night for the book launch. You can grab yourself, yeah, some drinks, some pizza. Cave In's a fantastic venue to spend time and definitely trans and queer friendly can vouch for that. It is definitely my local watering hole. Yeah, Other than that, another event that's coming up, which is today, is called Rainbow Roots down at Open Doors, which is Open Doors Youth Service, which is based at 5 Green Square in Fortitude Valley. We're going to listen to some music and when we come back we'll be having a chat with some people from Open Doors, including a young person who's part of the event today.

Open Doors Youth Service is a Southeast Queensland support service for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and or intersex youth aged 12 to 24 and their families. Open Doors believes that all young people have the right to explore, experience and express their gender and sexuality in safe and supportive environments and offers a range of programmes and counselling services as well as support services for parents of LGBTI youth and community education and training. For more information, visit their [email protected]. sponsors are 4zzz.

You'll see the transmission on 4zzz. My name is EZ, I use HE, him, pronouns, and I'm in studio with some wonderful people from Open Doors Youth Service this morning. Name and pronouns.

Hi, my name is Disa. My pronouns are they, them.

Hi, I'm Phoebe and my pronouns are they, them.

Awesome. Welcome to 4zzz. How's both your mornings been so far?

Very good. Just chill.

Yeah, I mean, my bus was late, which was stressful, but like, you're here. We live in.

Yeah, you made it. You made it on time for Community Radio.

Indeed I did.

And we're here to chat a bit about Open Doors Youservice event that's happening today. Who would like to. You want. You want to chat about the event today? What's going on down there?

Yeah, so today we have our Rainbow Roots, which is going on from one till five it's got some pretty cool stuff going on. We got a closed swap, which is always the best. I always walk home with so many things that I don't need. There's going to be some awesome live music, like an open mic, so, you know, preach whatever you want to preach. And there'll be like art workshops and badge making and food will be supplied, which is always just a plus.

That's why I go, nice, nice. And what do you do at Open Doors? What's part of. Do you spend time there?

Yeah, I. I've been going for a few years now. I was one of the founding members of the trans femme community, which is one of the, if not the only, old trans femme group in the whole of Australia, which is pretty neat to be part of that. And I've also just been going since. Yeah. For ages. And it's really helped me with my struggles in my identity and so it's been really good. Yeah.

And the trans femme group, is that kind of like a community group or.

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's a community group specifically for trans women and people assigned male at birth who are no longer that cool. Yeah.

Great. And. And you find that, like, it's a nice space to meet people and things like that?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's really hard to meet other people that are the same as you quite often out in the world. And so being able to find somewhere where you know you're gonna meet them and like, be able to relate to them in a way that most other people don't is always something I look forward to every fortnight.

Yeah. Aw, that's awesome. It's interesting because, like, you know, as trans people, we can feel so isolated from community and particularly as young people, OpenZoo service supports young people ages 12 to 24 and pretty much up until they turn 25. And yeah, so many different things. Dilsa?

Yes, it's me.

That's you. It is you. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the service, about what Open Doors does?

So I'm the counsellor at Open Doors, but there's also a lot of social group like Phoebe been talking about. So there's different social group for different ages, different genders and also a social group for indigenous people that just started, so it's very exciting. There's also counselling, so different counsellors. There's three counsellors and we also started like family mediation for any young people that wanted some support with their family. There's also advocacy youth workers. We doing amazing job for A bit more casework supporting young people for anything they need in their life. So it's a bit more support there. And yeah, and we have a new hub opening as well.

Oh my goodness. Yeah. What? Woo. That's awesome. So where's this new hub?

It's starting slowly in Logan, but the real open, like the big opening is going to be on the 30th of April.

Oh my goodness. Wow.

But you know, keep your eyes peeled on our social medias.

Yeah, yeah. I will put that notice out when we get a bit closer to the date as well so people can come along and celebrate. Cool. It sounds like you're doing some amazing stuff down at Open Doors. I'm talking like I don't know anything about the organisation but that's because I'm in my transmission mode. But I do spend a lot of time there. I also and the Internet take worker at Open Doors, you service. It's a fantastic space. If you want to check out today, there's going to be an artist playing live. You may have heard Iris perform before on 4 triple Z. Very popular local young trans femme artist. But yeah, other than other than music. Yeah. Barbecue, clothes swap, badge making, there's going to be some art workshops as well. Head down today anytime from 1pm till 5pm at Visible Inc. Near Visible Inc. 5 Green Square, Fortitude Valley. You can check that all out. Yeah. Is there any shout outs for anyone that we'd like to give or anything before we come off air? You got a friend tuning in, Phoebe, that you'd like to.

Yeah. I should thank Nico who is one of the amazing support workers at Open Doors, who gave me the opportunity to come on and speak about this event today. And also just thanks to Open Doors in general for being amazing and always being there.

Aw, don't make me cry. No, it's too early in the morning. If you'd like to donate to Open Doors, you services as well, you can, you can head to the Open Doors website, opendoors.org au check that out. You can donate through their website as well. You can also show up with some other donations. They do accept things like food vouchers in particular or non perishable foods. They do take clothing donations however, I don't think that's something that they're taking currently as they have so many clothes. But if you can think of go cards, cash donations for like food and things like that, anything that might be useful, particularly for any young people sleeping rough, that is also really useful. So yeah, you can, you can donate directly to the organisation in the Valley. Or you can donate online as well and follow them on social media at opendoorzooservice to check out all the events that they got throughout the year. And you can also refer your young people. So if you have a young trans or gender diverse person or someone who's questioning their identity, whether that be sexuality or gender, you can send them an Open Doors youse service. They'll come see me most likely, or one of the other intake workers and we can help get them the support and service that they need. Yeah, thank you so much, Dillser and Phoebe, for coming in today. And I'm gonna play a song in honour of 25 years of open doors this year. Hi, we're Whamgirls and you're listening to Transmission. You are indeed listening to transmission on 4ZZZ. And yeah, something else that we love about this incredible city is its fantastic leading community broadcaster for zzz. Which brings me to this next segment of where we will be chatting about April Atonement. It's April Atonement and I've decided to take some of zedgeist background tracks. Jack, I know you're upstairs. Station manager having a listen. Do you like this vibe? I like this vibe. We're gonna talk about April Atonement. Okay, so first of all, what is April Atonement? Well, it's a month on for ZZZ where you can subscribe and support community radio. So we can stay on air for another year and you can win a bunch of prizes and there's many to choose from. So I'm going to go through, I'm going to go through some of them. You can subscribe to 4zzz for in a myriad of different ways. There's a whole bunch of different packages, if you will. You can subscribe as a full subscriber. Passionate concession. If you've, you know, bit short changed this year, you can also super subscribe. You can subscribe if you're a band, a solo artist business or as an entire household. Maybe you and your share house want to jump in on a prize together. You totally can. Also, if you've got a pet, you can subscribe your pet. I got two kittens at home. They should probably get subscribed during April. Maybe I can do that. Yeah, I think I will. Also, if you're under 18, you can subscribe for 25 bucks. 25 bucks for the entire year. You get so many benefits aside from, you know, warm in a glow, which is quite delicious. You also get things like you can text in and Your name will appear, we'll know who you are. You can make song requests, you can get. You can jump in for some Zed giveaways and you even get some cheap entry tickets to some gigs. There's also discount outlets, so like Banshee's Bar for example is a discount outlet. You get maybe 10% off some beverages when you're out, which is a nice feeling. You also get benefits on Zed Merch. So you get discounted merch discount, a whole bunch of stuff. It's freaking awesome. You can head to the 4Z website4zzz.org au and you can subscribe there. I'm just looking at the website now. It's quite pretty, can't miss it. Some really cool, colourful jam jar vibes going on for April Atonement this year. If you are a regular Zeta, that is. But yeah, from April 1st to April 30th you should subscribe. You can win things like New Farm Cinemas Mid year Retrospective pass. You can also get Stork Furniture, Record Console Table jets, Fortitude Valley membership. Oh, what? Get fit. There's also more prizes. So VIP Oasis Deluxe Experience, which is the Brisbane River Oasis, I guess. What are they called? Like a party boat? Kind of, yeah. There's also a BMAC season pass and a year of heaps of normal non alcoholic beer from Heaps Normal is the independent, Aussie owned, made, purpose driven, non alcoholic beer company. You can check that out too. So yeah, April Enjoyment. Look at you. Go subscribe to 4zzz. There's so many things to check out. You can also head to the website, you'll see all the list of prizes there. And yeah, become a 477 subscriber. Come into the fold. Support community radio, you know you want to. You're listening to transmission on 4ZZZ. My name is EZ, I use HE him pronouns. And Transmission's all about amplifying the voices of the trans and gender diverse community here in the engine and beyond. And yeah, we've had been having a chat about a few events that are going on around town this, this episode, Rainbow Roots as well as a book launch at the Cave in tomorrow. So yeah, you should check them all out. We'll put them up on the Transmission Socials at Transradio with a Z. Trans with a Z. You know, because we're on for Triple Z. Yeah. I've been just perusing the news this morning trying to find something interesting to discuss and something has popped up that is interesting. Researchers in Melbourne have developed a world first tool to measure gender euphoria, which is freaking awesome. If you don't know what gender euphoria is kind of way to describe it would be like it's the opposite of dysphoria. So if you have gender dysphoria, you have gender euphoria and euphoria is essentially, well, it's euphoric, it's a feeling of joy. It's trans joy in its purest form. And yeah. The Gender Euphoria Scale, or ges, led by Swinburne University of Technology and Murdoch Children's Research Institute in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, was published in the International Journal of Transgender Health. The study monitored 732 trans patient participants aged 16 to 79 across Australia as part of the Transform Study, a trans led project from the Trans Health Research Group. The scale was developed through research reviews, expert feedback and focus groups with trans individuals. Pilot testing refined the tool and its validity was assessed with participants from the Transform Study. This pioneering research found that GEs consistently and accurately measures gender euphoria, offering a valuable resource for clinicians and researchers focusing on positive gender experiences. Experts believe it can help clinicians support trans clients in experiencing the joy of gender identity, not just managing dysphoria. The findings quite literally define trans joy. So 96.6% of trans people experience gender euphoria, with 61.6% feeling it weakly or daily. And 85.6% describe describing it as moderate to very strong over the past year. And a quote here From Charlotte Blacklock, Ph.D. student at Swinburne, says there is growing recognition of the need to broaden understandings of gender diversity by exploring and highlighting the joyful aspects of trans people's lives. And it's so true. We always focus a lot on like what's not going so well, but we do need to also focus on things that are going well and things like this. Having research that that is focusing on our joy is really wonderful, particularly the fact that it's being led out of this country. If you want to know more actually about TRANSFORM and a bunch of other studies that come out from the Body Trans Health Research, which is based down in Melbourne in Nam, and they're all about improving the health and well being of the transgender diverse community, you can check out their social media. Instagram's pretty good. They put a lot of posts up there of like studies that they've recently done. All of these things are factual and you can look up the studies, they are accessible. You do not have a page paywall. The fact that there are paywalls to journals and studies is outrageous to me, but these ones, there are no paywalls, so that's pretty nice. It's called the Gender Euphoria Scale publication, and that's in the International Journal of Transgender Health. I will also put that link up on the podcast for anyone who's listening to the podcast as well as on the social media when the podcast goes up tomorrow. So, yeah, you can take a look at that. Reading this article actually prompted me to think a little bit about what gender euphoria looks like for me, and I thought I'd share a little bit about some of my trans journey. Transitioning from female to male over the past four years. It's actually almost exactly four years since I started testosterone when I was 27, 28. I don't know, it was blurry that time in my life, but it was around then. It's four years. You can figure out my age. But essentially, like, yeah, gender euphoria is the feeling that I imagine you get when someone compliments you in a way that affirms your gender. So, for example, when a guy, a man, is just like, check out my. My biceps. Look how great they are. And you say, yes, you are very strong and very handsome, that's affirming their gender. And the feeling that that person gets, that that man gets, would be essentially the equivalent of gender euphoria, which is like, oh, I have been validated in my sensations of who I am and my identity. And that's kind of what it is. And that's kind of what most of the issues seem to be around, is that people don't want. Are uncomfortable with people having joy, which is really strange to me. But, yeah, essentially, euphoria is the feeling you get when people affirm who you are. And sometimes it's really personal, sometimes it's not even about other people affirming you and you receiving euphoria that way can also be just a sensation of looking at yourself in the mirror and recognising who you see. It might also be just looking down at your body and feeling comfortable in what you see and things like that. For me, during the early stages of my transition, particularly when I was hesitant and confused and wasn't entirely sure and people were. I guess that's the time when most people say, you don't know what you're talking about. It's just a phase. Yes, the phase was three years. I spent three years agonisingly, painstakingly trying to figure out what was going on. For me, I absolutely haven't spent any time thinking about my gender whatsoever. And it's just on the whimsy that I have decided to go for all these surgeries and hormones. No. I spent years, painstakingly, agonisingly trying to figure out who I was and fighting back against all of the world and society telling me otherwise. And I still persevered in my identity, which to me means that I'm more a man than most people, probably because I've spent more time thinking about it. But. Yeah. So I also don't need you to validate me and my agenda because I'm quite fine where I am now because I've done it all on my own. But during that time, during that time when I was particularly vulnerable, there was some things that came up. So I really didn't like looking in the mirror. The mirror was a pain point. Quite uncomfortable to look at myself. I was. It was just. I just didn't recognise the person. It was kind of. It's hard to explain. It can be kind of hazy and blurry and foggy. It just feels really crap. Also, I want to just quickly add, this is my experience and not the experience of all trans people. Everyone has a varying degree of dysphoria and experience when it comes to them transitioning. This is just some of my vibes over the years, but also something else that was interesting for me through transition was that I also just like, I could not look on social media at any other trans masc or trans man person and their journey, particularly if they were much, much further along than me in transition, made me really upset. And it's not because of anything personal. It wasn't that I don't want other people to experience joy euphoria. Obviously I do. It's more that I made a lot of comparisons to where I was in my journey and I just didn't feel like I was there. And so it just kind of was a pain point. And I've actually. I've had some trans men friends over the years who, at varying stages of their transition, who also sort of disengage with friendship with me and vice versa, because there were things that were coming up for them about my transition that made them feel uncomfortable because they weren't getting what they needed from their experience. Being trans is very complicated. And the way that I describe this experience is if we can all go back to a really wonderful time when we were all in high school going through puberty and maybe there are like other girls or boys that were maybe further along in puberty than yourself. At the time. And you would feel jealous because they had boobs or they had beards or whatever and you didn't. That's kind of the equivalent feeling of like, okay, puberty is doing things for you that it isn't doing for me and that can make me sad. And that's all gender. That's all being like, oh, okay, I do want a beard. Okay, I don't want boobs. Or maybe you want both, who knows? Is your body is your life. You can do whatever you want. But mostly I compare the experience of transition to be very similar to puberty, except kind of the added experience of everyone hating you. Do it. So that's not fun. However, euphoria is a thing. Gender euphoria is wonderful. I really love the experience that I have with testosterone over the last four years. It has absolutely saved my life and it saves lives. Gender affirming care is so damn important and it has literally nothing to do with anyone else. So, you know, if this is a path that you would like to take, you can, you can also start testosterone, testosterone, start your feminine, your oestrogen if you want as well. And you can also stop. You can do whatever the hell you damn like. It's your body, it's your life and you should do what makes you feel comfortable so you can exist in this world and partake in all the wonderful things that exist here. So yeah, if you are looking for support around that or if you're struggling with your mental health, you can call Q life. You can check them out, type in Q Life in Google on your phone and give them a call. They're available if you are looking for some support. And there's also QC LGBT health based here in Fortitude Valley. As well as if you're a young person, there's open doors you service. All those services are happy to help you if you need to access any gender affirming care or support they're available to you. And yeah, also it's april atonement at 4zzz. So if you've got some time, you should subscribe to the greatest radio station in all the world, 4zzz.org au check it out, win some prizes, support community radio, keep transmission on air. Of course. And yeah, that's all from me. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. And yeah, you're listening to 4zzz and see you next week. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to Transmission. See you next Tuesday 9 to 10am on 4ZZZ.