Gender is an oil painting

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Transmission on 4ZZZ, amplifying the trans and gender diverse community of Meanjin, Brisbane, and beyond.

That's right, you are listening to Transmission on 4ZZZ 102.1 FM. My name is Rae, I use they/them pronouns, and I have a jam-packed show for you today. I spoke last month with poet Sterling Elizabeth Arcadier, and we had an amazing chat about gender and poetry, and so I'm going to be playing that interview for you a bit later on, as well as a feature in the Transverse segment with 2 poems by Finn Sterling. But first of all, let's get into some news for this week.

Hi, my name is Elliot, my pronouns are he/him, and this week in news, new research suggests that genes play a part in trans identity. Recent research has provided strong evidence that genes are involved in the development of trans identities. A review of 463 sets of twins where at least one was trans showed that among identical twins, the likelihood that the other was also trans was 21.2%, while in non-identical twins, the rate was much lower at 8.7%. Still far higher than the standard 1 to 2% seen in general populace. The researchers do stress that while this indicates a genetic factor is at play, it is not the only factor, and although the rates are higher, most twin pairs are not both trans. In the article, they go on to state that like almost all human traits, it is likely that gender identity is shaped by both genetics and environmental factors. The South Australian government is targeting trans people. South Australian politicians are following the broader trend of wildly disproportionate levels of political attention on trans people, with 3 distinct anti-trans motions put forward on Wednesday. One Nation MP Corey Bernardi put forward a bill to ban puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones for trans people under 18, which was defeated 11 votes to 8 votes. This came alongside Family First's Sarah Gaim also moving for an inquiry into young people seeking assistance for gender dysphoria, while another One Nation MP, Rebecca Hewitt, raised concerns about trans women competing in women's sports. This precedes the Gender Healthcare Summit in Adelaide by just over a month, which gathers national and international healthcare experts on the subject to consider evidence for gender healthcare and the impact on children, young people, and families. Over to international news. 22 states in the U.S. have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the unprecedented attack on gender-affirming care. A coalition of Democrat-led states challenged the Trump administration's plan to strip federal funds from gender-affirming care for minors. The lawsuit states that the administration is overstepping federal authority over states' rights by regulating the practice of medicine. Attorney General Rob Bonta states, we will not stand by as the Trump administration oversteps its authority and twists the facts To justify its bad faith agenda against transgender Americans, we will continue to fight to secure access to medically necessary care and protect transgender individuals' abilities to prosper as their authentic selves. My name is Elliot, and that's all this week in news.

My name is Ray. I use they/them pronouns, and you are listening to Transmission on four triple zed.

Um.

Very excited to play a 4-part interview for you today that I did with Sterling Elizabeth Arcadia, she/her, who's a Best of the Net-winning disabled trans writer across genres. She was born in Alaska and has recently left to escape the trans genocide. Her debut full-length poetry collection Driver is forthcoming, forthcoming from Aerily Press in 2027. So this is the first part of my interview with Sterling Elizabeth Arcadia.

Hi.

Trigger warnings for this interview series for transphobic violence and genocide, self-harm, drug use, sex, mentions of fatphobia, swearing, and discussions of gender assigned at birth and genitals.

I'm Sterling Elizabeth Arcadia. I use she/her pronouns, and I write across genres but focus on poetry.

And your poetry is fantastic. I think that I like the breadth of your work as well as the way that you look at transness and bodies and also kind of flip things like ekphrasis on its head. Like a lot of people, I think, look at ekphrastic work as work that's only about visual art, but a lot of your poems about movies. So yeah, I'm excited to chat with you more about poetry. How did you first get into writing poetry?

I think I had some like romantic notion of poetry from a young age. But I only started writing seriously when I came out as trans, searching for a way to express myself. And poetry really stuck.

Yeah, I feel like that's very relatable. I think like I wrote like before coming out, and then I was suddenly like, when I realized who I was, I was like, God, I actually have stuff to write about now.

I know that feeling.

Yeah, and like that's— I don't know, it's like suddenly I, uh, look, I love cis people, but I felt like I'd gained like, uh, a whole bunch of personality points, just, you know, like I had so much, uh, so much more to cover in my work. So yeah, you're going to be reading some poems for us today. Yeah, did you want to introduce the first poem and, yeah, tell us a bit more about it?

Yeah, so this first poem is called Non-Binary Elimination Diet, Maha, and it is, I think, a kind of ekphrasis. It borrows a line from a post Trump made to the White House website. And I won't give that line away.

Maha.

The easiest solution to waist gaps is to get fatter, though I no longer wear pants. I flirt with other women at the stoplight in my underwear because my favorite dress is developing several holes, including in its pockets and at its neckline. There aren't any outfits that will convince other people I am what I am. I've received both gender-affirming and gender-refuting surgeries. What I am is a mix of a woman and something that runs perpendicular to womanhood. I don't have the benefit of being one of the good female men shouting the inherence of sex on command in exchange for a slightly later euthanasia or shooting squad. What I am is a bastard cross of a real person and a transsexual menace. Finally, the public will be safe from this rabid transgender insanity. Finally, these pathetic excuses for Americans will be found and eliminated. Trash burns quickly and easily. Our country will continue into the future unblemished and pure.

Fuck. Yeah, that is A really strong poem, and I think that it speaks to the way that, well, Trump and so many people seem to see us as not just as other, but yeah, as rubbish, as waste to be eliminated.

I mean, it's one of the key steps in committing a genocide, right, is dehumanizing the people you want to kill.

Exactly, yeah. And I think that, you know, we have talked on air, on transmission, about, you know, a lot about trans violence and a lot about transphobia, but I think that touching on, like, talking about trans genocide is incredibly important because at the moment it is, it is a genocide. Did you want to read your next poem for us?

Yes, please. So I wanted to say, after spending maybe 2 years writing mostly about my ex and sex I had with my ex, I'm finally entering a new era with my poetry where I'm focusing more on my own transition instead of my ex's transition. Oh my God. I'm writing a lot about gender and sexuality and getting a little more explicitly political with it. And so I think fittingly this poem is called Gender and Sexuality. I'm bisexual in the sense that the non-binary trans masc whore I slept with held the poppers up to my nose before he fucked my ass. It turns out cis masculinity is a cage. Everything I have and have lost I acquired the hard way. So I got a surgery to split my body in 2. My skinny boy body wriggled out between the wires. My fat bisexual heart is still imprisoned. Because of my belly, I can only bottom comfortably while lying on my chest. If people were less fatphobic, I wouldn't be stuck like this. I was born only a baby with no body to speak of.

That last line is just... Beautiful. And look, I think I can relate in terms of, I feel like I went from my political era to now just writing about my ex era. So I think I've kind of swapped.

Both are important.

I was like, yeah, both are, both are really important. If not writing about those things, then what is poetry for?

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things I want to do with poetry is say like, trans lives matter, and that means the things that happen within trans lives matter too.

Yeah, exactly. I think that— exactly. And I think that a lot of the time we are sexualized in a way that is only through a cis gaze, um, as opposed to, you know, the, the amazing, beautiful, freaky times that we're actually having, um, that to be quite honest has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else but ourselves. It infuriates me, uh, that we're constantly like demonized.

Yeah, I was just speaking with my friend about how queer people are often seen as like inappropriately embodied or sexual, and I think in some senses this comes from a higher-level feeling that bodies and sex are inappropriate, which I don't think they are. And the idea that bodies and sex are inappropriate is mostly used to punch down on marginalized people and to deprive children of age-appropriate knowledge.

Yeah.

And it's—

and children are also marginalized people, so.

And I think a lot of it is like, I was thinking the other day about like any kind of education that I had at school about sex and about queerness, and it just, it wasn't there. It took me until I went to university to kind of understand a lot more about who I was and, you know, the body that I was in. And that's, that's not good.

Yeah, I don't think I really understood the options that were available to me until like the day I came out.

Yeah, and I think like I even came out as like genderqueer because that was kind of like the, like, you know, 10 or more, more years ago, 15 years ago, I don't know, like whatever the— I think we were using genderqueer kind of as the more like the word that was more common. And then I was like, oh, I guess I'll use non-binary. And then like there were so many options that I— and even now I think none of them— I don't know if other people feel like this, but I don't, I don't necessarily think that some of the options or any of the options really fit completely. I always feel like I'm somewhere in between, constantly changing who I am every day. Yeah.

And I think like that's one of the limitations of language and how we use it, right, is people always want words to be attached to nice, neat boxes. But the truth is, like, no one really fits entirely or perfectly inside a box. And also words hold different meanings for different people. Like, they're just handles for internal experiences that we have, and there's no guarantee you're having the same internal experience as someone else who also uses that handle for their internal experience.

Yeah, like the word queer, for example, is so expansive. And I think like that's something that is really interesting about poetry is that, you know, we're able to kind of explore those nuances and I don't know, understand language in, in a different way, maybe.

And I'm increasingly frustrated by, like, categorical and binary separations. I think, like, people can and should get messy with it and blur boundaries. Like, I think someone could be non-binary and also the gender they were assigned at birth. And they could still be trans and be both those things.

I like it when we take those kind of words and just say, I can be any of those things or all of those things and really, you know, mix and match. And I think that it does everyone, not just trans people, good to kind of explore those nuances of gender and body and stuff.

Yeah, I mean, like, everyone can contain multitudes. Sometimes I feel like cis and trans are not like a perfect binary or in perfect opposition to each other, and there is overlap and people who do and position themselves to live in between cis and trans. And I think these first 2 poems I read Were a little more about the state and external things pushing down on me.

Ooh.

And this poem is a little bit about me pushing back on categories and how they're used. So I'll just go ahead and read it. This is— oh, the word palinode refers to a kind of poem that's composed by negated statements. So like not X, Not Y nor Zed. And this is I would never palinode my life. Imogen Binney was not right about what it's like to be a trans woman. Maybe my back hurts as divine punishment for the unethically kinky sex I had last night. Lee is taking topless selfies of us at Reese Beach with the trans masc skater bros in the background. God is watching, devising another punishment for tempting the skater bros. It's true that estrogen is a miracle drug. I used to think I would always be horny, but I went 6 months without a single orgasm before I quit injections. Lee is wearing a grapefruit button-down now and reading a novel in translation. The last time I saw a bald eagle, I was driving a car with a broken window along the Turnagain Arm. Another dyke winks at Lee, but I wish they had winked at me. The government is not what most people think it is. Being horny is an essential part of who I am. The last movie Lee and I saw together was How to Blow Up a Pipeline. When I move to Stockholm, I'm going to serve so much gender-nonconforming cunt they'll rename it Sterling Elizabeth Syndrome. American movies almost never have cum in them, but leftists are regularly framed as extremists for refusing to compromise on human rights. Lee winks back at the cute dyke who wants them. I left my trans masc earrings at home today, so no one believed my penis was a phalloplasty. I think I'll watch Instagram softcore porn tonight to pass my time on the train to Boston. Sometimes the point of a poem is to tell you that people who are trans in the wrong way are loved. God is already devising a third punishment for me.

I kind of want a shirt that says, uh, gender non-conforming cunt. That's great. I also love the, like, that form of poem in the way that it kind of feels very It feels like the ultimate free verse almost in the way that it kind of is these interconnecting thoughts. Yeah, it feels very— it feels like my brain. Basically, that poem feels like my brain is what I'm trying to say. Yeah.

Thank you.

I'm flattered because I like the way you think. But yeah, you've seen this poem. It's a series of one-line stanzas that each end with a period and kind of weave together.

Yeah, and I think that that's a really— it is a really interesting form. Like, it's something that I've been playing with recently as well because it sort of reminds me of, um, I'm not going to be able to think of the form, but the one where you, um, repeat the like one line throughout. I can't think of the name of it.

Is it a lullaby or a sestina?

Yeah, yeah.

But I don't remember which is which.

Yeah, I was like, I can never— I feel like I remember as soon as I read about them and then completely forget. I think that's one of the joys of poetry is that you don't necessarily have to know everything about every single poetic form in order to write it. I'm always encouraging our listeners to write more poetry. Yeah, I don't know what I was going to—

You don't need to know anything about any poetic form to write a poem.

Right, exactly.

Most times.

100% agree. I feel that, uh, this is also something that I talk about on the show all the time, is that like the barrier to entry for poetry and zines— there isn't one, and you should write them. It's my opinion.

I'm absolutely on board with that.

Yeah, I think like everyone can be can be a poet. And I do feel like that is something else about the way that you write, is that it's very accessible. Like, there's nothing that makes me feel like I have to go, like, study a dictionary in order to, like, access what you're writing about. It feels, you know, very, like, not only relatable but also to read it is to kind of, I don't know, to read your work feels like, you know, song lyrics or something that is very, yeah, like accessible.

Thank you. That's very flattering because music is an art form I really look up to. And I feel like if a poem is coming across as a song without the instrumental behind it, That's a high compliment.

I feel like the Venn diagram of, of like song lyrics and page poetry and slam poetry, there's, there's a whole bunch weaved in there. Yeah, I feel like poetry is so often seen as like inaccessible to people, and I always appreciate when people write in a way that is, you know, easy to, to connect with.

This poem is my most recent draft. I wrote it while driving to get ice cream with my sibling and feeling miserable on the inside. So instead of like a political movement or an outside-in poem, this is more of an inside-out poem. And I just gave it a name today. It's called Violet.

Violet.

Would you shoot me in the foot if I asked you to?

Platonically?

I want you to. Make me a trinket on your keychain full of lovable tchotchkes.

Love me.

I want you to make me the whole keychain, the carabiner and the keys at your stiff denim hips. Every day I cope with a new urge to sacrifice my body. Last July, I swallowed a half-moon of my own earlobe. Tomorrow, a feminizing rhinoplasty. I'm asking you because I don't know how to love myself myself. I'm asking you because you're the closest thing to a knife whose heart still pumps warm blood.

Did you want to describe to listeners, when you describe this as an inside-out kind of poem, sort of what you mean by that? Because I think that is the perfect descriptor for this one.

Yeah, I think the process of writing this poem for me was really a process of opening up, like, what's going on internally and touching that and putting language to it. So sort of trying to draw out those internal processes and adding the best handles that I know to them.

I feel like that's very cathartic as well.

Yeah. And surprisingly, it's not even about my ex.

I know. All I could think, I was like, that's how I write, like, you know, those kind of like ex poems. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. What is that? What is your process? For writing poems generally. Mine's usually just like vomiting into a notebook, but I'm always interested to see how other people write their work.

I have a couple different modes that I write poems in, and I think this one came about in one of my favorite ways, which is like lines that just feel write for a poem occur to me, and I'll write them down and then go back later and stitch them together and try to keep, like, knitting that same kind of fabric that the first couple lines I wrote make together. Sorry to mix my metaphors.

Oh no, I was, I was like, look, as a, as a crochet queer, um, I disagree with this Metaphor. No. Yeah, I think I do kind of a similar thing sometimes. And like, I'll— if I'm like, oh, I'm using a lot of alliteration or whatever in this one, I'll kind of try and keep that going with certain like phrases or like certain colours or something that I'm kind of weaving together at the same time. Is there other kind of ways that you, yeah, write your poems?

Yeah, other times I will sit down and sometimes it starts with 1 or 2 lines in a similar way.

Hmm.

But I'll sit down with the intention to write a poem instead of just generating lines as they happen to me. And a poem will go through like several radically different versions during this like one period of writing it. Before it reaches a place where I'm happy to call it a complete draft.

It's a thing that I used to find quite hard, was to just sit down and encourage myself to write. And I think it becomes easier the more that I've started writing. I don't know if you find that at all.

I definitely still find it difficult. It takes some of being in the right place, but less than the other process I described.

Yeah, I feel like with the former, you can kind of just like, you're like on the bus and you're like, that's a brilliant line. And other times I'm like, I need to be in the exact right café with the exact right coffee to write this poem.

I've been thinking a lot about the words transmasc and transfem. Specifically because I've started to identify as both, and providers, medical providers, look at me with absolute confusion when I say this. And other trans people often look at me with a lot of skepticism, or even like, that's not right, or you can't do that. And I feel like that kind of attitude defeats the point of being trans. Like, being trans is not about— some people would argue it is about where we came from, but I think it's more about a certain attitude towards gender and a chosen embrace of who you are and how you want to be. And I think, like, if someone feels that they're trans, then they're trans, and they don't have to go through any medical or even social changes to be trans. More people should feel entitled to claim that label, and I think people should feel even called to claim that label in an act of solidarity. But the thing I have about transmasc and transfem is I think people basically use these to mean, I think this person had these genitals at birth and is trans. Because there are trans people who, for example, like AMAB trans people, who are not trans women and aren't femme but are still trans and even present or maybe even identify as masc. So why would you not call these people trans masc?

Yeah, right?

And like, my journey has involved both living as a cis man and living as a gender-conforming trans woman, and I've gone back towards masculinity, and I consider myself transmasc. And I think to say that that's different from any other transmasc experience is to say that there's something inherent and unchangeable about gender assigned at birth, and I just don't think that's true.

Yeah, that's what we're trying to get away from.

I don't think we should be trying to signal what we think people's genitals used to be or are. So I get uncomfortable when people are labeling other people as trans masc or trans femme when they don't specifically use those labels for themselves.

Yeah, I think it is very, as you said, like it's essentialist and it also, it's so very limiting. I think like so many people would or have described me as trans masc, and sometimes that's true. Other times I describe my gender as like boy princess because why not? Like, I don't understand why we can't, you know, like even when we were kids, like, you know, describing our genders as different things. But yeah, I do think that it is— there this obsession with genitals and assigned genitals at birth, and it's not—

It's not fun and it's not exciting.

No.

And I feel like transness has the potential to be fun and exciting and playful and blur, like, these patriarchal lines that are made between genders.

Yeah, there's so much nuance and texture to gender. And I feel like, yeah, we're doing ourselves a disservice to, to have terms that are limiting. Like, if they're terms that people relate to, that's great.

We should be talking about each other based on how we talk about ourselves and who we are, and not who we were assigned to be by, uh, cis heterosexual patriarchy. I think transness is essentially an extension of the ideas of feminism that people should not be relegated to certain roles or discriminated against based on, like, how they're perceived or what they're assigned to be at birth, and that people should be able to do and be whoever and whatever they want as long as they're not hurting someone else. I just try to tell other trans people or people who are on the boundary about coming out as trans that there is no right way to be trans. You don't have to be masc or femme or move in a particular direction to come out as trans or even to transition. Gender is not a line. It's even more complex than a 3D graph. It's so cultural and unquantifiable. Gender is like an oil painting, not a ruler.

My name is Rae, I use they/them pronouns, and you're listening to Transmission on 4ZZZ. Uh, thank you so much to my guest, Sterling Elizabeth Arcadia, for her chat about poetry and gender. And if you want to listen back to that chat, you can do so on the 4ZZZ website, 4zzz.org.au. And while you're on the 4ZZZ website, don't forget to subscribe, 4zzz.org.au/support. Alrighty, I'm going to play now some poems that Finn Sterling, an incredible poet, decided to send to me yesterday, which was beautifully serendipitous. So I'm very excited to be able to play these 2 poems for you this morning.

Hey, I'm Finn Sterling. I use he/him pronouns, and I live, work, and play on Wurundjeri land. You can find my work on NB Life Journal, and you can also find me on Instagram and TikTok This is my poem, Nut Drop. HRT sugar cookies from the Trans Cookie Book. 2 tablespoons of butter. 4 tablespoons of your hormone of choice. I prefer testosterone for this recipe. It's what gives it that nutty flavour. 1 cup of sexual arousal akin to that of a teenager. A quarter of a cup of sugar. Half a cup of Little Songbird from Hadestown. 1 tablespoon of Rapunzel's hair growth. 2 tablespoons of Drag King's tears. 1 teaspoon of Mitch Brown's post-game sweat. Half a cup of finely chopped pecans, walnuts, or peanuts. 1/3 of a cup of Bruce Willis's charisma. Method: soften butter, cream with sugar, add hormone via any method that is comfortable for you. Dry King tears and Mitch Brown sweat. Then dry ingredients sifted together alternatively with sexual arousal, Bruce Willis's charisma, and finally the nuts. Drop on buttered sheets from teaspoon and bake in a moderately hot dad bod, 180 degrees, for about 3 years. Note, another transfemme recipe including the whimsy of Kelly Sheridan's voice and 3 doves is almost the exact counterpart Called ladyfingers. Only these are not dropped from a teaspoon.

Transverse, featuring spoken word from trans and gender-diverse people in Meganjin and beyond. Our voices are fearless, fabulous, and fundamental. Our poetry is here to stay.

I didn't feel trans enough. I went to all the meetings, never paid my membership on time, though none of us do. Buttons up to my neck, combat boots and rainbow laces, Pride hand-stitched into lining, reclaiming slurs, decorating face and body. Was I the wolf in queer's clothing? Racing to the dress-ups, hurrying to play pretend before the banners were taken home, rolled up until next year. I didn't care about bathroom stalls, signs, binders, just ballads sung by good people colouring the airwaves, creating gender in spaces and stars. Who knew mine was hidden under stones, soil, Sun warmed trunks and ladybug legs clinging to leftovers of yesterday's harvest. The pink earth, worms, brown of oxidised apple cores, and the tap you turn to water it again.

My name is Rae. I use they/them pronouns, and you are listening to Transmission on 4ZZZ. Shout out to Finn Thank you so much, Finn.

Thank you, Finn.

Thank you, Finn Sterling, for his poems that he recorded for us. And if you want to read more of his work, you can find him on Instagram, finn_slay__, and we'll pop his details and also the poems that Finn read in the transmission show notes. On the 4ZZZ website, 4zzz.org.au.

Thanks for listening to Transmission. Catch us every Monday live on 4ZZZ from 10 AM, or listen to our podcast on the Community Radio Plus app.