Listening to an NPR story about the concept of a trans woman transitioning and I’m just wondering why we’re still doing this!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Yes it does start with describing her outfit and yes it does include excerpts of Walk on the Wild Side!!!! In 2021!!!!!)
I genuinely love and respect whoever this woman is. But yikes, she deserves better! This story is hitting every single trans stereotype and I don’t understand why I’m listening to a radio story about trans women existing in 2021.
Sorry but if your trans radio story includes me listening to Lou Reed as a trans person talks about how she always knew she was a girl in the wrong body, you owe every trans person $50.
Anyway if you want to hear radio about trans people that had a plot beyond “have you heard of trans people existing,” might I suggest:
Shout out to MANY trans friends who work at/with NPR. Y’all deserve better too. 🖤
It does include the line “she was scared and didn’t see a way forward so she stayed in the body she was born in” as if transitioning is an Invasion of the Body Snatchers situation.
It is almost beautiful that every single line in this 4:20 (nice) story is a cliche.
Gonna say this one more time: plenty of trans people work at NPR. (Hell, I’ve worked with NPR.) They just aren’t in positions of power where they have editorial oversight over, say, all of Weekend Edition. If your response to this is “well NPR sucks” then we are not friends!
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I was talking to someone about that radio piece from yesterday and realized that not a single radio station has ever hired me to talk to their whole team about trans equity in storytelling. Good thing nobody in public radio has ever fucked up a story about gender!!! 🥰🥰🥰🥰🙏🤪
There are definitely individuals who have hired me or @ConsultSylveon for consults and I appreciate them very much! Shout out to @bodiespodcast and @Rjaellis and more that I’m blanking on right now. 🖤🖤
The rest of y’all — it is cool to retweet trans people talking about how you could do better, but what if you also did more than that? Just a fun thought experiment!
Andy M is not being punished. As he overtly states in his resignation, it has been clear this whole time that he has friends and allies in powerful places. Surely he’ll have a new job and a Substack soon. Meanwhile, as @TracieHunte says, the system that allowed this is unchanged.
Honestly I am frustrated by people who are referring to his resignation as an apology, even a bad one. There’s no attempt at an apology there. And why would there be? He’s going to be fine. His friends will keep gassing him up and getting him gigs.
As @audiosand says, systems are going to system. Andy isn’t the only serial pest in radio. As long as the systemic power imbalance and ~cisheteropatriarchy~ remains, there is always going to be a new Andy Mills to warn folks about in your group chats.
I realize I'm an hour late to Andy's resignation letter but let's go through it a few key points anyway, shall we?
Setting aside the extreme understating here (it was not merely one case of inappropriate touching, nor was it merely one drink on one coworker's head), it feels wild to frame your pattern of harassing and demeaning women as "like all human beings, I have made mistake."
All this proves is that you have privilege and powerful allies, my man.
Y’all ever think about how white people got good at doing heart transplants and inventing fancy consumer electronics and going to the moon before they got good at not being racist
People who are reading this as “white people are single-handedly responsible for every surgery and invention and moon landing” please read the tweet again. Obviously POC have also done these things AND typically been less racist at the same time, that’s the point.
I just think you should have to succeed at “don’t be an asshole” before you move on to other pursuits