Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 2: your weekly podcast that when there's bad things, there's good
Speaker 2: things too. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest
Speaker 2: today is one of my favorite returning guests, Andrew Tea.
Speaker 3: Oh thanks, Hi.
Speaker 2: I always get excited when you're the guest, because well,
Speaker 2: I like all my guests equally. Yeah, I can't. I
Speaker 2: can't show any preference.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't do that. There's no call for this line
Speaker 3: of flattery. But thank you.
Speaker 2: Enter t is the host of the podcast EO is
Speaker 2: this racist? And also, okay, this specific flattery I think
Speaker 2: I could do. You're my favorite guests to talk about
Speaker 2: mutual aid with.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, I feel like I probably comment at it from
Speaker 4: a good place of I'm pretty new.
Speaker 3: To it all things considered, and.
Speaker 4: You know, I've kind of like been around, but there
Speaker 4: have been times in my life when I was more
Speaker 4: involved in less and yeah, i've been, you know lately
Speaker 4: because of how things have been going in LA and
Speaker 4: I guess the world trying to really really double down
Speaker 4: and just make sure whatever community we have is as
Speaker 4: strong as it can be.
Speaker 2: I mean that makes sense. I think that a lot
Speaker 2: of it isn't an EBB and a flow, Like I'm
Speaker 2: not directly doing mutual aid right now, besides like some
Speaker 2: specific friends or whatever here and there, you know. But yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: So my question before I even get into the topic.
Speaker 2: You live in a city that very famously didn't quite
Speaker 2: burn down recently? Yeah, how's that going? How are mutual
Speaker 2: aid efforts going out there?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: How things been?
Speaker 4: I mean, I feel like from my perspective, it was
Speaker 4: very impressive. I well, I guess I don't know, because
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm more plugged in than I ever
Speaker 4: have been. So I was able to be on through
Speaker 4: Solidarity and snacks folks. I was able to which is
Speaker 4: a group that I mostly do work with, and so
Speaker 4: I was able to like kind of get in and
Speaker 4: least see like a lot of the chat and the
Speaker 4: chatter and the planning from the early side of things.
Speaker 3: So that to me it was very impressive. I don't know.
Speaker 4: Maybe I'm sure people with more experience this is maybe
Speaker 4: pretty normal, but or maybe not.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't have any basis for evaluating how actually impressive
Speaker 4: it is, but it seemed.
Speaker 3: Very impressive to me.
Speaker 4: The thing I was mostly focused on was trying to
Speaker 4: get masks out to.
Speaker 3: The sort of larger population, especially on house.
Speaker 4: Folks down on skid Row because the air quality was
Speaker 4: so unbelievably bad.
Speaker 3: I guess it still is, but.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so but it was nice watching like warehouses essentially
Speaker 4: pop up at various like a lot of bike shops,
Speaker 4: a lot of gallery spaces, a lot of little warehouse
Speaker 4: like work type spaces, and seeing things get distributed as
Speaker 4: efficiently I think as they could be. And also just
Speaker 4: kind of being cognizant of what needs are much harder
Speaker 4: to meet with just community, you know, obviously none of
Speaker 4: us had access. Maybe not obviously, and maybe I don't know,
Speaker 4: maybe things have changed sort of muted the signal group
Speaker 4: because it was pretty high traffic, what relatable you know,
Speaker 4: we don't have things like bulldozers or like super high
Speaker 4: end ppe. Yeah, and so there were limits to what
Speaker 4: could be done.
Speaker 2: Well, let me give you a piece of advice about bulldozers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're all keyed the same based on the manufacturer.
Speaker 3: Just throwing that out there. Yeah, good to know, Good
Speaker 3: to know.
Speaker 4: Anyway, there also largely wasn't that type of need, so
Speaker 4: who knows what would have happened if things needed to
Speaker 4: truly happen. But it felt like watching the pieces come
Speaker 4: into place. I was like, Okay, this is how this goes.
Speaker 4: And so I I guess I from from where I sit,
Speaker 4: I don't have an amazing objective basis for evaluating how
Speaker 4: it all went.
Speaker 3: But to my eyes, it seemed like it went well.
Speaker 2: But I mean that's kind of the thing about something
Speaker 2: like mutual aid. It's like not to say it always
Speaker 2: goes well, but on some level it always goes well.
Speaker 2: It always does. Whatever we can do is a positive thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's something that wasn't being done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, exactly, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think there there's an element of sort of
Speaker 4: like I guess it is, you know, in the business
Speaker 4: type world of managing expectations and.
Speaker 3: Like, yeah, but it is. It is true.
Speaker 4: It is like like pushing a boulder or any any
Speaker 4: amount you push the boulder is a place where it
Speaker 4: wasn't before. Yeah, you know, is it better than if
Speaker 4: we had a functional government that it took our took
Speaker 4: our tax dollars and appropriately them.
Speaker 3: Yeah I'm not sure. Yeah. Is it the most efficient?
Speaker 3: I mean, you know it because of the.
Speaker 4: Decentralized nature I it was obviously not the most directly
Speaker 4: efficient way to do everything. Yeah, but things absolutely did
Speaker 4: get done. I will say, during during sort of the
Speaker 4: absolute thick of it, I was like, man, when when
Speaker 4: the Mega people really got their heads up about Antifa
Speaker 4: super soldiers. I think the biggest, the biggest problem with
Speaker 4: you know, us as a fighting group is going to
Speaker 4: be just making sure everyone shows up to the war
Speaker 4: in time, which is gonna be a real fucking problem
Speaker 4: when push comes a shop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, And I mean it's funny because I
Speaker 2: was late to this recording, but usually I try very
Speaker 2: hard to put the punk in punctual.
Speaker 4: I was just like, damn, there's a lot of a
Speaker 4: lot of sitting around in parking lots for me this week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everyone's everyone's about fifteen minutes late.
Speaker 2: That's okay, Well that is actually oddly a good hm.
Speaker 2: I'll just tell you what this episode is about. But
Speaker 2: before I tell you what this episode is about, first,
Speaker 2: I want to say we do have a producer, she's
Speaker 2: not on the call right now. It is Sophie Lickterman.
Speaker 2: We also have an audio engineer named Rory, and everyone
Speaker 2: has to say hi to Rory.
Speaker 3: Hi, Rory Hi, Rory.
Speaker 2: And our theme music was written for us by unwoman.
Speaker 2: And I was pondering this week. I was like, well,
Speaker 2: what mutual aid story am I going to do? Because
Speaker 2: I have Andrew as my guest nice and a friend
Speaker 2: of mine brought up this story. It is a story
Speaker 2: about mutual aid during just about as dark of a
Speaker 2: time as you can imagine, the brightest lights in the
Speaker 2: darkest darkes. It's my favorite kind of story. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: is a story about all the people who stepped up
Speaker 2: to care for people dying of AIDS in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: In particular, it's about the unbelievable number of lesbians who
Speaker 2: came in to care for their queer brethren who were
Speaker 2: abandoned by their families and society and the government and
Speaker 2: the medical institutions. So this is my lesbians did amazing
Speaker 2: shit during the AIDS crisis. Episode. I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's gonna be called that. I probably can't cuss on
Speaker 2: the title.
Speaker 3: Amazing stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, have you have you heard about this at all?
Speaker 2: This this thing?
Speaker 4: I feel like yes, but I mean not anything specific,
Speaker 4: just that like sort of like the in you know,
Speaker 4: mentioning unsung heroes type situations.
Speaker 3: I think totally just swhear it would have come up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's literally I didn't end up watching this.
Speaker 2: I don't watch a lot of documentaries when I'm doing
Speaker 2: my research, to try to stick to written sources overall,
Speaker 2: but there's like different documentaries about many of these different groups.
Speaker 2: I think one of them is literally called Unsung Heroes.
Speaker 2: I think that's the name of Well, we'll talk about
Speaker 2: that one later. Sure, we've talked a bit about the
Speaker 2: history of queer rights and queer people on this show.
Speaker 2: I think this is an understatement. If you want the
Speaker 2: best rundown of how social movements look before Stonewall Riots
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixty nine, or the best rundown that I
Speaker 2: have done, check out our episode on the Stonewall Riots
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixty nine. But in general, I would say
Speaker 2: that lesbian and gay activism started off as a bit
Speaker 2: separate from each other, but they would often intersect. Maybe
Speaker 2: the best way I can think to put it is
Speaker 2: that as cultural spaces, the two would stay fairly distinct
Speaker 2: lesbian and gay, but in terms of activism and advocacy,
Speaker 2: queer folks of all types found common cause with each
Speaker 2: other often enough, and that was kind of where I
Speaker 2: was coming at from it, But then I was also
Speaker 2: reading more and more about like even in terms of
Speaker 2: cultural spaces, there was a lot of overlap too. I
Speaker 2: have read plenty of examples of stories about lesbian's bartending
Speaker 2: at gay mail bars, for example, or queer discothechs for
Speaker 2: all comers. You know. So the best way I say
Speaker 2: this is really messy the interaction between gay and lesbian
Speaker 2: activism and culture. While researching this episode, I ran across
Speaker 2: a lot of people, especially people who weren't there, including me.
Speaker 2: I wasn't there. I mean, I was technically alive during
Speaker 2: that but I was not particularly active as a four
Speaker 2: year old, and I ran across a lot of people
Speaker 2: who weren't there talking about how incredibly divided gay and
Speaker 2: lesbian scenes and people were from one another. But the
Speaker 2: more I did the research, the more I found this
Speaker 2: wasn't the case. There is a pattern that I've seen
Speaker 2: a lot on the show, and I'm curious your opinion
Speaker 2: about this pattern. But it seems like we have this
Speaker 2: habit of looking back at history and emphasizing all the
Speaker 2: divisions between various marginalized people instead of all the places
Speaker 2: where we've worked in solidarity with each other and like
Speaker 2: both things are true. Right. For example, I have read
Speaker 2: so many things before I especially before I started doing
Speaker 2: the show. I would read all the time about how
Speaker 2: the early feminist movement was like wildly racist in the
Speaker 2: United States. So those all white feminists who were just
Speaker 2: pieces of shit in terms of race. Sure, and I
Speaker 2: internalized that and I believed it, and absolutely there were
Speaker 2: huge numbers of actively racist white feminists, especially in the
Speaker 2: voting rights era of the early twentieth century. But then
Speaker 2: as I would read nineteenth century history about the United
Speaker 2: States and the abolitionist movements, a fock ton of the
Speaker 2: early white abolitionists were women who were quite actively also
Speaker 2: fighting for the rights of women, and they're like the
Speaker 2: same social circle more or less.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wonder, I mean, obviously, I think it's the
Speaker 4: headline is more surprising. The divisions are emphasized just because
Speaker 4: you know, in a vacuum without any external information, I
Speaker 4: guess I would just, you know, war one would just
Speaker 4: assume that like all queer people stick together and then
Speaker 4: so so it's like more notable the whatever divisions are there.
Speaker 4: It would be my only guess, like.
Speaker 3: That's so fair.
Speaker 2: That makes sense I like I'm so cynical that I'm
Speaker 2: like uncynical again where I'm like it helps the powers
Speaker 2: that be to focus on our divisions, you know, yes,
Speaker 2: but it also like like we shouldn't erase our differences.
Speaker 2: We shouldn't pretend like yeah, fucking white feminists haven't been
Speaker 2: really shitty or like that, like gay men can't be
Speaker 2: misogynists or like, you know, yeah, but I.
Speaker 4: Think it you're you're absolutely right, though I do think
Speaker 4: it goes sort of both ways in that like whatever
Speaker 4: interest is like peaked by the divisions absolutely also like
Speaker 4: serves the setus quo. So like there's no like nothing
Speaker 4: to like hit the brakes on that or tap the
Speaker 4: brakes on on that, like instinct, like whether it's like
Speaker 4: writerly or like from the publishing perspective, like they just
Speaker 4: want to put that out there and it helps, you know,
Speaker 4: the people in power for it to be put out
Speaker 4: there as well.
Speaker 2: Totally like kind of like how like Twitter is a
Speaker 2: nightmareland that creates divisions between people because likes and reacts
Speaker 2: and blah blah blah are like more useful to the
Speaker 2: algorith them and so therefore people who are angry are
Speaker 2: more likely to comment than people who are like oh yeah, no,
Speaker 2: totally yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 4: I mean it's the same way that like, like you know,
Speaker 4: just on any the internet is clearly but like even
Speaker 4: before the Internet, like one complaint, you get one complaint,
Speaker 4: but you won't get you know, a hundred satisfied customers
Speaker 4: that are like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's it. And then also even like I
Speaker 2: would never read the reviews of my own work, I
Speaker 2: actually specifically try not to read the reviews of my
Speaker 2: own work because I am very aware that I will
Speaker 2: read ten reviews that will be like Margaret Kiljoy saved
Speaker 2: my children from a burning building or whatever, I don't know,
Speaker 2: and then I'll read like one that was like Margaret's
Speaker 2: voice is bad or you know, I don't know, right.
Speaker 3: And then I'm like it's like devastating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so maybe that's it. Maybe we like we
Speaker 2: hear about we hear about the racist and we're like,
Speaker 2: well fuck this whole thing.
Speaker 4: You know, it becomes extra silient. Yeah, I will say
Speaker 4: as far as like Twitter goes. On the first big
Speaker 4: show I worked on, it was a show called Mixed Dish,
Speaker 4: and when it came out, I created not a Twitter bot,
Speaker 4: but if I was better at coding, it would have
Speaker 4: been a bot that was called not with the word
Speaker 4: not crossed out the Mixtish writer's room, and every time
Speaker 4: there was a negative comment, I would just write via
Speaker 4: the bot or not the not bot, but by the account. Okay,
Speaker 4: but we worked really hard on this one. Under every
Speaker 4: negative comment on Twitter.
Speaker 2: That is so relatable when people come like because people
Speaker 2: have like things that they could be critical about about
Speaker 2: the things I do. But sometimes on some level, I
Speaker 2: just always want to be like, do you know I
Speaker 2: didn't sleep for like a week because I was trying
Speaker 2: to get this right. And I know that I didn't
Speaker 2: get it totally right, but like I have to put
Speaker 2: out roughly two hours of history content every week, I
Speaker 2: just don't sleep. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we're past the part of the Internet
Speaker 4: where that could even work.
Speaker 3: But it was very fun to me in the moment.
Speaker 2: No, totally. Yeah, Okay. So gay rights in America before
Speaker 2: the Stone, before Stonewall, most visible groups were very assimilationists
Speaker 2: and pushing very hard for mainstream acceptance by like not
Speaker 2: rocking the boat. But all along there were all these
Speaker 2: kind of like unruly queers being unruly Stonewall was not
Speaker 2: the first and not the last major riot by queers
Speaker 2: who are sick of being mistreated by society. But after
Speaker 2: some cops raided the Stonewall in in New York in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine, the gay liberation movement exploded onto the scene.
Speaker 2: People were tired of asking nicely, and once people got
Speaker 2: tired of asking nicely, shit started getting done. That's a
Speaker 2: pattern you can see over and over again. As Frederick
Speaker 2: Douglas the Black Abolitionists put it, power concedes nothing without
Speaker 2: a demand. The seventies were a vital time in gay history,
Speaker 2: as people started really coming out on moss and said
Speaker 2: up all kinds of infrastructure that we rely upon today.
Speaker 2: I remember I was talking to one of my friends
Speaker 2: about this beforehand. I have relied on the infrastructure set
Speaker 2: up by like gays fifty years ago, for like my
Speaker 2: basic health care, completely unrelated to sexuality, just because I
Speaker 2: was like broken, lived out of a backpack, you know,
Speaker 2: and like I remember, I injured myself at one point
Speaker 2: by having too heavy of a backpack I was living
Speaker 2: out of and not being in my twenties anymore, It
Speaker 2: turns out that you can carry a certain sized backpack
Speaker 2: in your twenties that you can't carry onward, and I
Speaker 2: like injured myself and so the only place that I
Speaker 2: could go was this gay clinic and it was nice.
Speaker 2: But then it's just like bonus points because they respect
Speaker 2: my pronouns and it's nice and people are nice to you.
Speaker 2: You know. I love gay infrastructure is the point, and
Speaker 2: I think that gay infrastructure is one of the most
Speaker 2: beautiful prefigurations of the world. I want everyone to get
Speaker 2: to live in. A lot of that started getting set
Speaker 2: up in the seventies. Unfortunately, a lot of it was
Speaker 2: set up in the eighties because the eighties, yeah, were
Speaker 2: the spoiler alert for history.
Speaker 4: Real bad yeah, yeah, and bad at the time. But
Speaker 4: also all the all the shit that's happening now got
Speaker 4: started then or not, I got started before, but like
Speaker 4: some of the major stuff really got rolling then, and
Speaker 4: we're just kind of living with the results of how
Speaker 4: how those people did the shit in the eighties.
Speaker 2: I know, it's like we're listen, we're in like hyper
Speaker 2: Reagan times. Like Reagan was like yeah you at the time,
Speaker 2: I think people are like, I can't imagine something worse
Speaker 2: than this, and you're like, then, fucking yeah. Pull my beer.
Speaker 2: Trump comes in.
Speaker 4: I know, I mean, we'll see, hopefully at the very minimum,
Speaker 4: like Trump isn't sort of lionized in history. The way
Speaker 4: that that is sort of the most infuriating thing is, Yeah,
Speaker 4: people's at least at least in the nineties and two thousands.
Speaker 4: I think people are coming around a little bit now.
Speaker 4: But like their description of Ronald Reagan's like the fuck
Speaker 4: out of here? The fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 2: I was talking with one of my friends who works
Speaker 2: in the piercing industry, and they were wearing, I can't
Speaker 2: remember exactly, they were wearing a shirt that was like
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan's grave is a gender neutral bathroom. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: someone that they work with was a piercer, a gay
Speaker 2: man who survived the eighties in San Francisco, which is
Speaker 2: a hard thing to have done. And was just like,
Speaker 2: I'm so glad that people today still understand that Ronald
Speaker 2: Reagan is a terrible person.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, well and sort of even.
Speaker 4: As he got like you know, no longer really there
Speaker 4: and while he was still president.
Speaker 3: That's the thing.
Speaker 4: It's like, like, yeah, the Republican and right wing in
Speaker 4: general like apparatus is this like he is a terrible person,
Speaker 4: but it sort of doesn't matter, no, totally, like specifically him, Yeah,
Speaker 4: like is this is what those folks want and we
Speaker 4: are living with the consequences of not yeah, fucking taking
Speaker 4: them seriously honestly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then obviously like some people did, some people tried,
Speaker 2: and just like not enough, but like yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: and so in the eighties it was the dying time.
Speaker 2: Gay men started showing up in hospitals as early as
Speaker 2: about nineteen eighty one, well exactly nineteen eighty one, with
Speaker 2: all kinds of rare cancers and diagnoses with what we
Speaker 2: now understand as AIDS. Acquired immuno deficiency syndrome is caused
Speaker 2: by an underlying virus HIV human immuno deficiency virus. They
Speaker 2: didn't know that yet. The actual causes and means of
Speaker 2: transmission were going to be a hot topic for years.
Speaker 2: At first, doctors looked at what was happening and called
Speaker 2: it GRID gay related immune deficiency. This crisis was completely
Speaker 2: and shamefully ignored by the government. It was like till
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven before Reagan i think, said the word
Speaker 2: AIDS right. The treatment that people were receiving was shameful too.
Speaker 2: When patients first started showing up destroyed immune systems. At first,
Speaker 2: this makes some sense, doctors were rightfully afraid of getting
Speaker 2: their patients any sicker, and so they wore head to
Speaker 2: toe ppe in what was called colloquial as spacesuits. But
Speaker 2: soon enough all kinds of healthcare professionals started wearing them
Speaker 2: around AIDS patients out of fear for themselves instead of
Speaker 2: the other way around. And the thing is, I've read
Speaker 2: a couple of people like talking about, like how reasonable
Speaker 2: was it of people to be afraid of AIDS patients
Speaker 2: and stuff, And on some level, right, like, people didn't
Speaker 2: know what this disease was. They didn't know how it spread,
Speaker 2: and they knew that it had all one hundred percent
Speaker 2: death rate, which is a really high death rate. You know,
Speaker 2: it's about as high as it can get. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: But pretty early on, well, no one was quite sure
Speaker 2: how the disease was spread. Doctors and epidemiologists were pretty
Speaker 2: certain that it was not airborne and that it wasn't
Speaker 2: spread by casual contact, just based on looking at the
Speaker 2: I can't believe I wrote a script where I have
Speaker 2: to say epidemiology a lot, but just based on the
Speaker 2: like the spread of the disease, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was.
Speaker 4: It's a little bit in retrospect some of the COVID
Speaker 4: stuff too, where it was likely, especially like the wiping
Speaker 4: down your groceries business, and it's like, okay, but if
Speaker 4: it was transmitted like that, we'd all, like, you know,
Speaker 4: the city of Wuhan would have been completely obliterated. Like
Speaker 4: it just doesn't work like that. Yeah, but totally, I
Speaker 4: will say, you know, obviously have a sense of where
Speaker 4: this is going, and you know.
Speaker 3: I sort of understand the doctor's perspective, but yeah.
Speaker 2: No, totally, Like at the very beginning, you're like, whoa,
Speaker 2: I don't know what that is, and I don't want
Speaker 2: to then spread it to everyone, and like, you know,
Speaker 2: there's a there's a certain sense. But yeah, that was
Speaker 2: only for a brief moment. The medical establishment knew better
Speaker 2: really soon. They knew pretty much right away that it
Speaker 2: wasn't casual contact or airborne, and then by nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: three they realized it was blood born because of the
Speaker 2: number of blood transfusion patients who were getting sick. And
Speaker 2: this is the same year that researchers in France discovered
Speaker 2: the virus underlying the disease HIV, but homophobia and fear
Speaker 2: of disease worked really tightly together. Healthcare professionals were terrified
Speaker 2: of catching gay cancer. No one would touch or breed
Speaker 2: the same air as AIDS patients, so patients were completely isolated.
Speaker 2: One aid's nurse, a guy named Guy Vanderberg, who is
Speaker 2: himself hospitalized for a while, told ABC the food tray
Speaker 2: was shoved into the room and everything was covered in plastic,
Speaker 2: then everything was put into biohazard bags when it was
Speaker 2: taken out. People were fully gowned when they came in,
Speaker 2: even just to talk with me, And like, even if
Speaker 2: this was reasonable, and there's very brief window where it was,
Speaker 2: it's also just incredibly alienated and hard.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's like, solitary confinement is torture, literal torture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: That's even when you're not sick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. My personal anecdote around this is that
Speaker 2: a close family friend of my family's has HIV and
Speaker 2: he was diagnosed I think in the eighties, maybe the
Speaker 2: early nineties, and he's this conservative man who goes to
Speaker 2: a conservative church, and so when he went and told
Speaker 2: the congregation that, you know, he had HIV. Everyone in
Speaker 2: the congregation lined up to shake his hand like without gloves.
Speaker 2: And this was like a huge fucking deal, you know, right,
Speaker 2: because everyone consciously knew it was safe, but people were
Speaker 2: still being real fucking shitty about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Fortunately, queer people themselves, gay people and lesbians are
Speaker 2: as I understand it overrepresented in the medical profession, much
Speaker 2: like you might think that ads are overrepresented in this podcast,
Speaker 2: But I would argue that they are that they are. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what I would are you too, But if you
Speaker 2: get cooler zone media, then you don't have to listen
Speaker 2: to them. You can only listen to my ad transitions instead.
Speaker 2: But here's the ads, and we're back. The lesbian community
Speaker 2: rallied really hard, and they rode to Gondor's aid when
Speaker 2: the beacons were lit. They did not ask where was
Speaker 2: Gondor when the westfold fell? I have to somehow put
Speaker 2: in a Lord of the room's reference in every episode. Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: it's just it's important. And one gay man it's actually okay.
Speaker 2: The comparisons are going to get really strong though, right
Speaker 2: because there's well okay, yeah, one gay man in San
Speaker 2: Francisco spoke anonymously to the I news and said, quote,
Speaker 2: suddenly the hospitals were full of lesbians who were volunteering,
Speaker 2: volunteering to go into those rooms and help my friends
Speaker 2: who were dying. I remember being so moved by them
Speaker 2: because gay men hadn't been too kind to lesbians. We'd
Speaker 2: call them fish and make fun of the butcher dikes
Speaker 2: in the bar, and yet there they were.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that is a you know, that that
Speaker 4: is sort of like the differences and similarities that we
Speaker 4: were talking about earlier right there, which is like there's
Speaker 4: a difference between like poking fun at someone and like
Speaker 4: a community.
Speaker 2: Is dying totally totally. Yeah, like, yeah, we're going to
Speaker 2: make fun of oh you got bad haircut. I'm going
Speaker 2: to make fun of you until someone else messes with you.
Speaker 2: Then it's a war, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 4: And without also like two needlessly tapping the present, we're
Speaker 4: about to also enter into a time when the establishment
Speaker 4: medical advice is about to be factually incorrect. Yeah, not
Speaker 4: that it always hasn't been, sort of, but even more so,
Speaker 4: I don't know, this is sort of an open question
Speaker 4: to me, but it's like, whenever the next terrible thing
Speaker 4: that is a probably virus hits, like probably, yeah, we
Speaker 4: won't be able to necessarily, I mean, we probably pretty
Speaker 4: actively won't be able to trust our CDC or NIH.
Speaker 4: And again, with grains of salt, we never probably should
Speaker 4: have wholly trusted them. However, they've mostly been correct, you know.
Speaker 4: So whether it's you know, getting your measles vaccine or
Speaker 4: you know, not trying to use nutrition to fight cancer
Speaker 4: and mental mental health issues.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't know if there's like an EU like health
Speaker 4: authority to follow or Chinese health authority to follow, but
Speaker 4: don't follow the like.
Speaker 3: And don't follow the American one, and don't let.
Speaker 4: Their policies dictate your behavior, because we are going to
Speaker 4: have to do stuff like this which is maybe not
Speaker 4: technically advised or allowed by the establishment, but it is
Speaker 4: the right thing to do, and you know, within reason.
Speaker 4: I guess who knows what the next actual thing will be.
Speaker 4: But just because they say you're safe doesn't mean you are.
Speaker 4: Just because they say you're in peril doesn't mean you are.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 2: And it's like hard because it's like, well, this is
Speaker 2: going to make it even harder to get people to trust, like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm clearly not like a big like the
Speaker 2: state is a really good way of forming society, person,
Speaker 2: but yeah, institutions that get together to solve things, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I absolutely believe in and many of those are governmental
Speaker 2: and yeah.
Speaker 4: Well it's like the difference between like the broadly speaking,
Speaker 4: the state, but also like the state is unfortunately the
Speaker 4: best way to do some of these.
Speaker 2: Things, Like yeah, definitely that we have available to us. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, it would be nice if it worked.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's like they're getting rid of all that part.
Speaker 2: They're like, it's like, stop making the state look good,
Speaker 2: you weird right wing libertarians. Yeah, like you're gutting all
Speaker 2: the good parts of the state and you're keeping the
Speaker 2: fucking cops in the military.
Speaker 3: Yeah all right.
Speaker 2: Well, so lesbians step up in so many ways during
Speaker 2: this that it's overwhelming and I won't get into all
Speaker 2: of it, but we'll start with blood, because starting in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three, men who have sex with men were
Speaker 2: banned from donating blood in order to stop transmission through
Speaker 2: blood transfusions. There's there's some logic here, right, HIV tests
Speaker 2: weren't available yet, but this ban went on way too long.
Speaker 2: Do you want to guess what year men who had
Speaker 2: sex with men were able to donate blood again without
Speaker 2: discrimination in the United States.
Speaker 4: I only know this because I was asked in my
Speaker 4: adulthood so deep into the twenty to two thousand somethings,
Speaker 4: Is that right.
Speaker 2: Two years ago? Twenty twenty three? Okay, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: that's actually a good point. Yeah, all of us have gone. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty fucking three, they finally changed the rules.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty, men who have sex with men were
Speaker 2: allowed to donate blood if they hadn't had sex in
Speaker 2: the last three months. Nowadays, the rule is anyone regardless
Speaker 2: of extra gender, can donate blood, so long as they
Speaker 2: haven't had anal sex with a new partner or slept
Speaker 2: with multiple new partners in the past three months, and
Speaker 2: that I'm not an expert here. That sounds reasonable. Yeah,
Speaker 2: make it across the board and not about sexuality. That
Speaker 2: seems good. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But also it feels like we could also just
Speaker 3: screen for I.
Speaker 4: Mean, if you're just worried about HIV, it's like, just
Speaker 4: check if there's HIV there.
Speaker 2: I think, but I could be wrong. I think it's
Speaker 2: because there's a roughly a three month period for the
Speaker 2: efficacy of the testing.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, sure, okay.
Speaker 2: But I don't know how it relates to like bottled
Speaker 2: blood or whatever.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 2: Sure, but in nineteen eighty three men were suddenly told
Speaker 2: that they couldn't donate blood. But AIDS patients need a
Speaker 2: lot of blood transfusions, especially back then, so their own
Speaker 2: immediate community couldn't support them. Fortunately, LGBT is a thing
Speaker 2: for a reason. All of us letters are in it together.
Speaker 2: The l stepped up the most famous group is probably
Speaker 2: the most famous because branding is so important to being
Speaker 2: remembered in history, is what I'm learning on this show too.
Speaker 2: They were called the blood Sisters. Yeah, like you don't
Speaker 2: forget the blood sisters.
Speaker 4: Oh man, And just speaking of this is it's just
Speaker 4: nice to get a Warhammer forty K reference in there.
Speaker 2: Oh are there blood sisters and Warmmer? I'm a D
Speaker 2: and D girl.
Speaker 3: I don't think. I think so.
Speaker 4: Hell yeah, it might be a Sisters of Blood or
Speaker 4: something like that, just the bloody angels anyway.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, So the Warhammer forty K girls stepped.
Speaker 3: To the fuck uh.
Speaker 2: The Women's caucus of the San Diego Democratic Club set
Speaker 2: up a deal with a private blood bank to allow
Speaker 2: donors to designate the recipients, so basically people could go
Speaker 2: in and say, this is blood for people with HIV
Speaker 2: and AIDS. Then they called for a blood drive on
Speaker 2: July sixteenth, nineteen eighty three, and called on all the
Speaker 2: lesbians in San Diego, being that like fifty people would come,
Speaker 2: but the very first blood drive, two hundred people came
Speaker 2: with a line around the block. Peggy Heathers, a blood sister, said, quote,
Speaker 2: women came out of the woodwork, women that didn't want
Speaker 2: to have anything to do with men, even gay men.
Speaker 2: And I fucking love that. Even the hardcore lesbian separatists
Speaker 2: were like, look, I don't want to live with men,
Speaker 2: I don't want to date men. I don't want to
Speaker 2: organize with men. I'm not going to see them fucking
Speaker 2: die abandoned because of their sexuality.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like, well, I mean it also is just sort
Speaker 4: of like the right triangulation. It's like, listen, even if
Speaker 4: I don't want anything to do with men, the worst
Speaker 4: men are the ones that are perpetrating this upon gay men.
Speaker 2: Like totally, totally, there's still the real enemy.
Speaker 4: Let's not let's not and never be confused about who
Speaker 4: the real enemy.
Speaker 2: Is yeah, totally, and I just like, I love that.
Speaker 2: I love that they were like, yeah, like you know,
Speaker 2: you're still as being separatists and we're still coming to
Speaker 2: help you. The Blood Sisters continued for years. I have
Speaker 2: read that they continued before this is my favorite part
Speaker 2: about multiple sources, and I've read that they continue for
Speaker 2: four years. I've read that they continued until nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 2: Either way they stayed, I'm guessing that they stayed particularly
Speaker 2: active until the very first treatments of the late eighties
Speaker 2: kicked in, and then active to some degree for a
Speaker 2: decade after that until about nineteen ninety six. Is when
Speaker 2: you get the well I keep saying about in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six, you get the sort of cocktail three drug
Speaker 2: regimen that started dramatically improving peoples odds, you know.
Speaker 4: And the other side of it is like whether they
Speaker 4: were like continuing as a Blood Sister's like you know,
Speaker 4: under the Blood Sister's banner. There is the thing, you know,
Speaker 4: sort of mirroring my story, which is like once you
Speaker 4: get started, you do more like totally and I do
Speaker 4: think like a you know, the tiny silver lining for
Speaker 4: these crises is it does get regular people or maybe
Speaker 4: even slightly apathetic people and to like be like, Okay,
Speaker 4: I gotta do fucking something then like something that gets
Speaker 4: you know something else. No, yeah, enough of the time
Speaker 4: that you know, things become real.
Speaker 2: No, that's a good point. Yeah, you just got to
Speaker 2: like get people into the inertia of trying to help.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if the blood Sisters were the
Speaker 2: first or if they were the one that gets written
Speaker 2: about the most because they have a sick name. The
Speaker 2: idea spread. Lesbians ran blood drives in at least San Francisco, Denver, Boston,
Speaker 2: Los Angeles, Baltimore, Memphis, and DC. I suspect it's more
Speaker 2: than that, because I've read about lesbian support and a
Speaker 2: bunch of other cities beyond that. The San Francisco blood
Speaker 2: drive was led by the National Organization of Women, and
Speaker 2: they would put up flyers that say, our boys need
Speaker 2: our blood fucking good.
Speaker 4: And it's also like, because I do think just to
Speaker 4: like reach kind of the normal people, you do got
Speaker 4: to do essentially war propaganda for stuff like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And also, I mean this whole thing we're
Speaker 2: gonna talk about a little later, This whole thing is
Speaker 2: strangely like war, you know. Yeah, well yeah, and queer
Speaker 2: newspapers continued to say basically like, hey, lesbians, please donate
Speaker 2: blood or to quote the newspaper coming out, which I
Speaker 2: believe is San Francisco paper, they should do it, to
Speaker 2: quote stand by our brothers and fighting the AIDS epidemic.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: An author named Jennifer Wilde, who was writing for the
Speaker 2: queer Irish magazine GCN, put it like this, the drives
Speaker 2: also gave more than just blood. They were also away
Speaker 2: for the men suffering to know that they were loved
Speaker 2: and part of a supportive community that will always do
Speaker 2: what must be done to overcome adversity.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's the kind of thing where like real almost cheesy
Speaker 2: like phrasing, it's just appropriate. You're like, yeah, no, that's
Speaker 2: what happened. They absolutely We were like, you're part of
Speaker 2: a supportive community. We don't want you to die alone.
Speaker 2: Like yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, and also it is like like this is such
Speaker 4: a wonderful example of like laws and power are just
Speaker 4: people doing shit to other people. And like as bad
Speaker 4: as the stuff gets and as has been, like you know,
Speaker 4: when gay men weren't allowed to donate blood, really what
Speaker 4: this means is they just they need blood, like blood
Speaker 4: is needed, and if we can get blood in this
Speaker 4: instance to people, then it sort of is a counteraction
Speaker 4: to the bigotry and the fucking hate that is out there.
Speaker 4: Like you can just reverse it, yeah, or you can
Speaker 4: try or you do something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know what, we can't reverse the continued
Speaker 2: march of all of the brilliant products and services who
Speaker 2: I love.
Speaker 4: We can try. Are you going to listen to the
Speaker 4: ad first to figure out how?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, your enemy listen to these ads. Actually some
Speaker 2: of them are probably for good things. That's the hard
Speaker 2: part is that sometimes we get ads for nice things,
Speaker 2: like other podcasts. I like podcasts. I don't mind learning
Speaker 2: about podcasts through podcasts.
Speaker 4: That seems fine, yes, yes, but that does start to
Speaker 4: feel like a Ponzi scheme a little bit.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 4: Podcast advertising on other podcasts feels like hold on, well
Speaker 4: right now.
Speaker 2: And then people are like, how come all your guests
Speaker 2: are podcasters? And I'm like, I see your point, But
Speaker 2: all my guests are podcasters because they know how to podcast,
Speaker 2: because it's actually a trained skill that takes effort and
Speaker 2: also takes equipment, and not all of our guests are
Speaker 2: podcasters anyway, but all of our guests listen to ads.
Speaker 2: Actually that's not true. We don't listen them while we're recording,
Speaker 2: but here they are, you can listen to them. Let's go.
Speaker 3: And we're back.
Speaker 2: So lesbian stepped up to donate blood, and lesbian doctors
Speaker 2: and nurses stepped up to directly care for AIDS patients.
Speaker 2: But it went even deeper than that. In nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: a game and named Howie Dare He was a fourth
Speaker 2: grade teacher with a master's degree in counseling, and a
Speaker 2: lesbian therapist named Candy Markham started a gay counseling center
Speaker 2: in Dallas after seeing clinics in New York and Houston
Speaker 2: that were counseling centers for gay folks. This is before
Speaker 2: it was going to be an HIV thing. Everyone needs
Speaker 2: counseling and therapy sometimes, right, But if you're part of
Speaker 2: a criminalized community, that puts extra stress on your life,
Speaker 2: and most therapists that were available weren't exactly queer competent,
Speaker 2: let alone queer friendly. So they start up this hotline.
Speaker 2: They opened up the Oaklawn Counseling Center in the gahborhood
Speaker 2: and then they went around to bars and wherever people
Speaker 2: hung out to tell people about it. Then the two
Speaker 2: of them went to a gay mental health conference in Houston,
Speaker 2: because hell yeah, queer infrastructure. There was a gay mental
Speaker 2: health conference in Houston in nineteen eighty one, and they
Speaker 2: learned about this shitty new thing called Grid that was
Speaker 2: killing gay men and trans women on the coasts. So
Speaker 2: they decided to turn one of their phone lines into
Speaker 2: a GRID hotline. Even before Grid hit the city. Candy
Speaker 2: was like, we don't know anything about this disease yet.
Speaker 2: I'm paraphrasing her, but how he said, and I quote, yes,
Speaker 2: I know, but we will and we need to be prepared.
Speaker 2: So I really like this man because he is a handsome, prepper,
Speaker 2: leather daddy school teacher with a master's degree and like
Speaker 2: was a mental health king.
Speaker 3: He's fucking cool, amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can read all kinds of like I didn't
Speaker 2: put all of it in here, but like he wrote
Speaker 2: a lot. Well, I'll get to it, okay. Within a
Speaker 2: few months, AIDS came to Dallas. And the thing is
Speaker 2: is that AIDS untreated kills more or less everyone who
Speaker 2: gets it, and there were no treatments for years. I
Speaker 2: don't know if I've read anything quite so much like
Speaker 2: war as the AIDS crisis. Every account I've read about
Speaker 2: this time in any city or town talks about people
Speaker 2: going to multiple funerals a week, and that the gay
Speaker 2: accepting churches were running two to three services a day. Actually,
Speaker 2: the specific I think it was called the MCC the church,
Speaker 2: the Queer accepting church in Dallas at this time lost
Speaker 2: i think a third of its own clergy days. The
Speaker 2: hotline that they had set up, this grid hotline was
Speaker 2: staffed at first mostly by gay men. The quote worried
Speaker 2: well because it's like if you're a gay man and
Speaker 2: this time you're either sick or you're the worried well right,
Speaker 2: because you're like, well, I don't know what it's going
Speaker 2: to be me.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anytime anyone got sick, they were like, oh fuck, Like
Speaker 2: I got a cold, I might be dead now, you know, right.
Speaker 2: The community centered around this health clinic set up a
Speaker 2: buddy system where sick men would be placed with healthy
Speaker 2: folks who could care for them. They had more than
Speaker 2: one hundred registered buddies. These were sort of in addition
Speaker 2: to if you have like a full time caretaker, like
Speaker 2: if you live with your partner, or you live with
Speaker 2: your parents, or someone else's like caretaking for you. You
Speaker 2: also have a buddy system on top of that to
Speaker 2: help relieve that careme taking right, and this model of
Speaker 2: direct care and mutual laid spread to other cities. They
Speaker 2: also set up an adult day care center so that
Speaker 2: people with AIDS could come and be taken care of
Speaker 2: in the center during the day so that their caretakers
Speaker 2: could catch a break. All the while how He is
Speaker 2: running all this shit alongside Candy. He's also teaching math
Speaker 2: to incarcerated people at the county jail. In addition to
Speaker 2: be like he's like a college teacher, a fourth grade teacher,
Speaker 2: institutionalized people teacher, and a bartender and running a counseling service.
Speaker 2: He fucking burned the candle of both ends.
Speaker 3: Jesus, that's so exhausting. But I know good. I know.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty five, when how He was thirty seven
Speaker 2: years old, he was diagnosed with HIV. It was his
Speaker 2: friend and co worker, Candy, the other therapist who was
Speaker 2: his buddy in the buddy system, who was assigned to him.
Speaker 2: His mom was a nurse and took care of him too,
Speaker 2: and He died in nineteen eighty six at thirty eight
Speaker 2: years old, with his mother by his bedside, as were
Speaker 2: his wishes. His ashes were spread and his mother's rose garden.
Speaker 2: And I was like, as I was writing this, I
Speaker 2: was like, I don't know, I'm gonna be able to
Speaker 2: read this without crying. Like Candy kept going. All of
Speaker 2: her male friends were dying, and she spent all of
Speaker 2: her time doing pro bono therapy in hospitals and in
Speaker 2: home care, and then would go and speak at their funerals.
Speaker 2: And this wasn't easy for her. The group that she
Speaker 2: was working with would set up housing for everyone who's
Speaker 2: being kicked out by their families for being gay and sick.
Speaker 2: And she talks about how often she would have therapy
Speaker 2: clients who would bring their families and the poor client
Speaker 2: right who would have to come out both as gay
Speaker 2: and dying in the same conversation. And Candy's job in
Speaker 2: that situation, as best as I can tell, was to
Speaker 2: try and convince the family to have a basic fucking
Speaker 2: human decency right and like love and care for their child.
Speaker 4: So fucking you know, I guess like it's grim to
Speaker 4: think about that, and like grim to see like how.
Speaker 3: Little humanity some folks have. But I guess you also
Speaker 3: just never know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I like I come from a family where
Speaker 2: I like, can't imagine that having happened to me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I can imagine family or relatives or whatever who would
Speaker 2: be like shitty to me or make fun of me,
Speaker 2: or not know how to talk about it and be
Speaker 2: awkward or like it's gender me and god, I'm not
Speaker 2: trying to talk shit to my family. I could imagine
Speaker 2: all of these things. Yeah, yeah, but the like you
Speaker 2: are not our child to get out of here, which
Speaker 2: happens still happens to so many fucking queer kids. I
Speaker 2: just like I can't. I'm like, yeah, Like it's it's
Speaker 2: like could you could you have we put the bar
Speaker 2: on the floor, like could you step over it? Hell,
Speaker 2: it might even be buried under the ground. You just
Speaker 2: have to walk normal. Yeah, And instead they're like, no,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna dig up that bar and trip on it.
Speaker 4: You have to dig. You have to dig to be
Speaker 4: to be that bad. But yeah, or maybe you don't
Speaker 4: because it is reflexive for so many people clearly like that,
Speaker 4: Like yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And.
Speaker 2: Basically, as best as I can tell, what happened in
Speaker 2: the eighties is you have all of these queer health
Speaker 2: services and counseling services and general infrastructure projects, right that
Speaker 2: people have been building for a while or maybe built
Speaker 2: specifically around AIDS, but like often have been building for
Speaker 2: a long time, and then one by one all of
Speaker 2: the men in them would die, and so it would
Speaker 2: be lesbians who would step up. Sometimes also straight women.
Speaker 2: I'm not to to totally cut them out of this picture.
Speaker 2: Especially in San Francis, go end up reading about a
Speaker 2: bunch of straight women who also a lot, but this
Speaker 2: particular episode's focused on lesbians, and so you just have
Speaker 2: this thing where like, like I've read all these people
Speaker 2: who weren't there arguing about like, oh, why did women
Speaker 2: have to do all the unpaid labor or whatever? The
Speaker 2: fuck fuck you all of that shit, but like, yeah,
Speaker 2: why couldn't the men take care of themselves because they
Speaker 2: were dead?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I don't know what.
Speaker 2: To tell you.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's like, you know, of course that the
Speaker 4: grain of truth is in there, that is, that is
Speaker 4: the work that falls to women so much, but absolutely
Speaker 4: there is also an explanation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also like gay men are also over represented
Speaker 2: in carrying fields. Yes, yes, Like when I'm reading about
Speaker 2: a lot of the like early health clinics and stuff,
Speaker 2: it's like, oh, it's gay men and lesbians who staffed them, right,
Speaker 2: and then it was just lesbians left for some weird reason,
Speaker 2: you know, right. But yeah, no, totally. There is still
Speaker 2: a little bit of a like, yeah, you know, it's
Speaker 2: like carrying work et cetera as gender. But like you
Speaker 2: know what, like some work that is gendered is good
Speaker 2: when people do it, like yeah, and so many nonprofit
Speaker 2: leaders were dying in this period that Candy and other
Speaker 2: folks set up a six month seminar series to onboard
Speaker 2: lesbians to lead nonprofits. Right When she was interviewed later,
Speaker 2: when she was asked what she would do have done
Speaker 2: differently about her life, she says, you know what comes
Speaker 2: to mind is I'd make a lot more money and
Speaker 2: give it away. But you know, I worked as hard
Speaker 2: as I could. I don't think I could have done
Speaker 2: anything different. Like I said, I'm filled up from what happens.
Speaker 2: I think it is the story of my life. I'm
Speaker 2: pretty happy. Yeah, And so how do you have a
Speaker 2: good life? You fucking find a way to help and
Speaker 2: then you just fucking do it. Like, She's not the
Speaker 2: only person I've read this week who's talking is looking
Speaker 2: back on a life of helping people in this horrible crisis,
Speaker 2: and a lot of the people I'm reading are like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we all have PTSD now, or like, you know, it
Speaker 2: majorly impacted them, but overall, the people who survived, who
Speaker 2: were doing things are like, I'm I'm pretty proud of
Speaker 2: myself in my community, and I've lived the best life
Speaker 2: I could and I'm doing okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or look, everything comes with a cost, but you know,
Speaker 4: there's also be like, however, like PTSD you might have,
Speaker 4: I do think doing nothing would probably have made it worse,
Speaker 4: totally right, And you know what, and that's not a guarantee,
Speaker 4: of course, like different circumstances. But one of the bigger
Speaker 4: benefits of you know, mutual aid is this is for you.
Speaker 2: Too, absolutely, like and that's literally in the name mutual aid.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, it's like, no, we're just people taking care
Speaker 2: of each other. And right now it's me taking care
Speaker 2: of you, you know. And it won't necessarily be exact reciprocal,
Speaker 2: like oh well tomorrow you take care of me, yeah,
Speaker 2: but someone will take care of me, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it works. It worked. If everyone didn't, it just
Speaker 3: would work. Society would work.
Speaker 2: I know. It's one of the most frustrated things in
Speaker 2: the world, is like, once you start seeing it happen,
Speaker 2: you can unsee it, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people want to take care of each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well some of us don't, but that's true. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's what we got for part one. But
Speaker 2: when we come back on part two, we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about a whole bunch of other people helped, including
Speaker 2: more lesbians and some nuns.
Speaker 3: Amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Do you got anything you want to plug here
Speaker 2: at the end of your podcast, your mutual group, anything
Speaker 2: that TV shows we should watch that you wrote.
Speaker 3: Nothing. I don't know, Yo's is racist, our premium shows
Speaker 3: called YO. Can we Live? Or we don't talk about
Speaker 3: stuff that is horrible.
Speaker 2: That I haven't listened to that yet.
Speaker 4: Just you know, just a way to decompress a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's about it. I don't know, I'm around.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, if you want to keep up with me,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I say that every single time. I
Speaker 2: guess I probably probably when this comes out, I'm probably
Speaker 2: in the middle of kickstarting a book, which means I'm
Speaker 2: probably if this is March twenty twenty five that you're
Speaker 2: listening to it, I'm probably kickstarting the third book in
Speaker 2: the Danielle Kine series, The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice,
Speaker 2: and it is available either through Kickstarter or if you're
Speaker 2: listen to this in the future, you can just buy
Speaker 2: it probably, And there's audiobooks of all three books, so
Speaker 2: if you haven't heard the other ones, you can start
Speaker 2: with the audiobooks, or are the regular books which you
Speaker 2: can just get and I'll talk to you all soon.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
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