Speaker 1: Call Zon Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome to youap and here a podcast and I forgot
Speaker 2: to write an introduction for I'm your host, Miya Wong,
Speaker 2: and we are well, okay, we're not taking a break
Speaker 2: from the horrors, because this is also still a podcast
Speaker 2: about the horrors and what you can do about it.
Speaker 2: But you know, I am a transgender. One of the
Speaker 2: ways that we have been like depersonified via transgender is
Speaker 2: through a you know, a massive attack on trans like
Speaker 2: trans women in sports, and this has led to you know,
Speaker 2: like the acceleration of like the broad scale attack on
Speaker 2: all of us being able to exist as people. And
Speaker 2: with me to talk about this is someone who has
Speaker 2: written a book that is about this and also kind
Speaker 2: of not about this in a lot of ways, and
Speaker 2: that is Victoria Zeller, who is a writer author, writes
Speaker 2: about the Buffalo Bills for our friends over at Defector
Speaker 2: sometimes and is the author of a new book What
Speaker 2: are the Boys Out Today? When you're listening to this,
Speaker 2: wow crazy, While yeah it is, it has SYNCD up
Speaker 2: like this completely on purpose. We were one hundred percent
Speaker 2: planning this from the beginning.
Speaker 3: Hello, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm excited to have you on so you would
Speaker 2: think that the question that your book One of the
Speaker 2: Boys asks is what if a transchool played football? But
Speaker 2: the actual and more important question to ask is what
Speaker 2: if a poster could write fiction? And the answer is
Speaker 2: that it fucking rips?
Speaker 3: Thank you?
Speaker 2: Is this this book rules? I? Jenni Wily. I think
Speaker 2: this is the best written group chats I've ever read
Speaker 2: in a book. It rips it so good.
Speaker 3: I am very passionate about group chats, you know. I
Speaker 3: mean like posting is writing Hello audience. If you don't
Speaker 3: know me, my name is Victoria. I'm online. You may
Speaker 3: know my Twitter or blue Sky accounts at dirtbag Queer.
Speaker 3: I'm like largely posting about football when football is in season.
Speaker 3: I kind of just post about random shit these days.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I've allegedly written a book. The weird thing
Speaker 3: about writing book is that I feel like I've just
Speaker 3: totally blacked out actually writing it. And I'm like, that's crazy.
Speaker 3: Who did that? Couldn't be me? But yeah, in terms
Speaker 3: of like how I would like very quickly pitch one
Speaker 3: of the boys, high school senior named Grace comes back
Speaker 3: to her high school football team. She quit over the
Speaker 3: summer because she came out as trans because her teammates
Speaker 3: want to make a push for a state title and
Speaker 3: it's like trans coming of age, Friday night Lights handshake meme.
Speaker 3: But also when I was like big picture thinking about
Speaker 3: what I wanted to do with this, I wanted to
Speaker 3: tell kind of a like traditional high school sports story,
Speaker 3: but through an outsider lens. Like if you think about
Speaker 3: the average like high school football story, you think like, well,
Speaker 3: what we're gonna do is we're gonna win state, we're
Speaker 3: gonna get the scholarship, and we're gonna get the girl.
Speaker 3: And I wanted to sort of like deconstruct those three
Speaker 3: things by making the protagonist trans and making the protagonist
Speaker 3: a kicker instead of like a linebacker or a quarterback
Speaker 3: or whatever. And that is who I am.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this this book rips. That sounds like a
Speaker 2: fun thing going on where it basically has like the
Speaker 2: football iceberg, where like you can come into us knowing
Speaker 2: zero ball and you will get stuff out of it.
Speaker 2: And you can come into this where I am knowing
Speaker 2: like a some ball and you will guess some out
Speaker 2: of this. And then like the unhinged people who have
Speaker 2: like sixteen different pff tabs like pinned their bookmarks will
Speaker 2: be like, holy shit, the world building.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that was it is. It is hard writing
Speaker 3: fiction about sports if you're writing young adult fiction, you know,
Speaker 3: which is what one of the boys is. Don't be
Speaker 3: weird about that. If you're an adult, teenage girls are like, oh,
Speaker 3: you don't have to hate the things they like. You
Speaker 3: can like call down a little bit. Uh, But yeah,
Speaker 3: writing about football for an audience of like teenagers is
Speaker 3: like fascinating because you have to assume that the audience
Speaker 3: knows very little and you have to figure out how
Speaker 3: much you want to give them so that they get
Speaker 3: it without like overwhelming them, which is like really just
Speaker 3: not at all what I wanted to do. But also yeah,
Speaker 3: if you're a sicko like me, you can be like, ooh,
Speaker 3: I'm really into what this offense is doing or I
Speaker 3: am really into this like on side kick play design.
Speaker 3: So I tried to like do I tried to do
Speaker 3: a little bit of both. And also, again, this is
Speaker 3: a transcoming of age story, so yeah, it's also dealing
Speaker 3: with you know, the horrors. So yep, ball plus horrors
Speaker 3: is what we're working with here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think, okay, we're going to get more
Speaker 2: into the politics of this in a second. But first
Speaker 2: I want to ask one ball question since I have
Speaker 2: now I have now introduced my audience to the fact
Speaker 2: that I talk about football by managing to get a
Speaker 2: rant about de Sean Watson on here for like ten minutes,
Speaker 2: the Sean Watson trade. But okay, my one ball question
Speaker 2: for this was how happy did it make you when
Speaker 2: you figure out a way to write a football team
Speaker 2: that does not use the forward pass? Oh man, it's.
Speaker 3: Without without spoiling what happens at the end of the
Speaker 3: act one turn, circumstances occur so that this high school
Speaker 3: football team has to move a player who is who
Speaker 3: is not a quarterback two quarterback, at which point passing
Speaker 3: just goes away and we are just running the ball, baby,
Speaker 3: we are. We are pounding the rock.
Speaker 2: It's so sick.
Speaker 3: It is kind of sort of like loosely, what I
Speaker 3: based this on was the year that the University of
Speaker 3: Kentucky football team, like all like every single quarterback got
Speaker 3: hurt and they were like, Okay, Lynn Bowden, you are
Speaker 3: our best wide receiver. We're just gonna put you a
Speaker 3: quarterback and you know, we're just gonna see what happens
Speaker 3: and that's like that was the fun of writing fictional
Speaker 3: football is that I can make my fictional football team
Speaker 3: do whatever I want and I don't want to ever
Speaker 3: see conservative trickery that is the forward pass, get it
Speaker 3: out of here. Yeah, it's is.
Speaker 2: One of the things that you're writing is that you
Speaker 2: are very much just like an old school like traditionalist
Speaker 2: football pound of the rock, like none of this, like
Speaker 2: none of none of this is like an RPO bullshit
Speaker 2: person which is which is also I don't know, it's
Speaker 2: just very funny that you have like you have like
Speaker 2: the football personality of like an extremely cranky, like seventy
Speaker 2: five year old like coach from like the seventies. Yep.
Speaker 3: And I'm a trans woman, yeah rules, which like again
Speaker 3: I tried down to do too much of it in
Speaker 3: this book. Like part of the reason that I made
Speaker 3: my main character a kicker, which we will also talk
Speaker 3: about other reasons later, but part of the reason is
Speaker 3: that kicking is this sort of like own separate salad
Speaker 3: off thing. So I really only have to like get
Speaker 3: the audience to understand kicking and what happens when Grace
Speaker 3: is on the field. I don't have to get into
Speaker 3: like what a football team that like never passes the ball,
Speaker 3: like is doing on a technical level. We don't have
Speaker 3: to do all that. I give you just enough that
Speaker 3: if you are a sick oh you're like, yeah, baby.
Speaker 2: Rules, this is the sickest offense of all time.
Speaker 3: But but also yeah, but also like you know, trying
Speaker 3: to u trying to help the queer kiddos understand that
Speaker 3: like running the ball is the official football position of
Speaker 3: the working class, of the politariat.
Speaker 2: You know, Okay, we're gonna get more into the class
Speaker 2: ynamics of football a second. But the place I kind
Speaker 2: of want to start in terms of, like you know,
Speaker 2: talking about the parts of this at art just ball
Speaker 2: is so in a lot of ways, this is a
Speaker 2: book about scriptlessness, which is something that I think, I
Speaker 2: don't know, like we've been seeing a sort of resurgence
Speaker 2: of trends or not resurchens, but I kind of like
Speaker 2: surgeons emergence. There we go, there we go, there we go. Yeah,
Speaker 2: of trans literature, and I think this is a very
Speaker 2: interesting angle to take on it. And it's you know,
Speaker 2: when I say scriplessness, it's about the ways in which
Speaker 2: trans women in particular don't have you know, sort of
Speaker 2: examples and paths to like follow. Right, there's not like
Speaker 2: a you're supposed to go from A to B two C.
Speaker 2: This is like what you're doing with your life and
Speaker 2: you have to just figure it out because suddenly you're
Speaker 2: you and you just you just have to you know,
Speaker 2: there's no rails, there's no guide, You just have to
Speaker 2: do it. I think the Sapatista line about it is
Speaker 2: that the road is made by walking. Can you talk
Speaker 2: about how like having to just figure the shit out
Speaker 2: influence the way that you write Grace and the way
Speaker 2: that you sort of write this book.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this is something that Grace struggles with a lot.
Speaker 3: I mean, like specific to her, it's because she's a
Speaker 3: trans woman who's playing football, something that if an openly
Speaker 3: trans woman has ever openly played, like American football, there
Speaker 3: is not a lot of documentation of that online. So
Speaker 3: like Grace, she is like walking a path that has
Speaker 3: like never existed before. But I think, like more broadly
Speaker 3: and more like thematically, there is that like Grace is
Speaker 3: also frequently I call her stupid and I don't think
Speaker 3: that she's stupid, but calm up. But Grace struggles a
Speaker 3: lot to like express herself. I would say, and like,
Speaker 3: I wanted her to like challenge what a reader might
Speaker 3: expect from a trans girl in young adult fiction. Specifically,
Speaker 3: we're like I think she's like frequently kind of like grading,
Speaker 3: or at least I find her grading. She is not
Speaker 3: traditionally feminine. I don't think she's unfeminine, but she like
Speaker 3: struggles a lot with like feeling okay enough to like
Speaker 3: express that about herself. Yeah, and like, I feel like
Speaker 3: a lot of stories about trans kids have this view
Speaker 3: of being a like younger transperson of like, well, it
Speaker 3: was always easy for me, and I took to femininity
Speaker 3: like a fish in water, and like this was like
Speaker 3: natural to me. I wanted to write a character for
Speaker 3: whom it is not necessarily natural for Grace to be
Speaker 3: this person, and I wanted her past and the way
Speaker 3: she is now to sort of like challenge a like
Speaker 3: cist reader specifically, but also in terms of scriptlousness in
Speaker 3: a more like macro way. There's not a lot of
Speaker 3: hya contemporary fiction about transgirl characters like at all. There
Speaker 3: is now, thankfully, a good amount of trans male representation
Speaker 3: in the genre, but there are a few authors who
Speaker 3: are out here writing transferm contemporary but like not a
Speaker 3: lot so like figuring out like where I wanted to
Speaker 3: like slot in to this like genre that is kind
Speaker 3: of like struggling to be born, you know, not a
Speaker 3: lot of transferm like seventeen year old protagonists who are
Speaker 3: like going to like parties and beer and worrying about
Speaker 3: whether or not they want to go to college, which
Speaker 3: is all is all stuff I wanted to like touch here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think there's a bunch of levels of
Speaker 2: this stuff sort of operates on and I think it's
Speaker 2: very like I don't know, like a lot of being trands.
Speaker 2: And I say it, at least for me, I don't know,
Speaker 2: like maybe maybe this was different other people. Was just
Speaker 2: like having no idea what the fuck you're doing and
Speaker 2: just you know, waking up one day and realizing like shit, wait,
Speaker 2: what the fuck do you mean I'm doing this? And
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, I got think about this, Like
Speaker 2: doing this job was like wait, what the fuck I'm
Speaker 2: a trans podcaster? Like what like I can't even do
Speaker 2: my makeup? Well, Like, what the fuck are we doing here?
Speaker 3: Yep?
Speaker 2: I think that like an never think that I've talked
Speaker 2: about to talk about this a lot on the show. Is,
Speaker 2: but it's also just like how kind of like normal
Speaker 2: the trans girls who just like suddenly something blows up
Speaker 2: and they're like Internet famers or whatever the fuck are that.
Speaker 2: They're just like some kid until like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: there's just like an explosion and everyone is suddenly interested
Speaker 2: in every intimate detail of your life and is trying
Speaker 2: to deconstruct it in order to destroy you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Grace is. Again I don't really want to like
Speaker 3: spoil act act three stuff here, but later on in
Speaker 3: the story, Grace achieves some amount of like Internet notoriety
Speaker 3: for what she's doing. And yeah, Grace is like an
Speaker 3: extremely typical kid. She has like typical kid problems. But
Speaker 3: then this like microscope gets put on her and she's
Speaker 3: she is sort of like forced to like become this
Speaker 3: like different thing that like if she wants to be
Speaker 3: that thing someday, it's not now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think in a lot of ways, my book is
Speaker 3: about how we ask teenagers to like do too much
Speaker 3: and be too much. But like, especially trans kids, when
Speaker 3: you transition at any age, you are building the plane
Speaker 3: of your personality while you are flying it baby, yep,
Speaker 3: And like that's so much pressure to put on anyone,
Speaker 3: but like especially anyone who is a kid, is just
Speaker 3: like there's a lot of pressure, and I wanted to
Speaker 3: I wanted to like juxtapose the parts of Grace's experience
Speaker 3: that like a like sis boy or girl could read
Speaker 3: and be like, yep, I also don't know where I
Speaker 3: want to go to college. But also like sort of
Speaker 3: like show like well because she is like this, she
Speaker 3: is facing this like unreal level of scrutiny that is
Speaker 3: like not normal, deeply unnatural and like fucked up and
Speaker 3: like unfair.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of unfair, we have to go to ads.
Speaker 2: We come back. That's one of my better pivots. I'm
Speaker 2: proud of that one. We come back for you to
Speaker 2: talk about masculinity. We are back. So One of the
Speaker 2: Boys is weirdly the second football involved book about a
Speaker 2: trans woman that I've read in the last year, And
Speaker 2: I think it's fascinating because in the like pure archetypal
Speaker 2: sense from like structuralless anthropology, it is like a pure
Speaker 2: structural inversion of Alison Greeves is how to Fly, because
Speaker 2: how to Fly is this is also a good book.
Speaker 2: But How to Fly is about a girl getting forced
Speaker 2: femed to escape masculine violence, why they come and a
Speaker 2: cheerleader and one of the boys is about a trans
Speaker 2: woman going back into, like into a hypermasculine space to
Speaker 2: become a football player. It's like they're just literally perfect
Speaker 2: structural versions of each other. And so I wanted to
Speaker 2: ask you about how are you thinking about doing this
Speaker 2: thing right, which which is going back into these these
Speaker 2: hyper masculine spaces that a lot of people come out
Speaker 2: of pre transition, you know, when when you were sort
Speaker 2: of writing this, because this is not a thing that
Speaker 2: people tended to write when they're writing about transfems.
Speaker 3: Totally and sort of the like irregularity of Grace's path
Speaker 3: this way is like one of the reasons why I
Speaker 3: was like drawn to like writing a sports story about
Speaker 3: like a trans girl playing football specifically, is because like
Speaker 3: I probably have a like more I don't know if
Speaker 3: complicated is the word, but I have like a very
Speaker 3: like interesting relationship with masculinity. And as much as I'm
Speaker 3: like fascinated by it, like I think it is like
Speaker 3: endlessly interesting to see the ways that like men construct
Speaker 3: the like various kinds of masculinity that they live in
Speaker 3: and the like various outcomes that men can end up
Speaker 3: finding via their weird distinct masculinities. For instance, for me personally,
Speaker 3: I'm still in my like old high school like boys'
Speaker 3: group chat like that we like started like a decade ago,
Speaker 3: and like I have never once had a problem fitting
Speaker 3: in there. When they all found out I was trans,
Speaker 3: was like, oh shit, cool, whatever, we're gonna keep talking
Speaker 3: about like the Knicks, you know. And like, again, Grace's
Speaker 3: journey with masculinity is different from mine, but kind of
Speaker 3: like her, I have like some amount of like difficulty
Speaker 3: and like very masculine sports spaces when I was a kid.
Speaker 3: But then like once you adapt and once you like
Speaker 3: learn how to like perform this thing, Like I never
Speaker 3: had a problem existing in these worlds. And like something
Speaker 3: that Grace is really annoyed by is that people are
Speaker 3: always like I just can't believe that, like you would
Speaker 3: be trans, And what is hidden in there is like
Speaker 3: you were kind of a dick. You were like kind
Speaker 3: of a douchebag. Yeah, So, like I very much wanted
Speaker 3: to write a trans protagonist who has a relationship with
Speaker 3: like her past self and with her male friends that
Speaker 3: was like a little more complicated, where like she has
Speaker 3: a like very good, solid group of like male friends
Speaker 3: who are not like perfect, but are still like that's
Speaker 3: my friend. So like I think for my friends and
Speaker 3: for a lot of trans women's male friends, they're like, well,
Speaker 3: I was friends with you before, so like you're still
Speaker 3: like you know, you're still you. I'm still gonna be
Speaker 3: cool with you. So I guess that means that I
Speaker 3: have to think about like that I have to like, okay,
Speaker 3: now I have to like think about how like trans
Speaker 3: people are like treated by society more broadly. And it's
Speaker 3: like interesting seeing men in my life like suddenly become
Speaker 3: like cognizant of like transitions, and it's all like personal.
Speaker 3: It's all like, well, I know this person, and therefore
Speaker 3: I'm going to show compassion to this person that I like.
Speaker 3: And then you know, politics starting at the personal and
Speaker 3: sort of like growing out from there.
Speaker 2: So I want to ask a bit a bit more
Speaker 2: just digging into sort of the masculinity aspect specifically, because
Speaker 2: one of the things I think is I don't know
Speaker 2: that there's a part of being a transfem that isn't
Speaker 2: super well understood outside of it, which is sort of
Speaker 2: a lot of trends women have a phase where you
Speaker 2: really try to be a man, right, where you get
Speaker 2: like really into like hypermasculinity in order to try to
Speaker 2: like yeah, try to make yourself do it. Like I
Speaker 2: had gamer mea phase which was a fiasco. Not even
Speaker 2: gaming me. I'm still sort of gamer, but I had,
Speaker 2: like you know, I had I had like like top
Speaker 2: point two five percent heartstone player, like the ag a
Speaker 2: wreck a disasters, substantively a worst person. Yeah, and you
Speaker 2: know so and like that's the thing that has a
Speaker 2: lot of complicated social ripples. Were like this this process
Speaker 2: if like like doing this, you know, sometimes it's like
Speaker 2: your final them. It's just it's just what you're doing
Speaker 2: to try to get by. It's like trying to force
Speaker 2: yourself to be a man and like do this masculinity
Speaker 2: in a way that's like really shit because you're trying
Speaker 2: to like reconcile it with yourself. Yes, So this is
Speaker 2: like a thing that a lot of like transforms experience.
Speaker 2: I think it's written interestingly in this book. I was
Speaker 2: always wondering. I don't know, like like the way you
Speaker 2: talk about being in this in like fitting into these
Speaker 2: spaces is as like okay, well I figured out how
Speaker 2: to like do the performance okay, and then it was
Speaker 2: sort of fine. So I'm wondering, like this is almost
Speaker 2: universally seen as like this is like a formal structural
Speaker 2: violence enacted on you that you sort of have to
Speaker 2: like do this. But there's also a kind of, I
Speaker 2: don't know, a kind of complicated dynamic of like these
Speaker 2: people are still like your friends and you like them,
Speaker 2: and I guess I want to know sort of how
Speaker 2: how you've been thinking about like that specific angle and
Speaker 2: like this sort of process of fitting in and becoming
Speaker 2: it also just this is sort of unbecoming you have
Speaker 2: to do to like become yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so my book has flashback sequences that are written
Speaker 3: in second person. This is mostly a book that's written
Speaker 3: in first person. But I tried to like really lean
Speaker 3: into this like phenomenon of like closeted trans women like
Speaker 3: butching up at like certain moments in their lives in
Speaker 3: order to like pass and cram down this like feeling
Speaker 3: that is like really fucking scary at first. Yeah, So,
Speaker 3: like I want the second person grace flashbacks to her
Speaker 3: like starting fights and being a like asshole to her girlfriend.
Speaker 3: I want them to feel like jarring and I want
Speaker 3: them to feel like Grace is being a bastard in
Speaker 3: a lot of these flashbacks, but like I also wanted
Speaker 3: to show like how she gets there in terms of
Speaker 3: like various moments earlier in her life where she was
Speaker 3: sort of like shunted into this more like masculine path
Speaker 3: in order to like pass and like not be bullied
Speaker 3: or like other eyes, and like it definitely is. It's tough,
Speaker 3: and I think that I think that I personally have
Speaker 3: a like complicated relationship with Like, yeah, like I hated
Speaker 3: football when I played it, and I did it because
Speaker 3: like I like the sport obviously because I'm a fan,
Speaker 3: and because I wrote this book about it, and because
Speaker 3: I write about football sometimes and I boast about it
Speaker 3: a lot. But like playing it made me miserable, But
Speaker 3: like I also be friends with that team who I
Speaker 3: still talk to. So it's like I definitely wanted to
Speaker 3: feel like violent and imposed, but also like it isn't
Speaker 3: something that can be like erased. It's something that you
Speaker 3: have to deal with. It's something that like as you
Speaker 3: grow up and as you continue to self actualize, you
Speaker 3: have to like decide what parts of that version of
Speaker 3: yourself are worth keeping. And what parts aren't. And that's
Speaker 3: like something that I wanted to show, like Grace struggle
Speaker 3: through kind of in real time. She's like very early
Speaker 3: in her transition, and she doesn't know how she wants
Speaker 3: to present, and she doesn't know how much of her
Speaker 3: old life and the people in her old life that
Speaker 3: want to associate with her, or does existing on this
Speaker 3: football team dragger back towards something that she doesn't want
Speaker 3: to be anymore. It's all stuff that I wanted to
Speaker 3: play with. And it's not like overtly political, but is
Speaker 3: like subtextually political, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's it's it's political in the sense that,
Speaker 2: like you know that we were talking about sort of
Speaker 2: scriptlessness earlier, right, And I think one of the one
Speaker 2: of the sort of alienating factors about being trends is that, like,
Speaker 2: especially if you're like kind of alone and you're like,
Speaker 2: you know, like you're like the only transferm that you're
Speaker 2: spending time with, right, This is just true for like
Speaker 2: a lot of things, like a lot of how sort
Speaker 2: of oppression functions and a lot of how violence functions
Speaker 2: is by convincing you that this is the only you're
Speaker 2: the only person's ever gone through this m and there
Speaker 2: are always going to be unique aspects of it. But like,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the ways that alienation has maintained
Speaker 2: is by convincing you that no one else can understand
Speaker 2: the thing that's happening to you, and that because no
Speaker 2: one else has ever done it. And it turns out like, no, actually,
Speaker 2: this is something that like all of us have gone through.
Speaker 2: And when you sort of start to realize this and
Speaker 2: the kind of solidarity that they could be built based
Speaker 2: on this collective well of experience we've all gone through,
Speaker 2: and how it can be you know, changed by actual
Speaker 2: actions of a bunch of people working together. It changes things.
Speaker 2: So I think I think it is in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways political in the sense that like, in order
Speaker 2: to have politics, you have to have sort of like
Speaker 2: collective assemblages of people who fucking understand each other and
Speaker 2: to understand that they're not alone, that they can do
Speaker 2: things totally. And this is part of how you get
Speaker 2: to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we can talk a little bit more about the
Speaker 3: like very start of something that could be seen as
Speaker 3: a political awakening that Grace has in this book, but like, yeah,
Speaker 3: part of the reason that she isn't perfect is because
Speaker 3: she doesn't know any other, Like there are no other
Speaker 3: transmitting characters in this book, And that was very deliberate. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Grace is like on our own. She is like figuring
Speaker 3: this shit out as she goes yep. And I wanted
Speaker 3: it to feel rough and like ad hoc y because
Speaker 3: like that's how it is for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: That's how it was, like.
Speaker 2: Go through it by walking. Yeah, yeah, I guess. I
Speaker 2: guess I want to kind of move into the more
Speaker 2: directly political realm. Why do I think that's interesting about
Speaker 2: this book is that like Grace and this is something
Speaker 2: that like I my brain has been so melted by
Speaker 2: having been like the politics kids since I was like fifteen,
Speaker 2: because I was like my high school was like interrupted
Speaker 2: in the middle of it by be trying to overseell
Speaker 2: the Turkish government, and so like my brain is so melted.
Speaker 2: We'll get aired one one day. We already can't go
Speaker 2: there for our coverage of Kurdish gorilla movements. Very good stuff.
Speaker 2: You'll find many, many such things, as I think, But
Speaker 2: like one of the interesting persons about this is that
Speaker 2: Grace is like not political, right, and most of the
Speaker 2: people in this aren't. And there's kind of a divide
Speaker 2: between the politics knowers who are like the more uh
Speaker 2: you know, who are like okay, yeah, like we are
Speaker 2: like the queer kids. We are like the activist kids,
Speaker 2: and then like the you know, like the ballplayers, and
Speaker 2: then Grace sort of fits more into the like not
Speaker 2: even more into Grace isn't like a politics person. Grace
Speaker 2: is a like, hey, like transphobia is bad, we shouldn't
Speaker 2: do that, but also like just wants to fucking go
Speaker 2: kick a go kick a rock between two posts. So yeah,
Speaker 2: can you talk about like how you sort of decided
Speaker 2: to make her just be like kid who doesn't follow politics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so like if that was like not any kind
Speaker 3: of like statement about how like politics is bad, you know,
Speaker 3: that was like Grace's seventeen, and most seventeen year olds,
Speaker 3: if they have politics at all, have like completely incoherent politics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I was like holy shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So like Grace has the like barest outlines of
Speaker 3: like ideology and those were like put on her by
Speaker 3: people in her life. We know that her dad is
Speaker 3: a union man, and from a small age she has
Speaker 3: internalized that unions are good. Does she know why? Probably not?
Speaker 3: But or also we know that her friend tab who
Speaker 3: is Bori, has been like educating her on like Puerto
Speaker 3: Rican independence, which was like, which was a like that
Speaker 3: was a very funny line, right because because Grace is
Speaker 3: just like dumb as shit white kid from the suburbs.
Speaker 3: But so like inasmuch as she's like piecing together the
Speaker 3: person she is bit by bit, she's also kind of
Speaker 3: like piecing what she thinks about the world together along
Speaker 3: with that in terms of like most of the straight
Speaker 3: white players on the football team like do not have
Speaker 3: like basically don't have politics. There's a scene where one
Speaker 3: of my minor characters is like, yo, I just figured
Speaker 3: out that, like trans phobia is bad, and I loved
Speaker 3: I fucking loved writing that. But like, I imagine that
Speaker 3: up until recently, Grace was exactly like this and just
Speaker 3: like just like yep, I'm a middle lower middle class
Speaker 3: white straight boy, air quotes on all of that, she
Speaker 3: never had any kind of like thought about that. That
Speaker 3: does not reflect what was going on in my life
Speaker 3: when I was a teenager, because I was a very
Speaker 3: annoying oh like me and a friend of mine, Chavon,
Speaker 3: got in trouble for putting a Bernie Sanders twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: sticker on her locker, because that's the kind of shit
Speaker 3: we were doing in high school in twenty fifteen. So like,
Speaker 3: I was like very much had sort of like vacant liberal,
Speaker 3: middle class kid politics, but like Grace Grace is. I
Speaker 3: imagine that like later in her life she kind of
Speaker 3: has more political thoughts in her head. But I also
Speaker 3: kind of imagine that her brain works like I don't
Speaker 3: know if you've played Disco Elysium, but I kind of imagine.
Speaker 3: I kind of imagine Grace has a like thought cabinet,
Speaker 3: and it's like she has like she has like two
Speaker 3: slots in it. Oh, she just like cannot hold that
Speaker 3: many ideas in her brain at once. So she's she
Speaker 3: is in all aspects of her life trying her vest
Speaker 3: and trying to get better. And yeah, I want to
Speaker 3: like I feel like a lot of contemporary YA that
Speaker 3: comes out these days, a lot of the kids have
Speaker 3: like overly coherent politics. I was like, nah, nah, I
Speaker 3: wanted to write a kid who has like good intentions
Speaker 3: but has no idea what she's doing.
Speaker 2: Yep, God, my brain's doing the Trump flying. In many
Speaker 2: cases have no idea what they're doing. Yeah. Oh, Jesus
Speaker 2: crushing braids are broken. Okay, speaking of things being broken,
Speaker 2: the products and services to support this podcast unrelated statements.
Speaker 2: We are back, Okay. So, having now gotten like many
Speaker 2: far into this interview without directly being like, here's the
Speaker 2: football politics, let's talk about the politics of football. Because
Speaker 2: one of the things I think is fascinating about, you know,
Speaker 2: the way you're sort of talking about this, and the
Speaker 2: way that Grace like runs into this, and the way
Speaker 2: that this is just like a thing that happens in
Speaker 2: the US, which is that like giant portions of the
Speaker 2: entire US economy and like like structural elements of the
Speaker 2: US like education system from like the ground up, and
Speaker 2: like all of these sort of contracting services, like massive
Speaker 2: portions of like how every single part of the education
Speaker 2: system from like fucking like middle school through college are
Speaker 2: all bent around this game, yep. And I think one
Speaker 2: of the things that happens there is that like the
Speaker 2: kind of like default ambient politics, it is very conservative,
Speaker 2: and I think in ways you know, are very easy
Speaker 2: to understand, and that when people tend to talk about this,
Speaker 2: they immediately go like, well, yeah, so, like you know,
Speaker 2: like the left is talking about football it's like you're
Speaker 2: talking about the militarism, which is like, yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: they're fucking flying jets over games like there, we're not
Speaker 2: even in wars anymore. In terms of like US ground
Speaker 2: troops deployed, Like why the fuck are their troops showing
Speaker 2: up on the field. There's like the cult of masculinity stuff.
Speaker 2: There's you know, I mean, like there's been some engagement
Speaker 2: now with the racial politics of it with Kaepernick. People
Speaker 2: realize like, holy shit, wait, there's been like stuff happening
Speaker 2: here for ages, and you know, when you get sort
Speaker 2: of the masculinity politics. But there's I think a lot
Speaker 2: of stuff here that we don't talk about on the
Speaker 2: left in terms of like the class dynamics of this
Speaker 2: and the way that football I'm just like functions in
Speaker 2: a lot of very very weird ways in terms of
Speaker 2: like sucking together this weird pool of a bunch of
Speaker 2: like non white working class kids and like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: fucking see, if I knew ball, I could I could
Speaker 2: pull an example off the top of my head of
Speaker 2: like some some quarterback prospect you'd spent these family had
Speaker 2: spent like two million dollars on like personal trainers for him.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Yeah, I grew up sort of like middle lower
Speaker 3: middle class and like playing football specifically, and I grew
Speaker 3: up playing mostly like soccer and baseball, a little bit
Speaker 3: of basketball, but I sort of like I sort of
Speaker 3: ended up playing football when I was like a teenager
Speaker 3: because I was large, and that's how that works, yep.
Speaker 3: And like in terms of like connecting with people who
Speaker 3: weren't white and of my exact class status or higher
Speaker 3: like football, so it happened. Man, like most of my
Speaker 3: earliest friendships with black kids with Hispanic kids was like
Speaker 3: all through football, and like it is a like very
Speaker 3: interesting sort of like class and racial melting pot at
Speaker 3: least at like I went to a like pretty big
Speaker 3: suburban middle and high school, but like lots of lots
Speaker 3: of very different kinds of people ended up at my school,
Speaker 3: and lots of very different kinds of people ended up
Speaker 3: playing football, And like you're gonna get a more diverse
Speaker 3: slice of that student population on a football team than
Speaker 3: you will on the fucking yearbook committee or in like
Speaker 3: school band, class government, whatever. All of that came very
Speaker 3: naturally to me in terms of writing this book, where
Speaker 3: like I've ended up with a book that's like quite diverse.
Speaker 3: But I didn't really do that on purpose. I just
Speaker 3: kind of like, who are the kinds of kids who
Speaker 3: end up playing football? And it's like everyone you have
Speaker 3: like Poorish kids like Grace, and then you have like
Speaker 3: Ritish kids like Ahmed or Dre in my book, who
Speaker 3: like I very much wanted to like show that, like
Speaker 3: maybe one of the reasons that Grace is going to
Speaker 3: end up having a more coherent politics is because, like
Speaker 3: she has friends of different backgrounds that she might not
Speaker 3: if she had not ended up playing this this like
Speaker 3: fucked up, evil, violent game. To be clear, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think any football fan who is honest with themselves
Speaker 3: and has his politics that are not evil has a
Speaker 3: very complicated relationship to the game for a like variety
Speaker 3: of reasons. Because it like chews up people's brains and
Speaker 3: there's that, but there's also like implied conservative politics. There's
Speaker 3: also a big factor here is that high school football,
Speaker 3: even at a public school like mine, the religion is
Speaker 3: all over it, baby, like all over it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a huge part of it.
Speaker 3: Jason Kirk of The Shutdown Full Cast is working on
Speaker 3: a book about the history of Christianity and Talls Football
Speaker 3: called it Church in State. I'm very fucking excited for
Speaker 3: that book.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, yeah, that sounds awesome.
Speaker 3: But it's just like really interesting political space because of
Speaker 3: how diverse it is and because of how like homogeneous
Speaker 3: a lot of the like religion and politics.
Speaker 2: Of it are, I guess if that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And it's sounds so weird because like, you know, so
Speaker 2: like I don't know, I refuse to watch college football,
Speaker 2: Like I draw the line there, like I'm not doing this.
Speaker 2: I'm not doing this. They can't make me watch like
Speaker 2: fucking Colorado's State or whatever the fuck. But like one
Speaker 2: of the things that you get in the NFL too,
Speaker 2: is it's like, on the one hand, like you have
Speaker 2: all of this really really conservative shit right, like every
Speaker 2: fucking everything is God. Like every single time someone holds
Speaker 2: a thing in front of a player there there's like
Speaker 2: at least three lines of like all of this is
Speaker 2: possible because of God, and like someone's like it's like
Speaker 2: that the only place you see people regularly saying Christ
Speaker 2: is King where they're not also like holding an ar
Speaker 2: to like a non white person's head, you know. So
Speaker 2: so that there's all of this like really really conservative
Speaker 2: religious shit. But then also there's like a union, yes
Speaker 2: that everyone's in and it's like a large like I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not that powerful. And there's there's weirdness there too,
Speaker 2: because you get to see all of the really interesting
Speaker 2: dynamics of unions that you don't really get outside of
Speaker 2: kind of like I mean, like I guess like SAG
Speaker 2: kind of has this, but it's this union in this
Speaker 2: place where one the owners have like an unbelievable amount
Speaker 2: of control, like a hideous amount of power, and they
Speaker 2: can turn through people really quickly. They have you know,
Speaker 2: these are some of the richest people in the world.
Speaker 2: And then also secondly there's there's this like marketization force
Speaker 2: that's happening where you know, you get to see in
Speaker 2: miniature the way that capitalism has like moved to to
Speaker 2: sort of deal with with unions, to deal with sort
Speaker 2: of the class movements of the twentieth century, which is
Speaker 2: that like they're also trying to turn all of these
Speaker 2: kids like into entrepreneurs.
Speaker 3: M I think in the NFL, I think it's more
Speaker 3: coherent because there is a players association, not a union.
Speaker 2: A players association, although also also shout out shoutouts the
Speaker 2: PA for backing are for backing a unionization attempt here,
Speaker 2: Thanks for that. I don't know if it mattered, but
Speaker 2: that's a lot to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also, like sports players, unions are fascinating because these
Speaker 3: are people who are part of a union who are
Speaker 3: like at least some of them millionaires. So it's yep,
Speaker 3: a very interesting sort of like class dynamic happening there.
Speaker 3: But like call it like the college game right now
Speaker 3: is just charn Oldhouse. I mean, like it is better
Speaker 3: now that players are being paid like unambiguous good that
Speaker 3: players can profit off of their name, image and likeness.
Speaker 3: But again it makes like I remember, like I'm not
Speaker 3: on Twitter much anymore, but like in the like early
Speaker 3: Elon days, you started getting Twitter ads and these were
Speaker 3: sixteen and seventeen year old high school football players.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The post is like huddle highlights and like a like
Speaker 3: quick recruiting profile of like hey, class of twenty twenty
Speaker 3: seven defensive back wide receiver out of Palo Alto, and
Speaker 3: just like blasting that onto like Twitter timelines everywhere, just
Speaker 3: like please God, somebody see my Like, somebody see these
Speaker 3: fucking huddle highlights. The feudalism stage of high school and
Speaker 3: college ball has like ended, and now we are in
Speaker 3: the no regulations baby, just like completely unfettered capitalism stage.
Speaker 2: Can we explain like just how like very briefly, people
Speaker 2: who do not know any football, like what name, image, likenesses,
Speaker 2: and how this is different from like a system that
Speaker 2: would be normal, which is you pay the players.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so for like seventy years, the precedent with college
Speaker 3: football in the United States of America is that all
Speaker 3: these players are amateurs and they cannot be compensated in
Speaker 3: any way. They cannot profit off of their name, image likeness,
Speaker 3: so that means that they can't like sell autographs. The
Speaker 3: school isn't going to sell jerseys that have their name
Speaker 3: on them. You are meant to make exactly zero dollars
Speaker 3: from your time as a amateur college athlete. And this
Speaker 3: was the ironclad system for like seventy years, and then
Speaker 3: it kind of got like destroyed overnight. Yeah, when the
Speaker 3: NCAA finally legalizes players profiting off of their name, image,
Speaker 3: and likeness, so that means that they could sign like
Speaker 3: endorsement deals. And when this was first made a thing
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one, it mostly manifested in like the
Speaker 3: coldest Crawford for the Nebraska football team is filming a
Speaker 3: ad for a local air conditioning company because his name
Speaker 3: is Coldest And it was sort of like very like
Speaker 3: quaint and cute at first, but then nil collectives got going,
Speaker 3: which are these I don't even know how to how
Speaker 3: to like God described nil collective is these are like
Speaker 3: investment groups that operate independently of universities that pool resources
Speaker 3: and then pay players for like extremely scant public appearances
Speaker 3: so that they can say that they're just profiting off
Speaker 3: of name, image and likeness, but in reality they exist
Speaker 3: as a way to pay college football players without paying
Speaker 3: them via schools. Now there is the house settlement happening
Speaker 3: right now, which colleges will soon be able to probably
Speaker 3: maybe God who knows, will soon be able to directly
Speaker 3: pay college athletes a certain amount of money. Lord knows
Speaker 3: where that's going. Like this stuff is all changing at
Speaker 3: like lightnings at like yeah, so like we have just
Speaker 3: have gone from like nobody gets paid for anything to
Speaker 3: like we are in fucking like gilded age robber bear
Speaker 3: and shit where like yeah, because none of this shit
Speaker 3: is regulated, schools or an aisle collectives will go back
Speaker 3: on agreements and everything's negotiated every year. They're like like
Speaker 3: it's it's a fucking mess. Yeah in the college game
Speaker 3: right now. So I mean all of that makes the
Speaker 3: like NFL having a kind of shitty union look a
Speaker 3: lot better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I just kind of thinking about the kind
Speaker 2: of like this is my way of kind of bringing
Speaker 2: it back to transgender but like one of the things
Speaker 2: that I've been thinking about a lot in terms of
Speaker 2: I mean just like what I do, right, and but
Speaker 2: also just like the way that capitalism has been moving
Speaker 2: in the lass like few decades is it's increasingly about
Speaker 2: you know because like okay, so, like capitalism's fundamental base
Speaker 2: has always been like you sell your labor, h right,
Speaker 2: but now it's it's it's been increasing shows for me
Speaker 2: into like you're selling like the image of yourself. You're
Speaker 2: selling your identity, you're selling like yeah, you know, you're
Speaker 2: selling your personality. You're selling as much of like and
Speaker 2: this is this is what name image likeness is.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's like, we're not gonna pay you for like your labor,
Speaker 2: which is like you playing football. We're gonna pay you
Speaker 2: for like this nebulous image of yourself. So you get
Speaker 2: all these people who like are are you know, you're
Speaker 2: forced to turn all of yourself into an object for consumption,
Speaker 2: and like I think that's the thing with like fucking
Speaker 2: I don't know, That's what I'm doing on this show
Speaker 2: right to a large extent, like I am like the
Speaker 2: Asian transgender and like, yeah, obviously, like all of this
Speaker 2: is like research, but it's also you know, this is
Speaker 2: what like brand and identity is, and this has had
Speaker 2: these like seismic impacts on the entire global economy. Like
Speaker 2: I talked about this in an episode on when I talked
Speaker 2: about Temu, but like Tamu is literally the product of
Speaker 2: this happening with Chinese farmers. We're like Chinese farmers were
Speaker 2: doing this like farm social media thing, and so almost
Speaker 2: like holy shit, what if we like become these things
Speaker 2: where they were selling food but they're also just selling
Speaker 2: that like the identity brand of like themselves as farmers,
Speaker 2: and Timbu was like, well a PDD, which is the
Speaker 2: Chinese company, was like, what if we just brought all
Speaker 2: of these things together in one spot so you could
Speaker 2: just do directed like consumer sales through it. And now
Speaker 2: that's like the entire fucking economy is just this morass
Speaker 2: of like selling every single part of yourself and I
Speaker 2: don't know, like I'm wondering how much of yourself did
Speaker 2: you have to do you have to like leave in
Speaker 2: a book like this, and how much of it can
Speaker 2: you like kind of like keep away from the market.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, so.
Speaker 2: You're good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh gosh, everything is uh, everything is personal brands.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: You know, there's a lot of pressure as an author
Speaker 3: to to use all your social media is in a
Speaker 3: very particular way. You're supposed to You're you're supposed to
Speaker 3: make your cute little canva graphics, uh, and like talking
Speaker 3: about your character and engage with like prompt posts on
Speaker 3: Instagram and you know whatever social media du jore And like,
Speaker 3: my personal experience is a little irregular because I do
Speaker 3: have some amount of like sports, Twitter, niche micro celebrity posting,
Speaker 3: so like I'm not out here making promotional tiktoks for
Speaker 3: one of the boys. That was like something that was
Speaker 3: very important to me. Was like, oh, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to be doing that, thank god. Fuck that shit. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the way that authors have to promote themselves and
Speaker 3: turn themselves into brands is like a whole other can
Speaker 3: of worms.
Speaker 2: That like sucks.
Speaker 3: So like, Thankfully, I think I've managed to avoid the
Speaker 3: most alienating like forms of that. But I did have
Speaker 3: a few not too long ago, very confidently state that
Speaker 3: this book was loosely based on my life story, which
Speaker 3: was news to me. I was, like, word, I didn't
Speaker 3: know that. So, like, I think, especially if you write
Speaker 3: fiction as a person of any marginalized identity, if you're
Speaker 3: if you're black, if you're gay, if you're trans, whatever,
Speaker 3: people are going to assume that you're writing like auto fiction.
Speaker 3: Because I think a lot of people react to women's
Speaker 3: fiction this way, because I think a lot of people
Speaker 3: subconsciously have a hard time believing that like women have
Speaker 3: interior lives and can like imagine things, you know, Like,
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people assume that authors are
Speaker 3: always writing about themselves and writing about the people in
Speaker 3: their lives, and uh, I mean, I'm writing about experiences
Speaker 3: that I have had similar ones too, but like naw dog,
Speaker 3: that is not how this works.
Speaker 2: There's a really great I say about this by a
Speaker 2: friend of mine named Rosemary Hoe, who's absolutely brilliant writer,
Speaker 2: who wrote about the she's's writing about Zady Smith, and
Speaker 2: one of the things that she talks about is like
Speaker 2: the way that people just assume that Zadi that like
Speaker 2: Zadie Smith's politics are just like didactically coming out of
Speaker 2: the mouth of a character, and like, well, no, that's
Speaker 2: not how this shit works, Like yeah it is.
Speaker 3: Uh it's frustrating, and I think like a lot of
Speaker 3: authors have their own experiences with this, so uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean I like, you have to turn yourself into
Speaker 3: some kind of brand. That's why I'm going on podcasts,
Speaker 3: you know. So that's all, uh, you know, that's fun,
Speaker 3: but uh, I'm trying not to like, you know, completely
Speaker 3: give myself over to the fucking torment nexus, you know.
Speaker 2: And there's like, I don't know, the this is also
Speaker 2: just like this is a way you can just completely
Speaker 2: lose your mind. I don't know if I've ever actually
Speaker 2: talked about this on the show. Weirdly, one of the
Speaker 2: people whose career trajectory is the most similar to Minus
Speaker 2: is Asian American writer named Lesley Yang, who was like
Speaker 2: this guy who got brought in to write about like
Speaker 2: I think it was Columbine. It's like some mass shooting
Speaker 2: that was like a Korean kid did and his friends
Speaker 2: were like, hey, you're Asian right about this, Oh God,
Speaker 2: and he you know, for a bit he was like
Speaker 2: he was like duh, Like he was like he was
Speaker 2: like the guy who was like the big like Asian American,
Speaker 2: like this is like the literary thinker. He was like
Speaker 2: interviewing Aaron Schwartz. He was doing like profiles of a
Speaker 2: bunch of like interesting people, and then he just became
Speaker 2: this like incredibly boring, bog standard reactionary and he became
Speaker 2: one of these A very common kind of person who
Speaker 2: you experience on the right is like someone who's experienced
Speaker 2: who's like understanding of race comes from like watching sports
Speaker 2: where they're like there are black players in basketball and
Speaker 2: there's a bunch of them, and because of that, this
Speaker 2: means that like actually black people like overrepresented and like
Speaker 2: as a class, they're like privilege or whatever the fuck
Speaker 2: because there's just like a bunch of black basketball players
Speaker 2: and I don't know, I think it's like there's like
Speaker 2: a really interesting intersection here of like the way that
Speaker 2: people understand politics as just like politics are just like
Speaker 2: the thing that I see on my screen when I'm
Speaker 2: watching football, and how we have to sort of like
Speaker 2: just deal with that shit and deal with the sort
Speaker 2: of micro identity formation that is real but also isn't
Speaker 2: like a depiction of what the world is.
Speaker 1: M m.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So one of the interesting things in this book is
Speaker 2: that like the right wing media, like right wing football media,
Speaker 2: kind of isn't in it that much really, which I
Speaker 2: think is fascinating And I wonder part of how much
Speaker 2: of this is just that, like this was kind of
Speaker 2: a book that was a real action being written before,
Speaker 2: like Aaron Rodgers was going up Pat McAfee show in
Speaker 2: front of like half a million people every single day
Speaker 2: and like screaming about trans people.
Speaker 3: M hm. So this book has excerpts of like articles
Speaker 3: and outside media and like social media, et cetera. Originally
Speaker 3: it had like a lot more. I had to cut
Speaker 3: a lot in order to make this book like legible
Speaker 3: as a book. This book is already like pushing the
Speaker 3: edges of what you could really communicate in ya in
Speaker 3: terms of like I have a lot of characters, I
Speaker 3: have a lot of shit going on, So like part
Speaker 3: of it is just that, like I had to like
Speaker 3: you know, trim et cetera. But like, originally it had
Speaker 3: a lot more of that stuff, and there were like
Speaker 3: interstitial snippets from a fictional sort of like football podcaster
Speaker 3: guy who is like Pat McAfee and all of the
Speaker 3: like barstool former athlete podcasters, Yeah, in a blender, and
Speaker 3: he like he was this like really pathetic former like
Speaker 3: special team or linebacker who just like keeps reliving the
Speaker 3: fucking glory days. Yeah. Eventually I just had to like
Speaker 3: refocus and like, yeah, yeah, bring that conflict closer to
Speaker 3: home with like school administration's kind of shitty, and like
Speaker 3: there are plenty of dudes on the football team who
Speaker 3: also suck. So I kind of like left it in
Speaker 3: via some like shitty tweets that you see, or you
Speaker 3: get a lot of it, like indirectly you can imagine
Speaker 3: what is happening on the fucking Pat McAfee show.
Speaker 2: Oh my fucking god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But like also part of it is what you
Speaker 3: said that the weird timeline of publishing means that I
Speaker 3: started writing this book in February twenty twenty one, wrote
Speaker 3: the majority in twenty twenty two, and edit it in
Speaker 3: twenty three and twenty four, and like kind of this
Speaker 3: like very very organized anti trans reaction was not as
Speaker 3: prevalent in twenty twenty one at all like I kind
Speaker 3: of had to like track it as it started to
Speaker 3: like really like form up a drill time. This is
Speaker 3: not the world that I thought I was gonna write
Speaker 3: my stupid little football book. Yeah, and like have it
Speaker 3: emerge into a lot of people are say that this
Speaker 3: book is very timely, and I'm like, dog, this is
Speaker 3: a Biden administration sept for him through.
Speaker 2: So one final ball question on behalf of my beloved
Speaker 2: and a curse Seattle Seahawks. Okay, so think about Sam Darnold,
Speaker 2: who's now our quarterback after they traded my beloved Gito
Speaker 2: Smith for a fucking third round pick.
Speaker 3: Brother.
Speaker 2: Okay, so, like, is the thing that's going to happen
Speaker 2: this season not just by week five? Ave Lucas goes
Speaker 2: down for the twelve million time whatever child they drag
Speaker 2: out of a kindergarten to try to block the deal,
Speaker 2: one hundred gets liquified in ten milli seconds to Sam
Speaker 2: Darnold just like start seeing the ghosts of men who
Speaker 2: haven't been born yet, Like, isn't this exactly?
Speaker 4: Is?
Speaker 2: It's just what's gonna fuck happen? Why did they build
Speaker 2: this team like this?
Speaker 3: Can I attempt to give you a small amount of
Speaker 3: Seattle Seahawks optimism. I thought they were gonna.
Speaker 2: Would have lived in games last season. They should have,
Speaker 2: so we lost to the Flat Giants.
Speaker 3: So I really like some of what the Seahawks did.
Speaker 3: They drafted a lot of players that I really like.
Speaker 3: It's true they they finally took a interior offensive line
Speaker 3: player in the first round. Congratulations, Uh yay. Gray's Abel
Speaker 3: is a good player. He's also a maga as shit,
Speaker 3: which is what you want on your offensive line. No,
Speaker 3: that's what you want on your offense. It's true, it's true.
Speaker 3: But also like, god fucking damn it. So you got
Speaker 3: Gray's Abel. You got Jalen Milroe, who Jalen Milroe isn't
Speaker 3: good at football right now, but a sports media friend
Speaker 3: named Derek klass And put it that he's He's the
Speaker 3: kind of player you want to bet on and then
Speaker 3: be wrong about, just just because he's fun, because he's
Speaker 3: a like legit, actual like special athlete, special with the
Speaker 3: ball in his hand. He's cool. I really like Jaylen Milroe.
Speaker 3: But you also drafted later on. You took Tory Horden
Speaker 3: and Ricky White, who are two of my favorite sort
Speaker 3: of like small school wide receivers in the draft. You
Speaker 3: took Damien Martinez, who is a running back who I
Speaker 3: think could end up being a lot better than someone
Speaker 3: who's drafted in the seventh round would indicate. And also
Speaker 3: you took a full back. You took Robbie Oates. That's great.
Speaker 1: His name is a.
Speaker 2: Robbie Oates a great name, great name, old name, old
Speaker 2: name team.
Speaker 3: He is a He's like the squarest football player I've
Speaker 3: ever seen. Love love Robbie Oates. However, the Sam Darnold
Speaker 3: situation is tough. It's tough. I have a hard time
Speaker 3: seeing it happen.
Speaker 2: Like he would literally if you had put it behind
Speaker 2: last year Seahawks offensive line, he literally would have died
Speaker 2: by about week eight, like you just like straight up
Speaker 2: would have died on the field. Oh god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like it's a bit better this year because
Speaker 3: you have friends able, but you still have Abe Lucas.
Speaker 3: You know, you still have a We'll.
Speaker 2: Have Abe Lucas for three weeks and then we won't
Speaker 2: have Abe Lucas and then yeah.
Speaker 3: And also like Sam Darnold is in like the perfect
Speaker 3: spot for him, and now he's going to be throwing
Speaker 3: the ball too. I mean, you know, you got Cooper Cup,
Speaker 3: you got you know, for four weeks, got JSN, but
Speaker 3: you also have Marcus valdezk is he gonna is he
Speaker 3: gonna get load bearing snaps?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: Is that really? Is that really what you want?
Speaker 2: My cope last year was that was that JSN Metcalf
Speaker 2: and Lockett was the most underrated receiver trio in the league. Yep.
Speaker 2: And this year it's like, all right, we get six games,
Speaker 2: a Cooper Cup and then we get fifth rounders.
Speaker 3: Yeah. God, it's it's tough out here. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 3: expect Sam Darnold to work here, just like straight up,
Speaker 3: Like I have been a Sam Donald truther for years.
Speaker 3: But it is the classic thing of like I think
Speaker 3: Sam Donald's better than most people think, and then a
Speaker 3: lot of people are like one hundred thirty million dollars
Speaker 3: Sam Donald, and it's like what hold on, hold on,
Speaker 3: hold on, hold on, hold on. I didn't think he
Speaker 3: was that good. I didn't think he was traded Gino
Speaker 3: Smith good. No, oh god, So that's unfortunate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this this that this has been the football
Speaker 2: section of this of this podcast. Yeah, so Victoria, do
Speaker 2: you have anything else that you want to say before
Speaker 2: we head out, and where should people buy your book from?
Speaker 3: Non Amazon? That's like really all I have to say
Speaker 3: about that. Yeah, one of the boys, my name is
Speaker 3: Victor Coria Zeller, and you just buy that from bookshop,
Speaker 3: buy it from your local indie. You can buy it
Speaker 3: from Barnes and Noble, because we don't hate them as
Speaker 3: much as we hate Amazon. But like I would say,
Speaker 3: buy it from your local indie bookstore is like ideal
Speaker 3: for me. I make the same amount of money wherever
Speaker 3: you buy it, so it doesn't matter. But if you
Speaker 3: want to sign copy, you can also order it from
Speaker 3: my home bookstore, So there's that. Hell. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 3: my website is a Victoria dot monster and all my
Speaker 3: links are there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay, I realized I had an actual final question
Speaker 2: that I wanted to ask it I forgot to do
Speaker 2: before this the fucking we started the intro, so I apologize.
Speaker 2: So the odds here are much much higher than they
Speaker 2: are in most places that there's going to be some
Speaker 2: queer kids who fucking play ball to some extent listening
Speaker 2: to it, and I wanted to I'm throwing something from
Speaker 2: your book at you, which is, I know, what would
Speaker 2: you say to the what did you say it to
Speaker 2: the kiddos who are going through it?
Speaker 3: This is so mean. Okay, Okay, I'm gonna be real
Speaker 3: with you right now. Guys, do what's best for you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: fight if you have it in you to fight, But like,
Speaker 3: you got to be a kid first and foremost, and
Speaker 3: like trans kids, queer kids deserve the chance to be
Speaker 3: fucking kids. They deserve the chance to make mistakes and
Speaker 3: listen to music too loudly in their friends' shitty car,
Speaker 3: and they deserve to play sports if that's what they
Speaker 3: want to do. I think in a lot of ways,
Speaker 3: my book is about how we ask teenagers to be
Speaker 3: braver than they should be, and I think that's bullshit.
Speaker 3: So I'm not gonna put it on. You have as
Speaker 3: much fun as you can, like ball if you can,
Speaker 3: but do what makes you happy and what feels safe
Speaker 3: to you. Is like really, all I've got, Like, you know,
Speaker 3: just have fun while you're able to as a child
Speaker 3: is like yeah.
Speaker 2: No, And it's like, yeah, it's not if you are
Speaker 2: like a little ass kid. A I'm so sorry for
Speaker 2: how much I swear on the show. Be like, it
Speaker 2: is not up to you right now to save the world.
Speaker 2: That is the job of fucking everyone else who listens
Speaker 2: to the show like you. If you want there to
Speaker 2: be more queer athletes, if you want trans kids be
Speaker 2: able to be kids, that shit's on you. Yeah, all
Speaker 2: of the rest of you who listen to the show,
Speaker 2: If you are also like the fucking one bazillion trans
Speaker 2: people listen to the show, this is like a bit
Speaker 2: less on you than it is on fucking everyone else.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but the best time do I started organizing
Speaker 2: was like five years ago. The second best time is
Speaker 2: right now, and the best time after that is tomorrow.
Speaker 2: So go fucking build a world where trans kids can
Speaker 2: be kids and fall out.
Speaker 3: Let kids like me hoop, let them hoop, let them
Speaker 3: hit dingers, let them ball. Oh yeah, my people need rings.
Speaker 3: My people need titles, They need trophies, they need championships.
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