Salimatu Amabebe! 10% off merch! Back-to-back BFFs?!

Hey friends,

Hope you’re all hanging in there. I’m currently typing this with one hand because Ruby has claimed the other one, so please forgive typos, brevity, and general incoherence.

This week on the show, we’re catching up with the multimedia artist and multi-hyphenate Salimatu Amabebe! Salimatu has been a friend and a true inspiration to me for nearly a decade now, and I’m sure that’s why this turned into such an honest and vulnerable episode. I’m especially glad that Salimatu and I were able to talk about parental loss and grief (and growth and reimaginings) in January specifically, because this always seems to be the month with the most loss and grief. If you recently lost someone or are marking a tough anniversary, just know that many of us are right there with you.

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, please know that it’s not all bummers, lol. Salimatu also tells stories about pulling drag props out of their human body; and talks about using a ~ plural they ~ pronoun; and shares his complicated feelings over his top surgery results. It’s a good one, folks!

Photo: Salimatu performing as Barracuda, whipping its braids around and wearing what looks to be a leather bra and harness

Next week, we’ve got another good episode with another one of my best friends.** After years of being a sort of shadow character on the show — an occasional producer, a Gender Conceal guest, a feed drop episode creator, a business partner, a one-time Justin McElroy antagonist, etc. — we’ve finally got Cassius Adair on the show for an official interview! (By which I mean, he was eight months pregnant and I was like “oh shit, if we don’t do this right now, we may never do it??? Quick, hop on zoom for what will turn out to be fully 2.5 hours!!!”) I’ll talk about this episode (which is actually two episodes) next week, so no spoilers I guess, but boy howdy, it’s a fun one. And so smart!!! Cass is so smart, don’t tell him I said that though.

FYI: the week after that, we’ll be chatting about Practical Anarchism with Shuli Branson, so if you want to read ahead, that’s your next assignment! It’s a short one, you can do it.

**I swear the whole season isn’t going to be like this! They just ended up back-to-back because nobody else wanted to talk to me near the holidays for obvious and #valid reasons.

In other news, Teespring offered to sponsor a 10% off sale until the end of the month, so if you use the promo code TRAINS in January, you’ll get a discount on anything and everything in the shop. (It’s all Palestine and trains right now, but we’ll mix it up next month, so put your restock requests in now.)

Podcast production is really chugging along now — this week we’re editing two episodes and recording two interviews, which is a lot, it turns out. Oh, and in other news, Ruby did give me my hand back awhile ago to go look at some birds, or else this newsletter would have been like 5 sentences long. Anyway! She’s busy now, so here’s Links & Stuff:

• My friend Jesse made this short radio piece about a 1980 Lou Sullivan pamphlet, which we’ll also be talking about briefly on next week’s show
• Fuck David Leonhardt all my homies hate David Leonhardt 
• They also correctly hate Ring Doorbell but this is good news at least
• Please support Bluestockings! This article reveals how the arguments against their lifesaving work are classist / nonsensical / rude.

And here’s some fun / fun-seeming stuff:

• Beautiful pictures of 10 trans women competing in a global pageant!!
• This Slate collab is obviously incorrect but fun to skim
• TransLash put out a guide to upcoming trans movies 
• Sorry to share a 30 Rock thing but this is perfect art.

That’s it for this week. Here’s your weekly Rhubarb.

Photo: Salimatu sitting on a sunny stoop, holding a hand out for Ruby to sniff.

Xo,

Yr favorite gender detective