Labor Week! Starbucks strikes! Dakota Hommes! Laundry pile gender?

Hope you’re all hanging in there. Wow, Labor Week ended up to be perfectly timed after all, huh? Harper Collins is striking! The New School is striking! 110+ Starbucks stores are striking! Everyone is striking!!!

Speaking of strikes, have you listened to Monday’s episode with Spencer from SBWU? Her store kept a strike going 24/7(!) for 64 days(!!) with only 20 employees(!!!). The episode also includes tips for how to support Starbucks workers both during a strike and during your day-to-day Starbucks run. Please send it to the Starbucks drinkers in your life! :)

Photo: The picket line of a Boston Starbucks this summer.

I put this banger of a quote on Instagram, and I’m putting it here too because you can’t stop me! Spencer's the best.

“The best way that we have to legally fight class warfare is through organized labor. To be trans is to be constantly fighting an uphill battle in such a transphobic society; I feel like it’s just one more fight to a lot of people. I know that’s what it was to me.

When I was taking this on, I was like, “This is not even going be in the top 10 stressors in my life.” I would say that maybe it’s number 7; it’s been a little more than I thought, but it’s not the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it's among the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done.

As queer people, we have to have a sense of solidarity to survive. It’s a pretty easy step from solidarity with my trans comrades to solidarity with the people that I work next to every day.”

But that’s not all! We’ve also got an interview with Dakota Hommes, a library worker and TikToker who helped organize the first library union in Missouri! Dakota and I also talk about school book bans, narwhal facts, trans Harry Potter fan fiction, and God answering your prayers and making you trans (via the UCLA gender clinic, ofc).

Photo: Dakota and a coworker outside (I assume?) the library, wearing union buttons.

Oh, and we’ve still got merch, which you gotta order by Nov 30 if you wanna make sure it shows up before the holidays.

To be honest, babes, my meds have been messed up for days and I can’t figure out how to concentrate long enough to read anything (sounds fake but ok???). But here’s what I’ve got for Links & Stuff:

- My friend Shay finally published her amazing comic about changing her name, and it immediately led to several of my other other friends saying “Wow I feel seen” and also “OK but should I also change MY name??!?!” (If you’re considering it, strongly recommend the Life Kit episode about choosing a new name that I made with my cool smart friends!)

Photo: 3 panels from Shay's comic. They say, "I don't feel genderless in a cool, sexy, iconic way. I feel genderless the way a laundry pile is genderless. Or how a cloud has no gender. Or a collection of carbon atoms. Or a Pacman ghost."

• Vice published an article about “nonbinary bottom surgeries” aka getting creative about your junk.
• The funniest recap (by far) of Twitter’s ongoing collapse.
• A Mr. Burns/Elon Musk quiz (I got 92%!)
• Beef

That’s it for now. Here’s your weekly Rhubarb, which I stole from Mckenzee. 

Photo: Rhubarb sitting on someone's leg as if the leg is a little desk. She looks serious and bemused at the same time.

Xo,
Yr resident gender detective

PS: If any of y'all are doing Trans Union Antics, feel free to send us a short voice memo about it (to gendereveal@gmail.com) and we might play it on the show! :)