Patreon restructuring! Free t4t essays! Cat stuff!

Hey friends,

Hope you’re all hanging in there. I have been less online than normal this week, but I have to assume that things are still Not Good out there. And with all of the global Not Goodness in mind, it feels very silly to give you an update on changes to the gender reveal patreon. But that’s what I’m here to do, so, here we go.

Thanks again to everyone who filled out our first-ever Patreon survey! As a result of your feedback (and my capacity and whims), I’m going to restructure the patreon rewards as follows:

$1-4/month:

Your rewards don’t change! You still get the newsletter and the knowledge that I love you very much.

$5-9/month:

In addition to your one-time envelope of stickers (which you should have received already, unless you joined us within the last month), you’ll get access to a new Patreon-only audio feed! 

Because so many of you were like “don’t burn yourself out, dude,” we’re not making any promises about the frequency or the quality of the content dropped in the Patreon-only feed. But we will be sending out something special every so often, starting with [spoilers redacted] in April.

$10-39/month:

Sometime in the next several days, I’ll be removing the “thank you note + Gender Reveal pin” reward from this tier. This reward takes me a ton of time to create and send, and per the survey, people do not actually care if they receive them! (The pins are also a pain in the ass to mail.)

If you subscribed at the $10 level already and haven’t received these rewards yet, I’ll still plan to send them to you because that’s literally what you signed up for. But once I update the Patreon tier descriptions, those rewards will go away for ~future subscribers~.

Of course, we’ll also give you access to the new audio feed! See $5 tier for more info on that.

$40+/month:

This reward will stay the same! I’ll still send a big parcel of stickers and pins and zines and book(s) and patches and whatnot to our (literal) top-tier subscribers. And you’ll get access to the new audio feed too, of course.

OK, here’s a little Q&A based on questions I saw on the survey or am anticipating.

Q: Why are you paywalling audio content? Shouldn’t this all be free?

A: Ideally, yes! But here are my two reasons:

1) I don’t actually like having every single thing I make available to the entire world in perpetuity. Sometimes I want to make something that’s not very polished, or that doesn’t really make sense as an Official Gender Reveal Episode, and toss it somewhere secret for the True Heads who don’t mind a little messy experimentation now and again, without entering it into the Permanent Record of My Work.

2) Frankly, Jules and I are both still underpaid at this point, and Gender Reveal makes 98% of its revenue from the Patreon (thank you!!!!!!). This is me throwing something at the wall to try to lure in additional patreons. Will it work? Time will tell!

Q: I want my friend to hear your bonus content but they don’t have $5-tier money.

A: More of a comment, but I get it! If you download the file for them, I won’t be mad at all. Just don’t spread it around, you know? (You could also offer to pay their subscription for a year if you are flushed with cash.)

Q: Wait, are you going to do the thing you mentioned in the survey? The thing where you have two different identical tiers for cis and trans people?

A: Hmmm, kind of! We’re going to have the $5 tier that’s open to everyone, and then the $10 tier, which is the recommended minimum for cis people and also a way for everyone else to pay more if they want to. (You can also adjust your pledge to literally any amount at any time, but people tend to click on one of the pre-existing tiers.)

Q: I really want the current $10 rewards for some reason! Can I change my tier right now to grab them?

A: Sure, why not!

Q: Can we stop talking about patreon? I don’t care!!!!!!!!

A: Yes! But thank you for being here!

That was a lot of text so here are some cherry blossoms from this morning. 

Now it's time for Links to Stuff & Things: 

• My close personal friends Cassius Adair & Aren Aizura wrote an article for the t4t issue of TSQ called “‘The Transgender Craze Seducing Our [Sons]’; or, All the Trans Guys Are Just Dating Each Other”, and it’s currently available to read for free! I only read the first line (“It's important to read Patrick Califia's “Love Sees No Gender,” published in his essay/p-rn collection No Mercy in 2000, in as transfaggy a way as possible”) before passing this link along to you, but I trust that everything written by these boys (who, yes, are dating each other!) is top-notch.
• Ed Yong’s “How Did This Many Deaths Become Normal?” does a great job putting a lot of very bleak data into perspective. This quote (from a section about AIDS) stood out to me: “It’s always a real danger that things get worse once the people with the most political clout are okay.”
• I didn’t have dental insurance or fluoridated water growing up — nor do I have either of these things now — so I would foolishly have guessed that I didn’t have a lot of dental privilege. I was very wrong! I learned so much from this essay by Ijeoma Oluo, which recaps the absolute hell that the medical & dental systems have continued to put her through. (Obvious cw for medical and dental trauma)
• If you happen to be in NYC before July 10, I recommend the solo show I Am an Archive by (queer, Indian-Afghani-East African American, Muslim, they-pronouns-user) Baseera Khan at the Brooklyn Museum.
• To leave you on a light note: I can’t stop thinking about this tweet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And speaking of cat stuff, here’s your weekly Rhubarb. She says I'm not allowed to leave again. :))))

Photo ID: Ruby laying inside of a blue suitcase with her ears flattened down.

Xoxo,
Yr resident gender detective