Ambe Refusing Patriarchy I’m re-releasing this episode for a couple of reasons, the transcript is finally finished and the anti-trans directive in Texas has made parenting a trans child reportable. People have said that it is only the medical interventions that are reportable, but that’s not how mandated reporting works. Mandated reporting does not require you to know that abuse is taking place, it only requires a good faith belief or suspicion. And having framed medical interventions for trans children as child abuse, if the child you knew as Emma is now Ethan that’s all you need. And if you aren’t in Texas, you should consider how your state or province is watching this. How they define abuse and neglect in such malleable ways that allow for bigotry to result in reports to Child Welfare and to police. These reports, and the mandating of these reports, is violence. In this episode you will hear from Black, White, and Indigenous people. They are queer and straight, cis and trans. They are all talking about the various ways in which they refuse patriarchy and assert space, but also about the cost of that refusal. The violence, both emotional and physical, that happens and the concerns about how they are able to show up in places where they should feel safe. This is an important consideration for those of us who consider ourselves to be friends, allies, or accomplices. Are we willing to let them carry the entire burden of that cost just because it isn’t “our fight?” If they are our friends, it is our fight. You're listening to Aambe: a year of Indigenous Reading All right, so we are going to be talking about refusing the patriarchy today. Um, I started off thinking about Mother's Day, and thinking about mothers, and then thinking about, well, what does it mean to live in this world as a mother, when you don't necessarily fit that mold. Because lots of people take on mothering roles, right, without necessarily, you know, kind of being what we might think of as a conventional mother. You know, so lots of people taking on mothering roles, lots of people living outside of what we, you know, we would think of as a gender binary, you know, and so I'm, and we often talk that way about, you know, women and LGBTQ people, like we're all kind of lumped together into one group. And so then I started doing that, and I'm not sure that that's really okay, either. Then I started thinking, Okay, well, how are we all navigating the patriarchy, we're all kind of working our way through it. And then I didn't really like that, because that sounded too much like patriarchy is legitimately in charge of everything, and it really isn't. So, then I thought, okay, we're resisting the patriarchy. And still, that sounded wrong. That sounded like, they're still this big authority. And then I remembered a conversation I had with Brianna, Urena Revelo. We've had her on the pod a couple of times. And she talks about refusal and the politics of refusal. And that's how I landed on refusing the patriarchy. Because we are going to live our own lives, and our own terms, as mothers, as not mothers, as people who provide care in our communities. We're going to do that on our own terms, and the patriarchy can just do whatever it needs to do. So, yes, we’re smashing the patriarchy. Ernestine ended the Memoir conversation: “Decolonize and smash the patriarchy.” So I'm gonna kind of go around and have everybody introduce themselves, and we're gonna start with Jenssa because she's, gonna leave us shortly to manage a chat room, which will probably be quiet today, because I completely forgot that this was this week. I thought it was next week. Oops. Thanks, Nick. Nick sent me a message yesterday, saying, hey, so there a link. How's this gonna work? And I'm like, holy ** that’s tomorrow. But that's okay. It will live forever on twitch and be released as a podcast. Everybody had a chance to hear our genius. So Jenessa Jenessa: It's just gonna be me talking to myself in the chat room. That's great. So I am Jenessa. Hello. I feel like I should have like a fun fact. Every time I come on here, because I come on here. Every, every, every month. And I'm like, Hi, I'm Jenessa This is the book goodbye. I don't have a fun fact right now. But anyway. Oh, I met Patty on Twitter. Fun fact. I feel like a lot of you probably did, too. I read Tanya Tagaq book, Split Tooth. And it was it was really good. It was really hard to read. I remember I got it. And I was like, super pumped. And I told Patty, I got it. And she's like, Yeah, it'll be a heavy one. I was like, Okay. And it was it was really heavy. But it was it was really good. It was beautifully written. I'm really happy that I was able to read it. And some of the things that I was sort of, I guess, thinking about when I was reading it. Well, one thing is I feel like I need to reread it again to like fully like grasp. Like, I feel like there's some really deep themes in here that kind of maybe went over my head a little bit on the first read. But one of the things that I thought was like interesting was, well, there's two things. She has a poem in here that's written in her language. And I think it's really cool and powerful that she doesn't give, there's no translation for it. It's just there. And I'm like, that's, I was like, Oh, that's really neat. It's kind of like, I feel like when I read a book, I just want everything to be like, given to me, which is very selfish. Like I kind of center myself a little bit when I'm reading a book and I was like, oh, it's it's like, it's not about me. They're not giving me the translation. This is just here. It's beautiful. And, and then the main character in the book is, she becomes a mother. She's a girl who becomes a mother. And I remember I was reading through it and I actually went back and like reread, because I was like, who's the father? She never says who the father is. And I don't know why. But for some reason that was really unsettling for me. And I was like, why is why is this so why is this such a big deal for me? Why do I need to like know who the dad is? Like, it's like, Oh, yeah. Anyway, those are just two, two thoughts that I sort of had about the book. But I was like, I don't need to know everything. I don't need to know who the dad is, and why I don't even know why that's why that's such a big why why? Why is that important for me? Yeah, okay, I've talked enough. There's a lot of you here, and I'm sure you'll have many more cool and exciting things to say, here. Patty: Hey, Angela. Angela: Hi, this is new. I've never done anything like this before. But I've been on her show before. So I'm really, really pleased. I read everybody's bio. So I'm very excited about all of you. Getting to hear from all of you. The book that I have been reading, and it's called um How We Fight, White Supremacy. And I've been reading it on and off for a year. And be for two reasons. I've been reading a lot of other books, but I keep coming back to this book, because it's written from all Black writers from the United States. And they're just connecting points for me, and how I live my life and raising my son on my own who's Black Indigenous, and feeling isolated. And probably from my upbringing being raised in a white family to being here and not having a community. So I have felt in particularly this last year, that real need for community and this book has given me that. It there are there's points where I laugh, there's points where I cry. When this woman was describing her experience with a coach calling her Aunt Jemima, you know, I went back to my childhood and my white mother dressed me as Aunt Jemima for Halloween and just, you know, and feeling like, Okay, I'm not like the only one. And I think that with everything that's been going on this year and watching my son have some not great experiences with the police here in Vancouver. It's just allowed me to land in a place where a Black voice, it's Black art, like there's a really great … This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pattykrawec.substack.com
