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For Laura Jane Grace, Punk Was A Form

Of Armor

https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=522581237

0:00-7:02

GROSS: Laura Jane Grace, welcome to FRESH AIR. Is there a story behind that song?

LAURA JANE GRACE: You know, that song was the song that came, like, kind of instantaneously. A lot of
it has to do with coming from a place of feeling like you are unlovable or being made to feel ashamed of
yourself in a physical way. And a little bit of internalized transphobia along with that, too, in relating to the
question of passing, specifically with the line, I want to be - this is a line often, like, that's been repeated back
to me that people I feel like intentionally somehow subconsciously don't hear right of I want to be more real
than all the others. I want to be more real than all the rest. I want to be more - so real you can see the
difference. And people always, like, say it back as can't usually. And I feel - I always feel like that's, like, a
subconscious thing.

GROSS: So in May of 2016 at a sold-out concert in Durham, N.C., you protested the North Carolina law
mandating that you have to use the restroom of the gender you were assigned at birth. So onstage you took
out your birth certificate, you set it on fire. And tell us what you said.

GRACE: I said goodbye, gender (laughter).

GROSS: Yeah.

GRACE: I just waved goodbye.

GROSS: But I think that's interesting. You didn't say goodbye, being a man, hello, being a woman. You didn't
say, goodbye, Thomas James Gable, hello, Laura Jane Grace. You said, goodbye, gender. And tell us why you
said that.

GRACE: That phrase itself was something that struck me of I guess, you know, getting to a point of - maybe it
was, like, two, three years into gender transition and kind of having a nervous breakdown and being just so
sick of thinking of gender roles and what it means to inhabit, like, being a man or being a woman. I was just
tired of thinking about it. And with all this focus over like, you know, just, like, using a restroom is just so
ridiculous and so dehumanizing when you just want to, like - I don't know. It's something that, like, since I
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was a kid I feel like restrooms were always unsafe places, you know? And the focus of that around somebody's
gender, I think, is just cruel.

GROSS: Were they particularly unsafe for you as a kid?

GRACE: Yeah. It always felt like a safe space - or an unsafe space where, you know, if you were - not to be
crass, but if you were going number two, you were guaranteed to get, like, picked on by other kids in the
restroom if it was in between classes, you know? Or that was a place where - in high school where fights
would happen or you - where you were just a target. And, you know, it's something where as an anarchist I
always think to myself how, like, public restrooms are, like, demonstrative of why true anarchism as a
philosophy won't work, because it's a place where people are, like, fully unsupervised but, like, act like
complete animals.

Where - you know, not lifting the toilet seat or just, like, overflowing the baskets and just trashing the place.
You're really operating on an honor system, you know, of, like, just respect this shared space. So the fact of -
like, to distill this down to an argument over, like, gender when, you know - I mean, I literally have been to
every single Flying J truck stop in all of America. And every single one of them has a racist epitaph, like,
scrawled into the bathroom wall.

And, like, the question of, like, safety being focused on trans people is just infuriating to me. And I know,
like, going there and burning a birth certificate is really just a symbolic move. It doesn't mean anything. I
mean, I haven't used a birth certificate in I don't even - like, 20 years. You know, it's just absurd.

GROSS: So what does gender mean to you now? Do you see it as fluid, as ambiguous?

GRACE: I - as someone who's, like - kind of feels like they're - they've been kind of mid-transition for a while,
there has to be a level of fluidity to it, especially when traveling on an international level and interacting with
the people and situations that I do, you know? And, like, I feel like someone who's, you know, not under any
illusion of whether or not I'm passing. I just am the way I am. And if people have a problem with that then so
be it, you know?

GROSS: I'm glad you brought up the notion of passing. Like, do you want to pass as a woman or do you want
to be seen as trans?

GRACE: It's such a complicated question, you know? And, like, the one angle of, like, what does it mean to
pass, well, of course that's ridiculous. And who are you passing for? You know, that's, like, a ridiculous
thought. The reality of it being, though, is that, like, the reason most trans people want to pass is so that they
don't face threats of physical violence or discrimination. You know, then that oftentimes is the motivator for
me of thinking, like, maybe I should get facial feminization surgery or get a tracheal shave so my voice goes
up a register or something, you know?

That - but there's - you know, a good friend of mine, Bailey Jay, has a quote of plastic surgery won't fix a
broken soul. So I feel like it's really like you're just, like, walking these tightropes of, like, you know, trying to,
like, stay sane and trying to keep it together. That's - it can sometimes be a scary place.

GROSS: You know, in the process of transitioning to female, whatever we mean when we say that, (laughter)
are there, like, gender stereotypes of women that you want to avoid?

GRACE: Well, I mean, that plays into the question of, like, what does it mean to be a woman?

GROSS: Exactly. Yeah.

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Homework:

Preview the reading before class and pick 5 of the words above (in BOLD) and do the following:

 Define the word (learnersdictionary.com).

 Draw a picture that represents the word.
 Create your own sentence using the word (read it back to yourself to see if it makes sense).

List the words you have chosen here

1. ________________________________

2. ________________________________

3. ________________________________

4. ________________________________

5. ________________________________

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Assignment – DUE WEDNESDAY

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