256 - Polyamory and the Trans Experience with Marissa Alexa McCool
Marissa Alexa McCool is an avid podcaster, author of nine books, actress, grad student, and activist. In this episode, she expands on her view of the intersection between being an autistic, polyamorous transgender woman.
Learn about Marissa’s life and how her identities as a trans and polyamorous woman interconnect with her autism diagnosis. Marissa has a plethora of valuable insight when it comes to social patterns and norms, and her perspective gives us a fresh take on the nuances that occur within the non-monogamous community.
Check out Marissa’s books on Amazon and let us know how you liked this episode!
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the multiamory podcast, we're speaking with Marissa Alexa McCool. Marissa is a graduate student at Augsburg University, a podcaster, author, performer and activist. She's published nine books which is mind-blowing.
Emily: Yes. We just want to do one.
Jase: Been podcasting since 2016. Had an epic coming out story and does a blend of theatrical and academic speaking styles for her speeches that she's given across the country. She's also in her first season playing women's tackle football for Minnesota Pride which is awesome. We got to meet Marissa last year when we shared the stage with her at Minnesota PolyCon just this last summer, and we're really excited to have her on the show. Marissa, thank you so much for joining us.
Marissa: Absolutely. Pretty much anytime Callie Wright's been on a show, I'm like, "Oh, I'm here too." She and I definitely having experience transphobia when we've been confused for the same person probably 12 times.
Dedeker: I listened to your interview on Callie Wright show on Queersplaining.
Emily: We all did.
Dedeker: Yes, we all did. It sounds like that's a relationship that goes way back between the two of you?
Marissa: Yes, we go back to early 2016. They were one of the first people in their community that I came out to, and that was before I even been out. Pretty much anyone but the closest people around me, so they're really special to me. I've been on their podcast probably 10 times. They've been on mine just as many times. I photographed their wedding. We're tight.
Jase: That's good.
Emily: On your episode of Queersplaining, in this particular interview episode, you shared much of your life story, how you came to be the person that you are today. I definitely highly recommend to our listeners, go listen to that episode, listen to Marissa's story. It's really really fascinating and really interesting. What I wanted to ask you more about was I wanted to know more about your origin story as far as when it came to your approach to relationships and how your identity came to crystallize around non-monogamy, polyamory non-traditional relationships.
Marissa: For a very long time, I always felt like I was too much for one person to deal with, and a lot of it was being untreated for autism, and not knowing what all these gender feelings I was having more. I was raised in the reddest of red areas in Pennsylvania. For the longest time, I thought I was a drag queen, and that was because that was the only word I had for what I thought I was feeling and that was like when I was 18. We're talking early 2000's Red America Bush height of conservatism. It was not a good time to be discovering queer feelings, and not a good place for it.
A lot of my relationships throughout my 20's-- I had to start dating someone and just float the idea that there was a lot more to me than everything showed. Sometimes it went well, other times it didn't. Like I said, it just all came from this idea that I felt like I was too much for one person. People have described me as intimidating, and I can't figure that out. I spent my-- the times I wasn't in relationships in my 20's, I was kind of a unicorn third a lot, and I dated a lot instead of being in a lot of monogamous relationships, and I just felt better.
As I started coming out and really figuring out that I was trans and autistic which was relatively similar time, it just seem to go right along with that. If you're trans and monogamous, the dating poll really shrivels up really quick. I think that's what really opened me up to making it official, I would say, so that's how I got there.
Jase: It's so interesting that you mention starting from a place of feeling like you were too much for one person because I feel like what a lot of people fear when they think about opening up or becoming non-monogamous is like, "Does that mean I'm not enough for someone?" And so that's interesting to kind of-- the way you said that at least. It's the total opposite side.
Marissa: You read my intro and I can't tell you how many people even after coming and everything that I dated that would say, "I just can't keep up with you." That just reinforced that feeling that like, "Oh, my God. I'm so overwhelming. I'm trying to do so many things that I'm scaring people away." Yes, it is inverse of that cliche so to speak.
Emily: We wanted to talk a little bit about something that you just brought up which was that you were born into this conservative part of Pennsylvania, and you grew up in a pretty conservative environment. Now, you travel around the country, you do speaking at different polyamorous cons or different places and stuff as well. Do you see other conservative parts of the country changing at all or modifying their views?
I know we've stepped back into this really ultra conservative Trump culture again, it's a very volatile time in our country's history, but do you see people modifying their views on gender, relationships or sexuality? Is it just business as usual? Have we actually not changed that much since 2000-2001 back in the Bush era?
Marissa: It's changed a lot, and just a small correction, I wasn't born in Pennsylvania, but I grew up there. No worries. I was six years old when I first moved there, so it's not like it was a big thing. It has changed a lot even there because I tried to come out in 2014 and it had disastrous results. Even just in those few years between my first attempt and my actual time that I went through with it, I noticed a tremendous difference in people's attitudes and their friendliness and their openness to the idea. I definitely had to cut some people out of my life.
I came out in 2016. I was hoping a friend of mine come out in 2019, even help to pick her name. She says she didn't have one person who was mean to her, who criticized her, who challenged her in public and she's in Texas. If that's happening in Texas, things are changing. The problem is things are changing a lot, but that scares the shit out of the people that just like it in private and in their porn searches and are scared to death if that makes them gay, which of course the worst thing in the world so they tend to yell the loudest about it.
It's like how the most homophobic pastors and senators always seem to get caught with their foot under the bathroom door. Same thing with trans people because if so many people are so scared of trans people, why is trans porn such a lucrative business? It's just inconsistent and pretty much we see protest to march thing applies as much there as people who are scared shitless of gay people.
Dedeker: All right. Definitely. What is almost this phenomenon of the extinction burst of as things get more accepted, as people come out, as there's more awareness of it that there is going to be that, it's not even just backlash, but it really is the death rows. The people who scream the loudest, the people who react the strongest because the fact that I would hope anyway that the perception is that this is a tide that's changing and can't really be undone, I would hope.
Marissa: They're doing the best they can to try to legislate us out of existence. Unfortunately, some people see complicity with that as a good compromise. If you legislate us away from being able to use a public restroom, it keeps us from being able to exist in public, and that's what they're trying to do. There's far too much, "You're too mean, you're too radical, you're too outspoken.
A lot of people just don't understand that what's just a theoretical concept to them is our very existence. We're doing the best we can. It just seems like we get legislated against somewhere every freaking month and it's exhausting.
Emily: You had talked or you had talked to before we started the podcast, just about how many transgendered people can't even get a passport, which is something I had no idea about. Can you speak on that a little bit? Because I think some people aren't even aware of something like that. That's so horrible.
Marissa: There's a few articles that have come out about it, but most people really either don't know or haven't been paying attention to it. It's not new, it started within the administration. They haven't outright banned us from getting passports but I can't tell you how many people I know who have had either their name change or they're getting their initial passport held up because of transphobia. That's really all there is to it.
The article that I read, in fact, back when it came out was of someone who transitioned when they were 13 and they were saying, "We need to see these documents and everything." It's like, "I was a child. I don't have those. I never existed in public as anybody except who I am." There's no reason for you to have that or to need it. When they're not putting out outright bigoted laws or reference or anything like that, they're just making it that much harder to exist as a person. That's a lot of the microaggressions of government that people don't see. They often don't accuse us of making stuff up because why would they know that?
Dedeker: Well, so you said something that really struck a chord. You said something to the effect of like what seems to be just a hypothetical or theoretical discussion for you is actually a matter of survival for me. I know that's something that we came up against actually quite recently in our own community of just this. It doesn't just happen just with transgender identities, but multiple marginalized identities and communities where it's like people discuss it almost like it's a matter of philosophy that can just be bandied around not realizing that like, "This actually has impact for people."
I do feel like there is something about the discussions around gender and I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's just because we all have some kind of relationship to gender, all of us. It's a fairly universal experience that then makes it so that it's easier for people to just hop on this train of like, let's just talk about these things philosophically and theoretically and like, why should you need to have a special bathroom and stuff like that without realizing that it's like there's repercussions on the ground for people actually living this way.
Marissa: If you look at the fact that most of our representation before about three or four years ago was a punchline or a serial killer, it makes a lot of sense because people do draw their cues for media and movies and shows and representations.
Apparently, some comedians haven't caught up with the times because they're still using trans people as a punching bag in their fucking specials. It's exhausting there too because then they'll come out and say, it's just jokes. It's just whatever. It's like, yes, okay, but why are the transphobes and homophobes quoting you verbatim to either attack or bully us? If you might not think you're being transphobic, but they're using your words to be transphobic. So maybe you should examine that relationship a little bit.
Even the representation that we've had that isn't outright, "It's a man in a dress." Because of course only trans women and the trans community exist, we all know that. Even men, it's more often a cis person playing a trans person and it's a cis person writing about their theoretical idea of what it would be like to be trans instead of actually having trans peoples. It's particularly insulting to those of us who have these stories and are trying to tell them for a Mark Ruffalo or Jared Leto or somebody like that to come along and go, "Yes, I think I know better than you. I'm going to go get an award for telling what I think your story is like."
Emily: That's some bullshit.
Marissa: Just starting to get past that.
Dedeker: Well, I do want to talk about that more. On this show, we do love examining media representation and it's 100% true that we do take our cues from media and so it is sometimes very vital to be watching for all of the nuances of like how is this representation changing? Usually, we talk about on the show in regards to how non-monogamy representation is changing and shifting. I definitely love to hear from you. What do you notice both what's changing on the horizon as far as transgender media representation as well as what you see as for non-monogamy and polyamory representation?
Marissa: I feel like with the influx of the unicorn hunters on dating sites, that's where people automatically go with it. I actually saw a little controversy about what I made jokes about, which became the basis of my new book. At times I feel like that's where it begins and ends in a lot of people's minds. I also think that's where it's being represented the most. Is just the straight couple that is either looking for a spark or it's a straight guy bi woman and she just has all these fantasies that she wants to fulfill.
Emily: Of course.
Marissa: You can tell from how a certain number of people, not all of them, approach that on a dating site where they're just talking about what they want, what's going on them and how the queer woman is basically just a fantasy object. I might not speak for all queer women but most of us don't want to be objectified and used as someone's live-in porn search and then thrown away when somebody gets jealous.
Emily: Absolutely.
Marissa: At least it's making progress and it's getting represented as not everybody is monogamous or wants to be, but it's got a long way to go. As far as trans representation, it's getting better. At least some, if not most people know who Janet Mock is and know who Laverne Cox is and there's at least some examples we can point to.
Emily: Laverne comes into the restaurant that I work at often. She's lovely.
Marissa: She is amazing.
Emily: Usually with this huge entourage. She's awesome.
Marissa: Janet Mock will always hold a place in my heart as she came to speak at my undergrad and I missed her, but I had just published my first book and I asked if I could send it to her and she responded and actually gave me an address to send it to. That will always be a special thing for me. It's getting there. It's better than it was. I can say that. We're not dealing with as many “The Danish Girls” or anything like that. We still have ScarJo comparing us to playing a tree, so not everybody is there yet.
Emily: Playing everyone and every single person out there, jeez.
Marissa: There's a reason that if you ask a trans girl what her favorite movie is, eight out of 10 of them are going to say, Boy Meets Girl because it's a trans woman played by a trans woman. We have so few examples to go to that someone just making a paint by numbers last story where the person just happens to be trans is one of the few places we can go where we're not feeling like we're hearing someone else's interpretation or theoretical complex of our identities.
I think to speak back about why everybody's so curious about it or so into it is because a lot more people have these issues than are willing to admit. We live in a patriarchal society that's like, you are man, you have to do this X, Y, Z, or you're not X. As an autistic person who never gave a shit about that, let alone now, anytime someone comes to me with that, I just try to have a conversation of why you think this way? What is it about me that threatens you so much?
Dedeker: In having those conversations with people, has there been anything particularly illuminating?
Marissa: Yes. First of all, transphobia is based on homophobia, which is based in sexism. It always comes back to sexism because gay sheer came out of the fear of men feminine and hating femininity because everybody has to be a masculine, masculine man. Then lesbians were more fetishized than hated, which is problematic in and of itself. Then trans people come along and amazingly, some trans women are really hot and guys get attracted to them and then panic because that, of course, must make them gay and then they feel like they have to kill us because of that. This deeply rooted fear of femininity and sexism is at the root of it.
We just have to walk people back because they're so paranoid about being seen as gay, especially men and getting past that is one of the biggest keys that it's like if you're attracted to someone who was not a cis gender straight woman, it's okay. Even if it did make you gay, who cares? Why are you so afraid of that? It's getting past people's defenses
that has really led me to make a lot of progress with some people because as verbose and forward as I am on stage, and that is partially to get people's attention, when I talk to them one on one like I did, some people were saying they're talking to me for a half-hour like I'm much more like this. I'm much more approachable and understanding and patient, but the key is, I don't owe that to someone. That's where my boundaries have been pushed more times than one where someone demands to know what my sex life involves on a specific level or when someone wants to see my vagina and I don't know who they are. It's like, I don't owe you everything.
Emily: Why do you think that there is a subset of feminist culture that is also super transphobic?
Marissa: You’re talking about TERFs I assume?
Emily: We've talked about this a little bit on the show before but I really would be curious to know your answer to that.
Marissa: I think once again at the deep root of it is sexism in the sense that-
Emily: Which is ironic, but yes.
Marissa: There's this idea that men are always trying to get into women's spaces and as tormented as women can be in this society, a little bit I understand where they're coming from. They think that people are trying to infiltrate that because dudes are always trying to infiltrate that shit.
Emily: Yes, exactly.
Marissa: We're not them and there's also this tendency amongst certain people who are marginalized in one way, but privileged and all the others, their tendency is to throw someone lower on the ladder under the bus because they think, “Oh, well, it's all the focus is on them, they're not going to come after us and may even see us as allies and that whole civility compromise thing”. Whenever I've encountered a TERFy lesbian who thinks that pairing up with the alt-right is going to go well for them, it's like, “Whatever they do to us, they're going to do to you next. Don't think that it's going to stop with us”. That's my general message to everyone who listens to me speak is, if nothing else, understand that anything they're doing to trans people now, you're probably next in some way.
Jase: The whole TERF thing reminds me of the MRA movement, the Men's Rights Activist Movement, where it's the same thing of, “Okay, we're in a relative position of privilege compared to this other group”, but once they start getting attention and start bringing attention to the fact that we are more privileged than them, it's like, “Oh, no, Okay, I see being-- What's the word? “Being disadvantaged or suffering somehow makes you a better person. No, actually, we're the ones who suffer more than you so you can't be part of this”. It reminds me of that, which I think comes from also this idea that it's like the old, “Oh, well, my job is so hard I have to do this and this and this”.
It's like, “Oh, well, that's nothing. I have to do that too, but then also I come home and my wife is awful”. The other person's like, “Oh, yes, but my kids are so terrible”. It's almost like this competition of who suffers more because somehow that makes your achievements better. I think that like we glorify that, and that's what encourages both the TERFs and the MRAs to do that.
Marissa: Yes, there's a buzzword I always hear when this comes up is oppression Olympics, that people think we're saying what we are just to be more oppressed than somebody else, and it's like, “No, most of us just will be left the fuck alone for a little while. This competitive suffering, there are certain groups who feel like they have to do that because otherwise, they don't get the attention they want, but at the same time, it's usually used to dehumanizing blow people off because if you think they're just saying that to try to be a better martyr than the other, it's a lot easier to just categorically dismiss them.
When you're in a higher position of privilege, and you think that privilege means that it's a character judgment or that it means you haven't ever done anything hard, it'd be really easy to think that these people are saying I've never had to work for anything or these people are saying I'm a bad person because they're not telling me to check my privilege. It's a lot easier to convince yourself or that than it is that, “Hey, maybe I've been complicit and hurting people and I should examine that.
It's not surprising that there are a lot of people who react so defensively to that, but the best advice I ever got was someone whose name is escaping me at the moment, unfortunately, who said, the minute I feel defensive, that's when I start listening. That's when I know I need to pay attention because I need to take a step back and say, “Why do I have this defensive reaction?”
I've tried to be the same way because even within the trans community, there is a level of privilege. Being a White trans-woman is a lot easier than being a trans woman of color in society. It doesn't mean we have it easy by any means, but it certainly means there are people who are struggling a lot more than we are as a whole, and we need to be aware of that. It would be a lot easier to just blow that off and say, “Well, we have it hard too” but that's not the point of the conversation when that comes up. I think it's a good rule pretty much across board.
Emily: Oh, we said that’s good advice.
Marissa: If you feel defensive, take a step back and try to figure out why you feel defensive. If you keep asking yourself questions, you're probably eventually going to arrive at the answer of the roots of it and not the immediate conversation that's setting you off. That's not to say you should never be defensive, but you should know why beyond the surface reaction.
Emily: Wow.
Jase: Wow. That's fantastic.
Emily: I'm just going to sit with that for a second because that's definitely something I need to remind myself from time to time.
Jase: Everyone go rewind the two minutes and listen to that again.
Emily: Yes, seriously.
Marissa: I that you mean now.
Jase: All right. Now, you're free to listen to it, great we're back. I'm going to change topics now. The next thing that we want to talk to you about is about specifically mental health and non-monogamy and also transgender. We did an episode not too long ago with Ruby Boowey Johnson about mental health and relationships in general and also non-monogamy, but you have been part of a study and you've also been interviewed in some articles specifically talking about the intersection between autism, neuro divergence and transgender gender identity. Can you tell us a little bit more about what those things are? Then I have more questions after that.
Marissa: Sure. Being at the intersection of the two, I'm featured in an article that hasn't been published yet that is about why trans-people seem-- or why autistic people seem to embrace being trans quicker and why those things lining up. For starters, under the symptoms of autism is gender dysphoria, so there's a huge meeting point there. Obviously, there's a spectrum of autism as there is a spectrum of gender. I don't speak for everybody, I speak in generalities and this regard, but generally, autistic people tend to reject being things that were told just because or because society says we should.
Personally, I don't celebrate any holidays because I don't like being told how to feel on a certain day. I don't want to do something just because of day says I should. Gender’s kind of the same way. Even when I was younger, it was, “You have to do this”, and I'm like, “Why?” Well, because you're X. No, it was just a pattern rejection of that and that it’s, I don't want to call it an advantage because they're both things we have to learn and I always refer to it as learning how to be a person again and I had to do it twice with being trans and being autistic.
The processes in my experience were very similar. You have to start over from square one and realize you're going to react to things differently, you understand something about yourself more. How you walked in the world before is not how you're going to be able to walk in the world now. Sometimes that sucks, it really does, but you find a deeper understanding of yourself.
When you look back and you were a teenager, it was like, oh, all my friends were girls and they liked putting makeup on me and that would horrify most of the people I knew back then. That’s interesting. It just puts everything in a context and retrospectively a lot more makes sense and it's near parallel for me that I was a teenager in a super conservative area who, of course, was an autistic because most people's reasoning of autism back then was just the cliché of, I'm not even going to get into it because it's so offensive, but they weren't looking for it.
Then I was also dealing with what I now know was gender dysphoria because I never liked being seen as a guy. I never did and even at a very young age, I was just, I was cleaner. I didn't like getting dirty, I didn't like the stereotypical little boy things and looking back on it now, it makes a lot of sense but until then, even growing up, I was just the weird kid.
So it kind of gives reasoning and a level of understanding of how you got there and went you went through and instead of just saying, "Well, those were some really screwed up times". It's like, "Oh, I get it". It's comforting in a way once you get past the, oh god, I'm walking and I feel unsafe. I'm in X area. Why do I feel so uncomfortable? Why is everybody staring at me, I think everybody's staring at me?" But once you get past that stuff, you find out a lot of interesting things about yourself.
Dedeker: Yes, so the way that you talk about it and I remember that this struck me also when you were interviewed by Kelly Wright that for you, finally the pieces all coming together and clicking about the neurodivergence and being autistic that, like you said, it seemed like it was more of a source of comfort for you of like, okay, now all these things make sense and while I have to tackle this new process of figuring out how to move in the world.
Again, that it's like, at least I kind of have a better sense of where the pieces lay, essentially, which I think is such an interesting contrast to what I tend to see among certain communities, especially online that do kind of treat autism or especially like their own child being diagnosed as autistic as like, a death sentence. Of course, it's a nuanced discussion because like you were saying, it's like no one wants to be like, "Oh, Yes, it's 100% an advantage or it's 100% a disadvantage" but it definitely seems like for you that coming to that realization was ultimately a boon to you and who you are now.
Marissa: Absolutely. Just to give a little bit of context, I didn't pass a year in high school and I ended up going back to community college at 25. So until that point, I had just been like, "Oh, I guess I'm just not good at school", but then I went back and suddenly, I was getting all A's and to the point that I got into an Ivy League school as one of the token poor kids that they let in. The redheaded stepchildren of the university, if you will, and I had a really good GPA, I was doing really well, but I felt like I couldn't sit still in class and I would lose focus so easily.
Like taking a test, if somebody was sniffling every six seconds, my mind would just latch on to that and I would just lose where I was. Or if I had a 70 page reading assignment, I would read a few pages and then be like, the hell did I just read? I would have all these moments but if you just looked at my transcript, you would say, "Oh, this person isn't struggling" because I'm good enough at bullshiting that I was able to get through a lot of that stuff just simply because I have a way with words in writing that I can get through stuff and make it sound like I know what I'm talking about, even when I don't.
Once I started getting medication, specifically to treat ADHD symptoms because once again, there's a lot of crossover there as well, all of a sudden, I'm just like, capable of this hyper focus that just zeroes in on class. I'm not sitting and moving my legs back and forth and just feeling like I'm so restless and I got through my senior year, and I'm just sitting there going, I could have been doing this the whole time. So it was really neat to sort of see how treating all these things that I just thought were personality quirks or just how I was to being like, "No, there was actually a reason for all of this and now you don't have to worry about it".
Dedeker: Similarly to the writing that you've done looking at this intersection of neurodivergence in autism and gender identities, have you observed or found anything interesting regarding that same intersection, but with people in non traditional relationships?
Marissa: Yes, kind of along similar lines, I feel like autistic people are less likely to care about the extreme need for monogamy or the societal pressure of it because we, as autistic people tend to reject those social pressures. So for me, monogamy was never something that I highly valued. It wasn't like I didn't try to respect people or try to keep my promises but it didn't hold much weight with me and I didn't understand it, this need to just zero in on one person and have them be responsible for everything and vice versa.
I had a lot of trouble with that and I had a lot more fun when I was out dating with multiple people but not in a serious relationship. So kind of doing that and then coming out as trans and coming out as autistic all at the same time dating multiple people led me learn more about myself and made it easier to articulate what it was that I wanted and needed and that I didn't need to just keep all of this on one person and be like here. Yes, here, I'm on four podcasts this week, I have three football practices, I have school and I need to do these four other things. You need to be in all of them. That was kind of where it was at.
Jase: Have you also noticed any trends in terms of, not just yourself moving there, but do you feel like you noticed that within the non monogamy community that there are more artistic people than on average because of that? Do you feel like it attracts more people in the same way that it seems like it attracts people who like role playing games or board games? I'm just curious if you've noticed any trends like that.
Marissa: I do think there may be a correlation between all three of those things in the sense that queer, trans, autistic people often don't get to experience their childhood. We're masking and that's usually a term used by autistic people, but it's true for queer and trans people too, because we're not being our authentic selves. We're presenting a face just to survive. To minimize the bullying and the hazing and the outright violence that some people like me experience for all three of those reasons.
When we come out, and when we really start living as our authentic selves, there's this kind of urge to make up for what we've missed and get all of that back. I speak again as a trans woman, this may vary for other gender identities within the trans community but I gained a strong attachment to the word girl, as opposed to woman because I always liked that word better when I was a kid and I never got to use it and attaching myself to it was kind of reclaiming this period in my life where the words I was being forced to use about myself didn't match up.
I call it wreck time where I just look back on how things would have been if I had the access to the information and my parents were knowledgeable and all of those things and it's a lot like a reclamation and in terms of relationships, most of us didn't get to date the way we wanted to either and a lot of times, you don't want to come out and just be with one person right away because you have this whole world that's opened up to you and a lot of people just have this urge to explore it.
In my experience, some of the reasons that people who are in marriages or deeply committed relationships when they come out as trans, they either become non monogamous or they break up just because it's like there's this whole new world that's opened up to me. I feel like my authentic self. I have all this dating that most straight people got to do that I never got to experience. I need to overcompensate for the last X number of years right now and it's kind of empowering, if you think about it.
Emily: It seems like you were perfectly suited to be a non monogamous person just because you don't have necessarily these societal pressures like you say. You keep saying, I don't care about this, and I don't care about that, which is amazing, because I know so many people who've had so much ingrained within them about what society tells us we have to do or not do and you're just like, whatever. Let's do this thing. I'm just going to live in my authentic self in my authentic way and how wonderful that is and freeing and empowering.
Marissa: It took a hell of a long time to get there. I don't want to make it sound like I just flipped a switch but working in retail definitely ruined Christmas for me.
Emily: I hear you.
Dedeker: Amen to that one.
Emily: Singing Christmas carols in Shanghai on Christmas for two years. The list is, yes.
Marissa: Like, even this year, the last few years, I've done an audio play for the holiday time and one was a satire of a retrospective historical documentary on the war on Christmas.
Emily: Wow.
Dedeker: What?
Marissa: This year, I did a Christmas carol. It's a wonderful life parody with this couple who- one of them is obviously a lesbian but in a straight relationship. They're just over the whole thing. The guardian angel comes and tries to convince them of all these things and they keep predicting what the angel's going to do because it's so cliched and it pisses her off. That's the way I've approached most of these things. It's like I can see from where I am a lot of people just going through these motions and being miserable and frustrated and spending all this money they don't have.
My approach to Christmas is if you buy me something cool, I am not asking you to and I'm not buying you anything because if I want to buy you a gift, it's going to be because I want to give you a gift, not because of this day says I should. I found my approach with that- pretty much, holidays and social rituals and all of these things that never made any sense to me, has been a lot healthier for my mind.
Dedeker: That is kind of funny. I don't want to get off on a tangent about Christmas. I could, though, because I know Jase and I had a lot of conversations just this last Christmas time, I think kind of around that, around like, "Why do we all keep doing this to ourselves?
Emily: Spending so much money, continuing to shovel into my debt.
Dedeker: When was the time when Christmas genuinely was a joyful time for people and when did that switch? Was it all capitalism? Was it just the Victorians when it was like we have nothing to do in the winter and this is the one glimmering beacon of light that gets us through." We did get off on a lot of philosophical discussions about that that did boil down to the whole, like, often, the holiday time, it's like this big, collective mass, self-gaslighting into like, "Yes, this is happy and fun and we love to do this."
Marissa: Right. I just emailed you a link to my Christmas-
Dedeker: I love it.
Marissa: -life so-
Jase: Okay, we'll have to check that out.
Marissa: -- this time.
Dedeker: Perfect.
Marissa: It's called Have a Very Meta Christmas. It was a lot of fun to do. Being trans, being autistic, being non-monogamous, I try to view all of those things as a privilege of seeing things from a different point of view to compare how I saw things before I came out versus after I came out, to compare them when I was in those relationship worlds versus what I'm in now versus before I knew I was autistic. Now, I view it as extra insight and extra empathy for people who may not be there. I try to do every way that maybe that I've been marginalized, but everything that's characterized about me, I try to view it as an advantage to be able to help others and to have a perspective that people may not consider.
I feel like that's been the basis of my activism since I started.
Dedeker: To transition from that a little bit, when we first met you, it was at Minnesota PolyCon, you gave a keynote speech where you were reading essentially some Tinder profile poetry is what it sounded like to me. Was the book already written at that point or was that just part of the work in progress, what you're reading at Minnesota PolyCon?
Marissa: That was the basis for the idea. I was trying to think of a speech to write for their con, and I'm actually part of a Facebook group called Sounds like Unicorn Hunting .
Dedeker: Intimately familiar with that group.
Marissa: I would just see all of these consistent cliches and tropes. I first just put it into an opening joke kind of thing. When I noticed how much controversy it started up with the board or whatever they were of MM PolyCon, it was like, I must be touching a nerve somewhere. I reactivated my Tinder and started doing research and finding ones for myself. Because I am, at heart, a theater kid and even my academic speeches are designed to be performed, writing-- I don't want to call it slam poetry, but having poems like that and travel anecdotes, I write travel reviews in those styles, those are always chill at open mics. I figured they would work well in speeches, and they did.
Dedeker: I am curious about that though because that is something that I do remember from Minnesota PolyCon. I don't remember exactly what you said but at the end of the speech, you did say something to the effect of like, "If you're like really offended right now, maybe you need to think about your actions and maybe reexamine your Tinder profile, essentially." I'm curious to know, I do think that you're on the money when you were saying earlier about how right now, representation still really focuses on the stereotypical straight couple trying to find a hot bi babe, hopefully, for slowly moving past that.
As far as like within the polyamorous community, what do you think is the basis of why commenting on unicorn hunting or even calling out unicorn hunting behaviors, why there's still such a sensitive nerve that runs so deep there that still makes it so that it's like, "We have to think twice about that."
Marissa: Well, there's a lot of straight privilege that tends to go into it. That's not to say that all straight poly couples, whatever, I'm not speaking in those hashtag not all couples or whatever. At the same time, there's this idea that like, "We've broken this social norm." We're being dangerous. How dare you say? How dare you say that we're doing something wrong? We're going against the grain. That's great, rebel, rebel, but when you're objectifying another person and someone points it out and your reaction just explode at them, maybe you need to figure out if you're actually in this for the reasons you say you are.
You're on that Facebook group. You see all the time that people are just looking for this live action version of their porn searches. It's gross and it really makes people feel uncomfortable. When the people you are seeking are telling you that they're uncomfortable and your reaction is to say, "Fuck them," that's probably a sign that maybe you need to do what I said earlier, take a step back and figure out why you're being so defensive.
Dedeker: I actually had to mute that group from coming off on my newsfeed because it would just make me nauseated, like multiple times a day, seeing the posts that would come up. I guess the thing that's always really fascinating to me is-- And I don't know what it is, I'm sure that it's probably like straight privilege coupled with this being the particular form of non-monogamy that's like the least threatening to straight men specifically, but just that it's so prevalent. I feel like any of us could pop open our Tinders at any place in the States and find right away, at least five unicorn hunting couples right away that it's so prevalent and yet still, so not self-aware, I suppose as a community of people.
Marissa: A lot of the issues you'll see there are represented in a lot of non-couples' profiles. I tried to make that readily apparent in my work that the same stuff that we're seeing that's problematic in your couples' profile is also problematic in your individual profile. It's not just an issue of the non-monogamy communities. It's an issue in the dating community in general. Now, we have all these examples that are readily available that we can point to and go, "Yes, you're being shitty here and here's 10 more just like you that maybe I can point out to show you."
I think the relatively recent level of access that we have plays a lot of difference in that too because as queer people have formed their communities and as non-monogamous people have formed their communities, maybe they've only talked about it with two or three people. All of a sudden, there's this group of 200 people or 10,000 people that they approach this fresh side and all of a sudden, they're being told that they're wrong. That can be intimidating. That can feel threatening but if you're brand new to something and you're not listening to somebody who's already been there or at least considering it and not assuming that you already know everything, why are you really there?
What's your actual motivation? I don't think it's specific to unicorn hunting or couples dating. I think it's emblematic of a bigger problem that just happens to get magnified in these cases.
Emily: Is there ever a good way to unicorn-hunt or a better way or is it just total fucking bullshit?
Marissa: Opinions vary on that.
Emily: Just because you talk about it, I'd be interested to know your opinion.
Marissa: I feel like unicorn hunting just categorized as the problematic aspects of couples dating. You feel like there's a line between there. There's couples datings and then there's unicorn hunters in the pejorative sense. When the third or fourth or whoever, when they have full agency and there's not couples privilege and there's not fetishizing and there's not this hierarchical bullshit, when the person who is coming into the relationship is not just there for the sex and then dehumanized and thrown out onto the street and pretend that they don't exist and is just treated as a lesser or as an objectified fetish giver, that's the line.
When we denigrate unicorn hunters, we're talking about the people who are, "I want a female," and this is the one Venus policy and this is all these other problematic, homophobic, transphobic things that we run into. It's really just a difference of equality and agency and autonomy. If you don't have respect for any of those things, that's when it's not ethical.
Dedeker: What you're saying, that is reminding me that what I am starting to see with couples profiles which, I don't know if this is necessarily a good sign, I actually think it's maybe a slightly more dangerous sign, I'm starting to see more couples profiles where they're trying to reopen the language and say the right things. I see a lot more couples profiles that are like, "We're looking for someone for an equal partnership and we're going to treat you well and we're not going to treat you like a unicorn."
I think that is hard because it's like you can learn how to say the right things, but then it's like how can you prove that, really, at the end of the day. That's the new trend that I'm starting to see is some couples starting to get maybe a little bit more cognizant, a little bit more self-aware but I feel like my impression is that it's more of like, "Okay, we'll reopen the language to still serve the same means or the same goal as before," essentially.
Marissa: Is that really a new tactic though? I feel that's what the circle of abusers and the abused have been doing since the beginning of problems in the relationships.
Dedeker: That's true.
Marissa: If you take a single straight cis relationship and you see someone who is constantly trying to love bomb or show that they've improved or a guy trying to use the right feminist language to appeal to a certain person, it's not that much different. It's just a little bit more specific here. It's a different example in the overall context of these circles of problematic behavior, abusive behavior and unethical behavior. I don't feel like it's a new trend. I think it's a new chapter in the same book.
Dedeker: That makes sense.
Jase: I think that something that brings up for me though, the example that Dedeker is giving is I do feel like there's-- Well, okay, let me take a step back. With the example of abusers, I think that this is also true of a lot of abusers who don't know that they're doing that, or at least are not that specifically consciously aware that that is specifically what they're doing. Sometimes, they are but I feel like maybe even in a lesser sense, I know that when a lot of people are new to non-monogamy, they tend to do a lot of shitty things even if they don't think they're going to because they just don't know how to do it yet. They just haven't gotten that level of comfort.
I feel like that's what I tend to see a lot with those couples is it's like, "Yes, it's going to be totally fine. We're going to treat you equally. It's all going to be fine." Then as soon as anything challenging happens, it's like, "Well, we didn't mean to, but we went back to our safety net which is each other and tossing you out because you're more easily disposable."
Marissa: That sounds like the argument of cancel culture. It feels like it's the same thing where the whole, "I said one wrong thing and nobody educated me. Therefore, I'm a victim of cancel culture." I feel like that's in the same conversation. Most of the examples that I've at least seen, there is usually some attempt to say, "Hey, what you doing? It's kind of shitty here." When they lash out at people who say that, that's when it becomes meme material, at least in my experience.
Jase: It reminds me- going back to what you said before about if you feel defensive, that's when you should start listening. They didn't do that. That's when it gets posted in the group, in the Unicorn FB group.
Marissa: Right. It's the same thing if someone says something that could be construed as transphobic. On my Facebook profile, I will at least take the time to go, "Hey, that's shitty. Here's why." If their reaction is, "Everybody's too sensitive these days," it's like, "Okay, you're done." I am an educator, I do try to have patience but I don't have that much energy and I'm not going to spend it on someone who seems dedicated to not learning anything.
Dedeker: Right, that makes sense.
Emily: Good boundary to have.
Jase: Yes, I know, gosh. I feel like we've covered a lot of different things today. We've talked about neurodivergence, we've talked about gender identity and coming out and how that's related, trends across the country, how things are changing as well as unicorn hunting and all of this. I feel like we've hit so many things. In the spirit of hitting so many things, can you tell us about some things that you'd like to promote? You've written nine books. What's up with that? Tell us about all that and your podcasts and your new podcast.
Emily: Do you have time to do anything except for all of these awesome things that you're doing?
Marissa: Yes. In my spare time when I have it, I really enjoy going with my partner Murph or spending time with my family. I go to the zoo a lot and I do a lot of photography of the zoo and the North Shore of Minnesota which is particularly beautiful. That's my happy, low stem, get-out-of-everything place. Part of the reason that I've written so many books is because I got treated for the ADHD/autism symptoms and all of a sudden, everything was firing on all cylinders. Just to get some context, my first book was written during my senior year as I was attending Donald Trump's alma mater. That was when I came out.
Emily: You went to University of Pennsylvania?
Marissa: Yes, I did.
Emily: Yes, and so did he. Wow. Oh my goodness.
Marissa: I came out a month before he was elected. There I am in the middle of all of that and I just started writing. I ended up writing an entire reaction to the election in nine days and got the whole thing out before he was inaugurated. If you take into the idea that that's how fast I write, I'm actually a little disappointed of all I've written. A lot of stars lined up for that. A friend of mine who happens to be a former NFL player and has a relatively well-known queer activists-aligned ideology, Chris Kluwe, I had just interviewed him on election day.
I reached out to him and I'm like, "Hey, I'm trans. I'm writing a book about this bullshit that just happened. Do you want to write the foreword?" He was like, "Yes, send it to me when it's done." There we are. A lot of it has been right place, right time. Since then, I've written two YA novels, both with trans characters, obviously. I wrote books of essays, one focusing on my stories, a neurodivergent person. Others, I wrote a response piece to The Vagina Monologues that was focused on queer, trans and people of color. I've really been all over the board with as much writing as I do and putting it out there. It's not as impressive as people seem to think of.
Emily: No, it is.
Marissa: It's just been something like, I've been keeping all this stuff in for decades and now, all of a sudden, I can just unleash it and I also happen to get the right cocktail of pills that make everything work right. All of a sudden, "Blah, here's all the stuff I've been trying to say since I was 18 years old and beyond." Then I also just happened to attend an elite university as one of the token poor kids and learned from some of the best in the world on how to do that and how to get better at it.
I have the skill of being able to write hyper fast and then I got it fine tuned by amazing people and then I also fixed what was making it difficult for me. All of that at once plus coming out as trans in 2016 at Donald Trump's alma mater, it was just all at once and it's been the same ever since. Since also my coming out video went a little viral, I was put in the position where it's like, "Well, better come out before everybody else recognizes me."
Jase: Your most recent book is the one we were just talking about which is Tinder Profile Poetry which is book number nine. For our listeners, if you're a patron and you stick around for the bonus episode, we're going to be reading some sections with Marissa from Tinder Profile Poetry. Definitely stick around for that, we'll talk more about it. Then also, you have a podcast of your own which is called The Sister Getting Out of Hand.
Emily: I love that.
Marissa: Yes.
Jase: Which has 130 something episodes now which is cool.
Marissa: About there.
Jase: Can you tell us just a quick pitch for like, what is that podcast so people can know if they want to go check that out?
Marissa: Sure. I recently ended a podcast called the Inciting Incident Podcast and that had 209 episodes. That went back to my start four years ago. The Sister Getting Out of Hand is a blatantly sarcastic trans satire podcast. The whole concept is there are no cis people on the show and we do not take their feelings into consideration when making the show. The idea is to get a look into the way we talk about everybody when they're not around because so much of trans activism is one-on-one, taking people through basic terms and starting at the beginning. It was my idea to have a happy hour/shit posting podcasts. That's essentially what it is. We have skits where we act out whatever we're talking about.
I hate to say it's like talking shit but it is in a little bit of a way, but if you listen to one episode, you realize where it's coming for a minute and that there's a heart behind it. It's not just talking shit and people responded to it to the point that we're still going. Obviously, we're hitting a nerve somewhere and we talked earlier about how representation matters. It's nice, as I've been told, to hear what trans people are talking about, what the hell, having to stop and go, "Okay, this is what cis means for the 300th time today."
Then I just started on a passion project podcast with my friend Amy called Okay Then, a retrospective on the show Fargo because a major plotline of that Christmas play I sent you was the TV show of Fargo and my friend Amy who is also a star in that show, we were like, "We're both in Minnesota. We shouldn't talk about it," and then it became a show.
Jase: That's great.
Emily: Love that show.
Marissa: I've recorded several episodes of a new show that will be coming out soon with my partner Murph and the original co-host of Inciting Incident called, "But I heard about it." That idea is based on the fact that Murph grew up very isolated in fundamentalist Christianity and missed the '90s pretty much and I've had to show them Back to the Future. I've had to show them Lord of the Rings. I've had to show them all of these things that are so commonly seen and talked about that it was like, "What if we did a show where we talked about how I've known about this since I was a kid, but you're seeing it for the first time and contrasting those things?"
Then just the fact that my friend Brian is in on it and he is the smartest, most photographic memory person I know and he has really good perspectives on that as well. We just decided to make it a thing. After we record probably five episodes, that's where we're going to start releasing it.
Dedeker: I suppose kind of like the spiritual opposite of our Drunk Bible Study podcast which is about exposing Emily to all the biblical '90s stuff that Jase and I grew up with, but Emily did not. How funny.
Jase: You're all .
Emily: There you go.
Dedeker: Definitely. Most definitely.