And now for something completely different. A personal story before eldritch story time officially begins: an introduction of myself, your narrator, and an illustration of why I created this show in the first place.

I created Liminal Flares because I know how much it would’ve meant to me to find this while growing up as a queer, trans, nonbinary person struggling comprehend themselves amid a relentlessly heteronormative world.

I created Liminal Flares to be found by anyone who needs these haunted and haunting, gender-inclusive tales - be that because we help you feel more seen, valid, and included, or simply because you enjoy otherworldly storytelling that doesn’t exclude anyone based on their gender.

I created Liminal Flares because present day me also needs things like this to exist in this fraught yet wondrous world.

Herein lies the context that makes Liminal Flares so much more than another podcast of spooky stories. (Not that there's any such thing as too many eerie, atmospheric podcasts!)

Weekly story time commences from here on out. We have such unearthly enchantments in store for you. New episodes every Thursday.⁣ Please share Liminal Flares with your friends.

A few links to things mentioned in this episode:

The Trevor Project study about Gender-Affirming Care for Youth

Your Lessons Now Trans Voice Lessons (follow them @yourlessonsnow)

Recently read books:

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

Dear Senthuran by Akwaeke Emezi

Between You and Me: Transitional Comics by KC Councilor

Writing & Narration by Maika

Music by The Parlour Trick

Audio Engineering by Meredith Yayanos

Cover art by Daniel Kern

More info at liminalflares.com

Follow us on social media @liminalflares

I learned this, at least by my experiment,

that if one advances confidently in the direction

of their dreams and endeavors to live the

life which they have imagined, they will meet

with a success unexpected, in common hours.

They will put some things behind,

will pass an invisible boundary.

New universal and more liberal laws will begin

to establish themselves around and within them;

Or the old laws be expanded and interpreted

in their favor in a more liberal sense.

And they will live with the license

of a higher order of beings.

In proportion, as they simplify their life, the

laws of the universe will appear less complex,

and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty

povertym nor weakness weakness.

If you have built castles in the

air, your work need not be lost.

That is where they should be.

Now, put the foundations under them.

-Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

Published in 1854.

Hello and welcome.

This is Liminal Flares - Bedtime Stories

from beyond and In-between,

readings of eldritch literature drawn from the

public domain and amended to be gender-inclusive,

to remind us all that the relentless heteronormativity

of this world is a falsehood and that we cannot

assume to know a person's gender or their pronouns

based on our own perceptions.

But more than anything, this is a place for

haunted and haunting, gender-inclusive story time.

However, before story time begins, this very first

episode is about introducing myself, your narrator,

and sharing how and why this podcast came about.

My name is Maika.

I'm queer, transgender, nonbinary,

and my pronouns are they / them, and xe / xem.

Oh, one quick note before we really dive in.

I want to acknowledge that identifying as nonbinary

means different things to different people.

While I personally identify as a nonbinary trans person,

many people identify with a gender

that falls under the nonbinary umbrella.

So from here on out,

please know that when not speaking about myself,

I'm using nonbinary as an umbrella term.

The name of this podcast comes from an essay I wrote

about figuring out my own gender identity,

Unlearning the Gender Binary.

In that essay, I discussed various things

I had experienced throughout my life.

Things that I felt, thought, did, observed,

things that captivated me, things that troubled me.

So many different things that I increasingly

looked back on over the years

and began to recognize as clues,

luminous liminal flares sent up for my future self

to identify and interlink, revealing a winding path

tthat led to finally seeing myself clearly,

and understanding that I've always been exactly who I am.

My gender has always been this liminal,

untethered thing.

But I lacked the language to fully comprehend

and then articulate that for a long time.

I carried so much anxiety about coming out.

I worried that it had taken me too long to figure out

the source of the constant yet inexpressible

sense of unbelonging

that permeated every aspect of my life.

Why I always felt so out of joint with my body,

with my assigned gender, with other people,

and with the world itself.

Forget about being understood

as a nonbinary trans person.

I worried that cis people in my life

simply wouldn't believe me,

that those who'd known me for a long time

might feel that I had misled them.

I worried that other trans and genderqueer people

would tell me that I was mistaken about myself,

that I didn't belong among them either.

I had so many worries about coming out.

And I say that as someone for whom coming out

did not immediately put my life, my home,

or my job in any danger.

I'm very fortunate to live in one of the US States

where there are laws prohibiting discrimination

based on gender identity or sexual orientation.

Where gender-affirming health care

for trans and gender-nonconforming children,

teens, and adults is much more accessible

than it is in many places.

Where the state government is not actively trying

to erase transness, gender variance, or queerness,

not pointedly working to extinguish trans lives.

And where it is both possible and relatively

easy to change one's gender marker to

a nonbinary or third designation.

And even so, I still felt anxious, vulnerable, and insecure.

Writing that essay helped me acknowledge

and process many of my fears.

The predominantly supportive responses that I received

helped ease some of them, too.

But what helped me the most was speaking with

other trans and nonbinary people

about their own experiences.

I quickly discovered how common my worries were,

and found tremendous validation

in the similarity of our experiences,

for better and for worse.

The recognition and encouragement that I received

from each of those wonderful individuals

was lifesaving.

It was offered freely and generously

and made me feel equal parts inspired and indebted

to do what I could to help validate

and companion others in turn.

Publishing that essay felt like sending up

a wholly new sort of liminal flare.

This time for others who exist somewhere beneath

the vast and kaleidoscopically beautiful umbrella

of gender variance.

Perhaps they would identify with aspects of my story,

or simply recognize that it's never too late

to pick apart and piece yourself together.

After coming out, I felt new, like I was beginningto

wake up from a very long dream.

Which is not to say that my life hadn't felt real before.

It was just off. I was off.

And I had spent years searching, blaming,

mistattributing and suffering in ways

that had nothing to do with what was actually wrong.

Now I was still me,

but openly moving through the world

with a sense of myself that felt true,

that made beautiful sense,

rather than being at odds with literally everything.

Which brings me to this podcast.

Well, almost.

There's one more important piece of context.

After coming out, I began to transition,

which in turn meant learning to live and move

in a body that gradually stopped being something

it felt like I had to operate from a distance.

I've described it as existing inside one of the cavities

on the Operation gameboard,

desperately trying to avoid touching the metal edges

because everything inside of me would scream

each moment it inevitably happened.

Gradually my body became something I could begin

to discover how to fully, joyfully inhabit and use

to authentically interact with the rest of the world.

For most of my life,

my voice was a source of intense gender dysphoria.

Since childhood, long before my egg cracked

and I understood the why of it all,

before I even understood that this profound distress

has a name,

every time I spoke, my body betrayed me

by producing a voice that felt and sounded

terribly, painfully wrong.

Part of my transition concerned working

to make my voice feel and sound like my own,

and that included voice training lessons.

Shout out to Donny, my outstanding voice coach,

for making the process so fascinating and fun.

This podcast would not be possible without you

and all the work that we accomplished together.

And to the school itself, Your Lessons Now,

for making trans voice training so accessible,

even during lockdown.

If you or someone you know is interested in voice training,

I've included links to their website and social media

in the notes for this episode.

Between my weekly voice lessons were hours of

practice for which I was continually pulling books

from my shelves and looking up monologues

and poems online, all to read aloud.

While doing that,

I experienced the same painful, unavoidable issue

that I encounter everywhere else in life:

language that completely ignores gender variance.

Language that pretends that people outside

the gender binary do not exist.

Language that makes me feel invisible

and tells me that anyone who isn't a woman or a man

simply doesn't matter.

If you are nonbinary, genderqueer,

gender-nonconforming, gender-expansive,

whatever umbrella term best encompasses

your own unique gender identity,

this world continually, actively

denies your very existence.

The gender binary,

the system which classifies every person

as either female or male,

based on the gender assigned to them at birth,

is so extensively intertwined with our society

and the English language

that people enforce it all the time,

sometimes intentionally,

but typically without ever realizing

how their word choices instantly other and exclude

all sorts of people on a broad spectrum

of gender identity.

It's inescapable. It's exhausting.

And it can wear you down.

For example, the use of collective phrases such as

"every man, woman and child,"

or "ladies and gentlemen,"

or "men and women," "girls and boys,"

"sons and daughters," "guys and gals,"

"sisters and brothers," "he or she," "his or hers,"

and so on, is an act of erasure,

treating the gender binary as universal

and summarily excluding anyone

who is not a woman or a man.

This sort of casual, habitual erasure occurs everywhere:

throughout print, broadcast, and new media,

in workplaces and classrooms,

at doctors' offices and fitness centers,

in public restrooms and changing rooms,

on countless needlessly gendered products,

in every conceivable type of store,

in any mention of or discussion about

sexual and reproductive health

that only describes them as women's or men's issues.

It happens whenever abortion rights

are only addressed as a women's issue.

And do not get me started

on the fundamental wrongness

of gender reveal parties.

It happens via the assumption

that people who date

only have girlfriends or boyfriends,

that those who are married

only have husbands or wives.

It happens on all sorts of paperwork

and on web forms, in surveys and web analytics.

It happens in casual conversations, you name it.

For some of us, it often happens at home.

If you are nonbinary,

there are so very many ways

the world repeatedly tells you that

you don't merit consideration, let alone inclusion.

And the impact on individuals living in

a society that constantly refuses to even

acknowledge your existence can be devastating.

Studies by organizations like The Trevor Project have

shown that it is quite literally lifethreatening.

Language matters.

The way we talk about and speak to each other

overtly and subconsciously affects the way that people

perceive and value themselves and those around them.

Whether or not it affects you personally,

using gender inclusive or gender neutral language,

as well as learning and then using people's pronouns,

does more than make nonbinary people feel seen.

It reminds everyone else that we exist and matter too,

that we are part of the world, and just as deserving

of inclusion and representation as anyone else.

I've read articles and social media posts pushing

back against implementing gender-inclusive language,

as well as the use of neopronouns.

And one of the most common arguments

or complaints is that it's just "too much work"

to change the way we communicate.

It's more than people can remember

or be bothered to try and remember.

And you know what?

Yes. Change is hard.

Change is not passive.

It requires effort,

deliberate, ongoing effort.

But here's the thing,

if it's not too much work to learn someone's name

when you first meet them,

then you can also learn their pronouns.

If someone you know somehow changes their name,

and people do this for all sorts of reasons,

you don't tell them it's too much work

to remember to use their new name.

Or at least, I hope you don't.

And if it matters to you to call someone

by the correct name,

then it should matter every bit as much

that you're using their correct pronouns, too.

And remember, these aren't "preferred pronouns."

They are simply someone's pronouns, period.

And if you care enough to learn and use

people's pronouns, you should care enough

to use language that doesn't pretend the

world is only made up of women and men.

Even if that feels awkward.

That's okay.

Learning and growth are often

inherently awkward processes.

For as much as I'm complaining here,

I also want to make it clear that

even the smallest effort makes a real difference.

For example, if you catch yourself or a friend

misgendering a person in conversation -

and we all mess up sometimes -

Correcting yourself,

or politely correcting that friend is truly helpful.

If you mess up and let it slide,

possibly hoping that the person you misgendered

didn't notice -

and I guarantee, we always notice -

you're doing harm.

You just are.

Mistakes are inevitable, and that's okay.

It's refusing to even try that's harmful.

Our intentions don't matter if our actions,

or in this case, inaction,

still causes pain.

But I cannot overstate how beneficial it is when

you catch and correct yourself or that friend.

All it takes is simply stating the correct pronoun

and then carrying on with the conversation.

That's it.

This truly makes a difference,

even if only in one person's day.

You may not have any idea of what else

is happening in their life right now,

so making them feel seen, like they matter,

even just for a moment,

can have a profoundly positive impact.

And if the person you misgendered isn't present

when someone messes up their pronouns,

correcting each other is still important.

It makes it clear to everyone present

that correctly identifying people matters.

This is modeling and normalizing respectful,

inclusive behavior for each other.

And it's how we all get better at this.

Heteronormative language is something we

are conditioned with from birth.

It's so completely woven into society that

unlearning it and actively being inclusive in

one's speech requires continuous effort.

Which, finally, brings me

to the origins of this podcast.

Still with me?

As I was using all sorts of literature for voice practice

and continually encountering that exclusionary language,

I finally decided to stop wincing or rolling my eyes,

and instead tried a little experiment, just for fun.

As I read aloud, I swapped the outdated

use of he / him / his as default, catch-all pronouns

with the neutral pronouns / they / them / theirs.

I did the same thing for heteronormative assumptions

about the gender of some characters.

And I took instances of unnecessarily gendered language,

such as collective nouns, occupational titles,

salutations and honorifics,

and made them all gender neutral.

These are such seemingly insignificant changes.

They don't alter the surrounding stories at all.

And yet, the moment I began to read pieces with

these little amendments, something shifted for me.

Gone were all the small yet cumulatively painful

reminders of otherness.

Suddenly I could enjoy the stories,

the scenes, the writing itself,

and the feel of the words as I spoke them.

It wasn't just easier to focus on my practice,

which was my original intention.

I actually felt better... in myself.

The more pieces that I amended, the more it felt

like I was creating little literary havens for myself.

Places where anything is possible, be it marvelous,

mundane, horrifying, or somewhere in between,

without ever smacking into language that

breaks the spell of the fiction by excluding anyone

who isn't a woman or a man.

And I began to wonder, if reading literature with

these small, inclusive edits made such a difference

for me, perhaps it might do the same for others.

There is tremendous value in seeing yourself

represented in the stories you consume,

be they books, comics, movies, TV shows,

video games, songs, plays, whatever.

The Internet is full of stories from people

searching for reflections of themselves and celebrating

the inclusion of people like them, people who share

the same race, ethnicity, cultural heritage,

the same disabilities, the same neurodivergence,

the same sexual orientation,

and, yes, the same gender identity.

While it's fair to say that many forms of representation

are very gradually improving in mainstream media,

relative to the sheer volume of entertainment

of all sorts created each year,

stories seldom feature open, normalized depictions

of trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming characters.

On top of that, the very nature of

heteronormative language makes it crystal clear

to audiences, whether they realize it or not,

that anyone who isn't a woman or man,

a boy or a girl, doesn't exist.

So not only are most stories bereft of

nonbinary and genderqueer characters,

they don't even linguistically allow for

the possibility that such people might exist.

Shout out to a few recent exceptions on TV

that have made an impression on me -

by which I mean that this should not be taken

as a complete list of what's out there -

To Our Flag Means Death for offering so much

genuine, heartfelt, and affirming nonbinary

and queer representation.

Vico Ortiz, you are magnificent.

To the earnest and beautiful queer, trans, and nonbinary

representation on Star Trek Discovery.

Blu del Barrio and Ian Alexander,

you both make my heart swell.

To the Umbrella Academy, to Sex Education,

and to Rutherford Falls.

And I'm still sad that the live action

Cowboy Bebop series was canceled.

I desperately wanted to see more of

Mason Alexander Park as Gren.

Tantalizingly brief though their role was,

watching them and basking in their fabulousness

did me an enormous amount of good.

Thank goodness we can now enjoy them

playing Desire in The Sandman.

To say nothing of wonderful, wonderful

John Cameron Mitchell playing Hall Carter

in the same series.

By the way, Mason Alexander Park is

also in the new Quantum Leap revival.

Anyway!

Whether you're a child, teen, or some sort of adult,

it is a terrible feeling to read a story, play a game,

or watch a movie or show, and constantly be reminded

via the most basic parts of speech

that you aren't considered part of that world.

All of the entertainment that does this

further reinforces the reallife misconception

that the gender binary is universal.

And it is horribly easy to then fall into the trap

of wondering if you are valid.

When the stories you consume communicate

that people like you don't exist,

when the waking world makes it clear that

you don't even matter enough to be included

in basic grammar,

what happens to your self-worth?

So, what I'm here to do with this podcast

is the exact opposite of that:

to entertain you with eldritch stories and poems

that do not exclude anyone based on their gender.

Using pieces from the public domain enables me

to edit them without violating any copyright.

With a little pronoun switchery and employing

gender-inclusive terminology in place of

unnecessarily gendered, heteronormative words,

I am creating spaces for those of us outside

the gender binary where there weren't spaces before.

I'm saying, yes, people like you and me exist

in this or that story, this or that poem,

this or that fictional world.

Because no matter how often we are overlooked

or erased by individuals and wider society,

we ARE here.

We have always been here.

And we do matter.

You matter.

And the world is richer for it.

To be very clear, my goal here is not to erase

all use of the pronouns she / her /hers

and he/ him / his.

I am not trying to pretend that women and men,

trans or cis, don't exist.

That's just as harmful as pretending

that nonbinary people don't exist.

And those very same pronouns are also used

by many nonbinary people.

Others draw from an ever-growing array of neopronouns,

and some don't use any pronouns at all.

When amending pieces for this podcast,

I use the gender neutral pronouns they / them / theirs

because they can describe a person of any gender,

which means no one gets excluded.

If I've done my job well, unless perhaps you are

intimately familiar with whatever piece I'm reading,

you may not notice the changes that I've made.

Which is, of course, the entire point.

Heteronormative language assumes and conveys

that all people are either women or men.

By its very nature,

it excludes even the possibility of anyone else.

I can't avoid noticing that, which is why the frequency

with which it happens is so detrimental.

Whereas gender-inclusive language

makes room for everyone.

As you listened to the passage from Walden

that I read at the very beginning of

this episode, did you notice my edits?

I often hear people use phrases such

as "men and women," clearly thinking that

they are being inclusive by mentioning women.

And while that is an improvement on outdated

sexist language, we can do better than that.

We need to do better than that.

How helpful it would have been for me

and countless others to grow up in a world

that already did better than that.

I will always wonder how much earlier in life

I would have understood my own gender.

How much pain, confusion, and doubt

I would have spared myself had I seen examples

of trans and nonbinary people from childhood.

Had I read books like Genderqueer by Maia Kobabe,

Dear Senthuran by Akwaeke Emezi,

Transitional Comics

by KC Counselor,

just to name a few of my recent reads.

If I had even heard words like transgender, nonbinary,

genderfluid, or genderqueer.

Had I grown up with language that didn't

condition me to believe

that there were only two genders in the first place,

even though I knew from a very young age

that somehow I didn't fit either of them.

Instead, I just felt inherently wrong in myself -

all the time -

without understanding why

and without being able to articulate that wrongness,

without understanding that there wasn't

actually anything wrong with who I am.

I will never know what difference that would have made

for me, and there's nothing that I can do about that.

But I can try to help other people feel seen,

valid, and included.

I am not saying that this little podcast

is going to change the world,

but beyond the heteronormative status quo,

in the face of increasingly aggressive efforts

to silence and erase queerness, transness,

and gender variance,

my hope is that this podcast will help more

people feel like they belong in this world,

to help them stoke their own flares,

liminal and otherwise.

So to all of you out there beneath this vast

and kaleidoscopically beautiful umbrella

of gender variance:

You matter.

You count.

I see you.

I know that this can be hard.

I know that there are truly terrifying

and incredibly harmful things happening

in the world right now.

Just as I know that for me,

being queer, transgender, and nonbinary

is amazing and beautiful.

Each time I feel myself erased, I think of you.

I remind myself that you exist too.

I remind myself of how much it sucks that

you know what this erasure feels like too.

Each instance of erasure then becomes a moment

when I actively try to remember that I am not alone.

In thinking of you, in seeing you,

I strive to make my own liminal flare feel visible.

May these haunted and haunting stories and poems,

amended to be gender-inclusive,

read to you by a nonbinary trans person,

help you and / or people you know and love

feel more valid and seen.

And may we all help illuminate each other.

Thank you for listening to our first episode

of Liminal Flares.

I hope you've enjoyed our time together

in this twilight space.

Our music is by The Parlor Trick.

Audio engineering by Meredith Yayanos.

If you have a favorite author or a specific piece of writing

- a short story, poem, or passage from a book -

that's in the public domain in the US,

I welcome your requests for future episodes.

You'll find links to archives of public domain literature

in the resources section of our website,

liminalflares.com,

where you'll also find more information about us,

this show, and individual episodes as they air.

Submit your request via the website or

via social media @liminalflares,

where you can follow us to learn about future episodes

and keep up with what's happening behind the scenes.

Next time on Liminal Flares,

I stop going on and on about myself

and why I'm doing this,

and kick things off properly by reading

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.

This was the very first piece that I amended

just for myself,

so it seems fitting that we should begin there together.

I do hope you'll join me.