JEREMY PENN
My younger sister was going to visit. She was touring colleges and wanted to visit the University of Miami where I was at for school. And so I was on the like metro rail to pick her up from the airport and take her back to campus for a visit. She was, I think she stayed with me, I could be wrong. I was just like thinking through all this in my head, like listening to music, I assume, because that's what I'm always doing. And I just remember like staring like vacantly into a non-existent distance that only I could see, being like, why do I feel like I am not capable of whatever it is that I have been accused of? And I just have this little voice in the back of my head that just goes, because you're not cisgender. And I remember going, oh, absolutely not. We are not having this conversation. I have to go pick up my little sister. I do not have time for this right now. And that was really the start of the gender questioning, of like, oh. And unraveling that thread that I mentioned earlier of like, oh, well, just because I don't want surgery doesn't mean I am or am not trans. And it turns out that was not the case, as evidenced by my she slash they pronouns. And so from there it was sort of like a slow descent into figuring out like who I am and what my gender is.

JEREMY PENN
And it took a while in part because when I finally came out as trans, about a year and a half later in spring 2017, my senior year of college, again my immediate family took it very negatively. I came out distantly, like I tried to come out to my mother in person and I couldn't do it. I broke down crying in the car. And she later told me that she could tell that there was something, wrong is not the right word, but that there was something that I was upset about that I wanted to tell her, I just couldn't. During one of our many like post coming out conversations sort of debriefs after a lot of harm between us. So I came out to them via email because I just couldn't not be out anymore and then I came out to like everybody on Facebook. I was like a very well-known activist? I can't rightly call myself an activist, even though I would like to be. Like a very well-known entity around town, by virtue of how many organizations I was in, how much I yelled at student affairs administrators, which I continued to do in college. I was a known quantity and it was a big deal for a lot of people for me to be coming out. I came out on Facebook and basically my immediate family like cut me out. They were like we are incredibly upset both about the fact that you are trans and the way you told us. And when we finally reconnected, my parents effectively gaslit me for another year and a half into questioning whether or not I actually counted as trans. Of like, well if you don't want to transition, basically did to me what I had already done to myself by virtue of misperceptions and incoherent language around whether or not I could be considered trans or non-binary, what is the right term, what do I feel, into basically like backtracking around what my own gender identity was until I started law school in fall 2018.

JEREMY PENN
I worked for a year between degrees, so I graduated college 2017 and started law school fall 2018. And we had a big blowout fight because I had moved to DDC and I distinctly remember going, law school's gonna be brutal, and I should set up with a therapist now. So I, literally before the semester started, had gone to the Georgetown Laws, like, how do I, I just know I'm gonna need it and they had recommended me to a gender therapist off like you know like off campus like in private practice and they were gonna be really expensive and I remember being like I don't want to talk to my parents about it, but the counseling center is recommending this to me, and it would cost a lot of money, so let me see what my parents will say. And the response was incredibly hostile, to the extent that it actually snapped me out of where I had been for about 18 months and I was like okay, I'm not going to have their support, I'm going to have to not be able to rely on them. I'm going to have to be able to rely on myself or whatever else it is to figure this out because they're just not comfortable with this. Could not afford the external gender therapist without them, so I did therapy through Georgetown Law's Counseling Center, and then ultimately switched over to a low-income clinic where I was for a number of years before getting health insurance and now I am now I'm in private now I see someone in private practice but that was very much the journey of it as it was shaped by I mean the folks around me.

COOPER JOSLIN
Yeah that's, wow, same honestly. I'm sure Kalli has told you some of our background, you know, like she was, we were both involved in the exec board of our GSA at school and college and in Florida. You do, you sure do. Yeah, I honestly think we were involved in getting at least two people in the administration to quit their jobs. And so, yeah, I feel that. And yeah, the way that you see, at the time, you know, in like 2010, 2011, around there, the way that you saw trans people represented, it was that very single track of this is a, you know, a white trans woman, and you know, she's had X, Y, and Z surgeries. So that's what it means. And, you know, that's like, I feel like that's what I saw at least growing up. And it never clicked. Even in college, I had trans friends, and I was like, good for you. Good for you.

JEREMY PENN
Yeah. Listen, I still remember Laverne Cox. Like, that to me is always going to be like, like, the zero-zero point on the graph. It's like, not for like my own, I mean, not for my own perceptions of what I wanted for myself but in terms of like oh being trans can be something that is one not bad and to the bad shit is coming from the social norms around it not from being trans like I the yeah like when Orange is the New Black came out and she was in that role and you know so many I am far from the first person to point this out. Like, the writers chose to give her the role of the hairstylist. Like, they gave her a position of deep social influence and power within the Black community for women. And they were like, we're actually giving her this particular position because it's really important for us that she be known as this individual. She is not going to be a write-off over here on the side. We're giving her a really central position. And that was truly, at the time, for me it was like really revolutionary to the point that I'm getting like a little bit teary-eyed about it. And then the big one for everybody I think who wasn't queer was like the whole Caitlyn Jenner stuff, but even saying her name is already too much for this conversation, so that's going to be the only reference we do to her. Because that one was like the mainstreaming of the conversation in a way, but like, at least for me and I feel like for a lot of the other queer folks, it was always Laverne.

COOPER JOSLIN
I totally feel that. Yes, she was the first, like, any vague sense of positive anything that I had heard about a trans person. Because before, for me at least, it was Boys Don't Cry. Like, my mom had watched that movie in the 90s and like throughout my childhood she was just like do not, don't, just don't do it. So yeah that's another topic for another day, but.

JEREMY PENN
And conveniently like we don't have to like we don't have time to have that conversation, and luckily, it's already been had. Like, you got, like, Disclosure is out, it is on Netflix, it's a great documentary for everyone who listens to this recording, like, watch The Celluloid Closet too while you're at it. These things exist. You and I don't have to go there. It's been done.

COOPER JOSLIN
Thank god. So yeah, let's talk a little bit about the, I guess the law school years at that school with you, because that's, I know from watching Kalli, it is a whole experience. What was law school like? Not just in terms of gender, but just like in terms of things.

JEREMY PENN
So very infamously, Michelle Obama in Becoming, which I actually still haven't finished, please don't at me, I apologize. I'm chipping away at it. Apparently she very infamously refused to say anything about, I think she has a single line where she's like, I attended Harvard Law and that's where I met Barack. And that's like, it, like refused. She was like, and it was like a whole snub. I preferred to do the opposite. I prefer to drag Georgetown Law's name through the mud. It was brutal. Ironically enough, I really liked my first year-ish. I mean, it comes with all of the ups and downs that being in the first year of law school entails, but I actually found it... I remember describing it to someone at the time as, I feel like I am going to the gym eight hours a day for my brain. And I actually, I adored that. Contrary to a lot, I mean, I had plenty of imposter syndrome. Like, excuse me, like the race, class, gender dynamics of the space. But in terms of the academics, I literally remember the first week, actually it might have even been the first class. I remember like sitting down, I remember just being there, like participating in class or being in class, whatever, and just going like, oh yes, like this is where I'm supposed to be. Like I did the right thing in both going to go to, in choosing to go to law school and in going to this law school. Like this is the right place for me to be at. And I still don't disagree with those notions, even though I do think that Georgetown is like an irredeemable institution. So I was the only sucker Willing to be president of outlaw my 2L year which was if I recall Kalli's 1l year Because Kalli was only one year below me I also knew a number of folks who were two years below me who were 1Ls when I was a 3L. But Kalli was class of 2022, right? Yeah. Okay. Yes. Yes So Yeah, something that I actually don't know if Kalli knows this. Cause I, so, my 2L year, I had one of my, one of the people who was part of my close-knit circle of friends from college, from the LGBTQ group in college, was hospitalized in a coma and died very suddenly over the course of about three to five days in the middle of that year's orientation. And I was basically not necessarily forced but I there was definitely like an expectation that I would continue to participate in all of the various orientation activities as President of Outlaw, at the same time that I was actively in the middle of being at a loss for words, at having someone like very kin to me, like just dying. And so I was dealing with that and simultaneously trying to provide like a healthy, safe, welcoming, inviting environment for all of these incoming queer and trans law students, and also for the Section 3 folks in general. And so it was a really, really... The first half, even, of that year was brutal for that reason and then we kind of were gonna do a full reset and then you know famous last words it was the spring of 2020 BAM You know what I will say is that, I always like to say that Georgetown is a very robust underbelly. It is large enough that it, and it is, it occupies like a very weird place. So many people who want to go into public interest go to Georgetown, even if we don't fit the mold of who Georgetown wants us to be, because it is an avenue to public interest work. I think it places as a percentage of its outgoing students, it is the second highest percentage of students who go into public interest of all law schools in the country, second only to CUNY, the City University of New York Law School, which is famously public interest. Georgetown, I think it's like 20% of students. CUNY, it's like 40 or something like that. So we're huge and we have a fairly large set of resources for public interest students that quite frankly do not really meet but exist nonetheless separate from the private practice resources and at most law schools those are the only ones that exist. So there is this robust network of faculty and students and administrators on this underbelly side who actually do give a shit, who actually care, who have grounded values, whether we call that socialist, progressive, leftist, whatever, including professors who engaged in protests with us, and who wrote letters and signed letters with us, and this and that. But then we also had the flip side. We had not just conservative professors, but we had very middle of the road professors who really wanted to help move things along, but only according to their own principles or practices. Like really at odds with what students were asking for or telling them. It came to, I mean I can give you several points. So I was, on top of being president of Outlaw, my 2L year, I was also all three years, mainly 1L and 2L year, I was involved with National Lawyers Guild, our student chapter at Georgetown. So I was one of the co-organizers and participants in the protest against Kevin McAleenan, who at the time was acting DHS secretary, although I believe it was later determined that he was illegally elevated to acting role, so I think he technically doesn't even qualify as acting when you go through a document because of all the shit that Trump pulled to get people he wanted into acting positions. But that's all. We don't have time for all that. He was invited as a keynote, as the keynote speaker to Georgetown's annual immigration policy conference in fall 2019, my 2L year, and he was actively involved with the creation and implementation of family separation. So a group of us said, absolutely fuck this. And I have actually a photo saved on my laptop somewhere of like a, It's like us right as we were about to start the protest. I'm so like outside of the auditorium so there's like a bunch there was like Side of the auditorium and then a group of us who were protesting inside the auditorium And I mean a number of my classmates had great signs. I have a personal favorite, which is my friend Tamar Hoffman's I believe was one of class Kalli's classmates Tamar is Jewish Israeli Is an anti-occupationist like has like very grounded principles and is like also one of the like cleverest people I know She had a sign that just said, this is some straight-up Nazi bullshit. And it's right front and center in this photo that somebody took of us right as we're about to start doing the protest chants. And it's great. So I participated in that. And we then did a subsequent organizing around their then attempts to implement restrictions on student free speech on campus. So there was massive turnout to this big town hall that they held where they were basically like, we're gonna implement a bunch of things because we think it'll make things more respectful. And we were like, you are just trying to constrain student opposition to deeply, deeply conservative politics on campus that are actually putting students in harm's way as was brought up bringing a member of the US Cabinet, albeit illegally appointed, to campus implicates law enforcement in a way that is threatening to undocumented students at the Law Center, as well as students with carceral experience, like it's incredibly destructive. So anyways, that's a whole thing. That all happened my 2L year. Pandemic! Gestures vaguely. My 3L year is when, which would have been Tali's 2L year, the spring semester. So I was always involved with a lot of things. I served on the Student Faculty Diversity Committee, my 2L and 3L year. And then 3L year had run for and was elected to student bar association, like the law school student government as a 3L representative. And the terms run from March to March, so it was like we were elected and our first meeting was going to be the week after spring break, 2L year, and that whole term ended up being virtual and Olivia Hinerfeld killed it as president to this day still my president I was on in addition to being on the Student Faculty Finance Committee, I was also then asked to serve on the Student Faculty Finance Committee. And spring three all year, right before the end of our term, like literally it was in the intermediate period between the next elections where I believe Jade Baker had just won. Yes, because Melody... Yes, I have that right. So it was because it was, yeah, so Jade Baker had just won and was like due to start her term as the first black president of the SBA in the law school's history. And in between like the election and the like changeover meeting for SBA where like we would give our goodbyes and they would be welcomed in as the new like SBA board and House of Delegates. The video of two professors demeaningly speaking about their students of color specifically black students in the classroom, during the break in the middle of their class, was recorded in a Zoom, flagged by students, and sent to the administration as, hey, what the fuck, you need to do something about this, and they refused, and it was my classmate and good friend Hassan who leaked it on Twitter. I made a Twitter so that I could follow him and retweet it. As a little, like, fun little aside, because this is an oral history and I have a deep, like, a deep abiding love for oral histories, I did a project on LGBTQ oral history in college. Just so that this is forever recorded, the first thing I did when I joined Twitter was block Elon Musk. Which I find incredibly funny given that I stopped using Twitter a year later in spring 2022, and then six months after I left Twitter, he bought it out. So I proactively anticipated all of that, apparently. But yeah, I was involved in this massive student –

JEREMY PENN
I mean, in a very small way. I was not central to the conversations, but those of us who had been on the diversity committee had spent the entire year telling all of the faculty, like, hey, you guys aren't doing enough. Like, hey, these are not radical enough proposals. Like, hey, this is too tepid. Hey, you're not go, like, you're expecting labor from us and you're not recognizing our value. You're not compensating us for this. And like, sure, you all aren't being compensated, but your faculty, you're being paid to work here. We're students, we're paying to be here, not the same dynamic. And on top of that we have other obligations that we have to meet on and this is on top of all that. And we wrote like a very strong response that was basically like, you guys have fucked up. I'm paraphrasing obviously. It was way better written than that we were all a bunch of law students but yeah I mean we really castigated student administration I apparently had developed a reputation for it At one point I had to meet with an administrator about something individually regarding my own academics and we had only ever known each other in passing before through the more advocacy and student government and student affairs side of things. We had been in meetings and stuff before, but we never like one-on-one chatted. And he was like, oh, like, you know, like obviously we've known about each other in passing. And I was like, oh, like what is my reputation? And he just went, you're known for being a very zealous advocate for your constituents, which is code word for I would literally yell at administrators who would come to the Student Bar Association with proposals that were totally two-faced, that were really under-resourced, that were kind of trying to slip something by us and get our seal of approval. And I would often be one of the first people to say, certainly not the only one, but I was often one of those people who would be like, actually, I don't like this. Nobody's willing to say anything right now. I'll say it, the emperor's not wearing clothing. And so I have it as like a small point of pride that so many folks from student affairs are no longer there. Not quite frankly because they were bad people, but because they were working for someone who was awful and they have all moved on to better jobs even though he is still there. But I digress. So those are my experiences at Georgetown. The academics truly were, I think, robust, but I also picked professors in a very particular way. I mostly picked, I had a number of classes that I was interested in taking and or wanted to take and I took those classes. But by and large I took the versions of those classes that were taught by professors whose politics I liked and whose personalities I liked because I was not going to take a class with a professor who was not going to be able to hold space for me.

JEREMY PENN
And so in terms of my own gendered experience, I did at the start of every semester, I emailed all of my professors to introduce myself and let them know what my pronouns were. And it did not stop me from getting misgendered. My first year, one of my favorite professors, actually, like very embarrassingly, he was incredibly embarrassed by himself to the point that he froze on stage and did not know what to do. Misgendered me and I corrected him and he paused and went, wait, what? And I said it again and he was just completely frozen. And one of my classmates said like, like one of my classmates jumped in to maneuver and navigate the conversation and move the cold call forwards. He had no idea how to navigate that. I don't think I ever had a professor who was actively hostile to me. I did have classmates who were. I learned that there was a classmate, at least one, who I had just assumed she was misgendering me by accident. And then one of my closest friends said, no, Jeremy, she's doing that on purpose. I actually asked her about it. I went up to her at one point and said, oh, hey, you keep misgendering Garamay, and she said, oh, yeah, no, I'm doing it on purpose. And so space was really, yeah. At one point, I had to ream out a bunch of administrators about the fact that, I mean, one, we already had virtually, we had across the entire campus maybe three to five gender inclusive restrooms. And they were not evenly spaced around the campus. They were not all in coherently useful places. And the only one that was close to any of the major lecture halls at one point for a period of time just didn't have toilet paper in it.

JEREMY PENN
So actually it was spring 2020 was the start of the back half of my 2L year and my fourth semester and like from January through when we went virtual, I was just constantly... At first I was emailing them, and then I was in meetings with them, and I was telling them, and then I was in meetings with them, and I was yelling and or begging them, because I had to go like multiple floors up. I had to take an elevator to get, and to go to the other side of the building, to where the other restroom was in the building, because it was the only one available that had toilet paper in it. And then I was missing class and I had to go up to the, I didn't have to, but I went up to the professor and apologized and he was like, that's totally not your fault, but it also meant that I was still missing class. And then, you know, I was going back into the recordings to catch what I had missed because I had to fucking pee. So that's Georgetown.

COOPER JOSLIN
Yeah, first I want to say there's something, there's no feeling like being asked to be on a diversity council Like that's just I've been there too. And let me say wow That is quite a thing. So all those meetings were for toilet paper?

JEREMY PENN
Not all of them. So the meetings were not specifically about toilet paper. The meetings were about, like, DEI issues on campus. And I had to keep bringing up that quite literally, like, it's great that y'all want to talk about all these high-minded issues. I literally can't fucking pee. Yeah. Like, literally, I had to say that in a meeting I had to be like it was a meeting around the issues that like for whatever reason I got roped into I feel very like One of my mentors in law school was one of the founders and or president of the Women of Color Collective. And I think because of my reputation, because I'm a trans femme individual, even though I'm white, I was invited into a lot of spaces that were predominantly women of color. And so it was a meeting of DEI around specifically issues for non-cis white women. It was the issues for women of color and queer and trans women, I presume, because again, I was there and I think I was one of the only white people in the room. And I just had to be like, guys, I literally cannot pee. I have been missing class this week. And it's actually really funny. One of my friends had... We ran into each other on our way into the meeting we were both running late from a different DEI thing and because again, like they just want us to do everything and So we're running like Just looking me just went I'm so fucking sick of this bullshit. And then like, she says that as we immediately go into the room and then we have to just like, just deal with all the bullshit.

COOPER JOSLIN
Yes. God, I'm so sorry.

JEREMY PENN
Oh, I mean, yeah, you know it.

COOPER JOSLIN
So I want to be cognizant of time. We're approaching seven o'clock. I have two questions for you, but we can save those for another time if that's preferable.

JEREMY PENN
Totally up to you. Okay.

COOPER JOSLIN
If you've got time for it, I will ask first of the two. Cool. So, this is, I think, my 13th or 14th interview with different trans people, and it's been fascinating to see how everyone approaches transition differently. Some people were like, I was five years old and I knew I, you know, my genitals didn't work for me or something like that. You know, some people then like, you know, right out the bat like very explicit with it. But fewer folks have been like, you know, no, I don't want to have any surgery or anything, and I was just curious, what's your experience with that, and what is your advice to somebody who may not feel quote unquote trans enough.

JEREMY PENN
Yeah, that was one of the many issues I experienced slash still experience with or have experienced in a lot of trans spaces or with trans folks is either that actual experience or a fear of, or anxiety of experiencing that. In part because I've experienced it before and in part because I'm just afraid of experiencing it either again or in general. Like I mentioned, when I first learned what transgender was, I was like, well that can't be me because I don't want surgery like I don't want bottom surgery and I mean I didn't know that it was called bottom surgery at the time but so a few different things.

JEREMY PENN
I do still remember when I started growing facial hair. And I remember thinking, like, I mean, not ew, gross, but it was something along those lines. And I remember being like, I like, I was like, I want to remove this from my face and give it to somebody else. It's not for me. And at the time, I thought it was like Peter Pan syndrome. I was like, oh, it's because it's a sign of getting older and I don't want to, blah, blah, blah. It's this transition from childhood to adulthood. Also facial hairs have very particular connotations within the Jewish space that was really like fucking with me ironically enough in contrast to my body hair which I've always been fairly comfortable with. But so I like have known for you know at least a decade that I've hated my facial hair and when I started figuring out my gender it started clicking for me that this was a gender issue and not something else. And so it's one of the pieces of physical transition that I'm very, very affirmatively interested in is getting rid of this shit. But as I was figuring out my gender, I knew for a fact that I did not want to fit into some sort of binary. Like, I was like, I am not interested in trading one particular prison for another. At least is like my experience of it. Like some people find a deep sense of comfort in their redefined binary experience. That was not it for me. And so I liked this metaphor back before What's-Her-Face from Arizona became an independent. I liked it when it was just Bernie Sanders and Angus King. But I use... Cinema, that's her name. I, for a number of years now, I have described my gender as this. For people who like don't understand like how can you be transgender and non-binary isn't like one or the other like you're she they like oh and I go I am a gender independent who caucuses with the women well actually I say the girls but like it's like it's the girls yeah and like I actually around cliff I have found that that works really well for people because it's like oh okay cuz like they have a mental model for it and then it works it's like okay Jeremy isn't a woman or a girl but like caucuses with like goes into that space and it works for people so I I really struggled like I said you know like at first when I came out I thought that I had to be transgender and it was really conflicted over the fact that I didn't feel like a binary trans woman and even now I wouldn't I don't think I can even claim trans woman I don't think womanhood is a thing that I get to have not because I have to do certain things to have it but because it just does not feel like a space that is for me to put my hand on.

JEREMY PENN
But I do say trans femme, or at the very least trans femme-ish. What can I say? I'm good with like a tape measure. I'd like to think I'm like a little bit butch, but like not mostly, just like a little bit. Like around the edges. Like I think butch is fun to cosplay as but I don't prefer to live there so I knew that I wasn't binary trans and then again I kind of got gaslit into this full misperception of myself after reconnecting with my immediate family a few months after I had come out. And then I was like, well, I'm just going to use they, them. And that also felt very wrong because I was like, I am in this space of like, I mean, it felt wrong procedurally to have who I was going to be defined by my family, but it also felt wrong because I was like, this is also just not correct. And then I was able to settle on this happy, and I truly am somewhere in between. I do not consider myself transgender, period. I do not consider myself non-binary, period. I consider myself trans non-binary, whether that's a hyphen or a slash or however we define it. Because like, I'm trans non-binary. Like, I am a little bit trans and a little bit non-binary I'm not one of the other which in and of itself is like a fun little fuck you to the notion of the binary between them in the first place

COOPER JOSLIN
I thank you I want to say thank you You have been the first person I've talked to who has articulated my own gender in a way that I understand. Because same, just opposite end, you know? So that makes me so happy.

JEREMY PENN
It's the Spider-Man meme.

COOPER JOSLIN
Yes, That's it, that's it.

JEREMY PENN
Or actually, even, it's also that, I actually don't know what it's from, but it's that thing of like, is it Anna Kendrick and the other person like passing each other in the car with a look of horror on their face?

COOPER JOSLIN
Yes, you have articulated it perfectly. I was like, I always knew Jeremy was cool, but like, this makes more sense now.

JEREMY PENN
Yeah, so ironically enough, My dad was really proud of me for this. In college I went a little overboard with my academics, but one of the things I did was I minored in LGBTQ studies, which you'll be shocked to learn from the way that I think and talk about the world. But I also, one of the reasons I was able to do it is that I convinced my parents that I could fit it into my schedule because I got scholarships for it because they had a scholarship for it if you were either pre-law, pre-medicine, or pre-nursing and you signed up for the LGBTQ studies minor you could get a scholarship and so my parents were my mom was less so she was like do you have time like you already do so much and my dad was like it's free money take it and then they didn't have enough applicants the second year so I applied for it and got it again because they were like we literally don't have enough people applying So if you want it a second year, we will give you a second round of scholarship." And I was like, again, it is free money.

COOPER JOSLIN
Good for you. I love that. So I guess to wrap things up a little bit, The last question I've been asking, I think is probably my favorite. It's, what do you see as the future for trans people and what gives you hope? It's a two-parter.

JEREMY PENN
Oh, devastating. All right, so I mentioned I'm Jewish. So you'll be shocked to learn from everything you've experienced about me in the last hour that I have pre-planned my midlife crisis. I will be going to rabbinical school at some point. So I'm gonna give you like a very me slash rabbinical-esque slash Jewish answer, which is I don't think there is a future for trans people. I don't think there is one single future for trans people. I think there are a lot of them. Both in the sense that I don't think it has been defined yet, and I also don't think it's going to be just one. So that's my answer to that first one. That first one. The second one I struggle with. I have really bad suicidal ideation and so and my therapist is off this week so it's been particularly virulent this week but even in a good week I think I I don't know if that's true I think there are days and or weeks that I have a very coherent answer to this question.

JEREMY PENN
For me, there's two pieces to hope. There is removing the disillusionment. How do I explain this? It requires or involves both the removal of the bad and the provision of the good. It's not enough to do one or the other, right? If we add good, like if we have a bunch of bad shit in front of us, it's not enough to simply get rid of the bad shit, because we're left with nothing, and it's not enough to just add some good stuff to the mix because we still got a bunch of bad shit in front of us. Like we have to do both. And so my experiences really are like when I have experienced both of those. I've experienced the clearing away or the very, the yeah like the clearing away of like harm and the provision of care, for me, is where I get hope. It's fewer and further between than I would like, at the very least in this particular phase of my life. I don't think that's unique to people who are in their 20s. But like that experience of having unbridled compassion or love from people, like, that gives me hope, along with like, when I have, like, either for myself or others experienced like truly cathartic, or profound is not the right word. Like a truly rectifying healing from harm, which comes with, right, like at least in the Jewish faith and the Jewish tradition, like healing requires not just the reparations for what has been done, right? Not just setting the bone, but also like the implementation of not causing that harm again. Like it's not enough to say that we have set someone's bone if we don't do something about the thing that caused the fracture in the first place. And so I say that because my perception of what constitutes healing is not merely just the healing part, it's also that second piece. And when I've experienced both of those with and or parallel to, that experience of truly divine in a way, even when it comes from another person, care, like that for me is what gives me hope. And I don't have an example that comes to mind right now. But that's what comes to mind for me. That's what hope is. Or that's what hope brings me.

COOPER JOSLIN
I love that. I love that definition. That makes me happy. Thank you. Any parting words? Anything else you want to add? Anything you want to make sure it gets recorded.

JEREMY PENN
I'm obsessed with everything you have in the background. I I love I was like, oh not only does Cooper have like a full like gamer bro setup here, but it's also like proliferated with all of this like queer bullshit in the background that is like listen just because I have this gender doesn't mean I don't have this gender like it's oh it's delicious and delightful and I love that I'm seeing stuff that I've seen on your social media like in the background here. I'm like recognizing it. Yeah it's very like, yeah it's very like Hank Green energy.

COOPER JOSLIN
Thank you so much that makes me so happy. Yeah I am always worried that I'm gonna get on a call like this and people are gonna be like, what is wrong with you? So hearing the opposite of that is very affirming and a thank you.

JEREMY PENN
Oh, I mean we can have like a little bit of that. There's nothing wrong with what the fuck is real.

COOPER JOSLIN
Yeah, 100%. I, yes, I totally feel that. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for this call. This was so lovely. I really just want to express to you how high of an opinion I hold of you. You are such an amazing person and one of the first trans people I met when we moved to DC and you have just been so wonderful and such a beacon of inspiration for me. So thank you.

JEREMY PENN
I have to learn how to take a compliment. So I'm gonna say thank you. I was and or will, I am going to also provide you with the inverse. We have barely gotten to see each other because our lives are so busy. And yet, I am constantly in awe. I mean, it's not out of surprise, but out of consistent recognition of how cool it is. You do so many things for yourself and for others. Like this project alone is just a piece of it, right? There is the artwork that you do. You're putting together a zine. Like you do so many things. And truly it is, I don't mean underground as in it's not known. Underground in that like, it's not for the sake of building like a tower or like a pedestal like you're not trying to put yourself or somebody else on a thing You're just doing this stuff because you care and it is so refreshing, especially in a city that is not like that, or a city that is populated with lots of people who are not like that. But also just because, yeah, it is such a pleasure, privilege to get to share space and or city, like space in the meaning of time and also space in the meaning of literal geography with you.

COOPER JOSLIN
Thank you. Now it's my turn to say I need to learn how to take a compliment because I'm just like, you know, yes, exactly, finger guns it is. Thank you so much.