In this episode of Queers & Co., I’m joined by Chiron Stamp, trans artist, writer, facilitator and femmboy alien.

We chat about non-binary thinking beyond gender, intersectional collective care in practice, navigating the brutal legal system, neurodiversity as being like biodiversity, how capitalism tells us to move really fast, the difference between boundaries and limits and whether all queers are from another planet. Plus, an incredible and rare performance of Chiron’s work, “A Love Poem to my Transness”.

If you haven't already, be sure to join our Facebook community to connect with other like-minded queer folks and allies.

Find out more about Gem Kennedy and Queers & Co.

Podcast Artwork by Gemma D’Souza

Resources

Chiron Stamp's website

Chiron's Instagram: @stampchiron

Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy is available here

Rhys’ Pieces / Queefy

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds, Adrienne Maree Brown, is available here

Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Adrienne Maree Brown is available here

Photo of Chiron by Paul Samuel White

Full Transcription

Gem: Hey Chiron. So we've been chatting a bit before, but we decided to switch the recording on because we're getting really into it and it would be great to share this rather than have to repeat it again. So first of all, thank you so much for joining me. I'm really excited.

Chiron: Thanks for having me. I'm excited and nervous, but in an excited way. They're quite similar feelings. Maybe they're the same.

Gem: As we talked about before, we've kind of agreed some of the things we wanted to talk about, but I wondered if we should jump straight in with what we were talking about just before we started to record.

Chiron: Yeah. Oh, I was talking about how I'd seen this thing on Instagram, which was andI can't cite it. I'm really bad at that anyway, remembering the names of people, but on Instagram, someone had done some medical research into the link between people who identify as non-binary or trans in some way and being on the autistic spectrum and I haven't read it all, but it did that thing in my tummy where I felt strange about it. And I guess I'm really excited that somebody did some research, but then my automatic questions are like, who did the research? Is it a cis person asking a lot of non-binary people questions? Was it a trans person themselves? Or who is the research for and who makes money out of it? The usual questions about most things. And also it's a thing about the medical model isn't it? And if that is in relationship to the medical model, which is kind of like my artistic area of research, or like my biggest frustration with the world, I guess that we're in relationship to this idea that some people's ways of being are wrong or disordered or need to be fixed in some way. Sometimes ways of being can be really difficult but the world is not... I just think that people can actually do quite a lot if they're supported in the right way, but that means that we have to be much more flexible. I get that like fear of, "Oh, if people understand that research or engage with that research without being critical of the medical model because maybe they're a person where that medical model actually works for them quite fine, what does that mean about how people view trans people in society?" But those are all of my instinctual fears. I also try to challenge that quite a lot as well. I don't want to be cynical or fearful, but I do want to be critical. And also hopeful. Yeah, those were my thoughts. That was a bit of a rambling and I was asking you if you had seen it and what you feel about it and if it's... I'm talking about something I haven't engaged with properly, but there we go.

Gem: Well, I think it's an important thing to think about as well. And yeah, we can try and find the sources, but as with anything it's important to question stuff. I think the thing that comes to my mind when I hear you say that our family worked with an autistic advocate in Australia and she is amazing. She does really great work. I don't know if you know her, Kristy Forbes. In some of her work, she talks about people doing research at the moment in order to identify the genes that "cause", and for anyone who can't see me, which is everyone apart from Chiron, I'm doing air quotes... That "cause" neurodiversity or autism, whatever neurodiversity we're thinking about in order to remove that gene so that we are less likely to have people in society who are neurodiverse and 1. What the fuck? And 2. It reminds me of what you're saying about it depends who's looking at it, who is the audience for the research? Because I'm thinking, well, what the fuck? You're going to just curb all our chances of changing anything if you are aiming to have less neurodiverse people in the world because as I said before, generally people making changes and living outside of binary society are neurodiverse in some way. And I feel like around me, I have the community to show that like pretty much all my friends are neurodiverse who are activists and who are making actual change. So I don't know how you feel hearing me say that?

Chiron: I feel many things. Oh, what do I feel? I feel conflicted. I guess. I mean it makes me rage to think that someone thinks that they should remove... So my way of thinking about neurodiversity as an artist who's always made work about feeling uncomfortable about labels and queer was the only one that ever really felt comfy because it's the one that's really spacious and means everything and it doesn't mean anything. And then non-binary for me, I guess I had been using they/them pronouns that I don't consider to be gender neutral, but maybe we talk about that in a minute.

Chiron: I liked non-binary cause it basically said no, not that, none of the above. And I quite like that it has no in it. Now I've lost my train of thought, which also happens when you're nervous, right? That neurodiversity for me, I understand it a bit like biodiversity. A lot of my artwork is about non-binary-ness and mountains which don't go together, but for me they do but that you need diversity in biology and especially as things grow, if we think about plants in order for there to be land and you can't necessarily plant the same thing in the same place over and over because the land needs to be regenerated. And these are like ideas from first nations and indigenous people that we forget and have been erased. So, to me it makes no sense... The medical model seems to me to be striving for monoculture or the idea that everyone's the same and those ideas... So my like specialist area of research as an artist has always been trying to understand the medical model, how medicine or other big systems were built. And that also includes the legal system and the justice system and those things that govern our lives. And the medical model came about with the rise of colonialism and the idea that everyone becomes white or the ideas of whiteness; that you behave in the proper way and this is the way to be healthy and all of those ideas are a form of oppression and conforming. So the idea that I think that people don't realise about history. I'm a bit obsessive. I need to know lots of information. I think that if people had more information about how things were built, they might question why they still engage with them without being critical of them.

Chiron: So yeah, I guess it just makes me a bit scared. I've been a person who's not very quietly really talking about fascism for a long time and people get really scared when you throw this word around cause they're like, "That's a very extreme way of viewing the world." But I don't really think it is and people don't know about eugenics or how that worked in the UK especially. And how those were ideas that people upheld, that the idea that some people's biology and their brains and the colour of their skin means that they are better t