Real Queer America
3/22/19 - "Real" America does not belong to white men in red states. Queer people do not only live their best lives in New York and San Francisco. Across the country, queer folks form tight knit communities and love their towns, in spite of the oppressive measures enacted by their state legislatures. We get real with journalist Samantha Allen and her book, Real Queer America, which takes us along on a road trip to meet LGBT people in Tennessee, Utah, Georgia, Indiana, and beyond.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Destry Maria Sibley
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Ad sales: Midroll
TRANSCRIPT: REAL QUEER AMERICA
[Ads]
(0:57)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: Hi Ann Friedman.
Ann: What's going on?
Aminatou: Just hanging out together again. Love it.
Ann: Hanging out in your blue state home.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Aww, my little red state nugget. How's it going?
Ann: You know, Iowa is like . . . can go lots of different ways. It's like home of Steve King and also place that was really loving Obama. Like it's a complicated place like most states.
Aminatou: You mean real America Ann? [Laughs]
Ann: Oh my god, you are . . . thank you for setting this up so well. On today's agenda I talked to the journalist Samantha Allen who's a reporter for The Daily Beast about her new book Real Queer America: LGBT Stories From Red States. I think this book is doing the important work of showing what queer communities look like in places where they are not often described and written about.
[Theme Song]
(2:22)
Aminatou: I've been really excited listening to you talk about your experience reading the book and now I'm excited to read the book. I love a travel log.
Ann: Yes, it's a road trip book.
Aminatou: Love a travel log always. I also just really like this idea, you know? It almost sounds dumb when you say it but living on a coast is not a personality so . . . and just this idea, you know, that if you are a queer person that living in the middle of the country, it's a thing that you need to shed. It's both preposterous and also kind of sad and also it's just not true. I'm really excited about listening to you talk to Samantha about what it is like to tell the rest of the country that queer people are actually everywhere. They're everywhere.
Ann: Everywhere.
Aminatou: They're not new. Have you seen the Quinta Brunson meme? It's my favorite thing in the world where she looks like this very '70s person and it just says "People be gay." [Laughs] And I love it so much because -- and I think about it all the time whenever I see homophobia or trans-phobia on my timeline, or people are still talking about. It's like listen, people be gay. People be queer. Welcome to 2019.
Ann: Welcome to all of history. [Laughs]
Aminatou: They've been around. They've been around. They live everywhere. Here is a travel diary of many different queer people in the country who are leading just their lives and they're worth hearing.
(3:50)
Ann: Yeah. And I think obviously for a lot of the people that she interviews their queer identity, their lesbian identity, their bisexual identity, their trans identity is a big part of who they are. But many of these people are also like a huge part of who I am is someone who likes living in a small town or likes living in the state of Georgia or, you know, likes going to my local dive bar where all kinds of people who identify in all kinds of ways across the queer spectrum are hanging out together. And thinking about the fact that any experience is multifaceted.
Aminatou: Right.
Ann: And the way that she is getting into some of those details and really hanging out with some very cool people who it is fun to meet through this book was one of my favorite things about it. I also -- I think that it does a good job of getting away from media narratives of kind of fetishizing only a certain type of person from a red state. You know, I'm thinking about . . .
Aminatou: Ooh, what kind of person?
Ann: Oh, you know, used to be a coal miner, is probably a straight white person. You know what I mean? We know. We know the stereotype from a campaign season profile of like who lives in certain parts of the country and people who live there know that's not the full story. I used to get so mad when political reporters would only go to the old-fashioned diner on the town square where five old racist guys hung out as opposed to going to the Applebee's by the highway where everyone was really hanging out.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: Like, you know, because Applebee's does not have . . . the Applebee's by the highway does not have the same down homey work. No one's in overalls there, you know?
Aminatou: Right. Like no, this is literally where the racists hang out is this place.
Ann: Right, or really just like this tiny . . . like essentially you can kind of see reporters chasing their idea of who lives in a place as opposed to talking to a lot of people there. And I think Samantha is someone who having lived in Georgia and Utah and a lot of places where she found community and noticed that disconnect of hey, who doesn't get interviewed when these places are written about and I'm going to go do that work is very cool. And, you know, is real with or without quotation marks.
(6:05)
Aminatou: I love this. If you live in America you're a real American.
Ann: 100%, anyone who lives here. Everyone who lives here.
Aminatou: Well I am very excited to listen to you and Samantha talk and, you know, find out more about real America. [Laughs]
Ann: Oh my god, stop it.
Aminatou: You're my real American friend Ann.
Ann: Ugh, you're my real American friend.
Aminatou: Listen, listen.
Ann: You're more American than anyone I know.
Aminatou: It's true. Me, I'm borderline a Republican American. [Laughs]
Ann: Don't even.
Aminatou: You know how I turn when I go outside of the country. I become very American. I don't like it when people talk smack about America outside of the country.
Ann: Well you've chosen. America is the boo you've chosen so . . .
Aminatou: It's the boo I've chosen so, you know, you make your bed. Got to lie in it. [Laughs]
Ann: That is the perfect intro to this interview.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: Samantha, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Samantha: Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.
Ann: Beautiful and often ignored I feel like is a theme that runs through your book in terms of the places that you visited and came to know as a reporter and in some cases also as a friend to people who live there. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the premise of the book and what inspired you to write it?
Samantha: Yeah. So you know after the 2016 presidential election I was not feeling particularly happy or optimistic about the direction the country was going.
Ann: Really? Really?
Samantha: Imagine that. But at the same time I was also seeing a lot of sentiment on social media that was enraging me of like oh, the red states did this to us. Let's cut them off. They're just, I don't know, eating up all of our tax dollars while contributing nothing to our economy. You know, pretty elitist sentiment I think. And having come out in Georgia -- I lived in Georgia for five years -- you know, I met my wife in Indiana. I found all these amazing friends in Tennessee. I just thought that attitude did a tremendous disservice to the number of amazing LGBT and progressive people living in red states who are fighting to change them and I don't think should be thrown away because their electorates go a certain way during the presidential election.
(8:30)
Ann: Right. And so you took this road trip right?
Samantha: Yeah. And so I decided I wanted to kind of revisit a lot of places that were personally important to me and a few new places too interviewing LGBT people. You know, some who work for advocacy organizations but also some everyday folks. There's an entire chapter that's basically just about my friends in Tennessee. I just wanted to kind of show the vitality and the warmth of these communities where they kind of know what they're up against at the level of their state legislature but it really kind of unifies them. There's this warmth and adhesiveness there.
Ann: Yeah. I mean you write that places are so much more than their laws and I've been thinking about that because there was -- you know, there were four years of an Obama presidency where I think people who lived in blue states could kid ourselves that there was this alignment between what's happening on the books and maybe who we are or something like that, like who we want to be. And now it's not just red states. I think it's everyone who has a politics of inclusivity and social justice orientation is feeling not represented by the laws on the books. And so I think that is one important thing you're doing here is saying okay, you've heard about these bathroom bills for example in XYZ state but you have not heard about the people who live here and the way that they are creating community. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that disconnect, and whether a legislative atmosphere that is not hospitable -- what affect that has on the day-to-day lives of the people living under it?
(10:20)
Samantha: Yeah. I mean you point out one thing which is kind of a frustration of mine which is often when the national media gets interested in LGBT issues in a lot of these states it's just because oh, there's this horrific anti-LGBT bill that's been proposed. And, you know, they'll just cover the bill and they'll get a quote from the LGBT advocacy organization there and they'll get a quote from the anti-LGBT group that drafted the bill and just call it a day.
And what really gets missed in that equation is really kind of the lived detail of people's lives in these communities. And, you know, folks . . . I mean I think most about a place like Texas where there's just a tremendous effort in the legislature to pass some sort of anti-LGBT bill every year. The year I was writing this book there was an attempt to pass a bathroom bill. And folks in these communities, they're aware of this tremendous hostility but they really kind of take it in stride. They've built informal networks of support that allow them to survive, often thrive, and then when it comes time to protest it's just kind of like oh, here we go again. We're going to go to the state house. It's what we do every summer.
Ann: [Laughs]
Samantha: And they go to the state house and they yell and shout in the rotunda and kill a bill or two and do it again the next year.
Ann: That is a really nice distillation of something that I have noticed, you know, in being a part of activist communities in the middle of Missouri versus a large city in California which are two experiences I have had. The level of kind of skin in the game commitment and the lack of fatigue that I have observed and participated in when I am in maybe a more small -- or smaller or more rural activist community is super palpable. And I think that's a thread that runs through your book too about the ways that LGBT community feels different when it is within a red state or within a rural area versus, you know, a community as part of a big coastal city. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more about that, like not just on a level of we go out and protest when we need to but some of the ways you think these communities are different than what is portrayed as kind of the standard LGBT community in a big city?
(12:50)
Samantha: One of the things that made the biggest impression on me was someone I met in Utah, his name was Adam Simms. He said "Oppression and opposition can build the most beautiful connections." And I think within the LGBT community specifically one thing I notice the most is LGBT is four letters and there are longer versions of the acronym. There are a lot of people who are represented under that acronym but I found in my red state communities that more folks from each letter are all kind of hanging out together than say in kind of large coastal metropolises because folks have all kind of had to come up together in terms of rights and legislation and that kind of thing.
You end up with this, I don't know, sort of bond between the whole community. I mean it's not perfect mind you but it's a far cry from say like, I don't know, Massachusetts right? Where same-sex marriage happened so long before like a fully comprehensive transgender rights bill. And in my experience that can really kind of bifurcate the community. So when you go to a city like Jackson, Mississippi which I did near the end of my trip one of the things that really impresses me is you go to this one night club and you go to this one night club because it's the only LGBT night club in town. It's called Wonderlust. It's an amazing night club.
(14:15)
Everyone is there. Everyone of different races, different genders, different sexual orientations all in one night club. Then when you go to New York City the queer night life there is like oh, here is the bar for like older gay men then here's the bar where black LGBT people go. Everything is all just kind of taxonomized.
Ann: Yeah. I love that chapter about Wonderlust which is the name of that club in Jackson. There's this quote that I've been thinking about, the quote from your friend in Mississippi who says "Why am I proud to be from a state that continuously invalidates my identity?" I wonder if you can speak to that tension or that -- the fact that that is present along with such a deep love for the community that exists there?
Samantha: Yeah, I mean I don't know. Everywhere you find kind of like -- in LGBT communities at least -- just because you have a state that's trying to pass a bathroom bill or trying to pass a religious freedom act that's actually just about discriminating against LGBT people it doesn't mean that the LGBT people in those communities can disavow the very real attachments they've developed to the culture of that place.
You know, my friend Kaylie who you just quoted, what she loves about Mississippi is the hospitality, the warmth, the pace of life. And when people kind of mock her state or kind of dismiss it as backwards or regressive it's painful for her because she loves Mississippi. She loves having grown up there. I don't know, it's a baby bath water situation. Just because state legislators need to be chided for laws that they're trying to pass doesn't mean we need to dismiss I don't know what the south especially has to offer culturally. I fell in love with the south when I moved there. I sort of wish more people could experience that. I sort of think it should be required to live in the south for at least a year.
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(20:00)
Ann: You meet a couple of people in this book, or rather we meet them through you, who speak a little bit to the difficulty of finding these communities, finding LGBT community in some of these places because it's not always sign posted or flagged. Like they kind of say oh, you know, it took me a while. I had to meet the right person and then I kind of -- this whole world opened up to me. I'm totally paraphrasing. I'm wondering how you think that affects the communities themselves and whether on some level the outside narratives about red states, like maybe national media narratives about red states, contribute to the invisibility of some of these communities?
Samantha: Hmm, yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things you find is that we talked about Wonderlust a second ago. Like night life can be really, really, really vital in the way that it used to be for the entire LGBT community and in a way that it's kind of growing less relevant in bigger cities like New York or Los Angeles where LGBT people feel more comfortable going to, I don't know, just regular clubs right?
So, you know, in a lot of these cities like Jackson, Mississippi or Bloomington, Indiana which is another place I wrote about in the book you kind of have to find oh, here's the one LGBT night club in town. Let me go there. Let me meet some friends, find out where they hang out during the day, that kind of thing.
You know, it's kind of a double-edged sword situation because on the one hand it's almost fun to kind of flit through the shadows. The great club that I love in Bloomington, Indiana is called The Back Door and it's a reference to a time when literally you had -- to find a gay night club you had to kind of go in the back entrance or know a code word or that kind of thing. So I sort of love that feeling. But at the same time it can be really challenging for someone who, I don't know, just lands in Bloomington, Indiana because you really have to become sort of an amateur detective and figure out where are all the queer people? But once you do that you realize oh, they're all around me. They've been around me the entire time.
(22:20)
Ann: Right. Is there a moment when you've come to that point when you've lived in a place that isn't on its face super LGBT friendly?
Samantha: Yeah. So, you know, I moved to Georgia in 2010. I was still -- to start a graduate program at Emory University. I was still in the closet at the time. I hadn't yet come out as a transgender woman. I was coming from New Jersey. I'd never lived in the south before. And even kind of in the context of my liberal university in a humanities program surrounded by queer people I had so many preconceptions about the south and about Georgia. I didn't think it would be a safe place for me to come out and transition. I didn't think I would be able to really find community in that city.
Then I came out in 2012. My adviser was like oh, here's the doctor who can give you hormones. Here's the counselor who can talk you through this and also Emory now has fully inclusive benefits. Everything was just all laid out. And then, you know, I started interacting more with queer people at the school and then branching out from there to the point where I would go speak at a college like an hour's drive outside of Atlanta and there were all of these amazing young trans and queer students who were there in the middle of rural Georgia. Suddenly I felt really silly that I had been scared to come out in this state because there were queer people everywhere. Like a good horror movie.
(23:55)
Ann: [Laughs] Or I'm picturing the kind of everything goes to technicolor, not to be stereotypical Wizard of Oz about it. But yeah, where you suddenly could see this in a different way.
Samantha: Yeah, or Pleasantville.
Ann: Yes, Pleasantville. That's right. That's right. It's interesting because you mention your adviser at Emory who you tell a little bit of his story as someone who tried to make a life in Washington, D.C. which is I think known as a very -- especially gay male friendly -- but in general LGBT friendly city. And he hated it and was like get me back to Georgia or get me back to somewhere more rural. I'm wondering how you feel this idea of there's only one space that you can go to make a life if you are growing up queer in America and you should be aspiring towards a city, how do you think that negatively affects -- or how does that affect, I shouldn't even put my own judgment on it -- LGBT kids who are growing up in more rural places? Who might feel kind of country at heart but also feel like they've got to go to a city to get the life that they want.
Samantha: Yeah, I feel like there's this real disjuncture between what's happening with the LGBT community in the United States and sort of what's still the dominant media framework for kind of understanding that community. Like I think we're still kind of stuck in this mindset of like oh, all the LGBT people, they're buying that one-way bus ticket from Kansas City and getting off the bus in the Big Apple. And when you look at what's happening demographically that's not really the case anymore. Millennials are moving south and west to more affordable mid-sized cities. The percentage of LGBT people who are coming out in places like Sale Lake City or Norfolk, Virginia are just really leaping up in the rankings while places like New York or San Francisco are sort of staying static.
(25:50)
The LGBT center of gravity in this country is shifting and we're not really I think taking full stock of it. It's why I wanted to write the book is to say look, you know, if the dominant narrative of the 20th century was all the LGBT people are fleeing to the coast I think the 21st century narrative is about LGBT people saying "Look, maybe I want to move out of my rural small town but I'm not going to go all the way to New York or San Francisco. I'm going to go to Ashville. I'm going to go to Sale Lake. I'm going to go to St Louis." And that's really going to change the face of the country in terms of LGBT acceptance.
Ann: Right. Absolutely. And I also think that when you start to talk about and really break down the narrative versus the reality you have this note in the book about the disconnect that many LGBT people in red states feel from both people in kind of like the big, stereotypical gay safe haven cities and also the media narrative. And that is not just cultural but financial. And I'm wondering if you could talk about the financial picture a little bit because it's something that I think about a lot when I think about particularly urban/rural but also red and blue state disconnect.
Samantha: Yeah. I mean one of the ways I feel this the most, and this might be a controversial viewpoint, but I've worked in LGBT media for a while and there's kind of an article -- it feels like one every other week -- about oh, this gay bar in Brooklyn is closing or this gay bar in the Castro District is closing. And there's this sort of like, I don't know, eulogizing of it. And at once I totally understand these are institutions that have been around for a while. They have a lot of personal importance for people. On the other hand I think we're spending a lot of time talking about what affluent gay folks in big cities are worried about and thinking about and we're not really thinking about or talking enough about kind of lived realities for LGBT people elsewhere.
(27:55)
I mean one of the most moving experiences for me writing the book was to go to the Rio Grande Valley, a place I'd never been before, where something like nearly one in three people are living in poverty there. And I think we tend -- I think at least due to kind of the marketing around LGBT people it's always like travel and alcohol. There's this association of the LGBT community with affluence and that's definitely not the case in red states.
Ann: I'm wondering how the picture of some of these communities is complicated or maybe different for queer people of color. Because you write a little bit about how in order to get to some of these LGBT havens within red states you really have to be driving through a countryside that's dotted with confederate flags or that might be openly hostile and racist on that level.
Samantha: I didn't mention this in the book but, you know, I got pulled over twice during this six week long road trip. Once in Utah because I was tapping my navigation on my phone while I was driving, and then once in Arkansas because I guess I was just -- I don't know, it was 10 p.m. and I was in a rented SUV with out-of-state plates kind of driving around in this small community. But those are situations in which I would've been really terrified to have been pulled over were I a person of color. So I was really cognizant during the entire process of researching and writing this book of the ways in which my privilege as a white person was allowing me to actually traverse these spaces.
It's true you see a lot of confederate flags, confederate memorabilia. I noticed it the most in Arkansas where a lot of people were telling me oh, you've got to go to this small resort town. It's called Eureka Springs. It's amazing. And it was about an hour-and-a-half outside Fayetteville. And on the way there I passed just a ton of confederate flags and I thought wow, this would not be a relaxing weekend for me if I were a person of color to fly into Fayetteville and drive to Eureka Springs. Like I would be totally on edge when I arrived instead of, I don't know, ready to check into my bed and breakfast and have brunch or something like that.
(30:15)
I think, you know, not just as a traveler but as people who live in these spaces it really can kind of really impact the way you experience them. Like I was really moved by going back to Bloomington, Indiana where I met my wife and speaking with someone named Jenee Cummings. She's black. She runs Bloomington Pride and she talked to me about how she feels, you know, just uncomfortable holding hands sometimes with her partner in that city and about how she kind of feels this very kind of visceral discomfort when she sees a confederate flag sticker on a truck in traffic. It just made me realize that I had had maybe kind of rose colored glasses on when I was in Bloomington and didn't see some of the very real things that someone like Jenee experiences in that place.
Ann: Right. To that end as well you mentioned this phrase rose colored glasses. I find myself wondering if you, due to the overwhelming narrative of these places as not safe or not great for LGBT people, if you felt like you had to be a cheerleader for these communities? Or if you felt some sense of difficulty in explaining what was negative or hard about building queer community in these places? I'm wondering if that was hard for you, if you felt like you had to be more PR mode than you really wanted to be as a reporter?
(31:45)
Samantha: You know, I made a conscious note that in every chapter I am going to list all of the awful things about being LGBT in these states. I would list all of the anti-LGBT laws on the books. I didn't want to paint these as paradises or perfect places for LGBT people and I . . . but at the same time I really did want people to fall in love with these places. So yeah, you know, I stressed the good I would say but not in a way that ever felt to me disingenuous.
Ann: Right. I could feel that tension a little bit and relate to it because I think it can be hard when you're covering something that has been so negatively covered or not covered at all. The temptation is for me always to be cheerleading.
Samantha: Yeah.
Ann: I'm wondering if there's a place you went to that particularly surprised you?
Samantha: You know, it's a place I have lived in and it's Provo, Utah. So this was again before my transition before I came out. But when I started college in 2005 I went to Brigham Young University. It's owned by the Mormon Church. I was raised Mormon. It's not a religion that is particularly LGBT-friendly although the membership is slowly changing their views.
You know, when I was at BYU I was just terrified of the idea of, I don't know, coming out there or telling anyone that I was exploring my gender identity or things like that. It just didn't seem possible to be openly LGBT there. I went back to Provo and downtown Provo right across the street from the Mormon temple there is now this amazing LGBT center called Encircle where I met the most amazing people. I met all of these trans and gender non-conforming kids who were just hanging out and playing card games and drinking soda and having snacks and a lot of their parents were Mormon and were supportive of their kids. They were trying to be supportive, coming to discussion groups at this center. And it just -- it shocked me that this place in which I had once felt so much terror was now this really warm, welcoming environment at least in the sort of confines of this youth center. It was really moving to be there.
(34:20)
Ann: I love that. I'm also thinking about people listening to this who might find themselves either moving to a red state or perhaps even like you on a road trip through one, what you would say to them if they are eager to seek out the LGBT community there whether it be a bar or like a business or -- what's the way in if you are merely visiting and want to support or get a taste of what's happening in these communities?
Samantha: LGBT businesses and LGBT-friendly businesses in these places need your support so seek them out. Use Yelp and see who has gender-neutral bathrooms. That's a really good way to find LGBT-friendly businesses. Auto Straddle is a queer women's focused website that's published a lot of city guides. Some of them more recent than others, and some of the businesses on those may have closed because they're hard to keep open. But yeah, find the bar. Find the caf. Find the movie theater that will show you a lesbian drama from the '90s or something and go there and give them your money because that really helps the communities there.
Ann: Yes. And finally we've talked a lot about this being a road trip book and we like to ask all of our guests about their favorite snacks. And so I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about your favorite road trip snacks for this road trip or any road trip.
(35:55)
Samantha: This is going to be a controversial choice but the amount of Chick-fil-A that my friend and I ate on this trip was just beyond.
Ann: [Laughs]
Samantha: I think we probably had it, I don't know, once every other day. It's just really good chicken. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
Ann: Wow. And yeah, you mentioned -- this is another thing we like to ask -- about the people in your network who are really, really core to you. And I know you did this road trip with a friend and maybe you can talk about them a little bit too.
Samantha: Yeah, so my friend Billy, he is a transgender guy and he came out around the same time as me in 2012. And before his transition when he was in high school and the start of his college years he actually dated my wife. So it's kind of a small world, tight-knit community. But this is sort of what queer people talk about when we talk about chosen families. We always have these, I don't know, really complex and intertangled networks of support. And so Billy, he's really great. He's really funny and he agreed to come along with me on this trip for six weeks and transcribe interviews and see the country. Transcribing is my least favorite part of interviewing people and so he just heroically -- I say that he did more work on the book than I did because it was my least favorite part and if I had to transcribe all of the interviews we did, all like three dozen of them or something like that, the book would be coming out in 2025.
(37:45)
Ann: [Laughs] Many hands make a book like this. So Samantha I really appreciate your book and appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. If listeners want to follow your work or read more of your writing what is the best way for them to do that?
Samantha: Yeah, they can go to www.samanthaleeallen.com. All my stuff is up there.
Ann: Wonderful, and we'll link to it in the show notes too. Thanks so much for being on the podcast.
Samantha: Thank you. It was a delight.
[Interview Ends]
Aminatou: I'm really excited to read this book now.
Ann: Yeah. And I definitely am like who is adapting this into the queer road trip buddy comedy that we need? Because I would also love to watch this represented as opposed to just read some of these stories in the book.
Aminatou: Ann, maybe you're going to become a producer. Who knows? Who knows?
Ann: Listen, I'm an armchair producer the way I'm now an armchair editor where I just walk around being like "You should write that. Someone should make that." Like without actually being the one to follow through.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Freeidea.biz, the Ann Friedman story.
Ann: Just giving away these ideas for other people to put the work into.
Aminatou: Love it.
Ann: All right, I'll see you in a blue state boo-boo.
Aminatou: See you soon. You can find us many places on the Internet, on our website callyourgirlfriend.com, you can download the show anywhere you listen to your favs, or on Apple Podcasts where we would love it if you left us a review. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. We're on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at @callyrgf. You can even leave us a short and sweet voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music is composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs, our logos are by Kenesha Sneed, our associate producer is Destry Maria Sibley. This podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.