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2. You're listening to KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles and on the web at kpfk.org Pacifica radio for all of Southern California and beyond.
3. This is Feminist Magazine, a weekly radical radio show and podcast produced by a diverse collective of feminists.
4. And every week we bring you a mix of intersectional stories and guests to help you resist and engage.
5. And I'm Lynn Harris-Ballon, your host today.
6. And this is what feminism can sound like.
7. By 2030, one billion women will be in menopause.
8. One billion.
9. But we've been lied to, big time, about hormone replacement therapy.
10. Enter Menopunks, a hormonally radicalized feminist movement.
11. Menopunks is a bold, unapologetic documentary in production
12. and a podcast that exposes the truth behind the science and the silence.
13. We're joined now by Alicia J. Rose, the director and creator of Menopunks.
14. Welcome to Feminist Magazine, Alicia.
15. You are so welcome. I'm excited to be here.
16. Very happy to have you here.
17. I have been following the project and super excited to know more about it and tell our listeners about it.
18. Let's start with the study and how that inspired this film.
19. Well, you know, I really started the whole film because I was just feeling like absolute hot garbage, you know, three, four years ago.
20. I mean, the worst of most people who've experienced perimenopause can relate.
21. All these things start going wrong.
22. All my teeth were falling out, which is hard to even fathom at this point.
23. I thought I had like hip dysplasia.
24. I was going to need a hip transplant at 53, like just a nightmare.
25. And so I started kind of figuring out, well, what is going on with hormone replacement therapy?
26. Can I have it?
27. can I not? And the first thing you run into when you're looking at this, especially a few years ago,
28. was the Women's Health Initiative study, which was the biggest study to ever include women ever,
29. ever, ever. And it was started in 1993 during the Clinton administration. Very important point to
30. remember because it comes back around with the Republican administration to mess everything up.
31. But this study in 1993 was actually a cardiovascular study that, believe it or not,
32. the Golden Girls were used to draft people into. So in 1993, the Golden Girls were at their
33. absolute height. They're about to go off the air. They were never more famous. Menopause was like a
34. conversation because in some ways of the Golden Girls, it was wild. So 165,000 women plus were
35. drafted into this study, the Women's Health Initiative study. And it began with a real bang.
36. You know, there was now a woman in charge of the National Institute for Health at that point for
37. the first time there were women on the scene. There was a real, you know, in the 90s, a very
38. optimistic view of feminism. Third wave feminism was really just kicking in. We had all this riot
39. girl stuff, so many different elements of sort of this, this journey towards self actualization as
40. women as feminists, of course, we're going to be leading the world, of course, we're going to be
41. running everything So this study in 1993 it was kind of a reflection of that It was a cardiovascular study of women who were menopausal proper over the age of 50 And it was women who had actually a lot of cardiovascular risks in this
42. study to then bring in hormones as part of it to see how hormones reacted in the scope of
43. post-menopausal women with the query of can women take hormone therapy forever? That was kind of why
44. they started it. And that's how it began. And really, at this point in 1983, there were 23%
45. of women who were accessing hormone therapy. Wow. And then the study basically became this
46. standard by which all of our doctors were telling us, oh, it's incredibly dangerous,
47. more likely to have breast cancer, heart disease, all of these things.
48. Well, so here's the irony, right? 1993, Clinton administration, plenty of things I didn't like
49. about that, you know, especially his creepiness, but with Monica Lewinsky, who's so awesome now,
50. especially she's killing it as a menopunk in my opinion but you know years later fast forward to
51. 2002 right 9-11 had just happened now it's the bush administration this study had been going on
52. for a decade and it was a very expensive study with more women more subjects more participants
53. than ever before of any study of its kind so a you know almost a billion dollars had been spent on
54. this and it began in a democratic administration and yet 10 years later sort of looked at by the
55. this Republican administration. And they're like, OK, well, what happened with this billion dollars
56. over 10 years and the real true results, not what everybody heard in the press and how they
57. destroyed all of our lives by taking this to press and spinning it. But the actual results
58. was that, you know, for the vast majority of women, it was very, very safe. There was a
59. non-statistically significant result, far outlying result that was pulled to the front of this
60. and really latched onto by the brass, the Republican brass, so that they could have a
61. positive outcome to show for the billion dollars spent in Congress. And that means that saying that
62. hormone therapy caused breast cancer, which wasn't really what even happened in the study,
63. but it was the spin because of one small part of it. They're like, oh, let's go with that.
64. Let's take that. Let's take that to press. And that's going to be a win for Congress because now
65. it's not just, oh, we spent a billion dollars. It was good for some women, not good for other
66. They're kind of balanced out now.
67. No, their narrative now, and if you look back, is we save women from themselves, pat us on
68. the back.
69. You know, hormone therapy is going to kill you.
70. You know, that thing that made you feel like a human being in the middle of your, like
71. the most intense symptoms you ever had in your life.
72. That's, you're going to die.
73. And one thing to really keep in mind about that is that at this moment in 2002, 40% of
74. women were now accessing hormone therapy.
75. So we really saw a steady climb from, you know, the 60s when it was really kind of discovered
76. in the norm and known as the happy drug. It really was. And then women started taking it. Doctors
77. were prescribing it. It was prescribed like any other hormone, like thyroid meds or diabetes
78. medication. Right. So intentionally they skewed the results to make themselves look good. And
79. the headlines erupted and here we are. So Gen X steps up. I love this. And they're like,
80. We're just not going to take it. And here you are with menopause.
81. I feel like for me, there was this big aha moment in really understanding why Gen X was really
82. getting mad. And that started with my own anger, of course, and not knowing why my mother didn't
83. tell me anything about menopause and why there was no solutions offered to anybody. Women aren't
84. being told, oh, yeah, sure, take hormones. It's going to help you. Yet men are being offered
85. testosterone at the gym. And that was really confusing to me
86. like Whoa okay so I started looking into it And one of my producers on the film Jackie Weissman connected me with this incredible menopause specialist who now a participant in the film Dr Aoife O and she then invited me God bless her soul and I not religious into this incredible event that she
87. was having called the Portland Menopause Conference. This is last spring. And at that Portland Menopause
88. Conference, which by the way, we're so pumped, we could not afford it. So she let us in with a press
89. pass to photograph it and film it. And we did because now it'll be the documentary. But she let
90. us in. And that is where I got what I call hormonally radicalized. That is where Dr. O'Sullivan
91. and all these other incredible doctors and practitioners, clinicians really laid it all out
92. from their perspective as doctors, what happened with the study, how it was completely twisted
93. to the advantage of politicians that wanted to use it to, you know, ultimately, I believe,
94. systemically disempower multiple generations of women, which is the result of 24 years of HRT
95. being under prohibition. So she really busted open that like, she really lifted the veil for me in
96. this way that was sort of I could never go back once I knew the truth. And the thing that really
97. sealed the deal and made me really understand how Gen X was involved was by the end of that day of
98. watching and listening and hearing from all these incredible doctors and people, I thought it was
99. people like me who were there to just take it all in. But she asked some question like,
100. how many people here are doctors and clinicians and practitioners? And like,
101. 85% of the crowd was like 200 people raised their hands. And I was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa,
102. whoa, whoa, wait, wait a second here. The revelation was so it's not just the punks
103. that are pissed. The doctors don't know anything. And yet, and this is it's now been reinforced in
104. the podcast over and over, I've talked to probably like, I don't know, five to 10,
105. I don't know how many doctors, some haven't even been released yet. But these incredible doctors,
106. leading doctors in their fields, and every single one of them says, Oh, I wasn't given any education
107. on menopause or perimenopause, or I had one hour. And if I wanted anything, I had to seek it out.
108. And the only reason this is changing for me, says the doctors, is because I went into perimenopause.
109. that's why it's changing because the gen x doctors are coming of age right now and here one thing to
110. really consider is what happened in november are you aware of the fda coming out in november and
111. their whole announcement tell us so everybody this is the hot poop i can say that on the radio
112. right it's definitely the hottest the hottest poop um but okay in november in this nightmare
113. administration i'm assuming since it's a feminist podcast we all agree it's a nightmare
114. in this nightmare administration during the rfk you know working out genes admin he brought in
115. his pal i think it's his pal marty mccary who since left but briefly had a time at the fda
116. and he made it the hill he was going to die on to take the black box warnings off of all hormone
117. therapy products now that happened in november him and rfk stood up in front of you know everybody
118. and said, this was a mistake. This had never been on hormone therapy. You know, hormone therapy is
119. actually the only way women can have more longevity. It's the most effective cure to the
120. myriad of problems that occur in aging. And that, in fact, we can age better if we access hormone
121. therapy. So they admitted the mistake. Now, what I found out through Dr. O'Sullivan was that,
122. because I refuse to read Marty McCary's book, forget about it. But in Marty McCary's book,
123. he talks about how his mother died from a hormone related illness, which is his reason,
124. his touch point for caring at all If he hadn had a personal experience this never would have happened In fact I talked to all these doctors and I asked Dr Sullivan it in the podcast episode 11 on Metapunk podcast is black box warning take down break down meaning we kind of lay it all out for everybody
125. what it is, why it was put there, why it was total BS, and why taking it down is crucial, but
126. how weird it was that it's now during this administration, because the truth is,
127. multiple administrations tried to remove this. This is not a new thing. So many people got
128. together and tried to remove these black box warnings. These were never true. Hormone therapy
129. never caused breast cancer ever. It was always a lie. So these warnings have been impeding women's
130. health and effectively erasing midlife care for over two decades. Only now is the medical
131. establishment calling for that education and calling for this, what I consider to be hormonal
132. radicalization of, you know, the public and of the medical establishment. It's just, it's wild. So
133. that in November is a huge touch point for doctors, because now it's not just something
134. we're all reeling against the system, like Don Quixote, come on, it's not true. Listen to me,
135. but now there is a stake in the ground, where the FDA admitted the mistake. Now,
136. here's the irony of the mistake, Lynn, and I'm talking so much, but obviously,
137. too much to say and that's why I have a podcast so please listen to the Metaplex podcast I yammer
138. on about all this every episode so the FDA did this they talked about removing these black box
139. warnings and to understand the importance of this and how ridiculous these warnings were I'll just
140. illustrate it with one thing vaginal estrogen which all the doctors I've talked to said that
141. every single woman should be issued a tube of this stuff the minute you turn 35 literally
142. Everybody should have a tube.
143. This is the most natural benign thing derived from yams and soybeans.
144. Totally non-systemic.
145. Just affects your south mouth.
146. You know what I'm saying?
147. I can say that on the radio.
148. I actually put it also on my north mouth.
149. That's another conversation.
150. So vaginal estrogen in the black box warning that exists and still exists in most of the boxes because they've got to sell through the stock before those are taken out.
151. Nobody's going in and removing them.
152. It says that vaginal estrogen can cause probable dementia.
153. What? Yeah, what? It's there in plain as day. And that, Lynn, has just think about it. Your poor
154. south mouth, like you want to have vaginal health. I mean, there's no reason that your vagina should
155. shut down and basically close up. I mean, that's what can happen if you don't take care of it.
156. It becomes a wound, a gash that will cause you to go into sepsis with multiple UTIs. Like
157. the vagina needs help. It needs estrogen, right? And here's the thing about menopause,
158. proper menopause, the day where you no longer have your period and the time that ensues after,
159. it is a castration event. So when you go into menopause, you don't just kind of lose your
160. hormones, you lose them all. So a lot of things start suffering and your body kind of starts
161. working around hormones if you don't have access to hormone replacement therapy. And it sort of
162. folds in on itself and crumbles and your brain looks for the glucose that's no longer there and
163. your joints look for the collagen that's no longer being made. I mean, estrogen, progesterone,
164. testosterone, these are the building blocks of life. So back to the mistake. The mistake that
165. they made, in my opinion, beyond, I mean, it was a crime that they committed that this Republican
166. group of people, along with the brass of the Women's Health Initiative in 2002, it was a crime,
167. period. It wasn't a mistake. But the mistake that they did make, at least in an ironic sense,
168. is letting us know now.
169. Well, we have the chance to fix this wrong,
170. for Gen X to call for a frickin' reckoning,
171. a hormonal revolution that really, really...
172. forces this change once and for all through the voices of artists and musicians like Pat Benatar
173. and Nico Case and Peaches and Margaret Cho and all these incredible voices of Gen X and beyond
174. who feel passionately about women's health and want to see us have not only hormonal access,
175. but reproductive justice, period. So yeah, the mistake they made was basically saying,
176. oh yeah, okay, no more black box warnings. So now we can hopefully really get the access,
177. But it's still a hot mess out there.
178. And that's really why I decided to, you know, make the podcast to really get people into the conversation much quicker.
179. And also in an election year where I want to see us mobilize.
180. Very smart.
181. Yeah.
182. We've been talking to Alicia J. Rose, who's the director and creator of Menopunks.
183. A film can take many years to make, right?
184. So you're in that process.
185. But the podcast is now.
186. You're doing it right now.
187. Yeah.
188. 33 episodes.
189. And the film's going to come out next year.
190. We're actually about to release a new teaser in the next week or two featuring Pat Benatar and Nico Case and Peaches and all these amazing folks.
191. So, yeah, we're on track for spring 2027.
192. But the podcast honestly just started as my own passion for being a shareaholic and having these incredible conversations with people.
193. You know, you're in radio.
194. You're having them, too.
195. I come from a background of radio.
196. I DJed at KUSF for years and years in San Francisco.
197. in the early 90s. I just couldn't keep these to myself is the truth of the matter. And because
198. I have a history in the music business, and I'm a musician, and I'm a creator, I make photography,
199. and I do music videos. I've made almost 40 music videos for all kinds of different artists over
200. the years. I've shot album covers for the Decembrists. I've done band photos and music
201. videos for Bob Mould, videos for First Aid Kit, all kinds of different people. But because of that,
202. I know everybody. Well, not everybody, but I know people who know people. If I don't know them,
203. I know somebody who knows somebody. And so I thought, I wonder if, you know, people would talk to me about this because I felt like sharing stories, taking this out of the silence and talking about our experiences and especially hearing about these experiences of perimenopause and menopause from people that we admire and respect like Pat Benatar or Nico Case.
204. that just kills the stigma that kills the shame. If you hear Pat Benatar talking about getting a
205. hot flash at 72, you just don't feel so bad about it. You don't feel like a feminine failure,
206. you know, or just a failure in general. Cause I know for me, I mean, before menopause and
207. perimenopause was my life with menopunks, I certainly felt a lot of shame. And I know
208. people can relate to that. You know, I was like, Oh, this is the end of my life. Like what happens
209. now? Do I have to stop being an artist? Do I have to stop having sex? What happens? Like,
210. do I survive? Do I turn into something else? Like, our mothers sort of, unfortunately,
211. because they were the victims in the crosshairs of this Women's Health Initiative misinformation,
212. they were really left to suffer and sort of just think, well, this is my life now.
213. And I think we as Gen X saw them all go through that. And hardly any of them remember anything.
214. I swear to God, there's this thing that I've discovered, Lan, on the podcast called menopause blindness.
215. And the boomers have it in spades.
216. It is so tragic because they were told, oh, oops, we're taking it back.
217. We know you had amazing experience with this for over three decades, but oops, it's going to kill you.
218. So it's ours now.
219. They clawed back the HRT.
220. Can you imagine?
221. I mean, are you accessing HRT?
222. Yes, I am, gratefully.
223. Yeah.
224. Yeah Well imagine you and all your listeners imagine if you are accessing HRT and it hard There been so many gatekeepers and stupid hurdles still to this day that are there Women even like Melinda French Gates having to go to three different doctors I mean the doctors I talk to have a
225. hard time. Nobody's having an easy time. But like, you know, imagine if this thing that is really one
226. of the reasons why I'm so on fire right now and not with hot flashes, but with cool stuff that
227. I'm doing right, the energy that I've got, if that was ripped away from us unceremoniously,
228. how would you feel? Would you be mad? Yeah. Super angry. Yeah, exactly. Ready for
229. a radical hormonal revolution. Exactly. So that's where we come in, I think.
230. Tell us about who you've got in this film and how you're engaging with them,
231. asking them to tell their stories personally. What does it look like?
232. Well, the film is sort of three interweaving narratives, one of which is I've got my sort of core Portland, Oregon menopunks who are my main peeps.
233. And that's Corin Tucker from Slater Kinney, Jodi Blyley from Team Dresh, Kathy Foster from the Thermals and All Girls Summer Fun Band, Jen Spraja from the Softies, Gillian Hanner from Calamity Jane and Sarah Lund from Unwound.
234. And of those three of them, Sarah Lund, Kathy, and Jodi Blyley are all engaging or just finished engaging in six months of hormonal optimization therapy with Dr. Aoife O'Sullivan, who's also a medical participant in the film.
235. So we've just finished the six months.
236. This has been going on since last summer, last year.
237. And I've had the ability to interview them every time they've had an appointment and watch their progress and we're really tracking how they've kind of gone through it. For example, Sarah Lund is a breast cancer survivor. And so she kind of she was really mad at me when I started the project. She's like, what about me? All my friends are getting optimized on hormones. I am coming out of breast cancer and I feel terrible. And how do I feel better? And I was like, well, that's a really interesting perspective.
238. And Dr. O'Sullivan had graciously sort of as a producer of the film donated three rounds of this comprehensive care.
239. And we had only had two people that were using it so far.
240. And so Sarah became the third.
241. And man, her story is incredible.
242. And she did.
243. She was able to find some relief through hormones, but in a way you might not expect through testosterone.
244. Wow.
245. Really fascinating.
246. And that like it's helped her immensely.
247. And also she balanced everything else.
248. So that journey is a part of it.
249. And then Jodi Blyley from Team Dresh, who's a masked lesbian.
250. And well, they I'll say they she they I think she you know, really was kind of like, well, I feel OK.
251. I'm so glad I'm having my period. My period was a nightmare. I think she had PMDD.
252. She's like, I feel so much better now. I don't have to deal with that all the time.
253. I think maybe I could feel better. I don't know. Well, she got on therapy and she got on HRT.
254. And suddenly all these things started falling into place so much so that her anxiety dissipated and her confidence went up.
255. And she got the top surgery during the course of the film that she'd wanted for over 20 years, but didn't have the confidence to actually get.
256. And that happened during the course of the film, which is just unbelievable and so incredible.
257. And then Kathy, you know, you know, African-American mixed race woman.
258. And she had a really different experience trying to get care and been gaslit a lot and has a mother who has history of breast cancer and was told she couldn't and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
259. So she has her own experience of how that's helped her.
260. And then she wound up going off it because she had really bad vertigo.
261. but then going back on it and that experience
262. was really interesting.
263. So that's one thread of the film,
264. sort of tracking them through their lives
265. and their creativity and their wellbeing
266. through hormonal care and lack thereof
267. and what that looks like.
268. So that's one track.
269. And that also includes me as sort of their fearless leader and adventurer deep diving into my own experience that sort of frames the whole thing and ultimately ends with this huge concert that we just put on in Portland
270. this weekend that will turn into sort of the backbone of the film and that will include them
271. all performing. But the film also functions as an expose of what we just talked about,
272. of the Women's Health Initiative, the misinformation, what actually happened,
273. how we believe it was a horrendous, insane crime, where now the low estimate of the amount of women
274. that died during this last 24 years? I mean, this is like a theoretical low estimate. 100,000 women
275. have died from hormonal related. Yeah. I mean, that's like the lowest estimate. It's crazy.
276. Think about how many women just didn't have hormone therapy and suffered through menopause or
277. aged terribly or broke a hip or had dementia. There's a huge like people are making so much
278. money with old folks homes right now because so many boomer women are in old folks homes with
279. dementia or Alzheimer's. Guess what, folks? Dementia and Alzheimer's and lots of other
280. things are now known to be midlife diseases that actually start when you go through hormonal
281. castration and then get worse and worse and worse as you get older until you, you know,
282. you have in your family history, a history of dementia. Well, with no hormone therapy,
283. no hormone replacement, that's probably going to happen when you take these regenerative
284. building blocks of our lives out of our bodies and they go away forever. It's hard for our bodies to
285. make it back. So there's an expose element, which I'm really excited about, because I love that part
286. of it. Then there's also, there's a storytelling element and a conversation about the cost of this.
287. And that is a mix of my participants, like Corin Tucker, and some of the more celebrity
288. folks that we've got in the film that has been, I mean, I had a wish list, Lynn, like my bucket
289. list wish list of who I was going to get in this film. And I like it's all come true. And now I
290. have to make a new wish list bucket list. And people I was just hoping would be a part of it.
291. I mean, it's, it gives me the chills, honestly, because some people are kind of like, and no,
292. but the folks that say yes, really, truly want to see this change, like Pat Benatar, for example.
293. And Pat Benatar. Oh, my God, you guys, like she's just hitting menopausal stuff, like really,
294. really in her 70s. I mean, she's obviously like an icon beyond that's probably why
295. She's incredible.
296. She's taking really good care of herself.
297. But her story is amazing.
298. Peach's story is amazing.
299. Nico Case, her story is amazing.
300. Margaret Cho, she's a part of it.
301. Her story is amazing.
302. Alice Bagg, who lives in LA, her story is mind-blowing.
303. She got a hysterectomy at 40, and they took her hormones away, and she's been without
304. hormones.
305. But then through the podcast, I turned her on to Planned Parenthood, who does midlife
306. care.
307. They prescribe hormones.
308. She went to the Planned Parenthood down her street in Echo Park, made an appointment.
309. and a week later she was finally on hormones.
310. That's wild.
311. Frank, also in the film, another amazing formerly L.A. musician.
312. So part of it is the cost, right?
313. And that's a really important element for me and for the film to highlight
314. because you can say the FDA said, oh, we made a mistake.
315. You can have your hormones now.
316. But like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
317. We're talking about 24 years of prohibition of life-saving medication
318. that's basically a vitamin.
319. It matches what's in our bodies.
320. It's more of that than a drug, right?
321. It's derived from yams and soybeans.
322. It's identically matches what's in our bodies.
323. So like the cost of this crime that occurred with these, I want to cuss so bad, these MFN
324. is so profound culturally, is so profound societally.
325. And then look around us.
326. It's so profound politically.
327. Here's a crazy stat I'm going to kind of throw at you.
328. This is what I call podcast math Lynn So bear with me But I gave you the two stats already 23 of women were accessing hormones in 1993 And I said 40 right in 2002 Where do you think we at
329. now with those numbers, considering what happened in 2002 and what just happened in November?
330. Hopefully, we're going back up again. But I have a feeling not.
331. Well, just let me know what you think the number is.
332. 30%.
333. Oh, Lynn, so optimistic. I really wish it was.
334. I tried.
335. So he really tried.
336. And that's my dream.
337. We are at less than 5%.
338. No way.
339. Yeah.
340. It's unreal.
341. Unreal.
342. More women, less of them using hormones.
343. So if you really do what I did and step back and think, oh, OK, that's 95 percent of women not accessing hormonal care, you know, who are hearing this information or afraid or think because their mother had breast cancer, they can't have it, which is also not true.
344. There's so much more nuance to it.
345. And there's so much that our doctors can help us with that they're not helping us with because they didn't have the training.
346. Right. So that's 95 percent of women not accessing hormones.
347. OK, do the math with all the a-holes. I can say that on the radio with all the a-holes and all the mayhem and misery they are creating by stripping us of our bodily autonomy, by attacking gender affirming care, by stigmatizing trans health care, by by, you know, effectively erasing the ability to have abortions in most states, putting women in jail.
348. Women are dying. Abortion is health care. Guess what? Hormones are also health care.
349. That is the biggest message of our film. And I think for me, going through rock stars
350. is a very Gen X thing, because this is what I learned about Gen X, Lynn, in the course of this
351. whole mishigas of menopunks. And just knowing myself and knowing all my people, which is that
352. we don't want to be sold to. We don't want to be marketed to. We do not want to be told what to do
353. at all. What we do respond to is seeing somebody who is thriving beyond like peaches or Pat or any
354. of these people that I've interviewed. And we want what they've got. Gen X is really into that.
355. Like what is how does Gillian Anderson do? Like, how does she look so good? Like, you know,
356. it's not plastic surgery for everybody, right? Like to have energy is so systemic. And that is
357. really what it's all about. And so it's really my curiosity that's driving this whole thing,
358. because I'm just so fascinated and I'm so curious about people's stories.
359. And I want to know, I saw Peaches perform not that long ago.
360. She was just in L.A. recently and she blew my mind.
361. There she is. She's 59 years old.
362. She's literally walking atop people's hands in a sold out show with these giant sneakers,
363. wearing like barely anything with like, you know, like hairy nipple covers.
364. And I mean, just like just blowing everybody's minds and a completely intergenerational crowd, just everything.
365. and I'm thinking to myself, damn, she's got to be on HRT. Is she on HRT? I need to know. And so I
366. was like, can I have an interview? Can I eventually I, I got the interview and it turns out she is on
367. HRT, but she'd never been told about vaginal estrogen. So she was having other issues.
368. So, I mean, the craziest thing about the whole podcast is that I, I am unintentionally helping
369. hormonally optimize all these incredible musical icons. So I'm into it. I love it. It's a dream,
370. dream come true. It's a mission. Please tell our listeners where they can find out more about the
371. film coming up and also where they can listen to the podcast. Yes, type in menopunks wherever you
372. podcast. It's everywhere. I've even kept it on the evil couple of the evil empires platforms because
373. it's really just about access, even though I hate them. So type in menopunks. The podcast is
374. available wherever you go. You can always go to menopunks.com. You can find access points to the
375. podcast there. We have a Menopunks YouTube channel. All the video versions are up there.
376. Please follow our Instagram, which is just Menopunks and sign up for our mailing list,
377. which is impossible not to do when you go to our website because I put up a little pop-up window.
378. Sign up there because that is really the most direct way we can communicate to you. We got
379. kicked off of TikTok because we talked a lot about trans healthcare and wanting to restore justice
380. there and they kicked us off right when Larry Ellison bought the platform. And I just don't
381. have the energy to now populate it with 33 episodes worth of everything. I just, it's just
382. too much and whatever. I let things be downloadable to some degree so folks can just put them up on
383. their own. But yeah, go find us at menopunks.com, sign up on the mailing list, Instagram, all of
384. those things. That's the basics. But yeah, come be a part of what we're doing. I think that
385. the coolest thing about Menopunks and for me, the name Menopunks came, I have ADHD.
386. the name came from really uh my word combining stem of menopause specialists and punks and after
387. that aha moment i told you about the menopause conference kind of stimming those two things
388. together into menopunks and realizing literally lynn in that moment that oh my god this is the
389. movie and this is mine but not really mine like this is a new way to really understand menopause
390. and to own your power during midlife,
391. harnessing the fury, the rage,
392. the absolute energy of punk rock
393. and the defiance to not accept no for an answer.
394. And we know, Lynn, we know as feminists,
395. we know as activists that the only way things change
396. is with people demanding it.
397. Right.
398. And that's what we're doing.
399. We are truly just trying to rile up Gen X
400. and everybody else to demand this change
401. because we now, according to the FDA, you know, shouldn't be told no anymore, but we're still
402. being told no. And doctors still don't have the education. So we came up with a thing. So follow
403. us to find out more about this. But we have a brand new thing we're launching called the Menopunks
404. Bill of Rights. That is a 10 article bill of rights that includes everything from hormone
405. therapy being covered by your insurance to workplace accommodations for perimenopause
406. and menopause, to demanding educated hormonally radicalized providers, to demanding the right to
407. a quality of life, to demanding all these other things. So we're talking to politicians.
408. That's amazing.
409. I mean, it's just crazy. Like we had a rep, rep Maxine Dexter at Menopunkapalooza over the weekend
410. talk about all of this. She's my congressperson. I'm in her district. She was at our benefit show.
411. It was amazing. I just spoke to the governor of Oregon, Tina Kotek, and her wife, the first lady,
412. Amy Kotek about this. They're both menopunks. You know, I just spoke to a lobbyist who's going to
413. help me hopefully try to get this into a real bill. So, you know, these menopause bills are
414. amazing that are all that are starting to pop up over in the country. I'm really, really happy about
415. seeing that. But the issue with most of those is that they're addressing the problem, not the
416. solution. The solution is better access to hormone replacement therapy and coverage and no fighting
417. with your doctor and education and all of the things that we're concerned with, right?
418. It's great to have your job say, okay, you're having hot flashes.
419. You can go home.
420. That is essential.
421. It's a big part of it.
422. But the most important part of it is to ensure that we have access and that it's covered
423. by insurance or any other way.
424. So we just got an incredible empowering sponsorship from Planned Parenthood, Columbia Willamette,
425. which is my local Planned Parenthood.
426. And this is just, I just want to make sure that people know about this because other
427. Planned Parenthoods are doing this as well But our local Planned Parenthood that does all of Oregon and Southwest Washington they just retrained all of their clinicians on menopause and perimenopause care So you know if you being told no by your
428. doctor, if people are really making it difficult for you, go to Planned Parenthood, ask to be seen
429. by their clinicians. Gender affirming care is for everybody. It encompasses men who want
430. testosterone, women who want HRT, trans folk who are trying to, you know, be comfortable in their
431. bodies and want to live as they want to live, right? And the stigmatization of that is absolutely
432. unacceptable. And I will not accept it. And that is part of what we are doing here at Menopunks
433. is to smash that into smithereens and reframe the conversation about hormones are healthcare.
434. You've started a movement. We really have. We've been talking to Alicia J. Rose, who's
435. the director and creator of Menopunks. It's an upcoming film next year. It's currently a podcast.
436. It's a bill of rights. It's a whole movement. Thank you so much for joining us. And I love
437. hearing from you. And we will have all those links on our website and our socials as well.
438. Fabulous. Thank you so much for having me. I'm a card carrying feminist. And what we're doing is
439. kind of modeled on Ms. Magazine and the revolution they began with feminism. So I really want to do
440. the same thing with punk rock and a documentary and a podcast and I just don't see why not so
441. lfg my menopunks let's do this
442. let's do this
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459. Thank you.
460. © transcript Emily Beynon
461. © BF-WATCH TV 2021
462. © transcript Emily Beynon
463. Thank you.
464. Thank you.
465. Thank you.
466. 🎵
467. 🎵
468. Thank you.
469. © transcript Emily Beynon
470. Thank you.
471. Thank you.
472. Thank you.
473. Thank you.
474. Thank you you
475. KAMPENG
476. Terima kasih telah menonton!
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478. Terima kasih telah menonton!
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480. Thank you so much for your patience.
481. We've resolved the technical difficulty and now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
482. So there's an active process that happens, and that process is called the process of disablement.
483. So those given fancy terms were brought into academia by disabled British sociologists,
484. drawing from this experience of grassroots struggles,
485. and brought it to bear onto this model that had prevailed the history of any study of disability Not disability studies That different Any study of disability about disability on disability without disabled people
486. And so, and that's, it's known in disability studies as the biomedical or individual model of disability,
487. which understands disabled bodies as inherently individually deficient.
488. So it's an inherent problem of the body.
489. It has nothing to do with the societal circumstances, ideologies, practices, attitudes,
490. institutional approaches to different embodiment, right?
491. No, the disability is just a natural, organic occurrence, and it's a deficit.
492. Needs to be cured, needs to be hidden, needs to be manicured, needs to be prosthetized, needs to be handled, needs to be observed in confinement.
493. Right?
494. So this has been the tradition, right?
495. The long Western tradition of understanding and managing and administering the disabled body through a biomedical perspective.
496. That, unfortunately, is the perspective that continues to prevail today after 40, 50 years of struggles by disabled people, grassroots academics in collaboration, artists, performers, poets, you name it.
497. There is still this understanding of disability from this deficit perspective.
498. So these academics, like this British sociologist, were trying to be like, look, these people on the ground, they talked about a social perspective of disability, which locates the problem outside the body.
499. It is not different embodiment.
500. It is not the different body, different, that also in quotation marks, that's inherently problematic.
501. that's inherently burdensome or that's inherently abnormal, right?
502. It is actually the social structures, practices, policies, institutions,
503. interpersonal relationships that produce disability into a category of deficiency
504. and therefore a category of social oppression in every aspect of life, right?
505. So in doing so, this battle sort of begun, right?
506. It was like disabled intellectuals fighting against the rest of the world in terms of like this academic traditions and like schools of thought that had been like totally established and disabled academics and intellectuals, not even disability studies yet, but just like within sociology.
507. We're like, look at us.
508. We're disabled.
509. We're talking to you.
510. And the disciplines are like, you can't possibly be an academic.
511. You can't possibly be an intellectual because you're disabled.
512. So we don't know what you're talking about.
513. Right. So is this power, power relationship and this imbalance between both two camps, so to speak.
514. And so it happens that the social model has informed so many of our contemporary struggles.
515. It continues to do so because it brings the idea of disability to bear on the material reality,
516. concrete reality of the disabled body or of disabled bodies in a way that we cease to exist within this platonic realm of ideas and narratives and metaphor because disability is a
517. very useful metaphor, let me tell you. For writers, oh my God, it's like the primer, like, let's go to
518. disability and use all this imagery about collapsing societies through the image of the disabled body,
519. in a way as to detach it completely from the realm of material experience
520. and in doing so, from our lives, from the very experience of disability,
521. from living disability.
522. So living disability is embodying disability, which we do,
523. which disabled people do.
524. We embody that thing.
525. We celebrate that thing.
526. We struggle with that thing.
527. But in insisting on an erasure of disability and disabled people from producing everyday life and from producing the world, that's why we continue to circulate as metaphors.
528. As charity cases are pitiful.
529. That is not how we understand ourselves.
530. That is not how we see ourselves. That was not how we represent ourselves. Disability culture, huge depth, vibrancy, richness, multi-layeredness of experience and deliciousness.
531. and just like multifaceted ways of looking at our bodies in a three-dimensional perspective
532. as opposed to those flat allegories.
533. And we're wrapping up another edition of Feminist Magazine.
534. Don't forget, you can find all the links from our program today on our website,
535. feministmagazine.org.
536. Our programs are archived in the kpfk.org audio archives.
537. You can find our podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Google Play.
538. Thanks for listening.
539. We'll be right back.
540. Peace.
541. Peace.
542. Hi, I'm Patti Smith, and you're listening to Fiercely Independent Pacifica Radio, KPFK 90.7 FM.
543. People have the power.
544. People have the power
545. People have the power
546. Will Gear Theatricum Botanicum returns this June 6th through October 4th
547. with outdoor repertory theater, events, and educational programs for all ages.
548. A Midsummer Night's Dream is back.
549. Alongside Romeo and Juliet, Treasure Island, Noel Coward's Waiting in the Wings,
550. and Bernardo Cubrilla's dark and incisive new comedy, The People of Pompeii, set in the aftermath of the 2025 Palisades fire.
551. is located in Topanga Canyon, just off the 101 freeway.