A STATEMENT ON EDITORIAL LABOR

I entered the opinion-manufacturing industry nine years ago. At the time, digital media was in the business of paying as low as $15, sometimes less, for mainly inexperienced young women to write confessional essays that would get a clicky headline the writer would be blamed for (but usually didn't write) and that would drive social media engagement that publishers could leverage to sell ads. The first essay I ever sold took me 30 minutes to write. I was paid $50 for it. I was in the throes of severe post-traumatic stress disorder, on Medicaid, and needed money, so I kept writing. When I got my first full-time job in editorial, I was expected to produce 5-8 stories a day - or, I was expected to form and confidently articulate 5-8 new opinions a day.

In "Public and Private: Spheres of Influence," Felix Gonzalez-Torres says that "we have an explosion of information bytes and an implosion of meaning." During my career in the media, I have come to appreciate how prescient it was for him to see it all the way back in 1993. I often wonder what Gonzalez-Torres would think of the media landscape today.

It took me six straight weeks of information gathering, data collection and analysis, note-taking, writing, and revision to prepare for my interview on the Conspirituality podcast. I often felt like my mind was unraveling from the amount of information I took in. When I received the preliminary questions for the interview, I wrote 12,000 words in response, but very little of the opinions I formed, the data tables I built, or the solutions I might propose as a result of my preparation made even that first draft. That was again revised, again cut down, repeatedly, both before and after recording. And even at that, I know where there are mistakes left in the interview. At some point you have to say "enough" and let the work stand, imperfect. This should be the nature of writing, particularly on matters of grave importance.

I want to thank Matthew, Derek, and Julian for giving me the platform to say what I needed to say. And I want to note that what I had to say would not have been accepted as a story pitch practically anywhere in the current U.S. media ecosystem. It's too much work for author, editor, and audience, and I don't have enough of a public profile to drive a return on the investment. If you got something out of this interview, please keep all of this in mind: that the interview is only a fraction of the work that went into it, that it took serious sacrifices of time and health to produce on account of it having been produced independently and without the resources of a publisher, and that it is a matter of incredible happenstance that I even got the opportunity to speak in the first place.

I have come to a point in my career where I want to speak as little as possible. (The irony of saying so after a 90-minute interview doesn't escape me.) I think we could all stand to do less talking. I think we could all stand to think less of our own opinions and more of the humanity and wholeness of other people. I agreed to the interview because I have been trying for ten years to find a way to further Felix Gonzalez-Torres' work and consider it a large part of my life's purpose. I also agreed to the interview because we are speaking about matters of life and death, while most of the media treats the trans community as a fun thought experiment it can use to drive engagement and advance political agendas.

I have said what I needed to say, and at some point there's only so much I can beg for cisgender people to see me and my trans brothers, sisters, and siblings as whole human beings.

I look forward to being more than a trans person now that the interview is done and out in the world. I look forward to having the space and time back to make art and be a husband and mother. I look forward to maybe being able to produce images and objects that induce a feeling you and I share in common, instead of trying to reason and argue and construct and convince. 

Thank you very much for listening.

Beau