That's a wrap on season 1

TA-DA! We're putting a bow on our first season as host R.B. Brooks (they/them) reflects on the conversations from this season. We welcome your feedback and ideas for season two at [e-mail].

Show Notes

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What is Take the Last Bite?

Take the Last Bite is a direct counter to the Midwest Nice mentality— highlighting advocacy & activism by queer/trans communities in the Midwest region. Each episode unearths the often disregarded and unacknowledged contributions of queer & trans folks to social change through interviews, casual conversations and reflections on Midwest queer time, space, and place.

For questions, comments and feedback: [e-mail]

To support this podcast and the Institute, please visit sgdinstitute.org/giving

Host: R.B. Brooks, they/them, director of programs for the Midwest Institute for Sexuality & Gender Diversity

Cover Art: Adrienne McCormick

R.B.:
Hey, hi, hello y'all. This is RB and welcome back. If you missed us on Tuesday, that's because we're putting a big shiny bow on season one and calling it a wrap. But before we saunter off into planning for season two, I wanted to do a season one recap and gaze out onto the horizon of all of the amazing conversations we had during our first run of our podcast, Take the Last Bite.

[Music Playing]

Y'all we cannot do this. We cannot be these stereotypical Midwesterners. Please eat the rest of this food.

We just have these conversations every day with people like this is exhausting. I don't want to do this anymore.

Why can't we be in space with hundreds of other queer and trans folks and having these necessary conversations?

I don't know who you are, but we're going to talk by the potatoes for five minutes

Because aesthetic is the only thing keeping my dysphoria at bay. I'm broke all the time, but I look amazing.

Definitely going to talk about Midwest Nice and if that's as real as it wants to think it is.

Midwest nice is white aggression. That's what it is.

[End Music]

R.B.:
We kicked off our bold podcast experiment with a conversation about what the dreaded Last Bite means in the folklore of Midwest culinary convention. We followed up with a raw and honest conversation about the undergirding issues behind Midwest Nice. In episode three, a few of us reflected on our collective mortality, as two of us turned 30. After that, some of us took some time to compare experiences of rural versus urban queerness. We topped that off by chatting with queers who make beers and who push for change while doing it. We revisited a panel discussion about a trans abolitionist vision. We deep belly laughed with comedian and educator Hayden Kristal, and we wrapped up season one with a series of small bites where our team talked about joy and lessons from 2021.

It has been an outright pleasure manifesting this podcast and bringing forth conversations with, by, and for Midwest queer and trans folks. Because we know that we are the only ones who are capable of doing it and doing it right. It's been rewarding to gather our team into reflective conversation in ways that we usually only get an opportunity to do in late night sessions in hotel lobbies, in hotel suites, during conference weekends, in quick spurts via text message, or in sidebars during our meetings. I don't think we entirely knew what creating this podcast would look like and where it was going to go, but where we've landed so far and what we've been able to highlight in just one season has really been a showcase of what power there is in the Midwest region, what more there is to unearth, and what else needs to be highlighted in order to achieve a more holistic, thrush vision of sexual liberation and gender justice.

And while we definitely have a few solid ideas for season two, we want to know what you want to hear, and we want to know what you want to talk about. If you're someone who's doing amazing queer and trans liberation work in the Midwest region, we want to hear from you and learn about what it is that makes your work so special, what it means to be doing your work within the Midwest. What are the obstacles, complexities and uniqueness of how you're navigating the work compared to other geographical locations, or what just needs to be hyped up and talked about? So far, we know we want to explore more the experiences of rural queers. We want to do some special small bite snippets for Trans Day of Visibility in March, and we want to talk with some folks who are engaged in local politics and the complexities of engaging in any level of politics. But this podcast isn't intended just to be about our interests here at the Midwest Institute for Sexuality and Gender Diversity. This podcast is about all of us in the queer and trans community who call the Midwest region home, either for life, for a while, or for an undetermined amount of time. And so this should be a collective project in which we are interweaving all of the work that we're doing, all of the important work we know is getting overlooked by the national rhetoric.

And so we invite your insight, feedback, suggestions, recommendations, whatever you have for us by emailing us at [e-mail]. We're planning to pick season two back up around March, so in the meantime, if you want updates, follow ups, and to learn about our other programs, check out the Midwest Institute for Sexuality and Gender Diversity on social media. Please subscribe to the Take the Last Bite podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and like, like, like, review, review, review, so that we can get this podcast in front of folks who need to hear this important set of conversations.

Thanks so much to all of you who are already listening and releasing it. We're getting pings in countries that none of us have ever even been to, so that's really exciting. And obviously a lot of Midwest states are high on our analytics page of folks who are listening in to the podcast. Like I said, this has been a true treat, bringing these conversations into existence and learning more about how to be in connectivity and to educate folks in the Midwest region. So with that, I'll say stay safe, stay warm, and don't forget to Take the Last Bite.

[Music Playing]

Our inbox is open for all of your insight, feedback, questions, boycotts, memes and other forms of written correspondence. You can contact us at [e-mail]. This podcast is made possible by the labor and commitment of the Midwest Institute for Sexuality and Gender Diversity staff. Particular shout out to Justin, Andy and Nick for all of your support with editing, promotion and production. Our amazing and queer as fuck cover art was designed by Adrienne McCormick.

[End music]