Podcast Review: Gendercast’s “Pinkwashing” Episode

Gendercast co-host Sean recording an interview for the podcast. From the Gendercast Facebook page.

If you interact with me regularly, you know I listen to podcasts. Lots of podcasts. Six or seven hours a day, five days a week (I have a tedious, solitary job. With health insurance). Recently, a friend recommended Gendercast: Our Transmasculine Genderqueery, which went something like: “Hey, I found this podcast you might like? It’s called Gende-” “SOLD DONE DOWNLOADED.” Gendercast is hosted by Sean and Jesse and deals with their personal experiences as people on the transmasculine spectrum and tackles subjects ranging from clinical information about hormones and surgery to Feminism 101 to interviews with filmmakers. Episode 31: Pinkwashing was released last week and proved to be one of the most interesting, informative, and inspiring pieces of media I’ve consumed recently on any platform.

When I first saw the title of the episode, I thought it might have been a reference to breast cancer awareness, or maybe just how colors are gendered. I could not have been more wrong. Here’s a definition from Pinkwatching Israel:

Israeli pinkwashing is a potent method through which the terms of Israeli occupation of Palestine are reiterated – Israel is civilised, Palestinians are barbaric, homophobic, uncivilised, suicide-bombing fanatics. It produces Israel as the only gay-friendly country in an otherwise hostile region. This has manifold effects: it denies Israeli homophobic oppression of its own gays and lesbians, of which there is plenty, and it recruits, often unwittingly, gays and lesbians of other countries into a collusion with Israeli violence towards Palestine.

Here’s a synopsis of what your experience with this podcast will be: Selma, the Seattle-area queer Palestinian activist Sean and Jesse interview in this episode, introduces herself and gives a brief history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, then begins to explain the phenomenon of Israeli pinkwashing. Suddenly, learning is happening at a rapid rate in your brain. You are like: SELMA. I did not know about this pinkwashing thing (Unless you did, in which case good on you, seriously). You also get to learn about the Boycott-Divest-Sanction strategy, which is a global nonviolent strategy to weaken Israeli apartheid by pulling institutional funding, similar to the divestment strategy employed against South African apartheid in the 1980′s.

Pinkwatching Israel and Queer BDS are amazing organizations made up of incredible individuals that I think can motivate all of us to be creative in our resistance and to stand up for ourselves and our communities wherever we are. But don’t take my word for it – check out this rad interview and enjoy all the magical learning/badass empowerment/righteous anger feelings your little heart could desire. And subscribe to Gendercast so that I know I’m not the only one listening to Jesse’s most recent installment of TrantasyLand.

Pearl is so. ready. for the election to be over.