8. Surviving and Thriving

April 10, 2019·27 min·2 clips

Travis Alabanza describes performing as a witch at 14 with the entire school football team there to laugh — and receiving a standing ovation instead.

The ocean opens the door. On the beach, queerness is imagined through octopi that shift shape and colour, and fixed human categories suddenly look a bit small. Caitlin has crossed something real. After eight parts of questioning, walking, and listening, she says she came out as non-binary to everyone in her life and survived. More than survived, actually. That small correction carries the episode, because this is not only about making it through disclosure. It is about finding older ways to belong. Amru does much of that searching. They push back against the idea that non-binary identity is a modern invention, and against the fear that gathers around anything treated as new. History gives the episode weight without turning it into a lecture. Feminello people in 19th century Italy, the Hidra community, and Baclas in the Philippines appear as proof that gender variance has never waited for permission. The tone stays tender, not triumphant. Amru talks about a Western habit of seeing trans people mainly through oppression, and says that narrow view had started to feel sad and unhealthy. So they looked backwards. What they found was not simple comfort, but it was bigger than harm: accounts where gender-nonconforming people were envied, respected, or understood as carrying a gift of fluctuation. The personal thread keeps the history close to the body. Amru remembers growing up on a council estate, visibly gender non-conforming and always having to judge what might happen outside the house. A school panto memory lands with a jolt. At fourteen, playing a witch and wearing women's clothes in rehearsal became frightening because other students knew and reacted with alarm. The episode lets fear and pride sit together. It does not pretend history cancels harm, but it does make more room than harm alone. Caitlin's arc stays quiet and physical: the beach, the earlier walk from the Museum of Transology, and the closing sense of a last episode all feel held in one long tide. Nothing gets tied too neatly. Survival becomes a question of inheritance, language, and who gets to say that people like this have always been here.

As heard by us

A beachside episode about coming out, queer history, and learning to keep going.

Part eight settles into life after disclosure, with Caitlin already out as non-binary to everyone around them and the real question shifting to what thriving can look like after survival.

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Why you'd press play

If you want a beachside conversation about coming out as non-binary, queer history, and the ocean, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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