Episode 3: Learning to Do the Almost Impossible

Episode 4: Setting Fires

We’ve made it – this is the final episode of my podcasted thesis! Thank you so much for listening to TRANS FATS. In this concluding episode, I share some more stories – this time about access to professionalised care. I talk through colonial therapy practices, working with a dietician, genocidal famine regimes, rejecting the pathologisation of hunger, gender-affirming surgery, anti-fatness in the doctor’s office, and a whole bunch of grief. I also think about how social workers can know and do otherwise, and wrap up by saying many, many thank yous ❤️‍🔥 Notes 1. Andrea Gibson (August 13, 1975 – July 14, 2025): The poem isn’t over [https://andreagibson.substack.com/p/andrea-gibson-dead-poet-of-love-hope-grief-legacy] 2. Harmeet’s Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/harmeetrehal/] 3. M’s projects: adella [https://adella.bandcamp.com/] and worrywart [https://worrywart.bandcamp.com/music] Links * Transcript [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/ep4-transcript.pdf] [31 page .pdf] * References [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/references.pdf] [21 page .pdf] * Stable UVic URI [https://hdl.handle.net/1828/22966] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Episode 3: Learning to Do the Almost Impossible

In this third episode of my podcasted thesis, we dive into stories. I talk about my family’s gendered relationship with food and eating, diet culture in the early 2000s, Honesty Box, alienation and being baffled by gender, trying out chest binding and encountering anti-fatness in queer spaces, embodied knowledges, going to the doctor as a teenager, fucked up relationships with food, healthism, the gaze (g-a-z-e, not g-a-y-s lol) and getting dress-coded, clothing size fuckery, figuring out pronouns, and misgendering. It’s a big episode. I come to a critical understanding of how gender and fatness work, and how coloniality works to divorce us from knowledge of our own bodies. It’s an episode all about finding the words to describe knowing otherwise 🤯 Notes 1. “Weight Watchers” – Maintenance Phase [https://maintenancephase.buzzsprout.com/1411126/episodes/8134257-weight-watchers] 2. Photograph of a young Katie [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/babby.png]. They have long brown hair, are wearing a light green t-shirt and a homemade pirate eye patch with a red X on it, and are sporting a face-painted handlebar moustache and pink nail polish. Their chin looks kind of dirty but it’s probably supposed to be five o’clock shadow. They are sticking their tongue out. 3. I highly recommend Breathe: Journeys to Healthy Binding [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/746823/breathe-by-maia-kobabe-and-sarah-peitzmeier-phd-illustrated-by-maia-kobabe/], by Maia Kobabe and Sarah Peitzmeier. Ask your local library to get a copy or two! 4. The divisive legacy of that wavy Ikea mirror [https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2021/12/10808607/ikea-wavy-krabb-mirror], by Gina Tonic 5. “Articles of weight” – Weight For It [https://pca.st/cmgyfxip] Links * Transcript [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/ep3-transcript.pdf] [32 page .pdf] * References [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/references.pdf] [21 page .pdf] * Stable UVic URI [https://hdl.handle.net/1828/22966] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Episode 2: Memes and Methodologies

In this second episode of my podcasted thesis, I do a deep dive into my research methodology and methods. I start out with my hopes for this work before talking about autoethnography, coloniality’s relationship to positivism, medical notetaking, podcasting, accessibility, the body and the voice, relational ethics, and self and community care 🌈 I also ask again for your feedback on the accessibility of this podcast, which you can send my way at krobrien@uvic.ca [krobrien@uvic.ca]! Notes 1. Britt Hawthorne’s blog post: Who Are People of the Global Majority and Why It Matters [https://britthawthorne.com/blog/people-global-majority/] 2. I came across the idea of using poems as a springboard into memory when reading brown Mad social worker Aman Sharma’s (2023) autoethnographic thesis. He describes the poems he incorporated into his thesis work as ‘poetic artifacts’, after white scholar Lace Brogden’s (2008) use of report cards as ‘curricular artifacts’ in her own autoethnographic work. Thanks so much, Aman, both for your scholarly work and your supportive emails early on in this project! 3. Still from the TV show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/always-sunny.png]. A white man with a scruffy beard, wearing a short-sleeved light blue collared shirt, a striped brown tie, and khakis, is standing in front of a nonsensical evidence board. The board is full of papers connected by many red strings. The man has wide, red eyes and is gesturing at the viewer with one cigarette-holding hand, and pointing at the board with his other hand. 4. Story map [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/story-map-censored.png]. Photograph from above of a sheet of white paper covered in light blue sticky notes against a grey countertop. In the top left corner of the white paper, sticky notes are clumped around a handwritten note reading ‘access to supports (imperfect)’. In the bottom left corner, sticky notes are clumped around a note reading ‘complicated relationship w̄ food/eating’. On the right side of the paper, sticky notes cascade from a note at the top reading ‘gender feelings’ to a note at the bottom reading ‘anti-fatness’. There is a handwritten note reading ‘being perceived (particularly online)’ connecting the lower left corner and the right side of the paper. Some sticky notes have a teal dot on them, indicating that the text on them came from poems. Katie’s left hand is in the bottom left corner of the photograph. 5. Check out the ethics certificate [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/hreb-application.pdf] [1 page .pdf], approved ethics protocol [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/hreb-application.pdf] [18 page .pdf], consent form [https://osf.io/t8rb6] [4 page .pdf], feedback email [https://osf.io/fnwpu] [1 page .pdf], and withdrawal form [https://osf.io/ze7k9] [1 page .pdf] if you’re interested 🤓 6. Playlist: TRANS FATS [https://www.tunemymusic.com/share/NU9RHRIqBo] Links * Transcript [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/ep2-transcript.pdf] [22 page .pdf] * References [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/references.pdf] [21 page .pdf] * Stable UVic URI [https://hdl.handle.net/1828/22966] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Episode 1: What’s Going On?

Welcome to my thesis! This first episode talks about decolonial feminist theory, my white settlerness in relation to Indigenous lands including Palestine, transness and fatness and eating disorders, pathologisation and medical-industrial complex bullshit including the DSM and the BMI, disability justice, anddd anti-fatness. So, you know. Please take care if you decide to listen 💜 Notes 1. ‘Cis-centric’ describes a world where the bodies of cisgender folks, people whose genders are the same as the ones they were assigned at birth, are understood to be the norm. ‘Sexually dimorphic’ means an understanding of sex that only allows for two options, typically female or male. ‘Somatic normalcy’ means the idea that there is one way for bodies to be ‘normal’. 2. “By transnormative, I mean subjects [read: people] who, save for their status as trans, are otherwise highly assimilable – gender normative, heterosexual, middle class, well educated, racialized as white. … It is transnormative subjects that have the least mitigated [read: easiest or most straightforward] access to medical technologies of gender transition – hormones, surgery, and continued care. Conversely, it is nontransnormative subjects who are systematically exposed to institutional and interpersonal violence, up to and including death – by homicide and suicide, yes, but also by lack of access to quality, affordable, trans-competent health care.” (Malatino, 2019, p. 110, emphasis in original) 3. Amnesty International report on Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza: ‘You feel like you are subhuman’ [https://amnesty.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Amnesty-International-Gaza-Genocide-Report-December-4-2024.pdf]; United Nations press release: ‘It is important to call a genocide a genocide’ [https://press.un.org/en/2024/gapal1473.doc.htm]; United Nations independent commission of inquiry report concluding that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza [https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session60/advance-version/a-hrc-60-crp-3.pdf] (warning that this last link is heavy on the legalese!) 4. Photograph of a grey concrete footpath [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/walkway.png]. The concrete of the path is visibly lighter where the words “UVIC DIVEST FROM GENOCIDE” were once spraypainted in all-caps, like the concrete was pressure washed to remove the paint. 5. Patty Berne (January 21, 1967 – May 29, 2025): In memory and power [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y3LJvdK4J5E74S-P34cWmvesaRH0iH2c/view] 6. “The Body Mass Index” – Maintenance Phase [https://maintenancephase.buzzsprout.com/1411126/episodes/8963468-the-body-mass-index]  Links * Transcript [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/ep1-transcript.pdf] [27 page .pdf] * References [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/references.pdf] [21 page .pdf] * Stable UVic URI [https://hdl.handle.net/1828/22966] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.

Episode 0: Introducing TRANS FATS

Hi friends! I’m Katie O’Brien, and this trailer is a tiny intro to my podcasted thesis, TRANS FATS. If you have any feedback about the accessibility of this podcast, please don’t hesitate to email me at krobrien@uvic.ca [krobrien@uvic.ca]. Stoked to have you along for the ride 🌈 Links * Transcript [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/ep0-transcript.pdf] [2 page .pdf] * References [https://krobrien.ca/thesis/references.pdf] [21 page .pdf] * Stable UVic URI [https://hdl.handle.net/1828/22966] ---------------------------------------- Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy [https://acast.com/privacy] for more information.