Material Girls

We're thrilled to share the pilot episode of Gender Playground!

Gender Playground is a new show from Witch, Please Productions and is co-hosted by longtime friends Marcelle Kosman and Raimi Marx. This podcast is all about gender-affirming care for the kids in your life, and YOU are the intended audience! Whether you're a caregiver, parent, family-member, chosen-family-member, teacher, doctor, childcare professional, or just someone who wants to create a more loving world for kids, this show is for you!

This first episode is about gender expression and gender euphoria. In it, Marcelle and Raimi talk about Marcelle's daughter playing dress up, Marcelle's desire to balance her daughter’s creative freedom and safety, and what caregivers can do to better expand their own imaginations around gender and self-expression within and beyond the binary.

For more resources and information about today's topic(s), head to ohwitchplease.ca/gender-playground!

Note: We briefly touch on the current panic around "permanence" and although we don't name the buzzword "detransition" in this episode, we are aware that it's used in mainstream discourse to limit access to gender-affirming and life-saving care for trans and nonbinary youth. We will touch on this topic more in the following episodes and we plan to dedicate a full episode to it once we can sustain the show past our mini-season.

Until then, head to ohwitchplease.ca/gender-playground for some useful research on the low rate of detransition.

Links to the Recommendations from Our Pilot

• https://www.flamingorampant.com/
• https://jesslove.format.com/picture-books
• https://booksaremagic.net/item/oh62l0dfkY5ldh2RwcbyWg
• https://socialjusticebooks.org/sparkle-boy/
• https://modernrascals.ca/

Heads up! We’re trying to reach $7000/month in Patreon support by August 1st to ensure the sustainability of this new podcast! We’ve produced a mini-season of four episodes to test whether there’s an audience for the show. With financial support from our listeners, we’ll be able to produce new episodes that continue tackling this complex issue from a place of joy and love.

Join our Patreon today to get access to the following three episodes released over the next few weeks and to show your support of this show. Head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease, find a tier that works for your budget and DM us to let us know you joined in support of Gender Playground! Thanks for listening. We really hope you enjoy the show!

Special thanks to the folks that made this episode and its accompanying resources happen: Reese Carr, Erik Magnus, Gaby Iori, Zoe Mix, Hannah McGregor, Hannah Rehak and AJ Jaramaz.

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Well Witches... we're here, at the end of Witch, Please the podcast. If you've been following us on Instagram, then you know that we are so grateful for the last eight seasons AND we're so excited for our new flagship show: Material Girls, a scholarly podcast about popular culture.

You'll notice that, much like our usual Wrap Up episodes, this final episode is pure chaos. We were lucky enough to record this final Witch, Please episode in person which means what we lack in sound quality and coherence, we (hopefully) make up for in glee and games. Tune in for the giggles, stay for the Devastating Fun FactsTM and listen to the very end for a blooper Coach decided to keep in.

We hope this is a fun episode for you but fear not, we'll be back in two weeks with **serious theory** in our pilot episode of Material Girls. And heads up! We're keeping our Witch, Please feed, so stay subscribed to be notified when Material Girls drops! If you're wondering about our other show, Gender Playground, you can head over to ohwitchplease.ca/gender-playground to learn more.

AND if you want to be a part of this next chapter featuring more perks and more content than ever before, head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease to support Witch, Please Productions, feminist media for a radically* inclusive world. We need your support now more than ever!

*fuck terfs we're taking back radical

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Well Witches, we finally did it — we recorded an episode about fan studies and fan-fiction. And our wonderful guest, Amanda K. Allen (she/her), made it possible! Amanda is a professor of Children’s Literature at Eastern Michigan University who she came onto the show to discuss fan fiction conventions and genre at the intersection of power, adolescence, and the early days of the internet. Join us as we explore the rich history and legacy of fan-fiction through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Content Warning: We discuss the taboo nature of some fan fiction "ships" (i.e. Snape/Hermione and Hermione/McGonagall), as well as some tropes and conventions of non-consent, coercion and forced marriage and reproduction.

For listeners interested in understanding the ethics surrounding fan fiction writers' tendency to include graphic and disturbing elements within fan fiction (rape, non-consensual situations, torture, etc.), an excellent and helpful text is Kristina Busse's Framing Fan Fiction: Literary and Social Practices in Fan Fiction Communities. In particular, listeners might be interested in the tenth chapter, "Fictional Consents and the Ethical Enjoyment of Dark Desires." [Busse, Kristina. Framing Fan Fiction: Literary and Social Practices in Fan Fiction Communities. U of Iowa P., 2017.]

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Don't forget, we are running a Holiday Patreon Drive! If we earn $5000 USD/month from our Patreon by January 1st, 2022, we are going to host a LIVE Witch, Please Tell Me (*Our q&a bonus content!*) for all Patrons at every tier! Join today at a monthly rate that works for you and you'll bring us one step closer to our goal! Our tiers range from $2-$13.

Stay connected and follow Witch, Please on Twitter and Instagram @ohwitchplease and let us know what you think of the episode through a review on Apple Podcasts. Your support keeps this show running!

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For our final regular episode, we decided to revisit Fan Studies! We begin with a review of our episodes on Foucault and authorship, Michel de Certeau and the tactics of the disempowered, Jane Tompkins and circulation and Michael Warner's idea of discourse publics. Even though it's our last regular Witch, Please episode, don't be fooled, our Transfiguration segment is a HEADY one and Hannah leads us through mind-bending theory about affective economies and affective economics (two different things!!). If you like feminist theory, you'll love the discussion of Sara Ahmed's 2004 article “Affective Economies," and if you're a media theory nerd (which we suspect you may be...), you'll appreciate when Hannah brings Henry Jenkins into the mix to think about the relationship between media industries and fandoms.

Ultimately, the conversation, inevitably, gets a bit meta and we apply our newly discovered/uncovered/learned theory to the test with a discussion about the changing face of the Harry Potter fandom, the fandom around Witch, Please the podcast and the radical possibilities AND limits of both.

For this episode, we invited our Faculty Club to join in for OWLS so if you hear some unfamiliar voices and brains at work, that's why! Big shoutout to our Faculty Club (a high Patreon tier) for helping us with this last episode and for the financial support. You're why Coach has the hours to add so many sound effects. Hoot, hoot.

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Hey you! We're launching a new show called MATERIAL GIRLS! We've shared our first two episodes on Patreon to get the input of all our Patreon supporters as we develop the series which will launch this summer after we wrap up the Appendix Season. Join our Patreon today to listen to the first episode of our new show and to get access to a ton of audio perks like unedited audio, bloopers, comics, Q&As, and so much more! Become a supporter at patreon.com/ohwitchplease. If becoming a paying subscriber isn't in the cards right now, no stress! Please leave us a review instead — it truly helps sustain the show. Of course, you can always follow us on Instagram or Twitter @ohwitchplease to stay connected. We need your help to start this next chapter of Witch, Please Productions!

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In this episode we are joined by the wonderful Dr. Addie Merians. Addie (she/her) is a postdoc in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. She has her PhD in counseling psychology from the University of Minnesota and her research focuses on trauma and resilience, especially in relation to systemic oppression. In Season One of our reboot, we spoke with Lucia M. Lorenzi, PhD, to unpack trauma theory and to explore gaps, inconsistencies, and unreliable narration as sites where trauma lives in the Harry Potter books. Now, as we think about The Order of the Phoenix, Addie helps us make sense of Harry's behavior in the aftermath of Cedric Diggory's death, the culture of PTSD and silence within The Order itself, and so much more.

Content Warning: We speak explicitly about PTSD as a diagnosis, different types of trauma, and specific symptoms of stress, depression and anxiety. Please take care of yourselves and skip this episode if you need — and feel free to check out some helpful resources of support from our guest, Addie, below:

• Suicide Crisis Line: 1-800-273-8255 (Dial 1 if you are a veteran for the Veteran's Crisis Line)
• RAINN is the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization and leading authority on sexual violence. Call 800-656-HOPE for the National Sexual Assault Hotline.
• For more information on PTSD click here. The National Center for PTSD has information about PTSD for everyone, not just veterans. People can learn more about what PTSD is, different treatments, and find information for friends and family members of people with PTSD.
• PTSD Coach offers crisis resources, help finding local care, information about PTSD, symptom assessments, and a variety of tools to help manage symptoms.
• COVID Coach was developed to help folks with pandemic stressors and includes tools to manage stress and symptoms, information about a variety of topics related to mental health, assessments to track anxiety/depression/PTSD/well-being, and resources.

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Stay connected and follow Witch, Please on Twitter and Instagram @ohwitchplease and let us know what you think of the episode through a review on Apple Podcasts. As always, you can join our Patreon for exclusive content including bonus interviews, Q&As, Watch Alongs and more — our tiers range from $2-$13! For Witch, Please merch visit our TeePublic shop!

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