Becoming Robin Danger Vincent: Rockin' with the Robin Shakedown Band

translated listeners. I hope you've been enjoying the conversations we've been having this season. This week, I'm back inside my closet with one of my close friends, singer songwriter Robin Danger Vincent. We have a lot to talk about this week, coming out writing music, country music, vocal training, Atlanta stuff, and of course trans stuff. Duh. Please enjoy my fun conversation with Robin Danger.

If it comes out of the ground and I don't know, like, does it not notice its shadow or does it just like see its shadow and it's not afraid of it, or maybe it's a cloudy day and so it doesn't have a shadow. I don't fucking know how this all works. Okay, I think the groundhog just comes out and it says it's too fucking cold. Still, I'm going back under, I'm going back into hibernation. Yeah, but what our groundhog said was, well, bitch, it's already spring. So I'm here. That groundhog ran out

and gathered some strawberries exactly, it's blueberry. Wait, it's berry seasoned. Mama. Probably yeah, Berry. Wait, no, Berry, that's late. That's late summer apples all year long, that's fall, Mama. We're gonna start eating with the seasons, Mama. Is that a responsible thing to do? No, it's not. I mean it is. It's like the sustainable thing. I know, I know. But who's gonna eat all those fucking apples in the winter? Girl? We are not talking about what we're supposed to be

talking about. That's fair. I'm so sorry. Well, let me give you an introduction. Cheers, thank you. Let we give you a proper introduction. I am here today with family friend, friend of the pod, and musician, songwriter. Musician, singer, songwriter. I guess they call that guitarist, guitarists, all around great person, all around great person. She does solo music. She has a band. Her name is Robin Danger Vincent. Please welcome

to the pod. Wait, I said, what a name? Oh okay, I was like, wait, do you want to say Shakedown?

say late summer October twenty two. It was a beautiful day. We were in inmand Park. Yeah. It was at the first Atlanta trans Lady's picnic. Yeah, it was fantastic. I really enjoyed being there and of course meeting you and was a great day. It was, well, Robin, since I've met you, we have become close friends. You come over weekly for dinner and movies and whatnot. Well technically not movie but no night. Yes, and so we've been watching Veno together, which we need to finish. We do and

by the way, and we do so sorry. That's a life changing show, by the way, it is, and it's a lot to take in. I'm watching it the third time with you all now, so yeah, and this is my first time watching it with a group of people, well a group of people. I watched it with my boyfriend previously, but watching it with fellow trans women just feels very special. It really does. It feels like a you know, a sisterhood that I always wanted. So that's really sweet. Yeah, and I totally agree with that. I

appreciate I appreciate you for that. Thank you for having us over and doing that. Honestly, you've kind of facilitated the first group of trans people I've ever hung out with. Well, yeah, I guess during the winter, during our winter stay hiatus from the picnic. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, Robin, tell the folks about who you are. Sure my name is Robin Danger. Vincent as Cerman put it, I've lived in Atlanta my entire life, which at this point is rare. Well, yeah,

it is rare. Everybody moves away from here. A lot of transplants here, a lot of transplants. That's definitely true. I've never felt okay, so right now I'm feeling a pretty strong call to move away. I'll go ahead and put that out there. Yeah, but I've seen the city become something completely different. I remember a time before the Olympics were here. What was our mass? What was that little bit? It was busy? Izzy plush, I was iusied

out girl. I love as well. Yeah, I isy was like it was a very It was really the first identifying thing of Atlanta. We had the braves. Yeah, we had that tomahawk thing that I honestly never knew was a tomahawk. We had the bombing. We yeah, sorry, we don't have stuck about. We did have the bombing. But yeah, I guess I'll get right down into it. I grew up frequenting a pretty well known venue, an acoustic venue

here called Eddie's Addic. Oh hell yeah, hell yeah. Eddie's Attic was where my mother would take me many, many, many times. I don't really know how often she would take me because I was I don't know, this was before I was five years old. We would go to Eddie's Attic, where she worked as a publicist for a

lot of the bands that would come through. And since I was a little child, I did not have any daycare or anything like that, so I would just come and listen to musicians and get really really surrounded by that acoustic sound. And I just kind of thought that everybody did that, And as I grew older, I learned that not everybody does that, and it's kind of a unique space to grow up in. And consequently, I spent a lot of my childhood around a lot of lesbians,

around a lot of acoustic guitar playing lesbian sisters. So that probably played a large role in my development, and I haven't explored it as much as I should. But I went to Georgia Tech and I was going to be a mechanical engineer, and I spent maybe a year and a half to two years in the industry working as a mechanical engineer, commuting back and forth to Coming Georgia, Baby,

Coming Georgia. Have you seen that, Oprah Winfrey? I certainly, Oh my god, I certainly havene and I got the exact same for those of you listening at home who have not heard of this coming. Georgia used to be, and to some extent still is a sundown town, which is not a good town to be and that culture, that sun downtown culture extends to a lot of minorities

and persists to this day. To some extent, in my eyes, in that town, there's a lot of if you don't fit in exactly with the local culture, you're not seen well, you're not treated well there. So I on some level felt this alienation working there with the coworkers. I had who were all not all of them. Some of them are still very good friends of mine. Shout out to

Francis and Eric. They to a certain extent, a lot of them were kind of good old boys, and that's not a good environment to be a pre out trans woman in. And this was before I even knew. This was when I still considered myself as this dude working in coming Georgia, trying to fit in. But nothing felt right the time, as we would say, exactly well a

little egg. And I associated that feeling a lot with the industry, I think, which may have been a detriment to my development further in that industry, but it also exacerbated my coming out, which I guess. After working as a mechanical engineer for a little bit, I decided, you know, I've only got so much youth left in me, right, I might as well take the most advantage of it that I can. So I started a band. I had always really been trying to write songs since I was

in college. I got a band together and started playing around Atlanta, started going to the open mics and really exploring who I was through music, listening to a lot of different musicians, a lot of local musicians, hanging out with a lot of musicians, and watching a lot of music documentaries. Being from Georgia, we are surrounded with a lot of country music, classic country music, not so much new country music, which I think of as a blessing,

but a lot of classic country music. Country pop. Yeah, you know you love that country pop so much. But country music has always been about, contrary to what it's represented as now, going against the grain, but actually going against the grain, being part of the working class and going against the status quo. It represents those who are oppressed, and it gives a voice to those who otherwise wouldn't

have one. So I started seeing these oppressed minority groups in that light, which made me, gave me a little bit of empathy for people that I didn't have before. And I looked at who I was, and I said, am I stuck being a white sisk guy my entire life? Something about that feels wrong. I better explore this. So I explored it. And you know, this is a process that took place over the course of many, many, many months, many years even, but one day I finally said, you know,

maybe there is something to this whole trans thing. You know, growing up in a mostly Republican family in a mostly Republican area. It was frowned upon, to say the least, which we talked about earlier today. Yeah, and that made it really difficult to admit to myself and to my family and to my girlfriend. But I did what I felt an outlaw country musician would do because at the time, I considered myself an outlaw country artist, okay, and it

led to this. It led to my coming out, and it led to me starting hormones, and it led to like this whole new like it really feels like you're, for lack of a better less cliche term, born again. Moment you say, okay, listeners, we're going to take a quick break. Here. More from Robin on her outlaw country music outlook. After this, she does I know here and welcome back. Robin and I are just getting into her songwriting process. When you started music, you say you kind

of felt like an outlock country musician. How do you feel like your music has evolved as you have evolved in your transition? So one thing that I've always abided by is write what you know when you're writing music, when you're writing prose, when you're really writing anything, if you're not writing what you know, it's going to come across as fake. So I started just writing about my feelings.

Taylor Swift would write about she would use writing as a way to cope with her breakups and her drama that was going on in her life all throughout middle school and high school. And I read that in some interviews where and I thought, you know what, Taylor Swift has a good thing going for her. Maybe I should take a leaf out of that book. And so I started writing, just like I started No Holds Bar, just

writing about how I was feeling and myself. And I have one anecdote which was I guess my whole coming out. It was in twenty seventeen. I think I was feeling this unease, this unrest, and I grabbed my laptop and I went over to the Majestic Diner. Everybody knows the Majestic Diner. I hate their French fries, absolutely horrible. What makes them horrible? They're just they're just bad. They're bad

French fries. They just give you like potatoes, and it's just like they're not hard, they're not crunchy, they're not salty. I used to work at five guys. Oh really, the secret is the double frying. Yeah, you drop them one, you let them sit for five minutes or something like that, you drop them again. I always order my fries extra crispy. Oh my god, that's like maybe three drops total. I'm an extra crispy bitch, extra crispy bitch. Right there, ladies

and gentlemen, we're sitting with an extra crispy bitch. They know when I walk in to get that fucking prior, get going, go it, fire it up. Yeah. But I went to the Majestic Diner one night and I grabbed my laptop and I decided I was just gonna write. I was just going to write something about that night. Just felt very open and like I could be myself.

I was completely alone that night, and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote, and I think at the end of it, I had written like six pages on some Google doc and at the end of it, I had come to the conclusion the Internet says I might be trans but the Internet also says Paul is dead,

So I don't know. So that kind of like that little essay thing that I wrote, I didn't show anybody, but it stayed on my mind for the next couple of years, and then one night, I remember I was feeling kind of a similar way, and I went outside of my apartment. I looked up at the moon and I thought to myself, Man, it really feels like did you ever play Major's Mask? Yes, the legend of Alto Majors Mask. You know when you look up at the

moon and it's fucking terrifying. Yeah, like the third day, God, like, oh my god, nightmares about that. I remember looking up at the moon and I was thinking to myself, it kind of feels like the the moon is something that you always accept as being what it is. It's it doesn't change much. It goes through phases, but it is always there. It's a constant in the sky, except in the daytime when it's harder to see, or when it's

under the horizon when you can't see it. But other than that, astrology one O one, Robin here, thank you, Robin, You're very welcome the moon. I remember think, not astronomy, I a fucking moron. Anyway, we can cut that, we can cut that astrology. Astronomy. Astrology is just much more fun of a word, I think it is. It's harder to say astronomy, astronomy. It's like saying cnemone, Yeah, you're right, Okay, sorry continue. I remember looking at the moon and thinking to myself, what if.

but I got there, and uh, I remember. I walked from my sidewalk back into the house, and I was shaken because I've never i'd never like gone through some kind of you know, called it an awakening or whatever like this before in my life. But I went back into my apartment and my girlfriend greeted me at the door, and I said to her, I love you. I think I wish that I had been born a girl. And I don't know what to do with that information, but

I don't want to talk about it right now. And she looked at me and she said, Okay, we can talk about that later, and that like little tiny bit of acceptance, just that little tiny smidgeon of acceptance right at the beginning, kept me going. You know, I don't know what would have happened if it had gone differently, but I'm so so glad that it went the way that it did because you're still together today. We are still together today. Yeah, Yeah, that's amazing. I love the

crap out of her. Yeah. But we A couple months passed, and event vitually, I remember she was off somewhere and I was having just another one of those nights, you know, those nights, And this was after COVID had started, and everybody did their self reflection during COVID, and my self reflection included a night where I grabbed this large roll of butcher paper that we had her parchment paper off of a shelf, and I remember taking a big permanent

marker and I wrote I'm trans on it with no punctuation. I might have put a period at the end or something, but then I rolled it up and I put it on the shelf and I just I just thought about it for the next couple hours, and I knew that it was there, and I knew that it was out in the open, and I had said it. And then my girlfriend came home and I told her to go look at that thing on the shelf, and she did, and that kicked everything off. That was my first time

I came out to anybody other than myself. Wow. Now that didn't answer the question what is your music now? What is your sound? Now? If I had to commare it to an artist, I'm always going to say Tom Petty, okay, yeah, because that's your that's your like, he's my boy. Yeah, he's my boy. He's always been my boy. Okay. I love Tom Petty. I met him one time. Wow, I did you want to talk about that. It's not a great story. It's an okay story. It was his old band,

mud Crutch. They were playing at the Tabernacle. Oh okay, yeah in twenty sixteen or something. Yeah, in fact, it was June second, twenty sixteen. Oh, she has it tattooed on her. Yeah. He came to the Tabernacle and I, you know, hung out out back until he came out and I shook his hand and I said thanks for the music.

do for so long. Right, Okay, So I want to ask about your mother because she sounds like obviously another big musical influence, you know, musical influence for you. And I know you have a close relationship with your mother, I do. Is she your only family you're close to? What is that? I'm pretty close to my family. I

am ridiculously lucky in that regard. That's awesome. And you know, I'll be the first to admit that there is some survivors guilt there sometimes because I know that that is somewhat unique in the in the world that we live in. But I've always tried to be open with my mother, my father less, So there's that whole masculinity thing, and that's always hard to get around. But my mother and I have always been pretty close. I've always been able

to joke with her. I think what helps a lot is that she wouldn't like me to say this, but she would curse a lot. She says a lot of cusswords, and I thought that was really funny as a child, as yeah, no, like my entire life. Yeah, she would say a lot of curse words. But that always kind of led to me being more open with her for

some reason. And I always well because like she would say, like she would drop f bombs, and I was like, I could tell this lady anything, like she is real, She's gonna she'll she'll tell me how she sees it. And so one day I was home at my parents' house and my mom noticed that there was something wrong and so she kind of confronted me outside and said, Hey, what's going on with you? And I said, Mom, I'm

starting to question my gender identity. I think that was the phrasing I used exactly, and she she, she said she she kind of did this like, oh, God, don't don't tell your father that kind of thing, which is a little expected, and I said, I won't, but I am getting therapy for it, and she was very much in support of that, which really really helped me a lot. For her to be in support of like seeking help about it and getting therapy and talking to somebody about it.

You know, whether or not she supported it immediately, in my mind, doesn't matter as much. She just did not disown me. She always, always, always made it clear that she loved me, and I love her for that and I really appreciate that in her. Yeah, and let's talk about that too, because acceptance and embracing somebody's transidentity isn't always immediate. No it's not, and we can't necessarily always expect it to be well, absolutely not. It's not always

perfect either, you know. But I did not expect it at first. I had this Instagram account I remember that I started before coming out to her, and it was a private Instagram account where I would just post my thoughts. It was a journal, and I remember a lot of those posts were saying over and over again, my parents are gonna hate me for this. I am going to be disowned. I need to get right with not having

parents anymore. And so I, much like a lot of us do, came to terms and made peace with the fact that I would not have a family after this, and I would not have a mother and I would not have a father. Well, I'm glad that that has been the opposite. Me too, what's true? Me too? Yeah, well that's fantastic. It sounds like your mom was, you know, just growing up in the environment of Eddie's Attic, which is an Atlanta a staple. Yeah, it's an Atlanta landmark

and Atlanta's staple in the community. In terms of music. Growing up in that type of environment, it sounds like to me that your mom was somebody who loved music, and she loved music and she loved people. Yeah, and she instilled that into you. And a lot of your music is I think, not just about what you're recording and putting out on Instagram or I don't know, do you have music on like I do. I do like

streaming anywhere. I do have music streaming. I don't push it as much, right, Yeah, I haven't seen honestly, it's because of it's before vocal training. I guess. Let's talk about the vocal training. So you have a fantastic voice. Gosh, thanks, Carmen. You have a beautiful voice. So let's talk about vocal training and passing and all of that. You have a beautiful singing voice as well as a beautiful speaking voice.

Thank you. Let's talk about it well. You know, the drive to feminize the voice has been one of the biggest endeavors I think for me. I've always felt that before I knew I was trans, when I was just as dude, I thought that you can always tell a trans person by their voice. That was this preconceived notion that I had, and that scared the shit out of me. If I ever wanted to transition, I always some part of me always knew that this might be an option one day, that this might it might come to this.

Oh god damn it. Yeah, But that was like always a thing that kept me from doing it. I always thought to myself, like, what's the point if as soon as I open my mouth, I'm going to get clocked no matter what. But one day I expressed this to Marissa, my girlfriend, and God bless her, she went on YouTube and she found the trans Voice Lessons YouTube channel. When Marissa sent me that video, I realized, oh shit, it's possible. I don't care how much work it takes, I'm going

to do it. I'm going to fucking do it. And the hardest thing for me, it was all a psychological thing. It was ninety nine percent of it was psychological. Ninety nine percent of it was I'm working at this job. At the time I started my transition, I was working in Norcross, which is slightly slightly more Capressos. We were in the same area. That's so funny we were. Where were you? I well, I worked in Norcross as an estheteian.

I worked at the Alta and oh, no shit, I probably saw you once, I know, maybe maybe, and you're like, I was like, that is a hot bitch. No. Actually, I remember like I would go to get lunch working there because I would wear all black because I was

an esthetician, that the salon attire was all black. Sure, and I would wear a lab coat, but obviously if I was going to lunch, I took the lab coat all sure, so I would just be like in a black pencil skirt, a black patent leather wedge and like a black button shirt or whatever, just all black, all black black, and just like, for some reason, the darkest red lipstick I could find. And I remember I was an esthetician, so also very pale. I'm going to walk

with an umbrella one time. One time I heard a kid say to his mom, I think that's a vampire as I was walking by, and I lived for it. I mean it fits you because if I'm going to get colocked, I want to be called. You want to be colocked as a damn vampire. Yeah, in daytime of all things. Seriously, God, damn Carmen. That I mean that that does suit you very well. Yeah. I know I'm wearing like peach right now, not so much. But I haven't seen you out in the sun a lot, so yeah,

I'm not. I'm not a sun person. When we were talking, I was at the picnic. I was hiding in the shape. I remember that you have a moon person. I'm a moon person. Astrology was astrolology.

her new voice. Sorry, I was working in Norcross and my coworkers were, as luck would have it, all people I had been in bands with at at some point, and I had known them forever and ever and ever, and the hardest thing, the hardest thing is to change your voice on purpose in front of people who have known you for years, because like the second you do it, they're going to be They're going to think to themselves, what the hell are you doing? Like, are you delusional?

Do you think that that sounds like a girl? That's disgusting? And that was just on my mind all the all the all the time. I also had to talk to customers on the phone, which was terrifying in its own right. So I like on Fridays, I was able to work from home, and during these fridays sometimes I would practice my voice with customers and if they said they didn't

recognize me, I would consider that a win. And if they if you know, they they did recognize me and they just thought I was being weird, I would consider that a major l and my entire self confidence for the week would just be shaken. And uh so I ended up quitting that job. I ended up quitting that job for a lot of reasons, but one of the major reasons was so that I could practice my goddamn voice right and not feel like not feel like I

was constantly under scrutiny under the microscope. Another huge thing that helped, And there are two more huge things that helped. But the first huge thing that helped was listening to the radio in the car where you're alone. The car is such a godsend, goddamn it. I love my car and singing along with female vocals, singing well, singing along with Tom Petty radio Channel third one on Serious X because oh, okay, because I know, am I allowed to

plug Serious XTM? No, that's fine, okay. Yeah. I was just like, I was like, wait, there's like a no when I made that face because I was like, wait, there's a whole fucking Tom Petty. It's a whole fucking Tom Petty. But I'm okay, serious, serious, yeah, Because I know those songs backwards and forwards, inside and out, and I would sing along with them, you know, Being the natural born musician I am, I can harmonize very easily, and so I would add a female harmony to a

lot of these songs. And that helped, like crazy, just being able to do that hours and hours at a time, and that helped me train my singing voice as well as my speaking voice. I also started working with the Voice Lab in Chicago, which is a I don't know if their focus is trans voice, oh okay, but they are a voice related training ground for whoever needs it, for whoever wants is singing, speaking, whatever. And my vocal coach was a trans woman named Kira, and she was

fucking lovely. She was instrumental in helping me. You know. I would talk to her weekly. I would read Rain Wilson's autobiography over zoom to her and it was just the feedback, like there was no expectation that I would be doing it perfectly, and the feedback that I would get from her was great. And then finally, the best way to feminize your voice is get a customer service facing job. Oh yeah, the more you turn it into a game of how much can I get mammed instead

absurd is motivating. Did you also have that experience? You know, I started working when I So, I got my first job when I was eighteen, and I worked at a halloween store. Oh no, I'm sorry. I was sixteen when I got my first job, but I was younger than that. I was like fifteen, but I was just wow. No, it was a weird situation with like a friend of my dad that he knew from this fucking mega church and she turned out to be like a total like I wanted to send me to like conversion therapy based

like So, yeah, that was a traumatizing experience. I'm so sorry. So I didn't have another job until after when I was eighteen, when I worked at the Halloween store. And by that point I was by this point, you'd been on hormones. For me, I had been on hormones, and I'd also been training my voice, so everyone assumed I was a girl. That's fucking great. I mean I would have moms come in, you know, buying Halloween costumes for their kids and be like, don't ever get pregnant. It'll

ruin your beautiful figure. And I'm like, thanks, I won't, you know, that's very sweet of you. So yeah, I never I mean I was, I guess in that role as my in my all of my jobs, I was always like stealth, I guess you should say. But I guess people if they stared at me for long enough could probably figure it out.

to more of a songwriting focus. I haven't said this yet, but I wrote fifty songs in fifty six songs in twenty twenty two. Yeah, that's fantastic, thank you. I'm extremely extremely proud of it and should be and I am.

a girl I know from the backwoods. Yeah, I started a TikTok and I started, I'll started and stopped and started. Well here Now, when I do a country accent, I saw like a man were here. That's another thing. It's so difficult to.

fuck with you crazy, absolutely, Oh my god. It fucks with you in ways that are indescribable until you are on them right, until you're kind of like balanced out. Do you start to balance out? And two years then I think you start to apologize to those around you. I am sorry for being such a fucking mess the last two years, but I feel like I'm coming into myself.

But in order to celebrate that, I've begun to like well, I started out by stitching with people who would post these questions that they were having and like just giving a little bit of, you know, my own experience because it's all I can speak to. And then I started to like take some of my old journal entries on my phone and turn them and organize them into soliloquies, monologues. I don't know what the right word is for the internet. It's full of the internet for the talk, yeah, and

I would. I have started to post them a little bit, and they're getting like a lot of positive response, and I feel like, maybe, shit, if I can help somebody, if I can give somebody a little bit of the guidance that I wish that I had had, maybe we can start to turn around the stigma, and maybe we can start to make it more acceptable to be trans, because that is the ingrained trans misogyny that so many

of US millennials grew up with. That's not even to mention gen xers and boomers, those poor trans boomers who God damn, how do you survive that? Yeah? Well, and it's the thing that delays people so long it's transitioning because they see such the horrible representations. Exactly exactly am I going to be seen as a clown? Right? Exactly? And if so, how long am I going to be seen as a clown? Yeah? So I love that you're out there on TikTok Now, so what I mean? What

would you say? Like some of your videos are about like what kind of thoughts are you trying to thought? I'm trying to turn these huge, huge, huge, overarching concepts into much more small, digestible, breaking things down into step by step processes. You know, why is it okay to want to pass what makes us strive for that? It's okay to want to do that. It's also okay to want to stand out. How do we influence society to see trans people as trans people and not as pathetic,

weird caricatures or as creepy, stealthy traps. You know, those are the two big stereotypes. They're either clowns or their traps, And like, fuck, that's not what I am. I'm trying to be authentic about myself. I won't lie to somebody about being trans well, yeah, and it's I mean, we're all human at the end of the day, and we're not to assign our goals of transitioning. To say that we're trying to fool anyone or we're trying to make

anyone uncomfortable is the opposite of why people transition. Absolutely, it's I had a dream a couple of months ago, and in this dream, there was a you know the size of what used to be the Georgia Dome is now the Mercedes Benz. Yes, you know the size of that, like the interior of that. Yeah, I had a dream

that there was a bathroom that was that size. Oh okay, and there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of shower stalls in this bath It was like it was like a like a dressing room, like a changing room, and like there were there was like a everybody was there, every gender was there. Nobody gave a shit that you know, we were all everything was out on display. It's totally fine, you know. And to be honest, I can't remember or if everybody was naked. That was not the important part

of it. The important part of the dream was that I was visibly transgender in this dream, and I did not feel the need to stealth around this bathroom. I did not feel the need to fool anybody or to make anybody believe I was anything that I was not. I could be trans, and the way that I was treated was, oh, that's a trans person. That's a CIS female person, that's a CIS male person, that's a transperson,

Like it was just another thing. And I had never really had a yearning for that as strongly as I did after I woke up from that dream, and I kind of wish that we could move toward that. I kind of wish it was okay. And like every trans person will tell you this, I wish it was okay

to be trans. Yeah. Well, and more importantly, to have a trans body, a visibly trans body, you know, where you don't feel like you have to perfectly hide every you know, you don't have to curate everything, absolutely everything about your image when you're especially on that first year on hormones. If you're you know, if your goal is aligned with a certain type of person, you are curating everything you everything that you do and say and look

like is under this internal microscope. Yeah, because you think it's always under a microscope from others, an external microscope, and that makes it so difficult to do anything in public. That makes it so difficult just to function because you're so worried about how you're being perceived. I can relate.

to pass. A lot of it sometimes has to do with safety, and that makes sense, but also there's another side of it. A lot of us just fucking we think it. We think it would be cooler, and we think it would be better if we could just have a fucking female experience, and like that's okay, right. That needs to be seen as okay. It doesn't need to be seen as like a privileged thing like if if you can do it. A lot of it is through your own effort. Absolutely, through a lot of conscious and

focused effort. It's not a lot of it is genetics, a lot of it is luck, but a whole shitload of it is through a concerted effort to do so, a lot of hard work, a shitload of hard work. Yeah, and I think when you discount a trans woman's desire, you know, of course we can talk about transmen, but you and I are both trans women, so we'll just

talk about trans women. You know, we can talk about a trans woman's desire to pass as how it's treated as shallow or like almost as like you're a trader to the trans community in some way, which is not true. If you're not wrapping yourself up in a trans flag all the time, that doesn't make you a trader to the transfer We're still a part of the trans community. The stealth trans people are still part of the trans community. The trans people in the closet are still part of

the trans comsolutely, you know. So, yeah, I've had it directed at me. I've had anger regarding passing directed at me in terms of I've had somebody tell me well, because you are cis passing, which, by the way, they're basing the judgment that I'm cis passing off of my Instagram, which is curated, curated, absolutely curated. Those are the best photos of me. Many of them are filtered and they look really good too, thank you. But you know that's not necessarily what I look like in real life and

at all angles. You know what I mean, absolutely, And so it is a little bit invalidating to those of us who do desire to pass and those of us that do pass, because it's almost seen as us, well, you just have it very easy because you at you, you won. Congratulations, and it's yes, my life is easier for being able to pass as a woman and all

such situations. But I still had to work very fucking hard, absolutely there, you know, and I had to not only work hard, but I had to constantly fight for my womanhood from people who wanted to take it away from me.

to pretty. It's not passing and pretty are not the same thing there, and being pretty does not equal passing because I think I'm very pretty. But I think there's a lot of handsome features about me. Handsome features.

It's not about just shooting up the astrogene. Just to put this into perspective, size has always been a thing for me. I was a big guy. Like you mean your dick Wait what are you talking? No, No, like your physical side. Oh I'm sorry. Okay, I'm sorry. I do have it. I'm very well hung cartmen. I was like, wait, what are we talking about your physical your physical side. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry the volume that you take up, it's all it's always been tall. I'm tall and I

was wide. And I decided, Fuck, I'm going to transition, and I'm going to do it in the most effective goddamn way possible. I'm going to see how far I can go. Because I only have one life. I got on this weight loss train, exercise, run every fucking day of my life, limit my caloric intake like this, like almost fucking mind numbing. Like my mind was definitely in the shitter for like six months. I was I was having yourself. Yeah, very much, very very much. But like,

and it wasn't the healthiest way to do it. There are definitely healthier ways to do it. But through those efforts, I got to a place where I felt honest to God good about myself. And yeah, a lot of that has to do with these, you know, beauty standards that are not our fault, but that's the way that society sees us. I can't help I want to be beautiful exactly.

There are these structures that are built. There are these you know, there are these structures in place that society has put in place, and you can either try to dismantle those structures, but you can't do that alone, and they won't be dismantled for a very, very long time, as much as you wish they were. So you better just get used usual to the structures, play within them, You find your place in the structure, you exploit them as much as you can, because you're on your own

in this. You got to find a place where you feel comfortable in the structure, and you don't have another choice, So why not exploit the fuck out of some pretty privilege. Well, exactly get to where you feel comfortable. So I did that to the best of my ability, and I'm a much much happier person because of it. Yeah, and it's you know, it's important to know that these things just don't happen overnight, absolutely not. They don't just happen overnight.

You have to research it, you have to learn about it, you have to you basically make it your whole life. Sure, you know it, really do. I just said this on Instagram a while back, but having a body is a lot of work. It is. Having a transsexual body is a twenty four hours, seven days a week job that does not pay any benefit. It does not have any vacation, and there's no time off now health insurance. You know, it's fucked up anyway. It's totally true, though it is

being training is hard. It is people don't realize how much work actually goes into it. And the fact that we're talking about this, What you said that really resonated with me in that moment is that it's not all down to luck. And that is I think I just wanted to say that again because that is the amazing

thing about what we get to do as transsexuals. We get to completely build ourselves from the ground up, and it really isn't down to luck and always, you know, the genetics and the cars that you're dealt are part of it, a little part of it. They're a good they're a good bit of it. Absolutely, there are a lot of it, yes, but a majorly significant portion of it is your own efforts and your own self transformation.

A lot of people don't realize that in order to build yourself again, you have to dismantle everything that there is about you. Pretty much I've always kind of modeled it, like, there's this at my core, and my identity is this little brown circle. And I think it's because I have brown hair and brown brown circle. Okay, it's the brown circle.

This tiny little brown circle represents my soul, if you will, Okay, And I put up all these fences around it, and all of these masks and walls and all of these curtains and shows and presentation stuff. That's my gender. It's not just a boy wall or a girl wall. It's all this shit. And before I dismantled everything, people would look at my collection of walls and they would say, that's a dude. And I dismantled all of those things. And you did, too, tore them down, examined why they

were there in the first place. We kept the things that served us, and we got rid of the things that didn't, and we built new things. Absolutely, and that is the beautiful part about being trans Yes, that's the work. That's the work that goes into social transition. I think. Yeah, we were talking about authenticity earlier. That's another thing. I want it to be. Okay to be a young Trainey or an egg and hear these conversations and realize, like, you know, oh, it's not all just down to look.

There is a lot of work. I can commit myself to this. I can relate to these people who are talking about this. One of my biggest can I plug another yeah person, absolutely one of my biggest inspirations and best friends on this journey. She's a comedian named al Val She's a CANUK. She's a Canadian, and she is one of the most She's one of the realest bitches

I've ever seen. She does not hide any part of this journey really, and by seeing her content, I was really able personally to just like relate to a lot of it. And it helps that she is a comedian. It helps that, like her job is to try to relate to people in a funny way and she's really really damn good at it. But what she's doing is I think going to open the eyes of a lot of people and see, like, fuck, this is just a human.

This isn't like, this isn't some unrelatable weird monster. Transgender people are humans, and it's this isn't like the biggest part. This is a huge part of their life, but this isn't the biggest thing that they're going through. So, yeah, she's awesome, She's fantastic. Al Val all comedy Yeah on Instagram al Val Comedy al Val al Vl. I did want to ask one more question, going back to the

beginning of what we talked about. You said that recently you've been, for the first time in your life, considering moving away from Georgia. Indeed, indeed, and I just wanted first my question was what does it mean to you to be a trans woman in the South And why do you want to leave Georgia and where do you want to go? Yeah, so good questions to be a trans woman in the South. I did not really realize what it meant until I was a transwoman elsewhere. Just recently, actually,

just two days ago. I got back from Chicago, and I noticed that there are a shitload more out trans women just walking around, just out in public. And it's okay to be out in trans there. You know, I shouldn't say it's okay to be out in trans there. It's okay to be out in trans anywhere. But it happens a lot more in Chicago than it does here, and it happens a lot more in New York than it does here. And in Los Angeles, and you know

that's that's not by happenstance. We have a lot of ingrained culture here that makes it difficult to be that here. I didn't realize that until recently. But also the type of music that me and my band play. I don't want my entire identity to be a novelty act that I'm a trans person who has a band full of trans people, except for our drummer. He's great, all of them. But we need to be seen as a legitimate rock

and roll band. It's not that we need to, it's that we have this staunch desire too, and we are very good, and we put a lot of work into the performance and into you know, who we are. I want to see what opportunities are available for us as musicians, as songwriters, as performers in other cities. That's what you have to do. You have to get your likeness in front of audiences all around the country and all around the world. Don't nobody's going to know you or else.

You're just like a local act. You're a local act. Yeah, yeah, nothing wrong with being a local act. It's just not where I want to be, right. You want to grow from that, because you've been a local act for that ten twelve years, and that's the starting point for some people. And that's also kind of like the retirement into the corporate world. Yeah, you know, I tried the corporate world and then I became a girl. So we'll see where that goes. Well, so where do you want to take

the band? So I'm thinking, well, I guess that's harder than that. It is harder, it is. It is difficult answer, you know. Obviously, the the the answers are New York, Los Angeles, Austin, Texas, you know, places like that, anywhere where people would be interested in hearing us. I think I want to tour and find a place that suits us. Another friend of mine, Mia Byrne, she just started and

her her girlfriend Swan. They're both well known and respected musicians out in the Bay and soon to be in New York, and they just started this big ass collection of trans artists called Brooklyn Transcorps. Wow. Yeah, which is like, fuck, you know, there's a home for us somewhere. I don't know, maybe the maybe the answer is creating it here. But also, you know, Mia, she's like the first outsigned Nashville recording artist.

That's huge. That is huge. That's not something that happens here in Atlanta, right well, I definitely want for you to see bigger and better city. Thank you. I really appreciate you spending the time with me this evening, Carman, Thank you so much for having me on Beauty Translated. This is wildly important to me and I love what you're doing. Thank you. And I appreciate you sharing your story telling us about your music. It was wonderful. Chatting

with you was wicking your brain. Thank you. But tell the listener where they can first, where they can find you and follow you. Sure. So. On Instagram is where most of my music is posted. That is at Robin dot Shakedown. At Robin dot Shakedown, our band is called the Robin Shakedown Band, the Robin Chef Robin Shakedown Band. That's exactly right. I am the Robin in that. And are you a fan of Robin? I like, yeah, the singer to some make sent okay, Yeah, it's not a

huge I know. And we do cover that song, Oh my god, you do. We do. It's such a bad friend. I haven't been to a single fucking live show. You will, I know, you will.

talk to you sixty years or so. Alrighty folk. That brings us to the end of this deluxe mid season episode of Beauty translated. I hope you enjoyed my fun chat with the fabulous Robin Danger of Incent. The song you're hearing now and have been hearing throughout the episode is the song Shadows and Sun by Robin's band, Robin Shakedown Band. Check them out at the Atlanta roller Derby this Saturday, and please leave Beauty translated a rating and

review over on Apple Podcasts. It means the world to me. Stay beautiful, y'all. Bye bye.