Open roads. You started that. That group, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. In 2020, during the pandemic is what prompted me to do it because I was bored sitting at home all day. Nice. Can you say something in the realms of during the pandemic? Because I thought it was a good opportunity to bring people together instead of I was born. It's a bit of a great community motivator. Happy Pride, everybody. Today we're talking about the intersection
between queer and the restorers community. But before we let Aliana tell you all about this really awesome nonprofit organization. What's everybody drinking? Aliana, what are you drinking? I am drinking coffee. Do not usually have alcohol in the house because I am a lightweight. But what's notable about this is that I have a matching set of mugs, and all of them have a glaze dip on it,
except for this one. And I give this one to my guests specifically just to make the joke that, oh, I'm so sorry, they forgot to dip your mug. Is there anything I can do for. To help remedy this. Excellent Turkish restorer? What are you having? I'm having your whiskey. Ooh, whiskey and Nick Iver. What are you drinking? Oh, Nuclear reactor moderator. Because you know what? Those neutrons are just going too fast. They gotta slow down. Oh, my gosh,
I'm the boring one this week. Just rum and Coke for me. Oh, okay. All right. Well, like I said, we're talking about pride and the intersection with the queer and restore community. But before we really start getting into that topic, Aliana, tell us all about this nonprofit that you're involved in. Yeah, I found out the Genital Autonomy collective in 2022, and I couldn't find support that wasn't like, just a bunch of men restoring. And it started off as just support groups and
now has been, like, slowly expanding. And things have really picked up and started rolling since we went to the intact global 2025 conference in which how to Check V organ was announced, which is challenging the female genital cutting statute in Oregon to expand it to all children, including intersex, quote unquote, normalization surgeries, and of course, the circumcision of boys.
And that way, all children will be protected. And ever since that, I've been doing a lot of networking, and I've also worked with Gal Deaf the year before. And we have expanded to do research as well as public outreach as well as our original support groups. And There is a GoFundMe that I started to help with covering the cost of tabling at Pride. There's a Lot of things to be printed. That's probably the majority of the cost. And also like incorporating,
which is a slow process and can cost a bit as well. If I'm not mistaken, so far you've been printing things from your own pocket. Mostly. Yeah. Galdiff actually graciously covered a lot of our flyers and materials last year when we were tabling with them. This year we have some solo events, Rad Pride, the Transgeneral assembly. And we're going to go to Portland Pride with Galdiff again.
And in Tech Global, I believe. And in terms of the research, we have a paper being published with the Journal of Bodies, Sexualities and Masculinities that should be published around 2026. And we have a couple more writing opportunities that are coming up within the next year or so. And that paper actually got accepted for a presentation at the GLMA conference in Minneapolis this October. I think that's October 9th. So we'll be giving a presentation and possibly having a table there as well.
So I'll get to do something. Wow, so you guys have a lot going on. Yeah, I mean, I gave my business card to 50 different people at the Intact Global conference, so that probably helps a little bit. Okay, so I edited your episode in the Intact Again podcast. Here we are. It's Pride Month in America and most places. So where does the queer community and restoration come together?
What makes those kind of natural allies? I think because the queer community has already questioned a lot of society's values as many people growing up in the closet and being repressed. And also like specifically in regards to trans and intersection gender diverse people, bodily autonomy and specifically genital autonomy to do what they want with their genitals is like extremely related. It's the same. Right. That everyone who's restoring would. Would like to have. Right.
Also, I would like to somehow clarify something for listeners just in case what we mean by queer is any individual that is not in the cishet. Spectrum. I don't know if spectrum is the correct word here. Well, works well enough. So, Dick Iver, you're the one that actually found Allie on the. On the Internet and suggested that we do an episode with her. What was your thinking when you invited her to be a guest on the podcast? Well, when you joined our restoring meetings,
I enjoyed having you there. But also you have a very unique experience that I only found out was even more unique after we recorded that episode together. And then you let me know about that organization. It was developed at the time of that interview. But you've just done so much with it since then. It's kind of amazing to see how much you've been able to do since we last talked to each other. Yeah, thank you. It was just getting off the grounds
there. Like I think I just kind of recently came to terms with. I guess I'm a full time activist and community organizer. I've have not been working like professionally since I found out I was disabled. Do you want to talk about that? Sure. I mean I have several disabilities. It's just another intersection. But I used to do construction cell tower climbing when I was younger and before my disabilities had gotten worse. And specifically Ehler
Stanlor syndrome. Eds. It's a connective tissue disorder. I like to describe it as loosey goosey issue tissue issue syndrome because basically my joints are all loose, they fall out. And yeah, if I were climbing up a 500 foot cell tower and my shoulders came out, that would not be good. Like we all have had emergency training and how to like rescue somebody, but I, I think I'd just rather not. In the industry term for when you fall off of the tower and get caught by your harness is
a heart attack. We call it a heart attack. And like I'd rather have fewer heart attacks. Yeah. But this is something that I can do that's mostly desk work and I get a lot of help from people who are joining me. Like there's definitely some heavy lifting to do with like carrying around all the table for events and things like that. But people who are at these events are like very understanding and considerate. Like I can't get my shoulders above here without pain.
So risk of instability in dislocations. I feel like though, after climbing cell phone towers, how can you be afraid of anything? That's most people's biggest nightmare is heights. Right. I had less self preservation when I was younger, but that's true. I'm not scared of heights and maybe that has contributed to me being like, oh fuck it, people can know me as the foreskin girl or whatever. So fearless.
Yeah. I have jobs on my bucket list. Right. So when I was younger I made a list of jobs that I wanted to do before I died. And when I made that list, cell phone towers didn't exist. So I put window washer. But later when I was in my 40s, I revisited that list and I a revised window washer to cell phone tower climber. Glad to know that. Aspirational in my previous career. Yes. So, you know, back to the, to the Pride festival. The last couple of years have been a bit
of A riot for Pride. Started as a riot, Right. And protest. And now we need it more than ever before. Right. So I guess the question, you know, people ask is, are Pride events even still relevant? Absolutely. Pride events are still relevant. I mean, they started as a protest and riots are, I suppose, the things that actually got people rights and still what will continue to do so. And I'm kind of a person who's like, okay, we definitely need to go through official and non official capacities.
And I guess I've made myself the person who's going through the official capacity by like starting a nonprofit and going and tabling and being a visible public presence. Have you run into any resistance at. Like, Pride events or just in general? Well, I mean, in general, but, you know, in the queer community, is there any resistance toward restoring. Oh, yeah, definitely. I think it's actually a bit regional. I grew up in the Midwest and I was in like trans support groups when I
was there. And those groups were very resistant to me bringing up the idea that, by the way, circumcision is going to impact bottom surgery results. And whenever it came up, it was always in like hush tones, like, and the only sort of responses I would get, yeah, you can still get bottom surgery and it's not a big deal.
Like, the American doctors aren't going to question it. And then I would go and talk to people afterwards after they'd brought it up and be like, hey, by the way, restoration is a thing that will help you with your bottom surgery results. And in terms of like, dealing with the actual, like,
administration and like, collaborating. This was before I had started the General Autonomy Collective, but like, I talked to them in terms of, and be like, hey, this is a thing and probably shouldn't be shutting it down. And I got a lot of resistance to it. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance, I think, even more so than for CIS het men, because as a trans person, someone who's like, accepted themselves as a trans person, they need
to be like, actually bodily autonomy is good. I should be able to do what I want with my body. And then that's even counter to circumcision. Of course, there's just another layer. Well, now I'm wondering if we need a foreskin Pride month. We do get a day. We get a foreskin day, and that's it. Yep, April 4th or foreskin. Yep, the poor lowly foreskin. Always on the, on the downside. And I'm doing the research on the next person I'm going to interview, and it's A trans man and
not a. Go on to a different subject. But it turns out that foreskin restoration is actually kind of important for trans men as well because when they take testosterone, it causes the clitoris to get larger. And like the, the T dick, they say the T D outgrows its previous sheath of the foreskin and it starts rubbing. And it's, it's very interesting to hear these trans men talk about all the same complaints that we have about it's rubbing.
How do you deal with it rubbing against your underwear? I'm just used to it being protected. Yeah, we've been saying this forever and it's, it's just really, it's really cool to get another perspective. So both trans women and trans men can be helped by restoration techniques? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely. That's something that I've, I've done kind of poorly in terms of marketing and trying to reach the demographic
of like trans masculine people. And by the way, anatomy terms are mostly fine when discussing things like this because just to be clear, but like when you're talking about a specific person's genitals, when it definitely matters a bit more. But like, that's something that I've. I've wanted to like, make some flyers for, make some more materials. I haven't quite gotten around to it. Hopefully I'll get at least like one zine or flyer done before our
pride events. This is great for trans masculine people too. And speaking of that, actually, if I can give a shout out to a device manufacturer, Walter, at I think foreskin-restruction-devices.com he makes a device that is for labia stretching, which works for like clitoral hood. And that's something that transmasculine people can
use. And when I saw that he was making that, I was like, I need to reach out to you and get like something going on, like a device fund for, for people to like, crowdfund them and also to like on our website, on the General Autonomy Collective website, being like, here's a device manufacturer who's like explicitly aware of different identities and intersectionality and like, you won't have to like, worry about that when like getting any sort of support, which overall,
in like the restoration community, the people who are going out of the way to make devices and, and help people are usually pretty great about that. But they made an active effort to like, not include gendered language on their website and make a device that was for a much smaller minority. That's definitely not going to be a great source of profit. Right?
Yeah, but I wonder if we need to take a step back and actually outline the challenges that a transmasculine and a trans feminine person is trying to to overcome with restoration. So what are the specific challenges for transmasculine people when it comes to restoration? Oh, and I think the biggest one that we were just talking about is there aren't really devices, there aren't really documentation
in a way that is very readily available. This is actually an area where I've been learning French and I've been able to find more French resources from like Rwandan labia stretching devices and things like that, but they aren't really available in English, so. Yeah, but what are they trying to achieve? Like, what's a transmasculine person trying to achieve with restoration? What's the goal?
From the people that I've talked to, like partners and other transmasculine people that I've talked to, I think the chief complaint is usually like physical comfort, like Dick Iver was saying, in terms of like chafing, rubbing in its underwear. That's usually the first thing I hear and I'm very quick to recommend, like, hey, restoration is a thing that you can do too. And for some of it it's also definitely gender affirming. That's what I've heard later on, especially people who are foreskin
aware. There's a lot of people who are not foreskin aware, transmasculine people. Like actually, because circumcision is a gender affirming surgery, I would rather my post surgery or TED growth to appear circumcised. It feels more affirming to them, but I think that's kind of cultural and educational. For some people with T DIC growth, their thorough hood actually does grow along with it. I'm not really sure what causes it, but there's a lot of variation.
So another interesting thing is that trans men, when they're restoring is that as the T dic grows, sometimes they can experience some of the other things that us that have been circumcised experience. And that that's something you're going to hear a lot more about in the next interview I'm going to be doing here soon. But some trans men experience curvature because the lack of skin
is literally holding them back. And they find out that they actually have more gains in their penile shaft than they thought because it's literally being held back, just like it sometimes is with us. And something I'm doing more research on is some trans men even experience adhesions, which I don't quite understand that yet and how that works. But I'm learning and it's fascinating and I'm really looking forward to doing that interview. But yeah,
I'll stop talking about the next interview I'm going to be doing. But yeah, it's fascinating stuff. Yeah, yeah. Enough with the spoilers already. I haven't even done the interview yet, which is funny. Oh yeah. Well, when you do 30 hours of research on somebody, you feel like you've already done the interview. But then conversely, what's a trans feminine person trying to achieve with restoration? It's definitely as varied as everybody else. It can be
reclaiming bodily autonomy. Some people are just wanting better bottom surgery results, so they're restoring specifically for that. Some people want to foreskin. Right. Sexuality. And there's a post on Reddit by Yellow Cardinal about dysphoria versus dysmorphia and restorers who are dysphoric or dysmorphic. And in most cases it's dysphoric and genital cutting. Dysphoria is extremely similar to gender dysphoria. And in my own experience they were very tangled
together. Right. That's something that a lot of people have not questioned. A lot of trans feminine people with penises who are circumcised just have not questioned. So I, I suppose I'm kind of getting the word out there. Like this is, this is a thing. I love the, I love the expression that circumcision is a gender affirming surgery in and of itself. I said affirming, but I think assigning is a much more appropriate word there because for some,
like transmasculine people, it definitely can be affirming. And some people, it can be affirming if they choose it. It's really a plain gender. Yeah, you're right. That's, that's the key word if they choose it. And a lot of people in the, that see our, our stuff when it comes to genital autonomy think that we're just against all circumcision. No, you can do what you want with your body. The problem is taking that choice away from people.
Exactly. I haven't looked into this as much, so I'm asking, I'm generally asking, how is restoring received in the intersex community? People are usually pretty supportive of it. Like one of our zines we're working on is actually like, circumcision can also be included in like intersex genital cutting because it's included with things like hypospadias, quote unquote, repair things like that. So, yep. I have found to not have too much issue with combining the demographics.
And they often overlap because anybody that vaguely looks like they might have a penis. And there's the whole fallometer nonsense thing with the little card that's like, oh, if the clitoris is this longer than this, then we can circumcise them. Right. And it's like that, or it has to be reduced or whatever. You know, that thing you just mentioned reminds me
so much of South Africa. Like the pencil test where they put the pencil in the hair to see, like, do you qualify as a. It's this whole thing of trying to use fake science to figure out, oh, can we harm you? Let's go to the test to see if we can harm you. Goodness. We do know that there's queerphobia in the restoring community. What kind of experiences have you had with that? Yeah, quite a
few. I mean, it's what motivated me to start the Genital Autonomy Collective was like being in some groups and just like hearing microaggressions all the time that are pretty easily missed. Like, someone like, putting emphasis on the word men after I had spoken, talking about foreskin restoration as a men's issue movement or whatever they want to describe it as. And not to mention anything more explicit that's definitely, definitely been a thing. And seeing stuff like antisemitism definitely
comes up and is like, if you're anti Semitic, you're probably also transphobic. And there's also a bit of misogyny among a lot of people who hold a lot of resentment. There have been groups that I've joined where someone will go on about something like, oh, it was a female doctor that did their circumcision, therefore all women are. Are bad. And like, sometimes the tirade goes on for like, almost hours sometimes actually.
And it's just really hard to stop. And it's can kind of understand, like, how some people can feel not understood or heard about this and then attribute it to gender when I can just go ahead and say, like, patriarchy hurts men too. Yeah. It's not actually women that are holding the power to do this. Right. I don't think it has anything to do with them being female. I think it has to do with patriarchy in the establishment
perpetuating cutting culture. And that establishment is not your fellow restorer or specifically the woman who's restoring to. Or queer people, especially in general. The thing I would say to somebody that would say that is, would you have been happier if it was a man that cut off your foreskin does that make it better somehow? Yeah. Right, right. I should use that. I haven't even really thought of that. It's almost like when I was a baby. I would rather being
touched by a man than a woman. Like, what are you talking about? In one of the earlier episodes, it was Otto who was talking about actually who ended the episode by recommending people to be ready to be exposed to penises in general because it's a very male centric community somehow. Male or, you know, penis centric palace, let's say. And he did mention, like, it doesn't make you gay looking at penises. And we actually. I don't know what we did. Right. But we never.
I personally am never exposed to people who are like, e, don't show me that or anything like that. Even the, you know, we had all kinds of kinds of restorers who joined our little group and they would all be perfectly fine with being in the same room, quote unquote, with gay people, gay men, trans people. So I think that. I don't know that there must be a certain group that is uncomfortable with maybe being assumed to be gay because they're so fixated on their penises or penises in
general. As you know, it is gay to touch your own penis if you're a man. Right? Yeah. That's crazy. I think that brings. It brings up a good point that it's always important to remember who your allies are because there's so many things where people fight against the wrong group of people. The people that we're fighting against are the people that don't take us seriously and the people that are cutting fellow restorers. They're our allies regardless
of what orientation or sexuality they are. Our political view. Right. Yeah, we. That's a very good point. Or gender too. We all share one thing in common, which is trauma. So also speaking of the. The Reddit zoom group, it is of like all of the restoration support groups and stuff that I've gone to. It is by far one of the best. Like that. That's what I'm thinking of. Right. Sometimes, like microaggressions get through, but there is almost never any like explicit
misogyny and stuff in that group. So thank you for starting the. The Zoom group for the. The Reddit zoom group. Oh, well, thanks for coming back here. You're always welcome. We love some alley time. Thank do you all host. I don't remember how that started or if it's still. Oh yeah, it's still going on. And open roads. You started that group. Right? Yeah, Yeah. I started the group during the pandemic initially because I was bored and I just needed something to do. But, man, that group filled up
fast. And I discovered pretty quickly that it brought people together and this group needed to be together. They were really lonely and isolated, and the group has been amazing. Absolutely. Bardem is a great community motivator. Yeah. That whole time period was fascinating. It was the only. It was the first time in decades that people. That the average person actually had free time and people discovered that they were allowed to be more than their jobs. And it brought
so much out on people. It reminds me of a video essay talking about, like, free time being, like, demonized by capitalist classes. When people first started having free time again, I think it's more about hobbies and how that's what people need to fill their free time with, but only for upper classes. And hobbies for lower classes is actually a bad thing. It's the same way that people demonize. What's the first thing that people always demonize? When people protest,
they always say, oh, don't they have a job? Or shouldn't they be doing something better? That's always the first thing they complain about. Like, how dare they have the ability to complain. That's not their class. They're supposed to be making the things and serving us coffee. Yeah. How dare they have spare time and enjoy living. Now get back to your job. It sounds like a sitcom villain. I want to add that I did meet you people via the Sunday meetings, and for a longest
time, it has been the highlight of my week. You know, I have always been looking forward to Sundays, Sunday evenings, to. So I would find a community that would understand what I said, even though I didn't have to explain myself really deeply. So, yeah, I think that's where I met y' all as well. So kind
of brought all us together. So, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you were in the group for a long time and absolutely a valuable member of the group because you would always bring perspectives that were deeper than what we were talking about. So, you know, glad to hear it. I very much valued having you in the group. And, I mean, there's so many people who have come and gone over the years. You know, during the pandemic, we would have 60 people in that group. Well, that was just insane. It was very
hard to manage. You know, I'm glad you were managing during those ones. I mean, I came up with creative ways to do it, but, wow, it was. It got to be really kind of like a job, because in addition, this is the part that most people don't know is when the group was at its biggest, I would sometimes get over a hundred direct messages a day. Wow. And I know, you know, at the time I was bored. So, like, literally my full time job was to sit on the couch and answer fucking direct messages.
The funny part about that is I own a marketing company. And our principal clients during or just before the pandemic were breweries, wineries, and distilleries. That was our niche. And when the pandemic hit, one of our clients had just kegged an entire barrel of beer and they closed all of the places places you could drink. And so this beer was just going to go bad. And so he called this guy, called us up and said, hey, come get your kegs.
And we, you know, so we went and picked up. We each got two kegs each. And so there's more to the story, though. So the, the barrel. Normally if. If a barrel comes in with too much alcohol in it, what they do is they mix it with a second barrel to bring the alcohol content down, but no way in hell they were going to brew another barrel, right? And so this shit was like 9.6
ABV. It was like drinking a liquor. And. And we each got two full kegs, and I literally parked my ass on the couch with the keg sitting next to me, and I just sat and drank and watched Netflix for the first six months of the fucking pandemic. Add to that when you mentioned sending direct messages and consuming a lot of alcohol. Oh, God, ye. Yeah. Some of my answers, I look back and I'm like, oh, man, I was definitely drinking that day.
But, you know, we would message each other back and forth and I, you know, there were several people who were suicidal during that era. And, you know, it was just a very valuable thing ultimately. And I had no idea I was creating anything that valuable. It just turned out to be, here we are five years later, and it's
still going. So to. To add to the theme of the evening, maybe I could ask you, you know, it wasn't only people who were thinking about harming themselves, but also people who wanted to see your penis. Oh, my God. The number of marriage proposals I got during that era was pretty high also. Yeah, yeah, there were. There were some inappropriate people. Yeah, I mean, I got a lot of DMs that were just people's dicks. And I'm like, okay, no conversation, nothing. Just, there it is. Right. And so.
What'S the saying? At least take me out to dinner first Right, Yeah. You know, wow. You know, at least give me a hint of what your name might be, you know, before we go there. But. So, yeah, I had. I had some inappropriate. But here's what I. I say this with all due respect, but the thing that I. I have to point out is that of the literally hundreds of people who have interacted with me around this group, it has only been one handful of
people who have been inappropriate. And I think that says a lot about the community, but it also says a lot about the needs, that this is a serious need. It's not a want. Yeah. And people are afraid to be inappropriate because they need this. People will always ask for your consent before sending photos. That is my experience, you know. No, that did not happen to me. No, no. You could get Den Discord to scan direct messages. I don't know if Reddit does that.
Yeah, like, it'll block anything that's like, this is. They have a. A penis detector? Apparently. Yeah. Specifically for penises, but yeah. So if you try to send me an unsolicited dick pic on Instagram or something like that, it flags a message and it says, hey, this message might include content that you don't want to see. You know, before we reveal it, do you want to see inappropriate content? And I'm of course, always like, yes.
Right, right. Curiosity. I'm just picturing other things that detect that are like, the content you might not want to see is like, ah, sandals with socks. Oh, I should have known. No, no, I'm ruined for life. Oh, those drapes don't match at all. This is terrible. My dad said idea is clearly we get the circumcision rate low enough that those penis detectors, those image content that you don't want to see detectors will not flag a circumcised penis because it's like,
that's not a right. Oh, that'd be great. That looked like a finger. Yeah. Yo, my. My AI turned a corner today and it freaked me out a little bit. I use AI professionally all day long. Like, me and AI, we're. We're tight, right? But I have never once told AI that I'm gay. And in a message today, I asked it to do something that apparently violated some community rule. Beats the fuck out of me. Which one? Because I was just asking it to do business shit, right? And it responded with this.
It said, oh, love, we can't do that. And I was like, oh, love, what the fuck? And in another answer, it called me honey. It called me honey. I'm like, oh, My God, the Not. Safe work AIs are leaking into the professional ones. I know now I'm like, oh, Jesus, has it been doxing me? Has it been on the Internet and knows more about me than I wanted to know. Speaking of my favorite take on not safe for work content. And this sounds like an AI, but a person did this.
This one artist just kept getting requests to make, quote, not safe for work content. So she drew a bunch of OSHA violations. Like people hanging off of ladders, using a forklift inappropriately. It was like all not safe for work content. I love that. I love that. Open roads. I did want to say one thing, and that is on a more serious note, I am quite convinced that the group you started has saved people's lives because restoring. Yes, it. It saves people's
lives. And that your group is what brought everybody together. So I just wanted to thank you for what you did. Absolutely. Well, there's also anti trans, you know, lgb. Right. Group. It feels like a very pick me group. You know, like, we're the good gays, we're on your side, but people would not accept. Trans people are very inclined to, you know, not accept other queer communities as well. Or, you know, they tolerate you for the moment, but your time will come as
well. Also, I'll go a bit back. I want to show some appreciation about the trans communities. How to say that? You said you were learning French a little bit. Yeah, I don't. I don't. I don't remember the English term, but, you know, helping each other about the crowdfunding project for devices and everything. I am coming from a Muslim background and this topic already came up a few times. But I have always dreamt of being able to provide devices
to countries. Not necessarily only Turkey, but for countries where a dollar is, you know, 40 Turkish liras now, which is a lot. So they cannot purchase devices. So it will be a dream to create that kind of crowdfunding. And also I will obviously plug Walter's website to the description of this episode as well as Tantal Autonomy Collective. One thing I love during our meetings talking of Walter is being able to.
He's always at his workstation. If you guys ever. Everybody listening to this, you can come to meetings and oftentimes you'll get to see how. Well, I guess pun intended in this case how the sausage is made, where you get to see his whole station and everything. And you see him working and he's talking about, I don't have an air conditioning here, so it's about 90 fahrenheit but I'm making do. It's wonderful. In some meetings, he's standing there actually, like, pulling devices out of
the molds and stuff. Yeah, he's making them. He's right there. It's great. Oh, Turkish. How are you? Yeah, we have many people joining our calls, and we're lucky enough to have some listeners. Are you done? Open up. Drinking really loudly. Oh, don't worry. Alatu will be able to take that out. Yeah. Oh, okay. I hope so. He's enjoying that. It's a cocktail hour. If you can't hear my. My ice jingling in my cup. Are we really having a cocktail hour?
You can't hear my coffee literally steaming into the mic? Like it has to be that hot. Yeah. You're just jealous because my Drink makes noise, Mr. I drink my whiskey neat. Oh, yeah. Also, if. If Coca Cola would like to sponsor us, please email usmail.com we're definitely looking for sponsors. Coca Cola. Yeah, we'll sponsor anything. Go for it, Dick Podcast. If I go to the grocery store and I see a 12 pack of soda with some kind of restoration message on it, I will know that we have arrived.
Incredible. Cleaned with Coca Cola. That. That's how it should be involved. Right? I always hear that it's great for cleaning. So just dip your device. Coca Cola, please don't actually do this. It will. It will melt. I don't know. I haven't tested that. But if it can melt a tooth, I'm pretty sure your restoration device isn't gonna survive. Right. Also, like, back in the day, in the 90s, early 2000s, they would. You would have, like, these six packs of
Coke and some gift would be attached to it. So maybe like a TLC on a. Six pack here, kids. Oh, no, wait. So, yeah, talking about people who are joining and commenting. Yeah, we have some listeners who are generous enough to donate. Like, buy us a coffee, actually. Yeah. I mean, we've gotten some really cool messages from people who have donated. Let me read a couple of those messages. Here's one. I've really enjoyed listening to
your podcast. What a great idea to have interviews of men who are restoring. It's encouraging to hear their stories and we're. That's why we're doing it. So we're so glad you're being encouraged. Here's another one. Hello. I'm a fellow Intactivist and Restore. I'm very glad that I came across your podcast when I searched up another podcast episode on Circumcision and its harms after listening to Rafiq's story. I've been looking forward to each episode.
I loved hearing the story of a man who grew up in a Muslim Arab home who resents what was done to him. This perspective is not very common and it's great to break down the myth that those of a religion or culture embrace this. I bumped your podcast up to the top of my list over all the other podcasts as I really enjoy the format and the interviews. Love the idea of having a podcast specifically of men on their foreskin restoration journeys. I just have to be careful if I have my car windows down
while I'm listening to it. Ha ha. I would like to make a donation to keep the podcast going. Yes. By the way, we recommend everybody make a donation. I think it is such a wonderful podcast for men hearing the stories of other men. A podcast is also a great format for many other people to hear these stories. Many people may be against circumcision, but have no idea that restoration
is even possible. Personally, I wish that I had learned about foreskin restoration earlier in my life so that I could have probably already been a CIA 8 or something by now. I went to make a donation but encountered an error. Could you help me so that I could make a donation? You bet. We're always about helping you make a donation. Here's a comment from a listener who donated. I've been on Reddit for ages and I really get a lot out of the podcast, so it's the least I
can do. I'm glad it arrived safely and thank you for the for the donation. It really does help. You have no idea. I mean, it's because of donations like that that will now break almost even when it comes to the hosting. Could you explain degiver what the hosting costs mean? In order to record these, we use a program that works better than something like Zoom and to do. And the post processing is amazing. It's Alitu, but it cost $380 a year just
for that. Which by the way, we're on a year. We've been doing this for a year. Yeah, right. Yeah. Congratulations. We just renewed our ALITU subscription, but it not only records the episode, but it also hosts it. So when you download the episode, you're downloading it from alitu. So we really appreciate that. And it distributes our podcast to Spotify and to Apple and all of the other major podcasts listening apps. So it is really the most efficient and the best way that we can distribute
this to the most number of people. Yeah, it's an all in One type thing. It is really good. Does sound much more convenient. I have been trying to do like some social media and like even just like getting text posts across multiple platforms or like uploading all the images and stuff over and over again. Like that is so much work. It really is. It really is. And you know, we all have day jobs and so we're kind of doing this in addition to
everything else that we're doing. We love doing it, but it is a job. It takes me sometimes 20 hours or more to edit it, to edit an episode of the podcast. And you know, you hear about 45 minutes of the interview, but Dick Guyver does a lot of research on each person that we interview. And a typical interview is four to eight hours. Yep, my episode was seven hours. And from that eight hours of content, I somehow magically figure out what 45 minutes you care about.
I hope anyway. And if there's something you would have cared about, you'll never know. Bringing it back to Foreskin. You'll never know what you're. You're missing if you don't restore. Exactly right. Exactly. Oh my gosh. So can of worms. And you know, my hope for this cocktail hour is that we, you know, we've introduced at least some people to the, to the concept of, you know, trans restoration. My guess is that many of our listeners have never ever considered that trans people have
restoration needs too. And so Allie, I really appreciate you jumping on this cocktail hour with us and kind of, you know, helping us understand what the needs of the trans community are and what the challenges are. So of course happy to be here and I'm also very happy for people to like ask me questions or like. So like the General Autonomy Collective website, I'm slowly adding more and more FAQ questions that should hopefully answer any of those questions
that people have. And I'm even once they're up, I'm still happy to answer them then. Then I will have one last question to Ali. What are the events that are coming up? It's actually going to be like a really busy three weeks. So first on the 28th is Rad Pride in Portland, Oregon. And I'm very happy to be there because the non corporate pride definitely aligns and values with gac and it is always
those people who are the most happy to help. Like going to a Corporate Pride event, I didn't find anyone that was like, you can definitely use our button maker or like, or T shirt screening thing or like. But going to the non establishment folks at like Rad Pride and people that are running that and meeting people that are going to also be tabling at it, networking with them. They're so happy to, like help out. And everyone is. It's a community. Right. The transgeneral assembly is
supposed to happen again. I don't know if they've given a date yet, but it should be at the Mary A. Key center in Portland. And we will be tabling and I might also have a speaking position at that as well. So that's pretty exciting. And then after that, we will be at Portland Pride. This will be with Gal Def and Tac Global. It will not be a GAC solo table. They're the ones that are hosting it. But we will be there with them and
we'll have some GAC stuff with us as well. Other than that, we also are doing some bike rides for general autonomy because Portland is a great bike city and there's a thing called Bike Summer or Pedal Palooza. And basically I'm just trying to get as many people on bikes wearing foreskin. General autonomy related stuff. I'm getting a bike flag made and then have a ton of people riding around the city with like shirts and flags that say stuff about foreskin being great. Right. A general
autonomy awareness ride. Intersectional general autonomy awareness ride. So we're doing two of those. Well, that sounds super exciting. And we're going to put all of the links to all of these different organizations and events in the show notes. So if, if you've been inspired by this cocktail hour and you. You want to check out some of those things, then go to the show notes and check them out. Sweet. I Did we do it? I think we did it.
I think we might have done it. I think we may have gotten another one. Cool. All right, well, we have concluded another episode of the Cocktail hour. Thank you so much for joining us. And you know, keep coming back. We've got another episode in the works I am editing like crazy and that one's going to be a little bit of surprise. So keep coming back and have a wonderful week. Like, I'm waving. They can see I'm waving, by the way. We're waving.