Ep 175: Incel Culture

0:00)

SARAH: Hey what’s up hello. Welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aro-ace girl (I’m Sarah. That’s me.)

KAYLA:… and a demi-straight girl (that’s me, Kayla)

SARAH: talk about all things to do with love, relationships, sexuality, and pretty much anything else that we just don’t understand.

KAYLA: On today’s episode: incels.

ALL: — Sounds fake, but okay.

SARAH: Welcome back to the pod!

KAYLA: Mmm...M’arch.

SARAH: Hmm, M’arch M’adness.

KAYLA: M’arch M’adness. I made a March Madness bracket thing for work cause whoever wins gets an extra day off and I just picked the schools I had heard of before because there was a surprising amount of schools that I was like, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of you.

SARAH: Did you see that Ohio State’s first game is against a school called Oral Roberts?

KAYLA: I know of that, I do know of that school.

SARAH: If you’re familiar with Oral Roberts, I have questions.

KAYLA: I’m relatively familiar with it because of work.

SARAH: Why is it called that?

KAYLA: All I really know is that it exists I guess. I have Michigan winning the whole thing though.

SARAH: I do too. M’ichigan wins M’arch Madness.

KAYLA: M’ichigan wins M’arch Madness which is, m’isogynistic. Have you seen the videos of the women’s weight room and the women’s meals versus the men’s? It’s wild.

SARAH: For those of you who don’t know, March Madness is happening right now. It’s a giant bracket college basketball competition in the United States. There’s a men’s March Madness and there’s a women’s March Madness happening at the same time.

KAYLA: But no one pays attention to the women’s one. 

SARAH: Yeah and they’re in the same place.

KAYLA: The bubble, they’re in the same bubble 

SARAH: Yeah and the men’s weights rooms are good and socially distanced and blah blah blah. And the women’s weights room is one stack of free weights.

KAYLA: It was one tiny stack of free weights that you can get on Amazon. And then the basketball people were like, “no it’s not a money thing it’s a space thing we didn’t have enough space to give the women that much equipment” and this girl, I think I follow her on TikTok, I don’t know what school she goes to but she’s a college basketball athlete. She posted a video showing the women’s space and it’s just as big as the men’s but still only has the tiniest rack of weights. Then she posted a video of the women on her team eating the weird lunch they gave the women and it’s the nastiest weirdest steak thing. It was wild.

SARAH: Yeah. Anyway. Do we have any housekeeping?

KAYLA: We posted our last episode of our D&D Dungeons and Dragons miniseries this past week. So now all three episodes of me and Sarah and our friends Perry and Reza from Into The Gridge which is my second D&D podcast, all three episodes of us playing D&D are up as well as the campaign, the written module that Perry made that we played from. So, you can if you want to play this ace-themed D&D campaign, you can find it on our Patreon and you can play along with your fronds. 

SARAH: Hell yeah. Cool. On that note, let’s just dive in. Kayla, what are we talking about this week?

KAYLA: This week we are talking about incels and virginity as an insult. Things like that—

SARAH: Incel culture more broadly. 

KAYLA: I know we did a whole episode on virginity but it was episode 14 which is 3 years ago. I’m sure we’ve mentioned stuff about this throughout other episodes but in light of current events, we’re going to talk about it.

SARAH: For context, we’re not going to go too deep into this but for anyone who doesn’t know, this week in the United States in Atlanta, there was a mass shooting, which I’m about to say the mass shooting part is not surprising. But the specifics of the situation were that a young white man intentionally targeted three different stores, locations, businesses specifically because he identified as an incel and he felt like he wasn’t having enough sex and he viewed the people working in these establishments as sexual—they were causing him sexual urges so they needed to be eliminated, I guess was his mindset. Also, very notable was the fact that all of these establishments that he shot up were Asian-owned and he primarily killed Asian women. So, just a bit of context for you. Read up on it if you’re not familiar but that’s why this is on the mind for us this week.

(5:00)
KAYLA: Yeah, and I know we don’t want to go too into talking about the events because we don’t want to trigger anyone and I’m sure everyone in the US is already hearing a lot about it. So you don’t necessarily need to hear about it from us. Like Sarah said, do your research, and see how you can help anti-racism and specifically anti-Asian racism. Don’t be posting yellow squares, that’s insane.

SARAH: We did want to dive into the incel portion of that. Obviously, race played a huge part in this situation, especially the sexualization of Asian women. We’re not going to dive that much into that because that’s not what this podcast is about and we don’t have expertise in that. 

KAYLA: You don’t need to hear two white girls talking about that that’s not our place.

SARAH: But just putting it on the record that that obviously plays a role. What we’ll do is dive into what incel culture is and why it’s all bullshit basically.

KAYLA: Yes.

SARAH: Okay. So, where do we want to start with this, Kayla?

KAYLA: I guess we should start by explaining what an incel is just for people who don’t know. So, according to Wikipedia, “an incel is a portmanteau of involuntary celibates. They are members of an online subculture who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one.” I’ve seen people kind of the pick me guy, the “oh I’m not like other guys” I am so nice and I respect women but nobody wants me, I wonder why. And then they are the type of people to usually go on and sexualize women or be incredibly misogynistic—

SARAH: Or you know, murder them

KAYLA: Yeah. So, yes, it’s that whole sort of culture.

SARAH: In the United States, a lot of recent mass shootings have been directly associated with people who openly identified as incels or they would post incel memes and stuff on their social media because these people think that women owe them something or it can’t be their fault that no one wants to have sex with them. It must be women’s fault. Which, you know, leads them to murder people apparently.
KAYLA: Yep, natural response.
SARAH: Natural response, of course. Going a little more on what it says Wikipedia, they are “characterized by resentment, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, and the endorsement of violence against sexually active people.” So that gives you a basic of what that is.

KAYLA: Also from what I have gathered, often incels are often nerdy or geeks.

SARAH: Not the hot guys, they’re average-looking.

KAYLA: Mom’s basement, greasy, geeky type people—

SARAH: Overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly heterosexual people, overwhelmingly male.

(10:00)

KAYLA: Yeah. Which I think is an interesting layer to place over it of looking at—for starters, why that is what people view incels as, even if that’s not true and if true, why it is that subgroup that has collected in this kind of group.

SARAH: Right, who self-identify in a certain way.

KAYLA: Yeah.

SARAH: So, as I was scrolling the internet as one does, past couple days, I found a tweet that says “incel is an attempt to depoliticize misogynist racialized violence this time and every time.” And then the person who is @bridgetgillard went on to say that last tweet was “tweet is imprecise, I’m talking about how law enforcement uses sex to parse politics from male desire. uncritical uses of "incel" do this, incels are extremely political.” There’s a political aspect of incels, which people are like, “oh you shouldn’t talk about politics so much on your podcast” but here’s the thing. It’s so profoundly entwined with everything to do with sexuality and orientation and identity, it’s impossible not to.

KAYLA: Even outside of—when you think about the intersection of queerness and politics, it’s like gay rights and things like that, but I think it’s even down to stuff like this of how sex itself is politicized. I haven’t looked at all into this other than seeing this tweet and being like, “ugh! Crimes involving sex workers are often labeled as victimless crimes because the police doesn’t label sex workers as a human. And it’s even down to things like that of, we’re past talking about orientation, we’re talking about how sex is used and talked about at all. 

SARAH: And these tweets are in specific reference to a press conference that the police did in regards to one of these shootings. There were like three in a row and they were in different jurisdictions so different police sheriff’s offices are dealing with different ones. But one of them, he was all, “the kid was having a bad day.” Okay, fuck you. But you know, the way that they are trying t be “oh he had a sex addiction,” that’s a thing that comes up in this specific case where they were like, “this man has a sex addiction,” so they try and be like, the reason that he did this is because of his sex addiction. And they try and separate it from politics but you can’t because the fact that he thinks he is entitled to kill people because he is attracted to them or because he sees them as you know, tempting him, the fact that he thinks that he can kill people for that reason is inherently a political stance.

KAYLA: And as is always with people with mental illnesses, people with addiction, there are plenty of people suffering with sex addictions, with drug addictions, with very severe mental disorders, and most of them do not murder anyone. That’s just been a theme with all of these shootings in America, is it always gets tied back to some sort of mental disorder, which, I’m not saying it doesn’t play some kind of part in when people are violent. Obviously, you can’t separate them but it doesn’t excuse anything.
SARAH: Right, and we tweeted about it on our Twitter. There was a tweet that said, “Incel is trending so a reminder: lots of people don’t have sex. and they somehow manage to not go on killing sprees of Asian women.” And we quote retweeted this and said, “Not having sex — no matter the reason — is NEVER an excuse for violence, and "incel culture" does nothing but harm aspecs and allos alike.” The fact that people view incels as proof that you need sex or maybe men deserve sex or something, that’s harmful for aspecs and also harmful for allos. And you know, something fun and interesting about the original tweet that was tweeted that we quote retweeted, that person got suspended from Twitter for that tweet, and they had to appeal it.

KAYLA: Twitter is very dumb.

SARAH: They got banned from Twitter for seven days and they had to petition to get unbanned. Twitter was like, “this is such an extreme end,” what they viewed as I guess, misogynist that they felt the need to ban this person from Twitter and they had to appeal to get themselves unbanned. Which kind of shows how extreme our view of sex, and how it should be is entrenched in our society and that Twitter was like, “it’s offensive for you to say that plenty of people who don’t have sex don’t kill people.”

(15:00)

KAYLA: Yeah, this whole thing of incel culture and going as far as police saying it’s a sex addiction and even going back to original points we’ve made in the past, like virgin as an insult, it puts so much more power of the idea behind sex. Not even the act of sex. If you really think about it, the act of having sex is nothing, there is no inherent power behind that. But talking about someone’s sex drive causing them to murder people or building this whole subculture around people who are “unable to have sex” or someone commenting something rude on your video and you, even as a very progressive person, saying “oh I guess people who don’t have sex are watching my videos now,” it just puts so much power behind the idea of sex to use it as an insult or an identity. It’s just very frustrating to me especially when I see people who are very progressive people continue to do things like that cause it’s just making their problem worse.

SARAH: Yeah. And I do think in this situation with incels a lot of it is deeply associated with white supremacy and all sorts of other things so these people would find reasons to hate, even if society wasn’t the way it was in terms of how we think about sex and relationships. But, the way that society operates in terms of sex and relationships is a huge part of the reason why these people wouldn’t feel this way and wouldn’t feel so strongly about it they have to form online groups about how much they hate people who have sex or they hate women or they hate whatever just because they’re not getting sex from them. It’s a result of the fact that society does place so much importance and pressure on sex and virginity and whether or not a person is having sex.

KAYLA: Yeah, if so much importance wasn’t put on it, not to say these issues wouldn’t still be here because people would still be awful people and would still find reasons or excuses to be racist and to be misogynistic, these issues wouldn’t stop. But I think it really does go to show how harmful that can be even to allos. And of course, not everyone who feels upset there is pressure to have sex, go on to be incels or to murder people but you know. And not giving incels an excuse. I don’t want to say, oh poor incels they’re struggling under the burden of society. We all are and most of us aren’t assholes.

SARAH: Yeah. I haven’t had any sex in my whole life and I don’t fucking murder people. It’s more than just whether or not you’re having sex, like there’s so much more to it. So you know, I also think to the fact that specifically in this situation but also in other situations, it’s often their hatred and their attempts to murder people are often targeted at people who are sex workers or they are people who they believe to have a lot of sex, or they see them as a temptation which is what happened in this situation and it’s like, “so you’re saying because you’re not having sex, you hate people who do have sex?” It goes against the entire premise of the aspec community and sometimes incels and aspecs are at first glance, placed together but the reality is that the ideologies are so profoundly different that I don’t want anything to do with that. Incel culture is so deeply entwined with the allo-amato-heteronormative status quo and incel culture is a poster child of that. Like it could go more against the values of the aspec community.

(20:00)

KAYLA: It’s like, calling people incels, which I know they started it’s just a nice way of calling someone a racist or a sexist. Like, it almost feels kind of buffering and not talking about the real issue. We’re covering it in this conversation of, oh these men, who are angry that they don’t have sex and so they do this, this and this when really to me it feels like the not having sex part is not the biggest part of the issue and almost seems like a cover for what’s really going on.

SARAH: Right. It’s not PC to be like, “I would like to kill people because of their race or gender” so they hide behind the aspect of sex.

KAYLA: Right, kind of the woe is me side of it to make their actions seem not as dangerous or not as extreme as they are. That’s the part that can make it seem like the aspec community is more roped into it. I just wish that like the police when they talk about—when they do press conferences and things like that—that they would leave sex out of it. And just call what these people are doing what it actually is. I’m sure that them not having sex actually does have something to do with it—

SARAH: It was a racist, sexist hate crime.

KAYLA: Just putting the label of incel first and talking about them not having sex before talking about anything else, it takes the focus away from the underlying stuff. I just wish people would—it’s hard cause that’s a real part of it but I just wish we could like—you know what I am saying?

SARAH: I do. And as I was looking at the replies of that original tweet, I saw a reply that was talking about how the term incel was appropriated by extreme misogynists. It was actually created by a queer woman who was seeking a compassionate term for the involuntary celibate like herself, now of course, it has whole different sort of connotations so that’s interesting. So I looked into it. So basically, the origin of the term incel comes from a Canadian university student named Alana who has asked to not use her last name, but it was created by this woman who created a website in order to discuss sexual inactivity with others. It was originally called Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project and per Wikipedia it was used by people of all genders to share their thoughts and experiences. In 1997, she started a mailing list on the topic and used the abbreviation, INVCEL, later shortened to "incel", for "anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn't had a relationship in a long time.” And the last bit is a direct quote. She came to discover that she herself was queer, she identifies as bisexual, and then it says that she stopped participating in in her online project around 2000 and gave the site to a stranger. So what this term, this culture, started out as, was basically just a place for people to discuss how not having sex when they wanted to have sex may have impacted their life. It wasn’t ill-intended.

KAYLA: It feels very innocent, like a lonely hearts club type of thing with people that haven’t had luck in sex or romance department of their life, kind of commiserating their struggles and probably helping each other out. You know, not to say that like getting rejected and stuff like that isn’t hard and doesn’t suck. You don’t have to take it to extremes.

(25:00)

SARAH: Right if what you want is relationships and sex but you’re having trouble getting that in an honest way, that can be difficult.

KAYLA: I don’t see any problem with collecting people and getting together on the internet or in-person to commiserate on that. But the culture turns from being sad at your situation to blaming other people for the reason you’re in that situation. That’s when you get into an issue.

SARAH: Right and I looked at one of the sources on the Wikipedia page and it led me to a political article, where it says, “On the site, early versions of which are preserved on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, Alana revealed, “I don't really like the term ‘involuntary celibacy,’ but haven’t found a good alternative either.” While she kicked around other possible terms (like “perpetually single” or “dating-shy”), none of them seemed to do the trick.” So she wasn’t even married to the term cause there is a bit of woe is me association with involuntary celibacy like it’s someone else’s fault and I think this quote proves that she didn’t feel totally comfortable with that either. But she just couldn’t come up with a better term.

KAYLA: All she wanted was a support group for lonely people that’s all, and obviously it was co-opted by these extreme misogynist who again wanted a nice coverup for what they were actually doing. 

SARAH: Right, and I don’t think it was a single person who challenged the meaning, I think it definitely happened over time with the building of communities. It’s just so profoundly different from what it was originally intended. I also think it’s interesting with her saying how she could consider other terms like, perpetually single or dating-shy, incel as a term was not just about sex. It was about romance and relationships and I think there is a certain degree of that in modern incel culture, where it’s like “I can’t get a girlfriend” or “I can’t get a girl who’ll do what I want” which is a whole other thing. It wasn’t specifically about sex. It was more about loneliness and a lack of intimacy and personal connection and now it’s become so much about sex. 

KAYLA: And I do have to wonder like—I’m sure that was a slow thing happening over time and obviously not one person who changed that—but I have to imagine the modern culture of virgin shaming and using virginity as an insult had a lot to do with why modern incel culture is just sex and not so much focused on romance or intimacy as a whole I have to assume. The trope of some scrub in his mom’s basement who’s a greasy nerd who can’t have sex that existed far before modern incel culture. It just kind of feels like—

SARAH: The victimization of nerds, geeks, that group of people..

KAYLA: Yeah, it just kind of feels like all of that kind of stuff that was already circling around came together to create a monster.

SARAH: Right and I think too because the incel culture has been co-opted by primarily cis men, that’s also primarily the reason the focus has turned away from the focus, the romance, the intimacy, the loneliness aspect of it and has become about sex because that group of people has been taught, has been brought up to believe that as men, they want sex they need sex and they shouldn’t be as soft as to want a romantic relationship. It’s really all about sex. And they’re brought up to believe that and they enforce that in their own lives and the lives of people around them. And so, they take that and they kind of push away the more innocent well-meaning parts of the very beginnings of incel culture and they make it about sex. 

KAYLA: I mean obviously, incel culture wasn’t born in a bubble. A lot of things about toxic masculinity and how men and boys are conditioned in our culture, obviously has everything to do with it, not that it excuses anything cause there’s obviously a lot of men that don’t do stupid shit.

(30:00)

SARAH: I know so many men that don’t do stupid shit.

KAYLA: I would say like 99% of the men I know don’t do stupid shit, not like this at least.

SARAH: I do try to surround myself by men who do stupid shit. Just as a rule. 

KAYLA: Yeah. It’s just very interesting to map out what led us to this point.

SARAH: And I don’t know, I think it’s important that we as aspecs talk about this because as I kind of alluded to earlier, there is some sort of association that some people have of incels with aspecs because they view us kind of as opposites yet somehow in the same boat.

KAYLA: I feel like I’ve seen aphobes say that asexuals are just incels who just want to feel special or don’t want to call themselves incels. 

SARAH: Right they view us as, well aspecs are people who don’t want that but actually deep down they do, they’re just repressing. And so I think it’s important as aspecs we acknowledge that not only is this mindset fucked up, but also it’s just like, we shouldn’t be slut-shaming, we shouldn’t be placing blame on sex workers or women just for existing. People should have as much consensual sex as they want and if these people who identify as incels do want to have a lot of sex, then by all means do that in a safe, consensual way. If you really can’t find someone to have sex with you, pay a sex worker to have sex with you. That’s what their purpose is. And so it’s like, you know, this too gets into the whole religious angle of it too, where it’s like, “they were a temptation to him so he had to eliminate them because he was feeling ungodly thing,” which is a whole other can of worms but I think it’s important for aspecs to acknowledge and say out loud that this has nothing to do with us, we strongly disagree with this, we support the sex workers in this situation—in most situations I do support sex workers—unless one has murdered someone in cold blood for no good reason.

KAYLA: Unless it’s a bad person who happens to be a sex worker.

SARAH: Exactly. I was going to say, a sex worker who has murdered someone, but then I was like, what if someone had attacked them?

KAYLA: Sometimes, listen I don’t mean to get into this, but sometimes murder is necessary.

SARAH: Point being, as aspecs, we don’t associate with incels, we’re happy to associate with sex workers and as aspecs we support people all across the spectrum of whether you want a lot of sex or you want no sex, we embrace all of that as long as it’s happening in a safe and consensual way, you’re all cool. And that’s the basis of the aspec mindset and the ethos and a lot of people obviously don’t understand the intricacies of that and you’re just like, incels who are trying to make ourselves feel better.

KAYLA: It obviously sucks that we have to spend the time explaining ourselves and assuring to people that we are not incels.

SARAH: And so many aspec people have sex! AGH!

KAYLA: From the inside, we know that aspec culture or ethos or aspec lens, we know from within the community that perspective is very do what you want to do because it’s what you want to do. Don’t do things just because someone tells you to, whatever. Have as much sex as you want to, not what someone tells you you need to have. We know that that is a very important aspec and because of that there is I feel like if there is not, there should be a lot of solidarity between aspecs and people like sex workers or people create porn or anyone in that type of industry but from the outside people don’t understand that.

(35:00)

SARAH: Right and I also don’t want to make it seem like I think all people who identify as incels are unredeemable horrible people because I think if some of them are just better educated and they learn to understand—people fall into these rabbit holes, people fall into incel culture, into QAnon for a reason, right? It’s not like they’re just doing it for fun. So I think there are plenty of people who identify this way who can still be rescued from it.

KAYLA: I think a lot of it, at least from my perception of it, is young men—

SARAH: It’s often 18 to 23.

KAYLA: Because you’re spending time on the internet, maybe you fall into some chat room or subreddit or whatever and you fall into it. I’m sure a lot of—I don’t know—there is a good amount of people that fall into it and don’t realize how sinister it is what it’s kind of covering up.

SARAH: Absolutely. When I was doing a smidge of research, I found an article about a guy who talked about how he had kind of fallen into it. And how it took time and effort and unlearning get out of it and realize what had happened to him and how he got there. 

KAYLA: Because if someone is genuinely trying to get to a group that was the original group back in the 90s of someone that just wants support because they’re lonely, I’m sure there’s a million people out there like that who are looking for support because they’re having trouble dating or finding intimacy because they’re finding personal connection. Those people if you go on the Internet and you look up stuff like that, that’s what you’re going to find at this point.
SARAH: Yeah, and I just, like, there are so many other things to do if you want to have sex with someone. I don’t know, jerk off maybe that’ll help. I know it’s not quite the same but it’ll take the edge off won’t it?

KAYLA: I mean I have to imagine. I don’t know.
SARAH: First of all for anyone who’s like “should I jerk off or murder someone?” I think there is a pretty clear answer to that. But also like, for people who are in it, even if you don’t immediately get a girlfriend or solve the loneliness problem, there are things you can do in the meantime to help.

KAYLA: Yeah, once again, I don’t know that not having a lot of sex is actually the main concern of a lot of these people. 

SARAH: Certainly.

KAYLA: I do strongly believe that for a lot of people that’s a cover-up for their actual agenda.

SARAH: I agree. I think it’s something to hide behind but I don’t want to pretend it’s not a real thing. For the two of us, because we are aspec, it can be hard to fully understand the whole sex thing, especially for cis men. There were some discussions in our Discord recently. We had talked in the previous episode about the whole jerking off before a date. That’s a pre-date ritual and we were like, hmm? There were interesting conversations where people who were assigned male at birth were talking about their experience with that and I was like, that is wild. It’s something that I can’t totally wrap my head around.

KAYLA: As always, as has been from the very beginning of this podcast, there is a lot that Sarah and I do not understand but continue to talk about anyway, especially when it comes to male-identifying people. Or male-socialized people. I definitely agree with what you’re saying. Not getting anything that you want is difficult, especially with things like sex and romance that are so important to so many people. It does suck but once again, don’t need to murder people about it. 

(40:00)

SARAH: There are other ways to deal with that, for example, see a therapist. Join a dating site. Talk to a friend. Jerk off. All options

KAYLA: All incredible options.

SARAH: Okay, do we have anything else we want to add at this juncture?

KAYLA: No.

SARAH: Okay, good.

KAYLA: Why does my cat keep jumping on my desk?

SARAH: I don’t know. Bogie was in my room earlier today just sleeping in my bed but then I did some vacuuming and I traumatized him. I mean, we could ask, like “do you know anyone who identifies as an incel” or someone who, even if they’re not walking around like, “hi my name is incel,” if they shared that mindset? I’d be curious to know because I feel like a lot of our listeners probably do. On the Wikipedia page for incel, it was like, it’s unclear how many people really identify this way, whether it’s thousands or hundreds of thousands or whatever, but I think the mindset is very pervasive whether or not people are actively in the community or not. 

KAYLA: Yeah for sure.

SARAH: I’d be curious to know—and if you have anything to add about your experiences with those people—or just give us a shout.

KAYLA: Tell us everything.

SARAH: Tell us everything. Kayla, what is your beef and your juice this week?

KAYLA: I guess my beef and my juice is that the other day I did a dance workout that was kind of a zumba-esque situation, not really, that this lady did to a bunch of the songs from Mamma Mia. I was like, I can do that, it’s not, you know, not that intense, not any crazy workout moves and it’s to music that’s fun. And I did it and I haven’t worked out in about 12 years and also did not properly stretch before so I’m still sore 5000 days later.

SARAH: And she didn’t even do the MK Fit one. She did that other lady.

KAYLA: My juice is that I’ve made a bunch of dumb purchases since I got my stimulus check.

SARAH: I haven’t gotten my stimmy!

KAYLA: And one of them is a pin from an etsy person that says vaccine slut. The other is, there’s this company called Nice Shirt Thanks where you order a white t-shirt and send them a couple sentences of what art you want and they interpret your request in their own way and usually it comes out as very bizarre memes and weird pictures. I’ve been seeing them all over the Internet and now I’ve ordered one.
SARAH: Oh good. Going to be honest, I got distracted by my phone and wasn’t listening to you so I will find out when I edit what I said.

KAYLA: Won’t that be a nice surprise for you.

SARAH: My beef is infinite migraine. I have had a headache for—we’re rolling in on a week now. It’s not every minute of every day and it’s not like debilitating but it’s not fun either.

KAYLA: I’m sure it’s very annoying.

SARAH: And sometimes Ibuprofen is helpful and sometimes it’s not. And it must be a migraine because it’s been going on for this long and because Ibuprofen hasn’t been helping that much and because it’s light sensitive so I shut all my blinds. 

KAYLA: It sounds like a migraine.

SARAH: It’s gotta be a migraine. The migraines I do get, they’re not pounding headaches, they’re just behind my eyes, suffering.

KAYLA: When I get migraines, it’s usually behind my eyes, I get very warm, it’s very annoying.
SARAH: Interesting. Well I have that. Right before we started recording I felt a headache coming on and I was like, should I take Ibuprofen now and Kayla was like, YES.

KAYLA: As someone who waits 2 hours into the headache to be like, “I guess I’ll take Ibuprofen.” Yes.

SARAH: Yeah. I got to take a nap during lunch the other day because I was like, I need this to be gone. And it sort of helped. My juice is all of the dog pictures my sister sends me of Rosie.

KAYLA: And then Sarah sends them to me.

SARAH: And then I send them to Kayla. I don’t send all of them to you. I just send the best ones to you. I enjoy them. You can tell us your beef, your juice, answer our poll on our social media @soundsfakepod. You can also send us dog pics. We accept that as well. We also have a Patreon—patreon.com/soundsfakepod. Again, all of our D&D special episodes are now up. So if you want to become a patron, you can access all of them. Our $5 patrons are Jennifer Smart, Asritha Vinnakota, Austin Le, Perry Fiero, Dee, Quinn Pollock, Emily Collins, Bookmarvel, Simona Sajmon, Jamie Jack, Jessica Shea, Ria Faustino, Daniel Walker, Livvy, Madeline Askew, Lily, James, Corinne, AliceIsInSpace, Skye Simpson, Brooke Siegel, Ashley W, Savannah Cozart, Harry Haston-Dougan, SOUP, who is valid and to whom I apologize for this week’s episode not being funny, Amanda Kyker, Vishakh, Jacob Weber, Rory, Amberle Istar, Rachel, Kate Costello, John, Ariel Laxo, Ellie, Tessa, MattiousT, Chris Lauretano, Sam, Kelly, Scott Ainsli, Orla Nieve Eisley, Julianne, Lost In Space, Colleen Walsh, and Mattie, who bumped up from a $2 Patron. And did you know dear listeners, we have two separate patrons named Mattie, spelled M-a-t-t-i-e, two of em. 

KAYLA: The more you knowwww.

SARAH: Our $10 patrons, are Arcnes who would like to promote the Trevor Project, Benjamin Ybarra who would like to promote me playing D&D which is on our Patreon now, anonymous who would like to promote Halloween, Sarah McCoy who would like to promote Podcast From Planet Weird, my Aunt Jeannie who would like to promote Christopher’s Haven and also I’m going to add this in for her, today is her dog’s birthday and her dog’s name is Bucky Barnes and it’s also the release of Winter Soldier and the Falcon, which is a wonderful coincidence, so just a note for you, Cass who would like to promote the best of luck on the journey of self identification, thanks Cass, Doug Rice who would like to promote "Native" by Kaitlin Curtice, H. Valdis, Purple Chickadee, who would like to promote using they as a gender neutral singular pronoun, Barefoot Backpacker who would like to promote Reclaim the Night, The Steve who would like to promote Ecosia, Ari K. who would like to promote Thought Slime, the other Mattie who would like to promote The Union Series by T.H. Hernandez, Derek and Carissa who would like to promote the overflow—did I say overflow of heteronormativity?

KAYLA: You did which is not what we want.

SARAH: We don’t want that at all. We do not want that, we want the overthrow of heteronormativity, Andrew Hillum would like to promote The Invisible Spectrum podcast, Aaron like to promote free forehead kisses, Khadir who would like to promote Gnocchi Feta Fettuccine as a wonderful name for any cat, Potater who would like to promote potatoes, ChangelingMX starshipchangeling.net, and Sarah Kujawa who would like to promote her dogs’ Aviat and Stevie’s Instagram @aviatthehusky and fucking David Jay.

KAYLA: David entire Jay.

SARAH: We have not yet asked him.

KAYLA: I asked an hour ago.

SARAH: Unlikely to get a response that quickly. What? Kayla just hung up on me. I just want you all to know. I’m going to leave this in. Kayla did just hang up on me. I’m going to call her back. It got forwarded to voicemail. Maybe, hmm, I wonder what happened. Oh I bet her phone died. Kayla’s phone probably died. I’m just going to keep going. Everytime we get a new patron from someone we respect and already know in the aspec community, we lose our minds. Our $15 patrons are Nathaniel White - NathanielJWhiteDesigns.com—oh look who’s called me now, it’s Kayla. Did your phone die?

KAYLA: I thought your phone died cause I tried to call you back and it went straight to voicemail.

SARAH: I tried to call you back and it went straight to voicemail.

KAYLA: Maybe we called each other at the same time.

SARAH: That was bizarre and my phone was face down at the same time, I didn’t touch it. Anyway, I kept going. Nathaniel White - NathanielJWhiteDesigns.com, my mom Julie who would like to promote Free Mom Hugs, Sara Jones who is @eternalloli everywhere, Andy A who would like to promote being in unions and IWW, Martin Chiesel who would like to promote his podcast, Everyone’s Special and No One is, Leila, who would like to promote love is love also applying to aro people, Shrubbery who would like to promote the Planet Earth, Dia Chappell who would like to promote twitch.tv/MelodyDia, Sherronda J Brown, who is one of those people we were like, wow we know you and now you’re a patron? Maggie Capalbo who is promoting their dogs Leia & Minnie, and Dragonfly who this week would like to promote taking Ibuprofen when you first feel pain and not like waiting and being like oh it’ll go away. It won’t.

KAYLA: It won’t.

SARAH: It won’t. Tune in next Sunday for more of us in your ears. 

KAYLA: Until then, take good care of your cows.