The Fuck Does This Make Money?: “It feels fucked up taking money from other people”
A Q+A about money and feelings with Tuck Woodstock— journalist and gender educator.
The Fuck Does This Make Money?” is a Q+A about Money and Feelings.
This one is with Tuck Woodstock— journalist and gender educator.
Tuck makes Gender Reveal and runs Sylveon Consulting.
Who are you/the fuck do you make money?
I'm a journalist and gender educator based in Portland, Oregon. I currently make money through the patreon for my podcast, Gender Reveal, as well as by upcharging businesses for equity workshops through Sylveon Consulting.
Last year, I also made money by tweeting my way through Portland's racial justice protests, which I was compensated for via Venmo and Cash App donations.
How do your values guide how you make money?
The vast majority of my work — particularly my podcast and online reporting — is donation-based and accessible for free. One small exception is the Gender Reveal newsletter, which costs $1 a month or $10.80/year. A larger exception is my work with Sylveon Consulting; when I am billing a for-profit company, I have no qualms about charging quite a bit of money for my work.
But even Sylveon uses a sliding-scale fee system that hopefully makes our work accessible to our friends and community members. (I'll also note here that Sylveon donates 5% of all proceeds to trans mutual aid, on top of personal donations made by my co-founder and me.)
Tell me about your class background without telling me your class background.
My freshman year of high school, I was on the varsity ski team(?!) and bought the bulk of my clothes at American Eagle.
Tell me about a decision you’ve made about how you make money you’re proud of.
I'm most proud of the programs and systems that I've created to lose money, lol. For example, I run the Gender Reveal merch shop, but 100% of proceeds are split between trans designers and community organizations like GLITS, Trans Lifeline and Okra Project.
I also use roughly 20% of my annual Patreon income to create grants for BIPOC trans artists and organizers, and distributed $120K(ish) in mutual aid to trans folks in 2020, using a combination of online fundraising and personal savings.
So, I guess my decision is that I don't feel comfortable making money off Trans Content without turning around and giving a large chunk of it back to trans folks who need it way more than I do.
Tell me about a choice around how you make money that you know was the right decision, but you still feel weird about.
Honestly, I still feel weird about the Gender Reveal patreon!
Gender Reveal is my main gig, and there are costs involved beyond just my time and labor, so I know that I can't/shouldn't just drop the patreon and work for free until the whole thing collapses.
But I'm uncomfortable knowing that the bulk of the Gender Reveal patreon donors are trans people with limited funds. (Well, I don't know that they have limited funds, but they're trans, so statistically, they probably don't have a ton!) As someone who is housed and fed and medicated and not in debt, it feels fucked up taking money from other people... and that's why I redistribute so much of it.