Episode 23 - Chaya Milchtein - Business, Barriers, & Bodies
Published on: April 26, 2022
Chaya in a car, by water
Linet and Alexis were so excited to talk to Chaya Milchtein for this episode. Chaya is an automotive educator, freelance writer, and empowerment speaker. At Mechanic Shop Femme, she believes that education is empowerment, and she is all about empowerment and accessibility, offering sliding scale comprehensive automotive education for the average consumer. She has also taken these classes and created workshops for libraries, universities, and nonprofits.
Listen in as Chaya, Linet, and Alexis talk about empowerment, ethics in business, and how we can advance and raise up everyone.
Resources from this episode:
Mechanic Shop Femme
Chaya on Facebook
Chaya on Instagram
Chaya on Pinterest
Chaya on Twitter
Chaya on TikTok
Check out Chaya’s Salon Column!
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Transcript
Linet 00:01
Hey everybody, I am so excited to share this podcast with you today we talked with Chaya who is the founder, the ideator, the creator, the brains and the beauty behind the Mechanic Shop Femme. She talked about so many different things, including how she got started why D&I is so important, how you can be true to yourself and also be a badass awesome business that actually helps people. We've talked about so many different things I think you're really going to enjoy it Kai is a delight to talk to and I think you're gonna really enjoy listening to this one
Hi everyone! ¡Hola a todes!. Linet here (and Alexis) your co-hosts both she/her bringing you impactful stories and interviews from our communities to you and explore how we can support each other. I will say my voice is a little lazily in a little raspy because I'm getting over a cold. But Alexis, can you tell us a little bit about wetland Ron?
Alexis 01:18
Yeah, absolutely. So as regular listeners probably know, the Unconscious Bias Project is based in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, on unceded ancestral homeland belonging to the Ramaytush Ohlone and Muwekma Ohlone peoples, some of whom speak the language Chocheño. We encourage you to learn more about the Ohlone people on our website in the podcast links.
Linet 01:43
and We’d like to welcome today Chaya Milchtein (she/her), of Mechanic Shop Femme. Chaya is an automotive educator, freelance writer, and empowerment speaker. At Mechanic Shop Femme, she believes that education is empowerment, and she is all about empowerment and accessibility, offering sliding scale comprehensive automotive education for the average consumer. She has also taken these classes and created workshops for libraries, universities, and nonprofits. In addition to her blog, she’s written for publications like Al Jazeera, Shondaland, Rewire by PBS, Helpful Mechanic, Prism, Daily Xtra, The Huffington Post and others. So, welcome to the pod, Chaya!
Chaya 02:33
Thank you so much for having me.
Linet 02:35
So for our listeners that have yet to hear about Mechanic Shop Femme, can you tell us what it is all about?
Chaya 02:43
I started Mechanic Shop Femme, almost five years ago, it's gonna be June, it's going to be five years. And I started as a blog just designed to share articles. And you know, what my day-to-day things that were happening in the auto repair shop as an educational resource for people. I was not a great writer at the time. And I had zero confidence about this. But I was really looking for another way to expand what I was already doing. As I felt like I had reached the top of my career, I was managing an auto repair center. And anything that would go much further up from there would really become like corporate, where I wouldn't be able to interact with regular people and help regular people with their cars every day. So I started this blog, and very quickly, the blog spiraled into a whole new thing. And in April of 2020, when I was laid off from my full-time job, Mechanic Shop Femme became my full-time job. The focus is education, really. But I write about cars. I speak about cars, I teach about cars, I share a lot too, lots and lots of videos about cars, but not just cars themselves. Also general empowerment concepts. So plus size and queer life, a lot of travel recently, and a lot of other things that I think are interesting and also not seen in general media very often and that are helpful to people to hear about and to read about.
Linet 04:16
Let's learn about - how did you fall in love with cars?
Chaya 04:18
It was totally by mistake. Quite sure that I fell in love with cars, as opposed to fall in love with helping people with their cars. Because I'm the furthest thing from like, a car person. Like when you think of car people you think of people that are taking apart their cars or their driveways, people that are racing people that are involved in all kinds of car stuff. That's really not my life at all. So when I was 18, I just aged out of the foster care system, and I was pretty scared and desperate for a job and I could not get an interview anywhere. I mean McDonald's, nothing, no interviews. So I started a GoFundMe. My first attempt at, you know, Social Media Domination, I started a GoFundMe, and I said, “Hey, this is what's happening. I need help, I need money. I'm going to need to like, go live on my own, and I don't have anything.” And somebody reached out to me through it. Her father had sent her the GoFundMe, and she said, “You know, I think give you money, but money will only do so much. What do you really need?” And I'm like, “well, I need a job. If I can get a job, then everything else will be in a better place.” And she had had a person who used to work for her and now works as the HR manager at Sears department store. So she brought me in for an interview, and I did my interview. And at the end, the woman asked me what department did I want to work in. And, of course, I had no frickin idea. Like, I had never imagined this type of life for myself. And I wasn't particularly excited about working at Sears. So in my very classic Capricorns self, I said, “whichever one makes the most money,” she just looked at me in a bit of astonishment. But then she said, “Well, I guess that would be appliances or automotive.” And I'm like, “I guess automotive. That sounds interesting,” which she immediately followed up with, “well, do you have a driver's license?” which of course I did not have. So I went to get my driver's license and started my career at Sears. And things just sort of rapidly progress from there. I'm not somebody who does anything half-assed as they say, I sort of steamrolled my way ahead and try anything one time, and give it my full shot. And they did. And three months or so after that, I was transferred to the Sears in Brooklyn because I was moving there. And I became top 10 in the company and sales across all the Sears automotive centers. I worked at Sears that was the flagship store that used to be a Sears and Roebuck. So it's pretty cool. And then from there, this kind of all evolved into where we are today.
Alexis 07:12
That is incredible. I'm so glad that limit asked that. Going back to Mechanic Shop Femme. You've told us a little bit about like, what it is, and why you started how you got into it. Can you tell us a little bit more about what exactly it is that you do with different kinds of audiences, clients, etc? Who do you work with? And what does that look like?
Chaya 07:42
That's a great question. So my primary focus for Mechanic Shop Femme is serving the queer community first, and women second. But at the same time, my work is really helpful for all kinds of people. It's also really helpful for straight cis-men who never became those car guys that men are “supposed to be,” you know, “supposed to be” in air quotes, of course, who have never really felt have had a place where they could ask questions without being judged that having their manliness and their sexuality judged for their lack of knowledge. And while I started Mechanic Shop Femme with that focus for queer folks and women, and while much of my platforms still speak in that voice, and to my community, my work has reached far outside of those communities at that point, when I teach at libraries, I have an audience of older women who are over the age of 65, who are in transitional periods of their lives, their partners have passed, or they've gotten divorced. And now they're in a position where they have to take care of their vehicles, which they've never expected to do. And when they were young, and my age, there was no opportunity for them to learn the things they need to know. I've managed to create this platform that both is very clearly and proudly and loudly queer, but at the same time manages to speak to a wide variety of people.
Linet 09:15
On the pod we talk a lot about how you know our what nobody is a silo right? Nobody is very rarely is anybody one single identity, right? And our various identities, especially at UBP have shaped and informed our work. Like we're very intentionally intersectional in nature. Um, can you tell us a little bit about how your identities shape and inform your values in your work and how it shapes the work itself?
Chaya 09:44
Sure. So that's actually the way that I started Mechanic Shop Femme, down to what I mean to Mechanic Shop Femme came from that angle of, of bringing my whole self to my work. Cars are important, but cars by themself are boring. And cars by themself without the human element, without the stories, without the connection are things that a lot of people cannot connect with. So I’m a queer person, I am a married person to another woman. I'm in an interracial interfaith relationship. I am somebody who comes from a Hasidic Jewish home. I'm somebody who comes from an abusive home. I'm the oldest of 15 children. I'm a first-generation American, English is not my first language. And all of these things impact the way that I frame the work that I do, and also the way that I interact with people who want to learn from me. So do I teach people about cars? And is that what I'm predominantly known for? Yes, absolutely. But I'm not going to strip my identity, my uniqueness my humanity from my work in order to make it palatable for other people. So if you go onto my social media channels, or if you take one of my classes, you'll hear stories about my spouse, you'll hear stories about my life, and how those have interacted with cards, you'll see my travel as a fat queer person, which is something you don't see a whole lot of. And even when you do, you should see more of it. Because these concepts are framed with the gaze of, you know, cis, white, slim people doing them. And I don't think it should be that way. I also have been told my entire career, you got to niche down, you got to niche down, you've got to talk about just one thing. And sure, was it hard for the first couple of years was really difficult to figure out that balance of talking about cars and talking about fashion and talking about, you know, queer love and all of that, yes. Did it work out and benefit me and my community in the long run?
Alexis 12:00
Also, yes. As a queer person myself, like, it is so tough when folks ask you to, like, you know, leave that at the door. I know you mentioned before, that this also enters, into this informs your values on how you even structure pay and sustainability and things like that. Could you tell us a little bit more about that? Absolutely.
Chaya 12:29
So when I started Mechanic Shop Femme as a blog, I didn't really know where it was gonna take. And once I saw that the blog was really successful. I turned to my community, and asked what they wanted, and people wanted classes. So when I started launching my classes, it was incredibly important that my classes be both accessible to as many people as possible, but also sustainable for me, and also paid me a comfortable wage, not just a living wage, where you're just surviving, but a comfortable wage. And I really wanted to balance those two things out, giving as much access as possible community support of the work that I'm doing, and a comfortable position for myself. So what I did was I created a sliding scale for the classes. Each class has multiple different price points, I believe the classes now are from $49 to $159, depending on what level you select, it is completely self-determining. You do not need to provide anything or tell anything, or anything like that to prove whatever level you're in, and you decide what you are most comfortable with. Which is, you know, it really helps, I think, but it's also really confusing to people outside of our direct community, and the queer community specifically who have never encountered businesses that operate in this fashion. So the way I explained it is essentially, the people who are paying the higher price are helping carry the people who are paying the lower price, because this is a community operation at the end of the day. I also offer scholarships to low-income people of color and low-income disabled people or people with disabilities. I am teaching a class this weekend, I believe I've offered nine scholarship spots for this class, which is really important to me, it's really important to provide as much access to folks as I possibly can because these concepts impact the lives of people directly.
Alexis 14:43
A thing that Linet and I have struggled with a lot over the course of the past two years with UBP is, yeah, finding that balance between accessibility and also the fact that you know, when Linet and I need to not underpay ourselves. We need to not undervalue ourselves as we're doing the work because there's no point in doing it if it's not sustainable in a lot of ways.
Linet 15:12
I think like when we first started talking about it, Alexis, or like, I was there, I feel like I remember the conversation being like, I was like, okay, Alexis, “how much do you need?” And you were like “this much?” And I was like, “no, no, no, how much do you like, need like?” And then you came up with a phrase of like, what? “How much do we need to thrive?” Right? Because it's not just like to survive. It's like, let's face the reality that we live in the Bay Area, like, things are very expensive. A girl's got to pay rent, right? And like, on top of paying rent, you want to be able to live as you were saying, kind of like comfortably? Like, how much do we need to thrive? And it's not like, “Okay, we're gonna go (speaking of cars), we're gonna go buy luxury cars,” or, you know, Alexis is using a gold plated microphone right now, which is not “how can we, you know, we have enough that we can enjoy the things that we want enjoy, we can go on a trip, we can go out with friends for dinner?” Like these are things that, you know, you actually have to plan as a small business owner. And even though it's a nonprofit, like we are really running it, and it is really a business. Just because it's nonprofit, doesn't mean that we're not, we don't have to pay salaries or the things that we do don't cost money, or the resources that we need, don't cost money or expertise, or experience. And what we're putting into every one of our products, isn't the product of a lot of, you know, what equals to a lot of money in terms of experience and product, let's face it, we live in a capitalistic society. So we need to be able not just to survive, but to thrive. And we also made the decision of going sliding scale. And maybe this is going way into the business weeds. But one of the things that we're coming up with is that we're often putting forth some of our time into our much lower cost engagements, like just presentations, where it's just, it's just an hour, you know, they contract us for a speaking engagement. And we love doing those because we get to reach a lot of people that wouldn't have the budget to get, you know, full expertise, or somebody that will actually tailor their work to them. So sometimes we end up spending a lot of time on things that we're hoping to reach people that we wouldn't normally reach with our services. But we need to book more of the people that are able to pay more, because we do have a similar model thinking of like, well, if you can afford to pay more for the service, which you know, I don't know, McKinsey or something is going to charge you hundreds of thousandss of dollars for, then you should pay what you're able to pay, and then the people that don't have as many means that don't have, you know, a $33 million, you know, operating budget a year, are able to afford, you know, something that can still help them improve, because I think, at the core, both Mechanic Shop Femme and Unconscious Bias Project, we're here just to help people.
Chaya 18:16
But here's the thing, my sliding scale does not stop with my publicly available classes that individuals can book. I also offer a sliding scale, to libraries, to universities, to nonprofits. And the way that I structured those sliding scales are a little bit different than the way that I structure my sliding scales for individuals. What I do with businesses, not necessarily corporations, but specifically nonprofits and libraries, is I offer a sliding scale that clearly states what the fee should be, so that people have the opportunity to advocate on your behalf. So for example, I say my fee is between x and y. And the between x and x point five is a subsidized rate that's available only to people you know, in low-income communities are with small budgets or something like that. And then this is the average rate that people pay. And, you know, while that rate might be higher than what you typically pay, it allows me to continue doing the work to help people in lower-income communities and organizations with smaller budgets that serve that are serving underserved communities. And you'd be surprised how many people will go to bat for you.
Alexis 19:40
One of my friends back in summer of 2020 started doing a Pay What You Can grocery delivery service. And he listed on the website, “this is how much these groceries cost. And this is how much we're asking you to pay. And if you can only pay $0. It's $0. But if you can pay up to twice the actual price of the groceries, we ask that you do that.” And they actually managed to, not only did they average more money than the cost for every bag of groceries, so they were getting more in and could supply money to folks who couldn't afford the groceries. They also were even able to pay some folks to do the bagging and delivery and such that were folks who had been either having trouble finding employment during the pandemic, or had lost their jobs during the pandemic.
Chaya 20:49
People want to help if you give folks the opportunity to help, the opportunity to be part of a community that serves everybody in the way that they need to be served, that people want to be a part of that.
Alexis 21:02
Out of curiosity, have you found that that requires a lot of upfront explanation? Or do people seem to get it pretty fast?
Chaya 21:12
When it comes to individuals, so if you go on my website, and you're going to purchase a class, you will have a drop-down just like you would if you need to choose between blue and green and yellow, you have a drop down that says $49. And then it has a suggestion of where in your life you are. So like, I believe the $49 is underemployed. And then there's $79. And then there's an engineer and $159 is going out to brunch regularly owning multiple vehicles in a household. So it has a suggestion right on the line of the cost. And while the suggestions aren't necessarily concretely tied to the way that you, your specific, like, funding situation, is, it at least gives people a some kind of idea of where I'm going with this.
Alexis 22:04
By putting it that way, instead of a flat number that takes into account different costs of living as well.
Chaya 22:12
Yes, exactly. So a lot of places that I see doing sliding scales specifically to tag things to income level, but income level doesn't tell the whole story, especially when you're serving, you know, most of my students, the vast majority are from all across the United States and Canada, and cost of living are completely different. But also just personal situations are different. Maybe one person lives with a spouse who cannot work, maybe one person is, has multiple kids, you know, there's just so many different variables that I don't want to do, and I don't want to be there to do a means test. I want people to pay what they're comfortable paying what they think is fair, and put that number down and move forward. When it comes to businesses. I do have a like three sentence paragraph where I outlined how the sliding scale works for businesses specifically or rather, for nonprofits specifically, because not all of them have encountered this type of pricing structure, which is one reason but the main reason is because I need to offer them a way to advocate for me to the people who are actually cutting the check because most of the time, I'm talking to people who have to go get approvals from other people. So I need to give them a clear guide as to how the strict the pricing is structured. So they can then go to their superiors of whoever cuts the check and say, “here's what I think we should pay. And here's why.”
Linet 23:37
I know you do every now and then, you have like a media and marketing, like how to do public relationships for yourself. I just feel like you have so much experience now, you know, building Mechanic Shop Femme from scratch, running it now for five years, congratulations, we're coming up on our UBP birthday too, ours is March 28 will be five years as a nonprofit for us. And I'm like, I'm personally blown away by how you are everywhere. I don't know how you possibly have time to do so many incredible things. And also have set up this sliding scale that helps businesses advocate for themselves. And also, you know, do programs with libraries and nonprofits and also, you know, write all these amazing columns and blog posts and also have like a very strong presence on social media. And I mean, do you have a team of 500 or are you, I'm hoping what I'm leading to is, are you going to write a book on like creating your business with you know where your true to your identity for you're creating community as you're saying where you're accessible in more ways than just, you know, can I I don't know access this for multiple occasions but like monetarily accessible, the materials accessible the like, you know, it's not, you don't have to be super macho do to engage with card all of those pieces. I think that's a dream, as more and more people are starting to understand, like, hey, when we come to the workplace, a lot of people have to hide parts of themselves. How can we be more authentic to ourselves? Like, we only have one life. The pandemic, and just regular life is already hard enough as it is, are you gonna write a book on this incredible path and how you've built so many wonderful things, I feel like I would love to take a page from your how to get the other people your lead contact that wants to hire you for out of business or nonprofit, how do we get that person to have all the information they need to be able to advocate for you to the person that's cutting the check, like that is cool. That's not something that everybody knows how to do, or everybody's thought of. And I don't know, I just, I feel like, you have a lot of experience because you've, you've learned all this stuff yourself. You either, you know, learned it from books, or through experimentation or through like, what's true to me. But if you were to put a book out there on this, or like, even, I don't know, a documentary series, or maybe something like more, more fun, like, you know, coffee with Chaya and setting up a business.
Chaya 26:29
So the answer the book question first. So I am signed with an agency, PS Literary in Canada, and I do have a book proposal completed on a book on cars, not on business. So that's going to come first books are incredibly time consuming, and intensive. So that's probably the very first book that I'm going to write if I'm going to write another book. Second, if you are wondering like how I specifically ask people to advocate for me, I can read to you my little paragraph that I do. I say my pricing is on a sliding scale from let's and I'm just making up these numbers from $500 to $700 per program, most libraries, nonprofits, etc. pay between $600 and $750. This is truly based on an honor system. I appreciate your advocacy on my behalf since the program I offer is highly unique and specialized. The $500 to $650 range is available to libraries and nonprofits that cannot afford my rates and wish to access a subsidized cost. That's essentially what I do. And it's, it's worked really well for me so far. There's always people who will be like, “but I'm not 100% sure how this works.” As for a book about business, I don't know. And I heard you say that, like, oh, you learned from books and podcasts and stuff like that. I don't really learn that way. I kind of had a head for business and marketing. It's something that I just, it almost comes naturally to me in a way. And the way I learn best is actually through Facebook groups like business Facebook groups or business Twitter, and through hiring experts for short consultations, where I can essentially just ask my questions. So for example, before I started on TikTok, I hired someone who had a large following on TikTok who was not specifically a TikTok coach or anything. And I hired them for an hour to go through what TikTok is and how they think TikTok works. And then I launched my TikTok from there, one hour of asking whatever my questions are, so that I can go and try and do my damn best and then learn as I do it. That's the way that works best for me. I do teach business workshops. They are not on a sliding scale. Because these are workshops for business owners like for for-profit business owners, and it's tax-deductible costs and whatever. But I do teach two workshops. I haven't taught them in a while actually one is on how to get press and like leverage press for experts then standing because that's one of the ways that I built my business. And the second one is how to pitch articles, to publications like if you're somebody who has a story to tell or anything like that, I haven't taught them in a while but I'm always open to teaching them again, if people are interested. I'm still surprised at what an impact the press class made because I've only taught it publicly twice. And I still, it's been probably eight months since I thought it last. And I still get messages from people asking me if I'm going to teach this class again. And I don't even know where they found it. I barely promoted it. I managed to teach that class at both women and auto care to help more women get quoted in automotive-related articles, which is really important. And at a local nonprofit that focuses on foster care to help them also be able to share their expertise with publications when it comes to kids in foster care. So you can hire me to teach another one of those classes.
Linet 30:27
Yeah, folks, really don't miss out, Chaya has a lot of really great experience and is very good at getting Mechanic Shop Femme and her voice in lots of places where it is very needed.
Alexis 30:38
Let's take a moment to go to break where we'll have a couple of announcements.
Seth 30:50
Hi, everyone, this is Seth and I am one of the audio editors and volunteers here at UBP. The Unconscious Bias Project brings creative, accessible, evidence-based solutions for unintentional bias to academic, technological, governmental organizations, and beyond. We sustain a welcoming home for inquisitive and creative minds and encourage a growth mindset. Working by the model of “0% Guilt, 100% Empowerment.” Please subscribe or follow our Facebook and Instagram for the latest in events and how you can learn more and be involved. Also, take a look and check out our guest's website and learn more. Look for that information in the description section of your podcast or on our website.
Alexis 31:41
And now we're back. In addition to being an automotive educator, you're also a journalist we've we've talked about that a little bit. So what we want to know is do you have anything new going on in the journalism world that you'd like to tell us about?
Chaya 31:58
Sure. So my journalism has primarily focused on cars. And ironically, when you initially introduced myself, me, as a mechanic, and I asked for you to correct that. That's how I started writing about cars. I was quoted in the PBS site Rewire, which is no longer. And they titled me as a journal as a mechanic, and I said, “I'm not a mechanic,” and I asked them to make the correction. And the editor asked me if I'd like to write for them. And like, do I have room in my schedule to write for them? And I was like, do I, of course, add, she had no idea what I was doing, like, zero never pitched anybody before? Nothing. And I'm like, “Well, what do you want me to write about?” And she's like, “Well, what do you want to write about?” Which is like, got to come up with ideas. So I sent her like a list of little things that I wanted to talk about. And she took it to her team. And they commissioned the first couple stories I wrote about cars for major publications, which was heaven-sent because it allowed me to really scale my business, once I was laid off during the know the beginning of the pandemic, but that was how I started. And I started writing a lot about cars. But I also started integrating other things about like, plus size, lifestyle, fashion-related, and queer-lifestyle-related topics, or queer topics in general, like food redistribution, and queer weddings and all kinds of other stuff. And about six months, maybe eight months ago, or so, I had somebody send me something through email. And they were talking about a property that they repped in Europe. And I was like, “Well, that would be interesting. Like, I'm going on my honeymoon. And I'd love to stay there and maybe write about it.” And this publicist challenged me, probably unintentionally, but the email that she responded back was like, “you've never written about travel, what makes you think that you're going to be able to do it now.” So I immediately said, “you're going to challenge me.” And I sold five stories about my honeymoon. I wrote two stories for Fodors, two for Out Traveler, one for Salon. And that jump-started my travel beat in journalism because journalists can write about lots of different things. So it would stay relatively connected to the topics that I've already been writing about, because I've mostly written about travel is related to queer folks and travel as related to fat folks. The first story that Fodors accepted for me was, you know, it was something like, here are the European hotels that have my, an official fat seal of approval or something of that nature. And I was stunned. People were interested. This is so great. And I was really excited. So then I found a few more trips. And I sold a few more articles that people really liked them. And I recently was just assigned a column on travel, which is bonkers. And it's absolutely wild. Through Salon, who does not cover travel until this point, I'm their first travel thing in the past I wrote, like food and travel related things, but not like travel related. And they have officially greenlighted a column for me, called “A Fattie’s Guide to Traveling and Eating the World.” And my first column goes live on April 15. And it's going to be a monthly thing. And these columns survive based on people reading them. So if you're interested in traveling, you do not have to be plus size. You can love somebody who's plus-sized or just love to travel, you could read all about the places that I'm traveling to, and my experiences as a fat, queer person traveling the world. And I'm absolutely thrilled. And it really ties into me working on trying to get accessibility for my communities. When you are a fat person who travels, you realize very quickly that there are a lot of limitations to what you can do. When it comes to experience. It's, for example, I wanted to go with my wife on a helicopter ride in Chicago, and they have a weight limit per person. So even though the helicopter weight limit for people was over what our weight was between the two of us, they did not look at it as the weight for the helicopter, they looked at it as your weight individually. So I could not go on a ride. You know, I wanted to take Segways and roam and I couldn't take the Segways because that a weight limit, which is ridiculous. There's like no reason for that. All of these different things have an impact on the way that people can travel. And I'm excited to show people how someone like me travels, and where the more accessible places for larger people are and how to manage everything from like traveling with a suitcase full of clothes. If you're slim person, you could take a lot more clothes without hitting that 50-pound limit. Versus me, I could take very few items without hitting that 50-pound limit. So I'm just really excited to diversify the things that I write about and how I write and make an impact from a different angle because I get bored easily. So it's fun to do all kinds of stuff. It's so interesting, because I think a lot of people don't think about how you know, our identities can affect even just how we travel.
Alexis 37:59
I know that for me, and I don't know if there's anything equivalent that you've found in your experiences. For me, for instance, just like getting TSA PreCheck made such a difference for me as a trans person, to not have to go through that scanner every time because every single time due to the way that the scanners work, I would get patted down, every single time I went through it, they don't, like it always flagged me as like, “this is not a standard body type that we are our sensors are trained to deal with.”
Chaya 38:18
And actually there is an equivalence, there's absolutely an equivalent. So the same way that the scanners are not equipped to deal with a body types that are outside of what they consider, you know, “standard” for the sex that they are pressing the button on on the screen. It also doesn't recognize fat people in the same way. So because our thighs touch and our arms are larger, and our chests can be bigger, that people often get flagged for scanning for for pat downs when you're traveling as well, because the machines are not equipped for our bodies. So that definitely makes an impact. And also my wife is a black queer woman and she has locks down to like the middle of her butt. And her hair goes off at almost every single time we travel, meaning that TSA has to actually physically touch and pat down her hair every time we go through an airport.
Alexis 39:18
This is why I got Pre-Check was specifically so that I never have to go through those scanners again. So I just go through the metal detector like it's the olden times.
Chaya 39:28
I actually had no idea that PreCheck did that. So that's cool to know. I do now, Pre-Check, that I should get it.
Alexis 39:33
It is shockingly easy to get. I thought it was only for like fabulously wealthy people. It's $85 for I think five years.
Chaya 39:42
I had tried to do global entry, which is essentially I guess a a like, upgraded version of TSA PreCheck, it includes TSA PreCheck and I had an issue doing it because they require all of your addresses for a certain amount of years. And I was really poor for a long time, but I moved around a lot. And I don't have those, I don't have those, or at least I didn't have them at the time, the addresses at all the different places that I've lived in order to pass that security check that they do when they set up the Global Entry. So I wonder if TSA PreCheck doesn't require that, I'm going to look into that. Thank you.
Linet 40:26
Before we got citizenship, it literally feels like being herded like cattle, when you're coming through immigration coming back into the US, is a huge, long line and you're definitely yelled at and dealt with with very little patience. If you're coming in on the immigrant line, that is not a permanent resident, when you are a permanent resident, things are a little better, and you are a citizen, it's a lot better. If you're coming from a place like Colombia, or my parents were living in Nigeria, recently, the scrutiny is much greater, and my sibling who is more melanated than I am, and is a bigger person, and also has a beard, they get flagged a lot. So the Global Entry is like the, let me give you all of my frickin information. So that you don't, you know, immediately decide to discriminate against me when I'm coming in from abroad. And it's it's really, really helpful. And yeah, it saves a lot of headache. But I wanted to highlight a piece that you said earlier, Alexis, about machines and our technology, not being good for trans bodies and Chaya saying it wasn't good for fat bodies. And I just want to say like, every single time we I mean, we as a society, like scientists, people in tech, making our, making just even building cities, just anything, it's like, okay, “I'm only going to think about myself, or I'm only going to think about, you know, one specific, like bolded, in red air quotes “normal,” what's “normal user, that's gonna go use this. And then when I'm going to test my product, I'm going to test it on my buddies, who are the same as me. And then and that's how I'm going to test the product. That's how I'm gonna beta test and then I'm going to put it out in the world.” And turns out, and this goes from everything from like medicine, to seatbelts on cars, to bathrooms, to the sizes of doors to the sizes of bus seats, or seat belts, on buses, or, I mean, it's just the list goes on and on and on. Like, there's not a single person out there. I mean, maybe there is one that fits whatever is the average, but most everybody is an average, I mean, even getting close, my butt does not fit into those pants, because they're made for a mannequin. They're not made for a human, you know, or like, the more we design for just our small circle, even like the Air Pods, so they came out super huge and bulky. And like the earpiece wouldn't fit anybody that wasn't like, didn't have like a larger, like, dude, I'm just imagining, like, larger white dude’s ear. And like what about, you know, half of the world that has, you know, smaller years or, you know, somebody that just isn't comfortable with like, giant things stuck inside their ear, it just, you know, our design our tech,
Chaya 44:02
I don't understand how we've reached the point in society where, where we are at this level of technology, Linet, you know, we have so many resources at our fingertips. We have experts that can do almost anything. And we're still not serving the majority of the population. I want to go back to the point that you mentioned about traveling and immigration and, you know, Global Entry and things like that. This is not a problem that's unique to the United States. I travel frequently with somebody who's not a US citizen who I'm not going to name their privacy and does not have a passport that easily gets them access to countries all over the world like we have the privilege of doing if you're an American citizen, and going into Europe is a three-month process to get a visa to get there in getting letters from your employers guaranteeing that you will have a job when you come back and allowing you to take the trip - bank statements. I mean, the immense amount of nonsense that goes into getting into places when you do not have the privilege of having a United States passport, and then when you get there, they do not know what they're doing either. For example, the Schengen visa allows you access to every country that's part of the Schengen Zone, not every country that's part of the EU. And for example, Switzerland and Iceland are in the Schengen Zone, but they're not in the EU, and the people in Iceland and Switzerland, and the people, the countries that you are flying from, to those countries under this one visa, it's a single entry visa, and do not actually know what they're doing. Like we were in Germany, and the person in Germany, we were it was a stopover in Germany, and the person in Germany knew we were flying to Switzerland. And they had no idea that Switzerland was part of the Schengen Zone. They basically said “you cannot go back into the Schengen Zone after you fly to Switzerland.” And I just like disregarded him, he didn't know what he was talking about. It's really an interesting process and the way that they question you and be you know, the fingerprinting and all the extra security measures and everything like that, when you don't find a US passport is pretty intense, especially if you are a black person or a dark-skinned person of color that's flying to those places.
Linet 46:35
If you don't speak English super fluently, and with like very little accent, or I should say with specific accents. Because if you have a British accent, it's cool. Like the number of times I've been sitting in an immigration line and literally heard some super racist shit said at somebody in front of me just because they're speaking English with a Spanish accent, I can, I would make a million dollars if I had, you know, 10 bucks every single time I heard something like that. That's ridiculous.
Alexis 47:07
This is the point in the podcast where we ask you for any shoutouts or plugs you have today. So are there any thanks that you want to give to anyone? Are there any other resources you'd like to plug today? Anyone you want to amplify?
Chaya 47:25
Honestly, the most important things that I owe is kind of twofold. One is to my community and to people who may not necessarily see themselves as part of my community, but there are part of my community who allow me to do the work that I do give me the platform and the ability to do it because they want to learn because they will pay the higher sliding scale fee because they will amplify my work and I would be nowhere without that. And then, of course to my wife, who's who's endured a lot of a lot of interesting things, a lot of anniversaries where I was, you know, our anniversary two years ago, I was teaching a class at the University of California all day, and I couldn't do what I do without her. When it comes to amplifying my wife, about four months ago she launched her own small business. She's making candles also with a goal of showcasing diverse body sizes and types in art. And she makes body candles up she has started with just a couple of them. And they're all gender neutral with no gender-specific identities or anything like that in different skin tones and supporting different causes. She just launched her collection for 4/20, which will be sold out by the time this airs but the premise of it is that she's giving back to the Last Prisoner Project to help people who have been previously or currently incarcerated for marijuana-related situations with the law and you should definitely check her out, at a very accessible price point, and it makes a massive difference, in https://ctoanco.com/. And she's also @contoso.co on TikTok and on Instagram and on all that and you're you can go and find what she does, um, she's working on making more body types of molds that she will have to develop custom because they're not available. So really excited to see how all that comes together. When it comes to my work, like I said I do teach classes at universities, nonprofits, libraries, and also I teach at businesses that provide workshops for their employees like a lot of banks and places like that have Yoga classes are personal finance. I teach car classes. And you can hire me by going on my website and I have a workshop tab. And I would be happy to come in and teach a class virtually, for your people, for your community for your business. And of course, I have the publicly available classes if you want to follow me on social media you can you can learn on social media for free it I have videos and articles and all kinds of other stuff that's helpful to all of my handles on all platforms are @MechanicShopFemme, except for Twitter has a character limit.
Alexis 50:38
Thank you for being here today with us. This has been great. We've really enjoyed talking to you. I really
Chaya 50:43
appreciate your time. And thank you for speaking with me and for sharing more about your work as well. Which is very important.
Linet 50:51
Thank you so much. Yeah, that was awesome.
Seth 50:58
Thanks for listening. You can find more information and donate at unconsciousbiasproject.org. Dr. Linet Mera, she/her, and Alexis Krohn, she/her, are your hosts. Seth Boeckman, he/they, is your editor. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to this podcast and follow us. We can be found on Facebook at Unconscious Bias Project, Twitter at UBP_stem, LinkedIn, Instagram, or join our mailing list. UBP is a fiscally sponsored project of the Social Good Fund, a tax-deductible 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. If you wish to sponsor us, please contact us in the contact us tab at unconsciousbiasproject.org.