Hi, welcome to the All Things LGBTQ Interview Show, where we interview LGBTQ guests who are making important contributions to our communities. All Things LGBTQ is taped at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which we recognize as being unceded indigenous land. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. Hi, everybody. I'm here with a selected group of distinguished editors of this very thoughtful issue of sinister wisdom, transfeminisms, and we'll show that on the screen periodically. My guests are Julia Enzer, whom some of you have seen before, Claudia Sophia Gariga Lopez, Sarah Youngblood Gregory, and Shereen Ayatollah, sorry. Welcome. Hi. Hi. Thank you so much for having us. Oh, it's great to have you. I thought I would start, if you don't mind, by my reading your biographies. Claudia Sophia Gariga Lopez is a professor of queer and trans-Latina studies in the Department of Multicultural and Gender Studies of California State University Chico. She is an interdisciplinary scholar activist with a PhD in American Studies from the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis of New York University. She is the author of Trans Feminist Crossroads, Reimagining the Ecuadorian State, published in TSQ Transgender Studies Quarterly in 2016, and is currently preparing a book manuscript based on her dissertation, Gender for All. Dr. Gariga Lopez conducted a long-term participatory research, conducted long-term participatory research with trans-feminist and queer activists and artist groups in Quito, Ecuador, and has deep roots in community health and advocacy organizations in New York City. Her scholarship and visual art have been featured in a number of publications, including Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender LGBTQ History, and Latinas Struggles and Protest in 21st Century USA, as well as the Social Science Research Council's items blog. Dr. Gariga Lopez is also one of the co-editors for the Trans Studies in Las Americas issue of TSQ in 2019. This is very impressive. Her scholarly work is grounded in a critical engagement with activism, public policy, and public health, as well as trans-feminist and queer performance art, and cultural production in Latin America, the Caribbean, and within people of color communities in the U.S. Welcome.  Oh, no, please call me Claudia Sofia. Thank you for the warm welcome. Well, thanks for coming. Our next guest is Sarah Youngblood Gregory, who is a lesbian writer and poet. She covers sex, kink, VDSM, disability, pleasure, and health care for queer and trans folks. Sarah serves on the board of the Lesbian Literary and Arts Journal, Sinister Wisdom, which we all know and love. Sarah's debut checkbook, Run, is currently under contract with Finishing Line Press. Her work has been featured in Vice, HuffPost, Game, The Rumpus, Jezebel, and many others. You may also know Sarah as Sinister Spinster from Instagram, where they talk about kink and sex ed. Welcome, Sarah. Now, Shirin Inyatola is an associate professor of English at York College CUNY. Her areas of research include composition literacy studies, auto ethnography, and she has a really interesting article about that in this collection, and queer theory. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including the Journal of Lesbian Studies and the Rutledge Handbook of Queer Rhetoric. She is currently working on an auto ethnographic project that celebrates the complexities of queer immigrant storytelling practices. Welcome, Shirin. Thank you. Now we have the editor-in-chief of Sinister Wisdom, should we say? Julie Enzer is the author of four poetry collections, including Avowed, and the editor of the Complete Works of Pat Parker and Sister Love, the letters of Audrey Loden, Pat Parker, 1974 through 1989, and I just read that. It's a wonderful volume, Julie. Enzer edits and published Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian and literary art journal. She lives in Central Florida, and she's also co-editor of this wonderful collection, nominated for Lambda Literary Award this year, Outrights. So welcome, everybody. It's great to see you. I have some questions that I was hoping you would respond to, and a lot of them have to do with how you put together a volume like this. So the first question I have is, how did the idea for this issue come about? It's a special issue on transfeminisms. How did it happen? Whose idea was it? I believe it was Red Washburn's idea, if I'm not mistaken, to which Julie was happy to accept. And Red Washburn said about recruiting the majority of the co-editors for this issue. And I think all of us gladly accepted. It was a really nice, diverse group of transgender, non-binary and cis-transfeminists. And we began meeting like two years ago, if I'm not mistaken. Having rather large Zoom meetings, I think we've all commented on how the pandemic and the sort of Zoom meetings that became so common as a result of the pandemic allowed for more communication across geographic boundaries. So we're spread out pretty far. And we come from different disciplines. Some of us scholars, some of us more literary people, some of us more artists. And I would say, you know, the meetings I thought ran really smoothly. I dare say this was a joyful, if not easy, then not hard process of everybody having their own sort of contacts, networks that they wanted to invite to be a part of this. Of us feeling welcomed to contribute in our own ways. I'm predominantly a scholar. Maybe have one poem published before the poem that I have published in this issue. But I felt that this was a safe space for me to sort of return to a poetic artistic space. And so that was what the journal process was from my experience. I don't know if anybody else wants to speak to that. Well, let me add my two cents about the pandemic because this show has been going for six years. And we broadcast in Montpelieu, Vermont, which is not a hotspot, necessarily for a lot of writers, although writers and authors are here. But anyway, once the pandemic began, we realized the potential of Zoom. And so now we can enter, for example, we can interview you all from all over the country. And we've even done some international interviews. So it's great. Did you start out with 12 editors? Or did that grow as the process went along? I believe we started off with the 12 editors from the start. So, yeah, like I said, Red really said about recruiting a very diverse group of people. And we were all happy to oblige. Perhaps Red could speak more of the difficulties of wrangling for 12 different co-editors. But I felt like the meetings were very productive and very sort of like everybody was on the same page and looking for the issue to be really extensive and diverse. And it was. Who was that? The rest of your experience? Well, Julie, what was your role? My, my, I really did function as the publisher of this issue. I read and I talked about it in the conceptualization phase. And I knew, you know, Red's done a number of issues with sinister wisdom. And one of the things that they feel really passionately about is putting together multicultural, intergenerational groups of folks to edit things. And that's, you know, that's what we have. I feel like this is really the a pinnacle of his work with sinister wisdom, which started out interestingly with the Michigan Women's Music Festival issue that we published, Sinister Wisdom 103. And then Red also worked on our Dump Trump issue and an issue with the lesbian and herstory archive. And the sort of commitment to centering voices of people of color is really clear in this issue. And also in really thinking about intergenerational exchange, the issue has has trans folks who are really I think now recognized as trans elders like Susan Stryker and Pauline Park, as well as really incredible emerging voices. And all of that comes across in that wonderful conversation in the volume between Red and Matilda Bernstein and Sycamore. I love that. That was so, you know, it spoke to my sensibilities quite a bit. So how about our other two interlocutors? Did you have the same experience you were involved from the get go and you found the meeting smooth? And yeah, it was a really wonderful experience. I thought it was really fun to have so many different editors. I think, you know, at first it could be a little overwhelming, you know, at first glance to see 12 names on the front cover. But really, the experience was that there are a lot of different voices. But I think we were really united on the vision of the issue. And we came out with a really robust issue. And I'm really proud of how many different voices are in this issue. And I'm proud that I know this issue has found its home with sinister wisdom and that the reception has been so wonderful to it. It's just been really gratifying. And I think at our launch event, too, something that was really exciting was, you know, seeing the audience and the range of people that were drawn to this issue and drawn to sinister wisdom. Young people, you know, this was maybe their first piece published. And then older people who have been really familiar with sinister wisdom and kind of legacy subscribers. And then people who have just stumbled on thinking, I'm really excited about this topic and the work written here. And then they get introduced to sinister wisdom. So that was really exciting. And one of the things that I really wanted to see when working on this issue. Shireen, did you delegate among the editors? Like a visual arts person, you tell me. That happened. It happened very organically, too, in our meetings. A lot of times we would have, let's say, for example, poetry submissions. And there would be a few of us that would say, I don't know if I'm the person who's qualified to say, you know, what poetry will be included or not. And then somebody who had a lot more experience with that would step up and say, I'll do it, or I loved this one. And I think that happened because we were working with submissions in different forms, right, in poetry, visual arts and then prose pieces, essays. So it was really nice to have such a variety of skills represented by the editorial collective. And and I think in terms of the labor, it was really just something that, you know, this task needs to get done, who can do it. And then people would either volunteer or, you know, Radh would nudge us and then someone would reach out and reply. I mean, it was really it worked very seamlessly. Having 12 people, I think, made every part of it a lot easier to because it was such a shared and collective kind of labor. And that's really important, I think, to emphasize, because Radh really helped sort of shape this this quality of work as something that we're all contributing to. It wasn't just like a hierarchy one person's in charge and everybody else has to figure out what their role is. It was very much like all hands on deck kind of thing. So I was going to ask you what your principles of selection were. And so you probably all had different dependent on which cadre you choose to join, depending on the submission or how did that work? You know, I feel like we worked more on the basis of recruitment. So from the start, we had Susan Stryker's piece on groundlessness, which she sort of offered up. And so there was some pieces that we knew were offered and that we would want to take. And I know that we did put out a call for submissions, but I think we also really did a lot of recruitment work. And that's really where the strength of having 12 different editors came into place, where it was less about saying, OK, what came in and how do we sort through these different submissions to say, would you really want to be a part of this? And can you get them to submit something in time? So if anything, it was a little bit more of like, did you call them? Did you follow up? Are they going to submit it? Is it coming? And less of a thing about saying, like, what are our criteria for accepting a piece? I will say that from the start, we wanted it to be as diverse in terms of the people whose work we were submitting and the type of work that we wanted to see. And I think that because that was part of our intention from the start, we were able to secure that diversity of expression and representation that we were hoping for. Well, you know, that's a great plan because one thinks of collectives.  Well, I don't like it. Well, why don't you know what I mean? And so it sounds like if you were soliciting the people, it would make a lot more sense. Um, how did you and I'll also just add one other thing about the, you know, 12 co-editors and also the size. This is one of our thicker issues. Yes, I mean, I just want to note that at this particular historic moment, there's such heat and excitement in thinking about trans issues among a range of people, right? Both folks who identify and see themselves in trans categories, but also people who are just interested in gender, interested in queerness, that there's there's just heat around these issues right now. And I think that was the other sort of thing that brought people together and that brought the pieces, the pieces out from folks is this kind of desire to really think about trans issues and also the way trans issues knit together with feminism and how they have a space in a journal that's historically lesbian. There's there's there's a lot of heat and energy and excitement about those ideas right now in wide ranging places. And that's why it's such an exciting volume, you know, because it it clarifies how groundbreaking all of this kind of thinking really is and how it corresponds with it intersects with feminism and this part of feminism. And, you know, the bifurcation that has prevailed in certain circles is just retrograde. It's, you know, it's false because this is the wave of the future. And it's very exciting, I think. So how did each of you become you were all recruited by red? Yeah, if I could just add to that, yes, it's the wave of the future. And also, it is a significant part of our history legacy past. And so I think that a lot of us are committed to sort of refusing a look back that says, oh, you know, feminists or lesbians of the past, we're all transphobic and it's not until now that we see that we see that inclusion of trans people and instead call forth a long history. You know, we can go back to Pauli Mori in the 1930s, the Combahee River, collected in the 80s, Cherry Moraga, Oriane Saldua, right? That women lesbian of color, feminism has been a super important place of foundation for the trans feminism of the present moment. And that we do a disservice to our own history and legacy by creating this division as a generational one, when really it's about a small subset of feminists and lesbians who have decided to take on this exclusionary position. And so I think that rather than create this really narrow framework of like exclusionary feminists or inclusive feminists or lesbians, we can sort of look to the broad expanse of trans, lesbian and feminist collaboration and solidarity and alliance and shared histories as as what we're calling forth in this issue that is definitely pointed towards the future in in this moment when that collaboration and alliance is so urgently needed because of the ways in which we're under attack in really explicit ways. Thank you, Claudia, Sophia, a very important point. So you each were recruited by Red to get back to how you happened to join up? Yep. Yep. We've been working with Red on other projects. I actually did not know Red before this. And we have gotten to know each other quite well. But Red had reached out to Marcy Blackman, who who I know from 100 years ago and Marcy reached out to me. So that was my, I guess, point of recruitment, if you can call that. And you have that wonderful conversation in the volume. Yes, Marcy and I had a conversation that we wrote for this issue as well. And I love the cover the conversations. I love reading conversations. So that particular literary form is especially vibrant, I think. What did you like most about the issue? And what did you like most about your cooperative experience? You said how long did you say it took to put it together? Claudia, Sophia, did you say two years or two months? About two years. That's a big commitment. Yeah, yeah, we we we paused in between stuff, but yeah, it took about two years. Things happen. What did you like most about the issue that is multi-generational and multi-racial, et cetera? I really love that it's published in a lesbian journal. You know, I think sinister wisdom is a foundation of lesbian literary history. And I think, as as I've said, right, that trans feminism is not new to sinister wisdom. Trans people have been collaborating and contributing to it for a long time. But I think that for many, it's sort of a bedrock of of lesbian culture. And I think that it's really important that we have this moment of really explicit positioning of this journal. So I really enjoyed really reading Julie Enzer's introduction for the ways in which it sort of documents that arc of of the journal, which, you know, kind of shows a little bit of of back and forth of how this is a debate that happens within lesbian feminism, but also kind of like how we land to this point of really explicit naming and taking up of trans feminism. And let me ask you about the reaction to this volume. It's been primarily positive, would you say? Yes, it's hard to gauge, isn't it? I mean, you know, you send it out into the world and some people respond and. Yeah, there have been there's been a lot of really wonderful feedback from subscribers, long term subscribers and also new subscribers, too. And on social media, too, I've gotten a few messages saying, hey, I saw this. I think you're a part of this. I just subscribed. I'm so excited. I wish I'd known about this like 10 years ago. So I've been getting a lot of really wonderful messages from people that have been really gratifying to see. And I think Julie can speak to this as well, because she fields a lot of the emails, but it's been a very positive response. I would just add really quickly that the launch, I think, was it was a reminder of how people are responding. And I wrote this to Julie several times. I think I use this word many times, but it was beautiful. It was moving and beautiful to witness that launch. And just to see, you know, the variety of people who were in the Zoom room. It was so multi-generational and it was very representative of the people who read Sinister Wisdom and have for a long time. And it was it just felt like a very positive energy in that space. The readers were wonderful and the reading the comments that in the chat. I mean, it was just incredibly lively and warm and also intellectually, I think, completely satisfying. So I just wanted to add that. Well, I was going to add just a couple of things. One is that after the launch reading, someone emailed me and said that one of the readers is the true heir to Dorothy Allison, which I thought was really fun and wonderful. So I encourage people to to look at that video to hear that. And the other I mean, I want to echo what Claudia Sophia said earlier about the ways that this issue traces the contributions of lesbians of color to contemporary trans feminism formations, which I think is is really something that is that comes out more and more, but that I just like to repeat that and remind us of the really so much of the groundbreaking work that happened in the 70s and 80s by lesbians of color and also lift up the Arab American trans round table that is at the end of this this issue, which I think maybe one of the most consequential pieces that I've published as a part of Sinister Wisdom and in the fall, it'll be my 50th issue of the journal that's that I published. And the round the Arab American round table is really extraordinary. Every every single word and every single line of it. What I loved about it was that it ends with people's dreams for the future. And then, you know, it was provide I was like, well, what are my dreams? What kind of world do I mean, you know, so it's really inspiring that way. And it's a I know there are a couple of pieces after that that are very good. But, you know, it's really powerful. You're right. It is. And I just want to make sure we name a hymn said to Mateo Badrin, who really convened it and was the the architect behind a lot of that. And I'm so grateful for his work. Yes. Just Joe Cuddy in that at some point, he mentions he talks about homegirls and, you know, the people of color whose work has inspired him. So naming them also. All right, let's we move to Claudia Sophia's definition of trans feminism, what she says. And I'll ask you to respond if you'd like. May I quote you to yourself? Sure. Trans feminism is an intersectional and internationalist movement, a radical transformational politics that is not exclusively tied to trans issues, an important point. It's a practice of world making that integrates trans liberation into other struggles for social justice. Would you mind elaborating a little on that? It's a fabulous definition, I thank you. Well, I guess I would say that I began studying trans feminism in 2011 when I traveled to Guito and encountered Proyecto Transgeneral or Transgender Project. They began as the legal patrol, which was a collaboration between law students and street sex workers who were experiencing arbitrary arrests, extortion, physical abuse and a number of other atrocities on behalf of the police in Guito. And what they did was develop a series of sort of interpersonal interventions with the police. They would patrol the police, they would patrol the streets in the same times and places as the police, and they would dialogue with them about how sex work was not a criminalized practice, what it means to solicit sex, what it means to enter into a non-official contract with someone.  And so I think that trans feminism, different from something like queer theory, has always been based in sort of the material conditions of trans people. And that's exactly what makes it possible to sort of branch out into other issues. So a recurring experience for sex workers of all genders is migration, right?  And so those are some of the ways in which when you attend to the material conditions of trans people's lives, you necessarily open up into a broad range of other issues that expand beyond what we traditionally think of as trans issues. I'm thinking here of the work of Paisley-Kara in Sex Is as Sex Does where he talks about how the most important policies to put forth for trans people would be comprehensive immigration reform, prison abolition, universal health care, right? Things that are not necessarily thought of as trans issues, but that are actually the things that most profoundly impact trans people's lives and their ability to live their lives as trans people. So those are some of the ways in which I think trans feminism is this sort of deeply intersectional politics. I add they're internationalists and to me internationalist means anti-imperial, anti-colonial, right? Right now, living in Puerto Rico, we are experiencing deep structural abandonment, consistent power outages that are the result of efforts to and successful efforts to privatize the electrical grid so that the United States companies can extract more money and more wealth to upwardly distribute it to the United States. And those are things that deeply impact trans people's lives, right? We have a systemic lack of health care available in Puerto Rico and that is a result in great part to Puerto Rico's colonial status to the United States. And so for me saying that it's internationalist really means sort of understanding that on top of supporting migrants' rights, people's ability to move somewhere else when conditions in their homeland do not allow for them to flourish. It's also about being able to stay where we are and pushing back against the displacement. So for example, Puerto Rico has been subject to gentrification as a form of colonization for some time now, but really in the pandemic moment, right? We have this sort of renewed interest in Puerto Rico as a place where people can be outdoors all year around and this proliferation of Airbnb's in every single direction that make it so that people are increasingly unable to find affordable housing. And that impacts trans people's lives because trans people experience higher levels of poverty than other portions of the population, especially when we get into people of color. So those are some of the ways in which I think that trans feminism involves this sort of expansive view of politics and that has really been a point of identification for me as a trans feminist to not simply limit my understanding of trans feminism as like the inclusion of trans people into traditionally feminist issues, but instead sort of what happens when we focus on peoples who are most marginalized in our society and place them at the center of our attention and understand that what is most beneficial for women of color, trans people, people who are homeless will ultimately be in the benefit of society as a whole. Good. Here we go. I mean, it's so true. Everything's got to have a materialist base or what's the point? Let me turn to the next definition if you wouldn't mind on page 109 of my copy. This is Pauline Park who says, trans feminism meant for me is a mode of analysis that helps us understand gender in its widest sense and the relations of power circulating throughout society that are inextricably linked with dominant and alternative discourses of gender identity and gender expression. And just as important, if not more so, trans feminism is a commitment to social justice, which is what you were just talking about, quality of Sophia rooted in the understanding of power relations and the experiences of oppression based on gender identity and expression. Just like feminism, there will inevitably be many varieties of trans feminism as there are trans feminists. Does anyone want to respond to that particular definition? Jareen, Sarah, I feel like I'm in the classroom and I don't want to press you. Well, we will go on to the third definition. I will just say it's lovely to hear these things that you pull out, right? Because I think that this is one of the things that journals can do really well. And this issue is calling into being a new way of thinking about the world and people are working on different definitions. And I think that's one of the things journals do really well is bring multiple voices together to work through meanings definitions, to think about and roll around ideas. And I think that's one of the things that's a real success of this issue. And as you were reading it, I was recognizing the many ways that those sentences from Pauline Park echo with different sentences, different ideas, different topics, but still that echo there across the many decades of the journal. I think what's really important about this particular paragraph is that we're talking about trans feminisms, and I think that becomes very underscored here. Because I think there's a tendency to imagine trans feminism as sort of a singular or monolith kind of approach or lens. And it is not and it cannot be. While there are shared struggles, I think to just echo Claudia Sophia's incredible explanation of the definition provided in the text. I think this is a struggle to end oppressions of all kinds. So it is of course inextricably linked to all other such struggles and what leaps to mind is looking at the policing of national borders, looking at issues of access to health care, housing, medicine, food security, all of those very basic needs that are fundamental to our humanity. If we were to find solutions for that, that is exactly what is needed here. And it is vast and it is huge. And that's why we cannot, I think, pigeonhole one particular concept of trans feminism. It is multiple. It is feminism. Well, should we go through the third definition or should we move to asking Julie how to get the issue? I'd love to hear the last definition. Three is a good number. All right. It's Matilda Bernstein's Sycamore definition on 227 if you have the book before you. A trans inclusive feminism has to mean changing feminism itself or else what is the point of inclusion? It's not just about having us in the room. It's about how we can do this binary. It's about how can we undo this binary way of thinking in order to end transgender-based violence, rape culture, and patriarchy in all its forms. A steadfast reliance on categories of men and women, male and female, is part of the problem, not the solution. I think that's an important point to add to our conversation also. Absolutely. Yes. I think that dismantling of the sex-gender binary is one of the most important contributions that trans feminism has to offer feminism. The way that sense the creation of that gender sex binary as a way of refusing the imposition of specific gender roles on people assigned female at birth, we've been limited by it. I think that it in many ways creates a biological determinism, a gender essentialism that is actually harmful to much more than just trans people. When I think of trans feminism, it is much more than feminist solidarity to trans issues or feminist inclusion of trans issues. It's allowing feminism to be meaningfully and deeply transformed by trans politics in ways that will help us break out of our sort of self-made enclosures that really don't serve us at this point. I think that trans feminism pushes back against a sort of wounded attachment to biological determinism that really sort of only thinks of womanhood in terms of its victimization in relation to men. I think that that really limits our political vision to not be intersectional and internationalist in the ways that I just pointed towards trans feminism having the potential and the real manifestation of being. Sherry, do you have anything to add? I just think, you know, when I think about trans feminism and trans feminism, I think about how everyone is doing and interested in and intrigued by and performing gender at all times. I think some people don't want to really think about that. I think there's a lot of pushback to people who are explicitly saying like, yes, I am doing gender, right? I am playing with gender. I am transforming. I'm doing all these different things with it. And I think what's really exciting when I think about trans feminism is it wants everyone to confront gender, right, cis people too. And I think that's a really important necessary thing because we're going to talk about, you know, dismantling the gender binary as we need to. We also need to talk about the people who are doing gender and why they're doing it in those ways and what it might look like if they thought about it and could transform it with themselves and other people in their lives. So to me, that's an exciting possibility. Absolutely.  How can we get it, Julie? So Sinister Wisdom is available for direct order through our website at sinisterwisdom.org slash sw128. That's the number or you can just go to sinisterwisdom.org and it's right on the homepage. Click there and you can purchase a copy through PayPal. If you're not comfortable with PayPal, I also, you can send checks through the mail. The address is on our website, sinisterwisdom.org. And if you have any questions, my office number is also on the website. People are welcome to call me and I'll help you get your hands on a copy. We do ship twice a week, we're shipping out copies regularly. That's sinisterwisdom.org slash sw128. Very good. I personally am not a fan of PayPal. So thank you for providing those other options. Now we're drawing to a close, friends. So let us, let me ask you for last words. What do you want the audience to leave the audience with an in advance? Let me thank you all for coming. This has been very informative and enlightening and fun. So last words. I'll say to pick up on the definition of from Matilda Sycamore Bernstein, one of the things of having Matilda in this issue is he talks, she talks really beautifully about coming out in lesbian communities and sort of pays homage to lesbian communities as sort of a crucible central to their identity. And I really loved that moment. And it's not the only moment in the journal where there's this thinking about lesbian communities and how they've strengthened and helped forge different trans folks. And I think those moments are really beautiful. And it's another part of the issue that I'm really proud of. I think that's really a high point. And I was trying to think of some way that I could, I might zerox that whole conversation and send it around to friends. But of course, I'll encourage them to get the issue and buy it too. Thanks, Julie. Last words. Sure. I think I would just say how grateful I am for this opportunity to be a part of this project. So special shout out to Red. Thank you, Red, for always putting me on to cool opportunities. This is not the first time and hopefully not the last. And I would just say that Susan Stryker's piece on groundlessness really helped me understand my place as someone who is not trans within trans feminism, right? cisgender people are the ones who most propagate transphobia and therefore it is cisgender people's responsibility above all else, right? To attend to transphobia and to combat it and to extricate it from our lives or the blueprints of our thinking. Trans feminism has helped me understand myself differently. So I do think of myself as gender non-binary, but I also understand that I'm red and received as cis throughout the majority of my life and that understanding myself as gender non-binary does not mean I don't have unexamined transphobia to work through. So I would say that, right, that it is our responsibility to take on this work and to not shy away from that responsibility, to not feel guilty. Audrey Lorde has this great quote from her essay on the uses of anger where she says, I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices out of the approaching storm that can bend the trees as well as feed the earth. We are in that storm of transphobic hate, of anti-feminist hate and legislation waving over us and we need to sort of not shy away from making clear decisions and letting people know where we stand and kind of solidarity means sharing risks, right? So sharing the risk of confrontation, of judgment, of whatever it may be to understand the need to sort of stand together and to be creative as opposed to the sort of silent destruction that we tend to think is safer. So those would be my final reflections. Thank you, Claudia Sopia, and thank you for that wonderful quotation of Audrey Lorde. I'm very impressed. All right, Jareen, Sarah, last words. I would just say Claudia Sopia says it the best. And so with Claudia Sopia's work, but Sarah's work, everybody who has contributed in some way to this issue are people that are out there in the world doing so many things. And I think many people have other work that can be accessed and read or looked at or, you know, considered in some way and experienced. And I think so if this issue speaks to anybody in a particular way to continue the work of finding the contributors, asking them and paying them fairly to do other kinds of work in the future or making sure that their labor is compensated in some kind of way, but keeping this energy going and thinking also about the wide circles that each of us also have and how there is a way for us to involve people, to support people, and continue the work of centralizing trans feminisms in a variety of venues. So I would make that suggestion to the audience. Thank you very much. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I didn't mean to cut you up. I just said thank you for having us. This has been great. Sarah. Thank you. I echo what everyone else said, but I would also just encourage people to really consider supporting sinister wisdom. We know that we need queer and lesbian media. We know that we need queer and lesbian and trans media. We know it. Sinister wisdom is doing the work and I encourage everyone to support the journal or to the issue, subscribe, all of those good things. Thank you. Very good. Julie, you want to wrap it up for us? I don't have anything to add. Thank you so much. And it's always a delight to talk with you. The issue is Sinister Wisdom 128, Transfeminism, available at sinisterwisdom.org. Thank you, friends. Thank you for joining us. You're welcome to come back any time individually or together. Thank you, Anne. Take care now. Bye, everybody. Good to see you again. Bye. Bye. Thank you for joining us. And until next time, remember, resist.


Okay, so this is, well, this is lecture 28, okay, it looks like I forgot about how to do how to get the L first time around, okay, so I think you have to select journal first and then do, okay, good, alright, so let's remind ourselves what we were seeing last time we were looking at soft message passing decoding, right? Okay, so this is with respect to BPSK over AWGN, okay, so the main idea was the message or the number that is passed from bit node to a check node is going to be LLR of that bit node at every iteration, the best estimate of the LLR is that bit node, the message that comes from the check node back to the bit node is again some LLR for that particular bit node and once one makes the independence assumption that at any given iteration all these LLRs are calculated with respect to completely independent mutually disjoint received values, so you can deal with it like in the way I wrote down, so you get two simple update equations, one for the bit node and one for the check node, so let me write down how those update equations were, so the bit to check messages were something like this, okay, so for the first iteration what do you do? Okay, iteration one you simply send yi, I think y was my notation for the received values, okay, so received values are y1 through ym, these are received LLRs, okay, received LLRs, okay, so r1 through rn is my received values, yi will be 2 by sigma square times ri, right, so that is how you find the received LLRs and in iteration one you simply send, okay, so I am not going to write down the update equation for iteration one, it is a little bit different but it is just that the notation will be different and I have to go through and do the same thing, so in iteration one step pay what do you do? Send yi, right, so bit i sends yi on all the edges, okay and step b the check node will process the yi's, right, so there is some small difference there but from iteration two onwards we had a comfortable common notation, in fact you can extend that to iteration one also, it is not a big deal but let us just write it for these iterations, what would be the, what was the notation I said? U, where did I put L? I put L on top, right, UL denotes a bit to check message, bit to check message and I had VL denoting the check to bit message, right and well to do it properly I should index all the edges and then I should subscript U with that edge number, right, that will give you the proper way of doing it but then I will have to figure out the edges that are connected to bits, just you can do it properly consistently with notation but just the notation gets more and more messy, you have to have those kind of things, so I bypassed all that by just concentrating on one bit node and telling you what the law it obeyed, just by indexing those edges from one to i, okay, so if you look at a bit node of degree i, okay, say maybe yi was what it received from the, no, no, no, what did I, what degree did I take? I must have had some reasonable notation for this, d, okay, I took degree d and the ith bit it's got degree d, then I said it could have received V1 or maybe V2, right, V2 L-1 through, did I say this, Vd L-1 in the previous iteration, from the check with check nodes, okay, so and it is going to send U1 L to its first neighbor, okay, so this is the comfortable notation I used with respect to one bit node, okay, so what was the relationship now? U1 L equals yi plus V2 L-1 plus so on till Vd L-1, okay, so likewise one can do U2 L which would be yi plus V1 L-1 then you would jump to V3, okay, so you don't use V2, you don't use that information that came from that, this was the bit to check message in iteration L, okay, for the check to bit message it's a little bit more complicated just that operations are not too complicated but it involves one nonlinear function, it gets a little bit more messy, okay, so how does that work? If we look at check node j, the j check node, let's say degree E, okay, and again we'll do a similar notation just for simplicity, I'll say I'm interested in the message it sends out in iteration L and it would have received U2 L through UE L in the L iteration, okay, so in the step A of the L iteration then what do you do for V1 L? You have to do two things, okay, the sign of V1 L is computed in one way and the magnitude of V1 L is computed in one way, okay, so the magnitude of V1 L, what do you do for that? You use this formula which is f of what? Summation, okay, so let me just, let me not write sigma, so just kind of mix, messes up things, f of U2 L plus f of U3 L plus so on till f of UE L, am I right? Is this consistent with the way f was defined? Okay, what was f of x now? Log tan hyperbolic mod x by 2, right, and remember for f of x, I'm going to only take absolute value, okay, that's understood, I'm not writing it down, maybe there's an absolute value outside just to stress that it's only the magnitude I'm interested in, okay, it's fine and what about the sign? Is the sign of U2 L product of the signs of the individual messages, okay, is that fine? Okay, so these are the two updates and so the sign, you can also think of it as, you can also evolve it with bits if you want, okay, 0 representing plus 1 and 1 representing minus 1, you can take XORs and do that, that's also fine, all right, so hopefully this is quite clear. There was a questioning, there was a question that was asked to me about conditioning and all that, so for instance, when I derived those formulas, I never said anything about conditioning, right, simply said probabilities of individual bits, then the actual usage we seem to be conditioning, but those things work out okay, so you can work it out carefully and see that it works out okay, those conditionings are not a big deal, okay, go back and think about the way we wrote it down, okay, all right, so that's the update equation and what we're going to do now in this beginning, okay, hopefully I think we'll finish it in this class is to do density evolution for this iterative process, okay, under the IID assumption, again to do it rigorously, I have to go to the tree ensemble and then start from the leaf nodes and then come up all the way up, that's the proper way of doing it, that would be nice and rigorous and proper, but we will do the hand waving IID assumption and simply do the computation very quickly and you can always go back to the tree ensemble and we'll get the same expression, okay, so I'll do it for, I'm sorry, I'll give it after class, okay, so one more thing to worry about is regular and irregular, right, for regular we had, we have the same neighborhoods, so irregular we have different neighborhoods and you have to average over all of them, all of those things still carry over, I'm doing density evolution, the only thing that has changed is the messages have now become real numbers as opposed to just being bits in the previous case, but all those other assumptions that are necessary to make density evolution possible will still hold, for instance I'll have to show that the all-zero codeword is good enough, okay, so the all-zero codeword assumption and the tree assumption neighborhood being a tree, all those things will have to hold good, only then this really makes sense, okay, so all those things carry over into this also and they're all true and I think to do with the messages being real numbers for instance, okay, so I'm going to look at the update equation for one node, okay, and fix the degree, then figure out how to track the density through that update equation and then we'll do the averaging over a particular edge, okay, so I'll do the same thing like we did before, you remember for irregular how did we do it, fixed an edge and we said what's the probability that the edge connects to a degree D bit node on the left, okay, that was what, rose lambda D, okay, so then but then you do the update only for fixing the degree to be D, given that the degree is D and then you average over the whole probability to get your average behavior over all codes in the ensemble, okay, so we'll do the same thing here, so I can conveniently start with the fixed degree, particularly say a degree D bit node and see how to track the density, okay, so one slightly different thing here is now instead of tracking just one probability, I have to track the entire PDF, okay, so that will be different, okay, so I need notation for now random variables, okay, so so far we've only dealt with bits and messages are bits, what was received is bits, everything is bits, so I can get around with without worrying about random variables and define making the distinction between the random variable and the value it takes, okay, so far I never had to do that but now since the error even I am interested in is bit error but the underlying random variables are actually continuous random variables, I will have to make that distinction, okay, so I will begin by doing that, I will say capital Yi is a random variable that denotes Yi, okay, okay, so Yi is what the LLR of the ith bit received from the channel, okay, so that's my small Yi, it's actually a random, it's a random value, right, if you do different transmissions, you'll get different Yi, you won't get the same Yi and it'll follow a distribution, that distribution is that random variable is denoted capital Yi, okay, so what will be the distribution of Yi is for instance if you have to worry about this guy what will it be? What will be the PDF? Well, I have to say two Gaussians but I am going to make my all zero codeword assumption, okay, remember that, okay, so I didn't explicitly say this but I'll assume all zero codeword, okay, so all the assumptions of the previous density evolution hold, there's nothing that changes from there, so once I assume all zero codeword what is the message that I am sending? Plus one, okay, so it's only one Gaussian, the PDF of RA is what? The received value RA is normal with mean one and variance sigma square, okay, how do I get Yi I know? I multiply by 2 by sigma square, okay, so what will be the distribution of Yi I know? Normal with mean what? 2 by sigma square, variance 4 by sigma square, do you agree, right, when I scale a normal random variable the mean will scale, the variance will scale by the square, okay, so you do 2 by sigma square whole square multiplied by sigma square again and you'll get 4 by sigma square, okay, so that's what is the PDF for Yi, okay, so this is the easiest part, okay, this is a very nice and well behaved PDF if you plot it how will it look nice, well shaped Gaussian depending on sigma the width will be different and all that, okay, so it's a very nice thing, okay, no problem, so why we know very well, okay, so now I'll say at a particular iteration L I know the PDF of a random message, of a message on a random edge averaged over, averaged over the entire ensemble of graphs, I'll say I know that, okay, once I know that I'll try to find what the PDF of the message in the next iteration, once I have a formula for that I can keep doing it over and over again, okay, so for that again let's use some notation, let's say UL is a random variable that denotes UL, okay, so I've not put a subscript here, why because I've averaged over all the codes in the ensemble, okay, so every message is supposed to follow this PDF, okay and I know it's good enough, it will closely concentrate around the average, so I know every PDF will be very close to this, it's not a problem, okay, for U1 I know what this PDF is, for the iteration 1 what is this PDF, same as that normal PDF, okay that I know, okay, I have to find for U2, okay, so I'll first begin by trying to find the PDF for V1, okay, I have to first try to find V1, right, so I have to find the PDF for capital V1 which is a random variable that denotes VL, okay, so again I've averaged over all the graphs, okay, so how do I do this, I have to use my check node update equation, so what is happening to the random variables now, if I have to write VL, how is it done, the magnitude of VL goes as f of, f of, okay, in a degree E check node, okay, for a degree E check node the magnitude of VL is going to be, I'll say U1L plus f of U2L, so on till f of what U, E minus 1, right, this is what happens to the magnitude, okay, and what happens to the sign, is that a question, what happens to the sign, so what are these U1's, U2's now, yeah, they are all IID distributed according to what, the same UL, okay, they are all independent and identically distributed and they follow the same PDF of UL, okay, so that's my assumption, it's based on the so many other things that I saw on the graph, okay, so once I do that, I can do this, okay, so now it's possible to find, okay, without too much worries, you can easily, well not easily, at least theoretically you know how to find the PDF of the left hand side node, how do you find the PDF for magnitude of VL, okay, so you know the PDF for U1L and let it go through this transformation by f, okay, and you know it's a monotonic nice transformation, so you can apply one of your standard Jacobian formulas, you'll get the PDF for f of U1L, then how do you do the summation, you convolve all those PDFs and then you run it through f again, so you'll have to do all of those, okay, and you have to do it numerically, it's tough to get an analytical formula for that, okay, so you do all that, you get the PDF for the magnitude of VL, how do you get the PMF for the sign of VL, it's only a PMF, right, okay, so you have to find the PMF for sign of U1L, what is the PMF for that, how do you find the probability here for the sign of U1L, and you know the PDF for U1L, right, how do you find the probability that it's less than 0 or greater than 0, how do you find the probability that the random variable is less than 0, integrate from minus infinity to 0 that PDF, right, so you do that, you'll get the individual probabilities and they're all independent, so you can use the 1 minus 1 minus type formula, right, so it's easy to find that, so suppose I know, suppose P is probability that U1L is less than 0, right, I can easily find probability that sign of VL will be 1, okay, what will that be, 1 minus 1 minus 2P raised to the power e minus 1 divided by 2, okay, so it's easy, this is the same as the BSC here, there's no big difference, okay, so this part is only discrete, okay, can be easily computed, okay, but for the top part above, you need to do some numerical numerical methods have to be used, okay, but even then the method simply involves transformation of random variables and convolution, convolution one can efficiently implement as FFT if you want, so there are a lot of simplifications possible, but one can do that, okay, so I am not going to write down the whole thing, one can possibly write it in notation, for instance the way this is written is, after doing all of this, you can find the PDF of VL, okay, and can be obtained by what, you do this transformation, okay, what is this capital F, okay, not CDF, sorry, yeah, so transformation of random variables, transformation of the PDF when the random variable goes through F, okay, by FFX, what is FFX, this is the log tan hyperbolic, so when random variable goes through that, your PDF will go through a transformation, that transformation, I mean, I am denoting it as capital F, okay, once I do that, what should I do, I should convolve this capital F of this with itself how many times, e minus 1 times, okay, so I will denote that as the convolution as e minus 1, okay, so all of them are the same because I have assumed u1 to ue minus 1 or iid according to the distribution of u, okay, so that is my, that is guaranteed by my tree assumption and all that, okay, so it is all independent, I have averaged over all the realizations, so it becomes independent and identically distributed, okay, so I can denote it by this and after the convolution what should I do, again I do an F, okay, so at this point you should ask me one part of it is discrete, one part of it is continuous, how can you talk about the whole thing in one go, right, so it is theoretically possible if you read probability the right way, it is possible to do all these things with the CDF itself, right, you do not have to come to the PDF, I wrote down the PDF but I can do the whole thing with the CDF and if I do it with the CDF it does not matter if partially it is discrete or continuous or whole thing, everything will work out properly, okay, so imagine that this capital F is actually going through the CDF and maybe coming back, okay, some such thing is happening, okay, okay, so if at all you happen to read very advanced probability theory you will see that it is also possible to do such things with PDF itself, okay, but it involves some strange notions which are probably not necessary but if you read the book for instance modern coding theory you will see they use some strange notation for those kind of PDFs, it is okay, we do not have to worry about it, think of this capital F as a transformation of CDFs, you do the transformation of CDF and then maybe you do some operation to it to come back to the PDF, right, but the update happens in two ways, you deal with the sign differently and the magnitude differently, okay, so that is the thing, okay, so I do not want to go into the details and show you how this works, I will illustrate, I have implemented this in MATLAB, so I will maybe illustrate this and show you how this transformation looks, it will look a little bit ugly but at least theoretically hopefully the steps are clear, okay, what you have to do is reasonably clear, right, so you know what the transformation of random variable will be, you know how to do convolution, you know how to do, how to do this computation for the sign and then you can put both these two together to get the PDF of UV, that also you have to do, right, one more step you have to do, given the magnitude and the sign you have to play around with it carefully and get the final total PDF, once you get that you know the PDF of VL, okay, so going from VL to UL plus 1 is quite easy, it is not very difficult, okay, the reason is the, for a degree D check, degree D bit note it is only summation, all you have to do is only convolution, okay, but anyway we are not done here, this is not the only thing, right, yeah, you should average this over all the row ease, okay, so let us do that also, so if you do that the PDF of VL will be obtained, okay, I am going to say equality, but remember this is all, this one needs to be careful when I say these things, but anyway I will say, finally if you put everything together summation over E, row E, capital F, okay, convolution E minus 1, what, capital F of F UL, okay, given F UL I can find F VL using this fancy formula, okay, very implicit formula which assumes you know you are doing a lot of hard work with this capital F, once you do that capital F everything else will nicely follow, okay, so I will denote this whole thing as row, okay, so whatever happens when you go from check note to bit note is this fancy function row, you know, I mean this lot of abuse of terminology here, you should know that when I put the argument of row as a function, then I am doing this complicated transformation with PDFs, okay, otherwise what did I think of row as, row of X was my simple distribution polynomial, right, row of X is summation row, okay, sister simplification, okay, so that is how the density update through the check note happens, okay, so now if I look at what happens in the L plus 1 iteration from bit note to check note, let me again look at a degree D bit note, okay, what happens here is very, very easy, right, what is happening, UL, UL plus 1 is going to be equal to what? Yi plus what? V1L plus V2L plus so on till V D minus 1L, okay, and what are these VIs, they are all IID distributed according to FVL, okay, that assumption again holds, yes, yeah, I know, I mean, but I am going to say capital F actually denotes the whole thing, you are taking care to bring in the sign also later, you have to do that also, you are right, the point is when you do this transformation only the magnitude is taken care of, okay, then you have to take care of the sign, you factor that in and I am calling that whole thing as capital F, so maybe you want to call this say F1 or something if you want, just using F, okay, so you have to do that adjustment for the sign, okay, you have to do the magnitude differently, then sign differently, then put both together, right, there will be, this F1 will be slightly different, okay, maybe we will keep it, so this F1 takes care of sign also, okay, if you want to be very rigorous about it, you can do that, okay, so maybe I will do F1 here, here, yeah, it is fine, equality is fine, no problem, if you are happy with such equalities then it is fine, yes, okay, so for here it is very easy, right, so how will I do FUL plus 1, right, I have to take FYI which I know is simply normal distribution, convolve it with something which is actually convolution of FVL D minus 1 times, I do that, try to get this, okay, so convolution, again see when I write down this function, when you implement it numerically, you cannot do continuous variable, so what will you do, you will sample it, okay, so it will actually be a discrete time convolution, okay, and you can nicely do it and you make sure you choose only two power n type samples and then you can do FFT very easily, it will work very fast, okay, it will be much faster than this painful convolution, so one can implement these things very easily, okay, so you sample it at the right points, okay, no, no, no, I should be careful here, let me be careful, I need averaging over D, right, so I forgot about the averaging over D, so let me write that down a little bit carefully here, I am sorry, okay, so I need to sum over D lambda D to get my proper averaging, so that would be FUL plus 1, sorry, okay, so this is after averaging, so these two are after averaging and you notice this FYI convolution occurs in each term, so you can pull that out if you want, okay, so once you pull it out, you will get FYI convolved with, convolved with something, okay, so that's something I'll call lambda FVL, so these two are nice ways of describing how this works, okay, so these are just expressions, anybody can write down these expressions, so the difficulty is can you actually get it implemented, okay, so the only way you learn density evolution is not by listening to me write down these expressions and explaining about them, what's the only way you learn density evolution, implement it and matter, we have to code it, okay, unless you code it, unless you understand all the intricacies, this will never get through, you will never really understand how this is working out, okay, so what about probability of error, okay, so well and well and good, I am tracking this PDF of U, okay, so I can find FU, I can find FUL plus 1 so on, what's my probability of error, yeah, it's integral from minus infinity to 0, FUL, that will be your probability of error, okay, every time you can do it, either that or in fact you can even do some more complicated things if you want, but that's a good enough measure for probability of error, okay, so that will be fine enough, okay, is that clear, I'm sorry, yeah, yeah, I'm going to come to that, okay, so if you want finally at the end of the end of everything, I can write density evolution as what, how can I write density evolution, FUL plus 1, L plus 1 is some function, I'll call it DE, okay, so density evolution, there have been too many Fs, so I'll call it DE and it's parameterized by lambda, rho and lambda and rho, right, and what's my input to this density evolution process, FY, right, remember FY and FY is parameterized by just one parameter, which is sigma, right, sigma or sigma square, sigma square would be very correct, right, so that's all, so the proper way of writing it down, I'll say FY, FY is actually normal with mean 2 by sigma square and variance 4 by sigma square, okay, so the input actually is only sigma, right, given sigma, lambda and rho, you can run density evolution and figure out probability of error at, well, I should be careful about FUL, I'm sorry, sorry, FUL, okay, so I can run this any way I want, right, so what's probability of error after iteration L, okay, so in iteration L, probability of error will be probability that ULS less than 0, okay, so this, all this works because I assume the all 0 code word, right, if I do not assume all 0 code word, probability of error even is not very easy to define, okay, so you can compute it by doing this minus 0, okay, some D whatever, okay, so now you again make the argument about what can happen to this probability of error, okay, so probability of error in iteration L, I'm sorry, okay, so as you increase L, if you start with a particular sigma and lambda and rho, as you increase L, what can happen to probability of error, again it's a bounded function and it is hopefully monotonically decreasing, okay, so it has to converge, only question is will it converge to 0 or to a non-zero value, okay, again you can define the threshold sigma star as what, yeah, the supremum over, supremum over sigma such that what, probability of error well converges to 0, okay, there will be a maximum sigma at which probability of error will tend to 0, that is my threshold, okay, so again you have to prove several properties, you have to prove monotonicity for this density evolution with respect to sigma, all those things can be proven, okay, so I have not proved all of the analytical properties, but once you prove all those things one can nicely define sigma star as the threshold, okay, so I showed you simulations for the binary symmetric channel with Gallagher A, okay, so you write down, you do the simulations for even soft decision decoding, you will see even though for calculating the threshold, you tend so many things to infinity, you tend block length to infinity, you tend L to infinity, but threshold is a very, very reasonable measure for reasonably high block lengths, when when you go to block length of 1000 with the 36 regular code, the behavior will be very, very close to threshold, okay, so you will see that waterfall behavior close to threshold in your simulations, okay, so all those things will be true, so the threshold is a very, very important parameter, okay, in fact as you will see since I have tended, since I have tended what is happening, I was told if I do this, it will come back again, but it is not going to come back, okay, maybe I should do something, apparently you can also do this, okay, anyway we will give up on that, so you will see sigma star is a function of, function of what? Lambda and rho, okay, so once you fix lambda and rho, you will have a particular sigma star, okay, and then you can do the same optimization once again, over all possible lambda and rho with a particular rate, you find that lambda and rho which has the maximum sigma star, okay which can, which has threshold to be maximum value possible or you can do the reverse optimization which is for a particular threshold, what is the maximum rate that is possible, okay, so all these optimizations one can do to optimize over lambda and rho, okay, then the comparison will be how close will the threshold be to the capacity of BPSK over it, which can also be looked at, okay, so again, I mean these things are easy to write down and when you read them, they will all make sense and they will be very wonderful to listen to and all that, but only way this will sink in is if you try to implement, okay, and it is not too hard, you can do this in MATLAB without too many complexities, so one can, one can implement this, okay, so the next thing I want to do is I want to show you, what do I want to show you, I want to show you first, let me show you an illustration of density evolution, I am going to try to open up MATLAB, but will that do something nasty to my thing or never knows, okay, so if it becomes too painful, I will close the recording, but in case it does not, let us see what happens, okay, so how can I run programs and all that, I cannot type easily, this is going to be a pain and then do that, so will you do this open, okay, I am sorry, okay, so you can see, I mean there is lots of MATLAB, if I do not know if you are not familiar with MATLAB, this may not make too much sense to you and this is in fact a badly written program, so do not think you have to write density evolution properly, so basically I am doing it for a regular code with left degree 3 and right degree 27, so what is the rate, left degree 3 and right degree 27, so what is the rate, 8 by 9, 8 by 9 is the answer, so I am doing it for, so you see there are some FFT length and all that, I am doing it in a very badly calculated way, so you will see there are a lot of plots, so what I am plotting is, I am doing something called output, basically PV is the, PV, this PV that you see here is the, so it says title says the bit to check, so V is bit to check, okay, so I have done the opposite here, I am sorry, I think I did U for the bit to check in the notation and again I am also plotting the check to bit F, so PV is the PDF of the bit to check message, P is the PDF of the bit to check message, P out is actually for the output, I am also doing that, it is not too crucial, okay, so let us see, I am going to run this, my sigma is 0.4, channel noise variance is 0.4, so which is quite low, so let us run this, what should I do, okay, okay, there you go, so we got one plot which is, can you see the plot, so it says output is basically, and do not worry about what output is, it is basically some PDF, the overall PDF with iteration 0 and the bit at a rate is 0.00621, now I have to press enter or something on the main window, how should I do that, go to the next one, now it did not go, how do I press enter here, it is paused, I have to press any key, so I do not know how to press any key, double click is not working, so I think I should do, I should do this, no, space, okay, then, yeah, it is gone, good, I got it, so let me move this here so that I can, can you see it, okay, so this is the PDF of the bit to check message in iteration 0, you see it is the same as the previous plot, right, it is the, basically this is what, this is the Gaussian with mean 2 by sigma square, what is 2 by sigma square of sigma is 0.4, yeah, so you see the mean is around 12. something which is correct, okay, so I have not made any mistake, if you want you can check with the variance also, so that is the, that is basically the input PDF, okay, so I am going to press enter, oh my goodness, oh okay, I know what I have to do, I have to run something else now, how do I run something else, or how do I load, how do I run something else, again open, but this will need some input, how do I give inputs, keyboard, no, it will not work, so if I run this, what will happen, oh, I will do this, wait, wait, wait, let me see, maybe what will happen if I run this, okay, so I have to put the, okay, so let me try this, okay, maybe I will try this, oh my goodness, no, no, no, this will not work, this will not work, this will not work, you know what I can do, I can do one more thing, let me try this, I think if this works, it will be much simpler, let us do a paste, beautiful, now I do enter, how do I do enter, enter, there was some enter here, wow, that is very nice, so but that does not mean this will work, no, okay, so I have to just cut and paste from here, oops, major experiment in, how do I do close brackets, semicolon, okay, this is wonderful, okay, okay, okay, opening it where, yeah, that will be better, why am I wasting so much time doing this, it is nice to see this happen, but looks like I cannot see my mouse, okay, there it is, oh, it is busy, stop the recorder, stop the recorder,


be able to come to a noontime meeting and it depends on who you are and where you work Etc. Um, but I think that there needs to be a variety of times to make sure that we do capture as many people as possible So, um, I'm very supportive of this And I'm hopeful that This will be more than a discussion about The mural as everyone said it's a discussion about who we are Who we include in our community who we have excluded and who we want to make sure we don't exclude And and anticipating the next group of people that come to our community And want the community to reflect them Thank you. Thank you. Councillor busher. We'll go to councillor more And then to councillor diang Councillor more No, councillor more has the councillor more you have the floor and then we're going to councillor Oh, you're passing. I didn't hear you. We need to speak in the microphone so I could hear that But councillor more has passed and we'll go to councillor jang Thank you president right um Yes, I think it is very important for all of us again to know why we're here To think about why we're here. We are elected officials People in this community put their trust on us We might not agree with each other most of the time We might not agree with each other most of the time But We have a moral obligation To work together It is our obligation to respond to the people that elected us all of us And we cannot we will never be able To try to solve a problem An issue with the same level of thinking that we used to create them In 2004 we all know that the Church Street Marketplace they have a statement of goodwill In that statement, they use so many different examples on how Discrimination is hurting and how they don't want it there Despite all of that a mural was created with a lens that took equity away And again, we want to create another task force We were elected To make sure that every single person who leave and work here Are safe. They feel safe. They feel respected. They feel part of the process This has been a problem for so long It never came to the table for people to discuss Alberta patriarca raised this this this concern A white person activist he raised this concern and now we are here trying to take The concern the issue under the rug I don't think that's that's fair And I don't think that we do understand How the intention was pure Maybe it was so pure. We want to celebrate This is the name of what we call everyone love the parade Everyone love the parade the name just a title of that piece of art everyone Some people who don't see themselves brought the concern up here and now we're trying to put it under the rug I don't think it's fair We cannot move forward With any other resolution until we get the right answers from the city attorney There are a couple of things that are missing we need to know and once we know all of them Right a task force can be we can bring a task force forward If I have the power that whole alleyway will become piece of art Because we are known as Burlingtonian as artists. We are known as community members. We care for each other We we value we have many things that we value We value the lake we value our elected officials Bernie said we value all of them The person who was just right here I mean explained how an african-american how the before the soldiers the history All of that the art the piece of art is still there and it is reminding The resident of this city Most of them that you do not belong And I think it is very important sometime even among us We send Signals we send we talk about stuff that maybe you You cannot understand If you are not a person of color when we talk about discrimination You cannot understand it When we say we are discriminating women you cannot understand until you're a woman We cannot understand And as elected official it is our moral obligation Knowing that now 30 percent of our students are people of color and this is used as an opportunity for learning for growth We want to take it and put it under the rug From taking it away to be a ballad item question To Moving it around because my resolution that I introduced had a panel into it had a task force into it But we played around played around until yeah I don't think that's all of that is fair We cannot talk about a task force until we get all the right information that we Nicely, I mean respectfully ask the city attorney to do so We are talking about a piece of art. We don't even know if the contract exists The the reporters can go to canada and find the artist Why can't we find it and talk to him? I think all of those are very important thing That we need to talk about We know visual arts. It's it's protected by virah But we don't know if this specific art is also under that protection A lot of things are unknown And we want to Solve a problem without getting to the roots The roots is we know everything that is legal And again, if I had the power the whole alleyway would become piece of art and we have local artists International muralists who play all over the world and they reside right here And we also do know that before even this art piece of art here There was another piece of art and it was included on on the report Was that person Received any Notification about we're gonna take your piece of art down. We want to put another one. Do we know all of that? That person came here one day public forum spoke here in front of all of us You know Yeah, I do I do I do really do think that We need to pay extra attention. We need to open our hearts We need to listen to each other. We need to hold our hands We need to create a better feature for what's coming next The next generation it's not easy It is not easy because it is discriminating It is systematic. It is structural But we together I believe berlington can lead the world This is not maybe hurting most of the people it's not But it is important for me. I will not be supporting this resolution And I do believe it is important before we move forward to get the right answers and then We can move forward. Thank you. Thank you councillor jang. I'm gonna go to councillor more just to caution that Sort of what like councillor hartnett said earlier, which there's you can vote against the that's up to each councillor You can vote for or against the resolution or if you You can vote to just defeat this resolution if you want or if you feel that you want to postpone action That is a different course of action that you could take just to put that out there. So we'll go to councillor more now Thank you. Um, so I will be supporting this um because I think um, well, I I understand councillor jang's points. Um, I think that regardless of whether We own, you know, we own the mural regardless of what the answers to those questions are We're gonna want to move forward in some way and so That's why i'm supporting this um with without those answers And I don't know. I don't see how we're sweeping this under the rug. Um, it doesn't mean That that's not happening surely well intentioned people have done that before Um, so I don't want to say that you're not accurate in that. Um, sorry. I spoke straight to the councillor jang um And and maybe I don't see that because of privilege. That's possible. Um, so I just want to acknowledge that That's all Thank you councillor more councillor hartnett Thanks, um, I I don't know what it is to be Like a person of color and never walked in their shoes and I don't pretend to know that And I think anyone does is kidding themselves. So I will say that right up front But what I do take objection to Uh That for years That this council or this administration or previous administrations Uh, don't care about people's safety like We do such a great job in this city And the city council has done tremendous work in this area And many different areas to make the assertion that members of this council this administration or previous administrations Have not made it safe or a welcoming city here in brolington. It's just not accurate. It's not true and I take that personally We've done a tremendous job in this city over the last 20 years Of making this city welcome to everybody And we have opened our arms and we've done great things in this city And just recently when donald trump has been elected this administration this council stood up and made sure that everyone Should feel safe in this city and if you didn't we reinsure you we've done great work in this city Are we perfect? No But for someone to sit here and make the assertion that this city council somehow has not acted in a way That we don't welcome people and that we don't people It's not responsible to make it's a fair statement to make Thank you. Thank you. Councillor hartnett other councillors councillor shannon than roof I take great offense At the idea that the intention of this resolution is to sweep anything under the rug In fact what this resolution will do is it'll bring more people into the process So it won't just be the people at this table It will be a more inclusive process and we'll get input From from a variety of viewpoints that are not currently at this table Um, and that's the intention It's a public process to say sweep it on the rug It makes it sound as if we're doing this behind the scenes, which is not at all the case. These are public meetings They they'll have minutes. They will might have Um chance of having deep bridge And they'll have commuters So I think that that is Not an accurate framing of what we are trying to do here And I also take offense at the repeated claims that the city attorney is has not come up with the quote right answer And I think that the answer Is that there are some things that are not Completed at this point. It is certainly not her fault that they are not completed She has described to us the state of where things are today And that is the best that she can do Her review was thorough and it was clear to the point to the extent that where we are can be clear There depending on what direction we need to go in depending on the input both from Uh, the task force if I hope we go in that direction and ultimately the decision of this body Um That will inform what additional work needs to be done So that we can move forward and I hope again that we will um move forward with uh an inclusive task force That is the point Thank you councillor shan and um Councillor jang you want the floor again? Yes. Um, thank you. Thank you president right And you know, I I think it is very important. Um to clarify a couple of things What I just said over here again I am not turning My back to what I said And when I say it it's very true Which means that when I say that this city We need to come together It does not mean this city has not been doing great things If I am here today sitting here right because the people of word seven are saying black lives matter As an immigrant a muslim only person of color at this council Which is a great and wonderful thing that we welcome inclusion diversity and equity That's so accurate and I want to make that very clear But what I cannot understand or what you want to put in my mouth that I did not say Is this The member of this council as I said this is not easy We are leaders and when there is a problem there it should not even be A task force to solve it This is a problem that people brought up here We need to take action and when we have to do it we have when we have information Are not together fully yet They not Right, we don't see the contract. We haven't talked to the we don't even we think we own the the the middle We we don't know All of that are we don't know how can we take action if we don't know And why can't we take the action if we get all the information? Why do we need to take a Mural a mural task force? Again, what I'm saying is very clear and it's very simple. I'm sorry if I have an accent I'm sorry if sometimes my words are very heavy But I'm not backing down to what I said and again This is an inclusive city and we think we said no to Jeff session Fine burger That's Burma. This is Burma. This is Burlington We include people. We love them and we elected a black person here But when we have this type of discussion, what I'm saying don't push it in the rug Let's plan a A task force a task force was created to bring this problem And their intention was not to bring it. We made a mistake and as elected official if we see it We respond to it right away. We need the right information and attorney again. Thank you for your work Thank you. All right. Thank you councillor jane. Are we ready for the no councillor mason. I'll be brief I will be supporting this I Respectfully disagree and believe that a task force is a way to generate more discussion and greater input We just went through an election where I didn't hear Anyone campaigning on less transparency or less public input. In fact, I think we all heard very much the opposite so And the iraq Decisions were being by a small group of people at the city So I'm you know, I support a group that's going to do more reach out and be composed Of members who aren't sitting at this table to help us through this process. Thank you. Thank you councillor mason Councillor roof. I'll also be brief. I'll be supporting this resolution Namely just for a lot of reasons that were discussed, but also I've had I'm not sure about anyone else but Three people reach out to ask when they could start applying for the task force and I'll just make note of the timing I believe its applications will be due by April 19th. I believe 16th. Thank you And so there's plenty of time between now if this does pass and the application date Additional time. Well, we have to go through the process of appointing and then getting the work up and running It'll probably won't be until mid may so I look forward to the additional information from the city And I believe that a lot of those answers will be in by the time this committee this task force rather gets to work Thank you. Thank you councillor roof. I'm going to give the mayor the final word unless somebody is dying this week after Thank you acting president right. I just wanted to um Uh, no, I appreciate the Tone and the and the reason that was articulated And the councillor jeng's final point here on his frustration for why we cannot just take action to be done with something that it appears And from past discussions, I think he thinks the Decision the choice of what should be done is is quite clear. I think that's a frustration Probably all of us have had as members of city government We want action and we want to be able to move forward with it. Um, in this case I respectfully disagree with council jeng council jeng that The course of action Is completely clear or moreover that um, even if we had some kind of consensus on this council that the Um decision made on this council and with the approval of the administration would be received without Received well and accepted by the public without Um additional process. My sense is that this this issue is actually quite polarizing within the community at this point and the reason I have supported the creation of a Uh, a task force is in the hope that this group will Um, will work hard. Uh, it will be composed of people Who represent a broad array of viewpoints and are respected in the community and that they will help Us help the community move through what is currently a fairly polarized discussion. I hope you're right at this thing Which is more broadly accepted And actually leads to the kind of progress that councilor busher referenced earlier. I think that is a possible outcome here And uh, I I'm hopeful the council will act tonight So that we can get started with this important work and um It is in no way from my perspective in an effort to Sweep anything under the rug. It is in fact the opposite in effort to Have a full discussion and reach some kind of Broad community acceptance of what is currently a difficult issue Thank you, mr. Mayor. I think that we should be Have exhausted this debate and be ready to vote on the resolution to create a seven member task force Uh, would the attorney's office to get application process forms and to report back finally in july Correct. All right with that all those in favor of passing the resolution. Please raise your hands And those opposed That vote is nine to one with two absent Uh, and that resolution passes. So we will have created the seven member task force Um, that completes that item and we will now move ahead to item number seven Which is committee reports Um, any committee chair that would like to report to the council on committee activity Seeing none that finishes item number seven And we'll move ahead to item number eight, which is city council Council general city affairs Thanks, um, I just wanted to uh touch base and explain my No vote on the outdoor Application time for and again, and it's no disrespect to the members that stand on the committee And I know there's one at least fairly new But we've had a big discussion about outdoor seating here in the city and and we need to Be consistent on on how we address that and whether it's 400 residents living around the area or whether it's four I think we need to follow some process to say You know, we need your input. We need your involvement. And uh, so I think we have to be more consistent when we are Considering outdoor seating in our city and I I hope that we can do that. I don't think that's a new message here tonight That's why I kind of voted no on on the just Bring it about like it's been two years now And we've had discussions around this table about how we're going to administer Administrative outdoor seating. So hopefully You know, maybe that's something that worked that that committee can do in the upcoming year About a more consistent process in that regard. Thanks. Thank you. Councillor Hartnett. Councillor Dean Well, I'd like to I appreciate the input that I we've just received from Councillor Hartnett and and as a new member of the city council someone who's been here just less than a year I understand there's a lot of history of this issue that that I don't fully appreciate And I think I need to hear more about this and my committee does as well as we think I will say that that I feel it's important that we We have There are other businesses who operate under similar rules And that we again face the issue of equity For all businesses that have a right in grants You know these rights And so we have to be careful in our discussions that we are fair And I think we will address that on the the committee level And I wonder I I did miss the opportunity because I was in discussion with councilor roof Give us a committee report Mr. Chairman Dean to mention that the The Local control subcommittee and the licensing committee will be meeting tomorrow afternoon here at 445 in In the Room 12 downstairs Great. Thank you for that report chairman dean any other councillor on jenny general city affairs Hearing none we'll move on from that item to item number nine, which is a report from the president Councilor note. I talked to president. No doubt. She has no update. So we'll move Them to item number 10 I'll revert from the mayor on general city affairs. Mr. Mayor. You have the floor Thank you acting president right. I I'll be brief as well. Just uh, I want to say congratulations to all the Councillors that were re-elected and uh, let's see so Councilor like pine here earlier as well. We'll be joining the council and I'm Grateful for the opportunity to continue to work with it with this council and look forward to the New organization day in april Um, and that's uh, that's what I had for tonight councilor. All right. Thank you, mr. Mayor And we might just add congratulations. Mr. Mayor to you as well I'm a hard fought election and Ready to move on now and add my congratulations to every Re-elected city council as well Um With that I think we're ready for a motion to adjourn. Councilor hartnett moves it seconded by councilor jane All those in favor please say aye any opposed. We are adjourned. Thank you very much


All right, so write this chapter's name, semi-conductors. So this chapter is, it introduces a unique type of material, which is named as semi-conductors. So because of its unique properties, we can utilize this material to create various useful instruments. These instruments could be as simple rectifier than solar cells or photo diodes, LEDs, transistors. In fact, the laptop which you have, if semi-conductors would not have been there, we cannot imagine any of the electronics device so as to say. So we will get into the application of semi-conductors towards the later part of the chapter. And since we are getting introduced to this particular substance, which is semi-conductor, so first we will devote good amount of time understanding what is its property and how it behaves, which leads to some useful application of this particular device, of this particular material. So that is what this chapter is all about. And again, but then that question will come in your mind again and again that what is so special about this particular substance. So before I can elaborate in greater detail, I'll just talk about some basic difference between semi-conductor and so to say metals.  When I say dumb device, what I mean to say is that it doesn't apply its own thought or its own logic. It just goes by what is the external condition and based on that, the current will move in this particular piece of metal. So if you have a battery like this, the current will go like that. If you reverse a polarity, what will happen to current? Are you guys on mute? So tell me, I'm asking something. So if you reverse a polarity, what will happen to the current? It will go in the opposite direction. Right, so right now it is, let's say clockwise. Now it will become anti-clockwise. So this metal piece, it just goes by whatever is the external condition. And based on that, the current will flow. What semi-conductor does is that it will apply its own logic based on which it is not just completely dependent on what is external condition. Internally also, depending on how you're connecting the semiconductor, the flow of the current and voltage and everything can be affected. So basically, semi-conductor gives you a conditional flow of current or conditional voltage. So it sort of give you if then else statement itself. If this happens, then something will happen. If something else happened, then what was earlier happening will not happen. For example, let's say you have a piece of semiconductor, let's say a P-ingension, which we'll study a little bit later. If you connect a battery like this, current will flow. It will flow. But if you connect the same P-ingension like this, the current doesn't flow. There is no current. And right now, there is a current. So there is a conditional flow of current. It does not just depends on what is a voltage you are applying. And there are so many other useful applications. For example, there can be a device in which if current flow like this, then only a current like this can be supported. So this horizontal line current is possible only when the current flows vertically. So again, this is an intelligent device. So based on the conditions, it changes its behavior. Fine? So we know that entire computer science or entire, so to say, processing itself is nothing but if-then-else statement only, isn't it?  So like that only, semiconductor gives you a conditional output. So hence, it is very useful to build devices, which I'm talking about. OK, so we will first talk about the properties of semiconductor. Let's see what are some of the properties of semiconductor that makes it different from a metal and a non-metal. So what is the best way to understand how it is different? The best way is to just classify it based on the properties. So we have, first, the classification of the material. When I say material, I'm just talking about three kinds of material here. Metals, semiconductors, and non-metals. So we are classifying first all these material, based on conductivity. So let's see how they are different based on conductivity. So mind you, you should always understand one thing that this is just a classification. Classification is not a definition of anything. This is the way these substances are different. So just because semiconductors, conductivity is, let's say something, it doesn't make it special that way. It's just a classification of these three substances. So first one, all of you write down metals. What do you think their conductivity will be? Conductivity will be very high. And resistivity will be very less. So the value of resistivity is of the order of 10 to the power minus 2 to 10 to the power minus 8 ohm meter. And the value of the conductivity, you know it is inverse of resistivity. You guys know this or not? Yes, sir. OK. Conductivity is just inverse of resistivity. So if resistivity range is 10 to the power minus 2 to 10 to the power minus 8, conductivity range is just inverse of it. The inverse of ohm is represented by letter S. So this is the metal. And if you look at semiconductors, semiconductors have moderate conductivity and moderate resistivity. So their resistivity is of the order of 10 to the power minus 5 till 10 to the power 6 ohm meter. So you can see that there is an overlap of the values of resistivity for metals and semiconductors. Fine. So that you should keep in mind. And resistivity, of course, it will be inverse. So 10 to the power 5 to 10 to the power minus 6 like this. Now comes the nonmetal. What do you think nonmetal's resistivity will be? It will be very high, right? Resistivity will be very high and conductivity will be very less. So the value of resistivity is of the order of 10 to the power 11 till 10 to the power 19. So you can see how much is the difference between metals resistivity and the nonmetal's resistivity. There is a huge gap. Fine. So the resistivity of metals starts from 10 to the power minus 2. And the resistivity of the nonmetal, it starts from 10 to the power 11. So there is a big gap. Metals and nonmetals don't overlap when it comes to the values. So the conductivity, of course, should be very less. And it is inverse of resistivity. So it is like this. So these are the classification based on their conductivity and resistivity values. And it is found that the resistivity and conductivity of the semiconductor is in a way in between the metals and nonmetals. So that is the reason why one of the reason you can understand why the name is semiconductors. So since our prime interest is with respect to semiconductors, so we will try to understand semiconductors in greater detail. We have classified first all the materials into different kinds of material. Now what we are going to do is that we'll classify the semiconductor itself based on what kind of semiconductor it is. So let's try to classify semiconductors. Again, right now we are just discussing some of the properties of semiconductor or how it is different from others. We haven't yet gotten into detail about how these properties can be used. That will come a little bit later. So be patient. And right now just focus on the properties of the semiconductors. The semiconductor broadly can be divided into two types. One is elemental. This is elemental semiconductor. And the other one, you can say it is compound semiconductors. Now the example of elemental semiconductors is silicon and germanium. Both silicon and germanium, they are from the same family. But the carbon is not semiconductor. So you will understand why others are not semiconductors a little bit later. But then these are the two examples of elemental semiconductors. Now this is compound semiconductor. And the compound semiconductor itself can be further classified into three parts. The first one is inorganic. Inorganic compound semiconductors, then you have organic. And the last compound semiconductor is organic polymers. So when I say organic compounds, I'm excluding organic polymers semiconductors. I'll quickly write down a few of the examples. So inorganic semiconductor could be cadmium sulfate, gallium arsenate, like this. Then organic compound could be doped poly anthracines. So it is doped. And organic polymers can be polyperol. So I'm not getting into too much of detail with respect to the compound semiconductor because in our syllabus, we are just going to discuss about elemental semiconductor. Compound semiconductor is not in our syllabus. So this is with respect to, let's say, just physical classification or how they are, what they're made up of.