Hello, it is the Queer Talks Podcast Episode Two.
Yes, who's ready for it?
Yes, so on the way on this podcast, we're going to have a very, very special guest, Milo Mars,
talking all things, what it's like being an autistic trans man in the community and art he does for the trans community,
how we use his art to document being trans.
And of course, we're going to be talking all things, how autism, kink and just being queer, porn, stuff like that intersects together,
which is going to be absolutely amazing.
So there are ways to get in touch with this podcast, Queer Talks Podcast with Kai at gmail.com,
on Instagram, Queer Talks Podcast, on Twitter, Queer Talks Pod, and of course, on Facebook, Queer Talks with Kai.
Leave a review on what you think about the podcast.
And if you like what you hear, please spread the word of the podcast.
And of course, if there's any topic you want me to talk about, please get in touch.
We'll try and get the relevant guests to talk about the certain topic.
And yeah, it will be hopefully a good episode and thought provoking, which I want this podcast to be all about.
So there's a couple of things I want to say before I get my guests on.
Apologies for the music overpowering my voice on episode one.
I am new to podcasting, so I am learning everything about podcasting.
As you know now, I do a little introduction, then play the tunes, the little intro, and then I continue speaking.
So yeah, apologies about that.
It is episode one, though.
And as I say, I am learning.
And also a big, big well done to Stefan for the Mr. Lever London 2024 title.
Absolutely amazing.
Huge, huge congratulations to Stefan.
Sadly didn't win, but as an autistic man, I went out on my comfort zone in a good way and I made my voice heard.
Me and Chris are still going to continue our project for me.
My project is all about making disability friendly events in London.
And it is a bit more difficult due to the architecture of the buildings.
But I will try and get something sorted.
And yeah, hopefully Stefan will be a future guest to talk all things about his project.
I need to send him a little invite.
But yes, got all this talk out of the way.
No time to waste.
Let's get my guest on the lovely Milo Mars on the Queer Talk podcast episode two.
And welcome to the second episode of Queer Talks with Kai.
And today I am with a very, very special guest, Milo Mars.
Hello, Milo.
Hey, hey there.
How are you doing?
I'm doing good.
That's great.
How are you?
Good, also thank you.
Yeah, so for people who may not know about you, explain a bit about yourself.
Oh, I'm an artist and a trans and kink educator that currently does porn too, now and again
online.
And I've recently been working on a project with educating within trans health care to
try and help people understand, I guess, bottom surgery and other stuff that trans people
don't necessarily always talk about.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's amazing.
So we've got so many questions to get through in this episode, a bit about being autistic
and trans and of course how, as an autistic man, it influenced your interest in kink,
leather and porn.
So yeah, there's no time to waste.
So my first question is to you, because as someone with Asperger's, I can understand
we have our own troubles, but then being trans as well, I can imagine you have your own troubles
in that sense too.
So how can you share a bit about your journey, both discovering both your autism and transgender
identity and how it came to understanding and embrace these aspects of your life?
Well, from an early age, I've experienced masculinity and gender in itself through a
different lens that I assume a lot of the kids might have been experiencing their gender
expressions.
I never really understood gender social norms or specifically why I myself, being born assigned
female at birth, why I should have to uphold certain traditional stereotypes.
When I was a young child, I was perfectly fine with being able to express that.
My current interests, I was very much into action figures and play in army with my other
friend and stuff until kids will be kids.
I used to get bullied quite a lot and get questioned, are you a boy or are you a girl?
And it kind of took me aback and I was like, well, I see myself as more masculine and somewhere
in between.
I wouldn't come to the notion that I was non-binary until I was about 20.
But from that early age, I knew specifically who I was.
But I mean, bullying, as bullies do, I'd eventually get bullied into the closet.
And the same kind of happened with my autism as well.
I remember being quite young and getting asked by a child that used to be friends with my
mum, because my mum used to be friends with her mum.
And they had an autistic brother who was experiencing a lot more, I guess, experiencing autism in
a different way.
It was more profound in its way to say it affected their family.
And her mum and my mum would talk and be like, well, James is going through this.
And so she knew I was autistic.
I had no clue.
Because my parents hid it from me.
They kind of were in the way of thinking that if I didn't know that I was autistic, I wouldn't
be held back.
Of course, we know scientifically every autistic person has actual neurodiverse qualities that
are sort of intricate within neuroscience and the way that the brain is formed.
So I was going through things like sensory overload and social issues, not understanding
that there was a reason for that.
And she goes to me, my friend, at the time, like, do you get the stamp at Lego land?
And all the class kind of laugh.
And I'm like, yes, I do.
How do you know that?
And she's like, oh, yeah, it's because you're autistic.
Everyone knew in that class that I was autistic.
It was kind of like a rumor at the time.
And I go to my parents and go, well, am I autistic?
And they kind of wanted to deny it at first, but yeah, they eventually they say.
And I sort of went into the closet of trying to mask.
So I didn't necessarily get any of the support.
And I sort of put myself through the whole trying to be quite and quite normal.
I feel like a lot of trans people, especially the ones that are kids and that do notice
that something is wrong with their identity and the correlation between that and autistic
people who are very much like they have their own way of doing things and are very like
set in their understanding of who they are.
They know exactly who they are, but they get bullied enough that they try to attempt to
to mold themselves out of that situation will later then transition.
And I don't know, like at least that was what happened with me.
So I guess that that is some of the issues that I've had at present now.
I don't know if I really have that many, many issues that kind of current side, I guess,
maybe social socializing.
I do worry often with social social groups, like even ones, even with friends at present
because of all of the bad experiences that I had as a child, the billion and the being
told that I couldn't be who I was.
I often feel like that I need to present in a more masculine fashion, even though I myself
just I'm a trans man that is incredibly queer and I don't really feel the need to be all
macho macho.
But some some guys might try to say that if I'm not necessarily macho macho, am I can
I truly call myself a man?
And you got the it that transphobia that might occur.
And to be honest, I haven't had that many bad experiences within the communities that
I am in.
And to be honest, like the majority of the people I talk to are probably going to be
really lovely, lovely people.
It just it's something that just exists within my brain as a pattern.
And I'm doing my best now that I've kind of transitioned to a point that I'm I'm comfortable
within my body to to be able to then go out and present in in the ways that I find joyful
and really supportive of my autistic creativity.
So yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, that's great.
So I from my experiences, I know it's different, but as a gay guy, I feel like my autism helped
me be much more confident as a gay man.
Like, as you know, with autism, when you what's the word I'm trying to think of?
Like when you you well with my autism anyway, because autism is different for everyone,
but quite outspoken or from my experience anyway.
So when I knew I was a gay man, for me, I was very, very open with it.
So my question to you is as a as someone who's autistic and a trans man, do you think being
autistic influenced your experience of being trans and vice versa?
Yeah, because like, I don't know, like I I think my like my wanting to really belong
was a difficulty and at times has kind of dampened it.
I am finding my my sort of my my style, my fashion sense back after after not being able
to like to like be able to, I don't know, do makeup and really like love the feminine
things that exist within within the world that I quite like, like, for instance, Beyonce,
love Beyonce, but I used to not like like listening to music as a child, because like
I wouldn't listen to any female artists.
So like, people would tell me, no, you can't like that.
And my my autism definitely affected like the fact that I was able to like, say from
a very early age in like non-descript terms, because I didn't know what non binary as a
name was when when I was in primary school, but I was able to specifically say to the
kids around me, no, this is who I am.
People didn't like it.
And then to be honest, like, people are not always going to like who you who you are,
but they can shove it because I don't know.
As long as you're not hurting anyone.
Exactly.
What you want to do and being a trans man or trans woman, you're not hurting anyone.
Yeah, exactly.
You're just being yourself.
Yeah.
I don't know.
What else?
Trying to think.
I suppose also like maybe it's given me like ways of explaining very complex ideas to
say, like somebody that didn't necessarily have the sort of education or teach teaching
them like in a way like that, they didn't have the words.
So I'm able to describe something like gender, for instance, in a simpler way.
And I found that like helpful, I suppose.
Because with autism, you're like able to think outside the box a lot more.
At least that's what I have kind of best kind of like used my my autism creativity to try
and do within my art and just within my ability to to do education.
And I don't know, like, so I guess maybe maybe that like, for instance, some people on on
this podcast, like listening to this podcast, might not understand that like, well, yeah,
you can be a trans man and non binary.
Like, I kind of view my gender as pizza.
So like the male base, feminine topics, or whatever, whatever kind of clothes you want,
whatever kind of stuff you want, that there always be this base.
And my base just happens to be male, some base bases might be female, some bases might
be a mixed mixture of both.
And I think, yeah, sorry, this is tangent.
It's a tangent.
I've just tried to like, try it tried to like, answer the question to its fullest, whilst
also being unbelievably ADHD.
No, it's totally fine.
You're doing a good job.
Yeah, doing a good job.
God.
But yeah, no.
So stuff like that, and I feel like being able to have those like open and honest conversations
and come out like topics without necessarily.
I don't really get like angry at people for not being not having the understanding just
yet.
It's just as long as they're willing to learn and have an open ear.
It's, it's important.
Yeah, sorry.
Can I just say like, having people like you are important because as you know, I radio
present for a station called Trans Radio UK.
I've been with them for five years now.
And before that, I'm going to be completely honest, I never knew trans people are a thing.
So it was like non binary.
And I'm going to be open about this.
At the time, I didn't realize I upset someone who was trans because I didn't realize non
binary was the thing and me being stupid, not having an educational research, either
male or female, you can swap.
Well, I hate using that word, but that's because I was uneducated.
You can't.
I wouldn't call it stupid.
But I definitely uneducated in the in that but you know, I honestly, everybody is trying
to unload, unlearn a social program and that all of us was were brought up with I didn't
know what trans people were like, at all.
I think like the first time I ever saw a trans man was in a into some newspaper.
And it was this guy who's pregnant, he was a trans man, he had kids.
I just thought men could get pregnant.
I was like, Oh my god, that's really cool.
And go up to like, my like friends that were voices.
You'd better be careful.
You might get pregnant.
Not understanding that trans men were, say, you know, any from any different from any
other guy, because I just didn't didn't know that I could necessarily take hormones or
get surgery.
I even knew about intersex people before I knew who what trans people were.
So you know, like we all make mistakes.
And we all are on the same kind of path.
And it's really, really cool that you were able to get with trans radio, honestly.
They've told me a lot about the trans community.
And like, for example, you know, with Rocky Horror, how to use the word transfes, like
thanks trans radio UK, the owner, the owner and co owner, one's trans and one's a cis
woman.
So lovely if I have any questions, because I know I'm genuine, I'm not taking a piss.
They let me ask questions as well.
And they answer it.
So having someone where as long as you're being genuine, and they answer your questions,
I think that's great.
And like, I've learned a lot now.
And the last couple of years, I've kind of learned now.
If you see my personal Twitter, I'm always standing up for the trans community.
I've learned now, the trans community need their voices heard.
As a cis man, I've got all the privilege.
So no matter if it's through my presenting or photography or whatever I can do, or like
this podcast now, I've got you on, so your voice is heard, then I will do my best as
a cis man with all the privilege I've got.
And honestly, thank you so much.
It's like, thank you for me being on here.
It's great.
And all of the work you do in the community.
It's brilliant.
Anytime.
Right.
So the next question I want to ask is, and one of them is, it's like, for me, being
autistic, there's a lot of misconceptions.
And from when I've spoke to trans people, there's a lot of misconceptions about being
trans as well.
So yeah, what are some of the most common misconceptions people have about being autistic
and trans and how do you address them?
So I guess with misconceptions about being autistic is I don't like social situations.
No, I'm really extroverted.
I'm incredibly outgoing.
You'll often see me at the majority of your community meets, like the Leather England
community meet that happens every few months or so is lovely.
I have been known to go to a few community meets in the BDSM community in the West Midlands.
But a thing about social situations that I find hard is the social rules of the situation.
I don't necessarily know, like, for instance, if it would be okay if I could just like hang
on the outside of conversation and then jump in when people don't necessarily know that
I'm going to jump in and they might have not invited me to the conversation, so I usually
stay quiet.
Or for instance, things are too loud.
So I might stand on the outskirts of a room and like kind of be like that sort of wallflower.
But it doesn't mean that I'm necessarily introvert that's being kind of like made to go to these
events.
I like people.
I love people.
Really like at times listening to just different people's experiences and what's happening
within their day.
It brings me a lot of joy.
So I guess with autism, those kind of misconceptions that might prevent, say, like people inviting
autistic people to go to events or go out or come to our party.
And it's stuff that kind of prevents autistic people from feeling like they're able to go
to kink events because you get there and it's unbelievably loud or you get there and you
don't necessarily know if you're able to join in or not.
Stuff like the leather community, they meet at the fountain, lovely venue, run by some
amazing people there.
There's a beer garden.
So I would go out into the beer garden.
It's a little bit quieter.
And then you'd come back in to the main area if you want to listen to some music and stuff.
But if it gets too much, you always got that out.
So I often see this with my neurodiversion friends and we all go to like the Hunter in
London, for instance, has something similar like the cigar alley.
You go out there and things are just a lot shierter and you're able to then go back into
the party whenever you want.
This is kind of the thing that I really want event goers to understand that you probably
do need something along these lines that can benefit both the neurodiversion group, people
that do need that place as a means of relaxation.
And then the cigar smokers and the cigarette smokers that do want to use the space to smoke.
Best of both worlds.
It works for everybody.
The same with being trans, I guess.
Oh, God, there's misconceptions about that.
Say I don't know, like I get sometimes like it.
Can I talk about Grindr on here?
Is this?
Yeah.
Okay, cool.
I didn't know if this was.
Okay, that was maybe a stupid question.
We are talking about kink too and leather and whatnot.
I get like sometimes asked on Grindr, like, I don't want to be offensive, but what would
like asking me about like words or what should I call your parts?
And that's a perfectly normal question.
Like I get people that say I don't want to be offensive, but and it's like usually a
out of 10, it's not offensive to ask questions.
Actually it's quite nice that you are even bothering to ask me a question about my trans
identity.
Like it's best you just don't assume.
And sure, you'll get some trans people that might be offended and offence as everybody
like knows.
I guess we were all offended over different things.
And it's never going to be like a foolproof kind of, there's never going to be a foolproof
way of being able to approach a trans person on Grindr.
Just don't be a chaser.
Just don't like, I guess just assume that all trans men are okay with certain words.
That especially if they're like feminine words, most trans men are going to be pretty like
against that.
But then there are like anomalies.
There are trans men that are okay with just any, any, any unanotomical term.
It's just best to ask what would you like?
And most trans men are going to be completely okay with that.
And they're more likely to talk to you just knowing that you're not an asshole.
And I guess we've, we can cross that over to autism.
The whole not assuming because no autistic person is the same.
I might be, I might present my autism in different ways.
Sometimes, for instance, I sometimes stim in public.
Other autistic people don't stim in public.
Stimming is repetitive movement to self-serve.
So rocking back and forth for people that jiggle their legs in public because they're
trying to regulate themselves because it might be too noisy or people that stare off, you
know, some people do that.
Some people don't.
But to go up to an autistic person who has said that they're autistic and say, no, you're
not autistic because my, I know my neighbor, his son's autistic and his son is, insert
whatever, kind of stereotype about us.
I really don't want to even repeat these stereotypes because they're kind of defeatist.
If we want to sort of uphold all autistic experiences.
But, you know, saying something like that and refusing to kind of see a person's kind
of reality because they don't fit those kind of merits that you have held within your head
all this time because of the kind of social media that we kind of consume every day and
the things that like hate groups like Autism Speaks have said previously within the campaigns
about autistic people, it's not going to do anybody favors.
So just being open-minded and making both trans and autistic people feel able to express
their needs and just being an open ear is the best approach to any situation.
Yes, I can totally relate with the autism side of things.
I shared a meme recently which I found funny, but at the same time, it's so true.
There's this woman saying, oh, I have autism and then this guy said to her, oh, you don't
look autistic.
And then like, it was like, Oscar got grabbed to her and she said, thank you, thank you.
It's funny, but at the same time, it's kind of not because it's, as you say, a lot of
time, like for me, I'm high functioning, which is good, but I still have autism.
So I have many situations where I do things because of my autism and then people are like,
why are you doing that?
And I'm like, sorry, I can't help it.
I mean, the thing with, I mean, can I just like say something about functioning?
So I mean, within like the autistic community and within like just autistic research going
on currently, functioning labels have kind of been both positive, like it kind of helps
people to, so when you get diagnosed with autism, usually you get put within these bands.
So I think band one, which is like, you would be like high functioning, like people that
can quote unquote, like live a normal life.
And then you go up in severity and then like band two and band three, band three being
those that might need like more help, like carers that live, live at home with them or
they live in like community, community, like community houses or like, like places where
like you got on site staff and things like that.
But with functioning labels, there isn't anything to say that a person that is high functioning,
like I'm technically could be classed as high functioning, can't then shift along the spectrum
on different days, depending on, you know, have they eaten today?
What is the environment like?
Is it bright lighting?
Like has, are they ruminating today?
Like, what are they like, what's digestion like, for instance, like, if I have a really
upset stomach, I can go really nonverbal, it's horrific.
And then on other days, I'm going to be a lot better because I'm engaging, for instance,
my special interests, such as drawing or making, you know, smart and doing photography, like
I'm a lot happier and more able to like engage within a conversation if I am doing well,
but on other times you're not going to be.
So it's the autistic spectrum, I don't ever really believe and there are some other people
that would say this too, that you are ever just on one side of the spectrum.
It's always, you can be like kind of shifting depending on just the factors of that day.
So to bring it back to Kai, you're saying that, for instance, like high functioning,
but on other days you're like, I can't do this because of my autism, I'm really sorry.
And it's like, yeah, so you're not necessarily functioning that well in those situations,
but sometimes those situations you might be able to do it a bit better if you had this
or that adjustment or this or that like thing.
It really depends on the day, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, I totally agree.
I mean, I am high functioning, but I could have my dates when I...
Yeah, it's such a slidey experience and it's definitely one of the things that is a misconception
because I as a high functioning autistic person, if we're using that function in terms, I'm
not going to function on some things.
And then I actually like autistic burnout, which happens when you're not able to engage
within your autistic special interests for long.
There's a lot of stress, there's people that have misunderstood you and you go into like
a spiral rumination where you can't get out of it, that you just exhaust yourself and
sleep.
Like you can sleep all day and it can last for months to...
I've known friends that have had this happen for them for like two years of just burnout,
like neurodiverse burnout compared to work burnout for the neurotypical people.
Totally different because it is kind of skill regress.
But me being high functioning and me having had something like autistic burnout happen,
I would get people going, well, you're high functioning, so you shouldn't be having this
issue.
And it's like, ah, I can slide, I can be not good on some days.
And it's important to understand on those situations that a high functioning autistic
person, if they're going through something and they're not doing well, when on one day
they might have done well, just don't make it worse by questioning their validity to
say like having extra time doing something.
As long as they understood, they've said why and you're able to like, yeah, they're going
through something, but it's okay.
Same with people with low functioning, for instance, people that need more help.
I would like people to say that more, like they need more help rather than they're low
functioning, but they just need a little bit more help with different things to do something.
If they're having a better day, it would be pretty shitty if people went up to those people
and questioned their validity for their autism.
Even if that doing a little bit better on the day that they might, unusual struggle.
I rarely see that happen.
It's mostly the other way around, but that would be shitty.
So it's good to say, given autistic people, the benefit of the doubt that if they have
told you they need help or they need this or that, it's incredibly nerve wracking to
do that in the first place and they're not trying to be cheeky.
It's just the way it is.
So I am a bit conscious on time.
Sorry, sorry.
You said that has been amazing.
So I've got a couple more questions about being trans and autistic before we go on to
questions about kink, leather, porn as an autistic man.
So a couple more questions I wanted to ask was what are some ways allies like myself
can create a more inclusive and supportive environment for trans individuals as yourself
in their personal and professional lives?
I guess just like, if you are like kind of aware that something that your mate said is
just kind of shitty to trans people, you could like, I don't know, you could potentially
just like say, hey, actually, dude, and just like do it like that.
Or I don't know.
I don't know, there must be ways of approaching it because I sometimes get into like weird
kind of things with like the people that like are sort of like around me at times.
Your friends are not always going to like align with all of your political views at
times.
I try to have friends that do, but sometimes I will like a person for, well, they're really,
really good on these things.
And then you mentioned something and then, you know, I usually will say something that
like, you know, try to educate them or, you know, instead of them, for instance, going
up to a trans person saying something, not understanding that that thing is necessarily
bad because they weren't told previously.
And then getting upset because a trans person gets offended because you said an offensive
thing.
And then you're left to hate a whole group of people because they're all offended and
you don't understand why because all of your friends are not offended over that.
Just say something, just be nice about it, of course, but like just say like, you know,
just so you know, this or that.
And just see what they say.
They might choose to brush it off.
I mean, then it's up to you to figure out if you want to still have that friendship.
And that's on you.
And then I guess with autism, I mean, the same thing applies.
It's just looking out for each other most of the time.
I don't think the majority of people will want to ever really offend people.
I think that's like for a certain type of person.
And I don't want to be near those people.
And it's up to you if you want to be near them.
That's you.
Yeah.
And right.
Last question to do with this topic.
What message would you like to share with our listeners, especially those who may be
struggling with their own identities or facing similar challenges as you've mentioned in
the podcast so far?
Oh, oh, God.
I've got like a few.
So I recently had bottom surgery, a type of surgery that is lower regions.
It doesn't turn you into a bottom.
I've had people joke about that.
Same with top surgery.
Doesn't turn you into a top.
If only.
And it was metodioplasty, which is a type of bottom surgery that uses the anatomy that
you have had previously.
So previously I had TMR anatomy and trigger warning for anatomy.
If any trans listeners are listening, vagina.
But now it's not.
It's metodioplasty.
So I kept my front hole and they kind of create the aesthetics of a dick and balls using these
sort of stuff.
I'm not going to get into the science of it because I have a whole website for that.
On the Flesh archives on Instagram, I'm sure Kai will link this to the Instagram post.
At the end I will put it on the bio of this episode.
So at the end, send me the links and everything and I'll put it into the description of this
episode.
I'm interested to look at it and find out more about the work you do.
And we will be talking about it in a moment as well.
I post a lot of my art there and a lot of the art is very much geared towards the education
around trans healthcare in the UK.
I just want to kind of break down that wall because trans healthcare is just healthcare.
So it's good to understand what current life goes on happening within the medical field
at the moment.
I've posted lots of pictures, sculptures, plaster casts, everything, animations and
all on the website too that's linked to my Instagram.
I feel like now we will go into kink, leather, porn as an autistic man shortly.
But as you just spoke about your art, I thought I might as well just ask the questions about
your art next.
Yeah, sure.
Like on your Twitter bio, you say you're a flesh artist and you've kind of just announced
it a bit.
What does that mean for people who may not know?
It's still quite a new term to me as well.
So yeah, no, it's a new term for us all.
I just kind of coined the term because I'm very much interested with the idea of the
body, anatomy, surgery, and also just texture in general.
A lot of my art revolves around sort of picking apart these surgeries using ink and sort of
just drawing lines and building up hatched cross textures of like body parts.
And currently it is mostly trans surgeries, but I am looking to eventually get into just
surgery in general because the psychology behind being able to see your body as something
that isn't just a medical site, when you're going through something that is, it's difficult,
bottom surgery is difficult, but all surgeries difficult.
Being able to love your body and to look at a site and say, well, that is beautiful rather
than doctors have been putting things into my orifices and my leg is now like this and
I'll never see the, it will never be the same again.
No, things get better.
Things get better over time and it's not going to be what it was, but it's going to be something
new.
The flesh artist.
It's just what makes sense to me.
That and also I do porn.
So you recently did a statue of the term you like to use trans dick.
What is it like?
Can you say more about it?
Oh, so first of all, you get dental goo, which is like dental alginate, it's the powdered
stuff and you slosh it on and it creates a sort of cast that you can then fill up with
plaster.
So it is plaster, but I'm looking to eventually team up with a few of my metal work friends
and make some sort of like aluminium and then we'll see about bronze later on.
But I have like it's three casts.
One of my parts before surgery and sort of like the general anatomy and what things looked
like.
And I mostly wanted to do this because I'm not sure a lot of cis people within this audience
know, but of the things testosterone, HRT does to a trans man taking testosterone.
So one of the things that happens is the clitoris growth expands because I mean, I could get
into the whole like development of the penis.
It is basically the clitoris grows when you're a fetus and that's how the dick is.
So you add testosterone onto a person that has like a estrogen higher, so like, you know,
person that's female, that clit grows.
And I'll call that a T dick because I really hate the word clit.
I hate it.
It's disgusting.
Like it's not for me, not for me.
So yeah, T dick.
But I wanted to show that because with metodoplasty, it really depends on like what you had before
for the length.
And I'm kind of like known to have a very noticeable size for a trans man that has the
surgery.
Usually it's not that big.
And I had a lot of trans men like want to know if they were big enough for the surgery
to get similar results.
So being open about my body and my experiences, I did the second, second plaster, which is
the same, same goo and the same plaster work that you kind of do to show the extension
and where they put the balls and like the position and of everything.
And then I have a last cast for monoplasty, which is like a tummy tuck for your groin.
And it just brings all of the dick and the balls a little bit higher and more front facing
to kind of resemble a cis man's penis.
Yeah, that's the last cast.
That's amazing.
I think you touched on it just a little bit then.
But like, my next question is what inspired you to do it?
Like what do you hope the outcome will be making these statues?
I mean, the whole project, including the statues, is when I was getting bottom surgery, there
was no resources.
I was kind of a little bit terrified.
I knew I wanted bottom surgery.
I really did.
And I was put on a list for a new bottom surgery clinic in London that opened because the only
UK bottom surgery clinic closed over COVID.
Nobody had anywhere to go for bottom surgery.
And it was kind of a national crisis within the trans community.
And being the third patient, third underneath this bottom surgery clinic, I thought about
what if I created those resources?
So I just kind of wanted to do that so other trans guys didn't necessarily have to feel
scared going into their surgery, not knowing if it's going to be okay or not.
Usually, for instance, if you were going for a knee surgery, you could type into Google
knee surgery outcomes and all of these kind of things.
You could get as graphic as you want.
You could get surgery videos quite easily for that.
Yet you couldn't do that with this surgery.
Not as easily.
It was pretty hard to dig through that.
But being able to do that.
And now with Plasticasts, I'm going to be putting them into a 3D software called Blender
for any of the 3D artists and 3D printer nerds out there.
And I'm making an animation step by step of the whole surgery.
So I hope, yeah, it's a lot of maths and I hate maths, but I'm going to do it because
it needs to be done.
And it's going to be there for teaching trans people about the surgery, but also cis people.
And who knows?
I hope to potentially send the actual Plasticasts to a hospital and get them to do their own
animation because I'm sure there's people that would be better at doing this than me.
I'm just an artist that I love to learn new things, so I'm going to give it a go.
And then they can work on an animation because it would be really beneficial for all of the
people that are more squeamish than me that can't watch real surgery to understand what
will happen within this one.
Yeah, that's amazing.
And I've actually got a question which I just thought from the top of my head.
As one of the artists, when you have your surgery done, do you at all document how you
feel drawing it?
Yeah, on my website, I have blog posts that I have written.
I need to get back into writing.
I haven't written in a while, but I have blog posts there.
And they're all written from the style of William S. Burroughs.
He was a beat literature poet.
He wrote a lot of Gonzo-style journalism, but his stuff wasn't necessarily to do with
transness.
He was a queer man and going through a lot of pretty hard queer experiences, living in
the 50s, I think it was the 50s.
And he wrote it from the perspective of a sci-fi novel, very like Aliens and things
like that, but it's all very, very autobiographical, but also incredibly nonlinear.
So I have all of that because I wanted to do something that was raw and emotive.
And then kind of it showed all of the emotions because I'm going to tell you, it's not all
positive.
I'm incredibly happy with my surgery, but I mean, with all surgery, there are things
like post-op depression, which is the side effect of the anesthetic and the fact that
you can't do as much and you have to rely on people to do things for you.
So it's difficult, but yeah, it makes for an interesting read.
I also have those illustrations that I've mentioned, which are hard to look at, but
also kind of beautiful due to havaganda.
That and I also have some animations and some photography of the site, on the site.
I also have another photography project I did a while back about my relationships to
masculinity before I started my surgical journey.
So yeah.
Yeah, that's amazing.
So you mentioned it earlier, but where can people see the different art you've done and
what's your way of the blog?
So my Instagram, the Flesh Archives, there are dashes in there, but they will be attached
to the profile for this and attached to the profile is MarsMilo.com and that is a collection
of different art projects that I did around, just like in and about my bottom surgery journey.
I still need to add a few more things like this animation that's going to hopefully be
coming out with Blender, but yeah, that's where you can find it.
That's amazing.
Right.
For the final topic of this episode, it's all about kink, leather, porn as an autistic
man.
So to kick off this section of our little interview, how would you feel your autism
influences your perception slash interest in kink leather?
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So I need to mention sadomasochism for a bit.
So I'm a sadist, like pretty, pretty, like I like to cause pain.
It makes me laugh.
It's funny.
Of course, within consent, but like when I was a child, I would have these like experiences
that I would say very much linked to my autism, where I would have this checklist of, okay,
sensations.
Like I'd look at something and think, how does this hurt?
Would it hurt?
So I'd do it.
It's very, very jackass of me.
I'd like put my fingers in car doors and then cry and like my parents would be like, why
did you do that?
Because I wanted to see if it would hurt.
And a lot of these things.
And I would say that kind of carries into my way of perception of my like kind of way
of doing kink and sadism is I like to do things that I've experienced myself because then
I know for sure how they are being felt by myself.
The person that is the masochist and is receiving that pain, for instance, flogging, like I
will sometimes I will, but within flogging scenes, mostly as a challenge because I want
to see how long I can go, but also because I want to know what feels good, what feels
bad.
Why would I want to use that certain thing?
And then I will then do it on somebody and I would then be able to learn the skill wholeheartedly
like within my head because I need to do it from bottom to top way of thinking.
And that's usually a thought style that autistic people have bottom to top.
And I guess I like bondage quite a lot.
I'm not even really like I'm a switch.
I'm mostly dumb, but I am a switch.
But even then, like I love the idea of just being like tightly tied up because I'd like
put myself underneath, like I'd be in a ball pit as a child and just like lying there being
crushed and just like, oh, what if what if somebody like accidentally jumped on me and
I got hurt?
Oh, oh, the pressure of it.
Or tight cabinets, just being like hiding in tight cabinets as a kid and that wanting sensory
deprivation because the world was too noisy.
Like I find like a great peace of mind being in such a deprivation.
So I guess like all of this interlinks and I've talked to many autistic people that within
the kink scene because it seems like there's a lot of us in this scene.
It's almost it's correlated.
And so many people will have their own their own ideas of their own experiences.
And it's always so lovely for me to find out they found this lovely community and able
to experience the things that they really like within sensory stuff and just being autistic
through through this.
Yes.
That's great.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
So do you feel that being a trans man intersects with your experiences?
An interesting thing?
Any specific way?
Oh, oh, porn.
Yeah.
And like being able just to be open and proud of my body enough to post online is unbelievably
political, I guess, in today's age.
And also, it's something that needs to be done because there are trans people who were
like me when I was younger.
And I didn't know what a trans person was, because I didn't know and I couldn't see it.
And there can be people that are, you know, they're like sumbling over porn, and they're
coming into it and they're like, Oh, wow, there's, there's, there's a guy here and he's
got bottom surgery and he is trans and open and being, you know, being able to be sexual
and happy and it's needed.
So I see a lot of my like, yeah, being trans and doing porn is currently just like the
way I like to give back.
Yeah, it's like in anything if there's representation.
Yeah, I love the fact that it's not just me, there are so many other people and it's, I
mean, goes the same, the same with any community.
And you know, I do more than just do porn, of course, like within porn circles, like
I talk quite openly about my experiences.
And yeah, I mean, I just I'm just glad that I'm able to do that.
Yeah, as I say, like, I feel like no matter who you are, as long as you're the legal age,
you should be able to freely sexually expressive if you want to be or anything, as long as
you're not hurting anyone.
Yeah, exactly.
You're doing an amazing job because you as a trans man, you're so open and all these
different ways and hopefully with you being open, other trans people can feel more welcome,
more welcome to that body and more exploring and stuff like that.
So you do an amazing job.
Yeah, thank you.
So it's honestly been amazing interviewing today, Mars.
And once again, for anyone interested in Mars art, it will be in the description of wherever
you're listening to this podcast.
It's been a pleasure to interview you.
Have a good rest of the evening.
Thank you.
And you too.
Thanks.
Bye.