Mal Glowenke is headed to the polls! Host of the Made It Out podcast and aspiring Mayor of the Lesbians, Glowenke joined GLAAD’s Anthony Allen Ramos to talk about her upcoming special series, attending the Democratic National Convention, and what’s at stake at the upcoming election.
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Premiering September 17th, Glowenke is hosting a 6-part special series called Made It Out (To the Polls,) a voter education series specifically designed for queer women, produced by Mathilde Jourdan.
She talks about her inspiration behind the series, “I think a good place to start to help people understand why this gay podcast is getting involved in politics is to help people understand my background. I grew up in Texas where I feel like it’s part of the culture that women should not really care to learn or venture into things outside of the household. And I also grew up in a house where we just didn’t really talk about politics.”
She continues to say that like so many others, “I was one of those people who would say things like you know, I’m not interested in politics. I just don’t care, I don’t want to think about it. It doesn’t affect me. Growing up, I really just didn’t realize what a privileged stance that was to take.”
About the upcoming special, she says that, “I learned that we need to care about issues that affect us and issues that affect other people. We need to have the hard conversations. So, having a platform, I see this as my opportunity to kind of pay it forward and give that to other people who may be kind of stuck in that place of not knowing why they should care.”
She talks more about what fans can expect from the series. “We partnered with LPAC which is a lesbian, non-binary, political Action Committee, and they helped us work with a lot of these LGBTQ politicians. I think something that’s really important is humanizing politicians. I think that a lot of times we kind of just see this separation and we don’t understand that these are very normal people who weren’t politicians until they were.” She continues, “It’s just kind of a chance to sit down with them, understand what got them into politics, hear some of their personal stories and then hear what’s important to them policy wise.”
Glowenke understands that a lot of people are feeling overwhelmed by everything going on at this time, but she warns against letting this make you feel helpless and like your vote doesn’t matter. “I think that’s what they want you to believe. I think that’s what we’re being told, in hopes that we believe it and we stay home. I think that a lot of the right relies on our complacency because the thing is that they’re gonna go out and fucking vote.”
Glowenke recently had the chance to attend the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. There, she shared with attendees, including Scandal’s Kerry Washington, how she’d be running for “Mayor of the Lesbians.”
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She shares that the campaign was really just ‘a fun cheeky way to get people to kind of head tilt and pay attention to political content.” At the end of each video she included a frame asking viewers; “Are you registered to vote?”
She shares that fans can look forward to guests on the series such as Congresswoman Becca Balint and Senator Tammy Baldwin just to name a few.
Made it Out (To the Polls) premieres September 17th. Stream wherever you listen to podcasts.