Speaker 1: Big things happen when you're pretty, pretty bold, pretty clever,
Speaker 1: pretty strong. I'm Danielle Robe and each week my guests
Speaker 1: and I have conversations that put a new spin on
Speaker 1: pretty This is pretty smart. Can you believe I'm still
Speaker 1: in New York? I was in New York last week.
Speaker 1: I'm still here. I'm here until Sunday. And today I
Speaker 1: was doing something that I look forward to every single year.
Speaker 1: I was with AT and T for Tribeca Festival and
Speaker 1: Untold Stories. So each year AT and T puts this
Speaker 1: on and five talented filmmaking teams pitch their feature projects
Speaker 1: to an expert panel. This year's was Derek Luke, who
Speaker 1: you've seen in Captain America, the first Avenger, Kellen Smith Kenny,
Speaker 1: the chief marketing and Growth officer at AT and tea,
Speaker 1: actor and producer Moe McCrae, actress Michael Michelle, and filmmaker
Speaker 1: and former Untold Stories winner nardeep Kermy. You can actually
Speaker 1: see his film Land of Gold, he won two years
Speaker 1: ago on HBO Max, which is now Max. The cool
Speaker 1: thing is that each year's winner receives a million dollars
Speaker 1: to make their film, so it takes their pitch idea
Speaker 1: to a full length feature and then it debuts at
Speaker 1: the next year's Tribeca Festival. So we saw the film
Speaker 1: that won this year, and then next year it's going
Speaker 1: to debut and premiere at the twenty twenty four Tribeca Festival.
Speaker 1: It's really cool to watch all five pitches because the
Speaker 1: whole program celebrates the power of diverse storytelling, and they're
Speaker 1: really in these writers and directors and actors' corners. I've
Speaker 1: always felt like artists are orchestrators of attention. They instill
Speaker 1: hope time and time again, and we're just so lucky
Speaker 1: to have them, and they need our support, and so
Speaker 1: Untold Stories at and t Tribeca Festival gives them that support.
Speaker 1: It was really cool to be a part of Separately.
Speaker 1: I've been trying to just give you products or podcasts
Speaker 1: or anything that's been amazing in my life. And I
Speaker 1: went to my friend Sifat's dinner a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Sif co founded Array with her husband. She was on
Speaker 1: the podcast, but they did this dinner in partnership with
Speaker 1: Tower twenty eight and she has been telling me about
Speaker 1: this spray for months and I didn't listen to her,
Speaker 1: and then it was in the goodie bag and I
Speaker 1: came home and oh my god, it's incredible. It's called
Speaker 1: the SOS Save Our Skin Spray. It's a daily rescue
Speaker 1: facial spray. This is not sponsored. It's unbelievable. You never
Speaker 1: really hear me talking about beauty products on the podcast,
Speaker 1: but this is something. Okay, let's get to the episode.
Speaker 1: So one of my favorite finales ever is Sex in
Speaker 1: the City. Not really because I loved the finale so much,
Speaker 1: but because of this line, which Carrie delivers during the
Speaker 1: closing montage. The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship evolved.
Speaker 1: It's the one you have with yourself. You gain so
Speaker 1: much by having a good relationship with yourself, but it's
Speaker 1: so easy to say and so challenging to do. Our
Speaker 1: guest today is internationally acclaimed author, poet, comedian and non
Speaker 1: binary activists Aloke, who knows all about a curvy journey.
Speaker 1: If you've ever heard them speak or have read their writing,
Speaker 1: you know they're beautifully articulate and disarmingly honest in a
Speaker 1: way that kind of makes you question everything you've ever
Speaker 1: believed about gender, self love, trauma, and well everything. And
Speaker 1: during our conversation, there was a lot of that. We
Speaker 1: talked about identities, struggles.
Speaker 2: I say that Hatred has been the most reliable lover
Speaker 2: in my life.
Speaker 3: It's someone that I.
Speaker 2: Could always go back to evolving. The true transition for
Speaker 2: me was not on gender. It was from dissociation living
Speaker 2: what other people wanted me to be. And I think
Speaker 2: the best part about being human is that we changed
Speaker 2: and why we need.
Speaker 1: To rethink the things we've just assumed.
Speaker 3: Here's the truth tlot twist, We're souls all playing dress up.
Speaker 1: Alak's art is about individuality, joy, self acceptance, and the
Speaker 1: beauty of being. My hope is that this conversation leaves
Speaker 1: you feeling proud to be you and to have a
Speaker 1: lot more fun because a Loak taught me that in
Speaker 1: this conversation too. So the name of the podcast is
Speaker 1: pretty Smart because there's pretty bold, pretty witty, pretty strong,
Speaker 1: pretty smart interview people who put a new spin on
Speaker 1: pretty And I want to know what the last pretty
Speaker 1: smart idea is that.
Speaker 3: You had being alive.
Speaker 1: That's a good one.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you grew up in a small conservative town in
Speaker 1: Texas to immigrant parents. How do you think your first
Speaker 1: generation parents experience shaped you most overtly and then covertly.
Speaker 3: Most overtly.
Speaker 2: I grew up with so much fear, Fear of what
Speaker 2: other people would think, fear of what the future would hold,
Speaker 2: fear of who we were. And it was both overt
Speaker 2: and covert. It resembled things that didn't announce themselves to
Speaker 2: be fear. But then when you actually would push beneath
Speaker 2: the surface, you'd be like, this is fear. Like one
Speaker 2: of the narratives I grew up with was that you
Speaker 2: need the three basics in life, rice, roti, and rita.
Speaker 2: And I'd be like, what does that mean? And they'd
Speaker 2: be like a private education, marriage, and property. And I'd
Speaker 2: be like why and they'd be like, well, we come
Speaker 2: from refugees. So when you keep on asking why, you
Speaker 2: begin to realize that actually people are so afraid of
Speaker 2: losing things, and so they were hiding through external signifiers
Speaker 2: a degree that stability came from some external validation. And
Speaker 2: I think it's taken me a long time in my
Speaker 2: life to be able to identify that so many of
Speaker 2: the truisms that I thought were us, my family, our
Speaker 2: culture was just fear.
Speaker 1: Wow, I feel like I'm getting to meet a very
Speaker 1: realized version of a look. But I can't imagine that
Speaker 1: in Texas as a kid, you were as realized as
Speaker 1: you are now, and I was reading that you were
Speaker 1: bullied a lot. So I think bullying is a broad term.
Speaker 1: If you can take me back to little Eloke, what
Speaker 1: did that look like and feel like? For you?
Speaker 2: My deepest and youngest memories that I still have access
Speaker 2: to were the sense that I was wrong and could
Speaker 2: do no good, that I had to continually prove and
Speaker 2: justify why I deserve to be alive, and so bullying.
Speaker 2: I think often the focus is always on what people
Speaker 2: are saying like a slur, but I actually think the
Speaker 2: real psychic dimensions of bullying or how it lives inside
Speaker 2: of you after the fact. I think you'll maybe get
Speaker 2: attention when you say people were yelling at me in
Speaker 2: the hallway, but I think the real traumatizing story is
Speaker 2: and then I started to yell at myself, and what
Speaker 2: yelling at myself looked like was and then I stopped
Speaker 2: wearing what I wanted to wear, I stopped allowing myself
Speaker 2: to feel, I stopped allowing myself to be honest. That
Speaker 2: is the real devastating toll that I have to take
Speaker 2: inventory of on the other side, and I think that's
Speaker 2: the work that I'm doing right now, is to actually
Speaker 2: realize that like hatred was implanted in me, and I
Speaker 2: chose to keep it there because I thought that I
Speaker 2: deserved it. I thought that there was no other way
Speaker 2: for someone like me to exist without having to apologize
Speaker 2: for being alive. And so I think that it's difficult
Speaker 2: because so much of what the pain of bullying is
Speaker 2: happens internally, not externally, but it feels like people only
Speaker 2: want to notice with the external, not the internal.
Speaker 1: In your book, Beyond the gender Binary, you dedicate it
Speaker 1: to everyone who has been made to feel like they
Speaker 1: were too much or never enough, And I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: so everyone, as you sit here today, do either of
Speaker 1: those come up for you.
Speaker 2: I think I have a daily relationship with both of those.
Speaker 2: I feel like every time I've achieved a new stratosphere
Speaker 2: of self acceptance, then something else happens and I'm like, oops,
Speaker 2: starting from square one. And it's kind of frustrating because
Speaker 2: I thought healing would be like you put in the time,
Speaker 2: you put in the work, and then you're there.
Speaker 3: But what I've learned actually is that you have to
Speaker 3: continue to.
Speaker 2: Meet the task of saying, am I going to prioritize
Speaker 2: a healed version of me? Am I going to operate
Speaker 2: from a higher frequency? And I think what I'm starting
Speaker 2: to actually realize now is that it's more about developing
Speaker 2: a discipline and a practice than it is about having
Speaker 2: a destination. And that's why I've been saying authenticity is
Speaker 2: an orientation, not a destination, because every day, how cool
Speaker 2: it is that we get the opportunity to recommit ourselves
Speaker 2: to our highest self.
Speaker 1: As I was reading your bio, you have a lot
Speaker 1: of titles, right, and I mean your author, activist, performer.
Speaker 1: I see you as an artist because I always think
Speaker 1: that artists are orchestrators of our attention, and to me,
Speaker 1: that is one of your deep gifts. And then I
Speaker 1: read that you used art as a way to sort
Speaker 1: of heal when you were a kid. What did that
Speaker 1: look like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for saying that, because I feel like
Speaker 2: artists is the only identity I've ever selected for myself.
Speaker 2: Everything else was people telling me this is what you are,
Speaker 2: and artist was something I said, Yeah, this is who
Speaker 2: I am on my own terms, because what I like
Speaker 2: about it is that it resists definition It's not about
Speaker 2: saying I'm a poet or I'm a comic. It's about saying,
Speaker 2: in every scenario, I'm going to pursue the creative choice.
Speaker 2: Artistry is a practice of noticing what people say is
Speaker 2: impossible and saying, I beg to disagree.
Speaker 1: Ooh, say that again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, noticing what people say is impossible and then saying,
Speaker 2: I beg to disagree.
Speaker 1: I was having a meeting in New York one time
Speaker 1: and someone said to me, what do you think the
Speaker 1: most pivotal thing is in raising a successful child? And
Speaker 1: I said confidence? And they said art. And I said art,
Speaker 1: out of all the things, And they said, if you
Speaker 1: immerse your child in art, they learn confidence, they learn
Speaker 1: how to think, They learn all the things that you're
Speaker 1: wanting and asking for, think about like all the great
Speaker 1: people in your life. There's art there somewhere.
Speaker 3: That's so true my mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're giving me vocabulary to understand my own childhood.
Speaker 2: I was super fortunate because both of my grandparents on
Speaker 2: my mom's side were artists. My grandmother started painting in
Speaker 2: her late seventies after she got arthritis, so she would
Speaker 2: just make these abstract paintings out of tools from the kitchen,
Speaker 2: and my grandfather was a novelist and a playwright wow,
Speaker 2: and he would write with a quill pen like dipping
Speaker 2: it in ink and writing it down. And whenever they
Speaker 2: were making art, I was always, as a kid told
Speaker 2: don't disturb them. They're making art. There was this idea
Speaker 2: that art making is something sacred and we need to
Speaker 2: reserve time for it. And so I was always encouraged
Speaker 2: not just what I thought, but expressing what I saw
Speaker 2: in the world. And I think that's where a lot
Speaker 2: of my courage and my conviction came from, is that
Speaker 2: I had people around me who were curious about my
Speaker 2: point of view in the world.
Speaker 1: Many of the trans stories that I here explained are
Speaker 1: transitioning from one gender to another, and as I was
Speaker 1: reading about you, I was thinking, like, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that that resonates. Does that no? Will you say more?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sure, I see. The true transition for me was not
Speaker 2: on gender. It was from dissociation living what other people
Speaker 2: wanted me to be, to lucidity living how I wanted
Speaker 2: to be, to actually cultivating presence and awe that I'm alive,
Speaker 2: which is why I think that it was pretty smart
Speaker 2: of me to choose being alive, because I think many
Speaker 2: people are on an autopilot, existing but not living, and
Speaker 2: gender is only one precipice of a larger conversation of
Speaker 2: how we exist in a world that only cares for
Speaker 2: us if we perpetuate some fantasy of what it wants
Speaker 2: us to be, and very rarely are we asked who
Speaker 2: we want to become. And so I made the decision
Speaker 2: to become my best version of myself. And that was
Speaker 2: less of a before and after, an A or a B,
Speaker 2: but a daily practice of saying, how do I live
Speaker 2: with integrity and authenticity. And it was less about saying
Speaker 2: I was a boy and now I'm non binary to
Speaker 2: saying I am a look and I'm figuring it out.
Speaker 2: Less a journey with a fixed destination and more an
Speaker 2: embrace of fluidity.
Speaker 1: So when I read about this story of you telling
Speaker 1: your grandmother, it was really hard to read. You said,
Speaker 1: when I first told my grandmother I was transgender, she responded,
Speaker 1: how could you do this to me? In her eyes,
Speaker 1: my journey was about hurting her and not about healing myself.
Speaker 1: I feel like the reality for a lot of trans
Speaker 1: people is that speaking of the word limitless, like you
Speaker 1: mentioned the options are not limitless. I have a friend
Speaker 1: named Jacob who told me that they were eight and thinking, like,
Speaker 1: who's going to hire me? What job am I going
Speaker 1: to do? What were you thinking when you were eight
Speaker 1: years old?
Speaker 3: I thought I'd be murdered?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I genuinely believed that if I expressed myself, I
Speaker 2: would be killed, and so in many ways, I don't
Speaker 2: think I was allowed to have a childhood writ proper
Speaker 2: because safety was my first and foremost preoccupation. So I
Speaker 2: had to really think, is my voice going to betray me?
Speaker 2: Are my gestures going to betray me? Are the people
Speaker 2: that I'm friends with? Going to betray me? And even
Speaker 2: if I didn't have a vocabulary to describe what I feared,
Speaker 2: I knew that it had to be feared. And that's
Speaker 2: why I think it's a miracle that I'm alive, And
Speaker 2: that's why I'm so happy and grateful for all the
Speaker 2: strategies that my childhood mind developed to keep me alive,
Speaker 2: because I don't know if I would have had the
Speaker 2: strength now. I think oftentimes we say what would you
Speaker 2: say to your younger self, as if we know better,
Speaker 2: But I think it was the inverse for me, I
Speaker 2: think my younger self was so courageous, so brilliant, and
Speaker 2: so aware, pre verbal, pre language, pre identity. Knew that
Speaker 2: people were threatened by their freedom and found a way
Speaker 2: to incubate that freedom inside of themselves so that I
Speaker 2: could live the life that I lived today. And I know,
Speaker 2: I know that everything that I am today is the
Speaker 2: embodiment of that wild dream.
Speaker 1: I try and when I prep for interviews, put myself
Speaker 1: like I do a visualization and I put myself in
Speaker 1: that person's body. And I was thinking, I wake up
Speaker 1: every morning in a body and walk out into the world,
Speaker 1: and in many ways am really affirmed by the world.
Speaker 1: I feel emotional when I think about waking up in
Speaker 1: a body that is constantly told no, you're wrong, you're
Speaker 1: not good enough, whatever those words are. I read that
Speaker 1: you said people would just call you ugly. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: word itself is like, it's traumatizing. What does that do
Speaker 1: to your psyche? Like, I know now you have vocabulary
Speaker 1: to share what it felt like, but I'm trying to
Speaker 1: understand what it's like as a kid to grow up
Speaker 1: in that.
Speaker 2: It was awful and I wouldn't wish it on anyone,
Speaker 2: and That's why I fight so hard. I'm not trying
Speaker 2: to transmit the pain or make people suffer in the
Speaker 2: way that I did. I'm trying to transcend it so
Speaker 2: that no one has to go through what I went through.
Speaker 3: I feel a lot of grief.
Speaker 2: On how institutionalized violence has become in my day to day.
Speaker 2: So say, for example, last week, I had a gig
Speaker 2: in a state in the South, and I was wearing
Speaker 2: a dress and heels because I felt like it. And
Speaker 2: then I was like, oh crap, I'm about to go
Speaker 2: to an airport. I don't want to get assaulted. So
Speaker 2: then I had to change, wipe off my makeup, take
Speaker 2: off my lashes, put myself into sweats. And then I
Speaker 2: was like, I shouldn't have to do this, And then
Speaker 2: I thought, how many people have to do this? Have
Speaker 2: to think about every single thing they're doing in a
Speaker 2: day and anticipate will I get killed? Yeah, And that's
Speaker 2: my day to day. Where am I going to be,
Speaker 2: what time am I going to be there, who am
Speaker 2: I going to be with? And I have to develop
Speaker 2: a way of cluing my friends into that, like, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm in a car right now and I don't feel safe.
Speaker 3: Can I share my location with you, and I just I.
Speaker 2: Think I have a lot of grief on what I
Speaker 2: would wear, who I would be, how I would exist
Speaker 2: in the world if I wasn't conditioned to fear violence
Speaker 2: at every single moment, what I would have tried out,
Speaker 2: what risks I would have taken, because I think it
Speaker 2: actually it seeps into arenas that you wouldn't think are related,
Speaker 2: Like I think that for example, I've read seen started acting,
Speaker 2: and acting is extremely hard for me because I look
Speaker 2: at the camera and I'm like, and then I have
Speaker 2: to become aware of how deeply dissociated I was because
Speaker 2: dissociation protected me from violence. So if someone was spitting
Speaker 2: on me on the street, they weren't spitting at me.
Speaker 2: It was something happening to a character. But now in acting,
Speaker 2: I have to accept it's me and I'm responsible for
Speaker 2: if I have resting bitch face or not. And that's
Speaker 2: really hard and jarring because I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I'm in control. I didn't know that, And so there's
Speaker 2: so many parts of me that are conditioned by fear,
Speaker 2: and I'm I'm trying to heal, but how do you
Speaker 2: heal when I get retraumatized? Over and over again. That's
Speaker 2: what I also I am trying to wrap my head around,
Speaker 2: is to.
Speaker 3: What we were talking about before.
Speaker 2: I feel like I've reached a new zenith, like I've
Speaker 2: done this, I accept me, and then I wake up
Speaker 2: to ten thousand comments telling me that I'm disgusting, that
Speaker 2: I deserve to be incinerated. I mean, some of the
Speaker 2: most cruel things I've ever seen in the world. And
Speaker 2: as much as I can say I love myself, when
Speaker 2: you're up against that relentless tirade, how do you continue?
Speaker 1: You right? Accessing this beauty can feel impossible in a
Speaker 1: system that rewards conformity over creativity, But in my experience,
Speaker 1: a commitment to honest self actualization yields unparative, unparalleled peace
Speaker 1: and conviction self actualization over a quest for beauty. I
Speaker 1: think so many women can really relate to that. What
Speaker 1: makes you feel beautiful?
Speaker 2: I feel most beautiful when I'm telling the truth. Beauty
Speaker 2: is less about a physical attribute and more about a
Speaker 2: spiritual sense of living in my purpose. When I'm betraying
Speaker 2: my purpose is when I feel most ugly. And that's
Speaker 2: what's so funny. When people call me ugly, I'm like
Speaker 2: you think this is ugliness. Real ugliness is self betrayal.
Speaker 2: The real ugliness is a society that can't escape small talk.
Speaker 1: Are there any tools or practices you use to challenge
Speaker 1: the world's views of beauty? Because I think that's something everyone.
Speaker 2: Can I guess I'm no longer interested in challenging I
Speaker 2: was in the past, but now I've started to realize
Speaker 2: I can't actually change other people's minds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is.
Speaker 2: Like a real f you to my child to trauma,
Speaker 2: because so much of being a child, for me was
Speaker 2: trying to convince people to like me so that I
Speaker 2: could be safe. Yeah, And so much of being an
Speaker 2: adult is realizing people still didn't protect me, didn't matter.
Speaker 2: So actually, instead of trying to convince other people that
Speaker 2: I'm real or that I'm beautiful, why do I need
Speaker 2: other people's validation.
Speaker 3: I'm going to believe it myself. I'm going to live
Speaker 3: my best life.
Speaker 2: So I think so often people write about my work
Speaker 2: as if I'm challenging beauty standards or challenging gender norms.
Speaker 2: But I'm like those beauty standards, those gender norms don't exist.
Speaker 2: So I'm not challenging anything. I'm just being myself.
Speaker 1: Right. That's an interesting distinction to make. I remember, did
Speaker 1: you ever watch girls, you know, like Lena Dunham. Everybody
Speaker 1: would write like she's so courageous, and she was like,
Speaker 1: I'm living in my body and I'm naked. I'm not courageous.
Speaker 1: I'm just being right. And it changed the way people
Speaker 1: saw things. It actually moved the culture ball forward.
Speaker 2: I thought, well, I think you're diagnosing what's exactly wrong
Speaker 2: in this moment is that we're politicizing being. Like so
Speaker 2: often when I see people on their anti trans agendas,
Speaker 2: I'm like, you're literally saying that we don't get to exist.
Speaker 2: That's what this is about. That's all we're fighting for.
Speaker 2: We're literally just fighting for the right to exist. And
Speaker 2: yet people make that into an agenda, make that into propaganda,
Speaker 2: make it into these high falutant concepts. All I am
Speaker 2: asking for is the ability to exist. Why then, are
Speaker 2: people so threatened by my mere existence? It's because it
Speaker 2: clarifies that they don't know their own That's what it's
Speaker 2: ultimately about.
Speaker 1: So I was actually going to ask you that because
Speaker 1: I watch a ton of political shows, and nearly every
Speaker 1: single one there's a topic on transgender rights, and less
Speaker 1: than one percent of the population is transgender. The outrage
Speaker 1: is so outsized. What is it hitting in people? What
Speaker 1: do you think? What is it to me? I look
Speaker 1: at it and I'm like, is it that they hate
Speaker 1: women and so they hate femininity? Like? What is it
Speaker 1: do you think?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean you've got your finger on the pulse here.
Speaker 2: People are upset about trans healthcare and a country where
Speaker 2: there is no healthcare. People areset upset about transgender participation
Speaker 2: in sports. Let's be clear, like twelve athletes instead of
Speaker 2: world hunger, right, right, And that's actually not a contradiction.
Speaker 2: That's the calculations made by people in power to manufacture
Speaker 2: made up issues. They're so obsessing that we're making up genders,
Speaker 2: but plot twist people of power making up political issues
Speaker 2: as a way to divert attention from the real ones
Speaker 2: and continue to have you go to the polls to
Speaker 2: elect politicians who are going to monopolize and maintain their power. So,
Speaker 2: actually what it's about is just scapegoating. It's a long
Speaker 2: and dangerous history of taking a targeted and vulnerable minority
Speaker 2: saying that we have access to some kind of mythological
Speaker 2: authority and power as a diversionary tactic, a weapon of
Speaker 2: mass distraction to divert people's attention from the real issues
Speaker 2: that are affecting their day to day lives. And that's
Speaker 2: why I have mercy and compassion for a lot of
Speaker 2: these people in my common sections, because I know that
Speaker 2: they're also being used and duped by a system that's
Speaker 2: making them have outrage about what I look like, and
Speaker 2: not about the fact that they don't have enough money
Speaker 2: to buy property anymore, not about the fact that they
Speaker 2: don't know how they're going to survive in five to
Speaker 2: ten years. And that's why I understand that anger actually
Speaker 2: is an easier access point than grief, and that it's
Speaker 2: easier to demonize and hate me than it is to
Speaker 2: actually have to confront the intimate betrayal of the people
Speaker 2: who have said that they're on your team and on
Speaker 2: your side, but are actually manipulating you.
Speaker 1: Did all of the bullying follow you to college when
Speaker 1: you were at Stanford.
Speaker 2: Actually not as much at Stanford. At Stanford, I actually
Speaker 2: had the space to explore who I was on my
Speaker 2: own terms. That's when I started to play around with fashion,
Speaker 2: and I think I was in this kind of like
Speaker 2: mini lab of self expression that kind of didn't prepare
Speaker 2: me for the quote unquote real world, because when I
Speaker 2: would walk down the street and address and may be like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, that's a look. You know, evere knew who
Speaker 2: I was. But then when I moved to New York City,
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, this is not the same walking
Speaker 2: down the street at all. At Stanford, I think the
Speaker 2: kind of bullying that I experienced was less on the
Speaker 2: basis of my identity and more on the basis of
Speaker 2: my imagination of what we should be using our education.
Speaker 2: For most people went to school like that because they
Speaker 2: wanted to enter within the system, make a lot of money,
Speaker 2: and have no responsibility to giving back to the world.
Speaker 2: And I was the one with a megaphrone during our
Speaker 2: free speech hour being like, let's actually talk about human
Speaker 2: rights crises, let's actually use our location at this university
Speaker 2: to care about bigger issues, and people will be like,
Speaker 2: why don't we just party? So it was a lot
Speaker 2: of like, not negativity on my identity, more negativity on
Speaker 2: me being like, let's give a shit.
Speaker 1: Well that's actually kind of great though, right to be
Speaker 1: like assassinated on your ideas and not your character totally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you did your master's there too, right, what did
Speaker 1: you do your thesis on? So?
Speaker 2: I wrote about the LGBT movement in South Africa, where
Speaker 2: I have the opportunity to work with transvender organizations.
Speaker 1: For a while there, and by South Africa.
Speaker 2: South Africa had the most progressive constitution at the time
Speaker 2: for LGBTQ rights, but some of the worst hate violence,
Speaker 2: and so I was interested in the limits of the
Speaker 2: law and that really has informed my approach in the
Speaker 2: US too, where I think people are so obsessed with
Speaker 2: non discrimination protections and obviously those are important, but we
Speaker 2: have to change the hearts and minds of people, and
Speaker 2: we keep on assuming that if we changed policy, that's
Speaker 2: going to change how people interact with each other, and
Speaker 2: that's just not true. So, if anything, my experiences in
Speaker 2: South Africa taught me about the importance of culture and
Speaker 2: of artistry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a word, tell me if I'm messing it up.
Speaker 1: But there's a word that in what is the language
Speaker 1: in South Africa.
Speaker 3: It's in Zulu or Kosa.
Speaker 1: It means like hello, goodbye and something. But what they're
Speaker 1: really saying the greeting is I see you. It's not
Speaker 1: just a hello, which I thought was so beautiful because
Speaker 1: language informs our culture so much.
Speaker 3: Right, so beautiful.
Speaker 1: So you write, I do not request nor require your acceptance.
Speaker 1: What I ask for is your curiosity. You're on the
Speaker 1: podcast of curiosity. I'm obsessed with questions. Why do you
Speaker 1: ask your curiosity?
Speaker 2: I just feel like it's a lot of pressure to
Speaker 2: be certain about the world, Like every day people are
Speaker 2: asking for a degree of conviction that I find is
Speaker 2: so appalling, Like who are you?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think I am as one of the most curse
Speaker 2: sentences in the world, like I don't know, And genuinely,
Speaker 2: that's a straight jacket. I might change tomorrow, And I
Speaker 2: think the best part about being human is that we change.
Speaker 2: Like if I was to look at what I was
Speaker 2: wearing now ten years ago, I'd be like, what are
Speaker 2: you doing right now? It makes the most sense At
Speaker 2: the time, I was like never. And I think that's
Speaker 2: the joy is that we're constantly changing, right. And so
Speaker 2: what I notice is that a lot of times people
Speaker 2: have rigid ideas of what we're supposed to be doing
Speaker 2: with our lives, how we're supposed to look, what it
Speaker 2: means to be a man, or what it means to
Speaker 2: be a woman, and I want people to get curious
Speaker 2: on where those ideas came from and whether they're actually
Speaker 2: serving them, and I think by and large they're not.
Speaker 1: You know, It's funny is the first time I met
Speaker 1: Gloria Steinem, I was like, Danielle, what are you going
Speaker 1: to ask this icon that you've read every word of?
Speaker 1: And I had like three seconds, and I said, is
Speaker 1: it a lot of pressure to be the one with
Speaker 1: all the answers? Like everybody everybody turns to her for
Speaker 1: what is feminism? What's the answer to this? And she
Speaker 1: was like, no, I don't feel pressure at all. And
Speaker 1: I said how And she was like, because I don't
Speaker 1: have all the answers. And it was like such freedom
Speaker 1: because I looked at somebody like that and thought, oh,
Speaker 1: they have to have all.
Speaker 3: The answers totally.
Speaker 2: I think actually the smartest people are the people who
Speaker 2: I'm most honest about what they don't know. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: I think what's been really frustrating about the past few
Speaker 2: years is as trans people, we have to like have
Speaker 2: this manual every time we come out to be like,
Speaker 2: here's exactly what it means to be trans. Pre Natalie,
Speaker 2: I was playing with dolls everyone. So I always known,
Speaker 2: if you look back, I've always like we have performed
Speaker 2: this absolute certainty because right now certainty is coupled with
Speaker 2: our access to basic human rights. And I actually think
Speaker 2: that that's an unfair onus, because we don't ask SIS
Speaker 2: people when did you know you were SIS? We don't
Speaker 2: ask SIS people when did you choose to be a
Speaker 2: man or a woman. We assume and we naturalize that
Speaker 2: it's because trans people are seen fundamentally as disorderly or
Speaker 2: wrong that we have to legitimize ourselves. But I think
Speaker 2: the intervention should not be I've always known the intervention
Speaker 2: should be none of us really know. Let's just take
Speaker 2: faith that self declaration is the closest that we have amen.
Speaker 1: So, because of your experience, you have such a distinct
Speaker 1: way of looking at the world. Do you ever look
Speaker 1: at someone like me who fits within a gender binary
Speaker 1: and think like you're really missing out?
Speaker 3: Hm?
Speaker 2: Well, okay, First of all, I would say that I
Speaker 2: don't see you as fitting in the gender binary. I
Speaker 2: don't think the gender binary at all is about what
Speaker 2: we look like. I think our appearance actually is not
Speaker 2: where our gender lives, It's where our heart is actually
Speaker 2: I like that, and so I don't think we can
Speaker 2: tell people's gender based off of their physical appearance. We
Speaker 2: have to have deep conversations with them. And I'm sure
Speaker 2: that if we were to get to know each other better,
Speaker 2: you would defy so many ideas of what you were
Speaker 2: told a woman should be in society, and you have
Speaker 2: declared your own path, and that's all I'm asking people
Speaker 2: to do is to actually say, these categories aren't as
Speaker 2: honest as my stories. And I actually feel like and
Speaker 2: maybe we were going to talk about this a little
Speaker 2: bit in the future. I actually feel like all of
Speaker 2: us know the kind of loneliness of having people misperceive you,
Speaker 2: of looking at you and making a set of assumptions
Speaker 2: about who you are, what you've been through, and I
Speaker 2: would never want to do that to anyone. I want
Speaker 2: to feel awe struck by people, and I feel like
Speaker 2: when we just flatten people to like what their lives
Speaker 2: look like on the outside, we lose the capacity for
Speaker 2: awe And so I think the reason I'm so interested
Speaker 2: in conversations like this is that they're constant everyday reminders
Speaker 2: that people are so cool and extraordinary and against all odds,
Speaker 2: they continue to be beautiful, by which I mean be themselves.
Speaker 1: You give me a when I hear you speak. You
Speaker 1: constantly make me think differently about things. You expand my mind. Okay,
Speaker 1: so your use of color really stands out to me,
Speaker 1: and I can't help but think and tell me if
Speaker 1: I'm projecting. But you're such a beautiful writer. And I
Speaker 1: think about the symbolism of color in literature. There's this
Speaker 1: book called The Giver. Are you familiar with it? So
Speaker 1: for anybody who hasn't read it yet, But it's a
Speaker 1: dystopian novel and there's no color in society. And then
Speaker 1: there's a twelve year old named Jonas, and he starts
Speaker 1: to see color for the first time, and he sees
Speaker 1: it as an expression of individuality, which the society is
Speaker 1: trying to withhold. They're trying to be conformists so that
Speaker 1: there's no differences and no arguments and no problems. And
Speaker 1: I read that book and I'm like, you're Jonas, what
Speaker 1: is your use of color? How do you think about color?
Speaker 1: In the way you dress, in the way I'm sure
Speaker 1: you paint, like you're such an artist, how do you
Speaker 1: look at color?
Speaker 2: First of all, I'm feeling emotional because that was one
Speaker 2: of my favorite books as a kid, and I totally
Speaker 2: forgot about it. So thank you for bringing them back
Speaker 2: into my life, and I am going to reread it
Speaker 2: as an adult. I remember resonating with that so much.
Speaker 2: And once again, when you're a child and you don't
Speaker 2: have the language, but you have the affinity.
Speaker 3: You're like, I really feel this.
Speaker 2: I can't explain why I can't draw the parallels, but
Speaker 2: I think what it helped me on stand is like
Speaker 2: I see the world differently than other people, and I
Speaker 2: feel punished for the way that I see the world. Yeah,
Speaker 2: color for me is about mental health. I've been really
Speaker 2: excited by seeing gen Z talk about dopamine dressing.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of this.
Speaker 3: Basically, like, the world.
Speaker 2: Is cruel and miserable and awful, So a life hack
Speaker 2: is to dress in the most colorful and zany way
Speaker 2: to continually inject joy into your life. And so what
Speaker 2: they're basically trying to say is like, we're not dressing
Speaker 2: and please other people. We're dressing to make ourselves happy.
Speaker 2: And that's where I started to find color, as I
Speaker 2: was like, dang, there's so much misery around me, so
Speaker 2: much drabness. I want to be able to catch glimpses
Speaker 2: of myself and be like, Ooh, I'm excited to be here,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, I'm opting into this life. And so
Speaker 2: every time I'm composing an outfit, I don't care about
Speaker 2: what a shirt is supposed to be, or what a
Speaker 2: skirt is supposed to be, or what prints go together
Speaker 2: or not, what colors go together or not. I care
Speaker 2: about how it makes me feel. And my goal is joy.
Speaker 2: And we notice in our society we think of color
Speaker 2: as immaturity and going into whiteness, are going into blackness
Speaker 2: as being mature, as being more professional. But I actually
Speaker 2: think that that's templated on how our definitions of maturity
Speaker 2: in our society are incorrect. Maturity for me is emotional intelligence,
Speaker 2: and colors are where emotions live. So I want to
Speaker 2: see your full emotional display. And that's why if I
Speaker 2: go to any party and everyone's wearing all black, I'm out.
Speaker 3: You're not going to be interested.
Speaker 1: How do you exist in New York?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I'm just not going to those parties,
Speaker 2: that's for sure.
Speaker 1: That's really cool. So one aspect of gendering in society
Speaker 1: is definitely fashion, as you mentioned, Yeah, you correct in
Speaker 1: me quite well when I thought about it being about
Speaker 1: our appearance, right. Can you talk about how the gendering
Speaker 1: of fashion is relatively new in.
Speaker 3: Concept, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: So people don't understand that you would have been arrested
Speaker 2: wearing the outfit that you're wearing right now, if you're
Speaker 2: walking in downtown LA in the early nineteen hundreds, because
Speaker 2: people who were presumed to be women were seen as
Speaker 2: cross dressing if they weren't wearing a skirt or a dress.
Speaker 2: It was, in fact seen as so inappropriate that it
Speaker 2: would lead to quote the collapse of civilization. Where are
Speaker 2: we hearing that? And then how did we get the
Speaker 2: right for women to wear pants? It was because women
Speaker 2: began to organize and protest, actually go out into public
Speaker 2: risk arrest, be arrested, be physically abused, and taunted. Many
Speaker 2: of these people were lesbians, so shout out to lesbians,
Speaker 2: and they fought to destigmatize it such that now we
Speaker 2: can have conservative political commentators who are in pants telling
Speaker 2: us that men and dresses are cross dressing. So your
Speaker 2: variability to condemn me actually comes from the same history
Speaker 2: that I'm fighting against. So actually we already have a
Speaker 2: precedent here that what we see as gender transgressive wasn't.
Speaker 2: It was just misogyny and patriarchy, because the reason that
Speaker 2: we were uncomfortable with women wearing pants was because we're
Speaker 2: uncomfortable with the idea of women not needing male escorts.
Speaker 2: In fact, the term public woman was a slur for
Speaker 2: sex workers because people couldn't imagine that a woman would
Speaker 2: be in public without a male escort unless she was
Speaker 2: soliciting sex. They couldn't imagine that a woman could be independent.
Speaker 2: So the fear of women in pants was actually about
Speaker 2: economic independence for women, and it was a fear of males.
Speaker 3: Losing power and authority.
Speaker 2: So the exact same dynamics are happening now when we
Speaker 2: think about the gendering of skirts and dresses, right, Actually,
Speaker 2: clothes have no inherent gender. They don't think they can't
Speaker 2: declare themselves. If a man wears a skirt, it's not
Speaker 2: as if his manhood melts off of him. These are
Speaker 2: all social conventions, and so my kim paignted to gender
Speaker 2: fashion is actually about saying we get to determine what
Speaker 2: clothes mean to us. For you, wearing a dress might
Speaker 2: be an affirmation of your femininity. For me, it might
Speaker 2: not have anything to do with gender. That's cool that
Speaker 2: they all mean different things. Yeah, and give up that
Speaker 2: responsibility to the individual rather than the marketing. So I'm
Speaker 2: not asking for new, boring gender neutral collections that are
Speaker 2: always all gray and like tragic, which feels like a
Speaker 2: form of homophobia to begin with, Like why are you
Speaker 2: gonna give us the ugliest clothes.
Speaker 3: And call that gender neutral?
Speaker 2: What I'm actually asking for is that we recognize that
Speaker 2: all clothes already gender neutral. So cast models of all
Speaker 2: different genders and part of your campaign.
Speaker 1: Yes, all clothes are already gender neutral.
Speaker 2: You could be out here in a full face of makeup,
Speaker 2: a full wig, a seven inch practical heel. I always
Speaker 2: need to say practical, because we live in a culture
Speaker 2: that is constantly shaming us for heel wearing. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: I want to say it can also be practical if
Speaker 2: your goal is your mental health, Thank you, and a
Speaker 2: practical seven inch heel. And that could just have nothing
Speaker 2: to do with gender. That could just have to do
Speaker 2: with that person's individual self creativity.
Speaker 1: Right, it's the shoes you want to step into that, Okay.
Speaker 1: So in vice you wrote the majority of people still
Speaker 1: believe what trands is what we look like and not
Speaker 1: who we are. We are reduced to the spectacle of
Speaker 1: our appearance, and you advocate for people to be regarded
Speaker 1: in their full personhood. This long history of transfem bodies
Speaker 1: being reduced to a metaphor a symbol, a fantasy, these ideas,
Speaker 1: and yet trans people are the most erase from the
Speaker 1: LGBTQ movement. Would you say that's true. Yes, I've heard
Speaker 1: some people say that bisexual people have the most erasure,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. It's not like the oppression Olympics.
Speaker 3: Here, but right, and there are trans people who are
Speaker 3: by right, how.
Speaker 1: Do you explain to people that we're all dressing up
Speaker 1: every day?
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so here's the problem. People never want to
Speaker 2: be explained to. So as a matter of explain, As
Speaker 2: a matter of fact, if I was to tell people, hey,
Speaker 2: you're dressing up there, you're.
Speaker 3: Like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: So instead of doing that, I make art. And what
Speaker 2: I hope that my art is is like a big
Speaker 2: sound bath across the world where people can just put
Speaker 2: in some headphones and reflect on their own lives. People
Speaker 2: think that I'm just writing about my own life life,
Speaker 2: but I'm actually asking a question to the entire world.
Speaker 2: And that's what I've learned as a poet is that
Speaker 2: the more particular I am at writing my own story,
Speaker 2: the more universal it resonates. And that's what's so annoying
Speaker 2: about all these Hollywood execs who think, well, no one's
Speaker 2: going to care about your experience as an Indian gender
Speaker 2: no non conforming person. That's kind of niche. And I
Speaker 2: was like, actually, your racism's kind of niche because it's
Speaker 2: dying and it's not no longer relevant. And so actually
Speaker 2: we need robust and diverse storytelling because that creates more
Speaker 2: arenas for people.
Speaker 3: To reflect on their own lives.
Speaker 2: Right, And so what I hope is that if people
Speaker 2: see an image of me and they're like, oh, why
Speaker 2: is that man playing dress up? That then they're going
Speaker 2: to continue to see images of me because we're.
Speaker 3: Not going anywhere.
Speaker 2: And then they're going to be like, we're all playing
Speaker 2: dress up. Because here's the truth plot twist, We're souls
Speaker 2: all playing dress up. So actually being in a body
Speaker 2: is the ultimate form of drag, you know, and everything
Speaker 2: after the fact is an approximation of what our soul
Speaker 2: is and so once I started to realize that, I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, actually there's.
Speaker 3: No more pressure. I can wear whatever I want.
Speaker 1: Look, being in a body, being in a human body
Speaker 1: is the ultimate form of drag. Yeah, you're so right.
Speaker 2: And it's all play because at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: these are going to disintegrate and decay, and yet we
Speaker 2: act as if they are. So it's so funny to
Speaker 2: me how people say, like biology as if it's forever
Speaker 2: you're gonna die, Like I don't know else in lily that,
Speaker 2: but like, actually, your biology is going to literally just
Speaker 2: become the earth. That what you think of as permanent
Speaker 2: is not permanent. You want to know what is permanent
Speaker 2: your integrity. What is permanent is your honor. What is
Speaker 2: permanent is the way that you treat people, your kindness,
Speaker 2: how you show up in the world, because that, like
Speaker 2: the bullying, is going to create ramifications that exist on
Speaker 2: and pass throughout generations. Do you think that ten generations
Speaker 2: from now, they're going to be concerned with whether or
Speaker 2: not I had facial hair and a profile picture or not. No,
Speaker 2: you're going to be concerned about how I treated people.
Speaker 2: So what it strikes me as necessary is to notice
Speaker 2: all the things that they think of our real as material,
Speaker 2: as serious, and all the things that they think of
Speaker 2: us superfluous or excessive or juvenile, and to flip them. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because often I think it's the things that we dismiss
Speaker 2: the most that are the most beautiful and magnificent, The things.
Speaker 1: We dismiss the most. Can you give me an example, Yeah, fun,
Speaker 1: we dismiss fun.
Speaker 2: I think we exist in a culture that requires us
Speaker 2: to hustle all the time. That's like, Okay, you can
Speaker 2: take a vacation then come back in, or you can retire,
Speaker 2: or even worse, you can wait until you die and
Speaker 2: then you can go to heaven and then you can
Speaker 2: have fun there. And so honestly, when I'm walking around
Speaker 2: in La we talked about this a little bit before.
Speaker 2: In La more than anywhere else in the world, if
Speaker 2: I'm around in this outfit, people will.
Speaker 3: Be like, what are you dressed up for?
Speaker 2: No, they don't oh all the time, They're like, are
Speaker 2: you going to an event? Are you going to function?
Speaker 2: I'm like, what a meager understanding of the world. The
Speaker 2: main event, the main attraction is that I'm alive.
Speaker 3: How about you?
Speaker 2: And the jaws drop I'm having fun right now. I'm
Speaker 2: just dressing to have fun. But where along the way
Speaker 2: did we learn that we could only have fun in
Speaker 2: discreet moments Coachella weekend and not that every single day
Speaker 2: could be the festival culture that you seek. It's a
Speaker 2: culture that requires us to have escapism so that we
Speaker 2: can default back into dissociation and just function like we're robots.
Speaker 2: I'm not interested in that, and so fashion is my
Speaker 2: way that I puncture through. But I can actually be like,
Speaker 2: every single day is so much fun.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny as you're saying this, look is
Speaker 1: I'm Jewish and our culture, in my experience, is very
Speaker 1: much serious and like there's been so much sacrifice in
Speaker 1: generational trauma that it's like fun, what's fun? What are
Speaker 1: we doing today to move forward?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Like it's so And it wasn't until I started dating
Speaker 1: people from other cultures that I realized that I was
Speaker 1: missing out on all this fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean as an Indian and I grew up
Speaker 2: in a very similar dynamic where that too. I've been
Speaker 2: making this joke on stage. My mom always gets so uncomfortable,
Speaker 2: but I say, my grandfather survived the refugee camp, so
Speaker 2: I could spend all day taking glamorous selfies with eyelashes
Speaker 2: so long they look like Puba care just sweeping the
Speaker 2: floor as I walk in. And what I'm trying to
Speaker 2: basically say there is Okay, we talk about how our
Speaker 2: ancestors suffer. Did they suffer so that we could suffer too? No,
Speaker 2: they suffered so that we could live a better life.
Speaker 2: So when are we going to live a better life?
Speaker 2: Because I grew up constantly being told you should be
Speaker 2: grateful for the compromises that other people make. Okay, thank you,
Speaker 2: So now I'm going to live my best damn life.
Speaker 1: That's the covert from my first question. That's one of
Speaker 1: the covert things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I feel like in my family, I was
Speaker 2: so punished for living a fun first kind of life
Speaker 2: because people would be like, well, you have to think
Speaker 2: about getting your needs met, blah blah blah. And I said, Okay,
Speaker 2: what if we were to see mental health as the
Speaker 2: need once again, something immterial that's material. What if my
Speaker 2: goal was to actually be eighty six and look back
Speaker 2: on my life and be like I have the time
Speaker 2: of my life, Then every decision I'm making is not irrational.
Speaker 2: Every decision I'm making is so that when I die,
Speaker 2: I can look back and be like, this was amazing.
Speaker 1: So you're living a fun first life. I really I'm
Speaker 1: going to adopt that. I really like that.
Speaker 2: I mean it gets me in bad places, like I
Speaker 2: really should be sleeping more. So I want to be like,
Speaker 2: like the pendulum can't swing too far. Like we also
Speaker 2: need to like we need to think about balance.
Speaker 1: And you work a lot? Is your work fun to you?
Speaker 3: So much fun?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: This is a big fight that I have my friends
Speaker 2: because They're like, you're a workaholic.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I'm having fun, yes, my own labor.
Speaker 3: It's different.
Speaker 1: I feel the same way. I had to assess it
Speaker 1: in therapy because I was like, am I using work
Speaker 1: as an estate? And I was like, I'm having the
Speaker 1: time of my.
Speaker 3: Down life totally. And I ask myself every day, am
Speaker 3: I enjoying this?
Speaker 2: And if I'm not, I'm not going to do it
Speaker 2: right because I've just seen what happens when we live
Speaker 2: lives that aren't prioritizing our mental health. We displace on
Speaker 2: other people and it becomes resentment, and then we police
Speaker 2: other people for having fun. And I think so much
Speaker 2: of what's happening in this country right now. It's a
Speaker 2: bunch of people who believe the limiting belief system that
Speaker 2: they had to die in order to express themselves. And
Speaker 2: so when they see people expressing themselves having fun, they're like, wait,
Speaker 2: what do you mean that life gets to be pleasurable?
Speaker 2: And they're defending at the altar of their own misery.
Speaker 2: And I'm not interested in that.
Speaker 1: So I am hesitant to take our fun conversation and
Speaker 1: get serious again. But I think that your work around
Speaker 1: loneliness is so important. So I'm going to segue a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 3: So there's something more fun than talking about loneliness with.
Speaker 1: Other people totally who identify another.
Speaker 2: Than me at the party being like, hey, can we
Speaker 2: talk about the international crisis of loneliness? Like that's that's
Speaker 2: my small talk.
Speaker 1: So you're calling it the international crisis, it's actually a
Speaker 1: public health epidemic. The US Surgeon General in twenty seven
Speaker 1: declared it as such.
Speaker 2: When they said that, I was so happy. I was like,
Speaker 2: finally I need other people who are saying.
Speaker 1: This because you felt it all along.
Speaker 3: My entire life.
Speaker 1: Okay, so do you see the epidemic because you yourself
Speaker 1: felt lonely and you recognize it in other people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that most people mistake loneliness as living.
Speaker 2: They just think that's what it means to be alive,
Speaker 2: and it's not. Because what I began to notice is
Speaker 2: that the very things that are most precious to me,
Speaker 2: the things I want to share the most in the world,
Speaker 2: are the things I'm not allowed to. Instead, I just
Speaker 2: have to walk around being like I'm good, I'm well,
Speaker 2: how are you sir?
Speaker 3: How is the web? It's so stunted.
Speaker 2: What I actually want to be like is like, okay,
Speaker 2: so how do you process jealousy? Like how did you
Speaker 2: move on from your last X?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: Could you share that?
Speaker 2: Because actually, each one of us have so much expertise
Speaker 2: on what it means to be human, and when we
Speaker 2: remember that, then every single person is a potential renowned
Speaker 2: world scholar.
Speaker 1: Yes, I feel that way in every interview, even if
Speaker 1: I'm talking to somebody in an uber totally. So I
Speaker 1: interviewed somebody on loneliness and they told me that, especially
Speaker 1: towards the end of your life, loneliness is the equivalent
Speaker 1: of smoking fifteen cigarettes per day. That's the effect it
Speaker 1: has on your health. So one antidote I've found is
Speaker 1: exactly what you said. It's conversation, right, It's like bringing
Speaker 1: your authentic self to the table. Some people don't want
Speaker 1: to do that. Like if I just met you and
Speaker 1: I said, so, can you tell me about how you
Speaker 1: handle jealousy? We would be best friends because we have that.
Speaker 1: We're on the same wavelength there. Not everybody's like that.
Speaker 1: So how do you approach conversation with people when you're
Speaker 1: still trying to feel them out?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I get that.
Speaker 2: I'm not for everyone, and so it's a filtration technique
Speaker 2: where I'm at a barty and people like, how are you?
Speaker 2: And I'm like, I'm actually really spiraling right now, and
Speaker 2: I'm questioning, like what the purpose of existence is. If
Speaker 2: people are willing to engage with me, I've made new friends.
Speaker 2: If they're not, I'm like, have a great day and
Speaker 2: we move on. I don't need to judge people for
Speaker 2: being at where they're at. That's their own healing journey,
Speaker 2: that's their own ministry. I can't comment on it, but
Speaker 2: I do know that for me, it's essential that I
Speaker 2: have people that I can be honest with because my
Speaker 2: entire childhood I had to be dishonest, and I saw
Speaker 2: what happens on the.
Speaker 3: Other side of that.
Speaker 2: You feel a hollow sense of existence, like you're a
Speaker 2: character and not like you're a soul. And so when
Speaker 2: I'm able to have conversations where I can bring my
Speaker 2: full self, my honesty, my contradiction, my complexity, that's where
Speaker 2: I feel most happy.
Speaker 1: So there's this term that I just learned called terf,
Speaker 1: and you're probably like rolling your eyes, like you just
Speaker 1: learned about it. However, I'm an avid reader and I
Speaker 1: think and genuinely interested in gender dynamics, and so because
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard of this term, I was like, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people haven't heard of this term.
Speaker 1: So you make a distinction about entitled when it comes
Speaker 1: to a specific wave of feminism. And your use of
Speaker 1: the word turf sent me down a rabbit hole because
Speaker 1: I had to reread first, second, and third wave feminism.
Speaker 1: So can you explain to me what a turf is?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So turfs are anti transfeminists who believe that trans
Speaker 2: people have been detrimental to women's rights and women's issues.
Speaker 2: And that's an incorrect framework because it actually trans writes
Speaker 2: are an extension of feminism and it's the result of
Speaker 2: a dividing conquer strategy where people who are being harmed
Speaker 2: by patriarchy end up competing for a few scarce resources
Speaker 2: rather than actually working together to overthrow the patriarchy. So
Speaker 2: all the issues that have been long standing issues in
Speaker 2: feminism or place equality, sexual harassment, gender based violence, or
Speaker 2: issues faced by trans people, and there's been a propaganta
Speaker 2: campaign to try to teach people that trans people are
Speaker 2: a threat or distracted or detracting away from issues facing women,
Speaker 2: when this is a false distinction, because there are trans
Speaker 2: people who are women to begin with.
Speaker 1: I don't understand how we just keep repeating history, Like
Speaker 1: the feminist movement was exclusionary of people that were not white.
Speaker 1: That was awful, did not get us anywhere. Like, I
Speaker 1: don't understand how we keep doing this. There's constantly people
Speaker 1: to exclude.
Speaker 2: Well, I think another way of asking your question is
Speaker 2: why do humans continue to be humans?
Speaker 1: Yeah? You know, like why do humans keep human?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Totally.
Speaker 2: And that's why I have compassion, because I'm like, it
Speaker 2: makes so much sense when you have been marginalized your
Speaker 2: entire life, what you think will offer you salvation is
Speaker 2: getting power over other people because what you've been taught
Speaker 2: stability is is domination. But here's the secret. Actually, what
Speaker 2: true power is is the creation of a world without hierarchy.
Speaker 2: What true power is is where each person is just
Speaker 2: allowed to vibe without you controlling or policing them. So
Speaker 2: I get the temptation of domination, but it's not going
Speaker 2: to deliver you what you seek. So many people are
Speaker 2: spending their entire lives climbing trees that bear no fruit.
Speaker 2: And I'm just sitting here having a party with my
Speaker 2: technicolor dream coat, literally with all of my colors in
Speaker 2: the world, saying why don't we eat the fruit of
Speaker 2: the table, and people like no, I'm going to go
Speaker 2: chase it up there. It doesn't exist over there, No.
Speaker 2: So I get it as a trauma response. I get it,
Speaker 2: and I have compassion for it. What I don't have
Speaker 2: space for is the promotion of misinformation and disinformation that
Speaker 2: has made people think that trans people are some detrimental threat, when,
Speaker 2: as we spoke about before, people like me can exist
Speaker 2: in public without fear of violent persecution. And there's something
Speaker 2: morally bankrupt about a world that inflates our sense of
Speaker 2: power and authority. Whenever we can't even exist.
Speaker 1: I think, regardless of gender, the idea of finding your
Speaker 1: own identity is just so universal. Is there a part
Speaker 1: of your identity that you still struggle with.
Speaker 2: There's so many parts of myself I still struggle with.
Speaker 2: I am so used to hating myself, so that part
Speaker 2: of me comes back all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I hate hearing it too, but I have to love
Speaker 2: it in order for it to thop. Yeah, it's been
Speaker 2: my most reliable I say that hatred has been the
Speaker 2: most reliable lover in my life. It's someone that I
Speaker 2: could always go back to. I know it so well.
Speaker 2: I'm so familiar with self hatred. It was installed in
Speaker 2: me at a very young age, and I held it close,
Speaker 2: and it thought that it was protecting me, because if
Speaker 2: I hated myself, then if anything else anyone said to
Speaker 2: me couldn't hurt me like I could hurt me. So,
Speaker 2: oh you don't like me, Well I don't like me? Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's so what. There was a fatalism, a kind of
Speaker 2: latent suicidality to it. And now that I'm excited at
Speaker 2: being alive, pretty smart idea, always on brand, all right,
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, I need to start working on
Speaker 2: this self hatred piece of me, and I started to
Speaker 2: realize I had a perverse attachment to my self hatred
Speaker 2: because it's familiar. It's easy for me to go to
Speaker 2: what would a version of me that was self loving
Speaker 2: look like? I don't know them, and so I'm now
Speaker 2: getting accustomed with actually saying I don't know, yeah, and
Speaker 2: that's okay, that's better than I hate. It's easier to say,
Speaker 2: I'm curious on what it would look like for me
Speaker 2: to be self loving right now.
Speaker 1: Curious. I love having a question to ask yourself when
Speaker 1: you are in those states. I'm curious what it would
Speaker 1: look like if, which I guess, goes right back to
Speaker 1: your limitless notion.
Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, if I could go from when I
Speaker 2: was younger, I didn't allow any video or audio recordings
Speaker 2: of myself because I thought my voice was too feminine
Speaker 2: and my gestures were too feminine, and then people would
Speaker 2: make fun of me for being gay, and then I
Speaker 2: would experience violence and then I would die. That was
Speaker 2: where my head went to. It to now me being
Speaker 2: able to sit with you unapologetic and what I am
Speaker 2: wearing and who I am, that shows me that things
Speaker 2: can change that we thought permanent. I thought that self
Speaker 2: hatred would be a permanent resident in my heart, and
Speaker 2: now it's just a visiting guest. And that's progress. And
Speaker 2: I think we have to announce progress because I think
Speaker 2: right now there's so much jadedness and cynicism in this world,
Speaker 2: like we're just stuck. But alongside it, there's so many
Speaker 2: everyday acts of triumph within ourselves and within each other,
Speaker 2: and it feels important to speak them that Most triumps
Speaker 2: aren't grandiose. They're not like extreme declarations of progress. Often
Speaker 2: those are performative, they're not actually real. They're subtle gestures
Speaker 2: that we notice ourselves taking up a little bit more space,
Speaker 2: advocating for ourselves a little bit more, And they deserve
Speaker 2: to be elevated as triumps.
Speaker 1: They happen for me, so out of the blue. Do
Speaker 1: they for you too? So you say the lungs they
Speaker 1: are for breathing, The heart is for forgiving. What's the
Speaker 1: hardest lesson you've learned about forgiveness?
Speaker 3: Self? Forgiveness is the hardest lesson.
Speaker 2: So easy for me to understand everyone else's complex emotional landscapes.
Speaker 2: This is my mpath crisis, Like it totally makes sense
Speaker 2: why you were so cool to me because you're being
Speaker 2: cruel to yourself. But where I find it most difficult
Speaker 2: is like I still have a perfectionist complex for my
Speaker 2: five year old self. I'm sitting here being like, why
Speaker 2: didn't you tell your parents that you were queer and
Speaker 2: that you needed their support and help because you were
Speaker 2: gonna get bullied at school?
Speaker 3: Right? And it was like you were literally five years old.
Speaker 2: I was like, but I could have been a child
Speaker 2: prodigy at healing trauma. Okay, some people learn ten languages.
Speaker 2: I could have learned PTSD therapyd right.
Speaker 3: Like why not?
Speaker 2: And so now I'm really trying to forgive myself for
Speaker 2: who I had to become in order to survive. And
Speaker 2: that is the most difficult work because the self flagellating
Speaker 2: has been a driving mechanism for me for a lot
Speaker 2: of my life. Improve yourself, become better, maximize, optimize, become funnier,
Speaker 2: read more books, become smarter. And now that's no longer
Speaker 2: fueling me. And so what I'm trying to actually feel
Speaker 2: me now is like curiosity, wonder, awe, beauty, very different
Speaker 2: tactics than shame.
Speaker 1: Do you have a good group of friends now?
Speaker 3: Oh the best?
Speaker 1: When did you find them?
Speaker 2: The great part about touring is that I get to
Speaker 2: travel the world and my friends are scattered in every continent,
Speaker 2: and they are often people who I don't see that often.
Speaker 2: There are people who'll see like once every year, once
Speaker 2: every two years, but when we're together, it's like I
Speaker 2: sink into it and I'm like, I'm not alone, you know.
Speaker 2: And so I think my art was a way of
Speaker 2: meeting other people who felt the same fears, the same loneliness,
Speaker 2: the same pain, and so in that way, I understand
Speaker 2: that even though I was writing about my own life,
Speaker 2: I was actually asking a question like does anyone else
Speaker 2: feel the same way? And I was able to find
Speaker 2: people through my art who have been my best friend.
Speaker 1: There's this quote I heard when I was younger that
Speaker 1: the people that have been through the most have the
Speaker 1: most to give. And I don't meet it in a
Speaker 1: martyrdom way, but it just seems like the depth of
Speaker 1: what you're able to feel and explain is so great.
Speaker 2: I have so much love for the world, and this
Speaker 2: is why living in New York is often kind of challenging,
Speaker 2: because I love everyone so hard, and that's difficult when
Speaker 2: you see like fifteen thousand people in it.
Speaker 3: The beginning of the day.
Speaker 2: So I'm just literally walking around being like, I love you,
Speaker 2: like I just I'm rooting for you so hard. I
Speaker 2: have so much love to give because I know how
Speaker 2: hard it is to be alive. And I operate from
Speaker 2: the premise that everyone is suffering from something that they're
Speaker 2: not telling me, or that they're not telling their friends.
Speaker 2: Everyone is suffering with this kind of pain and loneliness.
Speaker 2: So I have to show up with that in mind,
Speaker 2: which requires a daily practice of benevolence and kindness. And
Speaker 2: I'm trying to give that and then someone will just
Speaker 2: it's New York, so those but they walk away.
Speaker 3: Right, But I or in the yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: So I'm just trying to find people like you in
Speaker 2: the world who have that same sense of what the
Speaker 2: world would call myavity.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's naive.
Speaker 1: Okay, So we were talking about this before the camera's
Speaker 1: cut off, but someone called me and said, why is
Speaker 1: your content also fucking earnest? And it kind of hurt
Speaker 1: my feelings. And I did a reflection exercise and I
Speaker 1: was like, I guess it is kind of earnest, but
Speaker 1: I'm earnest and you just said that you're earnest too,
Speaker 1: which makes me feel better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was saying. Earnesty is my most controversial identity.
Speaker 2: People think my hot take is that there are more
Speaker 2: than two genders, but my actual hot take is that
Speaker 2: humans are worth it. My actual hot take is that
Speaker 2: every single person can be transformed and that redemption is
Speaker 2: a beautiful thing. My hot take is that it's worth
Speaker 2: committing to love and a world that is so loveless
Speaker 2: and painful. My hot take is it's worth showing up
Speaker 2: with vulnerability even when people shut it down, because you're
Speaker 2: making a perforation in the surface. Yeah, and you never
Speaker 2: know how that's going to change the world, just being kind.
Speaker 2: So I'd taken me a long time because I used
Speaker 2: to have so much cringe worthiness around my earnesty, Like
Speaker 2: I didn't want to say.
Speaker 3: Out loud, I love you.
Speaker 2: But now I'm really trying to speak that part of
Speaker 2: me to actually say, I love being alive, I love people.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited by the world. And it feels controversial
Speaker 2: because people are so used to minimizing their joy, minimizing
Speaker 2: like you don't really want to tell people how much
Speaker 2: you care. But I guess what I'm saying is like
Speaker 2: death is an omnipresent reality in my life, and I
Speaker 2: have to really think I might not be here tomorrow.
Speaker 2: And what I started to realize is, therefore, that's an
Speaker 2: amazing opportunity for me to live the fullest version of
Speaker 2: my life, the most incandescent and true version of my life,
Speaker 2: so that if I go God willing, I don't, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to be sitting there having any regrets. Yes,
Speaker 2: So earnesty for me is a way of living a
Speaker 2: life without regret.
Speaker 1: You just gave me so much peace because I've been
Speaker 1: looking at it as like, am I naive? Am I
Speaker 1: not seeing something? Am I like a Midwest?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Happy, go lucky? And maybe I am all those things.
Speaker 1: But I do like that I'm earnest, I like that
Speaker 1: I'm kind when it's inconvenient. I like that I believe
Speaker 1: in people. So thank you for that. Thank you for
Speaker 1: affirming me. My job was to affirm you in this interview.
Speaker 1: But of course you're you.
Speaker 3: It's so mutual affirmations.
Speaker 1: Okay, rapid fire. Are you ready?
Speaker 3: Never ready? But I'll try, never.
Speaker 1: Ready, always willing. Yes, a piece of art that will
Speaker 1: always move.
Speaker 3: You Rihanna in the yellow dress at the Megala.
Speaker 1: Not what I thought you were going to say. Who
Speaker 1: has loved you really, really well?
Speaker 3: My favorite book series called The Wheel of Time.
Speaker 1: Also not what I thought you were going to say.
Speaker 1: You've had some pinch me experiences, which has been the pinchiest.
Speaker 3: So far, looking in the mirror and saying, hey.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling fun and happy while you say it.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Someone we should all be following online.
Speaker 3: Hm hmm.
Speaker 1: Someone you learn from, someone that you find interesting.
Speaker 2: Amara Jones, an amazing trans journalist who was recently selected
Speaker 2: as one of the Time one hundred.
Speaker 1: A book that changed your life, something you think everybody
Speaker 1: should read.
Speaker 3: Hm hmm.
Speaker 2: There are so many. But I'm going to be really
Speaker 2: cliche right now and say Perks of being a Wildflyer.
Speaker 2: Wildflire was so important to me as a teenager why
Speaker 2: I was so angsty and I got that validated that
Speaker 2: there were other people who felt pain like me.
Speaker 1: Are you still angsty?
Speaker 3: Always?
Speaker 2: It's in the eyes, yeah, equal measure ernest and angsty, yeah, Ernest.
Speaker 2: Like my entire brain is just an emo rockmand just
Speaker 2: waiting to happen.
Speaker 1: It is everything, like a very colorful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, healing her. They're like smiling through the tears. I
Speaker 2: feel like I'm the embodiment of the lolsau of emoji.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody should pick an emoji that represents them. Okay,
Speaker 1: pick up that card deck Question Everything, fifty two cards
Speaker 1: for deeper conversation, which everyone speaks to you. I always
Speaker 1: think people get the card that they're supposed to get.
Speaker 2: Okay, when have you felt the closest to magic in
Speaker 2: your life? Oh?
Speaker 1: I'm so happy you got that one.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So I've been doing this really reckless thing where I'll
Speaker 2: be invited to give like a keynote lecture for like
Speaker 2: an hour, and I won't know what I'm saying until
Speaker 2: I start.
Speaker 1: Don't tell me that I have second hand anxiety.
Speaker 2: I just literally will make it up on the spot,
Speaker 2: on like three hours of sleep, thousands of people in
Speaker 2: front of me, and I'll make it up on the spot.
Speaker 2: And then afterwards people are like, wow, how long you've
Speaker 2: been working in that speech? It must have been prepared,
Speaker 2: And I was like, I just I just made it
Speaker 2: all up. And so now I started to realize that
Speaker 2: as part of my magic practice, provide speech is where
Speaker 2: I thrive.
Speaker 1: Do you humility aside. In order to be a speaker
Speaker 1: like that, do you have to have like incredibly high
Speaker 1: intellect or what skill set do you possess that allows
Speaker 1: you to do that?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think I love language, and so I think I
Speaker 2: have like a thesaurus in my brain. And so every
Speaker 2: time I say a word like a door, I can
Speaker 2: think of like sixteen words that sound like a door,
Speaker 2: or that are alliterated with a door, or that are
Speaker 2: synonyms with a door. And so my like, I guess
Speaker 2: it's because I stop seeing language as like trying to
Speaker 2: convince people or explain things and more about having fun. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so my relationship with speech is like, let me
Speaker 2: make up grammar. Oh, there's not a word that exists.
Speaker 2: Let me make up that word. Let me come up
Speaker 2: with a new sentence structure. So it's like I'm painting
Speaker 2: something with language limitless.
Speaker 1: What's the smartest decision you've ever made?
Speaker 2: I think there's been many, but one that comes to
Speaker 2: mind right now is wearing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.
Speaker 2: There was so much advice that I was getting of
Speaker 2: like that's okay, story time. When I first went to college,
Speaker 2: my mom and I had this epic fight where she
Speaker 2: was like, no one is going to take you seriously
Speaker 2: because you dress like a theater major. And I said,
Speaker 2: first of all, theater is serious business, okay, do not
Speaker 2: offend that community. Second of all, I need to bring
Speaker 2: my nine suitcases with me. I don't know what college
Speaker 2: is going to give, but I know what my shoes are, okay.
Speaker 2: And she was like, why you care about clothes are
Speaker 2: superficial And that was installed in me from such a
Speaker 2: young age of like, obsession with your clothes is vanity
Speaker 2: and real higher order thinking is. And actually, what people
Speaker 2: don't understand is that when I'm dresses, I want that
Speaker 2: allows me to do this improvise speech that allows me
Speaker 2: to channel it allows me to have access to honesty.
Speaker 2: Because in the same ways that we decorate alters, why
Speaker 2: don't we decorate ourselves? And the same way that decoration
Speaker 2: and ornamentality have always been ways of acknowledging the divine,
Speaker 2: why don't we do that to ourselves? And clothing, actually
Speaker 2: and accessories for me are a way of actually finding
Speaker 2: my sacredness of being able to welcome it. And I
Speaker 2: think that people only understand dressing up as for other
Speaker 2: people and that's never been my experience. It's always been
Speaker 2: about welcoming myself back to myself.
Speaker 1: I have one last question for you. What has it
Speaker 1: meant to you to find a community of people online
Speaker 1: who are for you.
Speaker 2: It's meant so much because now I have the experience
Speaker 2: of getting harassed in public and being able to post
Speaker 2: on Instagram and be like, hey everyone, I'm getting harassed
Speaker 2: in public and people say we're rooting for you. When
Speaker 2: I was a child, I would get harassed and not
Speaker 2: be able to tell anyone, and so I had to
Speaker 2: deal with that burden on my own. But now I
Speaker 2: can say, when you're harassing me, you're harassing all these
Speaker 2: other people who love me. And you might think that
Speaker 2: I'm just some freak on the street, but actually there's
Speaker 2: a lot of people who love me, and right now
Speaker 2: it's easier for me to show it for myself when
Speaker 2: I remember that I'm part of something bigger.
Speaker 1: In these interviews, I feel like I get to live
Speaker 1: to learn better in some way. And my preconceived sort
Speaker 1: of thought about our conversation was I'm going to have
Speaker 1: a different perspective on gender. I'm going to be able
Speaker 1: to learn a different vocabulary. I am walking away from
Speaker 1: this interview feeling like fun. I want to thank the
Speaker 1: people that make this show possible. Colleen O'Neill, Jill Solama,
Speaker 1: Karrie O'Keefe and Phil Steed Tech. Okay, you know what
Speaker 1: time it is. Today's a good day. To have a
Speaker 1: good day. I'll see you next weeks.
Speaker 3: The Shop Shop