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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show, a reduction of shondaland

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Speaker 1: Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. I know that

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Speaker 1: the recent people harm me is because they have been

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Speaker 1: harmed and they are doing harm to themselves. So I

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Speaker 1: want to break the circuitry of self sabotage and I

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Speaker 1: want to teach people healing is possible. And I think

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Speaker 1: that that is why trans people were historically regarded as

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Speaker 1: spiritual leaders, because of our mastery of metamorphosis. And what

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Speaker 1: I mean by that is that this world teaches us

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Speaker 1: that everything is fixed and cannot be changed, and then

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Speaker 1: trans people entered, we say we can change everything. In

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Speaker 1: two thousand and sixteen, I was a part of an

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Speaker 1: amazing documentary on HBO called The Trans List, and featured

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Speaker 1: in that documentary was a person by the name of

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Speaker 1: a local bade men In. In the moment a Loke

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Speaker 1: came onto the screen, I was enchanted by their charisma

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Speaker 1: and their deep, deep knowledge. I felt like a local

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Speaker 1: was just connected to some energy, some spirit that is beyond.

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Speaker 1: A Loke is a gender non binary writer and mixed

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Speaker 1: media performance artist. They're the author of them in Public

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Speaker 1: and Beyond the gender binary in twenty nineteen, they were

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Speaker 1: honored as one of NBC's Pride fifty and Out Magazines

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Speaker 1: Out one dred. They have presented their work in more

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Speaker 1: than forty countries. I knew that I wanted to have

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Speaker 1: a conversation on this podcast about gender nonconformity and a

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Speaker 1: local will take us beyond and that's where we need

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Speaker 1: to go hunting. Please enjoy my conversation with the loke

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Speaker 1: maid minute. Hello a looke and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: How are you feeling a day dark? And I am

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Speaker 1: feeling so enthusiastic about talking to you. Ah, that's a sweet.

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Speaker 1: I always love chatting with you. And it was really

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Speaker 1: important for me to have you on the show because

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Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about non binary folks and gender

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Speaker 1: non conforming folks, and as a trans woman, as someone

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Speaker 1: who identifies in a binary way, for us to support

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Speaker 1: our gender non conforming and non binary siblings, and so

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Speaker 1: many transbinary people don't, and thinking about gender non conformity

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Speaker 1: is a great opportunity for everyone. And I was reminded

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Speaker 1: of that reading your book Beyond the Gender Binary. One

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Speaker 1: of the things you say early on in your book

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Speaker 1: is that you contend that the gender binary exists to

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Speaker 1: create division and conflict, not to celebrate creativity and diversity.

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Speaker 1: Can you talk to us a little bit about what

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Speaker 1: you mean there? Absolutely, So I think a lot of

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Speaker 1: people mistake moving beyond the gender binary as erasing people's

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Speaker 1: right to identify as men or women, and that couldn't

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Speaker 1: be farther from the truth. For me, binary means it's

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Speaker 1: more about how you're policing other people versus how you

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Speaker 1: narrate yourself. So someone who's perpetuating the binary is telling

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Speaker 1: other people you can't be non binary, or this is

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Speaker 1: what it means to be a man or a woman.

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Speaker 1: So moving beyond the gender binary is not about erasing

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Speaker 1: man or woman. It's actually just about saying man and

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Speaker 1: women are to have potentially infinite options. And I think

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Speaker 1: that there are many men and women who believe that.

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Speaker 1: And I actually have been doing a lot of work

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Speaker 1: during quarantine historically to understand like why people are so

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Speaker 1: threatened by this, And what I've actually been discovering is

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Speaker 1: that the gender binary actually was instituted to hurt all

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Speaker 1: of us. Now, we often talk about it just hurting

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Speaker 1: non binary people, but I'd love to like explain to

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Speaker 1: people that actually historically it was created as a way

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Speaker 1: to control everyone. So a great illustration of this is

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Speaker 1: the history that you and I know well of the

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Speaker 1: masquerade laws. So in the United States, from the eighteen

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Speaker 1: forties and tell the nineteen forties, across the country, trans

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Speaker 1: and gendervarian people like us would be thrown into prison

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Speaker 1: simply for existing in public. Our community referred to these

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Speaker 1: laws as the three article law, meaning you to where

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Speaker 1: at least three articles of clothing associated with your assigned sex,

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Speaker 1: otherwise you could be thrown in prison. So you and

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Speaker 1: I would be both thrown in prison as female impersonation.

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Speaker 1: And what's so incidius about these laws is they would

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Speaker 1: often publish in the newspapers are names alongside our photos.

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Speaker 1: So this could actually like ruin people's entire lives. And

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Speaker 1: what makes it difficult for us is that when we

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Speaker 1: try to find historical records of why people did this,

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Speaker 1: they didn't want to tell the police. So oftentime, when

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Speaker 1: people arrested, they would be asked why you wear a

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Speaker 1: woman's clothes and they'd be like, I don't know, and

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Speaker 1: that refusal is actually resistance because they knew that their

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Speaker 1: words would be used against them, right But what most

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Speaker 1: people don't understand is that the cross chressing laws were

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Speaker 1: put into place actually to control cis gender women, because

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Speaker 1: the respectable cis gender woman was supposed to just stay

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Speaker 1: at home in the domestic sphere and only men were

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Speaker 1: allowed to navigate the public. So pants became an illustration

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Speaker 1: of saying men are somehow more rational, literal, agentic, and

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Speaker 1: women have to stay at home and reproduce and not

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Speaker 1: actually have political thoughts. So actually, these gender binary was

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Speaker 1: created to confine women to the domestic sphere and to

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Speaker 1: deny women the right to vote, and to say that

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Speaker 1: men were the rational people who could roam. So what

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Speaker 1: this look like is in the western expansion of the

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Speaker 1: United States, a lot of times women would just wear

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Speaker 1: pants and quote unquote dress up as men so that

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Speaker 1: they could go outside. And this is just another of

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Speaker 1: many examples of being like when it was created, the

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Speaker 1: binary was actually fundamentally about misogyny. It was literally about

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Speaker 1: saying women aren't competent, aren't smart, can't be political subjects.

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Speaker 1: And so now when we're pushing against the gender binary,

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Speaker 1: it always hurts that there's so much pushback that come

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Speaker 1: from women and the feminist identified women too is the trouble.

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Speaker 1: It's really awkward. Yeah, And I love that you said

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Speaker 1: that because I come to so much of this from

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Speaker 1: an intersectional feminist perspective, that the gender binary is deeply

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Speaker 1: harmful to those folks who identify as women, and that

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Speaker 1: there's always been a relationship between the gender oppression that

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Speaker 1: trans and non binary people experience in the gender oppression

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Speaker 1: that SIS women also experienced. So we really are all

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Speaker 1: in this together. And you're very explicit in your book

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Speaker 1: that the gender binary is all about power. The first

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Speaker 1: thing I think about it that there are people out

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Speaker 1: there who are like, well, what about biology, right? And

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Speaker 1: I think that's exhausting, But what would you And I

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Speaker 1: have my things I would say to that, But what

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Speaker 1: would you say to those people who would be like,

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Speaker 1: men are this and women are this? Based on chromosomes

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Speaker 1: and gonads and ovaries and all these things. I would

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Speaker 1: say this reflects the failure of the American public education

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Speaker 1: system on two fronts when it comes to biology and history,

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Speaker 1: because last time I checked, if you consulted actual biologists,

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Speaker 1: there are thousands of accredited scientists who say there's no

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Speaker 1: biological basis and dividing people into one of two sexes,

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Speaker 1: let alone genders, So that's not consistent with science. Actually,

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Speaker 1: biological refers to living matter, which means you and I

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Speaker 1: have biological ears, biological noses, which means that there's more

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Speaker 1: biological variance and anatomical diversity among females than there are

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Speaker 1: between females and males. Because news check, Actually women have

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Speaker 1: different bodies, and that's okay. What people are saying when

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Speaker 1: they say biological is actually reproductive or fertility, and that

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Speaker 1: reduction of men's bodies to their reproductive role is misogyny. Actually,

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Speaker 1: the framework of biological sex was created by exclusively cis

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Speaker 1: gender white men as a way to deny women political rights.

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Speaker 1: They would say, anatomically, you were meant for reproduction. Not

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Speaker 1: to think that's why you can't go to school because

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Speaker 1: that will ruin your menstrual cycles. So it's so awkward

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Speaker 1: that people use this term biology without recognizing what that

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Speaker 1: actually means scientifically and how that's been levied historically. So

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Speaker 1: for me, I think what I'm trying to do with

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Speaker 1: my work is to always have history and to the

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Speaker 1: chat and to just be like, actually, my faith comes

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Speaker 1: from the fact that I know what was before and

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Speaker 1: so it's ironic to me, and I wanted to speak

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Speaker 1: to this too with your work with disclosure, because I

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Speaker 1: think it's so important. It's ironic to me that every

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Speaker 1: it feels like decade we're having the same as tired conversation.

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Speaker 1: Like it's like with your career, people were like the

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Speaker 1: first trans and you were literally there being like, actually,

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Speaker 1: there were these girls that came before, And it feels

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Speaker 1: like our job is trans people in so many ways,

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Speaker 1: is to do that historical due diligence, because CIS society

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Speaker 1: always wants to erase our history and positionist as new,

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Speaker 1: even though we've been cutting up saying these things for

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Speaker 1: literally centuries. Recently, I read a biography of Sylvester, the

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Speaker 1: Queen of Disco, and I'm obsessed with Sylvester. Sylvester too,

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, Yes, and interviews people would say, Sylvester,

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Speaker 1: you're in drag right, and Sylvester would say, no, I'm

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Speaker 1: just Sylvester. Even before the language of non binary, Sylvester

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Speaker 1: was templating what that could look like. And it makes

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Speaker 1: me so angry because they were one of the most mainstream,

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Speaker 1: celebrated black queer performers in the world, and yet that

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Speaker 1: knowledge gets erased ten years later, like it's just not okay, Wow,

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Speaker 1: I am so glad you're here. You've just said so

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Speaker 1: much in such a way, like I didn't even really

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Speaker 1: have the language for. And one of the bell Hook's

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Speaker 1: quote I think from Yearning, but I don't know if

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Speaker 1: bell said at first. She says, our struggle is also

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Speaker 1: one of memory against forgetting and that piece of history,

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Speaker 1: that piece of we've always been here, that piece of

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Speaker 1: reducing people to reproductive organs. And I think that is

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Speaker 1: it's so objectifying, and it's so and it's so inherently misogynists.

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Speaker 1: And I'm so glad you've so clearly laid that out

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Speaker 1: for us. I would love for people who don't know

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Speaker 1: this to know that Laverne is also theoretical scholar. And

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Speaker 1: I will never forget watching you Live in conversation with

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Speaker 1: the New School with Bell Hooks, and she was talking

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Speaker 1: about white capitalists heter a patriarchy. Her phrase actually is imperialist,

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Speaker 1: white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. I'm a bell Hook, yes, And

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Speaker 1: you made the intervention and you added cis in front

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Speaker 1: of that. I said, this normative, heteronormative, imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist,

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Speaker 1: patriarchy go on alone, and I don't think people understand

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Speaker 1: what that means, and I really like to break that apart.

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Speaker 1: Trans women and trans feminine people are actually expanding feminism,

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Speaker 1: contributing to feminism because we're insisting that womanhood and femininity

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Speaker 1: don't have to be coupled with reproduction. We're actually saying

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Speaker 1: that there's a spiritual power, essence, poetry to women in

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Speaker 1: femininity that don't have to be part of the reproductive paradigm.

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Speaker 1: And instead of SIS women saying thank you, this is

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Speaker 1: really powerful and amazing, they double down oftentimes on SIS

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Speaker 1: men's definition of what a woman should be. So in

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Speaker 1: so many ways, what trans women are offering is a

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Speaker 1: feminist vision of womanhood. And that's why it's a travesty

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Speaker 1: to me that there's so many bills trying to criminalize

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Speaker 1: our community resourcing the rhetoric of feminism. This is not

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Speaker 1: just about theory for us, right, this is about actual

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Speaker 1: policy that's discriminating against trans women, intersect people, non binary

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Speaker 1: people using this bullshit. Yeah, for me, it's always important

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Speaker 1: to note that there are queer cis feminist you know,

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Speaker 1: women and women of color who have challenged the ideas

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Speaker 1: of essentialism that would reduce women to biology into reproduction.

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Speaker 1: So trans non binary feminists or in that tradition, I

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Speaker 1: always like to not erase the brilliant work by so many,

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Speaker 1: particularly black feminist and queer feminists and queer Black feminists

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Speaker 1: who have been doing work for decades, who have laid

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Speaker 1: out this anti essentialist project for us as a blueprint.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I've always identified as a feminist and to

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Speaker 1: be able to be in this space of anti essentialism

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Speaker 1: is so crucial for me. In my college lectures, I

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Speaker 1: would always um talk about sojournal truth first in her

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Speaker 1: sort of proclamation Anti woman and from eighteen fifty one

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Speaker 1: and at the Ohio Women's Convention in that proclamation and

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Speaker 1: talking about the history of the sort of devaluation of

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Speaker 1: black womanhood in America, and how there's a there's a

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Speaker 1: story that she was making a speech in Indiana, I

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Speaker 1: think in eighteen fifty six and someone yelled from the

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Speaker 1: audience accusing her being a man, and she like opens

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Speaker 1: her glaus and reveals her breast. So that so that

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Speaker 1: blackness was during abolition in eighteen fifty one was associated

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Speaker 1: with maleness, and womanhood was associated with white women and

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Speaker 1: black women were like, wait, hey, ain't I a woman?

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Speaker 1: And in that context, I also linked that history of

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Speaker 1: the devaluation of black womanhood with what Butler talks about

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Speaker 1: in Gender Trouble when she quotes Simon de Bouvoirs, when

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Speaker 1: Simone de Beauvois says one is not born a woman,

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Speaker 1: but rather becomes one, and Butler says, um, if I

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Speaker 1: can recall correctly, it's not clear that the one who

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Speaker 1: becomes a woman is necessarily female. Right. So there's been

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Speaker 1: a critical framework laid out in the history of feminism

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Speaker 1: where we can claim claim our gender on our own terms.

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Speaker 1: And that's really, for me, what it's really all about.

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Speaker 1: And let's also wake it up and say the same

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Speaker 1: rhetoric of y'all aren't real women was levied against black

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Speaker 1: and indigenous women by white feminists in the early twentieth century.

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Speaker 1: So white women would not take the issues that black

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Speaker 1: women were bringing up like missagen nation lynching, racist sexual

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Speaker 1: violence as women's issues because they believed that black and

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Speaker 1: Indigenous women had to become part of a cult of

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Speaker 1: true womanhood or pious, respectable women. And what I've been

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Speaker 1: unearthing in my research is actually white women would set

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Speaker 1: up associations to go into Native American reservations and Indigenous

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Speaker 1: communities and teach Indigenous women how to iron and how

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Speaker 1: to wear white women's clothing as a way to civilize

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Speaker 1: them into patriarchy. So the idea became, because you're part

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Speaker 1: of a savage matriarchy, you have to enter patriarchy before

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Speaker 1: you can be a feminist. And here we are in

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Speaker 1: one with transclusionary feminist resourcing, the same rhetoric that Susan b. Anthony,

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Speaker 1: Charlotte Perk, and Gillman all their ilk used against black

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Speaker 1: and Indigenous women, Which is why for me, the trans

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Speaker 1: Star Goes has been of our racial justice. And I

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Speaker 1: know that you've been so eloquent about this from the beginning,

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Speaker 1: and I think that's one of the most heartbreaking and

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Speaker 1: devastating experiences as a racialized transperson is that so many

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Speaker 1: of us, our gender comes from a deep love of

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Speaker 1: our racial and ethnic communities, and yet it's an unreciprocated love.

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Speaker 1: Often where we are fighting so hard because we understand

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Speaker 1: how white supremacy fortifies these awful gender binarians and norms,

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Speaker 1: and we don't get that same kind of love and response.

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Speaker 1: Oh look, I love you so much. This is so brilliant.

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Speaker 1: This is a good time to take a little break.

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Speaker 1: We'll be right back though. Okay, that's taken care of.

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Speaker 1: Let's get back to our chat. You've spoken so eloquently

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Speaker 1: in the past, and this is already You've gotten there

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Speaker 1: already that the struggle for gender equality and gender freedom

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Speaker 1: for everyone, including trans and non binary people, is linked

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Speaker 1: to an anti colonialist, anti white supremacist agenda. So can

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Speaker 1: you talk to us about your understanding of how gender

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Speaker 1: was not binary and indigenous cultures all over the world. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: And I also want to invite people to check out

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Speaker 1: my good Reads, where I currently have over six hundred

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Speaker 1: book recommendations, because what I've noticed is I have done

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Speaker 1: the research, and yet whenever they have, like a white

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Speaker 1: CIS person, say you don't exist, that's taken as authoritative.

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Speaker 1: Whenever those of us who have actually devoted our lives

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Speaker 1: to doing this work, our credibility is undermined because of

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Speaker 1: what we look like. And I've decided I'm not accepting

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Speaker 1: that transposoject anymore. Like I know what I'm saying, and

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Speaker 1: it comes from a corroborated place. You have six hundred

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Speaker 1: book recommendations like just six hundred book recommendations on good

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Speaker 1: Reads and divided into different reading lists. One of them

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Speaker 1: is colonialism and gender. So get into her work. So

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Speaker 1: here's what's really important to understand. One of the predominant

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Speaker 1: tactics of colonization across the world was imposing people into

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Speaker 1: Western gender norms. And I say imposing people because it

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Speaker 1: wasn't just indigenous gender variant people, it was all people,

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Speaker 1: and all people were policed into what white men and

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Speaker 1: white women should look like. The most visible explicit example

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Speaker 1: of this is cross dressing legislation. So in India, the

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Speaker 1: British actually passed a law that forbade any public displays

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Speaker 1: a visible gender nonconformity and required gender non conforming people

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Speaker 1: to register themselves with the police so the police could

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Speaker 1: ensure that they weren't cross dressing. Right, we're talking this

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Speaker 1: is in the late eighteen hundreds, and so the cau

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Speaker 1: cassity of telling me that we are new when actually

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Speaker 1: what we are is disappeared. So what I want us

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Speaker 1: to reframe the conversations. It's not that we're new. This

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Speaker 1: is a struggle that is on on for hundreds of years,

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Speaker 1: So it's not just that we were visible and then

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Speaker 1: we were raised, and then we were visible again. It's

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Speaker 1: just that as history actually goes, they disappear us. And

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Speaker 1: so what I've been trying to ask as an artist

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Speaker 1: is why do they need to disappear us? And what

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Speaker 1: I realized is in our existence is an alternative, and

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Speaker 1: the way that power works is by erasing an alternative,

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Speaker 1: so that people think that the status quo is the

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Speaker 1: only way to live. But in trans existence is possibility.

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Speaker 1: We're actually showing people you get to choose your own family.

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Speaker 1: We're showing people you own your own body. We're showing

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Speaker 1: people you get to choose your own beauty. And in

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Speaker 1: that way, we actually are presenting a radical imagination to

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Speaker 1: what family is, to what community is, to what health is,

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Speaker 1: to what life is. And so what I actually think

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Speaker 1: is I want to reframe the crisis of anti trans

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Speaker 1: violence as the policing of our life giving like as

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Speaker 1: the policing of the world, the beauty, the glamour, the

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Speaker 1: spirituality that we bring in. There's the main reason that

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Speaker 1: part of colonization was also then doctrination of people into

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Speaker 1: a particular type of Western Christianity and the erasure of

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Speaker 1: indigenous spiritual traditions which long understood femininity not as weak

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Speaker 1: or docile, but as powerful, ancestral and spiritual. And in fact,

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Speaker 1: in my research, what I found is a lot of

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Speaker 1: people who were arrested for cross dressing by the Portuguese Inquisition,

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Speaker 1: who were held in Christian trials, when in those trials

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Speaker 1: would say this is not I'm not wearing this because

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Speaker 1: I'm a woman. I'm wearing this to receive God. They

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Speaker 1: would say I wrapped my head to receive God. They

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Speaker 1: would say I put on the scirpt to receive God.

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Speaker 1: And so for me, what I really am trying to

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Speaker 1: be more explicit about is, yes, this is about my gender,

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Speaker 1: of course, but also this is about my spirituality. This

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Speaker 1: is how I feel most godly, This is how I

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Speaker 1: feel most divine in it when I'm getting d So

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Speaker 1: I'm making an altar on my body, and if you're

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Speaker 1: going to degrade that altar and you're gonna spit on me,

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Speaker 1: that doesn't matter, because I know my own godliness. And

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Speaker 1: so what happens when we break out of the cis

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Speaker 1: narrative that we're broken, that we're lacking, that we're absent,

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Speaker 1: and instead we say we are the divine, we say,

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Speaker 1: we are practicing our worth and our divine feminine and

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Speaker 1: that is why we're being persecuted. A look, you're preaching

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Speaker 1: the word right now. I'm living. I'm getting my full

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Speaker 1: entire life. Thank you, A look so much. Now. I've

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Speaker 1: been saying to trans people for years that in indigenous

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Speaker 1: cultures all over the world, we were revered. My understanding

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Speaker 1: is that hedro you wouldn't pre colonialism, you wouldn't want

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Speaker 1: to get married, or if your child was not christened

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Speaker 1: by a hydro, or your wedding not blessed by hydrid,

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Speaker 1: that it would be damned. And so I say to

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Speaker 1: trans and non binary people, we are anointed, and we

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Speaker 1: must claim our sacred space and our sacred place. And

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Speaker 1: what a tragedy it is that we've been institutionally gas lit.

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Speaker 1: That's the sad part, you know, when you were speaking

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Speaker 1: to me earlier about how even within the trans community,

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Speaker 1: non binary people are demeaned by people who are identifying

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Speaker 1: as women or men. For me, the culpritive that is

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Speaker 1: what Western eugenics did to our knowledge systems. So what's

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Speaker 1: really important to understand here is that there was an

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Speaker 1: unprecedented coordinated effort in the late nineteenth century and early

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Speaker 1: twentieth century to pathologize gender nonconformity. We actually, and I

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Speaker 1: really want to wake it up for people. People say

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Speaker 1: that we're new, but baby, there were words for us

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Speaker 1: before the word heterosexual was created the nineteenth century. In

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Speaker 1: the early sevent hundreds, we were called Molly's in the UK.

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Speaker 1: Then we were called pansies. In fact, if you look

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Speaker 1: at the press in the early nineteen thirties, they called

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Speaker 1: us third sextors. They had language for us before they

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Speaker 1: even had the language of heterosexual. But even I mean,

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Speaker 1: if even if you think about Greeks, I mean, I

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Speaker 1: think that the term the problematic term or maphradite comes

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Speaker 1: from her maidies. I think so even if we think

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Speaker 1: about you know, sort of ancient times, there were there

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Speaker 1: were folks who existed beyond the binary. And what's deep

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Speaker 1: about so much oppression is that there's just so much

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Speaker 1: ignorance around it. There's a lack of understanding about history,

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Speaker 1: a lack of understanding about biology and science, a lack

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Speaker 1: of understanding about sociology. Oh my god. Look, so there

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Speaker 1: was a moment in your book when you talk about

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Speaker 1: and it just hit me in my gut. When you

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Speaker 1: talked about when you were a kid being bullied and

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Speaker 1: being told that you were assisty and acted like a girl.

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Speaker 1: I was like, that's exactly, literally exactly what they said

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Speaker 1: to me. And then later on they called you a man,

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Speaker 1: and I was just and I think you used the

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Speaker 1: phrase too feminine to be a boy and too masculine

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Speaker 1: to be a girl. It was like the irony of that.

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Speaker 1: I've always thought about the irony of that in my

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Speaker 1: own life, that like I was called a girl when

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Speaker 1: I was a child, um, and then now people call

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Speaker 1: me a man and as a way, and so it's like,

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Speaker 1: you can't kind of win in this system. Can you

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Speaker 1: elaborate on that and what that says to you right

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Speaker 1: now and in this moment. So there's no consistent definitions

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Speaker 1: for man and women, they change the definitions of man

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Speaker 1: and woman specifically to exclude us. That's where the power

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Speaker 1: comes in. So they see trans people being able to

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Speaker 1: change our birth certificates, so they change the law. They

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Speaker 1: see trans people being able to modify our body or morphology,

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Speaker 1: so they change the law. So it's actually that there's

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Speaker 1: no static definitions of what it means to be a

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Speaker 1: male and female. They invent those definitions specifically to exclude us,

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Speaker 1: And I think it's really important to bring up castor

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Speaker 1: semenia in this conversation. Castro Semania identifies as a woman

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Speaker 1: who is a South African Olympian and continually is told

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Speaker 1: that her naturally occurring rates of testosterone are too high

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Speaker 1: for her to compete in the female category. So what

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Speaker 1: they're saying is we have a predetermined idea of female

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Speaker 1: which just so happens to be defined around white European women,

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Speaker 1: and then when it comes to black and Global South

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Speaker 1: women who often have different distributions of steroid not sex

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Speaker 1: hormones in their bodies, they get policed out. And that's

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Speaker 1: in a literal example of a project that's existed for

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Speaker 1: hundreds of years where they change the rules specifically to

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Speaker 1: justify them winning and racialize people losing. And I think

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Speaker 1: Castro not only identifies as a woman, but it was

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Speaker 1: also assigned female at birth, so just so she identifies

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Speaker 1: as a woman and with the sign female at birth,

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Speaker 1: so she's she would be as this woman by definition,

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Speaker 1: but with very high levels of testosterone, right, And that's

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Speaker 1: why for me, it's like there's no there's no ethical

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Speaker 1: standpoint to policing gender and sex. There's no logical consistency,

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Speaker 1: there's no scientific consistency. What there is is trauma. And

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Speaker 1: I think what I was so looking forward to this

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Speaker 1: conversation is you're one of the few people in a

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Speaker 1: public platform speaking about trauma. And for me, trauma is

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Speaker 1: the origin of everything. So then the question for me becomes,

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Speaker 1: how are people so traumatized that they mistake freedom as

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Speaker 1: a threat? And then I began to realize it's not

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Speaker 1: that we, as gender nonconforming people, are the only ones

429
00:25:09,800 --> 00:25:13,320
Speaker 1: that are harmed by this binary. This binary has recruited

430
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:17,760
Speaker 1: CIS people such that whenever they're presented with any alternative,

431
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:22,520
Speaker 1: they have to undermine that in themselves and in other people.

432
00:25:22,880 --> 00:25:25,760
Speaker 1: So then the violence we experience as trans people was

433
00:25:25,840 --> 00:25:28,960
Speaker 1: templated on what they did to themselves. First, it's what

434
00:25:29,119 --> 00:25:31,280
Speaker 1: the CIS women said when they said, no one will

435
00:25:31,359 --> 00:25:33,960
Speaker 1: love me if I have facial hair, So I'm gonna

436
00:25:34,040 --> 00:25:36,240
Speaker 1: remove every hair on my body. And when I see

437
00:25:36,240 --> 00:25:39,240
Speaker 1: a general non conforming person do that, I can't process that.

438
00:25:39,520 --> 00:25:41,560
Speaker 1: It's sys men saying no one will ever love me

439
00:25:41,600 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 1: if I'm vulnerable emotional, so when I see someone else

440
00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:46,199
Speaker 1: doing that, I have to erase them. So then I

441
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 1: began to realize there's no such thing as transgender issues.

442
00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:51,800
Speaker 1: There are issues that since people have for themselves that

443
00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:54,840
Speaker 1: they're taking out on us, And I think that energy

444
00:25:55,000 --> 00:25:56,760
Speaker 1: I was only able to get by doing my own

445
00:25:56,800 --> 00:26:00,159
Speaker 1: trauma healing work because I was misled into thinking I

446
00:26:00,280 --> 00:26:03,479
Speaker 1: was broken when from the age of three I was

447
00:26:03,560 --> 00:26:06,960
Speaker 1: practicing my truth. My mom has a story that she

448
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:08,399
Speaker 1: told me that when I was seven years old, she

449
00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:10,840
Speaker 1: was talking me into bed and I said, Mom, I'm queer,

450
00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:13,080
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what that word meant. I read

451
00:26:13,080 --> 00:26:15,000
Speaker 1: it because my dad was brought up in a British

452
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:17,879
Speaker 1: colonial education system, so we read children's literature from the

453
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:20,080
Speaker 1: UK which used queer as a word for strange. But

454
00:26:20,160 --> 00:26:23,639
Speaker 1: I knew that I was different before I had any language.

455
00:26:24,080 --> 00:26:26,480
Speaker 1: And so for the audacity for people to tell me

456
00:26:26,840 --> 00:26:30,119
Speaker 1: that I just made this up for my career, for

457
00:26:30,160 --> 00:26:34,080
Speaker 1: political correctness, or to undermine other people, No. Trans people

458
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:38,960
Speaker 1: practice a kind of resonant presence that threatens a world

459
00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:43,199
Speaker 1: that thrives on scarcity, trauma, and projection. We are some

460
00:26:43,240 --> 00:26:45,960
Speaker 1: of the most real that there ever was So what

461
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:49,200
Speaker 1: happens is other people project their insecurities because they don't

462
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:51,840
Speaker 1: know who they are. They only know who they've been

463
00:26:51,840 --> 00:26:56,359
Speaker 1: told they should be. Hello, I feel like I literally

464
00:26:56,400 --> 00:26:58,879
Speaker 1: am sitting here. I'm like, okay when people ask me

465
00:26:58,920 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 1: about these issues and like, listen to a low girl,

466
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:08,560
Speaker 1: I'm tired. Girl is gender neutral for me, by the way,

467
00:27:09,440 --> 00:27:11,840
Speaker 1: I'm tired. I'm like, I'm just the look you're giving

468
00:27:11,840 --> 00:27:15,399
Speaker 1: it the gospel truth right now. Hurt people, hurt people.

469
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:17,960
Speaker 1: And I talk a lot about trauma publicly. We've talked

470
00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:21,720
Speaker 1: a lot about trauma on this podcast. In Trauma, my

471
00:27:21,920 --> 00:27:25,280
Speaker 1: therapist defines trauma as too much, too fast, too soon,

472
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:28,520
Speaker 1: and it's really about our nervous systems. When I have

473
00:27:28,640 --> 00:27:30,880
Speaker 1: nervous systems go into survival mode and we go into

474
00:27:30,880 --> 00:27:34,439
Speaker 1: five flight or freeze. When we're biologically I think this

475
00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:38,560
Speaker 1: is the correct term for biology, biologically programmed, right, or

476
00:27:38,560 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 1: at least neurobiologically programmed. So when we sense a threat,

477
00:27:41,840 --> 00:27:45,960
Speaker 1: it's our bodies released cortisol, adrenaline, and when we were

478
00:27:46,040 --> 00:27:48,840
Speaker 1: out of that dangerous situation, we regulate, We sort of

479
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:53,640
Speaker 1: come back to our stasis. If we are constantly feeling

480
00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:58,040
Speaker 1: under threat, under stress, But we're not hardwired biologically to

481
00:27:58,160 --> 00:28:01,280
Speaker 1: constantly be in that survival place, to constantly release the

482
00:28:01,280 --> 00:28:05,320
Speaker 1: cortisol in adrenaline over time. That can cause disease, can

483
00:28:05,359 --> 00:28:09,359
Speaker 1: cause illness, adrenal fatigue, all sorts of things. But I

484
00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:13,639
Speaker 1: think the piece there is not feeling safe. And I

485
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 1: think what for me, as a trans person of color

486
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:18,920
Speaker 1: who's sort of been bullied my whole life, I've been

487
00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:21,840
Speaker 1: released in cortisol in adrenaline like all the time because

488
00:28:21,840 --> 00:28:25,000
Speaker 1: I've never felt safe. And I think people who aren't

489
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:28,560
Speaker 1: trans and aren't people of color also aren't feeling safe

490
00:28:28,800 --> 00:28:31,919
Speaker 1: for probably very different reasons, maybe some of the same reasons.

491
00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:35,800
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're seeing us as a threat to them. Like

492
00:28:36,080 --> 00:28:38,640
Speaker 1: and I've always always like to remind people that feeling

493
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:42,479
Speaker 1: unsafe and feeling uncomfortable are not the same thing. Right,

494
00:28:42,520 --> 00:28:44,960
Speaker 1: if I'm uncomfortable, I talked about bathrooms all the time,

495
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:48,160
Speaker 1: like right in Jim Crow South, and white folks were

496
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:51,200
Speaker 1: not comfortable with black people using the same bathroom as them,

497
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:54,360
Speaker 1: but they weren't unsafe with black people using the bathroom.

498
00:28:54,760 --> 00:28:57,520
Speaker 1: And you know, sis women who might be uncomfortable with

499
00:28:57,600 --> 00:29:00,800
Speaker 1: the trans woman in the bathroom with them and unsafe.

500
00:29:00,840 --> 00:29:04,600
Speaker 1: They might be uncomfortable. In my healing work around my trauma,

501
00:29:04,760 --> 00:29:08,040
Speaker 1: I have to be able to distinguish between being uncomfortable

502
00:29:08,080 --> 00:29:11,040
Speaker 1: and unsafe, so I'm not constantly releasing those hormones. That

503
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:14,360
Speaker 1: is work I have to do. People are lashing out.

504
00:29:14,640 --> 00:29:16,680
Speaker 1: I think a lot of times people are lashing out

505
00:29:17,520 --> 00:29:21,760
Speaker 1: at the wrong thing. They're feeling threatened and they're feeling unsafe,

506
00:29:21,880 --> 00:29:24,440
Speaker 1: and so they're lashing out of trans people, their scapegoating us,

507
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:26,720
Speaker 1: and they're lashing out at us, or they're lashing out

508
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:29,479
Speaker 1: at immigrants, or they're lashing out at black people, and

509
00:29:29,520 --> 00:29:33,680
Speaker 1: it's like, wait a minute, maybe there is this system,

510
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 1: And what you're saying around the gender binary is that

511
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:38,080
Speaker 1: there's a system that is they're pressing you. What I

512
00:29:38,080 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 1: would say about people who are you know, in the

513
00:29:39,960 --> 00:29:42,280
Speaker 1: Midwest who have all their jobs have been shipped overseas.

514
00:29:42,360 --> 00:29:44,680
Speaker 1: It is not the fault of Mexicans and people from

515
00:29:44,720 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 1: South America who have come and taking your jobs. There

516
00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:49,440
Speaker 1: is a system that is in place that is not

517
00:29:49,840 --> 00:29:51,960
Speaker 1: done what it needs to do to protect your jobs.

518
00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 1: So instead of lashing out at your fellow citizen, maybe

519
00:29:55,080 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 1: we should be looking at uniting as a people and

520
00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:01,440
Speaker 1: changing the system that is a pressing us. And now

521
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:06,760
Speaker 1: that was my little Yes, scapegoating is a trauma response,

522
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:10,800
Speaker 1: and it's just it. Really, this is where trauma literacy

523
00:30:10,800 --> 00:30:14,680
Speaker 1: has changed my life because often the political vocabulary is

524
00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:17,400
Speaker 1: insufficient for me. Now, like I kind of get bored

525
00:30:17,440 --> 00:30:20,120
Speaker 1: by a lot of social justice language because it's not

526
00:30:20,320 --> 00:30:22,880
Speaker 1: enough because the social justice language and oh my god,

527
00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:24,800
Speaker 1: this is, oh my god cry because I've been so

528
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:27,080
Speaker 1: fed up with politics and like I just can't do

529
00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:30,840
Speaker 1: it anymore. But I'm still political, but I think that's

530
00:30:30,840 --> 00:30:34,120
Speaker 1: the piece political language is really limiting. I'm in the

531
00:30:34,160 --> 00:30:36,080
Speaker 1: space of healing. I'm in this space of like, how

532
00:30:36,120 --> 00:30:38,200
Speaker 1: do I deal with this trauma? How do I deal

533
00:30:38,280 --> 00:30:40,440
Speaker 1: with like, you know, my shame. How do I heal

534
00:30:40,520 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 1: myself so that I can like go into this next

535
00:30:42,840 --> 00:30:46,240
Speaker 1: fifty years hopefully you know, with some with some sanity

536
00:30:46,320 --> 00:30:49,080
Speaker 1: and some help. But this is why I connect with

537
00:30:49,120 --> 00:30:51,400
Speaker 1: you so deeply, La Fern, is that I see us

538
00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 1: both struggling because we understand that actually the spiritual work

539
00:30:55,720 --> 00:30:58,920
Speaker 1: is the political work. The healing work is the social

540
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:02,760
Speaker 1: justice liberatory work, and we're actually saying the work begins

541
00:31:03,360 --> 00:31:07,160
Speaker 1: reckoning with our own trauma and with sedimentation of all

542
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:10,840
Speaker 1: these legacies and histories in us, how we treat each

543
00:31:10,880 --> 00:31:13,880
Speaker 1: other and how we treat ourselves the location of politics.

544
00:31:13,920 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 1: So for me, I'm not as concerned with the rigor

545
00:31:16,440 --> 00:31:19,239
Speaker 1: of your analysis, what words you have. I'm much more

546
00:31:19,280 --> 00:31:21,640
Speaker 1: concerned and how are we treating each other? How are

547
00:31:21,640 --> 00:31:26,880
Speaker 1: we practicing a loving, compassionate, trauma informed world today. And

548
00:31:26,960 --> 00:31:28,720
Speaker 1: what this has allowed me to do is to have

549
00:31:28,760 --> 00:31:31,800
Speaker 1: a very different conversation on trans politics. I am exposed

550
00:31:31,800 --> 00:31:35,560
Speaker 1: to transphobic violence every single minute of my life, and

551
00:31:35,600 --> 00:31:39,000
Speaker 1: I respond with love. And people don't get it, But

552
00:31:39,080 --> 00:31:41,560
Speaker 1: I want to explain that I'm choosing love not to

553
00:31:41,600 --> 00:31:44,240
Speaker 1: be the better person. I'm choosing love to heal because

554
00:31:44,240 --> 00:31:47,400
Speaker 1: if I was to be angry at every single person,

555
00:31:47,800 --> 00:31:53,080
Speaker 1: that would ruin my nervous system. And love actually equalizes

556
00:31:53,160 --> 00:31:55,760
Speaker 1: me and makes me actually want to live. It gives

557
00:31:55,800 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 1: me joy and beauty and possibility and hope. And why

558
00:31:59,160 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: would I ever subscribed to an ideology that makes me

559
00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:05,520
Speaker 1: feel guilty for hope when it's actually the very thing

560
00:32:05,520 --> 00:32:08,960
Speaker 1: that makes me survive. And then, second, I love because

561
00:32:08,960 --> 00:32:11,520
Speaker 1: I know that the reason people harm me is because

562
00:32:11,520 --> 00:32:14,560
Speaker 1: they have been harmed and they are doing harm to themselves.

563
00:32:14,880 --> 00:32:17,959
Speaker 1: And then I know that weaponizing shame against them doesn't

564
00:32:18,000 --> 00:32:23,680
Speaker 1: actually do anything but reinforce their self sabotage. So I

565
00:32:23,720 --> 00:32:26,400
Speaker 1: want to break the circuitry of self sabotage, and I

566
00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:29,560
Speaker 1: want to teach people healing is possible. And I think

567
00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:32,640
Speaker 1: that that is why trans people were historically regarded as

568
00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:37,280
Speaker 1: spiritual leaders, because of our mastery of metamorphosis. And what

569
00:32:37,320 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 1: I mean by that is that this world teaches us

570
00:32:39,440 --> 00:32:42,160
Speaker 1: that everything is fixed and cannot be changed, and then

571
00:32:42,200 --> 00:32:46,680
Speaker 1: trans people entered, we say we can change everything. I

572
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:50,120
Speaker 1: hated who I was. I was problematic, I was ignorant,

573
00:32:50,200 --> 00:32:52,719
Speaker 1: I was messy, I was not in a good place,

574
00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:56,200
Speaker 1: and then I took life into my own hands and

575
00:32:56,320 --> 00:33:00,120
Speaker 1: I manifested myself. If that is not a men to

576
00:33:00,280 --> 00:33:03,960
Speaker 1: for a poem, a truth, a prophecy for this world,

577
00:33:04,480 --> 00:33:07,000
Speaker 1: that's the gift of possibility that trans people give you.

578
00:33:07,120 --> 00:33:09,400
Speaker 1: Two can change, and I know you and I both

579
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:11,960
Speaker 1: believe this. The reason that I find social justice so

580
00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:16,120
Speaker 1: concerning right now is this idea of redemption has been

581
00:33:16,160 --> 00:33:21,520
Speaker 1: completely lost, and I'm actually like, we should start from culpability.

582
00:33:21,840 --> 00:33:24,280
Speaker 1: We should start from complicity. We are the things that

583
00:33:24,320 --> 00:33:27,040
Speaker 1: we critique, we are the things that are harming us.

584
00:33:27,080 --> 00:33:30,840
Speaker 1: But yet we fight because there's still something beautiful, redeemable

585
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:37,000
Speaker 1: and possible alongside that in ourselves and in one another. Absolutely. Absolutely.

586
00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:40,480
Speaker 1: Oh look, there's a few things they came up from me. Um.

587
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:42,840
Speaker 1: Corey Booker was on a talk show when he was

588
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:45,800
Speaker 1: running for president in the primaries, and he was talking

589
00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:48,840
Speaker 1: about love and having an ethic of love and like

590
00:33:49,000 --> 00:33:51,360
Speaker 1: proceeding from a place of love, and the journalists, I

591
00:33:51,360 --> 00:33:53,920
Speaker 1: want to see the journalisting laughed in his face as

592
00:33:53,960 --> 00:33:55,960
Speaker 1: he said it, like literally laughed in his face. I

593
00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 1: was like, wow, he got no traction talking about love.

594
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:01,120
Speaker 1: That came up for me when I've listened to you.

595
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:04,600
Speaker 1: And then Um, a psychologist we just interview, talked about love.

596
00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:06,760
Speaker 1: I talked about love all the time. And she talked

597
00:34:06,760 --> 00:34:09,719
Speaker 1: about how when we're in love, our bodies instead of

598
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:13,400
Speaker 1: those stress hormones, our bodies actually released dopamine and release

599
00:34:13,560 --> 00:34:17,360
Speaker 1: oxytocin and all these good, you know, feel good hormones

600
00:34:17,600 --> 00:34:20,359
Speaker 1: when we're in love and when we feel love and

601
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:23,520
Speaker 1: just this space of manifesting love for myself and maybe

602
00:34:23,520 --> 00:34:27,520
Speaker 1: for another person or for our thing is literally healing.

603
00:34:27,640 --> 00:34:31,400
Speaker 1: It's literally taking those stress hormones and bringing them down

604
00:34:31,520 --> 00:34:35,320
Speaker 1: and replacing them with hormones that are loving and our bodies,

605
00:34:35,640 --> 00:34:38,640
Speaker 1: and that is something that we all need. And the

606
00:34:38,680 --> 00:34:41,359
Speaker 1: space of metamorphosis that you just talked about, I think

607
00:34:41,800 --> 00:34:44,840
Speaker 1: that was one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.

608
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:47,680
Speaker 1: This is why I'm not into the cancel culture thing,

609
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:51,160
Speaker 1: because it's like people can change and people, you know,

610
00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:53,520
Speaker 1: I can't change you. You have to make that decision

611
00:34:53,520 --> 00:34:57,000
Speaker 1: to change yourself. But that is possible. And then how

612
00:34:57,040 --> 00:35:00,040
Speaker 1: do we also create a space where we're assuming the

613
00:35:00,200 --> 00:35:03,080
Speaker 1: best in people? Um, I think we shouldn't be naive

614
00:35:03,120 --> 00:35:06,520
Speaker 1: about making generous assumptions, right, But I think if I'm

615
00:35:06,520 --> 00:35:09,040
Speaker 1: assuming that people are sucking on purpose and people are

616
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:12,000
Speaker 1: just corrupt, it's a really dark place to be in.

617
00:35:12,560 --> 00:35:17,000
Speaker 1: Making generous assumptions about our fellow human beings helps me,

618
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:19,839
Speaker 1: Like that helps me moving from a place of love,

619
00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:23,799
Speaker 1: helps me get through my life instead of being cynical

620
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:27,320
Speaker 1: and sort of jaded and bitter. So this work is individual,

621
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:30,720
Speaker 1: but if enough individuals do the work, it can become

622
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:33,440
Speaker 1: collective and then we can begin to change ideology and

623
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:36,560
Speaker 1: change structures and systems that you have to get that out.

624
00:35:37,120 --> 00:35:39,920
Speaker 1: I was gonna say my job as a poet is

625
00:35:39,960 --> 00:35:44,760
Speaker 1: to resurrect the dead things, including love and my entire life.

626
00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:49,640
Speaker 1: I've been shamed as naive immature for being committed to love,

627
00:35:50,120 --> 00:35:52,759
Speaker 1: and then I actually realized I need to cultivate my

628
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:57,680
Speaker 1: naivety because of course, a system that is so cruel

629
00:35:58,080 --> 00:36:05,040
Speaker 1: will diminish, undermine, and delegitimize any alternative as naive, ridiculous, idealistic.

630
00:36:05,400 --> 00:36:08,839
Speaker 1: And now I actually believe in the possibility of transformation

631
00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:11,800
Speaker 1: of this world. I believe the healing is possible because

632
00:36:11,800 --> 00:36:13,880
Speaker 1: look at what I've done in my own life, and

633
00:36:13,960 --> 00:36:16,080
Speaker 1: that's what Healing Journey has done from me, is that

634
00:36:16,160 --> 00:36:19,640
Speaker 1: if I could find something redeemable in me, I wanted

635
00:36:19,680 --> 00:36:22,520
Speaker 1: to die. For the first half of my life, I

636
00:36:22,560 --> 00:36:26,160
Speaker 1: didn't exist. I was literally a fantasy of what other

637
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:29,520
Speaker 1: people needed me to be. I perfected disassociation as my

638
00:36:29,560 --> 00:36:31,879
Speaker 1: first performance are which is why so many of as

639
00:36:31,880 --> 00:36:33,719
Speaker 1: a trans and gender a commer people are so damn

640
00:36:33,760 --> 00:36:37,359
Speaker 1: good at performance. It's because we learned the scripts really

641
00:36:37,400 --> 00:36:42,240
Speaker 1: early on, and and transition for me was about realignment

642
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:44,680
Speaker 1: and if I could go from being a ghost of

643
00:36:44,719 --> 00:36:49,040
Speaker 1: myself to being able to perform and weep and feel

644
00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:53,239
Speaker 1: every emotion. How dare you tell me that hope is impractical,

645
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:57,920
Speaker 1: Because hope is how I resurrected myself from premature death.

646
00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:03,440
Speaker 1: So I am actually really committed now to an arsenal

647
00:37:03,640 --> 00:37:09,000
Speaker 1: of militant compassion and compassionate militancy. And I reject this

648
00:37:09,080 --> 00:37:13,120
Speaker 1: idea that we were just somehow wrong or or short sided,

649
00:37:13,560 --> 00:37:17,120
Speaker 1: because actually the political traditions that I most learned from,

650
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 1: Like when I think about the history of cross dressing laws,

651
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:23,400
Speaker 1: our transistors were arrested twenty to forty times. It wasn't

652
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:26,920
Speaker 1: just like one time. It was like routinely risk and

653
00:37:26,960 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 1: then exposed to sexual violence in prisons, put into mental

654
00:37:29,520 --> 00:37:32,480
Speaker 1: health institution centers. Why did they keep on going outside?

655
00:37:32,760 --> 00:37:35,560
Speaker 1: And the only reason I can understand it is they

656
00:37:35,600 --> 00:37:38,960
Speaker 1: were writing love letters to us. That is the only

657
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:42,680
Speaker 1: way I can understand it. My transform others said, I

658
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:44,759
Speaker 1: am writing a love letter to those who do not

659
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:47,720
Speaker 1: exist yet, and I am trying to create a world

660
00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:50,279
Speaker 1: such that you can't exist. So what that means is

661
00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:52,399
Speaker 1: that I'm only able to exist because of the love

662
00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:56,680
Speaker 1: and care of other people. So actually my love and

663
00:37:56,719 --> 00:37:59,960
Speaker 1: care creates the capacity for existence for the next generation

664
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:03,040
Speaker 1: it and that idea is what propels me to keep going.

665
00:38:03,200 --> 00:38:04,920
Speaker 1: Is the more love and the more care and the

666
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:07,120
Speaker 1: more intention than I put into the world, maybe I

667
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:10,040
Speaker 1: can create a world that's livable by the people that

668
00:38:10,120 --> 00:38:14,919
Speaker 1: need to exist. Mm hmm, oh, that's so beautiful. When

669
00:38:14,960 --> 00:38:17,919
Speaker 1: you talked about your being called naive, I immediately thought

670
00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:20,480
Speaker 1: about the child that lives in all of us, and

671
00:38:20,560 --> 00:38:24,239
Speaker 1: the child who does not know bigotry that is top bigotry,

672
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:27,760
Speaker 1: but also doesn't know shame, also doesn't know trauma and

673
00:38:28,360 --> 00:38:31,360
Speaker 1: sort of tapping into the child and me whose wide

674
00:38:31,400 --> 00:38:37,560
Speaker 1: eyed and it's filled with possibility, and so caring for

675
00:38:37,640 --> 00:38:40,800
Speaker 1: that little child, letting her come out and play um,

676
00:38:40,840 --> 00:38:44,520
Speaker 1: speaking gently to her, nourishing her and sometimes, you know,

677
00:38:44,640 --> 00:38:46,600
Speaker 1: being the adult when I need to be, but letting

678
00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:52,640
Speaker 1: her have space teaches me so much about myself. Okay,

679
00:38:52,680 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 1: it's that time again. A lot more is coming though,

680
00:38:55,200 --> 00:38:58,160
Speaker 1: including our guests. What else is true, We'll be right back.

681
00:39:05,320 --> 00:39:07,759
Speaker 1: We are back, and we're ready to pick up where

682
00:39:07,760 --> 00:39:11,920
Speaker 1: we left on. So I do want to be a

683
00:39:11,960 --> 00:39:16,120
Speaker 1: little basic and talk about pronouns. I remember when I

684
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:18,960
Speaker 1: when I had my really first close non binary friend

685
00:39:18,960 --> 00:39:21,239
Speaker 1: who used data in pronouns, and I remember just having

686
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:24,319
Speaker 1: difficulty at the beginning with with they them, and I

687
00:39:24,360 --> 00:39:27,440
Speaker 1: don't anymore, and and again one can change, but I

688
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:29,400
Speaker 1: had difficulty in the beginning. A lot of people, I

689
00:39:29,440 --> 00:39:31,960
Speaker 1: think still have some difficulty with they them. I think

690
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:34,680
Speaker 1: fewer people than used to. Can you talk about the

691
00:39:34,719 --> 00:39:38,440
Speaker 1: importance of pronouns and respecting people's pronouns. I would love

692
00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:41,759
Speaker 1: to say that I had difficulty miss gendering myself, which

693
00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:45,480
Speaker 1: is export often don't bring up tell us about that,

694
00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:48,560
Speaker 1: but you know what, I started to use day then, pronouns.

695
00:39:48,560 --> 00:39:51,239
Speaker 1: It was a transition for me because I was just

696
00:39:51,320 --> 00:39:55,680
Speaker 1: so saturated into the language of male quote female pronouns

697
00:39:55,680 --> 00:39:58,279
Speaker 1: and binaries that it was a new introduction to me.

698
00:39:58,320 --> 00:40:00,840
Speaker 1: And so I began from humility being like, of course,

699
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:05,799
Speaker 1: it's difficult, but it's in no way equivalent to the

700
00:40:05,920 --> 00:40:12,120
Speaker 1: kinds of institutionalized psychological warfare that gender variant people exist

701
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:18,000
Speaker 1: and a culture that ritualizes and naturalizes our disappearance. So yes,

702
00:40:18,040 --> 00:40:21,520
Speaker 1: it's difficult, but that difference you're alluding to between discomfort

703
00:40:21,560 --> 00:40:25,360
Speaker 1: and actual oppression. So actually, what I would argue is

704
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:28,160
Speaker 1: the only way that we show up for other people

705
00:40:28,360 --> 00:40:31,200
Speaker 1: is through inconveniencing ourselves. So in this kind of political

706
00:40:31,239 --> 00:40:33,920
Speaker 1: vacabulary right now, people are saying defund the police. It

707
00:40:34,040 --> 00:40:37,120
Speaker 1: just scares people. As a framework, you should come up

708
00:40:37,160 --> 00:40:40,760
Speaker 1: with a more palate. That's not how change works. Change

709
00:40:40,800 --> 00:40:45,200
Speaker 1: works by actually being made uncomfortable. So what they them,

710
00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:48,400
Speaker 1: I think is so productive and generative in doing, is

711
00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:53,040
Speaker 1: halting a conversation and therefore halting an assumption. And that's

712
00:40:53,080 --> 00:40:56,640
Speaker 1: what we need to attack as a trans movement is

713
00:40:56,680 --> 00:40:59,919
Speaker 1: the preconscious. It's not just about how people are curre

714
00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:03,720
Speaker 1: did on social media, it's what they actually are thinking

715
00:41:03,760 --> 00:41:06,680
Speaker 1: before they articulate the language. And this hasn't experienced so

716
00:41:06,680 --> 00:41:08,680
Speaker 1: many of us as trans people know as well. They're

717
00:41:08,719 --> 00:41:11,279
Speaker 1: just using our pronouns to be politically correct, not because

718
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:13,640
Speaker 1: they actually see us for who we are. And I

719
00:41:13,640 --> 00:41:15,680
Speaker 1: don't want you to use day them just because it's

720
00:41:15,680 --> 00:41:17,440
Speaker 1: like you're gonna get called out. I want to use

721
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:19,960
Speaker 1: saying them because you no longer see me as a man.

722
00:41:20,760 --> 00:41:24,120
Speaker 1: And that's what I'm insisting on for trans people is

723
00:41:24,160 --> 00:41:28,840
Speaker 1: that we have accepted mere acknowledgement as the social justice

724
00:41:29,080 --> 00:41:32,640
Speaker 1: in beart it when I'm actually I'm saying no, regard

725
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:36,680
Speaker 1: my humanity, and regarding my humanity means recognize me for

726
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:40,880
Speaker 1: my complexity, my interiority, and that which can never be

727
00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:44,840
Speaker 1: rendered visible. Not all trans people are the same, because

728
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:48,920
Speaker 1: we each have souls, and I'm arguing for bodies, not souls.

729
00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:50,920
Speaker 1: The next point I want to make about the pronoun

730
00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:54,720
Speaker 1: conversation to elevate it, just because as people will say,

731
00:41:54,880 --> 00:41:59,160
Speaker 1: it's plural, it doesn't make sense grammatically, etcetera. And I

732
00:41:59,200 --> 00:42:02,759
Speaker 1: want to actually say, in this moment of pandemic, one

733
00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:07,359
Speaker 1: would think that Western individualism could be revisited, because what

734
00:42:07,400 --> 00:42:10,239
Speaker 1: we should learn from this is that what's happening over

735
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:13,760
Speaker 1: there impacts what's happening over here, and that we create

736
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:18,799
Speaker 1: fictional walls everywhere between countries, between genders, between races that

737
00:42:18,880 --> 00:42:23,000
Speaker 1: are illusory and don't stand the test of life and existence.

738
00:42:23,520 --> 00:42:27,160
Speaker 1: What they them for me is actually of collapsing Western

739
00:42:27,200 --> 00:42:31,920
Speaker 1: individualism and saying I am because of many, because it

740
00:42:31,960 --> 00:42:36,239
Speaker 1: took many, loving, caring traditions and people. And so when

741
00:42:36,280 --> 00:42:40,120
Speaker 1: I say I am, I'm representing those people's communities, traditions.

742
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:43,239
Speaker 1: When I say they them, I'm paying homage to Sylvester

743
00:42:43,640 --> 00:42:45,880
Speaker 1: to Sylvia, to all the people who came before me.

744
00:42:46,200 --> 00:42:48,280
Speaker 1: I'm actually saying the only reason that I can exist

745
00:42:48,360 --> 00:42:53,000
Speaker 1: is because other people existed. Yes, I'm not trying to

746
00:42:53,040 --> 00:42:56,000
Speaker 1: extrapolate myself, and so that's why I say they them

747
00:42:56,040 --> 00:42:59,719
Speaker 1: as a poem. Every time you've gendered me appropriately, we

748
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:02,839
Speaker 1: are convening together in a poem. And the poems that

749
00:43:02,880 --> 00:43:05,080
Speaker 1: matter most to me are the poems that we speak,

750
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:08,360
Speaker 1: and I think they them as a as an articulate

751
00:43:08,400 --> 00:43:14,160
Speaker 1: poem of a kind of alternative to Western individualism. Brilliant.

752
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:20,359
Speaker 1: I knew you'd elevate the conversation. That was fucking brilliant. Yes,

753
00:43:20,400 --> 00:43:23,239
Speaker 1: I'm cursing on my podcast, but there's a moment in

754
00:43:23,239 --> 00:43:26,360
Speaker 1: your book beyond the gender binary. You right, The gender

755
00:43:26,400 --> 00:43:29,720
Speaker 1: binary is like a party gift who shows up before

756
00:43:29,760 --> 00:43:34,319
Speaker 1: you've had a chance to set the table. I love that.

757
00:43:34,400 --> 00:43:37,480
Speaker 1: Can you elaborate on that a little bit? To wrap up? So,

758
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:42,880
Speaker 1: the thing is people still think that babies are born

759
00:43:43,120 --> 00:43:48,760
Speaker 1: male or female, when actually we're slowly starting to say, okay,

760
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:51,320
Speaker 1: maybe not all babies are born straight. That's a cultural

761
00:43:51,400 --> 00:43:53,680
Speaker 1: position we put on. But when it comes to gender

762
00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:56,680
Speaker 1: and sex, we haven't done that due diligence. The truth

763
00:43:56,760 --> 00:43:59,600
Speaker 1: is we're all born and then we become after the fact.

764
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:03,600
Speaker 1: But what the gender binary makes you think is that

765
00:44:03,680 --> 00:44:09,000
Speaker 1: our organic default, biological as they say, self, was male.

766
00:44:09,239 --> 00:44:12,560
Speaker 1: Laverne and I were not born moles, period, period. And

767
00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 1: and to really understand trans life, you need to break

768
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:20,600
Speaker 1: out of this paradigm that we were biological males quote

769
00:44:20,680 --> 00:44:26,720
Speaker 1: unquote that transition like that's all literally sis nonsense. Okay,

770
00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:31,160
Speaker 1: we were born a Loke and Laverne respectively, and culture

771
00:44:31,160 --> 00:44:34,080
Speaker 1: and society came in and accrued various meanings to what

772
00:44:34,080 --> 00:44:37,080
Speaker 1: we were giving and what was given. And so when

773
00:44:37,080 --> 00:44:40,600
Speaker 1: I'm saying the gender binary shows up unannounced, it structures

774
00:44:40,640 --> 00:44:44,440
Speaker 1: the preconscious that I was speaking before. It literally means

775
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:47,160
Speaker 1: that even before you speak, you see address and you

776
00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:49,440
Speaker 1: think woman. But what I want you to understand is

777
00:44:49,480 --> 00:44:52,680
Speaker 1: most of what we consider now to be feminine was

778
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:55,479
Speaker 1: actually worn by people of various genders for hundreds of years.

779
00:44:55,520 --> 00:45:00,960
Speaker 1: Make up, wigs, heels, leggings, dresses, lace, So actually every

780
00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:05,839
Speaker 1: symbol is structured by historical, social and political conditions. And

781
00:45:05,880 --> 00:45:09,000
Speaker 1: when you continue to make this as some like organic

782
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:12,839
Speaker 1: innate like blank slate, that doesn't exist. You're blank slate

783
00:45:12,840 --> 00:45:16,600
Speaker 1: with socially constructed darling. Okay, So what I'm trying to

784
00:45:16,600 --> 00:45:18,759
Speaker 1: get people to realize is that it's not enough, and

785
00:45:18,800 --> 00:45:21,319
Speaker 1: I think this is the next generation of transactivism and

786
00:45:21,360 --> 00:45:23,759
Speaker 1: thought I'm just announcing that now. I hope that it

787
00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:28,040
Speaker 1: takes It is it's not just about saying trans women

788
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:31,799
Speaker 1: are women, transmit our men, yes, of course, but it's

789
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:37,480
Speaker 1: actually about saying only people can self determine their own truth.

790
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 1: It's about removing the power and the authority of families,

791
00:45:43,080 --> 00:45:48,520
Speaker 1: of religions, of governments to say you're a male or female. Instead,

792
00:45:48,640 --> 00:45:51,000
Speaker 1: what we should be fighting for is ask people who

793
00:45:51,040 --> 00:45:55,040
Speaker 1: they are, period and then believe them period. And I

794
00:45:55,120 --> 00:45:56,920
Speaker 1: just don't think we're fighting for that as a transmovient

795
00:45:56,960 --> 00:46:02,160
Speaker 1: because we've settled with our own subordination to assist frameworks.

796
00:46:02,160 --> 00:46:04,800
Speaker 1: So we still have to use this rhetoric of transition

797
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:08,120
Speaker 1: as if we were some gender that was inaccurately ascribed

798
00:46:08,160 --> 00:46:10,319
Speaker 1: to us and then now we are. I'm like, no,

799
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:12,960
Speaker 1: I've always been a low I was not the broken

800
00:46:13,080 --> 00:46:16,200
Speaker 1: I was not the problem. It was the gender binary

801
00:46:16,239 --> 00:46:20,239
Speaker 1: that made you misinterpret. So this is not about political correctness.

802
00:46:20,280 --> 00:46:24,400
Speaker 1: It's actually about honesty and factuality. When you miss gender someone,

803
00:46:24,880 --> 00:46:28,360
Speaker 1: you're not just like being politically incorrect, you're being incorrect.

804
00:46:28,960 --> 00:46:33,240
Speaker 1: Like would we go around calling someone named Sarah Susan,

805
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 1: she'd say, no, my name is Sarah. That's the exact

806
00:46:36,560 --> 00:46:38,680
Speaker 1: same thing that we're doing. When we missed gender, people

807
00:46:38,880 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 1: were misrecognizing them. And the final thing I wanted to

808
00:46:43,239 --> 00:46:47,120
Speaker 1: say is the trauma of misrecognition, just to sort of

809
00:46:47,160 --> 00:46:50,680
Speaker 1: link it into what we were speaking about trauma before. Unfortunately,

810
00:46:50,719 --> 00:46:54,239
Speaker 1: people only understand trauma is physical, like you have to

811
00:46:54,400 --> 00:46:58,279
Speaker 1: experienced physical brutality in order to say I've been traumatized.

812
00:46:58,719 --> 00:47:01,480
Speaker 1: And that's just not how our bodies believe that. Actually,

813
00:47:01,480 --> 00:47:05,759
Speaker 1: our neurological systems don't really differentiate between that. And what

814
00:47:05,880 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 1: I noticed in so many of our lives as transigeneral

815
00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:13,799
Speaker 1: conforming people is the trauma of being misrecognized. Actually, like

816
00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:18,120
Speaker 1: takes a physical toll, ultimately makes us hurt. But I

817
00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:20,719
Speaker 1: want to be fluid also in saying the trauma of

818
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:24,560
Speaker 1: being recognized and I want to thank you for recognizing me.

819
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:29,680
Speaker 1: And it's the anecdote to so many of those centuries

820
00:47:29,680 --> 00:47:34,080
Speaker 1: of misrecognition and It's a testament to the power of

821
00:47:34,080 --> 00:47:37,760
Speaker 1: of loving reconciliation, and I think that's what we exist

822
00:47:37,800 --> 00:47:41,280
Speaker 1: on this planet to do as trans people, is to

823
00:47:41,320 --> 00:47:45,840
Speaker 1: see each other for who we are, before medicalization, before

824
00:47:45,880 --> 00:47:48,360
Speaker 1: any of that. I'm staying see each other for our souls,

825
00:47:48,480 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: you know. And I want to say thank you so

826
00:47:50,239 --> 00:47:53,560
Speaker 1: much for seeing me from my non binary soul that

827
00:47:53,640 --> 00:47:55,880
Speaker 1: I feel like I can wear what I want to

828
00:47:55,920 --> 00:48:01,400
Speaker 1: wear and not worry that my ID entity will be invalidated.

829
00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:05,040
Speaker 1: M hm. That is really what we all want, no

830
00:48:05,040 --> 00:48:07,279
Speaker 1: matter how we identify in terms of gender. We want

831
00:48:07,280 --> 00:48:09,920
Speaker 1: to be seen as who we really are, and we

832
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:15,319
Speaker 1: need to be seen who we really are. I like

833
00:48:15,560 --> 00:48:19,319
Speaker 1: to end the podcast with a very specific question that

834
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:23,399
Speaker 1: comes out of my trauma resiliency therapy. Actually it comes

835
00:48:23,400 --> 00:48:26,400
Speaker 1: from the community resiliency model, and it's based from the

836
00:48:26,480 --> 00:48:29,080
Speaker 1: idea of both and that I might be going through

837
00:48:29,120 --> 00:48:32,080
Speaker 1: something really horrible and awful and traumatizing right now, and

838
00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:34,640
Speaker 1: I feel that in a very specific place in my body,

839
00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:38,239
Speaker 1: but somewhere in my body, the sensations are neutral and positive.

840
00:48:38,400 --> 00:48:41,640
Speaker 1: And if I focus on what's challenging, that's all I

841
00:48:41,640 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 1: can see. But if I focus on what it's neutral

842
00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:47,160
Speaker 1: and positive. Maybe I can shift my energy, shift my

843
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:49,400
Speaker 1: nervous system a little bit. It's basically about what are

844
00:48:49,440 --> 00:48:52,280
Speaker 1: the things that help you get through so a looke

845
00:48:52,480 --> 00:48:55,719
Speaker 1: for you? What else is true? What helps you get

846
00:48:55,760 --> 00:49:03,080
Speaker 1: through history? So off in I feel incredibly lonely, like

847
00:49:03,719 --> 00:49:05,959
Speaker 1: in a physical sense being the only person who looks

848
00:49:06,000 --> 00:49:08,040
Speaker 1: like me on a street and having everyone stare at me.

849
00:49:08,440 --> 00:49:11,080
Speaker 1: In an emotional sense, asking as anyone ever felt this

850
00:49:11,200 --> 00:49:15,359
Speaker 1: kind of loneliness, And then I read, and reading for

851
00:49:15,400 --> 00:49:18,760
Speaker 1: me was a lifeline because I found people who felt

852
00:49:18,800 --> 00:49:22,200
Speaker 1: the same things before me. And this year, one of

853
00:49:22,200 --> 00:49:26,640
Speaker 1: my New Year's resolutions was that basically, someone in the

854
00:49:26,680 --> 00:49:32,120
Speaker 1: world has felt your loneliness before. Find your ancestors, become

855
00:49:32,160 --> 00:49:35,439
Speaker 1: their living memorial. And what I mean by that now

856
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:38,839
Speaker 1: is I no longer feel that kind of loneliness. I

857
00:49:38,880 --> 00:49:42,799
Speaker 1: can say, yes, I've been slotted out of so many

858
00:49:42,880 --> 00:49:48,399
Speaker 1: predetermined communities, homes, categories, But there are other people at

859
00:49:48,400 --> 00:49:51,399
Speaker 1: the same time who have also felt with that devastation,

860
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:55,200
Speaker 1: and we become each other's family. And family is not

861
00:49:55,320 --> 00:49:58,200
Speaker 1: just for the living, it's also for the debt. So

862
00:49:58,239 --> 00:50:00,560
Speaker 1: it's about finding intimacy with our answers ers who felt

863
00:50:00,560 --> 00:50:03,000
Speaker 1: that kind of loneliness. And so that paradigm has changed

864
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:05,520
Speaker 1: my entire life because I thought forever that my biggest

865
00:50:05,520 --> 00:50:11,000
Speaker 1: fear was loneliness, and now I've realized I'm never actually alone. Right,

866
00:50:12,960 --> 00:50:16,399
Speaker 1: that is definitely a resource. What we have a color

867
00:50:16,480 --> 00:50:20,520
Speaker 1: resource in the parlance of KRIM or the community resiliency model. Uh.

868
00:50:20,560 --> 00:50:22,960
Speaker 1: That just made me think about Kristin Nef's work on

869
00:50:23,040 --> 00:50:25,480
Speaker 1: self compassion, which I'm obsessed with right now because I'm

870
00:50:25,480 --> 00:50:27,920
Speaker 1: really trying to be more compassionate to myself. And one

871
00:50:27,960 --> 00:50:29,680
Speaker 1: of the things she says that is a big component

872
00:50:29,680 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 1: of self compassion is understanding that we were part of

873
00:50:32,640 --> 00:50:36,680
Speaker 1: a larger community, that other people are also experiencing the

874
00:50:36,719 --> 00:50:39,239
Speaker 1: same thing, have experienced the same things that we are,

875
00:50:39,680 --> 00:50:42,440
Speaker 1: and so that share humanity. If we can use that

876
00:50:42,520 --> 00:50:44,560
Speaker 1: and say, well, no, you're not the only one who's

877
00:50:44,560 --> 00:50:47,200
Speaker 1: feeling this right now, that other people have gone through

878
00:50:47,200 --> 00:50:49,040
Speaker 1: the same things that you have le barned and are

879
00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:52,399
Speaker 1: going through it right now, You're not alone, and that

880
00:50:52,440 --> 00:50:55,320
Speaker 1: we can say that to ourselves and give that gift

881
00:50:55,360 --> 00:50:57,880
Speaker 1: to ourselves. So, really, what you're doing, and according to

882
00:50:57,960 --> 00:51:00,600
Speaker 1: Christin Neft's work, is practicing self compassion and which is

883
00:51:01,080 --> 00:51:05,040
Speaker 1: so beautiful and the biggest challenge right now being more

884
00:51:05,120 --> 00:51:08,799
Speaker 1: compassionate and loving towards myself. I love you below. You

885
00:51:08,840 --> 00:51:11,440
Speaker 1: are your everything, you really are, and I'm just so

886
00:51:12,160 --> 00:51:14,840
Speaker 1: blessed that you're in the world like really and truly.

887
00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 1: I whenever you talk about your experiences being outside, being

888
00:51:22,040 --> 00:51:27,440
Speaker 1: in public and the harassment you experience, I feel that

889
00:51:27,640 --> 00:51:31,520
Speaker 1: viscerally because I've experienced similar harassment, particularly when I was

890
00:51:31,560 --> 00:51:36,200
Speaker 1: in age into nonconforming space myself, pre medical transition, and

891
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:41,360
Speaker 1: really to this day, and I just I'm so grateful

892
00:51:41,400 --> 00:51:44,080
Speaker 1: that you've had the courage to speak it. But it's

893
00:51:44,080 --> 00:51:45,920
Speaker 1: not just that you speak it, it's the way you

894
00:51:45,960 --> 00:51:50,400
Speaker 1: speak it with so much love, authority, sense of history,

895
00:51:50,480 --> 00:51:53,480
Speaker 1: and a connection. It is deeply You're so deeply connected

896
00:51:53,520 --> 00:51:56,719
Speaker 1: to the ancestors, to an energy of power that is

897
00:51:56,719 --> 00:52:00,040
Speaker 1: greater than you. You are clearly anointed, so beauty to

898
00:52:00,120 --> 00:52:04,280
Speaker 1: fly anointed, and I love that how beautifully you walk

899
00:52:04,360 --> 00:52:07,279
Speaker 1: in that, And that is what I aspire to, is

900
00:52:07,320 --> 00:52:10,520
Speaker 1: to walk more fully in the part of me that

901
00:52:10,640 --> 00:52:13,680
Speaker 1: is annointed, the part of me that is the goddess

902
00:52:13,760 --> 00:52:16,920
Speaker 1: inside of me. So thank you, Thank you for existing alone.

903
00:52:17,280 --> 00:52:28,000
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm a person who really appreciates history and

904
00:52:28,080 --> 00:52:31,440
Speaker 1: having an understanding of history as a way to kind

905
00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:35,760
Speaker 1: of understand where we are now. So much of how

906
00:52:35,800 --> 00:52:38,120
Speaker 1: history has treated trans people is that it's sort of

907
00:52:38,160 --> 00:52:42,440
Speaker 1: erased us and so acknowledging history and that we've always

908
00:52:42,520 --> 00:52:45,880
Speaker 1: been here in really concrete ways. It's like it just

909
00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:49,919
Speaker 1: fills me with such a sense of connection that does

910
00:52:50,000 --> 00:52:53,480
Speaker 1: feel spiritual. It feels very very spiritual. I feel like

911
00:52:53,560 --> 00:52:56,320
Speaker 1: this episode with a log was very much church for

912
00:52:56,440 --> 00:53:00,120
Speaker 1: me and being trans and and owning my transnis is

913
00:53:00,160 --> 00:53:04,799
Speaker 1: about owning the divine that's inside me. It's bigger than

914
00:53:05,480 --> 00:53:09,399
Speaker 1: it's bigger than politics. It's just it's it's God. It's God.

915
00:53:11,800 --> 00:53:15,840
Speaker 1: Sending everyone out there so much love on your journey

916
00:53:15,960 --> 00:53:29,080
Speaker 1: towards building and healing. Thank you for listening to The

917
00:53:29,200 --> 00:53:33,920
Speaker 1: Laverne Cox Show. Please rate reviews, subscribe and share with

918
00:53:34,080 --> 00:53:37,920
Speaker 1: everyone you know. You can find me on Instagram and

919
00:53:37,960 --> 00:53:41,200
Speaker 1: Twitter at Laverne Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox

920
00:53:41,239 --> 00:53:44,560
Speaker 1: for Real. Join me next week when we'll be talking

921
00:53:44,680 --> 00:53:50,000
Speaker 1: to my therapist, Yes, my therapist, Jennifer Burden Flyer, about

922
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:53,000
Speaker 1: the therapy that we do together and specifically about the

923
00:53:53,000 --> 00:53:59,279
Speaker 1: community resiliency model. Until next time, stay in the love.

924
00:54:01,800 --> 00:54:04,440
Speaker 1: The Laverne Cox Show is the production of Shondaland Audio

925
00:54:04,719 --> 00:54:08,040
Speaker 1: in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from

926
00:54:08,040 --> 00:54:12,000
Speaker 1: Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,

927
00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:14,320
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.