WEBVTT - Moving Beyond the Gender Binary w/ ALOK 0:00:02.360 --> 0:00:05.800 Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show, a reduction of shondaland 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:12.479 Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. I know that 0:00:12.520 --> 0:00:15.280 the recent people harm me is because they have been 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:18.599 harmed and they are doing harm to themselves. So I 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:21.319 want to break the circuitry of self sabotage and I 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:24.520 want to teach people healing is possible. And I think 0:00:24.560 --> 0:00:27.600 that that is why trans people were historically regarded as 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:32.239 spiritual leaders, because of our mastery of metamorphosis. And what 0:00:32.280 --> 0:00:34.400 I mean by that is that this world teaches us 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:37.080 that everything is fixed and cannot be changed, and then 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:48.199 trans people entered, we say we can change everything. In 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:50.479 two thousand and sixteen, I was a part of an 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:54.760 amazing documentary on HBO called The Trans List, and featured 0:00:54.800 --> 0:00:57.760 in that documentary was a person by the name of 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:01.120 a local bade men In. In the moment a Loke 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:05.959 came onto the screen, I was enchanted by their charisma 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:10.440 and their deep, deep knowledge. I felt like a local 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:15.400 was just connected to some energy, some spirit that is beyond. 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:19.360 A Loke is a gender non binary writer and mixed 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:22.920 media performance artist. They're the author of them in Public 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:26.679 and Beyond the gender binary in twenty nineteen, they were 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:30.400 honored as one of NBC's Pride fifty and Out Magazines 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:33.120 Out one dred. They have presented their work in more 0:01:33.480 --> 0:01:38.480 than forty countries. I knew that I wanted to have 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:43.480 a conversation on this podcast about gender nonconformity and a 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:47.440 local will take us beyond and that's where we need 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:51.320 to go hunting. Please enjoy my conversation with the loke 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:58.720 maid minute. Hello a looke and welcome to the podcast. 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:01.280 How are you feeling a day dark? And I am 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:05.840 feeling so enthusiastic about talking to you. Ah, that's a sweet. 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:09.320 I always love chatting with you. And it was really 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:12.560 important for me to have you on the show because 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:16.519 I wanted to talk about non binary folks and gender 0:02:16.560 --> 0:02:19.679 non conforming folks, and as a trans woman, as someone 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:22.639 who identifies in a binary way, for us to support 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:25.880 our gender non conforming and non binary siblings, and so 0:02:26.000 --> 0:02:30.400 many transbinary people don't, and thinking about gender non conformity 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:34.000 is a great opportunity for everyone. And I was reminded 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:36.680 of that reading your book Beyond the Gender Binary. One 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:38.680 of the things you say early on in your book 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:41.200 is that you contend that the gender binary exists to 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:47.360 create division and conflict, not to celebrate creativity and diversity. 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:49.680 Can you talk to us a little bit about what 0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:53.200 you mean there? Absolutely, So I think a lot of 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:58.160 people mistake moving beyond the gender binary as erasing people's 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:01.120 right to identify as men or women, and that couldn't 0:03:01.160 --> 0:03:05.359 be farther from the truth. For me, binary means it's 0:03:05.400 --> 0:03:08.920 more about how you're policing other people versus how you 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:13.200 narrate yourself. So someone who's perpetuating the binary is telling 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:16.840 other people you can't be non binary, or this is 0:03:16.880 --> 0:03:18.440 what it means to be a man or a woman. 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.720 So moving beyond the gender binary is not about erasing 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:24.640 man or woman. It's actually just about saying man and 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:28.120 women are to have potentially infinite options. And I think 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:30.359 that there are many men and women who believe that. 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:33.640 And I actually have been doing a lot of work 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:38.720 during quarantine historically to understand like why people are so 0:03:39.120 --> 0:03:43.120 threatened by this, And what I've actually been discovering is 0:03:43.160 --> 0:03:46.880 that the gender binary actually was instituted to hurt all 0:03:46.920 --> 0:03:50.360 of us. Now, we often talk about it just hurting 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:52.960 non binary people, but I'd love to like explain to 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:56.320 people that actually historically it was created as a way 0:03:56.320 --> 0:04:00.160 to control everyone. So a great illustration of this is 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:02.200 the history that you and I know well of the 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:06.160 masquerade laws. So in the United States, from the eighteen 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:09.840 forties and tell the nineteen forties, across the country, trans 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:12.400 and gendervarian people like us would be thrown into prison 0:04:12.840 --> 0:04:16.000 simply for existing in public. Our community referred to these 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:18.240 laws as the three article law, meaning you to where 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.320 at least three articles of clothing associated with your assigned sex, 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:23.440 otherwise you could be thrown in prison. So you and 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:26.120 I would be both thrown in prison as female impersonation. 0:04:26.520 --> 0:04:29.000 And what's so incidius about these laws is they would 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.880 often publish in the newspapers are names alongside our photos. 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:36.320 So this could actually like ruin people's entire lives. And 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:38.600 what makes it difficult for us is that when we 0:04:38.640 --> 0:04:41.680 try to find historical records of why people did this, 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:44.240 they didn't want to tell the police. So oftentime, when 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:46.200 people arrested, they would be asked why you wear a 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:49.120 woman's clothes and they'd be like, I don't know, and 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:52.720 that refusal is actually resistance because they knew that their 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:56.000 words would be used against them, right But what most 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:59.200 people don't understand is that the cross chressing laws were 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:03.640 put into place actually to control cis gender women, because 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:07.160 the respectable cis gender woman was supposed to just stay 0:05:07.240 --> 0:05:10.600 at home in the domestic sphere and only men were 0:05:10.640 --> 0:05:14.720 allowed to navigate the public. So pants became an illustration 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:19.840 of saying men are somehow more rational, literal, agentic, and 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:22.880 women have to stay at home and reproduce and not 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:28.000 actually have political thoughts. So actually, these gender binary was 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:31.839 created to confine women to the domestic sphere and to 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:35.080 deny women the right to vote, and to say that 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:38.440 men were the rational people who could roam. So what 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:40.360 this look like is in the western expansion of the 0:05:40.440 --> 0:05:43.320 United States, a lot of times women would just wear 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:46.520 pants and quote unquote dress up as men so that 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:49.960 they could go outside. And this is just another of 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:53.359 many examples of being like when it was created, the 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:57.760 binary was actually fundamentally about misogyny. It was literally about 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:02.040 saying women aren't competent, aren't smart, can't be political subjects. 0:06:02.440 --> 0:06:05.320 And so now when we're pushing against the gender binary, 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:08.120 it always hurts that there's so much pushback that come 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:13.400 from women and the feminist identified women too is the trouble. 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:19.240 It's really awkward. Yeah, And I love that you said 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:21.560 that because I come to so much of this from 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:27.000 an intersectional feminist perspective, that the gender binary is deeply 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:30.359 harmful to those folks who identify as women, and that 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:34.719 there's always been a relationship between the gender oppression that 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:38.039 trans and non binary people experience in the gender oppression 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:42.240 that SIS women also experienced. So we really are all 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:46.400 in this together. And you're very explicit in your book 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:49.800 that the gender binary is all about power. The first 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:51.360 thing I think about it that there are people out 0:06:51.360 --> 0:06:53.640 there who are like, well, what about biology, right? And 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:56.560 I think that's exhausting, But what would you And I 0:06:56.560 --> 0:06:58.320 have my things I would say to that, But what 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:00.279 would you say to those people who would be like, 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:04.440 men are this and women are this? Based on chromosomes 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:08.800 and gonads and ovaries and all these things. I would 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:11.480 say this reflects the failure of the American public education 0:07:11.560 --> 0:07:16.160 system on two fronts when it comes to biology and history, 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:21.160 because last time I checked, if you consulted actual biologists, 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:25.760 there are thousands of accredited scientists who say there's no 0:07:25.960 --> 0:07:29.560 biological basis and dividing people into one of two sexes, 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:33.400 let alone genders, So that's not consistent with science. Actually, 0:07:33.440 --> 0:07:37.120 biological refers to living matter, which means you and I 0:07:37.160 --> 0:07:40.960 have biological ears, biological noses, which means that there's more 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:46.280 biological variance and anatomical diversity among females than there are 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:50.480 between females and males. Because news check, Actually women have 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:53.600 different bodies, and that's okay. What people are saying when 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:58.440 they say biological is actually reproductive or fertility, and that 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:05.120 reduction of men's bodies to their reproductive role is misogyny. Actually, 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:10.040 the framework of biological sex was created by exclusively cis 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:14.360 gender white men as a way to deny women political rights. 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:18.960 They would say, anatomically, you were meant for reproduction. Not 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:21.960 to think that's why you can't go to school because 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:25.520 that will ruin your menstrual cycles. So it's so awkward 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:29.520 that people use this term biology without recognizing what that 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:33.600 actually means scientifically and how that's been levied historically. So 0:08:33.679 --> 0:08:35.240 for me, I think what I'm trying to do with 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:37.800 my work is to always have history and to the 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:41.440 chat and to just be like, actually, my faith comes 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:44.920 from the fact that I know what was before and 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:47.760 so it's ironic to me, and I wanted to speak 0:08:47.800 --> 0:08:49.640 to this too with your work with disclosure, because I 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:52.440 think it's so important. It's ironic to me that every 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:56.360 it feels like decade we're having the same as tired conversation. 0:08:57.040 --> 0:09:00.400 Like it's like with your career, people were like the 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:03.240 first trans and you were literally there being like, actually, 0:09:03.960 --> 0:09:06.760 there were these girls that came before, And it feels 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:09.280 like our job is trans people in so many ways, 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:13.199 is to do that historical due diligence, because CIS society 0:09:13.280 --> 0:09:16.520 always wants to erase our history and positionist as new, 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:19.600 even though we've been cutting up saying these things for 0:09:19.880 --> 0:09:23.599 literally centuries. Recently, I read a biography of Sylvester, the 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:28.880 Queen of Disco, and I'm obsessed with Sylvester. Sylvester too, 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:32.480 Oh my god, Yes, and interviews people would say, Sylvester, 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:35.120 you're in drag right, and Sylvester would say, no, I'm 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:39.400 just Sylvester. Even before the language of non binary, Sylvester 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:41.960 was templating what that could look like. And it makes 0:09:41.960 --> 0:09:44.559 me so angry because they were one of the most mainstream, 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:48.760 celebrated black queer performers in the world, and yet that 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:54.960 knowledge gets erased ten years later, like it's just not okay, Wow, 0:09:55.480 --> 0:09:58.480 I am so glad you're here. You've just said so 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:01.480 much in such a way, like I didn't even really 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:04.880 have the language for. And one of the bell Hook's 0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:06.800 quote I think from Yearning, but I don't know if 0:10:06.800 --> 0:10:09.280 bell said at first. She says, our struggle is also 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:15.040 one of memory against forgetting and that piece of history, 0:10:15.080 --> 0:10:19.160 that piece of we've always been here, that piece of 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:24.920 reducing people to reproductive organs. And I think that is 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:28.800 it's so objectifying, and it's so and it's so inherently misogynists. 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:32.600 And I'm so glad you've so clearly laid that out 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:34.720 for us. I would love for people who don't know 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:38.000 this to know that Laverne is also theoretical scholar. And 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:40.480 I will never forget watching you Live in conversation with 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:43.000 the New School with Bell Hooks, and she was talking 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:48.319 about white capitalists heter a patriarchy. Her phrase actually is imperialist, 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:51.480 white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. I'm a bell Hook, yes, And 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:54.840 you made the intervention and you added cis in front 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:59.960 of that. I said, this normative, heteronormative, imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist, 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:03.040 patriarchy go on alone, and I don't think people understand 0:11:03.360 --> 0:11:06.559 what that means, and I really like to break that apart. 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:12.120 Trans women and trans feminine people are actually expanding feminism, 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:18.040 contributing to feminism because we're insisting that womanhood and femininity 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:21.720 don't have to be coupled with reproduction. We're actually saying 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:26.960 that there's a spiritual power, essence, poetry to women in 0:11:27.000 --> 0:11:32.400 femininity that don't have to be part of the reproductive paradigm. 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:35.360 And instead of SIS women saying thank you, this is 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:40.439 really powerful and amazing, they double down oftentimes on SIS 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:43.960 men's definition of what a woman should be. So in 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:46.480 so many ways, what trans women are offering is a 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:50.280 feminist vision of womanhood. And that's why it's a travesty 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:54.520 to me that there's so many bills trying to criminalize 0:11:54.520 --> 0:11:57.920 our community resourcing the rhetoric of feminism. This is not 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:00.320 just about theory for us, right, this is about actual 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:04.200 policy that's discriminating against trans women, intersect people, non binary 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:08.200 people using this bullshit. Yeah, for me, it's always important 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:11.640 to note that there are queer cis feminist you know, 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:15.280 women and women of color who have challenged the ideas 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:19.199 of essentialism that would reduce women to biology into reproduction. 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:22.880 So trans non binary feminists or in that tradition, I 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:27.520 always like to not erase the brilliant work by so many, 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:31.160 particularly black feminist and queer feminists and queer Black feminists 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:34.319 who have been doing work for decades, who have laid 0:12:34.320 --> 0:12:38.320 out this anti essentialist project for us as a blueprint. 0:12:38.720 --> 0:12:40.840 I mean, I've always identified as a feminist and to 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:44.040 be able to be in this space of anti essentialism 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:46.839 is so crucial for me. In my college lectures, I 0:12:46.840 --> 0:12:50.240 would always um talk about sojournal truth first in her 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:53.880 sort of proclamation Anti woman and from eighteen fifty one 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:56.719 and at the Ohio Women's Convention in that proclamation and 0:12:56.840 --> 0:12:59.280 talking about the history of the sort of devaluation of 0:12:59.280 --> 0:13:02.320 black womanhood in America, and how there's a there's a 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:04.559 story that she was making a speech in Indiana, I 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:07.000 think in eighteen fifty six and someone yelled from the 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:09.600 audience accusing her being a man, and she like opens 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:12.000 her glaus and reveals her breast. So that so that 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:16.040 blackness was during abolition in eighteen fifty one was associated 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:19.319 with maleness, and womanhood was associated with white women and 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:21.520 black women were like, wait, hey, ain't I a woman? 0:13:22.000 --> 0:13:25.080 And in that context, I also linked that history of 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:28.520 the devaluation of black womanhood with what Butler talks about 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:31.280 in Gender Trouble when she quotes Simon de Bouvoirs, when 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:33.720 Simone de Beauvois says one is not born a woman, 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:37.280 but rather becomes one, and Butler says, um, if I 0:13:37.360 --> 0:13:39.920 can recall correctly, it's not clear that the one who 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:42.679 becomes a woman is necessarily female. Right. So there's been 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:46.239 a critical framework laid out in the history of feminism 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:50.960 where we can claim claim our gender on our own terms. 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:53.240 And that's really, for me, what it's really all about. 0:13:54.920 --> 0:13:57.240 And let's also wake it up and say the same 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:01.240 rhetoric of y'all aren't real women was levied against black 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:04.640 and indigenous women by white feminists in the early twentieth century. 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:07.320 So white women would not take the issues that black 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:10.920 women were bringing up like missagen nation lynching, racist sexual 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:14.920 violence as women's issues because they believed that black and 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:17.800 Indigenous women had to become part of a cult of 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:21.360 true womanhood or pious, respectable women. And what I've been 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:23.680 unearthing in my research is actually white women would set 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:27.280 up associations to go into Native American reservations and Indigenous 0:14:27.280 --> 0:14:31.240 communities and teach Indigenous women how to iron and how 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:35.320 to wear white women's clothing as a way to civilize 0:14:35.320 --> 0:14:39.840 them into patriarchy. So the idea became, because you're part 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:43.960 of a savage matriarchy, you have to enter patriarchy before 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:45.960 you can be a feminist. And here we are in 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:52.120 one with transclusionary feminist resourcing, the same rhetoric that Susan b. Anthony, 0:14:52.320 --> 0:14:55.720 Charlotte Perk, and Gillman all their ilk used against black 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:59.400 and Indigenous women, Which is why for me, the trans 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:01.320 Star Goes has been of our racial justice. And I 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:03.760 know that you've been so eloquent about this from the beginning, 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:06.760 and I think that's one of the most heartbreaking and 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:11.680 devastating experiences as a racialized transperson is that so many 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:15.040 of us, our gender comes from a deep love of 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:20.720 our racial and ethnic communities, and yet it's an unreciprocated love. 0:15:20.800 --> 0:15:25.800 Often where we are fighting so hard because we understand 0:15:26.160 --> 0:15:30.680 how white supremacy fortifies these awful gender binarians and norms, 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:33.040 and we don't get that same kind of love and response. 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:36.440 Oh look, I love you so much. This is so brilliant. 0:15:38.240 --> 0:15:40.000 This is a good time to take a little break. 0:15:40.240 --> 0:15:49.640 We'll be right back though. Okay, that's taken care of. 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:53.800 Let's get back to our chat. You've spoken so eloquently 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:55.640 in the past, and this is already You've gotten there 0:15:55.640 --> 0:16:00.680 already that the struggle for gender equality and gender freedom 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:04.720 for everyone, including trans and non binary people, is linked 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:09.600 to an anti colonialist, anti white supremacist agenda. So can 0:16:09.640 --> 0:16:13.560 you talk to us about your understanding of how gender 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:17.880 was not binary and indigenous cultures all over the world. Absolutely, 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:20.240 And I also want to invite people to check out 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:22.840 my good Reads, where I currently have over six hundred 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:26.680 book recommendations, because what I've noticed is I have done 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:30.320 the research, and yet whenever they have, like a white 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:34.640 CIS person, say you don't exist, that's taken as authoritative. 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:37.560 Whenever those of us who have actually devoted our lives 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:40.920 to doing this work, our credibility is undermined because of 0:16:40.920 --> 0:16:44.480 what we look like. And I've decided I'm not accepting 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:47.760 that transposoject anymore. Like I know what I'm saying, and 0:16:47.800 --> 0:16:51.360 it comes from a corroborated place. You have six hundred 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:54.600 book recommendations like just six hundred book recommendations on good 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:58.040 Reads and divided into different reading lists. One of them 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:01.200 is colonialism and gender. So get into her work. So 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:05.640 here's what's really important to understand. One of the predominant 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:10.520 tactics of colonization across the world was imposing people into 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:15.040 Western gender norms. And I say imposing people because it 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:18.560 wasn't just indigenous gender variant people, it was all people, 0:17:19.440 --> 0:17:22.439 and all people were policed into what white men and 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:26.120 white women should look like. The most visible explicit example 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:29.720 of this is cross dressing legislation. So in India, the 0:17:29.760 --> 0:17:33.440 British actually passed a law that forbade any public displays 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:37.879 a visible gender nonconformity and required gender non conforming people 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:41.160 to register themselves with the police so the police could 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:44.560 ensure that they weren't cross dressing. Right, we're talking this 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:47.640 is in the late eighteen hundreds, and so the cau 0:17:47.680 --> 0:17:52.560 cassity of telling me that we are new when actually 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:56.119 what we are is disappeared. So what I want us 0:17:56.160 --> 0:17:59.040 to reframe the conversations. It's not that we're new. This 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:01.520 is a struggle that is on on for hundreds of years, 0:18:01.920 --> 0:18:04.480 So it's not just that we were visible and then 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:06.880 we were raised, and then we were visible again. It's 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:10.639 just that as history actually goes, they disappear us. And 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:12.480 so what I've been trying to ask as an artist 0:18:12.600 --> 0:18:15.199 is why do they need to disappear us? And what 0:18:15.240 --> 0:18:20.199 I realized is in our existence is an alternative, and 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:23.840 the way that power works is by erasing an alternative, 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:26.359 so that people think that the status quo is the 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:30.840 only way to live. But in trans existence is possibility. 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:33.760 We're actually showing people you get to choose your own family. 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:36.359 We're showing people you own your own body. We're showing 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:38.640 people you get to choose your own beauty. And in 0:18:38.680 --> 0:18:44.119 that way, we actually are presenting a radical imagination to 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:47.840 what family is, to what community is, to what health is, 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:51.080 to what life is. And so what I actually think 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:53.960 is I want to reframe the crisis of anti trans 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:58.200 violence as the policing of our life giving like as 0:18:58.240 --> 0:19:01.800 the policing of the world, the beauty, the glamour, the 0:19:01.840 --> 0:19:05.000 spirituality that we bring in. There's the main reason that 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:10.359 part of colonization was also then doctrination of people into 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:14.000 a particular type of Western Christianity and the erasure of 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:18.520 indigenous spiritual traditions which long understood femininity not as weak 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:22.639 or docile, but as powerful, ancestral and spiritual. And in fact, 0:19:22.800 --> 0:19:25.080 in my research, what I found is a lot of 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:28.840 people who were arrested for cross dressing by the Portuguese Inquisition, 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:32.080 who were held in Christian trials, when in those trials 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:34.720 would say this is not I'm not wearing this because 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:38.400 I'm a woman. I'm wearing this to receive God. They 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:41.560 would say I wrapped my head to receive God. They 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:43.960 would say I put on the scirpt to receive God. 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:47.159 And so for me, what I really am trying to 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:50.119 be more explicit about is, yes, this is about my gender, 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:53.120 of course, but also this is about my spirituality. This 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:57.520 is how I feel most godly, This is how I 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:00.119 feel most divine in it when I'm getting d So 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:02.520 I'm making an altar on my body, and if you're 0:20:02.520 --> 0:20:04.720 going to degrade that altar and you're gonna spit on me, 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:08.280 that doesn't matter, because I know my own godliness. And 0:20:08.320 --> 0:20:10.720 so what happens when we break out of the cis 0:20:10.840 --> 0:20:13.960 narrative that we're broken, that we're lacking, that we're absent, 0:20:14.320 --> 0:20:17.400 and instead we say we are the divine, we say, 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:20.239 we are practicing our worth and our divine feminine and 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:23.800 that is why we're being persecuted. A look, you're preaching 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:26.040 the word right now. I'm living. I'm getting my full 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:28.920 entire life. Thank you, A look so much. Now. I've 0:20:28.920 --> 0:20:32.320 been saying to trans people for years that in indigenous 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:36.359 cultures all over the world, we were revered. My understanding 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:39.239 is that hedro you wouldn't pre colonialism, you wouldn't want 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:42.720 to get married, or if your child was not christened 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:45.320 by a hydro, or your wedding not blessed by hydrid, 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:47.440 that it would be damned. And so I say to 0:20:47.480 --> 0:20:50.199 trans and non binary people, we are anointed, and we 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:53.359 must claim our sacred space and our sacred place. And 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:57.000 what a tragedy it is that we've been institutionally gas lit. 0:20:57.800 --> 0:20:59.720 That's the sad part, you know, when you were speaking 0:20:59.760 --> 0:21:03.520 to me earlier about how even within the trans community, 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:07.240 non binary people are demeaned by people who are identifying 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:10.960 as women or men. For me, the culpritive that is 0:21:11.000 --> 0:21:15.880 what Western eugenics did to our knowledge systems. So what's 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:18.040 really important to understand here is that there was an 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:22.240 unprecedented coordinated effort in the late nineteenth century and early 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:27.439 twentieth century to pathologize gender nonconformity. We actually, and I 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:29.880 really want to wake it up for people. People say 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:32.959 that we're new, but baby, there were words for us 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:36.240 before the word heterosexual was created the nineteenth century. In 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:38.720 the early sevent hundreds, we were called Molly's in the UK. 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:41.520 Then we were called pansies. In fact, if you look 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:43.760 at the press in the early nineteen thirties, they called 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:48.080 us third sextors. They had language for us before they 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:50.520 even had the language of heterosexual. But even I mean, 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:52.159 if even if you think about Greeks, I mean, I 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:55.000 think that the term the problematic term or maphradite comes 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:57.840 from her maidies. I think so even if we think 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:00.639 about you know, sort of ancient times, there were there 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:06.240 were folks who existed beyond the binary. And what's deep 0:22:06.280 --> 0:22:08.639 about so much oppression is that there's just so much 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:11.560 ignorance around it. There's a lack of understanding about history, 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:14.680 a lack of understanding about biology and science, a lack 0:22:14.720 --> 0:22:18.000 of understanding about sociology. Oh my god. Look, so there 0:22:18.040 --> 0:22:20.200 was a moment in your book when you talk about 0:22:20.280 --> 0:22:22.159 and it just hit me in my gut. When you 0:22:22.200 --> 0:22:25.120 talked about when you were a kid being bullied and 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:28.720 being told that you were assisty and acted like a girl. 0:22:28.760 --> 0:22:31.760 I was like, that's exactly, literally exactly what they said 0:22:31.760 --> 0:22:35.160 to me. And then later on they called you a man, 0:22:35.359 --> 0:22:36.960 and I was just and I think you used the 0:22:36.960 --> 0:22:39.200 phrase too feminine to be a boy and too masculine 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:41.280 to be a girl. It was like the irony of that. 0:22:41.359 --> 0:22:43.679 I've always thought about the irony of that in my 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:45.640 own life, that like I was called a girl when 0:22:45.680 --> 0:22:48.520 I was a child, um, and then now people call 0:22:48.600 --> 0:22:51.560 me a man and as a way, and so it's like, 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:55.080 you can't kind of win in this system. Can you 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:58.000 elaborate on that and what that says to you right 0:22:58.000 --> 0:23:02.320 now and in this moment. So there's no consistent definitions 0:23:02.359 --> 0:23:05.280 for man and women, they change the definitions of man 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:09.320 and woman specifically to exclude us. That's where the power 0:23:09.400 --> 0:23:12.520 comes in. So they see trans people being able to 0:23:12.600 --> 0:23:15.320 change our birth certificates, so they change the law. They 0:23:15.400 --> 0:23:19.520 see trans people being able to modify our body or morphology, 0:23:19.680 --> 0:23:22.440 so they change the law. So it's actually that there's 0:23:22.560 --> 0:23:24.919 no static definitions of what it means to be a 0:23:24.920 --> 0:23:28.840 male and female. They invent those definitions specifically to exclude us, 0:23:28.840 --> 0:23:30.920