Speaker 1: Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show, a reduction of shondaland
Speaker 1: Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. I know that
Speaker 1: the recent people harm me is because they have been
Speaker 1: harmed and they are doing harm to themselves. So I
Speaker 1: want to break the circuitry of self sabotage and I
Speaker 1: want to teach people healing is possible. And I think
Speaker 1: that that is why trans people were historically regarded as
Speaker 1: spiritual leaders, because of our mastery of metamorphosis. And what
Speaker 1: I mean by that is that this world teaches us
Speaker 1: that everything is fixed and cannot be changed, and then
Speaker 1: trans people entered, we say we can change everything. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and sixteen, I was a part of an
Speaker 1: amazing documentary on HBO called The Trans List, and featured
Speaker 1: in that documentary was a person by the name of
Speaker 1: a local bade men In. In the moment a Loke
Speaker 1: came onto the screen, I was enchanted by their charisma
Speaker 1: and their deep, deep knowledge. I felt like a local
Speaker 1: was just connected to some energy, some spirit that is beyond.
Speaker 1: A Loke is a gender non binary writer and mixed
Speaker 1: media performance artist. They're the author of them in Public
Speaker 1: and Beyond the gender binary in twenty nineteen, they were
Speaker 1: honored as one of NBC's Pride fifty and Out Magazines
Speaker 1: Out one dred. They have presented their work in more
Speaker 1: than forty countries. I knew that I wanted to have
Speaker 1: a conversation on this podcast about gender nonconformity and a
Speaker 1: local will take us beyond and that's where we need
Speaker 1: to go hunting. Please enjoy my conversation with the loke
Speaker 1: maid minute. Hello a looke and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: How are you feeling a day dark? And I am
Speaker 1: feeling so enthusiastic about talking to you. Ah, that's a sweet.
Speaker 1: I always love chatting with you. And it was really
Speaker 1: important for me to have you on the show because
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about non binary folks and gender
Speaker 1: non conforming folks, and as a trans woman, as someone
Speaker 1: who identifies in a binary way, for us to support
Speaker 1: our gender non conforming and non binary siblings, and so
Speaker 1: many transbinary people don't, and thinking about gender non conformity
Speaker 1: is a great opportunity for everyone. And I was reminded
Speaker 1: of that reading your book Beyond the Gender Binary. One
Speaker 1: of the things you say early on in your book
Speaker 1: is that you contend that the gender binary exists to
Speaker 1: create division and conflict, not to celebrate creativity and diversity.
Speaker 1: Can you talk to us a little bit about what
Speaker 1: you mean there? Absolutely, So I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people mistake moving beyond the gender binary as erasing people's
Speaker 1: right to identify as men or women, and that couldn't
Speaker 1: be farther from the truth. For me, binary means it's
Speaker 1: more about how you're policing other people versus how you
Speaker 1: narrate yourself. So someone who's perpetuating the binary is telling
Speaker 1: other people you can't be non binary, or this is
Speaker 1: what it means to be a man or a woman.
Speaker 1: So moving beyond the gender binary is not about erasing
Speaker 1: man or woman. It's actually just about saying man and
Speaker 1: women are to have potentially infinite options. And I think
Speaker 1: that there are many men and women who believe that.
Speaker 1: And I actually have been doing a lot of work
Speaker 1: during quarantine historically to understand like why people are so
Speaker 1: threatened by this, And what I've actually been discovering is
Speaker 1: that the gender binary actually was instituted to hurt all
Speaker 1: of us. Now, we often talk about it just hurting
Speaker 1: non binary people, but I'd love to like explain to
Speaker 1: people that actually historically it was created as a way
Speaker 1: to control everyone. So a great illustration of this is
Speaker 1: the history that you and I know well of the
Speaker 1: masquerade laws. So in the United States, from the eighteen
Speaker 1: forties and tell the nineteen forties, across the country, trans
Speaker 1: and gendervarian people like us would be thrown into prison
Speaker 1: simply for existing in public. Our community referred to these
Speaker 1: laws as the three article law, meaning you to where
Speaker 1: at least three articles of clothing associated with your assigned sex,
Speaker 1: otherwise you could be thrown in prison. So you and
Speaker 1: I would be both thrown in prison as female impersonation.
Speaker 1: And what's so incidius about these laws is they would
Speaker 1: often publish in the newspapers are names alongside our photos.
Speaker 1: So this could actually like ruin people's entire lives. And
Speaker 1: what makes it difficult for us is that when we
Speaker 1: try to find historical records of why people did this,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to tell the police. So oftentime, when
Speaker 1: people arrested, they would be asked why you wear a
Speaker 1: woman's clothes and they'd be like, I don't know, and
Speaker 1: that refusal is actually resistance because they knew that their
Speaker 1: words would be used against them, right But what most
Speaker 1: people don't understand is that the cross chressing laws were
Speaker 1: put into place actually to control cis gender women, because
Speaker 1: the respectable cis gender woman was supposed to just stay
Speaker 1: at home in the domestic sphere and only men were
Speaker 1: allowed to navigate the public. So pants became an illustration
Speaker 1: of saying men are somehow more rational, literal, agentic, and
Speaker 1: women have to stay at home and reproduce and not
Speaker 1: actually have political thoughts. So actually, these gender binary was
Speaker 1: created to confine women to the domestic sphere and to
Speaker 1: deny women the right to vote, and to say that
Speaker 1: men were the rational people who could roam. So what
Speaker 1: this look like is in the western expansion of the
Speaker 1: United States, a lot of times women would just wear
Speaker 1: pants and quote unquote dress up as men so that
Speaker 1: they could go outside. And this is just another of
Speaker 1: many examples of being like when it was created, the
Speaker 1: binary was actually fundamentally about misogyny. It was literally about
Speaker 1: saying women aren't competent, aren't smart, can't be political subjects.
Speaker 1: And so now when we're pushing against the gender binary,
Speaker 1: it always hurts that there's so much pushback that come
Speaker 1: from women and the feminist identified women too is the trouble.
Speaker 1: It's really awkward. Yeah, And I love that you said
Speaker 1: that because I come to so much of this from
Speaker 1: an intersectional feminist perspective, that the gender binary is deeply
Speaker 1: harmful to those folks who identify as women, and that
Speaker 1: there's always been a relationship between the gender oppression that
Speaker 1: trans and non binary people experience in the gender oppression
Speaker 1: that SIS women also experienced. So we really are all
Speaker 1: in this together. And you're very explicit in your book
Speaker 1: that the gender binary is all about power. The first
Speaker 1: thing I think about it that there are people out
Speaker 1: there who are like, well, what about biology, right? And
Speaker 1: I think that's exhausting, But what would you And I
Speaker 1: have my things I would say to that, But what
Speaker 1: would you say to those people who would be like,
Speaker 1: men are this and women are this? Based on chromosomes
Speaker 1: and gonads and ovaries and all these things. I would
Speaker 1: say this reflects the failure of the American public education
Speaker 1: system on two fronts when it comes to biology and history,
Speaker 1: because last time I checked, if you consulted actual biologists,
Speaker 1: there are thousands of accredited scientists who say there's no
Speaker 1: biological basis and dividing people into one of two sexes,
Speaker 1: let alone genders, So that's not consistent with science. Actually,
Speaker 1: biological refers to living matter, which means you and I
Speaker 1: have biological ears, biological noses, which means that there's more
Speaker 1: biological variance and anatomical diversity among females than there are
Speaker 1: between females and males. Because news check, Actually women have
Speaker 1: different bodies, and that's okay. What people are saying when
Speaker 1: they say biological is actually reproductive or fertility, and that
Speaker 1: reduction of men's bodies to their reproductive role is misogyny. Actually,
Speaker 1: the framework of biological sex was created by exclusively cis
Speaker 1: gender white men as a way to deny women political rights.
Speaker 1: They would say, anatomically, you were meant for reproduction. Not
Speaker 1: to think that's why you can't go to school because
Speaker 1: that will ruin your menstrual cycles. So it's so awkward
Speaker 1: that people use this term biology without recognizing what that
Speaker 1: actually means scientifically and how that's been levied historically. So
Speaker 1: for me, I think what I'm trying to do with
Speaker 1: my work is to always have history and to the
Speaker 1: chat and to just be like, actually, my faith comes
Speaker 1: from the fact that I know what was before and
Speaker 1: so it's ironic to me, and I wanted to speak
Speaker 1: to this too with your work with disclosure, because I
Speaker 1: think it's so important. It's ironic to me that every
Speaker 1: it feels like decade we're having the same as tired conversation.
Speaker 1: Like it's like with your career, people were like the
Speaker 1: first trans and you were literally there being like, actually,
Speaker 1: there were these girls that came before, And it feels
Speaker 1: like our job is trans people in so many ways,
Speaker 1: is to do that historical due diligence, because CIS society
Speaker 1: always wants to erase our history and positionist as new,
Speaker 1: even though we've been cutting up saying these things for
Speaker 1: literally centuries. Recently, I read a biography of Sylvester, the
Speaker 1: Queen of Disco, and I'm obsessed with Sylvester. Sylvester too,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Yes, and interviews people would say, Sylvester,
Speaker 1: you're in drag right, and Sylvester would say, no, I'm
Speaker 1: just Sylvester. Even before the language of non binary, Sylvester
Speaker 1: was templating what that could look like. And it makes
Speaker 1: me so angry because they were one of the most mainstream,
Speaker 1: celebrated black queer performers in the world, and yet that
Speaker 1: knowledge gets erased ten years later, like it's just not okay, Wow,
Speaker 1: I am so glad you're here. You've just said so
Speaker 1: much in such a way, like I didn't even really
Speaker 1: have the language for. And one of the bell Hook's
Speaker 1: quote I think from Yearning, but I don't know if
Speaker 1: bell said at first. She says, our struggle is also
Speaker 1: one of memory against forgetting and that piece of history,
Speaker 1: that piece of we've always been here, that piece of
Speaker 1: reducing people to reproductive organs. And I think that is
Speaker 1: it's so objectifying, and it's so and it's so inherently misogynists.
Speaker 1: And I'm so glad you've so clearly laid that out
Speaker 1: for us. I would love for people who don't know
Speaker 1: this to know that Laverne is also theoretical scholar. And
Speaker 1: I will never forget watching you Live in conversation with
Speaker 1: the New School with Bell Hooks, and she was talking
Speaker 1: about white capitalists heter a patriarchy. Her phrase actually is imperialist,
Speaker 1: white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. I'm a bell Hook, yes, And
Speaker 1: you made the intervention and you added cis in front
Speaker 1: of that. I said, this normative, heteronormative, imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist,
Speaker 1: patriarchy go on alone, and I don't think people understand
Speaker 1: what that means, and I really like to break that apart.
Speaker 1: Trans women and trans feminine people are actually expanding feminism,
Speaker 1: contributing to feminism because we're insisting that womanhood and femininity
Speaker 1: don't have to be coupled with reproduction. We're actually saying
Speaker 1: that there's a spiritual power, essence, poetry to women in
Speaker 1: femininity that don't have to be part of the reproductive paradigm.
Speaker 1: And instead of SIS women saying thank you, this is
Speaker 1: really powerful and amazing, they double down oftentimes on SIS
Speaker 1: men's definition of what a woman should be. So in
Speaker 1: so many ways, what trans women are offering is a
Speaker 1: feminist vision of womanhood. And that's why it's a travesty
Speaker 1: to me that there's so many bills trying to criminalize
Speaker 1: our community resourcing the rhetoric of feminism. This is not
Speaker 1: just about theory for us, right, this is about actual
Speaker 1: policy that's discriminating against trans women, intersect people, non binary
Speaker 1: people using this bullshit. Yeah, for me, it's always important
Speaker 1: to note that there are queer cis feminist you know,
Speaker 1: women and women of color who have challenged the ideas
Speaker 1: of essentialism that would reduce women to biology into reproduction.
Speaker 1: So trans non binary feminists or in that tradition, I
Speaker 1: always like to not erase the brilliant work by so many,
Speaker 1: particularly black feminist and queer feminists and queer Black feminists
Speaker 1: who have been doing work for decades, who have laid
Speaker 1: out this anti essentialist project for us as a blueprint.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've always identified as a feminist and to
Speaker 1: be able to be in this space of anti essentialism
Speaker 1: is so crucial for me. In my college lectures, I
Speaker 1: would always um talk about sojournal truth first in her
Speaker 1: sort of proclamation Anti woman and from eighteen fifty one
Speaker 1: and at the Ohio Women's Convention in that proclamation and
Speaker 1: talking about the history of the sort of devaluation of
Speaker 1: black womanhood in America, and how there's a there's a
Speaker 1: story that she was making a speech in Indiana, I
Speaker 1: think in eighteen fifty six and someone yelled from the
Speaker 1: audience accusing her being a man, and she like opens
Speaker 1: her glaus and reveals her breast. So that so that
Speaker 1: blackness was during abolition in eighteen fifty one was associated
Speaker 1: with maleness, and womanhood was associated with white women and
Speaker 1: black women were like, wait, hey, ain't I a woman?
Speaker 1: And in that context, I also linked that history of
Speaker 1: the devaluation of black womanhood with what Butler talks about
Speaker 1: in Gender Trouble when she quotes Simon de Bouvoirs, when
Speaker 1: Simone de Beauvois says one is not born a woman,
Speaker 1: but rather becomes one, and Butler says, um, if I
Speaker 1: can recall correctly, it's not clear that the one who
Speaker 1: becomes a woman is necessarily female. Right. So there's been
Speaker 1: a critical framework laid out in the history of feminism
Speaker 1: where we can claim claim our gender on our own terms.
Speaker 1: And that's really, for me, what it's really all about.
Speaker 1: And let's also wake it up and say the same
Speaker 1: rhetoric of y'all aren't real women was levied against black
Speaker 1: and indigenous women by white feminists in the early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: So white women would not take the issues that black
Speaker 1: women were bringing up like missagen nation lynching, racist sexual
Speaker 1: violence as women's issues because they believed that black and
Speaker 1: Indigenous women had to become part of a cult of
Speaker 1: true womanhood or pious, respectable women. And what I've been
Speaker 1: unearthing in my research is actually white women would set
Speaker 1: up associations to go into Native American reservations and Indigenous
Speaker 1: communities and teach Indigenous women how to iron and how
Speaker 1: to wear white women's clothing as a way to civilize
Speaker 1: them into patriarchy. So the idea became, because you're part
Speaker 1: of a savage matriarchy, you have to enter patriarchy before
Speaker 1: you can be a feminist. And here we are in
Speaker 1: one with transclusionary feminist resourcing, the same rhetoric that Susan b. Anthony,
Speaker 1: Charlotte Perk, and Gillman all their ilk used against black
Speaker 1: and Indigenous women, Which is why for me, the trans
Speaker 1: Star Goes has been of our racial justice. And I
Speaker 1: know that you've been so eloquent about this from the beginning,
Speaker 1: and I think that's one of the most heartbreaking and
Speaker 1: devastating experiences as a racialized transperson is that so many
Speaker 1: of us, our gender comes from a deep love of
Speaker 1: our racial and ethnic communities, and yet it's an unreciprocated love.
Speaker 1: Often where we are fighting so hard because we understand
Speaker 1: how white supremacy fortifies these awful gender binarians and norms,
Speaker 1: and we don't get that same kind of love and response.
Speaker 1: Oh look, I love you so much. This is so brilliant.
Speaker 1: This is a good time to take a little break.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back though. Okay, that's taken care of.
Speaker 1: Let's get back to our chat. You've spoken so eloquently
Speaker 1: in the past, and this is already You've gotten there
Speaker 1: already that the struggle for gender equality and gender freedom
Speaker 1: for everyone, including trans and non binary people, is linked
Speaker 1: to an anti colonialist, anti white supremacist agenda. So can
Speaker 1: you talk to us about your understanding of how gender
Speaker 1: was not binary and indigenous cultures all over the world. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I also want to invite people to check out
Speaker 1: my good Reads, where I currently have over six hundred
Speaker 1: book recommendations, because what I've noticed is I have done
Speaker 1: the research, and yet whenever they have, like a white
Speaker 1: CIS person, say you don't exist, that's taken as authoritative.
Speaker 1: Whenever those of us who have actually devoted our lives
Speaker 1: to doing this work, our credibility is undermined because of
Speaker 1: what we look like. And I've decided I'm not accepting
Speaker 1: that transposoject anymore. Like I know what I'm saying, and
Speaker 1: it comes from a corroborated place. You have six hundred
Speaker 1: book recommendations like just six hundred book recommendations on good
Speaker 1: Reads and divided into different reading lists. One of them
Speaker 1: is colonialism and gender. So get into her work. So
Speaker 1: here's what's really important to understand. One of the predominant
Speaker 1: tactics of colonization across the world was imposing people into
Speaker 1: Western gender norms. And I say imposing people because it
Speaker 1: wasn't just indigenous gender variant people, it was all people,
Speaker 1: and all people were policed into what white men and
Speaker 1: white women should look like. The most visible explicit example
Speaker 1: of this is cross dressing legislation. So in India, the
Speaker 1: British actually passed a law that forbade any public displays
Speaker 1: a visible gender nonconformity and required gender non conforming people
Speaker 1: to register themselves with the police so the police could
Speaker 1: ensure that they weren't cross dressing. Right, we're talking this
Speaker 1: is in the late eighteen hundreds, and so the cau
Speaker 1: cassity of telling me that we are new when actually
Speaker 1: what we are is disappeared. So what I want us
Speaker 1: to reframe the conversations. It's not that we're new. This
Speaker 1: is a struggle that is on on for hundreds of years,
Speaker 1: So it's not just that we were visible and then
Speaker 1: we were raised, and then we were visible again. It's
Speaker 1: just that as history actually goes, they disappear us. And
Speaker 1: so what I've been trying to ask as an artist
Speaker 1: is why do they need to disappear us? And what
Speaker 1: I realized is in our existence is an alternative, and
Speaker 1: the way that power works is by erasing an alternative,
Speaker 1: so that people think that the status quo is the
Speaker 1: only way to live. But in trans existence is possibility.
Speaker 1: We're actually showing people you get to choose your own family.
Speaker 1: We're showing people you own your own body. We're showing
Speaker 1: people you get to choose your own beauty. And in
Speaker 1: that way, we actually are presenting a radical imagination to
Speaker 1: what family is, to what community is, to what health is,
Speaker 1: to what life is. And so what I actually think
Speaker 1: is I want to reframe the crisis of anti trans
Speaker 1: violence as the policing of our life giving like as
Speaker 1: the policing of the world, the beauty, the glamour, the
Speaker 1: spirituality that we bring in. There's the main reason that
Speaker 1: part of colonization was also then doctrination of people into
Speaker 1: a particular type of Western Christianity and the erasure of
Speaker 1: indigenous spiritual traditions which long understood femininity not as weak
Speaker 1: or docile, but as powerful, ancestral and spiritual. And in fact,
Speaker 1: in my research, what I found is a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were arrested for cross dressing by the Portuguese Inquisition,
Speaker 1: who were held in Christian trials, when in those trials
Speaker 1: would say this is not I'm not wearing this because
Speaker 1: I'm a woman. I'm wearing this to receive God. They
Speaker 1: would say I wrapped my head to receive God. They
Speaker 1: would say I put on the scirpt to receive God.
Speaker 1: And so for me, what I really am trying to
Speaker 1: be more explicit about is, yes, this is about my gender,
Speaker 1: of course, but also this is about my spirituality. This
Speaker 1: is how I feel most godly, This is how I
Speaker 1: feel most divine in it when I'm getting d So
Speaker 1: I'm making an altar on my body, and if you're
Speaker 1: going to degrade that altar and you're gonna spit on me,
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter, because I know my own godliness. And
Speaker 1: so what happens when we break out of the cis
Speaker 1: narrative that we're broken, that we're lacking, that we're absent,
Speaker 1: and instead we say we are the divine, we say,
Speaker 1: we are practicing our worth and our divine feminine and
Speaker 1: that is why we're being persecuted. A look, you're preaching
Speaker 1: the word right now. I'm living. I'm getting my full
Speaker 1: entire life. Thank you, A look so much. Now. I've
Speaker 1: been saying to trans people for years that in indigenous
Speaker 1: cultures all over the world, we were revered. My understanding
Speaker 1: is that hedro you wouldn't pre colonialism, you wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to get married, or if your child was not christened
Speaker 1: by a hydro, or your wedding not blessed by hydrid,
Speaker 1: that it would be damned. And so I say to
Speaker 1: trans and non binary people, we are anointed, and we
Speaker 1: must claim our sacred space and our sacred place. And
Speaker 1: what a tragedy it is that we've been institutionally gas lit.
Speaker 1: That's the sad part, you know, when you were speaking
Speaker 1: to me earlier about how even within the trans community,
Speaker 1: non binary people are demeaned by people who are identifying
Speaker 1: as women or men. For me, the culpritive that is
Speaker 1: what Western eugenics did to our knowledge systems. So what's
Speaker 1: really important to understand here is that there was an
Speaker 1: unprecedented coordinated effort in the late nineteenth century and early
Speaker 1: twentieth century to pathologize gender nonconformity. We actually, and I
Speaker 1: really want to wake it up for people. People say
Speaker 1: that we're new, but baby, there were words for us
Speaker 1: before the word heterosexual was created the nineteenth century. In
Speaker 1: the early sevent hundreds, we were called Molly's in the UK.
Speaker 1: Then we were called pansies. In fact, if you look
Speaker 1: at the press in the early nineteen thirties, they called
Speaker 1: us third sextors. They had language for us before they
Speaker 1: even had the language of heterosexual. But even I mean,
Speaker 1: if even if you think about Greeks, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that the term the problematic term or maphradite comes
Speaker 1: from her maidies. I think so even if we think
Speaker 1: about you know, sort of ancient times, there were there
Speaker 1: were folks who existed beyond the binary. And what's deep
Speaker 1: about so much oppression is that there's just so much
Speaker 1: ignorance around it. There's a lack of understanding about history,
Speaker 1: a lack of understanding about biology and science, a lack
Speaker 1: of understanding about sociology. Oh my god. Look, so there
Speaker 1: was a moment in your book when you talk about
Speaker 1: and it just hit me in my gut. When you
Speaker 1: talked about when you were a kid being bullied and
Speaker 1: being told that you were assisty and acted like a girl.
Speaker 1: I was like, that's exactly, literally exactly what they said
Speaker 1: to me. And then later on they called you a man,
Speaker 1: and I was just and I think you used the
Speaker 1: phrase too feminine to be a boy and too masculine
Speaker 1: to be a girl. It was like the irony of that.
Speaker 1: I've always thought about the irony of that in my
Speaker 1: own life, that like I was called a girl when
Speaker 1: I was a child, um, and then now people call
Speaker 1: me a man and as a way, and so it's like,
Speaker 1: you can't kind of win in this system. Can you
Speaker 1: elaborate on that and what that says to you right
Speaker 1: now and in this moment. So there's no consistent definitions
Speaker 1: for man and women, they change the definitions of man
Speaker 1: and woman specifically to exclude us. That's where the power
Speaker 1: comes in. So they see trans people being able to
Speaker 1: change our birth certificates, so they change the law. They
Speaker 1: see trans people being able to modify our body or morphology,
Speaker 1: so they change the law. So it's actually that there's
Speaker 1: no static definitions of what it means to be a
Speaker 1: male and female. They invent those definitions specifically to exclude us,
Speaker 1: And I think it's really important to bring up castor
Speaker 1: semenia in this conversation. Castro Semania identifies as a woman
Speaker 1: who is a South African Olympian and continually is told
Speaker 1: that her naturally occurring rates of testosterone are too high
Speaker 1: for her to compete in the female category. So what
Speaker 1: they're saying is we have a predetermined idea of female
Speaker 1: which just so happens to be defined around white European women,
Speaker 1: and then when it comes to black and Global South
Speaker 1: women who often have different distributions of steroid not sex
Speaker 1: hormones in their bodies, they get policed out. And that's
Speaker 1: in a literal example of a project that's existed for
Speaker 1: hundreds of years where they change the rules specifically to
Speaker 1: justify them winning and racialize people losing. And I think
Speaker 1: Castro not only identifies as a woman, but it was
Speaker 1: also assigned female at birth, so just so she identifies
Speaker 1: as a woman and with the sign female at birth,
Speaker 1: so she's she would be as this woman by definition,
Speaker 1: but with very high levels of testosterone, right, And that's
Speaker 1: why for me, it's like there's no there's no ethical
Speaker 1: standpoint to policing gender and sex. There's no logical consistency,
Speaker 1: there's no scientific consistency. What there is is trauma. And
Speaker 1: I think what I was so looking forward to this
Speaker 1: conversation is you're one of the few people in a
Speaker 1: public platform speaking about trauma. And for me, trauma is
Speaker 1: the origin of everything. So then the question for me becomes,
Speaker 1: how are people so traumatized that they mistake freedom as
Speaker 1: a threat? And then I began to realize it's not
Speaker 1: that we, as gender nonconforming people, are the only ones
Speaker 1: that are harmed by this binary. This binary has recruited
Speaker 1: CIS people such that whenever they're presented with any alternative,
Speaker 1: they have to undermine that in themselves and in other people.
Speaker 1: So then the violence we experience as trans people was
Speaker 1: templated on what they did to themselves. First, it's what
Speaker 1: the CIS women said when they said, no one will
Speaker 1: love me if I have facial hair, So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: remove every hair on my body. And when I see
Speaker 1: a general non conforming person do that, I can't process that.
Speaker 1: It's sys men saying no one will ever love me
Speaker 1: if I'm vulnerable emotional, so when I see someone else
Speaker 1: doing that, I have to erase them. So then I
Speaker 1: began to realize there's no such thing as transgender issues.
Speaker 1: There are issues that since people have for themselves that
Speaker 1: they're taking out on us, And I think that energy
Speaker 1: I was only able to get by doing my own
Speaker 1: trauma healing work because I was misled into thinking I
Speaker 1: was broken when from the age of three I was
Speaker 1: practicing my truth. My mom has a story that she
Speaker 1: told me that when I was seven years old, she
Speaker 1: was talking me into bed and I said, Mom, I'm queer,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what that word meant. I read
Speaker 1: it because my dad was brought up in a British
Speaker 1: colonial education system, so we read children's literature from the
Speaker 1: UK which used queer as a word for strange. But
Speaker 1: I knew that I was different before I had any language.
Speaker 1: And so for the audacity for people to tell me
Speaker 1: that I just made this up for my career, for
Speaker 1: political correctness, or to undermine other people, No. Trans people
Speaker 1: practice a kind of resonant presence that threatens a world
Speaker 1: that thrives on scarcity, trauma, and projection. We are some
Speaker 1: of the most real that there ever was So what
Speaker 1: happens is other people project their insecurities because they don't
Speaker 1: know who they are. They only know who they've been
Speaker 1: told they should be. Hello, I feel like I literally
Speaker 1: am sitting here. I'm like, okay when people ask me
Speaker 1: about these issues and like, listen to a low girl,
Speaker 1: I'm tired. Girl is gender neutral for me, by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm tired. I'm like, I'm just the look you're giving
Speaker 1: it the gospel truth right now. Hurt people, hurt people.
Speaker 1: And I talk a lot about trauma publicly. We've talked
Speaker 1: a lot about trauma on this podcast. In Trauma, my
Speaker 1: therapist defines trauma as too much, too fast, too soon,
Speaker 1: and it's really about our nervous systems. When I have
Speaker 1: nervous systems go into survival mode and we go into
Speaker 1: five flight or freeze. When we're biologically I think this
Speaker 1: is the correct term for biology, biologically programmed, right, or
Speaker 1: at least neurobiologically programmed. So when we sense a threat,
Speaker 1: it's our bodies released cortisol, adrenaline, and when we were
Speaker 1: out of that dangerous situation, we regulate, We sort of
Speaker 1: come back to our stasis. If we are constantly feeling
Speaker 1: under threat, under stress, But we're not hardwired biologically to
Speaker 1: constantly be in that survival place, to constantly release the
Speaker 1: cortisol in adrenaline over time. That can cause disease, can
Speaker 1: cause illness, adrenal fatigue, all sorts of things. But I
Speaker 1: think the piece there is not feeling safe. And I
Speaker 1: think what for me, as a trans person of color
Speaker 1: who's sort of been bullied my whole life, I've been
Speaker 1: released in cortisol in adrenaline like all the time because
Speaker 1: I've never felt safe. And I think people who aren't
Speaker 1: trans and aren't people of color also aren't feeling safe
Speaker 1: for probably very different reasons, maybe some of the same reasons.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're seeing us as a threat to them. Like
Speaker 1: and I've always always like to remind people that feeling
Speaker 1: unsafe and feeling uncomfortable are not the same thing. Right,
Speaker 1: if I'm uncomfortable, I talked about bathrooms all the time,
Speaker 1: like right in Jim Crow South, and white folks were
Speaker 1: not comfortable with black people using the same bathroom as them,
Speaker 1: but they weren't unsafe with black people using the bathroom.
Speaker 1: And you know, sis women who might be uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: the trans woman in the bathroom with them and unsafe.
Speaker 1: They might be uncomfortable. In my healing work around my trauma,
Speaker 1: I have to be able to distinguish between being uncomfortable
Speaker 1: and unsafe, so I'm not constantly releasing those hormones. That
Speaker 1: is work I have to do. People are lashing out.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of times people are lashing out
Speaker 1: at the wrong thing. They're feeling threatened and they're feeling unsafe,
Speaker 1: and so they're lashing out of trans people, their scapegoating us,
Speaker 1: and they're lashing out at us, or they're lashing out
Speaker 1: at immigrants, or they're lashing out at black people, and
Speaker 1: it's like, wait a minute, maybe there is this system,
Speaker 1: And what you're saying around the gender binary is that
Speaker 1: there's a system that is they're pressing you. What I
Speaker 1: would say about people who are you know, in the
Speaker 1: Midwest who have all their jobs have been shipped overseas.
Speaker 1: It is not the fault of Mexicans and people from
Speaker 1: South America who have come and taking your jobs. There
Speaker 1: is a system that is in place that is not
Speaker 1: done what it needs to do to protect your jobs.
Speaker 1: So instead of lashing out at your fellow citizen, maybe
Speaker 1: we should be looking at uniting as a people and
Speaker 1: changing the system that is a pressing us. And now
Speaker 1: that was my little Yes, scapegoating is a trauma response,
Speaker 1: and it's just it. Really, this is where trauma literacy
Speaker 1: has changed my life because often the political vocabulary is
Speaker 1: insufficient for me. Now, like I kind of get bored
Speaker 1: by a lot of social justice language because it's not
Speaker 1: enough because the social justice language and oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is, oh my god cry because I've been so
Speaker 1: fed up with politics and like I just can't do
Speaker 1: it anymore. But I'm still political, but I think that's
Speaker 1: the piece political language is really limiting. I'm in the
Speaker 1: space of healing. I'm in this space of like, how
Speaker 1: do I deal with this trauma? How do I deal
Speaker 1: with like, you know, my shame. How do I heal
Speaker 1: myself so that I can like go into this next
Speaker 1: fifty years hopefully you know, with some with some sanity
Speaker 1: and some help. But this is why I connect with
Speaker 1: you so deeply, La Fern, is that I see us
Speaker 1: both struggling because we understand that actually the spiritual work
Speaker 1: is the political work. The healing work is the social
Speaker 1: justice liberatory work, and we're actually saying the work begins
Speaker 1: reckoning with our own trauma and with sedimentation of all
Speaker 1: these legacies and histories in us, how we treat each
Speaker 1: other and how we treat ourselves the location of politics.
Speaker 1: So for me, I'm not as concerned with the rigor
Speaker 1: of your analysis, what words you have. I'm much more
Speaker 1: concerned and how are we treating each other? How are
Speaker 1: we practicing a loving, compassionate, trauma informed world today. And
Speaker 1: what this has allowed me to do is to have
Speaker 1: a very different conversation on trans politics. I am exposed
Speaker 1: to transphobic violence every single minute of my life, and
Speaker 1: I respond with love. And people don't get it, But
Speaker 1: I want to explain that I'm choosing love not to
Speaker 1: be the better person. I'm choosing love to heal because
Speaker 1: if I was to be angry at every single person,
Speaker 1: that would ruin my nervous system. And love actually equalizes
Speaker 1: me and makes me actually want to live. It gives
Speaker 1: me joy and beauty and possibility and hope. And why
Speaker 1: would I ever subscribed to an ideology that makes me
Speaker 1: feel guilty for hope when it's actually the very thing
Speaker 1: that makes me survive. And then, second, I love because
Speaker 1: I know that the reason people harm me is because
Speaker 1: they have been harmed and they are doing harm to themselves.
Speaker 1: And then I know that weaponizing shame against them doesn't
Speaker 1: actually do anything but reinforce their self sabotage. So I
Speaker 1: want to break the circuitry of self sabotage, and I
Speaker 1: want to teach people healing is possible. And I think
Speaker 1: that that is why trans people were historically regarded as
Speaker 1: spiritual leaders, because of our mastery of metamorphosis. And what
Speaker 1: I mean by that is that this world teaches us
Speaker 1: that everything is fixed and cannot be changed, and then
Speaker 1: trans people entered, we say we can change everything. I
Speaker 1: hated who I was. I was problematic, I was ignorant,
Speaker 1: I was messy, I was not in a good place,
Speaker 1: and then I took life into my own hands and
Speaker 1: I manifested myself. If that is not a men to
Speaker 1: for a poem, a truth, a prophecy for this world,
Speaker 1: that's the gift of possibility that trans people give you.
Speaker 1: Two can change, and I know you and I both
Speaker 1: believe this. The reason that I find social justice so
Speaker 1: concerning right now is this idea of redemption has been
Speaker 1: completely lost, and I'm actually like, we should start from culpability.
Speaker 1: We should start from complicity. We are the things that
Speaker 1: we critique, we are the things that are harming us.
Speaker 1: But yet we fight because there's still something beautiful, redeemable
Speaker 1: and possible alongside that in ourselves and in one another. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Oh look, there's a few things they came up from me. Um.
Speaker 1: Corey Booker was on a talk show when he was
Speaker 1: running for president in the primaries, and he was talking
Speaker 1: about love and having an ethic of love and like
Speaker 1: proceeding from a place of love, and the journalists, I
Speaker 1: want to see the journalisting laughed in his face as
Speaker 1: he said it, like literally laughed in his face. I
Speaker 1: was like, wow, he got no traction talking about love.
Speaker 1: That came up for me when I've listened to you.
Speaker 1: And then Um, a psychologist we just interview, talked about love.
Speaker 1: I talked about love all the time. And she talked
Speaker 1: about how when we're in love, our bodies instead of
Speaker 1: those stress hormones, our bodies actually released dopamine and release
Speaker 1: oxytocin and all these good, you know, feel good hormones
Speaker 1: when we're in love and when we feel love and
Speaker 1: just this space of manifesting love for myself and maybe
Speaker 1: for another person or for our thing is literally healing.
Speaker 1: It's literally taking those stress hormones and bringing them down
Speaker 1: and replacing them with hormones that are loving and our bodies,
Speaker 1: and that is something that we all need. And the
Speaker 1: space of metamorphosis that you just talked about, I think
Speaker 1: that was one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: This is why I'm not into the cancel culture thing,
Speaker 1: because it's like people can change and people, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't change you. You have to make that decision
Speaker 1: to change yourself. But that is possible. And then how
Speaker 1: do we also create a space where we're assuming the
Speaker 1: best in people? Um, I think we shouldn't be naive
Speaker 1: about making generous assumptions, right, But I think if I'm
Speaker 1: assuming that people are sucking on purpose and people are
Speaker 1: just corrupt, it's a really dark place to be in.
Speaker 1: Making generous assumptions about our fellow human beings helps me,
Speaker 1: Like that helps me moving from a place of love,
Speaker 1: helps me get through my life instead of being cynical
Speaker 1: and sort of jaded and bitter. So this work is individual,
Speaker 1: but if enough individuals do the work, it can become
Speaker 1: collective and then we can begin to change ideology and
Speaker 1: change structures and systems that you have to get that out.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say my job as a poet is
Speaker 1: to resurrect the dead things, including love and my entire life.
Speaker 1: I've been shamed as naive immature for being committed to love,
Speaker 1: and then I actually realized I need to cultivate my
Speaker 1: naivety because of course, a system that is so cruel
Speaker 1: will diminish, undermine, and delegitimize any alternative as naive, ridiculous, idealistic.
Speaker 1: And now I actually believe in the possibility of transformation
Speaker 1: of this world. I believe the healing is possible because
Speaker 1: look at what I've done in my own life, and
Speaker 1: that's what Healing Journey has done from me, is that
Speaker 1: if I could find something redeemable in me, I wanted
Speaker 1: to die. For the first half of my life, I
Speaker 1: didn't exist. I was literally a fantasy of what other
Speaker 1: people needed me to be. I perfected disassociation as my
Speaker 1: first performance are which is why so many of as
Speaker 1: a trans and gender a commer people are so damn
Speaker 1: good at performance. It's because we learned the scripts really
Speaker 1: early on, and and transition for me was about realignment
Speaker 1: and if I could go from being a ghost of
Speaker 1: myself to being able to perform and weep and feel
Speaker 1: every emotion. How dare you tell me that hope is impractical,
Speaker 1: Because hope is how I resurrected myself from premature death.
Speaker 1: So I am actually really committed now to an arsenal
Speaker 1: of militant compassion and compassionate militancy. And I reject this
Speaker 1: idea that we were just somehow wrong or or short sided,
Speaker 1: because actually the political traditions that I most learned from,
Speaker 1: Like when I think about the history of cross dressing laws,
Speaker 1: our transistors were arrested twenty to forty times. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just like one time. It was like routinely risk and
Speaker 1: then exposed to sexual violence in prisons, put into mental
Speaker 1: health institution centers. Why did they keep on going outside?
Speaker 1: And the only reason I can understand it is they
Speaker 1: were writing love letters to us. That is the only
Speaker 1: way I can understand it. My transform others said, I
Speaker 1: am writing a love letter to those who do not
Speaker 1: exist yet, and I am trying to create a world
Speaker 1: such that you can't exist. So what that means is
Speaker 1: that I'm only able to exist because of the love
Speaker 1: and care of other people. So actually my love and
Speaker 1: care creates the capacity for existence for the next generation
Speaker 1: it and that idea is what propels me to keep going.
Speaker 1: Is the more love and the more care and the
Speaker 1: more intention than I put into the world, maybe I
Speaker 1: can create a world that's livable by the people that
Speaker 1: need to exist. Mm hmm, oh, that's so beautiful. When
Speaker 1: you talked about your being called naive, I immediately thought
Speaker 1: about the child that lives in all of us, and
Speaker 1: the child who does not know bigotry that is top bigotry,
Speaker 1: but also doesn't know shame, also doesn't know trauma and
Speaker 1: sort of tapping into the child and me whose wide
Speaker 1: eyed and it's filled with possibility, and so caring for
Speaker 1: that little child, letting her come out and play um,
Speaker 1: speaking gently to her, nourishing her and sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: being the adult when I need to be, but letting
Speaker 1: her have space teaches me so much about myself. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's that time again. A lot more is coming though,
Speaker 1: including our guests. What else is true, We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: We are back, and we're ready to pick up where
Speaker 1: we left on. So I do want to be a
Speaker 1: little basic and talk about pronouns. I remember when I
Speaker 1: when I had my really first close non binary friend
Speaker 1: who used data in pronouns, and I remember just having
Speaker 1: difficulty at the beginning with with they them, and I
Speaker 1: don't anymore, and and again one can change, but I
Speaker 1: had difficulty in the beginning. A lot of people, I
Speaker 1: think still have some difficulty with they them. I think
Speaker 1: fewer people than used to. Can you talk about the
Speaker 1: importance of pronouns and respecting people's pronouns. I would love
Speaker 1: to say that I had difficulty miss gendering myself, which
Speaker 1: is export often don't bring up tell us about that,
Speaker 1: but you know what, I started to use day then, pronouns.
Speaker 1: It was a transition for me because I was just
Speaker 1: so saturated into the language of male quote female pronouns
Speaker 1: and binaries that it was a new introduction to me.
Speaker 1: And so I began from humility being like, of course,
Speaker 1: it's difficult, but it's in no way equivalent to the
Speaker 1: kinds of institutionalized psychological warfare that gender variant people exist
Speaker 1: and a culture that ritualizes and naturalizes our disappearance. So yes,
Speaker 1: it's difficult, but that difference you're alluding to between discomfort
Speaker 1: and actual oppression. So actually, what I would argue is
Speaker 1: the only way that we show up for other people
Speaker 1: is through inconveniencing ourselves. So in this kind of political
Speaker 1: vacabulary right now, people are saying defund the police. It
Speaker 1: just scares people. As a framework, you should come up
Speaker 1: with a more palate. That's not how change works. Change
Speaker 1: works by actually being made uncomfortable. So what they them,
Speaker 1: I think is so productive and generative in doing, is
Speaker 1: halting a conversation and therefore halting an assumption. And that's
Speaker 1: what we need to attack as a trans movement is
Speaker 1: the preconscious. It's not just about how people are curre
Speaker 1: did on social media, it's what they actually are thinking
Speaker 1: before they articulate the language. And this hasn't experienced so
Speaker 1: many of us as trans people know as well. They're
Speaker 1: just using our pronouns to be politically correct, not because
Speaker 1: they actually see us for who we are. And I
Speaker 1: don't want you to use day them just because it's
Speaker 1: like you're gonna get called out. I want to use
Speaker 1: saying them because you no longer see me as a man.
Speaker 1: And that's what I'm insisting on for trans people is
Speaker 1: that we have accepted mere acknowledgement as the social justice
Speaker 1: in beart it when I'm actually I'm saying no, regard
Speaker 1: my humanity, and regarding my humanity means recognize me for
Speaker 1: my complexity, my interiority, and that which can never be
Speaker 1: rendered visible. Not all trans people are the same, because
Speaker 1: we each have souls, and I'm arguing for bodies, not souls.
Speaker 1: The next point I want to make about the pronoun
Speaker 1: conversation to elevate it, just because as people will say,
Speaker 1: it's plural, it doesn't make sense grammatically, etcetera. And I
Speaker 1: want to actually say, in this moment of pandemic, one
Speaker 1: would think that Western individualism could be revisited, because what
Speaker 1: we should learn from this is that what's happening over
Speaker 1: there impacts what's happening over here, and that we create
Speaker 1: fictional walls everywhere between countries, between genders, between races that
Speaker 1: are illusory and don't stand the test of life and existence.
Speaker 1: What they them for me is actually of collapsing Western
Speaker 1: individualism and saying I am because of many, because it
Speaker 1: took many, loving, caring traditions and people. And so when
Speaker 1: I say I am, I'm representing those people's communities, traditions.
Speaker 1: When I say they them, I'm paying homage to Sylvester
Speaker 1: to Sylvia, to all the people who came before me.
Speaker 1: I'm actually saying the only reason that I can exist
Speaker 1: is because other people existed. Yes, I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: extrapolate myself, and so that's why I say they them
Speaker 1: as a poem. Every time you've gendered me appropriately, we
Speaker 1: are convening together in a poem. And the poems that
Speaker 1: matter most to me are the poems that we speak,
Speaker 1: and I think they them as a as an articulate
Speaker 1: poem of a kind of alternative to Western individualism. Brilliant.
Speaker 1: I knew you'd elevate the conversation. That was fucking brilliant. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm cursing on my podcast, but there's a moment in
Speaker 1: your book beyond the gender binary. You right, The gender
Speaker 1: binary is like a party gift who shows up before
Speaker 1: you've had a chance to set the table. I love that.
Speaker 1: Can you elaborate on that a little bit? To wrap up? So,
Speaker 1: the thing is people still think that babies are born
Speaker 1: male or female, when actually we're slowly starting to say, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe not all babies are born straight. That's a cultural
Speaker 1: position we put on. But when it comes to gender
Speaker 1: and sex, we haven't done that due diligence. The truth
Speaker 1: is we're all born and then we become after the fact.
Speaker 1: But what the gender binary makes you think is that
Speaker 1: our organic default, biological as they say, self, was male.
Speaker 1: Laverne and I were not born moles, period, period. And
Speaker 1: and to really understand trans life, you need to break
Speaker 1: out of this paradigm that we were biological males quote
Speaker 1: unquote that transition like that's all literally sis nonsense. Okay,
Speaker 1: we were born a Loke and Laverne respectively, and culture
Speaker 1: and society came in and accrued various meanings to what
Speaker 1: we were giving and what was given. And so when
Speaker 1: I'm saying the gender binary shows up unannounced, it structures
Speaker 1: the preconscious that I was speaking before. It literally means
Speaker 1: that even before you speak, you see address and you
Speaker 1: think woman. But what I want you to understand is
Speaker 1: most of what we consider now to be feminine was
Speaker 1: actually worn by people of various genders for hundreds of years.
Speaker 1: Make up, wigs, heels, leggings, dresses, lace, So actually every
Speaker 1: symbol is structured by historical, social and political conditions. And
Speaker 1: when you continue to make this as some like organic
Speaker 1: innate like blank slate, that doesn't exist. You're blank slate
Speaker 1: with socially constructed darling. Okay, So what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: get people to realize is that it's not enough, and
Speaker 1: I think this is the next generation of transactivism and
Speaker 1: thought I'm just announcing that now. I hope that it
Speaker 1: takes It is it's not just about saying trans women
Speaker 1: are women, transmit our men, yes, of course, but it's
Speaker 1: actually about saying only people can self determine their own truth.
Speaker 1: It's about removing the power and the authority of families,
Speaker 1: of religions, of governments to say you're a male or female. Instead,
Speaker 1: what we should be fighting for is ask people who
Speaker 1: they are, period and then believe them period. And I
Speaker 1: just don't think we're fighting for that as a transmovient
Speaker 1: because we've settled with our own subordination to assist frameworks.
Speaker 1: So we still have to use this rhetoric of transition
Speaker 1: as if we were some gender that was inaccurately ascribed
Speaker 1: to us and then now we are. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I've always been a low I was not the broken
Speaker 1: I was not the problem. It was the gender binary
Speaker 1: that made you misinterpret. So this is not about political correctness.
Speaker 1: It's actually about honesty and factuality. When you miss gender someone,
Speaker 1: you're not just like being politically incorrect, you're being incorrect.
Speaker 1: Like would we go around calling someone named Sarah Susan,
Speaker 1: she'd say, no, my name is Sarah. That's the exact
Speaker 1: same thing that we're doing. When we missed gender, people
Speaker 1: were misrecognizing them. And the final thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: say is the trauma of misrecognition, just to sort of
Speaker 1: link it into what we were speaking about trauma before. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: people only understand trauma is physical, like you have to
Speaker 1: experienced physical brutality in order to say I've been traumatized.
Speaker 1: And that's just not how our bodies believe that. Actually,
Speaker 1: our neurological systems don't really differentiate between that. And what
Speaker 1: I noticed in so many of our lives as transigeneral
Speaker 1: conforming people is the trauma of being misrecognized. Actually, like
Speaker 1: takes a physical toll, ultimately makes us hurt. But I
Speaker 1: want to be fluid also in saying the trauma of
Speaker 1: being recognized and I want to thank you for recognizing me.
Speaker 1: And it's the anecdote to so many of those centuries
Speaker 1: of misrecognition and It's a testament to the power of
Speaker 1: of loving reconciliation, and I think that's what we exist
Speaker 1: on this planet to do as trans people, is to
Speaker 1: see each other for who we are, before medicalization, before
Speaker 1: any of that. I'm staying see each other for our souls,
Speaker 1: you know. And I want to say thank you so
Speaker 1: much for seeing me from my non binary soul that
Speaker 1: I feel like I can wear what I want to
Speaker 1: wear and not worry that my ID entity will be invalidated.
Speaker 1: M hm. That is really what we all want, no
Speaker 1: matter how we identify in terms of gender. We want
Speaker 1: to be seen as who we really are, and we
Speaker 1: need to be seen who we really are. I like
Speaker 1: to end the podcast with a very specific question that
Speaker 1: comes out of my trauma resiliency therapy. Actually it comes
Speaker 1: from the community resiliency model, and it's based from the
Speaker 1: idea of both and that I might be going through
Speaker 1: something really horrible and awful and traumatizing right now, and
Speaker 1: I feel that in a very specific place in my body,
Speaker 1: but somewhere in my body, the sensations are neutral and positive.
Speaker 1: And if I focus on what's challenging, that's all I
Speaker 1: can see. But if I focus on what it's neutral
Speaker 1: and positive. Maybe I can shift my energy, shift my
Speaker 1: nervous system a little bit. It's basically about what are
Speaker 1: the things that help you get through so a looke
Speaker 1: for you? What else is true? What helps you get
Speaker 1: through history? So off in I feel incredibly lonely, like
Speaker 1: in a physical sense being the only person who looks
Speaker 1: like me on a street and having everyone stare at me.
Speaker 1: In an emotional sense, asking as anyone ever felt this
Speaker 1: kind of loneliness, And then I read, and reading for
Speaker 1: me was a lifeline because I found people who felt
Speaker 1: the same things before me. And this year, one of
Speaker 1: my New Year's resolutions was that basically, someone in the
Speaker 1: world has felt your loneliness before. Find your ancestors, become
Speaker 1: their living memorial. And what I mean by that now
Speaker 1: is I no longer feel that kind of loneliness. I
Speaker 1: can say, yes, I've been slotted out of so many
Speaker 1: predetermined communities, homes, categories, But there are other people at
Speaker 1: the same time who have also felt with that devastation,
Speaker 1: and we become each other's family. And family is not
Speaker 1: just for the living, it's also for the debt. So
Speaker 1: it's about finding intimacy with our answers ers who felt
Speaker 1: that kind of loneliness. And so that paradigm has changed
Speaker 1: my entire life because I thought forever that my biggest
Speaker 1: fear was loneliness, and now I've realized I'm never actually alone. Right,
Speaker 1: that is definitely a resource. What we have a color
Speaker 1: resource in the parlance of KRIM or the community resiliency model. Uh.
Speaker 1: That just made me think about Kristin Nef's work on
Speaker 1: self compassion, which I'm obsessed with right now because I'm
Speaker 1: really trying to be more compassionate to myself. And one
Speaker 1: of the things she says that is a big component
Speaker 1: of self compassion is understanding that we were part of
Speaker 1: a larger community, that other people are also experiencing the
Speaker 1: same thing, have experienced the same things that we are,
Speaker 1: and so that share humanity. If we can use that
Speaker 1: and say, well, no, you're not the only one who's
Speaker 1: feeling this right now, that other people have gone through
Speaker 1: the same things that you have le barned and are
Speaker 1: going through it right now, You're not alone, and that
Speaker 1: we can say that to ourselves and give that gift
Speaker 1: to ourselves. So, really, what you're doing, and according to
Speaker 1: Christin Neft's work, is practicing self compassion and which is
Speaker 1: so beautiful and the biggest challenge right now being more
Speaker 1: compassionate and loving towards myself. I love you below. You
Speaker 1: are your everything, you really are, and I'm just so
Speaker 1: blessed that you're in the world like really and truly.
Speaker 1: I whenever you talk about your experiences being outside, being
Speaker 1: in public and the harassment you experience, I feel that
Speaker 1: viscerally because I've experienced similar harassment, particularly when I was
Speaker 1: in age into nonconforming space myself, pre medical transition, and
Speaker 1: really to this day, and I just I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: that you've had the courage to speak it. But it's
Speaker 1: not just that you speak it, it's the way you
Speaker 1: speak it with so much love, authority, sense of history,
Speaker 1: and a connection. It is deeply You're so deeply connected
Speaker 1: to the ancestors, to an energy of power that is
Speaker 1: greater than you. You are clearly anointed, so beauty to
Speaker 1: fly anointed, and I love that how beautifully you walk
Speaker 1: in that, And that is what I aspire to, is
Speaker 1: to walk more fully in the part of me that
Speaker 1: is annointed, the part of me that is the goddess
Speaker 1: inside of me. So thank you, Thank you for existing alone.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I'm a person who really appreciates history and
Speaker 1: having an understanding of history as a way to kind
Speaker 1: of understand where we are now. So much of how
Speaker 1: history has treated trans people is that it's sort of
Speaker 1: erased us and so acknowledging history and that we've always
Speaker 1: been here in really concrete ways. It's like it just
Speaker 1: fills me with such a sense of connection that does
Speaker 1: feel spiritual. It feels very very spiritual. I feel like
Speaker 1: this episode with a log was very much church for
Speaker 1: me and being trans and and owning my transnis is
Speaker 1: about owning the divine that's inside me. It's bigger than
Speaker 1: it's bigger than politics. It's just it's it's God. It's God.
Speaker 1: Sending everyone out there so much love on your journey
Speaker 1: towards building and healing. Thank you for listening to The
Speaker 1: Laverne Cox Show. Please rate reviews, subscribe and share with
Speaker 1: everyone you know. You can find me on Instagram and
Speaker 1: Twitter at Laverne Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox
Speaker 1: for Real. Join me next week when we'll be talking
Speaker 1: to my therapist, Yes, my therapist, Jennifer Burden Flyer, about
Speaker 1: the therapy that we do together and specifically about the
Speaker 1: community resiliency model. Until next time, stay in the love.
Speaker 1: The Laverne Cox Show is the production of Shondaland Audio
Speaker 1: in partnership with I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.