The Culture War #21 - Is Drag Appropriate For Kids? w/Maebe A. Girl & Kitty Demure
BUY CAST BREW COFFEE TO SUPPORT OUR WORK - https://castbrew.com/
Become A Member And Protect Our Work at http://www.timcast.com
My Second Channel - https://www.youtube.com/timcastnews
Podcast Channel - https://www.youtube.com/TimcastIRL
Merch - http://teespring.com/timcast
Make sure to subscribe for more travel, news, opinion, and documentary with Tim Pool everyday.
Produced by @sergedotcom (everywhere)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
One of the biggest questions in the culture war is whether drag is appropriate for kids, but surrounding this is a bunch of other issues pertaining to what's being taught in schools, what books are appropriate in schools.
It's led to many laws in many states, but it's escalated from just outright saying some books shouldn't be allowed in schools to outright saying certain medical procedures are outright banned in many states.
So we're going to discuss all of this, and we're being joined by two individuals, two drag queens, but I'll leave it to you guys to introduce yourselves.
Would you like to just introduce yourself first?
Maybe.
Yeah, of course.
My name is Maybe A Girl.
My pronouns are she, her, they, them, and I happen to be the first drag queen ever elected to public office in the United States.
I was elected to the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council in 2019, and I was just re-elected to my third term.
So I am a trans person, and I'm also a drag performer.
And then we also have... Billy, I go by Kitty Demure or Hogath Assist-y online.
I'm a performing drag queen.
I haven't performed in a while.
I went into management of a gay nightclub in Los Angeles area.
And I just am here to talk about kids and drag and how I'm against it and the video that I made in 19, no, it was 2019, warning people of what's happening today.
Back in 2019, I was noticing this phenomenon of drag queens going into libraries and other venues to read to children, and I didn't understand why that was happening.
I saw a picture of somebody I knew doing it, and somebody I knew who was a prostitute, a drug user, and it was just, I started noticing they were not representing the drag community, I think, in a very flattering way.
And that's the one thing that got to me.
Not only that, but the types of books they were reading to the children, making them question gender, sexuality, things of that nature that you really aren't exposed to until you're older and have more of the brain capacity to deal with that type of mature stuff.
I don't even understand why it even has to happen.
Why can't people read to their own children?
I mean, I would think a child would rather spend quality time with their parent reading to them.
Then taking them to somebody in an environment that is not set up for drag.
For me, drag is, it's an illusion.
It's not a life.
It's not, you know, you don't go out every day in drag.
Even though RuPaul's been famous for saying, you know, you're born naked and everything else is drag.
That's not really the case because when we do drag, we're deliberately being a characterization of a woman.
So I don't believe, you know, just us dressing up is drag.
But the content of which they're reading to the children I think is inappropriate.
I think parents should be reading to their parents.
I think elderly people could come in and read to, you know, children.
They're often lonely and, you know, feel useless.
Why not that?
Why not have police officers, doctors, you know, important people You know, people we need more of in our society, why can't they imprint and influence children?
I mean, hearing what you've had to say, I disagree entirely.
I don't think that it's inappropriate for drag performers to read to children.
I think what is I think what is inappropriate is describing the drag community, the idea of doing drag as a monolith.
And I think that a lot of people, especially folks who've never met a drag queen or a drag performer or who have ever been to a drag show, they have this idea of what a drag performer is.
But drag, as with any community, is not a monolith.
And so in my opinion, I believe that there are appropriate interactions for particular situations.
So, you know, I perform in nightclubs and the shows that I do, the performers that I interact with in the nightlife scene, totally different than what you see at Drag Queen Story Hour.
And I agree that, you know, we shouldn't have kids at drag shows that are taking place at nightclubs, which is not happening.
You know, these are 21 and up venues.
But you have, I think the idea of drag shows Discluding drag performers from being able to read to kids, I don't think that there's any sort of validation in that.
Because I do think that there's a difference between being a drag performer and reading to children in an age-appropriate context, Versus being a drag performer and doing a more explicit number in a nightclub.
And there's a huge difference in that.
And so this idea that drag performers are just sexually explicit performers, I think is false in its entirety.
Even in the nightlife scene, you will see so many different kinds of drag performers.
You will see drag performers that do performances that actually are entirely appropriate for children.
And then you'll see some that are not appropriate.
And I agree, we shouldn't have kids in nightclubs.
That's why there's 21 and up rules.
But when drag queens are reading at libraries, when drag queens are doing Drag Queen Story Hour for kids, 99% of the time, they are reading books that are appropriate for children.
I feel like the argument against Drag Queen Story Hour is the fact that there has been perhaps a few people who have crossed a line.
And unfortunately, that reflects on the whole community, and I don't agree that it should reflect on the whole community.
And that's what bothered me, is that we're just accepting this.
And I'm like, is everybody not seeing what I'm seeing?
Sure.
You know, people like to bring up Mrs. Doubtfire, which I don't consider to be drag.
I consider that a desperate man.
That's drag, honey.
trying to see his children.
- That's drag, that's drag hunting. - But that, for me, drag is a performance.
It's a performance.
- Was Robin Williams not performing in Mrs. Doubtfire? - I think he performed as a character actor in a movie portraying a father who was desperate to see his children.
And as far as the inappropriate drag, the children and stuff seeing it, unfortunately those pictures and videos do exist.
There's videos of drag queens, whether it was their fault or not, and I will concede that it's not always the drag queen's fault.
I think parents are bringing their children to say brunch at Hamburger Mary's, which is A venue where children can go in, but then you have queens doing inappropriate numbers.
I mean, Yara Sofia from RuPaul's Drag Race came out with her boobs bouncing out and then had to hide them when she realized that there was a child in the audience and they handed her a dollar.
And it's, you know, but yet she was modest and understood.
Oh, no, there's a child here, but it's during the day at brunch and she's a professional.
I mean, to not think a child wouldn't be there, I think it's ridiculous.
Well, also, I have to ask you, first of all, Yara Safiya or any number of drag performers that perform when they wear a chest plate, you know, it is a fake set of breasts.
What is actually so inherently offensive about that?
I'm personally an advocate of free the nipple.
I don't think that people chest up should have to cover themselves if they don't want to.
And I think that applies to cis males, cis women, Trans males and trans women and everything in between.
I don't think there's anything actually inherently offensive or sexual about a chest and it's actually very interesting to me that men in our patriarchal society can move about and and be totally bare-chested and it's not sexual but a woman does it and it's sexual.
I'm sure that many of them do, but again, no group of people is a monolith.
So I don't think that the chest, a breast, is inherently sexual.
It is a part of the human body.
It is a life-giving part of the human body.
That's why I'm totally in favor of women breastfeeding in public, of people breastfeeding in public.
Because it shouldn't be, an exposed nipple should not be taken as sexual.
And just somebody bringing out their breast cannot be, I don't think, inherently perceived as sexual.
And if it is, I think it's on the end of the person perceiving it rather than the person exposing themselves.
The interesting thing here is a long time ago, men and women weren't allowed to expose their chests.
I saw a photograph from Atlantic City from the 1920s.
In the middle of summer, everyone's wearing suits.
It was a very... I look at it from our perspective today, I'm like, it's very weird.
And then you can see a couple decades later, all of a sudden women are wearing, like, unitard bathing suits, one-piece bathing suits.
Men start wearing swim trunks, all of a sudden men aren't wearing shirts.
No one seemed to care that men's nipples were just culturally shifted this way.
We are starting to see this in many states across the country where, in New York for instance, many of these states, it is considered, I believe, a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to tell women they can't expose their nipples if men can.
Which, instead of creating a circumstance where men must now cover up, it created the inverse circumstance where women now don't have to.
But here's where it gets interesting, because I think this is a very, very interesting point.
I have a picture here, Libby Emmons posted, of Dylan Mulvaney.
Libby asks, why is the New York Post blurring male nipples in a sheer dress?
Dylan Mulvaney, of course, publicly identifies as trans, wearing a sheer dress where you can visibly see Dylan's nipples.
There's an interesting question being asked.
If Dylan Mulvaney is biologically male, and the argument is legally, or not legally, but in all social media, nobody cares if a male is showing their breasts, what about Dylan Mulvaney makes it now that these nipples are no longer allowed to be seen on the internet?
You know, Tim, it's so interesting.
I actually, I saw this on social media this morning before I came over here, and Dylan Mulvaney has endured a huge influx of criticism, hate, and you know, even people are saying, why did she have to leave the nation?
I understand that.
I took that in a smaller context in Los Angeles in June, earlier this summer.
The thing is, what What I immediately thought when I saw this image and when I saw the criticisms, so you want to say that Dylan Mulvaney is a man and then you're upset that Dylan Mulvaney is showing her nipples.
So which is it?
Is Dylan Mulvaney a man or is Dylan Mulvaney a woman who shouldn't expose her nipples?
I feel like the Many of the critics you can't have it both ways you can't so if you acknowledge that well, we shouldn't see her nipples Okay, so you acknowledge her as a woman?
But if you see Dylan Mulvaney as a man, which is untrue, which is not how Dylan sees herself then what's the issue?
But you just said that children should not be exposed to women's nipples.
So although Dylan Mulvaney is not performing in a drag show right here, she's on social media that's being broadcast much more broadly over Twitter, Instagram, etc.
than performing at a drag brunch, which I don't even think that Dylan identifies as a drag queen.
Dylan is a trans person.
So what is it?
Is it offensive that she is trans?
Is it offensive that her nipples are showing?
And if her nipples are showing, but you think that she's a man, then what's the issue?
I'm sorry to cut you off, but I will tell you, this is not about how everybody else perceives.
We should be addressing people the way that they see themselves.
And that is truly a big part of the trans issue is a lot of the reason that trans people portray themselves in a certain way is because they want the world to see themselves the way that they see themselves.
And so Dylan sees herself as a woman, she is a trans woman.
So to then call her out and say, "Well, no, you're a man and you still can't show your nipples." There is a huge hypocrisy in that. - I agree, I don't think they should be blurred.
Yeah, it's weird.
Also with the White House, when you had, I believe it was two trans women, I'm sorry, two trans men and a trans woman, you had the trans woman covering up her breasts and the trans men were not.
Outrage was focused on the trans woman, though ultimately the White House did address all three of them.
I bring up the same question because there's got to be a logical answer or question as to What is the issue at hand?
It's the issue that as soon as a person grows breast tissue through hormones or whatever, we all of a sudden decide.
There have also been, even outside of the context of transgender issues, on Instagram for instance, women, females, will take pasties of male nipples over their nipples and post pictures because there seems to be some kind of logical inconsistency here.
Either we say no nipples for anybody or we say nipples for everybody.
Or is it on society to say, hey, maybe I shouldn't sexualize somebody's body just because they have a body.
We all have bodies and we all have sexuality within us.
We all have sexual components of ourselves.
And that's an individual decision.
I'm not saying every woman has to go out there and show off her breasts if she's not comfortable.
But if you are comfortable, you should be able to do that just in the way that men can do that.
And it's part of the patriarchy.
So how would you define patriarchy?
I would define patriarchy as society defined by men, which we are sort of, I think we're having a really important societal conversation about this right now.
But this is something that has dictated society since this Since the beginning of history, you know, when we look at different parts of society through historical times, you see that men have have sexualized women and then women end up having to be the victim because they are being sexualized.
So I don't think that in all instances women are sexualizing themselves.
I think that men are often sexualizing women and therefore women have to cover themselves because men can't control themselves.
We see this, I think, the most pronounced example would be in Middle Eastern countries.
The niqab, I believe, is probably pronouncing it right, but women have to completely cover their entire bodies except for their eyes.
I don't know enough about the culture or religion.
My understanding is that And this could be completely wrong, is that the men argue that they can't control themselves if they see a beautiful woman, therefore the women must cover up.
Not that the men should not attack the women.
Something like that.
Do you think that's fair, Tim?
That women should be forced to cover up?
Absolutely not.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think most Americans are probably like... No, I'm kidding.
No, absolutely not.
So then why does a drag performer who is performing in a drag brunch or a drag show that folks are consenting to attend to have to cover themselves up?
And if a child happens to be present, What is that going to do to inherently groom them or or sexualize them?
Yes, but the right in the argument against drag culture is based off of these few instances, these outliers, and Folks are taking those instances and applying it to drag should not be allowed around children whatsoever.
And I think that that is the drag community's fault.
And that's why I was the adult who came out and said something.
If we were going to expose children to this, why is it going to be a drag queen with their legs spread open reading to kids about, hey, You know, maybe you're a girl, maybe you're a boy.
You know, it's like there's no PR or there's no, like, head of the LGBTQ Inc.
Yeah, but I think, I also think that's a total mischaracterization of what Drag Queen Story Hour is.
You know, we see these few clips that are spread around on the internet.
A lot of right-wing folks like to spread these images.
Of course, there are people who cross a line, who cross a boundary, and I disagree with that.
I don't think that Uh, drag performers who are engaging in Drag Queen Story Hour should be doing that kind of performance.
But I also think that is a very small minority of what is actually happening.
And any person, any adult who brings their child to Drag Queen Story Hour is doing so in a consensual manner.
And I don't think that they're bringing their kids to be sexualized.
I mean, you have to be a total pervert to want to sexualize your own child.
But that is the way that the LGBTQIA community and specifically drag performers are being portrayed because of this particular kind of language.
I have done Drag Queen Story Hour a couple of times.
I did it at DTLA Proud a few years ago and I did it actually somewhat recently.
The LGBT Center in Los Angeles hosted Trans Pride, and I was booked to do Drag Queen Story Hour.
And you know what?
I showed up, and I brought very age-appropriate books.
These were literal children's books about, you know, about spirituality and about acceptance and about, you know, loving yourself and loving others.
There was nothing sexual about that.
And everybody in the room, they enjoyed it.
The parents enjoyed it.
The children enjoyed it.
There was nothing sexual about it.
And yet, there are so many people who are claiming that, oh, Drag Queen Story Hour is grooming and sexualizing children.
And that is not the case.
The thing is, there might be one or two or a couple of people out there that might not even realize that they are crossing a line because they're used to performing in nightclubs and night venues.
But the thing is, I don't even, those people, I don't even think they're attempting to sexualize children.
There might be some things that are inappropriate.
But that's the thing.
There are no, it's hard to pick out a specific guideline that is going to apply to every single age group and every single person.
And it's up to the parents to decide, do I want to bring my child to drag queen story hour?
But that's actually the grooming argument that certainly some, uh, many of the drag queen stories are just someone in drag reading stories.
But as you mentioned, some people are crossing the line and then you have the more egregious And when I say some, when I say some, okay, there has to be millions, at least thousands to hundreds of thousands of drag performers.
And many of them are doing Drag Queen Story Hour.
You cannot outlaw the entire idea of it because one person has done that.
Because on the flip side, when we think about cis heteronormative culture, there are dozens more examples of people who are grooming children, who are actual pedophiles.
But are we saying we need to outlaw cis heteronormative culture?
No.
The thing is, we need to find those particular individuals and make sure that they are not actually grooming children.
And the fact of the matter is, most drag performers are not grooming children.
Most drag performers, when they are doing engaging in Drag Queen Story Hour, there's benefits The benefits of Drag Queen Story Hour, you know, kids love being read to.
You know, I remember being read to as a child.
I remember sitting in the library and I remember the librarian being a little boring and just, oh, kids, here's the story.
Here you go.
When kids are imaginative, kids love imagination and fantasy and fun.
And there is something that is very imaginative and fantasy filled about drag performance, whether or not you are a cis or trans drag performer.
And so children love to be read to by drag performers because it's fun and it's imaginative and it's fantasy filled.
And they're not even saying, OK, you have to be a drag performer.
You have to be trans.
You have to be LGBTQIA.
And that's part of the argument that I disagree with that, that LGBTQIA people and specifically drag performers are grooming children.
We're not grooming them.
We're trying to say that you are welcome to be you as you are.
If you are cis, heterosexual, fabulous.
If you end up being queer, fabulous.
We're not trying to steer you any particular way.
But I remember being a queer child.
And I remember not having any sort of mentor or model to look at.
And I felt very othered.
And I felt very different.
And it actually caused a lot of mental health problems.
And so when you actually introduce children to the diversity of gender identity, to the diversity of sexuality, to the diversity of everything other than the cis heteronormative family, you show kids that it's okay to be you as you are.
You don't have to follow this particular guideline that is, again, defined by the patriarchy.
And you can be whoever you are, and you're welcome to be who you are.
I'm not saying you must be trans, you must be a drag performer, but if you end up being that when you grow up, Great.
And I remember not having that sort of influence.
And I remember the impact that it had on my mental health as a queer youth in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, not seeing anybody that was like me anywhere in society.
And it made me fearful to be who I am.
Are you familiar with Desmond is Amazing?
Yes.
Do you have any thoughts?
I'll ask some questions, but I just want to let you open up.
Yeah, I don't know Desmond.
I have seen Desmond online.
I know that they are a queer youth who wanted to engage in drag and I think that's perfectly okay.
I don't think that Desmond's parents are behind the scenes saying, you have to be a drag performer.
We're trying to groom you to be trans.
There is actually no benefit to it because queer people and trans people are You're familiar with go-go dancing, I assume?
Yeah!
that we live in, that I don't think that a person who didn't want to engage in that would choose to engage in that, knowing the kind of ostracism and criticism and hatred that would come to follow.
The things that I've said, read about this child are disgusting.
And that is, that's so much more horrific than this person saying, I want to put on a skirt and a wig and perform.
- Are you familiar with go-go dancing, I assume?
- Yeah.
- And bikini bars.
- Sure, yeah.
In many states, what they define as stripping is the removal of any clothing on stage with no nudity.
The act of removing clothing is the stripping of clothing.
So, Tim... So this is stripping?
If you are on stage for a bunch of adults... I'm on stage for a bunch of adults right now.
...offering you money for the explicit purpose of seeing you remove clothing, this is where you have, uh... You know, context matters, right?
Like, I think...
But I think I get where you're going at, Tim, but here's the thing.
Drag performers, like there is the reveal of drag.
I think that a lot of people just aren't familiar with drag culture.
And there is this idea of performing where there's a reveal.
And that doesn't mean stripping down and being sexual.
Taking off a garment to show an undergarment does not mean that it is stripping or being sexual.
So in, uh, I think South Dakota might be the state, but there's a bunch of states.
Women aren't allowed to be fully nude on stage.
So they have what they call bikini bars or go-go bars.
The women will go on stage and do what is in every way identical to what Desmond does on stage here.
Removing an outer layer of clothing in exchange for money from the audience.
Desmond is a child in this.
I could be wrong.
It's been several years.
This is 2019.
My understanding was that this was an adult bar full of adult males watching the child perform on stage and do things that many have argued were sexually suggestive, especially in the Gwen Stefani portion of this.
There are queer children being raised in homes that are intolerant.
I, myself, grew up in a home where my parents became much more tolerant when they realized that I was a queer person.
And there was a lot of hesitation and objection at first.
And that was based off of what they had learned growing up.
And so we're perpetuating this culture of, gay is weird, LGBTQIA is, oh that's other, you don't know, don't engage in that, that's adult content, that's, there's something wrong with that.
I wish I had grown up in a school environment where I had adults and other people around me saying, it's okay to be who you are.
No, I just, I guess, because like I said, I grew up in an earlier time and I did not have your experience at all.
My experience came from other kids.
I, you know, I don't know what I, can I say faggot on here?
I was called a faggot every day.
Every day of my life, I was called a faggot.
And I was still myself and I don't know, and I think that's what we need to be teaching kids, is not for me to tolerate something that you do, but for you to be able to take my opinion And just say, okay, and still be you.
But that's the reason that that doesn't happen is because queer kids are growing up in environments that are not necessarily queer.
And when you ban any sort of LGBTQIA education from school levels until you get to high school, that's where you breed people who fear and who other folks who are LGBTQIA.
The reason that you were called a faggot, the reason I was called a faggot was because those other kids grew up in environments where they heard their parents calling other people faggots.
And that's what we're trying to do is trying to let folks and let kids today in this generation know that it is okay to be queers.
It's okay to be LGBTQIA.
And again, there's nothing inherently sexual about being LGBTQIA.
Just in the same way that there's nothing inherently sexual about being cis heteronormative.
And there is a connection there, of course, according to who you love and who eventually you have sex with, but that doesn't mean that we're trying to teach kids about explicit sex.
I've got to completely disagree.
We have these two books here, Gender Queer Less So, This Book is Gay More So, explicitly teach about overt sexual acts, depicting them, and were provided to children, sometimes as young as the age of 10.
Now, Tim, let me ask you, when you say children, what do you mean by children?
Because children could be 0 to 18.
What do you mean by children?
So this was a 10-year-old.
These are middle schoolers.
This book is gay specifically was given to... You don't think that middle schoolers who are starting to go through puberty and who are starting to have sexual intercourse and starting to experiment with sexuality, you don't think that any of them are queer and might need to learn about queer experience?
There's a difference between sex ed and this book is gay which teaches those children how to use Grindr, right?
I think it's...
We can go back to earlier on, I think, where a lot of the argument comes from.
There is the granular and there is the macro.
When you look at a single instance of, say, just someone dressed as a woman, drag reading to a child, we can argue, well, it's simply just reading a story.
But when you look in the whole big picture of it, you have these instances where this book in particular teaches about eating feces.
Okay, well, I want you to know that I don't personally endorse any of these books.
It's really easy to put two books on the middle of this table for this particular interview and say, hey, look, this is what's being shared.
This is not in every single... These books are always here.
We have a bunch of books.
But here's the thing is, it's really easy to pick two books that depict that and say, well, this is what LGBTQIA education is about.
And that's not true.
Let me tell you this.
In the Netherlands, Something that they do is they actually have comprehensive sex education, sexual education for everyone from kindergarten through 12th grade.
But here's the thing.
Kindergartners are not learning about sexual intercourse.
They're learning things in an age appropriate manner.
They're learning that, oh, This person might have two daddies or two mommies or something along those lines.
It's not explicit.
So while I agree that this kind of content shouldn't be in a lot of schools, there is a certain age that you approach when you are a teenager and you've gone through puberty and you're starting to self-actualize and self-realize and figure out who you are.
And if you don't have resources, again, you are feeling othered and you're feeling different.
You're feeling like there's something wrong with you.
I can speak this way because I was somebody who recognized that I was queer when I was a teenager.
And the reason that I promote this idea that we should have LGBTQIA age-appropriate education through all levels of school is because I don't want any other child to feel how I felt going through school, whether it be through adults or my peers.
And these are the books that are being adamantly defended.
So, for instance... Well, I'm not defending these books.
Just to let it be known, I'm not defending these books.
There's probably explicit imagery in here that you're going to show me.
It's the same thing that... Well, you might not show them, but...
Whether or not these books have them, there are a lot of right-wing people who are bringing about these books that do have explicit imagery.
I don't condone that.
I don't think that we should have books for, you know, elementary school students that depict images of people getting blowjobs or having intercourse.
I disagree with that.
What I agree with is age-appropriate letting people know that queer people exist, that cis-heteronormative culture is not the only thing out there.
And you yourself might be queer, and don't think that there's something wrong with you because it's not everything that you see around you.
So this is one of the principal issues, particularly with this book is gay, a teacher provided to middle schoolers, kids between the ages of 10 and 12, it describes scat, right?
And things like that is absolutely inappropriate for 10 or 12 year olds, when people on the right, predominantly, not completely, but they tend to be the one leading the charge on these things, said, hey, wait a minute.
In fact, what happened was parents called the police.
Saying that the teacher was providing, you know, illicit materials to the children.
NBC News ran an article showing a different book about what you describe as just explaining queer experiences and did not explain what was in the book.
It was only because right-wing personalities, disaffected liberals, libertarians, whatever, the people on that side, started tweeting images of the book showing that it's not just sexism.
But so what happens is When someone says, hey, this is not appropriate for kids, the response that you see for the most part from high-profile personalities, maybe not you, is defense of the book.
In fact, our guest who came on the show a couple weeks ago adamantly defended this book being for children, being in middle schoolers, saying it was a good book and it shouldn't be censored.
That is what fuels concern among those who are saying, this is grooming.
That is exactly my point, and why they're selling it as a gay thing.
Right.
And so who, I don't know who the hell authored that book, who claims that it's, SCAT is a gay thing, but I think we should be going after the author for them being inauthentic, because... I think this is a really good point, that often when it comes to, so SCAT specifically, I can't believe we're talking about it, it's in the glossary.
Tim, don't you see how when these things are very adamantly portrayed in the media, folks who don't know or don't think that they know queer people or trans people, this is what they think queer culture is about.
I can tell you as a queer person that queer culture is not about scat.
I don't care if there's a rainbow on there.
If some adult wants to, you know, engage in that, whatever, that's on them.
But I will tell you that the majority of people who want to see LGBTQIA education in schools In an age-appropriate manner, don't want to see kids being taught about scats.
And that's the fact of the matter.
But the thing is, folks who, again, don't have never met a queer person or think they haven't met a queer person or a trans person, they think this is what all queer people are saying.
Hey kids, learn about scat.
No, that's not the case at all.
And I very adamantly disagree with that.
But again, I don't think this book should be banned from libraries, but maybe it shouldn't be in an elementary library.
That tends to be the main issue, right?
You mentioned earlier, you said, somebody said.
Well, that's the thing.
Somebody said.
What bothers me is that so many people who are against LGBTQIA education in schools, they take these outlier situations.
They take this one person who has said this and makes it the representative of the whole LGBTQIA community, which is not true.
That's false.
And so I disagree that kids should be, you know, given books that have explicit imagery.
And when I say kids, I mean, you know, elementary school students.
When you start to go through puberty, you're going to start to do your own exploration.
Kids are smart enough to know how to use the internet to go and find porn if they want to do that.
I don't think they should do that, but kids are going to do that.
I remember being a queer teenager, and I remember having to seek out queer pornography because I couldn't find it anywhere.
So would you agree with the Florida Legislature and Ron DeSantis in removing these books from the curriculum?
You know, here's the thing.
Are these books in the curriculum?
In the schools, I believe?
Because there's a big difference between these books being in the curriculum versus being available for somebody to rent out at the library if they want.
And what is wrong about— Should these be in grade school libraries?
Uh, but is the, let me ask this.
I don't know the, I don't know the conditions of every school in Florida.
Is every, because a lot of schools have multiple grade levels.
If there is a school that is, you know, elementary through high school, then yeah, I'm sure that there are some teenagers who might want to read this content, might want to learn about that.
Am I endorsing it or condoning it?
No.
But do I think it should be banned?
No.
I think that's dangerous when we start to censor.
And it's so interesting to me because You know, The Right frequently is going off about First Amendment and free speech, and then they go and they try to censor any sort of LGBTQIA content because the child might perhaps see it.
The thing is, I don't believe in my heart of hearts that this is being endorsed on a large scale to young children.
There might be a few bad actors, but I don't think that they speak for the LGBTQIA community In the same way that I don't think that any given pedophile who is cis-heterosexual speaks for the whole cis-het community.
So this, this is quite literally the perspective of the right on grooming.
That you would argue in any way children should be able to access this, is grooming.
But is grooming, but having a book in a library, is that actually grooming?
Are you, is there a library in there?
Or, uh, you know, Teachers and adults saying hey check out this book yes And read it and look at all of the imagery and if there is I will tell you right here that those are outliers Those are outliers, and that is that's the big argument That's the big thing that the right uses to go against queer people is you take these outliers?
Situations and try to apply it to the whole LGBTQIA, but there's very few people speaking out against it The same happens on the right as well.
They're also not a monolith and I have been that drag queen that has been there for the right and the conservatives and you wouldn't believe the emails that I get from conservative parents, Republican parents who have gay children and they don't know how to deal with it because the LGBTQ community abandoned them.
So Loudoun County is literally 10 seconds from here, and this is where parents came out and said, why was this book given to my kids?
The response?
Condemnation by the LGBT community.
Show me, were these books subscribed to children?
Were they given to children?
If it's something that's in a library... You keep pulling a bunch of different But again, I see you keep pulling these things up.
But again, this is not representative of what is happening everywhere.
It's very easy to pick and choose these specific instances where that happens.
And yes, I agree with you.
I don't think that this sort of content should be given to exclusively elementary school children.
Should this teacher be criminally charged for providing instructions on Grindr to minors?
I don't know if they should be criminally charged, but I think that that person might understand how difficult it is for queer people to meet other queer people in the context of an environment where they are ostracized and told that there's something wrong with These are middle schoolers being given sexually explicit books that discuss scats, Scissor Sisters, and how to use grinding.
But again, okay, is this widespread?
This particular article that you brought up, is this happening in every school district, in every county, in every state?
No.
I don't think whether it's happening everywhere is an argument for whether this is illegal.
But that's what I'm saying.
It's very easy to pick and pull out this particular instance.
I do disagree with that, and that's the thing is I want to make it clear that I am against the grooming and sexualization of children, but what I want to make clear is that the overall message of the LGBTQIA community and the overall inclusion of LGBTQIA history and education In school districts is not focused on sexualizing children, and that's what it's been warped into.
And of course, I care about kids.
I don't want to see kids harmed or sexualized or, you know, falling victim to pedophiles.
I don't want to see that whatsoever.
But the story has been warped that this is an overall an overarching theme of the LGBTQIA community.
And that's what I'm here to defend.
It's because, overwhelmingly, the LGBTQIA community, in terms of its most prominent speakers, have been actively defending these books.
Well, I would consider myself to be a speaker of the LGBTQIA community as the first drag queen ever elected to public office in the United States.
As a trans person running for a seat in the U.S.
House of Representatives, I'm not telling kids that they should be reading this material when I'm available to them in libraries.
Well, again, based on age appropriate, there's a big difference between a 5-year-old reading that and a 17-year-old reading that, and you have to agree with that, Tam.
But in a middle school library, you said it shouldn't be banned.
Well, also, middle schools and high schools are often merged, so sometimes you will have a school where material is available that might be adult content or for older audiences.
I don't think that we should outlaw and just remove all of these books and burn them.
This is exactly what happened 100 years ago, I mean, there's a difference between Playboy and Catcher in the Rye.
Yeah, exactly.
There's a difference between this book is gay and Catcher in the Rye.
If someone's saying, oh, this book has offensive ideas in it, then sure, banning that.
But these are sexually graphic books that are available to grade school kids.
If your position is that you think it shouldn't be censored, that's quite literally the argument conservatives have, that you would be arguing for Well, shouldn't parents of 5, 6, 7 year olds be monitoring what they check out of a library?
I do think that is up to the parent to decide what is the child allowed to check out.
If a child who's 7 years old picks out one of these books from the library, yeah, I would absolutely understand that their parent wouldn't want them to read it.
But if they're 17 years old... Why would pornography be in a library where kids can access it?
Yeah, but it's not pornography.
I think that, you know, when you look at books that display anatomy and teach about what queer sex is about, it's not necessarily pornography.
The thing is that there are so few resources available to queer people in general, and specifically queer youth, that when we try to censor and shield all youth from this idea of LGBTQIA, That is the censorship that is harmful because that's the breeding of children.
That's the grooming of children to hate people who are LGBTQIA and to fear them and to think that they are other.
And that's the reason I was called a faggot and that's the reason Kitty was called a faggot because kids didn't hear from their parents or their teachers or their peers that it's okay to be queer.
And so yeah, there might be some explicit imagery in that.
And again, I agree that that shouldn't be shown to kids who are in elementary and early middle school.
Or available to them?
Or, you know, or available to them.
But the thing is, maybe shouldn't that be up to the librarian?
Hey, you're six years old.
I'm not gonna let you check out this book.
They don't have to check it out to read it.
They go in the library, they can read any book they want.
So, some things should not be available to kids.
I mean, gore, pornography, sexual explicit activities.
A lot of these arguments that I hear from you and from other people within the community, they seem very Outdated like like they like people don't have any representation or they don't see depictions of like gay or or trans or anything I mean, that's all you see now.
I mean what I mean, that's I don't understand That's because we had to fight for that when I was I graduated high school almost 20 years ago And I didn't see anything like this.
I didn't have anything like this.
I didn't I wouldn't write about Scott I didn't have anybody to be able to talk to you about that and that is what made my peers and the people around me make Me think that there was something wrong with me because I was a queer person And you know, I kind of had the opposite.
And even after I do a gig, I will spend the day in this.
Because you know what?
It makes people actually recognize that I am a queer person.
People will gender me correctly when I'm dressed like this versus when I'm dressed down.
And that's why a part of my incentive to do it as a drag performer, as a trans person, you know, I don't mind being in this all day because people are more likely to refer to me in the pronouns that I use and to see me the way that I want to be seen.
And that's a big part of this argument is queer people just want to be seen and recognized in the way that they see themselves.
I have a friend, she wanted me to talk about this, her name is Megan, she works for the LA School District, she's a counselor, and they are walking on eggshells every day because they have children who are gender fluid, who go back and forth.
Well, it's actually, I will tell you why it is difficult to let it roll off my back.
When there are over 500 anti-LGBTQIA bills moving across the United States on the state level, on the federal level, I cannot let that roll off my back because there are people who would wish to see my existence eliminated.
And the same with my community.
And it started off in, oh, well, we just don't want trans people in sports.
And now it's moved to, we're banning gender-affirming health care across the board.
Gender is how you see and perceive yourself internally, in terms of a masculinity to femininity spectrum.
And I don't think that it's binary.
I don't think it's this or that.
And, uh, and people, people really want to define things as black and white, this or that.
And the thing is, most things in nature do not actually exist on a binary, but it's very easy in the way that humans think we want to place things in categorical boxes.
It's easier for us to, um, in interpret information when you're either this or that black or white, gay or straight trans or cis, but the thing is, there is so much more, um, there's so much more nuance in all of that.
What about neo-genders?
I mean, if, if, If it's a spectrum between masculine and feminine, how would you describe something like hydrogender?
If somebody has an experience that I'm not familiar with, but this is how they see themselves, what is the problem in calling them the pronoun that they want to be called?
How would someone who is hydrogender affirm their gender?
I don't.
What is hydrogender?
A neogender.
A neogender.
A non-binary.
So for me.
There's one example.
So for instance, I'm trans non-binary, you know, and people often think that non-binary people are different from trans people.
The thing is that, again with everything, things exist on a spectrum.
So the spectrum of cis to trans There's a lot of nuance in between there.
So people can be either trans binary or trans non-binary.
So somebody who may have been born male and totally transitions to female and wants to be recognized entirely as female and feels that way and presents themselves that way, that's trans binary.
Somebody who's trans non-binary, for me, myself, I feel somewhere a little bit in between.
If I'm getting, you know, real and frank, I feel somewhere between, like, the middle, but moving closer to the feminine.
So that's why, for me, I feel comfortable using gender neutral pronouns, they, them.
I don't like being referred to as he, him, because that doesn't encompass who I am.
Yeah, I may have particular body parts, I may have been born in a particular body, but that's not how I move through the world, that's not how I see myself, and that's not how I want others to see myself.
And I don't see what the big issue is in acknowledging people as they come to you.
Well, that's the thing is, you may or may not know, and that's the thing is, if you don't think you're trans, you're probably not.
If trans people, if folks who are, well, am I trans?
I'm not saying all of them are, but if you're exploring that idea, there is a chance that you very likely might be trans.
And here's the thing, I also endured the same thing as you did when I was growing up.
constantly called a girl, a lady, she, misgendered on the phone when I was still identifying as a boy.
And it's so interesting to me that as a youth, as a child, I was characterized as, oh, you're a girl.
You're not a boy, you're a girl.
And now as an adult, somebody who has come into my own and realized who I am and how I see myself and how I see the world and how I want the world to see and interact with me is...
It's so funny that those same people are you're a man you're a man and it just seems like it's done with this intent.
to other and to ostracize and I think there's just a lot of misunderstanding and hatred in there and you know I I think that you know it's clear that we disagree on a number of issues but I think that we've also probably experienced the same kind of bullying that a lot of queer kids endure and that goes back to my argument about why I think that LGBTQIA education in schools is important because when you familiarize people with circumstances that are very real and all over the world
You show them that, okay, to be different is not necessarily to be bad.
And that's what I hope to portray in this conversation.
Again, I want to reiterate, I am entirely opposed to the sexualization of children.
I'm entirely opposed to pedophiles in grooming.
But I think that what folks have portrayed the overall LGBTQIA community as is a community that promotes that.
And it's simply false.
So I wanted to ask, you referred to it as gender-affirming care.
The reason I brought up hydrogender and neogenders is I'm not quite sure how there could be a surgery or medical practice to affirm a gender that is conceptual or abstract.
Well, that's the thing.
You don't necessarily have to have a surgery to be transgender.
I think that there's this idea that if you are a transgender person, you have to go through HRT, and you have to have surgeries, and you have to totally transform.
But that's somebody who is trans-binary.
Again, there are so many people who, again, identify as genderqueer, genderfluid, non-binary, who are in the middle, who You know, it's hard to pinpoint what our gender is, and there might not be words for it.
And that's why, you know, the word non-binary, it might seem very new to people.
Even though that word is new, the concept and the idea of it is actually, it's ages old.
And so... See, I think as adults, we're sitting here having this complicated conversation, and we're trying to figure it all out, and then it makes me wonder, well, when I was six, five, six, seven years old, how would I include myself in this conversation?
Well, I also don't think that there's, you know, six or seven-year-olds listening to this program.
Maybe there are.
I don't know if there are.
Are you gonna say that they should not listen to this program?
I often say, We do try to keep shows like this a bit different.
Same thing with our drag shows.
When I do a nightclub show, I'm doing a nightclub show with the intent that it's going to be an adult audience.
When you do a show like a drag brunch, a place where they actually might allow children, I always think about that in terms of how I'm going to perform.
So I think about the context of where I'm going to be performing as a performer.
And I wanted to sharpen drag queens to have that same attitude.
I have to be conscious of what I'm doing to the audience of the message I'm portraying and you have to be ready for anything and it should be age-appropriate.
So when I was little, my mom opened a coffee shop on Halsted and Waveland in Chicago.
I don't know if you're familiar with the area.
I lived in Boys Town for many years.
There you go.
When I was growing up, I met a lot of people who were LGBT, and they were drag performers and stuff.
I worked at this coffee shop, so naturally you'd see gay men and lesbian women and bi people, and they'd be talking about these things.
But for the most part, I was watching Ghostbusters cartoons or playing Pokemon.
When the Pride events, the Pride parades happened, my mom would not let me go outside because adult men were naked and doing sexual behaviors in the street, adult women were doing the same thing, people were engaging in simulated sex acts on parade floats, and that was confusing to me.
I think I was like 10 years old.
And I'm like, how come you keep saying it's about love, but then you tell me I can't go outside because they're having sex?
When I would walk down the street, what would I see?
I'm a little kid.
I'm 10.
I'm going to 7-Eleven to buy, you know, a Slurpee.
And in the window- At Roscoe and Halstead?
Is that where it is?
Yeah.
When I see in the window of a clothing store, anatomically correct mannequins receiving blowjobs.
Like, not overtly, like, a mannequin up to the groin of an anatomically correct mannequin.
They had genital macaroni and cheese.
These things are on display in the windows.
So naturally I said, this is not about love, they're lying to me.
I'm a little kid, I was between the ages of 10 and 11 when this was going on, and as soon as the first parade comes around and I'm told I'm not allowed to go outside, and there are adult activities going on, I immediately was like, they lied to me, it's not about love.
That's not true.
You know what, though?
So I hear where you're coming from with that story.
And I agree with you.
Like, I think that that's probably that's not age appropriate for young children.
But public display in windows.
But to say that only queer people have shops that are explicitly sex shops, I think is also a false narrative.
But that's not what I'm saying.
Obviously, there are strip clubs.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
You're talking about beatniks right on the corner of Roscoe and Halstead, right across from that 7-Eleven.
And if you were to actually go into that store, there's actually, okay, you might see that.
But also what you see inside is not...
Necessarily sexually explicit.
Yeah, you might see some pasta in the shape of a penis.
But also, are you not going to see that same kind of thing in a bachelorette party where they're going out or Spencers?
And that's the thing is that that is adult content.
That's adult content.
I don't think that children belong in that atmosphere.
And I do think, again, age appropriate recognition and exposure, I think, is really important.
But that brings me to the issue of these Pride events, right?
So in Florida, there was a town that banned their Pride event after Florida said you can't have children at sexually explicit shows.
The corporate press, the narrative from many on the left, were saying, oh no, now Pride is being cancelled, when the issue at hand was don't have sexual, you know, these kids be exposed to this stuff.
Every Pride I've ever been to in my life has been sexually explicit in what I would describe as overtly illegal ways without any law enforcement.
Well, I don't know what Pride events you're being taken to.
Los Angeles, Chicago.
Well, yeah, but exactly.
But also, just a few weeks ago, I mentioned that I did Drag Queen Story Hour at Trans Pride, which was at the LGBT Center.
It was an entirely family-friendly event.
There was no kink there.
There were no people walking around in, you know, just jock straps or less.
And I agree.
I don't think kids should be exposed to that.
But I think that I don't think that those kinds of events should be banned.
Resultingly, I think I think in that instance, Parents should say I don't want to bring my kid to this event because I know that's going to occur and I don't think that the event should not occur because of the fact that there may be a child there and that's the thing is that's why even that's when I go back to saying when I do drag shows I specifically make sure that I'm performing something that is age-appropriate if I think there's even the slightest chance that there might be a child there and and that's the thing is at what point do we say oh
Well, it should be up to the parents to say you can't go there versus this event should not occur at all.
I mean, but these things aren't legally allowed in public, right?
If a man were to, let's say, put on BDSM gear and another man thrust into him while spanking him with whips like we saw in West Hollywood, if he did that anywhere at any time, that's an outright arrest.
Is it, though?
Yes.
Yeah.
I mean, unless, of course, police don't want to enforce these things.
So to be fair, actually, when there was that event where it said it's not going to lick itself and there were kids there, the police were like, we're not going to get involved in this at all because they're like, well, it's a phrase.
Is it inappropriate?
I think it's absolutely inappropriate.
And again, that's where I'm saying, parents, do not bring your kids to these events if you know there's going to be kink at Pride.
I don't think we should outline kink at Pride.
So you think there should be sex acts in public?
Yeah, well, but what I'm saying is this is specifically a Pride event.
It's not as if there is this kink community, you know, BDSM community moving about town doing these explicit acts on, you know, Main Street America.
These are events that are specifically Pride related and usually in very specific areas of Pride.
And again, I don't think that you should bring kids Where are the complaints?
This is in public, across the street from a Wendy's.
Of course there are children there.
You can see children in the video, or young people at the very least.
And this is just one example.
Of course I can keep bringing up more and more and more.
Of course, of course.
But also, are there not cis-heterosexual nudists that move about life throughout the U.S.?
Absolutely.
And they do naked bike rides.
So again, they're in specific areas, right?
So the naked bike rides, for example, we've also been critical of.
Who cares?
Why are we... For me, listen, I...
Again, I'm gonna reiterate we should not be sexualizing children But I don't think that the human body is inherently sexual unless we sexualize it and tell children.
This is sexual This is sexual.
You should be turned on by this which is it's that's not what anybody drag queens.
When there are over a half a thousand anti-LGBTQIA bills moving across the US, that is a problem because what the conservative right is trying to do is they are trying to use Exactly.
We're not a monolith, but many Republicans on the conservative right are actively trying to ban anything LGBTQIA related in all realms of society.
Are you saying you only see this in the LGBTQ realm?
It's really easy to pull this clip up on YouTube.
When this was a family Christmas show with fake breasts and children were being presented simulated sex acts, the LGBT community defended it and said that's exactly what they were about.
No, don't say that the LGBTQ community defended that, because I am part of the LGBTQ community.
I didn't personally defend that, so don't tell me that I am endorsing this because I'm a member of the LGBTQ community.
High-profile individuals defended it.
Okay, you profiled individuals.
High-profile personalities on the left and the LGBTQ community have overly defended us.
And I'll give you the example again.
Two weeks ago, when we had a prominent left personality on the show, They actually said this should not be removed from grade schools, and it's a good book for kids.
Well, shouldn't that show you that we are not a monolith as a community?
But it shows you why.
It shows you that there are some people that perhaps believe that, and there's many that don't, so do not categorize us as all being the same.
And if somebody comes out and says, hey, this is not appropriate, we shouldn't allow this, and prominent left personalities, TV shows, and pundits all rush to the fence, The lines are blurred.
So at what point do we put the responsibility on parents not to bring these children to events like this and then say, hey, yeah, drag is appropriate, again, in many different contexts.
It can be appropriate in the context of children, like Drag Queen Story Hour.
When you go to Drag Queen Story Hour, it's not this.
And you might be able to pull up clips where you see, oh, well, actually, this did happen a few times.
Yeah, I'm sure it has, but again, that's not depicting the entire LGBTQ community.
So we'll clarify this.
There are certainly a lot of conservatives, more religious and staunch conservatives, who would say, any of it, all of it, banned.
But the bigger issue is that when you see something like this, there was the incident in the UK where the individual wore the rainbow monkey costume with the genitals and things like that.
When they say, this is what drag is, there is a semantic difference, right?
So often what you'll see on the left or among LGBTQ individuals, they'll say, a man dressing like a woman is drag.
They'll show Mrs. Doubtfire, for example, being an example.
I don't think that's what conservatives are talking about.
I don't think any conservatives are saying, like, no one should watch Mrs. Doubtfire.
You see a play where a man is in the role of a woman.
But that's the thing, actually, Tim.
We've got to step back a second because there are states that are wanting to disallow Things like Mrs. Doubtfire, any sort of idea of drag, the idea of dressing as the opposite gender that you were assigned at birth, that is actually being criminalized.
And that is where LGBTQIA people have a big problem.
And again, it goes back to this idea that, Tim, have you ever had in any single year over 500 bills specifically targeted against your identity as a human being?
Probably not.
Maybe you have, but as somebody who is queer, and I've seen it increase year after year after year, they're trying to make this a thing that it is not.
And the folks that are, you know, putting forth these bills, the folks that are being massively critical of this kind of thing, are the same people who back in the 1970s said, we should not allow gay marriage because, well, what's it going to lead to next?
We should not allow gay marriage because They're coming for your children.
It's this slippery slope argument.
Let's address this.
There's a viral meme.
It says, what will happen if gay marriage is legalized?
First, gay people will get married.
A third world war will break out.
Various plagues.
Schools will begin teaching kids how to have gay sex.
The terrorists will win.
The joke is that these things are happening, but the one thing I will focus on, I mean, maybe a third world war, there's COVID, but this book is, Gay was Given to Children, and there are many instances where books like Genderqueer, and Florida's addressed this, and it's happened in hundreds of schools across the country, kids are being taught, it's not even, I think gay sex is not even the right way to address it.
It's not, but you're right.
These books are beyond it.
So I think it is a fair point brought up earlier that SCAD is not exclusive to the LGBT community.
Okay, but that's the thing, and that's where I do agree with you.
a lot of things in this book that are explicitly just generally kink that children should not be exposed to that are being taught in schools under the premise it is lgbt education okay but that's the thing is and that's where i i do agree with you i don't think that that's i don't think that should be taught as lgbtqia education when we talk about what is actually being taught as lgbtqia education in in schools in states that specifically require so for instance i live in california
lgbtqia education in history is a state requirement uh and again it's all age appropriate the thing is kids are i I do think that sex education should be taught to children and it needs to be inclusive of LGBTQIA people because I received sex education when I was in middle school, high school, but it actually didn't really include anything about the kind of person that I am and my sort of... Like what kind of sex ed did you receive?
So basically, learning about safe sex, learning about the risks involved in it.
And one of the big reasons that sex education is so important is to empower children to know what is right and wrong for themselves.
And when I say that, what I mean is recognizing when you actually see abuse.
And one of the reasons that you see so many young children being abused sexually by non-LGBTQIA people It's because they actually don't have any sort of education or knowledge to know that that is wrong.
And that's part of the reason why nations like, you know, places like the Netherlands, they have comprehensive sex education from kindergarten to 12th grade that is, again, age appropriate.
And folks who are from there, they're no more likely to engage in sex earlier than anybody else across the world, especially when you compare it to the USA.
But they are much more likely to make informed decisions.
about how and when they want to engage in sexual activity, how and when they want to say yes or no, use protection, and make sure that they are doing it safely.
I think it would be so naive to say that teenagers aren't having sex.
You know, teenagers have sex.
And I agree that teenagers should not be having sex with adults.
But recognizing that difference and realizing that that's something wrong, that something is wrong in that, is something that is taught in sex education.
And it needs to be inclusive of LGBTQIA people.
Here's the hard moralistic separation.
Conservatives would argue teenagers should not have sex at all, period.
Well yeah, and that's the thing, and that's been something that's been taught since the time of Reagan.
Billions of dollars have been put into sex education in a way that has been explicitly said, you have to do this from an abstinence-only approach.
And it's so unrealistic.
Telling teenagers they can't do anything, of course they're going to rebel.
And then when they're raging with, you know, hormones and coming into themselves, of course, they're going to be engaging in things like that.
So to take an abstinence only approach is actually, it's negligent and it's irresponsible.
And that's exactly what causes high rates of STIs and teen pregnancies.
When you start to tell people about sexuality, again, in a way that is age appropriate, that is You know, based on this idea that is anchored by love and relationships rather than just explicit hardcore sex, it's easier for children to talk to adults about that, to trusted adults, to parents.
And so that's the thing is that in the Netherlands, they ended up, you know, nine out of ten, you know, folks who are teenagers who engage in that sort of behavior do it in a way that is safe and informed because they've received that education.
Versus in the United States where again since the 80s since you know Reganomics it has been abstinence only and that is not an effective or accurate Way to teach people about sex and it actually makes people shameful about sex You know We're all sexual beings and that's something that you grow into as an adult and I think that it's important to teach kids to be informed about that and to to make appropriate decisions for themselves that are consensual and
The kids are actually, they feel safe enough to tell the people who are in their school environment who they are, because they don't feel safe at home.
If a child felt safe enough to come out to their parents, They would.
The reason that a child would come out to teachers or peers or a counselor at school and not to their parents is very likely because they're afraid of the consequences of actually revealing that to their parents.
I think it's also important to note that this is not just a singular conversation that, you know, Right.
eight-year-olds are having with their parents.
These are, you know, these are going to be 14, 15, 16, 17-year-olds who are coming into their identity.
They're coming into the world.
They're almost at that point where they're almost adults.
They're starting to realize who they are.
They're starting to develop autonomy.
You know, teenagers, they're autonomous by the time they're hitting puberty.
And they're starting to realize who they are in the context of the rest of the world.
And when they live in a home that doesn't recognize or affirm them, that can be really detrimental to LGBTQIA health.
And that's why folks that are trans who are teenagers, that's why I I know you've mentioned this on your other shows that there are very high rates of suicide for LGBTQIA people, specifically trans people who are teenagers and they're living in this world where they're not being seen or recognized by anybody around them, not their parents, not their teachers, etc.
But that's actually an argument against affirmation or concealing from the parents.
So the predominant studies that we have show that desistance rates are between I think it's 65 and like 96% or something like that for trans gender dysphoric youth.
If there is no intervention, the likelihood is greater than chance that a child who is gender dysphoric will desist and go on to likely just be a gay adult.
If the argument is that trans individuals... But it also goes back to what's inherently wrong about being a transgender adult, Tim?
High suicide rate.
If you just said that, and this is the argument made.
It's suicide in the context of not being acknowledged or seen as you are.
The thing is, we are all individuals and that's liberty and freedom.
If desistance rates tend to be between, let's just say 60 and 90, if it's higher than that, I think it's like 65 to 98.
The fact of the matter is detransition rates, I know you.
Desistance, not detransition.
Okay.
This means you have a 10-year-old child who is experiencing dysphoria.
The studies, and we've gone over these numerous episodes, show that if left alone to just go through puberty, the child will likely end up just being a gay adult and not trans.
So it solves the issue.
It actually doesn't, though.
This means that overwhelmingly, There is a greater chance they will be accepted as they are and as they want to be, whereas if they are given an intervention and hormones or puberty blockers, they will end up living a life where the world does not recognize them, increasing their likelihood of suicide.
Yeah, but is that actually on the trans person or is that on the world that we live in?
You can't force people to identify?
That's what I'm saying.
We're not trying to force people.
The reason I even came on the show is to, I wanted to provide an opinion and an experience from my own point of view, and I'm not singular in my experience.
You know, you might be able to look on the internet and see all these studies and statistics, but you don't have experience as a transgender person, what it's like to go through the world as a transgender person.
I do.
My community does.
My friends do.
I'm just using the data.
But that's the thing.
No, okay, but data can also be, you can pick and choose data.
The thing is, most detransition, and I know we weren't talking about that, but detransition is actually very rare.
And the thing is, you know, when it comes to puberty blockers, the reason that puberty blockers are prescribed is to actually give the person in question, the family, the doctors, substantive time to actually figure this out and to give the child in question time to think, "Is this actually for me or is it not?"
And, you know, I've seen so many arguments against puberty blockers, especially from groups like Gays Against Groomers and Libs of TikTok.
And the thing is that puberty blockers are not just specifically prescribed to transgender teenagers.
They are prescribed to teenagers who are cisgender who are experiencing precocious puberty.
These have been prescribed since the early 1990s.
There's been, at this point, decades of research that they are not harmful, they're reversible.
There may be some bone density loss.
I know that's the big argument against, but that can be supplemented with vitamin D and there's treatments to fix that.
But I don't think that that particular one small risk is a reason to say we shouldn't allow children to do that.
And the thing is puberty blockers, what they actually do is, again, they are blocking puberty from happening so that children and parents and doctors can have a legitimate, informed, and ongoing conversation.
I think there's this myth going around that parents are just saying, well, I want you to be trans.
I'm taking you into a gender clinic and we're going to get you on hormones today.
And that's not how it works.
And the fact of the matter is that most Most people who end up going on hormone blockers, they'll do that for a few years.
If you decide that you don't want to actually transition, you don't have to.
But what it's actually doing is it's actually giving teenagers and parents and doctors time to see if this is something that is temporary or is this an ongoing thing where, yeah, this person actually is experiencing the level of gender dysphoria where they actually want to transition and make it a permanent thing this person actually is experiencing the level of gender dysphoria where they actually want to And there's this idea of like the social contagion, which it's just it's so false.
I mean, I was asked to speak in Chico, California by a woman's group because they said, you know, it has exploded there.
Like, why did it explode?
And there is this belief that it's a social contagion because you get one group of friends and you get a couple of the people who identify as trans, eventually they're all jumping on board.
Exactly, and that's why doing puberty blockers, that's not permanent.
That is, it's basically, it's delaying puberty so that the individual, the parents, and the doctors All together can formulate this opinion about whether or not this is something that is actually beneficial and ongoing for the individual in question.
So this idea that parents are just taking, you know, 13 year olds in and putting them on HRT in the same day, it's it's a false narrative.
And while there may be, you know, maybe one or two or obviously one or two is like, but if there's a few instances where that's happening, again, people who are opposed to the idea of people transitioning in general, They're going to take this one instance and say, well, this is what all teenagers are doing.
When we had Destiny on, I think, I'll try and pull them up, I think the numbers were in terms of surgery among minors, it was in, over the past few years, like a few thousand.
But when it comes to hormone replacement therapy, in the past four years, I think it was around 50,000.
So it is happening to a lot of...
But again, Tim, this is not something that is happening to very young children.
And when it's...
Well, 13.
That's the thing.
That's when you say children, it's very easy to think, oh, seven, eight-year-olds.
The thing is, puberty blockers are not prescribed to children who have not yet reached puberty.
And then when they go into taking puberty blockers, they're on puberty blockers so that they can decide, along with their family, along with their doctors, if HRT or something else is appropriate down the line.
So while there are instances of teenagers who are 16, 17, 18, perhaps getting top surgery or going on HRT, this is not the overwhelming majority.
And that's the reason that puberty blockers are actually a great option for kids who are thinking that they are trans.
And if you're experiencing that level of gender dysphoria, again, I'm not saying all kids should go on this.
But if you are a child who is experiencing extreme gender dysphoria, you've expressed this to your family, your school, your doctor.
Uh, it's worth a conversation because the thing is that there are trans adults, and trans adults many times, often, were trans youth, and were ignored and told that they didn't know what the hell they were talking about.
By 2021, it's now 42,000, nearly doubling from the previous year.
And when they show you at least a few of the states, you can see California saw a massive spike from 2016 to 2020.
In other states like Massachusetts and Michigan, they've all seen growth, but not nearly as pronounced as California, though New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington have larger rates than Massachusetts.
Do you want to hear my explanation of that?
So I my explanation of that is because of the fact that there are states California is a state that requires LGBTQIA education in history when you don't give kids the language or the understanding to realize that there are other kinds of people So for instance, you know, I came out as transgender in my 20s, but a big part of that reason was that sort of language and that sort of understanding was never taught to me when I was younger.
I've always been the way that I have been, but it wasn't until a little bit later on that I really had that understanding and that language to sort of describe who I am and what my experience is like.
And so the reason that so many folks want to ban LGBTQIA education is because they don't want kids to realize that actually you might be trans or non-binary.
And again, it goes back to this question of what is inherently wrong about being trans or non-binary?
So a correction.
It wasn't 50,000 or whatever that were receiving hormones.
It was, they found 121,882 children ages 6 to 17.
I understand there's a distinction between like a 16, 17 year old and a 6 year old.
But they say we're diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
And in terms of puberty blockers, it's about 600 in 2017, escalating to in 2021, 1390.
Yeah.
So, again, my point is that I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
That's puberty blockers, and then hormone therapy was about 1,900 in 2017, growing to 4,231 in 2021.
Sorry.
Okay, so again, my point is that, yeah, when you are growing up and you're learning about the world, and you don't realize that there is language and experience to match what is going on with your internal self, Then again, you're just going to think there is something wrong with you.
And when you live in a state like California that requires LGBTQIA education, you're going to have a much different experience than a place like Alabama or a particular state that wants to outlaw LGBTQIA education entirely.
There's this idea that if you shield people from LGBTQIA knowledge that they will not become LGBTQIA.
But there is an there's something inherent about being LGBTQIA.
And what I'm saying is, again, nurture children and let them let children figure out who they are on their own.
And that's why this kind of education is important, because it shows that what you might be feeling might not be.
There's nothing wrong with that.
And the thing is, there's children are not being turned trans.
You can't just make somebody be trans.
I will tell you that as somebody who has grown up, I initially came out as gay and I now identify as trans.
I will tell you, I wanted nothing more in the world to be cis heterosexual growing up because I saw the way that the world treats people like me.
There's no reason that people want to be ostracized.
And the thing is, when you give people the tools and the knowledge in the community to know that, oh, you're actually, you're wonderful just the way you are, that's actually very, that's a great thing.
And when I say just the way you are, You know, there's something inherent about being transgender.
So while in some instances the outside might not match what the inside is feeling for people, that's something that I do think is appropriate for kids to know about.
Again, it begs the question, why are we shielding kids from LGBTQIA people?
The suggestion there is that there's something wrong with being LGBTQIA.
That bill actually banned straight conversations as well as gay conversations.
Teachers were barred from talking about any heterosexual relationship all the same.
Yeah, but also I just recall growing up in a world where every sort of content that I was viewing was viewed through a cis heteronormative lens.
Whether or not it was sexually explicit, in most cases it wasn't, and that's what we're saying is that You can introduce children to an LGBTQIA lens without it being sexually explicit and without saying, you must be LGBTQIA.
The fact of the matter is that LGBTQIA youth deserve the same benefits that cis-heteronormative youth receive when they receive sex education in school.
And very, very few states require LGBTQIA sex education.
California is one of only a handful of those that do.
We talk about self-pleasure, I don't know, whenever... So what's the difference between that and... Well, to take the shame out of it, you know, because kids were discovering our age.
But you said also the adults are the ones responsible for the children, and they should take responsibility for it, and they could raise them any way they want.
But that's also my argument for parent inclusion is, if you don't want your kid checking this book out, don't let your kid check that book out.
You don't want your kid at Pride, don't bring your kid to Pride.
You don't want your kid at Drag Queen Story Hour, don't take your kid to Drag Queen Story Hour.
But don't tell every other student in the student body that they can't learn about LGBTQIA.
You also said schools should not be telling the parents what's going on at all.
No, I didn't say that whatsoever.
What I said was that if you have a student who is afraid to come out to their parents because they are Uh, thinking that they might be transgender and they're afraid to come out to their parents.
There's a reason they're afraid to come out to their parents.
So how can a parent control what they're seeing, what they're hearing, if the parents are being misinformed?
If you're 16, 17 years old and you're afraid to come out to your parents, you know, Tim, there's a reason why LGBTQIA youth are massively overrepresented in the homeless population overall.
About 40% of, of, uh, unhoused youth, Identify as LGBTQIA.
And the reason for that is because they are in homes that are abusive.
They're in homes where parents kick them out.
There is a legitimate fear for LGBTQIA people to come out to their parents because they see their parents.
They're not dumb.
They're almost about to be adults.
They've seen the world around them and they see the way that their parents interact with the world.
And if they see their parents using words like faggot, tranny, etc.
I don't doubt that they would be afraid to come out.
What's stopping the youth from finding a home somewhere else?
finding a place to live?
Well, the fact that I think there's this misunderstanding that there's just so many homeless shelters out there.
I mean, I live in Los Angeles.
We just came out, we just had our statistics for the homelessness count come out just a couple of weeks ago.
There's now about 70,000 people living in L.A.
County who are unhoused.
Every single year I participate in the homelessness count.
It's done by the L.A.
County Housing Services Authority and it's a point-in-place count.
Do you know why minors are homeless predominantly?
is that over the past five, six years, I've done the count probably about four times.
Every single year the results come out, the numbers just keep increasing and increasing and increasing.
And this is just overall.
- Do you know why minors are homeless predominantly? - I don't and I don't know if I could-- - You're incorrect.
It's 'cause they chose to be.
And I know this because I actually worked for a- Okay, but wouldn't you- Because I actually worked for a homeless shelter, and one of the challenges that we face with multiple buildings in the network was that children would ne- uh, these are teenagers, typically, between 13 and 17, refuse to get off the streets.
For a variety of reasons.
Well, if they are LGBTQIA and it's directly related to their identity, you can imagine why.
I mean, would you want to live in a home where you don't feel safe?
Where I guarantee you there are LGBTQIA kids being.
These are boarding.
These are getting the fuck beaten out of them by their parents.
These are homophobic and transphobic.
A private bedroom and a private shelter residence that that are.
Yeah, but I think that's a huge myth that there are that there's enough housing for people who are experiencing homelessness.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
You were wrong.
No, you were wrong.
I worked for a homeless shelter network.
So did I.
And they were always empty.
And they instructed us to lie to people to claim that they were full.
And we were desperate for more money to expand them.
And they weren't.
And that's on the that's on the people experiencing homelessness.
The people who were on the streets that were being given outreach for an opportunity to have a place to live would reject it every time.
So when I asked the Executive Director... Well, you know, do you want to know why, Tim?
Have you ever actually gone out and spoken to those people?
Yes, I have.
That's quite literally what I did.
And when I asked the Executive Director, why are we being instructed to tell people that we're at capacity when we're empty?
And when I go to these shelters, there's no one here.
He said, we can't get the kids to come.
They don't want to be in these shelters.
They don't want to come to tell them that the shelters are full?
No, tell the donors the shelters are full because we need their money.
OK, so let me ask you this, Tim.
If you were somebody experiencing homelessness and you were living in a tent on the streets of Los Angeles and somebody came up to you and said, OK, we're going to give you housing.
But here's the thing.
You cannot bring you can only bring two bags of belongings.
You have a curfew.
You have to be in by nine o'clock.
You have to be out by seven a.m.
You can't have any family members come.
You can't have any pets come.
You can't have any visitors.
That's not an argument for being LGBT or anything.
That's just the general argument for why so many people who are experiencing homelessness are adverse to the idea of taking on these temporary interim housing situations.
It's because they are carceral in nature.
And the thing is, you and I both believe in freedom and liberty.
Do you have a family?
Do you have kids or a wife or anything?
Girlfriend.
A girlfriend.
So let's say you suddenly were in this situation where you're unhoused and they said, well, you can't have your girlfriend over.
And let's say you even did have kids or something like that.
And they said, you can't have anybody come and stay with you.
You can't have kids.
You can't have your spouse or your loved one.
You can only bring two bags of belongings.
This is not an argument for fleeing a home because your parents are abusive.
It is related because, again, LGBTQIA people are overrepresented in the unhealthy population.
You're simply saying that the circumstances afforded to these kids to have a free place to live don't meet what they feel they're entitled to.
I wouldn't call kids experiencing homelessness, given temporary shelter, a free place to live.
That's literally what it is.
They don't get the kind of support that actually comes from a loving, nurturing home.
So they're opting for And that population is going to grow.
- Well, think about why somebody would opt to live on the streets instead of being housed. - That population will grow. - So if there is a shelter that lets LGBT youth be themselves, but they're, hey, look, you can't do certain things if you're gonna live here, and they say, I'd rather live on the streets.
The issue is not that they're homeless because they're LGBT, it's 'cause the shelters suck, and these kids would rather be on the streets. - Okay, so what is your argument in who's at fault?
Who's to blame here?
Are you blaming LGBTQIA youth or are you blaming the system?
There's no one to blame, but if you're going to make the argument that the reason they're homeless is because their parents were abusive, when the reality is they don't like the circumstances afforded to them.
supportive of their identities and are abusing them, resultingly, I think you might not be aware that there are a lot of parents who literally abuse, verbally and physically, their children because they are LGBTQIA.
They're, uh, not every LGBT, uh, not every single homeless youth is, of course, LGBT.
But if, if I'm gonna look at my experience having actually worked with this, with these networks, the kids who are not LGBT, who, who are, uh, many of the kids were being abused, they ran away.
Uh, many of these kids did opt to take a shelter so they could go to school and they could get a better life.
The majority of them, however, wouldn't do it regardless of whether they're LGBT or not.
Drug use was a big problem.
Drinking was a big problem.
And so, the prohibitive factor that we experienced was, you told the kid they couldn't have drugs, they would not come.
So what they would do instead is they would say, okay, we'll give you a tent, we'll give you blankets.
And they said, thanks.
And then they disappeared the next day.
It had nothing to do with being LGBT.
It had everything to do with, we don't want to live in this building under these circumstances.
And if that's the case, You can't just say that, oh, these kids are forced and homeless because of this issue, because they're not.
I can certainly say the kids who are not LGBT, who drug use is a big component here, they're not going to go to a shelter that's prohibiting drugs.
But if the only factor in, say it's a 15-year-old kid who's gay, his parents are, you know, mean, they're abusive, so he runs away, well, why wouldn't that kid simply be like, yes, thank you, finally a place to live where people aren't going to be abused?
I also don't think that teenagers in that particular experience have the knowledge to know about all the resources available.
And also, I live in a place like Los Angeles where there are many resources available, but there aren't nearly enough available to every person experiencing homelessness.
So I can't even imagine, is there a homelessness shelter anywhere within five miles of here?
To be honest, there may be, but we're in the house.
So you don't think that there might be an LGBTQIA kid living somewhere near here who has experienced abuse at home, runs away, goes to stay with a family, moves to a city?
And I can tell you that the people that I encountered on the road Who were also homeless are standing in church lines.
It was always the churches who were giving us help, by the way.
So we're standing in line for food and money from the church, and nobody wanted a home.
They didn't want shelter.
They wanted their money.
They wanted their food so they could take the rest of their money and go buy drugs and alcohol with it.
And it was like we would sit under this tree in a grocery store parking lot, And there was all kinds of people, and they, it was like camping, and it was like they enjoyed their freedom.
They enjoyed, they consider that the ultimate freedom, is to not be tied down with bills, rent, taxes, anything just, they're just receivers.
Yeah, there was, when I lived in Seattle, there was a group, they called the AvRats, the Avenue Rats, they called themselves that.
And they were intentionally homeless youth who liked doing whatever they want, whenever they wanted.
They were given food for free because of the support structures that existed to give out food to the homeless.
Then, whatever money they would ever get, they would do things where they'd get an EBT card, sell, you know, hey, I'll give you $180 worth of food for $100.
I really just wanted to say that I feel like we're kind of starting to run around in circles about this.
So I was going to change subjects.
The idea to me is that, you know, I don't think that any of this is, okay, I want to be trans, so I'm going to go and be homeless, and I'm going to go take advantage of the government.
I'm sure there might be instances of that, but you have to consider that folks that age, they don't have the experience.
They don't know about resources.
They don't know about possibilities and they don't know about, you know, support systems that really support them.
And I have worked with enough people who have experienced homelessness to understand why they have a massive distrust of government programs that promise them housing.
A lot of people are promised permanent supportive housing, but they end up being back on the streets just months later.
As an example, so I worked with the, I was somebody who went out during, I don't know if you're familiar with Echo Park in Los Angeles, Back in March 2021, there was a massive eviction of people experiencing homelessness that were living at Echo Park Lake.
And there was probably about there was about 200 people, more or less give or take 10 people living at the park.
And the thing is, these folks actually developed a community with each other.
You know, I think we often think of, you know, folks who are experiencing housing, folks who have families and friends.
We have it made.
We know what it's like.
Even when you're in circumstances like that, it is human nature to develop community and to develop alliances.
And so there was a real community that was built at Echo Park Lake.
I went there all the time.
I never felt unsafe.
Certainly, there are people that feel uncomfortable when they see people experiencing homelessness.
But that doesn't necessarily mean they're unsafe.
I never actually felt unsafe walking around that park.
The city council member, Mitch O'Farrell at the time, did a mass eviction of Echo Park Lake.
And what was so ugly to me was the fact that he was touting this as this big housing success.
He said, we got almost 200 people into housing.
What he didn't reveal was that that housing is very temporary in nature and You fast forward to about a year and a half, two years later, only five of the nearly 200 people that were evicted actually achieved permanent supportive housing.
Seven were dead.
More people died than were actually given permanent supportive housing.
So what they'll do is they'll put you in this temporary shelter.
You've got maybe 60 or 90 days and then your time's up and you're just I agree.
I think a lot of these shelters are dirty.
And so that's why there is such a distrust amongst people experiencing homelessness, whether they're LGBTQIA or not, about accepting these offers of housing.
My final thought, because I do want to move to the big finale, is I agree.
I think a lot of these shelters are dirty.
I think a lot of them are, we're going to make a lot of money off this problem, and they're not actually helping people.
Thank you, Tim.
Because you can't keep a job as a director of somebody leading homelessness unless you have people experiencing homelessness.
But the big finale, we have about 10 minutes left, and I have the question for you that I wonder if you've been expecting.
You ready?
I'm not expecting it, but let's see.
What is a woman?
I think I don't know if I'm qualified to answer that because I don't think that there's a singular answer and I think it goes back into this idea of what I was talking about earlier as we look so many people view the world through this binary lens of you're either this or that you're a man or a woman but the idea of a man the idea of a woman is actually so expansive and there's so much opportunity and nuance in between and I think it's up to the individual to decide and I think that's part of the personal
Freedom and liberty that I agree with in American ideals is that let us be free to Be self-determinating and if I tell you that I am somebody I'm not gonna tell you just to Screw you over or to fool you or to try to get something off of you if I'm telling you this is who I am just to acknowledge me for that and if there ends up being you know a consequence resultingly of
Then deal with it, but the fact that we have to have this definition of what a woman is I think it's counterproductive and I think it's in and of itself meant to be transphobic.
Let me let me let me ask you a follow-up.
What is a female?
Oh Well, also, you know, I think a big thing that we haven't talked about actually at all in this conversation is is the idea of intersex people.
And so, again, I was talking about this idea of the binary.
You know, people view the world, again, black and white, this or that, male or female.
It also, it denigrates the experience of everybody in between.
There are so many people who are born intersex, who are healthy people, and they are... That would naturally imply there is a male and a female then, if there is an inter, right?
Well, but that's the thing is, yeah, there are, but also, But to state that there is just male and female is incorrect.
There's so much in between.
So people who are born intersex... So can you define what female is?
Female would, in my opinion, be the one end of this binary that society has created.
And whether or not I agree or disagree with it, it's sort of the circumstances of the society that we live in.
So sex and gender, the argument is they're different.
Sex is a clearly definable, scientifically identical thing.
But you say it's society created it.
Well, I think that gender and sex are different, absolutely.
So female relating to the sexes, male and female.
Yeah, I think that it's relating to that, but again, the idea that it's just male and female, it completely takes away the autonomy of intersex people, which are—there is a huge prevalence of intersex people who were born intersex, and these are the people— Listen, these are the people we should be— For there to be intersex, there has to be a male and a female, right?
Based off of this idea of a binary.
I don't disagree with the existence of intersex people.
If we're going to try and get to the core of what the social argument is, and the argument typically on the LGBT left side is that women can be your experience, well then female has to be discernibly something we can identify.
Well I think you can change your sex and your gender.
The appropriate term... But you can't change your sex, you can't change your gender.
Sex goes onto your DNA.
I disagree with that.
How do you alter your DNA throughout your whole body to have different chromosomes?
What do you think HRT is?
What do you think HRT is?
Hormone replacement.
HRT doesn't change the action of my chromosomes.
It changes your biology.
It doesn't change your DNA.
Okay, so, but also if we're talking about chromosomes, like, in what other context are we describing people based off of their chromosomes?
I think the argument for this is an argument intentionally created to be an argument against transgender people, as if we are some freaks of nature trying to fool people.
That's a bit over the top.
Do you disagree that there are many people who would describe us that way?
There are a lot of people who are very mean, I would say.
But here's what I'm trying to get to, and this is what we need to understand.
We did not create, as a society, women's sports because sometimes people wear dresses.
We created women's sports because biological males versus biological females have differences in fast twitch versus slow twitch muscle, center of gravity, collagen, and bone density.
But also, when we talk about sports, it's very much condensed into this idea of, oh, transgender people are erasing women and there are all these cis women who are not getting scholarships and not winning.
The fact of the matter is transgender people have been performing in sports with cisgender people For a long time.
It's only recently become this cultural phenomenon where people are speaking out against it.
And the thing is, transgender people are not always winning against cisgender people.
And that, in and of itself, defies the argument that folks who are born male shouldn't be competing with folks who are born female.
The argument, maybe mistakenly on the surface to a lot of people, is that biological males are winning all the time.
The argument is that, uh, I'll give you an example in skateboarding.
The first ever 1080, uh, three full rotations was done, I think, by a 12-year-old boy.
That was 10 years ago.
It is only in the past week that a female landed the first 720 two rotations.
These are pre-bubescent.
This is a 12-year-old girl.
Even before puberty, there is very visibly discernible distinctions between the sexes when it comes to sporting capabilities.
So if you take someone who has all the advantages of prenatal testosterone, for instance, in the womb, quite literally with more testosterone, they're going to be competing with advantages over people who do not have that.
And so the issue ultimately ultimately becomes if if the purpose of competition is a dedication to training ability, a combination of natural talent, abilities and hard work, what you're doing is you're saying that some people who have a biological advantage, but maybe don't have the same level of capabilities in the male spectrum are now but maybe don't have the same level of capabilities in the male spectrum They may or may not win, but that means these females are pushing ten times harder to try and be at the same level they would have been were it not for the male who's competing against them.
Well, I think what your argument is leaving out is, you know, something that you emphasized heavily is this idea of competition.
And it's something that I think you left out about this idea about sports and about being in athletics is one of the greatest things that comes to people, whether they be adults or children, engaging in sports and sports and athletics, which is this idea that of team building.
There are so many benefits of actually being on a team that, you know, apply when you have teams that are made up of cisgender and transgender people.
And it applies in many different realms.
It applies to the sport itself.
You know, developing a team, being a team member.
It's not always just about winning.
And I think that's part of what is so awful in our American culture is there's this emphasis on I must wane.
I have to be the best.
I have to wane.
I think we lose sight of what is so wonderful about sports and a lot of sports are, you know, it's team building and it's working.
But we're not tracking the stats of basketball teams because they have good teams.
We don't have like, how many high fives did LeBron get?
But that's the thing, it's like, what's the point?
Then you have to ask, well, what's the point of doing a sport?
Are you doing a sport just to win and show you're better than somebody?
It's a competition between everybody to see who is ultimately the best at this thing.
I did sports growing up, and one of the things that I actually got out of that was team building.
It was never about, I must win everything.
And I think that's a really awful way to approach life is, I must win everything.
And it's a very capitalist approach.
It's a very, unfortunately, American-centric approach of, I must win, I must be better, because there has to be somebody beneath me.
So we have a few minutes left, and I had a question.
Throughout the show, you've used the phrase cis to refer to people.
I'm curious how you justify using a term that is offensive to a group of people.
I laugh at that because it's so manufactured that that's offensive to people.
I will tell people that because as somebody who is transgender, the term tranny, which I use that term, and I apologize if anybody listening is offended by that, but as somebody who's transgender, that word has intentionally been used to denigrate and dehumanize transgender people.
It's actually a medical Latin prefix that has been used for time.
Yeah, and that's why I'm not offended by the term homosexual.
A lot of people are.
In fact, you'll get banned from social media for saying homosexual.
If you call someone a homo on YouTube, you will be taken down and given a strike for hate speech.
Okay, well, I disagree with that.
But I don't think that- but cis is not a- cis is not a slur.
I will say that unapologetically- If a group of people determine that they're offended by a word- You mean the group of people that is totally indominant, totally normative, What does that have to do with whether a group of people is offended by a word and consider it hate speech?
Because that group of people, many folks within that group, will use the opposite, trans, to describe people in a way that is offensive.
But that's the thing is, trans is not offensive.
I don't consider trans to be offensive, and I'm a transgender person.
I don't consider cis to be... That's the group's preferred term.
Yeah, but... But this is not the other group's preferred term.
But those are not preferred terms.
These are words that are being used in opposition.
You said people want to be identified as the way they want to be identified, and you should use their pronouns.
So how would you like me to describe you as somebody who... I don't care what you call me.
I'm saying if people tell you, don't call me that, you're saying you should call me the terms I want, but I can call you whatever I want.
Okay, but then how would you... what word or phrase would you use to describe somebody who is not transgender?
That's not up to me to decide.
Actually it is because you just told me that cis is offensive and you are somebody who I would consider cis but I won't use that word because I know you find it offensive.
- My argument has always been, I use people's preferred pronouns.
- And thank you.
- I appreciate that, Tim.
I do appreciate that.
And I heard you say that in a previous podcast that you did.
And I do really appreciate that. - I don't use neo-pronouns though.
I think that is confusing and hard for anyone to understand. - Well, I think it's also, I think it's used as an argument to discount many trans people.
While I, if somebody was to say to me, "Hey, these are my neo-pronouns, please use them," I would take an effort to try to use them.
If somebody else doesn't, I can't be the person to say, you must do that.
But this idea that- The issue is, where's the line?
If somebody says, I am, you know, my pronouns are he or she or they, what is the big deal?
Just respect people as they come to you.
And this is my point.
If, you know, we've had many trans guests on the show, they say, you know, typically nobody says like, please use these pronouns.
If I'm asked by a trans person to use their pronouns and say, refer to me this way, I say, sure.
And if someone says, don't call me, says it's offensive, I say, okay.
But I don't understand how it's inverted that the trans, uh, many, not all.
For me, it's you have to look at the group that is the dominant group, and you have to look at the group that is subjugated.
You have to look at the group that is being harmed by societal norms.
And that's sort of my approach to it.
But truly, truly, Tim, if you were to tell me that Ciz was offensive to you, I wouldn't refer to you as Ciz.
I don't want to do anything to individually harm people, but I will also say that Not all people who are not trans consider cis to be a slur.
But it's not about trans people.
But that's the other thing is, as for me, I'm also, I'm trans, but I'm not a monolith.
If there's a trans person who says, I don't like the word queer, as you said, or I don't like the word, you know, trans or tranny, I'm not going to use those words because ultimately my goal is to see people as they see themselves, to come at you as you are.
A couple minutes, did you want to answer what is a woman?
And then female is defined as One of two biological sexes that has a characteristic.
See, but that's the falsehood.
There's not just two.
You're completely... There are.
No, you're ignoring intersex people.
But intersex is not a third sex.
It's in between.
No, it's not actually just in between.
There are so many variants of chromosomes.
Right, but sex refers to mobile sperm or immobile ovaries.
Okay, but also, even going with what Kitty said, like, the whole idea of trying to define this is to bring trans people down, and that's what I disagree with, because- That's not true at all.
No, it actually is, because- I have a trans brother!
Okay, well, it's quite literally- I have a trans brother.
Since the dawn of genetics in this research, we have, and even before that, we've identified mobile sperm and immobile ova, which is the rudimentary version of what this term sex means.
And I'm not talking about humans, I'm talking about plants and animals and just life in general.
There is no GOMA.
There's no third semi-mobile characteristic.
Yeah, but again, when you define things on either ends of a spectrum, everything in between, you're totally ignoring everything in between and saying, no, well, you must be either this or that.
And that's why intersex kids have to undergo Surgeries that they don't consent to when they're infants, and they're socialized to be a certain way.
That's grooming.
That's indoctrination.
That's not an argument against the science.
I mean, if science shows that there are overwhelmingly, when it comes to biological sex, it is overwhelmingly bimodal, in that you are correct, there's an overlap, intersex exists, but it's about 98% to 98% going to fall into one of two categories.
So do we ignore the 2% of the people when there's 8 billion people on this planet?
That's a lot of people.
No, it just means that when it comes to - It's a science, we don't lie about it for the sake of someone's feelings. - You defined a woman as someone being able to give birth.
So is somebody born a female who is infertile? - I said whether or not they can give birth. - So it's just based off of chromosomes.
I just don't understand why we're having an argument about chromosomes.
- I have no problem being a man with a penis and enjoying having a penis in a man, and being a man, and also dressing like a woman, and being feminine.
I mean, you know, and it's like, why is it that there are certain part of our so-called community, which I'm an H, I'm not LGBTQ, I'm homosexual, which is the new, like, straight white man of the community, okay?
And the thing is, it cracks me up because There are people like me, Buck Angel and Blair White who have a completely different experience than say other people who are just so sensitive and they just cry over everything and they look at everything as some sort of argument or fight or something to erase them.
When there's others, there's a whole population of us on the other side that are completely content with it.
Like, we go to Trump rallies and we're praised, and everybody loves us, and I've yet to see the hate.
Okay, so then why have there been over half a thousand anti-LGBTQIA bills introduced?
Because of these books, and because... Yes!
It's all about... Okay, but what does it have to do with being trans?
Nobody had a problem until kids.
What does it have to do with being kids?
Trans people are not the sensitive ones.
It appears that people who are not trans are the sensitive ones.
Well, when you're showing books to children... When children are being shown books on how to use Grindr, and they're 10 years old, And again, I have said and I want to make sure that I disagree with that.
So why is it that you have, why is it that these shows with millions of followers, quite literally a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers, says the opposite of what you just said and they want children to see that book?
How do we get those people to stop?
I can't speak for those people and again, we are not a monolith.
I'm sick of people trying to describe my experience as a trans person and pulling out, again, these outlier scenarios and saying, well, this is what other trans people are doing, so there must be something wrong with your community.
Whether or not that's explicitly said, it's implied.
It's implied through the legislation that is being introduced to actively harm LGBTQIA people.
We can say it this way.
You appear to be in the overwhelming majority, whose opinions do not reflect the greater community on the left and the LGBT community, as prominent channels with millions of followers defend these books being given to children, and you reject them.
In which case, you can understand why there are many post-liberal or conservative individuals who are saying, ban it.
Because when we look to the MSNBCs, when we look to these prominent left-wing YouTube channels, they're saying more.
And we're saying, stop, stop.
Even if it is one story or one book, one time, why is NBC News advocating for more of it?
That is the narrative that comes out in the corporate press and among high-profile left personalities, which creates the image that is what the LGBT community wants.
Okay, well let me ask you this.
You know, we keep coming back to this idea of book banning.
I disagree with the idea of book banning.
I think there has been a lot of awful...
I don't think that the Bible should be banned.
If you want to have the Bible in the library, go for it.
I think that people should be free to choose within legal limitations and context.
Like, again, I don't agree with any sort of books that have to deal with— The Bible for kids?
Well, this is actually... You know what I'm saying?
When you go to these bookstores, these are... Unfortunately, no, but I'm not gonna say that that book can't exist.
Now, I can't speak specifically for this book is gay or genderqueer or whatever, but genderqueer on Amazon is listed as 18 up.
And I think this book is gay is listed as 14 to 17, which is interesting considering this is actually more- And again, I haven't read them, so I can't really truthfully critique them.
But again, I think that things should be considered in an age-appropriate context.
Sorry, we've definitely gone way over, but I just wanted to ask you one final thing.
Yes.
You've not read Genderqueer?
No, but I imagine that I've seen some of the imagery that is in there, that has been shown around on Twitter, which again, is accessible to children.
I agree.
And I disagree with people posting it in that context.
I always censor these things.
And that is only, I think, two pages out of the whole book.
The book, to me, I often tell conservatives, read it.
Did you read it?
They say no.
These people who are very critical of gender ideology, I say, did you read it?
They say, no.
I'm like, how have you not read the book you've been criticizing so heavily?
Because the book is actually about something completely different.
This book is about a young female who was brutally abused by her parents and in a very extreme and disturbing way that CPS should have intervened.
She could not read till she was 12.
She had to wear crusted pads covered in blood to school to the point where she smelled so awful, they had to remove her from class and tell her of her stench.
This is not... You know, the conservatives are pointing out this one part of the book where this non-binary individual is saying, here are my predilections, quite literally referring to autoandrophilia in the book, and then showing these images explaining what that is.
I see this and I say, this is a book about trauma of a child, and these are the kinds of things that should be prevented.
No 12-year-old girl going through puberty should have to wear the same pad covered in menstrual blood for five days straight to the point where other students are saying, you smell like feces, get out.
But that's what this book is.
And so long as people are ignoring stories like that, these adults who need to read it, they're not gonna understand what's causing a lot of these social issues that they seem to be complaining about.
So I recommend, you know, I understand people, people might not want, I don't think it's appropriate for kids, but you know, yeah, I, now this book is gay is, is, I think it's, there's two chapters in it that have been the subject of contention because they explicitly talk about sex.
If, if There's a question about age-appropriate education, as you mentioned, when, like, just literally explaining to a kid someone might have two dads.
I have no issue with that.
Right.
If the argument is like, hey, third grade and down, we don't do any kind of sex ed at all, I'm like, sure, fine, whatever.
Like, that's what happened in Florida.
Now, granted, Florida extended it all the way up to, like, 12th grade or whatever.
We can have those arguments.
But I'll just wrap it up with my final thoughts, saying it's the explicit nature of it, which I think we agree.
We don't want kids to be looking at These kinds of things.
Getting that to be sort of the mainstream argument, I think, would be the goal, but I'll leave it there.
I don't know.
We've gone over, so if you have any final thoughts you wanted to add before we close out.
Yeah, I, you know, I agree with what you say in that last part is, you know, let kids be kids and enjoy their innocence, but unfortunately there are bad actors that would, you know, that do actively seek to destroy kids' innocence.
You know, there are absolutely kids who are between the ages of kindergarten and third grade who are sexually abused by parents, family members, neighbors, etc.
And when you don't provide any sort of sex education to kids, letting them know that that kind of behavior is wrong, they accept it as something that is just coming at them and they don't realize it.
And so that's really my big argument for comprehensive sex education is to actually protect children and give them the empowerment to know what is right and wrong in the way that other people treat them in in terms of touching and things like that.
And it's very easy for kids to be manipulated.
And the goal of most, the overwhelming majority of LGBTQIA people, in my opinion, is not to groom or indoctrinate children.
It's to actually provide tools to be able to self-protect and to also realize that there are many different kinds of people in the world, many of them deserving respect.
And LGBTQIA people should not be conflated with groomers and pedophiles intrinsically. - Yeah.
But that's also, that's actually a very, that's a very common way that a lot of trans people realize they're trans.
For instance, I actually came into my trans identity after I started doing drag because I was actually never exposed to LGBTQIA education growing up.
When I started doing drag, it was actually a safe way for me to experiment with, you know, this idea of... Costuming.
You can call it costuming, but for me, that was the thing is for many drag performers, it feels like a costume.
And when I realized it didn't feel like a costume for me, but a natural extension of my gender identity, that's when I realized there was something more than it just being fantasy playtime.
What I saw, what my goal was, was to get parents on board.
That's why I made my original video in 2019.
Parents are on board now.
They're listening.
They're at school board meetings.
They're doing all kinds of things.
Finally people are waking up.
And that was my goal.
And I'm glad to see that happening.
I do think that the youth, like Whitney Houston says, the children are our future.
We have to worry about that.
We have to care about our future.
I'm tired of the confusion of kids.
I was a kid, it confused me as well.
Just, you know, follow me.
Official Kitty Demure.
Hogatha Sistey.
I didn't even get to talk about Hogatha.
She's a whole different character that turns the whole trans thing on its side.
And it's a new, it's the modern woman drag character.
And I'm gonna have a podcast coming up called BFM coming up soon and looking forward to the launch of that and I'm just gonna keep fighting and doing what I think is right regardless of my supposed loving community agrees with me or not.
So again, I'm the first drag queen ever elected to public office and I'm running to be the first transgender person ever elected to The US House of Representatives.
This is my third time running for Congress.
I came in second place out of nine candidates last year with over 60,000 votes.
And I'm running on a platform that includes universal healthcare, housing for all, education for all, environmental justice, racial justice, LGBTQIA rights.
Reproductive rights and all of the great progressive things.
You can follow me on Instagram at maybeagirl, on Twitter at maybe underscore a underscore girl, or you can visit our website maybeagirlforcongress.org.
Hoping to get some more supporters.
Right on.
Thank you both for coming.
This has been fun.
We'd go on for a million years.
For everybody who watched, thank you so much for checking it out.
Of course, we sponsor ourselves, Cast Brew Coffee, castbrew.com.
Check us out.
I will not be here next week.
I will be out of town for... I'm going to a specialist for a sports injury, and then Seamus is going to be hosting TimCast IRL throughout the week, and then Hannah Clare, I believe, will be hosting next week's Culture War, which is going to be epic.
I don't know if I'm supposed to say who's going to be on, but it's going to be a big debate over elections.
