Grace Leeder, a Toronto-based healthcare educator and Rob podcast host, reframes transgender identity as a spectrum—challenging binary norms while critiquing media’s role in reinforcing stereotypes through limited narratives. She highlights Canada’s Conservative Party’s proposed bills restricting gender-affirming care, linking them to rising trans youth suicide rates, and rejects "passing" culture as exclusionary, comparing it to arbitrary cis beauty standards. Advocating for polite corrections over confrontation, she warns that political engagement—not backlash—is key to societal progress, urging listeners to normalize trans existence through education and open dialogue. [Automatically generated summary]
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, the podcast that would have a better name if they weren't all taken.
I'm Spencer, your host.
Today, we're going to have a meta-conversation.
That is a conversation about a conversation.
I've noticed that in some situations, the rhetoric surrounding the concept of transgenderism is starkly negative.
And in other situations, there simply is no rhetoric at all.
Most people avoid this topic with vigor.
I suspect that there are a lot of people who don't have anything against transgender people, but also don't understand how to have those conversations.
We've come to learn that there are inherent pitfalls here that we don't understand.
So then I ask the question, would those conversations happen if we understood the pitfalls and could talk about this without being rude?
The world isn't the same place it was when I was growing up.
It has a different shape.
I now have a choice.
I can reject that new shape and petulantly demand that the world revert back to its previous state, or I can accept that the world doesn't conform to my wishes and instead work to understand the environment I'm in now.
That's what today's meta conversation is about.
It's an attempt to increase the overall understanding of this phenomenon so as to improve everyone's conversations about it.
With that, our special guest.
Yeah.
Hi, I'm Grace Leader.
I use she, her pronouns.
I'm from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
I podcast for post-show recaps and Rob is a podcast about scripted TV and reality TV and all sorts of things.
And I also work as a in healthcare education for diabetes Canada.
So, yeah, that's me.
So how do I how do we do this, Grace?
A great question.
Yeah.
I mean, you introduced yourself with your pronouns.
Yes.
Should I have done that?
Was that rude of me to not?
No, I don't think it's rude of you to not.
I think that you certainly can.
And I think that I, you know, I do it because I want, I would prefer people to call me by those pronouns.
The idea that they're preferred pronouns also is a bit of outdated language.
Those are just my pronouns.
But I think I do it because, you know, I've never done any like, you know, voice training, anything like that.
It's, yeah, it's become a practice in which people do it.
I think it certainly shows some level of inclusivity to do it yourself.
But yeah, I think even for trans people, I think it's like, it's a little bit awkward to do it.
It's part of the introductory thing that not a lot of people do.
And I don't always do it.
So yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, pronouns are sort of the, I don't know, tip of the spear, I guess, because that seems to be what a lot of people focus on first whenever this sort of gets broached.
And I, in some ways, I get that.
In some ways, I don't, because for people my age and maybe like a little younger than me and everything older than that, there's sort of a, you know, generational gap there.
We lived in a world where there, it's not that this phenomenon didn't occur, but especially for people who weren't living in cities, I relate it to something like some people say it's like a unicorn, but I don't like to say that because unicorns don't exist and transgender people do.
But it's more like an astronaut.
Because as a kid, both transgender people and astronauts, I understood that they existed because I saw them on movies.
But I legitimately felt when I was 10 years old that it's unlikely that I'll ever meet either.
Right.
And so I built my world in my mind such that, yeah, they're there somewhere in the world, but I don't have to worry about them because I'm unlikely to ever be in a situation where I have to deal with that.
Does that make sense?
It totally makes sense.
I mean, I think too, like, yeah, you would, you would see.
And also, like, the idea that, you know, calling them trans was not the language that was used.
No, not that.
Yeah.
And also, you know, there are more trans people who are out.
I will not, you know, I don't know the numbers of the, you know, how many people have been trans, but trans people have been around for forever.
But it's just that it's, it's safer, you know, the classic example is showing the study about the number of people who are left-handed, the number of people who identified in left-handed.
There's a sudden surge once it kind of became more acceptable to be left-handed.
And then, and then it plateaued, right?
And that's kind of what's happening right now with trans people is that it's a, it's, it's safer than ever, although not entirely safe for everybody to come out as trans.
And so, yeah, more people around you might come out.
Yeah, depending on where you live, you might have never encountered them.
I grew up in a small town.
There was no, there's, I, I remember one time there was a, uh, a trans person when I was, you know, who I saw come into a restaurant and was like, oh, that person's like trans.
Maybe that's not the exact language I use at the time.
And that's like the only person until I started to explore my own gender identity that I met other trans people.
So yeah, same.
It's just like you don't.
And we're still like, I think only about 1% of the worldwide population identify as trans, a very small amount of people.
It's probably a little less than 1%, but still it's, it's just.
Fewer than 1%.
Yeah.
And that point, it's very hard to tell the numbers because this has been sort of a unrecognized thing for so long that.
And, you know, the same thing with homosexuality and a lot of other ways in which a person could live and exist that wasn't recognized.
They had to, they had to make a choice.
Like I described, I have to make a choice.
They had to make a choice where they had to hide a thing about themselves.
And that's very psychologically damaging, I think.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
I mean, for sure.
Yeah.
And so people choose not to come out for their own safety.
And, you know, I talk a lot about media.
And I think the reason I like talking about media is because I think it's, it's a bit reflective of our, of our world and not always sometimes that's a distorted reflection of our world that for a long time, the people who controlled what could get made portrayed literally laws to say that, you know, if a queer story is on television or in a movie, it can't have a happy ending.
You know, so I think, yeah, I think media is so interesting from that lens to say it's, it's where people might encounter trans people.
And if the, and if you're, you're, the way that you're viewing somebody is only through this stereotyped or stigmatized lens, then you the notion you move through the world.
Why would you think any differently?
Right.
Yeah.
Media is a funhouse mirror for society.
Really?
100%.
Yeah.
I mean, I know some trans people too, Spencer, who, who actually don't love the idea of sharing their, their pronouns.
And obviously this is anecdotal, but the idea being if you're in a room and there's one trans person and everybody goes around the room.
And I think the idea that it's so difficult because for a very long time, sex and gender have been perceived to be the exact same.
And where the idea of telling people your pronouns is that you might have a gender identity.
You know, your gender identity might match what people would presume your pronouns to be.
So, this is working.
And it's very funny in one-on-one conversations, like in this conversation, so you're never going to use my pronouns, probably, right?
You're going to say, No, you only refer to you, yeah, yeah.
So, so it's never going to come up in this conversation.
Um, it would be talking about you in the second person near you, that would be so awkward.
It feels very rude, yeah, I have to say, tell someone else about you guys in the room.
Yeah, I don't know, yeah.
So, I don't do it in like every meeting I'm in, or you know, at work or whatever on every podcast I'm on.
I do it often when I'm like, you know, I'm meeting potentially like a client at work and I want them to know that, like, okay, if they're going to be sending emails that might be about me, I might want them to understand what my pronouns are.
But some people don't like it because in a room full of cis people and there's one trans person, um, you feel like you're singled out in a way because it's like um, you're not sure what that pronouns are, and then like you're the person who this is all for in a sense, uh, but it feels like this thing, yeah.
And so, I, yeah, so within the community, I think there's own special treatment line that sometimes is trotted out.
Oh, you want to be treated special, right?
Yeah, and I, yeah, that's also terrible.
Let's just call that what it is, yeah.
Um, and so some people who are trans, I think, actually like would prefer, but I, that it typically I think happens to people who their gender identity would match typical like cis gender identity.
So, if you would pass, for example, or you know, it gets we get really complicated, but oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, looking into this, it does get very complicated, yeah.
Um, so about pronouns, I mean, we've been told all manner of thing about pronouns in the last 10 years or so, probably more like six or seven years or so.
Um, are there any new pronouns?
Is this a real thing, or is this just a thing people talk about?
I mean, there, there are, you know, whether or not they're new, I think some of them certainly aren't are new.
I will be on it again, the trans community is so small, and then there are, you know, these ways I, you know, a lot of people balk at they, them and being like, it's not grammatically correct, it's completely grammatically correct to refer to a singular person using a they, them pronoun.
And I think that the, you know, I first, in some way, I don't know, you know, there's a Canadian, I don't know if I want to call him philosopher personally.
I don't even really want to name him, but his, his objection to pronouns was that it was limiting his freedom of speech.
Um, that to use uh pronouns uh that people requested um actually is an invasion of freedom of speech, which we don't actually really have in Canada, but uh, alas.
Um, that uh, and and I, you know, this idea that it's like uncovered, my brother talked a little bit about like I had a friend who's using they, them pronouns.
It's like it's just it's unusual for your brain to work.
You, you've, you know, you're 30 years old and you've you've thought about the way you speak in this way, and suddenly you're doing something new.
It's the same thing as a lot of the language in terms of trying not to, you know, people ask, try not to use the word crazy or lame.
Um, it takes it's so ingrained in your vocabulary that takes a long time.
Yeah, once once you think like that, you speak like that.
That's how it is.
Yeah, so it takes active training.
And I often think like the thing that happens is that the thing you learn is as you as you try it, as you mess up, hopefully in your brain triggers, oh, I did it wrong.
And the next time, hopefully, it happens sooner and sooner until the point where it happens before you speak, basically.
But there are these new pronouns.
They're very rare.
I don't think I've ever met a single trans person who has used actively used anything other than she, her, he, him, or they, them.
But there, there are these other ones.
Um, and I think the thing that people get concerned about is that they're so, there's, you know, you people have obviously used they of like, where did they go?
Oh, they went to the store and you're talking about your dad or whatever, you know.
But these other ones that are like Z-Zer and they're so uncommon to us that they feel these sort of neo-pronouns, I think that they're called.
I don't entirely know what to make of them.
They're very rare.
They're very uncommon.
But some people do use them.
And I think that, you know, I imagine that person will have their own, you know, if you're close enough with someone that they would request you use those pronouns.
I would advocate that you try to use them as much as much as possible.
But, you know, it's very, you know, yeah.
Right.
But at no point do we have to, you know, there's not going to be a booklet that comes out, gets delivered to everyone in Canada with a whole list of the however many number that are claimed.
I think the number that's claimed is probably exaggerated for effect and based on people that are attempting to push back at this idea for a reason I haven't yet understood.
But yeah, I mean, this is mostly about just being polite, right?
Yeah.
And the idea that in Canada we might, you know, have a weirdness about that doesn't, you know, doesn't surprise me as a Canadian.
You know, we've always been weird about what to exactly do to be polite.
That's, yeah.
I mean, the thing for me is that, you know, this professor who talks about it's a freedom, it's a, it's a limitation of freedom of speech.
Like he's certainly right to say that he can, you can use whatever pronoun you want for somebody.
So long as, you know, for me, the most important distinction about when someone misgenders me is, are you actively trying to be mean or are you did it by accident?
And most of the time, I don't even know.
And it won't impact my life that much, right?
Like, unless, you know, if you, you know, if somebody, you know, so people can come, literally people can calm me whatever they want, as long as it doesn't border on, you know, harassment.
But, you know, this idea that you must always get and that the police are going to come and lock you up.
Are you a Perks and Rec fan?
You know, the Fred Armiston thing of like, you know, in his country, you go to jail for everything.
Like, this is not the future of like what's going to happen with respecting people's pronouns or disrespecting people's pronouns.
And if you use the wrong pronoun, honestly, I'm probably not even going to correct you most of the time.
And the piece of that is I always feel like to an extent being trans can sometimes feel like I'm being inconvenient to people.
And I know that I'm very privileged in the sense.
I actually, I feel like I don't actually get a lot of like, I don't get misgendered a ton.
I don't, you know, whatever.
But so for example, I was at a dinner the other night and it was a, it was a, it was a dinner for a colleague who had left our organization.
And there was a person I knew, but not really knew very well.
And I don't, I don't think I, I, I pass very well as like, you know, as feminine.
And so during dinner, whenever he would refer to, he would say he, but I was not going to like stop dinner to be like, just so you, you know, just so you know, I felt like I was going to disrupt dinner.
And like, I could do it for my own, but it doesn't really bother me that much because he was, he was actually, the way he was behaving towards me did not, otherwise did not feel antagonistic.
So I, I didn't real, I don't really care.
Some people might care more, in which case I would advocate that like, maybe I wish some of the people there who knew me would have corrected him a little bit.
Maybe.
That's the place I feel like allies can, you know, create these safer spaces.
But honestly, at the end of the day, it was fine because he was engaging with me in a way that was like, he was interested in what I was talking about.
He was sometimes what he was saying is like, oh, yeah, he has like, he does a podcast and he has all these like, you know, he was like, he was not doing it to be antagonistic.
So nobody's coming and arresting him or fining him or anything for using the wrong pronouns.
I think that if you're, if you do it, if you purposely know somebody's pronouns and you, and then you start using the wrong pronouns, I would mostly say, like, what does that get you?
What, what, what, you know, and I, I know we could then theorize about what bullies get out of being bullies and what people get from spouting hate, but to honestly try to walk the line in that way.
It's like, it's like holding your finger very, very close to someone's eye and then declaring that they're, you're not touching them.
That's right.
It's very childish.
And I, yeah.
And I think what they're thinking, what they think they're doing is speaking truth.
But if all the people at the table, say I'm at this table and one person is purposely antagonistically using the wrong pronouns for me and everybody else is in the right, well, who's actually, who's actually speaking truth in the situation?
Probably everybody else at the table who is fine with me identifying the way I identify.
And one person who thinks for some reason science has proven in the history of that there can't be trans people and they don't actually exist.
And I'm making a mockery.
Like, that's not true.
Trans people, there's a really interesting, Neil deGrasse Tyson talks with, does an interview with Ben Shapiro if you've ever seen it.
You can probably pull up the clip and they talk about just you.
And Ben goes, but science is science.
He's speaking to Neil deGrasse Tyson, who's one of the foremost scientists.
Trans communicators.
And he goes, but if it's true that there are people in the world who believe that their sex is different than the one they were born with, then isn't that scientifically true?
Isn't that also scientifically true?
And what do we do to, you know, if all the science then shows through scientific evidence that letting them use the pronouns, calling them by their name, letting them dress how they would identify and being perceived in that manner, that helps them contribute more to society rather than not be part of society?
Isn't that scientifically true as well?
Isn't that evidence to prove that trans, you know, yes, they exist and that, you know, so it's a really interesting conversation they have where, yeah, anyway.
Trans people exist when we recognize that they exist.
And that's, yeah.
I mean, this gets to a question that I have here is that what do we mean when we say that gender is a social construct?
We could probably have a whole extra episode about this if we wanted.
But I mean, in my life, in my lifetime, when I'm looking back at analytically at what I've considered to be this male, female thing and everything else, most of the aspects here are appearance, right?
And the lines between these things have blurred quite a bit in that time, right?
When I was a kid, it was considered odd, like accepted, but some protest from older people when a boy, like a teenage boy, got an earring.
Right.
Right.
It was done, but it was, you know, you got from the older generation this, this thing.
Oh, you know, you know, boys don't wear earrings, girls do.
Right.
That's pretty arbitrary.
Right.
And now it's, it's just common.
No one, that's an eyelash when you see a man having earrings in both ears or whatever.
It, it's not, we don't look at it.
And then we look at like hair length.
I had long hair in high school.
Yeah.
No one in my high school mistook me for anyone but a male.
But I know that in decades past, people were mocked sometimes in some places for having being a male and having long hair.
Like, oh, that's a, you know, are you a boy or a girl or something?
Right.
And that's, it's also incredibly arbitrary because we all have the hair on our heads.
So why is this like, and then we get to clothes.
Clothing is just choices.
Most of the clothing in the past was about function rather than form.
But why do we get this situation where we, you know, most of the things that we would use to identify in polite society have to do with how we're choosing to present ourselves and what we choose to adorn ourselves with, et cetera.
So what are your thoughts on this?
Where are we with this?
Yeah, I mean, I mean, to get really, I feel like, you know, gender being a social contract and people trying to preserve that social contract construct.
To me is about the preservation of power and the systems we have in place.
That if you disrupt this system that men are men and women are women, and so men wear pants and women wear dresses and women can wear nail polish but men can't wear nail polish if you disrupt this system, I feel like there's this worry or fear, fear that it will disrupt other systems.
You know, if you go, you know, think about even um, you know, women women only were really able to start to work in factories when they were necessary to the war and then were told to leave after.
That's where the suffragette uh, not the suffragette movement, but um uh, you know this, this idea that, like women can can work, comes from um, it's a disruption of, of social order, of of social order and where power lies, that men would be the one who would earn money um, and bring it home and and have that type of control and that's, you know, fearful.
If you, if you, if you have the ability to try and maintain that, I think I can understand, and the fear of the unknown and change to try and preserve that um yeah, I mean, it's very.
It's the other piece too, about this idea that um preserving, you know, gender as a social gender, as as as what it is is.
It also harms cis women.
I remember talking with uh this this, uh this writer, Frankie De La Creta's a um, a great sports writer, and we were talking about fairness in sports and how um, when you start, the ways in which you, you start to to restrict trans people from participating in sports is also going to restrict cis people from participating in sport as well.
So say, for example, you're a cis woman, but you have this high level of testosterone, suddenly you're going to be restricted from competing in sport because you have this unfair advantage that is perceived as masculine.
And my favorite response I think i've ever, which is uh, Frankie said, it is true, you know, if you, if you start to restrict bathrooms, by the way people look and present well, a cis woman who has a, has short hair, is going might, and this is proven to be true there is evidence that um, cis women have been harassed in bathrooms.
So cis woman goes into a bathroom and is kicked out and it turns out, well they're, they're a cis woman.
Um they've, you know, I think trans people have every right to be in the bathroom, but this person certainly has every right to be in that bathroom.
Um, it's going to hurt cis people, but also, don't trans people just have the right to human decency and respect as well?
So my favorite response is like, yes, it is true, but we don't have to look at every lens through.
Well, what if it hurts cis people too?
Like if we only ever did things because it would protect cis people or straight people or white people or men, then that's a bet, that's a bad society.
That's the only part of us, not all of us.
That's right.
So I I do.
I think that gender Gender is a social con, that, and we're, and we've moved to a place.
But you look at this, uh, if you're familiar with the trans exclusionary radical feminists who their idea is that why don't we let, you know, rather than a boy who, who, you know, I guess a trans girl who's, who's born as a boy, rather than thinking, well, they might be trans and they, you know, we'll put them on puberty blockers and then they might be trans, why don't we just let them, you know, he should, he should be able to wear a dress, he should, you know, all of these things.
But then you look at some of the people who exist in this movement who then criticize when there was a Twitter post that went a little viral of this person who's non-binary and they were going to school in their workplace, not a school, sorry, in dresses, sometimes lipstick, sometimes in a suit, just like whatever they wanted to wear.
And people were like, what a freak.
And it's like, but isn't this the exact, if you, if you as like a, you know, you don't think transness exists, but you're okay with breaking down gender as a social construct, then shouldn't this be the exact way?
He's not saying I'm a woman.
He has a beard, but he wears lipstick.
You know, it's all, you know, this sort of stuff.
But it, it, to me, when I then see the, you know, these people who, because I looked into this when I first came, I was like, well, maybe I'm not trans.
Maybe I just want to do drag sometimes, you know?
And obviously that's not, that's not me.
But then when I look at the reaction to then how they see people who are moving through the world in the way that they proclaim, and then they're saying that they're freaks and unnatural.
It's like, I think you're just trying to preserve some notion of what was for the reason of maintaining power and control and order and your understanding of the world.
Yeah.
Well, always in every situations from the get from the beginning of time, the people who are who have some notion of something to lose will be the least likely to want to have anything change.
Right.
That's always been true.
That's been true of everyone.
Yeah.
And they use these examples of things that might or could happen or say are happening at an overwhelming rate, like trans people competing in sports.
The Olympics has allowed trans women specifically, trans people, but trans women to compete for many, many years.
There's never been a single trans person who's platformed and won a medal at the Olympics.
So this fear of like, well, this is what could happen if we let this happen.
It's not bearing out to be true.
And it's only to then preserve, again, some of that, the status quo, the power that they currently hold on to, that they want to keep or feel that they're losing.
Those all seem like slippery slope arguments to me, and they don't hold up together very well, in my opinion.
I agree that there can be regular, you know, there can be, we should do more, we should do more research, we do more science to prove that, yeah, maybe MMA fighting because of the bone density you maintain, maybe it proves that it's an extreme unfair advantage.
But what is sports other than unfair advantages?
But alas, I can understand that there needs to be a line drawn somewhere and that so many of these sports bodies already have these things of you must, you know, you must take a testosterone blocker.
You must be on estrogen for so much time.
Anyway, where, and often I have to think it's very interesting.
I also live with type 1 diabetes and some of this technology that's coming out, the way that the studies have to be, you know, for some of this technology for it to be approved, my blood sugars have to be in better range than someone who doesn't have diabetes.
And so this is this interesting, this thing of like, well, in some ways, if the technology becomes so far advanced, my blood sugars will be better than somebody without diabetes.
And I think of the same thing.
It's often all of these pieces like my testosterone, if I was to go and try and compete in an internationally governed sports disease, my testosterone would have to be much lower than a cis woman because that's what happens when you're on the testosterone blocker versus how much testosterone your body might automatically make.
So, yeah.
So what is dead naming and why should we avoid it?
Yeah.
So dead naming is the act of using the name, the name that someone potentially was used or given before if they decided to change their name.
So I have a name that I was, my parents gave me when I was born.
And, you know, try not to, I, you know, most people don't use it.
But I think the reason is, you know, it's, you know, the other thing that's funny about like, well, that's not really your name, you know, is like, well, yeah, but like T-Pain also isn't his name, you know, he's not Snoop Dogg.
He's not, you know, the amount of actors that are like changed their name.
Cher wasn't her name when, yeah.
Madonna also not, yeah, right.
Yes.
And so not that I'm Cher or Madonna or Snoop Dogg, but, but, you know, it is, it is sort of acceptable in our society that you might go by something, you know, even a nickname, you know?
And so the thing about dead naming is it often comes with for trans people, it also often is to attach to a time where we were maybe at our lowest points of, of, and there's obviously like, I'll get to another thing I want to talk about in a bit, but yeah, it's often associated with this time.
And it's almost like, you know, when we choose our own name, that is us embracing this new identity, this, this decision we've made, because when you're trans, I often talk about the hardest part, the hardest time period of being trans is when you have all these thoughts when you're, you know, likely when you're young or whatever, and you're like, I could be.
And then I said like, no, maybe I'm not.
And I looked up like, you know, gender radicalism and like, you know, okay, maybe that's, that's it.
I'm like, no, it's actually not it.
And that moment where you know yourself, you're like, oh shit.
Like, I am trans, but like, I'm going to have to come out to people.
And that's like so scary.
And coming out might mean I lose my job or I get kicked out of my apartment or my friends don't talk to me.
My family kicks me out of my house.
You know, all these things.
I'm very lucky that none of that ever happened to me.
But there's that, that moment where you're not sure how the world will react.
And then you come out and you either goes well or it doesn't, but you've made this decision because you know it's the best decision for you in your life.
And yeah, it's like, you know, it's like it's a silly metaphor, but it's like when you become a butterfly.
Like if you saw a butterfly go and you kept being like, that's a caterpillar.
Like, yeah, I guess you could, you could say that.
And it'd be in some way you're right.
They're not a caterpillar anymore, though.
That's they're not a caterpillar anymore.
Now they're a butterfly.
So to me, it's, it's the, it's, and, and using that name is often, it's like, you know, I hate the now, this is what I was going to get to.
I hate the analogy that like that old person is dead or they're not you.
You know, my mom would would say this comment of like, um, uh, and she has, she hasn't, she maybe once or twice of like, oh, I lost a son.
And it's like, yeah, but I'm still, there's so many parts of me that were, that were in me before, but now I'm a, I'm a fuller version of my, I was, my mom is great.
My mom is amazing.
My mom is the best.
I just always need to shout that out.
My mom has been so supportive.
But yeah, it's like, yeah, it's an attachment to the, you know, if you're, if you're going to use that name, it's, you're, you're bringing up, you know, that's certainly a piece of me that's not me.
Some people, I picked a name that's very close to my, to my old name.
I thought for me that was easy.
Some people want something totally different.
It's, it's, and it's, it's a big part of coming out.
It's, it's almost, it's almost more important than your pronouns, right?
Because it's like, that's the thing most people are going to call me.
And if people aren't using it, you know, it's a bummer.
It sucks.
So it's just about being nice again.
But yeah, a name is very personal, right?
It's, it's, uh, you know, much more so, I think, than pronouns would be.
I, I went through a time in my teens where I wasn't that happy with my name just because it made me seem odd compared to everyone else.
In that time, I, I just wanted to fit in and my name made me stand out more than I wanted to.
And it was, it was just a phase, right?
But now I wouldn't want to be known by any other name.
Right.
I kind of accepted my name.
And I think that's, I mean, I happen to accept the name that I had from the start.
The fact that that doesn't necessarily happen with everyone, they have a different name.
And it's not even necessarily that they, you know, change genders or something, right?
Some people start going by their middle name because they prefer it to their first name, right?
It happens.
Yeah.
One of my favorite things I play in this online game of Dungeons and Dragons, shout out to twitch.tv slash DM Philly.
Dungeon Dragons in Space.
And it became a bit of a running gag.
We'd meet these people.
My character can speak to animals.
And so I'd go like, I'd meet a deer or whatever.
And I'd be like, what's your name?
And they're like, well, I've never been given a name.
It's like, well, you can have any name you want.
And it became this running gag of every time we'd meet someone in space and like, yeah, my name's whatever.
And I'd be like, well, you can have it.
You know, you can have any name you want.
And it's kind of become a bit of our calling card.
It's like, you can name yourself whatever you want, but also it's sort of my call to cis people too.
It's like, you know what?
If you don't like your name, you can actually, you can actually change your name.
You can, you can be, you can have whatever name you want.
Yeah, right.
Trans people get to have the fun.
We get to do it all the time, but you can be whoever you want to be.
I think people get hung up on this idea that there has to be a reason for their name.
Right.
And I'm like, names are just as arbitrary as everything else we use to identify.
They're also social constructs.
Yeah.
Also, it's very rare that you would know somebody's name.
And if you find it out, like if someone tells you, I would presume they'll also tell you, like, please don't use it.
But, you know, if they, for whatever reason, like sometimes they'll be like, oh, this story doesn't make sense if I don't tell you.
My, you know, because I tell a lot of stories.
I, I like, you know, I talk a lot.
So, you know, it's like, this story doesn't really make sense unless I tell you.
One of the things I'm very proud of this in terms of someone who doesn't really take life too seriously is growing up, my mom would always tell me she wanted to give me this specific middle name, which is my uncle's middle name, because she thought that my full name was going to sound great as a lawyer.
I'm never going to be a lawyer, but thanks, mom.
It was a very nice idea.
But she couldn't because it was my uncle's, the middle name was my uncle's name.
And she thought that her father would be so mad because like she wasn't naming any of her kids after my grave, which was Hugh.
It's a great name, but it's a little, you know, it doesn't always flow well.
So when I was legally changing my name, I'd always really liked the sound of that, of the names put together.
So I did decide to change it, but I gave the feminized version of that middle name, which was Alexandra into Alexandra.
But the other reason I really liked it is because now I became Grace Alexandra leader, which as an initial spell is a pun, which is gal.
So I really, I just thought it was perfect.
So I, you know, I had to change my name to Alexandra.
So yeah, that's my middle name.
So this question might be, I mean, it's the, it's the question that I know the least about of all the questions I wanted to pose to you.
What is body dysmorphia?
Yeah.
Body dysmorphia is not being happy with the body you have, basically.
And I know you have in the in the notes that you sent me some of these questions is like, is it different than wanting to have a thinner waist or bigger shoulders?
And no, there is tons of stuff that cis people do all the time that I would consider affects is trying to alleviate body dysmorphia.
It's just like cis body dysmorphia.
So people who get lip filler or Botox or, you know, whatever they get, whatever they go to do to try and fix the way that they don't like the way that their body works.
And body dysmorphia is a huge part of why people have eating, like disordered eating.
You know, that's body dysmorphia of not, you know, and a lot of that, again, is based on studying.
One of the, one of the parts for me that was really interesting about trying to discover who I was, I was trying to parse all the things like what, what do I think I, you know, who do I think I am?
Who do I think I am not am because of the way society, you know, because gender is a social construct.
So, so what do I remember one time and I wasn't really thinking about my friend said, you know, when you, when you transition, you'll still be able to like baseball, right?
And I said, Yeah, I know.
I know, but like, you know, it was like, you know, so, and I remember, I remember I tried like wearing makeup and go.
And the thing about makeup for me is like, I grew up, I have three brothers.
It was a very like masculine household, a lot of sports, a lot of whatever.
So it's not like I even had like a sister who was doing makeup and whatever.
And the thing about now is like, there's so much like there's YouTube videos and you can like whatever you need to.
So I'm constantly Googling, like, I don't know how to do something in my house.
I'll just like, there's a YouTube video for it.
Yeah, sure, there is.
But the thing about makeup for me is like, I'm not very good at it.
And the way to get better at it is to keep doing it.
But as you're doing it and you're not good at it, it's like not very fun to like go out into the world with bad makeup, you know?
So I was going to work and I would, I would try something.
I was like, I don't really like, it's not my favorite, you know, or like wearing a dress to work.
But those are the days where I would often get the most compliments of like, you look amazing.
You look great.
And it's funny because this is kind of that idea of like, I think where some people who do fall into the turf movement, who I think could be like pulled back, is that it is a little silly to think like the only way you get recognized as a woman is like if you wear a dress or you know, you have nail polish or you have an earring or whatever.
But sometimes that's the way like that's when people, it would click for people that I was like I was trans for some reason.
So I remember talking.
You were trying harder to be that.
Yes.
Right.
So, so which was very nice, but also I remember I also had this one person who was very funny.
She'd always come down the aisle at our work and she knew that I was had transitioned and she was trying so hard to be inclusive.
And she'd go, hi, ladies.
And I was like, oh, that's really good.
But Simon sits here too.
Like he's part of our group as well.
So she was like, she was, she was trying so hard for me, but I was like, oh, but also Simon, who identifies as male, is like part of our group as well.
Maybe doesn't want to be called ladies, but she was so nice, right?
But I remember going to my therapist and I remember talking about this.
And I was like, yeah.
And then I feel like, am I, what if I, if I wear a dress to work, am I like contributing to like, you know, patriarchy?
And she's like, well, you know what?
You could just figure out what you like and who you want to be before you have to solve all of that.
It's like, okay.
Yeah.
You don't have to represent all people when you dress for work.
Yeah.
You can just dress for yourself.
Yeah.
So, you know, it's body dysmorphia is all these, you know, I did decide to go on hormone replacement therapy to sort of like change the my body and the way it would it would look.
And I'm very happy I made that that choice.
That's not for everybody, not everybody who, and this I think is a very confusing thing for some people that you don't have to have body dysmorphia to be trans, because I think that's so ingrained with like, you know, a lot of the stuff we'd see.
Like my, one of my earliest memories of trans people is like Maury, where it's like, okay, did this person have a sex change or not?
And it's like, you know, it's like, we're so hung up with like, well, it must be that thing.
It must be this most private personal thing that must be the thing that leads people to be trans.
And I think it's confusing for people when it's not that.
And it, and I think we're trying to be like, forget all that stuff you watched on TV for years.
You have to know that gender is so like your identity is so ingrained in your brain that it's, it's, you know, it is not a matter.
And this has been scientifically proven as well.
They've done brain scans that shown that trans people's brains react differently, look different than cis people.
So it's like, yeah, but yeah, body dysmorphia, it's not different.
It's not different than wanting some piece of you, you know, to want to work out more, have abs.
You know, it's not, it's, it's really not.
It's only that for some people, the body dysmorphia is actually about like, you know, there, there is like gender and sex components that are, you know, play into it.
Yeah.
I mean, I, as a 16-year-old, I did an obscene number of push-ups and sit-ups because I watched movies and I wanted to be like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Like I wanted to have a body that was a tough thing to try.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was, but I looked up to that.
I went, you know, I'm in, you know, good shape.
Maybe I could be, I could be buff like that.
I could be, you know, muscle man or whatever.
And but I could never get my shoulders to be anywhere near like that.
It was just not happening for me.
It was like, you know, something I had to live with.
Well, and I think the same thing is true for that there are, there are, you know, scientific with hormone replacement therapy, with some of the surgeries we decide to get, but also, you know, there is this idea of passing in the trans community.
And it's something that I think it was such a, it's such a goal for people because it will make it easier for you to maneuver around in society.
So passing is essentially the idea that you are perceived as a cis woman if you're a trans woman or you're perceived as a cis man if you're a trans man.
And the reason is obvious that you are less likely to face discrimination or harm for being trans if you pass as a cis person.
The thing that becomes hard is the more that that becomes like the idealized version, the people who will never pass.
So say, you know, lots of, not to say that a woman who, a trans woman who decides to transition at 55 won't be able to like pass, but also there are, you know, I always, I, there's a little piece of me that's always like, boy, if being trans was more acceptable and it happened when I was a kid, I wouldn't have gone through puberty.
And some of the things that are like my voice, my voice, I could do voice training.
I'm not super keen to do voice training, but there's all these things I wouldn't necessarily have to do that would make it easier for me to pass.
And at the same end, I don't want passing to be, because I don't want people who don't have the means to pass either financially or whatever is going on in their life that would mean they can't pass.
Those people should not be treated, you know, less fairly than people who can pass.
So it's very complicated.
Passing is a, is sort of a complicated thing because it's often a thing people strive for because that's like the end goal, but it's very difficult to do that.
And is also problematic in a way.
If the more people are in the two boxes of male or like man or woman, then where does that leave like non-binary people?
Where does that leave people who can't pass?
Right.
Like if we're like, oh, that's the ideal is to be a man or a woman, like that's not great for people who, that's not the end goal too.
So, you know.
Yeah.
I think that the drive to, as you say, pass for one or the other is a symptom of what society does to people.
Right.
Really?
It's, it's that we generate a social expectation that you're one or the other.
And then people who are trans will then push themselves to fit in one of those boxes.
And I think we should get, you know, I think a better solution is to get to a point where we accept that we don't fit necessarily, that some of us aren't just one or the other or whatever.
Or change the box.
Yeah, change the box.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a have a couple unique size boxes or whatever.
That's fine.
And the other piece is like that's got because on top of this idea of like being trans and then your identity, there's also like cis people have this too, right?
And that's what we're saying about like having big shoulders or a thinner waist or your lips look amazing or whatever, you know, there's these ways in which basically like there's sort of this, even for a cis person, this like idealized for that again, this is why I love media and why I think media is interesting is because it's a funhouse mirror distortion of like, who did we put in movies?
Who became superstars?
Who is the sexiest man of the year?
Somehow it was, what's his name?
McDreamy this year.
How did that happen?
Who knows?
But that's what sometimes when people struggle with like their own body, cis people struggle with body dysmorphia.
That it's often all in that same vein.
So trans people are kind of, I don't want to say it's extra hard, but there's this like another thing.
And not every trans person deals with the same thing that cis people deal with too, right?
So it's anyway, it's very complicated.
Yeah, I mean, it's wrapped up in what we consider to be beauty standards.
And we think, I think a lot of people think about beauty standards as being sort of like instinctive.
Like we're always going to like people who look a certain way.
And that if you sent those people back in time, they would also be just as liked as they are now.
Well, that's not in any way true.
And we know this.
There's, I mean, a great example that I've heard from someone else before is, I mean, we look at paintings from the past and what people looked like in the paintings.
They didn't have television or cameras or anything like that.
But some people point out, well, these people, they were painted as being larger, what we would consider kind of fat or maybe even obese in some situations.
But is that true?
There's a painting that's called the Judgment of Paris.
And this is about the Greek myth, of course, of the thing that started the Trojan War, according to the Iliad, was the three goddesses who are considered the most beautiful goddesses among the 12 Olympians went to a mortal being that is Paris, and they asked him to judge which of them was the most beautiful.
And he was the most beautiful human.
And he is, you know, painted in the picture as a larger person.
All of them are the larger people.
One of the goddesses is promising him the love of the most beautiful woman.
She's also portrayed as a larger woman.
And from this, we can see with media as a mirror, a reflection of what happened in that time where larger people were considered to be more aesthetically beautiful.
That must be clear.
Well, it's also, then there's, you know, I believe that's because if you were more wealthy and therefore you could, and then you could commission art to be made, you might have been bigger because you had more food.
You had more, you were, you know, right.
And so it is also a reflection of power.
You know, I did not study art history, although I am a history major.
But yeah, bigger bodies, it's because that's who hold held power and control and control.
And that was mostly food, right?
Of food and, you know, all of that stuff.
So, yeah.
In Chinese and Japanese cultures, they developed a beauty standard of having extremely white skin because that meant you weren't working outdoors.
You were more likely to be upscale, in charge, indoors more, getting less sun.
And that was seen as a more beautiful thing.
And even today, many of the people in the Chinese opera will be painting their faces entirely white.
And so what we consider to be beauty standards are arbitrary, just like everything else about what we consider to be.
So Arnold Schwarzenegger going back in time wouldn't have been the number one star at any time.
He would have been working in the fields, right?
The other thing I was thinking of, I'm watching some media that's very like women-centric lately.
There's a couple of series that have come out.
And one is specifically about indigenous communities, the new season of True Detective.
And I've been thinking a bit about that too, about these societies where the importance of women being leaders or it being more of a matriarchal system.
It's just that so many of our systems that have, you know, wherever they came from, which is basically from Europe and came over here, we, you know, that's what was dominant and established.
And so the idea that, you know, the people who want to preserve that are also ignoring all these ways in which like, you know, if people call it like the natural order of things, but also there are many places where the natural order of things was that, you know, it might be a metrical-led society.
And so like the idea that they're, you know, it's like the, you know, and, you know, indigenous communities, uh, there's also, if you, some of the, if you look at some of the acronyms for LGBTQ also includes a two, it's often for two spirit.
A number of tribes, and they're not even close to each other.
They never encountered each other, who all had this idea of basically a third gender, which is two-spirit, and that you would inhabit both the masculine and the feminine.
And they're actually in some many of the tribes revered in a way in terms of having this.
There's an Indian culture to this too, about trans this like you know, form of trans people who are known to be quite like the idea is that they're quite spiritual.
It's like if you, if you are, were born a boy and then have this feminized or womanhood to you, there might there's something supernatural that you're able to tap into, you know, sort of in the more binary view of the world, like the masculine and the feminine and how revered that would be.
Obviously, that did not happen in sort of like the Western, you know, European society, but there were societies and civilizations and tribes where that that was the natural order.
That was that was how things happen.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, I don't know where I'm going with that, but well, it led to that from our other point.
So I have a little sort of a brief explainer that I've used in some informal situations to explain to people what I feel is happening.
Well, not happening.
I shouldn't say it that way because there's some level of biology and genetics and something much more complicated happening.
But this is sort of an explainer that just allows people to see it in their minds, I think, is a better way to put it.
So I'd like to go through it and maybe you can kind of let me know what you think of it or where it's off course or what it could be better.
So imagine that you have a piece of paper in front of you and you put two dots on the piece of paper, one on the left side, one on the right side.
And above the dot on the left side, I want you to label it male.
And above the dot on the right side, label it female.
So in the traditional view of what's happening with humans here, there are just two dots.
And this space between them on the page is just an empty gulf.
There's just, you're just one or the other, and there's just we, two very small islands, and everyone fits in these two little dots.
Right.
So now I want you to just draw a straight line directly between the two dots.
And this is the new view that everyone is at the two dots or on the line that's somewhere between the two dots.
And this is where we are.
So people who, first of all, people who try to take the idea that you can declare yourself other things or you can identify as other things, no one is really doing, as far as I could tell, no one is really doing anything other than identifying as being somewhere along this line.
You know, no one is somehow strangely at a third dot somewhere up or down the page.
No one's identifying as a cat.
No one is trying to identify as some intangible concept like judgment.
And I think it's important to realize that to say, like in some rhetoric that people have come up with, to say that men and women don't exist anymore, well, that's also not true, right?
Because what defines the line is the two points at either end.
No one's saying that anyone is, you know, there's any males that are claiming that they're further left than the leftmost dot, or any females who are further right than the rightmost dot.
It's bound on both sides by the two things that we know of to be, and that you just, some people are somewhere in between.
And to make it just a little more complicated, but still true to the situation.
Some people are moving from one point to another and finding, you know, in moving in steps, maybe finding the spot that they feel comfortable.
And some are moving and going all the way across.
Some people are moving maybe partway across and then stopping and getting to a point where they feel comfortable.
So what do you think of this explanation?
Is it useful?
I think it is useful.
I mean, there's obviously, I think the more you're like in it, the more you can, you know, like, oh, is that quite right?
Is that, you know, because there's, I would, I would question whether or not this, you know, what are we labeling on this, which is probably gender identity, probably on this, but there's also gender expression that you can have that is can be different.
So like a good example is like when I came, when I knew I was, I was trans, my gender identity now shifted.
I now know, oh, I'm, I'm a trans woman, but my gender identity continued to be that of a masculine cis presenting person because that's was how I felt the safest to move through the world.
So I like it.
I do think, I think as like a, to broadly explain it, I think it worked, you know, there was the, my mom fell for it.
Apologies if my mom's listening, but she fell for the litter boxes being added to schools.
Have you heard of this?
The water mill.
There was someone claimed there was a young child somewhere that was identified as a cat.
That story has been told many times, but that I looked into that.
That wasn't really happening.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't, I, I personally get a little conflicted about that because I struggle with like people who identify as furries.
And the idea, my understanding is that almost nobody is 100% of the time identifying as a furry, that you might have moments where you, and if you're not familiar with the furry, look up furry, you know, for me.
I watched the episode of CSI that had the furgus that was very instructive.
I was speaking broadly to the audience, maybe.
Yeah, yeah, the news.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
But, and I struggle with it because in some ways, I don't want to dismiss what people get out of identifying as a furry.
So I don't, I don't know.
It's a very, it becomes more common.
I don't feel like I'm an expert to judge.
It's their own thing.
The other, the other piece I think I was thinking about as we're talking about it is the thing I, this rest represents gender identity.
I think this, this, this, um, this piece of paper line.
The thing that I want to acknowledge, and I, you know, I don't know how many people are listening to this who like are so firmly entrenched in sort of like trans people aren't real or don't exist or whatever, but um, the idea that like trans people are ignoring their their sex is, is, is not true.
Every time I go to my doctor, it's not like my doctor and I just pretend I wasn't born male.
Yeah.
He knows.
Just so you know, he knows.
He is fully aware and he takes into account.
So if there's things that like, if it affects my hormones, then that's one thing.
But if it affects part of me that's like, you know, masculine that I can't change, then we're talking about it.
But from a broader society lens, like, why does it, why does it matter?
Who, what, what, you know, as long as, you know, people are being respectful, not infering on people's lives.
And I think it's overblown how much the people will say that trans people are interfering on people's freedom of speech, et cetera, et cetera.
But I think it is a good, I think it is a good piece for both gender identity and gender expression.
I think people should know also that like those two things don't have to, there's those two things don't have to perfectly align.
And that might feel confusing, but the idea there is like, I think specifically if you think about a good example is probably like a cis woman who is like, you know, a butch lesbian.
Her gender identity is, it could just be that of like a woman.
Her gender expression will have lots of elements that are, that are more masculine.
And so will fit more, you know, to that right side of the spectrum, whereas her, her, or the left side, I guess I should say, on the gender expression line, whereas the her gender identity might be really firmly planted on the right side of that graph.
So I think it is good.
It's just that's the only piece that I, you know, as I'm thinking about it.
But from a, you know, if you're, if you're trying to explain to somebody who really doesn't, you know, is not versed in and, you know, we all live in a lot of, especially if we're online a lot, we all live in our bubbles where your social media feed gets curated.
You follow the people you want to follow.
And so if you're, if you know a bit about transgender people already, this maybe is vision.
But if you're trying to explain to someone who doesn't know, I think this is a really good place to start.
Yeah.
So, so, yeah.
I remember there's a comedian who talks about how she, her mom got offended that she, her, she felt like, cause she's a cis woman who uses who she that, but she looks very non-binary.
It's like, people keep saying you look non-binary.
And she said to her mom, said, I don't think you need to know that yet.
I think we're too early in your education.
And her mom got really offended.
She's like, why can't I learn about non-binary?
But like, you know, she's like, because I think it'll be too complicated.
But yeah.
A couple of things about someone just said there.
I think that I can't remember the wording you used.
It was something about there's some people who use language like that trans people are somehow infringing or trespassing on a on a thing.
That language, to me, to my mind, strongly reminiscent of language that was used to describe homosexuality back in the day.
It's the same playbook, Spencer.
It's the same playbook.
100%.
Don't go in the bathroom.
They can't go to bed.
They can't be around children.
It's all the same playbook.
That they're somehow, that they're somehow alien to our society.
And that's that marriage is a protected traditional thing that they're not part of it.
Like that's obviously not happening with trans at the moment.
But like, you know, it's marriage is only for the purpose of bearing children, which is then brings up all kinds of questions.
Like, why would we let older people marry, for example?
Right.
Yeah.
I remember there's a really great, I believe it's another Ben Shapiro moment where he's explaining and the student lets him go on and on about like, it's about child rearing and why, and then he goes, okay, so when your children go off to school and they're not at your home anymore, are you going to divorce your wife?
It's really good.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Shapiro has a lot of holes in his arguments that he just kind of talks over.
But yeah, well, and then the other part that you mentioned that there could be people who have a gender identity that doesn't isn't currently matching their gender expression.
Yes.
If we if we were able to modify society such that we accepted all of those identities, do you think there would be very many people who had this gap?
Or at least if there was this gap, there would be, it would be very, very, very small.
No, I think that's the, that's kind of the dream.
One of my favorite quotes, I'm surprised I haven't said it yet, is that trans people do not want your cis kids to become trans people.
We just want trans kids to become trans adults.
And so the thing behind that is the more that we can, you know, the more that you can let somebody explore their gender expression, which is sort of the heinous thing about these bills that restrict gender affirming care, because they've kind of lumped this idea of gender-affirming care.
And whenever you say, well, I'm for gender affiliate care.
I'm not sure about it.
Right.
I know.
And they'll say, well, so you're, you're for children having surgery.
And it's like, well, actually, if you look at what gender affirming care is for children, it's basically let them use a pronoun that matches what they what they would like.
Them have a name and let them that matches their gender identity, that they their gender expression, that they want, and then um, let them wear clothes that that, you know, expresses their gender identity.
That's it, nothing.
Nothing harmful nothing, you know.
But the problem is that the, the things that are that are potentially harmful about that is the way that society is designed, which is that other kids might make fun of them for doing that.
That's what's harmful, right?
So the bullying argument yeah yeah, and again, not to say, you know this idea that uh, that Frank says trans people can just should, deserve their own uh, respect and human decency.
But also, the thing that is is great about letting people explore their gender identity.
There are many people who explore their gender identity, who think they might be trans and discover they're not trans and through this and through, you know, playing around with gender discover oh, that's not, that's not me, but I do want to keep this piece of like, I like having my nails painted, you know, and they get to keep, they get to keep that and it's, you know, for me, a safer, you know society, you know, and it's when you, you know, I do think that these bills that are being passed the.
The thing that is is harmful, and you can just see it that they want to just legislate trans people out of existence and that's what's.
And that sounds like I may be being alarmist, but it's, but I think it's true.
I think that if you look at the rates of uh, suicide attempts uh, for trans kids, it's extremely high.
Um, and the and what the legislation was doing was basically saying okay, let's protect kids, and now that they've done that in many places, now they're saying okay, but also, now you can't, you can't go on hormones if you're an adult, and so they're, they've just they like, you know, it's like a really good, you know sports strategy of like yeah we'll, you know, we'll go on defense here, and then you know they've done it they've, they've done it both and what they've done is stop people from being able to be themselves and and continue to increase that rate of suicide.
So what I want in the world is that yeah, for those two, for that gender expression and gender identity to align perfectly, and I think the sooner you can allow people to do that and try to figure out and try to you know, and have the freedom that it can always change um, like if people decide to detransition, i'm fully support.
You should be whoever you you want to be and who you are.
And I don't have any ill will to people who detransition because that's a choice that you thought you were making, this right choice, and those choices come with lots of time with a doctor and a therapist and self self-thinking, you know.
So um yeah, I want those two, two lines to be brought up and I think we have to change society to do that and so, like in this example like yeah, you could advocate, there's there's, there are bills in Canada right now, the conservative government is uh, or not the conservative government, i'm sorry the Conservative Party OF Canada, in their platform policies, are advocating for some of these changes with the idea that if they were to get into power, they would implement some of them.
So you can obviously do your part by voting, by calling your mp mp if there's any movement that's happening on these, but also just in your daily life, trying to you know the smallest things you can do.
Like I said, when somebody's misgendering me at the, using the wrong pronoun at the table, to say oh, just so you and you don't have to do it in a mean way, you don't have to scold them, and I actually don't.
I I don't think.
I think there are people who deserve to be scolded.
Let's not mistake that there are as many of them that i've mentioned on this podcast who I think are actively uh, behaving dangerously and are harming trans people, but your co-worker who just is out for dinner with you and accidentally misgendered you.
They don't need to be scolded.
They could use hey, just so you know what's that, and they'll decide to change or not.
So yeah yeah yeah, becoming the uh, the word police just makes a person insufferable, which is probably why you don't do it.
I don't do it.
It's because you have social graces.
You don't want to have to.
Full of social graces.
Yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
Right, it's part of with what charisma we call that.
You know you're, you have some level of charm.
Everyone has a little bit of it, although to some we have to dig deep, but Yeah.
It's really tough.
The people who are angry at the world and are angry and get mad and are demanding.
I get that.
I feel that.
I think it's really hard to when you when I just don't think that that, you know, directed at the wrong people, I don't think that always works.
I, I, you know, I'm, I am not, I don't really think the cancel culture exists.
And I also yet know that there are people in sort of the podcast community who.
one thing on, you know, one thing you say on a podcast that then you get people yelling at you on Twitter, I don't think is the most conducive way to, and I, you know, I'm saying that from like a very privileged point of that, like I get to speak my voice out a lot.
And I don't want to say that like I'm not open to change, but I often, I know for myself, I get like, I put my, you know, when it's like, when you come at me in a certain way, depending on what the thing is, if it's important enough, I think if it's, if I'm so wrong, then that's one thing.
If I'm like kind of wrong, I feel like, do you have to use all?
I don't know.
So I don't know.
It's complicated.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yell at politicians too.
Don't you, yeah, but you know, I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We don't yell at politicians enough, I think.
I do in general.
Yeah.
So I feel strongly that you don't have to be a member of a particular group to make allowance for their existence.
If we're going to be a society that accepts people who aren't like us, then we need to walk the walk.
Do the work to understand what that means, to accept them.
Some of the more outlandish rhetoric surrounding transgenderism involves a notion that our language is being policed, that it represents some level of oppression, that some imagined authority is watching us and is ready to slap us on the wrist for stepping outside the bounds in some way.
The people who push this notion want to rally a mob to push back against the imagined authority.
But that authority is imagined.
The only oppression in this situation is what the majority of us will do to a vanishingly small minority in order to make us feel less uncomfortable with a changing world.
Giving into the rhetoric of hate is a recipe for oppression of people who don't fit into the ordinary boxes.
Having conversations about the fact that transgender people exist will help to normalize their existence in the minds of people who don't encounter them.
Trans people have to live their lives.
The least we could do is include them in our conversations.
If anyone has any comments or questions or concerns or wants to tell me how we got the whole thing wrong, you can send that email to truthunrestricted at gmail.com.