The Culture War #21 - Is Drag Appropriate For Kids? w⧸Maebe A. Girl & Kitty Demure
Summary
One of the biggest questions in the culture war is whether or not drag is appropriate for kids. In this episode, we are joined by two drag queens, two elected officials, and a drag performer to debate the controversial topic. Join us as we discuss all of the issues surrounding the topic and hear from the two drag Queens, Billi and Kitty, as well as the drag performer, Hugatha Sisti, as they give their thoughts and opinions on the matter. We also hear from Billi, who is the first drag queen ever elected to public office in the United States, and Kitty Demure, who was elected to the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council in 2019, and Billi who was re-elected to her third term in 2018, and is currently serving her 3rd term as an elected official in the City of Los Angeles, where she serves as a councilor and a performing drag queen in the district of Silver Lake, CA. All three of them share their thoughts on the topic of whether or no drag is suitable for kids in public schools, and why they believe it should not be. We also discuss the difference between being a child performer and being a performer in the drag community, and being an adult in the entertainment industry, and what it really means to be a child in drag, and the role of drag performers in society, and how it should be viewed in the LGBTQ+ community, as it pertains to the culture and culture in general. In the Culture War, we re joined by three drag queens and three elected officials to debate all things related to the topic, including a drag queen, and their opinions and perspectives on the issue of whether kids should be allowed to participate in drag in public spaces, and whether they should be able to be exposed to drag in schools and the culture of the drag scene, and if it s appropriate for them to be taught in public, or not? Thank you for listening to this episode! We hope you enjoy this episode and share it with your friends and family, and don t forget to subscribe to us on social media! We ll be back next week for a new episode of The Culture War! (and we ll be posting another episode next week! with more content about the culture War, coming soon! we promise you'll get to know more about drag in the next episode of Culture War in the coming weeks! xoxo, Rupaul, Rumpaul .
Transcript
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one of the biggest questions in the culture war is whether drag is appropriate for kids
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but surrounding this is a bunch of other issues pertaining to what's being taught in schools
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what books are appropriate in schools it's led to many laws in many states but it's escalated from
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just outright saying some books shouldn't be allowed in schools to outright saying certain
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medical procedures are outright banned in many states so we're going to discuss all of this and
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we're being joined by two individuals two drag queens but i'll leave it to you guys to introduce
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yourselves would uh would you like to just uh introduce yourself first maybe yeah of course
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my name is maybe a girl my pronouns pronouns are she her they them and uh i happen to be the first
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drag queen ever elected to public office in the united states i was elected to the silver lake
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neighborhood council in 2019 and i was just re-elected to my third term so i am a trans person
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and i'm also a drag performer all right thanks for joining us and then we also have billy i go by
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kitty demure or haugatha sisti online um i'm a performing drag queen i haven't performed in a
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while i went into management of the night gay night club in los angeles area um and i just
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am here to talk about kids and drag and how i'm against it and the the video that i made in 19 no it's
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2019 warning people of what's happening today well should we we'll start with that do you want to
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explain what your video was about well my um back in 2019 i was noticing that this phenomenon
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drag queens going into libraries and other venues to read to children and i didn't understand why
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that was happening um i saw a picture of somebody i knew doing it and somebody i knew who was a
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prostitute a drug user and it was just i i started noticing they were not representing the drag community
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i think in a very flattering way and that's the one thing that got to me not only that but the
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types of books they were reading to the children making them question gender sexuality things of
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that nature that you really aren't um exposed to until you're older and have more of the brain capacity
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to deal with that type of mature stuff so you made a video uh do you want to explain the like the
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gist of the argument you said it wasn't appropriate is that what it was well i think and and and i don't even
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understand why it even has to happen like why why can't adult why can't people read to their own
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children i mean i would think a child would rather spend quality time with their parent reading to
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them than taking them to somebody in an environment that is not set up for drag for me drag is it's an
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illusion it's not a life it's not you know you don't go out every day in drag even though rupaul's
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been famous for saying you know you're born naked and everything else is drag that's not really the
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case because when we do drag we're deliberately being a characterization of a woman so i don't
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you know believe you know just us dressing up is drag but um the the content in which they're reading
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to the children i think is inappropriate um i think parents should be reading to their parents i think
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um elderly people could come in and read to you know children they're often lonely and you know feel
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useless why not that why not have police officers doctors you know important people you know people
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we need more of in our society why can't they imprint and influence children i have a i have a
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interesting and direct response i mean you're an elected official maybe yeah absolutely i mean uh
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hearing what you've had to say i um i i disagree entirely um i think that i don't think that's it's
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inappropriate for drag performers to read to children i think what is um i think what is
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inappropriate is describing the drag community the idea of doing drag as a monolith and i think that
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a lot of people especially folks who've never met a drag queen or a drag performer or who have ever
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been to a drag show they have this idea of what a drag performer is but drag as with any community
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uh is not a monolith and so in my opinion i believe that there are appropriate interactions
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for particular situations so you know i perform in nightclubs and the shows that i do the performers
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that i interact with in the nightlife scene uh totally different than what you see at drag queen story
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hour and i agree that you know we shouldn't have uh kids at drag shows that are taking place at night
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clubs which is not happening you know these are 21 and up venues but you have uh i think the idea of
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of um discluding drag performers from being able to read to to kids i i think that's um i i don't
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think that there's any sort of validation in that because i do think that there's a difference between
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being a drag performer and reading to children in an age-appropriate context versus being a drag
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performer and doing a more explicit uh number in a nightclub and there's a huge difference in that
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and so this idea that drag performers are just sexually explicit performers i think is false in
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its entirety even in the nightlife scene you will see so many different kinds of drag performers you will
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see drag performers that do performances that actually are entirely appropriate for children and
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then you'll see some that are not appropriate and i agree we shouldn't have kids in nightclubs that's
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why there's 21 and up rules but when drag queens are reading at libraries when drag queens are are
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doing drag queen story hour for kids uh 99 of the time they are reading books that are appropriate for
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children i feel like the argument against drag queen story hour is the fact that there has been
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perhaps a few people who have crossed a line and unfortunately that reflects on the whole community
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and i don't agree that it should reflect on the whole community no i i agree with that but i am that
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one percent that is speaking out we aren't a monolith like you said so i am the one that's speaking out
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you won't find another one doing it and that's what bothered me is that we're just accepting this and
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i'm like is everybody not seeing what i'm seeing sure you know people like to bring up mrs doubtfire
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which i don't consider to be drag i consider that a desperate man and a father trying that's drag
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that's drag honey but that for me drag is a performance it's a performance was robin williams
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not performing in mrs doubtfire i think he was he performed as a character actor in a movie
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portraying a father who was desperate to see his children and as far as the inappropriate drag um
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uh the the children and stuff seeing it we unfortunately there are those pictures and
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videos do exist there's videos of drag queens whether it was their fault or not and i'm and i
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will concede that it's not always the drag queen's fault i think parents are bringing their children to
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say brunch at hamburger mary's which is a venue where children can go in but then you have queens doing
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inappropriate numbers i mean yara sofia from um rupaul's drag race came out with her boobs bouncing out
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and then had to hide them once she realized that there was a child in the audience and they handed
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her a dollar and it's you know and but yet she was modest and understood oh no there's a child here
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but it's during the day at brunch and she's a professional i mean to not think a child wouldn't
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be there i i think it's ridiculous well also i have to ask you um first of all yara sofia or any
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number of drag performers that perform when they wear a chest plate you know it is a fake set of
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breasts right what is actually so inherently offensive about that i'm personally an advocate
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of free the nipple um i i don't think that people chest up should have to cover themselves if they
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don't want to and i think that applies to cis males cis women trans males and trans women and
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everything in between i don't think there's anything actually inherently offensive or sexual
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about a chest and it's actually very interesting to me that uh men in our patriarchal society can
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move about and and be totally bare chested and it's not sexual but a woman does it and it's sexual
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why is that i'm i don't know it's our culture it's the way we've designed our country but is it so
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it's culture it's i don't think that it's necessarily inherent there's nothing inherently
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sexual about a chest but our culture has made the chest of a woman sexual right and so therefore we
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are holding down women we're holding down trans women and people who have breasts why should they
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not be able to walk around with their chest exposed what is that going to do to a child well that
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that implies women have not taken participation within making it a sexual object i mean women do
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sexualize their own breasts so ultimately they have decided that these mammary glands to feed
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children are sexual objects so where where did you see that women are sexualizing their own breasts
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because in my opinion men cis men are sexualizing women's breasts you don't you don't think that women
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find their breasts sexual i i'm sure that many of them do but again no group of people is a monolith
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so i don't think that the chest a breast is inherently sexual it is a a part of the human body
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it is a a life-giving part of the human body uh that's why i'm totally in favor of women breastfeeding
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in public of people breastfeeding in public because uh it shouldn't be an exposed nipple should not be
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taken as sexual and just somebody bringing out their breast cannot be i don't think inherently perceived
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as sexual and if it is i think it's on the end of the person perceiving it rather than the person
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exposing themselves the interesting thing here is a a long time ago men and women weren't allowed to
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expose their chests i saw a photograph from atlantic city from the 1920s in the middle of summer
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everyone's wearing suits it was a very i i look at it from our perspective today i'm like it's very weird
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and then you can see a couple decades later all of a sudden women are wearing uh like unitard bathing
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suits one piece bathing suits men start wearing swim trunks all of a sudden men aren't wearing shirts
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no one seemed to care that men's nipples right just culturally shifted this way we are starting
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to see this in many states across the country where the uh new york for instance many of these states
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it is considered a uh uh i believe a violation of the 1964 civil rights act to tell women they can't
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expose their nipples if men can which instead of creating a circumstance where men must now cover
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up it created the inverse circumstance where women now don't have to but here's where it gets
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interesting because i think this is a very very interesting point i have a picture here uh libby
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emmons posted of dylan mulvaney okay libby asks why is the new york post blurring male nipples in a
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sheer dress dylan mulvaney of course publicly identifies as trans wearing a sheer dress where you can
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visibly see dylan's nipples there's an interesting question being asked if dylan mulvaney is biologically
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male and the argument is legally or not legally but in all social media nobody cares if a male is
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showing their breasts what about dylan mulvaney makes it now that these these nipples are no
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longer allowed to be seen on the internet you know tim it's so interesting i actually i saw this on
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social media this morning before i came over here and dylan mulvaney has endured a a huge influx of
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criticism hate and you know even people are saying why did she have to leave the nation i understand that
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i i i took that in in a smaller context in los angeles in uh june earlier this summer the thing is
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what what i immediately thought when i saw this image and when i when i saw the criticisms so you
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want to say that dylan mulvaney is a man and then you're upset that dylan mulvaney is showing her
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nipples so which is it is dylan mulvaney a man or is dylan mulvaney a woman who shouldn't expose her
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nipples i i feel like the many of the critics you can't have it both ways you can't so if you
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acknowledge that well we shouldn't see her nipples okay so you acknowledge her as a woman uh but if you
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see dylan mulvaney as a man which is untrue which is not how dylan sees herself then what's the issue
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you can't have it both ways right i mean i i personally don't see why they're blurred out
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dylan mulvaney in my opinion dylan mulvaney but you just said that you that children should not be
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exposed to to women's nipples so although dylan mulvaney is not performing in a drag show right
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here she's on social media that's being broadcast much more broadly over twitter instagram etc than
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performing at a drag brunch which i don't even think that dylan identifies as a drag queen dylan is a
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trans person when you really care about someone you shout it from the mountaintops so on behalf of
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desjardins insurance i'm standing 20 000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care
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about you home and auto insurance personalized to your needs weird i don't remember saying that part
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visit desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care
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so what is it is it offensive that she is trans is it offensive that her nipples are showing
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and if her nipples are showing but you think that she's a man then what's the issue well i think it's
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offensive that they're blurred out and they're referring to i agree and and they're referring to
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him as a her because i think that dylan mulvaney is an actor that's what i think i think he's a he's um
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he he exists for publicity stunts um and a lot of people including myself while we might use the
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pronoun she we do it out of politeness not no i disagree i'm sorry to cut you off but i will tell
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you this is not about how everybody else perceives we should be addressing people the way that they see
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themselves and that is truly a big part of the trans issue is a lot of the reason that that trans
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people portray themselves in a certain way is because they want the world to see themselves the
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way that they see themselves and so dylan sees herself as a woman she is a trans woman so to then
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call her out and say well no you're a man and you still can't show your nipples there is a huge
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hypocrisy in that i agree i don't think they should be blurred yeah it's weird also with the white house
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when you had uh i believe it was two trans women uh i'm sorry two trans men and a trans woman
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you had the trans woman covering up her breasts and the trans men were not outrage was focused on
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the trans woman though ultimately the white house did address all three of them i bring up the same
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question because there's got to be a logical a logical uh answer or question as to what is what is
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what is the issue at hand is the issue that as soon as a person grows breast tissue through hormones
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whatever we all of a sudden decide there have also been even outside of the context of transgender
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issues on instagram for instance women uh females will take uh pasties of male nipples over their
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nipples and post pictures because there seems to be some kind of logical inconsistency here either we
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say no nipples for anybody or we say nipples for everybody that i agree i'm i don't have the answer
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it seems seems something's broken there no i agree with you and until our society stop sexualizing
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nipples it'll be that way and that including particularly female nipples right and that's
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the thing female nipples so is it on the individual to cover up their nipples or is it on society to say
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hey maybe i shouldn't sexualize somebody's body just because they have a body we all have bodies
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and we all have sexuality within us we all have sexual components of ourselves and that's an
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individual decision not i'm not saying every every woman has to go out there and show off her breasts
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if she's not comfortable but if you are comfortable you should be able to do that just in the way that
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men can do that and that's it's part of the patriarchy so what how would you define patriarchy
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i would define patriarchy as uh society defined by men which we are sort of i think we're having a
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really important societal conversation about this right now but this is something that has
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dictated society since um since the beginning of of history you know when we look at um different
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parts of society through historical times you see that uh men have have sexualized women and then
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women end up having to be the victim because they are being sexualized so i don't think that in all
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instances women are sexualizing themselves i think that men are often sexualizing women and therefore
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women have to cover themselves because men can't control themselves we see this i think the most
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pronounced example would be in middle eastern countries the uh niqab i believe is probably
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pronouncing it right but women have to completely cover their entire bodies except for their eyes
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i don't know enough enough about the culture of religion my understanding is that and this could be
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completely wrong is that the men argue that they can't control themselves if they see a beautiful
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woman therefore the women must cover up not that the men should not attack the women something you
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think that's fair tim that women should be forced to cover up absolutely not yeah yeah i think most
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americans are probably like no i would then why then why does a drag performer who is performing in a
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drag brunch or a drag show that folks are consenting to attend to have to cover themselves up and if a
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child happens to be present what is that going to do to inherently groom them or or sexualize them
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well i don't see i don't necessarily think a breast is a sexual thing or is something to be
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sexualized it's what you do with the breast now in in a in numbers this is what i don't understand why
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you you think that they're they're not sexual things drag queens will wear big breasts they will rub
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them they'll you know motorboat men and all of them all of them no but can we just say that
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everything i say is not an umbrella that encompasses every single person yes but the rights in the
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argument against drag culture is based off of these few instances these outliers and folks are taking
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those instances and applying it to drag should not be allowed around children whatsoever no i i understand
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that and i think that that is the drag community's fault and that's why i was the adult who came out
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and said something can you know why can't if we were going to expose children to this why is it going
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to be a a drag queen with their legs spread open reading to kids about hey you know maybe you're a girl
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maybe you're a boy you know it's like there's no pr or there's no like head of the lgbtq inc that is like
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managing these things yeah but i think i also think that's a total mischaracteration uh of what
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drag queen story hour is you know we see these few clips that are spread around on the internet
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a lot of right-wing folks like to spread these images of course there are people who cross a line
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who cross a boundary and i disagree with that i don't think that uh drag performers who are engaging
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in drag queen story hour should be doing that kind of performance but i also think that is a very
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small minority of what is actually happening and any any person any adult who brings their child to
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drag queen story hour is doing so in a consensual manner and i don't think that they're bringing their
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kids to be sexualized i mean you have to be a total pervert to want to sexualize your own child
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but that is the way that the lgbtqia community and specifically drag performers are being portrayed
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because of this particular kind of language i have done drag queen story hour a couple of times i did it
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at dtla proud a few years ago and i did it actually somewhat recently um the lgbt center in los angeles
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hosted uh trans pride and i was booked to do drag queen story hour and you know what i showed up and
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i brought very age-appropriate books these were literal children's books about um you know about
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spirituality and about acceptance and about you know loving yourself and loving others there was nothing
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sexual about that and everybody in the room they enjoyed it the parents enjoyed it the children
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enjoyed it there was nothing sexual about it and yet there are so many people who are claiming that
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oh drag queen story hour is grooming and sexualizing children and that is not the case the thing is there
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might be one or two or a couple of people out there that might not even realize that they are crossing
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a line because they're used to performing in nightclubs exactly venues but the thing is i don't even those
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people i don't even think they're attempting to sexualize children there might be some things that
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are inappropriate but that's the thing there are no it's hard to pick out a specific guideline that is
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going to apply to every single age group and every single person and it's up to the parents to decide
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do i want to bring my child to drag queen story hour but that's actually the grooming argument that
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certainly some many of the drag queen stories are just someone in drag reading stories but as you
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mentioned some people are crossing the line and then you have the more egregious examples and when
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i say some when i say some okay there has to be millions at least thousands to hundreds of thousands
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of drag performers and many of them are doing drag queen story hour you cannot outlaw the entire idea
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of it because one person has done that because on the flip side when we think about cis heteronormative
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culture there are dozens more examples of people who are grooming children who are actual pedophiles
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but are we saying we need to outlaw cis heteronormative culture no the thing is we need to find those
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particular individuals and make sure that they are not actually grooming children and the fact of the
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matter is most drag performers are not grooming children most drag performers when they are doing
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engaging in drag queen story hour there's benefits to that the benefits of of drag queen story hour
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you know kids love being read to you know i remember being read to as a child i remember sitting in the
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library and i remember uh the librarian being a little boring and just oh kids here's the story here
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you go when kids are imaginative kids kids love imagination and and fantasy and fun and there is
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something that is very imaginative and fantasy filled about drag performance whether or not you are a cis or
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trans drag performer and so children love to be read to by drag performers because it's fun and it's
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imaginative and it's fantasy filled and they're not even saying okay you have to be a drag performer you
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have to be trans you have to be lgbtqia and that's part of the the argument that i disagree with that that
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lgbtqia people and specifically drag performers are grooming children we're not grooming them we're
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trying to say that you are welcome to be you as you are if you are cis heterosexual fabulous if you
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end up being queer fabulous we're not trying to steer you any particular way but i remember being a a
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queer child and i remember not having any sort of um mentor or model to look at and i felt very othered
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and i felt very different and it actually caused a lot of mental health problems and so when you
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actually introduce children to the diversity of gender identity to the diversity of sexuality to
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the diversity of everything other than the says this is heteronormative family you show kids that
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it's okay to be you as you are you don't have to follow this particular guideline that is again defined
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by the patriarchy and you can be whoever you are and you're welcome to be who you are i'm not saying
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you must be trans you must be a drag performer but if you end up being that when you grow up
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great and i remember not having that sort of influence and i remember the impact that it had
00:23:58.640
on my mental health as a queer youth in the late 1990s in the early 2000s not seeing anybody that was
00:24:05.440
like me anywhere in society and it made me fearful to be who i am are you familiar with desmond is amazing
00:24:13.280
uh yes do you have uh any thoughts i'll ask some questions but i just want to let you open up yeah i don't
00:24:19.280
i don't know desmond i have seen desmond online i know that they are a queer youth who wanted to
00:24:25.520
engage in drag and i think that's perfectly okay i don't think that desmond's parents are behind the
00:24:31.920
scenes saying you have to be a drag performer we're trying to groom you to be trans there is actually no
00:24:38.320
benefit to it because queer people and trans people are overwhelmingly ostracized in the society that we
00:24:44.640
live in that i i don't think that a person who didn't want to engage in that would choose to
00:24:49.760
engage in that knowing the kind of ostracism and criticism and hatred that would come to follow
00:24:55.760
the things that i've said read about this child are disgusting and that is that's so much more
00:25:00.720
horrific than this person saying i want to put on a skirt and a wig and perform are you you're
00:25:06.400
familiar with go-go dancing i assume yeah and bikini bars sure yeah in many states what they define
00:25:13.600
as stripping is the removal of any clothing on stage with no nudity the the act of removing
00:25:18.960
clothing is the stripping of so tim so this is this is stripping if you are on stage for a bunch of
00:25:26.720
adults i'm on stage for a bunch of adults right now offering you money for the explicit purpose of
00:25:31.280
seeing you remove clothing this is where you have uh you know context matters right like i think but i
00:25:38.480
think i i get where you're going at tim but here's the thing drag performers like there is uh the
00:25:43.760
reveal of drag i i think that a lot of people just aren't familiar with drag culture and there is this
00:25:48.320
idea of performing where there's a reveal and that doesn't mean stripping down and being sexual taking
00:25:54.720
off a garment to show an undergarment does not mean that it is stripping or being sexual so in uh i think
00:26:01.840
south dakota might be the state but there's a bunch of states women aren't allowed to be fully nude on
00:26:05.600
stage so they have what they call bikini bars or go-go bars the women will go on stage and do what
00:26:11.120
is in every way identical to what desmond does on stage here removing an outer layer of layer of
00:26:16.080
clothing in exchange for money from the audience desmond is a child in this i could be wrong it's
00:26:20.880
been it's been several years this is 2019 my understanding was that this was an adult
00:26:24.960
bar full of adult males watching the child perform on stage and do things that many have argued were
00:26:31.600
sexually suggestive especially in the gwen stefani portion of this uh and then in exchange for money
00:26:37.360
so if so for many people who live and we can just say perhaps in a more conservative area this is
00:26:43.360
indistinguishable from stripping so this is an 11 year old doing the same things bikini dancers do for
00:26:48.080
money yeah but i i don't think that it's indistinguishable from stripping you know i as a
00:26:51.920
drag performer i've been performing for eight years now and i will go out there and i might come out in
00:26:57.040
something like this where i'm wearing a blazer and i perform and i take it off and people will
00:27:01.200
cheer and give me money are they cheering and giving me money because i'm stripping and turning them on
00:27:06.480
no it is entertainment and it's a performance and it's a part of queer arts i don't think that this
00:27:11.520
child i don't think that they are trying to be sexual i don't even think that the parents are
00:27:16.240
trying to sexualize the the um the person i think that this is a kid who has seen drag culture
00:27:23.200
knows that they're queer and wants to engage in it in a way that is age appropriate did that child
00:27:28.960
get get naked on stage i don't think so bikini dancers don't get naked either yeah so that's
00:27:35.680
that's the issue yeah but also there's a difference between standing up in a box and and gogo dancing
00:27:41.440
you know thrusting yourself out there for very obvious sexual intentions versus somebody who is
00:27:47.200
just doing who is just doing a drag performance and i think that's something that really bothers me
00:27:52.400
is that people equate drag performances with with strippers and with adult entertainment drag
00:27:58.160
performances are actually all ages but there are specific performances that are appropriate for
00:28:03.280
say drag queen story hour versus a nightclub when you really care about someone you shout it from the
00:28:10.880
mountaintops so on behalf of desjardins insurance i'm standing 20 000 feet above sea level to tell our
00:28:16.800
clients that we really care about you home and auto insurance personalized to your needs weird i don't
00:28:25.360
remember saying that part visit desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care
00:28:34.320
um when it comes to this i i don't know if see i i was kind of like this kid with on the opposite
00:28:47.280
direction i i've gotten to little league because i was groomed and and felt pressured to make my
00:28:53.600
parents happy hello i could agree with that so i went into little league when i really wanted to i was
00:28:59.520
really a gay kid in my in my day we didn't use queer queer was a slur i'm i'm 53 years old so i'm
00:29:05.040
a little old from a different generation so queer was um an offensive thing to call people and and um
00:29:12.640
as far as like influences gay influences um i grew up now this is in the 80s i grew up across the street
00:29:17.680
from two moms um i think a lot of this tolerance that that that they're trying to thrust on the public
00:29:23.840
starts at the home and it's like i these kids come from tolerant homes and so yeah but what about
00:29:30.240
the kids that don't come from tolerant homes well i don't think those are the kids that are being read
00:29:33.920
to yeah exactly and so but that's the thing there are queer queer children being raised in homes that
00:29:40.800
are intolerant i myself grew up in a home where uh my parents became much more tolerant when they realized
00:29:47.200
that i was a queer person and there was a lot of hesitation and objection at first and that was based off
00:29:52.800
of what they had learned growing up and so we're perpetuating this culture of gay is weird lgbtqia
00:29:59.200
is oh that's other you don't know don't engage in that that's adult content that's that there's
00:30:03.760
something wrong with that i wish i had grown up in a school environment where i had adults and other
00:30:10.000
people around me saying it's okay to be who you are i think one of the oh go ahead no i just i guess
00:30:16.720
because i like i said i grew up in an earlier time and i did not have your experience at all my
00:30:20.800
my experience came from other kids i you know i don't know what i can i say faggot on here i was
00:30:26.080
called a faggot every day every day of my life i i was called a faggot and um i was still myself and
00:30:33.200
i i don't know and i think that's what we need to be teaching kids is not is not for for me to tolerate
00:30:38.720
something that you do but for you to be able to take my opinion and just say okay and still be you
00:30:47.280
but that's the reason that that doesn't happen is because queer kids are growing up in environments
00:30:51.840
that are not necessarily queer and when you ban any sort of lgbtqia education from school levels
00:30:58.240
until you get to high school that's where you breed people who fear and who other folks who are lgbtqia
00:31:05.600
the reason that you were called a faggot the reason i was called a faggot was because those other kids
00:31:10.000
grew up environments where they heard their parents calling other people faggots
00:31:13.760
right and that's what we're trying to do is trying to uh to uh let folks and let kids today
00:31:21.840
in this generation know that it is okay to be queer it's okay to be lgbtqia and again there's
00:31:28.400
nothing inherently sexual about being lgbtqia just in the same way that there's nothing inherently
00:31:33.920
sexual about being cis heteronormative but and there is there is a connection there of course according
00:31:39.360
to who you love and who eventually you have sex with but that doesn't mean that we're trying to
00:31:43.840
teach kids about explicit like i've got i gotta i gotta completely uh disagree we have these two
00:31:50.000
books here genderqueer less so this book is gay more so explicitly uh uh teach about overt sexual acts
00:31:57.040
depicting them and were provided to children uh sometimes now tim let me ask you when you say
00:32:02.400
children what do you mean by children because children could be zero to 18 what do you mean by
00:32:06.640
children so this was uh 10 year old this is middle schoolers this book is gay specifically
00:32:10.480
was given to you don't think that middle schoolers who are starting to uh go through puberty and who
00:32:15.280
are starting to have um sexual um intercourse and starting to experiment with sexuality you don't
00:32:21.200
think that any of them are queer and might need to learn about queer experience there's a difference
00:32:25.600
between sex ed and this book is gay which teaches those children how to use grinder right i think
00:32:30.960
it's it's this goes we can go back to earlier on i think where a lot of the argument comes from
00:32:37.040
uh there there is the granular and there's the macro when you look at a single instance of say
00:32:42.080
just someone dresses a woman drag reading to a child we can argue well it's simply just reading
00:32:47.040
a story but when you look in the whole big picture of it you have these instances where
00:32:51.520
this book in particular teaches about eating feces okay well i want you to know that i don't
00:32:57.360
personally endorse any of these books it's really easy to put two books on the middle of this table
00:33:02.080
for this particular interview interview and say hey look this is what's being shared this is not
00:33:07.120
in every this is not in every single we have a bunch of books but here's the thing is it's really
00:33:12.080
easy to pick two books that to pick that and say well this is all this is what lgbtqia education is
00:33:17.920
about and that's not true let me tell you this yes yes but in the netherlands in the netherlands
00:33:22.640
they're uh something that they do is they actually have comprehensive sex education sexual education
00:33:29.040
for everyone from kindergarten through 12th grade but here's the thing kindergartners are not learning
00:33:34.480
about sexual intercourse they're learning things in an age appropriate manner they're learning that oh
00:33:40.080
this person might have two daddies or two mommies or something along those lines it's not explicit so
00:33:46.000
while i agree that this kind of content shouldn't be in a lot of schools there is a certain age that you
00:33:51.760
approach when you are a teenager and you've gone through puberty and you're starting to
00:33:55.920
self-actualize and self-realize and figure out who you are and if you don't have resources again you
00:34:00.880
are feeling othered and you're feeling different you're feeling like there's something wrong with
00:34:04.080
you i can speak this way because i was somebody who recognized that i was queer when i was a teenager
00:34:10.320
and the reason that i promote this idea that we should have lgbtqia age appropriate education
00:34:18.080
through all levels of school is because i don't want any other child to feel how i felt going
00:34:22.960
through school whether it be through adults or my peers and these are the books that are being
00:34:27.040
adamantly defended so for instance well i'm not defending these books right just to let it be known
00:34:31.600
i'm not defending these books there's probably explicit imagery in here that you're going to show
00:34:35.280
me it's the same thing that well you might not show them but whether these books have them there
00:34:40.880
are a lot of right-wing people who are bringing about these books that do have explicit imagery
00:34:46.160
i don't condone that i don't think that we should have books for you know elementary school students
00:34:51.440
that depict images of people getting blowjobs or having intercourse i i disagree with that what i
00:34:57.440
agree with is age appropriates um letting people know that queer people exist that cis heteronormative
00:35:05.600
culture is not the only thing out there and you yourself might be queer and don't think that
00:35:10.880
there's something wrong with you because it's not everything that you see around you so so this is
00:35:16.000
one of the principal issues uh particularly with this book is gay a teacher provided to middle
00:35:20.240
schoolers kids between the ages of 10 and 12 it describes scat right and things things like that
00:35:25.840
is absolutely inappropriate for 10 or 12 year olds when people on the right predominantly not not not
00:35:31.040
completely but they tend to be the one leading the charge on these things said hey wait a minute
00:35:35.440
in fact what happened was parents called the police saying that the teacher was providing you know
00:35:39.920
illicit materials to the children nbc news ran an article showing a different book about what you
00:35:45.600
would describe as just explaining queer experiences and did not explain was it what was in the book it
00:35:51.040
was only because right-wing personalities disaffected liberals libertarians whatever the people on that
00:35:56.320
side started tweeting images of the book showing that it's not just i've seen them i've seen them i know
00:36:01.680
what you're talking about yeah but so what happens is when someone says hey this is not appropriate for
00:36:06.480
kids the response that you see for the most part from high profile personalities maybe not you
00:36:10.880
is defense of the book in fact our guest who came on the show a couple weeks ago adamantly defended this
00:36:16.480
book being for children being in middle schoolers saying it was a good book and it shouldn't be censored
00:36:21.120
that is what fuels concern among those who are saying this is grooming my my issue is in one of one of
00:36:28.960
these books that are talking about queer or gay things they that's where they refer to scat in in these
00:36:35.360
books to be so but also do you think that um it's that scat is limited to right that was b tq i
00:36:41.280
queer culture and that's guarantee you there are straight people out there engaging in scat that's
00:36:45.120
exactly right that is exactly my point and why are these are selling it as a gay thing
00:36:49.520
right and so who i don't know who the hell authored that book who claims that it's scat is a gay
00:36:54.080
thing but i think we should be going after the author for for them being inauthentic because i i i
00:36:59.600
think this is a a really good point that often when it comes to so so scat specifically i can't believe
00:37:05.600
where i'm talking about it it's in the glossary it's in the can you define it tim if it's in the
00:37:10.560
glossary reads eating poop that's what it says uh then it says scissor sisters uh it describes see
00:37:18.240
tim don't you see how when these things are are very like adamantly portrayed in the media
00:37:25.520
folks who don't know or don't think that they know queer people or trans people this is what they
00:37:30.640
think queer culture is about i can tell you as a queer i can tell you as a queer person that queer
00:37:35.840
culture is not about scat i don't care if there's a rainbow on there right i want to know if some
00:37:40.880
adult wants to you know engage in that whatever that's on them but i i will tell you that the
00:37:46.560
majority of of of people who want to see lgbtqia education in schools in an age-appropriate manner
00:37:55.760
don't want to see kids being taught about scats well and that's the fact of the matter but the thing is
00:38:01.600
folks who again don't have never met a queer person or think they haven't met a queer person or a trans
00:38:06.320
person they think this is what all queer people are saying hey kids learn about scat no that's not
00:38:12.640
the case at all and i i very adamantly disagree with that but again i don't think this book should
00:38:17.520
be uh banned from libraries but maybe it shouldn't be in an elementary library that tends to be the
00:38:24.480
main issue right with it but that's the thing you mentioned earlier you said somebody said well
00:38:29.760
well that's the thing somebody said what what what what bothers me is that so many people who are
00:38:35.760
against lgbtqia education in schools they take these outlier situations they take this one person
00:38:43.600
who has said this and makes it the representative of the whole lgbtqia community which is is not true
00:38:50.240
that's false and so i disagree that kids should be you know given books that have explicit imagery
00:38:57.200
and when i say kids i mean you know elementary school students when you start to go through
00:39:01.680
puberty um you're going to start to do your own exploration kids are smart enough to know how to
00:39:06.480
use the internet to go and find porn if they want to do that so i don't think they should do that but
00:39:12.400
kids are going to do that i remember being a queer teenager and i remember having to seek out uh
00:39:18.560
queer pornography because i couldn't find it anywhere well so so would you agree with the floor
00:39:22.800
legislature and ronda santus in removing these books from the curriculum you know here's the thing
00:39:26.960
are these books in the curriculum in the schools i believe because there's a big difference between
00:39:32.960
these books being in the curriculum versus being available for somebody to rent out at the library
00:39:37.840
if they want and what is wrong about grade school libraries uh but is the let me ask this i don't know
00:39:44.000
the i don't know the conditions of every school in florida is every because a lot of schools have
00:39:49.440
multiple grade levels if there is a school that is you know elementary through high school then yeah
00:39:55.360
i'm sure that there are some teenagers who might want to read this content might want to learn about
00:40:00.320
that am i endorsing it or condoning it no but do i think it should be banned no i think that's
00:40:05.440
dangerous when we start to censor and it's so interesting to me because you know the right
00:40:10.560
frequently is when you really care about someone you shout it from the mountaintops so on behalf of
00:40:18.000
desjardins insurance i'm standing 20 000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care
00:40:23.520
about you home and auto insurance personalized to your needs weird i don't remember saying that part
00:40:32.400
visit desjardins.com care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care
00:40:41.920
is going off about first amendment and free speech and then they go and they try to censor any sort
00:40:48.240
of lgbtqia content because the child because the child might perhaps see it the thing is i don't
00:40:55.120
believe in my heart of hearts that this is being endorsed on a large scale to young children there might
00:41:01.280
be a few bad actors but i don't think that they speak for the lgbtqia community in the same way that
00:41:07.840
i don't think that any given pedophile who is cis heterosexual speaks for the whole cis het community
00:41:13.040
so this this is quite literally the perspective of the right on grooming that you would argue in any way
00:41:18.640
children should be able to access this is grooming but is grooming but having a book in a library
00:41:24.000
is that actually grooming are you is there a library in there or uh you know teachers and adults saying hey
00:41:30.960
check out this book yes and read it and look at all of the imagery and if there is i will tell you
00:41:36.560
right here that those are outliers those are outliers and that is that's the big argument that's the big
00:41:42.640
thing that the right uses to go against queer people is you take these outlier situations and try
00:41:47.920
to apply it to the whole lgbtqia but there's very few not very few people speaking out against the same
00:41:52.720
happens on the right as well they're also not a monolith and i have been that drag queen that has been
00:41:57.600
there for the right and the conservatives and you wouldn't believe the emails that i get from
00:42:02.320
conservative parents republican parents who have gay children and they don't know how to deal with
00:42:08.000
it because the lgbtq community community lgbtq community abandoned them they have demonized all
00:42:14.800
of the right they've abandoned they have i think it's the you know even your own loudon county is not
00:42:19.920
even the right right so loudon county is literally 10 seconds from here and this is where parents came out
00:42:25.280
and said why was this book given to my kids the response condemnation by the lgbtq show me where
00:42:31.120
were these were these books subscribed to children were they given to children if it's something that's
00:42:36.640
in a library you keep pulling a bunch of different stories again i see you keep pulling these things
00:42:40.720
up but again i suppose this is not this is not representative of what is happening everywhere
00:42:45.200
it's very easy to pick and choose these specific instances where that happens and yes i agree with
00:42:51.120
you i don't i don't think that this sort of content should be given to exclusively elementary
00:42:56.880
school children should this teacher be criminally charged for providing instructions on grinder to
00:43:00.400
minors uh i don't know if they should be criminally charged but i think that that person might
00:43:05.360
understand how difficult it is for queer people to meet other queer people in the context of an
00:43:10.480
environment where they are uh ostracized and and told that there's something wrong with these are
00:43:15.840
middle schoolers being given sexually explicit sexually explicit books that discuss scat scissor
00:43:20.240
sisters and how to use but again okay is this is this widespread this particular article that
00:43:25.200
you brought up is this happening in every school district in every county in every state no it's
00:43:30.080
very easy i don't think to whether it's happening everywhere was an argument for whether this is
00:43:33.360
illegal but that's what i'm saying it's very easy to pick and pull out this particular you can do that
00:43:37.840
on any topic right and do it's racism but but similarly i disagree with this i disagree i don't yeah
00:43:43.520
teacher should be arrested to come down to it i don't think that a teacher should be telling
00:43:47.760
middle school students how to use grinder i don't think that or tinder or any other exactly exactly
00:43:53.840
i don't i just i do disagree with that and that's the thing is i i want to make it clear that i am
00:43:58.560
against the grooming and sexualization of children but what i want to make clear is that the overall
00:44:03.760
message of the lgbtqia community and the overall inclusion of lgbtqia history and education
00:44:09.920
in school districts is not focused on sexualizing children and that's what it's been warped into
00:44:15.520
and of course i care about kids i don't want to see kids harmed or sexualized or you know falling
00:44:22.160
victim to pedophiles i don't want to see that whatsoever but the story has been warped that
00:44:27.520
this is an overall an overarching theme of the lgbtqia community and that's what i'm here to defend
00:44:34.560
it's because overwhelmingly the lgbtqia community in terms of its most prominent speakers have been
00:44:40.000
actively defending these books well i would consider myself to be a speaker of the lgbtqia
00:44:45.760
community as the first drag queen ever elected a public office in the united states as the as a
00:44:50.960
trans person running for a seat in the u.s house of representatives i'm not telling kids that they
00:44:55.200
should be reading this material but you are available to them in libraries well again based on
00:45:00.960
age appropriate there's a big difference between a five-year-old reading that and a 17-year-old
00:45:05.600
reading that and you have to agree with that tim but in a middle school library you said it
00:45:08.960
shouldn't be banned well also middle schools and high schools are often merged so sometimes
00:45:12.800
you will have a school where material is available that might be adult content or for older audiences
00:45:19.600
i don't think that we should outlaw and just remove all of these books and burn them this is
00:45:23.920
exactly what happened 100 years ago when there's a difference between playboy and catcher in the rye
00:45:29.440
yeah exactly exactly this book is game catcher in the rye if someone's saying oh this book has
00:45:34.000
offensive ideas in it then sure banning that but this is these are sexually graphic
00:45:38.880
books that are available to grade school kids if if your position is that you think it shouldn't
00:45:43.920
be censored that's quite literally the argument conservatives have that that's that's you would
00:45:48.880
be arguing well shouldn't parents shouldn't parents of five six seven year olds be monitoring what they
00:45:53.920
check out of a library i do think that is up to the parent to decide what is the what's the child
00:45:58.960
allowed to check out if a child who's seven years old picks out one of these books from the library
00:46:03.520
yeah i would absolutely understand that their parent wouldn't want them to read it but if they're
00:46:07.200
17 years old library where kids can access it yeah but it's not pornography i think that you know
00:46:12.080
when you look at at books that that display anatomy and and and teach about what what queer sex is about
00:46:19.600
it's not necessarily pornography the thing is that there is so there's so few resources available to
00:46:28.560
queer people in general and specifically queer youth that when we try to censor and shield uh all
00:46:34.880
youth from this idea of lgbtqia it that is the censorship that is harmful because that's the
00:46:41.280
breeding of children that's the grooming of children to hate people who are lgbtqia and to fear them and
00:46:47.280
to think that they are other and that's the reason i was called a faggot and that's the reason kitty was
00:46:51.040
called a faggot because because kids didn't hear from their parents or their teachers or their peers that
00:46:56.320
it's okay to be queer and so yeah there might be some explicit imagery in that and again i agree
00:47:01.680
that that shouldn't be shown to kids who are in elementary and early middle school or available
00:47:06.720
to them uh or you know or available to them but the thing is maybe shouldn't that be up to the librarian
00:47:12.800
uh hey you're six years old i'm not going to let you check out this book they don't have to check
00:47:16.560
it out to read it they go in the library they can read any book they want so some things should not
00:47:21.280
be available to kids i mean gore pornography sexually explicit activities a lot of these
00:47:26.000
arguments that i hear um from from you and from other people within the community they seem very
00:47:32.560
outdated like like they like people don't have any representation or they don't see depictions
00:47:38.160
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
00:47:44.000
understand that's because we had to fight for that when i was i graduated high school almost 20 years ago
00:47:48.960
and i didn't see anything like this i didn't have anything like this i didn't i would read about
00:47:52.880
sketch i didn't have anybody to be able to talk to about that and that is what made my peers and
00:47:57.920
the people around me make me think that there was something wrong with me because i was a queer and
00:48:02.400
you know i could i kind of had the opposite i i was raised around um gay people i my grandmother
00:48:08.000
lived in palm springs i was i was there every summer and heavily gay town um she had gay friends and and
00:48:15.520
co-workers um i remember the first time i i was served by this man in a restaurant he had a beard and he had
00:48:22.400
fake eyelashes on and mascara and i knew at that moment that he was gay and i knew i was gay already
00:48:31.680
and when i saw him it absolutely like horrified me because it's the opposite of what you didn't have
00:48:38.400
the actual depictions that i had of homosexuality i thought were negative and i was being shown that
00:48:44.320
what made you what made you think that though what made you think that seeing a man wearing mascara
00:48:49.440
there was something inherently wrong about that i didn't think that had anything to do with the
00:48:52.640
culture that you grew up i i didn't think it was i didn't think it was wrong i thought it was just
00:48:58.000
not attractive i mean it had nothing to do well i don't think that everybody is um dressing themselves
00:49:03.360
and putting on their makeup to make you attractive no i understand that but i also have that opinion i
00:49:07.920
mean i mean when people when people put on their when people put on their drag their outfit
00:49:13.520
you're walking you're not sitting at home doing it you're of course you're going how do you know
00:49:20.400
that well because i'm a drag queen and i don't sit at home but again drag queens are not monoliths
00:49:25.280
the drag community is not a monolith what you may or may not do in drag is not representative of the
00:49:30.160
entire drag community i mean you don't dress like this all the time i don't maybe not all the time but
00:49:34.800
often and even after i do a gig i will spend the day in in this because you know what uh it makes people
00:49:40.960
actually uh recognize that i am a queer person and people will gender me correctly when i'm dressed
00:49:48.080
like this versus when i'm dressed down and that's why a part of my incentive to do it as a drag
00:49:53.120
performer as a trans person you know i i don't mind being in this all day because people are more
00:49:58.480
likely to refer to me in the pronouns that i use and to see me the way that i want to be seen and
00:50:03.600
that's a big part of this argument is queer people just want to be seen and recognized in the way
00:50:08.720
that they see themselves but that's impossible i don't think it's impossible i mean especially
00:50:13.280
when it's fluid i i have a i have a friend she wanted me to talk about this her name is megan
00:50:17.520
she works for the la school district um she's a counselor and they are walking on eggshells every
00:50:24.080
day because they have children who are gender fluid who go back and forth can i ask why you put air
00:50:30.880
quotes around that as if gender fluid people don't exist um well even though it's not your experience
00:50:35.920
because i just personally don't believe in it okay so because uh it's not your experience
00:50:43.200
and you don't believe in it other people well may not be like that well it really really not
00:50:49.520
a strong argument to ask a question then how can you perceive someone the way they want to be seen
00:50:55.200
is every day they're exactly well it's the point that's the thing is that's why people are saying these
00:51:00.160
are my pronouns and then you have folks who are saying i don't do pronouns it's so unnecessary
00:51:04.480
that's the thing is no but that's the gag is people everybody uses pronouns people are just
00:51:10.160
saying these are the pronouns that i use just call me she instead of he call me they instead of of she
00:51:15.840
and it is it really that difficult to respect people and acknowledge people the way that they
00:51:20.080
see themselves and what is the actual inherent harm in that it's also not nothing it's also not
00:51:24.960
difficult to just let it roll off your back well it's actually i will tell you why it is difficult to
00:51:30.240
let it roll off my back when there are over 500 anti-lgbtqia bills moving across the united states
00:51:36.800
on the state level on the federal level i cannot let that roll off my back because there are people
00:51:41.200
who would wish to see my existence eliminated and the same with my community and it started off in oh
00:51:47.440
well we just don't want um trans people in sports and now it's moved to we're banning gender
00:51:52.800
affirming health care across the board we're florida children florida wants to take kids away they
00:51:58.080
always leave out children okay well you want to move into that we can talk about that but they
00:52:02.480
but they always argue that they always you'll see them go on and on and on and on i'm like but
00:52:06.640
they're not talking really did you not know that you were a queer person when you were no no i'm not
00:52:11.600
no because i'm i'm not queer because that's a slur okay see but you won't respect that okay all right
00:52:17.760
well you don't want to be referred to as queer i won't but i have reclaimed the you the use of the word
00:52:22.640
and you can do that just what is you said faggot yeah what is gender how would you define gender
00:52:28.800
gender is how you see and perceive yourself in term in internally in terms of uh a masculinity to
00:52:36.640
femininity spectrum and i don't think that it's binary i don't think it's this or that and uh and
00:52:43.600
people people really want to define things as black and white this or that and the thing is most things
00:52:50.560
in nature do not actually exist on a binary but it's very easy in the way that humans think we
00:52:57.040
want to place things in categorical boxes it's easier for us to um in interpret information when
00:53:03.920
you're either this or that black or white gay or straight trans or cis but the the thing is there
00:53:10.720
is so much more um there's so much more nuance in all of that what about neo-genders
00:53:16.560
when you really care about someone you shout it from the mountaintops so on behalf of desjardins
00:53:24.080
insurance i'm standing 20 000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you
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slash acp non-transferable one per household application and eligibility decisions are
00:54:10.720
made by the fcc other restrictions apply i mean if it's a spectrum between masculine and feminine
00:54:17.280
how would you describe if somebody has if somebody has an experience that i'm not familiar with but
00:54:22.720
this is how they see themselves what is the problem in in calling them the the pronoun that they want
00:54:29.760
to be how would someone who is hydro gender affirm their gender i don't what is hydro gender
00:54:34.160
neogender a neogender a non-binary so for me so one example so for instance i'm trans non-binary you
00:54:41.040
know and people often think that non-binary people are different from trans people the thing is that
00:54:47.520
again with everything things exist on a spectrum so the spectrum of cis to trans is um there's a lot of
00:54:56.480
again nuance in between there so people can be either uh trans binary or trans non-binary so somebody
00:55:03.920
who uh you know may have been born male and totally transitions to female and wants to be recognized
00:55:09.600
entirely as female and feels that way and presents them way that themselves that way you know that's
00:55:15.920
that's trans binary somebody who's trans non-binary for me myself i feel somewhere a little bit in in
00:55:22.000
between um if i'm getting you know real and frank i feel somewhere between like the middle but moving
00:55:28.080
closer to the feminine so that's why for me i feel comfortable using gender neutral pronouns they them
00:55:34.960
i don't like being referred to as he him because that that doesn't encompass who i am yeah i may have
00:55:40.880
particular body parts i may have been born in a particular body but that's not how i move through
00:55:46.400
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
00:55:50.880
what the big issue is in acknowledging people as they come to you and that's that's part that's
00:55:57.200
liberty that's freedom see i i guess my my deal is i grew up i i'm i look like a very masculine person
00:56:05.920
which i deliberately did for this show um well i mean i just this is my everyday wear honestly but
00:56:12.560
i'm a pretty feminine guy i mean and i mean and i was misgendered most of my life through my voice
00:56:19.360
over the telephone drive-throughs up in and and you know what i laughed at it i just okay it becomes
00:56:26.080
such a serious thing now and i'm like oh i don't i just don't understand the importance of it i don't
00:56:32.800
get it so how do i know at me being a feminine guy how do i know that i'm not trans well that's the
00:56:40.000
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
00:56:44.720
not uh if trans people if folks who are well am i trans i'm not saying all of them are but if you're
00:56:51.440
exploring that that idea there is a chance that you very likely might be trans and here's the thing i
00:56:57.920
also endured the same thing as you did when i was growing up uh constantly called a girl um a lady
00:57:04.400
she uh you know misgendered on the phone when i was still identifying as a boy and it's so interesting
00:57:10.720
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
00:57:18.160
and now as an adult who somebody who has come into my my own and realized who i am and how i see myself
00:57:25.680
and how i see the world and how i want the world to see and interact with me it's so funny that those
00:57:30.960
same people are you're a man you're a man and it just seems like it's done with this intent to other
00:57:36.400
and to ostracize and i think there's just a lot of um misunderstanding and hatred in there and
00:57:41.440
you know i i think that you know it's clear that we disagree on a number of issues but i think that
00:57:46.160
we've also probably experienced the same kind of um bullying that a lot of queer kids endure and that
00:57:52.240
goes back to my argument about why i think that lgbtqia education in schools is important because
00:57:57.760
when you familiarize people with um circumstances that are very real and all over the world
00:58:03.920
you you show them that okay to be different is not necessarily to be bad and that's what i i hope
00:58:11.600
to portray in this conversation i again i want to reiterate i am entirely opposed to the sexualization
00:58:18.640
of children i'm entirely opposed to pedophiles in grooming but i think that what folks have portrayed
00:58:24.080
the overall lgbtqia community as is a community that promotes that and it's simply false so i wanted to
00:58:31.360
ask uh you referred to it as gender affirming care the the reason i brought up hydrogender and neo and
00:58:37.840
neogenders is i'm not quite sure how there could be a surgery or medical practice to affirm a gender
00:58:42.560
that is conceptual or abstract well and that's the thing is it doesn't you don't necessarily have to
00:58:47.680
have a surgery to to be transgender i think that there's this idea that uh if you are a transgender
00:58:54.080
person you have to go through hrt and you have to have surgeries and you have to totally um you know
00:59:00.240
to transform but that's also that's that's by that's somebody who is trans binary again there
00:59:04.880
are so many people who again identify as gender queer gender fluid non-binary who are in the middle
00:59:10.560
who you know it's hard to pinpoint what our our our gender is and there might not be words for it and
00:59:17.920
that's why you know the word non-binary it might seem very new to people even though that word is new
00:59:22.880
the concept and the idea of it is actually it's it's ages old and so so you think as adults we're
00:59:29.600
sitting here having this complicated conversation and we're trying to figure it all out and then
00:59:33.280
it makes me wonder well when i was six five six seven years old how would i include myself in
00:59:38.960
this conversation i mean if as adults we don't understand well i also don't i don't think that
00:59:43.200
there's you know six or seven year olds listening to this program maybe there are i don't know if there
00:59:47.040
are are you going to say that they should not listen to this program often say i'm not we do try to
00:59:51.680
keep uh shows like yeah exactly i'm not talking about that's the same same thing with our drag shows you
00:59:56.560
you know we when i do a nightclub show like i'm doing a nightclub show with the intent that
01:00:01.840
it's going to be an adult audience when you do a show like a drag brunch a place where they they
01:00:06.400
actually might allow children i always think about that in terms of how i'm going to perform so i think
01:00:11.600
about the context of where i'm going to be performing as a performer and that's my that's me as a
01:00:16.560
performer that's not me and i wanted and i wanted to sharpen drag queens to have that same attitude
01:00:21.760
i have to be conscious of what i'm doing to the audience of the message i'm portraying and you have
01:00:26.880
to be ready for anything and it should be age appropriate so you guys have uh uh i'm sorry
01:00:32.720
both of you have given your experience on growing up uh i'll tell you mine because i have a question
01:00:37.920
when i was uh younger my family opened and i think we're the same age tim what year were you born 86
01:00:42.880
same oh 86 37 86 so when i was little my mom opened a coffee shop on halstead and waveland in chicago
01:00:49.440
i don't know if you're familiar with the area i lived in boystown for many years uh when i was
01:00:54.560
growing up i met a lot of people who were lgbt and there were uh drag performers and stuff um i worked
01:01:03.120
at this coffee shop so naturally you'd see gay men and lesbian women and bi people and they'd be
01:01:07.760
talking about these things but uh for the most part i was watching ghostbusters cartoons or playing
01:01:12.080
pokemon when the pride events the pride parades happened my mom would not let me go outside
01:01:18.240
because adult men were naked and doing sexual behaviors in the street adult women were doing
01:01:23.360
the same thing people were engaging in simulated sex acts on on parade floats and that was confusing
01:01:29.200
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
01:01:34.160
you tell me i can't go outside because they're having sex when i would walk down the street what would
01:01:38.480
i see i'm a little kid i'm i'm 10 i'm going to 7-eleven to buy a you know a slurpee and in the
01:01:44.000
roscoe and halstead is that where it is yeah and um when i see in the window of a clothing store
01:01:51.680
anatomically correct mannequins receiving blowjobs like not overtly like a mannequin up to the groin of
01:01:58.800
an anatomically correct mannequin they had uh uh genital macaroni and cheese these things are on display in
01:02:05.120
the windows so naturally i said this is not about love they're lying to me i'm a little kid i was i
01:02:10.800
was between the ages of 10 and 11 which is going on and as soon as the first parade comes around
01:02:15.520
and i'm told i'm not allowed to go outside and there are adult activities going on i immediately was
01:02:22.160
like they lied to me it's not about love that's not true you know what though i so i hear where
01:02:27.120
you're coming from with that with that story and i agree with you like i think that that's probably
01:02:33.040
that's not age appropriate for young children but but the thing is but to say but to say that
01:02:38.080
um only queer people have shops that are explicitly sex shops i think is also a false narrative but
01:02:44.800
that's not what i'm saying obvious obviously there are strip clubs i know exactly what you're talking
01:02:49.040
about you're talking about beatniks right on the corner of roscoe and halstead right across from that
01:02:52.960
7-eleven and if you were to actually go into that store there's actually okay you might see that but
01:02:59.600
also what you see inside is not necessarily sexually explicit yeah you might see some pasta
01:03:04.960
in the shape of a penis but also are you not going to see that same kind of thing in a bachelorette
01:03:09.840
party or when they're going out or spencers and that's the thing is that that is adult content
01:03:14.960
that's adult content i don't think that children belong in that atmosphere and i do think again age
01:03:19.520
appropriate um recognition and exposure i think is really important but that that brings me to the
01:03:25.680
issue of these these pride events right so in florida there was a town that banned their pride
01:03:29.760
event after florida said you can't have children at sexually explicit shows the corporate press the
01:03:35.360
narrative from many on the left were saying oh no now pride is being canceled when the issue at hand
01:03:40.960
was don't have sexual you know these these kids be exposed to this stuff every every pride i've ever
01:03:46.800
been to in my life has been sexually explicit in what i would describe as overtly illegal ways
01:03:51.840
without any law enforcement well i don't know what pride events you're being taken to los angeles
01:03:56.240
chicago well yeah but exactly but also just a few weeks ago i mentioned that i did drag queen story
01:04:01.120
hour at trans pride which was at the lgbt center it was an entirely family friendly event there was
01:04:07.360
there was no kink there there were no people walking around in you know just jock straps or less
01:04:14.320
and i agree i don't think kids should be exposed to that but i think that i don't think that those
01:04:19.680
kinds of events should be banned resultingly i think i think in that instance parents should say
01:04:25.680
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
01:04:29.680
the event should not occur because of the fact that there may be a child there and that's the thing is
01:04:34.800
that's why even that's when i go back to saying when i do drag shows i specifically make sure that
01:04:41.680
i'm performing something that is age appropriate if i think there's even the slightest chance that there
01:04:46.720
might be a child there and and that's the thing is at what point do we say well it should be up to
01:04:53.280
the parents to say you can't go there versus this event should not occur at all i mean but but these
01:04:58.160
things aren't legally allowed in public right if if a man were to uh uh let's say put on bdsm gear and
01:05:04.800
another man thrust into him while spanking him with whips like we saw in west hollywood if he did that
01:05:09.680
anywhere at any time that's that's an outright arrest but is it though yes yeah i mean unless of course
01:05:16.400
police don't want to enforce these things so to be fair actually when there was that event where it
01:05:20.880
said it's not going to lick itself and there were kids there the police were like we're not going to
01:05:24.720
get involved in this at all because they're like well it's a phrase is it inappropriate i think it's
01:05:29.760
absolutely inappropriate and again that's where i'm saying parents do not bring your kids to these
01:05:34.160
events if you know they're going to there's going to be kink at pride but i don't think we should
01:05:37.680
out like what about in public so you think there should be sex acts in yeah well but what i'm saying
01:05:43.040
is this is specifically a pride event it's not as if uh there is this kink community you know bdsm
01:05:49.840
community moving about town doing these explicit acts on you know main street america these are
01:05:56.320
events that are specifically pride related and usually in very specific areas of pride and again i don't
01:06:01.920
think that you should bring kids to pride if you know that these things are going to be happening but
01:06:06.400
there are also many yeah i knew you were i here's the thing i i've seen these images and i've seen
01:06:11.520
where are the complaints this is in public across the street from wendy's of course there are children
01:06:15.600
there that you can see children in the video or young young people at the very least and this is
01:06:19.680
just one example of course i can keep bringing up more and more and more of course of course but
01:06:23.680
also are there not are there not cis heterosexual nudists that move about life absolutely throughout
01:06:28.160
the u.s and and they oh and so again they're in specific areas right so the naked bike rides for
01:06:32.880
example we've also been critical of why is it there is why are we i just i for me listen i
01:06:38.240
i again i'm gonna reiterate we should not be sexualizing children but i don't think that the
01:06:43.040
human body is inherently sexual unless we sexualize it and tell children this is sexual this is sexual
01:06:49.680
you should be turned on by this which is it's that's not what anybody drag queens they're doing
01:06:54.480
it too who are these drag queens can you name some names you don't i can name a million drag queens
01:07:00.400
who go on stage who sexualize their theme their fake female body okay but yes again this is most
01:07:07.440
often usually normally 95 of the time happening in the context of a nightclub not at drag queen
01:07:14.400
story hour but there was a filled over like you said it has it has spilled yes but also that's what
01:07:19.920
we're talking about well exactly but what i'm also saying is that the same thing happens with
01:07:24.400
cis heterosexual right we agree with you i agree with you i completely agree and that's what i'm saying
01:07:29.760
i'm talking about my community to this i'm talking about my community but i'm saying we shouldn't we
01:07:34.000
shouldn't uh ban all drag because there's a chance that no one's banning drag sexual no one well
01:07:39.760
actually what do you mean nobody's banning where you're not where is drag band uh have you not heard
01:07:44.400
about what's happening in tennessee no why don't you tell me exactly what's happening so basically they
01:07:48.720
want to ban you know they want to ban drag performances and make it specifically 21 and up as
01:07:54.880
if it is okay so strip club well you mean ban it for kids so are you saying that you left the word
01:08:02.720
kids okay but are you saying that a 20 year old is um are you saying a 20 year old is a child no
01:08:10.960
when you really care about someone you shout it from the mountaintops so on behalf of desjardins
01:08:16.560
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01:08:22.000
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that's b-o-b at advertise cast as in podcast.com i'm not saying that no i i but i'm just saying i'm
01:09:07.120
not saying that they shouldn't be there when there are over a half right now right in california
01:09:12.720
moving across the u.s that is a problem because what what the conservative right is trying to do is
01:09:19.040
they are trying they're not a monolith they're trying to use these exactly we're not a monolith
01:09:23.520
but no but many people many republicans on the conservative right are actively trying to ban
01:09:30.480
anything lgbtqia related in all around for many democrats well i gotta say it's well and democrats
01:09:36.480
but conservative democrats but it's because the lgbtq community are the ones who have included this
01:09:42.560
they're telling us who they are and i'm sitting here saying no we're not are you saying you only
01:09:46.720
see this in the lgbtq realm it's really easy to pull this out you can pull this clip up on youtube
01:09:52.640
when this was a family christmas show with fake breasts and children were were being presented
01:09:57.200
simulated sex acts the lgbtq community and this was defended it and said that's exactly what they
01:10:01.840
were about now don't say that the lgbtq community individuals don't say the lgbtq community
01:10:06.880
defended that because i am part of the lgbtq community i didn't personally defend that so
01:10:12.480
don't tell me that i am endorsing this because i'm a member of the lgbtq individuals defended it
01:10:17.280
okay you profiled individuals high high profile personalities on the left and the lgbtq community
01:10:22.320
have overly defend us and i'll give you the example again two weeks ago when we had a prominent
01:10:26.560
left personality on the show they actually said this should not be removed from grade schools and
01:10:31.920
it's a good book for kids well shouldn't that show you that we are not a monolith as a community
01:10:36.000
but it shows you why it shows you that there are some people that perhaps believe that and
01:10:40.160
there's many that don't so do not categorize us as all being the same and if if somebody comes out
01:10:44.560
and says hey this is not appropriate we shouldn't allow this and prominent left personalities tv shows
01:10:49.680
and pundits all rushed to the fence it gets the lines are blurred it gets it becomes one thing and
01:10:55.360
that's what pisses me off is because this show is a professional production that was it's a christmas
01:11:01.920
show okay and and in this particular picture this person reveals their breasts and they're
01:11:08.080
simulated it brings me back to my beginning point yeah whose fault is it that we're sexualizing breasts
01:11:13.040
who the fuck cares if you see a drag is also the thrusting into the a drag queen doing it on stage
01:11:19.120
she's she's sexualizing the breath it's she made it naughty right i mean that's they make the breasts
01:11:24.400
naughty i mean that's what she did i mean the the context of this is at what point do we put the
01:11:28.960
responsibility on parents not to bring these children to events like this and that's where
01:11:33.280
i've turned my focus hey uh yeah drag is appropriate again in many different contexts and it can be
01:11:39.760
appropriate in the context of children like drag queen story hour when you go to drag queen story
01:11:44.080
hour it's not this and you might be able to pull up clips where you see oh well actually this did happen
01:11:49.280
a few times yeah i'm sure it has but again that's not that's not depicting the entire
01:11:54.080
lgbtq community so we'll clarify this there are certainly a lot of conservatives more uh religious
01:12:00.000
and staunch conservatives who would say any of it all of it banned right but the bigger issue is that
01:12:04.960
when you see something like this there was the incident in the uk where the individual wore the
01:12:09.520
rainbow monkey costume with the genitals and things like that when they say this is what drag is
01:12:15.440
there is a a semantic difference right so often what you'll see on the left uh or among lgbtq individuals
01:12:22.400
they'll say a man dressing like a woman is drag they'll show uh mrs doubtfire for example being an
01:12:27.440
example uh i don't think that's what conservatives are talking about i don't think any conservatives
01:12:31.920
are saying like no one should watch mrs doubtfire you see a play where a man is in the role of but
01:12:36.400
that's the thing actually tim you we've got to step back a second because there are states that are
01:12:41.600
wanting to disallow things like mrs doubtfire any sort of idea of drag the idea of dressing as the
01:12:49.520
opposite gender that you were assigned at birth that is actually being criminalized and that is where
01:12:54.000
lgbtqia people have a big problem and again it goes back to this idea that tim have you ever had in any
01:12:59.840
single year over 500 bills specifically targeted against your your identity as a human being probably
01:13:06.960
not maybe you have but as somebody who is queer and i've seen it increase year after year after year
01:13:13.600
they're trying to make this a thing that it is not and the folks that are um you know putting
01:13:20.480
forth these bills the folks that are being massively critical of this kind of thing are the same people
01:13:25.840
who back in the 1970s said we should not allow gay marriage because well what's it going to lead to
01:13:31.440
next we should not allow gay marriage because they're coming for your children um it's this it's
01:13:36.080
it's this he's gonna pull that up it's this slippery slope the thing is it's a slippery slope argument
01:13:41.200
it's a slippery slope argument and and you know bother so so so but let's address this there's a
01:13:47.400
viral meme it says what will happen if gay marriage is legalized first gay people will get married a
01:13:52.680
third world war world war will break out various plagues schools begin teaching kids how to have gay
01:13:57.200
sex the terrorists will win the joke is that these things are happening but the one thing i will focus
01:14:01.680
on i mean maybe a third world war there's covid but uh yeah this book is gay was given to children
01:14:06.960
and there are there are many instances where books like genderqueer and florida's addressed this and
01:14:12.020
it's happened in hundreds of schools across the country kids are being taught it's not even i think
01:14:16.880
gay sex is is is not even the right way to to address it it's not you're right these books are uh
01:14:23.240
beyond it so i think it is a fair point uh brought up earlier that scat is not exclusive to the lgbt
01:14:28.480
community i can't believe i'm talking about this but uh there's a lot of things in this book that
01:14:33.160
are explicitly just generally kink that children should not be exposed to that are being taught in
01:14:38.020
schools under the premise it is lgbt education okay but that's the thing is and that's where i i do
01:14:44.360
agree with you i don't think that that's i don't think that should be taught as lgbtqia education
01:14:49.120
when we talk about what is actually being taught as lgbtqia education in in schools in states that
01:14:56.240
specifically require so for instance i live in california lgbtqia education in history is a state
01:15:02.620
requirement uh and again it's all age appropriate the thing is kids are i do think that sex education
01:15:10.500
should be taught to children and it needs to be inclusive of lgbtqia people because i received sex
01:15:16.300
education when i was in middle school high school but it actually didn't really include anything about
01:15:21.940
the kind of person that i am and my sort of like what kind of sex eddie so basically um you know
01:15:28.240
learning about safe sex learning about um learning about safe sex learning about um the risks involved
01:15:34.660
in it and the big one of the big reasons that sex education is so important is to empower children
01:15:40.600
to know what is right and wrong for themselves and to know and when i say that what i mean is
01:15:45.640
recognizing when you actually see abuse and one of the reasons that you see so many young children
01:15:50.740
uh being abused sexually uh by non-lgbtqia people is because they actually don't have any sort of
01:15:58.080
education or knowledge to know that that is wrong and that's part of the reason why nations like uh
01:16:03.540
you know places like the netherlands they have comprehensive sex education from kindergarten to
01:16:08.320
12th grade that is again age appropriate and folks who are uh from there they're no more likely
01:16:15.220
to engage in sex earlier than anybody else across the world especially when you compare to the usa
01:16:21.220
but they are much more likely to make informed decisions about how and when they want to engage
01:16:27.260
in sexual activity how and when they want to say yes or no uh use protection and make sure that they
01:16:33.480
are doing it safely i think it would be so naive to say that teenagers aren't having sex you know
01:16:38.900
teenagers have sex and i agree that teenagers should not be having sex with adults but recognizing
01:16:45.860
that difference and realizing that that's something wrong that something is wrong in that is something
01:16:51.100
that is taught in sex education and it needs to be inclusive of lgbtqia here's here's the hard
01:16:56.160
moralistic separation conservatives that argue teenagers should not have sex at all period well
01:17:00.320
yeah and that's the thing and that's been something that's been taught uh since uh the time of
01:17:04.660
reagan billions of dollars billions of dollars have been put into sex education uh from the 80s sorry
01:17:11.460
yes oh closer okay billions of dollars have been put into sex education in a way that has been
01:17:18.320
explicitly said explicitly said you have to you have to do this from an abstinence only approach and it's
01:17:24.840
so unrealistic telling teenagers they can't do anything of course they're going to rebel and then when
01:17:30.940
they're raging with you know hormones and coming into themselves of course they're going to be
01:17:34.800
engaging in things like that so to to take an abstinence only approach is actually it's negligent
01:17:41.000
and it's irresponsible and that's exactly what causes high rates of stis and teen pregnancies when you
01:17:48.320
start to tell people uh about sexuality again in a way that is age appropriate that is um you know
01:17:55.840
based on this idea that is anchored by love and relationships rather than just explicit hardcore
01:18:01.840
sex it's easier for children to talk to adults about that to trusted adults to parents and so
01:18:08.220
that's the thing is that in the netherlands they ended up you know nine out of ten uh you know folks
01:18:14.020
who are teenagers who engage in that sort of behavior do it in a way that is safe and informed
01:18:18.980
because they've received that education versus in the united states where again since the 80s since
01:18:23.780
you know uh reaganomics it has been abstinence only and that is not an effective or accurate
01:18:30.080
way to teach people about sex and it actually makes people shameful about sex you know we're all sexual
01:18:36.120
beings and that's something that you grow into as an adult and i think that it's important to teach kids
01:18:41.920
to be informed about that and to to make appropriate decisions for themselves that are consensual
01:18:48.000
you know based on based on those kinds of things um do you think that schools should be concealing
01:18:54.940
the um gender and names i do and i'll tell you exactly why of the kids so they're double they're
01:19:02.400
living double lives i think they're no they're not living double lives the kids are actually uh they
01:19:07.180
feel safe enough to tell the people who are in their school environment who they are because they
01:19:12.780
don't feel safe at home if a child felt safe enough to come out to their parents they would the reason
01:19:17.460
that a child would come out to teachers or peers or a counselor at school and not to their parents
01:19:23.580
is very likely because they're afraid of the consequences of actually revealing that to their
01:19:27.920
parents so if they if they live in an abusive home should they be removed from it well it also i think
01:19:32.800
uh abusive home so i think that uh yeah i think yeah i think generally yes if children are in
01:19:39.080
abusive homes they should be removed so if they cannot affirm their gender at home or their sexuality
01:19:44.020
yes but i also think this is i think it's also important to note that this is not just a singular
01:19:49.040
conversation that you know eight-year-olds are having with their parents these are you know these
01:19:54.120
are going to be 14 15 16 17 year olds who are coming into their identity they're coming into the
01:19:59.420
world they're almost at that point where they're almost adults they're starting to realize who they
01:20:03.600
are they're starting to develop autonomy you know teenagers they're autonomous by the time they're
01:20:08.620
hitting puberty and they're starting to realize who they are in the context of the rest of the world
01:20:13.020
and when they live in a home that doesn't recognize or affirm them that can be really
01:20:17.780
detrimental to lgbtqia health and that's why uh folks that are are trans who are teenagers that's
01:20:24.300
why i know you've mentioned this on your other shows that you know there are very high rates of
01:20:28.860
suicide for lgbtqia people specifically trans people who are are teenagers and they're living in
01:20:35.580
this world where they're they're not being seen or recognized by anybody around them not not their
01:20:40.800
parents not their their teachers etc but that's actually our an argument against affirmation or
01:20:47.160
concealing from the parents so the the predominant studies that we have show that desistance rates
01:20:53.160
are between i think it's 65 and like 96 percent or something like that for trans uh gender dysphoric
01:20:59.480
youth if they if there is no intervention the the likelihood is greater than chance that a a child who
01:21:06.460
is gender dysphoric will desist and go on to likely just be a gay adult if the argument is that trans
01:21:13.780
uh individuals that it also goes back to what's inherently wrong about being a transgender adult
01:21:18.280
tim high suicide rate now if if you just said that and yeah but that's it's suicide in the context of
01:21:25.420
not being acknowledged or seen as you are the thing is we are all individuals and that's liberty and
01:21:30.960
freedom is this is exactly the point i'm making if desistance rates tend to be between let's just
01:21:37.860
say 60 and 90 it's higher than that i think it's like 65 the fact of the matter is detransition
01:21:41.820
rates i know you existence not detransition okay this means you have a 10 year old child who is
01:21:46.880
experiencing dysphoria the the study when you really care about someone you shouted from the
01:21:53.640
mountaintops so on behalf of desjardins insurance i'm standing 20 000 feet above sea level to tell our
01:21:59.460
clients that we really care about you care about you home and auto insurance personalized to your
01:22:06.280
needs weird i don't remember saying that part visit desjardins.com slash care and get insurance
01:22:12.960
that's really big on care did i mention that we care it's time to gear up for the school year at
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larry outlets highway 99 exit cart mill is and we've gone over these numerous episodes uh show that
01:22:53.280
if left alone to just go through puberty the child will likely end up just being a gay adult
01:22:58.280
and not trans so it solves the issue but so it actually doesn't though this means that overwhelmingly
01:23:04.340
there is a greater circumstance a greater chance they will be accepted as they are and as they want
01:23:10.520
to be whereas if they are given an intervention and uh uh hormones or puberty blockers they will end
01:23:17.660
up living a life where the world does not recognize them increasing their likelihood of suicide
01:23:21.360
yeah but is that actually on the trans person or is that on the uh the world that we live in and
01:23:26.320
you can't change you can't force yeah well that's what i'm saying we're not trying to force people
01:23:30.560
the reason i even came on this show is to i wanted to provide an opinion and an experience from my own
01:23:36.660
point of view and i'm not singular in my experience you know you might be able to look on the internet
01:23:41.680
and see all these studies and statistics but you don't have experience as a transgender person what
01:23:46.120
it's like to go through the world as a transgender person i do my community does my friends do and
01:23:52.080
we see using the data but that's the thing no okay but data can also be you can pick and choose data
01:23:57.240
the thing is most detransition and i know we weren't talking about that but detransition is actually
01:24:02.520
very rare and the thing is you know with when it comes to puberty blockers the reason that puberty
01:24:07.540
blockers are prescribed is to actually um give the the person in question the family the doctors in
01:24:15.460
uh substantive time to actually figure this out and to give the child in question uh time to think is
01:24:23.380
this actually for me or is it not and you know i've seen so many arguments against puberty blockers
01:24:29.780
especially from groups like um gays against groomers and libs of tiktok and the thing is that puberty
01:24:37.600
blockers are not just specifically prescribed to transgender teenagers they are prescribed to uh
01:24:44.100
teenagers who are cisgender who are experiencing precocious puberty these have been prescribed since
01:24:48.820
the early 1990s there's been at this point decades of research that they are they are not harmful
01:24:54.580
they're reversible there may be some bone density loss i know that's the big argument
01:24:59.540
against but this can be uh you know that can be supplemented with you know vitamin d and and you
01:25:06.860
know there's there's treatments to to fix that but i don't think that that particular one small risk
01:25:12.040
is a reason to say we shouldn't allow children to do that and the thing is puberty blockers what
01:25:16.220
they actually do is again they are blocking puberty from happening so that that children and parents
01:25:23.260
and doctors can have a legitimate informed and ongoing conversation i think there's this myth going around
01:25:29.280
that parents are just saying well i want you to be trans i'm taking you into a gender clinic and
01:25:34.560
we're going to get you on hormones today and that's not how it works and the fact of the matter is that
01:25:39.580
most uh most people who end up going on hormone blockers they'll do that for a few years if you
01:25:44.960
decide that you don't want to actually transition you don't have to but what it's actually doing is
01:25:49.900
it's actually giving uh teenagers and parents and doctors time to see if this is something that is
01:25:55.800
temporary or is is this an ongoing thing where yeah this person actually is experiencing the level
01:26:01.860
of gender dysphoria where they actually want to transition and make it a permanent thing rather
01:26:07.700
than just a trend and there's this idea of like this social contagion which it's just it's so false
01:26:13.200
it's so you don't oh go ahead well they've they've seen that i mean i was asked to speak in chico
01:26:18.440
california by a woman's group because they said you know it has exploded there like why did it explode
01:26:26.720
and there is this belief that it's a social contagion because you get one group of friends
01:26:31.080
and you get a couple of the people who identify as trans eventually they're all jumping on board
01:26:35.940
exactly and that's why doing puberty blockers that's not permanent that is it's basically it's
01:26:41.440
delaying puberty so that the individual the parents and the doctors uh all together can formulate
01:26:47.780
this opinion about whether or not this is something that is actually beneficial and ongoing for the
01:26:53.260
individual in question so this idea that parents are just taking you know 13 year olds in and putting
01:26:59.420
them on hrt in the same day it's it's a false narrative and while there may be you know maybe one
01:27:05.360
or two or obviously one or two is like but if there's a few instances where that's happening
01:27:10.380
again people who are opposed to the idea of people transitioning in general they're going to take this
01:27:16.180
one instance and say well this is what all teenagers are doing this is what all parents
01:27:20.380
are doing that with racism too they say all white people are actually when they could point out
01:27:24.200
little things i mean don't don't doesn't every instant matter i mean we all of it matters right
01:27:30.060
when uh we had uh destiny on i think i'll try and pull them up i think the numbers were in terms of
01:27:35.640
surgery among uh minors it was in over the past few years like a few thousand but when it comes to
01:27:42.700
hormone replacement therapy in the past four years i think it was around 50 000 so it is happening to
01:27:47.620
a lot of uh but again tim again tim this is not something that is happening to very young children
01:27:53.580
and when it's that's the thing that's when you say children it's very easy to think oh seven eight
01:27:58.400
year olds the thing is puberty blockers are not prescribed to children who have not yet reached
01:28:03.380
puberty and then when they go into taking puberty blockers they're on puberty blockers so that they
01:28:09.940
can decide along with their family along with their doctors if hrt or something else is appropriate
01:28:15.180
down the line so while there are instances of um teenagers who are 16 17 18 you know perhaps getting
01:28:23.680
top surgery or um going on hrt this is not the overwhelming majority and that's the reason that
01:28:29.580
puberty blockers are actually a great option for for kids who are thinking that they are trans and if
01:28:36.380
you're experiencing that level of gender dysphoria again i'm not saying all kids should go on this but
01:28:41.780
if you are a child who is experiencing extreme gender dysphoria you've expressed this to your family
01:28:47.080
your school your doctor uh it's worth a conversation because the thing is that there are trans adults
01:28:53.920
and trans adults many times often were trans youth and were ignored and told that they didn't know what
01:29:00.200
the hell they were talking about so this is uh from reuters diagnoses of use with gender dysphoria
01:29:05.680
surge 2017 it was 15 000 2018 18 2019 it was 21 000 by 2021 it's now 42 000 nearly doubling from the
01:29:13.720
previous year and when it when they show you at least a few of the states you can see california
01:29:17.760
saw a massive spike from 2016 to 2020 in other states like massachusetts and michigan there they've
01:29:23.320
all seen growth but not uh not nearly as pronounced as california though new york pennsylvania and
01:29:29.160
washington have yeah do you want to hear my explanation of that so i my explanation of that is
01:29:35.480
because of the fact that there are states california is a state that requires lgbtqia education in
01:29:40.960
history when you don't give kids the language or the understanding to realize that there are other
01:29:46.980
kinds of people uh so for instance um you know i came out as transgender uh in my 20s but a big part
01:29:54.260
of that reason was that sort of language and that sort of understanding was never taught to me when i was
01:29:59.140
younger i've always been the way that i have been but it wasn't until a little bit later on that i really
01:30:04.400
had that understanding and that language to sort of describe who i am and what my experience is like
01:30:09.660
and so the reason that so many uh folks want to ban lgbtqia education is because they don't want kids
01:30:16.500
to realize that actually you might be trans or non-binary and again it it goes back to this question
01:30:21.960
of what is inherently wrong about being trans or non-binary so a correction uh it wasn't 50 000 or
01:30:28.400
whatever that were receiving hormones it was they found 121 882 children ages 6 to 17 i understand
01:30:35.300
there's a distinction between like a 16 17 year old and a six year old but they say we're diagnosed
01:30:39.000
with gender dysphoria and in terms of puberty blockers it's about uh 600 in 2017 escalating to
01:30:45.160
in 2021 1390 yeah so again my point is that i'm sorry i'm sorry i i was wrong that's puberty blockers
01:30:52.860
and then hormone therapy was about 1 900 in 2017 growing to 4 231 in 2021 sorry okay so again my
01:31:01.880
point is that uh yeah when you are growing up and you're learning about the world and you don't
01:31:07.060
realize that this that there is language and experience to match what what is going on with
01:31:12.460
your internal self then again you're just going to think there is something wrong with you and when
01:31:16.560
you live in a state like california that requires lgbtqia education you're going to have a much
01:31:21.460
different experience than a place like alabama or a particular state that wants to outlaw lgbtqia
01:31:28.680
education entirely there's this idea that if you shield people from lgbtqia knowledge that they will
01:31:34.820
not become lgbtqia but there is an in there's something inherent about being lgbtqia and what i'm
01:31:41.160
saying is again nurture children and let them let children figure out who they are on their own
01:31:46.200
and that's why this kind of education is important because it shows that uh what you might be feeling
01:31:53.180
might not be there's nothing wrong with that and the thing is there's children are not being turned
01:31:58.900
trans you can't just make somebody be trans i will tell you that as somebody who has grown up i initially
01:32:05.740
came out as gay and i now identify as trans i will tell you i wanted nothing more in the world
01:32:11.660
to be cis heterosexual growing up because i saw the way that the world treats people like me
01:32:16.800
there's no reason that people want to to be ostracized and the thing is when you give people
01:32:22.500
the tools and the knowledge in the community to know that oh you're actually you're wonderful just
01:32:28.400
the way you are uh that's actually very that's a great thing when i say just the way you are
01:32:33.740
you know there's something inherent about being transgender so while um in some instances the
01:32:40.200
outside not might not match what the inside is feeling for people that's something that i do
01:32:45.500
think is appropriate for for kids to know about like why are we again it begs the question why are
01:32:51.860
we shielding kids from lgbtqia people the the suggestion there the suggestion there is that there's
01:32:59.560
something wrong with being lgbtqia i don't think they're being shielded i i don't understand how people
01:33:04.940
in 2023 you when you say you when you say you when you know don't say gay laws like i know that
01:33:10.560
but that's don't say gay i know that's like uh that's false that that bill actually banned straight
01:33:14.580
conversations as well as gay conversations right teachers were barred from talking about any
01:33:18.660
heterosexual relationship all the same yeah but also there's i just uh so i mean i just recall growing
01:33:24.920
up in a world where every sort of content that i was viewing was viewed through a cis heteronormative
01:33:31.560
lens whether or not it was sexually explicit in most cases it wasn't and that's what we're saying
01:33:36.440
is that you can introduce children to an lgbtqia lens without being without it being sexually explicit
01:33:42.780
and without saying you must be lgbtqia the fact of the matter is that lgbtqia youth deserve the same
01:33:50.140
benefits that cis heteronormative youth receive when they receive uh sex education in school and very
01:33:57.180
very few states require lgbtqia sex education california is one of only a handful of of those
01:34:03.680
that do my sex education in school which is i'm what 20 years at least not 20 years but over 10
01:34:09.840
years older than you guys was in california born and raised california went to california schools my
01:34:13.920
whole life our sex education was under health a health education and it was about reproduction
01:34:21.160
so we and we learned about masturbation and things like that they would separate oh really wasn't that
01:34:26.460
pornography um we talk about self-pleasure i don't know whenever so what's the difference between
01:34:32.120
that and take the shame out of it you know because exactly that's the thing and that's what i'm that's
01:34:37.220
my argument for lgbtqia inclusion is that take the shame out of being lgbtqia there's nothing wrong
01:34:44.260
with it and i i never felt shamed by the education system i felt it from the students themselves i knew
01:34:51.440
where do you think they learned that well at well at the the homes that you think are headed
01:34:56.640
from the homes of the adults who should make from the homes of people who didn't receive that kind
01:35:00.400
of but you but you said also the adults are the ones responsible for their children and they should
01:35:04.460
take responsibility for it and they could raise them any way they want but that's what i'm but
01:35:08.280
that's also my arguments for my argument for you know parent inclusion is if you don't want your
01:35:13.060
kid checking this book out don't let your kid check that book out you don't want your kid
01:35:16.140
pride don't bring your kids to pride you don't want your kid a drag queen story hour don't take
01:35:19.720
your kid to drag well but don't tell every other student in the student student body that they
01:35:24.560
can't learn about well this is an excellent argument for school choice you also said schools should not
01:35:29.160
be telling the people when you really care about someone you shout it from the mountaintops so on
01:35:35.380
behalf of desjardins insurance i'm standing 20 000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we
01:35:40.640
really care about you home and auto insurance personalized to your needs weird i don't remember
01:35:48.780
saying that part visit desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care
01:35:57.460
parents what's going on at all no i didn't say that whatsoever what i said was that if you have
01:36:04.340
a student who is afraid to come out to their parents because they are uh thinking that they might
01:36:09.900
be transgender and they're afraid to come out to their parents there's a reason they're afraid to
01:36:13.720
come out to their parents they probably control what they're seeing what they're hearing if the
01:36:17.360
parents are being if you're 16 17 years old and you're afraid to come out to your parents
01:36:22.540
you know tim there's a reason why lgbtqia youth are massively overrepresented in the homeless population
01:36:31.040
overall about 40 percent of of uh unhoused youth identifies lgbtqia and the reason for that is
01:36:39.260
because they are in homes that are abusive they're in homes where parents kick them out there is a
01:36:44.640
legitimate fear for lgbtqia people to come out to their parents because they see their parents
01:36:50.620
they're not dumb they're they're almost about to be adults they're they've seen the world around
01:36:55.320
them and they see the way that their parents interact with the world and if they see their
01:36:58.720
parents using words like faggot tranny etc i i don't doubt that they would be afraid to come out
01:37:04.660
what's what's stopping the youth from finding a home somewhere else finding a place to live
01:37:08.220
uh well the fact that i think there's this misunderstanding that there's just so many
01:37:13.100
uh uh homeless shelters out there i mean i live in los angeles we just came out we just had our uh
01:37:19.140
our uh statistics for the homelessness count come out just a couple of weeks ago there's now about 70
01:37:25.640
000 people living in la county who are unhoused every single year i participate in the homelessness
01:37:32.460
count it's uh it's done by the la county housing uh housing services authority and it's a point in
01:37:38.880
place counts and what has been really disturbing to me is that over the past five six years i've done
01:37:45.120
the count probably about four times every single year the results come out the numbers just keep
01:37:51.020
increasing and increasing increasing and this is just overall do you know why uh minors are homeless
01:37:56.700
predominantly uh i don't and i don't know if i could you're incorrect uh it's because they chose
01:38:03.140
to be and i know this because i actually worked okay but wouldn't you because i actually worked for
01:38:06.420
a homeless shelter and one of the challenges that we face with multiple buildings in the network was
01:38:11.360
that children would uh the these are these are teenagers typically between 13 and 17 refuse to get
01:38:19.060
off the streets for a variety of reasons well if they are if they are lgbtqia and it's directly
01:38:24.840
related to their identity you can imagine why i mean would you want to live in a home where you
01:38:29.700
don't feel safe where i guarantee you there are lgbtqia kids being these are boarding these are getting
01:38:34.800
the fuck beaten out of them by their parents these are who are homophobic and transphobic private
01:38:39.420
bedroom and a private shelter residence that that are yeah but i think that's a that's a huge myth that
01:38:44.900
there are that there's enough housing for people who are experiencing homelessness yeah yeah i'm sorry
01:38:49.280
you were wrong no you were wrong i worked for a homeless shelter network did i and they were always
01:38:54.340
empty and they instructed us to lie to people to claim that they were full and we were desperate for
01:38:59.920
more money to expand them okay and that's on the that's on the people experiencing homelessness
01:39:04.600
the people who were on the streets that were being given outreach for an opportunity to have a
01:39:09.500
place to live would reject it every time so when i asked you want to know why tim have you ever
01:39:13.280
actually gone out and spoken to those yes i have that's quite literally what i what i did and when
01:39:17.080
i asked the executive director why are why are we being instructed to tell people that we're at
01:39:20.860
capacity when we're empty and when i go to these shelters there's no one here he said we can't get
01:39:25.560
the kids to come they don't want to they don't want to come to tell them that the shelters are
01:39:30.160
no tell the donors the shelters are full because we need their money okay so let me ask you this
01:39:35.620
tim if you were somebody experiencing homelessness and you were living in a tent on the streets of
01:39:40.420
los angeles and somebody came up to you and said uh okay we're going to give you housing but here's
01:39:45.680
the thing you cannot bring you can only bring two bags of belongings you have a curfew you have to be
01:39:51.200
in by nine o'clock you have to be out by 7 a.m you can't have any family members come you can't have
01:39:57.420
any pets come you can't have any visitors the thing is that for being lgbt or anything that's well
01:40:02.220
no but that's just the general argument for that's the general argument for why so many people who are
01:40:06.540
experiencing homelessness are adverse to the idea of taking on these temporary uh uh interim housing
01:40:13.620
situations is because they are carceral in nature and the thing is you and i both believe in freedom
01:40:19.520
and liberty and if do you have a family you have kids or a wife or anything girlfriend a girlfriend
01:40:24.880
so let's say uh you suddenly were in this situation where you're unhoused and they said well you can't
01:40:30.760
have your girlfriend over and um let's say you even did have kids or or something like that and
01:40:36.540
they said you can't have anybody come and stay with you you can have kids you can't have your spouse or
01:40:41.640
your loved one you can only bring two bags of belongings this is not an argument for a fleeing
01:40:46.320
a home because no but this is it is related because again lgbtqia people are overrepresented
01:40:51.760
in the you're simply saying that the circumstances afforded to these kids have a free place to live
01:40:56.840
don't meet what they feel i wouldn't call i wouldn't call kids experiencing homelessness
01:41:01.360
given temporary shelter a free place to live they don't get they don't get the kind of support that
01:41:06.880
actually comes from a loving nurturing home well of course they're opting for living on the street
01:41:10.940
and that population is going to grow think about why somebody would opt to live on the streets
01:41:15.180
instead of being housed that population will grow so if there is a shelter that lets lgbt youth be
01:41:21.400
themselves but they're hey look you can't do certain things if you're going to live here and
01:41:25.020
they say i'd rather live on the streets the issue is not that they're homeless because they're lgbt
01:41:28.680
it's because the shelters suck and these kids would rather be on the streets okay so what where so
01:41:34.500
what is your argument in who's the who's at fault who's the blame here are you blaming lgbtqa youth
01:41:39.900
or are you blaming the system there's no there's no one to blame but if you're going to make the
01:41:43.200
argument that the reason they're homeless is because their parents were abusive when the reality is
01:41:47.160
they don't like if they have if they have parents if they have parents who are not supportive of
01:41:52.400
their identities and are abusing them resultingly i think you might not be aware that there are a lot
01:41:58.600
of parents who literally abuse verbally and physically their children because they are lgbtqa
01:42:04.700
there are there are not every lgbt not every single homeless youth is of course lgbt agreed agreed but if
01:42:11.180
if i'm going to look at my experience having actually worked with this with these networks
01:42:14.780
the kids who are not lgbt who who are uh many of the kids were being abused they ran away
01:42:19.880
uh many of these kids did opt to take a shelter so they could go to school and they could get a
01:42:24.200
better life the majority of them however wouldn't do it regardless of whether they lgbtq or not drug
01:42:28.960
use was it was a big problem drinking was a big problem and so the the prohibitive factor that we
01:42:34.580
experienced was you told the kid they couldn't have drugs they would not come so what they would do
01:42:39.720
instead was they would say okay we'll give you a tent we'll give you blankets and they said thanks and
01:42:42.940
they disappeared the next day it had nothing to do with being lgbt it had everything to do with
01:42:47.500
we don't want to live in this building under these circumstances and if that's the case
01:42:52.600
you can't just say that oh these kids are forced into homeless because of this issue because
01:42:57.720
they're not that i can certainly say the kids who are not lgbt who are drug use is a big component
01:43:03.620
here they're not going to go to a shelter that's prohibiting drugs but if the only factor in say as a 15
01:43:08.580
year old kid who's gay his parents are you know mean they're abusive so he runs away well why
01:43:13.120
wouldn't that kid simply be like yes thank you finally a place to live where people aren't going
01:43:16.740
to be abusive i also don't think that um teenagers in that particular um experience have the knowledge
01:43:22.860
to know about all the resources available and also i live in a place like los angeles where uh there
01:43:28.260
are many resources available but there aren't nearly enough available to every person experiencing
01:43:32.900
homelessness so i i can't even imagine is there a an lg there's there a homelessness shelter anywhere
01:43:39.480
within five miles of here here no way yeah to be honest there may be but we're so you don't think
01:43:44.320
that there might be an lgbtqia kid living somewhere near here who has experienced abuse at home runs
01:43:50.120
away goes to stay with the family moves to a city he's 40 miles away you know you know dc's okay so
01:43:55.420
you're expecting a kid to make their way 40 miles away to dc to find a homeless shelter it's just
01:44:00.780
these are these are not realistic expectations for lgbtq i was a homeless gay adult for two weeks
01:44:07.020
i lived in a car and i can tell you that the people that i encountered on the road um who were also
01:44:12.840
homeless are standing in church lines it was always the churches who were giving us help by the way
01:44:16.820
so we're standing um in line for church uh food and money from the church and nobody wanted a home they
01:44:24.420
didn't want shelter they wanted their money they wanted their food so they could take with the rest of
01:44:28.160
their money and go buy drugs and alcohol with it and it was like we would sit under this tree in a
01:44:34.260
grocery store parking lot and there was all kinds of people and they it was like camping and it was
01:44:40.100
like they enjoyed their freedom they enjoyed they they consider that the ultimate freedom is to not be
01:44:46.000
tied down with bills rent taxes anything just they're just yeah but our 16 year olds really tied down with
01:44:52.160
bills rent and taxes no but there was but they get to party constantly yeah there was a there was when i
01:44:56.780
lived in seattle there was a group they called the avrats the the avenue rats they called themselves
01:45:01.980
that and they were intentionally homeless youth who liked doing whatever they want whenever they
01:45:06.540
wanted they were given food for free because of the support structures that existed to give out food
01:45:10.740
to the homeless then whatever money they would ever get they would do things where they'd get an ebt
01:45:15.620
card sell you know hey i'll give you 180 bucks worth of food for a hundred dollars i bought drugs like
01:45:21.420
right exactly they'd buy drugs with it uh we if you want to address or say no no no i'm sorry i didn't
01:45:26.940
mean to cut you off tim i i really just wanted to say that i i feel like we're kind of starting to
01:45:30.660
run around in circles about this so i was going to change subjects the idea to me is that you know i
01:45:34.700
don't think that any of this is okay i want to be i want to be trans so i'm going to go and be
01:45:39.620
homeless and i'm going to go take advantage of the government i'm sure there might be instances of
01:45:44.440
that but you have to consider that folks that age they don't have the experience they don't know
01:45:48.920
about resources they don't know about possibilities and they don't know about you know support systems
01:45:53.520
that really support them and uh i have worked with enough uh people who have experienced homelessness
01:45:59.700
to understand why they have a massive distrust of um government programs that that promise them
01:46:06.180
housing a lot of people are promised permanence permanent supportive housing but they end up being
01:46:11.660
back on the streets just months later as an example uh so i worked with uh the um i i was
01:46:18.820
somebody who went out during i don't know if you're familiar with echo park in los angeles uh
01:46:23.800
back in march 2021 there was a massive eviction of people experiencing homelessness that were living
01:46:29.680
at echo park lake and um there was uh probably about there was about 200 people uh more or less
01:46:36.440
give or take 10 people living at the park and the thing is these folks actually developed a
01:46:40.820
community with each other you know i think we often think of um you know folks who are experiencing
01:46:46.080
housing folks who have families and friends we have it made we know what it's like even when you're
01:46:50.860
in circumstances like that it is human nature to develop community and to develop alliances
01:46:55.920
and so there was a real community that was built at echo park lake i went there all the time i never
01:47:01.980
felt unsafe uh certainly there are people that feel uncomfortable when they see people experiencing
01:47:07.180
homelessness but that doesn't necessarily mean they are unsafe i never actually felt unsafe walking
01:47:12.340
around that park uh the city council member mitchell farrell at the time did a mass eviction of echo
01:47:17.940
park lake and what was so ugly to me was the fact that he was touting this as this big housing success he
01:47:26.660
said we got almost 200 people into housing what he didn't reveal was that that housing is very temporary
01:47:34.260
in nature and you you fast forward to about a year and a half two years later only five of the nearly
01:47:41.760
200 people that were evicted actually achieved permanent supportive housing seven were dead more people died
01:47:48.920
than were actually given permanent supportive housing so what they'll do is they'll put you in this
01:47:52.580
temporary shelter you've got maybe 60 or 90 days and then your time's up and you're just you're
01:47:59.360
dislocated you're shuffled around and so that's why there is such a distrust amongst people experiencing
01:48:04.800
homelessness whether they're lgbtqia or not about accepting these offers of housing i'll my final
01:48:11.380
thought because i do want to move to the the big finale is uh i agree i think a lot of these shelters
01:48:15.880
are dirty they're they're i think a lot of them are we're going to make a lot of money off this
01:48:20.640
problem and they're not actually helping thank you tim because you can't you can't you can't keep a job
01:48:25.740
as a director of somebody uh you know leading homelessness unless you have people experiencing
01:48:30.340
homelessness if you solve the problem you can't fundraise that and that's with everything
01:48:33.640
you create all these yeah i i'm very distrustful but uh the big finale we have about 10 minutes left
01:48:38.400
okay and i have the question for you that i i i wonder if you've uh been expecting you ready
01:48:44.200
i'm not expecting it but let's see what is when you really care about someone you shouted from the
01:48:51.340
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01:48:56.960
our clients that we really care about you care about you home and auto insurance personalized to
01:49:03.720
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i think i don't know if i'm qualified to answer that because i don't think that there's a singular
01:49:56.900
answer and i think it goes back into this idea of what i was talking about earlier as we look
01:50:01.240
so many people view the world through this binary lens of you're either this or that you're a man or
01:50:07.140
a woman but the idea of a man the idea of a woman is actually so expansive and there's so much
01:50:12.360
opportunity and nuance in between and i think it's up to the individual to decide and i think
01:50:17.780
that's part of the personal freedom and liberty that i agree with in american ideals is that let
01:50:23.920
us be free to uh be self-determinating and if i tell you that i am somebody i'm not going to tell you
01:50:30.580
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
01:50:36.680
who i am just to acknowledge me for that and if there ends up being you know a consequence
01:50:41.640
resultingly then deal with it but the fact that we have to have this definition of what a woman is
01:50:47.420
i think it's counterproductive and i think it's in and of itself meant to be transphobic well let me
01:50:52.900
let me let me ask you a follow-up uh what is a female oh um well also you know i think a big thing
01:51:01.000
that we haven't talked about actually at all in this conversation is the idea of intersex people
01:51:06.460
and so again i was talking about this idea of the binary you know people view the world again black
01:51:12.360
and white this or that male or female uh it also it it denigrates the experience of everybody in
01:51:18.780
between there are so many people who are born intersex who are healthy people and they are that
01:51:26.500
would naturally imply there is a male and a female then and there is well right well but that's the
01:51:31.380
thing is perhaps yeah there are but also so what is a state but to state that there is just male and
01:51:37.360
female is incorrect because there's so much in between right i won't say that people who are born
01:51:41.540
people who are born intersex you know i want to define what female is uh female would in my opinion
01:51:47.400
be the one end of this binary that that society has created and whether or not i just i agree or
01:51:54.440
disagree with it it's sort of the circumstances of the society that we live in so sex and gender
01:52:00.120
the argument is they're different sex is a clearly definable scientific scientifically identical
01:52:04.700
thing but you you say it's society created it well i think that they're you know gender and sex are
01:52:11.220
different absolutely so female relating to the sex is male and female yeah i think that it's relating
01:52:16.380
to that but again the idea that it's just male and female it completely takes away the autonomy
01:52:21.060
of intersex people which are there is a huge prevalence of intersex people who were born
01:52:26.240
intersex and these are the people in order for their these are the people we should be has to be a
01:52:30.640
male and a female right uh so i'm not i'm not asking for based off of this idea of a binary i don't
01:52:35.340
disagree with the existence of intersex people but i think that somebody you know if we're gonna if
01:52:39.140
we're gonna try and get to the core of what the social argument is and the argument typically on the
01:52:44.220
lgbt left side is that woman can be your experience well then female has to be discernibly
01:52:50.480
something we can identify well i think you can also you can change your sex and your gender
01:52:54.460
you know uh the you know the appropriate term but you but you you can't change your sex you can't
01:52:59.800
change your gender uh i think that's i disagree i disagree with that how do you alter your dna
01:53:04.360
throughout your whole body you know what do you think what do you think hrt is what do you think
01:53:07.180
hrt is hormone replacement doesn't change that it changes your biology it changes your biology
01:53:11.600
okay so but also if we're talking about chromosomes like in what other context are we describing
01:53:18.200
people based off of their chromosomes i think the argument for this is an argument intentionally
01:53:23.360
created to be an argument against transgender people as if we are some freaks of nature trying
01:53:28.620
to fool people and the fact of the matter is that that's a bit over the top right well no but do you
01:53:33.620
disagree that that there are many people who would who would describe us that way there are a lot of
01:53:39.460
people who are uh very mean i would say but here's what i'm trying to get to and this is what we need to
01:53:44.340
understand we we did not create as a society women's sports because sometimes people wear dresses
01:53:48.800
we created women's sports because biological males versus biological females have differences in
01:53:53.320
fast twitch versus slow twitch muscle center of gravity general uh collagen and bone density okay but
01:53:58.920
also when we talk about sports this when we talk about sports it's not just about you know it's very
01:54:04.480
much uh condensed into this idea of oh um you know we're uh transgender people are erasing women and you
01:54:11.560
know there are all these cis women who are not getting scholarships and not winning the fact of
01:54:15.160
the matter is transgender people have been performing in sports with cisgender people for a long time
01:54:20.760
it's only recently become this cultural phenomenon where people are speaking out against it and the
01:54:25.040
thing is transgender people are not always winning against cisgender people and that in and of itself
01:54:29.900
defies the argument that that uh you know folks who are born male shouldn't be competing with with
01:54:36.020
well that's not the argument folks who are born female the argument may be mistakenly on the surface
01:54:40.180
to a lot of people is that biological males are winning all the time the argument is that uh i'll
01:54:45.840
give you an example in skateboarding the first ever 1080 uh three full three full rotations was done i
01:54:51.820
think by a 12 year old boy that was 10 years ago it is only in the past week that a female landed the
01:54:59.320
first 720 two rotations these are preview best and this is a 12 year old girl even before puberty there is
01:55:05.600
very visibly uh discernible distinctions between the sexes when it comes to sporting capability
01:55:10.140
so if you take someone who has all the advantages of uh uh a prenatal testosterone for instance in
01:55:17.180
the womb quite literally with more testosterone they're going to be competing with advantages over
01:55:21.720
people who do not have that and so the issue ultimately ultimately becomes if if the purpose
01:55:27.100
of competition is a dedication to training ability a combination of natural talent abilities and hard
01:55:32.800
work what you're doing is you're saying that some people who have a biological advantage but maybe
01:55:38.360
don't have the same level of of capabilities in the male spectrum are not competing against women
01:55:42.860
they may not they may not may or may not win but that means these these females are pushing 10 times
01:55:48.380
harder to try and be at the same level they would have been were it not for the male who's competing
01:55:52.320
against them well i think what your argument is leaving out is you know something that you emphasized
01:55:57.320
heavily is this idea of competition and it's something that i think you left out about this idea about
01:56:02.340
sports and about um being in athletics is uh one of the greatest things that comes to uh people whether
01:56:10.280
they be adults or children engaging in sports and sports and athletics which is this idea that uh of
01:56:16.480
team building there are so many benefits of actually uh being on a team uh that you know apply when you have
01:56:24.340
teams that are made up of cisgender and transgender people and it applies in many different realms it applies to
01:56:30.500
the sport itself you know developing a team being a team member uh it's not always just about winning
01:56:35.980
and i think that's part of what is so awful in our american culture is there's this emphasis on i must
01:56:41.560
wane i have to be the best i have to wane when i think competition i think we lose sight of what is uh
01:56:47.840
so wonderful about sports and a lot of sports are you know it's team building and it's uh working
01:56:52.920
we're not we're not tracking the stats of basketball teams because they have good teams we don't have
01:56:56.740
like how many high fives did lebron get but that's the thing is like what's the point of then you have
01:57:00.300
to ask well what's the point of doing a sport are you doing a sport just to win and show you're
01:57:03.780
better than somebody it's it's a competition between everybody to see who is ultimately the
01:57:07.720
best well if you know i recall i did sports growing up and one of the things that i actually
01:57:12.820
got out of that was team building it was never about i must win everything and i think that's a
01:57:17.220
really awful way to approach life is i must win everything it's a very capitalist approach it's a very
01:57:22.900
unfortunately american-centric approach of i must win i must be better because there has to be
01:57:27.720
somebody beneath me so uh i i we have a few minutes left and i had a question uh throughout the show
01:57:32.080
you've used the phrase cis to refer to people i'm curious how you justify using a term that is
01:57:36.520
offensive to a group of people i i laugh at that because it didn't become that's it's it's so
01:57:42.380
manufactured that that's offensive to people when people have been calling trans what right do you
01:57:47.260
have to tell people that i will tell people that because as as somebody who is transgender
01:57:51.740
the term tranny which i i use that term and i apologize if anybody listening is a you know
01:57:58.520
offended by that but as somebody who's transgender that word is has intentionally been used to
01:58:03.860
denigrate and dehumanize transgender people like queer like queer but cis is not cis no it's not it's
01:58:10.300
actually a medical so it's a medical latin prefix that has been used for time yeah and that's why i'm
01:58:16.740
not offended by the term homosexual a lot of people are in fact you'll get banned people are
01:58:20.700
social media if we're saying homosexual if you call someone a homo on youtube you will be taken
01:58:24.980
down and given a strike for hate speech okay well i disagree with that but i don't think that but
01:58:30.100
cis is not a cis is not a slur i will say that unapologetically group of people that they're
01:58:36.000
offended by a word you mean the group of people that is totally in dominance totally normative
01:58:42.020
what does that have to do with whether a group of people is offended by a word and consider it hate
01:58:45.360
because that group of people many folks within that group will use the opposite trans to describe
01:58:51.620
people in a way that is offensive but that's the thing is trans is not offensive i don't consider
01:58:56.220
trans to be offensive and i'm a transgender person i don't consider that's the group's preferred term
01:59:01.020
yeah but it's not the the other group's preferred term but those are not these are not preferred terms
01:59:06.240
these are these are these are words that are being used in opposition people want to be identified as
01:59:10.600
the way they want to be identified and you should use their pronouns so how would you like me to
01:59:14.120
describe you as as somebody i don't care what you call me i'm saying if people tell you don't call
01:59:18.600
me that you're saying you should call me the terms i want but i can call you whatever i want okay but
01:59:22.820
then how would you what word or phrase would you use to describe somebody who is not transgender
01:59:28.360
that's not up to me to decide well i'm somebody actually it is because you just told me that
01:59:34.520
cis is offensive and you are somebody who i would consider cis but i won't use that word because
01:59:38.760
i know you find it offensive i say they're organic that's what i organic yeah i'm also organic do you
01:59:45.020
think there's anything about me that's not organic well he thinks it's not a slur so he can call you
01:59:49.420
that if he wants right um i'm as far as organic i'm talking about being medicalized and and surgically
01:59:54.940
enhanced and all of that organic only you think only transgender people are medically and surgically
02:00:00.400
enhanced i think more uh average person i highly disagree right but what i'm saying is i'm you know
02:00:07.200
when you represent when you represent what you were born right there that's isn't that surgery
02:00:10.900
isn't that medicalized i just you can care you can care i'm talking about at birth what you are born
02:00:18.560
as my my my argument has always been um i use people's prefer pronouns i don't and thank you i
02:00:24.420
appreciate that tim i do appreciate that and i heard you say that in a previous podcast that you did
02:00:28.540
um and i i do really appreciate that i don't use neo pronouns though i think that is confusing and
02:00:34.480
hard for anyone to understand well i think it's also i think it's used as an argument to discount
02:00:39.400
many trans people i while i if somebody was to say to me hey these are my neo pronouns please use them
02:00:44.940
i would take an effort to try to use them if somebody else doesn't i can't be the person to say
02:00:49.480
you must do that but this idea that that issue is where's the line if somebody says i am you know my
02:00:54.720
pronouns are he or she or they what is the big deal just respect people as they come to you and this
02:01:01.060
is my point if uh uh you know we've had many trans guests in the show they say you know typically
02:01:06.300
nobody uh says like please use these pronouns we just use what seems to make the most sense what
02:01:11.500
they dress like but but if somebody says like but again that's like even that is so like it's so
02:01:16.120
culturally developed like there's nothing inherently biological about the way that somebody dresses
02:01:21.640
it's so socially but as a drag queen i can tell you what a woman is i mean i wouldn't even get to
02:01:27.000
that what i'll ask you but i just wanted to address this if if i'm asked by a trans person to use their
02:01:31.680
pronouns and say refer to me this way i say sure and if someone says don't call me says it's offensive
02:01:35.920
i say okay but i don't understand how it's inverted that the the trans uh many not all for me it's you
02:01:43.640
have to look at the group that is the dominant group and you have to look at the group that is
02:01:47.280
subjugated you have to look at the group that is being harmed by societal norms and that's that's
02:01:53.320
sort of my approach to it but truly truly tim if you were to tell me that cis was offensive to you
02:01:58.360
i wouldn't refer to you as cis i don't want to do anything to individually harm people but i will
02:02:02.820
also say that not all people who are not trans consider cis to be um but it's not about trans
02:02:09.280
people but that's the other thing is as for me i'm also i'm i'm trans but i'm not a monolith
02:02:14.540
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
02:02:19.280
uh you know trans or tranny i'm not going to use those words because ultimately ultimately my goal
02:02:24.820
is to see people as they see themselves to come at you as you are what couple minutes we can did
02:02:30.200
you want to answer what is a woman well yeah a woman is i can tell you what a woman is every drag queen
02:02:34.020
can tell you what a woman is if they're being honest this is why they wear the big hips the butt
02:02:38.740
the boobs that they tuck their penis so we we've already determined a woman does not have a penis
02:02:44.540
because drag queens tuck their penises i've never seen one drag queen in all of my years of pageants
02:02:50.000
have a bulge okay well you've never been to any of my shows and they do whatever they can
02:02:54.820
rupaul's drag race the biggest drag show there is you will never see a bulge you will never see the
02:02:59.800
penis rupaul's dragon rupaul's drag race is not the and it's all be all of and it's competition what
02:03:06.020
you're against and it's competition you i'm not against competition but also that is in a different
02:03:12.020
than sports and team building i'll tell you working in the in the gay nightlife entertainment
02:03:16.380
industry it was the most toxic environment i have ever worked in more more misogynistic and
02:03:22.000
patriarchal than being when i was a trucker and a diesel mechanic i'll tell you that it that but i
02:03:27.580
tell you back to what a woman was a woman is a human that's born with a vagina and has the capability
02:03:33.640
of reproducing or giving birth whether they can do it or not they have the anatomy for it to me that's
02:03:39.980
what a woman is then we all know it the traditional definition is and this is matt walsh says all the
02:03:45.660
time but it is literally the dictionary definition adult human female yes and then female is defined
02:03:50.100
as uh one of two biological sexes that has a characteristic but that's the that's the falsehood
02:03:55.100
there's not just two you're completely there are you're no you're ignoring intersex people but
02:03:59.580
intersex is not a third sex it's in between no it's not actually just in between it's it's there
02:04:06.140
are so many variants of of chromosomes right but sex refers to mobile uh sperm or immobile ova okay
02:04:13.760
but also even go with what kitty said like the whole idea of trying to define this is to bring
02:04:19.260
trans people down and that's what i disagree with because no it actually is i have a trans brother
02:04:23.680
okay okay well it's quite literally i have a trans brother throughout since the dawn of genetics in
02:04:29.420
this research we have uh and even before that we've identified mobile sperm and immobile ova which is the
02:04:35.100
the the rudimentary version of what this term sex means and this i'm not talking about humans i'm
02:04:39.380
talking about plants and animals and just life in general there is no goma there's no third semi-mobile
02:04:46.620
uh uh yeah but again like you when you when you define things on either ends of a spectrum
02:04:54.080
everything in between you're you're totally ignoring everything in between and saying no well you must be
02:04:59.340
either this or that and that's why intersex kids are are have to undergo um surgeries that they don't
02:05:06.240
consent to when they're infants and they have to they're they're socialized to be a certain way
02:05:10.200
that's grooming that's indoctrination that's that's not an argument against the science i mean if if
02:05:14.800
science shows that there are uh overwhelmingly when it comes to biological sex it is it is overwhelmingly
02:05:20.100
bimodal in that you are correct there's a there's an overlap intersex exists but it's about 98 to
02:05:25.040
98 going to fall into so do we ignore the two percent of the people when there's eight billion
02:05:29.900
people on this planet that's a lot of people it just means that when it comes to science we don't
02:05:33.840
lie about it for the sake of someone's feelings you define you know a woman as someone being able to
02:05:37.560
give birth so is uh somebody born a female who um is infertile or i said whether i said whether or not
02:05:45.760
they can give birth so so but but that's just a so it's just based off of chromosomes i just don't
02:05:51.080
understand why we're having an argument about chromosomes i have no problem being a man with a
02:05:55.400
penis and enjoying having a penis in a man and being a man and also dressing like a woman and
02:06:00.480
being feminine like i am i consider what i'm very secure person that i could do that i could i can
02:06:06.460
say yeah i'm a man so i also enjoy being i also enjoy putting on that woman you're insecure with us
02:06:11.640
i don't know i'm not insecure with you at all i have no problem with it with trans adults i have no
02:06:16.140
problem with that like i said my brother is trans i have no problem my best friends i have best
02:06:20.300
friends that are trans no problem i hope that's true no it is true we you know we have trans like
02:06:25.300
buck angel and blair white they're very level-headed trans people sarah higdon huh sarah higdon i mean
02:06:31.540
you know and it's like why is it that there are certain part of our so-called community which
02:06:38.340
i'm an h i'm not lgbtq any i'm a i'm homosexual which is the new like straight white man of the
02:06:45.760
community okay and the thing is it cracks me up because it's there are people like me buck angel
02:06:55.900
and blair white who have a completely different experience than say other people who are just so
02:07:00.180
sensitive and they just cry over everything and they look at everything as some sort of
02:07:05.040
um argument or fight or something to erase them when there's others there's a whole population of us on
02:07:11.120
the other side that are completely content with it like we go to we go to trump rallies and we're
02:07:16.000
praised and everybody loves us and i've yet okay so then why then why have there been over half a
02:07:20.900
thousand anti-lgbtqia bills because of these books and yes it's all about okay but nobody had a problem
02:07:27.940
so kids if we if trans people are not the sensitive ones it appears that people who are not when you're
02:07:34.660
showing books to children when children are being shown books on how to use grinder and they're 10 years old
02:07:39.080
and then again i have said and i want to make sure that i disagree with so why is it that you have
02:07:44.620
why is it that these shows with millions of followers quite literally a youtube channel with
02:07:48.220
over a million subscribers says the opposite of what you just said and they want children to see
02:07:52.140
that book how do we get those people i can't speak for those people and again we are not a monolith
02:07:56.500
you have to if and i'm sick of i'm sick of people trying to describe my experience as a trans person
02:08:01.760
uh and pulling out again these outlier scenarios and saying well this is what other trans people are doing
02:08:06.920
so you must be there must be something wrong with your community there is whether or not that's
02:08:11.400
explicitly said it's implied then we can say it's implied through the legislation that is being
02:08:15.300
introduced to actively harm lgbtqia we can say it this way you appear to be in the overwhelming
02:08:20.800
majority whose opinions do not reflect the greater community on the left and the lgbt community
02:08:25.100
as prominent channels with millions of followers defend these books being given to children and you
02:08:29.300
reject them in which case you can understand why there are many post-liberal or conservative
02:08:34.720
individuals who are saying ban it because when we look to the msnbcs when we look to these prominent
02:08:40.620
left-wing youtube channels they're saying more and we're saying stop stop even if it is one story or
02:08:46.300
one book one time why is nbc news advocating for more of it that is the narrative that comes out in
02:08:53.620
the corporate press and among high-profile left personalities which creates the image that is
02:08:58.800
what the lgbt community wants okay well let me ask you this you know there's this we keep going back
02:09:02.780
to this idea of book banning i disagree with the idea of book banning i think there has been a lot
02:09:07.340
of awful precedents that have been set by book banning uh i think that people should be free to
02:09:13.260
choose you know within legal you know limitations in context like i don't again i don't agree with
02:09:20.000
any sort of um books that have to deal with bibles and i don't think that the bible should be banned
02:09:24.620
if you want to have the bible in the library go for it but do i think that the bible should be taught
02:09:28.440
and given to every student in a classroom no in the same way that either of these books on this
02:09:33.240
table here they're not being distributed to every child in a school even though that is the bible
02:09:38.780
well the many folks would like to see that she was giving it to all of the middle her students she
02:09:43.460
was giving so every child in that middle school was given that well that's a bit of an absolute
02:09:46.580
statement she was giving it to her students the teacher was giving and again i disagree with that
02:09:50.320
i disagree with that but if why why won't let me ask you this though what's the difference between
02:09:54.500
why won't mbc why why won't anyone else call it out i don't know i don't know i'm not mbc so so i'm
02:10:00.900
actually i'm not i'm not even arguing with you we agree yeah what can we do to get mainstream
02:10:05.860
prominent left personalities to reject this stuff for children the idea when we say things like ban
02:10:11.080
books that gives this idea that the book should be burned it should just be totally out of circulation
02:10:17.620
this book should be available to whomever wants to read it and again age appropriate so adults so
02:10:23.700
what's the difference between going to having this book available in a library versus this book
02:10:28.640
being available at barnes and noble would you want that book sitting next to another book that was
02:10:32.360
against transgender well this is actually you know what i'm saying when you go to these bookstores
02:10:37.040
unfortunately no but i'm not going to say that that book can't exist now i can't i can't speak
02:10:41.780
specifically for this book is gay or genderqueer whatever but uh uh genderqueer on amazon is listed as
02:10:47.080
18 up and i think this book is gay is listed as 14 to 17 which is which is interesting considering
02:10:51.940
this is actually more again i haven't read them so i can't really truthfully critique them um but
02:10:57.360
again i think that things should be considered in an age appropriate context and what we sorry we've
02:11:03.900
definitely gone way over but i just wanted to ask you one final thing yes have you've not read gender
02:11:08.520
queer no but i imagine that i've seen some of the imagery that's is in there that has been that's been
02:11:14.000
shown around on twitter which again is accessible to children i agree and i disagree with people posting it
02:11:19.320
in that context i always censor these things and that is only i think two pages out of the whole
02:11:23.320
book the book to me i i often tell conservatives read it did you read it they say no these these
02:11:30.300
these people who are very critical of gender ideology i said did you really say no i'm like how have you
02:11:33.660
not read the book you've been criticizing so heavily because the book is actually about something
02:11:37.420
completely different this book is about a young female who was brutally abused by her parents and in a
02:11:44.160
very extreme and disturbing way that cps should have intervened she could not read till she was 12
02:11:50.000
she had to wear crusted pads covered in blood to school to the point where she smelled so awful
02:11:55.720
they had to remove her from class and tell her of her stench this is not a you know the conservatives
02:12:01.720
are pointing out this one part of the book where this uh this this non-binary individual is saying
02:12:07.880
here here here are my uh my my predilections quite uh literally referring to auto androphilia
02:12:12.320
in the book and then showing these images explaining what that is i see this and i say
02:12:17.800
this is a book about trauma of a child and these are the kinds of things that should be prevented
02:12:27.540
no no 12 year old girl going through puberty should have to wear the same pad covered in menstrual blood
02:12:33.160
for five days straight to the point where other students are saying you smell like feces get out right
02:12:38.340
but that's what this book is and so long as people are ignoring stories like that these adults who need
02:12:43.460
to read it they're not going to understand what's causing a lot of these these social issues that they
02:12:47.940
seem to be complaining about so i i recommend you know i understand people people might not want
02:12:53.240
i don't think it's appropriate for kids but you know yeah i now this book is gay is is uh i think
02:12:59.820
it's there's two chapters in it that have been the subject of contention because they explicitly talk
02:13:03.260
about sex if if there's a question about age appropriate uh education as you mentioned when
02:13:09.080
like just literally explaining to a kid someone might have two dads i got i have no issue with
02:13:13.020
that right if if the argument is like hey third grade and down we don't do any kind of sex ed at all
02:13:17.980
i'm like sure fine whatever like that's what happened in florida now granted florida extended it all the
02:13:22.820
way up to like 12th grade or whatever we can have those arguments but i'll just wrap it up my final
02:13:27.200
thought saying it's it's the explicit nature of it which i think we agree we don't want kids
02:13:31.300
to be looking at these kinds of things right getting that to be sort of the mainstream argument
02:13:36.160
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
02:13:39.880
final thoughts you wanted to add before yeah i i you know i agree with what you say in that last part
02:13:44.060
is you know let kids be kids and enjoy their innocence but unfortunately there are bad actors
02:13:49.620
that would you know that do actively seek to destroy kids innocence you know there are absolutely kids
02:13:55.660
who are between the ages of kindergarten and third grade who are sexually abused by parents family
02:14:00.780
members neighbors etc and when you don't provide any sort of sex education to kids letting them know
02:14:07.900
that that kind of behavior is wrong they they accept it as something that is just coming at them and they
02:14:13.920
don't realize it and so that's really my big argument for um comprehensive sex education is to actually
02:14:20.900
protect children and give them the empowerment to know what is right and wrong in the way that other
02:14:26.100
people treat them in in terms of touching and things like that and it's very easy for kids to
02:14:32.120
be manipulated and the goal of of most the overwhelming majority of lgbtqia people in my opinion
02:14:38.720
is not to um groom or indoctrinate children it's to actually provide tools to be able to self-protect
02:14:46.620
and to also realize that there are many different kinds of people in the world many of them deserving
02:14:51.080
respect and lgbtqia people should not be conflated with groomers and pedophiles uh intrinsically
02:14:58.880
okay and i would just like to say that um as far as um i believe that drag queen um storybook hour
02:15:07.080
and the push for drag is basically gateway trans that's what it's turned out to be in my experience
02:15:12.840
you can't turn someone trans um i'm not saying that they're trying to be turned trans i'm trying to
02:15:19.160
say that a lot of people get into drag and then they say they're trans afterwards and i've noticed
02:15:25.520
that a lot but that's also that's actually a very that's a very common way that a lot of trans people
02:15:30.440
realize they're trans for instance i actually came into my trans identity after i started doing drag
02:15:36.080
because i was actually never exposed to lgbtqia education growing up when i started doing drag it
02:15:42.200
was actually a safe way for me to experiment with um you know this idea of costuming of of um you can
02:15:49.580
call it costuming but for me that was the thing is for many drag performers it feels like a costume
02:15:54.600
and when i realized it didn't feel like a costume for me but a natural extension of my gender identity
02:15:59.700
that's when i realized there was something more than it just being uh fantasy play time
02:16:04.980
final thoughts my final thoughts yes um i'm what i'm glad what i saw what what my what my goal was
02:16:12.000
was to get parents on board that's why i made my original video in 2019 parents are on barred now
02:16:16.940
they're listening they're at school board meetings they're doing all kinds of things they're you know
02:16:21.260
finally people are waking up and um that was my my goal and um i'm glad to see that happening um
02:16:29.920
i i do think that the youth that you know like whitney houston says the children are our future
02:16:35.380
we have to worry about that we have to care about our future and um i just i don't i just i'm tired
02:16:41.860
of the confusion of kids i was a kid i was it confused me as well and um just you know follow me um
02:16:49.260
official kitty demure um hogatha sisti we i didn't even get to talk about hogatha she's a whole different
02:16:54.360
character um that turns um the whole trans thing on its side um and um it's a new it's it's the
02:17:03.460
modern woman drag character um and um i'm going to have a podcast coming up called bfm coming up soon
02:17:10.120
and looking forward to the launch of that and i'm just going to keep fighting and doing what i think
02:17:14.260
is right regardless of my supposed loving community agrees with me or not right on did you want to
02:17:19.540
mention any social yeah absolutely uh so again i'm the first drag queen ever elected to public
02:17:24.260
office and i'm running to be the first transgender person ever elected to the u.s house of
02:17:29.000
representatives this is my third time running for congress i came in second place out of nine
02:17:32.760
candidates last last year with over 60 000 votes and uh i'm running on a platform that includes
02:17:38.980
universal health care housing for all education for all environmental justice racial justice lgbtqia
02:17:44.560
rights reproductive rights and all of the great progressive things you can follow me on instagram
02:17:49.860
at maybeagirl on twitter at maybe underscore a underscore girl or you can visit our website
02:17:55.600
maybeagirlforcongress.org hoping to get some more supporters right on thank you both for coming this
02:18:01.400
has been fun uh we'd go on for a million years but i think we're right here and for everybody who
02:18:05.580
watched everybody who watched thank you so much for checking it out of course we sponsor ourselves
02:18:09.640
cast brew coffee cast brew.com check us out i will not be here next week i will be out of town for
02:18:16.020
uh i'm going to a specialist for a sports injury and then seamus is going to be hosting timcast irl
02:18:20.340
throughout the the week and then hannah claire i believe will be hosting next week's culture war
02:18:23.960
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
02:18:27.480
to be a big debate over elections thank you so much for hanging out and we will see you all next time