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Supporting LGBTQ+ Students In K-12 Mathematics

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Supporting LGBTQ+ Students In K-12 Mathematics

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[23300582 - Mathematics Teacher_ Learning and Teaching PK-12] Supporting LGBTQ+ Students in K–12 Mathematics

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How Parents Influence Kids' Gender Roles https://youtu.be/swSy6pdAS-0

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How Parents Influence Kids' Gender Roles https://youtu.be/swSy6pdAS-0

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How Parents Influence Kids' Gender Roles

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Bill Nye On Sexuality and Gender Spectrum https://youtu.be/aQDBNJ3mPa0

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Bill Nye On Sexuality and Gender Spectrum https://youtu.be/aQDBNJ3mPa0

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Bill Nye On Sexuality and Gender Spectrum

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What is Intersex?  https://youtu.be/n_5l2fwWGco 

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What is Intersex?  https://youtu.be/n_5l2fwWGco 

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What Does Intersex Mean? | InQueery | them.

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What Does "Pansexual" Mean? | InQueery | them.

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What is Queer?      https://youtu.be/UpE0u9Dx_24 

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What is Queer?      https://youtu.be/UpE0u9Dx_24 

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Tyler Ford Explains The History Behind the Word "Queer" | InQueery | them.

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Jacob Tobia Explains the History of the Word 'Genderqueer' | InQueery | them.

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Angelica Ross Explains the History of the Word 'Transgender' | InQueery | them.

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What Does "Two-Spirit" Mean? | InQueery | them.

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Students have repeatedly vandalized Pride posters at Spencer Lyst's high school in Williamson County, Tennessee. Teachers have skipped over LGBTQ issues in class textbooks. Trans kids in his state have been legally barred from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity. Parents have called on school officials to remove books about sexual orientation and gender identity from the county's elementary curriculum. And while leading hisschool's Pride club at a September homecoming parade, Lyst and other LGBTQ students were booed by a group of parents.

"I'm so used to it, but it shouldn't be something I have to think about," Lyst, 16, said of the near-constant feeling of being attacked at school because of his identity.

He even said it's "difficult" to walk into the school bathroom for fear of what or who "might be in there."

"Like, can I go to the bathroom or am I going to get hate for just existing?" he said.

Lyst's school experience is a far cry from an isolated case.

Since the start of the school year, school officials in states across the country have banned books about gay and trans experiences, removed LGBTQ-affirming posters and flags and disbanded gay-straight alliance clubs. In school districts throughout the nation, students have attacked their queer classmates, while state lawmakers have filed hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills with many seeking to redefine lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer students' places in U.S. schools.

"There is no separating any of these things," Mary Emily O'Hara, the rapid response manager at LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, said at a media briefing on Monday. "What we're seeing here is anti-LGBTQ groups, on a national level, making schools the new battleground across the board, across various kinds of school policies and various forms of legislation. Schools are the target right now for the anti-LGBTQ movement."

In the majority of cases, conservative school officials, lawmakers and parents say LGBTQ issues do not belong in school because they are "political" and "not age-appropriate" for students. Conversely, queer youth and their families, along with LGBTQ and ally teachers, say they feel they are being "erased" from the U.S. education system.

'I'm not going back in the closet'

South Florida mom Jennifer Solomon, 50, has four children. Her eldest child, Nicolette, 28, is a lesbian who teaches fourth grade in Miami-Dade County. Her youngest, Cooper, 11, identifies as male, but Solomon said his "expression is female." Cooper "never wanted to be a girl," his mom explained, but he prefers to wear his school's girls uniform and enjoys dressing up like a fairy-tale princess for fun.

"An easy way to describe it is that he's the opposite of a tomboy," she told NBC News.

Despite how hard she works to protect her children, Solomon - who leads her local chapter of PFLAG, an LGBTQ family advocacy group - said the slew of anti-LGBTQ school policies "keeps me up at night."

On Monday, Solomon's governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, signaled that he would support a new piece of state legislation - titled the Parental Rights in Education bill, but dubbed the " Don't Say Gay " bill - that would prohibit the discussion of sexuality and gender identity in schools.

Speaking at a news event in Miami, DeSantis said it is "entirely inappropriate" for teachers to be having conversations with students about gender identity, citing alleged instances of them telling children, "Don't worry, don't pick your gender yet," and "hiding" classroom lessons from parents.

"Parental rights? Whose parental rights? Only parental rights if you're raising a child according to DeSantis?" Solomon, who is a nurse manager at a health care company, said of DeSantis' concerns. "DeSantis tries to paint this picture that every family is this 1950s mom and dad with two kids and a cat and dog. That is not what Florida looks like; that is not what the country looks like."

"DeSantis has found a weak spot, and that weak spot is children," she added, suggesting that DeSantis is supporting the measure for political gain.

Nicolette Solomon said she is already hesitant to mention her wife - and by default her sexuality - at school, but she said passage of the "Don't Say Gay" bill would be "the straw that breaks the camel's back" and vowed to quit if it becomes law.

"If I can't be myself, seven hours a day, five days a week, then I'm going back in the closet, and I can't do that. It's not good for my own mental health," she said. "And I don't think I can bear to see the students struggle and want to ask me about these things and then have to deny them that knowledge. That's not who I am as a teacher."

In less than two months since the start of the year, conservative state lawmakers have filed more than 170 anti-LGBTQ bills - already surpassing last year's 139 total - with at least 69 of them centered on school policies, according to Freedom for All Americans. The nonprofit group, which advocates for LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections nationwide, said in an email that it didn't track LGBTQ school policy bills last year, as it was not as much of a "sweeping trend" as it is now.

Three states - including Lyst's home state of Tennessee - passed bills last year that allow parents to opt students out of any lessons or coursework that mention sexual orientation or gender identity, according to GLSEN, an advocacy group that aims to end LGBTQ discrimination in education. In addition to the "Don't Say Gay" bill advancing in Florida, there are 15 bills under consideration in eight states that would silence speech about LGBTQ identities in classrooms, according to free speech nonprofit organization PEN America.

But perhaps the biggest trend in state bills targeting LGBTQ youths are those focused on transgender students.

Last year, legislators in at least 30 states weighed legislation that would bar trans students from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity, according to LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign. Nine of those states enacted the bills into law. So far this year, 27 states have proposed similar bills, with South Dakota enacting its version of the legislation into law this month.

While not school related, there has also been a slew of bills that seek to prevent transgender youths from accessing gender-affirming health care. At least 20 states have proposed such measures since early 2021, with two states - Arkansas and Tennessee - enacting these bills into law. However, a federal judge temporarily blocked the Arkansas law in July after the American Civil Liberties Union challenged it in court on behalf of trans youths and their families.

Cooper Solomon said he thinks lawmakers are pushing anti-LGBTQ legislation "because they were born in another time."

"I guess back then, a long time ago, they didn't accept this, and they thought it was really bad," the fifth grader said. "I would just like them to know that it's OK to be like this, and it's not going to hurt anyone."

'My community was under attack'

Legislation aside, the last straw for Jack Petocz, 17, was when his high school in Flagler County, Florida, removed a young adult memoir detailing the trials of being a Black queer boy: George M. Johnson's "All Boys Aren't Blue."

In November, a school board member filed a criminal complaint against school officials for allowing copies of the book- which has been challenged in at least 19 states -to remain in two of the county's high schools. The complaint was dismissed, but the superintendent decided to keep the book off of shelves until new policies are drafted to give parents more control over the library's collection.

"I felt that my community was under attack, that they were trying to silence LGBTQ+ experiences and voices within our community," Petocz, who is gay and led a student protest in response to the book's removal, said. "We're already a minority. Why are you trying to suppress this critical information within our libraries, you know? These books are critical to providing a sense of identity."

Books about race, sexual orientation and gender identity have historically been challenged in schools, but over the last several months, school libraries have seen a surge of opposition.

In the fall, as book bans started to take off in counties across the country, national groups - including No Left Turn in Education and Moms for Liberty - began circulating lists of school library books that they said were " indoctrinating kids to a dangerous ideology " to rally support.

The bans then became a talking point in the contentious Virginia governor's race, where the Republican candidate, former private equity executive and political newcomer Glenn Youngkin, made education a central issue of his campaign and swept to victory.

Youngkin's victory prompted other politicians to jump onto the issue, with the governors of Texas and South Carolina urging state school officials in November to ban several books, deriding them as "pornography" and "obscene" content.

School board members in Virginia's Spotsylvania County made national headlines after calling for LGBTQ books with "sexually explicit" material to be incinerated.

Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom, said in November that while challenges to books with LGBTQ- and race-related content have historically been "constant," the association has recently seen a "chilling" uptick.

"I've worked at ALA for two decades now, and I've never seen this volume of challenges come in," she said."The impact will fall to those students who desperately want and need books that reflect their lives, that answer questions about their identity, about their experiences that they always desperately need and often feel that they can't talk to adults about."

To counter LGBTQ book bans - and school bans on race-related texts - a group of more than 600 writers, including bestselling children's author Judy Blume; publishers; bookstore owners; and advocacy groups signed a joint statement in December condemning the trend, arguing it "threatens the education of America's children."

Setting a 'different tone'

While state bills and book bans have garnered the most media attention, advocates say there are a host of other troubling trends adding to the distress that many queer students are feeling: removals of Pride flags and other LGBTQ-affirming symbols from classrooms, disbandments of gay-straight alliance clubs and resignations of teachers in protest of anti-LGBTQ policies.

In the fall, for example, rainbow stickers were ordered to be scraped off classroom doors at MacArthur High School near Dallas.

"While we appreciate the sentiment of reaching out to students who may not previously always had such support, we want to set a different tone this year," an email from a school official addressed to school staff read. NBC News obtained the email from a MacArthur High School teacher.

The sticker removals prompted a protest from the student body, but the pushback did not successfully encourage school officials to change their stance on the policy.

School board members in Newberg, Oregon, made national headlines in the fall for taking similar actions. In September, the school board banned educators from displaying Pride and Black Lives Matter flags and other symbols it considered " political " in school.

"We don't pay our teachers to push their political views on our students. That's not their place," the school board member who authored the policy, Brian Shannon, said at a recorded board meeting.

The policy prompted town protests that attracted some members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has endorsed violence, who counterprotested the efforts. An attempt to recall Shannon and another school board member over the flag removals failed last month.

Some teachers have resigned in school districts over similar measures, like a Missouri teacher who resigned in September after his district mandated that he take down his Pride flag and not discuss human sexuality or "sexual preference" at school. In December, parents accused teachers at a middle school in Tennessee of trying to " indoctrinate " kids into being gay after helping students start a gay-straight alliance club.

In addition to parents, school officials and lawmakers, classmates are among those targeting LGBTQ students, according to advocacy groups and local news reports.

A national survey of LGBTQ students published in 2020 by GLSEN found that 69 percent of respondents reported experiencing verbal harassment at school based on their sexual orientation, 57 percent based on their gender expression or outward appearance, and 54 percent based on their gender identity.

Last year, more than a dozen local news articles -from California to Florida - reported on trans students being harassed or attacked by other students, some of them in bathrooms. However, advocates say it is unclear whether the attacks have increased or whether local outlets are reporting them at greater rates.

Impact of affirmation

Advocates have long been warning educators about the mental health risks plaguing LGBTQ youths and how anti-LGBTQ policies can exacerbate them.

A survey last year by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that 42 percent of the nearly 35,000 LGBTQ youths who were surveyed - and over half of trans and nonbinary youths - seriously considered suicide within the prior year. Separately, two-thirds of LGBTQ youths said debates about anti-trans legislation have impacted their mental health negatively, according to a small survey The Trevor Project conducted in the fall.

However, researchers at The Trevor Project have also found that LGBTQ youths who reported having at least one LGBTQ-affirming space - such as a school, home or workplace - were significantly less likely to attempt suicide.

With that in mind, Lizette Trujillo drives three hours a day back and forth to her 14-year-old transgender son's school in Tucson, Arizona. From the time when he socially transitioned in 2015, Daniel's school was open to the idea of letting him use the bathroom that corresponded with his gender identity - which Trujillo said was not a given in Arizona - and already had experience teaching trans youth.

Trujillo said while the commute "is not without its challenges," sending Daniel to a school where he is "not 'othered'" has made him happier.

"The biggest difference at my school is that I'm supported by all my teachers and the principal and staff; I have access to sports and the bathrooms," Daniel said. "It makes learning easier."

It also freed up space for his mother to focus on securing her son gender-affirming health care, filing for new identification documents and working through emotional hardships.

"What people don't realize is that you're not just worried about school when your child socially transitions," Trujillo said. "As you start this gender journey, you start to hit walls, and you're like, 'Oh, I didn't realize I needed that,' or, 'I didn't realize that was going to be a problem. I didn't realize we were going to lose family.'"

In response to the slew of challenges plaguing LGBTQ students and teachers, President Joe Biden has vowed to lend his support. Earlier this month, the White House issued a rebuke of Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill, while connecting the legislation to the disputes happening nationally.

"Make no mistake - this is not an isolated action. Across the country, we're seeing Republican leaders take actions to regulate what students can or cannot read, what they can or cannot learn, and most troubling, who they can or cannot be," a White House spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News. "This is politics at its worse, cynically using our students as pawns in political warfare."

Students 'fighting for their basic rights'

There are a number of examples across the U.S. of students getting proactive and successfully turning around anti-LGBTQ policies.

Aaryan Rawal, 17, was one of more than 400 students in Fairfax County, Virginia, who successfully urged their school officials to reinstate two LGBTQ books in November. Rawal, who is gay, said he was relieved when school board members heeded students' demands, but he lamented that the organizing efforts forced him to miss class and lose sleep.

"No student in any county in this country wants to go to school fighting for their basic rights," Rawal said. "Instead of doing statistics homework or hanging out with friends, we were expected to go to school board meetings and lobby school board members for stuff that really shouldn't be up for debate."

Last month, a group of students in Palm Beach, Florida, met with their newly hired superintendent to describe their experience being LGBTQ in their county's schools. They went around, one by one, and relayed stories of harassment and assault from students and bullying from teachers, according to two students who attended the meeting.

"Students have just gotten a collective consciousness that, 'School sucks and because I'm LGBT this is to be expected,' and that's not normal," Marcel Whyne, a nonbinary high school student who attended the meeting, said. "That shouldn't be the level of standard that we have for LGBT kids. You're entitled to be treated like your peers and go to school and, you know, just be bored at school like a normal student, not terrified that you're going to be harassed and have photos taken of you and be embarrassed and assaulted just because you're trying to be who you are."

As for Spencer Lyst, in Tennessee, he set out to start his high school's Pride club, Indy Pride, last fall with the goal of spreading awareness about the school's LGBTQ community and providing "a place for people who may feel like they don't have one." While being booed by adults at his school's homecoming was a "difficult" experience, he said he remains undeterred.

"People should know that no matter what bill they try to pass or book they try to ban or thing they try to ban teachers or students from talking about in schools, it doesn't change who people are, and it doesn't change who we're going to continue to be," Lyst said. "So trying to take a legal route to 'protect your kids' doesn't work. They are who they are, and if you can't accept that, maybe it's you who has some work to do."

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Politicians target LGBTQ kids in national erasure campaign from classrooms to sports fields

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Facing limiting legislation, book bans, harassment and more, gay and transgender youth say they are being "erased" from the U.S. education system.

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ALOK (they/them) is an internationally acclaimed writer, performer, and public speaker. As a mixed-media artist their work explores themes of trauma, belonging, and the human condition. They are the author of Femme in Public (2017), Beyond the Gender Binary (2020), and Your Wound/My Garden (2021). They are the creator of #DeGenderFashion: a movement to degender fashion and beauty industries and have been honored as one of HuffPo’s Culture Shifters, NBC’s Pride 50, and Business Insider’s Doers.

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ALOK: What makes us beautiful? What makes us free?

March 1, 2022

Glennon Doyle:

Okay, love bugs. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. I just need you to be in a place today where you can really, really listen because we have sort of a heart mind shifting conversation here for you today. Untamed and most of my struggle in life and work is about trying to figure out who I am free from all the cages that culture built me to spend my one life inside of. So for all of us who are kind of on this freedom quest, Alok, I think of as a prophet calling to us from the wilderness.

Amanda Doyle:

Absolutely.

Glennon Doyle:

Showing us not just how it's possible to break free of gender binaries, but how it's possible to see break free from every socially constructed binary that does not allow us to live out our full humanity, our divinity, our infinite creativity and possibility. So what I want to insist to you is that the next hour of our lives is not about us understanding Alok, but it's about us allowing Alok to help us understand ourselves and the situation in which we find each other and ourselves down here. So Alok is an internationally acclaimed writer, performer, and public speaker. As a mixed media artist, their work explores themes of trauma, belonging, and the human condition. They were born July 1st, 1991. So that was like last year for fuck's sake.

Amanda Doyle:

We're so old.

Glennon Doyle:

So hopefully Alok is three. In College Station, Texas, and grew up as the child of Ma... Can you say this for me?

Alok:

Malayali and Punjabi.

Glennon Doyle:

Thank you. Immigrant parents from Malaysia and India. Alok graduated at the top of their class at Stanford University, but come on who didn't? And earned a master's in sociology in 2013, they are the author of Femme in Public, published in 2017. Beyond the Gender Binary and Your Wound / My Garden. You should know the Alok, that all of them in our house. They're the creator of #DeGenderFashion which is so exciting. A movement to degender fashion and beauty industries. Alok is committed to challenging what they call the international crisis of loneliness by creating public spaces for processing pain and establishing meaningful connection. Alok, welcome.

Alok:

I'm so happy to be here.

Abby Wambach:

Oh my gosh. Well, I have to ask first and foremost, this podcast is committed to talking about hard things and also respecting each other's humanity. So, first I want to check in with you Alok, what is hard for you right now?

Alok:

I think when most people think about transphobia, they imagine physical altercations, bullying in public, but I think what's most difficult about my life right now is the intimate violence that comes from within, the people who you feel should understand, but don't. And the hard thing that I wanted to bring to this conversation today was transphobia that comes from women because I feel like it's something that often doesn't get thought about or worked through, but it's actually what hurts me the most. Because I feel like feminism and specifically my mother and my grandmother created the conditions for me to have the audacity to own my own body. And I see my life and my gender as a continuation of a tapestry of women who had the bravery to say no, thank you. And for that love to be unreciprocated, I think creates a kind of grief in me that feels so overwhelming and arduous that it feels impossible to puncture, but we can do hard things.

Abby Wambach:

Oh my goodness.

Glennon Doyle:

Can you tell me what, when you say for that to be unreciprocated, can you tell me what you mean by that specifically?

Alok:

I see so much of what the trans movement being in the world is a love letter that says, I believe in your capacity for transformation, I believe in your capacity for self-determination. And then in response to that love, we're told that we are wrong, that we're disorderly, that we're foolish, that we're ridiculous, that we're delinquents, that we're predators, that we're violent. That's a pain that I continue to face as my words reach more people, is this extreme and coordinated backlash to tarnish me and by extension tarnish the ideas that have been here, they're ancient ideas, because I think what patriarchy does is it makes us publicists. We find ourselves speaking it, doing it, living it, thinking it with such a fierce allegiance that if someone dare say another way of living is possible, people would rather eradicate and extinguish that alternative than confront that kind of spiritual nudity of asking, who am I outside of what patriarchy wants me to be?

Glennon Doyle:

Alok, you said the days that I feel most beautiful are the days that I am most afraid. Can you tell us what you meant by that?

Alok:

Yeah. I've been thinking about this a lot because there's been a lot of negative self-talk in my head recently, when I look at photos and videos of myself, I'm so cruel. The first thought that populates is you look like a freak. You're disgusting. Why do you do that? Why are you wearing that wig? Why are you wearing makeup? And I think people are surprised to hear that because they see images of me as this fierce, independent, incandescent light. But I want to remind people how insidious misogyny is, that as women and trans people, it's going to take our entire lives to develop a self image outside of what men have taught us to see ourselves as.

Alok:

And so I have to literally sit and love on myself in that moment and remind myself, why am I doing this? Is this fear my own, is this hatred my own? And it's not because when I was filming the project that I was filming where I look at the video later, I was so happy and I was so free and I felt so beautiful. And I would catch glimpses of myself in mirrors or iPhone screens and be like, I've come so far to be here and it's so glorious to be here. And then in the aftermath, I find myself so mean.

Alok:

I think that's because I've been punished for my beauty, my entire life. And by beauty, I mean, looking like myself, which I think most people don't know that's what beauty actually is. And so I've developed a knee-jerk response. That's actually an antagonistic relationship to my beauty when I feel most beautiful I'm most afraid, not just because of what other people will do to me, but what I'll do to myself, how I'll censor myself, how I'll look at that video and say, "You are a fool so tone it down." And how I'll tone it down and how easy it'll be to blame it on someone else but to know, ultimately I made the decision.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah.

Abby Wambach:

Yeah.

Glennon Doyle:

I get like a slightly different version of that. First of all, I love beauty is looking like ourselves. Is that what you said? Beauty is looking like ourselves. So I went on a show recently and Alok, my little dream was to go on a TV show with no makeup on because every time I go on a show, I just ask them to put all the makeup on because I get very scared of looking like myself. So it's like different, but the same. And I was scared to do it because I was scared to look at it later, myself, not what other people were going to see, but what I was going to do to myself, seeing myself on a screen with nothing on. So yeah, I get that. I get that.

Amanda Doyle:

I wanted to ask you Alok, I feel like for so many that are in this clearly, this unprecedented attack on trans people is killing trans people and killing all of us at the same time. And it's sometimes heartbreaking how far we have left to go. But as a fellow gender studies major like yourself, I resonated so much with how much you talk about how empowering it is to know our collective history and you say, "My faith comes from what was before." Can you just talk a little bit to us about the tool that is erasing our histories and presenting it as new, disconnecting us from our histories and how that disconnects us to the direction where we would otherwise be going if we were more connected.

Glennon Doyle:

Because you said your ideas are not new, they're ancient.

Alok:

Yeah. I mean, I just got word the Texas State Legislature, where I'm from, a politician there has included my book, Beyond the Gender Binary in a list of 850 books to ban in Texas public education. That is just such an example of what I mean, it's that they disappear us, it's not that we're new. It's that censorship has been an organizing strategy for hundreds of years. It looked like cross-dressing laws that made it illegal for people like us to exist in public. Abby, you and I would've been thrown into prison for just being outside. Women would be beaten for wearing pants. And when I tell people that they're so shocked that they don't even know that. And how did people get through the cross dressing laws? They went outside anyways. They did something very hard. They knew would be criminalized.

Alok:

And I have documentation of people who were arrested 20 to 40 times who in courts of law said, "I know who I am. I'm neither a man nor a woman." I have evidence of that from the early 1800s. But why is it that those stories don't reach us? Why do I have to go to university to go into archives to find those newspaper clippings? Why did it take me being an adult to learn that there were people like me who ran New York City nightlife in the early 20th century, we called ourself fairies and girl boys, androgens and inverts. We had so much language and so much love. Why, why, why? And then I realized, oh, it's because when we have connection to ancestry and especially queer ancestry, then we know that there have been people who have felt the same pain that we did, and they still lived a glorious life so that we could, and that intergenerational connection of queer people is why I do the work that I do.

Alok:

I know that in my life, I might not see the end of transphobia, but I might be able to create something that allows the next generation and to feel like they can live a life that's worth living. I want to gift possibility because that's what my transcestors or my trans ancestors did for me. And so much of what I'm doing in the work is in tribute. It's a living memorial to an ongoing pulse that says let's do this decent human thing of being ourselves in a world predicated on our disappearance.

Amanda Doyle:

Also for you particularly culturally, and for so many folks culturally, being disconnected from your cultural roots through colonialism, the way that the long history of third sex, all of it, that was a part of your culture before colonialism. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because, but for European rule of many cultures, there wouldn't have in this struggle. I mean, there would've been celebration of who you are.

Alok:

Yeah. Totally. It's so funny to me that people accuse us as trans and non-binary people of imposing this gender conversation on them. When the real imposition was dividing billions of complex, divine, nuanced souls into one of two categories, man, and woman. And that was an orchestrated project of colonialism across the world. And what is now called the United States and Canada and where I'm from called India, where European settlers indoctrinated indigenous peoples into the idea that they had to be men or women as defined by your American culture. Otherwise they were heathen, degenerate, and wrong. And this looked like the extinguishing, like attempted genocide of gender variant people across the world. So what they do is they tell you that there's only two genders and they get away with it because they kill, disappear, erase, discredit and delegitimize all of us who for hundreds of years have lived alongside you.

Alok:

What that's done, I think perhaps even most insidiously is it's made our own people tell us that us being queer is a marker of our whiteness or assimilation into the Americas. When I was a kid, I didn't think that I could be both queer and Indian because I was made to believe that being Indian in meant I had to be straight. I had to be cis, I had to be married. One of the stories that I like to tell is that when I pierced my nose, my grandmother who lived with me at the time said, "How could you do this to me?" And what she was feeling, the surface is that in our culture, which is so family oriented and collectivist that I was betraying her by prioritizing me. But I think I want to have a higher level conversation, because that's what I'm always trying to, or attempting to do in the world.

Alok:

When she said, "How could you do this to me?" What she's also saying is how could you show me that freedom is possible. Because it's easier. It's easier to believe that this prison is a home. It's easier to believe that this misery is the only way to live. And in watching and witnessing you own your own body, I have to confront the ways in which I've outsourced that ownership to other people, to culture, to identity. And so, so much of what the trauma I experienced from my own people, I know at the root comes from these histories of unprocessed trauma from colonialism, from so many of the violences wrought on them that made them feel like they were never enough.

Amanda Doyle:

That line, how are people so traumatized that they mistake freedom as a threat?

Glennon Doyle:

And doesn't everybody on some level, experience that from their parents. How dare you show me, what's possible, I've already lived most of my life. How dare you show me now what could have been.

Abby Wambach:

It's totally true for me. I think that the truth of so many of us queer folks who had parents who in one way or another, or grandparents say, "How could you do this to me?" It is this freedom that we choose. And it's like, they look at us with this disdain that they couldn't make the same choice themselves on some deep cellular level. Women, especially, I think my mom probably being the parent of seven of us children probably looks at the way that her baby, the youngest child can go out into the world and try to break so many of these culturally constructed norms. And I don't know, I just think that you are a fucking revolution Alok, and what you just said just is so true. For all of the parents out there, children are a revolution and they should be seen as so.

Abby Wambach:

What you just said about there was something that you wrote that really spoke to me and it goes along with what you just said, how could you do this to me, it's like, when you first told your grandmother that you were trans. To me, that's so important too, because I never got to tell my grandmother, I was too afraid. You were braver than me. There's a part of me that feels like, oh, sad that she didn't ever know me. Now that I'm strong and an adult and not needy of their approval being known even if, even if it does come with trauma, I still need to be known by our family. So I just want to read back to you what you wrote, how could you do this to me? And you said, "In her eyes, my journey was about hurting her, not about healing myself. She eventually passed on without ever seeing me as myself and at her funeral I had to dress as the man she wanted me to be, I wept for her and for me." Can you talk about that?

Alok:

You know, Glennon, reading your book, one of the things that really stood out to me was how impoverished our definition of love is. How we've accepted conditional acceptance as love. And that one of the most powerful things we can do is to say, love has no buts or ifs or contingency plans. It's a complete devotion to the other. The love that I grew up with felt so conditional, felt you had to be excellent. You had to be happy. I remember I wrote a poem about being depressed as a young person and my grandmother should have been in a campaign for iPad, because she would just be Googling me nonstop. So she discovers this poem. She calls my mom who calls my aunt who calls my sister, who calls me. And she's so upset. Not that I was depressed, but that I'm speaking about it in public.

Alok:

The way that we talked about depression in my family was of course we're all depressed, but that's why we work hard. So what I really started to realize is the reason that love was conditional for me is it was conditional to themselves. They wouldn't love themselves unless they were excellent. My grandmother literally worked so hard all of the time. And the only time I ever saw her free was when she developed disabilities, when she was older and couldn't labor in the same ways. So she was forced to lie in bed and then being in bed she started to paint at the age of like 76. She started to take coffee grinds and spoons and things from the kitchen and make abstract paintings.

Alok:

She made thousands of paintings and she would say, "These are my real children." I saw the myth of patriarchy. I saw how she was most free at the end of her life when she wasn't what society called beautiful. I saw how that she was the most beautiful when she had her sleeves rolled up and was making these paintings. That's why I came to the funeral. I came because I knew that people are complicated and I loved her and my love wasn't contingent on her accepting me.

Abby Wambach:

Damn. Fuck.

Glennon Doyle:

I love that. I love that.

Abby Wambach:

It's like the very thing we want, the very thing we want from our parents or our people, we have to give it unconditionally back to them.

Glennon Doyle:

Can I ask a question? I want to... I don't know how to... I'm at the beginning of putting these ideas into words, so just be patient with me because I don't have all the right words yet. But I have been just rethinking or understanding freshly some ideas about gender that I've had. A lot of this little inner revolution started by watching the TERFs.

Abby Wambach:

What are the TERFs for those who don't know?

Glennon Doyle:

Can you give me a definition of-

Amanda Doyle:

Trans-exclusionary radical feminist-

Glennon Doyle:

Feminist, but how to describe.

Amanda Doyle:

Oh. Oh, okay. Well, Alok, tell me.

Alok:

No, Amanda, I would love for you...

Amanda Doyle:

If you're looking at like social theory, there's this idea of distinctiveness threat, where if we, anytime we place our identity very specifically in a group, then the uniqueness of our individuality becomes under threat when the boundaries around that group in any way become malleable. So for these radical feminists that have defined themselves completely as woman, and that is where they find their strength and their identity, instead of viewing the world from a mutual fight, the way that in fact, trans people and feminism align in our fight, they see trans women as the most threatening of all to them because if you can pass as me, what even is my identity, I have to put these walls very much around.

Glennon Doyle:

Okay. Then I'll try to explain it this way. So watching them, I realized, oh, yikes. If that has anything to do with feminism, then I need to rethink what I mean by feminism. Because in Untamed, I write woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, woman, women, women, all the time. I Googled it once how many times I'm like, holy shit. I really identified with that word then and now when I listen to things, I'm starting to think differently about it because I'm thinking, oh, like a TERF if I'm a TERF, if your most important thing is protecting your idea of what a woman is, then that's an over-identification with an identity. I don't get that.

Glennon Doyle:

What I mean by feminist is I'm on the side constantly of whoever is getting the most fucked at the time. That's it. So if a bunch of feminists are protecting women, as they see them at the exclusion of someone who is actually more under threat at that point than I'm not with them anymore. Also, Alok, I can't find inside of myself when I get really still, I can find this thing that is like a wild moving faith inside of my identity. My real self. I can find creativity. I can find that energy that's always... I can't find any gender.

Glennon Doyle:

I can't find on the inside of me, I can only find gender on me. I can find it like in my shirt and on my jewelry. And in my old remnants of Botox where I've like injected misogyny underneath my... I can find gender on me, but not in me. And I have friends, I have a close transgender friend who can find gender inside of them and that's what they're expressing. So my question to you is this idea of gender is a mandatory performance, but not born in us. Is that how you experience gender or do you experience gender as a real true thing inside of you that you're expressing on the outside. And also does that question make any effing sense to you?

Alok:

Okay. First of all, Glennon, and it's never about making sense. It's about making sensation. It's about what things make us feel, whether or not if they... Because in order for something to make sense, it has to pay allegiance to an idea that already existed and we want to make new ideas so we have to be speculative and experimental. And that's why I'm a poet. Poetry is a laboratory for new ways of loving, thinking, and dreaming because in poetry, there are no rules. And that's why I think everyone is actually a poet because it's the anarchy of form where for the first time in my life, I had permission to say, make it up.

Alok:

I brought that attitude everywhere I went, I'm going to make it up. So first I wanted to say to what we were talking earlier about TERFs is it's not just trans women, it's trans and non-binary people are positioned as a threat that's undermining the feminist campaign because what is happening is they'll say that this gender theory is erasing the material reality of sex based discrimination. So it's this idea that trans people are making it up and what's real is being a male or a female. First of all, all language is made up. So when people say to me, "You're making up new words." It's like plot twist, the word made up, was made up.

Alok:

What you're upset about is that trans and non-binary people for the first time are speaking for ourselves and not being spoken for because what power and especially patriarchal power is, is the monopoly of the right to speak for other people. And so what is so threatening to these TERFs is that we are saying, I'm not actually a metaphor, I'm not a discourse, I'm not an idea. I'm not an an opinion, I'm a god damn human being. What TERFs are fighting for is not actually freedom, it's the ability to do what has been done to them, to someone else.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes, yes.

Alok:

And that's why I find it so difficult for me because feminism should about liberation from the need to even have power, because there's so many more interesting things we have to do, like take naps. Power is not the goal. It's not about overthrowing one system of domination to have another. It's about ending the need for domination. And that brings me to love because what I've found, and I also have been so concerned by the uptick the United States where I'm having this conversation is not like the United Kingdom where TERFs have institutional power in the same way, but they're winning the idea wars. So oftentimes their narratives become the first ways that people encounter people like me. So they're told that we are some violent danger, menace to society. And I see people being like, do you actually know trans people in your life, or are you just... Where are you imbibing this from? You would think it would be very strange when the Republican party, a notoriously anti-woman establishment is opportunistically resourcing the rhetoric of protecting women and girls-

Glennon Doyle:

They care so much about that.

Alok:

When it comes.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes.

Abby Wambach:

So funny now.

Alok:

It comes to black people, immigrants, Muslims, and trans people. What's so scary about TERFs is that they're resourcing the language of feminism. So that we're all like, yes, empowering. Yes, totally great. But when the sand actually settles, what you see is something far more sinister. And so what I've found when I'm reading this stuff is what it is it's a case of unprocessed grief and pain and rage. That's why I manifested wanting to meet you years ago because you in another life could have been a TERF.

Alok:

Every incentive was there for you because you experienced so much brutality and injury from men, and you could have said, "Womanhood is the only way." Elevated that, exalted that, but what you did is you dug a little bit deeper and you started to realize a kind of marrow that's much more spiritual than that, that actually says patriarchy is an escape room. And it doesn't matter who your character is. We're all just trying to get out. And actually it's about possibility. You write imagination over indoctrination. Only by doing that healing work, can we actually say, I don't want to hot potato my oppression and misery on someone else.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes.

Alok:

I actually want to end the hot potato.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes.

Alok:

And then to your final question there, about what I feel about myself personally, I experience gender as it's defined by other people, as an obstacle to my I spirituality. But gender as it's defined by me is an exercise in my spirituality. And let me explain. They see gender as what I look like. I don't see gender, I surrender to it. They say gender is about how I act, my mannerisms, all the things on the outside, my body. I see gender as a connection to my divinity. And so what people don't remember when they don't learn history, is that a lot of what we now call feminine garb was actually ceremonial wear that people would wear to receive God. And it actually was about spirituality. So the way that I dress is not because I want to be seen as a woman or be seen as non-binary it's because I want to be a receptacle.

Alok:

I want to be a vessel for my purpose on earth. And that when I am dressed as myself, when I am myself, then I can channel truth and speak it. But for so long in my life, I was dissociated. I was a shell and I think y'all were too. And what my gender journey was about is less about finding my gender and more about being able to walk on the earth and feel it, being able to speak with a kind of conviction where my words actually landed. How I got there is what other people call gender, but what I call healing myself.

Glennon Doyle:

Okay. Okay.

Abby Wambach:

It's like you-

Glennon Doyle:

I feel that.

Abby Wambach:

You just-

Glennon Doyle:

That caused a sensation.

Abby Wambach:

Summed up 20 years of my life in two sentences.

Glennon Doyle:

I just want to just want to real quick go back just in case any sweet love bugs who are listening are trying to put into context what Alok was just saying about, I could have been a TERF in another life and understanding that we don't do to other people, what we are trying to escape from ourselves. And we don't leave people behind. It reminds me very much of the mistake white feminists have made for so long with... It reminds me of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It reminds me of, we are women we will identify more as women than anything else, which allows us then to when we are fighting for the vote to leave behind black people, which have happens again and again and again, because they didn't identify with a more marrow part of the soul, which would've connected all of them and not let them leave each other behind. It's the same thing in some ways, not all ways, but in some ways with gender, correct or incorrect?

Alok:

Yeah and historically, one of the things that often gets lost is the Elizabeth Cady Stantons and Susan B. Anthonys would tell black women an indigenous women, you're not ready for feminism yet. You have to look like women as we define it and go through what we experience. So actually, what a lot of people don't know is white women would go to indigenous reservations and teach indigenous women how to iron, how to wear blouses and corsets. The idea would be you have to experience sexism so that you can experience feminism. So rather than going to indigenous and black women and saying, can you teach me how to be free? White women said, "You have to experience my misery." And we see the exact same stuff with TERFs now where they say, "You can only be a feminism if you do this, this, this, this, this, if you've been through this experience." It's that same sense of entitlement.

Alok:

But what I really am pushing back against in my work is I can't reason people out of hatred. If I have to make an argument, a critical treatise on why I should not be attacked, on why I should be able to breathe, then you do not care about this conversation. So we have to go deeper. And the reason we have to go deeper is because we are not responsible for the pain, but we are responsible for the healing. What I want to tell TERFs and what I want to tell, and that's what I began with saying that travesty of transphobia from women is I am so sorry. I am so, so, so sorry for the cruelty and misogyny in the world, but that does not give us permission to wreck that same damage elsewhere.

Glennon Doyle:

That's right.

Alok:

We have to do the work to interrupt these cycles of violence and insist on a more dignified and beautiful life. And I promise you it's possible. And that's why you're so irritated by us because you see also, another thing that TERFs do is they comment on our appearance. They say, "Oh, you're a mockery. You're like a joke, you're disgusting." They're doing the same sexist tactics men did. Where in the early 20th century, when women were advocating for the right to vote, men would publish images to scare women from choosing the right to vote by depicting them as ugly. What did ugly mean? Wearing pants, having a beard, being masculine. So the idea would be you're no longer desirable if you have political autonomy. What are the TERFs doing now to trans people? Look at these ugly people. I was literally just tagged in a meme the other day, trans rights activists are ugly, TERFs are beautiful.

Alok:

I was sitting there being like, what? This in the name of feminism. I think I really want to... Not to harp on this, but this is an urgent crisis. So often when I speak about this, people are like, this makes no sense, it's counterintuitive. If you experience depression, why would you farther it? I want to interrupt that logic. If you experience depression of course, of course you want someone else to-

Glennon Doyle:

It's hazing.

Alok:

Because you want someone else to feel that pain. Yes.

Abby Wambach:

Right.

Alok:

It is.

Amanda Doyle:

Well, and you've internalized it so much. I mean those early white feminists, it's not that they were thinking consciously I want you to feel the pain I felt. They were thinking, they had so internalized the patriarchal model of model womanhood, that they were actually looking at indigenous women and saying, "You are actually not women yet until you match this." So we have so internalized the trauma and the systems, these artificial definitions, we have become them so much that we can't even interact. We have to bring you into patriarchy, then to free us from patriarchy.

Glennon Doyle:

Which is the danger of white feminism, right? That's the whole thing. White feminism is so freaking dangerous because it's just about bringing more people along into this death trap that we are in and getting a few of us a little bit higher in the hierarchy that already exists instead of doing what Alok said, which is, how do we get free from this need for power in the first place? Alok, I want to talk about beauty a little bit, because I think this is a touch point that probably most people listening will understand because they felt it on a daily level. You said in Grammar Lessons, I fucking love your poetry, Alok, I love it so much. "The body is three dimensional language. Beauty is the harshest editor." Can you talk us about how all of us are controlled and dehumanized by beauty in the way that the world defines it, not the way that you define it, beauty standards.

Alok:

I'm so glad that we're speaking when I'm 30 years old, because if we'd have this conversation five you years ago, I would not be ready to say what I'm about to say, I've gone through a profound transformation in my political analysis, I spent the bulk of my life and my career detailing the ways in which I was discriminated against, how insidious and violent these systems of oppression were. And now I'm kind of bored of that work because I realized the reason I was being discriminated was not because I lacked, but because I loved, was because of my power, I was only interpreting my life through their lens, which made me feel like I was wrong. When in fact I was a marker of everything that was right. So I began to revisit what was it that people called ugly in me. They called my body hair ugly.

Alok:

They called my skin color ugly. They called my features ugly. They called my femininity ugly. And if I trace all of those insults where they land, I love women. I love femininity. I love queer people. I love butts. I love sex. I love all of these things that they are using to degrade us. So they don't degrade me anymore. They're just testaments to my beauty, such that when I started to do this work, what I began to realize is it's not what we're fighting against. That's the basics, we're fighting against violence culture. Of course we're fighting against hostility, transphobia, but what are we fighting for? I'm fighting for beauty. And a lot of people get confused by that because the only definition of beauty like love that they've inherited is so basic and flat that they just associate beauty with that commodity that we're told, if you access, then you get power.

Alok:

That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is beauty means your soul's fingerprint on the earth that no one else in the world can have your beauty. It's when I'm speaking to someone and I'm like, I could talk to you for the rest of my life because finally I can breathe again. The world for me is a series of drowning and then having conversations with people where I can finally breathe again and the reason I can breathe is because it's you, it's not that imprint of what you've been told. The cookie cutter sheet that says hi, I only know myself from my identities. So the work of beauty work for me is actually deep healing work to say, who am I outside of what I've been told I should be? Beauty is about that attitude of showing up and saying, I'm worthy of being here.

Alok:

It's unruly. It's riotous, it pisses people off. Once you find that beauty in yourself, you see it. Now what I was trying to track in my latest book, Your Wound / My Garden is I'm so much more happy and joyous because I see so much beauty everywhere. Despite every single attempt in the world to erase dissent., the season shifts, that's a form of dissent.. The flower blooms, that's a form of dissent.. We rise up, that's a form of dissent. I go back to putting on my wig and my makeup, even though I felt I was going to throw it in the closet. That's a form of dissent. Beauty is the natural orientation of the universe, the universe rioted first. And we are just following its lead.

Abby Wambach:

Aye yai yai.

Glennon Doyle:

Or maybe it's Maybelline. Your Wound / My Garden. I need to read something from it. So this is from Alok's latest for poetry collection. I don't even want to call it a book. A sensation called Your Wound / My Garden. "One day when I die, rewind the heart attack, what power precipitated it? Unfurl the tumor, what policy prescribed it? Dissect the culture, not my corpse. Diagnose the world, hold one big stethoscope to it. Listen." Alok, can you talk about the cycle of trauma? Because really what you're talking about so much lately, what I understand that you're talking about is how all of this, all of this political, all of this oppression, all of this anger, the TERFs, all of it has to do with trauma that happens to us and then we keep precipitating. So can you talk about the cycle of trauma in terms of how we oppress ourselves and each other and the toll it takes on our bodies, on our politics, on our freedom.

Alok:

So I know a lot of listeners suffer from the same thing. I suffer from 24/7 chronic pain. And when we look at the data, it's predominantly women and trans people who navigate autoimmune disorders, chronic pain and chronic illness. I wrote that book because I was spending so much time in clinics. I went to dozens and dozens and dozens of doctors. And I was like, "What's wrong with me? I shouldn't be in pain." And we did all the scans and we did all of the tests and everything made people say, "You're perfect, you're healthy. You're great."

Alok:

Then I started to realize, oh my gosh, it is easier and more cost effective to blame me for my injury, my pain than it is to actually say, this is misogyny. And I actually believe misogyny makes us sick. I actually believe that when I'm walking down the street and people are laughing at me and taking photos of me and spitting on me that when I'm logging online and people are saying lies about me, are literally just trying to fear monger as a way to make me into something that I'm not, that has a toll on my body.

Alok:

Such that it manifests physical pain because our body is trying to teach us, hey, this is not right. This is not safe. And so what I started to do is say, "Oh my goodness, I might never get safety out there, but I have to give safety to me." And so what pain allowed me to do for the first time in my life, and Glennon, and you write about this and I really resonated with that. It's not that pain is the problem, it's that suffering is the problem. And so pain actually said stop. And so I stopped everything I was doing. I started looking at my life and I said, "Why did I mistake latent dissociation and a kind of suicide death drive workaholism as being alive?" No, I want to live so fully with so much vigor and zest and glamor that when I die, because inevitably that's the only thing that we know, I'll say, okay, cool, great. Next adventure. I'm there, no regrets, no remorse.

Alok:

Pain actually allowed me to start thinking about trauma, but then to start thinking about healing, I didn't just stick there in diagnosing the wound. Why am I experiencing pain? What is this going through? I started to ask, the only reason I care to ask these questions is because some part of me is fighting for me saying, you want to be free. I think like many people suffering alongside with, and I write about this in My Garden too. It's like, what preposition do we have to pain? It's there, am I next to it? Is it in me? Actually in some ways taught me that all of the models that told me that life was going to be good. When I was younger I believed I'd stop being bullied when I grew up. When I was younger, I was told you're going to meet the love of your life.

Alok:

Life is going to be picture perfect. Fuck that, actually life is going to be full of pain and so much confronting self doubt. And you'll feel like you made it and then you hate yourself again. But alongside that is so much beauty. And so what I wanted to do in that book and the reason I called it that title is to show that suffering is a visitor. My natural orientation is love, care, peace, but then depression comes in, suffering comes in and it's saying, notice me, the pain is saying, submit to me. And I do that. And then it goes, or it doesn't go. But that doesn't matter because what matters more is that I listen to it.

Glennon Doyle:

So all of our love bugs who are listening right now, the whole Pod Squad, we do something called the next right thing each week. So What is the next right thing Alok, something little, we call this, We Can Do Hard Things, but we don't want it to be hard. What is the next right thing that we can do to face or free ourselves from the effects of trauma? If trauma is where all of this comes from?

Amanda Doyle:

Or to interrupt the cycle, if we have inherited our grandparents' trauma and are trying, how do we step into that cycle-

Glennon Doyle:

And our culture's.

Alok:

Forgiveness, self forgiveness. When you are being most cruel internally, you have to have some other voice in there being like, that's not nice. Would I allow anyone to say this to my friend? Never. So that's where you're going to intervene and say, this is intimate partner violence, me against me. And I'm coming in and I'm saying not today. And even if it feels absurd, it's really about stopping and in your head being like, no, I'm not going to tolerate that. And what I fundamentally believe is if we do the work of self forgiveness and self compassion that unlocks an unbridled compassion for other people, because we see the ways in which we are flawed.

Alok:

We're idiosyncratic, we're self sabotaging and ridiculous. So are other people, and so people always ask me, "How did you learn to love all these people who are so mean to you online?" And it's because I realized I could have been them in the same ways that I was saying you could have been a TERF. Maybe I could have been a TERF. An my first response isn't to say like, these people, these bigots that's not right. It's how did I get out of bigotry? The way I got out of bigotry is someone loved me and maybe that someone was me.

Abby Wambach:

Oh.

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah. And you know what? Another next right thing we can do is read a Alok's poetry. I mean when I listened to you just now talking about poetry, I realized, Abby knows I have to start my day with poetry. I can't even, I don't want to leave the magic space too fast. I'm just going to say words, because you told me they don't have to make sense. I'm just going to say some words. I don't want to forget about magic right away. And poetry is where I can stay in the magic. And I guess, I mean where people are just showing me their true, beautiful selves without the representative that's staying inside of all the structure. A poem is like a love letter from the marrow that you were talking about. It's like even sometimes when I'm reading a book and I love books, but even books feel too structured sometimes.

Glennon Doyle:

It's like not a new, fresh thing. It's like the first time I read Untamed to one of my dearest friends, Liz Gilbert, I had written it in an entirely different structure, the structurey structure. And she was like, "What is this shit?" And I'm not even exaggerating. That's basically what she said-

Abby Wambach:

Yeah, she didn't say shit.

Glennon Doyle:

She was like, "Your writing-"

Abby Wambach:

She was just like, "What is this?"

Glennon Doyle:

Yeah, wasn't free enough. And I do think that poetry, if you start to read poetry or allow yourself to write poetry, it's just a way of freeing that beautiful... The beauty that Alok is talking about, that's been beaten out of us. It's a way to wake it up.

Alok:

Can I be honest with you?

Glennon Doyle:

Please.

Alok:

I feel like I was put on this earth to be a poet and it's so hard because no one wants to read it. And so everything else I do is about how do I get people to come and watch me perform a poem, which is the hardest sell. It's like, hey everyone, like come and confront all of your deepest repression and trauma through poetry. It's just difficult. I feel like we have to sugarcoat the medicine because people mistake the medicine as poison, and the poison as the medicine. But I truly feel so frustrated when all these people believe all these things. When all you can do is go read a poem. And then for the first time it will teach you education of the heart.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes.

Alok:

That's what poetry does is actually how to love more. Because when I read poetry, I'm constantly expanding and stretching because what poetry actually teaches me is that we're all in this world together. And we're seeing the same things and experiencing similar things. And we're all in different worlds at the same time. And that I could read your poems... And to be honest, when I was reading your book, it's the poetic lines, which speak to me the most. Every time I'm reading, it's those zingers. Other stuff that's like all just like, it's setting up the ace shot. Wow. I just made a sports metaphor. Oh my God.

Glennon Doyle:

Look at you.

Alok:

I'm proud of myself. Oh my god. Wow. It's really those lines. And that is how I write is I write backwards. I have the line because I'm a poet. And what a poet does is take a really complex idea, strip it apart, strip it apart, strip it apart, strip it apart, strip it apart, land it in that line. And then everything else is decoration.

Glennon Doyle:

Yes.

Abby Wambach:

It's like maybe the best compliment you could have ever given my wife.

Glennon Doyle:

Because my secret dream is to be a poet.

Alok:

But what if you already are one?

Abby Wambach:

I keep telling her, I don't know when she'll finally listen, maybe now she will.

Glennon Doyle:

Now that Alok told me. I'll believe it.

Abby Wambach:

Yeah, of course.

Glennon Doyle:

I'm changing my bio tonight. We are going to end this conversation with Alok but don't be too sad because Alok is coming back on Thursday to answer some burning questions from our Pod Squad of poets. We love you. This week when things get hard, don't you forget that we can and do hard things. We'll see you back here soon. I give you Tish Melton and Brandi Carlile.

Glennon Doyle:

We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts. Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn't, don't worry about it, it's fine.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
March 1, 2022 Glennon Doyle: Okay, love bugs. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. I just need you to be in a place today where you can really, really listen because we have sort of a heart mind shifting conversation here for you today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Ally | A term used to describe someone who is actively supportive of LGBTQ+ people. It encompasses straight and cisgender allies, as well as those within the LGBTQ+ community who support each other (e.g., a lesbian who is an ally to the bisexual community).

Asexual | Often called "ace" for short, asexual refers to a complete or partial lack of sexual attraction or lack of interest in sexual activity with others. Asexuality exists on a spectrum, and asexual people may experience no, little or conditional sexual attraction.

Biphobia | The fear and hatred of, or discomfort with, people who love and are sexually attracted to more than one gender.

Bisexual | A person emotionally, romantically or sexually attracted to more than one sex, gender or gender identity though not necessarily simultaneously, in the same way or to the same degree. Sometimes used interchangeably with pansexual.

Cisgender | A term used to describe a person whose gender identity aligns with those typically associated with the sex assigned to them at birth.

Coming Out | The process in which a person first acknowledges, accepts and appreciates their sexual orientation or gender identity and begins to share that with others.

Gay | A person who is emotionally, romantically or sexually attracted to members of the same gender. Men, women and non-binary people may use this term to describe themselves.

Gender binary | A system in which gender is constructed into two strict categories of male or female. Gender identity is expected to align with the sex assigned at birth and gender expressions and roles fit traditional expectations.

Gender dysphoria | Clinically significant distress caused when a person's assigned birth gender is not the same as the one with which they identify.

Gender-expansive | A person with a wider, more flexible range of gender identity and/or expression than typically associated with the binary gender system. Often used as an umbrella term when referring to young people still exploring the possibilities of their gender expression and/or gender identity.

Gender expression | External appearance of one's gender identity, usually expressed through behavior, clothing, body characteristics or voice, and which may or may not conform to socially defined behaviors and characteristics typically associated with being either masculine or feminine.

Gender-fluid | A person who does not identify with a single fixed gender or has a fluid or unfixed gender identity.

Gender identity | One's innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither - how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One's gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth.

Gender non-conforming | A broad term referring to people who do not behave in a way that conforms to the traditional expectations of their gender, or whose gender expression does not fit neatly into a category. While many also identify as transgender, not all gender non-conforming people do.

Genderqueer | Genderqueer people typically reject notions of static categories of gender and embrace a fluidity of gender identity and often, though not always, sexual orientation. People who identify as "genderqueer" may see themselves as being both male and female, neither male nor female or as falling completely outside these categories.

Homophobia | The fear and hatred of or discomfort with people who are attracted to members of the same sex.

Intersex | Intersex people are born with a variety of differences in their sex traits and reproductive anatomy. There is a wide variety of difference among intersex variations, including differences in genitalia, chromosomes, gonads, internal sex organs, hormone production, hormone response, and/or secondary sex traits.

Lesbian | A woman who is emotionally, romantically or sexually attracted to other women. Women and non-binary people may use this term to describe themselves.

LGBTQ+ | An acronym for "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer" with a "+" sign to recognize the limitless sexual orientations and gender identities used by members of our community.

Non-binary | An adjective describing a person who does not identify exclusively as a man or a woman. Non-binary people may identify as being both a man and a woman, somewhere in between, or as falling completely outside these categories. While many also identify as transgender, not all non-binary people do. Non-binary can also be used as an umbrella term encompassing identities such as agender, bigender, genderqueer or gender-fluid.

Outing | Exposing someone's lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender or gender non-binary identity to others without their permission. Outing someone can have serious repercussions on employment, economic stability, personal safety or religious or family situations.

Pansexual | Describes someone who has the potential for emotional, romantic or sexual attraction to people of any gender though not necessarily simultaneously, in the same way or to the same degree. Sometimes used interchangeably with bisexual.

Queer | A term people often use to express a spectrum of identities and orientations that are counter to the mainstream. Queer is often used as a catch-all to include many people, including those who do not identify as exclusively straight and/or folks who have non-binary or gender-expansive identities. This term was previously used as a slur, but has been reclaimed by many parts of the LGBTQ+ movement.

Questioning | A term used to describe people who are in the process of exploring their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Same-gender loving | A term some prefer to use instead of lesbian, gay or bisexual to express attraction to and love of people of the same gender.

Sex assigned at birth | The sex, male, female or intersex, that a doctor or midwife uses to describe a child at birth based on their external anatomy.

Sexual orientation | An inherent or immutable enduring emotional, romantic or sexual attraction to other people. Note: an individual's sexual orientation is independent of their gender identity.

Transgender | An umbrella term for people whose gender identity and/or expression is different from cultural expectations based on the sex they were assigned at birth. Being transgender does not imply any specific sexual orientation. Therefore, transgender people may identify as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc.

Transitioning | A series of processes that some transgender people may undergo in order to live more fully as their true gender. This typically includes social transition, such as changing name and pronouns, medical transition, which may include hormone therapy or gender affirming surgeries, and legal transition, which may include changing legal name and sex on government identity documents. Transgender people may choose to undergo some, all or none of these processes.

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Ally | A term used to describe someone who is actively supportive of LGBTQ+ people. It encompasses straight and cisgender allies, as well as those within the LGBTQ+ community who support each other (e.g., a lesbian who is an ally to the bisexual community).

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The Intersection of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC Identities

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People who belong to the LGBTQ+ community and are people of color are known are considered to be a multiple minority. Learn about the challenges they may face.

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For years, Morgan Mann Willis dreamed of having a community where it would be safe to openly talk about queer identity, explore sexual desires and be supported by others. That sense of belonging wasn't something Willis, who uses she and they pronouns, had with their family of birth, in which there was a "really big gap of feeling like a whole person."

"I don't think that my family was ever going to be a place where I was going to think about the fullness of who I am or my identity or what my needs were," Willis said.

So Willis, 38, created their own family. More than a decade ago, they joined bklyn boihood, a Black queer party and event collective that operates in cities across the U.S, to connect with LGBTQ people who identified on the masculine gender spectrum.

"Being a part of it has meant being able to dream beyond the boundaries of gender, of sexuality, of identity, and give us room to kind of fully bloom into whoever we are," said Willis, who now lives in Detroit. "One of the ties that binds us is kind of the way that our masculinity is presented and maybe isn't presented or lives in the world."

Being part of the group was one of the first times, Willis said, they had a place to openly discuss queer sex and relationship traumas and to celebrate their milestones. When Willis performed at a queer storytelling event, they said, they almost cried when they saw the group cheering them on from the crowd.

"I've never had anyone show up and not have to formally invite them or beg them to come," Willis said. "That was really special."

Through the collective, Willis said, they were able to re-imagine what family looks like.

While coming out has become more accepted in recent years, many LGBTQ people, like Willis, are building their own "chosen" family trees in the face of rejection from their biological ones. In such chosen families - also known as found families - friends or groups act as stand-in parents for those who have been rejected or have difficult relationships with their families of origin. Forty-nine percent of Black LGBTQ adults say they have strained relationships with their parents, according to a 2021 UCLA report, compared to 33 percent of their straight Black peers.

E. Patrick Johnson, the author of "Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South" and the dean of the School of Communication at Northwestern University, said chosen families have long existed in the Black community.

"The history between Black queer chosen families is actually connected to the history of chosen families within Black communities in general," Johnson said, "because of the long history of displaced families among Black folks who were enslaved for 100 years and broken and removed from their biological families and so out of necessity had to depend on each other."

Johnson said it's common within the Black community for children to refer to someone as their "play auntie" or "play uncle," terms used to describe close family friends. Similar language developed in Black queer communities to label those bonds, he said.

"We would say when I was younger: 'Is she family? Is he family?' And that meant 'Is this person gay?'" Johnson said. "It had nothing to do with being biologically related but sharing an identity."

Black chosen families form bonds not only to escape homophobic families but also to find pleasure and communion with others, Johnson said. One example, he said, are house parties, which since the 1900s have been safe spaces for Black queer people to express their sexuality and make connections.

"It's a place where folks can come and party or they come to have sex, where they come to be seen in the fullness of who they are," he said.

The height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic also led to the formation of queer chosen families in the Black community, said Rin Reczek, the co-author of "Families We Keep: LGBTQ People and Their Enduring Bonds with Parents."

"Chosen families were seen as particularly instrumental during the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, when families and society writ large wholly rejected queer people," Reczek said. "But they have remained a fixture of queer life today because they provide an environment free of homophobic and transphobic families of origin that are often rife with toxic expectations and interactions."

A chosen family often plays a larger role in an LGBTQ person's life, said Sean Ebony Coleman, 53, a Black transgender man who is the founder of Destination Tomorrow, an LGBTQ organization in the Bronx, New York.

"A lot of times the chosen family has more sway or more influence," said Coleman, who is part of the ballroom community and a longtime member of the House of Ebony. "When you look at the house and ballroom community, those young people come into that world and they have the love of the house mother, the house father, the house godparents, and these people become so influential that at times we can reach out to them if we're having difficulties or we're trying to get a message across to our clients."

In ballroom culture, houses often provide members with food, shelter and mentorship in exchange for participation in ballroom competitions. In such spaces, LGBTQ people gather to dance and perform for prizes. Coleman has walked in ballroom categories such as "realness" in front of panels of judges and hundreds of spectators. He said the ballroom community not only helped him build confidence but also was a space that affirmed his LGBTQ identity.

"It saved my life," Coleman said. "It was a place of safety that I could explore who I was without having to feel guilty about it or shame or ostracized. ... I was amongst other folks who understood what it was that I was going through, and they became my brothers and sisters."

Ciora Thomas, a Black transgender woman, ran away from home at 14 to escape a transphobic household. As the eldest child, she was expected to take on the role of a provider, but she said the responsibilities came to a halt when she started transitioning.

"I lost authority as an older sibling," said Thomas, 33. "My brothers were being nasty to me. My mom was being nasty to me. The church was being nasty to me."

LGBTQ people who lack family support are more at risk of homelessness and mental health issues, including depression and suicidal ideation, compared to people who are accepted, a 2016 report in the Journal of Adolescent Health found.

Thomas' tumultuous relationship with her family soon led her to engage in sex work for survival. She was later embraced by a group of trans women sex workers, who took her in as their own family.

"I found my chosen family finally," Thomas said. "I just felt protected. If I had a client outside, the girls were watching my back, if the police were coming around, the girls were watching my back, and we were watching each other's backs."

Thomas, who later founded SisTers PGH, a Black- and trans-led advocacy group in Pittsburgh, said the organization acts as a bridge to help LGBTQ people who are rejected because of their sexual orientations or gender identities.

"We can meet those kids as they're being thrown out to the street," she said. "I was homeless, a lot of my staff were homeless and addicts, and we experienced what not having a family was about."

Today, Black LGBTQ people continue to build chosen families in the wake of crises in the LGBTQ community.

"Now that we are in a different era, I see a lot of these families being formed around trans people, particularly in response to the number of Black trans women who are being murdered," Johnson said. "Another way that Black queer family has evolved is around home insecurity. There are so many, particularly Black and brown, queer youth who are homeless ... and there's a necessity to find shelter, either literal shelter or metaphorical shelter in a community."

Experts say another benefit is the freedom many LGBTQ people have in chosen families, compared to many biological families.

"These relationships are not legally binding, and there are far fewer pressures to stay in such ties if they go sour," Reczek said. "This means that one is not trapped in chosen families but are free to stay or leave in accordance with the quality of the relationships within the family."

Martez D.R. Smith, the executive director of the Keeping Ballroom Community Alive Network, said he discovered that freedom and support at an early age when he joined the ballroom scene. He said the idea of what family can and should be prompts another set of questions.

"I think most people, if they had a choice, they would elect people who reflect the things that they value or the things that they aspire to be," said Martez, 30. "Maybe as a Western society we should reconsider the way we view family. ... Maybe the way we're doing it isn't the best way, or maybe it isn't the most productive. They always say it takes a village to raise a child, right?"

Willis' chosen family at bklyn boihood gives them opportunities to grow in ways that felt limited in families of origin. Willis said adding to their family tree has spawned new interests, ideas and challenges. They hope that can inspire others to create families of their own.

"Being able to not have to stay the same is the part that makes it feel like unconditional love ... and it makes it possible for us to continue to grow together and evolve," they said.

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She escaped her transphobic household - and found a new, LGBTQ friendly family

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For years, Morgan Mann Willis dreamed of having a community where it would be safe to openly talk about queer identity, explore sexual desires and be supported by others. That sense of belonging wasn't something Willis, who uses she and they pronouns, had with their family of birth, in which there was a "really big gap of feeling like a whole person."

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Fighting what some saw as a “whitewash” of gay history, some in Chicago are trying to document the city’s Black LGBTQ community, which can trace its roots to the early 20th century.

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A recent change designed to protect the privacy of North Carolina's transgender public school students is drawing complaints from some conservative groups.

At the end of January, the state Department of Public Instruction updated the PowerSchool information system so that the sex for students is no longer visible unless schools give users permission to view the records. The change, which DPI says is based on federal guidance, is meant to protect transgender students from being outed if the gender they identify with is not the same as their biological gender.

"The update does not erase student sex information in the system," Blair Rhoades, a DPI spokeswoman, said in an email. "The update instead allows for local decision makers to choose who can view that information.

"All states have been working towards following this federal guidance, as there has been ongoing litigation around Title IX, and the agency is obligated to comply with all federal laws addressing discrimination."

Title IX is a civil rights law that prohibits gender-related discrimination in programs that receive federal funding.

But Education First Alliance is accusing Republican State Superintendent Catherine Truitt of "advancing the 'Trans' agenda." The group cites the new change as well as one DPI made last year to PowerSchool to show the preferred name of students instead of just their legal names.

Education First Alliance charges that the PowerSchool changes "will allow children to choose their own names and sexes without the input or permission of parents."

But Rhoades tweeted Tuesday that the assertion that DPI is allowing children to change genders without parental consent "is ludicrous & wholly inaccurate."

Transgender students being outed

Craig White, supportive schools coordinator at the Asheville-based Campaign for Southern Equality, said at the start of the school year that the group received a rash of complaints about transgender students being outed at school. White said the problem was that everyone had PowerSchool access to the sex field for students.

White said that the group complained to DPI that both federal privacy rights and Title IX rights of transgender students were being violated.

In June 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Bostock v. Clayton County case that federal employment discrimination law applies to transgender people. Based on the court ruling, the Biden Administration issued federal guidance saying Title IX's prohibition of sexual discrimination includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Based on the guidance, DPI sent an email on Jan. 23 to schools telling them an upcoming PowerSchool update would remove the student sex field from teachers' screens.

A followup email on Jan. 26 told schools that the student sex field would be hidden in PowerSchool unless users had management access or were granted "view access" by their school.

"If a faculty member has a legitimate reason to see the sex of a student, they can," White said in an interview Wednesday. "What they can't do is receive it as a matter of course."

"Transgenderism in schools'

Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the N.C. Values Coalition, said she blames the Biden Administration and not Superintendent Truitt or DPI for the change. She accused the Biden Administration of engaging in federal overreach by reinterpreting Title IX to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

"This goes back to the Biden agenda to elevate transgenderism in schools and to use schools as laboratory for experiments instead of looking at what's best for children," Fitzgerald said in an interview Wednesday.

Fitzgerald said principals should turn on the PowerSchool function to allow teachers to see the sex of their students because educators need to know that information.

The change comes at a time when Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has described teaching sexuality, including transgenderism and homosexuality, in schools as "filth."

Robinson and other critics have called for removing some LGBTQ themed books from schools because they say they contain obscene and graphic depictions about sex.

White argues there's a political war against LGBTQ students and faculty, especially transgender people.

"What we're moving toward is an environment where students of color and LGBTQ students are not feeling safe and welcome in schools," White said. "DPI is right that those students have the right to a quality public education."

This story was originally published February 24, 2022 8:00 AM.

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NC won't show the sex of students on PowerSchool. It's meant to help transgender kids.

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A recent change designed to protect the privacy of North Carolina's transgender public school students is drawing complaints from some conservative groups. At the end of January, the state Department of Public Instruction updated the PowerSchool information system so that the sex for students is no longer visible unless schools give users permission to view the records.

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Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness | Official Trailer | Netflix

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Because history has never been as straight as you think.

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An LGBTQ+ interview podcast hosted by Jeffrey Masters, and produced by The Advocate magazine in partnership with GLAAD.

"If you want to understand what it sounds like when a host is prepared, look no further than Jeffrey Masters. His interest in his guests' stories, as well as his encouraging manner, allows him to get beyond the surface whether he's interviewing activists or members of the entertainment industry."

"Whether he's chatting with seminal AIDS advocate Cleve Jones or rising powerhouses like Our Lady J and Keiynan Lonsdale, Masters digs deep, surpassing expected coming out stories in favor of examining specific life moments that have defined the queer luminaries we love."

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An LGBTQ+ interview podcast hosted by Jeffrey Masters, and produced by The Advocate magazine in partnership with GLAAD. "If you want to understand what it sounds like when a host is prepared, look no further than Jeffrey Masters.

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Queersplaining - Intimate portraits of LGBTQ lives and the issues that shape them

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Queersplaining is a podcast that explores the lives of LGBTQ folks. Each week is a dive into the ways our queerness and/or transness effects the way we navigate the world

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Gen Z's Fluid Take on Gender Expression | Courtney Lucius | TEDxYouth@BrooklynLab