Program Notes
Guest speaker: Jae Starfox
This podcast features Jae Starfox’s 2013 Palenque Norte Lecture, which was delivered at the Burning Man Festival. In their talk, Jae provides a candid look into some of the issues that transgender people are faced with as they make their way through a sometimes less than friendly world. As more and more people are beginning to deal with their own gender related issues, this talk provides some little discussed but very important information. Following Jae’s talk I play a short segment from my interview on the Joe Rogan podcast in which we also discuss gender issues.
ALSO SEE: Intersex women speak out to protect the next generation
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic
00:00:23 ►
Salon.
00:00:23 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:32 ►
And I’d like to begin today by thanking fellow saloners, Theo the Leo, Keech, and hey, clever cartoon, by the way, Keech,
00:00:41 ►
T-Lack P, Brian M, and Owl C, whose donations are helping to offset some of the expenses associated with these podcasts.
00:00:44 ►
So I thank you all very much. Also, I’d like to thank
00:00:47 ►
Joe Rogan for having me as a guest on his show last week. As a result, I suspect that there are
00:00:52 ►
some newcomers here in the salon today. And the reason that I suspect this is because, well,
00:00:58 ►
after my appearance on Joe’s show, I acquired over a thousand new followers on Twitter.
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And my Twitter handle, by the way, is psychedeliclozo, L-O-Z-O, all one word.
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So for our new fellow salonners, I thought that maybe I should give you a brief overview
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of what these podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are all about.
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The format is quite simple.
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The main feature is a recorded talk or the occasional interview
00:01:25 ►
with people who are in some way associated with what I like to think of as the worldwide
00:01:31 ►
psychedelic community. And the reason I know that there is, in fact, such a community is that in the
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eight plus years that I’ve been doing these podcasts, we’ve reached over a million unique listeners in more than 100 countries.
00:01:45 ►
So welcome to our community. Now, a good many of the talks that I’ve featured in these podcasts
00:01:52 ►
are by Terrence McKenna and by Dr. Timothy Leary. Many of the others were featured speakers at the
00:01:58 ►
Mind States conferences or from the Palenque Norte lecture series that takes place at the
00:02:03 ►
Burning Man Festival each year.
00:02:06 ►
And if you go to our Program Notes blog, which you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us,
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you’ll see a listing of over a hundred categories that these talks fall into,
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including the names of the speakers.
00:02:18 ►
And this is my 379th podcast, and hopefully their quality has improved,
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in case you are listening to some of the
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early ones. I never really thought I’d still be doing these podcasts in the beginning, and so
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for the first hundred or so, I was still using a $15 headset microphone. And while I’ve got a
00:02:37 ►
little better mic now, I’m still doing these podcasts in the little spare room I use as an
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office. Right now, I’m in a period of playing a couple of talks from the 2013 Palenque Norte lectures,
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followed by a couple talks by McKenna or others.
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And today I’m going to feature a talk that is thus far unique here in the salon.
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As you can tell by the title, it’s about androgyny and features the delightful Jay Starfox.
00:03:05 ►
In just a moment, you’re going to hear their story, and I hope that you’ll not only give this talk your attention right now,
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but after you’ve listened to it with me, well, I hope that you’ll continue to give some thought to what they have to say
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about ways in which you can make this world a little better place for our friends, relatives, neighbors, and coworkers
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who are
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working through their own gender issues. So without any further ado, here is Christopher
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Pezza introducing Jay Starfox at Planque Norte 2013. And as you’ll notice, there were places in
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which someone in the audience was either asking a question or commenting, but unfortunately their
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voices weren’t picked up by the recording system, and so I had to cut those silent gaps out.
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Now here is Pez.
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All right, up next we have Jay Starfox, and they are awesome.
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I just have to say that I’ve been working with Jay for the last week and a half, and
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Jay actually helped construct this entire tent structure
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that you’re now sitting in.
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And even sacrificed one of her fingers
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to a 20-pound sledgehammer in the process.
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But they are such a rock star,
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and I’m really excited for this talk.
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So without further ado, here’s Jay.
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Thank you, Pez. So I got the inspiration to do a talk about divine androgyny because I was here
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at Burning Man last year and I was like, divine masculine, divine feminine. Great. What about
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everybody else? And my friend,
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I was like,
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my friend Trouble said,
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well, you should do it.
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And so that was my dream.
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And then at the psychedelic science conference in April,
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I met Annie and Pez
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and found out about this camp
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and have just been having a ball ever since then.
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And I was like,
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you have the camp for
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the talk that I need to give um so that’s been just like a really thrilling thing in my life
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and I’ve listened to a lot of the talks that were done in this camp at Palenque Norte last year
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they’re all on the psychedelic salon I highly recommend them and one of the things I love about a lot of those talks
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is when people are discussing their own life experiences
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so that’s one of the things I’m going to bring into this
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is talking about my own life
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and the work that I do every day
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in loud and quiet ways
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another big inspiration for me has been Tibetan Buddhism, which is a tradition
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that’s really opened itself up to white Westerners like myself and most of us in this room,
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and said, this is where this tradition can now do a lot of benefit and receive a lot of benefit. So
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I feel really comfortable engaging with those ideas. And I’d like to start
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us off with a visualization from Tibetan Buddhism, which uses a lot of imaginative meditation. So
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this idea that if you can visualize where you’re going, you’ll do a better job of getting there
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more quickly and more fully,
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which contrasts with a lot of other meditation practices,
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and it’s something that I think is pretty nifty.
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So if y’all will close your eyes, if that feels comfortable,
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and take a couple breaths and kind of slow it down,
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and hear the music in the background, like that’s part of it. and take a couple breaths and kind of slow it down,
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and hear the music in the background, like that’s part of it.
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And picture in your mind’s eye an object, something noun-ish,
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that for you symbolizes an energy that is masculine, however that is for you.
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It could be power, it could be destruction,
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it could be, I don’t know, phallic,
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however that goes for you.
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And picture it, get it in three dimensions,
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turn it around, really see this noun from all sides.
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Get a sense of it.
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What does it smell like?
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Is it hot?
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Is it cold?
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Breathe it in a little bit.
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Feel that energy that comes off it.
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Whoa.
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And now kind of like put it off to the side.
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You’re going to shift your attention a little and you’re going to find something that is, again,
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kind of a noun, an object,
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that is both complementary and opposite
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the way that we think of the feminine often.
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Something flowing, creative, gentle,
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whatever it is,
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however you associate that idea.
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Find an object that you can imbue with that. And
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again, kind of fill it in, look at it from all sides, really get a sense of it. Breathe
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it in. And now take your masculine object and your feminine object and mash them together.
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your feminine object and like mash them together let them maybe it’s conjugal maybe it’s improbable or nonsensical and and then like really get that combination that blending and feel the energy that
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comes off of that one breathe it in and that for me that that energy, it flows.
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It’s a unity.
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It’s complementary.
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It’s not really masculine or feminine.
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It’s not halfway between them.
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It’s something else entirely.
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And it changes from moment to moment, depending on your perspective.
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It could have one or the other.
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This, I think, is like a big part of androgyny,
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this energy of unity.
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And so that’s really powerful.
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I invite you all to open your eyes or keep them closed as suits you.
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And thanks for sharing that with me.
00:09:29 ►
In Tibetan Buddhism, the Buddha deity is often envisioned as Buddha and consort,
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intertwined, co-mingled as one being with a variety of gendered characteristics.
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Similarly, in Hinduism would be Shiva Shakti.
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And so this unity that I feel from androgyny,
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I think has a great analogy to the unity that is sort of everything. There’s a saying like
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hell is other people which I like to kind of unpackage as hell is othering
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people. You are in a mind state resembling hell when you are treating
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other people as separate from you. But if you acknowledge our interconnection,
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you’ve got a doorway into a whole other way
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of experiencing people and yourself.
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And I have found a lot of that energy
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has been available to me as I engage in a gender transition.
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I’ve been on testosterone for five months,
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and it’s been a real pleasure, maybe not every single day.
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Usually on Tuesdays I’m pretty crabby,
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because that’s the day before my next injection.
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So today I’m feeling pretty good.
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I had it this morning.
00:11:03 ►
And I kind of have realized that transitioning is a like multi-year-long process
00:11:10 ►
of psycho-spiritual death and rebirth um and i’m really glad i’ve had a few eight to ten hour
00:11:16 ►
practices of psycho-spiritual death and rebirth um it’s been really uh a resource for me to learn how to let go of all of my checks on what my body is doing and how it’s functioning and how my mind reacts to different stimuli. is your primary hormone and you experience a stress or panic response, the kind of neurochemical
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cascade results in the emotion of sadness and frustration. Whereas if testosterone is the
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dominant hormone in your system and you experience a stress or panic response, the dominant emotion
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that you’ll feel from that kind of different neurochemical cascade is anger.
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So instead of getting upset and crying, now I want to go and make something happen.
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That’s been really nice because I had no idea what was going on with me before.
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I don’t really have a typical trans narrative.
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When I was three years old, I wasn’t like, a typical trans narrative when I was three years old I wasn’t like I’m a boy
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actually when I was four I loved wearing dresses
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and I’m still pretty cool on dresses
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and this is something my parents give me endless shit about
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oh but you loved wearing dresses when you were four
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I look at my dad very seriously and I say
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I’m the kind of guy that liked wearing dresses when they were four.
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And he just sits there and squirms in his seat.
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The really dignified guy, a doctor in his 60s.
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And I’ve got him pinned all of the transphobia and homophobia that he’s got locked up inside him because he’s part of our culture.
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got locked up inside him because he’s part of our culture and I’m
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sitting there and I’m looking him right in the eyes and I’m telling
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him that if he’s going to like keep
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having me in his life he’s got to work through
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that and
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that’s been really big
00:13:13 ►
and like
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a lot of people say oh you can’t
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transition if you don’t have X and X or whatever.
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And, no, it’s not true.
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Bit of a fun technical fact.
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In 2010, the World Professional Association of Transgender Health changed their standards of care such that informed consent is all that a physician needs to do
00:13:45 ►
in order to give you hormones for a gender transition.
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You don’t need to see a psychiatrist.
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If your doctor tells you you need therapy, find a better doctor.
00:13:55 ►
So another really entertaining thing in our society
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that a dear friend of mine who couldn’t come to the burn this year
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because they just got a new vagina told me about this idea of Freud.
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Freud is kind of the basis for a great deal of our psychology and analysis and therapy.
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And a lot of his stuff is pretty weird, if you kind of get into it.
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And a lot of his stuff is pretty weird, if you kind of get into it. And this great idea that my dear friend told me about was,
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so Freud is seeing all of these female-assigned folks
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who are hysterical and have social dysfunctions
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and, like, hate their bodies and want to be their dads
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and want to kill their moms, right?
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Does that sound like everybody’s problem
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or does that sound like trans guy problems?
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I think that there’s a fairly good chance
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that these socially dysfunctional female assigned folks
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that Freud was seeing were transgender,
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but there was no word for that.
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There was no cultural beginning for that.
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And so a lot of this stuff that Freud called our unconscious,
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our shadow, is really the trans experience and the pain that trans people feel and the fear around
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that. And learning about that and thinking about it and thinking about the way that psychiatry and
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psychology have developed and the ways in which gender is medicalized
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when it doesn’t match what a doctor tells you when you’re born
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and how that kind of shadow work that for three years,
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all of my trips, everyone’s genitalia would turn into bleeding incisions,
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and I just thought that was what happened to everybody.
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Well, no.
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No, that was kind of like a flashing light.
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Hey, you should pay attention.
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Those kinds of clues are hard to see
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when all of the history of psychology
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tells you that that kind of pain
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is the pain everybody deals with.
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It doesn’t have to be.
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There’s a lot to learn from it, but it should be a point of action, not a place to give up.
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And so I’ve learned a lot from those feelings I had of dissociation, which were really challenging for me for a long time,
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not knowing that things I was seeing and feeling and understanding had something to do with part of my life path.
00:16:37 ►
And like I’ve had a really challenging build week because everyone I was building this camp with,
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maybe one or two of them would get my pronoun right once or twice. And that just sends me right out of a present moment.
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I feel so invisible when that happens. My preferred pronoun is they, by the way, although he is fine.
00:17:06 ►
and it’s like when I hurt my hand which Pez mentioned
00:17:08 ►
I didn’t even notice
00:17:09 ►
I kept working and Pez actually had to
00:17:12 ►
stop me and be like hey
00:17:14 ►
Jay you’re bleeding
00:17:15 ►
come here
00:17:17 ►
I didn’t feel it for like a day
00:17:20 ►
finally I got out and took a whole
00:17:22 ►
night by myself just out in deep
00:17:24 ►
playa and was like come on
00:17:26 ►
you need to like get some grounding like don’t let what other people say dictate your whole being
00:17:33 ►
and that’s a hard hard thing especially for trans folks I think but for everybody people see you a certain way is it ever possible to show yourself to someone else
00:17:48 ►
there’s a huge question i’ve been experiencing like maybe i’m a tall person trapped in a short
00:17:54 ►
person’s body i can’t do anything about that we have a that I am a manly queer and a trans masculine person and I can do something about that.
00:18:25 ►
three years ago, I thought that trans meant something a little more like intersex, like that they, I didn’t, I didn’t know that you could use hormones to change your appearance.
00:18:32 ►
I had no conception of that. I grew up in a really rural town about three hours from here.
00:18:38 ►
Uh, and I am still healing from that. Much love to all the small-town folks.
00:18:47 ►
I hope you can all come to Portland.
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It’s very nice.
00:18:53 ►
And I totally lost my train of thought there.
00:18:56 ►
That’s another thing I love about toxic Burning Man.
00:18:59 ►
You never quite know where the speaker is at,
00:19:01 ►
so you just roll with it.
00:19:04 ►
I have this lovely set of notes that I made for myself,
00:19:08 ►
except my handwriting is barely legible right now
00:19:11 ►
because I’m right-handed.
00:19:13 ►
And so one of the things that I’ve been doing
00:19:16 ►
is learning how to see bodies as beautiful.
00:19:19 ►
It’s one of the awesome things testosterone does
00:19:21 ►
is you get a sex drive,
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which I’d never really had before.
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So now like people look great and some of them I might even want to have sex with.
00:19:31 ►
And that’s really cool because previously I had what I guess you would call demisexual.
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My sexuality was entirely dependent upon my emotional connection to someone. So I didn’t,
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I saw people as sexually inert
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unless I was, like, madly in love with them,
00:19:48 ►
which made my sexuality have this kind of weird codependent aspect,
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which has gotten a lot better this year.
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And so I’ve been learning to see bodies in this really special way
00:20:01 ►
that I think I want to share that vision
00:20:05 ►
as part of this talk,
00:20:07 ►
which is like,
00:20:09 ►
what is gender would be a question.
00:20:13 ►
And I’d love to open that up to start with.
00:20:15 ►
Does anybody have any thoughts
00:20:17 ►
about defining gender?
00:20:20 ►
Raise your hand.
00:20:23 ►
Word.
00:20:25 ►
Good job.
00:20:27 ►
Yeah, so I kind of, lately, my feminist analysis of gender,
00:20:32 ►
feminist analysis being one that takes into account systems of power
00:20:36 ►
as they relate to colonialism and oppression,
00:20:41 ►
is that there’s kind of three main areas you see gender.
00:20:46 ►
There’s the personal.
00:20:47 ►
So you look inside.
00:20:49 ►
When I look inside and I look for my gender, I see like a swirling vortex of fun.
00:20:55 ►
Some people don’t see that, I’ve learned.
00:20:59 ►
And then there’s gender as a social phenomenon.
00:21:03 ►
You look at people, you see gendered qualities.
00:21:07 ►
Did you know that your hairline is gendered?
00:21:09 ►
Since I’ve started testosterone, my hairline has changed.
00:21:12 ►
I have this freckle here that you didn’t used to be able to see
00:21:15 ►
because my hair covered it, but now it’s changed.
00:21:19 ►
You’ll almost never see a receding, peaked hairline
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on someone who’s never had testosterone
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as their dominant hormone after puberty. My voice is gendered. I used to speak much more up here.
00:21:34 ►
I don’t really do it that well right now. My throat’s a little playa happy. Your tendons are gendered uh when you have testosterone in your system your tendons get
00:21:48 ►
thicker and tougher your muscle density is gendered your fat distribution
00:21:55 ►
the shape of your face this part in particular um you’ll hear about facial contouring for trans
00:22:03 ►
women and they call this brow bossing and they want to reduce that angle because you’ll notice I have hardly any bump right there because I didn’t have testosterone when I went through puberty.
00:22:15 ►
Um, the first time.
00:22:18 ►
Uh, so like things are gendered that you’d never expect just on your body.
00:22:24 ►
So things are gendered that you’d never expect just on your body.
00:22:28 ►
And then there’s clothes.
00:22:32 ►
And then there’s the political domain of gender, which has a lot to do with things like distribution of labor.
00:22:37 ►
A really good genderqueer anarchist former housemate of mine
00:22:41 ►
introduced me to the idea of a of gendered categories of labor
00:22:46 ►
so you have productive labor which would be speaking in the speaker series you have reproductive
00:22:55 ►
labor organizing the speaker series you have productive labor designing and orchestrating
00:23:01 ►
the build of the temple reproductive labor organizing the opening ceremony for the temple,
00:23:07 ►
productive labor,
00:23:09 ►
running the big machine that builds the man,
00:23:11 ►
reproductive labor,
00:23:13 ►
letting people in the gate.
00:23:14 ►
If you look all around Burning Man
00:23:16 ►
and you’re looking at who’s doing the big art pieces
00:23:20 ►
and whose names are attached to them,
00:23:21 ►
it’s overwhelmingly names that sound male.
00:23:25 ►
If you look at who’s working the gates and the coffee shop
00:23:29 ►
and who’s serving tea in the tea house,
00:23:35 ►
it’s overwhelmingly names that sound female.
00:23:38 ►
So this is a really kind of insidious level of gender
00:23:43 ►
as a political category and one that probably causes the most
00:23:48 ►
suffering because when you have a two-category system say I studied linguistics in college and
00:23:54 ►
I got to write about gender and when you have a two-category system you always have a marked and
00:24:00 ►
an unmarked category so the marked category is the non-default. It’s less common. So that’s why
00:24:09 ►
women often feel like a minority because they’re the marked category. If, for example, in French,
00:24:15 ►
if you have a group of people and seven of them are perceived and assumed to be women and one of
00:24:23 ►
them is perceived and assumed to be male, then you of them is perceived and assumed to be male,
00:24:25 ►
then you use the male plural to refer to that group of people,
00:24:29 ►
because masculinity and maleness are unmarked in Western European and North American culture.
00:24:39 ►
So that two-class system leads to an unmarked group that gets privilege and power.
00:24:46 ►
So that’s the feminist analysis of it.
00:24:48 ►
And what happens when you start breaking down those two categories is that the people in power get scared because it threatens their power.
00:25:07 ►
their power and the people who are dependent upon that power structure who are in the marked category also get scared because the system that they know how to navigate and that has
00:25:15 ►
at least enabled them to survive if not supported them is being threatened so androgyny non-binary trans folks and so on is really like destabilizing to a lot
00:25:29 ►
of political and social categories that are completely normalized for most of the people
00:25:36 ►
you’ll meet i don’t expect anyone to see me and expect my pronoun is they unless the person I’m meeting has had an awful lot of training.
00:25:53 ►
Just like I wouldn’t necessarily expect a cis guy to be all that good at getting his girlfriend to orgasm unless he’s had a whole lot of training.
00:25:58 ►
And lesbians give the best training in that, I’ve learned.
00:26:08 ►
best training in that I’ve learned. And so the next place I wanted to go is to kind of present some of my ideas about what you can do to activate more divine androgyny in the world, in your life,
00:26:16 ►
in organizations that you’re involved in. And the first one is like on the personal level,
00:26:22 ►
explore your gender, make it a place that you frolic, that you be whatever it is.
00:26:28 ►
Free yourself to find things that are gendered that you never expected were.
00:26:33 ►
A friend of mine makes this joke.
00:26:36 ►
When you’re looking at a crowd and you see somebody who’s wearing a vest,
00:26:40 ►
has a mohawk, and nose piercings,
00:26:43 ►
they’re probably genderqueer.
00:26:47 ►
This is a good one.
00:26:53 ►
So find interesting and odd ways to explore gender.
00:26:57 ►
Does being childish wearing brightly colored socks,
00:27:01 ►
does that make you feel gendered?
00:27:04 ►
Does wearing a big trench coat make you feel gendered? Does wearing a big trench coat make you
00:27:07 ►
feel gendered? What adjectives can go with gender? My favorite adjective for my gender is usually
00:27:13 ►
fabulous. And like, there are all kinds of words that are gendered or have the potential to be
00:27:21 ►
gendered in ways that no one’s ever told you they ought to be,
00:27:25 ►
so go for it.
00:27:27 ►
Wear mismatched socks and a really ugly hat.
00:27:30 ►
It helps.
00:27:32 ►
Another thing that you can do is ask people for their pronouns.
00:27:37 ►
Like, find the manliest guy
00:27:38 ►
and just be like, hey, what’s your preferred pronoun?
00:27:43 ►
Whoa.
00:27:44 ►
And, like, allow for self preferred pronoun? Whoa.
00:27:48 ►
And allow for self-definition.
00:27:50 ►
If someone doesn’t get it, help them,
00:27:53 ►
particularly if you don’t feel threatened.
00:27:57 ►
Because if you’re having an experience where you feel threatened, it is not the right time to educate someone.
00:28:00 ►
It’s time for you to get the hell out of there.
00:28:02 ►
It’s never your job to educate someone,
00:28:05 ►
and it is absolutely never your job to educate someone
00:28:07 ►
who’s making you feel unsafe.
00:28:09 ►
So don’t feel bad about it.
00:28:11 ►
It’s okay.
00:28:13 ►
And when you’re interacting with someone who you know
00:28:18 ►
has a more nuanced conception of gender,
00:28:23 ►
ask them.
00:28:24 ►
Don’t assume anything about their bodies.
00:28:26 ►
They could have all kinds of words for their body parts
00:28:29 ►
that you wouldn’t know.
00:28:31 ►
And it’s really important to honor people’s self-ID
00:28:35 ►
and self-definitions.
00:28:37 ►
And it can be really enriching to explore those
00:28:41 ►
and go and learn about cliques and girl cock and like the whole range of ways
00:28:51 ►
that you can rename your body parts so that you can love them as part of you and share them with
00:28:57 ►
somebody who gets that and that’s really cool um and uh that note, don’t ask anyone ever,
00:29:07 ►
no matter how close you are to them,
00:29:09 ►
whether they’re going to have surgery
00:29:11 ►
or what kind of genitalia they have.
00:29:13 ►
Never. Don’t do it.
00:29:14 ►
If you hear someone doing it, tell them not to.
00:29:17 ►
If someone wants to volunteer that information, that’s great.
00:29:21 ►
But, like, don’t ask people about their genitalia.
00:29:23 ►
It’s just not polite.
00:29:28 ►
And on a kind of a larger scale,
00:29:31 ►
one of my visions is to change the language of organizations
00:29:35 ►
to be gender inclusive.
00:29:38 ►
So instead of saying this event is open to men and women,
00:29:41 ►
you could say this event is open to people of all genders.
00:29:45 ►
I’ve been working with a wonderful person
00:29:47 ►
who runs the Tea House next door
00:29:49 ►
and also helps to coordinate the Women’s Visionary Congress,
00:29:53 ►
and we worked together to change all of their language
00:29:57 ►
so that it did not define gender as anything
00:30:01 ►
but a completely open-ended category.
00:30:04 ►
And I’m hoping to do that with
00:30:06 ►
the Oregon Country Fair in
00:30:07 ►
the near future, and I invite
00:30:10 ►
all of you to
00:30:11 ►
go from the bottom up.
00:30:13 ►
It doesn’t matter how deeply you are involved in
00:30:16 ►
something. Make some
00:30:18 ►
noise.
00:30:22 ►
And that’s kind of what I got to say.
00:30:24 ►
Now we do questions
00:30:25 ►
so as sort of
00:30:33 ►
what I’ll think of is
00:30:35 ►
like are you asking about an all women’s space
00:30:38 ►
so how to invite female identified people
00:30:42 ►
without excluding anyone who is female-identified.
00:30:46 ►
You could say feminine of center.
00:30:50 ►
I really like that one.
00:30:54 ►
Does anybody else have a way that they like to express
00:30:57 ►
categories of gender,
00:31:01 ►
particularly for people who are feminine of center,
00:31:04 ►
that encourages that kind
00:31:06 ►
of comfort? I have never had my chromosomes tested, so I do not know. I was female assigned
00:31:16 ►
at birth, which means that my, I guess the non-gendered term is lingon, was less than a half inch long
00:31:26 ►
at the moment that I popped out.
00:31:29 ►
If you’re between a half inch and an inch,
00:31:32 ►
they’ll do corrective surgery
00:31:34 ►
to make your genitalia match
00:31:37 ►
the way that they read your chromosomes.
00:31:41 ►
Doing chromosome tests
00:31:43 ►
before corrective surgery on intersex babies is pretty new
00:31:47 ►
before they would just make it look tidy and female
00:31:50 ►
so that’s pretty exciting
00:31:53 ►
in terms of progress
00:31:55 ►
but still you can’t get consent from a baby
00:31:58 ►
and very few parents are actually brought in by their physician
00:32:02 ►
to have it be a real decision making process
00:32:04 ►
so if you’re going to have a child or bring a child into your life,
00:32:08 ►
you might try to find a real savvy doctor for that too.
00:32:12 ►
So one of the things I love about the burn
00:32:14 ►
is seeing all kinds of gender bending.
00:32:18 ►
People who take things from different categories and perceptions
00:32:23 ►
and mix them together in like really exciting and
00:32:25 ►
unexpected ways so like someone wearing pants with just a huge package and a beautiful flowing
00:32:36 ►
shirt and long hair and like big old platform boots and I just love that topsy-turvy feeling and I try to kind of see that all the
00:32:47 ►
time and like notice things about people that kind of make them a little bit less black and white
00:32:54 ►
and a little bit more approachable for that and I think if you give everybody the opportunity to
00:33:03 ►
not be boxed in right away, they’ll surprise you.
00:33:10 ►
When I have some friends I have in on this, and it’s something that I practice,
00:33:15 ►
if I’m talking about a third party who’s not present, I’ll use neutral pronouns for them.
00:33:23 ►
So that kind of,
00:33:27 ►
I’ll usually only do this with friends who are kind of in on this practice with me
00:33:29 ►
because otherwise it gets confusing
00:33:31 ►
because no one’s used to it.
00:33:35 ►
But to say, like,
00:33:37 ►
I have been working on this with them
00:33:39 ►
and, you know, you want to talk about one person,
00:33:41 ►
oh, my friend Kaylin is interested in this person and i think
00:33:46 ►
they might be really good but they’re such a bro and then like it really kind of changes the dynamic
00:33:52 ►
of a conversation or i have a friend who’s single and really looking to date some people
00:33:58 ►
and so i’ll be like oh i think you might like this person. They’re really smart, funny, whatever.
00:34:09 ►
And not reveal the gender of the person I’m setting them up on a blind date for.
00:34:15 ►
And, like, that just topsy-turvies all kinds of things.
00:34:18 ►
And it also helps you practice.
00:34:22 ►
Another good one I heard is practicing songs. Singing songs, but inserting non-binary pronouns. So Z here
00:34:28 ►
hears is an example of a set of non-binary pronouns or AM air. They, them, their, another
00:34:37 ►
one. And so you sing a song, Skater Boy is a song with a whole lot of pronouns in it.
00:34:45 ►
So it’s a really easy song to practice with.
00:34:48 ►
And that kind of gets it used to rolling off your tongue.
00:34:51 ►
So then when you meet someone new who you’re like, what’s your preferred pronoun?
00:34:54 ►
Because you should always ask that when you meet someone new.
00:34:58 ►
This person would be like, oh, Z, thank you for asking.
00:35:01 ►
And you’ll be so practiced because you’ve been singing it.
00:35:07 ►
That one was straight off of Tumblr, which is a really great resource for all things gendery and flame wars.
00:35:19 ►
Yeah, there’s kind of a medical history reason for that,
00:35:27 ►
Yeah, there’s kind of a medical history reason for that, which is that until the mid-90s, what were then called the Harry Benjamin standards of care, required a year of therapy coinciding
00:35:38 ►
or followed by a year of real-life experience before a trans person could even access hormones. So you had to go
00:35:47 ►
way far out. You had to be like, I am a man. I am so masculine. I’ve always played football,
00:35:56 ►
whatever. Or you had to be like, I am a girl. I’ve always played with dolls, like whatever it is.
00:36:01 ►
In order just to access hormones. and that um up until 2010 you still
00:36:07 ►
had to get therapy and convince your therapist that you were really trans um and uh this year we
00:36:14 ►
uh being transgender is no longer a mental illness
00:36:17 ►
uh gender dysphoria is is still considered a mental illness, rightfully,
00:36:26 ►
for the pain that it causes people.
00:36:29 ►
A phrase, a nice alternate wording is dysmorphia,
00:36:33 ►
as opposed to dysphoria.
00:36:35 ►
So you can kind of reclaim the way that you’re experiencing your body.
00:36:38 ►
It’s not that you’re freaked out and scared by it.
00:36:41 ►
It’s that it’s just not your body.
00:36:43 ►
I used to kind of say, like,
00:36:45 ►
I feel like space aliens kidnapped me
00:36:47 ►
and gave me breast implants.
00:36:50 ►
Not so much that it’s like it’s not my body,
00:36:53 ►
it’s just like, why did they do that?
00:36:57 ►
So, you know, on a kind of personal level,
00:36:59 ►
dysmorphia might be a better word to use
00:37:02 ►
to describe one’s experience than dysphoria,
00:37:04 ►
and I love spreading the seeds of alternate language.
00:37:10 ►
I think there’s a bit of a difference if somebody comes out to you
00:37:15 ►
for reasons of you’re their employer,
00:37:18 ►
for reasons of non-medical concerns, because they’re your friend and they’d like to be open with you.
00:37:28 ►
Those are times when I think it’s inappropriate to ask about someone’s genitalia,
00:37:33 ►
just like it would be inappropriate when you’re getting close to your friend to just be like,
00:37:39 ►
hey, how hairy are your pubes?
00:37:42 ►
It’s just like, particularly for someone who’s dealing
00:37:46 ►
with a lot of pain potentially um or for someone for whom that’s a really triggering trauma trigger
00:37:52 ►
kind of question um it’s good to try to be really sensitive say you’re getting into an intimate
00:37:58 ►
relationship with someone who’s trans that would be probably a great time to talk about genitalia and preferences around that
00:38:06 ►
um so there’s like there’s nuance to it but uh so much of the time as soon as I come out to
00:38:13 ►
somebody the first question they ask is well are you gonna have surgery this is none of your
00:38:18 ►
business that’s my answer it’s like that’s a really personal question, and I don’t think that I want to share that right now.
00:38:33 ►
And so, because, like, it’s a big question, and it’s a heavy question, and it’s not one that always has an easy answer.
00:38:44 ►
And having to be faced with thinking about a part of you that’s got such complex and painful feelings so often is just really, like, exhausting.
00:38:47 ►
It makes it so that I don’t want to talk to people about it.
00:38:51 ►
So I guess some of that comes from like a personal preference.
00:38:56 ►
And it’s also something that when I go and read about how to be a good ally, that’s usually one of the top five things.
00:38:59 ►
So I just like to share that wisdom.
00:39:02 ►
But I think you have a really good point that closing off a question closes off a
00:39:08 ►
whole world of conversation that’s really important um i mostly know other trans guys and there’s
00:39:16 ►
a fair bit of peer pressure to go on t in part because it’s so easy and so effective and having all of the energy and strength that it gives you
00:39:28 ►
and the freedom to wear whatever you want
00:39:32 ►
but still get red in a way that is resonant.
00:39:35 ►
So there’s a lot of power to that.
00:39:39 ►
So there’s a fair bit of peer pressure around that,
00:39:42 ►
although I have met some trans folks
00:39:44 ►
who haven’t done any hormones or surgery,
00:39:47 ►
and often it’s a really great choice for them
00:39:53 ►
for all kinds of reasons,
00:39:54 ►
and that’s neat to encounter.
00:39:58 ►
So I love that there’s all the variety.
00:40:01 ►
And I don’t know a whole lot about the trans feminine
00:40:04 ►
sort of nuances and peer pressure.
00:40:11 ►
So that’s about our time. Thank you so much, everybody, for coming and listening to a little
00:40:17 ►
ramble and for sharing your thoughts. And I hope to see you queering it up out on the playa.
00:40:23 ►
and I hope to see you queering it up out on the playa.
00:40:31 ►
Well, if that doesn’t give you enough to think about,
00:40:34 ►
I’m going to play a short bit of commentary that took place between me and Joe Rogan
00:40:37 ►
on his show the other day.
00:40:38 ►
And I think that it nicely fills out
00:40:41 ►
this conversation about gender.
00:40:43 ►
For those of you who are joining us for the first time because you came here from Joe’s show,
00:40:47 ►
well, you most likely heard this already.
00:40:50 ►
But since his entire show ran to a full four hours, without even a bio break, I should add,
00:40:56 ►
well, since it’s that long, I thought that I would play this one short soundbite from it
00:41:00 ►
to give you an idea of how our conversation went.
00:41:03 ►
And I’ll put a link to the
00:41:05 ►
full program on Joe’s site in the program notes for this podcast. Now, here is Joe Rogan on the
00:41:11 ►
Joe Rogan Experience, November 19th, 2013. And we’ll pick up at a point where Joe and I were
00:41:18 ►
discussing a news item from the Middle East that was about stoning homosexuals to death.
00:41:24 ►
It’s ridiculous.
00:41:25 ►
It was from a time when people didn’t know any better.
00:41:28 ►
Right.
00:41:28 ►
The idea that your God wants you to do that is beyond ridiculous.
00:41:33 ►
You know, it’s religion is, you know, it’s basically superstition when you come down
00:41:37 ►
to it.
00:41:38 ►
A huge part of it.
00:41:39 ►
And I get the idea that I get that people need a higher power or believe in a higher
00:41:43 ►
power, 100%.
00:41:44 ►
But if you can’t see that there’s the hand of man and something that tells you that you should stone
00:41:48 ►
homosexuals to death you can’t see the hand of man in that you really think that that’s the way
00:41:53 ►
a god would handle it right why would a god invent homosexuals in the first place if you don’t think
00:41:58 ►
that they’re doing that because they’re born that way look there i’m sure have been men who are
00:42:02 ►
heterosexual who are like let’s see what this fuss is all about, and went over and did some gay shit.
00:42:07 ►
Why not?
00:42:08 ►
I’m sure.
00:42:08 ►
It happened.
00:42:09 ►
Nothing wrong with that.
00:42:11 ►
But the reality of being gay, if you’ve ever met anybody who’s gay, is that most people who are gay always knew it from the time they were born.
00:42:20 ►
Now, why would your God create that?
00:42:22 ►
Why would your God create someone who was born in a way that makes them just by nature of existing?
00:42:27 ►
You’re allowed to stone them to death.
00:42:29 ►
You should stone them to death.
00:42:30 ►
Well, you know, my youngest son is gay.
00:42:32 ►
And when he finally came out, I said, well, you know, I’ve been talking to your sister about this for 10 years.
00:42:37 ►
And he said, well, I knew I was gay that long, too.
00:42:41 ►
He said, I just had to get the courage to come out.
00:42:43 ►
And just last January, he got married in Washington, D.C.
00:42:48 ►
And he was kind of a big deal at the Kennedy Center, and so it was a big society wedding.
00:42:53 ►
And it was an amazing social event with hundreds of people there and, you know, people from the State Department and everywhere.
00:42:59 ►
Wow. And you could tell the tables that were the old established straight people who came just to be polite at first.
00:43:08 ►
But it turned into such a wonderful party.
00:43:10 ►
You know, they had the wedding and then a dinner and then the reception all in the same place.
00:43:14 ►
And everybody stayed until the thing closed down.
00:43:17 ►
They were having – mainly the old people were watching the young people dance because – well, my son’s husband is a principal dancer at the Susan Farrell Ballet.
00:43:27 ►
Wait a minute.
00:43:27 ►
A gay ballet dancer?
00:43:29 ►
This story just doesn’t make any sense.
00:43:30 ►
You don’t think there’d be?
00:43:31 ►
Well, there’s one or two.
00:43:34 ►
Isn’t it funny that there’s certain, like, if you hear guys in interior decorator.
00:43:39 ►
Yeah.
00:43:39 ►
Bam.
00:43:40 ►
Right.
00:43:40 ►
I mean, how many straight dudes?
00:43:41 ►
I’m sure there are some, and they get mad at me saying this right now, but I don’t know why it is, but there’s something about certain professions.
00:43:48 ►
And, you know, but boy, is he a hell of a dancer.
00:43:53 ►
He’s a good dancer.
00:43:54 ►
Well, you know, that’s always been the rumor about John Travolta.
00:43:57 ►
He’s probably not even gay.
00:43:58 ►
It’s probably people are still upset about Saturday Night Fever.
00:44:01 ►
He was too good.
00:44:03 ►
He was too good.
00:44:04 ►
He changed the way people decided to mate.
00:44:07 ►
But, you know, if you want to go to a fun wedding, just go to a same-sex marriage because
00:44:12 ►
it’s new for them.
00:44:13 ►
It’s something, you know, they’re really celebrating something for the first time.
00:44:17 ►
It’s a very joyous occasion.
00:44:19 ►
Right.
00:44:19 ►
They don’t feel pressured into it.
00:44:21 ►
No.
00:44:21 ►
Like, you guys have been together for five years and he hasn’t gotten you a ring. This is bullshit.
00:44:26 ►
You need to let him know that this is unacceptable.
00:44:29 ►
Yeah,
00:44:30 ►
gay guys don’t have a girlfriend like that.
00:44:31 ►
They’re doing it out of love.
00:44:33 ►
And they’re a wonderful couple.
00:44:35 ►
Where is it legal now? How many
00:44:37 ►
states is gay marriage legal? I think about 15
00:44:40 ►
or something like that in D.C.
00:44:41 ►
It’s happening, right? Slowly but
00:44:44 ►
surely. Yeah, see, he had just moved to Florida,
00:44:46 ►
taken a new job,
00:44:47 ►
and they’d already had all these plans,
00:44:49 ►
but he couldn’t get married in Florida,
00:44:50 ►
so they left everything in D.C.
00:44:52 ►
Fifteen states were legal same-sex marriage,
00:44:57 ►
and then there’s also more states,
00:45:00 ►
34, that ban same-sex marriage.
00:45:04 ►
There’s more that ban it.
00:45:05 ►
But recently there’s been a federal decision.
00:45:07 ►
The tax department is going to recognize it no matter what state they live in.
00:45:11 ►
This is fascinating, though.
00:45:12 ►
There’s states where it’s banned.
00:45:15 ►
It’s like they have banned same-sex marriages.
00:45:18 ►
34 of them.
00:45:19 ►
That’s amazing.
00:45:20 ►
They really had to go out of the way there, didn’t they?
00:45:22 ►
But it’s so stupid.
00:45:23 ►
It’s so stupid it’s hard to believe.
00:45:24 ►
It’s so stupid that people in this day and age decide what two people can’t do because of their sex.
00:45:30 ►
Yeah.
00:45:30 ►
Like, if marriage is legal, okay, and I’m not sure it should be, but if marriage is legal, why shouldn’t it be legal for gay people?
00:45:39 ►
It’s just so sensible.
00:45:41 ►
It’s so dumb.
00:45:42 ►
And it’s such a weird thing to get behind.
00:45:44 ►
It’s like, what’s your end game here?
00:45:47 ►
I don’t understand how you’re getting behind.
00:45:48 ►
Anybody would be getting behind this.
00:45:50 ►
Outside of some crazy religious belief, you’ve lost me.
00:45:54 ►
What do you care?
00:45:55 ►
Yeah, what do you care?
00:45:56 ►
And the idea that somehow or another it’s going to eventually cost us money.
00:46:01 ►
There’s some stupid arguments that you see that convoluted logic about why people being gay and getting married would make any difference or cost any more or less than them not getting married or them, you know, or straight people getting.
00:46:12 ►
What studies are you talking about?
00:46:15 ►
What do you know?
00:46:16 ►
Who’s doing studies on this?
00:46:17 ►
And these homophobes that are just insane.
00:46:19 ►
And for what?
00:46:20 ►
Right.
00:46:21 ►
They’re saying, you know, that that gay marriage or same sex marriage now is going to cause everybody to go out and rape children.
00:46:27 ►
I mean, they’re making this stuff up that’s just unbelievable.
00:46:30 ►
That’s maybe like disinformation.
00:46:31 ►
Maybe the gay marriage people who are pro-gay marriage are saying shit like that just to make it such a retarded argument.
00:46:39 ►
Well, it’s working.
00:46:40 ►
It’s a clever move.
00:46:41 ►
It is.
00:46:41 ►
It is.
00:46:42 ►
Yeah, it’s one of those weird things where I can’t believe it’s still around.
00:46:46 ►
It’s like I remember when I was a kid.
00:46:48 ►
I’ve told this story, but in the interest of this particular discussion, when I was like – I guess I was 11 years old and I had moved from San Francisco to Florida.
00:46:58 ►
And there’s a lot of things that I didn’t know.
00:46:59 ►
San Francisco was incredibly open-minded, and I really remember being very aware of the difference
00:47:06 ►
immediately upon moving to Florida
00:47:09 ►
because I had a friend, a Cuban friend.
00:47:13 ►
His name was Candy.
00:47:14 ►
And his dad, Candy Escondido or something like that.
00:47:17 ►
It’s a crazy last name.
00:47:18 ►
I forget his last name.
00:47:19 ►
But his dad was screaming and yelling,
00:47:21 ►
slamming the newspaper on the table.
00:47:22 ►
I can’t believe this shit.
00:47:24 ►
And I was trying to figure out what was going on. And I was like, you know, trying to figure out what was going on, you know.
00:47:27 ►
And I was like, what’s your dad mad at?
00:47:29 ►
And he goes like, dad, what are you mad at?
00:47:30 ►
He’s like, they’re letting fags get married.
00:47:33 ►
You believe this shit?
00:47:34 ►
They’re going to let those homos marry each other.
00:47:36 ►
He was mad.
00:47:37 ►
He was throwing the newspaper down.
00:47:38 ►
I was 11.
00:47:40 ►
And I was like, what a silly man you are.
00:47:41 ►
You’re a grown man.
00:47:42 ►
And this is something that bothers you and concerns you?
00:47:45 ►
I remember thinking that 11-year-old boy, like, wow, there’s a lot of weak-ass bitches out there posing as men.
00:47:51 ►
Like, you dummy.
00:47:52 ►
Like, what do you care?
00:47:53 ►
Were you a tough guy because you cared that two guys want to kiss each other?
00:47:56 ►
Like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
00:47:58 ►
It’s just so stupid.
00:47:59 ►
It’s such a dumb thing to get behind.
00:48:01 ►
It should have been normal a long time ago.
00:48:03 ►
Yeah.
00:48:03 ►
When I was a kid, I lived in San Francisco next to this gay couple this uh black guy and his boyfriend is white dude
00:48:09 ►
and my aunt used to go down there and they would smoke pot and play bongos naked they would all
00:48:15 ►
get together i was like fucking seven they would all they would all go next door to the gay couple’s
00:48:20 ►
house it was totally completely normal it like, there’s a black guy,
00:48:25 ►
there’s an Asian guy, there’s a gay guy. It’s like another guy. It’s like, it’s no big deal.
00:48:30 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a
00:48:35 ►
time. No, it’s no big deal. And while I should probably say something serious right here,
00:48:43 ►
And while I should probably say something serious right here,
00:48:48 ►
all I can think of is a little seven-year-old version of Joe Rogan surrounded by naked pot smokers playing bongo drums.
00:48:53 ►
No wonder he’s become such a unique person.
00:48:56 ►
Truly one of a kind.
00:48:58 ►
And if I’m correct here, I think that it was just a few days ago
00:49:02 ►
that Illinois, my home state, became the 16th state to legalize same-sex marriage.
00:49:08 ►
Way to go, Illinois!
00:49:10 ►
Now, one other thing that Joe and I talked about was the Occupy Movement,
00:49:14 ►
and while I thought that I was talking about a hypothetical overall Phase 1 plan for the movement,
00:49:20 ►
I was quite surprised to hear from Cecilia, who sent me some links dealing with that
00:49:25 ►
very topic, and I’m happy to find that my hunch was right. And I’ll post those two links in the
00:49:31 ►
program notes, and I think you’ll find them both very interesting. Now, before I go, it seems like
00:49:38 ►
a good idea to pass this along. I’m not sure why, but just felt fun. It’s a list of the top 10 cities to live in while you’re young.
00:49:47 ►
And I suspect that you’re going to be surprised by a couple of them, as I was.
00:49:51 ►
So here are the supposedly 10 most youthful cities in the world.
00:49:57 ►
Number 10, Seoul.
00:49:59 ►
Number 9, Tokyo.
00:50:01 ►
8, Los Angeles.
00:50:03 ►
7, London.
00:50:14 ►
6, Chicago. Angeles, seven London, six Chicago, five Paris, four Dallas, three New York City,
00:50:22 ►
two Berlin, and number one was Toronto. And how could it not be Toronto with that entertaining mayor? Well, even watching the news should be fun in Toronto.
00:50:27 ►
And all kidding aside, after my second visit to Toronto many years ago,
00:50:31 ►
I tried everything I could think of to get the corporation I was working for at the time to transfer me there.
00:50:37 ►
It’s a truly wonderful place.
00:50:40 ►
And happily, number six, Chicago is where I was born and raised.
00:50:44 ►
Or as the Clancy brothers would say is where I was born and raised.
00:50:48 ►
Or as the Clancy brothers would say, where I was bred and buttered.
00:50:58 ►
And while I’ve actually had more fun in number seven, London, which I agree is also more fun than number eight, L.A., the only one of the other cities in that list that I’ve lived in is number four, Dallas.
00:51:03 ►
And I suspect that a lot of people are
00:51:05 ►
wondering about that, but I’m not one of them. In our conversation between Joe and I the other day,
00:51:12 ►
we talked some about my days in Dallas and how that city actually was ground zero for MDMA or
00:51:18 ►
ecstasy to hit the streets, as opposed to being primarily used on the therapist’s couch as it was taking
00:51:25 ►
place on the West Coast. But becoming a street drug is something that you would think could
00:51:30 ►
happen almost anywhere other than Dallas. You know, Dallas is the city where a president was
00:51:36 ►
murdered and is overtly, as in In Your Face, religious. Well, the producers of The Stark
00:51:42 ►
Project, which is a documentary film about the, well, the most exciting club of its day, and it was located in Dallas.
00:51:50 ►
Well, they came by and recorded an interview with me about those days in Dallas and titled it Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate.
00:51:58 ►
And you can watch it on Vimeo via a link on the Slons Program Notes blog. But since there’s a big family holiday approaching here in the States,
00:52:07 ►
I’ve asked the producers for permission to podcast the audio portion of that interview
00:52:11 ►
so as to give our fellow slawners who want to come out of the psychedelic closet
00:52:16 ►
at their family gatherings a little something they can play to get the conversation started.
00:52:21 ►
Of course, this isn’t going to be any help for someone coming
00:52:25 ►
out of another type of a closet, only this scary one labeled drug user. And that podcast isn’t
00:52:31 ►
going to be very long, just a little over the 29 minutes of the interview, and I’ll be posting it
00:52:36 ►
by the close of the day tomorrow. But for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
00:52:42 ►
Be well, my friends.