Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
"Race is a Salad, Gender is a Berry" with Megan Madison
1.6k Plays5 years ago
Sign up for Zencastr and get 30% off for 3 months with promo code: twobiguys Go to https://zencastr.com/pricing?coupon=twobiguys&fpr=ex42o to start recording your own podcast or meetings today!
Music by Ross Mintzer
Graphic Design by Kaitlin Weinman
Edited by Moxie Peng
Produced by Moxie Peng, Matt Loomis, Alex Boyd, and Rob Cohen
Recommended
Transcript
Pandemic Recording Challenges
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, I'm Rob, and thanks for discovering Season 1 of Two Bye Guys. We hope you enjoy it. So in Season 1, we recorded everything in person. It was pre-pandemic, and we used professional sound booths. And as you'll hear, the audio quality is pretty great. But it was also very complicated and expensive. And when the pandemic hit, those booths became impossible.
Adopting Zencastr for Better Audio
00:00:23
Speaker
So in season two, we tried recording interviews locally while chatting on Zoom, which kind of worked. But the audio quality was spotty. Sometimes people made manual mistakes with the recording. It was a huge hassle for me to receive the files, convert the formats, compile the audio, edit by hand. I knew I needed a better solution if I was going to continue the podcast.
00:00:46
Speaker
And Zencaster was that solution. The thing that was most important to me, knowing how the process works, is that the audio gets recorded locally, not over the internet like Zoom does. When you get up to seasons three and four, you'll hear how good the audio quality is. It rivals what you're about to hear from season one, which was recorded in professional sound booths. And it's so much easier and cheaper. Everyone can record from home with whatever equipment they have, even just a laptop's built-in mic.
00:01:15
Speaker
And then there's the editing and post-production. I used to have to go through every track manually, reducing background noise, mixing volumes and levels, making sure my guest and I were synced. Now Zencaster post-production takes care of all of that and delivers ready to upload files. So if you're thinking about starting your own podcast, I highly recommend Zencaster. It's easy, it's affordable, and it's very reliable, and the sound quality is great.
00:01:40
Speaker
And now if you go to zencaster.com slash pricing and enter promo code 2BUYGUYS, you'll get 30% off your first three months. That's z-e-n-c-a-s-t-r dot com slash pricing promo code 2BUYGUYS for 30% off your first three months. It's time to share your story with Zencaster.
Introducing Megan Madison
00:02:07
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Two Bye Guys. This is Alex. And I'm Rob. And we have a guest with us today, actually, Megan Madison. We're glad to have you here, Megan. Hi, Megan. Hi. Welcome. Thank you. So we're very excited to have Megan here. And just to give you a little bit of a bio about Megan, Megan Pamela Ruth Madison is an early childhood scholar, activist, and practitioner based in New York City.
Embracing Identity
00:02:32
Speaker
She holds a BA in Studies and Religion and an MS in Early Childhood Education. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy. And before graduate school, Megan was a preschool teacher in Chicago.
00:02:48
Speaker
So, Megan works as a trainer for the Center for Racial Justice and Education, the Human Route, and the New York Early Childhood Professional Development Institute, where she facilitates workshops for teachers on race, gender, and sexuality. She is proud to have served on the governing board of the National Association of the Education of Young Children. Currently, Megan serves on the board of directors for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.
00:03:15
Speaker
Quite the bio. We're very lucky to have you here, Megan. I feel lucky to be here. And also, we are personal friends. We are. And I've known Megan for a few years now. And she has very great insights on all this stuff that we're going to talk about today. And I'm excited to have that conversation. Me too. So welcome, Megan. I guess let's start by asking you, how do you identify on any and all spectrums you would like to identify?
00:03:43
Speaker
Oh, what a good question. This could be the whole interview. Yes, that's my plan. Yeah. A few things that might be relevant to share. I identify strongly, proudly, unapologetically as a black person. At the same time, I acknowledge and celebrate my mixed racial ancestry. So my middle names that you shared, Pamela and Ruth, are my grandmother's middle names.
00:04:05
Speaker
My grandma Pam was white, my grandma Ruth was black or African-American, so kind of embracing those middle names is one way that I lift up that heritage. I also identify as queer. I also identify so many other ways.
00:04:21
Speaker
Let's pause there for now and then more things will get woven in you know I have like a personal thing against Like the identity listing thing that sometimes happens because it feels performative there's so many pieces of who I am that I want to share with the world and like I feel like they come out naturally in relationship, so I
00:04:41
Speaker
Right, and how do you choose what makes the list when you get asked that question? Yes, okay, so we'll continue, and if any more pieces of your identity come out, we'll discuss it then. Cool, that sounds good. About your queer identity, how did you come to that, and what does that mean to you, and why is that part of your identity important?
00:04:59
Speaker
Another really good question. I mean, in part because I do work in early childhood, a lot of my work is like thinking back to my own early childhood experiences. And when I really dig deep, it's like, oh, I've always been queer. Like that's just a deep inherent part of who I am. And also there's a part of that process that does feel like it's been like a remembering or recovering that's happened later in life. And in part related to the work I do,
00:05:26
Speaker
I think I started doing workshops on gender and sexuality for preschool teachers, mostly thinking of myself as straight, because most of my romantic partners have been cis men and I identify as a cis woman. And then along the way, as I started to really more deeply unpack gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, the different pieces of that,
00:05:47
Speaker
It just became clearer and clearer. Like it started feeling like a lie to say that I was straight because it felt like I was like hiding romantic and sexual attraction I had for people of all different genders and also like hiding exploration. And so it just started to feel more authentic to claim and embrace a queer identity. Yeah. And that's kind of where I'm at. And it sounds like the label queer kind of still leaves a lot of room for you not to have to restrict yourself to anything. Right. Like in
00:06:16
Speaker
Yeah and I think for me also queer is a verb to me and not just like an adjective. So it's like when I embrace or claim an identity of queer it's also like making an external commitment to living a life that
00:06:32
Speaker
queer's boundaries and aligns with the political commitment to like the liberation of all people. And so it feels like it's an identity that feels active and it's like calling to me to be an active relationship in alignment with my political values and also be in community in a way that I know other identities felt like more individualistic and queer felt more like political and moving and community oriented.
Educating on Race and Racism
00:07:00
Speaker
I feel what you're saying so much because I also came to a queer identity later in life. And part of it was about looking at myself and what was going on in my head. But it was also in conjunction with learning more about what gender means and how much of it is a construct and what sexuality is and what queerness really is and realizing, oh,
00:07:24
Speaker
That's not this other thing. That actually applies to me and it is sort of a political statement and choice I wanted to make. Yeah, and also like I also feel like there's a part of living into that political commitment to me that feels it feels important to recognize that like I'm married.
00:07:42
Speaker
And I'm married to a cis man. And like most of my life, I walk around with people assuming that I'm straight, which affords me quite a few, to put it as an understatement, literal and figurative privileges in our society. And there's a violence in that, right? In that like my, how I identify isn't fully seen and recognized in the world. And for the most part, that affords me a lot of opportunity and advantage.
00:08:10
Speaker
at the expense of people who don't have those privileges and advantages, who are members of my queer community. So it feels like also a part of identifying as queer is recognizing that system and doing what I can in big and small ways to push against it, which I can't actually do effectively without acknowledging the ways in which the system of heteropatriarchy benefits me.
00:08:33
Speaker
Right. That makes sense. What do you mean by there's violence inherent in people perceiving, taking the privileges of passing a straight?
00:08:43
Speaker
Well, it's like a little everyday erasure of my own identity in exchange for outward privileges. And that feels violent to me. It's like self-harm in a way almost, right? Yeah. I think that was what was hard for me was the time when I was conscious of my queer identity but couldn't talk about it. And sort of censoring that every day and passing every day became very challenging. Yeah.
00:09:12
Speaker
So tell us about the work you're doing with the Center for Racial Justice in Education. So you're leading workshops for educators? Yeah, the Center for Racial Justice in Education, formerly known as Border Crossers, is a nonprofit based here in New York City, but we do work nationally. And we lead workshops and professional development for teachers.
00:09:36
Speaker
Teachers who serve children birth all the way through, sometimes high school, sometimes college even. As a trainer, my specialty, like my wheelhouse is early childhood, so most often I get to work with preschool teachers and childcare workers, but occasionally I'll work with an elementary school teacher, high school teacher here and there.
00:09:54
Speaker
And so what are those workshops like? What kind of stuff are you actually teaching these teachers? And what's the goal of those? And how do the teachers respond? Yeah. We do lots of different workshops, but the kind of the core workshop we do is called Talking About Race in the Classroom. And it's a full day workshop.
00:10:13
Speaker
where the first, I'd say about third of the day, is really setting community norms and getting people ready and willing and practiced in having open, authentic conversations with each other about race and racism. So then once people are warmed up, then we shift into the content.
00:10:31
Speaker
which is pretty simple, but it's like content that very few of us got in our K through 12 education or even college education. And it's kind of the basics of what is race? Like some of us went to liberal arts colleges and learned that race is a social construct.
00:10:47
Speaker
But few of us have practiced really articulating what does it mean that race is a social construct? Like who constructed it? When? Why? How does that happen today in schools and in our everyday life? So we talk about that. And then once we're clear on what race is, then we talk about what racism is. And again, like some of us learned in fancy liberal arts colleges that it's a system of power. It's not just about individually held prejudice.
00:11:10
Speaker
But still, really unpacking. What does that mean that raises the system of power? And in particular, how does it play out in education systems? So then once we all do all that, we set the container, we learn a bunch of stuff, then the last half of the workshop is really applying all of that knowledge. And that looks different depending on the school community, but most often we work with scenarios and do role plays so that teachers actually have an opportunity to practice.
00:11:35
Speaker
What do I say? What do I do when a kid asks this question or this thing happens in the news? Like how am I going to handle a situation like that? And then we close out. Cool. I was a film major in that liberal arts college and I did not learn about any of this. And like, and growing up, especially, I mean, I went to a very white elementary school and very straight in hindsight. Like I didn't learn anything about any of this until later.
00:12:01
Speaker
Same. Yeah, I was like at least three years into a PhD program before I really dug into the research on this. And that's also not a coincidence, right? That's an example of how racism is institutionalized. It's like that content is left out of most of our educations unless you really, really, really dig for it. Right. It's made to be invisible so that the system doesn't change.
00:12:25
Speaker
Yes, exactly, yeah. It's very hard to dismantle a thing you don't know what to call and you can't point at it and you don't know how it's functioning. Yeah, so how is race a social contract and what do you teach these educators about that? One thing I like to do to explain race being a social construct is to explain like what a social construct is. It can be helpful to use other examples of social constructs. So a favorite of mine that's a little bit silly is a salad. It's also a social construct.
00:12:53
Speaker
Turns out you can look up the definition of salad in the dictionary, but like in everyday use salad means different things to different people across space and time. So I grew up in the Midwest where salad can include cream cheese and sugar and canned fruit and sour cream. That's a valid thing.
00:13:13
Speaker
Didn't you make a salad for us once that was like grapes and all those? Yeah, grapes held. It's delicious. It was. Yeah. My partner, however, grew up in Northern California and he thinks that's disgusting. For him, he grew up with the definition of salad that there has to be a vegetable in it. Fair enough.
00:13:34
Speaker
But it's just one example of this thing we call salad means something to different people across space and time. And also just because it's made up, though, doesn't mean that it doesn't have real life significance. You go to a restaurant and you order a salad, people have expectations around what salad means.
00:13:50
Speaker
And so when it comes to race, it's similar, right? We have racial categories, but they have changed over space and time. There's not an essential thing to them. It turns out when you take a DNA test, there's more genetic variation among a flock of penguins than there are among human beings. There's no biological, essential nature to race.
00:14:13
Speaker
And yet, like how we are racialized, how people perceive me when I walk down the street really matters, sometimes in life and death ways. And also my identity, my racial identity is very real. So just because the categories are made up doesn't mean that they don't have a lived impact. And then we go into the workshops into a lot of the history around like, okay, well then who invented? If a social construct means human beings invented it,
00:14:37
Speaker
Who? Who were these human beings? And when? And why? Because also human beings, societies invent things for a purpose, not just for fun. And that leads us into the conversation about racism, because essentially race was constructed and serves the purpose of racism.
00:14:52
Speaker
What do you mean by that? So we've got dudes, like James Madison is one of them. My last name is Madison because he likely enslaved my ancestors. Oh, wow. So he's literally sitting down. I imagine him on some fancy couch. He's got enslaved people bringing him tea. He's got like a feather pen and he's sitting down and he's writing, fuck the British. This is slavery. Taxes are too high. I want tea for free. All men are created equal. This is our constitution, blah, blah, blah.
00:15:20
Speaker
So he's writing all this stuff about freedom and justice and equality while he's also participating in the near genocide of indigenous people and the like systematic legal kidnapping and enslavement of African people. And so this science coming out of Europe serves the function of essentially like
00:15:40
Speaker
smoothing that giant cognitive dissonance between the ideals of justice and equality and the reality of massive inequalities and dehumanization of people of color.
00:15:52
Speaker
So that stuff gets baked into our Constitution. Like James Madison also helped write the, he proposed the three-fifths compromise. So written into the United States Constitution is essentially this idea that enslaved African people aren't fully human. They're just three-fifths of a human being. So it's not just like cool ideas on the street. It like gets baked into the policies and practice of our country and then
00:16:13
Speaker
here we are. Not actually all that like far from like that wasn't ancient history that was like fairly recent history. So it explains a lot of like oh no wonder we are where we are. Right. How do kids respond to this or look at race differently when they're exposed to this early on?
00:16:31
Speaker
Young people are amazing. I mostly work with teachers of really young children. And at that age, they haven't been exposed to too much misinformation. So their reactions are often like, ah, cool, great things. That explains everything.
00:16:47
Speaker
You know, they're usually at, like, three and four, like, seeing big racial disparities, especially in New York City. Like, they see that all the people on the money have peachy-colored skin that people would call white. And they see that the bus drivers and janitors have brown-colored skin and that people call them black.
00:17:04
Speaker
They see these giant inequities, and they have questions about why. And they also see their grownups aren't talking to them about those. And when people ask questions about it, they get really uncomfortable. And so when a teacher finally actually explains it to them, they're usually just like, ah, thank you. This makes sense now. I get it. I remember a great conversation I had with a four-year-old around the racial wealth gap.
00:17:32
Speaker
And he was like, oh, yeah. So if there's a group of people who was kidnapped from another place and that they weren't able to save money and give it to their kids for about 350 years, and that was just 100 years ago, it would make sense that on average those people would not have as much money as white people.
00:17:48
Speaker
And he was just like, okay, got it. Because it's not a complicated concept, really, unless you've been taught some alternative reality, as most of us have, unfortunately.
Understanding Gender as a Social Construct
00:17:59
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And then when you work with older kids, high schoolers are so fun because they're also coming in a sense of their own power. And in that sense, there's a natural developmental rebelliousness and also big fucking feelings, which I love.
00:18:13
Speaker
teenagers like my inner teenager included and so teenagers once they're like once they have this information or often like great where are we going what are we gonna do like who do I need to write where do I call like what action am I gonna plan what community organization am I gonna join like there's so much energy there that I love working with older kids
00:18:40
Speaker
So race is a social construct. Race is a salad. It's a salad. So how do you think that gender and sexuality are also salads? And how are they social contracts? Yes. If so. Yeah, definitely yes. A big yes. And I do remember when I started thinking about this, I tried to make them the same and they're different. So they're all social constructs and they look different and operate differently. So like a burger or fries or something?
00:19:09
Speaker
Yeah, something like that. Or another social construct I love to use is berry. What's a berry? I don't know. Is a grape a berry? I don't know. Is a small round fruit? So much like a blueberry, but it's a grape. I know, but it's in the cheap fruit salad. It's not in the expensive fruit salad. Oh, true. Good point.
00:19:25
Speaker
And it turns out when you actually look up a definition of berry, things like bananas and tomatoes and most vegetables are also berries. So berry is another social construct. It means things to people when we say it. Who knew? Anyway, so gender is a berry, race is a salad.
00:19:43
Speaker
Yeah, so gender. In particular, this idea of gender being a binary is totally made up by society. There are different societies that have made up gender very differently with more than two options. And we live in the United States in 2019 and the way that at least gender was constructed for me and lots of other people is that there's only two options and that those options correspond
00:20:09
Speaker
with your biology, in particular your secondary sex characteristics, whether you have a penis or a vagina.
00:20:16
Speaker
and that there's a whole bunch of things, expectations that go with those boxes, including how you dress, who you're attracted to, what you wanna do when you grow up, how much you like the color pink, like a whole bunch of, like what rules you're supposed to perform, what your personality is, how you're supposed to talk, who you should be, yes, all kinds of stuff loaded into this tiny little constraining box that actually no one fits into. And so we've got these two boxes, man, woman, girl, boy, male, female.
00:20:46
Speaker
And that's the way it's been constructed. And yeah, they don't fit. Yeah. Yes, and yet we're all walking around trying to fit into those unless you identify as queer and maybe look at those boxes differently and start opening them up. Yeah. And it's not because we're like bad, square people that we try to fit into those boxes. It's like they're literal social sanctions. When we step outside of the box, society pushes us back in, in sometimes really subtle ways and sometimes really explicitly violent ways.
00:21:15
Speaker
Also, in some part, our conformity to these boxes has to do with we're just trying to survive. Yeah. Well, and as somebody who is queer and queer presenting, fitting into that masculine male box is easy in a lot of ways. You are perceived in a certain way that makes life easier, but that violence that you're talking about, that violence is there. It's because it's unnatural, and we're putting so much expectation on us instead of just having that freedom.
00:21:44
Speaker
I definitely repressed a lot of non-masculine things about my identity early and just didn't think they were important. And like, you know, as I started to learn about this stuff and embrace those parts of myself, I realized how much damage I was doing by trying to fit into that box.
00:22:00
Speaker
And the more I do this work, the more surfaces that I didn't even realize that it was there. Like the first couple of years of doing this workshop, actually the gender and sexuality workshops I do are through the New York Early Childhood Professional Development Institute. The first workshop is all about gender, the second is about sexuality, and then the third is about family diversity.
00:22:22
Speaker
And the way we start the first one, the gender workshop, is asking people to think back on some of their first gendered memories. And it was like a few years into doing these workshops until a memory surfaced for me that like I just legit had not remembered until I had gone through the same activity over and over and over again. And I remember being a kid and SNL was like really popular and really funny and I would love like
00:22:46
Speaker
staying up late on Saturday nights with my sisters and watching SNL. And there was this skit, Pat. Do you remember Pat? I definitely remember Pat. Yeah. And I remember my family teased me. They called me Pat. Really? Yeah. And I didn't get it. But something about me and the way I presented gender in the world was clearly reading something that like the people who love me and knew me most were like, oh, that's kind of like Megan. Megan's like Pat.
00:23:16
Speaker
When the joke with Pat was that you couldn't tell if Pat was a man or a woman and every time somebody thought they could identify them, Pat would say or do something that made you think the opposite, right? And it was a punchline. Pat's gender identity was unknown and a punchline.
00:23:35
Speaker
Wow, sorry, I did not know Pat, and that hurts a little. They even made a movie. I think there was a movie called It's Pat. So really just like a movie to make sure that we know that this is funny. Like somebody who doesn't fit into one of those boxes that we're talking about.
00:23:54
Speaker
is just a punchline. Yeah, that was the whole punchline. That's cool. So I'm like in this workshop, this memory surfaces because people are talking about being made fun of in lots of different ways because of not conforming to the gender boxes in ways that also resonate with me, right? Like if you're a girl and you climb trees, people often call you a tomboy, right? Or if you're assertive, people call you bossy.
00:24:15
Speaker
So as people are in the workshop or sharing these memories, I was like, oh, yeah, people call me Pat. I think that had something to do with SNL. What is that? So then I go home and I rewatch these YouTube videos and I was just like, whoo, like it like hit me a wave of like, no wonder I repressed this shit. Like that's intense for the people you love and trust.
00:24:35
Speaker
And so my guess is as I continue doing this work, it's just gonna be 60 more years of unpacking memories like that and figuring out what they mean to me and recovering pieces of myself that I shoved way down for my own survival. And also, it's really healing to do this work because as I engage in that, I'm not doing it all by myself. I get to do it in a room full of other people who are also doing that work with one another. So we get to support each other and
00:25:01
Speaker
just together like, whoa, this is really hard and it really sucks and it's not fair and it's not our fault. And look, we have this amazing opportunity to build classrooms where that kind of violence isn't going to happen because we're grown ups now and we get to make sure it doesn't happen to kids so that they will have a whole year, at least under our care, where they get to explore gender and be their full selves and just like feel what it's like to be in the world and their bodies completely. And like they'll never forget that.
00:25:31
Speaker
So what is that ideal year like for preschool kids? Like how do you set the parameters of gender? How do you talk to kids about gender? What's their response like? Yeah, no, I love that. That question alone makes me want to go home and just like make some art about it. Like get really clear on what my vision for gender justice is. Some things that I think
00:25:55
Speaker
are probably true in that vision. A lot of my work I do, we use the framework called anti-bias education, which has like four core goals. The first is identity, which is like every child will know who they are, have language to describe who they are, and feel proud about who they are. That's awesome.
00:26:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a pretty good space to start. Yeah. The second goal is diversity. So that's like every child understanding that not everyone is the same as them and knowing how to hold space and lift up and celebrate the fact that different people have different identities and experiences. The third goal is justice.
00:26:37
Speaker
And justice is basically like, okay, so our classroom might be this gender justice utopia, but we don't live yet in a gender justice utopia beyond the four walls of this classroom. So when we see sexism, when we see patriarchy, when we see heterosexism, kids will be able to see that and name it and say out loud from a deep belly place, that's not fair.
00:27:00
Speaker
And then the last piece is activism. It's like, okay, so when we see these unfair things in the world and we can name them, what skills do we have to resist those systems, either independently or with others, and to build alternatives that feel better for us and feel just and feel safe?
00:27:17
Speaker
All those things are the types of things I've been trying to learn more about, but it's taken so many years. How do kids now who get that kind of environment, how do they perceive gender? Like, are they cool with gender as a construct? Do they get trans and non-binary identities more easily than adults seem to have a lot of trouble?
00:27:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean little kids are super dope. And they're also human, right? Like also don't want to romanticize little kids. And that is a tough thing in my work. There is this kind of, I think lots of grownups have a hard time acknowledging that like three year olds can be racist and sexist. Like they can really do mean things to other people, to grownups.
00:27:57
Speaker
They're human beings, full of agency and complexity, just like grown-ups are. And also, they're super dope. And when given the space, because a lot of it, it's not rocket science. It just makes sense, kind of like you said earlier. If they're exposed to that knowledge, I've definitely been in preschool classrooms where they're like, oh yeah.
00:28:14
Speaker
this person's a girl, this person's a boy, this person's an in-betweener. This person felt like a boy yesterday, but now today they're a girl. Like, this person's neither. Like, it's pretty, like, nonchalant in a way that, like, for us as adults, because we had, like, 30, 40 years of socialization, it feels like a big deal to change those
Advocating for Open Sexuality Education
00:28:33
Speaker
ideas. For them, they've only had one, two years of socialization. So they're like, okay, cool, that didn't work. Let me throw it away. Yeah. So you see kids that young sort of trying out different gender identities and talking about it in that way?
00:28:44
Speaker
Yes, definitely. So another friend and person you could look up on the internet who's doing really good work, NC and Pastel, they are working with a group called Gender Justice in Early Childhood. They have a great website. And I had an opportunity to go visit their preschool classroom.
00:28:59
Speaker
And it was just so magical. I walked in, NC introduced me, this is Megan, and it was actually one of the young children who was like, okay, great, that's Megan's name, but when we're not using Megan's name, how should we refer to Megan? This Megan, she, or they, or he.
00:29:18
Speaker
And Encine was like, yeah, you could just ask. And so then they asked. And I was like, oh, yeah, she and her and hers feel good to me. Like, OK, cool. And then I was like, well, and I just met you and I know your first name, but I don't know how to talk about you when I leave. And so then we all sat down and we had a little tea party. We went around and everybody had an opportunity to share their name, their gender identities, anything else about them that they wanted me to know. It wasn't a big thing. It was just like, oh, yeah, sure, we can do this.
00:29:44
Speaker
Right. It's like a simple starting point, which seems so difficult to get into some adults heads like, oh, I have to put my gender pronouns in an email or I have to do that group meeting anytime I'm with new people. But like, that's better for everyone. It's not difficult. Yeah.
00:29:59
Speaker
Just the expanded use of the word they, the singular they, using that, because I work with a lot of people who I don't necessarily know their gender, or what pronouns they like to use. So just being trained and training young people to use the word they. I don't know if that's a part of what you do, but it automatically breaks down on gender expectation that they have on individuals just based on appearance, or based on a name, or based on something like that. I'm also curious a little bit. It still kind of strikes me as, at least me 10 years ago, or five years ago,
00:30:28
Speaker
would have been kind of unnerved by seeing all of this. It reads to us as progress, but it reads to some as instability of some kind. Do you witness that? Do you see that kind of reaction?
00:30:40
Speaker
I definitely see it in myself, right? Because also, I've grown up in this and have not stopped consuming these daily messages of the gender binary and of sexism and heterosexism and patriarchy. So I definitely can empathize with that feeling because it comes up, I see it in myself. And I definitely see a lot of grown up feeling that fear. And young people actually are very helpful for me in that. When I actually spend time with them, the beautiful thing about early childhood is that there is a lot of experimentation.
00:31:09
Speaker
that like, oh man, woman, person, oh person, do I wish that I had had time to explore in that way at that age instead of like now feeling kind of awkward that I'm like early 30s trying to do all this exploration publicly, I got a job and stuff. It just would have been much easier had I had the space to do it when I was four.
00:31:31
Speaker
So I love that young children have the space to explore and play with pronouns, play with gender identity, play with gender expression so that they can figure out what fits. And also, they're pretty clear. There's a lot of stability. It's not uncommon for me to meet a four-year-old who's like, no, I'm a boy. I know I'm a boy.
00:31:49
Speaker
No, I'm done playing. I explored. I had an opportunity. Like I know, right? Like they really, there's a depth and a clarity of knowing who they are, especially because maybe they haven't been inundated with so many other confusing messages.
00:32:10
Speaker
My exploration of sexuality I feel is very tied to my new understanding of gender and those they sort of came together. So how early and in what ways do you talk about sexuality with kids or do you start with gender and does that conception of it as a spectrum or as fluid or as a construct, does that just impact their view of sexuality?
00:32:35
Speaker
Yeah, all of it, both of it from birth. And it looks different, right? So I'm not usually talking about sexual intercourse. And even marriage, really, with infants and toddlers. But when we think about sexuality as not just being about sex and being about our relationship to our bodies, our relationship to our feelings,
00:32:58
Speaker
relationships with other people and communication, relationship to our gender identities, what we're attracted to, relationship to our own desire. Babies definitely have bodies and feelings and relationships and desire and intimacy. Those are all things that babies from birth have. And so talking about those things starts that early.
00:33:20
Speaker
sexuality is about all those things. And when I came out as bi, it affected all of those things like my feelings and my body. And it wasn't just sex, sexual intercourse. However, that was what I thought sexuality was. And I had to learn in my late 20s and 30s that sexuality meant all these other things too.
00:33:40
Speaker
Yeah, so yeah, yeah, I'm just so grateful I had an opportunity to go to the first workshop because I remember walking into that workshop being pretty terrified and like I remember just even the feeling of my body of like I'm going into an early childhood workshop around sexuality like
00:33:55
Speaker
I don't even know how those two words go on the same sentence, sex and young children. And in particular, the only training I had received, and this was like 10 years into a career in early childhood, the only training I had received was mandated reporter training, which is essentially like sexual abuse, identification, reporting procedures. So like all the feelings I had associated with early childhood sexuality were like worst case scenario.
00:34:22
Speaker
And so it was so helpful to be in a workshop that just was like, yes, those feelings make sense. They are welcome here, process them. And also there's a whole world of sexuality beyond sexual abuse, beyond sex, and really fun conversations to have with kids. And that are coming up all the time, right? Like when I finally had space in this workshop to like just acknowledge young children masturbate.
00:34:43
Speaker
They touch their bodies because it feels good. And I was like, oh, phew. It's not just me. OK. That's like a thing. OK. And it's totally natural. Great. Now let's talk about it and figure out what to do about it. Or because they're like super curious about their body and what it does. All of their things. Like they're curious about their fingers. They're curious about their nose. They're curious about what their booger taste like. And they're curious when they wake up and they have an erection. And they're like, what is this? Why did this happen? Does everyone's body look like this? If somebody's body doesn't look like that, what do I call it?
00:35:13
Speaker
What does it look like? Does it change when I get older? Just all of these supernatural things that once it was demystified, it felt like I could breathe. And it was that feeling of, oh, goodness, wouldn't this have been so great if my grownups were talking to me about this way earlier?
00:35:30
Speaker
Right, because when we were growing up, that kind of stuff was relegated to like one hour a month in health class and everyone was like laughing about it and it wasn't really informative. It was a joke. And I masturbated at a very young age before I knew what I was doing. Looking back, like I had no clue what it was. There was no education.
00:35:49
Speaker
Same, and I carried so much shame. I was like, maybe I'm broken, maybe this is wrong. I don't know what feels good, but nobody's talking about it, right? But if someone had just been like, ooh, I see you're discovering your body and experimenting with what that feels like. And other people do that. And other people do it, it's totally normal. Maybe not at the grocery store. Maybe in your bedroom when you get home. I was like, okay, cool, I can do that.
00:36:17
Speaker
We're talking a lot about how conversation is just stifled. We're not able to talk about sexuality at a young age. And now in our personal lives, stereotypically, how often do we actually have real honest conversation about the sex we're having?
00:36:33
Speaker
Yeah, totally. And the consequences of that are huge, right? That silence, like there's the internal violence of like just swallowing silences and not being able to speak them and like holding onto that shame. Like that's not good for any of us in our bodies or in our souls and our emotional selves. There's also like just the practical health implications of that, right? Like if people don't feel like they can talk honestly, they're not having the conversations they need to have to have safe sex. Completely.
00:37:02
Speaker
And then beyond just like our survival needs, I also feel like a big thing I'm going through as an adult now is like mourning the loss of so many possible pleasurable experiences that I didn't have because I didn't have language for it. And I didn't have enough language to be able to ask for like, this is what I want.
00:37:22
Speaker
And I also didn't feel entitled to getting what I wanted or pursuing so many desires. And like, I'll never get those 20 years back. Now I get to spend the next 60 years of my life seeking after them and it's gonna be fucking awesome. But like, I want everybody to feel, what did Lizzo say recently? Like we all deserve to feel good as hell, right? Like I want everyone to have a fucking great orgasm every day. There's no reason we shouldn't. Like everyone would be so much happier
00:37:50
Speaker
We would be better at our jobs. We would just be nicer to each other. So many fights on the subway probably wouldn't be prevented. But that's also only possible if we're able to break that silence and learn the skills to just talk openly with other people about what we want. That's a great Utopian vision for the future and forecast of the day. I have it.
00:38:15
Speaker
Yeah, I can't claim that one as my own. I got that one from Adrian Marie Brown, who wrote a book called Pleasure Activism that I'm reading, and it's changed in my whole life. It's so good. Highly recommend. I had that same experience coming out around age 30. I was sad for myself that I didn't do that exploration sooner and that I may have missed out on things, but then I
00:38:38
Speaker
I was so happy that I was doing it now and that I had as much of my life ahead of me as I do. It's better to do this stuff early, but it's also never too late. Yes, it is never too late. And especially to other bi and pan people, it can be really, really confusing. Yeah.
00:38:55
Speaker
It's really hard to figure out who we are and what we want and like that's not our fault and like I just want to like buy a bouquet of roses or like whatever flower makes people feel good or if it's not flowers whatever it does make a person feel good for like everybody who's in their 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s and like even at that age like coming to a realization of what they want and experimenting with it like that gives me so much hope so yeah it's never too late.
00:39:19
Speaker
And there is, at least for me, a sense of real groundedness and pride that I really worked to figure this out. It wasn't just handed to me. It took some work. And I feel a depth of security and knowledge that I'm, in some ways, really grateful for myself for having done that deep exploration.
Incorporating Intersectionality in Education
00:39:38
Speaker
So you do this work teaching educators about race and gender and sexuality. How is the approach to those things similar or different? And is there some intersection among those? Yes. All of my work is rooted in critical race feminism, like a black feminist lens. And so I can't do a workshop on race and racism without talking about gender, without talking about sexuality, without talking about capitalism, without talking about ableism.
00:40:08
Speaker
Similarly, I can't do a gender workshop without talking about racism and all those other things. It's just kind of for each workshop, there's a different anchor or an entry point. And I love those moments when there's connections between them, like one that often comes up in the gender workshop. And for me, I guess, wow, we're going full circle to where we began talking about my identities and being both black and being queer.
00:40:28
Speaker
Yeah, look at that. So often we do this activity with the gender boxes where people surface, like what are the expectations for girls and women in our society? What are the expectations for men and boys? And often one that comes up for girls and women is that we're small, we're dainty, we're damsels in distress, we're somehow attractive to men. And there's usually a moment where there's a couple women of color in the room who are like,
00:40:52
Speaker
Not really. I've never been expected to be dainty or a damsel in distress. I'm expected to be the mule of the world. I'm expected to be sassy and angry and maybe a subject of lust and sexual desire, but never romantic. There isn't a stereotype that men are pursuing us romantically.
00:41:13
Speaker
And that's a beautiful example of intersectionality, of the ways in which our gendered expectations are placed on us are also racialized. And so in some ways, that's also why my queer identity is a black queer identity. Identity as a woman is a black woman. It's all in there, both in how I identify and how I experience the world. Awesome. That's a great full circle place to leave us.
00:41:39
Speaker
Yeah, it was so great having you, Megan. I think this was a really fantastic discussion. Yeah, thank you very much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I feel so honored. Thank you for sharing your stories with me.
Episode Acknowledgments
00:41:52
Speaker
I'm very grateful that you both exist in the world exactly as you are, and I'm very grateful that this podcast exists. Thank you. Well, thank you, and we're grateful for you and your stories as well.
00:42:06
Speaker
Our music is by Ross Mincer, graphic design by Caitlin Weinman. This podcast is edited by Moxie Pung and is also produced by Moxie Pung, Matt Loomis, Rob Cohen, and me, Alex Boyd. Thanks for listening to two bye guys.