208. Can You Find Gender IN You or Just ON You?

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Hello, welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.

We are grateful for you.

We are so glad that you exist and that you're listening.

How are you two doing?

I'm wonderful.

Just making sure your phone's off.

Yeah, is my phone off?

Yeah.

That's great.

Dina asked me six times, but that doesn't mean every time during the tech check, the pod squad should know that we go through this list of questions

where Dina is making sure that we are prepared for the recording.

Like, are these things plugged in?

Have you done this?

Have you done this?

And

my, what I do.

is I just look at Dina and when she asks me the questions, I nod yes and I just try to look like I'm really paying attention, but I never think about any of the answers to the actual questions she's asking.

You're such a people pleaser at the moment that you're like, sure is, sure is plugged in.

But really what would please her the most is if you actually plugged it in.

I know.

I just love Dina so much.

And I just want us to have a moment, but she would prefer I did my job, I'm sure.

So then she looks at Abby and says, Abby, is it plugged in?

Yes.

And then Abby does.

It takes a village.

So we're going to do some questions from the pod squad today.

These are some of my favorite episodes because I feel like we get to kind of get a little bit looser than usual and just talk directly to the pod squad.

Lucy Goosey.

Lucy Goosey, as Lucy Goosey as we get, as I get.

And so let's go.

Let's listen to the pod squad's questions and see what happens.

And also, thank you, Pod Squad, for continuing to just write and call us because this whole thing that we're doing here is just a conversation with you.

And it's such a joy to be able to hear what you want to talk about and

to be in it directly with you.

So thank you for sharing your precious time by doing that.

It means so much to us.

Okay, I'm going to cue you up with questions.

I'm going to cue you up with cues.

Great.

Oh, oh, shocker.

Our first question is on gender.

You, have you been listening for the past year and a half, might be tempted to think that we are at the bottom of the pile of gender questions, but to Glennon, there is no bottom of the bottom of the pile of gender questions

so let us continue

god i love the pod squad all i want to do is talk about gender go go let's go hi glennon my name is nick i'm a 19 year old college freshman and i just wanted to thank you for being so unapologetic with yourself and vulnerable because i seriously never felt more understood and seen by someone across cyberspace than I do by you.

But my question was, in your past podcast with Alok, you said you don't feel gender on the inside, but you feel it on the outside.

And I'm just curious what you meant by that, because I feel that exact same way in my soul.

But what does that really translate to, I guess?

Thank you.

Nick, first of all, a freshman in college.

Nick, you're a freshman in college.

That touches me deeply that a freshman in college is listening to the pod.

And I also,

real quick, before we get into gender, which you know we will, Nick.

You never have to wait that long.

Just sit tight real quick.

We're going to get to gender.

Strangers on the street.

How are you, Glennon?

Well, I'm not a binary.

I'll tell you that shit.

Nick, real quick, I just want to say this to you because I think this is something that my mom said to our son before he left for college.

which I thought was so wonderful.

She said, everybody's going to tell you that this is the best year of your life and to enjoy it.

And you just do not listen to that.

That is not true.

Freshman year in college is hard and confusing and almost impossible to find your grip.

Spoiler alert, Nick.

So is every year coming.

Okay.

So

let's get through this year and then the one after that.

One year at a time, Nick.

But truly, that is something we need to stop saying to people about anything and everything.

This is the best thing of your life.

Then when it's not, it just makes it double worse.

So it's a lot of pressure.

It's a lot of pressure, Nick.

It's a lot of pressure.

Speaking of, I want to say something to that.

You know the book that I'm reading because I read very, very slowly called How to Raise an Adult?

You might have heard it on the podcast for the past six times because I'm the slowest ass reader in the world.

She has this part where she talks about how when parents say, I just want my kids to be happy.

And it sounds like that's a very small request.

All I want in life is just for you to be happy.

That that is an absurd amount of pressure

as a kid interprets it.

All I want is for you to be happy.

So the kid hears it as like, what I need to do for my parent is to be happy.

And I think that is so interesting that we can just stop saying that as if it's relieving them of a burden and not putting that pressure on them because that is what they're hearing that is

if i pretend to be happy

then everyone around me will be happy as opposed to all I want for you is what you are, whether that's happy or sad or mad or whatever.

So anyway, all I want for you is for you to be who you are and what you are.

And as an extra bonus, the next level would be is if you would

share with me all that you are whenever you are it.

When you're sad, when you're angry, when you're confused.

And I won't try to fix it.

I'll just be honored that you shared it with me.

Yeah, that's good.

That's good.

All right, so Nick, you're referring to the conversation that we had with our dear friend Alok

when we were talking about gender.

And I said to Alok, I just can't find gender in me.

I can only find it on me.

So now I will try to explain

what I mean by that about not being able to find gender in me.

So

I

can only like deeply and truly understand or grasp or hold on to things that I can feel as real.

So for example, if I say, I love Abby or Abby, or I say to Abby, I love you.

And Abby says, how do you know?

Which she does all the time because just we're lesbians.

Okay.

There's like 16 follow-up questions.

So I can feel that I love Abby because I can describe it.

It's like a magnetic yearning that comes from inside of me.

It's like when I think about losing her, it's an ache that I feel like crack open in me.

It's a directional

feeling that makes me lean towards her.

I can feel it

as sensation, sort of, inside of me.

If somebody asks me, how, if I say I'm angry and someone says, how do you know you're angry?

I can say, I feel, it feels like fire inside of me.

I'm sweating.

I know I am.

I feel it.

If someone asks me, how do you know you have faith?

It's not because of a list of rules I can point to.

It's nothing that I know.

It's something that I feel inside of me as like a widening or a swelling or a yearning or kind of like a faint memory of something that I used to know that I will one day go back to, whatever.

I can feel it.

Even if people ask me, this is one that I'm pretty sure some people don't believe in addicts as addicts.

I believe

that I am an addict.

I can feel it.

I totally respect people who don't believe in that word because of this and that.

And for them, it doesn't work.

For me, I can feel it.

I know what it feels like to want to devour the entire world.

I can feel the addictness in my body.

All of those things, there's not a lot of things that I could put after the

two words, I am,

and feel

certain about it.

Not many things.

One of the things that my whole life, people have been telling me, I am,

and even I have to say, I am a girl, a woman.

When I investigate that word or concept after the words, I am, I cannot find it anywhere inside of me.

If someone says to me, how do you know you are a girl or a woman?

And I try to dive inward

to dredge up something inside of me that makes that concept real, I cannot find it.

When you ask me, how do I know I'm a girl?

I would tell you, well, I have boobs.

I have a vulva and a vagina.

I have a uterus.

I have long hair.

I have a closet full of these clothes.

I have a certain voice.

I have a certain whatever.

Like Nick, when you said, I feel exactly that way in my soul,

what I hear you saying is

the deepest part of me does not understand gender at all because it's not real.

So I guess what I can say is

gender is something

that I express on the outside of me with makeup and hair and clothes and even personality traits, all of these things.

But I don't feel it on the inside at all.

It's like I'm playing a role because somebody has handed me a part

when I was born.

You are a girl.

And they've given me a character description of what is acceptable for this role that I'm playing and what will be rewarded and what will be punished.

And they've given me a costume and they've given me a dialogue.

And it's mostly an act.

And I

am a good actor.

I look very, very femme.

I act very femme in a lot of ways.

But that is not because I feel that on the inside.

That's because I am good at playing a role.

I feel like if when I was born, if you gave me a bunch of different things and said, boy, man, whatever, I could play that role.

I would have nailed that.

So

maybe it's different for other people.

And maybe some other people do feel gender on the inside.

But here's my hunch.

Okay.

Bear with me right now because now I'm going to talk about cigarettes for a second.

All right.

In a development I didn't see coming.

Yeah.

Okay.

Virginia Slims or Marvel Reds?

Well, thank you for that.

You major gender role.

Thank you for saying that.

When we first reached for a cigarette when we're little.

Pod squad, as an aside, I used to smoke.

If smoking didn't kill you,

which it does,

I would smoke cigarettes from the time I woke up in the morning until the time I went to sleep.

I do not do that because they will kill you.

So don't do that.

See, aforementioned, I am an addict.

Yes, exactly.

The aforementioned, if I were an alcoholic, I would drink also every day from wake up to sleep.

Okay.

Why do we first pick up a cigarette or why do we, it's because we have something on the inside.

It's not just, it's not the nicotine at first.

It's because the second time it is.

for sure.

It becomes that.

But it's mixed with this longing to express something on the inside to the outside world.

That is why

the cigarette industry spends so much time and did spend so much time placing cigarettes.

in movies, in advertisements, to show when a person was trying to express their individuality or their ruggedness, right?

The Marlborough man.

So people would reach for that to express this like feeling inside of themselves to like be rugged or be whatever.

Or if you were going to, you know, try to get it to the women, they would put it in the hands of the Virginia slimps.

You've come a long way, baby.

If you wanted to express your feminist side, your

version of ruggedness or individualism, when they put them in movie stars' hands, when they were having an angsty moment or whatever, Holly Whittaker does a great job of discussing this in her book, but it's like

we have something on the the inside that we're trying to express on the outside.

And the world gives us accoutrements

to express that.

So I do wonder if some of these things that

when we say, well, I'm wearing these heels and these earrings and this mascara because I'm a girl, maybe what we want to express on a deeper level.

is that we're trying to express human characteristics that the world has told us is girl.

So maybe like on the inside, I'm trying to express tenderness and whimsy and vulnerability and softness and nobility and elegance.

And I have been told

that

these certain

costume choices express those things.

So

I say I'm expressing gender, but what I'm really expressing is these bucket of human characteristics

that,

for example, maybe when I'm wanting to wear that suit or those sneakers, there, whatever, and I'm saying, boy,

what I'm trying to express from the inside out is roughness and toughness and scrappiness and invulnerability and the ability to take up space and strength.

But all we have to express those are what we've been told is gender.

So we say, I'm expressing boy, I'm expressing girl.

But what's beneath that

is like

this just desire to express the full spectrum of being human.

Is this making sense at all?

It is making total sense.

At first, when you started, I thought you were saying that you couldn't identify

things that were real and of you

that were true to you instead of planted in you.

Because like when I, when I look at myself and think like, what is actually true and of me that isn't an act,

there are things I can identify, like my competitiveness, my intensity, the fact that I feel deeply connected to strangers.

And like, if I see something happening, if someone needs to put their luggage in the car, like I can't stop myself from being like, I will help you put your luggage in your car.

A sense of real self-efficacy, a sense of like, I can accomplish that.

Those are real things that are of me and that were born in me.

So that's not an act, but intensity competition, that would be understood as masculine.

But my my deeply connectedness to others would be seen as feminine yes

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So

maybe

when we are deciding

what parts of our gender to express, we are expressing deeper and truer things than just what gender we are.

And then then maybe some of those things that are real and true inside of us stay dormant because if I was raised in a different environment, maybe my intensity would not have been valued.

Maybe that would have been squelched out of me.

So I might understand myself only as deeply connected to strangers because that was the only truly real part of myself that would have been welcome since I am understood as a girl.

Yes.

Because the truth of the matter is I don't find girl anywhere inside of me.

Okay, just yeah, but what we're saying is girl isn't a thing.

What we're saying is there are certain things that are true about us that when funneled through the framework of gender, it's like we have this, this endless list of characteristics inside of us.

And when they come through, there's two

buckets.

It's boy and girl.

So all of your things, they come through.

Bucket A, bucket B.

You're only allowed to hold

whatever bucket you've been told you are

but it doesn't mean that that girl or boy is inside of anyone what you are is inside of you and when funneled through the lens they're determined to be either boy or girl right i think that might be why you struggle so much especially now that you're in therapy with

clothes totally i think that because you know this in your head it's like you're fighting against the role you were told that you needed to play your whole life.

And so you're like,

is this comfortable?

Is this what I am?

And I don't know.

I just think that gender expression is kind of what we're talking about.

And that's why I believe that like trans and non-binary people,

I think that they're the ones who know the most about this.

I agree.

Every time.

And I feel like we're, We're talking about the same things and a little bit different in that

I think what I'm trying to say also is like, yes, the two categories.

But since we don't talk about that at all, all people are left with is the language of I'm girly or I'm masculine in what I wear.

It's like we don't even know the depth of what we're really saying or expressing when we only have those two words.

I do not think that gender is real.

I think it's something we've thrown on top to oversimplify these other very deep things that we're trying to express.

Isn't it very weird that we have only these two categories that we're allowed

to be?

And it's made up, but we're living in this context and in this world where everyone else is pretending it's real.

And so the way people relate to people, because really when we're trying to decide, are you a boy or girl non-binary, all we're trying to really figure out is how should I treat you?

How should I treat you?

That's the question.

Like, how do I treat you?

How is this interaction?

So weird.

On one level, we have to treat it as real because it's really affecting our experience as we walk through the world in legal ways, in safety ways, in

our bodies, in our jobs, and the way that the world responds to us while knowing it's not real.

So, in that way, it's just like race.

It's like a bunch of people just made it up to create a hierarchy of power, but we have to live in a world where it's being treated as real, where it truly affects us.

but i just feel like it's the emperor has no clothes and that's why like

when

our friends come to us and say oh my kid just came out as non-binary

my reaction in my body is never like

oh my god your kid is non-binary because i think everyone's kid is non-binary like i think oh your kid's really smart

i'm just saying this is what i think in my body it could be totally i could be wrong gender could be real, whatever.

I don't know.

What I'm telling you is what I can figure out is real.

I think, oh, your kid,

for whatever reason, is in an environment that's like open and wise enough to look internally to figure out what am I.

And they're smart enough to realize there's no there there with gender.

So they just figured out the emperor has no clothes.

They just figured out something earlier than most of us do, which is gender is not real.

So I can't tell you I'm a boy or a girl because

what are you talking about?

And I feel like more and more people are going to

look deep enough to understand that.

Yeah, I think what we're talking about is the way that we express the gender that is assigned at birth.

And

I do think that there is a fear mechanism in place with not just the generation, like my parents' generation,

but it's the same same thing as coming out as gay or whatever kind of sexuality you are.

Parents are afraid that their kid is going to be ridiculed or treated wrong.

And so that's where the fear comes in.

And I don't know, I just have been a non-good actor, like you said, my whole life.

I've not been.

Well, you're the opposite.

I've been a good actor.

I'm like, oh, I'll nail this femme thing.

And you were like, no, I can't act it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the only thing that feels right to me, because you know, femme clothes and that whole thing, that has never felt real, like good enough to me.

And also, I will say that like super masculine clothes don't feel, but it's like the thing that fits my body the best.

And I'm just like, fine.

Yeah.

I'm like in between somewhere.

I think we all are.

Yeah.

What about you?

I'm just, I want to know from sister, like, do you feel,

how, do you feel like you are a woman?

Because I feel like, okay, I'm a woman because the world tells me I'm a woman.

I look like a woman.

I'm a woman.

Fine.

Woman, woman.

But I don't feel like that's true.

I feel like I don't have a gender at the truest inside of me.

What about you?

I haven't wrestled with it a ton in terms of like, what do I feel like?

I think of it sometimes.

in experiments like where I'm thinking through

what would my particular world look like if I was the exact same person,

but I was a man.

And I think my world would be very different

in subtle and not subtle ways.

And

I think the orientation of my family and my home would look different.

I think

instead of being

an almost apologetic

posture toward

the world

that I

work my ass off

and

do really well to support my family, it would be,

oh, dear God, she's an amazing provider for her family.

And what can we as a universe do to accommodate the provision of her bounty unto us?

Like the difference, just the, I mean, seriously.

Yeah.

Like the world

would be looking

at

that

in a very

different way.

If you were a man, sissy, you'd be the man is what you're saying.

Yeah.

And then I think about just like the statistics of the benefit of doubt.

I think about it in more practical terms, is guess what I'm saying.

Like for me, I feel like I have the incredible privilege and the incredible blessing of being married to a feminist, of understanding that there isn't a difference in what I am allowed to do and think and what our roles are in the home.

And I'm surrounded by family on both sides that don't think about that.

I think about it more from a perspective of my place in the ecosystem of community and world and business that I think like, God damn, can you imagine just walking in a room and instead of having to overcome the three doubts that get you to the place, you're walking in with

three

accommodations before you even open your mouth.

I think of it in

that way, you know,

in the more practical terms.

I think about it when it comes from outside of me.

Yes, I hear what you're saying.

All the things that are of me, I feel like I really do express the way I would express them if I were a man or if I were a woman.

And I only think about the world's response to those

and how that

is funneled through a world's response, that responds to me as a woman, as opposed to how the expression of myself would be interpreted differently if it were coming from a man.

Yep, I get that.

It's interesting because we need both ways of thinking all the time.

Because there's part of me that thinks that all of that shit

is never going to ever change

unless and until the slow unfolding of the idea that the gender isn't real, like the destroying of that thing.

The more and more people that say, oh my God, the gender emperor has no clothes,

that is the only thing that will slowly dismantle that

because the lie of gender is the stranglehold that keeps

the world treating the genders differently.

And vice versa.

Like, I think that I would have been knowing my personality, the family that we grew up in, and knowing that like I

probably would have gone to a military academy.

Right.

If I had grown up.

God, that's so true.

You would have.

And what are the expressions of myself as I am that would have not

been able to come out

if that had been my life?

Yes.

I think about that all the time.

Just

what gets squelched?

In a way, I think that women have more external frustration.

And men have more internal frustration

because

I can be

because of my privileged situation, I can be exactly who I am, and then I'm enraged all the time because I see how exactly who I am is being treated in a way and being paid in a way and being understood in a way that is wildly bullshit.

If I were a man,

I would contain all the same things,

and I wouldn't even be expressing

a lot of those things.

What I was expressing would be lauded and appreciated and given way more benefits of any doubts than they deserved.

But what was inside of me,

unexpressed, would probably be slowly killing me.

So you're fucked either way.

It's like for men, doors swing wide open on the outside, but there's all these locked doors on the inside.

And for women, there can be fewer locked doors on the inside, but all the doors are locked on the outside.

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I just have to say this because I think it's important for those people who might

feel like me more than you two, where you guys are playing a role and there is suffering and there is hardship there.

But I think that people who live in the middle, like myself,

there are these little things that happen, much like it does for men and women, but they are

seen as

a breach of this social contract we've all decided to be a part of.

And when you are in breach, you then are killed.

You you are totally you are ridiculed you are looked at you are asked at dinner tables about

you know are you a boy or a girl and there is much more i think and i don't know what i'm trying to say here but i just i want to acknowledge that if you do fall in the lines like to be in the middle and to make that choice you are going against something that that people are scared of.

It's a grave transgression and you can't pass.

Yeah.

Being a woman that looks like me, who is competitive intense, I can very easily switch

into playing the role in any circumstance, which is to my benefit in that moment.

Yep.

To be,

oh, geez, I don't really understand this.

Could you help me out?

I'm sorry, officer, was I speeding?

Yeah.

And that does slowly kill you inside, but it also helps you out a shit ton when you need it.

And that's why trans people are killed, because it's the ultimate transgression of what we have decided that you are allowed and not allowed to be.

So if we go back to the metaphor where like there's a director and we're all in a play and the director is all the powers that be.

And in childhood, the director hands you a script, girl, boy,

and some people are fucking like, no, I'm not playing your role.

I'm not playing your part.

The director

is infuriated.

They kick you out of the play.

Or they kill you.

And I think when we talk about trans people, because we know people who have said, no, no, it is gender is real for me.

Like I was assigned girl at birth.

I'm boy, and I feel boy in me and I'm expressing boy.

And Abby and I talk a lot about why we both have,

and I don't mean this to any offense to non-trans people, but we both have an immediate, like higher level of respect for trans people when we meet them.

And so we've talked about what that's about.

And it's not just affinity.

It's not like, oh, they're queer.

And so we're this queer and we're all queer.

And it's not just that.

I think it's because,

especially in this job, especially for 15 years or however long we've been doing this of really listening to people and their stories and what they want more than anything and what their biggest regrets are and what they're working towards.

It's always again and again, it's people saying in a million different ways, I just want to live as who I am,

not what the world expects from me.

It's like what everyone's desperately trying to do in all of their different lanes of life is like, how do I figure out what my life is, who I really am?

How do I be true to myself instead of like spending my entire life trying to please other people?

You know, how do I not abandon myself?

How do I abandon everyone else's expectations of me before I abandon myself?

And

I think my immediate respect for a trans person is it's like they are

living proof of choosing outer conflict instead of inner conflict.

And they're wearing it on themselves.

It's like

nobody had that easy.

Nobody

maybe will get to the point.

So I'm sure we will, where that is an easier

life experience.

But for somebody to be living out as trans, it just means that they

chose

what everyone else wants to do and be, which is like, how do I look inside myself and choose real,

choose what's truest to me, even when it causes

conflict, even when I disappoint other people, even when it makes things dangerous for me.

I think that's why trans people scare the shit out of people.

Oh, yeah.

So everyone's just going to go being who they are.

Right.

But what about the director?

If we have learned anything, it's that

only the people with the specific lived experience can talk about that experience.

So it's like, you say you can't find the gender on the inside.

I believe you.

If someone comes to me and says, I find gender on my inside, I believe you.

Totally.

Yeah.

I think a lot of trans people would say that.

Yes.

A lot of trans people are like, this is how I feel on the inside.

And it's like wonderful.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

And it's not like, okay, so you say you're a man.

Well, you're acting because the gender binary is a lie.

Oh, but that's ironic because I'm actually telling you exactly what I am and I contain this and this and this.

And so it's just, we believe everyone.

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Okay, this is hilarious.

We've gotten through one question.

Nick, thank you so much for that question.

You now have us thinking about our dear friend, Alok,

in just recognition of and celebration of all people who are breaking the director's rules

and

in

recognition

of the increasing

violence and resistance those people are having to

their decision to live bravely as who they are.

We give you one of our favorite parts of our incredible conversation with our dear friend Alok.

If you want to go back and listen to the full episodes with Alok, which you certainly should go back to episodes 74 and 75.

Here you go, loves.

Here's Alok.

I see my life and my gender as a continuation of a tapestry.

of women who had the bravery to say no thank you.

And for that love to be unreciprocated i think creates a kind of grief in me that feels so overwhelming and arduous that it feels impossible to puncture but we can do hard things right oh my goodness can you tell me what when you say for that to be unreciprocated can you tell me what you mean by that specifically

i see so much of what the trans movement being in the world is a love letter that says I believe in your capacity for transformation.

I believe in your capacity for self-determination.

And then, in response to that love, we're told that we are wrong, that we're disorderly, that we're foolish, that we're ridiculous, that we're delinquents, that we're predators, that we're violent.

And

that's a pain that I continue to face as my words reach more people is this extreme and coordinated backlash to tarnish me and by extension, tarnish the ideas that have been here, their ancient ideas.

Because I think what patriarchy does is it makes us publicists, right?

And we find ourselves speaking it, doing it, living it, thinking it with such a fierce allegiance that if someone dare say another way of living is possible, people would rather eradicate and extinguish that alternative than confront that kind of spiritual nudity of asking, who am I outside of what patriarchy wants me to be?

Alok, you said

the days that I feel most beautiful are the days that I am most afraid.

Can you tell us what you meant by that?

Yeah.

I've been thinking about this a lot because

there's been a lot of negative self-talk in my head recently.

When I look at photos and videos of myself, I'm so cruel.

The first thought that populates is, you look like a freak.

You're disgusting.

Why do you do that?

Why are you wearing that wig?

Why are you wearing makeup?

And I think people are surprised to hear that because they see images of me as this like fierce, independent, incandescent light.

But I want to remind people how insidious misogyny is, that as women and trans people,

it's going to take our entire lives to develop a self-image outside of what men have taught us to see ourselves as.

And so I have to literally sit and love on myself in that moment and remind myself, why am I doing this?

Is this fear my own?

Is this hatred my own?

And it's not.

Because when I was filming the project that I was filming where I look at the video later, I was so happy and I was so free and I felt so beautiful.

And I would catch glimpses of myself in mirrors or iPhone screens and be like, I've come so far to be here and it's so glorious to be here.

And then in the aftermath, I find myself so mean.

And I think that that's because I've been punished for my beauty my entire life.

And by beauty, I mean looking like myself, which I think most people don't know, that's what beauty actually is.

And so I've developed a knee-jerk response that's actually an antagonistic relationship to my beauty.

When I feel most beautiful, I'm most afraid, not just because of what other people will do to me, but what I'll do to myself.

how I'll censor myself, how I'll look at that video and say, you are a fool, so tone it down.

And how I'll tone it down and how easy it'll be to blame it on someone else but to know ultimately I made the decision.

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