Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Beyond Bullying: Jeffrey Marsh and the Power of Radical Self-Love

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

On today's episode of "The Language of Love," Dr. Laura Berman sits down with Jeffrey Marsh. Marsh is an LGBTQ+ activist and social media personality known for their uplifting videos on TikTok. The genderqueer, genderfluid nonbinary author was dubbed "the internet's most beloved anti-bully," and on this episode, Marsh lives up to their reputation as one of the most inspiring and educational voices in the LGBTQ+ community. Marsh is a visionary who coaches people to learn to love and accept themselves, especially the parts of themselves that might feel wrong or flawed, or unlovable.  Dr. Berman sits down with Marsh to discuss everything from gender identity to pronouns to what it really means to live a fully authentic life. Marsh explains how they are able to live so bravely even in a world that can sometimes feel so filled with hate. As Marsh discusses their traumatic experiences with bullying as a child, Dr. Berman digs into the topic of childhood bullying from her perspective as a mom who struggled with watching her own kids being bullied. Dr. Berman asks Marsh how parents can better support their children when they're enduring bullying, as her own efforts to intervene were often not successful. When school can feel like a warzone, it can lead kids to make tragic choices that can have devastating consequences. Marsh explains what they think parents should do to protect their kids and also how to teach kids to stand in their own power even as they're being judged and mocked for their differences. Don't miss this inspiring episode that will educate, uplift, and empower you on your journey to wholehearted living. Website: http://www.jeffreymarsh.com/ Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/thejeffreymarsh https://twitter.com/thejeffreymarsh https://www.facebook.com/jeffreymarshofficial https://jeffreymarsh.tumblr.com/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKDBJO1KAhAHroi44gRqyFQ https://vine.co/jeffreymarsh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm Dr. Laura Berman, a sex and relationship therapist. And for the past three decades, I've been helping people learn how to love and be loved better. That's what we're doing here on The Language of Love, where I get to answer calls and emails from people just like you. My goal with The Language of Love is to help you discover more meaningful emotional and physical intimacy and to help you build more awareness of how precious and sacred your sexuality really is. Be sure to email me or reach out with your very own love-sex relationship questions, and I might just answer them live on the air. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. I'm really excited to introduce you to this week's guest on the language of love.

Jeffrey Marsh is a spiritual and inclusive messenger, really. Received over 1 billion views on social media and has gone viral on pretty much every social media platform, especially TikTok and Instagram. He is an educator. He's an anti-bullying. They are an educator. They are. Yeah, listen to me. I'm already starting. See, look at me. They are. My program is they. In fact, I want to ask you about this.

They are an educator. Well, we'll get to that in a second. Let me just finish introducing you. But this is a great example. Finish how impressed I am. Go ahead. Yes. Well, you are very fabulous.

And wrote, and was your book, your book should be a bestseller. I assume it was. Was it a bestseller? It is. It's called How to Be You. The subtitle is Stop Trying to Be Someone Else and Start Living Your Life. And I read the book. I thought it was amazing.

You know, I love how a lot of it is autobiographical. You use yourself and your own journey and what you've learned in terms of really learning to embrace yourself and so much about what I talk about on the show in general, not just about, you know, in terms of non-binary or transgender or the LGBTQ community, just for all of us, we struggle with self-love and self-worth. It's a lifetime journey. certainly those of us who've been disenfranchised and bullied and marginalized it's even harder but I think this book you know applies to everyone and people are often asking me okay so I know I

need to love myself how the hell do I do that and so we're going to be getting down to that a little bit as well but I love that I that I made the boo-boo right as I was introducing you because I think you know it was convenient yeah it was good and I and I usually my unconscious just cooperates that way in a beautiful way when needed. But I think it's interesting. I was just talking to my husband about something related and I corrected him and I said they. Oh, I think he was talking about my son's friend who uses the they pronoun. And then he started, my husband was like, well, how do you do that? That's grammatically incorrect because normally you would say he or she is coming tonight, right? Do you say they are coming tonight or do you say they is coming

tonight? Because it's one person. Well, there are two things I want to address before we get into our grammar lesson. Number one, I think, I think, or I hope the book is a bestseller because it's not just LGBTQ people reading it. Yes. A lot of folks who are not like me pick up the book and see valves in those pages and I often talk about how I'm a walking metaphor can this is why I wanted to talk to you today because I you get this instinctively it's so much a part of your work yeah I'm this metaphor for there is nothing wrong you mm-hmm people can see my social videos they can read the book they can see me walking down dream. And they basically know instantly what I've been, is wrong with me my entire life. My

effeminacy, my LGBTQ-ness, whatever you want to call it. They know what was wrong with me. And they can also see instantly that I love what I was told was wrong with me. Yes. That's my strength, superpower. I love that so much. And you said something, I made a lot of notes in the book, you know, of little quotes and things I loved. And you wrote, and it's exactly a version of what you're saying, the thing people most try to change about you is a big clue to who you really are, I think is how you said it. Can you speak to that a little bit before we get into pronouns and

grammar. Yeah, of course. And it's all related, obviously. You were told as most with you is your gift to the world. What I had hoped that you would do, and one of the main things that I hoped it gives or that it gives to readers is this sense that people do not want you to be free. That is true for almost every human being it is changing and it is getting better but what was classically thought of as parenting when my parents were young parents parenting me as a kid what was thought of as good parenting was to in a sense break the spirit of your kid and assimilate them so they would conform and and and that aka socialization yes exactly right And my parents did the same thing to me, I mean, in different ways.

But anything that made you different or stand out or not fit the norm or not fit their ideal of how they wished they could have been, they either, and I'm talking about the collective you, not just you or I, but they either beat or shamed or subtly or overtly tried to condition. And it was and it's a misguided form of love, which I also really appreciate in your message, because I absolutely believe that. And one of the things that I of the many things I love about your message, not just in the book, but in your videos, is that there's so much compassion for the bully, you know, for or for not the parents are all bullies, because like we said, it's coming from a place of love and misguided intention to protect. But it's coming from their wounds as well. and you have so much compassion for when someone judges or is prejudiced or says even something really hateful or shameful, you know, your response is always like, wow. You know, it's like I always say, you spot it, you got it, right? You'll be like, wow, I feel so bad for you because that must have happened to you. What you're doing to me, you must really feel about

yourself and someone else did that to you. And I'm so sorry, which I think is a really powerful response. Yeah. And, you know, evidence points to the fact that they're still doing it to themselves inside their head. Why would they, why else would they be coming to me? Yeah. Right. Unless they had that same kind of missing and wanting conformity inside their own head yeah so to me the hater back is not only inefficient it's actually moving in the wrong direction and another thing i hope people take from my work is holding on to the dignity and onto the boundaries and holding on to ways you will and not be treated right teaching people what's acceptable and what isn't

in how to treat you these days we navigate relationships all of that is intact and the full humanity in every single person yeah my community that's really beautiful and i think it's so hard for people to do, you know, when they're, especially when they feel frustrated and hurt and offended and shut down. Um, and it's something that I tried, you know, to teach my kids as they were coming up and all got bullied. And you're right in many ways for their gifts that made them a little quirky or weird or the kind of kid that grownups adored, but kids just could not understand, you know? And I would say to them, well, you, you know why he's, that kid is saying those things to you. He must be really unhappy with himself. You know, he's really hurting himself

and, and it would, you know, it would kind of help them a little bit because I think it made them take it a little less personally, but it didn't really serve to, to stop the bullying, right. Or to make it less. And some of my kids were better at walking away than others, right. What, you know, some of them couldn't walk away from an altercation and would get into a verbal sparring match that would escalate the whole thing. You know everybody responds differently and so much of your book obviously is written from the perspective of the adult you are now remembering the kids you were then and what you remembered and learned but what and I know you work so often with kids and young people now and you advise them

but but what what do you what did that what are the tangibles that that a kid could do or any of us could do but I think especially a young person who maybe doesn't have the same capacity to walk away, what would you recommend they do or say? I mean, they're thinking, okay, you must feel this way about yourself, right? What do they do or say? Well, it's so fun that you asked that because I was that kid. If I wanted to avoid bullying, the only option I had was to never go to school again, which was not an option. So I was walking in every day to a group of people who would terrorize me as best as they could every day including teachers in school where I grew up and I carried that as my shame for years my

responsibility my weight to bear for years and years and years so I wouldn't want to address the kids in this exact moment i just wonder what your parents the uh teachers the older kids anybody who's in a position yeah you know when i was really really young i never wanted to hear somebody well the bully is getting bullied yeah right that's the last thing i don't care yeah like make them stop and then when you try to intervene i mean i'll never forget the middle school teacher. And she's like, I'll try to talk to them, but talking to them makes it worse. I'm like, you are the school counselor. Talking to the kids makes it worse. What are you talking about? Exactly. But I tried talking to the other parents. They were bullies themselves. I tried talking to

the school. They were clueless and helpless. I tried even talking to one of the other kids. I got in a ton of trouble with the school. It's really tough. And if I could have gotten, And in fact, I mean, we don't have to get into this now, but you may or may not know that my middle son tragically passed away and the trajectory that got him to the place where he was experimenting with drugs in order to fit in with the small group of kids that would accept him, which were the druggie kids or the drug using kids, I should say. He was going in, like you're describing, he was going into a war zone every day. that's what it feels like in a child's mind to go into school every day knowing that you're going to

be heckled and teased and marginalized and so even wearing that hat as I ask you this question as a parent because I was doing all of that I was taught I mean I didn't call up these kids parents because they were like in ninth grade and but I had earlier but I talked to the school I talked to the counselors. I talked to the administrators. I talked to him a lot. Is there something, and I don't mean that that would have saved him, but just using me as an example, is there something that I could have done or said that might have given him some more tools other than building him up as much as I could and helping him see his gifts? And he would even say to me, I see that. I know eventually I'm going to be okay. It's just getting through the next few years with these

idiots around me, treating me like crap. Like he could see that it was them, not him. And yet at the same time, he was living in a war zone and being, and the most important thing to a kid is at that age, especially social inclusion and acceptance, that's more, much more important than anything else. And he couldn't get that, at least not without meeting the norm that these few kids who accepted him were setting for him. Well, there are two things to talk about. We can get right to the tips and tricks in a second. But before we go there, I want to ask if you're feeling guilty i feel horribly guilty yes i mean that's the that's the hardest thing from from the moment he was born i've gone through every minute of um you know what could i have done differently

when he was in fourth grade and you know if i had responded like every point of his life uh how can you not feel guilty that's the hardest part is that you know my one job was to keep this kid alive if nothing else if i have no other job you know and i and and uh and i couldn't and so yeah i question everything yeah i didn't expect here but you're the person to go here with I almost died by suicide many times and it really only is uh by luck by hook by crook um by circumstance that I'm here now talk to you so the first thing I would offer is no there's not more you pretty clear to me that you

loved your kid I did yeah and that to me that to me goes top on the list and everything else is underneath and if someone's listening

and is in a similar situation I know you and I would both tell your kid you love them yeah and in a sense I wouldn't I don't want it to hear so I found out when I was in my 30s that my mom used to yell at my school really she would go into the office and yell at whoever listened to her and you never knew that she would do that take a seat and she would yell at the you know the person at the front desk the principal anybody my teacher you're supposed to be protecting my child you're not protecting my and she would just scream she never told me she was doing that because she thought

to be a good parent was to fix everything so that i quote didn't have to worry about yeah but in the process i just felt like nobody was advocating right and nobody had your back and she did and you didn't know and she so i bring that up to say i all the evidence points to your kid knowing exactly how much you cared oh he did he definitely knew and how much you loved yes and how much i accepted him yes and speaking as someone who has been in those situations myself it could be infinite love and that's not going to turn around for you it is helpful to know and it feels good to know but as far as it being your fault or that you could have or should have done more yeah I hope

so you see what I mean I do and I've been working on it and I see it all intellectually but you know it's just a process I think you have to I think it's part of the healing is letting go of that because I certainly know all of that intellectually and I know other than maybe letting him leave school when she was always begging to do and homeschool, which I didn't want to do. And that's maybe the only decision that I probably could have made. What's that? Can I compliment you? Yes. Always. Oh, good. I never would have asked for homeschool because home was not a safe place. uh yeah so that actually a compliment to you and the kind of mess the kind of space you are offering to your kid yeah no he loved being home he definitely felt in fact he thrived through

the pandemic because he could home school basically yeah he loved he you know it was just he was isolated and lonely and rejected by the people that he most required that you know needed the acceptance from. My acceptance was not, nor my husband's, was enough of a bomb on the rejection, right? B-A-L-M, not B-O-M-B, but it wasn't enough of a bomb, which I think is normal for a teenager. And that's, you know, I think all teenagers do stupid experimental stuff, but I know that he was doing the stupid experimental stuff to try to, and he would verbalize that to me that he needed to do it in order to fit in and I would say I'm sorry I wish I could say yes because part of me wishes I could do anything to help you feel like

you belonged because you deserve to belong but I'm not going to say yes to that if you're like the millions of women out there and the people who love them whose sex lives have been negatively affected by chronic urinary tract infections I wanted to tell you about a product line I discovered called Eucora because people don't talk about this enough. UTIs can happen due to menopause, pregnancy, so many other factors. And so many women struggle with this and go to the doctor repeatedly and then end up avoiding sex as a result. Eucora not only offers UTI relief and proactive urinary tract health supplements, but they have a whole learning center on their website with research and information for you. So get proactive about urinary tract health with

Uquora. Right now, Uquora is offering 20% off when you go to Uquora.com slash love, but hurry because it's a limited time offer. Go to Uquora.com slash love and get 20% off your order. That's U-Q-O-R-A.com slash love. So it sounds like, well, let's get to the, enough about me. Let's talk about you. Let's get to the how to's, although it'll probably become about me again. But, but But the tips and tools for those who are still here and for those parents who do see their kids struggling, we said definitely talk to the school, talk to the teachers, even talk to the other parents. But what would you, you know, to tell the child, in addition to understanding, okay, this kid is hurting too, hurt people hurt people, that doesn't help you get through the school day, what would you say? I would have a frank discussion with your teacher. So, yeah, kind of like the story I told with my mom, I wish she would have come right home and said, guess what I did today?

Yeah. In the sense of how they're treating you, I'm acceptable. You're not alone. You're not overly dramatic. You are seeing things clearly. You and I both know the truth. Yeah. And I affirm who you are.

and i affirm your truth and i'm going to do everything i can to protect you that i think is a good thing to hear as a kid i think you can't change school or or change the circumstances yeah and i've actually had a couple of friends like kids that were friends with my son when they were really little reach out to me recently and you know these are families that we don't even live near anymore. And a couple of them have said, my child is being bullied in school and is miserable and, you know, is a sophomore in high school and wants to move to this other school that's more accepting. But, you know, this is a great school. And what about college? And I keep saying, fuck college. Just like, get the kid out of there. You know, that's the least. And I think

it's the same reason I said no to homeschooling. It's like, what are the colleges going to think when they see all of a sudden he homeschooled, you know, and, and so, and I would give anything to have that problem now, you know? So if your kid is really suffering and the school is not doing anything and nothing is getting better, who gives a fuck about, you know, it's all going to work out. And so I think there is something to be said to letting them homeschool or letting them go to an, you know, there's, there's this, which I think is part of our conformity. There's this Like got to live to learn. You know, you got to learn to live in the world. And there are going to be my parents used to say this to me when I was bullied.

They're going to be assholes everywhere. They're going to be nasty bosses. Now they're nasty teachers, but they're going to be nasty bosses. It's going to be misogyny. Yes. Yes. Yes. Get used to it. That's what they would say. Learn to not let it bother you. New from Nespresso. Blend wellness into your coffee routine with the Coffee Plus range. infused with functional benefits choose the coffee you love with added b vitamins like coffee plus b12 to help support immune function and coffee plus b6 to keep your day moving or go with the flow and choose ginseng delight our new double espresso with ginseng extract whatever lies ahead don't

change your morning let your morning change you discover coffee plus on espresso.com and and that kind of mentality i think was in there what's wrong with that go ahead tell us you're mocking it yes i am do but what's wrong with that is it's blaming the victim yeah and normalizing makes yes makes the bully relationship about how the bullied is dealing with that no no no turn around we need us the bully what they're doing hold them accountable yeah of course we grow up and become adults and the same thing happens we go to shops we read another book we right we try to do self-improvement when abusers trying to relate to us yeah right i just wish that the world would hold yours accountable. Let's concentrate on that for a few years and not improve our

teamwork. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, say more about that because, you know, I agree with you that there should be a zero tolerance. And I think you're a beautiful model of how to create zero tolerance for bullies in a compassionate, but uh-uh kind of way. Like, no, it's not okay. And I'm so sorry that you feel like crap about yourself and that the reason you're making me feel small or trying to make me feel small is because you feel small, but it's not okay. And is there more that we can do other than just saying no? And I also think, and I'm hugely passionate about this, the whole fricking bystander thing, how silent people are when they witness that makes me infuriated. it's almost worse than the bully and they have their own reasons and wounds for doing that and they don't want to get in the in the middle of the shrapnel but still you know we all have to

speak up as the bystanders as well as the one bully there's actually studies to bear that out that a lot of us have childhood abuse but that you know i think people are afraid to get in trouble um it feels like that are fighting and they don't know what to do their fight or flight turns into freeze so there are a lot of reasons why bystanders are jumping in but i'm with you the time is over for all of that stuff i call them on my channel buffer bus buffer what are they really buffer buddies buffer buddies yeah that you know if an lgbtq person is being harassed for example you better buffer buffer buddy yourself in there and make a change stand up be the person between the bully and the bully the buffer yeah i see so they're not

buffering the bully they're buffering the bullied they're helping to protect the bully yeah i think that's important and think the circumstances of the last five years have shown us what happens when we're about to thrive yeah yeah and they still are to put it gently yes they still are and people have a lot of risk i mean our culture i think in general it's changing and shifting and we all want to be you know more less misogynistic and more divine masculine supporting and all of that but for god's sake the it's still that the guy who's the harshest toughest biggest what you know loudest somehow still is seen as more powerful and i think that doesn't change until the rest of us change our opinions on that

mm-hmm you know it makes me think of turfism i don't know if you've ever heard that word t-e-r-f is uh it's an acronym for trans exclusionary radical feminists and this is that's based in great britain mostly in america as well and throughout the world it's women that believe trans people are bad for feminism not just that um that trans people should be exposed that we should be kept from society that we're raised if they can't i've never heard i mean i've heard of that but i've never heard of this term and i didn't know there was like a whole thing around this okay oh there's a whole thing around it the reason i bring it up here is because me, the fight for LGBTQ rights and the fight for women's rights, the fight to end

misogyny, is in a very similar, if not the same fight. We're trying to dismantle these strict ways our police seem to expressing who they are. And you would think women would be supportive of that i would think so and to be clear most right and most feminism is trans inclusive but you made me think of it because there are so many people who aren't the bully but still caught up in the bullies system yeah and the turfers are part of that they're caught they're modeling after the bully basically and and in a place of scarcity yes and they want to be, they want to get ahead within the bully system instead of dismantling the system through different directions to move in. So what is the first thing we should do to dismantle the

bully system? Well, do you want to talk about grammar first? Because you said we were going like a half hour ago. I know. I'm still, I'm so intrigued. I want to know how to dismantle the whole problem but yeah this is one way because using learning the correct terminology and educating yourself is one way not to get lost in the bullies misrepresentations and lies and and mischaracterizations and stereotypes so um so yeah let's talk about some of the terminology and and then we'll talk we have to remind you're handling this whole interview much better than i So you help me remember to come back to the dismantling the bullies. I didn't mean to.

No, I like it. I like it. I like it because my executive functioning is not the best ever, but especially these days. Okay, so. I love it. Well, give context first, and then we'll talk about grammar. Because the context is the idea that, quote, there are only two genders, and that belief makes it very easy to then have a personal philosophy that one gender is better than the other one. It's like a stepping stone.

and if people like me come along well actually i don't fit into one of those 37 genders there are 43 there's 112 right gender is a totally different concept than you were taught right we can muddy those waters and there is no one who's better than another there is no gender that's better than another gender because that's really the promise and the gift people like me so deep in my soul, I know that I'm not a man and I'm not a woman. I'm non-binary. The word binary meaning two, referring to a woman. And I'm outside that system. What we're doing in this movement is simply trying to use language to describe us. And that may not always make sense. and so most of pronouns it's not appropriate to use he or she when talking about me because

you're not either a he or and actually i almost never get to talk this but the first people who wanted to use gender-neutral pronouns were feminists in the 1970s. They wanted a universal gender-neutral pronoun so that when people were talking about applicants, college applicants, so that women would not be discriminated against. I see. Okay. And so that people would not have these heavy assumptions that come from she and her. Yeah.

So they were the first to advocate for it. And LGBTQ people just picked up the slack and said, yeah, that works for us too. How about they? Because we already use they to mean one person. Yeah, we do. Like if you don't really know the gender of a person, you will use they. Yes. Left their wallet here.

I hope they come back and get it. Yeah. They're so stupid for leaving their wallet. Yeah. they are so it is exactly the same usage for that anonymous okay for a known person and you would use they are yes you would even if you were talking about one person whose gender you didn't know yes because you do someone left their umbrella you're not picturing 12 under an umbrella they are coming back to get their hopefully whoever they are so really

convenient thing is we already know how to use it how to form sentences what people mean yes nobody gets confused that you're talking about 12 people when it's a nervous person and their wallet right and very few people get confused when you're talking about me yeah jay left their wallet i hope they come back and get it yeah and what do you think about the x the x pronoun like x versus they where does that fit in well it's in so x is often used as a gender marker on documents my driver's license right now has x on it not an m not an f but an x and there are alternate pronouns the reason they it's so popular is that it's already in the language the feminists in the 1970s were actually starting to trying to use a brand new vocab word

and whenever that's been attempted it put on a lot of extra work yeah to do yeah so that's why that's a good i didn't i didn't know that that it was because of the of the vocabulary convenience of it as much as anything else but that makes sense and so and currently if you if you meet somebody who says my pronouns are z z uh you know a word you've never heard of yeah you should respect them do your best to use that word and a lot of us use that because it is so uh well under already they right and so there's not so whatever someone wants to be called you call them but otherwise, I mean, right? Yes. Good. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you said that. Yeah. That's the principle. That's the principle. It's interesting that I said he, as I was introducing you, because,

you know, looking at you, even though I know you're non-binary, looking at you, you definitely have qualities, you know, in the continuum, right? You're not binary. And yet, because your name is jeffrey and you're tall and you have short hair you know i just automatically think i have one of those two things yes but um that just means you have a lot of testosterone in your system which is good for your libido that's what i say about myself and i love how you're just like they you just you just because people go on appearances and names is sort of what they immediately defer to and it reminds me of based on appearances and names racism who yeah or even but to not not pull off the subject of gender from the appearances people know who's better at math

ah right people should get promoted yeah people know who right on and on and another that non-binary people can give the world and society is that who we are is an innate experience it's not a set of physical attributes you know i pause at that word because it's not attributes it's like physical you need to jump through in order to look like your gender right yeah it's it's how It's like how willing and able and identified are you willing and able to be with the stereotypes of the gender you've been assigned, basically. Yeah. And it's not like we're not living in a world where there are women who have facial hair.

Yeah. They do exist, right? They do. I just grew one on my chin the other day. Oh, good. um one to again compliment you i just love how much you share of your own story um yeah to me there is not something we were told makes up gender that is not incredibly wiggly higgledy-piggledy all over the map so imagine you're in high biology class

and they actually don't teach it this way anymore people of our age we're in high school biology class someone sell its chromosomes well there are people born with all kinds of chromosomes right including xxx yeah xxy right all kinds of missions and they're actually people walking the earth but if you use their chromosomes in different parts of their body you get different answers yeah for the same person yeah that's and that's just one genitalia is another there are intersex people and people born with all genitalia that looks all kinds of ways women have facial hair right so other characteristics or a clitoris it's as big as a penis i mean everything we were taught about gender is vibrant yes and not not i think seven

and that's what go ahead well they're just not stayed they're not stagnant but i do think correct you know we we all our society is built around these binary boxes in so many ways but i want to spend a minute talking about some of these terms for folks because like like intersex versus transgender versus, and I've talked about this some of the show, but I want to hear your definitions versus transsexual versus non-binary. Like what are some of the key terms that your average person should know? New from Nespresso, blend wellness into your coffee routine with the Coffee Plus range infused with functional benefits. Choose the coffee you love with added b vitamins like coffee plus b12 to help support immune function and coffee plus b6 to keep your

day moving or go with the flow and choose ginseng delight our new double espresso with ginseng extract whatever lies ahead don't change your morning let your morning change you discover coffee plus on espresso.com yeah i think one of the reasons that a lot of us use the umbra term trans, just those five letters, T-R-A-N-S, is because so much of our history includes that word. So terms like transsexual and transvestite are now outdated terms, but they include that words and the word transgender includes that word trans and so so many of us just took t-r-a-n-s and we used to mean the whole kind of rainbow family of people who have well i'll give you a good a good definition for any hour listening anybody whose gender does not match the that's

printed on their birth certificate that's a trans person okay that's a good definition so so my birth certificate says male it's in a filing cabinet it's paper it's somewhere in Pennsylvania and I'm non-binary so that's a transition but Caitlyn Jenner did that same thing laverne cox did that thing came out as who they truly are and it's different and i don't know if you'll recognize this freight or know what i'm i mean it's different than the gender they were at birth right so assigned the baby comes out you see a penis you say it's a boy you see a no penis you say it's a girl basically and then that's your assignments i'm so you phrased it that way because isn't that the whole earth yeah every based on whether you have a penis yeah yeah

you don't have a penis you're female yeah um it's not that you have a vagina no it's that you don't have a penis it's like what anyway intersex folks are folks who are born with genitia that the medical establishment finds ambiguous and i phrase it that way because of thank goodness many intersex people i was not born intersex but intersex people in that movement are fighting back and saying don't perform surgery on babies which happens they kind of do the surgery based on what they look most like uh yeah like on a and a prayer yeah and a guess yeah for someone's whole life but we digress um so that's intersex okay and that's genital there's

an affinity is that many intersex folks not all but many intersex folks eventually also identify non-binary because the identity naturally into not being a man or woman being outside being both yeah whatever else so non-binary is really referring to your gender identity how you identify yourself i'm not in a box i'm not male i'm not female i'm on this beautiful continuum And intersex is about the genitals and not having male or female specifically somewhere on the beautiful continuum of genital structures. Can you imagine people live their whole lives thinking that a natural species, a natural group, seven and a half billion people fit into either one box or the other? Yeah, it is pretty astounding. We do like our neat little boxes.

and so tell me well yes it makes us feel like the world makes more sense and then it also yes control yeah control yes and so why so trans someone who was you know who identified as a transvestite which is now an out-of-date term what would what would that person now call themselves well that's up to them they could come out as numpy and they could come out as gender non-conforming or they could come out as nothing because girths are not gender now pants are not gender right a gray team is not no a gender no so there is there is really is you know and i see it especially the young kids you mentioned i'm famous on tiktok yes so especially the young kids and creators on tiktok there is there is no such thing as us dressing in quotes

because you you wear what you want yeah because you think it's great yeah like harry styles right he was getting he was getting some flack for that harry styles so i wonder what harry styles identifies as? Do you know? Well, actually, I was interviewed for Good Morning America about this subject, as Harry is not non-binary. The term we use for someone who is not trans is cisgender. So transgender or cisgender. And Harry is cisgender. Right. And cis is the more conforming in the box you know i'm male so he identifies as male if he's cisgender yeah straight heterosexual cisgender yeah okay and then transgender is still okay but transsexual is not correct and that's mostly as far as i can tell because so many people are not

able to afford don't want surgery surgery is such a big step and such a personal decision we shouldn't make whether you had a doctor do things

to your genitals we shouldn't have that determine whether you're valid so it's not really about because transsexuality just brings to mind bodies and surgery so it just highlights the requirement or not of that right but can you say well what about because people used to say they are how would they say

they're fully transitioned do we do we not say that anymore either people i mean you can't no but i mean politics like in you know hurtful or offensive you're trying to help give allies tools yes and actually i want to address the metasus first because i've noticed in my activism I know I look amazing, but I'm four. So I've been doing this for a long time. And we've come to this interesting place. So years ago, people used to just think of me as fish. They'd be afraid. They'd be like, what's that person going on over there? Is this like Silence of the Lambs? Is this person going to kill me? You know, that kind of energy. And now we've gone from that to people being afraid to say the wrong things. Yeah, a lot of people are. But people are still looking at me and I'm still isolated.

And, you know, I'm still causing this anxiety that I don't want. So what I would recommend for people to do is know that you goof like you did. Yeah. So gracefully know it's going to happen. And be ready to learn and apologize and move. That would be the plan. As opposed to making sure you memorize every single correct vocabulary. Yeah.

Because I don't want to ask to do that, actually. Yeah. I want people to have a heart-to-heart connection. And that actually will be the best context for them to learn what words to use and not use. okay fair enough because people yeah it does and I think you're right that people want I mean that's the nice thing even though I understand the accidental isolation it creates but that at least people are trying to do the right thing right but there is this kind of paranoia that I'm going to say you know that they're going to say something wrong or do something offensive

of which is nice because it's coming from a place of wanting to do the right thing. So let's get back for a minute from the ally standpoint, whether you are a parent of someone who maybe you suspect is non-binary or trans in some way, or even if your kid's just being bullied or just, I mean, even if your kid's being bullied, or if you just want to be, you know and see yourself as an ally what can we do to start dismantling some of this toxicity and and and bullying and prejudice i think talking about it is your way to go so many allies are afraid to say the thing that they clam up like we were talking about the bystander syndrome, right? So many folks are afraid to make that misstep. And I can talk

about myself and racism, honestly. Things were spicy for a while when I realized that I wanted to be devoted to anti-racism and I didn't yet have the tools. And so there was going to be a time period where I was going to say wrong things, going to do the wrong thing, going to step, gonna go there and a person of color or a black person pull me aside and be like don't say that right

had to be able to stay with myself as I went through that and that's what I would encourage everyone to do we were talking about yeah

we were talking earlier about people being traumatized i think that is a very little kid thing yeah that every did had to be perfect it had to be right you had to formulate everything before it came out of your mouth or you would have been made fun of beat up ostracized rejected right that's that all comes right out of all of us six years old and now is your chance to transcend that And if I represent non-binary people in any way as the first non-binary person to go on national TV and talk about it, you know, if I'm at the forefront of a movement, if I'm a runnative, let me say on behalf of all of us, speak up. Personally, Jeffrey, I would rather have you fumbling and stumbling and making mistakes and fighting for us.

then staying silent then clamming up no and I think it's also related to self-love as you talk so eloquently eloquently about in in your book you were talking I remember about um how a big component of self-love for you which I thought was so beautiful was was you know fundamentally self-trust not only you know trusting your own heart which I assume is sort of your own good intentions even if you screw up even if you're awkward even if you say the wrong thing trusting your heart's intentions and trusting your own adequate adequacy you know that you're enough exactly as you are and I think that's sort of what you're speaking to now when you say staying with yourself through struggling to support someone in your community or in your family or struggling

with, you know, something you see on the street or on social media and wondering how to speak up or how to speak to that person or how to advocate. It's really what I think you're saying is that there's no rule book and that it's really, as with all things, about trusting your own intentions. It's so funny because I was picturing, you know, if my life is being threatened in a park or whatever and a third person starts yelling get away from him i'm not going to come and go well actually my pronouns are they it's a day yeah yeah it's people get a feed and really sometimes the rubber is meeting the road and you gotta you can get in there and put a stop to and you know you know what people listening to this and people drawn for work i know this for

fact you can speak about human dignity yes absolutely you may not know all the words you may not know the vocab you may not know the pronouns you may not have all you know all the rules but you do know about inclusion about dignity you know about love you can speak about those that's really really beautiful and a really good point to end on is there anything else that you think is important we talk about definitely pick up jeffrey's mark jeffrey's marsh i was going to say jeffrey marsh's book uh how to be you stop trying to be someone else and start living your life you know it's a really i thought it was just a really beautiful there was a lot of sort of mainstreaming and easily accessible buddhist principles in there just like it was

a lot of that's supposed to be but yes you're right yeah and i think it's it's actually a buddhist book but but it's it's in you know regular practical terms which i think is really beautiful and it's clear that it's been your path and how you've you know healed yourself in many ways and and become the advocate that you are and the and the model of self-love that you are and i think all of us my gosh if we could have more self-love we would definitely have less bullying that's for damn sure so oh i certainly think so can i tell you just a you know 30 seconds yeah about that so i mentioned earlier that i went i was the first person to go on national tv and say i'm binary let's talk about it and it was actually newsmax conservative

cable news and i had discussed my team do i want to go on there do i want to do this and we decided together you know it's part of my mission to be able to talk to everyone are and what's important and the host was being very antagonistic and at one point in the year if people want to look up the viral you know the host says to me you know if you buy this book are they going to learn more about people like you and I said

if they buy this book they'll learn more about themselves good answer because we're so very much alike and that is why i'm so grateful that we could talk today and that you were willing to i don't usually say this but you know people like me are not given it's getting better we're not usually given a voice so it says something about you that i am here i love your voice that you have

thank you um i mean i don't mean just your speaking voice to talk to like me yeah we're supposed to be silenced and ostracized and elsewhere else so I never take moments like these for granted and I went I'm just grateful from the bottom of my heart that you are you that you are yeah thank you thank you I um to me it's it's a no-brainer because I when I say I love your voice I mean you do have a beautiful speaking voice but I love your message and I love how you give it. And I love how smart you are and how heartful you are and how generous you are and how intuitive you are, you know, not to mention entertaining. So that's a beautiful combination. And I thank you so much for joining us. I wish you a million more gajillion miles of

success in your work and in your purpose and you know I think that message fundamentally is those things that we most for all of us that we feel shame about or embarrassed about or we're bullied about or we're overtly or covertly conditioned out of embrace those things stop running away from them because those are actually your deepest most beautiful gifts so I want to thank you for being brave enough to live your gifts for all of us. It is truly my pleasure. I hope I speak to you again soon. Anytime. I want to make a move, I want to make a move, but I'm too shy. I can't fall asleep without your arms around me.

I guess I'm falling in love. Where some see heroes and others see egos, Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. A fad to some, the future of money to others. we see crypto's trillion dollar swings the end of jobs or the end of human struggle we see the endless funds fueling the ai hype while others follow the noise we follow the money