Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Sex, Gender, and Respect: Breaking Down the Basics

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

In this episode of Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex with Dr. Sue & Charlie, Dr. Sue and Charlie explore the critical differences between sex and gender, shedding light on how these terms are often misunderstood and misused. They delve into the significance of respecting people's identities, using affirming language, and understanding the evolving nature of gender as a social construct. The conversation explores the evolution of language surrounding gender, the importance of affirming people's chosen names and pronouns, and how respecting identities fosters safety, health, and happiness for those who don’t fit traditional labels. This episode encourages listeners to embrace the power of understanding and respect to foster a safer and healthier world for everyone. If you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestions

Hey everyone, welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and me, Charlie. We're here to dive into the topics of sex and sexuality that you might be curious about, but don't always feel comfortable talking about. No judgment, just open, honest conversation. So zip down and let's get candid. And today we're going to talk about sex and gender. Super exciting.

But before we do that, I'm here with Dr. Sue. Hey, Dr. Sue. Hey, Charlie. Would you like to tell our listeners a little bit about your background? Sure. So this one, I always try to tailor the background based on what we're talking about. And I think on this one, I need to kind of go more into the academic side. So I have a Ph.D. in human sexuality education, and I've been working in academia for a while.

But I also do a lot of work trying to educate other groups. So I do a lot of work with social workers, health care professionals. And one of the things we do often talk about is the difference between sex and gender because so many people just have no clue about this. So I teach the next generation of, well, just the next generation. But then I'm also doing work outside of academia, working with health care professionals, doing some continuing education for them. Because one of the things we're going to talk about is that this is always changing, like what we know, what we understand as best practices. So that's a little bit about me, very short bit about me. But Charlie, I think we need to go back to you.

Oh, no. Yes. For those of you who haven't listened before or just would like a refresher, Charlie is our co-host who's always kind of ready to talk about the ins and outs of everything, relationships, sex, sexuality, and all those other taboo topics that we very rarely talk about publicly. Charlie, you want to give us a little bit more? Sure. I, Dr. Sue and I have been friends for a bit, and we tend to have these types of conversations just between us as friends, and we find that we have a good back and forth on it, and we thought we'd bring this to the masses for those that are curious or looking for language.

I am someone who has always considered themselves to challenge taboos and what is acceptable for me to talk about, I'll say unashamedly, as a woman in our modern society. So challenging the norm is my happy space. So that's how we got here and how you have all joined us. And I think we need to blame my students just one more time. I feel like I'm blaming them more. That's always a highlight in our introduction. Well, no, no, I think it's important because the podcast, I mean, the podcast came to be because, like you said, we were having these conversations and we wanted to have them anyway. But a good push came from my students because they would tell me the things that they were listening to and it was often incorrect. And so I would gently, not so gently, push back and be like, what are you listening to? Because this isn't accurate. And their ungentle pushback was like, well, then do your own and we'll listen.

So a lot of a lot of the decision to kind of do this podcast was based off the feedback I was getting from students who were listening to other podcasts and felt like there was something lacking. So we were trying to fill in that gap. And I think that's important, especially on something like sex and gender, because as a culture, most people do not understand the difference between sex and gender. like the fact that we have gender reveal parties you're not actually revealing their gender as the child does not a the child is not born and b the child does not know their gender what you are celebrating in a reveal party is what genitals it has and so that was one of those this is one of those things where like i know people talk about this a lot but we we as a culture just don't really understand the difference between those two terms we tend to conflate them all the time and it drives me nuts. So I think it's just important to have a conversation about that.

I agree. I think it's important that we have this episode to clarify and lay the foundation around the language of sex and gender because so often as well, because of conflation and lack of education proper quality education surrounding this topic it makes it easier as we see the less the public the general public knows about something the easier it is to weaponize and use as a fear tactic or a tactic to control members of society or discriminate against members of society. And so we really want to surface this as, as hopefully clarifying and, and piquing your curiosity to go further so that you can understand your fellow members of your community in a meaningful and compassionate and respect, respectful way. And maybe learn more about

yourself. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. If you've never quite felt comfortable with your sex assigned at birth or you question what it means to be your gender in this culture, I think it can be helpful for that as well. So to dive in, shall we start with definitions? Sure. I need to point something out. So if any of my students are listening, they know that I tend to draw lines in the sand in my classroom about certain words and then I say hey I don't I don't really care what you do in the real world because in the real world everyone uses certain terms interchangeably but I think it's important for this one that we do understand the difference between sex and gender so when we talk about sex and you may have started hearing the phrase sex assigned at birth because we tell you

what your sex is when you are born. And we put it on your birth certificate. And we need to remember to come back to that. So note to self, come back to birth certificate. Yes. Sex assigned at birth is usually based off what we see in between an infant's legs. So if we see something that could be a passable penis, we sex assign it boy, male. If we see what's a passable vulva, we sex assign it female. It is not as simple as that. Your sex, for sex assigned at birth, it usually is as simple as that. There is a category called intersex for folks who have ambiguous genitalia or mixed genitalia. So maybe they have one testy and one ovary.

Maybe they have a very small penis, like a microphallus. And so the doctor questions whether that's really male, which is a whole thing right there. Right. That is so early in your life. Right. So sometimes it's because sometimes there's ambiguous genitalia, but that term intersex also applies to folks who have chromosomes that don't fall into the standard XX and XY.

So this term intersex is actually a pretty big term. A standard female is going to have XX chromosomes. A standard male is going to have XY chromosomes, but we see all different flavors of chromosomes. Like, I love when people say, oh, nature only gives you male and female. I'm like, no, no, that's no, because we have XXY, we have trisomy X, we have X blank, which is an X and a missing chromosome. There's all sorts of things. So for sex assigned at birth in the United States, depending on where you are, like what state you're in, there is an option of having a third sex or putting it in an undefined sex. But traditionally, we've looked at a baby, we've looked at his genitals, and we said, you're going to be male or you're going to be female.

I feel like I should take a breath there. That was a lot of information. There you go. That is a lot of information. you you compacted i compacted three days of the lecture yeah baby delivery genetics okay all right you stretch you good i'm good big stretch then we have gender and i i always i always talk because when i talk to health care professionals that needs to be one of our topics we need to talk about what health care professionals

are taught and what they're not taught in med school or nursing school or whatever school they're in so that's yeah there we go future future thought right there yes um because when i work with health care professionals and we do continuing education stuff they're always like all right just you know tell us tell us what the gender is thing the gender thing is now and i'm Like, but that's the problem is that gender is socially constructed. We as a culture say what genders are, oh, here come the air quotes, acceptable and what exists. And so I can't always just cut to the chase and tell folks, like, here's what we know about gender now because it's ever evolving. And it's also different from community to community.

So gender is socially constructed. back when i was born back in the year of the dinosaurs you were you were male or you were female but that that was a very american culture way of looking at it back then and so things have changed but not every culture has always limited people to male and female and i don't know if you want to jump in on that at all or just got a look of panic like why no not at all I I'm not sure uh what I can add to that other than just my you know general um curiosity about different cultures and history and things like that um you know I am aware of many indigenous cultures having a third spirit um as as that gender you know the um I I believe the

Indian culture, South Asia, India, South Asian, Indian culture has, has that third gender. And in many of those cultures, they're revered, because they have the spirit of multiple. I'm gonna, I'm gonna fumble this listener. So my, my extreme apologies, this is out of respectful um but just the benefit of having the different spirits inhabit your yourself and so that gives you um certain wisdom and perspective i think in many ways um and that in american society really this the understanding many of us have been conditioned to as far as the gender construct in american society really started in the mid-20th century honestly because before that the and i think this is in large part how long this conflation has existed um gender was

seen as a biological a fixed biological category and that's not what gender is right and then sex Yeah. Yeah. Callback. There you go. Reinforcing the message. And we had certain movements that started to challenge the gendered expectations of people in society and that really in America started in the mid 20th century. So this is relatively new. And the, in my opinion, the forces that have held kind of power and influence historically have been kicking and screaming ever since to accept these things. But that's maybe a different episode. That's a different – but I think your point is that it is new for the U.S. but is not new for the rest of the world, that other cultures – there's a long history of other cultures understanding that it's not as simple as male and female. See, you did perfect when I referred to you. Thanks, Dr. Seale. So gender is socially constructed, and this generation that's coming up and the generation right before it have been pushing those boundaries a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, which is great. I mean, there's always been generations that are trying to push it. But I think more than ever, we're having open dialogue about the fact that it's not as simple as I have a penis, I'm male. And so that's where we get into the term cisgender. For anyone who's heard this term, cisgendered means that your body part matches how you feel.

so I have a penis I feel male I would be cisgender male if I chose to use that label that that label is a choice to use if I have a vulva and a vagina and I identify as female then I would be cisgender female so even just using those terms is relatively new and it's because we're starting to have more conversation about kind of how we see gender in this culture so would you then say there's like a fourth gender because cisgender is is gendered language right I don't ever count genders because and the reason I don't do that is because depending on the group that I'm working with how they define gender may be very different from other groups so I just say that there are genders and there's no there's no count um because we're constantly allowing people to

figure out language and we're constantly allowing people to kind of think about who they are and what that means but i am going to come back to the point that it's still socially constructed so if i don't feel female part of that may be genetic like i my body i look down and i don't Like my body parts don't make sense to me or they don't feel congruent with who I am. But then as I'm figuring out my gender, it's really about the options that are there for me as a society and as a culture. So I don't – yeah, I don't count genders. I just say genders. Perfect.

Yeah, because the language changes and what we know changes. So like when you use the word trans, so it used to be a medical diagnosis. and at the time we use the term transsexual which is a very medicalized term and i know you just saw my face because i would never really use that i would never use that face in public i would never use that word in public i use my face in public all the time important distinction um so so that used to be a medical term it used to be a medical diagnosis that the person's gender identity wasn't congruent with where their body parts and they were struggling with gender dysphoria and like we would label them and it would we weren't always so nice to people when we did that and

and it's changed and then we came out with the word transgender and essentially the same concepts but less of a medicalized history and now the term trans exists and i i get this question a lot i was doing a training for psychiatrists and they said so what's the right word i'm like i don't know i I don't I don't I don't know who you're talking to. It really is about self-identity. So when I work with my older folks who identify as transgender, they use the term transgender and they like that word because for them it was the first word that fit for who they were as a human. And they they latch onto that label and that's what they use. My younger folks that I work with who identify as trans use the term trans like transgender, such an older term.

so that way that only youth can when they think i'm being so antiquated right like come on dr sue um so so even with that that same concept has two different labels based off who we're talking to so see i don't i don't count genders because i'll run into folks who identify as demi-male or demi-female and then i have to broaden my horizons yeah so um i think that's important to to know and you know that that you don't count the genders you don't quantify it right and because what what we know if anything about human society is that society constantly evolves and i think people when when some people hear evolve me say evolve they may think that you know it's improving it just evolves when i'm saying evolution in this context it is it just

changes and sometimes it and there's an ebb and flow to evolution as far as progressiveness and acceptance versus um the those who buy into and rely on the status quo um kicking and screaming letting out primordial roars a little bit of op-ed commentary there um about this and so it's just really it is about how language evolves with um movements in society with the different generations and what they um determine that they'll continue to accept or challenge sure And it's interesting because we use terms now that we didn't use ever before, like agender, that people don't identify with a gender or gender fluid, this idea that how you see your gender can change every day. And that's part of the evolution. It can be confusing for folks who think that the world is binary and the world is absolutely not binary.

and whenever I talk about sex and gender that's always the first thing that comes out of my mouth it's that the world is not binary it's never been as simple as male and female it's only been as simple as that for folks who didn't understand that there was more to it than that and part of that was with science I mean we didn't really understand

genetics for a while so we thought it was about what we saw with genitals and we saw that there was a variation in genetic composition as well so that kind of evolution that you were talking about but I think it's important to keep in mind that gender is something that someone gouts to self-identify so that's why there's gender

reveal parties outside the fact that sometimes they cause massive fires um hashtag california and those parties drive me nuts because you're really celebrating with the genitals and i wonder about the kid who's born into that family where they did a whole big gender reveal and there was a color and the fact that we still use blue and pink when pink has traditionally been a girl's color um excuse me a boy's color uh but we use you know i'm trying to imagine the kid that's raised in this house with it with it with a with the parents did this gender reveal party and i'm not shaming anyone who does this by the way but what are you gonna do when you do this big gender reveal and then seven eight years into the kid's life they say this doesn't feel right for me

Right. And so for me, I worry about the safety of that kid. I worry about how open those parents would be or those guardians would be to a kid who says, I don't this gender doesn't feel right for me. These body parts don't feel right on my body. Because gender and that's I think why gender reveal parties drive me nuts is that gender is a self-identity. And here we are while the kid's still in utero saying, oh, here's your gender. Yeah. And to expand on that child's experience, you have photographic pictures, redundant redundancy. yeah um but you you know when you go back to look at albums for when you were you were young enough or so young that you don't have a memory and it's tied to something those pictures are tied to something that you don't identify with like the fact that those exist can just can I I believe re-traumatize that child if if they don't identify with how that was celebrated I don't know I I think part of that is how the family handles it very true yes so that as well

and I and I think it's important to note that for parents whose kids may say you know you you labeled me as this and it doesn't feel right for me I think there is a in some ways there's a grieving for the parents of we've lost this identity child, but we have this identity child. Like because when you're a mom, you know, I hear all the time about, oh, I'm a boy mom. This means X, Y and Z or, you know, I'm a girl mom and I hear A, B and C. Part of that is also the parents identity is having to change. And I think there's a natural grieving process when there's a loss of an identity and a gaining of a new one. And so I think in the families where you have all this photographic evidence, unless, you know, you're the second child and no one thinks about taking photos of you.

Sorry, that might be my own bitter. Yeah. My own bitterness right there. But I think that in families where the family says, OK, like we love you and accept you and we understand that those photos are from a different time, but we understand who you are now. I think it cannot be traumatizing if it's processed. and if there's an under you know this this is who we celebrated but now we have you and this is an exciting time for us as well um but i think that's what i hear from parents sometimes when they say my kid my kid is identifying as something different do i need to like get rid of all the

photos i'm like no not that's that's your shared history but it's about how you have conversations about it if your kid walks space for that grief right and and then the acceptance right talking about evolution like it's a cycle right like if if you if you're sitting there looking at the pictures crying and your kid walks in because you're crying over the child that you lost you know that's heavy for the kid and when I say kid I don't always just mean a child sometimes it's an adult child yeah but but I think there's it's about how that's handled and I think it is it can be really hard for parents especially because the focus becomes so about the kids that we sometimes forget the parents are going to need some support through this too support in navigating

health insurance support in navigating health care for their kids support um navigating other people in the family friends and family and community members like i think that we need to support the person whose gender identity is not necessarily congruent with their sex assigned at birth but i think a lot of times you forget that the parents and caregivers and siblings of that child also kind of need to be addressed they need to feel supported as well it's a whole it's a change for everybody not just a change for the person yeah absolutely um so so what what else around sex and gender um and i think maybe at the midpoint of this episode it might be good to just reinforce sex the the two definitions we agreed on couldn't we do that whole thing again not the

whole thing, just the highlight, you know, the one sentence sex. That's going to be the sound bite that's taken out of context. Gender is socially constructed. Sex is usually based on genitals, but can also be based on chromosomes, but is oftentimes assigned at birth. So there's a difference. And I think this is a good point time to point out that a few years ago, the American Medical Association, the AMA, said that there was really no reason to have your sex assigned at birth on your public facing birth certificate. There's just no reason. It shouldn't make a difference. Now, I've spoken to people who work in health insurance who goes, whoa, whoa, whoa. And this is an interesting thing. And I got to tell you, I'm about to walk into a place where

I don't have all the answers. People in health insurance are like, well, we kind of need to know you're sex assigned at birth because we need to know what coverage you're entitled to if you have a vulva then once you hit a certain age your well woman exam is covered and if you're male assigned at birth and you have a prostate then a certain age we're going to start worrying about prostate things and making sure those and and so when i had someone who worked in health insurance and i really wish we could have talked more if you're out there please feel free to you remember who you are please email me because i want to continue the conversation um they're like no no we have to know sex assigned at birth and i'm like but why why can't it just be the medical need that the

person has at the time because if you're sex assigned to female at birth and you're taking testosterone you still need to go to an ob-gyn you still have those body parts they they need to still monitor what's happening um so so i think it's so the american medical association says no reason for birth for for sex assigned at birth on your birth certificate and then health insurance It's like, well, how do we know what you're supposed to provide? And then doctor's offices. And what we should charge you. Yeah.

I wasn't going to go the capitalism route. I will. But then even with health care workers, I get a lot of students. When I was at other institutions, I had a lot of folks who were pre-allied health, so pre-OTPT, nursing, med school. And we'd get to this, and they're like, so what do I ask the person? Do I ask sex or gender? I'm like, it kind of depends on why you're asking. I would ask both if you think it's appropriate.

If I'm working in a medical office, I kind of need to know what body parts you have. Also, this will help me with health insurance for you. But also, I need to know how you identify as gender, one, so I can refer to you a way that's affirming for you and makes you feel safe and comfortable and respected. But that may also give me a level of what you're facing in the outside world. So if you tell me that you were sex assigned at birth, but you identify as female, Now, depending on what kind of doctor it is, I may want to have a conversation with you about how you're feeling and if you're feeling safe and how to support you. So it's important, I think, that sometimes we're getting information on both.

I went down a rabbit hole because I wanted to go somewhere else, and I forgot where I was going. Ah, the sex assigned to birth. Sorry. Do you have anything to say before I go back to where I was? I do, but it's going to take us away from this topic. Oh, no, no. Go for it. I'm going to write it down that way.

Okay. Old school. I'm going to write it down, pen and paper. Affirming language and the weight of affirming language. Because I think you said a lot just right there. If you tell me you're affirming language, not only does it communicate to me how to effectively interact with you in this instance, but it gives me a sense of what you may be facing in society based on your affirming language. So all the implications of affirming

language. Yeah. And we know that. Thanks. Am I on time right now? And I know that people think that pronoun is like where we're going and we should probably mention pronouns, but it's more than just about that. It's about the name that feels comfortable. And for those of you who are like oh people want to change their names they should just like you know get over it I'm sitting here thinking so many of us don't use the name that was given to us by our parents on our birth certificate so my official first name is not Sue it's easy enough to find out that it's Susan but the only time I hear that is when you're a complete stranger who thinks you know me or you're my mother yelling at me which case I'm usually that's like the last name that I get called it's usually

like five names before that but like i feel more comfortable going by sue so it's so many of us have names that we don't it's either shortened or middle names or initials and so when people like oh like why do we have to use the name you prefer because most of us do have a nickname or shortened name um and so i think that's important to use the name that you want my my health care staff right now someone made a note in my medical records that i prefer sue and it is it just feels nicer when someone opens a door and calls me in the waiting room and calls me by the name I find affirming and then the one that I prefer. And I really didn't want to use the word prefer there, but it is a name that I prefer. And so now I'm getting into preference.

For a while when the whole thing happened with, stop laughing at me. For a while when the whole thing happened with pronouns, we use the term preferred pronoun, which drove me nuts because it's not about the the pronouns we prefer it's about the pronouns that are affirming to us and I get like oh does it really matter affirming pro you know preferred if you're asking that question you don't get it you don't get that it's not about what I prefer it's about what makes me feel seen and what makes me me and that's that's the issue with the pronouns but it affirms it It affirms your lived and living experience. Yep.

And when we use people's pronouns and names that they, and I'm going to use the word prefer here because their name might be different depending on where they are. But when we use people's affirming pronouns, especially in a family situation, we know that the people are much less likely to feel alienated. That was a horrible sentence. I'm going to do that again in better English. in in places where we use people's preferred pronouns they feel more accepted they feel more respected they don't feel the sense of isolation they don't feel they don't have the same suicidal ideation as we do with with people who are in spaces where they are not affirmed by their name and their pronoun yeah so the way and and i would also point out that many many many so many of us

already engaged in asking that question about someone's name. Oh, you're Susan? Do you go by Susan or Sue? Right. So to shift that and make it a broader practice to someone who has maybe just implicitly, they haven't explicitly shared it yet, but there's some implicit things that you're picking up on. Why not just broaden that? Do you prefer or what's more comfortable for you or you know because you want to be that space and that that was kind of clumsily clumsy language but but you know there are things that that you can just intuit on in in many cases and then ask the the question um in a mindful compassionate respectful way to because that can signify to that person i can start i can i can start opening up a little bit because this feels okay i feel

safe with you has the potential to feel safe right right and it's it's it's an important step and it's it's such a simple step and like you said we do it all the time when when we meet people it's always oh do you go by or i'll be at conferences and people have like their full name and they'll cross it out and write down their nickname or their preferred name and so we've done this for years and and suddenly now that it's being tied to folks who may be trans or folks who may be gender fluid or or gender non-binary suddenly we're like oh it's not okay to ask people's names we've done this all the time we have literally done this for decades so the big pushback now that we're seeing with people is really about a lack of information

and tying it to the trans community when it's always just been about humans and what they prefer to be called. And this is part of the weaponization I know that you were talking about way earlier in the conversation. But I just want to get back to the healthcare issues for a second because I'm, yeah, I was working with a, we really do need to do an episode on the medical, on healthcare. I was working with someone who was doing a training for healthcare professionals on how to address gender and this person comes up to me and goes oh we're totally we're totally accepting I'm like okay great and they're like yeah we we say sex and we leave it blank and I was like that that's that's thank you for trying that's yeah that's not really not quite

there no no no um so for me when I'm working with health care medical professionals it really i always encourage them to ask both um because it is two different things your sex assigned at birth for medical professionals is important your gender is also just as important i kind of want to decide if i want to go back to the ama thing because i think i may piss people off when i say off this next piece but or that could be the lead into the medical professional episode so the thing about the ama um saying that they don't think they think that information should be gathered about the sex assigned at birth for records and for census data and for all the things that we use those records for but that they don't think should be on forward-facing

documents because why does anyone else need to know what our birth certificate says right yeah like i had to i had to have a moment when that when i first read about this since years ago that they came out with the statement i just sit there and be like what like why does anyone need to know what my sex assigned at birth is and then thinking of all the places I have to put it on legal documents like driver's licenses passport you know like why do we do all these things one of the things I was reading when the statement came out was about the fact that we have often put information that was really none of anyone's damn business including race of the parents so we used to put race of the parents on the forward-facing birth certificate and we removed

that because we realized it was being used for discrimination and harassment. And so I think it's really important that the American Medical Association is saying, for the same reason we removed race of parent, we don't have to have the sex assigned at birth on your public facing birth certificate. Unfortunately, it hasn't been a ton of changes with that. But I think it's important to recognize that when you start labeling someone from the second they are born if they do not fit that label you are putting them in a position where they have to fight for their identity their entire lives and that's yeah and if you've never been there that's that's a lifetime of fighting and it is exhausting it's it's a lot of weight yeah and then and then

it's it's a layer that then has a layer put on top of it based on where you live in the country and then that has a layer on top of it where base potentially based on where you live um that fight is extremely difficult because you could be living somewhere where they start using it to weaponize language to then legislate the things that you are fighting for just to be seen and to feel validated in your existence yep so i don't for me this is the next thing is talking about transitioning but i don't know if we want to do a full thing i feel like that might be another episode the whole like i feel like that's a big episode gender firming care yeah but i just want to say this really quickly because you kind of touched on it here um in the united states we

have official united states documents right we have our passport and on our passport and i don't know how many people know this but it's been true for a couple of years now on our passport you don't have to put male or female you can put x as your gender identity a third gender which is an amazing movement forward um could make you a target in other countries or depending on where you are in the u.s um but then we also have state-specific documents and i think this is what a little bit of what you were getting at is this idea that it could be really difficult to change in some states if your sex assigned at birth or your gender no longer matches like how you identify you simply file paperwork and to do it's changed other states it's like how many hoops can

we make you jump through how many pieces of paper can we get you and a surgeon and a psychiatrist i'm making some of those up but how many people can we get to sign off on documents and so i think it is really important to keep in mind for safety i think it's really important to keep in mind for well-being of people, that we have to recognize that two people in the United States in two completely different states can have two completely different experiences. Absolutely. And for me, that's what makes this conversation. I want to see even more complicated for me, the complicated conversation is not complicated. Sex is your sex assigned at birth, often based off what's between your legs and or your genital and your chromosomes,

systems gender socially constructed like that's simple but for a kid growing up in new york city or a kid growing up in not new york florida i don't well i didn't want to piss anybody off by picking a state we have to realize that it's two completely different world and then even the kid in new york city may be growing up in a family that's not tolerant or doesn't understand the difference so i think it's really it's really hard to have a conversation about something like this because everyone's got their own stories and everyone society at large has been conditioned in the conflation of the two yeah yeah so unless you're seeking out content like this uh like this episode or um art you know professionally written reviewed articles um or other content by

experts in this realm um and i and i'm gonna add a qualifier there neutral experts experts who are experts committed to kind of just the facts ma'am kind of thing i know i know uh it's a quote from an old old show i know but just professionals who are committed to to the integrity of the information and don't have a motivation to appease political parties donors things like that right so it is it is it is difficult it is to to get us to that place of society to that place of neutrality surrounding this language it's and it's never going to be that simple so no so that's why we wanted to have this episode to to to give the foundation of definition of sex definition of gender and what that means in in modern american society and some of the

implications there right yep amazing so takeaways yeah go sex sex usually assigned at birth usually based off what's between your legs or and or chromosomes gender socially constructed i understand in the real world we're going to conflate those two here's the thing i need people people to keep in mind you do not get to tell someone what their gender identity is we do it to kids when they're little because they don't know literally their ass from their elbow at that point because they're still figuring out their body parts I love when like kids like discover that that's their body part and then we don't we don't get to tell people as they as they're getting older and getting to know who they are we don't get to tell them what their

gender identity is that's something that they're going to determine based off how they feel of the culture around them off their feelings of safety and acceptance that's going to be based off a lot of things so we don't get to tell people what their gender identity is what i think we are responsible to do is accept their gender identity regardless of what we think it should be because doing so is going to help keep people happier healthier and alive receive the information that they are communicating and respect it the same way you would respect that I don't like to be called Susan. I like to be called Sue. I know I'm going to get like a ton of comments now about Susan. If you can respect that, you can respect someone saying, I now go

by the name of. It's such a simple thing, but it's such an important thing. It's a first step, but it's so incredibly important. And I would also argue that if you struggle with someone communicating that and know this is who they've always been to me, I would push back and say it doesn't cost you anything it it really if you honestly look at it doesn't impact your lived experience as much as it impacts theirs and it could be a matter of life and death so there you go all right everyone so that was a lot but we want to thank you for joining us on this episode of Unzipping Taboos, Candid Conversations About Sex. We hope today's episode truly sparks new thoughts,

may open up conversations worth having with those around you. And remember that your curiosity is the key to breaking down barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships. So if you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, leave a review, comment on this episode if you have thoughts you want to share with us and share it with somebody who you feel might need to hear this. And if you've got a question or a topic you want us to dive into, reach out to us via the link in the episode description. We want to give a special shout out to our friend Allie O'Brien for incredible theme music. Thank you so much, Allie. And until next time, keep the conversation going, keep unzipping those taboos, and please, everyone, take care.

© transcript Emily Beynon