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0:46

Welcome to gender reveal. podcast

0:48

where we hopefully get a little bit closer to

0:50

understanding what the hell gender

0:52

is. I'm your host, and

0:54

resident gender detective, talk with

0:56

stock. Hey,

1:06

everyone. Hope you're all hanging in there. This

1:08

week on show, we are sharing my conversation with

1:10

diversity equity and inclusion consultant

1:13

Lily Zhang. Lilly and I talk

1:15

about navigating transphobic workplaces,

1:17

what makes allied ship considered performative,

1:20

whether DEI work delays the proletariat

1:22

revolution, and why so

1:25

many DEI tactics can do

1:27

more harm than

1:28

good. By people, pizza,

1:30

that'll probably do more for your workforce

1:32

in a sixty minute workshop. But

1:34

before we get to that, two things. The first

1:36

is that last week, I had the distinct honor

1:38

and pleasure of appearing on the NPR show.

1:40

It's been a minute I had such a fun

1:43

time chatting with my friend Britney Lewis who hosts

1:45

the show about the fifth anniversary of gender

1:47

reveal. You can find that in all of

1:49

the podcast places And if you found this

1:51

podcast from, it's been a minute. Welcome.

1:54

If you'd like to start somewhere that's like a little

1:56

bit less deep in the trans weeds on

1:58

a single topic, I'd suggest backing up

2:00

just a hair to our recent episodes with Margaret

2:02

Killjoy, Linda Segarra, Sabrina

2:04

Embler. I feel like those are all really representative

2:07

of the show's like whole deal. But, you know,

2:09

Do you? Also, I'm just letting

2:11

you know we are a little over one week

2:13

away from our live show at the Bell House in

2:15

Brooklyn. I am told that people love

2:17

to wait until the last minute to buy tickets. If

2:19

that's you, the time is now. I

2:22

mean, you can catch the show as podcast

2:25

in a few weeks. That's not the same. There's gonna

2:27

be visual elements to this one. You're

2:29

gonna wanna see it with your eyes and also

2:31

experience the vibes. Tickets

2:33

are at the bellhouse n y dot com,

2:35

link in the show notes. That's on

2:37

February first, by the way. And now,

2:39

it's time for this week in gender.

2:50

You may have heard we have a second podcast

2:52

called gender conceal. It's a

2:54

show that I put out every month for our Patreon supporters

2:56

as a thank you for funding our work.

2:59

This month, I spoke with linguist Kirby Conrod

3:01

for gender conceal, You may remember Kirby

3:04

from gender reveal seasons one and or

3:06

seven. In this gender reveal episode,

3:08

we spoke about an incredible achievement

3:10

that Kirby was recently a part of.

3:12

And as a special treat, we are sharing

3:14

a few minutes of this episode here

3:16

for you now. Just a heads up.

3:19

We are about to say Posey like so

3:21

much. But for good reason. What

3:28

are we doing here today? You summoned

3:30

me. The important

3:33

news that linguists have figured out the best

3:35

word of the year so far.

3:37

It's not a word. It's a suffix. It's wasy.

3:40

Have you heard of this? Well, I mean, I've heard of it

3:42

in context, but, like, what does

3:44

it mean as a word? What did they

3:46

define it as? So I'm one of the people

3:48

who nominated it and spoke for it

3:50

in the big linguist meeting, but

3:52

the American dialect society

3:55

runs the new words sort

3:57

of thing in the word of the year Zheng. A

3:59

lot of dictionary student on the word of the year,

4:01

but the American dialect society is the oldest

4:03

word of the

4:03

year, and it's also better because it's like a fun,

4:05

vote thing instead of just one like psychographer

4:08

deciding. So their

4:10

definition is like a blend

4:12

like from boy pussy is

4:14

Busy. And then they did not

4:16

really elaborate much further except

4:19

to say it's like kind of analogous

4:21

to opposite, then

4:23

they got too embarrassed to keep going. And

4:26

so the way that I've been defining it

4:28

is that it's either physically or

4:30

sort of metaphorically analogous

4:33

to a pussy in some way. So if

4:35

it's some sort of cavity or a hole that's

4:37

a physical analogy, like

4:39

a doughnut, can have a doughnut, o z.

4:41

And if it's something that's

4:44

more like putting all of

4:46

your energy and artistic

4:48

creativity into something, then

4:50

that's not really about a

4:52

physical thing and more about like

4:54

enthusiasm. And so

4:56

that's when, like, the barista really

4:59

put their whole barista seat into

5:01

this latte art. Uh-huh.

5:05

So so that's kind of how

5:07

I'm defining it, and I think that the

5:10

official big Air quotes official ADS

5:12

definition is like a subset of that.

5:15

Yeah. This feels this

5:17

feels gay to me. It is gay.

5:19

Yeah. If you heard

5:22

old bogey linguist or

5:24

any just sort of random straight

5:26

person on the street say

5:28

this barista really put their barista seat

5:30

into this would you feel like you would

5:32

want something or like we were losing some

5:34

sort of clear culture? How would you feel?

5:37

I would feel really delighted

5:39

of, like, I've given you my brain awareness. I

5:41

know you're infected with the same brain awareness as

5:43

me because this is, like, it's, you know, when

5:45

once you start playing this kind of word

5:47

game, it's just kind of running as a like

5:49

background program in your mind all the

5:51

time. And so the idea of

5:53

like an old sort of fogey,

5:56

like, using it in this way is, like, really

5:58

delightful and satisfying to me. And

6:00

part because they really still are a little

6:02

bit embarrassed about the word. Like, the word

6:04

Posey is still pretty taboo. It's still

6:06

like something. I don't think you

6:08

can say it on just like NPR or

6:09

whatever.

6:10

And so, you know, I think that

6:12

that's something that pleases

6:15

me that we have had such an impact

6:17

on the culture that we get to,

6:19

like, make everybody have the same problem as us,

6:21

which is that we're thinking about, like, whether spongebond

6:23

has a a spongebobossi or

6:25

a sponge bosi. And I

6:28

want everybody to be worried about this with

6:30

me all the time. Okay. Well,

6:32

that brings us to another conundrum because

6:34

I have had numerous conversations with

6:36

people in the past about whether Busy

6:38

is. Boy pussy, but

6:40

pussy, back pussy because, like,

6:42

that -- Mhmm. -- it's either gender neutral

6:44

or not. So do you think it's canonically

6:47

boy pussy? I think that

6:49

the thing is because you when

6:51

you are ossifying a single

6:53

syllable word like boy or

6:55

but or back, you're losing

6:57

the rest of the pharmacological material.

6:59

And so I think it's impossible

7:02

to say what the first use of that

7:04

word would have been or what was

7:06

going on in the mind of that that first

7:08

person who's like, oh, yeah, you know,

7:10

I I can't actually put that in

7:12

a sentence in this context, but I assume that

7:14

was a fun time that they were having. I

7:18

think that that the fact that it's

7:20

ambiguous between those various

7:23

options is something that's a cool

7:25

thing about the sort of way that the

7:27

word started spreading. And

7:30

I think that also something

7:32

like, okay,

7:35

somebody asked me about whether I've ever

7:37

seen Gussey, which is to say,

7:39

girl pussy. And then

7:41

I searched and I absolutely found

7:43

it within two seconds in a Twitter search.

7:46

And so there's something to be said about the way

7:48

that I think a lot of queer and trans people

7:50

sort of eroticize our genders

7:52

in a way that layers onto

7:54

whatever's going on with our, you know,

7:56

stuff. And so I would argue

7:58

that Bliposi can still be

8:01

gender neutral in a way that, like,

8:03

if you're advanced enough, you can have a

8:06

boy Posey and not be a boy. And

8:08

I I think that that's an advantage of the word.

8:11

It's just about like being advanced.

8:13

At configuring your

8:16

sex and sexuality and

8:18

gender in in a particular arrangement.

8:20

I have to tell you I was

8:22

talking to a friend of the

8:24

show that you and I were gonna

8:26

do this and she, a

8:28

trans woman, was like,

8:30

let me know if you need me to talk

8:32

about Gucci. It's not

8:34

that she was trying to do a joke she had

8:36

forgotten. What pussy was.

8:39

So this

8:42

is what I mean about being advanced

8:44

and your friend is very

8:46

advanced and good job. And like, you know,

8:48

we linguists are huge nerds. And so

8:50

when stuff comes all the way back

8:52

around, we're, like, very excited about

8:54

it even if we're, like, a little bit embarrassed

8:56

about, like, you were saying the word pussy so

8:58

many times in an academic setting.

9:00

I'm like a little bit

9:02

flustered about it. The

9:12

full version of this episode also

9:14

includes such topics as why are

9:16

there so many different words of the year, why

9:18

are they all related to trans people this year,

9:20

somehow? How are the press visually

9:22

representing OC in their articles?

9:24

Can we use OC to recruit

9:26

clear linguist And why is linguistics so

9:28

queer anyway? Also, how

9:30

do dictionaries work? And what does

9:32

Lula's ex have to do with any of this?

9:34

To hear the full episode, head to patreon

9:36

dot com slash gender, where you'll also

9:39

get like ten other bonus episodes

9:41

and all sorts of other behind the

9:43

scenes content. This has

9:45

been this week in

9:47

gender. We've

9:54

got a voicemail message for you this week. The email

9:56

is a little message from a listener that we

9:58

read on the show. You can sign up for the email

10:00

via the link in the show notes. This week's

10:02

message is from Howard and it

10:04

says, shout out to my

10:06

dad. I recommended a few

10:08

episodes to him when I first came out and now

10:10

he listens every week usually

10:12

even before I

10:13

do. Happy birthday, dad.

10:17

Happy birthday to Howard's dad. The

10:19

only true ally. Lily Zhang

10:27

a no nonsense diversity equity and inclusion,

10:29

speaker, strategist, and consultant who

10:31

specializes in creating diverse, equitable, and

10:33

inclusive workplaces, their hands on

10:35

systemic change. A dedicated

10:37

change maker and advocate, Lilly's work has

10:39

been featured in the Harvard Business Review,

10:41

New York Times, and NPR. Their

10:43

most recent book, DEI.

10:45

Deconstructed, centers on accountable

10:47

and effective practices to

10:49

achieve DEI outcomes in organizations.

10:55

The way

10:59

we always start the show is by asking in terms

11:01

of gender, how do you describe yourself?

11:03

Yeah. I would describe myself

11:06

and I'm choosing my words

11:08

because I feel like the description

11:10

has changed every, like, six months.

11:12

So I have to, like, recheck and be

11:14

like, how am I describing myself these

11:17

days? Probably as

11:19

a non binary trans

11:21

feminine, Yeah. We were

11:23

specifically talking about gender. But in non

11:25

gender world, you describe yourself often

11:27

as a no nonsense DEI

11:29

strategist and your book title

11:31

also has no nonsense in it -- Mhmm.

11:33

-- and not to do

11:35

an overdone Twitter format, but

11:37

no nonsense DEI coach in lies

11:39

the existence of nonsense DEI

11:42

code. I was just wondering

11:44

if you could talk about what makes

11:46

your work different from some of

11:48

the other practices out

11:50

there, maybe some of the ones that you're, like, critiquing

11:52

in your book. It works.

11:54

And that's something that I know

11:56

for a Because there's data

11:58

to show it, there's evidence, there's

12:00

proof. I have a lot of

12:02

empathy for other

12:04

DEI practitioners, especially folks who were

12:06

relatively new to the industry, given

12:08

that as I write in my book,

12:10

there is such a

12:12

lack of standardization

12:14

of in

12:16

some ways, professionalization of the

12:18

field. And so that

12:20

makes it really difficult to know what if

12:22

effective DEI work is. Right? Essentially, anyone

12:25

can call themselves a DEI practitioner.

12:27

And in fact, you know, I've seen a couple people

12:29

essentially say, I had a

12:31

lifetime in sales and then I read Robin

12:33

DeAngelo's white fragility and now I'm a

12:35

practitioner. And I'm like,

12:37

what's your skill Right? Like, what you use to

12:39

make sure that when you go into companies

12:41

to make them better, you succeed. And

12:43

they say, well, you know, I just care a lot. About

12:46

making companies better. And I'm like, and do you.

12:48

And they're like, probably. And I'm like,

12:50

probably is not good enough. Right? Like, you're

12:52

getting paid to fix shit. Right?

12:54

Like, if you hired a plumber

12:56

and they showed up. And

12:58

you said, look, my toilets

13:00

messed up. Right? Fix it. And then

13:02

two hours later, they, like, walk out and they

13:04

say, oh, send you the bill. And you're just, like,

13:06

did you fix it? And they're, like, well,

13:08

I

13:08

tried, and then

13:09

they leave. That's not good enough.

13:12

Yeah. Right? And and in many ways, that's the

13:14

state of our industry. A lot of it is

13:16

about the effort we put in as

13:18

practitioners, but it's not necessary necessarily

13:20

grounded in outcomes. It's not

13:22

grounded in whether or not our work actually

13:24

succeeds. And so when I describe my

13:26

work as no nonsense, it's

13:28

both a characterization of

13:30

my style, which is I'll tell it to you

13:32

straight. I'll tell you what you need to

13:34

hear. But then also, it

13:37

talks to what I'm able to achieve,

13:39

which is what I say I'm going to achieve.

13:41

Right? If I'm there to fix an issue, I'm not gonna leave

13:43

until the issue is fixed, we can

13:45

show it sticks and we can prove it sticks and we

13:47

have data to show it. Yeah. I'd love

13:49

to hear more about that because I think in the

13:51

plumber analogy, like most of

13:53

us know how to flush a toilet and see if

13:55

it works or not. But I think a lot of

13:57

people wouldn't know

14:00

how to tell if DEI

14:03

is working. So when you're looking

14:05

at like quantifiable outcomes, like

14:07

what? I I'm sure every instance

14:09

is different. But can you give us some examples of sort of

14:11

ways that you can it's working like what those quantifiable variables

14:13

are? Yeah. That's such a good

14:15

question. So it buries and

14:17

there's so many of them depending on the kind

14:19

of DEI issue. There's a billion

14:21

kind of DEI issues. Let's take a very common one.

14:23

Let's say microaggressions. Right?

14:26

Let's say there's a team of people.

14:28

Let's say they're the trans not the team,

14:30

and they're getting misgendered repeatedly.

14:32

Transpersons miserable. People

14:34

on the team don't really care. So

14:36

let's pick a few metrics to

14:38

gauge, you know, what the problem is and what we're trying

14:40

to fix, let's say, the trans person's

14:42

individual satisfaction. The

14:45

number of microaggressions happening on

14:47

a monthly or weekly basis.

14:50

The overall technological safety of the

14:52

team, so that's you know, people's

14:54

willingness to speak up when they

14:56

have something to share or to share critical

14:58

feedback. Let's say, also,

15:00

the comfort speaking

15:02

up as a bystander when they

15:04

see behavior that isn't appropriate. Right?

15:06

So that's that's four metrics now.

15:08

Right? Measure them pre and post. Let's

15:10

say you go in and you're just like, let's see just

15:12

how messed up this team is. And

15:14

let's say we measure that transpersons

15:17

miserable. B. There's tons of microgression. C.

15:19

No one speaks up. And D.

15:21

No one feels comfortable being

15:23

a bystander or being

15:26

an up standard rather when they see

15:28

behavior that's not appropriate. Right?

15:31

You don't know it's fixed until all these

15:33

things are bent. So

15:35

the trans person's happy. The microaggressions

15:38

either don't happen or when they happen, they

15:40

result really quickly. People

15:42

feel confidence speaking up, and they do speak up

15:44

regularly. They share feedback with each

15:45

other. And when there is behavior

15:48

that is not okay, people

15:50

speak up and say, that's not

15:51

okay. With any sort of DEI issue, essentially,

15:54

the idea is that you can break it

15:56

down into these ways to show

15:58

how bad the problem is.

16:00

And importantly, when it's

16:02

fixed. Mhmm. I

16:05

get a ton of questions

16:07

from, like, one individual transperson, where

16:09

if you boil it down, their question is like,

16:12

hello, I'm a junior level

16:14

employee at this company. I am getting

16:16

misgendered all the time. What can I

16:18

do? To not experience so much

16:20

Transphobia. And it's always really hard for me

16:22

to handle those questions because it's,

16:24

like, absolutely not their

16:26

responsible ability to fix transphobia of their workplace, but also it

16:28

is their problem. Right. There's

16:30

very little they can actually do by

16:32

themselves. Yeah. So if you're

16:34

encountering that kind of question, like, yeah, how do

16:36

you respond to those

16:38

sort of issues? Where the main issue is that,

16:40

like, one or two people are being

16:42

treated very poorly and the

16:44

person who's seeking the

16:46

resolution to this problem is the person who's being

16:48

treated poorly because I think you need buy in for the

16:50

rest of company. Right? Yeah.

16:52

Totally. So as a

16:54

consultant, I don't typically go in

16:56

and help individuals going

16:58

through part time. So I'm I'm gonna slightly

17:00

dodge the question by saying that's not actually

17:02

the the type of challenge that I solve.

17:05

But oftentimes, I do see

17:07

that situation just from the other side

17:09

of things. Usually, the manager will bring

17:11

me in. They'll say, hey, our

17:13

teams having some problems. We have one

17:14

employee. Let's use this as an example of

17:16

their trans. Our team isn't very good at treating this

17:18

trans person with respect and the trans person's

17:21

pissed

17:21

off. What can we do to help?

17:24

And so I'm usually

17:26

offering advice to someone with

17:28

a leadership position, which is a

17:30

little easier. Right? Because that is the person

17:32

who has the power to effect change.

17:34

Now as part of those conversations I might talk to

17:36

the trans person, and

17:38

they might say, what do I

17:40

do to fix it? And the hard

17:42

answer to this is, well,

17:44

you yourself as an individual, hence,

17:46

fix everything by yourself. Right? Like, this

17:49

requires that the organization get

17:52

its act

17:52

together. And to be

17:55

fully transparent, if

17:57

I'm ever in a situation where it seems

17:59

like the org or the company or the nonprofit

18:02

isn't going to change on a timeline

18:04

that's going to support the trans person,

18:06

and I am talking to that trans person.

18:08

I've given advice on the clock

18:10

that's essentially you need to get

18:12

out. Right? Like, you need to take care of yourself. You

18:14

need to protect yourself. Because

18:16

sometimes there are those situations. Right?

18:19

And when I'm talking to individuals, my

18:21

focus is on how I can help

18:23

them thrive and get their needs met

18:25

in the situation controlling what they

18:27

can control. When I'm talking to

18:29

senior leaders, the advice is a little different

18:31

because there's more that they can control

18:34

because of their positional power and authority. Right? So

18:36

the advice sort of varies depending on who I'm

18:38

talking to. Yeah. Absolutely. Well,

18:41

thinking of this advice where

18:43

sometimes your advice to this

18:45

trans person will be get out. I

18:47

have this line. I don't know that I said it on the

18:49

podcast but I say a lot to friends about how

18:51

if someone's in like a toxic relationship,

18:53

it feels relatively easier to

18:55

say like, look, you don't deserve to be treated this way. There's

18:57

all of these people who would treat you better with

18:59

respect and care or even like not being in a relationship could

19:01

be better than this situation. With

19:04

jobs, I have a lot harder time because when people

19:06

are in a toxic workplace,

19:09

it's hard to say,

19:11

oh, you'll find a better one because so often they don't, they

19:13

just find a different toxic workplace. Right.

19:15

So I am curious this is an unhinged way to this

19:17

question, but, like, do you think that healthy workplaces

19:20

exist? Yeah. And if so okay. So if so,

19:22

like, what advice would you have for people

19:24

job hunting? To

19:26

look for a job that won't make them completely

19:28

miserable? That's a very good question.

19:30

So first of all, I'll preface this by saying

19:32

capitalism itself is an

19:34

abusive relationship. And the

19:36

reality is not everyone working

19:38

in a toxic workplace has the freedom

19:41

to go elsewhere. Right? Or

19:43

rather every low quote unquote has the

19:45

freedom, but sometimes the trade offs are just not

19:47

reasonable. For job hunters,

19:49

especially job hunters who have

19:51

marginalized identities, are weighing

19:53

the pros and cons of

19:55

staying in a toxic workplace against the

19:57

pros and cons of being a job

19:59

speaker in a

20:01

tumultuous market that discriminates

20:04

against marginalized folks, especially

20:06

multiply marginalized folks. And

20:08

I would never fault somebody for

20:11

staying in a workplace that treats them

20:13

terribly because the costs of job

20:15

hunting feel too high for them. And

20:18

recognizing that those people

20:20

who do choose to look for

20:22

better prospects, there's a lot you can

20:24

do to protect yourself, you know,

20:26

from individual focusing with,

20:28

like, have good boundaries, take care of

20:30

yourself, take breaks, so ground yourself

20:32

with loving community that reaffirm

20:34

your inherent with as a person because

20:37

that's definitely something that you can

20:39

forget. When you go through the

20:41

endless bladder mill that is

20:43

applying to jobs. Right? It's it's just

20:45

miserable. It's awful. And

20:48

then if you have the capacity to do leveraging

20:51

resources like community

20:53

groups, professional groups, finding

20:56

networks of people who affirm your words

20:58

as a person and as a professional, I

21:00

think, are really powerful. And

21:02

I I totally encourage

21:05

both listening to try

21:05

that. Do you do talk in your book

21:08

about how in twenty sixteen you read

21:10

this one paper

21:12

that, like, sort radically change the way you

21:14

approach

21:14

everything. Yeah. Can you talk about that and,

21:16

like, the path that kinda set you on?

21:19

Yeah. Yeah. It's It's

21:21

not every day I mark, like, passages of my

21:23

life, but in, like, HBR articles.

21:26

Feel like that's that's kinda a

21:28

lot. Mhmm. But the article in question was

21:30

why DEI programs fail by

21:33

Frank Dobben and Alexandra

21:35

Colas, two sociologists. And

21:39

essentially, what they found is

21:41

that tracking the long

21:43

term impact of the most popular

21:45

DEI initiatives like anonymizing,

21:48

resumes, DEI

21:51

training, and some other things. They

21:53

had a net negative effect. On the

21:55

overall representation of

21:57

marginalized communities in the companies that

21:59

they were deployed in. Oh, yeah. And

22:01

the last last one was using

22:03

job test. Right? So sort of standardizing job

22:05

applications to require a skills

22:07

test. Now all of these things are

22:09

portable best practices in the

22:11

DEI space. Right? Like, you hear all the time, take identifying

22:14

information off of resumes. You use the

22:16

DEI training to educate your

22:18

workforce. And this research essentially

22:20

found that in the years following

22:22

these sorts of trainings, the overall

22:25

representation of marginalized groups

22:27

ranging white women to black

22:30

men to I think they also

22:32

tracked other men of color. I think it was just race

22:34

and gender for that analysis. Everything

22:37

dropped. Pretty severely. And

22:39

their finding was that these

22:41

interventions deployed in a

22:43

vacuum essentially were

22:46

utilized wrong.

22:48

Right? So for job tests, for

22:50

example, companies that implemented job

22:53

tests looked like they had made the

22:55

process fair, but then hiring

22:57

managers who resented the job tests

22:59

would just hire

23:01

their friends, have the friends skip the

23:03

job tests, and then just have folks

23:05

from marginalized communities take the tests.

23:08

then gave them cause to fire

23:10

or or to not hire rather those

23:12

members from marginalized communities. Right?

23:14

And every example had

23:16

something like Right? Like, this well intentioned policy

23:18

that the people in the organization just

23:20

sort of leveraged to worsen

23:23

discrimination and sort of make it better. Now,

23:26

The big from that research wasn't

23:28

that we should stop doing all of

23:30

these DEI mainstays. It's that

23:32

we just shouldn't affect any silver bullets

23:35

to magically fix our fields. Right?

23:37

We needed to go deeper beyond, like,

23:40

here are the ten most effective interventions.

23:42

Use them and you'll all your problems. And

23:45

the DEI field has been plagued by

23:47

a lot of interventions like that. Right? A

23:49

lot of folks who talk up, you

23:51

know, their pet initiatives, their sort of favorite

23:54

policies, saying essentially, if you do this one

23:56

thing, if you take by one workshop, if

23:58

you pay for four installments, nineteen

24:00

ninety five, and, you know, go through

24:02

my coaching program. You too will be able

24:04

to fully solve equity in your

24:06

company. And the research time and time

24:08

again says, no, that's actually not how this

24:10

stuff works. Right? There are no silver

24:12

bullets, there are no panacea's. This

24:14

work requires that

24:16

we track our initiatives from

24:18

day one to day done

24:21

and to hold everyone

24:23

accountable to acting in the way that

24:25

we want them to. And we need to make sure that

24:27

we have no unintended consequences

24:29

from the DI work that we do. And this and

24:32

then a knock on DR practitioners,

24:34

I think this is the fault of

24:36

everybody in this industry and though that Jason

24:38

to it, Nobody tracks their impact

24:40

over time. Right? Like, it's a

24:42

fire and forget sort of situation. You get your

24:43

workshop. You deploy it.

24:45

Delete.

24:46

You're done. Did it work? I sure hope so, but I have no

24:49

way to check. And

24:50

that's standard practice. That's how everyone

24:52

does their work. That's how I did

24:55

my work. Until I read that article

24:57

and was like, oh, shit.

24:58

Right? Like,

24:59

I think I'm a part of the problem. And

25:01

it took years and years and years to, like, totally

25:03

revamped my practice to change that.

25:05

And it's still really, really hard to

25:07

track your impact over time. Yeah.

25:10

I'm interested in whether

25:13

it's ever difficult for you

25:15

to get buy in for this

25:17

kind of like long term holistic

25:21

work because for me, I have

25:23

won very specific training

25:25

that I do that is specifically for

25:28

journalists. It's a minimum three to four

25:30

hour curriculum. And

25:32

I, all of the time, get messages

25:35

from newsrooms that say, well, we

25:37

can only make it ninety minutes. Yeah. We

25:39

can only take an hour of everyone's time.

25:41

Like, it's a budget issue, but it's not even a budget

25:43

issue. It's like, we won't pull

25:45

everyone off of work for more than an

25:47

hour. So facing

25:49

things like that? Is that something where you just

25:51

say no and walk away? Or do you have to say

25:53

no and walk away? So and I

25:55

give a reason why. Right? So the

25:57

really important thing is you don't just say,

25:59

oh, I'm not willing to provide that

26:01

goodbye because what happens when you say

26:03

that? They'll find someone who will.

26:06

Right? So when I walk

26:08

away from those initiatives or at the very least when I

26:10

push back, I say, this is the research

26:12

that I have. On why I

26:14

do things the way I do things. This is a

26:16

research I have also

26:18

on why doing these sorts of shorter

26:20

initiatives don't actually help.

26:22

Frankly, if you only have budget for

26:24

a sixty minute workshop, do

26:26

something else with that money. Like,

26:28

you are literally burning your money if you

26:30

bring in a one time sixty person

26:32

workshop. Like, by people peats,

26:34

that'll probably do more for your workforce

26:36

in a sixteen minute workshop. And and

26:39

I'm like, I'm not even joking. Right? Like, that's

26:41

probably correct in terms of the overall impact

26:43

it's going to have on your your workplace

26:46

or health. Let's say, you only have, I don't know, two

26:48

thousand bucks for a sixty minute

26:50

workshop. Give everybody five

26:52

dollar gift cards for their

26:54

birthdays. You know, like like,

26:56

actually -- Yeah. -- actually, there's research to

26:58

support that. That will definitively do more

27:00

for your workforce than a sixteen minute

27:02

workshop. And so every time I object. Right? I

27:04

say this is the actual impact of what you'll

27:06

be getting from a sixty minute, ninety minute

27:09

workshop. And this is what I

27:11

can promise from doing things the way that I do

27:13

things, not just some trying to sell you a product,

27:15

but because I've been really intentional in

27:17

designing my services to be effective

27:19

given what I know about the research. You

27:21

make your own decision. At the end of the

27:23

day, even if they don't work with me, I wanna

27:25

make them more conscious consumers of

27:27

DDI services because everyone

27:29

loses if they go with that sixty minute

27:31

workshop. Right? Like, it it it doesn't well,

27:34

I guess, the only person who doesn't lose is the

27:36

person who they pay for it. But Fundamentally,

27:38

the marginalized communities who are trying to help

27:40

don't benefit from that sort of thing.

27:43

Right? Well, something else you would dress in

27:45

your book is this question of, like,

27:47

performative hourship. And we know

27:49

that a reason that a lot of people are booking

27:51

these sixty minute trainings are not because they're

27:53

trying to a problem, because say they did a training and, like,

27:55

get everyone off their back. Right? And

27:57

so I was thinking about

27:59

performative hourship, not necessarily from the

28:01

perspective of corporations, but

28:03

I think from individuals, I also hear it a lot and I think

28:05

that your advice can translate. So I was wondering if you

28:07

could just talk about the

28:10

concept performative viewership. And if you're talking

28:12

to a corporation or a person

28:14

who's worried that they wanna do something,

28:16

but they don't wanna be seen as performative, like

28:18

what thoughts you have. For them? Yeah. It's

28:20

a really common question. I have a

28:22

slightly different take than

28:24

the typical one in terms of performative.

28:27

A lot of folks will essentially

28:29

say, performative XYZ,

28:32

is XYZ that's not sincere. It's

28:34

done for optics. I actually don't agree

28:36

with that. I think a lot of the folks who

28:38

I see accused of performing of allyship,

28:41

believe in some part of

28:43

their part that they are actually fixing

28:46

a problem. They're just

28:48

locally misinformed, drastically

28:51

underestimating how difficult things

28:53

are and just really overly

28:55

optimistic in the ability of something small if it's a

28:57

large

28:57

problem. I think

28:59

I see this idea performative

29:02

more as this

29:05

like a socially constructed thing.

29:07

Right? So essentially, if I

29:09

just trust you as a person, very

29:11

little that you do or say, I'm going

29:13

to proceed as performative. Right? if you

29:15

mess something up, if I trust you a lot and you

29:17

mess something up, I'll be like, well, you know, I'm

29:19

sure it was done with, like, the best

29:22

of intentions. Sure you're gonna figure it out.

29:24

Right? I'm sure it's gonna be great. Like, you

29:26

just stumbled a bit. But if I

29:28

don't trust you, everything

29:31

changes. Right? If you do something right,

29:33

but not right enough, you just did it for optics.

29:35

Mhmm. And if you mess up, right, like having forbid,

29:37

you mess up all things evidence

29:40

evidence. This person was terrible. Mhmm.

29:42

And so I see this this

29:44

label of performative as

29:48

a as an sort of objective measure

29:50

by which behavior is

29:52

is gauged. And more as a

29:55

reflection of the

29:57

critic. Right? To what extent

29:59

they trust or don't trust the person that they're

30:01

criticizing. And it isn't a bad

30:03

thing. Right? In fact, it's very useful

30:05

If everyone is calling a leader performative, it means

30:07

that no one trusts them. And

30:09

this is likely because of

30:11

their past behavior. They've done something

30:14

they've asked for goodwill, people have

30:16

extended it, and then they've betrayed it. Right?

30:18

Or they made a promise they couldn't keep

30:20

multiple times. And so

30:22

when I hear, second such as

30:24

performative hourship, I hear a

30:26

couple of things. One, I

30:29

want them to fix something that they've done

30:31

in the past. I want them to

30:33

regain my trust. And

30:35

two, I don't believe that this thing that

30:37

they've done is going to work. And

30:39

nobody trusts leaders anywhere

30:41

because they're you know, most leaders are

30:43

not great at doing this work

30:45

effectively. It's a low trust environment.

30:47

And in a low trust environment, everything

30:49

is performative. All I

30:52

ship was the twenty twenty one word of

30:54

the year. Which sounds good until you realize

30:56

that the runner-up was performing it. The

30:58

reports were used together. Right?

31:00

So the funny thing here, right, is we're in a

31:02

situation where no one trusts leaders leaders don't know what

31:04

the hell they're doing. They've messed up a lot. I

31:06

want to get as far away as

31:08

possible from making lists. The the ten things

31:10

you can say that are not informative, the ten things

31:12

you can say that are performative, the wrong way to

31:14

be thinking about it. Instead, we need to be

31:17

saying,

31:17

leaders, if you've lost the trust of your

31:19

workforce, how do you get it

31:21

back? Right?

31:22

Like, that is the core question at the heart of all

31:24

of this. Right? Well, then what you say in your book

31:26

is that if you've lost the trust of your workforce,

31:28

then what need do is seed

31:30

power, and I was reading that being, like, how have you ever convinced

31:33

anyone ever to do that? I

31:35

have. And it's

31:37

really difficult. You essentially so

31:39

a lot of leaders say, no, I'm not gonna do that, because I do that,

31:41

they'll destroy me. So I'm gonna keep doubling down.

31:43

And I'll say, okay. Well, how is doubling down

31:46

working for you? The answer is

31:48

always Well, it's not. Right.

31:51

Right. So, usually, leaders

31:53

will flail for a little bit and go

31:55

like, why is my tough guy

31:57

approach, not working, and making things worse. And

31:59

I'm like, geez. I don't know. Maybe you could see some power. And

32:01

they're like, well, no. I'm gonna keep doubling

32:03

down. And then I go back a month later. I'm like, how

32:05

are you doing, buddy? And they're like, awful. Things are

32:07

awful. And I'm like, how do you feel about

32:09

maybe just giving up a little bit

32:11

of power? Right? Like, take it words than how it is right

32:13

now. And the

32:15

thing that I write is essentially

32:17

to build trust, to build goodwill,

32:20

you need to act for

32:22

the benefit of marginalized

32:25

groups while expecting nothing

32:27

in return. Nothing. Essentially,

32:29

if you give people something and they

32:31

don't trust you, they're going to be so wary.

32:33

Right? They're gonna get the resource. They're gonna

32:35

look at you. They're gonna be like, are the

32:38

strings attached? Am I going to get in trouble? Am I

32:40

going to get retaliated against? And

32:42

if you're a good leader or you're trying

32:44

to turn over a new league, Nothing

32:46

bad will happen. They'll use the resource. They'll

32:48

do something to benefit themselves. They'll

32:51

look at you expecting retribution,

32:53

and then hopefully nothing happens.

32:56

And then you here's another thing. This

32:58

ring's attached. And then we're like, okay. Well,

33:00

last time, last time it seemed okay. So

33:02

maybe we'll consider it again. Maybe

33:04

they take it. Nothing happens. Right?

33:07

And by the way, this isn't

33:09

just a job related Zheng. this

33:11

is relationship repair. Right? Like, this is

33:13

how you rebuild any relationship where

33:16

trust has been broken. You

33:18

act really intentionally to benefit the

33:20

other person. You rebuild trust.

33:23

Through acts of goodwill. And, you know,

33:25

it goes without saying, don't be cynical about

33:27

it. Don't rebuild trust just to, like, I don't

33:29

know, pull one over them because then they'll

33:31

never trust you ever again. These,

33:33

like, these strategies are how

33:35

you fix broken workforces. Right? Not

33:37

by saying all the things in the path for water under

33:39

the bridge, but by saying, we're gonna make

33:42

things right. We're gonna turn over a new

33:44

leaf. I'm gonna do things to benefit

33:46

you. And you have to do

33:48

nothing for me for a long period of

33:50

time until there is that trust

33:52

built. Yeah. I feel that a lot

33:54

of people who get into DEI,

33:57

especially people from marginalized backgrounds, are doing it

33:59

kind of as a reaction to what

34:01

they've experienced in the workplace and trying

34:03

to ensure that other

34:05

people don't experience the things that they've experienced.

34:07

But my understanding is that you got into this, like, when you

34:09

were still in college, like pretty young.

34:11

So I was just curious, like, what got

34:13

you interested in this specific work in the

34:15

first place. Yeah. Yeah.

34:17

Okay. A bunch of thoughts

34:20

here. One, I believe very strongly that

34:22

people's healing from trauma

34:24

needs to be separate from their DEI

34:28

work. I think bad things happen

34:30

when you try to heal from your own trauma through

34:32

being a professional, the AI practitioner.

34:34

I've seen really bad things happen.

34:37

I understand where the impulse comes from. Right?

34:40

But, like, feeling comes

34:42

from therapy and community and

34:44

relationships, not going into companies so that

34:46

you can, like, we should talk white

34:48

men. It's very satisfying

34:50

sometimes. Don't do that. It's not great

34:52

for anyone. Answering your

34:54

actual question, So I

34:56

originally was doing trans inclusion

34:58

trainings. That was my thing in college. Right? And,

35:00

like, a lot of trans folks who had a

35:02

really tough time in the world I would like

35:05

I wanna make sure this never happens to anyone ever again. wanna teach people to be,

35:07

like, not awful towards trans people so

35:09

that people aren't awful

35:11

to me anymore. For a ton of bunch

35:13

of those trainings. Now something that happened

35:16

in college is I got involved

35:18

in a lot of direct action, protest

35:20

movement stuff. And

35:22

that was really an incredible time in my

35:24

life. I'm still, you know, closely connected

35:26

to a lot of grassroots communities.

35:30

And at the time, I had a very

35:32

rudimentary basic, let's say,

35:34

theory of change about how it is you

35:36

change an

35:38

institution, like, stamp work where

35:40

I went to school. I thought administrator, dad evil, agents

35:42

of the system, destroy them.

35:45

Dad, I thought We're on the

35:47

side of justice, you know, fighting deliberation,

35:50

blah blah blah, administrators are

35:52

stopping us. They are preventing us

35:54

from exposing the truth about

35:56

the institution. If we just

35:58

raise visibility about all these issues in

36:00

the world and we expose our institution

36:02

for what it

36:02

is, the world will come crumbling down and will

36:04

change the

36:05

system. Right? So it's a very sort

36:07

of romanticized, like, Euro's journey,

36:10

sort of picture

36:12

of activism. And so we did

36:14

a whole bunch of direct action. We protested. We merged. We did a bunch

36:16

of stuff. And then one day, we

36:20

Paravans to a major bridge spanning the

36:22

Bay area and got out of

36:25

our cars and sixty eight

36:28

of us block the bridge for about forty minutes.

36:30

Mhmm. Big action, got a lot of

36:32

news, then all of us got arrested. We

36:34

weren't expecting

36:36

that part. Somehow we expected that, like, we would have three rings of

36:38

people and the hour ring of people would be

36:40

interested in getting arrested or okay with it. The

36:42

inner ring

36:44

wouldn't. That didn't work. Costs around us. There was, like,

36:46

hundreds of them. We all got arrested. We all got

36:48

traumatized. All in through the the

36:51

criminal justice system, everyone needed

36:54

therapy, it was really

36:56

bad. It was really bad. And we went back to

36:58

campus and we're like, well, at

37:00

least we showed

37:02

that. Right? Nothing happened. Nothing

37:04

happened. People were just confused

37:06

and, like, well, we're not really sure why you went and

37:08

got yourself arrested,

37:10

but, like, we're sorry, can we help you with your legal

37:12

costs? And in all the time I had

37:14

reflecting, I was just thinking, like, I

37:16

don't think that's how we

37:18

do it. Right? Like, I don't

37:20

actually think this is how you changed

37:21

institutions. It just traumatized everyone and

37:24

didn't move anything,

37:26

and it was

37:27

a failure. And so I started

37:27

thinking like there's something I don't know. There's

37:30

something about this institution. I don't know. There's something

37:32

about making change. I don't know. There's something about

37:34

creating movements that are effective that I don't

37:36

know. And I need

37:38

to know how to do this stuff

37:40

because that's the thing I never want

37:42

anyone to go through. Right? To

37:44

sort of have this naive idea about how to make change to throw yourself

37:46

against a brick wall or hurt yourself

37:48

and to, you know, get processed through this

37:50

really traumatizing system. Right? Like, we were thrown

37:52

in police

37:54

cars and like, both, you know, spent time in jail and it was was

37:56

bad and for nothing. Right?

37:58

So I was like, I

38:01

gotta figure this out. And

38:03

I changed the degree I was studying,

38:06

got my graduate degree in

38:08

sociology and, you know, spent a lot of time

38:10

also focusing on the history of activism and

38:12

successful movements and that's

38:14

sort of where I am

38:16

today. Yeah. Thank you for sharing all of

38:18

that. I was thinking when you were

38:20

talking about at the beginning

38:22

about not coming to

38:24

DEI work to, like, work through your

38:26

trauma. I think that

38:28

even if you have done all of

38:30

that work, and you're able to come at it from like a neutral place, can

38:32

still be activating as a

38:34

multiple merchandise person to

38:37

work with people who are saying

38:40

things that are at best

38:42

very ignorant, and they don't realize that they're very

38:44

ignorant. And so I

38:46

find that often when I'm having those

38:48

I can, like, it together in the conversation,

38:50

but then immediately afterward, I have to, like, dump feelings into the void

38:52

somewhere to just, like, get out everything

38:54

that I was holding back.

38:57

I was wondering how you deal

38:59

with any feelings that come up when you're

39:01

working with people professionally

39:04

and you're listening to them say things that you can't like like you said,

39:06

like, it's not productive to just yellow white men

39:08

in your training, but there is, like, you're holding it in

39:10

your body somewhere for an amount of time.

39:12

Right? Yeah. So

39:14

personally, I have a lot

39:16

of support outside of my job,

39:19

outside of my work. I care

39:21

a lot about DDI work. Like,

39:23

obviously, I'm super passionate about it. I spend

39:26

most of my waking hours doing

39:28

DEI work. And I have a life outside

39:30

of work.

39:32

Right? So realistically, if I go through something awful, I'll

39:34

hold together, end the call,

39:36

turn to my spouse, near the

39:37

room, and go, like,

39:40

love,

39:40

I gotta talk about some shit. And of

39:42

course, on this, you know, I I have a

39:44

therapist every week. I've been in therapy for, like, five

39:47

or six years. I spend a lot

39:50

of time healing and a lot of time processing grief and trauma

39:52

and all that. So that

39:54

or at least partially so that I can go

39:56

into my work and and be

39:58

able to be effective as practitioner

40:00

in whole space. Now, I

40:02

also think not every practitioner is

40:04

cut out for that kind of work

40:07

and that's also totally okay. I

40:09

actually don't do as much of that work as I used to. I used to do workshop

40:11

facilitation, which is brutal. Right?

40:14

Because, like,

40:16

you get people with all sorts of knowledge levels and all sorts of

40:18

places in their DDI journey, and you

40:20

get some really ignorant stuff.

40:22

Right? I don't do it anymore. Like I

40:24

keep strategy.

40:26

And so if someone's just like, isn't sex and gender the same?

40:28

Right? I'm just like, that's not actually what we're talking

40:30

about today. Right? Like, we are talking about

40:32

how to design an effective program.

40:35

We're talking about how to design and, I don't

40:37

know, effective DEI survey. Right? Like, save your

40:39

questions for Google or hire on

40:42

and practitioner that's here to teach you about

40:44

trans issues that's not

40:45

me. And I chose that intentionally

40:47

because a, that's not work I want to be doing

40:49

and b, it was also stressing me

40:51

out a lot. Yeah. It can

40:52

be a lot. Gotta say. It's open in

40:55

a lot. Well, I wanted

40:57

to talk about your

40:59

earlier work if you wanna talk about it because you

41:01

wrote these two other books or co wrote these

41:04

two other books. So one of them is

41:06

called the ethical

41:08

sellout and I was wondering if you just

41:10

wanted to tell us what you mean by ethical sellout, what you explored in that book. So

41:12

the ethical sellout came about

41:16

collaboration I had with a colleague

41:18

at Stanford who spent a lot

41:20

of time working as a

41:22

sort of therapist and

41:24

a coach. And this was also, you know, around the time when I

41:26

was really thinking hard about activist

41:28

communities and how marginalized

41:30

communities can

41:32

sometimes be really hard

41:34

on ourselves and each other. And

41:36

especially on the Internet, I'm looking

41:38

at you, Trans Twitter. Right? Right. And

41:41

you know, just thinking in the

41:44

service of creating

41:46

healthy communities and helping

41:49

individual people navigate this abusive

41:52

capitalist landscape, right? Is

41:54

there a better way we

41:56

can approach community building and personal

42:00

meaning building in all

42:02

this. And so the Excel sellout

42:04

is really a challenges this

42:06

idea of purity culture of purity politics. This

42:08

idea that you can only be a

42:10

good person if you engage in these

42:12

sorts of behaviors, if you always act

42:15

according to the beliefs that you should

42:18

have given your marginalized identities

42:20

and so on and so forth. Right? This

42:22

idea that your employer,

42:24

every decision you make, every

42:26

piece of media you consume, right,

42:28

is somehow a moral reflection of

42:31

your goodness or badness. And

42:33

the thesis of the Epicel sellout

42:35

is it's not. Right? Like every

42:38

single person all the time every

42:40

day has

42:42

to navigate like I said, our Capitalistic

42:44

Healthscape and make compromises all the time. Right? Like, everyone

42:46

makes compromises. Even the most pure

42:50

you know, socially just person, you know, makes compromises.

42:52

The idea here is not,

42:54

is it possible to avoid being a

42:57

sellout, but more how

43:00

instead can we be kinder to

43:02

ourselves and still we'll probably live

43:04

up to our values and hold ourselves

43:06

accountable and be honest. But navigate

43:08

this ambiguity and complexity of

43:10

our world as marginalized people.

43:13

And the Escalade, I

43:16

think, had a number of of frameworks to help

43:18

people, you know, navigate those sorts of

43:20

challenges. I think we we call it the change

43:22

framework, right,

43:24

approaching. Ourselves with

43:26

compassion, honesty, accountability, nuance

43:29

growth, and exploration. And so

43:31

these are all sorts

43:33

of traits that we saw from interviewing dozens

43:35

of people. Right? Frankly,

43:38

we interviewed some people who were,

43:40

let's say, better adjusted and and more

43:42

able to

43:44

sort of reconcile their place in the world and live as

43:46

principal people without hating

43:48

themselves. And we interviewed some folks that were,

43:50

like, really, really having a tough time

43:52

with that. Right? This idea

43:54

that, like, well, I think I'm a good

43:56

person. But because I consume this one thing,

43:58

this one time, like, I hate myself

44:00

forever and I've lost myself

44:02

worth and I'm worried that my community will hate me and will destroy me. Right?

44:04

And all these things. And we just heard all

44:06

this fear -- Yeah. -- and this

44:08

worry that, like, we we wouldn't find

44:10

belonging because, like, I don't know.

44:12

We watched the Avatar movie and

44:14

liked it. Right? Like, I don't know. Right? Like

44:16

-- Yeah. -- all sorts of things. And

44:18

the book is really a letter

44:20

to community and a love letter

44:22

to ourselves, eventually saying

44:24

like, there's something that matters here,

44:26

which is surviving,

44:28

thriving, supporting ourselves, supporting

44:30

community. I think what's going on right

44:32

now a lot on the Internet and

44:34

oftentimes in person

44:36

communities isn't the best we can

44:37

do. We can do better for ourselves. We can do better for each other.

44:39

I mean, I'm hearing a lot

44:41

of examples about

44:44

cultural consumption, which I think is a really good way to frame this. But I was

44:47

curious, do you feel like you're doing ethical

44:49

selling out in your work

44:51

in some way?

44:52

Sure. I mean, absolutely.

44:54

Right? Like, everything I do is a compromise.

44:56

I had a friend say this

44:58

to me once. Right? Like, Lily,

45:00

by helping making companies more inclusive, you are

45:02

delaying the

45:03

revolution. I was like

45:05

Sure. Yeah. Sure. Like, you're

45:08

not wrong. I guess, you know,

45:10

the worst companies are, the more people

45:12

will feel inspired to, like,

45:14

you know, rise up and and

45:16

the proletariat will will destroy the bourgeoisie and take power and like,

45:18

you know, communist revolution. But

45:20

also, that's fine. I'm

45:21

doing work that matters to me. I'm

45:23

having impact that I see that

45:25

matters to me. It's a line with with my

45:28

principles. I do this work in large part because

45:30

it's harm reproduction for the people that are

45:32

embedded within systems. Do I think my

45:34

DEI work is revolutionary?

45:36

No. I don't think it is.

45:38

And I don't need it to be. I don't want it to

45:40

be. There are so many other folks on

45:42

the ground doing grassroots activism, doing liberation work,

45:44

building community, building self

45:46

determination. A lot of my friends are

45:48

doing that work. I support

45:50

that work. And it's not

45:52

my work. It's not for me. Is that

45:54

attention? Sure. But I spent a

45:56

lot of time thinking about it, and I think I'm where I

45:58

need to be. And look,

46:00

I've given a talk for Amazon

46:02

before. I had some feelings. I had to

46:04

process it. Like, I had to think really hard, like, what

46:06

am I willing to do? For let's

46:08

say Amazon, for example. Right?

46:10

And to what extent do I feel like

46:12

my impact needs to have to make

46:14

up for me lending my

46:16

voice for what I view as, you know, the

46:18

paragon of evil, whatever. And these

46:20

are decisions that everyone

46:22

not just EEI consultants have to make

46:24

every day. These experiences are very common. Everyone has them.

46:26

And rather than judging,

46:28

right, folks who don't live up

46:30

to our arbitrary purity standards, we

46:34

need to make space for more people in the

46:36

revolution. Right? Like, we need to be expanding

46:38

our idea of what it needs to be

46:40

building a better world together. Yeah.

46:44

So you wrote this piece four years

46:46

ago about Trans Daveremembrands events, and

46:48

I don't do two door events because I don't

46:50

think it's appropriate for me personally to

46:54

do them. But I have to admit that I think that the

46:56

idea that corporations are

46:58

reaching out to me

47:00

about two door

47:02

events is unhinge, and

47:04

I can't imagine it going

47:06

well. So as someone who has, like, worked

47:08

in a lot more workplaces and thought

47:10

about this at least once four years ago, I was just wondering,

47:12

do you think possible

47:14

to do a good corporate

47:16

two door event?

47:17

Yes, asterisk. Okay. And the

47:19

asterisk is, like, inside sixty four baht. And just

47:21

sort of

47:22

corporate trans event should be led by and

47:24

for trans people. Hurts

47:28

up. Right? The only time a corporation

47:30

should ever do a ten

47:32

door event is if there are trans

47:34

people in that

47:36

corporation who lot of folks

47:38

that event are already hosting that

47:40

event and have specifically

47:42

requested that their corporation provide

47:44

support in specific ways. That

47:47

is the only acceptable context in which any

47:49

company should be doing to your. And

47:51

if it's happening under those

47:53

conditions, I can't fault

47:55

it. Right? It's trans people organizing and

47:58

leveraging their workforce to

48:00

provide support and visibility for something that they

48:02

want

48:03

to do. I think that's fine. In fact, I I think that's good

48:06

practice. Right? Now if we're talking about some

48:08

HR practitioner who

48:10

has no trans experience

48:12

or no connection to trans folks going, like,

48:14

I think we should do a t door. Let's

48:16

go rugs love some trans people to cry in

48:18

front of us. Right? Like, I think that has

48:20

exploited it. I think that's

48:22

harmful. I think there is no net

48:24

positive. In fact, no any positive from

48:26

that. And they should immediately drop

48:28

the idea. And the difference between these two things is

48:30

power. Right? And who we

48:32

are centering? If we are

48:34

centering trans folks, trans folks wanna do

48:35

it, then we should empower

48:38

trans folks to do it. If

48:39

there are

48:39

no trans folks meeting, then we should absolutely

48:41

not do this thing. And

48:43

that's where all of it

48:45

comes down to. Yeah, I think that's

48:47

a really, really good answer. And I do

48:50

wanna clarify that when I'm like, I

48:52

personally turned on all of these events

48:54

regardless, it's also an issue of power of why are

48:56

you coming to, like, a white adjacent trans

48:58

mask for trans day of remembrance.

49:00

Like, that's not, again, still not

49:02

the people we should be censoring. Like, even

49:05

within trans people, So so I sort of agree with you. I'm gonna I'm

49:07

gonna click a little bit. Go ahead. Right? Because I've

49:10

also been in

49:12

this scenario. Where we've

49:14

had a room full of trans people,

49:16

right, with maybe one black trans woman.

49:18

Sure. And then someone says, Tido,

49:21

Who does everyone get? Sure. Right?

49:24

And so there's this idea that, like,

49:26

even among transcommunities. Right? Like,

49:28

there's tokenism that happens all

49:30

the time. And there's a problem sometimes Zheng we

49:32

look towards, you know, multiply

49:34

marginalized transpads, especially black

49:36

transpads to be the voice

49:38

for Ador. And

49:40

if there are black transpads that are there

49:42

that are leading that that, like, wants to

49:44

be in that space, there's zero problem

49:47

at all. But I've also been in a hard situation where none

49:49

of the black trans fems in a room or

49:51

in a local community have the capacity

49:53

or desire to

49:56

represent for Gabor. And I've seen them get pushed into this

49:58

position by guilty aft white trans

50:00

liberals. Right? Going

50:01

like, well,

50:02

we we

50:02

can't take up space. It's gotta be

50:05

you. so I want us to push

50:08

a little deeper and think about

50:10

power as something that's not just

50:12

synonymous with

50:14

identity. Right? We need to be finding ways to be

50:16

elevating community and making space

50:18

for folks without playing a very

50:20

simple, like, well, who here checks all

50:23

the right boxes, like, whether or not they consent, we need to

50:25

make them do this event. Right? I don't

50:28

know. Right? Like, there is no one way

50:30

to do

50:32

teacher correctly. And

50:34

I wanna say that, like, it's

50:36

not a perfect approach just to

50:38

find the nearest like black transpam

50:40

or, you know, Latino transpam. And say,

50:42

like, this is your event, whether or not you wanna be there. Right? Like No.

50:45

Absolutely not. But I think that if you're

50:47

paying a speaker to show up on Zoom, I think

50:49

if you're paying a speaker is

50:51

different. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Yes. I was

50:54

exclusively talking about the specific

50:56

concept of people reaching out and saying, can

50:58

I pay you money

51:00

to talk via Zoom to our company. Oh,

51:02

and it's like, well, you can hire

51:04

literally anyone because it's on Zoom. Why are you

51:06

giving money to me?

51:08

Yeah. Okay. That's a different situation. But, yes, if you're talking about like a

51:10

grassroots local event that's so

51:12

important or even like an indoor community event that's so

51:14

important and I've

51:16

seen that happen. So, like, I think everything you said is really valuable. I just wanna

51:18

clarify. If you're paying

51:20

someone money and it could be anyone,

51:22

that's when it's like -- Right. -- it's

51:24

not just looking around the room and

51:26

roping in one person, it's like, really poor

51:28

black and indigenous and

51:30

Latina trans fence. Right? Like, that's that's

51:32

that's who you should be having on your g

51:34

doors. Absolutely. So thank you for complicating that. I will now going to ask

51:36

Gil, is there anything else that we haven't talked about

51:38

that you wanna talk about? I guess

51:40

throughout this conversation, I've just

51:42

been thinking as a

51:44

multiply marginalized transperson

51:46

doing DEI. Right? Like, I

51:48

think something that I've been grappling

51:50

with in the last few years

51:52

is that people are much more comfortable with me teaching trans inclusion

51:55

workshops and they are with me

51:57

teaching UEI strategy workshops. And

52:00

I've had this really interesting relationship with

52:02

my identity and my story over the

52:04

last few years because everyone wants

52:06

me to tell my TransAlv story.

52:09

Right? Uh-huh. And, like, frankly, I've got a good

52:11

one. Like, it's pretty sad. It does make

52:13

people cry. Sometimes it makes

52:15

me cry. And as I've

52:17

sort of repositioned myself in this phase,

52:20

you know, not just as like, hey, Lilly is a trans

52:22

person and talks about trans people and sometimes

52:24

cries for an audience to, you know,

52:26

Lilly is a DDI strategists

52:28

that's also leading this field in a very different

52:30

way. It's been tough navigating

52:32

how people want to put

52:34

me into a box because of my identity. It's

52:36

right, has been really, really difficult for

52:38

trans date of remembrance. Suddenly, I get a

52:40

whole bunch of people that don't care at all about

52:42

the EAS strategies, stuff going like Lilly

52:45

cried for us. Right? For Asian American heritage month. I

52:47

get a whole bunch of people when I really cry

52:49

for

52:49

us. Right? For Prideland, they're like, really cry

52:51

for us. And

52:53

It's tough. Right? It's really challenging. I think at one

52:56

point in my career, I would have done it. And I would

52:58

have, you know, felt like it was really

53:00

healing. And sometimes,

53:02

you know, the biggest challenge for me is

53:04

feeling like, well, if I'm not talking about

53:06

pure trans Asian people all the time,

53:08

I'd be training

53:10

my community. Right, this idea that, like, I somehow have to be doing

53:12

everything all at once. And I think a lot of

53:14

that is in sort of the

53:16

expectations that

53:18

marginalized people put on ourselves, especially when there are very few of us in setting

53:20

that we somehow need to be the perfect

53:22

representative of all the communities

53:24

that we're part of. And

53:27

something I've been personally working on is, like, letting go of that. And saying,

53:29

like, am I a perfect trans person, a

53:31

perfect non binary person, an Asian person,

53:33

peer person? Absolutely not.

53:36

Like, I can be your problematic save all

53:38

day. I'm not perfect and never will be. And I'm trying to be more okay

53:40

with that. Right? Because

53:43

we don't, like, take

53:43

this random white dude and go, like, your

53:46

entire race and gender is being

53:48

judged with you. We don't do that.

53:50

And I want us to be better

53:52

at, like, being kinder to ourselves, you know, talking about the s goes out.

53:54

Right? Like like, holding more

53:56

compassion for ourselves in all of

53:58

our imperfections

54:00

and whatnot. Yeah. I I think

54:02

that's great because it

54:04

also brings up the concept of boundaries

54:06

and how you don't owe everyone your story

54:08

all of the time and in touches on something that I

54:10

think about cons recently, which

54:12

is how hard it is

54:14

for trans people and other marginalized

54:16

people to be seen as experts in our field even when

54:18

we are spurts, like, I get questions all the time when trying to do my

54:20

job in a professional capacity where I'm like,

54:22

does anyone have any questions? And they'll

54:25

literally be, like, what did

54:28

your parents think when you came

54:30

out? And, like, this is not what we're here to talk

54:32

about today. Yeah. You know, I've

54:34

definitely gotten that. Yeah. It's so wild.

54:36

So anyway, I just yeah. I appreciate

54:38

all that. It's it's yeah.

54:40

It's a big thorny issue for people

54:43

to grapple with, but The way we always

54:45

end the show is by asking, in your ideal world, what

54:47

would the future of gender

54:50

look like? Messy and

54:52

free. I think it would be

54:54

incredible if everybody could present

54:56

in any way, if gender expression

54:59

was unbounded, if you know, we

55:02

still have gender because gender is important

55:04

to people. But right now,

55:06

if gender is a box, right, it's a

55:08

coffin. And I want gender to

55:10

be like, football fields. Right? Like like, I want there to be

55:12

so many ways to be a

55:14

man that, like, you know, every man feels

55:16

empowered, so many ways to be

55:18

known by So many ways to be

55:20

a woman, so many ways to be any

55:22

gender. Right? That people feel

55:24

liberated. I've want people to look, to dress,

55:26

to speak, to act, in any

55:28

way that feels, you know,

55:30

empowering for them. And I want us to

55:32

break out of this,

55:34

you know, gosh, affordable, colonial, awful idea

55:36

that, like, gender is is

55:38

this tight constricting little thing that

55:40

you have to squeeze yourself into or else you're

55:42

not worthy as

55:44

a human. I think gender should be liberating for

55:46

everybody. Right? Like, I think people are scared

55:48

of transnotes sometimes because

55:50

we Zheng

55:52

represent a new way of thinking about gender that terrifies people have squeezed

55:54

themselves into these boxes their entire lives.

55:56

And I want everyone to feel that

55:59

same sort of know, freedom and

56:02

that same sort of

56:05

joy. That's gonna do

56:08

it for week show. You can find lily at lily zeng dot

56:10

co and on LinkedIn if you're

56:12

fancy. Their latest book, DEID

56:14

Constructed, as

56:16

well about the other books they mentioned are available

56:18

now wherever you get books. We are, of course, on Twitter and

56:20

Instagram at gender reveal and gender

56:24

podcast dot com. You can also find us on Patreon where of course

56:26

we've got a new bonus episode about the lusification

56:28

of it all and many, many, many

56:31

other fun perks, that is at patreon

56:33

dot com slash gender. And you can

56:35

also find us at the Bell House in Brooklyn

56:37

on February first It's gonna be

56:39

very fun. Don't miss it. Today's episode was produced and edited by Azzie

56:42

Lina Skidman and by me

56:44

at Teckwoodstock. is by

56:46

Ira and Lai, our theme song is by

56:48

Breakmaster Cylinder. Additional music

56:50

this week by Pluto Sessions. We'll

56:52

be back. Next week

56:54

with more feelings

56:56

about gender.

57:07

We don't make the podcast for people who aren't

57:10

trans, so we don't care if they're

57:12

bored.

57:12

I don't know. Like,

57:14

what are you thinking about now. What do you

57:17

what do you think is juicy? What do you want me to cover the last minute? Well, what do

57:19

you think is juicy? You're the one with

57:21

too much? That's juicy. Oh,

57:24

god.