Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "What Is Gender?" with Courtney Act (aka Shane Jenek)

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"What Is Gender?" with Courtney Act (aka Shane Jenek) · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  G'day, humans. Welcome to The Safe Space for dangerous ideas. Today, one of them of greatest
• 0:08
  legends in drag queenery globally, perhaps second only to RuPaul.
• 0:16
  Courtney Act is the character, the pseudonym of Shane Genek. Shane is really interesting,
• 0:22
  fascinating human being. You know, you probably know Courtney as Australia's most popular
• 0:27
  drag queen and singer and television personality. Courtney came to prominence. You may have
• 0:32
  forgotten on Australian idol, Australian version of pop idol, American idol and so on.
• 0:39
  In 2003, she was on RuPaul's drag race in 2014. She's done an enormous amount of television
• 0:48
  hosting. She made it big in the United Kingdom in 2018 when she was on celebrity big brother.
• 0:55
  And she won, she won the season. And she really revolutionized and changed people's ideas
• 1:00
  about, I suppose gender and sexuality and gay people and drag queens and all the rest
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  of it, by through some of her sort of confronting interactions with some of the other contestants
• 1:11
  in the big brother household. She released a soul for Eurovision, for the Eurovision final
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  in 2018 came in fourth place. She was on dancing with the stars in Australia.
• 1:24
  To try to summarize Courtney's role by reciting a list of achievements is invariably going
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  to be unsuccessful because Courtney learns so large in Australian public life and means so much,
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  the LGBTQI plus community. But who is the person behind Courtney? Who is this young
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  Queenslander named Shane Genek? Shane is very thoughtful at a lot of respect for him as not
• 1:52
  just a performer and a boundary pusher, but a someone who wants to think about what gender is
• 1:58
  and what sex is in both meanings of that word and what sexuality is. And while we're all sort
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  of chattering on the sidelines about transgender rights and gender of critical theory and so on,
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  here is an individual who has devoted his entire life to playing with the boundaries of these
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  definitions and to exploring different ways of acting out essentially of inhabiting different
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  types of gender expression and different sexualities. So I thought it would be fascinating to sit
• 2:28
  down with Shane and pick his brain about himself and Courtney. And it was, I hope you love this as
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  much as I did. Enjoy the one and only Shane Genek.
• 2:45
  So are you following specifically because the market is going down or is this, is this
• 2:56
  fortuitous timing? Good. I got the wrong timing. But then everyone always says, look, in the long
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  turn, everything's going to go up and I say, how can I keep going up? There's probably less
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  buyers, which is good for me. Oh, you mean, yes, right? I said, yeah, no, when we bought,
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  you couldn't, you couldn't go to an auction because everything, there were no auctions really
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  taking place. People would put in offers that were so high that the buyer, that the seller would
• 3:22
  pull it before the auction. Right. So unless you were that person, you don't get it. Can you lift
• 3:27
  your mic up so that you were talking into it a bit more? So I need to wear these headphones? Well,
• 3:31
  I hear anything. No, you won't hear anything. Apart from your dulcet tones and my beautiful rich
• 3:36
  tan butter. Doesn't sound nice, actually. Nice, isn't it? I mean, it does sound like I just wear
• 3:39
  them because I want to make sure that we're not speaking too loud or I feel like you're speaking
• 3:44
  into my brain now, which is nice. That's the magic of radio and podcasting. It's very intimate.
• 3:50
  It is nice, isn't it? Yeah. They say that it's the most intimate of media, mediums,
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  media's podcasts, like, yeah, things that happen in your ears and reading books. Yeah. Well,
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  that's a direct line into your brain. But then there's not another human being who you're hearing
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  at all, except for reading a book and a bit like brainwashing, like in a not in a bad way,
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  but like you're just like, it's teleport, it's like a telepathy. Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
• 4:15
  You know, the listener couldn't see you doing those hand movements. No, have we started? Yeah,
• 4:19
  sure. Yeah, the listener, because you were just going the listener, you were going, yeah,
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  the it's like telepathy, but you're holding hands out like you were doing, like you were hypnotizing
• 4:30
  me. Like I was hypnotizing you in some way. Yeah. Oh, dear, oh dear. Well, I'm glad we could finally
• 4:36
  sit down. Hi. I thought it was going to be more difficult to schedule you. You seem like a busy
• 4:41
  person. Well, you got me on a good week. Great. We're a good day. Good day. Yeah. Should I know,
• 4:47
  should I cut out all the stuff about you, buying an expensive property? Is it an apartment or a house?
• 4:52
  apartment. Yeah. Yeah, maybe but cut out that part. No, I won't cut it out. You don't get it.
• 4:58
  Well, I do because I feel like the less you talk about your success, the better. Yeah, but it's
• 5:05
  not success. It's a tiny apartment and it's in a terrible part. It's a little tiny apartment
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  and it's in it's really a small shoe. It's a crack den. That's how I started advertised.
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  So let's not go that far. It's the shittiest. It's basically a gutter. It's a gutter horse den.
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  That's what it is. Okay. Now you've gone too far. Well, anyway, I'd love
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  you to talk to you, especially outside of a formal or a presenting or hosting environment.
• 5:35
  Well, you know what I like about this? What? Is that I am on a journey to upgrade my,
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  I don't I say like debating skills. I often think that I have the information. I have the
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  the right approach, but I don't always have the immediate oratory skills in a high stress
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  environment, like a Q&A or a, you know, when you're talking to someone who's a bit adversarial
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  or at least I don't have a lot of practice in that. And I thought, oh, this will be nice because
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  I feel safe with Josh, but I also know that I will be challenged in a safe environment.
• 6:15
  Oh, that's nice. That's a nice thing that you could, that's the nicest thing you could say about
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  me, really, except for saying that I have beautiful blue eyes and, yeah, I said you looked,
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  you looked radiant and well-rested. I think you said radiance, but I interpreted radiance from
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  what you'd said. It's a fair answer. Brilliant. Dashing. I interpreted all of that from the fact
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  that you said, you look well. Yeah. No, that's what I meant. Great. So you got, see that,
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  what would, what would, where would the adversarial component come in between you and me?
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  Well, not adversarial between you and I, but more just it's, the podcast is called Uncomfortable
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  Conversation. It is, that's true. So I look forward to having my ideas challenged.
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  Because I think that, you know, you're not inclined to just sit and agree with your guests
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  on this podcast, you're going to ask questions and then maybe point out blind spots in what my
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  argument is. I mean, one of the interesting things that, that, that this show does, I hope,
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  is also sometimes just have conversations that even if I'm not, even if they're not uncomfortable
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  with the guests, that they were at least talking about something that is uncomfortable for other
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  people to broach without feeling like they have to adhere to a certain script. Yeah. And one of
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  the things in that area, in, in the area that you dabble in, dabble, dabble in the dabble.
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  You dabble in it. You dabble in it. Yeah. You do more than dabble, my friend. You jump in,
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  would be the, yeah, what like, so let's show that pride. Okay. What do we start there? Because
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  that would be probably the most thing, the thing that most straight people would feel the least
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  comfortable challenging. The cornerstone of the gay community also happens to be one of the
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  seven deadly sins. That's a good point. Yeah. That's why didn't we pick gluttony? Well,
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  which we also have in spades. We do. Vanity. Vanity. Vanity. I don't know what I mean.
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  There's seven, there's 14, because it's like, it's, well, no, there's seven, but it's like,
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  we're not very good Christians. Greek enrollment, you know, where everybody's got
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  yeah, okay. I've got two names. I get it. Yeah, that's right. Caught the act Shane Jenick.
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  You've probably got a middle name as well. I do. It's Gilberto. Is that right? It is. Shane Gilberto
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  Jenick. Yeah. I love it. I'm going to call you Gilberto from now on. It's my dad's name,
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  and my dad's dad's name. Can I call you Gilly? Yeah. Sure. That's why I call my dad though.
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  Is that right? Hey, Gilly. Hey, Gilly. Yeah. Gilberto. So the most uncomfortable conversation
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  that a straight person could have about gay people would be to say, really? That's the most.
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  Do you think a conversation about pride? I thought pride was like pretty much done and dusted now.
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  Am I living in the bubble? I think pride is pretty much done and dusted in the sense that everyone's
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  expected to agree that it's a great thing to be proud of gay people. Right. But if someone
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  wasn't proud of gay people, they would be considered that would be considered a hate crime.
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  I think that we have reached a certain stage in society where there's certain human rights
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  that we fundamentally agree on. And if you look at acceptance of queer people in mainstream
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  society, we sort of agree that gay people should have, or same-sex people should have the right
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  to get married. We had a referendum on that. We agree that gay people have a right to exist,
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  you know, have the same rights to healthcare or to palsing or to whatever that, you know,
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  straight people do, right? Well, yeah, but that's been, that's been, with the exception of the
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  marriage thing, all of that other stuff has been settled for decades, doesn't it? I think that
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  people are more agreeable to it now. It might have been settled from a legislative point of view,
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  but I think from a social point of view, it's really only been I reckon like 2014 was a time when
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  the queer movement really started advancing, and especially in pop culture. And I see that
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  acceptance and conversations like I just saw it like around the world when marriage equality
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  passed. I was living in the United States, and I just remember the idea that like the president
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  and I remember Obama first talking about like LGBTQ, remember him saying that term. And I remember
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  the validation that I felt hearing that. I was like, oh my god, the president of the United
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  States just said like gay lesbian bisexual transgender people. And I, the fact that that was
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  shocking and exciting to me in 2016. Or was that when, no, 2016 was when it passed in the US, I think.
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  No. 14. 14. The fact that that was exciting, it was 14 because I was in Mexico City.
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  Of course you were. I had just landed for a gig in Mexico City. Right. And a straight identifying
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  boy that I was dating at the time in my book, lived in, lives in Indianapolis, but doesn't really.
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  Well, because you have to change the names and the locations. You don't have to. We just talked
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  about your apartment. You didn't want me to. Well, I asked you not to put that in.
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  But I'm a polite person who reached out to everybody. You respect other people's opinions.
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  Well, I respect other people's right to privacy. Yeah. And usually their opinions too.
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  Unless they list their enterprise. You can say that. Yeah. Sure. But I, yeah, I remembered
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  I landed in Mexico City and he texted me and he was like, did you hear that marriage equality
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  just passed? And I was like, is that a proposal? Yeah. And I was completely not expecting the wave
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  of the motions that I felt when that happened. I had to go behind a pile on in Mexico City,
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  airport and do the ugly cry. And it was just that thing where like, you couldn't do an ugly
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  cry, Shane, you're too pretty. Oh, I could. Really? You, you, you haven't seen it. I have to see,
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  I have to make you cry. Or you don't need to see me cry to be ugly. But I've certainly seen,
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  you know, photographs from late nights on the dance floor. You know, in drag where I would be
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  defined as less than social accepted. Right. Right. But yeah, it was like quite an overwhelming
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  moment. And that was only in 2014. I remember reading the decision as well when it came down. I was
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  working at Huff post live in Manhattan. And when it came down, I remember reading it. And yeah,
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  I cried at the, the majesty of the language. And it was more at the momentousness of it. But
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  doesn't the fact that that was so momentous, so recently, point to how quickly things have changed
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  as well? I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not suggesting that, oh, pride is so pass A because we've
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  had pride forever. But I am suggesting that it's been probably the most successful civil rights
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  revolution in modern history, one could say, the turnaround because in the space of the turnaround,
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  the black civil rights movement, the black civil rights took forever and is arguably less robust.
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  You know, it took, I mean, from the end of slavery, then you had the eternity of Jim Crow,
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  and then you had the riots of the 60s and Martin Luther King getting shot and then queer people
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  had no visibility or rights up until the late 60s. But that's what I'm saying. So like within a
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  half century, you've gone from zero, you've gone from zero to hero, you've gone from being not only
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  like hated, but outlawed. Yeah. And then, I mean, as recently as when we were children, it was still
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  considered a perversion and like a, you know, a really dysfunctional way to live. And that has now,
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  you know, yes, that still exists in some corn, in some pockets. But that is a now an opinion that
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  it's impossible to express without either getting fired for it or certainly uninvited from the
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  next cocktail party in our great Western nation. Yes, that's right. Yeah. So the pace has been
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  amazing. The legal achievements have been amazing. And so I guess is anyone allowed any more to
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  not be on that train at the pace of that train and to express reservations? I think about like these
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  recurring incidents of like football players not wanting to wear pride jerseys to on the,
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  you know, on the field or using cultural and religious excuses that have been cherry picked
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  specifically relating to queer identity feels a little like too convenient. It's like, well,
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  there's lots of things that you're religion forbades, but you're fine with those parts. But when it
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  came to queer identity, that was when you took Umbridge. That to me feels like maybe people
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  are using excuses when what they really mean is I don't like gay people. Yeah, I mean, of course
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  they're cherry picking. Yeah. I mean, you also have a whole stand up bit about how, you know,
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  people when people say, I, you know, being gay is filthy. It's disgusting that they never say that
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  about crab cakes. But you know, God says the same has the same definition towards crab cakes and
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  things that crawl off in the sea. It does towards gay sex. But I mean, we don't get to choose how
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  people interpret their religion. We only get to choose whether or not we sort of allow them to
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  celebrate their religion or articulate their beliefs. I think there's a difference between celebrating
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  their religion and holding their beliefs and those beliefs then impacting on other people's
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  right to exist. Right. But we've eliminated that possibility by outlawing discrimination and
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  yeah, you know, like on the basis of sexuality. Well, I think the question is like, why do people
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  feel that way? Like why do say if we're talking specifically about specifically about gay and
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  by men, what is it about that that people are against? And I've got a few thoughts. One of them,
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  it all, I think empathy is a thing here where either the person is, this is a, get out of jail
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  free card for all of this straight homophobes out there. But like I listen up all my straight homophob
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  followers. Yeah, you're in luck. Like either you do not possess any capacity for empathy. And
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  you're like this 100% straight bloke that has no attraction to men. And therefore you cannot,
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  in any way, understand how anyone else's experience, I somehow suspect that the biography of Shane
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  Jenny is going to contradict this theory, but carry on. Well, it's the Scott Morrison argument.
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  Like Jenny told him the empathy was was important quality. And then he turned it on in his robot
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  brain. Yeah. So that's one. Maybe it's not a get out of jail free. Maybe I was leading up the
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  garden path there. And then the other side is this. Now I was on the bus. No, I was on the
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  tube in London during COVID times. And everyone was wearing their masks except every time there's
• 17:24
  always one or two blokes who weren't wearing masks. There was always men. My anecdotal evidence
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  was that it was always men. And I would sit there. And I was like,
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  everyone else on this tube is wearing their mask wearing a pandemic. This is during the peak time
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  when you didn't want to be on the tube. I was going to rehearsals for I was like allowed out of
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  the house for special anyway. Then you couldn't get an Uber or a cap because you were saving up
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  money for your crackdown. Exactly. And then I found myself getting really agitated and like almost
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  like aggressive just sitting there on the tube looking at these men who weren't wearing their masks.
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  And I was like, all of us here are doing the right thing. We're all being considerate and concerned
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  about everybody else. We're wearing our masks. Why aren't you? Right. I sort of had these like
• 18:13
  aggressive thoughts in my head. I'm feeling aggrieved just you doing that to me purely in
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  acting. I feel like I'm not wearing a mask. Now Shane's shouting at me. What did I do wrong?
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  Well, now take, I took that idea. This is like an exercise and empathy for me. And I took that
• 18:29
  idea and I thought, well, hang on a minute. Maybe this is what homophobes feel.
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  Maybe they think they're doing the right thing. Yes, we've all had these feelings.
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  Yes, men can be attracted, but I'm doing the right thing. I've been told that this is how I'm
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  supposed to be. This is how I'm supposed to live my life. And all of these other puffters are
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  out there breaking the rules when they're doing the right thing. Maybe that's where the homophobic
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  aggression and violence and disdain comes from. That's very interesting. I remember suggesting
• 19:04
  to my brother when we were in school that someone who was picking on me was probably jealous of me.
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  And he laughed at me because he thought that was the most self-serving interpretation of why I was
• 19:14
  being bullied. That's what our parents told us. That's right. But there's something there. It's not
• 19:19
  a hundred percent of it, but there's something there that the bully wishes that they were as
• 19:25
  cluelessly unruffled by. Often, the cluelessness of the confidence and the competence of the
• 19:33
  person who's getting bullied is what's riling up the bully. Yeah. And so it's interesting. I was
• 19:39
  reading a very entertaining pornographic magazine. No, what's the core one? It's like education or
• 19:48
  like a like a thing like a, like a text. Little, not a little essay. Yeah, but there's a better word.
• 19:55
  Anyway, I was reading this. It's where were you reading it? It was like, can you do maybe like
• 19:59
  sounds like something you can do? Yeah, it sounds like university thesis. I want to say literary
• 20:05
  text, but that's not right. It's not a little very interesting. It was a journal. Maybe it was a
• 20:09
  journal or something. It was like a, not educational. Anyway, it was like a, it was a thing. A smart person
• 20:15
  who studied stuff, right? It was on a phantiles lolly wrapper. And you were reading the biography.
• 20:22
  It was a, it was a, it was a, it was the epistemic contract of bisexual erasure. What?
• 20:29
  And I found it really interesting because it talked about how there is, it is in
• 20:36
  straight people and gay people's interests to, in air quotes, erase bisexuality. For straight people,
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  for straight men, their heterosexuality can only be proved in a world that is
• 20:51
  monosexual, gay or straight. So if bisexuality is just a thing that we all know and love and accept,
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  built in, sorry, let me backtrack. In this world, all a man has to do to prove that he's straight
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  is have sex with a woman or show attraction to a woman. In a bisexual world, if a man has sex
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  as a woman, he could still be attracted to men. And therefore his sexuality is in question.
• 21:17
  Right. For gay people, there's also, that can also be a desire to erase bisexuality because
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  a part of the conversation around gay identity has been that it's immutable, that it's not a choice.
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  And so bisexual people sort of look like it is a choice because they like, well, I can
• 21:39
  slip with anyone of any gender, therefore it is a choice, therefore gay isn't a real thing,
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  therefore everyone should be straight because it's a choice. So it's interesting when you look at
• 21:50
  that and then consider that like, yeah, maybe, maybe these, because I always think about straight
• 21:59
  men as being the ones to focus on either how they're reacting in the case of pride, you know,
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  your question about pride or like obviously they're, they're people who feel like they're under
• 22:12
  fire at the moment, which I kind of enjoy. I mean, it is, it's even an interesting self
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  identifier isn't a straight men. I mean, it's a bit, it's a bit slippery for the reason you say,
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  but there's one, my eyes were opened when I was in my teens or maybe early 20s by a book by a
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  Canadian cultural theorist named Bert Archer, which I'm not even sure if it's still in print,
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  but it was called the end of gay and the death of heterosexuality, which was great. And I mean,
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  I still remember one line from it, which was that the, and this may not be Bert's him, I've
• 22:44
  been quoting someone, but he said that bisexuality looms so large over the human condition that
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  it's invisible to most people. And so you need to sort of do what you're doing, which is like
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  step back and think, okay, well, if everything were a spectrum, that would fuck with the ideas of
• 23:03
  both of the camps that have invested interest in this. And I mean, I found, and I should also say
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  to the straight guys or straight girls who are listening to this, the claim is not that everybody
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  secretly wants to have sex with the member of the same sex and that they're just denying that
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  to themselves. The claim is rather that it's more that the edges and the boundaries between desire,
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  aspiration, flirtation, what level of charmingness you ascribe to people and how you feel when
• 23:36
  you see people who are extremely charming, charismatic, attractive, or whatever. All of those
• 23:42
  things are muddier than the simplicity of I would always rather X than Y. And that there are
• 23:49
  some cultures and some eras and some places that are more conducive to encouraging people to
• 23:54
  explore those boundaries than others. Well, even in this era, there's great, there's like a great
• 24:00
  study, I know you gov in the UK to this great, did a study and it talked about, I won't get the
• 24:05
  figures exactly right, but it was like young people doing 16 and 24 when asked about their attraction,
• 24:11
  like the questions, it depends on the questions you ask. If you ask them to say, are you gay,
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  straight or by? Like 90% of them said they were straight. But then when you started asking better
• 24:22
  questions, like do you think it's likely that you could fall in love with or be attracted to someone
• 24:30
  of the same sex? Like when you added all, it was like unlikely, unlikely, no, like definitely not,
• 24:40
  likely very, like different sort of grades of that. Yeah. And people were like, well, you know,
• 24:46
  if the right person came along the right time, do you think it could be attracted to or fall in
• 24:49
  love with somebody of the same sex? Like more than like close to 50% of people said, yeah,
• 24:55
  probably. Yeah. Exactly. And it's even starker if you say to them, like, you know, if you're straight,
• 25:01
  would you rather go down on Hillary Clinton or get a blowjob from Harry Styles? Yeah. That's a great,
• 25:09
  you know what I mean? It's flexible. It's, it's the only thing to have to be really straight. Wouldn't
• 25:14
  you to be going down on Hillary or have a mother, you know, thing, which a lot of straight men do.
• 25:20
  That's true. Maybe I need to not Hillary. Maybe it's not Hillary. We have to find someone.
• 25:25
  Is that what you're saying? I don't know. So I want to hear anyone better. No, no, no, it's hard.
• 25:30
  Yeah, absolutely. They'd take, they'd take Jello in a heartbeat. But this, so then the question
• 25:34
  becomes what have you, tell us about things that you've experienced in your life then that have
• 25:39
  given you cause to doubt the boundaries because you're not just talking about from your experience
• 25:45
  because do you think of yourself as gay, gay? I think that like, I'm socially gay. Like, I'm very gay.
• 25:51
  I'm, I'm like, what people, what they want you about. I'm like, I'm like a man who wears
• 25:57
  women's clothes, who likes pastels, who's feminine, who, well, I don't actually have my fingernails
• 26:01
  painted at the moment, you know, who dresses in drag, who even like has sex with men whilst
• 26:06
  wearing women's clothes. Like, there's all sorts of proclivities that I have. But then you're
• 26:10
  depraved. Is what you're saying? I'm depraved. In the old school, in the good old school ways,
• 26:14
  like preacher, like absolutely the fire and brimstone. And I'm like, wow, they got this all wrong.
• 26:20
  This is good shit over here. But then when it comes to my sexuality, how it actually manifests,
• 26:26
  I'm attracted to people of different genders. I've had sex with women and, you know, people
• 26:30
  of different genders. I mean, did you like that? Yeah, it's fine. I mean, you liked that in the,
• 26:34
  in a sense of like, you weren't constantly just sort of closing your eyes and thinking of
• 26:37
  being one and thinking about a guy. No. Well, it's interesting. Right. Cause a friend of mine and I
• 26:42
  were walking along. And he had said, this was a couple of years ago, I was hosting a show called
• 26:48
  The By Life, which is a bisexual dating show on the e-channel. And he was like, you know,
• 26:54
  you're just gay. Like, you're not pansexual. And I was like, well, he goes, you just have,
• 26:59
  you just had sex with women because like, if they're boyfriend's hot. And I was like, okay,
• 27:03
  well, let's just say that that's true for a moment. How many times have you found yourself having
• 27:07
  sex with the woman just because her boyfriend's hot? And he was like, never. And I was like,
• 27:11
  yeah, so it's a different thing. But I've definitely had sex with, you know, couples like heterosexual
• 27:17
  couple, male and female couples. I've, I've had, I've even had sex with two
• 27:23
  minute ones, which is every straight man's fantasy. In fact, there was a straight man in his
• 27:28
  girlfriend watching as it happened. Um, is that right? How did that come about? Well,
• 27:33
  wait, there were five people in the room. It's too many. No, no, three, well, yes,
• 27:37
  there were, well, actually it was separate rooms because we were on the balcony on the day of
• 27:40
  it. And they were on the couch watching. Um, you can read about that in my best-selling
• 27:43
  memoir, caught in the act available now. There's also an audiobook if you like the sound of my
• 27:48
  dulcet tones. It is very good. I do like it. I don't remember that sequence, but, but maybe
• 27:52
  I was just so overwhelmed by, by, by, maybe I was blushing at the time and I needed some smelling
• 27:59
  socks to wake me up. I was so threatened. But you know what's interesting, right? I could have sex
• 28:05
  with every woman left on the planet and nobody would ever call me straight. Yet, the minute a man,
• 28:11
  a straight man, deviates from the very narrow and rigid boundaries of what is straight. People
• 28:16
  want to categorise him as gay. And I think that the problem is is that we, we have obviously
• 28:23
  different rules for different genders. And then also like, very rigid boundaries. Different
• 28:30
  sexualities. Yeah. Yeah. Well, for different sexualities and, you know, we have a different,
• 28:35
  and for different genders because we view, I see, because a woman would probably be allowed
• 28:39
  to still be straight even if she made out with her college roommate. Yeah, exactly. And I just
• 28:44
  think it's interesting when it comes to sexuality. Because ultimately, like if we flash
• 28:48
  on to the future, I think the only thing that queer people want is for all people to be able to
• 28:57
  act and dress and live how they feel and to be attracted to whoever they're attracted to. Like,
• 29:04
  there's nothing. Oh, no, I'm not sure that's true. Of everyone in our community that, that, that,
• 29:10
  human flourishing and, and acceptance is the primary goal. Because part of that, this is part of
• 29:17
  the, this is part of what I was sort of pointing to in the, in the anti-pride question earlier,
• 29:23
  which is that there is a vision of like sexual self-expression that would be completely free of
• 29:33
  labels. Right. And yet at the same time, we live in a world in which there is a lot of sunk
• 29:39
  cost and investment in fighting for labels. Yeah, because it's a stepping stone.
• 29:45
  I think. Well, it may be a stepping stone for you, but at some point, the, the people who are
• 29:51
  jealously guarding the fiefdoms of their labels and trying to raise money for LGBTQI plus activism
• 29:58
  and who are very invested in the history, the illustrious history of Stonewall and the early
• 30:03
  people who were marching for gay rights all over the place. Like, they're not all of them.
• 30:07
  I don't mean thrown into the bus. But at some point, they need to cling on to a vision of
• 30:14
  ovenness from the rest of society in order to perpetuate their own relevance, which could be
• 30:21
  stymying rather than encouraging of the flourishing of the next generation. I think that's
• 30:26
  putting the cart behind. But I think that's putting the cart in front of the horse because I think
• 30:34
  that that imagined future of no label wonderland that is so far off. You mentioned Harry Styles
• 30:41
  earlier and Harry says, you know, we don't, we don't want labels. We should be able to. And I'm
• 30:45
  like, well, that's a real statement of privilege in the world that we live in. I mean, in the United
• 30:49
  States right now, queer people having their rights taken away at a state level, you know, left
• 30:53
  right and center. And we see in, well, wait, is that true? Well, in Florida and Texas,
• 30:59
  there certainly is. There's the don't say gay bills, the rights of trans people, like, like
• 31:05
  abilities to play sport and in schools and all the things. I mean, so we can take those one by one.
• 31:11
  But like, the Florida don't say gay thing, right? Is a response to a sense that increasingly
• 31:16
  school districts were teaching people from who are very young about gender fluidity and that there
• 31:22
  was this, this sort of orthodoxy that you're supposed to say that there's no such thing as boys
• 31:27
  and girls. You can be whatever sex you want to be that, you know, sex is not really a biological
• 31:31
  thing, but gender is, gender is whatever you want it to be. So there were people who have more
• 31:36
  traditional ideas about gender. Well, I think I objected to it for, this was only for year three,
• 31:42
  right? Grade three. So eight year olds and under. So the quote unquote don't say gay bill,
• 31:47
  which is not a bill that I approve of at all. But I just want to be clear about what we're actually
• 31:51
  talking about rather than, you know, throwing our enemies under the bus. What they wanted was that
• 31:56
  wait until people are nine years old before you start telling them that there aren't such things as
• 32:00
  boys and girls and that families who... Well, here's the problem with that though, right?
• 32:05
  When you think about it, the indoctrination, the so-called indoctrination that that
• 32:12
  points to, that queer people are trying to have this ideological conversation with children,
• 32:19
  has already begun with children in the heteronormative world. Like from a young age,
• 32:25
  children in school and, you know, through the media, are told that boys dress like this and girls
• 32:31
  dress like that and they act like this and they act like that. And we have these sort of narrow
• 32:36
  bandwidths of definition of what... Like when we're fine with boys playing with toy guns,
• 32:40
  but heaven forbid, a boy should play with a toy doll. Like that's ludicrous. Yeah, I mean, I said,
• 32:45
  it's not a very good law. But I hear a lot of rhetoric about how people are having their rights
• 32:53
  stripped away. And I just want us to understand that the rights have come a very, very,
• 32:57
  very long way, very, very fast. And we've had probably a thousandfold increase in the capacity of
• 33:05
  queer people to flourish and be self-expressed. And there's a conservative pushback at the moment,
• 33:10
  which I disapprove of all heartedly. But I would contextualize as saying that they want to bring
• 33:14
  it back, you know, we've had a hundred steps forward and they want to bring it back two steps.
• 33:18
  Which historically is something that we see consistently. That's right.
• 33:21
  I mean, you know, trans people in sport, when and where was this age of pleasure and plenty,
• 33:27
  where trans people were in an uncomplicated way allowed to participate in sport in whatever,
• 33:31
  you know, the sport of whatever sex they chose, that never existed. So now there are laws that are,
• 33:37
  you know, depriving them of the right to compete in women's sports. But I mean,
• 33:42
  then you also have the feminist sort of German, Greia, J.K. Rowling critique of like, there is
• 33:46
  a kind of something special about being a little girl and going through puberty as a girl,
• 33:50
  and that is also something that should be protected and not steamrolled out of existence.
• 33:54
  I don't think that those two things are mutually exclusive. The existence of trans
• 34:00
  girls and cis girls can, I think, I think the idea is that the cis experience cis being
• 34:12
  not trans, the Latin for not not, the Latin for on the same side as trans being the Latin for
• 34:20
  on the other side as. Right. I think that it's important to acknowledge that cis and trans
• 34:27
  experiences are unique and don't need to take away from the experience of the other.
• 34:33
  Right. But you're just saying exactly what J.K. Rowling says.
• 34:37
  Well, but she's using it in a way to, in a weaponized way because she understands that there's
• 34:44
  logic in that language, but then she extrapolates it further in order to take away the rights of trans people.
• 34:49
  No, I don't think she does. I mean, if you read what she says, like she really, she really does.
• 34:53
  I mean, if you actually read what she says, what she's saying is all respect to trans people,
• 34:59
  go get them. Fantastic. Do you believe that's what she means? I feel like getting into a conversation
• 35:04
  about J.K. Rowling. Well, let's put her aside and let's just ask whether or not it's a transphobic
• 35:11
  position to hold, to say trans people are absolutely entitled to all of the rights that everybody
• 35:16
  else is and we should applaud and support them. And also, it's not the same to be a trans woman as
• 35:22
  it is to be a cis woman. That's not exactly the same thing. That there are still sexual differences
• 35:26
  and all kinds of experiential differences that take place among cisgender women that are not
• 35:31
  the same as trans trans. I think the gotcha question at the political debate, for example, is always
• 35:38
  like, what's the definition of a woman? Yeah, what's the definition of a woman or like Jordan
• 35:43
  Peterson, there's BBC journalists thought that she was, you know, had a real gotcha by saying like
• 35:48
  trans women women. So like, you know, the posters on the placards in the streets are trans women
• 35:53
  are women as if to say trans women are cis women, essentially. I mean, trans women and cis women
• 35:59
  are all the same. I would disagree with that. I think that what we're actually talking about is
• 36:06
  that trans women are the trans women and cis women are both women. They're not saying trans
• 36:14
  women are cis women. I think, but everyone agrees they're both women, I mean, apart from the most
• 36:20
  radical, Jordan Peterson doesn't, JK Rowling doesn't, all the people that
• 36:23
  tend to just thinks that they're trans women. And trans women recognize that they're trans women.
• 36:30
  No trans women is out there saying, I'm a cis woman. Well, actually one that I was in the celebrity
• 36:35
  bit of the other house did try to say that. They're, they're, they do exist. I mean, also, I don't
• 36:40
  think trans women are saying we are women, but I don't think trans people trans women are saying
• 36:47
  we are cis women. I think that's true, but that's the implication when you say that if it's
• 36:53
  bigoted for you to say that there should be any carve out for cis women. In other words,
• 36:58
  when it comes to the case of, you know, does, you know, the, the, the trans woman who
• 37:04
  sues the Korean spa for not wanting to shave her balls, right? Well, this is the problem with
• 37:12
  this conversation. But hey, let's just finish that foring up because extreme, ridiculous, ridiculous,
• 37:18
  but that's how you, that's how you tease out principles. Then the conversation gets focused
• 37:23
  on these extreme alienating things when really most trans people are trying to just leave this
• 37:28
  absolutely. And they would, what I'm saying is they would be, it would be easier for them to do so
• 37:33
  where it not such a hot culture button issue. And it wouldn't be such a hot issue if they weren't
• 37:38
  these extremes. Well, yeah, because the extreme thing, I, it's a, sorry, interrupt, but it is
• 37:43
  something that gets my goat because if you've done a philosophy class, then you know that the way
• 37:48
  that you try to figure out what's right and wrong, for example, is by pushing at the extremes and
• 37:52
  going like, why can't we eat babies? Like, what's wrong with eating babies? There are a lot of
• 37:56
  babies around. Why can't we just eat lots of babies? Sam Harris gives that out that example a
• 38:01
  thing about then that why isn't why don't we talk about that more? Why don't we talk about eating
• 38:05
  babies more because it's ridiculous. If in my world we would show, well, I'd have a radio show
• 38:11
  every day called talking, eating babies with Josh Seps. When it comes to trans people, the,
• 38:16
  no, I get it. I get it. I get it. I get it. But you're sort of, you're sort of doing a, like,
• 38:21
  a what aboutism where it like, I think we do, if we're going to be generous to the trans community.
• 38:28
  And of course, you know, we're somewhat speaking out of turn because neither of us is strictly trans.
• 38:33
  But the, the, or unstrictly, or unstrictly trans either. But the, you know, you do have to deal with
• 38:40
  what's the question that I'm dodging. The question of is, if a trans woman wants to shave her
• 38:46
  balls in a Korean bathhouse. So if people don't know what we're talking about, there was a court,
• 38:51
  there was a court case in the United States where a trans woman went to a Korean spa and then
• 38:57
  they, they said that they didn't want to wax her balls and so she sued them. And they're all
• 39:03
  these, yes, that is true. And there are also cases of, you know, women, women being sexually
• 39:08
  assaulted in women's shelters, for example, because people who are ostensibly trans women,
• 39:13
  but who were sexual predators were, all that. But that's not to do with the transness. That's to
• 39:18
  do with their sexual predidiveness. Correct. But you wouldn't have someone in there who was,
• 39:24
  who had the motivations of a violent male sex offender, or a violent female sex offender.
• 39:30
  How many of those are there? Well, they exist, probably just as many as violent trans sex offender,
• 39:35
  trans women sex offenders. And that's the problem is that you can flate the conversation about these
• 39:41
  trigger topics like sex offenders, you know, trans women. This is all just building up to the actual
• 39:47
  question, which I think is the actual question that the, that the rallies and the gris are trying
• 39:51
  to sort out, which is, should there be any space for cis women? Should there be any spaces?
• 40:00
  Is it ever acceptable? Is it always bigotry for, you know, a cis woman, no matter how traumatized,
• 40:08
  no matter, no matter how much of an elite athlete or whatever, is there ever a space in which
• 40:14
  cis women can assert womanhood? I think that it's, I think I look, there's, there's, I wanted
• 40:24
  to find some things because from the public perception trans women are considered like from some
• 40:33
  people's point of view, trans women are being sort of pigeonholed. Well, what JK Rowling is doing
• 40:37
  is pigeonholing trans women as men. And so she's not, but some people are. Well, she does.
• 40:43
  She uses her argument to suggest that she uses the sex first gender argument to
• 40:52
  plant, paint the picture in the, the minds of people that trans women are just men dressed up as women.
• 41:00
  I don't think she does. I mean, point me to where she says that. Well, in her essay that she
• 41:08
  yeah, that she published after, after this whole, it originally blew up. She, um, I got,
• 41:14
  I haven't read it in ages. She definitely doesn't say anything like that they're just dressed,
• 41:17
  they're just men dressed up. She says, oh, you know, I'd probably choose to be a man if I had the
• 41:22
  choice. And she sort of conflates it to being this like whimsical choice about what gender do you
• 41:27
  want to be? And thereby suggesting that trans women are, you know, men who are just sort of
• 41:35
  choosing to be women, I think there's something if you, if she ever denies that, but there is a
• 41:39
  scale of credence that one has to apply to different claims of sexuality and gender surely. So
• 41:48
  there's the case of the person who from the age of two has always insisted that they're the opposite
• 41:53
  sex, right? That's a, that is clearly a trans person. And then are you putting, are you giving
• 41:58
  the same credence to the 16 year old autistic girl whose friends agenda non-binary who says that
• 42:03
  she's non-binary as being a fundamental attribute of her? I think what we're, character, character.
• 42:09
  I think that this conversation that we're having is the wrong conversation. Because I think what
• 42:15
  it's doing is centering these sort of more fringe or extreme ideas, which I know you say in
• 42:25
  philosophies. But like we're centering these extreme ideas, which are possibly like 1% of
• 42:33
  the experience. And we're giving them, at the moment, a lot more than 1% of the volume in the
• 42:38
  narrative and the conversation. Right, but it's also an extreme idea to a lot of people that people
• 42:42
  can be a different sex than the one that they were born. Yeah, it is. So we all have to give some
• 42:46
  credence to each other's extreme ideas to get along in a democracy. But it's also an established
• 42:51
  idea that, you know, most people in Australia, I think 78% of people surveyed by quality Australia
• 43:00
  are on board with the idea that trans people should be afforded, you know, the same rights
• 43:07
  to live and exist as other people. Like they're on board with the idea of trans people existing
• 43:15
  and being allowed to exist in public. And there's, I get frustrated only when, only because I,
• 43:24
  in the media and the news, I see so much of this conversation happening when really I think
• 43:30
  what would be much more functional is if we looked at how trans identity and even non-binary
• 43:35
  identities and queer identities can actually lift up and support women in the struggles that
• 43:42
  they face as well. Because I think that we're all fighting against the one common enemy, which is
• 43:50
  men, which is this sort of patriarchal idea of what a woman is supposed to be, what a man is
• 43:55
  supposed to be. And I think that there's something really punk and also functional in say, I mean,
• 44:01
  even like really, this is really basic, but even some of like Harry Styles wearing a dress or,
• 44:07
  you know, in my Instagram feed granted might be quite different from a lot of people's listening.
• 44:13
  But I see a lot of fluid fashion, a lot of men wearing things that would be traditionally
• 44:20
  considered for women. And I think, you know, historically look back at the 1930s and Captain
• 44:25
  Hepburn wearing trousers was, you know, groundbreaking and, and, and shocking. And in 2022,
• 44:35
  this idea of fashion being fluid is being deconstructed. And I think in doing so, when you
• 44:42
  deconstruct the expectations of gender roles in society, you also create freedom for women to,
• 44:51
  to flourish, however they feel as well. Like I think you do that for all people who are not
• 44:58
  sort of cis straight men by, well, and even cis straight men could do with a little bit of
• 45:03
  uh, well, they're more so than anybody. That's the kicker. I think rather than focusing the
• 45:08
  conversation around the extremes of trans identities, I think what I should be talking about is
• 45:12
  like the, the, the suicide rates of men, the depression rates of men are significantly higher
• 45:19
  than those of women. Like men are these, these sort of um, idealized forms of masculinity. I think
• 45:27
  are so oppressive to men. And I think that because they're um, I don't want to say that they're like
• 45:36
  these, these social ideas create a world where maybe the man, it hasn't even considered
• 45:47
  who he really is because his role is to live up to the expectation, expectation of what a man is.
• 45:52
  I mean, I guess I know that personally because I felt that pressure for a long time as a young
• 45:57
  person. But then because I was just so far left of center, I just, I was, my, my,
• 46:04
  queerness was irrepressible. Whereas I think for a lot of men who they really are versus who
• 46:13
  they've socialized to be. And I understand it's like you can't really separate the two because
• 46:17
  the, the world that we grew up in informs who we are. But I feel like there's a lot of compromises
• 46:21
  that are made. Um, and it's not that I'm calling for anarchy. Um, it's more than I'm 10% more
• 46:28
  anarchy. Yeah. Now that's anarchy. Just a little bit more anarchy. No, I mean, I can, I agree with
• 46:33
  all that. I mean, just to close the chapter on the, the what are we focusing on thing and why are
• 46:38
  we focusing on these extremes? I would just say that I completely agree that there is a,
• 46:45
  a culture of right wing rat baggery, which tries to whip up with this stuff up and like
• 46:51
  ferment it and make a mountain out of a molehill and constantly focus on these outlier
• 46:55
  experiences in order to demonize an entire community. My point is just that what often happens
• 47:01
  is you have this swinging to and fro between one, from one side to the other and each side
• 47:07
  aggravates the other so much that it brings out the worst in the other. Yeah. So it's not,
• 47:12
  I think this whole conversation about all of this nonsense about trans bathrooms and athletes
• 47:17
  and everything like that would be almost non-existent if people just listened to what
• 47:23
  JK Rowling and Tremaine Grier are actually saying and just took them at their word and if it wasn't
• 47:28
  the case that like just to give you an example of what it's like to talk about this in the in public.
• 47:32
  Yeah. I mean, I'm just going to quickly insight that I respectfully disagree with what you just
• 47:37
  said. That's fine. That's fine. But I mean, if the panel that there is so much hysteria on both
• 47:44
  sides of this, you know, there have been BBC Journalists who have been suspended for just even touching
• 47:49
  the subject, the the idea that they're, you know, the suggestions people who are murdered on
• 47:55
  the daily. Absolutely. And we don't approve those of that, do we? No. But most people do approve of,
• 47:59
  I mean, most people in polite society clearly approve of the of the approbation that that hits
• 48:06
  anyone who touches this subject because nobody is there. There's obviously everyone agrees
• 48:09
  that anyone who touches it is a transfer. Well, there's obviously like the extreme extreme,
• 48:15
  extreme, but you don't even have to respond to it. I don't want to put you on the spot here.
• 48:18
  No, I think that just to give you an example, like when the Tavistock gender clinic closed in
• 48:23
  the UK, you know, there was the usual right wing rat baggery from some areas in the Australian
• 48:29
  media, but it generally didn't get reported on at all because everybody knows that if you even
• 48:35
  talk about this, then the level of scrutiny and complaints is going to be unbearable. So I mean,
• 48:40
  I was the only person on ABC radio who did a segment about it. And I've had to waste an entire
• 48:45
  afternoon responding to editorial complaints that have come through from people who go over it
• 48:51
  with the most fine tooth comb that you could possibly apply to any half hour. I mean, the most
• 48:55
  unreasonable and ridiculous claims, but they want to, they want to increase the penalty for anyone
• 49:01
  talking about it. So that there are certain, certain subjects, certain spheres of discourse that
• 49:05
  can't take place. And I just fundamentally think that in a free society, we shouldn't be
• 49:10
  mischaracterizing each other. We should be giving each other the benefit of the doubt.
• 49:15
  And if there are some old school feminists who are so such dinosaurs that they think that
• 49:19
  there's something unique about growing up as a girl and that that's relevant to womanhood,
• 49:23
  they deserve a seat at the table and they don't deserve to be handed out of polite society.
• 49:28
  I agree with what you've just said, but I think that the way you apply what you've just said to
• 49:36
  the extreme sort of, I don't know what the right word is, to describe the small but extremely mighty
• 49:50
  the sort of sensorious wing of the gender critical theory movement.
• 49:54
  Yeah, I think that again, when you talk about the the the sensory wing of the gender
• 50:02
  no, the sensory wing of the as it hang on, I'm talking about the you're talking about the
• 50:08
  righties or the lefties. Yeah, the lefties, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's the extreme lefties and I think
• 50:15
  what happens is then you then sort of suggest that all trans people are unreasonable. No, no, no,
• 50:23
  not at all. They most trans people don't agree with them in the same way that most people of color
• 50:27
  don't agree with the white university educated worksters who are pushing a whole bunch of ideas
• 50:32
  about them as well. It's a very paternalistic university educated kind of theoretical theory
• 50:38
  obsessed clique. It's nothing to do with the lives of real trans people. I think you have to look
• 50:42
  at like both sides of the argument, right? Like what is it that motivates the let's say transphobes
• 50:49
  and what is it that motivates the people with the extreme defense on the other side? And
• 50:55
  historically, we're talking about people who are extremely oppressed when we're talking about
• 51:00
  trans people. You know, like you said, they've only recently been able to sort of exist in
• 51:05
  society. And there's a lot more visibility now, which is wonderful, but visibility without
• 51:11
  protection is a trap. And you're talking about people who live in exist on the margins and have
• 51:20
  had to fight and struggle for their identity. And I don't agree with the way that they go about
• 51:26
  things, but you can see that so much of their identity is is defensive and wrapped up in and I
• 51:33
  don't agree with like there's these extreme ideological sort of ideas where the people get torn
• 51:38
  down for and I do think that we need to have a level of common sense when it comes to what we are
• 51:45
  willing and not willing to accept. And I feel like we're in this sort of maybe not infancy,
• 51:52
  maybe like adolescence of conversation about trans identity. And I think like some of these
• 52:00
  ridiculous arguments that we all sort of like inverted commas, sane people look out and say
• 52:04
  that's ridiculous. Why is this person being criticized for that? Why is this journalist being
• 52:09
  criticized for that? I think we need to have more nuance and understanding of those issues. And
• 52:14
  sometimes it's okay to say, well actually this is where I am drawing a line. As long as the
• 52:19
  motivation of that person comes from a place of understanding what they're actually talking about.
• 52:27
  Now I would say when I read the JK Rowling essay and also read some critiques of it and some
• 52:33
  support of it, I thought that she was using her skills as an author, as a writer, to construct
• 52:43
  this very seemingly sensible and logical idea that when you read it, it seems very reasonable and
• 52:53
  you're like, yes, yes, that makes perfect sense. But I think when you then look at it with some
• 52:59
  empathy through the eyes of the trans community, I'm not saying that that extreme ridiculous
• 53:05
  response is what's required. But I think it is a lot more nuanced than, oh no, JK Rowling agrees
• 53:11
  with trans people and thinks that they should exist. She just has a few of these disagreements.
• 53:15
  I think there's something a lot more insidious in JK Rowling's writings and opinions that
• 53:23
  are sort of like dog whistling. Maybe we can't get inside her head, can we? But I don't think she
• 53:30
  was like lying awake nights thinking about this until she's writing. Do you know what I mean?
• 53:37
  There's an obsession. A weird obsession here. It comes back to the two and throw and two and
• 53:41
  throw. It comes back to Florida passing. Florida wouldn't need to pass a law or telling schools not
• 53:48
  to teach five-year-olds about gender theory. I think that JK Rowling really feels like her
• 53:54
  rights as a woman are being encroached in a real-world way. I feel like she sees a trend towards
• 54:00
  demonizing anybody who defends the right of cis women and as being a bigot and she's worried
• 54:06
  that that's going to mean an end to feminism as she understands it. I think you can defend the right
• 54:10
  to cis women and understand the nuances of trans women without they're not mutually exclusive.
• 54:20
  You don't have to think she's doing that. I think she does. I think she's doing that.
• 54:23
  Anyway, who does? I wonder if she does or I wonder if there's something else that is
• 54:33
  wrapped up in the art? I can tell you from my personal experience. When I am told that a certain
• 54:40
  conversation is forbidden and that I'm not allowed to make sense about something. I'm not allowed
• 54:45
  to speak plainly and rationally and honestly about something because it might hurt somebody's
• 54:50
  opinions, then I dig in. Yeah, but I think that that's... So I wouldn't she? I think that when you're
• 54:56
  told that, it's, I guess as a journalist, it's in I think that it's incumbent of you to
• 55:04
  understand both sides of the argument and then deliver what is the thing that makes sense,
• 55:12
  which is what you're saying you want to do, which makes sense to me. But I think that perhaps
• 55:18
  sometimes we... I think it comes back to a level of empathy and I remember growing up,
• 55:27
  I remember questioning my gender identity and thinking, am I trans? I do drag. I present very
• 55:32
  femininally. I enjoy everything that goes with femininity. When I'm dressed as Courtney,
• 55:39
  I find it easier to engage socially. There was all of these things that I was like,
• 55:45
  oh, I don't know. And then there was also... And I lived in like a binary world. You're either a man,
• 55:53
  which I didn't really feel like all of the things that I was were a man. I was like, well,
• 55:59
  not really a man, am I? And I was like, well, therefore, I must be a woman. And so for a long time,
• 56:04
  my confusion came because of this binary idea of gender. Am I a man? No. Only other option is
• 56:11
  woman. Right. And then I felt really conflicted about my gender for a long time because I was like,
• 56:15
  I don't think I am a woman, but it's the only option. I'm really confused. And I was... Is this
• 56:21
  while you were doing drag? Yeah, this was like 2000 and I was living in LA like 2012, 2013. Actually,
• 56:30
  no, 2014 I remember deciding to go there in my brain because I grew up in a transphobic society.
• 56:39
  And I took on all of that socialized idea about trans people. And I didn't want that for myself.
• 56:47
  And so I was too afraid to consider if I was trans or not because I didn't want to be trans because
• 56:53
  I thought that was less than. And it wasn't until the conversation. It was 2014. It wasn't until
• 57:00
  the conversation about trans people started picking up some pace in the media. I remember Leverne Cox
• 57:05
  on Katie Kurek schooling her about why it wasn't appropriate to ask a trans woman about her genitals.
• 57:10
  I remember Janet Mock on Piers Morgan talking about sort of similar misgendering and sensationalizing
• 57:19
  of her identity saying like, Bonne Mann, you know, up next, Janet Mock, Bonne Mann and things like
• 57:25
  that. And then her coming back on the show to sort of school Piers Morgan. And I remember the first time
• 57:30
  being like, oh, trans people have a right to be respected. Like these two women have asserted
• 57:38
  themselves in the face of, you know, Piers Morgan and Katie Kurek and into the world to say like,
• 57:45
  no, no, we're not just going to sit here and be folly for your sensationalization.
• 57:52
  We're sensationalization. We're actually asserting ourselves and we're holding our own space
• 57:59
  in society now. And I remember feeling like wildly empowered by that and other conversations
• 58:05
  that were happening other books and memoirs that I read of trans people. I now had a esteemed
• 58:11
  enough opinion of trans people to think, oh, if I am trans, maybe that's not such a horrible thing
• 58:20
  because I can see that trans people are valuable and are worthy. And then I examined, I had the
• 58:25
  courage to examine, ask myself the real question, am I trans? Because for so long, I just didn't want
• 58:30
  to look. It was just like, and I sort of played around with those ideas socially. And I just didn't
• 58:37
  know the answer. And I called my best friend, Vanity Insidney. And I was like, I don't know what I'm
• 58:44
  going to say, but I just need you to listen. And I started talking with the comfort and safety of
• 58:50
  a friend who I knew probably shared my experience and wouldn't judge me either way. And I got to
• 58:56
  the end of the conversation. I was like, I'm not trans. I don't want to be a woman. I love being a
• 59:03
  girl. I love femininity. I love all of those things. But I don't want to be a girl or live as a woman
• 59:09
  or anything like that. I understood that I didn't have any dysphoria about my body. But I still
• 59:15
  what clicked in that conversation that led you to that? It was the strength that I had to actually
• 59:19
  ask the question. Because for so long, I just had blinders on. And I was like, I don't want to look
• 59:24
  because I'm scared of the answer. And then when I did look, I was like, oh, actually, I can see a
• 59:31
  world where I'm not a trans woman. I don't know if I'm a man, but I don't know what I am, but maybe
• 59:39
  that's okay for now. And then a little while later, through my friendship with Chaz Bono, who is a
• 59:45
  trans man who happens to be Chaz son, he and I were having this conversation. And he said to me,
• 59:52
  you know, have you ever heard of the term gender fluid? And I was like, no, what's that? He's like,
• 59:55
  it's just this idea that it's okay for boys to be feminine and girls to be masculine. And I was
• 1:00:00
  like, that honestly in 2014, that was revelatory. I was like, fuck, really? I just, I had never thought
• 1:00:07
  that sounds so dumb saying it now, but I just never thought that it was okay for boys to be
• 1:00:11
  feminine. I always was failing at being masculine consistently, but I was always trying. I was
• 1:00:18
  always trying my hardest to be masculine even even I was failing at it. And so that was a real
• 1:00:26
  important sort of aha moment for me. And the thing that was interesting was that I would often ask
• 1:00:33
  trans people, I've done like a few interviews and things and I asked this question to a couple
• 1:00:38
  of trans people in trusted moments where I said, do you think that one day in society,
• 1:00:43
  people will fall comfortable enough with gender and sexuality and identity and fashion and
• 1:00:49
  everything that trans people won't need to, you know, undergo medical transitions and we'll just
• 1:00:54
  be able to like live as is in society. And I asked that question to Chaz and he said, no, absolutely
• 1:01:00
  not. He said for him, his top surgery was absolutely integral to who he is. And historically when I
• 1:01:09
  had asked that question to trans women that I knew, they had grown up in an era where, you know,
• 1:01:15
  in the 60s, 70s, 80s, like the only option 90s up until the last sort of 10 years, the only
• 1:01:21
  options a trans woman really had when it came to employment making living were like a showgirl
• 1:01:27
  or sex work. Like you couldn't just get a job as a trans woman in an office. Like it was very
• 1:01:32
  uncommon. And when you think about like ever from the moment a trans woman walks out the front door
• 1:01:39
  in the morning, she's getting looks and being gawked at and and, you know, all of those sorts of
• 1:01:45
  things, which is why there was such an imperative placed on, you know, looking on passing, passing,
• 1:01:50
  which is a term sort of a data term, meaning the sort of imposition of a trans woman to be able to
• 1:01:54
  pass in society as a cis woman was about. Yeah, people didn't know that you were trans.
• 1:01:57
  You've got a much easier right, which makes sense. And so talking to chats about trans people,
• 1:02:03
  I was like, yeah, but don't you say, no, no, I think that I can exist in society without
• 1:02:09
  surgery or without transitioning. And I can just feel comfortable in my femininity because
• 1:02:14
  I'm not trans. And it was a real aha moment. It may have been the first time that I actually
• 1:02:19
  experienced real empathy in my life where I was able to put aside my lens of understanding and how
• 1:02:24
  I had translated my experience onto trans people. And I had thought for the longest time, oh yeah,
• 1:02:30
  I just made a better choice than you. Like I could have been trans, but I actually just chose
• 1:02:36
  this because of whatever reason. And that's where I realized, no, that is not correct. There are
• 1:02:42
  people who are trans. And they are not me and they are different from me. And listening to someone
• 1:02:51
  and believing someone was so important in me having empathy. And as close to I as close to
• 1:02:58
  the trans community as I have been and or maybe even like I visually present like a woman sometimes,
• 1:03:04
  I still was so far away. World's away in my actual ability to be empathetic to their experience.
• 1:03:11
  And so I just think that perhaps there is maybe a lack of understanding sometimes where
• 1:03:21
  people assumed to understand the trans experience. And these conversations that happen in the
• 1:03:26
  public sphere are based on so much like assumed knowledge that really no one who's listening,
• 1:03:32
  like everyone's just trying to go through. Like like the the rights of trans people
• 1:03:37
  don't affect nearly everyone except for the trans people that they really affect. And I feel like
• 1:03:47
  being more focused on the upliftment of this really marginalized section of our community
• 1:03:53
  is more important than not women's rights at all. I think that they can work in tandem. And I
• 1:04:02
  think that if there was some real conversation in the middle, like if we all took off our armor
• 1:04:11
  and we walked towards the middle rather than yelling from each side of the room.
• 1:04:14
  You mean like if we had uncomfortable conversations with comfortable conversations?
• 1:04:19
  I mean I think everyone would agree almost almost every reasonable person would agree with your
• 1:04:25
  depiction of chance there. And that lovely anecdote about your empathic the empathic leap
• 1:04:31
  that you were able to make in understanding that this is not something that people do frivolously,
• 1:04:36
  that this is something, this is the way that they are born. Almost everyone would agree with that.
• 1:04:40
  The flip side is it's also the case that at the moment in a confusing gender environment,
• 1:04:49
  it's conceivable that there are a few cases of teenagers who are who feel like they don't conform
• 1:04:55
  to the stereotype who feel like you did right when you were saying I don't feel like a man.
• 1:05:00
  I mean I know gay guys who are quite open about the fact that if they were you know if they were
• 1:05:05
  12 in 2022 instead of in 1995, they probably maybe would be considering being trans or would be
• 1:05:18
  at least considering coming out as gender non-binary or something like that. And so the difference in
• 1:05:23
  the discourse is that even the quote unquote anti-trans person will I think agree with you that the
• 1:05:30
  chances of the world exist. But on the other side, the sensorious gender activist will not agree
• 1:05:38
  that the 12 year old who could potentially go the other way exists because if you say that
• 1:05:43
  that person exists, then you have the blood of transgender children on your hands.
• 1:05:47
  Well, I think that it's important to acknowledge what you said that some people
• 1:05:53
  when they grew up, if they grew up in 2022 that they might have chosen a different, you know,
• 1:05:59
  gender expression or path of themselves, there's nothing wrong with that.
• 1:06:02
  No. And in fact, having more conversations, I don't know whether you were hinting at sort of like
• 1:06:09
  mistaken people like the transitioners and so on.
• 1:06:13
  Well, or, you know, people who didn't get there, I don't know if you were hinting at like the fact
• 1:06:16
  that like maybe some kids are getting swept up in the conversation, but I think that what actually
• 1:06:22
  will be a solution to that is more conversation, not less conversation. Yes.
• 1:06:27
  And so for me, it was having these other different stories and more examples. And I guess
• 1:06:32
  thankfully a supportive environment and critical thinking and I'm very curious about stuff.
• 1:06:36
  So I'm always trying to understand. And I think that having yet more examples was something
• 1:06:45
  that helped me understand who I was rather than sort of like stifling the conversation.
• 1:06:50
  Yeah, I mean, what do you think then gender is going to be in the future? I mean, you said like,
• 1:06:55
  you know, clearly, so jazz thinks that in the future, let's, I don't even know how to tease apart
• 1:07:04
  the trans community into its various, into its like disaggregate it from its different
• 1:07:10
  communities without sounding like I'm finishing some of the people. But let's say that you're a
• 1:07:16
  binary transition. So you've been a binary trans, you've been a binary trans person since,
• 1:07:23
  you know, you're an infinite infant, right? Let's talk about that as, you know, trans 1.0.
• 1:07:29
  This is like a real coke. The Kinsey scale. Yeah, yeah, right, right, a bit of gender.
• 1:07:34
  So at the extreme end, you've got people who basically from the earliest time in their life,
• 1:07:39
  they feel like they are the opposite sex than the one that they were assigned at birth. And
• 1:07:44
  they transition as quickly as possible. And that basically fixes everything. And they would
• 1:07:48
  lead miserable lives if you forced them to lead to, you know, to perform as the sex that they
• 1:07:56
  were assigned at birth. And then at the other end, you've got, I suppose at the other end,
• 1:08:02
  do we also have binary people who are cis? Yeah, yeah. And somewhere in the middle, we've got,
• 1:08:09
  well, where are you? I'm probably like on the cis man side, but probably closer to the middle,
• 1:08:19
  then I won't, I won't project my assumptions of your gender. But like if I'm just drawing a
• 1:08:25
  scale here, if I go like a Kinsey scale from zero to six, zero is, isn't it seven? Not zero to six.
• 1:08:32
  Is it zero is exclusively heterosexual, six is exclusively homosexual. Okay. And then three,
• 1:08:39
  trust shame on this one. Yeah, because then it's like three is the middle. Okay. And then you've
• 1:08:45
  got zero, one, two, and then four, five, six has been that. So if we do it the same for gender,
• 1:08:50
  rather than cis and trans, there's this like man and woman. And I would say, well, see,
• 1:08:57
  it's very, see, I just wrote man on the zero. Like there was a assumption that we're talking about
• 1:09:03
  people who are assigned male. Well, no, because I put woman at the other end. So I'm going to put
• 1:09:08
  woman at zero and I'm going to put man at cis. So egalitarian. Well, but wait a second. You got
• 1:09:13
  to be now this is now this is now you're doing my hidden because are we talking about male versus
• 1:09:17
  female or are we talking about cis versus trans? Well, when I'm talking about here is where what is
• 1:09:21
  my gender identity? Right. And if I put it on like let's let's then say feminine to masculine.
• 1:09:27
  Yes. Woman to man. Yes. I would say that I'm like a four. So I'm I'm mostly mostly man, but
• 1:09:35
  definitely with a little bit of woman. I don't think I'm in the middle and I don't think I'm on
• 1:09:39
  the other side of the middle and come on the man side of the middle. Right. And so then the
• 1:09:43
  question becomes in the future, if the chas bonos are always, you know, they are never going to
• 1:09:49
  find fulfillment unless they are unless they find their gender self expression in a different sex
• 1:09:56
  than the one that they were assigned when they were born. So that means that that's always going
• 1:09:59
  to happen. We don't want to erase that identity because their identity is precisely to inhabit
• 1:10:07
  the binary of male and female. Yeah, because there's an experience of dysphoria that occurs with
• 1:10:11
  that body. At the same time, we've also got this gender fluid type thing going on, which questions
• 1:10:19
  the very existence really of sex and gender binaries in that way. Sort of like the bisexual question
• 1:10:25
  earlier. That's right. It undermines this idea of biological imperatives. But then so then the
• 1:10:30
  worry would be wouldn't it from both conservative cis transphobes and also from binary transgender
• 1:10:43
  chas bonos that if the gender fluid people win, you lose your team. I mean, you sort of undermining
• 1:10:52
  what makes a trans person trans. Because you're framing the argument incorrectly, I believe.
• 1:10:58
  I believe it is this just an analogy to the one that you were making earlier about gay and
• 1:11:02
  straight and like bisexuality sort of but it's not to suggest that straight and gay people don't
• 1:11:08
  exist. It's just to suggest that perhaps the the straight people, hundred percent straight people,
• 1:11:16
  hundred percent gay people exist. And then there's people who fall on the spectrum of sexuality in
• 1:11:22
  the middle and they're not they don't invalidate the existence of the other. Each person's individual
• 1:11:27
  experiences, what their individual experiences. So bisexuality doesn't erase homosexuality and
• 1:11:34
  heterosexuality. So just as gender fluidity and people of varying gender identities doesn't
• 1:11:41
  invalidate the experience of a binary trans person or a binary cis person. They don't invalidate.
• 1:11:47
  It sort of complicates it doesn't it? I mean bisexuality does because aren't we basically like
• 1:11:51
  if you're like me and you think there's something wrong with being gay or something wrong with being
• 1:11:55
  trans. Because no, but if I mean if you're if like me you think that everyone is sort of on a
• 1:12:02
  sexuality spectrum and that I don't even really know what you mean when you say that there are some
• 1:12:06
  people who are absolutely straight. There are certain people who've only ever had straight
• 1:12:10
  experiences. But like going back to the Hillary Clinton versus Harry Styles or all sex thought
• 1:12:17
  experiment. I suppose there are some people who who would always be more repulsed.
• 1:12:24
  Well, it was like guns here. They probably take the bullet. But like, but I think that like you're
• 1:12:29
  also on an uneven playing field when you're which is the point. But like yeah, that's the whole
• 1:12:33
  that's the whole game. Right. That's the extreme example. It was like you're going to be killed if
• 1:12:38
  you don't do one of these things. Yeah, that's right. It's already absurd just to point out. I know
• 1:12:42
  who is staging this experiment. You are. You're the one. I'm going to have to have like a bunker in
• 1:12:48
  my basement where I get people. No, but who's more than 10% Anarchy. I can see what's going on here.
• 1:12:53
  I want about a good 12 and a half percent energy in my world. No, but you know, that does that does
• 1:13:00
  a road to the confidence that we can have in there being gay people and straight people.
• 1:13:04
  Well, it doesn't because you can just believe people see what the real problem is.
• 1:13:09
  Leave people. No, but that's the problem because we can't believe people in the concert. We
• 1:13:13
  can't believe straight people in the construct of the world that we live in because they haven't had
• 1:13:19
  to question their sexuality like gay people have. And so it is possible for an inner world where
• 1:13:27
  being gay is seen as less than there are straight people who are remaining in the closet. And so
• 1:13:31
  when the closet exists, then you can't believe in air quotes people when they talk about the sexuality
• 1:13:38
  because there's there's motivations for them to not tell you the truth. There's also the thing
• 1:13:43
  that the socialized ideals actually do lead to behavior. So there's a lot of people. I wasn't
• 1:13:48
  honestly. I didn't realize that I liked guys until I was 18. Yes, I remember masturbating
• 1:13:54
  over Leonardo DiCaprio. And I remember I asked a ball diaries Leonardo DiCaprio.
• 1:13:59
  Was this Titanic? Yeah. Well, I remember thinking that, okay, this is I remember thinking that my
• 1:14:05
  mum might be able to read my mind. Right. And so and I assumed that when I was ejaculating,
• 1:14:12
  my thoughts would be at their loudest. Right. So I would masturbate about Leo and then I quickly
• 1:14:17
  switched to thinking about a girl. I'm 14 at this stage. I quickly switched to a girl as I was
• 1:14:21
  ejaculating, thinking that I would throw my mum off the mental mind reading. But the point
• 1:14:28
  to that is is that I went the first 18 years of my life because I didn't because of the world
• 1:14:32
  that I grew up in without having the language to understand that I was gay, even though it was
• 1:14:36
  obvious that I was. So there's a lot of, I'm reading, have you had red, white and royal blue?
• 1:14:41
  No, but Sean has my partner. It's so cute. He loves it. He's got a little bit of a
• 1:14:45
  star ball without giving too much away. One of the characters sort of describes how they
• 1:14:51
  lived most of their life without understanding their sexuality as being bisexual because they
• 1:14:58
  could be attracted to women. And that was enough. But actually, there was this other world where
• 1:15:05
  you could be attracted to men and women and be functionally bisexual.
• 1:15:11
  So you've heard Peter Allen's song by coastal. Yeah. Yeah. You're reminding me of that.
• 1:15:16
  Both coast to so much fun. Yeah. Why do you have to pick one? Yeah. But I think that when it comes
• 1:15:22
  to the idea of gender fluidity, it does not invalidate a binary trans person's existence or any
• 1:15:27
  other person's existence. I think it just, but not in valid days too. You're setting the bar too high.
• 1:15:32
  Okay. You're making the straw man. So I think for me, let's just talk about personal experience
• 1:15:38
  rather than theory. Right. When I was in my teens, the I thought that gay people had a very particular
• 1:15:47
  fashion and a very particular politics and a particular attitude towards sex, which was very
• 1:15:52
  libertine and that they they dressed a certain way and spoke a certain way like me and walked
• 1:15:58
  you thought gay people like me and you're like, I was fabulous as you. Yeah. And that didn't see
• 1:16:06
  them. And that because I it not only didn't I didn't object to it, it just didn't fit fit me. And
• 1:16:14
  so because I wasn't that, then I concluded that presumably everybody has the same internal
• 1:16:23
  hardwiring as I do and finds charming people charming and attractive people attractive. I mean,
• 1:16:28
  just look at the catwalks of Paris and Milan where there are obviously really hot young look at
• 1:16:33
  the look at the Abercrombie and Fitch ads that young that ended up. That young that are you
• 1:16:40
  this is company spend billions of dollars winning over young men by showing them images of sexy young
• 1:16:48
  men. So to me, I just thought as I was going through puberty, obviously everybody loves everybody
• 1:16:54
  everybody and can be turned on by everybody. But due to the fact that we live in this particular
• 1:16:59
  culture, you you marry the opposite sex. And unless you also really like going down Oxford
• 1:17:06
  Street on top of an inflatable penis and wearing sequins and arseless chaps, in which case you go
• 1:17:11
  with the same sex. Well, that was correct at that in the 90s. Yeah. And that was so because there
• 1:17:16
  was only one story. That's right. But so that's the story that gets undermined by bisexuality
• 1:17:21
  and bisexual fluidity. So the story of my story and I suspect the story potentially of many people
• 1:17:29
  is that like I was sufficiently intellectually curious and also contrarian and like keen to buck
• 1:17:36
  every cultural convention that I could possibly find that I was pretty eager and enthusiastic
• 1:17:45
  about doing the forbidden. And that didn't mean anything to me that I never had a conception about
• 1:17:51
  being in the closet because I didn't even realize what I was right because I wasn't part of the
• 1:17:56
  binary. Now, if the if lots, lots more people in high school can date someone of the same sex
• 1:18:04
  and then date someone of the opposite sex and then date someone of the same sex again without
• 1:18:08
  opening up a whole pandora's box of what that means about their identity, I think that will be a
• 1:18:13
  good thing for human flourishing. Yeah. And a bad thing for the labels of gay and straight. See,
• 1:18:19
  I don't know because I think that'll always exist. I don't think that 100% of the population is
• 1:18:25
  bisexual. I think that, you know, gay and straight, sorry, if gay and straight are currently 98%
• 1:18:33
  of the population with like 2% bisexual. Well, actually, no, because bisexual people make up the
• 1:18:39
  largest percentage of the LGBT community, but at the least represented. So when you look at the
• 1:18:45
  people who identify as bisexual, there's more of them than the L's and the G's. Okay, but let me
• 1:18:51
  grant you that. Okay. Let's suppose that it's what six percent by and five percent and four
• 1:18:56
  percent. Yeah, or something. Just making up numbers. Yeah, we're making this up. But if your
• 1:19:00
  conception of the way that culture is put together and humankind is put together is 90% straight,
• 1:19:06
  four percent gay and six percent by. And then you go from six percent by to 60% by. You've lost a
• 1:19:13
  bunch of like straights and gays have lost out. They weren't straight. No, I know. But the idea,
• 1:19:19
  that's right. Exactly. That's great. I'm saying bring it on. I'm just saying let's not pretend
• 1:19:24
  that it doesn't also undermine the binary. Well, it, the binary, well, it undermines the
• 1:19:30
  binary in so much as it's no longer a binary. Yes. And I believe that that's, I believe, I don't
• 1:19:36
  know what the numbers are because we don't live in a world where people are able to just be
• 1:19:40
  either upfront about it, up front either to themselves or to the outside world. But I think,
• 1:19:45
  yes, it does disrupt the binary of sexuality because the binary of sexuality isn't real. So it
• 1:19:51
  often people live their lives thinking that there's something wrong with them. But actually,
• 1:19:55
  it's the system that's broken. It's the binary that's broken. And I would argue that that
• 1:19:59
  is the same for the gender binary as well. But then you'll see there's all these questions in the
• 1:20:03
  gender binary of like what is gender? Like it's not just as reductive as like men's clothes and
• 1:20:10
  women's clothes. And so there's all of these. I mean, what do you think it is? You're someone
• 1:20:15
  who's been his life playing around with it. Yeah. I mean, for me, I think that I, even when I
• 1:20:23
  like was like, oh, gender fluid, that feels fun. And then I was like, oh, no, I'm not, maybe I'm
• 1:20:27
  not gender fluid enough or like, and then I was like, oh, I've gotten to this point now where all
• 1:20:34
  of these labels gay man, you know, pan by gender fluid, they all were like sign posts that were
• 1:20:46
  helping me find the street that I lived on. And then I was on the street and I had to work out which
• 1:20:53
  house was mine. And then when I found my house, which was sort of the best examples of the labels
• 1:20:59
  that suited me, I then got to decorate my house and paint it whatever a color I wanted and make it
• 1:21:06
  mine. And that's where I have sort of gotten to now where I'm like, oh, yeah, like labels like
• 1:21:11
  pansexual and gender fluid really helped me to connect with the best label for me. But ultimately,
• 1:21:19
  now those labels don't mean anything to me because I'm just me. And so when it comes to my gender,
• 1:21:26
  it almost feels like a redundant question because I am me. But that's also like such a privilege
• 1:21:35
  to be able to do that. Like I live in a world like I'm a drag queen on the television who gets the
• 1:21:40
  flounce around and do what they want and people love that for most people still living in, you know,
• 1:21:46
  suburbia for a kid to just flounce around like I do would cop a lot of flack would require a whole
• 1:21:52
  lot of uncomfortable conversations with a whole lot of people because we still view
• 1:21:58
  there something as less than as and quite often it comes to femininity being seen as less than.
• 1:22:05
  And I and you know as gay or attracted to men taking them up the arse, like all of these things
• 1:22:12
  are seen as less than. And so that's why that original idea that I talked about, you know,
• 1:22:17
  for men to prove their sexuality, it's the idea that it needs to be proved in the first place.
• 1:22:22
  And I think in a lovely future world, nobody needs to prove their gender or their sexuality,
• 1:22:30
  they just get to exist as who they are. And there are lots of examples, there are lots of stories
• 1:22:36
  that are told of different genders and different sexuality so that people can see themselves reflected
• 1:22:42
  back and understand who they are in relation to all of these stories and then find their house
• 1:22:47
  and decorate it however they want. On that optimistic note of the future, I will thank you
• 1:22:53
  for your time. Where can people follow you and how can people get you and what should they read?
• 1:22:58
  At Courtney Act on the Instagram, I mean, I'd say that I'm on the TikTok but I'm just pretending.
• 1:23:04
  I post things on there but I'm just trying to stay culturally relevant.
• 1:23:08
  I feel like I missed the boat on that one. I feel like I can't at this stage of my career be
• 1:23:13
  on TikTok. Which is pretty pathetic. I'm going to pay someone young to TikTok for me.
• 1:23:20
  And then will they just run around behind you taking videos of you? That's my hope.
• 1:23:24
  Yeah. I'll do it. No, you're not young. I'm sorry, I thought you were.
• 1:23:28
  You just said you missed the boat on TikTok. I'm not entrusting you to my TikTok.
• 1:23:31
  That's a very good point. I'm rather busy. I have quite a lot going on.
• 1:23:36
  But what can they read? Or they can read my book, Caught in the Act? They can read your book.
• 1:23:39
  It's excellent. It's fascinating. Caught in the Act and they can read your wonderful Instagram posts.
• 1:23:44
  Thank you Shane. I know it's not always easy walking into the lion's den and I just
• 1:23:49
  never know that we were going to be so hard. That's right, exactly. But I appreciate you for it.
• 1:23:55
  And I love hearing your ideas. Thank you. Nice to see you. See you.