award winners as well as msnbc's chris hayes. if this is a topic that interests you, go to our website at booktv.org and in the search by typing racerelationsbook and you can find an archive offers and materials. these are available to watch online. coverage of last week's baltimore book festival, laura jacobs offers her thoughts on misconceptions about transgender and non-conforming people. >> backup here again, much louder this time, the baltimore book festival, welcome to the radical book fair pavilion. this is an event we have been organizing for close to ten years and every year we bring the best to the baltimore book

festival, and in the festival, and thinking in different ways beautiful program of events, super thrilled, and do the intro for that, cool. this event is organized, in the corner of north and maryland, and check us out at any time, great coffee and great events. in all the speaker books we are hosting on stage here so we encourage you to check it out and ask questions. i will turn the microphone to monica from the baltimore

transgender alliance. welcome monica to the stage. [applause] >> still here, goodness. they moved away from mount vernon, i didn't realize it had grown so much. for those who don't know about the baltimore transgender alliance, we are an organization with an idea about becoming more politically significant in baltimore to an organization that sponsored several rallies,

had meetings with three police commissioners and actively working the way baltimore engages with the transgender -- a little bit of history, we have been in existence since 2013, the transgender alliance started with an idea, a woman who currently pursuing her doctorate in law and policy, she is a 28-year-old african-american transgender woman. at the time she was a 20-year-old, and actually working there, would be here. forming a coalition of organizations and individuals to increase power invoices in the

city. it is easy to ignore us, personally through the years, raised my voice in the city, listening to us and our issues in our needs and all kinds of promises broken going to annapolis, special needs and said to them we have special needs, some things people don't understand, people don't understand why it is not a threat to be in a woman's bathroom. the only thing i want to do is use the bathroom. things like that people haven't been able to wrap their heads around. people can't wrap their heads around how somehow my gender variance doesn't make me a

threat in the bathroom but i do the same things in the bathroom anybody else goes to the bathroom to do. they needed to take action and focus political energy and make a difference in the city so the baltimore transgender alliance is a coalition of organizations and individuals. we need to respond to violence against transgender women especially transgender women of color in the city. while we were formulating this idea three transgender women were murdered in the first year while people were formulating this idea. the baltimore trends uprising, the uprising was in the planning stages when freddie gray was murdered, we needed to have more

urgency around this action. one thing that happened, one woman who was murdered sort of disappeared, maia hall, we heard a little bit about what happened, two others were in a joyride outside fort meade, someone was killed and she had a history of drug abuse, yes. the story went away. what we decide it is we can't let narratives like this die. we decided the community needs to take our place, by baltimore trends alliance in baltimore, there was a course in baltimore, policing justice and misconduct

and human rights in baltimore and adjust the quality and so we are here to stay, we are here for the long haul. all of you will become what we call co-conspirators. allies a little weak, we need co-conspirators and people to do action with us because we are all in it together. anybody's injustice against everybody. [applause] >> it hasn't gotten too warm yet but glad you are here. thanks for the introduction which gives us an important sense of what is going on in the community is why some of these issues are so relevant and so important. my name is laura jacobs, one of

the co-authors of the book "you're in the wrong bathroom". that is how you're supposed to pronounce it. it is not "you're in the wrong bathroom" but "you're in the wrong bathroom". thanks for coming out. i will introduce myself and we will get going from there and hopefully this will be drafted so you can't just sit there, you have to talk, sorry. those of you who just want to sit, sorry. my name is laura jacobs. by day i'm a psychotherapist meaning i sit in an office and talk to people. most of my clients are trends of some variety or another, probably two thirds. i see trends people through adolescence and adulthood so i feel a wide range of people. outside of that, when i'm not by day working as a therapist, i am the chair of the board for the community health center in new york city. i don't know if anybody knows

that here, and lgbt health centers that started almost 50 years ago right after stonewall, and provides services to the lgbt community regardless of ability to pay. if you have no money, you are uninsured or undocumented you can come in and get good high-quality care and that is part of our mission in new york. we are making sure everybody from somebody like me to some homeless street person who may be walking the streets because they don't have any alternatives is getting good health care. i do a lot of public speaking and i am trying to be a pain in the ass to the authorities. i should also say i identify as transgender myself. i like to play with gender, mess with gender, be provocative, throw gender norms in people's faces, not usually when it is

this hot but we are i think this book was timely because we are seeing so much more about transgender issues, they are almost everywhere, people are talking about it as the person who introduced me, trends in the military, trends people in schools and so on. getting public debate in the way they never were before. 20 years ago, talking about transgender issues, this is a very stigmatized marginalized thing, nobody felt they knew anybody trends so there was not conversation about it and now that it is in the public eye they seem to be talking about trends issues and everybody seems to know an adolescent coming out, your child, niece, nephew, whatever, somebody you

know at school, there coming out younger than they did in my generation so things are very different. but we are seeing a lot, when you watch the news and you see people talking about trends issues you are hearing a lot of different sides of the story, what are people hearing in the media about trends in the military? what kinds of stories are you hearing, narratives, what are people saying in the military? anybody brave enough to volunteer? [inaudible conversations] >> trends people will mess with military cohesion. it is going to be expensive to have trends people in the military because of health care costs, nobody wants to serve

with trans people, it will weaken our military. on the other side you are hearing trends people and a lot of military leaders saying trans people serve pretty well, we are happy with them and it will cost for zillion dollars to get of them and retrain a bunch of people and we don't want to do that. you are hearing information and contrary information, what is real and what is not, what is misinformation or outdated information, somebody say something and so on, it feels like the time is right to write a book that brought up a bunch of issues that might be true and to spend time debunking the ones that were missed.

people need real information. if there are more trends people in the world they got to know where to get the real information and what the real information is if their family members are out there, they need to counter some of the negative and deliberately misrepresentations or attempt to manipulate. that is a huge part of why we wrote this book, not just for trends people but allies and educators, people in schools who work with trans youth or practitioners, mental health people, doctors and so on so they could provide better care. so i don't want to talk much about that but i want to bring up the myths that are in the book and also want to solicit miss some of you may have heard out there and we could spend a few minutes talking about it. does that sound reasonable? the first myth i was going to

bring up with the idea that trans people all want to be barbie or can. people heard this, can anybody tell me what that is about what that means or what you think when you hear that kind of thing? in the back. if i can paraphrase, the most important thing about trends people, what they hear about trends people, passing is a word that means being able to live as the gender you want to live without anybody noticing, walking down the street, by a pizza of pizza and not get harassed because people think you look like a guy in the dress or something else like that.

that used to be one of the criteria to get service. years ago if you didn't pass, the doctors that control who had access to medical services, 50 years ago, 60 years ago, you could only get trends services through a big institution. people who needed to change their gender would go to these places, they have rich criteria. and have access to these services. if you didn't live up to those criteria, you are sol. and some of those criteria, why was this at all important? some of those criteria, you have to pass, look good in your

destination and the social norms of that, going male to female you had to like cookies, had to pursue jobs like secretarial jobs, you couldn't like trucks or sports for that kind of stuff, you had to be heterosexual. if you didn't, and that wasn't who you were, or you showed any sign of regret, or maybe there was something about my birth gender you were kicked out of the program. over a couple years at johns hopkins, 2000 people applied for services. you want to take a guess how many got through the program? out of 2000? anybody? i heard 100. 20? any other guesses? 10? 24. out of 2000. what do you think happened to

the other -- math is not my strong suit, 1976? thank you. they ended up getting kicked out of the medical program, they couldn't get services. they probably end up depressed, anxious, thoughts of suicide which we know are very high in this population. so nowadays we are seeing more people playing with gender, people who are not living binary male or female lives but more people who are able to craft genders of their own making and genders that are creative or genders that blur gender lines or feel they don't have a gender at all and while that used to be a criteria to get services nowadays through places in other community health centers, whatever your story is is fine.

i say to my clients i don't care if you are new at age 5 or if you figured it out a few weeks ago. all i care about is you are being thoughtful about the decisions you are making about your life and if you are being thoughtful how you are proceeding and my job is to help you make thoughtful decisions i will support whatever decisions you make. i don't care if you are heteronormative or not. that is the history behind the barbie or can kind of thing. other myths that come up when they think about transition? that you are catholic? the other myth is all trans people are crazy or mentally ill or i forget. some people believe that. how many people heard something like all trans people need therapy? i am seeing a lot of hands go up. it is a belief and years ago you

had to go through rigid therapy to get access to the services i was talking about before. that therapy unlike now was not designed to help you explore and ask questions and think about what gender means to you, that therapy was designed to determine whether you were a good candidate or not and that meant living up to all those standards you had to live up to and if you don't live up to those standards therapy proved you were really trans and you were kicked out of the program. the other part of that is there have been diagnoses in some of the mental health books about trends identity since the 70s, 1973 if i remember right. the big book of mental health disorders called diagnostic and statistical manual, that is what

therapists use to diagnose people and say you have depression, anxiety, whatever. there have been diagnoses in that book since then. if there is a diagnosis in the book of mental illness, how do you say trans is not a mental illness? people use that as an argument. there has been pushed back about that ever since certainly the 90s, get use to it which i think of as we are here, trans and gender queer, get used to it. there has been pushed back about that for a long time. now it is still in the dsm but listed as gender dysphoria meaning discomfort with your

gender, not gender identity disorder. even just that changing of the language changes how people can change that. i have known people who came to me or my peers, they are ready to transition. they don't need three months, six months a year of therapy, they know who they are. that is the history behind that myth. when somebody says to you you think you are trans, we got to get you a therapist and figure this out. not necessarily. >> prescribed number of days of counseling you have to go through, we are still rigid, living on the street or folks who couldn't get to counseling because they couldn't get away from their families for that long, that was an indicator you were not absolutely trans. >> i'm assuming she, forgive me, should ask people, sometimes people couldn't attend because of things in their lives, or for another reason didn't have

access, that was interpreted by the doctors as you are not interested in this, this isn't important to you so that is you, we will kick you out of the program. just another one of those criteria that were used to allow the doctors to be very paternalistic. and is society comfortable with people who don't measure the standards we think of? that could be whatever, gay, lesbian people, people of color. and these are all issues of privilege, society doesn't love people who don't fit into easy boxes. trans people don't fit into neat easy boxes.

doctors thought they were upholding society and trying to figure out who would measure up. very old-school paternalistic approach but that is what it used to be. other myths that occur to people that you might think about? >> too young to know. >> talking about trends youth. we are seeing more of that, people as young as a couple years old even. feel that or express that they don't feel like the gender that matches their body. that is a tough one. how do you know your gender? i would ask any of you in the room, any of you sweltering under this tend with me. how do any of you know what gender you are. ..

and kids are certainly young enough to attempt suicide, some of these youth. they know that they are in pain. they know that they need help and they often know that this is what they need. would we rather they attempt suicide or are we better off helping them get services? studies show, there's been a lot of studies lately, studies show that transyouth in unsupportive

environment, parents don't accept, the school doesn't accept. maybe they'll live in a community that's not so supportive for religious reasons or any other reason, right, those are the kids who have the really high rates of anxiety, depression and suicidal gestures. the rate of suicidal gestures in the transgender community are extraordinarily high. the studies say that rates, the number of transpeople who have attempted suicide throughout the course of their life is 41%. 41%. that means four out of every ten transpeople give or take has attempted suicide in their life. in the general population it's like 1.5. what we know is it's the transkids who grow up in unsupportive environments that have those kinds of depression, anxiety. the transkids who grow up in

environments, the parents accept them, school is cool, they do just as well as any other kid in their grade in their school, they don't show higher rates of anxiety, school performances are good and so on. you know, when we think they are too young to know, we are sort of saying, well, they can't know themselves and we want them to continue to suffer until they are old enough for us to feel okay with them and that's -- you know, some people say that's not making a decision, that's like letting time play out and we are just going to sort of wait and see, right, but wait and see it's a decision in and of itself. wait and see, we are going to force these kids to undergo more torture, more torment until, you know, we have set this arbitrary number at 18 that they are ready to transition. transition doesn't happen overnight and my experience is that some kids start the process

and they maybe decide that this isn't really for them and they stop. the kids who seem to not want to persist, don't, and they are fine with it. they say, well, i tried this for a while, i don't think it was me and that's fine. and so the process just by virtue of how long it takes, it helps people figure it out. in my experience, the ones that need to slow down, slow themselves down. it's a myth we hear all of the time that transparency people are too young to know, transyouth and nobody is putting 5-year-olds through surgeries, come on, that's one of the arguments you hear. nobody is doing surgery on a 5-year-old to change gender. yeah. i don't know a doctor who would do that. so other myths, anybody.

>> transpeople are being deceptive -- >> people are being deceptive, sure. isn't always a joke, we've all heard the joke, somebody went into the bar, they were hanging out, pick somebody for the night, they get up to the hotel, oh, my god the woman has a penis, she was trying to mess with me, whatever. i mean, i suppose there are some people like that out there but in general, no. transpeople are trying to live their life like anybody else. just like you were saying earlier, transpeople are trying to find partners, date and live their life. is it -- if i met you on the street, is it necessarily your business that i'm trans? you're shaking your head, no. if we were talking, hanging out, asking if i'm trans, think about

what's behind the question. if you're asking if i'm tran, what are you asking about? you're kind of asking me about my body, right, and you're kind of asking what does she have under her clothes. what's under there, frankly, if i meet you on the street, that's none of your business no more than it's my business to ask you to like, what do you have, can we talk about it, you want to tell me about it, you want to tell me when you first knew that was right for you, you want to tell me if you had any medical procedures down there, i could probably go on, right, when you're trying to figure somebody who is trans, you're sort of asking that question. i was -- i transitioned many years ago when i was in school and a woman came up to me in a cafeteria ones. i hadn't seen her in a while.

class friends, acquaintances, she sits down across from me in the cafeteria and she says, she doesn't even say hello, she says, hey, i hear you had surgery over the summer. like what the -- what are you saying, who the hell are you? again, none of her business. what's between my legs, it's none of her business. if you and i are going to bed together, that may become your business, but we talk about that. by in large, transpeople know that that is a really bad idea to just sort of try to trick somebody. we hear all of the time about murderers, we know that this community is subject to violence both emotional violence, sexual violence and murder. transpeople are acutely aware of that. i can't say that it never happens to somebody that doesn't

disclose, but we know the risks. so i don't think we are trying to trick people. i think we are just trying to live our lives and keep what's private, private. you want to get together afterwards and talk about what's between our legs, we can get a drink, sorry, i'm being silly. and then we will talk about it. but barring that, it's -- it's no more your business than me talking about your body, it's my business. so other myths or things that people believe -- yeah. [inaudible] >> sure. a little bit about what we were talking about earlier, that's the idea that most people wanting to from as you say one side of the spectrum like being very male to very female, right. who have we seen that in lately? caitlin jenner.

thank you, i'm not going to go there. i would really like to but i'm not going to go there. you know, i assume that that's authentic for her and i'm not dismissing her being trans, that that's her narrative. i wish she would be more thoughtful about everything else that she does. but we see that a lot. we see that in caitlin jenner, we see in other people who are more cool, janet, lavern cox, plenty who go from one end to the other end and are more thoughtful about it and understands the politics that goes on there. but that's the stereotype, right. look at me, i will tell you -- i'm not going to tell you too much about my body, i was born male, here i am, you know, i'm wearing polish, i have long hair, you can maybe make guesses about my body if you look at my clothes and how i'm dressed but i'm also dressed in shirt and

tie and a vest and slacks and sort of, you know, boots and not spikey 9-inch stilettos. and as i was saying earlier, which maybe you missed that, there were standards that you had to live up to in order to get care and if you didn't live up to those, you were kicked out. going from one end to the other was really a lot of what that was about. so, next. yeah. >> people -- transpeople are just confused. >> we are going to grow out of that? have you heard this? i don't know if people said it to you or not. people said it to me and people say it about my clients and specially when i have a youth come to me to start to pursue therapy, parents are often, are wondering if this is just a phase. you know, two weeks ago my kid

wanted to be a musician and now they want on the artist and six months before that they wanted to be an astronaut and a year before that they told me they were a kitten. maybe it's just a phase. i hear that all of the time. the rates of people who go through transition and then regret it are small. like we are talking like far less than 1%. i don't know the exact number. if we just look at the community and anecdotal data from what we see, people don't grow out of it. this is something that is deep and personal part of who you feel like you are, who you know yourself to be inside. whether that means you feel like you were born in the wrong body, or you don't feel that, feel something else, the stories behind that can vary but people

who believe that are trans, it's very rarely a phase. i've seen it sometimes. that usually plays itself out and you figure that out before anybody has surgery or what not. and even if -- even if it was a phase, let's say it was a phase, i'm not saying it is. hypothetically. let's say it was a phase and you were born female and you lived as a guy for two years and then you decided, well, not really. what's wrong? why is that wrong? transition should be fixing a problem and correcting it for once and forever, everything is right with the world and you just go on, right?

it's a pretty shallow view of gender as a whole. gender is far more complicated. i suspect -- looking around, i see some people who are dressed in minery ways and i can probably make some assumptions about your gender and i see some people who are not. but even if i sat down with some of you who -- who to me like kind of binary, if we really start today talk about it, your genders would be nuance than just male or female, right? why is that not allowed for transpeople, why are we not okay with the nuance sometimes leading somebody down a winding path? what's wrong with that? gender is this amazing complex multidimensional part of who we are. i believe that transpeople or many of us are exploring this facet of life and relationships

and power and existential questions about how we fit into the universe through their process of exploring their own gender. i wouldn't exactly expect that to be a straight path, right, you're exploring this thing that's multifaceted and nuance. so if the path winds back, what's wrong with that? the stereotype, you are supposed to know, it's not suppose to be a phase and you are just supposed to fix it and then life goes on, but our lives are in many, many ways far more nuance than that and why can't we allow that of transpeople just like everybody else? okay, a question? okay. i got a smile there. others, other myths or things that people feel have heard, thought of about gender or anything else? yeah.

>> running parallel to the confusion, -- [inaudible] >> is that manager -- something happened. >> there are high rates of drama in the transgender community. we are talking about emotional violence, physical violence, sexual violence, rapes are many more times more than the population and it's tragic. and even transpeople don't necessarily experience acute trauma like being assaulted, what do you think it's like to be in a body that doesn't feel like yours for 20 years or even 10 years, 30 or 40, i have clients in 50's and 60's? you could argue that's chronic ongoing trauma rather than acute trauma. but does that mean that transpeople are -- that trauma is what drives people to be trans?

it goes back to the argument, you've been traumatized and you can't connect with your body and you're running away who you were or not evolving your trauma issues and what not and while there are high rates of trauma, plenty of transpeople don't have anything like that in their history and you can't find -- you can do the most in-depth history assessment of their lives and you won't find any of that and why would it be imfor somebody to have drumma -- trauma and be trans? why does this go back to the idea that some of the early doctors were, were proceeding from which is the idea that -- that transness can be avoided. a lot of our historical services aimed for transpeople really

were founded on those assumptions. they may not have articulated it ? >> written it down or understood it in their minds, but the idea was, you know, we should avoid all across and maybe it is fixable and let's fix it and, you know, even if it's not fixable, like only in rarest last resort to treat people who can't otherwise exist, right? and so we think that if transpeople are trans because of trauma, heal trauma and they won't be trans anymore and won't help transition which messes with societal norms and everybody goes peacefully. it is really sad that so many transpeople have experiences of trauma but the idea that trauma underlies is really not at all true.

anybody want to throw any others ? [inaudible] >> okay. that's one of the biggies, there's probably many. i know transrabbis, clergy in christianity, i know transmuslims who are devout, i know transbuddhist and many begin the idea that it's so constricting that no queer person trans or gay would ever want to be a person of faith. that's not really true. a lot of transpeople are very devout. and that provides -- did you

have a question? [inaudible] >> yeah, yeah. we are all pedophiles. those transpeople in the room can sort of, we can have a pedophile support group after this. sorry. [laughter] >> yeah. i don't even know where to begin with this one because it's so ridiculous, you know. we are all perverts, we all are all having weird kinky sex and that involves young children and we are just trying to seduce them to the dark side and we are going to mess with young children because we have don't morals and we don't care about society's rules, we don't care about society, what the hell, of course, we are going to break the child molestation bullshit. i don't know if i'm supposed to be that, whatever. but, no.

somebody mentioned transpeople in the bathroom before and so much of the -- so many arguments about transbathroom that is we are hearing right now and that we have heard for many, many years is that transpeople are going to assault our women and children in bathrooms, that you allow transpeople in the bathroom and all hell is going to break loose. they are going to be committing physical assault and sexual assault and just messing with our women. it doesn't happen. there is literally no -- there are literally no documented cases of that happening. literally zero that i'm aware, that i have ever seen and that anybody i know has ever heard of. if it happens, there are already laws, there's laws against people victimizing in the

bathroom. you say transpeople can't use bathroom of their choice, that law already exists, so we are forcing transpeople to use the bathroom that they don't agree with based on no data and we are putting much more at risk. transpeople who have to use a bathroom that doesn't feel appropriate for them are very much subject to violence. sexual and otherwise. so we are putting onus on marginalized people based on no data. are there transpedophiles, i have never met one but there -- why don't we have pedophile bathrooms. that's kind of ridiculous. same is true of, you know, the transbathroom argument and in some ways, it goes back to this thing, we don't want transpeople in our culture.

on north carolina was one of the states, a few others that are pursuing this kind of legislation or have, right, so let's think this through for a second. you and i go out for dinner, we are having a nice time, we are relaxing, maybe we have a few drinks, glass of water, whatever, right, maybe we go to a movie or a mall or something like that, right, sooner or later i'm going to have to pee just because i have a blahedder the size of a walnut. if i can't go to a bathroom that feels comfortable for me, what am i going to do? hold it in, whatever. next time i'm probably not going to go out, next time i'm probably going to stay home or move to another state because not allowing transpeople to use

an appropriate bathroom is not just about bathrooms. it's about we don't want these people here, we want to make it uncomfortable for you to live here so much so that we are not going to -- that you're not going to want to live here. we have seen this before, people, right? water fountains, people of color having to eat in the back of the restaurant -- you know, the back entrance, all sorts of other situations. it's the same nonsense rehashed. a few other questions? we have maybe five minutes or so . questions, thoughts, or beliefs. oh, i'm sorry. [inaudible]

>> you know, transpeople serving in the military are ultimately serving a government that is at least right now hostile to needs . some of them didn't join under an administration that was hostile to their own needs. some of them have been there for a long time. many of them didn't join as transpeople. most of them probably argue, joined because they believed in it. they have family traditions or they believe in serving or they believe that serving your country in that way is honor -- is an honorable thing to do. i kind of think that there would be fewer wars, but i also don't

want to judge people living what they feel is right for them. if they don't feel like it's -- if they don't feel like it's a contradiction or they're willing to ride that out during the current times, who am i to say that they shouldn't? i would be just as guilty as the people who want to police us to more restrictive roles. i don't know -- you had -- >> i look as civilian. i mostly do it because i need a job. it's one of those things where it doesn't matter, i just need the money and it also gets training and -- >> this person came here came out as transman in the military, you're a civilian you said but you are working with the

military and needs a job sounds like it's a good job for you, right? and so people have all sorts of needs. i have a friend who works in the state department, he didn't start there, he's doing lgbt work. he's still able to sort of somewhat fly under the radar and do left turn work, should he quit? change in all sorts of ways? the generals would only be supportive of transpeople in the military if they see transpeople doing good jobs in the military. even just seeing the generals stand up for transpeople is a powerful message. i guess, you know, i'm a therapist when i'm working with somebody i want to put my own judgments aside. do i have my own beliefs, yeah, sure. but who am i to say that they have to live a certain way. i don't know if that addresses your concern, over here.

one and then two. >> that was a good time to be transgender woman in the military and always taught -- she felt that one of the best ways for her to make change is to be in the military? >> people feel like the best way to make change in institution is from within. you know, if you're outside an institution and poking them in the eye with a stick saying, you need to change, they're probably not going the change, you're right, because you're poking them in the eye. if you're inside you have a different relationship a relationship where you can make change. i'm not saying activism and external work isn't important, you're right. there's people that are able to do work for change inside and that can be powerful too.

yeah, over here. >> a while ago you mentioned that transgender people should be allowed to be as nuance in profession as other people, my question is, i'm finding that people who do not declare themselves transgender are in recent years being forced into much more rigid standards than they were when i was say, 20, which was a long time ago, so i'm finding that -- sorry, i'm watching my grandchildren there. i'm finding that once somebody deciding they are not going to be whatever description was of an adult woman, people say you must be transgender, no, i just like wearing painter's pant or wearing my hair short, whatever the heck it is, trivial things, style -- >> in the interest of time, i

think i got the question. what she's saying she's feeling people that are expressing nuance gender are sometimes forced into identifying as trans because they don't live up to social norms who discomfort are we addressing in that situation? if we are -- i think it's a good point. if we are sort of -- if there's societal pressures to adopt a general binary, and maybe they don't identify as trans, who is that helping? it's not helping the individual, right? they are comfortable with nuance expression of gender. it's helping society because society is uncomfortable with ambiguity and uncomfortable things that don't fit into neat little boxes and maybe there is pressure.

there is pressure, yes. .. .. >> >> there is an argument that

more visibility means more pressure than people are aware of the nuanced genders we live in a complicated time people are exploring gender in all sorts of ways there are pressures helping people or harming people or not working in their best interest and i am really glad to see that there is such cool and amazing thing with their genders. even looking around this room. so even one or two generations out but the rest of you are screwed but how we understand gender that it

evolves that we cannot even understand right now i can show you if i had another half-hour but now a cut of time. i want to thank the bookstore for hosting this and all of you for coming year and listen to me babble for the last 45 minutes and help people think about that relationship or to help understand a community that made you never had contact with before so thank you for coming the of book is for sale