are you a boy or a girl
that’s a question I got all the time
when I was a little kid are you a boy or
a girl it was a question that delighted
me and scared me and Confused me and
annoyed me pretty much in equal measure
it delighted me because if someone was
asking me that question it meant at
least I didn’t look totally like a girl
but it scared me because I wasn’t sure
what that meant why didn’t I look like
other girls but mostly it really just
annoyed me because I had no idea how I
was supposed to answer that question
when I was a kid I just didn’t have any
words aside from boy or girl the best
answer I could give was different and
that didn’t begin to get at the depth or
nuance of what I felt I mean when we
call something different or weird or
strange it means we don’t understand it
when we know something when we care
about it when we love it
we give it a name I can remember being a
really little kid and going to bed at
night and pulling the covers over my
head and praying to God to make me a boy
it would take years and years for me to
figure out I didn’t need to be made into
someone else I just needed better words
and it would be until I was seventeen
until I finally found the first right
word and that word was transgender and
it showed me just the magic that the
right word can accomplish how it can
unlock something inside yourself how the
right word can validate and permit allow
something to be the best thing about
transgender it gave me an answer to that
question are you a boy or a girl
yes I’m transgender
people don’t always like that answer and
in the 22 years since I came out as
transgender I’ve spent a lot of time
discussing and debating and thinking
about that term so in 1995 when I came
out transgender was pretty much a brand
new word and it replaced language like
transsexual transvestite crossdresser
terms that now seem archaic and
hopefully obsolete but in the years
since then as you may have noticed
there’s been a sort of explosion of
terminology around gender
we’ve got terms like non-binary gender
non-conforming gender fluid gender queer
gender expansive third gender a gender
and probably a lot more that I haven’t
heard of and as I go around the nation
and give talks on gender identity I
frequently encounter some hostility and
resentment towards all these terms like
the attitude of people is why can’t you
just make up your minds why isn’t
transgender good enough do you really
need more terms people even say it makes
you guys guys seem silly and frivolous
if you keep making up these these new
words I’ve given talks and heard an
audible groan from the audience when I
add another letter to the lgbtqia+
acronym and I can understand it can be
confusing you can probably be annoying
or even overwhelming but I hope I can
convince you that this proliferation of
language is extremely important language
is so powerful why is that I think it’s
because language is deeply tied to human
nature our brains are patterned to learn
use and acquire language and the flip of
that is true as well as we learn use and
acquire language it patterns our brains
it creates new mental grooves that we
can think along and I love to think of
this incredible feedback loop working
around gender identity the synergy of it
we create all these new terms
we employ them they become part of our
daily vocabulary and they generate
within us a new perception and a new
adaptive adaptability around gender
identity and it doesn’t just happen for
each of us individual but Colette
actively as a society we use these new
terms and we start to have a new
appreciation and understanding of gender
I will admit that sometimes I feel like
I’m fighting an uphill battle as I try
to get people to adopt new terminology
the pushback I most often hear is labels
are terrible they’re really dangerous
and we shouldn’t be trying to shove
people into boxes okay duly noted my
position is this labels are really great
labels actually save lives let me give
you a historical example of this if we
go back to the Middle Ages we arrived at
a time when there is no word for
homosexuality and no understanding of
gayness as an identity sexual
orientation as a part of who we are as a
human being at the rare times I mean
okay there’s the knowledge that
sometimes men have sex with men and to a
lesser extent that sometimes women have
sex with women but to the extent that
this is even spoken about or written
about it’s with such unhelpful terms as
that unspeakable sin or the
unmentionable vice if you had been a
person who had slept with another man
and you went into the confession you
would confess to the sin of Liguria
which is a kind of catch-all broad term
for a whole manner of sexual sins I’m
telling you this because it’s actually
through the confessional that we begin
to see language around sexuality kind of
strange but there was a problem in the
Middle Ages these people would come in
and confess the Luxuria and the priests
would be put in an extremely awkward
position the priest would then have to
ask a series of questions in order to
determine the right penance what exactly
did you do
who did you do it with where were you
and if the person was not forthcoming
the priest would have to push a little
bit look I need to know did you do this
or that and you can see that this would
not only be an awkward line of
questioning for a priest but might put
ideas into the person’s head I didn’t do
that but it sounds like a really good I
time I’m gonna try that
so to circumvent this problem the
priests made up a subdivision
of this category luxurious and one of
the subdivisions was sodomy it’s a truly
terrible word it’s been used to condone
a lot of violence against gay people but
it also did something amazing and
positive it made something out of
nothing
it put a word to a concept and made that
concept exist where prior to that there
had been this void within our language
and within our minds and pretty quickly
after that word sodomy is invented we
see people begin to begin to use that to
refer to themselves and actually to
collect and gather other people labels
create solidarity labels allow
communities to exist in my own life that
label was transgender when I was a kid
it felt like there was something wrong
with me that I was the abnormal one and
there was no other explanation for it I
was just weird but when I found that
label transgender and when I found other
transgender people all of a sudden I
knew that word let me see this is about
much more than just me this is not
something that’s going on in my head so
I hope will embrace the power of labels
I hope that we’ll see that even though
language carries this historical weight
and we feel that we have to follow the
rules of grammar that really language
serves our needs language serves us and
we should invent new words and we should
change the rules if they’re not fitting
us I love how the lgbtq+ community has
repurposed old words how they’ve taken
terms like queer that used to have a
negative connotation and turn it into
something positive
I love how they’ve just pushed aside
terms like transsexual and homosexual
words that have been used to medical
eyes and other us and I love how the
language around gender has just exploded
and taken on a whole new bunch of forms
and I’m optimistic that we can embrace
that I think we need to recognize that
language is something that doesn’t just
describe or explain reality it changes
reality
language is revolutionary
[Applause]
you
that’s a question I got all the time
when I was a little kid are you a boy or
a girl it was a question that delighted
me and scared me and Confused me and
annoyed me pretty much in equal measure
it delighted me because if someone was
asking me that question it meant at
least I didn’t look totally like a girl
but it scared me because I wasn’t sure
what that meant why didn’t I look like
other girls but mostly it really just
annoyed me because I had no idea how I
was supposed to answer that question
when I was a kid I just didn’t have any
words aside from boy or girl the best
answer I could give was different and
that didn’t begin to get at the depth or
nuance of what I felt I mean when we
call something different or weird or
strange it means we don’t understand it
when we know something when we care
about it when we love it
we give it a name I can remember being a
really little kid and going to bed at
night and pulling the covers over my
head and praying to God to make me a boy
it would take years and years for me to
figure out I didn’t need to be made into
someone else I just needed better words
and it would be until I was seventeen
until I finally found the first right
word and that word was transgender and
it showed me just the magic that the
right word can accomplish how it can
unlock something inside yourself how the
right word can validate and permit allow
something to be the best thing about
transgender it gave me an answer to that
question are you a boy or a girl
yes I’m transgender
people don’t always like that answer and
in the 22 years since I came out as
transgender I’ve spent a lot of time
discussing and debating and thinking
about that term so in 1995 when I came
out transgender was pretty much a brand
new word and it replaced language like
transsexual transvestite crossdresser
terms that now seem archaic and
hopefully obsolete but in the years
since then as you may have noticed
there’s been a sort of explosion of
terminology around gender
we’ve got terms like non-binary gender
non-conforming gender fluid gender queer
gender expansive third gender a gender
and probably a lot more that I haven’t
heard of and as I go around the nation
and give talks on gender identity I
frequently encounter some hostility and
resentment towards all these terms like
the attitude of people is why can’t you
just make up your minds why isn’t
transgender good enough do you really
need more terms people even say it makes
you guys guys seem silly and frivolous
if you keep making up these these new
words I’ve given talks and heard an
audible groan from the audience when I
add another letter to the lgbtqia+
acronym and I can understand it can be
confusing you can probably be annoying
or even overwhelming but I hope I can
convince you that this proliferation of
language is extremely important language
is so powerful why is that I think it’s
because language is deeply tied to human
nature our brains are patterned to learn
use and acquire language and the flip of
that is true as well as we learn use and
acquire language it patterns our brains
it creates new mental grooves that we
can think along and I love to think of
this incredible feedback loop working
around gender identity the synergy of it
we create all these new terms
we employ them they become part of our
daily vocabulary and they generate
within us a new perception and a new
adaptive adaptability around gender
identity and it doesn’t just happen for
each of us individual but Colette
actively as a society we use these new
terms and we start to have a new
appreciation and understanding of gender
I will admit that sometimes I feel like
I’m fighting an uphill battle as I try
to get people to adopt new terminology
the pushback I most often hear is labels
are terrible they’re really dangerous
and we shouldn’t be trying to shove
people into boxes okay duly noted my
position is this labels are really great
labels actually save lives let me give
you a historical example of this if we
go back to the Middle Ages we arrived at
a time when there is no word for
homosexuality and no understanding of
gayness as an identity sexual
orientation as a part of who we are as a
human being at the rare times I mean
okay there’s the knowledge that
sometimes men have sex with men and to a
lesser extent that sometimes women have
sex with women but to the extent that
this is even spoken about or written
about it’s with such unhelpful terms as
that unspeakable sin or the
unmentionable vice if you had been a
person who had slept with another man
and you went into the confession you
would confess to the sin of Liguria
which is a kind of catch-all broad term
for a whole manner of sexual sins I’m
telling you this because it’s actually
through the confessional that we begin
to see language around sexuality kind of
strange but there was a problem in the
Middle Ages these people would come in
and confess the Luxuria and the priests
would be put in an extremely awkward
position the priest would then have to
ask a series of questions in order to
determine the right penance what exactly
did you do
who did you do it with where were you
and if the person was not forthcoming
the priest would have to push a little
bit look I need to know did you do this
or that and you can see that this would
not only be an awkward line of
questioning for a priest but might put
ideas into the person’s head I didn’t do
that but it sounds like a really good I
time I’m gonna try that
so to circumvent this problem the
priests made up a subdivision
of this category luxurious and one of
the subdivisions was sodomy it’s a truly
terrible word it’s been used to condone
a lot of violence against gay people but
it also did something amazing and
positive it made something out of
nothing
it put a word to a concept and made that
concept exist where prior to that there
had been this void within our language
and within our minds and pretty quickly
after that word sodomy is invented we
see people begin to begin to use that to
refer to themselves and actually to
collect and gather other people labels
create solidarity labels allow
communities to exist in my own life that
label was transgender when I was a kid
it felt like there was something wrong
with me that I was the abnormal one and
there was no other explanation for it I
was just weird but when I found that
label transgender and when I found other
transgender people all of a sudden I
knew that word let me see this is about
much more than just me this is not
something that’s going on in my head so
I hope will embrace the power of labels
I hope that we’ll see that even though
language carries this historical weight
and we feel that we have to follow the
rules of grammar that really language
serves our needs language serves us and
we should invent new words and we should
change the rules if they’re not fitting
us I love how the lgbtq+ community has
repurposed old words how they’ve taken
terms like queer that used to have a
negative connotation and turn it into
something positive
I love how they’ve just pushed aside
terms like transsexual and homosexual
words that have been used to medical
eyes and other us and I love how the
language around gender has just exploded
and taken on a whole new bunch of forms
and I’m optimistic that we can embrace
that I think we need to recognize that
language is something that doesn’t just
describe or explain reality it changes
reality
language is revolutionary
[Applause]
you
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