hi over the next 18 minutes we’re gonna
talk about all of those things we’re
gonna talk about revolution and we’re
gonna talk about gender and sexuality
and identity and for me what this really
all comes back to is talking about my
nails because they may not look like it
but my nails are a radical example for
me my political identity and my gender
[Music]
so when you think about yourself and you
think about your world around you you
are given a story a narrative your life
is a book that you’re supposed to open
and read and find yourself in but it’s a
book and you’re supposed to find
yourself in that and if for some reason
you don’t find yourself in those stories
if you are little boy and grade-two
who’s really really excited about the
idea of fatherhood someday but the only
people who are allowed to talk about
that are at the little girls with their
baby dolls well you’re gonna have a
certain experience or if as we heard
earlier you’re the Asian who can’t
really manage to pull all A’s in math
class or you don’t want to play the
piano well you’re gonna have a slightly
different experience or if like me you
were the little white girl who instead
of wanting to play dress-up and with
Barbies I really liked getting muddy and
falling down and getting covered in
scratches and I had no ability to match
my clothes to each other well you’re
gonna have a certain experience because
the story that you were given the
narrative that your society tells you
exist for your life and the life that
you actually live or possibly the one
that you see your best friend living
isn’t gonna match that experience is
called cognitive dissonance those two
stories that just don’t go together
the little
things around you they don’t actually
match up with who you want to be or what
you see or what you experience or maybe
some of the people around you and you
have a couple of choices when this
happens one you can try to force it to
work it’s what George Orwell in his
famous book 1984 refers to as
doublethink the ability to hold two
opposing ideas in your mind and somehow
force them to work to go back and forth
and for me this was the experience of
saying well okay yeah but I’m not like
other girls and that meant that I could
ignore the narrative which was useful
but it didn’t actually change it and the
narrative was still uncomfortable for me
or alternately you can try to build new
narratives one’s not based on
stereotypes ones that are more honest
and ones that hopefully will foster
empathy and understanding as we’ve heard
already those are very important things
so what I want to give you is five steps
five steps to world change because to me
changing these narratives will change
the world because you’re going to
realize that you have other
opportunities other ways of thinking and
seeing the world that you maybe don’t
realize now and that children being born
now will be able to grow up with new
narratives and that’ll be really
important because when you don’t know an
idea exists you can’t actually choose
new paths so the first step in all of
this is to know who you are I know that
seems really easy but it’s actually much
more complicated than we usually think
about so as an example this is who I was
in high school this is who I thought of
myself as and these were the pieces of
my identity that I crafted and the ones
that I was proud of and the ones that I
told people about and I’m sure that
somewhere inside you you have a list
like this and I’m
want you to just take a second and and
try to think of what things exist on
that list because that’s the person
you’re trying to tell people you are and
you’re crafted identity is important and
once you’ve got a few points and you’ve
kind of got this idea of who you are
then I want you to think about the
almost self-evident things that you
missed the things that while utterly
obvious you never even thought of the
things that aren’t crafted because those
are really important too
those are the places often that you’re
going to find the greatest dissonance
and for me we’re gonna talk about that
last one because it’s the one that got
me started on all this so once you have
this self identity and you’ve got this
kind of idea this list and I highly
encourage you to write it down and check
back on it every six months or 12 months
and go but really who I still am or I
really thought that maybe I need to
rethink that piece of that well then
you’re gonna start watching for
challenges to that identity you can’t
look for challenges to something until
you know this what that something is
so challenges to your identity I’ll take
you through me when I was born a doctor
held me out by the feet and yelled it’s
a girl and everybody was excited and
bought pink roses and little balloons
for my mom and everybody was happy
very exciting and as time went on that
was okay I had you know the birthday
party in the frilly dress and I read
books with my sister and as I got older
I became less and less comfortable with
what the narrative of being a girl meant
it made me more and more uncomfortable
and I couldn’t ever put my finger on it
what was it about the girl thing I knew
that I was comfortable with the concept
the word was the right word I was female
that was fine by me I had no problems
with that and yet something didn’t line
up and I allowed myself to take that
easy way out of not being like other
girls so I could ignore all of things
in the word that made me uncomfortable
and all of the expectations from those
narratives I was given that made me
unhappy I was a jock I was really into
martial arts this is me at my black belt
testing in high school and I was a
complete and utter academic nerd I am
here dressed up for the Ides of March
the day when they stabbed Julius Caesar
to death I wore that toga all over
campus in loving memory but by college I
had grown so uncomfortable that I
refused to put on makeup I issued
dresses I felt uncomfortable and judged
in them and what I didn’t realize was
that I was being judged by myself now
while I was in college this really
wonderful thing happened
I met someone and I got married and this
is one of the only pictures of me
between the ages of 19 and 30 that you
will see me in a dress because some part
of me fed into the narrative of wearing
a dress to my wedding but I made sure
everybody knew that I had the little
leggings on underneath it very important
that everybody knew that and I was
wearing flat shoes because goodness
knows I wasn’t going to wear heels
because they made me not just physically
but emotionally uncomfortable and my
wife and I moved to Taiwan we were very
happy and that little thing that
continued to niggle in the back of my
head just sat there niggling because you
know I could actually ignore it most of
the time I didn’t wear makeup I didn’t
need to wear dresses so I was okay just
ignoring the fact that it existed and I
could go on with my life and that was
fine so I found challenges but I hadn’t
confronted them because every time it
came up I simply said you know this
isn’t a big deal this isn’t really a big
problem just push it back push it back
and I’m just me it’s it’s just me but I
didn’t realize that I was judging the
other women around me who actually did
do these things
that made me uncomfortable and there
were times when I even tried to convince
them not to do it because you know what
that’s just them selling you a certain
version of womanhood and that’s not cool
completely ignoring that of course
there’s more than one version of
womanhood but I was uncomfortable with
any version that wasn’t mine
what I needed was a model of
confrontation a way to actually look at
it an example I’m gonna give you on the
surface kind of looks like examples that
I had but the experiences are incredibly
different and yet it was a model of
confrontation for me a way to start
asking more important questions so when
Amber was born she had the same pink
balloons and little roses and everybody
was happy and she went home and in
college she met this really wonderful
woman and they got married and they
moved to Taiwan and they were happy but
while I was dealing with a certain piece
of my identity the piece that had to do
with my definition of the word female of
the word girl of woman amber was walking
down a path that like I said on the
outside it looks really similar and yet
it was so incredibly different because
amber realized after we moved here that
while it wasn’t the definitions of woman
that made her uncomfortable
it was the being a woman that didn’t
work so amber became sky and my wife
came out as my husband and confronted
those things and this was not an easy
process this was a difficult process of
asking lots and lots of very complicated
questions questions like not just what
does it mean to be a woman because that
was never the question the question was
who am I am
bigger question than I had been
approaching and a question that was much
scarier because it was a much deeper
redefinition of self and my husband came
out as my spouse eventually and I’ve
never seen them happier and I’ve never
seen them more true to themselves and
for me this was what I wanted I wanted a
version of self that was true that was
me that I could identify as I needed to
confront those questions I needed to
confront that definition but to confront
it I had to go back and I had to ask the
questions again because I figured that
once I’d gone through them in high
school we were done right I mean you
don’t have to learn things twice except
that it’s not learning it’s experience
and it’s growth and it’s change because
my narrative didn’t fit me and I
realized that the narrative that I’ve
been given for a woman actually didn’t
fit the women around me either
and so I started asking questions not
just of myself and that was the piece
that was important because when Skye
went through their identity
confrontation we talked about it
together they talked about it with other
people and this was the model of
confrontation I need it asking really
hard questions really hard questions
things that have the ability to change
you fundamentally questioning not just
who you are but why you’re that person
and whether you’ve chosen to be that
person or whether it was chosen for you
did you accept the narrative because it
was easy or did you actually go through
a process of deciding that it was
important to be that
person and so I started having these
conversations with everyone and this
amazing thing happened I realized that
the narratives didn’t fit anyone I knew
and so I figured out that the last piece
of this was to not stop asking but also
to never stop asking other people this
is not an experience that can happen
only in yourself
this is an experience if we’re going to
change the world and we’re gonna change
the narratives so that people have more
choices so people have more ability to
understand who they are and what their
abilities and potential and
opportunities are then we can’t stop
asking and we have to ask others and you
don’t have to have an answer when you
ask you just start asking so I asked the
women around me what it meant to be a
woman and I found that none of them had
narratives that met that story that I’d
been told of Sleeping Beauty waiting for
her prince to come or even the TV shows
I watched growing up we none of us were
any of those people and that was okay
but we also learned that those
narratives had to be rewritten and that
you rewrite them by talking to people
and asking questions and asking them to
actually look into who they are and I
figured out through this process of
questioning that you know the heart of
the question you asked the more
important the answer is gonna be so it’s
one thing for me to stand here and ask
what it means for me to be a woman but
you know I had a conversation with a
friend a little while ago she’s Asian
American and I was talking to her and I
said so you know you’re you’re Asian
what does that mean to you are you proud
of it she’s like yes I’m proud of it she
had an answer for what it meant because
she’d had to think through it she’d
actually gone through that experience of
thinking through what it meant for her
to be Asian in the United States and
then the darndest thing she looked at me
and she said so what does it mean for
you to be white
[Music]
and I have nothing I had no answer for
that at all because I never thought
about it you know all the people on the
TV shows were white and everyone where I
grew up was white and you know it wasn’t
something that people had ever asked me
about before and nobody challenged it
and I realized that that was a lot
harder question and really scary because
if I started asking what that meant and
I had to deal with all of those things
that came along with being white and I
had to actually have an identity based
on acknowledging it instead of what I’d
always had which was an identity based
on ignoring it and pretending it didn’t
matter because it matters of course it
matters so I asked my friends difficult
questions and I’m a teacher and I asked
my students difficult questions and the
whole point is to get them to think
about this friends students my parents
everyone I think everybody needs to
answer these questions everyone needs to
find the answers and you know you’ll
find out that the most important
questions in these are the ones that
come up when you start asking the things
you’ve never thought about the things
you’ve always taken for granted
questions of race and gender and faith
and nationality and language the things
that you’ve always just accepted as true
the same way that we accept that the sky
is blue and we don’t outside about grade
three when they explained it really
asked why I had to start asking what it
meant for me to be white and what it
meant to have been raised Protestant and
what it meant to be a woman and what it
meant to be American and I’m still
working on them and I’m still asking
these same questions and I’ll have you
know I asked my mother the same question
every couple years in the conversation
we have changes every time and that’s
the best part because it means that the
ideas change
dissonance is a sign this thing where
your world doesn’t match where you start
to notice little bits of discomfort and
you kind of push them off you’re like no
no no it’s cool it’s cool it’s cool and
you start that doublethink process where
you know on the one hand I know that
girls wear dresses and makeup and that
they want to be mothers and have
children and yet on the other hand I
have am NOT going to have children and I
am NOT interested in pink fluffy dresses
most of the time and and and how do I
make these match and I go it’s okay I’m
just not like that everybody else is
like that but I’m not like that and
that’s okay because not everybody else
is like that and those moments of
dissonance start looking for them
because they’re a sign that something
isn’t right something in the narrative
is wrong or missing because the
narrative was easy and we like easy it’s
comfortable and when you notice that ask
yourself what’s wrong ask yourself where
it’s coming from and then ask other
people I paint my nails as a way to
explain this to people I painted them as
a way to come to terms with my
femininity to walk out of the house and
ask why when nobody noticed that I’d
painted my nails why did I feel
self-conscious and shameful why was I
uncomfortable with this and it was
because I thought that people were
judging me and were seeing me as much
more effeminate maybe then I felt or
something and the reason I felt shame
was I thought that all these bad things
were gonna come along with it because
those were the messages I was given so I
paint my nails so I can ask other people
it’s to remind me to ask other people
these hard questions because when we ask
questions and when we start challenging
easy identities we start challenging
those stereotypes then what started out
as a whisper
of discomfort turns into a roar of
disillusionment where people realize
that the story isn’t true and that’s
when the stories change and that’s how
we change the world thank you
[Applause]
talk about all of those things we’re
gonna talk about revolution and we’re
gonna talk about gender and sexuality
and identity and for me what this really
all comes back to is talking about my
nails because they may not look like it
but my nails are a radical example for
me my political identity and my gender
[Music]
so when you think about yourself and you
think about your world around you you
are given a story a narrative your life
is a book that you’re supposed to open
and read and find yourself in but it’s a
book and you’re supposed to find
yourself in that and if for some reason
you don’t find yourself in those stories
if you are little boy and grade-two
who’s really really excited about the
idea of fatherhood someday but the only
people who are allowed to talk about
that are at the little girls with their
baby dolls well you’re gonna have a
certain experience or if as we heard
earlier you’re the Asian who can’t
really manage to pull all A’s in math
class or you don’t want to play the
piano well you’re gonna have a slightly
different experience or if like me you
were the little white girl who instead
of wanting to play dress-up and with
Barbies I really liked getting muddy and
falling down and getting covered in
scratches and I had no ability to match
my clothes to each other well you’re
gonna have a certain experience because
the story that you were given the
narrative that your society tells you
exist for your life and the life that
you actually live or possibly the one
that you see your best friend living
isn’t gonna match that experience is
called cognitive dissonance those two
stories that just don’t go together
the little
things around you they don’t actually
match up with who you want to be or what
you see or what you experience or maybe
some of the people around you and you
have a couple of choices when this
happens one you can try to force it to
work it’s what George Orwell in his
famous book 1984 refers to as
doublethink the ability to hold two
opposing ideas in your mind and somehow
force them to work to go back and forth
and for me this was the experience of
saying well okay yeah but I’m not like
other girls and that meant that I could
ignore the narrative which was useful
but it didn’t actually change it and the
narrative was still uncomfortable for me
or alternately you can try to build new
narratives one’s not based on
stereotypes ones that are more honest
and ones that hopefully will foster
empathy and understanding as we’ve heard
already those are very important things
so what I want to give you is five steps
five steps to world change because to me
changing these narratives will change
the world because you’re going to
realize that you have other
opportunities other ways of thinking and
seeing the world that you maybe don’t
realize now and that children being born
now will be able to grow up with new
narratives and that’ll be really
important because when you don’t know an
idea exists you can’t actually choose
new paths so the first step in all of
this is to know who you are I know that
seems really easy but it’s actually much
more complicated than we usually think
about so as an example this is who I was
in high school this is who I thought of
myself as and these were the pieces of
my identity that I crafted and the ones
that I was proud of and the ones that I
told people about and I’m sure that
somewhere inside you you have a list
like this and I’m
want you to just take a second and and
try to think of what things exist on
that list because that’s the person
you’re trying to tell people you are and
you’re crafted identity is important and
once you’ve got a few points and you’ve
kind of got this idea of who you are
then I want you to think about the
almost self-evident things that you
missed the things that while utterly
obvious you never even thought of the
things that aren’t crafted because those
are really important too
those are the places often that you’re
going to find the greatest dissonance
and for me we’re gonna talk about that
last one because it’s the one that got
me started on all this so once you have
this self identity and you’ve got this
kind of idea this list and I highly
encourage you to write it down and check
back on it every six months or 12 months
and go but really who I still am or I
really thought that maybe I need to
rethink that piece of that well then
you’re gonna start watching for
challenges to that identity you can’t
look for challenges to something until
you know this what that something is
so challenges to your identity I’ll take
you through me when I was born a doctor
held me out by the feet and yelled it’s
a girl and everybody was excited and
bought pink roses and little balloons
for my mom and everybody was happy
very exciting and as time went on that
was okay I had you know the birthday
party in the frilly dress and I read
books with my sister and as I got older
I became less and less comfortable with
what the narrative of being a girl meant
it made me more and more uncomfortable
and I couldn’t ever put my finger on it
what was it about the girl thing I knew
that I was comfortable with the concept
the word was the right word I was female
that was fine by me I had no problems
with that and yet something didn’t line
up and I allowed myself to take that
easy way out of not being like other
girls so I could ignore all of things
in the word that made me uncomfortable
and all of the expectations from those
narratives I was given that made me
unhappy I was a jock I was really into
martial arts this is me at my black belt
testing in high school and I was a
complete and utter academic nerd I am
here dressed up for the Ides of March
the day when they stabbed Julius Caesar
to death I wore that toga all over
campus in loving memory but by college I
had grown so uncomfortable that I
refused to put on makeup I issued
dresses I felt uncomfortable and judged
in them and what I didn’t realize was
that I was being judged by myself now
while I was in college this really
wonderful thing happened
I met someone and I got married and this
is one of the only pictures of me
between the ages of 19 and 30 that you
will see me in a dress because some part
of me fed into the narrative of wearing
a dress to my wedding but I made sure
everybody knew that I had the little
leggings on underneath it very important
that everybody knew that and I was
wearing flat shoes because goodness
knows I wasn’t going to wear heels
because they made me not just physically
but emotionally uncomfortable and my
wife and I moved to Taiwan we were very
happy and that little thing that
continued to niggle in the back of my
head just sat there niggling because you
know I could actually ignore it most of
the time I didn’t wear makeup I didn’t
need to wear dresses so I was okay just
ignoring the fact that it existed and I
could go on with my life and that was
fine so I found challenges but I hadn’t
confronted them because every time it
came up I simply said you know this
isn’t a big deal this isn’t really a big
problem just push it back push it back
and I’m just me it’s it’s just me but I
didn’t realize that I was judging the
other women around me who actually did
do these things
that made me uncomfortable and there
were times when I even tried to convince
them not to do it because you know what
that’s just them selling you a certain
version of womanhood and that’s not cool
completely ignoring that of course
there’s more than one version of
womanhood but I was uncomfortable with
any version that wasn’t mine
what I needed was a model of
confrontation a way to actually look at
it an example I’m gonna give you on the
surface kind of looks like examples that
I had but the experiences are incredibly
different and yet it was a model of
confrontation for me a way to start
asking more important questions so when
Amber was born she had the same pink
balloons and little roses and everybody
was happy and she went home and in
college she met this really wonderful
woman and they got married and they
moved to Taiwan and they were happy but
while I was dealing with a certain piece
of my identity the piece that had to do
with my definition of the word female of
the word girl of woman amber was walking
down a path that like I said on the
outside it looks really similar and yet
it was so incredibly different because
amber realized after we moved here that
while it wasn’t the definitions of woman
that made her uncomfortable
it was the being a woman that didn’t
work so amber became sky and my wife
came out as my husband and confronted
those things and this was not an easy
process this was a difficult process of
asking lots and lots of very complicated
questions questions like not just what
does it mean to be a woman because that
was never the question the question was
who am I am
bigger question than I had been
approaching and a question that was much
scarier because it was a much deeper
redefinition of self and my husband came
out as my spouse eventually and I’ve
never seen them happier and I’ve never
seen them more true to themselves and
for me this was what I wanted I wanted a
version of self that was true that was
me that I could identify as I needed to
confront those questions I needed to
confront that definition but to confront
it I had to go back and I had to ask the
questions again because I figured that
once I’d gone through them in high
school we were done right I mean you
don’t have to learn things twice except
that it’s not learning it’s experience
and it’s growth and it’s change because
my narrative didn’t fit me and I
realized that the narrative that I’ve
been given for a woman actually didn’t
fit the women around me either
and so I started asking questions not
just of myself and that was the piece
that was important because when Skye
went through their identity
confrontation we talked about it
together they talked about it with other
people and this was the model of
confrontation I need it asking really
hard questions really hard questions
things that have the ability to change
you fundamentally questioning not just
who you are but why you’re that person
and whether you’ve chosen to be that
person or whether it was chosen for you
did you accept the narrative because it
was easy or did you actually go through
a process of deciding that it was
important to be that
person and so I started having these
conversations with everyone and this
amazing thing happened I realized that
the narratives didn’t fit anyone I knew
and so I figured out that the last piece
of this was to not stop asking but also
to never stop asking other people this
is not an experience that can happen
only in yourself
this is an experience if we’re going to
change the world and we’re gonna change
the narratives so that people have more
choices so people have more ability to
understand who they are and what their
abilities and potential and
opportunities are then we can’t stop
asking and we have to ask others and you
don’t have to have an answer when you
ask you just start asking so I asked the
women around me what it meant to be a
woman and I found that none of them had
narratives that met that story that I’d
been told of Sleeping Beauty waiting for
her prince to come or even the TV shows
I watched growing up we none of us were
any of those people and that was okay
but we also learned that those
narratives had to be rewritten and that
you rewrite them by talking to people
and asking questions and asking them to
actually look into who they are and I
figured out through this process of
questioning that you know the heart of
the question you asked the more
important the answer is gonna be so it’s
one thing for me to stand here and ask
what it means for me to be a woman but
you know I had a conversation with a
friend a little while ago she’s Asian
American and I was talking to her and I
said so you know you’re you’re Asian
what does that mean to you are you proud
of it she’s like yes I’m proud of it she
had an answer for what it meant because
she’d had to think through it she’d
actually gone through that experience of
thinking through what it meant for her
to be Asian in the United States and
then the darndest thing she looked at me
and she said so what does it mean for
you to be white
[Music]
and I have nothing I had no answer for
that at all because I never thought
about it you know all the people on the
TV shows were white and everyone where I
grew up was white and you know it wasn’t
something that people had ever asked me
about before and nobody challenged it
and I realized that that was a lot
harder question and really scary because
if I started asking what that meant and
I had to deal with all of those things
that came along with being white and I
had to actually have an identity based
on acknowledging it instead of what I’d
always had which was an identity based
on ignoring it and pretending it didn’t
matter because it matters of course it
matters so I asked my friends difficult
questions and I’m a teacher and I asked
my students difficult questions and the
whole point is to get them to think
about this friends students my parents
everyone I think everybody needs to
answer these questions everyone needs to
find the answers and you know you’ll
find out that the most important
questions in these are the ones that
come up when you start asking the things
you’ve never thought about the things
you’ve always taken for granted
questions of race and gender and faith
and nationality and language the things
that you’ve always just accepted as true
the same way that we accept that the sky
is blue and we don’t outside about grade
three when they explained it really
asked why I had to start asking what it
meant for me to be white and what it
meant to have been raised Protestant and
what it meant to be a woman and what it
meant to be American and I’m still
working on them and I’m still asking
these same questions and I’ll have you
know I asked my mother the same question
every couple years in the conversation
we have changes every time and that’s
the best part because it means that the
ideas change
dissonance is a sign this thing where
your world doesn’t match where you start
to notice little bits of discomfort and
you kind of push them off you’re like no
no no it’s cool it’s cool it’s cool and
you start that doublethink process where
you know on the one hand I know that
girls wear dresses and makeup and that
they want to be mothers and have
children and yet on the other hand I
have am NOT going to have children and I
am NOT interested in pink fluffy dresses
most of the time and and and how do I
make these match and I go it’s okay I’m
just not like that everybody else is
like that but I’m not like that and
that’s okay because not everybody else
is like that and those moments of
dissonance start looking for them
because they’re a sign that something
isn’t right something in the narrative
is wrong or missing because the
narrative was easy and we like easy it’s
comfortable and when you notice that ask
yourself what’s wrong ask yourself where
it’s coming from and then ask other
people I paint my nails as a way to
explain this to people I painted them as
a way to come to terms with my
femininity to walk out of the house and
ask why when nobody noticed that I’d
painted my nails why did I feel
self-conscious and shameful why was I
uncomfortable with this and it was
because I thought that people were
judging me and were seeing me as much
more effeminate maybe then I felt or
something and the reason I felt shame
was I thought that all these bad things
were gonna come along with it because
those were the messages I was given so I
paint my nails so I can ask other people
it’s to remind me to ask other people
these hard questions because when we ask
questions and when we start challenging
easy identities we start challenging
those stereotypes then what started out
as a whisper
of discomfort turns into a roar of
disillusionment where people realize
that the story isn’t true and that’s
when the stories change and that’s how
we change the world thank you
[Applause]
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