gt392-cbr32

The Gender Talk radio show discusses transgenderism and challenges traditional views of gender. They interview poet and intersex activist Thea Hillman and author and spiritual leader Malka Drucker. They also talk about their Christmas Eve experience and answer a question about cross-dressing and transgender identity. Good evening. I'm Nancy Nangeroni. I'm Gordine McKenzie. And this is Gender Talk. Hello again. This is Gender Talk, worldwide radio that talks about transgenderism in the first person. Each week we bring you news, information and exciting new voices that challenge our traditional view of gender and more. Tonight we'll be meeting acclaimed poet and intersex activist Thea Hillman. We'll talk about her own sexuality and we'll hear some of her poetry and about some of her intersex activism. Then we'll meet Malka Drucker, the award-winning author and spiritual leader whose latest book is titled White Fire, a portrait of women spiritual leaders in America. We'll talk with her about the roles of women in traditional and non-traditional religion. And despite the fact that it's our tradition to be non-traditional, we'll also have the Twisted Nasty News question of the week and much more tonight on Gender Talk. Hello everyone. Welcome back to another Gender Talk. It's Monday evening, December 30th and that's our last show in 2002. The end of the year. Yes, it is. Anyway, we're happy to be entering another year with everyone. Oh yeah, I need another year. Do you? This one's been a little challenging. I think that's true for all of us. Actually, Gordine and I attended a Christmas Eve service at Arlington Street Church, which has long been an activist haven for activism. And it didn't burst into flames, nor did I, like I had anticipated upon going in. Yes, they actually accepted our presence there among them. The Reverend Kim gave a wonderful sermon on hope. We found it very moving and we're very glad we attended. There was one wonderful line in there. Do you remember that, Nancy? To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing. That was inspiring. Yes, a very inspiring talk that she gave. And of course, the Arlington Street Church is a Unitarian Universalist church, which is, what do you call that, multi-denominational or non-denominational? It depends on which other denomination you talk to. And we're going to talk about lots of different denominations and non-denominations tonight. Speaking of denominations, those deep, dulcet tones that you hear is the voice of Hal Fuller, our engineer. A failed Southern Baptist minister. That's right. Your folks wanted you to be a minister, right? Oh, yeah. Did you ever feel the fire moving in you? I actually delivered. I was youth minister of Southern Baptist Church one week. It was just another speech. They called it a sermon. I called it a speech. And you chose poetry instead? Yeah, or it chose me instead. Anyway, we're going to meet Thea Hillman, who is a member of the board of directors of the Intersex Society of North America. She's also a poet. She's an award-winning poet. Yeah, so she's going to read some poetry. She's gone across the country doing slam poetry readings. Poetry? Yep, poetry. And has done some really wonderful work. And her new book, Depending on the Light, has got some wild stuff on it. She makes great connections. Of course, Gordine McKenzie is a huge fan of poetry, aren't you? And a poet in your own right. Yep. Yeah. I think we also have to note the voice you're not hearing tonight. Yeah, yeah. Karen Larson is not with us tonight, folks. Oh, we're so sad. You know what? She slipped on the ice and fell and took a bad fall, and she actually hit her head. And so, Karen, we hope your head is feeling better. We hope you're okay. Sending you healthy rays. Yeah, yeah. So everyone out there, this weather is particularly icy. I guess we're going to have rain the next few days, and then it's going to turn back to ice. So these are days to be careful, so please do. That's what winter is like in New England. And then we're going to meet Malka Drucker, who's also an award-winning author and a spiritual leader. And she's got this new book. In New Mexico. She's in New Mexico? She's in New Mexico now. That's great. So that connects us back to... And Thea just came back from Albuquerque. Really? Yeah. Mackenzie, do you have like a New Mexico filter on our guests? Maybe I'm pining. Anyway, speaking of homesick, we spent a nice Christmas day, which also happens to be our anniversary. And so we actually celebrate our anniversary more than Christmas that day. And, of course, we celebrate and we just revel in the fact that everyone else is honoring our anniversary, right? Well, we went to the ocean and enjoyed being out in nature that day. We went out in the storm. Yeah, there was a storm. It was supposed to give us 10 to 15 inches of snow. It ended up giving us about three to four, I think. It rained a lot, and we got soaked, but we sure had a good time there. But the ocean was just amazing, and we fed the seagulls. There were a bunch of seagulls and one crow. Lone crow hanging with the seagulls. And there was one huge baby Huey seagull that wanted to eat all the corn, all the sunflowers, all the Dorito chips. Isn't that always? All the offerings we brought. There's always one. But the crow was getting right up there with him and snacking. And so we're driving home, and we've noticed this year among the decorations people have around their houses are all these inflatable figures now. All these inflatable, mostly small ones. Giant ones. Yeah, they must be six or eight or ten feet tall. They're these snowmen and Santas and stuff. But that day during the storm... Because when we left, we'd gone out to the ocean. We were soaked. They were all deflated a little bit. And so all the snowmen were tilted forward, kind of falling over. They were bobbing because the wind was blowing. And they had these candy canes, and it looked like something out of a macabre horror film. They were just like... And as we drove along, we saw a supine Santa flat on his back. One of those big helium ones. I so enjoyed that because the inflatable stuff seems like a little bit on the, can we say, tacky side. Just a little bit much. It's sort of like those plastic Santas that people like to put on their front lawns and all that stuff. Well, that's part of the season is you make your house look as tacky as possible. As many lights and inflatable deer and Christmas crash. Some people use the lights beautifully and just do very artistic jobs on their houses with wreaths and all of that. Some houses are just gorgeous. We made, in the center of our room, we have garlands and we have ornaments. And if you stand under it, it's a place where when there's too much holiday stuff, you can just say, beam me up. And it's like a spaceship. And then we went and visited my family on Saturday. And a family sort of self-divides itself into two groups. Those with children, those who are children oriented, who haven't participated in this sort of recognition of the population explosion problem. They all show up early. Sorry. I had to get that in. They all show up early and leave early. And so that left all of us who have chosen to focus on other things. We got to hang out afterwards and had a really nice time. But we stayed up way too late. Got totally wiped out. And then the family recuperated. Anyway, I hope everybody had a good holiday season. And we'll have a very good New Year, too. So anyway, welcome back to Gender Talk, everybody. In case you wondered what this was. Yeah. And now shall we do our question of the week? Sure. I miss Karen. I miss her raucous voice. Hey, Karen. Yeah. Our question this week comes from Kathy. Kathy says, I consider myself a transvestite. And Kathy sent us in an email where the subject line of her email was, I disagree with your definitions of transvestite and transsexual or something like that. Or no, transvestite and cross-dresser. Cross-dresser. Yeah. So she says, I consider myself a transvestite. The reason for this is I love to dress. And I dress fully and as perfect as I can to be the girl I wish to be. I can be passable and enjoy every minute of this time. The problem is I do not have to live as a male and cannot. No, the problem is I do have to live as a male and cannot dress all the time. Two or three times a week is all I get the chance for. It hurts me when I cannot dress. And I long for it each and every day of the week. Although from my past experience I've found that every cross-dresser I've met usually enjoys the feel of a certain item or two of women's clothing and it is more for a sexual reason. In most, if not all cases, they can go without this pleasure for any given time and almost never dress completely. She says that of every cross-dresser she's met. I would love to hear your take on this. Thanks very much, Kathy. Well, there's a few issues here. One is there is a difference between sort of fetishistic sort of cross-dressing where you're getting a sexual charge out of the clothing or the items of clothing or whatever and the cross-dressing where it's sort of your identity that you're changing and where the identity change is something that gives you comfort and allows you to move in the world in a way that gives you some feeling of pleasure or comfort or safety or whatever. So that's one issue. There's another issue here which is that you sound more like someone who would be a transsexual if they could be, somebody who would transition if you could since you say you like to cross-dress as often as you possibly can. Maybe transgender. Yeah, maybe a transgender. To me transgender is more of an overarching term. See, I called myself a transsexual even though I didn't want to have the surgery because, yeah, I know. There's so much gray area there. I think that's one of the things she's asking is for clarification of the definitions like what else is different. It sounds like Kathy is somebody who would like to live as a woman or who would like to try at least. She says every day she would like to do it. She talks about it every day and she does it just as often as she can. So it sounds like living as a woman might be a good experience for you, might be one you decide to stick with. So maybe that's why you find a difference between yourself and some of those cross-dressers who are cross-dressing on a more recreational way. I do think that there are plenty of cross-dressers who are not cross-dressing for a strictly sexual reason. And I think to say that I think kind of misrepresents those people. While there are plenty of people who get off sexually from cross-dressing, I think even for those people there can often be a component of cross-dressing which is not sexual. And so to simplify it as just a sexual thing, although you didn't use the word fetish, I did, to make it just a sexual thing I think is really not correct. I don't think that's true even though for a lot of people it can be. And that may even be the primary thing. I think there's more to it than that. One of the things that Virginia Prince said that after you've pleasured yourself in dressing, if you keep the stuff on a little bit longer, you find out something about what it is to be this woman. And so what that speaks to then is intention and what you do with it. Because I think the sexual component there is some kind of inner drive that is sort of leading you in this direction. And whether or not you take it beyond the strictly sexual component and you start looking at what else is there for me to learn here, what else is there for me to explore, what other experiences are there, then it can become something much larger. So I think that is their latent in everybody who cross-dresses. And that's why I say even those who are cross-dressing, only to enjoy the sexual turn-on, I think even for them I think there's more to it. I think there's a lot more potential. There's a lot more latent. And I think most people experience some amount of that whether they realize it or not. Well, there are a lot of people that don't identify as cross-dressers or transvestites that also get sexually excited about putting on particular items of clothing. Like, so you think men and women both? Yeah, I would say definitely. But certain groups have gotten stigmatized. I mean, it's interesting when we look at diagnostic criteria and what that basically means. But there are many women that put on different types of clothing and find that very arousing. There's also men as well. Are they aroused by the clothing itself or by the potential that the clothing represents? Maybe the feel of the clothing on the body. I mean, I would argue that, yeah. And I would argue that some amount of the sexual arousal from cross-dressing is because of the potential that the cross-dressing represents as much as that particular piece of clothing. There may be certain, it may be that one item of clothing represents a particular kind of potential that is the potential that excites you the most. And so your interest in that potential may become rooted in that particular kind of clothing. But I would still argue that there's a potential beyond the piece of clothing which is a component of that. And so I think that if we simply say somebody is turned on by panties, I think that that's, or whatever, I think that we're oversimplifying. Costuming makes you feel different. And I look at, you know, RuPaul says you're born naked and everything else is drag. So if you put something on that makes you feel hot or attractive, you know, and people do that. I mean, I've seen TV commercials where a woman puts on a man's shirt and gets turned on thinking of the man whose shirt she's putting on. You haven't? You think that's silly? Because I wish that you could see the look on your lady's face as she pondered that. Can you make that audible so people can have some idea of where you're at? How can I do it? I don't know. I'm just thinking, I don't know. It's like you're doubting. Well, but I worry when we have desire sold back to us. I'm flinching because it's when we have desire. I don't know the experience of women, so is that an experience that you might have as a woman? I don't know. I liked men's shirts, but that was just myself, you know, and I don't know. Good point. So to comment on the commercial as if that's representing real life isn't really too smart. No, no, I'm not saying it's not too smart. In fact, it's mighty darn dumb. No, don't say that about yourself. I'm thinking instead that we just have to be careful when our desires are taken and commodified and sold back to us. We have to question them. It can touch a nerve. Okay, so where I was going with that was around sort of the potential of the clothing. Like maybe a man puts on a tux and like thinks, oh, you know. And the rest of the time he gets all thrilled. The women are going to be all turned on by me. Or the man. Or the man. And so he gets turned on thinking about how other people are going to be turned on thinking about him. Well, we might look at ourselves sometimes and go, oh, we might look mighty fine because we've got ourselves all fluffed up. But now that's around the potential rather than around the feel of the clothing itself. Whereas with lingerie, I would say that appearance and feel is definitely more likely to be a component there. But for a man to put on that lingerie, it's not just the fact that it feels different and all of that. First of all, that brings him into a sensual side of himself rather than simply an acquisition-based kind of way of existing in the world. All of a sudden you're in a sensual, feeling, touching place. That taboo, forbidden thing plays both directions. The sword cuts both ways. Most men who are doing cross-dressing in a fetishistic or masturbatory way can't get that stuff off quickly enough after they come. That's an important point. The shame kicks in. That keeps a lot of people from further exploring what this really feels like. I went through a time where it was that way for me because I felt so ashamed. I felt like it was so wrong. I had no contact with anyone else who was doing it or who was saying it was okay or anything like that. That shame just like, bam, knocks you down. Anyway, Kathy, I hope that represents our take on this. I hope that satisfies your interest in hearing our take. She'll probably never ask us again. There are as many different aspects to cross-dressing as there are cross-dressers, I think. No matter what you think you've seen in other cross-dressers, to some extent it's a reflection of your own experience and what you are going through. Maybe you're in a position where you're feeling upset that you can't cross-dress more and so you're kind of putting people on the other side of that fence or whatever. When you think of the terms themselves, transvestite is a medically derived term versus cross-dresser is a self-generated term. There are some interesting things that go on there, but people should be able to define however they want to define. What's interesting is transvestite is a cross-dress lover. An ite is somebody who likes to do something and a vestite would be a clothing, somebody who likes to dress. A transvestite would be somebody who likes to cross-dress, whereas cross-dresser is about a practice. It's interesting that the two words have slightly different meanings that way. When the community labeled itself, it labeled itself by its practice. They chose a word that described the practice, something they did, rather than describing themselves as liking it. They described themselves as doing it. I don't know if that's significant. Anyway, thanks for your question, Kathy. I like the question. I think this is an area of a lot of interest because there are a lot of people out there cross-dressing. I think we need to keep talking about this stuff more and more. Anyway, thanks for your question, Kathy. Those others of you who have other questions, please send them in to question at gendertalk.com. Okay, question at gendertalk.com. We did get a couple of questions last week during the show from a listener in Arizona. I just wanted to let that listener know that we will be answering your questions, but we actually need to do a little bit of research before we can answer them. We'll try and answer those next week. Thanks so much for your question, Kathy. Now it's time for Hal Fuller. The Gender Talk Twisted Nasty News. Since it's the end of the year, we're going to do a little reflection here. Mirrors. I love mirrors. It's actually been, for the transgender community, a time in which there have been a lot of gains, particularly in... What are the figures here? Over the last year, seven counties, 44 cities, and two states, Minnesota and Rhode Island, now have explicit civil rights protections for transgender people. They now have them. They didn't all just pass them. No. Okay. There were a lot that were this year, and I can't find the specific number, but much more than in past years. There have been more cities, more municipalities, more states passing specific transgender protections. Well, if you look at a graph of the number of cities and counties, the number of municipalities or regions that are passing transgender protective legislation, you'll see that it's an exponentially increasing curve. So the pendulum is swinging towards people creating those kinds of protections to redress the inequities that exist. So in the year 2002, the governing council of 14 cities and counties, including Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New York, and Philadelphia, voted to include transgender people among groups protected by local non-discrimination laws. So the previous year had more than six jurisdictions taking such action. So that's a significant gain. What was the number this year? Fourteen. Wow, more than double. Yeah. So at this point, with all those major cities, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, and many more passing, it really, I think, becomes harder for people to say, no, this is not reasonable legislation to pass. So that's a good thing. It makes it a little bit easier for the people who are advocating for it. It also makes it easier for the council people or whoever, the elected representatives, to vote for it. Now, we also have to remember that in other ways it was not so good a year. There were 25 members of this community that were killed. That's an all-time high, isn't it? I think so. That is an all-time high. And I think it's not accidental. I think it's not just a coincidence that not only did the rate of law passage increase, but the rate of violence increased along with it. Well, the amount of exposure, the amount of times that you hear the word transgender or transsexual or even transvestite in the press, in the media. Well, I think we're at a dangerous point in time because if we continue accelerating the rate that we pass legislation but we do not at the same time accelerate our educational efforts, what we're going to have is more and more people who are going to be angry that these laws are being passed, who are not going to understand the need for them, who are not going to understand the basic humanity of trans people who are going to see them as the enemy, and there will be an increase in the violence. And feel threatened. Exactly. I don't know why, but they... Well, I know why. I mean, so many people who grew up in this country have violence done to them as children around gender issues. Yes, this is true. So many boys get hit by their fathers because they're not macho enough or they get punished because they have violence done to them. And so, of course, they do violence later around the same issue. So I'm very concerned that we're polarizing further. I've been talking about this increasing polarization as long as we've been doing gender talk, I think, and we really see it very clearly in these numbers, and it's very important. I think maybe as a community, instead of turning our... Now that we've been winning all these fights, instead of turning our attention to more and stronger legislation, we should turn our attention to more and better education. So maybe we should all put that in our campaign shirt. Maybe they should go together. Well, yeah, except they don't. I mean, if this polarity is continuing, then that's telling us that we're not educating as fast as we're legislating. Well, any time that a reform movement gains any ground, you have a backlash. People feel threatened. They feel they're losing privilege. A statement that I quoted last week where someone essentially said, with all of these things happening, all of this changing, how can I teach my grandchildren my own values? Of course, those values were of hatred and discrimination, but the world's changing too fast for a lot of people. We have so much privilege to go around. And we've got to be really tight with it, you know? Yeah. Not pass it out, huh? Speaking of freedom, in the Philippines, they started a new rush hour train service, a female-only rail car, because women were being harassed. Oh, I like this. But they also said that transvestites, no matter how convincing, would not be allowed to ride the new coach for women. I don't like that. Transvestites. That's interesting. I don't know how I feel about that. Obviously, it was of concern to them. I don't necessarily believe that transvestites should just automatically get access to women's space. But in the case of bathrooms, where they're well-behaved, I think that it's safer for them probably to use women's bathrooms. And I think that's a good argument for transvestites using women's bathrooms. But I think in this case, on the train, I don't think they're physically threatened. I don't think we've heard of transvestites getting beaten on trains or getting hurt. And they might be using the phrase transvestite in the way that we use the phrase transgender. I mean, it could cover a very broad spectrum. It could. But a transvestite is just a guy cross-dressing. I shouldn't say just, but it's a guy cross-dressing. It's somebody who identifies as a guy. And, of course, you might have women hitting on women. But generally speaking... You're not supposed to mention that. Generally speaking, more often than not, any woman out there who is attractive in this sort of culturally desirable way, any attractive woman out there knows they get bothered by men. Much more than men get bothered by women. And so it's not an unreasonable thing. And it's not unreasonable to have some kind of policy around people who cross-dress. One of the interesting things is where you see this kind of segregation is most often in countries that are in cultures that are quite misogynistic. The Arab culture. And the women are being segregated not because it's their fault that they're getting hit on. It's because men can't be trusted. Their religion says men can't be trusted, so women have to be kept apart, veiled, unseen. Sorry to our Islamic listeners. I would have thought that rather than... Well, I guess it takes less person power to set up a women's... set up a women's car than it does to sort of monitor. Because I would have thought the better way of doing it would be just to have enough people around so if you see guys bothering women, you go up and say, hey, we don't tolerate that on this train. Like you said, it's probably easier just to have a totally women's car. And you know that's fed by the media that shows men in movies and such persisting after the woman has said no. Persisting and persisting and persisting and finally she acknowledges that yes, he's the man for her and all of this stuff, which is a bunch of baloney. But what you do is you teach men that they have to be very persistent in order to win the woman of their dreams, which of course makes men tend to err on that side. So I'm not saying that the men are necessarily jerks. They're just enculturated to behave in a way that makes them seem like jerks. Here's an interesting story out of Mississippi. Oh, I missed something interesting here. You did. We're still on the all women's car thing. Okay. Well, see, I need to say, where are you going to put transvestites though? I mean, if women are being harassed and you have transvestites or transgender people on trains, if they're dressed. They're not at risk the way they are out in public because a train is a moving thing that somebody can't get off of. People don't do assaults on trains because they can't get away with it. Well, actually they do. Do they? Yeah. I would think that they would be safe. Read an MBTA police report. That's MBTA. That's different from a... What kind of train was this? Wasn't this a long-haul train? Or was this a commuter rail? It was more or less a commuter rail. But if they moved the women because the women were being harassed... And the men can't be trusted. Yeah, and that if men can't be trusted, then why... What I was saying was a better way to do it would be to have people paying attention to what's going on and just informing men who are harassing women, hey, we don't do that on this train. If you want to ride this train, you're going to leave the women alone. That's right, or we're going to hurl you out the door. Story from Mississippi. As we all know, Senator Trent Lott stepped down as the majority leader in the Senate because of unfortunate statements he made essentially supporting Strom Thurmond's segregationist run. What year was it? 48, I think. 48. Well, he's gotten even in more trouble. Even the Ku Klux Klan is giving him grief, not because he made the statement, because they were in favor of it. They were upset that he apologized. Oh, good. That's fair. You can't win, Trent. Just take foot out of mouth and polish toes. You know, it's time for people who are coming from the left politically, it's time for people coming from the left politically to start standing up and being counted. That needs to happen now or we're going to get in more and more trouble internationally. Okay, one final story. You know, it wouldn't kill us to pay a few more taxes in order to continue the services for people who have difficulty caring for themselves. It wouldn't kill us to pay a little bit more. Well, we're probably going to end up with tax cuts because those are popular under a Republican regime. Or he's refusing to. Yeah, we're talking about the situation here in Massachusetts. Oh, there's also a Maria Lopez thing today in the news. Sorry, Hal. No problem. Oh, by the way, you're listening to Gender Talk on WMBR in Cambridge. In case you were wondering, again, a mystery man strangely obsessed with garden gnomes is prowling the commercial drive area of East Vancouver in Canada. They call him the Feng Shui Bandit. Why? Because he steals the gnomes and arranges them, moves them a little bit. You've got an interior decorator there, huh? Wait a minute. So all he's doing, he's not stealing them, he's just moving them? Well, sometimes he's actually taking them out of the yard that they were inhabiting and set up in a little gnome display. Somewhere else. Somewhere else that is more Feng Shui correct. And, in fact, if the residents put the gnomes back where they were originally, he'll come again and move them again. So he's persistent. The problem is he has started to take fish from people's fish ponds, but he neglected to take water. The fish, alas, did not make it. Oh. So he's not clear on the concept. What is this very weird? This is a disturbed person. Yeah, yeah. Well, there have been a rash or a series of gnome stealings all over the world. Like an entire city, all of a sudden, people would go out in the morning and their gnomes would be gone. And they would find like 30 or 40 of these little garden gnomes somewhere. Arranged. All collected. Yes. Sounds like some strange abduction. Well, thank you for informing us of this interesting matter. And that's it for this edition of the Gender Talk, Twisted and Nasty News, Making Gnome Sense as Usual. I need to comment because Judge Maria Lopez is a judge who ruled in the Horton case. What was her name, Ebony Horton? Right. She was a young, high school-aged tranny who was caught in a car with an underage, a younger 15-year-old or something. 11-year-old. 11-year-old. She was accused of attempted rape and all kinds of things. And so there was an incredible outcry because Maria Lopez lit this Horton off on probation. And so there's been a terrible outcry. And today we were driving into the show and we heard it reported. We heard her statement that she feels like an elephant gun has been taken to shoot a mouse coming after her for this. And it was strictly because of publicity and all. And I've had a personal conversation with someone who is very close to Ebony Horton who has been working with Ebony Horton since this all happened. And this is somebody who I have a tremendous amount of respect for. This is somebody who I think has impeccable credentials and deserves all of our respect. And this is somebody who says the media has totally blown this thing out of all proportion. What Horton did was not what she was reported to do. She was not abusing this young person. And it's all gotten twisted. And it's a total witch hunt. And so just for those of you who might be wondering about this news story, I wish I had more first-hand information. But based on what I've heard, it's just a total witch hunt. There was a lot of conflicting reports that came out. Essentially, originally the police didn't believe the story of the kid. They had severe doubts about what he was telling them actually occurred. And remember Ebony was, what, 17 or 18 as well? We're not talking about a person that was a great deal older. There are a lot of questions. But it was very anti-cross-dressing. Yeah. And this would be a good time for me to remind you all that the views and opinions presented on this program did not necessarily reflect those of the staff and management of WNBR, the Technology Broadcasting Corporation, or MIT. Okay. We have our first guest, Thea Hilton. Thea is on the Board of Directors of the Intersex Society of North America. She's a writer and an intersex activist from San Francisco who recently authored a book of poetry called Depending on the Light. She has produced many performance events, including Sold Out Intercourse, a sex and gender spoken word recipe for revolution for the 2001 National Queer Arts Festival. She's on the Mills College Board of Trustees and one of the co-producers for Word Girls, the first inclusive all-girls spoken word festival. And she has read her poetry at festivals, bookstores, and done readings all across the country. And you can hear about some of those trips in the book of poetry. Welcome to Gender Talk, Thea. Thanks. It's great to be here. It's great to have you here, Thea. Thea, this is an inspiring piece of work. What led you to writing and writing about your experiences? Well, writing has just been one of the things I've done ever since I was a little kid that I think got me the most attention. So I think it was the best way that I could. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. All right. And you're an intersex activist and you're involved with the Intersex Society of North America. Does your intersexuality, is that part of your writing and are you writing about that? I am now. I think I always was writing about it in a certain way because I was always trying to push the envelope and break down binaries. Were you aware of your intersexuality at an early age? No. I was aware that I had a health condition that was called congenital adrenal hyperplasia that I was aware of as an enzyme imbalance and that I took medication for it. So I understood that aspect of it, but I didn't realize that I was intersex and I didn't actually even hear the word intersex until about three years ago. That's probably true for most of us. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Whether we're intersex or not. And what did that all mean to you as you were growing up? What kind of role did that play in your life? Well, the interesting thing is that I thought I was special. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Wow, that's wonderful. Yeah. Here I was four years old growing pubic hair and I got to go to doctor's appointments and I got to wear a medical alert bracelet. You were growing pubic hair at four? Yes. My goodness. That was how my condition began to manifest itself. Oh, wow. Yeah, I'd say that's early. Yeah. Yeah, cool. You know, and so luckily my parents were, they were very scared at the time and very worried, but they were also very open with me. Oh, how wonderful. Yeah, I really, you know, never really saw my body as freakish. I think I began to learn as I got older the ways in which my body was different, but as a young child I just thought I was special and I was lucky because I was getting hair before all the other girls. So you escaped in some ways from some of the terrible tortures that others went through. I absolutely think that's true. Wow. Good for you. Yeah. That's good because we hear so many horror stories about children who are just paraded around for the medical establishment and made to feel absolutely horrible and parents freaking out and this is a refreshing story to hear. Yeah. It's really something that supports a notion of, you know, we need to have a lot of room for everyone to be around and not change everyone to one uniform way. It sounds like the way that your parents dealt with it might be a good model for other parents. Yes. Have you shared that? Have you written about that? I mean you said it's in your writing, but have you written about that like for other intersex folks or for in particular doctors at all? I mean it sounds like that would be a great thing for doctors to have available to give to parents of intersex kids. Yes. It's interesting that you mention that because I think so far what I've written about is trauma, an erasure of difference in terms of intersex and I think one of the things that I have to offer is a different story. Yeah. A wonderful model for people to follow. No, I agree with you. One of the biggest principles of the Intersex Society of North America, one of the things that we advocate for the most is that there should be an environment of openness and honesty with both the parents and the children and that's something that doesn't happen right now. Anything else is stigmatizing. Right. Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's great. And you think the medical profession would have learned that by now? They think people can't handle it. They think people can't handle difference. That's a very hierarchical way of looking at things, isn't it? Yeah. Because those people aren't as capable as we are. We can handle it but they can't. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Interesting. Now you are producing performance events. Tell us about those. Well, I consider part and parcel with my activism. Forward Girls, which you mentioned, was an all-inclusive spoken word conference and all-inclusive in this case meant anyone who has been, will be or is right now a girl. I love that. So that included people of different ages and people, you know, some who were born women or some people who transitioned to being women. I wonder if that would include me. Yep. I don't necessarily identify. I mean, I definitely don't identify as a man but I don't really identify exactly as a woman. I don't know how I identify. You passed. Well, were you a girl at any point? Was I a girl at any point? Well, yeah, I probably was. Well, then you'd be welcome. And I think still is here. Yeah, I think there's still some girl. There's definitely some girl here. And that's why I like the word girl better than woman for this conference. Oh, yeah. It's a little more playful and it's also a little bit less loaded. That's great. Cool. You know? Cool. So that was one event. My most recent event, which was really exciting, was called Rated XXXY, which was an evening of erotica and education benefiting the Intersex Society of North America. Wonderful. And every single one of the performers, there were eight performers there and they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. And they were all women. But we all, each one of the performers, had experiences with being told that our body wasn't standard for male or female at a young age and we're brought up dealing with this. And it was a very racially diverse group. It was actually people from different countries in the event. And we really got the word out. And we got to show people, hey, there's a lot of different, it intersects with a lot of different faces. And it's a big term in and of itself. Let's hear from the people themselves. Interesting. That's important. Yeah. I wonder if folks who have sexual issues like intersexuality or transsexuality, those sorts of things, I wonder if that focuses us on our sexuality in a different way that changes the tone of the art that we produce. You know? Yeah. Well, I've always believed, just in terms of being queer, that this is the first thing where I was supposed to do something a certain way and then realize that wasn't quite the way I wanted to do it. Like, I was supposed to be having sex with men, but it wasn't necessarily the right direction for me. And I had to start questioning. And then if you question that very essential thing that women have sex with men, you know, then you really realize, well, all those things I'm supposed to do, I can actually question all of them. Yeah. And so for me, my work has always been about pushing people or making them uncomfortable in one way or another or getting them to at least make informed choices about what they're doing. Yeah. So I definitely think so. And so for me, I do think, back to your earlier question, that whether I knew I was intersex or not, I knew I was different. You know? And I was. I had a lot more antigens, you know, masculinizing hormones running through me than other little girls. And I'm sure that made a lot of difference. Did you beat up the other girls? Especially in terms of my sexuality. Yeah. And me as a sexual being. Can you read something for us? Sure. What I'll do is I'll read the beginning of a piece called Contradiction. Okay. And this is a piece about, sort of, it was written as I was sort of figuring out that the term hermaphrodite had something to do with me and I wasn't quite sure what it had to do with yet. Right. So I'll go ahead and read the first couple of paragraphs of that. And when did you write this one, Thea? I wrote this, excuse me, in about 1998 or 1999. Okay. Which was right before I found out about, well, that I found out that I could consider myself intersex. Ah, okay. I was sort of coming out to myself and this is the first piece that I wrote. Cool. I think it was sometime before I was born that wrong crept in. What cell divided when it wasn't supposed to? What tissue held on too long, longing for itself and not giving way? And who told my little brain? And what was the energy of difference? Or was it there at all until other bodies defined it so? This line I walk is somewhere between gardenias and carnations, sandwiched between blood tests and varsity letters, a charm on the medical alert bracelet. Each visit to the doctor a tiny X on the line I never was on, weight above, height below. Lines drawn from bone age tests and you have to be this tall before you can ride. If I could have been a hermaphrodite, what does it feel like? No one ever thought to tell me it was okay to feel uncomfortable. Holding difference from the inside out, my appearance as a normal girl is a miracle of medical science. I can successfully reproduce this appearance. I search in others for the parts of me I wronged. My appearance as a girl has crushes on girls who appear to be boys, who are half boys, who have all the facial hair my mother fought so hard to save me from. The line is about jump rope then. It carries contradictions on its back and I make sure never to step directly on the crack. Cool. That's great. Thanks. Do you step on the crack now? All the time. And clean. That's what's fun is you get to play with that stuff when you start looking at it. Yeah. I can remember walking down the sidewalk and avoiding the cracks. I used to get very superstitious about that as a kid, but then I'd start walking on them to see what would happen ultimately. I've always been a big chicken around gender stuff. The world's biggest chicken. I transitioned and all, but I didn't put myself in between. I was always so afraid of sort of being a queer guy, being too queer as a guy or as a woman. It's like I'm gradually moving to a more kind of in between I think state, but I still kind of gender myself strongly and I still don't place myself right on that line. I think between is just the scariest place. For everybody. Yeah. Whether it's bisexuality or gender or between jobs even. Absolutely. We're dealing with that a lot and I just think it's the most exciting place. I so appreciate people who can hold that. That's an important point. It's a magical place. There's a lot of energy and a lot of power that's invested there. Yeah. Our culture depends on categories and it's when we get outside of categories or between categories that we put ourselves in the space where magic can happen, where things get exciting. I agree completely. I do. Because it's so easy to go on automatic pilot and when you don't have any road maps and you have to invent something or discover it or find it, it's a whole different experience. And it challenges yourself too. It's like they were singing last night, we were watching some Pink Floyd video stuff, Comfortably Numb, the song. It's like instead of just being comfortably numb, it's sort of like you put yourself out in the weather and you feel what it feels like and you have to make decisions about where you're going to go instead of just taking the career path and all of that. A lot of it is just being programmed and we get terribly programmed by gender. Yeah. That challenges it. Thank you for reading that. You have been working on a longer piece. Are you finished a longer piece you said? Yes. Will you share that with us? Sure. This is a little bit different. This is about the people that I'm lovers with and that I feel are holding that space of But it's also about relationships between people who are mothering and their girls. I think maybe we can discuss it after more than before. But yeah, I'll just go ahead and read it and we can see what it's about. Great. Okay. It's called Miscarriage. Actually, I'll just also say this just appeared in a zine called Comet Bus. When I was in Albuquerque, someone came up to me and said they'd read it. Oh, wow. Yeah. So cool. I want to thank the editor, Aaron, of Comet Bus and also just never underestimate the power of zines. Oh, that's great. That's terrific. It's really amazing. We're going to turn off our microphones while you're reading this so there won't be any distracting sounds coming from us. Okay? Okay. Just so you know, you'll be hearing sounds from us. Okay? Okay. Yes. It's called Miscarriage. Great. I have been a mother many times, but I have never been pregnant. There was that one child older than me. I picked her up in a bar. Her apartment was small. She leaned back against her headboard, smug and sexy. Her mouth went slack, eyes soft when she pulled down the straps of my bra. She made a noise I didn't understand yet. I am the mother she never had. There have been a few of us in her life, makeshift mothers who love away the pain or cry trying. It was only moments, but it was no longer just sexy. She buried her head in my chest, arms around me. Surprised, I held her close. Something's happened to this girl's mother, my head told me. This girl hasn't had a mother in a long time, my heart told me. I am only 30, but I have been a mother to many girls. Oh, my sweet girls. I haven't saved one of them yet. I hold her. I tell her she's beautiful. I hold her and rock her when she's hysterical, heaving sobs harder than any I've ever cried, and I wonder, how will I ever hold up all those tears? How can I teach her to let them go, that they are part of an ocean lapping a welcome shore? My mother's heart breaks for a baby that isn't mine, and for a child I know I'll have to give up. I hold many of them longer than nine months. I have never carried any of them to term. It's funny that miscarriage sounds so much like marriage, but without the promise, the ring, or a future. Poor baby. She's older than me, but I see the beatings in her young eyes, housed in an ancient face. It's the pictures that kill me, a knife twisting in my mother gut. She shows me pictures. She hands me her hurt like a beloved headless doll, oblivious to what it reveals, each year another scar. The baby eyes in the pictures give way to a hard teenage grin, and a glint that makes me wince. Each year a pristine new dress hung off her, and the pictures look progressively wronger than the year before. The boy peeking out from the girl that's getting beaten to death inside there. By her mother. By her. I fall for the girl who takes refuge in her brother, in boyhood. The girl who sees her survival in a square butt and flat chest. Today my girls wear army fatigues, hooded sweatshirts and briefs. Their shoulders curved to hide their chests. They get mistaken for boys on the street and in public bathrooms. But I see the little girls, invisible to others, but unmistakable to me. Bigger than me, they get sirred all the time. But they'll always be my little girls. I love their little boy bodies. I love their breasts. I put food on the table. I hold down a job. I keep the house clean. Each time I tell myself, this one, this will be the one, I'm going to save this one. And she lets me in. She lets me touch her. She lets me in and I tell her I love her and I tell her how to keep a job, how to feed herself, how to succeed in the world. I tell her I believe in you. You have something to offer the world. You have a chance. But motherless girls don't want to be nurtured. They want to be mothered. And they'll do anything to not grow up and not let go. So with every word of encouragement, I cement her failure. With every hope, every word of support, I build a tower of expectations she's going to fall from. And then with every hurt and disappointment, I feel a future without me in it. For she is motherless and I will necessarily lose her. She will necessarily grow up without me. I lose another baby. And maybe I try again when the bleeding resumes. All right. Very powerful. Yeah, terrific. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, too. After I read this, each time people have come up to me and they're either the motherless girl or they're the mother. I love it. And more than one person wanted to meet with me and talk about this issue. So I thought we should start a group called Mominon. Mominon, I love it. I think there's definitely some parallels just in relationship issues around some of the things you said in there. I think there's some real potent observations there of some of the dynamics that go on in relationships around support and encouragement. Yeah, and how it can also get a little problematic and a little twisted and never end up really realizing itself. Yeah, sometimes support has the opposite effect or the type of support given can have the opposite effect. Yeah, and I think in queer relationships we see each other's pain so clearly. It's really hard to not want to just heal each other and take that on. Yeah, the nice thing about queer relationships is I think from what I've seen we tend to have less of a gulf across which we're working. I mean it seems like in hetero relationships you're more likely to sort of be separately compartmentalized in your lives. Whereas in queer relationships you're closer to each other just by virtue of living lives and having perspectives that are closer than in a straight gendered world. And the continents always shift and move around a lot there. Yeah, and you've got to be quick on your feet to be a good dancer. It strikes me too that the challenge for us is to really remain independent as much as we can and to not merge too much. To find a way to maintain that independence at the same time that we honor our loving relationship and the closeness and find ways to maintain the excitement and the love that you start with, the enthusiasm for the relationship. It's a delicate balance, not losing that vulnerability that can take you to such wonderful places and make such a very strong connection. And still being able to take care of yourself too. That's tough sometimes. Yeah, I think I hear some hurt around trying to care for others here. Maybe just a little, Thea. Just a little. Yeah. It's been a clear enough pattern. It's been a clear thing that I need to move away from and I feel like I actually have. That's been really helpful. Maybe you should have a child that you can parent and then you won't parent your partner. Writing it really brings it into that consciousness and awareness and really becomes therapeutic, I think, on so many levels. As well as sort of like an incantation too that moves you into other areas. So just by writing that, have you noticed things shifting and changing then? Yeah, absolutely. Great. For me, if I can write about something that hurts, if I can turn it into art, there's a separation there. You're creating a distance. So there's the sense of accomplishment of creating something, but there's also a distance that gets created there. And to be able to read it out loud, for me, performing is a big part of writing. Yeah. And so getting to share that and getting recognition or acknowledgement, not just of the work itself but of what it means and what it means for other people, that sort of connection with other people is so great. Yeah. Really just, it's no longer then about, for me, it's quickly not about the issue anymore. It's really about the art and it's about connection with other people. Oh, yeah. That happens to me with my music, when I perform the music. That's right. It's interesting because at the same time that it does become about something else, you need to maintain where you started because that's what you're giving to other people. When you're performing for other people, it's where you were when you wrote it and it's the message that's in it. Yeah. And so you need to sort of preserve that way of getting into that space because that's what you're giving to other people when you're performing. You don't want to get lost in that excitement about, oh, look at all these people are enjoying this. Isn't that wonderful? Yeah. That's right. We haven't talked much about intersex activism and we're down to just a few minutes here. We'd like to give you a chance if you want to. We know you're on the board of directors of the Intersex Society of North America. Is there any particular place you'd like to go with that, talk about that? Is there any message you'd like to get out today about that? Well, sure. ISNA is the Intersex Society of North America. We talked about that earlier. Intersex is people born with anatomy that someone decided is not standard for male or female. Right. ISNA has been around since 1994. One thing that's pretty exciting, and I'll go into a little bit of our principles and sort of the kind of suggestions that we make around intersex, but one thing that's pretty exciting is that we just hired a new executive director. Yes. Monica Casper. Right. She's going to join us, I think, February 17th on the show, actually. Right. Yeah. She's terrific and we're very excited about the next decade and where ISNA is going to go. In particular, it's exciting because the word is out. I think really people know about ISNA now, especially within the medical community. Great. And you're getting more and more respect all the time, aren't you? Yes. And more media coverage, too. Yeah, as well. We had this great thing happen a couple weeks ago. A doctor called us from a teaching hospital and a children's hospital on the East Coast, actually, who said that after hearing our board chair, Alice Drager, speak and after reading her book, Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, after hearing her speak and reading that book, two baby boys were born in the hospital who had what's called hypospadias, which is basically a condition where the urethra comes out somewhere besides the tip of the penis. Right. And very often these little boys' standard operating procedure, actually, is to turn these little boys into little girls with early surgery. Oh, my. Simply because their penises are, you know, not large enough or not standard for penetrating a woman. Wow. We identify people, isn't it? Yeah. That's your mission in life. So usually these doctors would have turned, well, given both of them surgery and turned one of them into a little girl. And instead, after hearing Alice speak, they did not do surgery. It was a year ago. And they just contacted us to tell us that the little boys are doing fine. Great. And that they are changing their practices. Wonderful. That's so inspiring. Wow. And Alice is wonderful and has done great work. We've had her on the show. You've had her on the show? Yeah. So one thing I would love to do if we had just another minute, I'd like to say what ISNA does stand for. Sure. We have another minute. Do we have a minute? Yep. Great. We believe that intersexuality is a problem of stigma and trauma but not gender. And that parents' distress must not be treated by surgery on the child. Of course it's going to be distressing when your child is born differently than you expected. Yeah. But that with counseling, anybody can get used to just about anything. That's right. Especially with a healthy kid on their hands. We believe that professional mental health is essential and that honest, complete disclosure is good medicine. Good. And this is the big one. This is the one that people get confused about. We believe that all children should be assigned as a boy or girl but without early surgery. And with the understanding that the child may self-reassign when they're old enough to tell us what their gender is. Cool. That's great to keep that space open. Yep. Yeah. That's terrific. Yeah. But the children shouldn't necessarily be gender experiments. Our society may not be up to that necessarily, and it's not fair to put that on the child. It's better to assign them one way or the other. Yeah. And we are not anti-surgery. Yeah. And we know that any child that's born, intersex or non-intersex, may decide to tell us later that we assigned them the wrong gender. That's right. Exactly. Well, Thea Hillman, thank you so much. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for the work that you're doing. Thank you for sharing tonight. Thank you for your work. Keep up the great work. Thank you, too. And we'll put a link to your website. Of course we will. We'll have links to Theahillman.com. Yep. And as well as ISNA.org. Thank you so much. From our website. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Bye-bye. Bye now. Thanks. Good night. All right. That was terrific. Good work. And now we've got a special message. How? Dreams of tomorrow are precious things, and none so fragile as those of a child. But right now in America, one out of every six children is caught in the nightmare of poverty, desperate to awaken to a better world. And when a child's dreams of the future are threatened, so are those of a nation. Poverty, America's forgotten state. For more information, call 1-800-946-4243 or visit PovertyUSA.org, sponsored by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. And here's what's happening for the week of December 30th, 2002. Tomorrow night, Tuesday, December 31st, DAGGER, the theater offensive, first night Boston Grand Procession is happening. DAGGER is a queer women's guerrilla theater group, part of the theater offensive. They march in the Grand Procession for first night Boston with dyke puppets in tow, and they perform throughout first night activities. This is all starting up at the Heinz Center at 530 p.m. And for more information, you can call 617-542-1399. And on Thursday, January 2nd of the year 2003, Oh, my God. yes, join Women's Fight Back Network's protest of Romney's Millionaire's Inaugural Ball. Stop the budget cuts. Stop the war. Counter-inaugural. Begin the new year by letting Governor Romney know how you feel about the budget cuts at his $365,000 inaugural party. Yes. Where will this be taking place? 7 p.m., the World Trade Center, Seaport Boulevard, Boston, Mass. For more information, you can call 617-522-6626. Women's Fight Back Network literature at www.iacboston.org. Slash WFN on that Women's Fight Back Network. Okay. On next Wednesday, well, in a couple of weeks, on a Wednesday, January 15th, I guess it is, the self-defense class for transgendered women is happening. It's a free information session from 7 to 9 p.m. Oh, no, I guess there's a free information session on January 15th. That's what it is. In this course, you'll learn the best ways to respond no matter how you're being read. Explore what's worth fighting for and learn effective de-escalation skills for when it's safer to walk away. This sounds like a terrific class. It's a 20-hour course. It runs for five Wednesdays, February 26th to March 26th, from 6 to 10 p.m. at 374 Boylston Street in Brookline. For more information or to RSVP for the information session, contact Meg Stone, who's the Associate Director of Impact Model Mugging, at 617-232-7900. Or you can go to their website at www.impactboston.com. And give us a call at 617-253-8810 if you've missed anything. 617-253-8810. But the best bet on that is to call us right after the end of the show. Okay? And a little further out and farther away, on January 25th and 26th, that's a Saturday and Sunday of 2003, the National Conference on Organized Resistance will be taking place at the Ward Circle Building, American University in Washington, D.C. For information, you can go to www.organizedresistance.org. Organized resistance. Organized. Yes. The 6th Annual National Conference on Organized Resistance, a space for radical discourse and collective empowerment, will feature over 60 workshops, panel discussions, and skill shares, as well as tabling space for dozens of radical groups. Free food and child care will be provided on both days. And out in February, the American Boys will be holding their 7th Annual True Spirit Conference, titled Masculinity, the Magical Mystery Tour. It's happening February 14th to 17th. That's Friday through Monday in Washington, D.C. For more information, go to their website at www.true-spirit.org. The True Spirit Conference focuses on the social, physical, emotional, spiritual, and relational health of all gender-variant people on the female-to-male spectrum, as well as their partners, family, and allies. And also, the Tiffany Club's first night event, excuse me, the first event is happening, gee, you know, I don't have that written down here. It's either January 25th, 26th, but it's happening in just a few weeks in Woburn. So visit their website at www.tcne.org. That's T-C-N-E as in Tiffany Club of New England.org. And that does it for our announcements tonight. All right. And we have our second guest on the line. Way to go, Mackenzie, taking over for Karen Larson on the phone. I'm running around here. Malka Drucker. Malka is an award-winning author of 20 books, including books for young people and adults on subjects like baseball, television, and Frida Kahlo. One of her best-known books is The Rescuers' Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust. She is a rabbi to a congregation in New Mexico and has just released a new book, White Fire, a Portrait of Women Spiritual Leaders in America. Welcome to Gender Talk, Malka. Thank you. Pleasure to have you with us, Malka. Did we pronounce your last name right, Drucker? That's correct. All right. Great. And there you are in my home state, New Mexico. Oh, where did you come from? Albuquerque. Oh, great. Yeah, it's a beautiful, beautiful place. This is a groundbreaking work in terms of you went out and did interviews with women spiritual leaders from all different types of backgrounds, from traditional religion to Wiccan religion to Native American belief systems, and asked a lot of questions. What inspired this? And tell us some of the things that you found here. I think that, first of all, I am a rabbi. So on sort of the most basic level of understanding, I wanted to find out if women, especially people with pulpits or gatherings, shared an experience of relationship with their people, regardless of the past. Has there ever been a book like this written before, a book about women spiritual leaders? Not like this one, I felt that rather than simply present a collection of people, I wanted to give a picture, a portrait of what these women together, ensemble, present as the experience of a woman spiritual leader. Did you have preconceptions about what you were going to find? Were you coming from a place where you were saying, well, I think women are going to be bringing this, I think women bring this into the world, and I'm going to go out there and see if that's the case? I had a much simpler expectation than I had the delight to receive. I began with, as I said, an idea of how much of my experience in relationship to my people and in relationship to how I view the divine do I share. Now as I went more deeply into it, I began to realize why that meant so much to me. Because I knew that for me, the way I get through the night in our times now is by my faith. And the more I would be in touch with other people of faith and people of my gender, I thought that it might bring me into a new voice in the world that maybe has been missing and why we've been so unbalanced, and something that Marianne Williamson says in the book. And what I think ultimately I was looking for was, since war has never made any sense to me, could this possibly be a gender thing? Is it that women are the mothers of the world regardless of whether they have had children? They represent the creative aspect of the divine, which is feminine traditionally. I think there's a lot of people out there that would say yes to that. Yeah. So I thought that if I could find that energy regardless of our faith paths, maybe it could be a path to peace, that we're all marching in the same direction, isn't it? Great. What did you find? Well, you know, I have 31 remarkable women. Yes, you do. That I have met. And really I met 60 remarkable women. We just didn't have room for everybody. And I realize now that this was very self-selecting because I did experience a conference recently of women religious and spiritual leaders. And it doesn't necessarily mean that when you gather a group of women that you are necessarily going to have a new day. Yeah. And maybe the problem was there were too many, the one that I attended. So what you're saying is the conference was disappointing in its energy? Yeah, it kind of got down to politics. Was that the one here in Boston? No. I'd rather not go into great detail about it. We can talk more about it if we don't identify it. No, there's no reason to. What I'm hoping actually is that we can create a summit from the women in the book. Because I know that these women are red hot and they all practice different religions with the same message of kindness. And I'd love to see them together really praying on peace, not trying to find global solutions, you know. Yeah. Monica, one of the things we see is when women are in positions of power without the support of other women that they're not empowered to become leaders in the way that we would like them to, I think. What do you think of that? For example, we have a woman governor of the state right now, but she's been ineffectual in terms of moving things in a good direction. And it's not clear exactly what causes that. But there have been so many examples of women who have gotten into positions of power but who haven't made the kind of revolutionary change that is both possible and necessary or very desperately needed. And it seems to me maybe that does come from lack of networking or whatever. Is that different between politics and spirituality? When we talk about spirituality, is it different from, I wonder? I don't know. I don't know. Malka? I think that you raise a very important point here. The same thing happens to men, too. I mean, I don't mean to say that women are the only ones who experience that. No, I do think, however, I always write in Rescuers, the book we did about people who saved Jews in the Holocaust. I always think it's something that Margaret Mead said. This is sort of my own language on it. Never forget that each of us can change the world. Yeah. But we can't do it alone. Exactly. And it's dangerous, too. See, religion is a very dangerous thing. And what I needed to find was, first of all, a sense to keep me from despair of seeing that there are many paths to goodness, which I did find. And secondly, I was lonely. I was lonely, first of all, as you say. As a woman, it is very hard to do anything out there that has been kept for men, primarily. Yeah. And the other piece of that is that it's very difficult to be a person of faith. Yeah. So now you've got two things going. And I think that women absolutely, in this world, need each other greatly. And I think that out of my own loneliness, I do say I feel like I wanted to kind of imagine a dinner party with all these women talking to each other. Yeah. And you said that in some of your people that you talked to, there was a Zen Buddhist priest that talked about why women are agents of change and that sometimes as an outsider, you have a certain power of coming in and being able to create change because there aren't the expectations that you're going to carry on, you know, business as usual, so to say. And you have nothing to lose. Yeah. That's important. That's very important. You talked to the women in your book also about what inspired them. What was the moment when they knew they had a spiritual calling? And again, you're talking across the map from spiritual leaders like Starhawk, who is Wiccan, to Zen Buddhist women, to women that are in mainstream Methodist religions and things. What did you find in terms of calling and mission that the women felt? As I said before, what was going to make this a picture rather than just a collection was where I was coming from. I was the thread throughout the book, so I'm looking for something in every one of these traditions. And people ask me, why not put in Tammy Faye? I have to be able to understand it. I have to be able to know where I'm building my bridge. Right. And you do that, like when you're talking to Starhawk, you said that there was a part of you that wondered what a witch looked like and what goddess worship was about. So there's something that you're learning then in speaking to each of the women. Yes, I really approached this book sort of like the books in the Middle Ages that essentially represented every man. I was on my own pilgrim's quest, if you will. Right. And that very much was, in the end, I thought that some people might find the book too self-absorbed. I don't know. Yet I understood that in many ways that book would be in my searching as a non-fiction writer and as a biographer about me. And this is how it works. Well, you know, that's the most honest place any of us can come from, I think. I think a lot of people would recognize that, that you can't take yourself fully out of anything that you do, so you might as well be honest about your place in it. That's right. Yeah. You had a lot of women from New Mexico, I noticed, from diverse spiritual practices. Could you talk briefly about some of the women that you interviewed there? Yes. There were three really very disparate people. One was Connie Yacoub, who lives in Albuquerque, who is a Western convert to Islam, married to an ethnic Muslim. Jose Habde, who was a Franciscan nun and Seneca elder in Gallup, New Mexico. And finally, as you mentioned, the Buddhist priest, Joan Halifax Roshi, who leads a Zen center here in Santa Fe. And beginning with Connie Yacoub, the Muslim, I very much, as a Jew, wanted to come to a place of understanding here and to represent fairly and respectfully a point of view offered by a woman spiritual leader. In Islam, my definition was too narrow at first, because women don't serve in that way. While they can be imams, nobody had any really to recommend to me. But in Islam, study is of paramount importance, as it is in Judaism. Therefore, a woman with a doctorate, a scholar, would be a spiritual leader in Islam. So I looked for teachers, and Connie Yacoub represented a teacher. Jose Habde was just a wild woman. I mean, she was nearly 80 years old. I mean, certainly one of the freest spirits I have ever met. Joan Halifax is sort of a contemporary. We came through the 60s. I understand her energy very well. And we've done Dharma Torah talks together. And you're talking across different belief systems, yet do you find common threads there? Yes. I mean, again, I would say every woman I've met is in love with the divine, whatever we call that, and has burning desire, great passion to bring everyone to this as a gift, as the best thing we can do, to bring people closest to the divine. We can understand that in a non-transcendent way, or the language of our time, bringing out the best, the most creative in each of us. Looking back on putting together this book and meeting all these women, is there a particular experience that you had in doing this that you could comment on, or were there any particular features of the work that you did with these women that stand out, whether it was something that surprised you or something that affirmed something for you, or just a general sense of your overall experience? You know, this is the first thing that comes to mind. In a sea of wonderful experiences. We talked about the New Mexico women. Jose Hobday was telling us this story in a very nondescript Albuquerque hotel room. I mean, talk about magical realism. She was eight or nine years old, and something very exciting had happened at school, and she went running into the house looking for her mother, and mama-mama just barges into the bathroom as her mother is coming out of the bathtub. And she sees her from the back, and the sunlight streaming on her body, and her hair coming mid-length. It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. And she was just riveted to the floor, and virtually shaking and knowing she shouldn't be there and knowing she couldn't leave. Later, she would say, I understood this was rapture. And her mother saw her and said, Joe, her name was Jose, come here and I'll show you what it is to be a woman. And she took her hand, she said, my right hand, and she had my hand run all over her body. And she said, it's a wonderful thing to be a woman, Joe. And I want you to know that. And next time, knock. The next time, knock, she said. That's wild. Great story, Malka. That's very, very nice. We're down to just a couple of minutes here. Yeah, that's wonderful. Do you have another experience to share? Let me think. Or if there's anything else you want to comment on. Well, here's sort of a nice thing. This happened with Starhawk in San Francisco. We were at the Witches Halloween. There must have been 2,000 people there. Wow. Here's another 9-year-old girl story. It must be on my mind for some reason. So this nice little normal 9-year-old kid, little girl, walking around this scene. It's very hippie-like. People of all ages and backgrounds. You know, shrines to good things like nature and departed loved ones. Everybody's just having a wonderful time. It's very noncommercial. So I said to this 9-year-old, you know, what is this line? I was wondering if it was like being dragged to church. The kid said, oh, I really like it here. And I said, really? Why? And she said, well, you know, people are very, very nice in here. Oh, I like that. And they really, they're wise. Great. There is hope. Yeah, that's wonderful. You know, a little like a kid would have been an Episcopalian 35 years ago. You know, there's hope. Yes. All right, the book is called White Fire, A Portrait of Women Spiritual Leaders in America. Oh, I wanted to ask you what white fire is. Darn. Can we do it real quick? Can you do it real quick? White fire comes from a cryptic text in the Talmud, which says the Torah, that is the Bible, is white fire written upon, black fire written upon white fire. So I've always understood that to mean that while we can read the black today, one day we'll recognize the white is another language, the figure ground. And so it is with women that one day we will be part of the whole. Great. Okay, thank you so much, Malika Drucker. Again, White Fire, A Portrait of Women Spiritual Leaders in America. Thank you so much for being our guest on Gender Talk. I enjoyed it. And we'll put a link to your website where you give wise words. Thank you very much. Oh, that would be great. Yeah, of course. I'd love that. We'll do that. Okay, bye-bye now. Good night, Malika. Good night. Okay, well, that does it. We've got to run. We're running late as usual. That's right. Last show in 2002. Coming up is the classical hour, so don't go away. There's a bunch of classical music coming your way. Our website is gendertalk.com where you can listen to about 300 different radio programs. There are quite a few. They're indexed by topic as well as by date. And please avail yourself of this. It's a resource for everybody, and it's free, gendertalk.com. And thanks to Jamie Fay Fenton and tgforum.com for making that possible. They donate that archive. Thank you so much for that. That does it for our program tonight. We hope you've enjoyed our show as much as we've enjoyed bringing it to you. On behalf of Hal Fuller, the somewhat injured and absent Karen Larson, Gordine McKenzie and myself, Nancy Nangeroni, thanks again for listening. And Karen, get well quick. And remember, no matter what the occasion, gendertalk is always appropriated. Oh, hey. Well, where were you? You were doing something in your bag or something. Gendertalk is always appropriate. It's always appropriated. It's always appropriated and appropriate. Good night, everybody. We hope it gets appropriated. We'll see you next week.