that was trying to see if she could guess the topic you know that said well good i'm interested in understanding how people's views gender have perhaps changed for ourselves or changed culturally when i was a kid you know we didn't have these types of discussions but i did have this very binary view of things the know that people tend to be male or female tend to be homosexuals or heterosexual at all the pronouns now well i don't understand all the pronouns some of them which pronouns there's a lot like what kind of pronouns well not really pronouns are more like different kinds of genders there's a know there are people who like to be referred to as they and that is because they like the plural or is that it because they don't want to be male don't want to be male or female and that what bothers me about it is i'm such a grammar nazi that i can't handle the fact that it's plural so i want a gender neutral non plural ok which would be it but they don't want but yeah it seems too impersonal yeah there's another one what is it how do you pronounce of the x e yeah it's like x that means what heard you know so it's not a but it's singular yes it's really confusing to me even though i try to understand it i think in a sense the confusing this of it may be the important part right because  long as you're confused you stop assuming you know what other people are like and i think some people feel somewhat fluid in that as well that today they might feel more masculine tomorrow they might feel more feminine and want to actually identify themselves that way yeah i know someone in ninth grade that's like that feels two different things on different days and i've met several people like that to and it's interesting that this is always had to have been true right throughout all of human history there must have been people who felt they didn't fit into one of these two categories where they didn't fit into or they were more fluid or they just you know didn't like being labeled right and yet it's only within perhaps the past ten years that i'm aware of us even having these types of conversations openly to admit that people feel like that and the thing that i really like about that is that people can claim something about their own sexuality whatever it is you know when people can claim anything to do about their own sexuality whether that thing is what gender they are what who they are attracted to or even whether they want to have sexual relationships all those things are really important things that people should be allowed to claim for themselves and i think particularly for women who in western culture at any rate have often not been able to be in control of their own sexual absolutely this is perhaps a really powerful thing  how do you experience it as a you know young person you know in this time where you are allowed to talk about it and be who you are i think it's really good to be in this era where people are more accepting about it now you go to a club at your high school called spectrum which is about respecting the fact that sexuality and gender and identity are on the spectrum yeah what is it about that that makes you feel like that's an important club to belong to there's so many of us and we're all just so accepting of each other doesn't make you feel safer yes because that's always the thing that drives me crazy is when i feel that specially girls or women equate sexuality any kind of sexuality with being unsafe with being a threat this is a threat to my safety if i express or admit sexuality then that's a threat to my safety yeah that's crazy that just drives me nuts as a guy growing up you know  so what your where did your sense of your masculinity femininity i'm going to tell you that it took a lot of work for me to understand what sexuality was or what it is or in a not that i understand but to be accepting of whatever it is and i found it to be extremely useful for me to study he said to her in psychology which says describe sexualities be an energy that lives inside of you and there are students of energies and some people have more of one kind of energy some people have more of another kind of energy and when those energies interact with other people it makes you feel closer to those people and that's to me is the essence of what it's all about and why it feels helpful to have it in the first place so at the end that's something i didn't get to in my into my forty's that's not a place i got in my forty's when i was a young person i was so terrified of how i was accepted or how i was looked upon or how i was going to fit in or and i was so wanted to be accepted and be close to my peer group or the girls in my peer group i was just like the the weirdest creepiest person who didn't have no clue who i was talking to and why i was talking to them i mean you know and that's that is exactly how i felt and i was like oh my god i am so out of place and it took me a long time to sort of get to a place where i actually got useful information for myself and that useful information has been really helpful but it is sort of also extended me to a place where now i'm like i just want to get more and more information i really want to learn more about this the thing that makes it cool is i sort of see how that information helps me to find happiness or  not that i can find happiness but potentially i could see how a person maybe not even me but how a person could experience happiness through the effective use of this information that's what happens to me and it took me a long time to get to that place and part of that is that i'm a different kind of person many people are totally all about having kids i wasn't like that so to me it was hard for me to understand what is the purpose of all these feelings know what do you think i mean for yourself there how do you understand and the value of your own sexuality i definitely think it has to do with connecting with a community but i also don't think sexuality is give a deal like it's just part of you and people out of you make such a big deal out of it but it's really not it's just about who you love one of the things that really interests me about it part of being human i think is this coming to recognize that we really don't understand much and that if you can live within that mystery that then you really open up to your own life and i think one of the places that was useful for me opening into that mystery is recognizing that you can never understand why you're attracted to what you're attracted to right that it just feels like it's right and then you look at other people who are attracted to different things are different genders or whatever and you go well that's wrong or right but you can't even explain your own i think that ultimately people are in search of an ultimate truth and that alternate truth is that we are being that is greater than our physical body we are a being that exists that is somehow bigger than what we think it is and we are a part of something larger than just what we see in ourselves so we seek to understand that we seek a moment of feeling that and that feeling we can get when we are extremely close to another person and that becomes really attracted to us i don't disagree with that mostly i've had that type of male bigger than me experience in meditation all by myself right i have ever with another person so i don't disagree that that's not an important motivation well that's not something that can happen in relationships but but i don't know that that's well maybe i might try being myself i think maybe i'm describing myself because actually sexuality can mean all sorts of things what i always feel like it is the major question that we have in our lives is manifested in that realm of ourselves so if our major question is a can i have any control over the world then that will manifest in how we relate sexually if our major question is am i lovable or acceptable then that will manifest in our in our so for me my i think it's fair so my my major question is what the hell am i right so to me that manifests itself in that way that i described  ok ok it's a brand new song do you want to hear it ok it's called to happen to be called supergroup in honor of the night are trick myself there are forty thousand piano players in this day who are better than me or is going but i've asked all these crazy people to show up and they were nice enough to say they would no want to i think one of the biggest things is acceptance and being accepting of the other person in their beliefs is really important i found in going through difficult periods in relationships that for me this secret weapon kind of was acceptance that if you could get to true acceptance of the other person then almost everything else fell into place better and the minute you're sitting there saying oh no things should be this way rather than that way or you should act like this rather than that that's when you know the difficulties start compound ing and so i think acceptance is really profoundly important and it's something we don't teach yeah well so acceptance can be is something has to happen two ways because i can accept you but if you can't accept you are can't accept my accepting of you that it's not going to work as well it's always a good thing if i accept you know rights always a good thing if i accept you and it helps but it also has to happen both ways but if i don't actually trust that i'm excited to bowl so the act that's  well you know and that's not i wouldn't call it your problem because i would say that part of it is building an environment around you i mean you're only a kid so building an environment around you where that can feel comfortable is not all your responsibility you know and i also think for a kid i mean you have so little control over your day over what you get to do over your own life you know the things you feel judged on are the things that you're being told to exact rather than the things that you feel like are you and so it's a weird place if we want to fix this so that people felt more accepted and felt that they could be accepted what is it we should be doing the information is listening so if you could be convinced that people would listen write and really listen then that might make you feel a little more accepted write songs about acceptance i don't want to hear you got a boyfriend sometime you better of who though who if you change your mind you know where i am if you change your mind you know where to find hi everybody welcome back to the show you know we are so accepting of ourselves in this show we accept the show and we accept you listening to the show and loving us except that one guy over there a situation where you can't you don't know how to deal with this person acceptance is always a good thing to try always helps a little bit that's what i always find if you're just so frustrated when in a situation where i'm going to have to