Exploring Queer Identity & Inclusivity: A Deep Dive with Lindz Amer

Bryan: 0:27

Teaching While Queer is a podcast for LGBTQ+ educational professionals to share their experiences in academia. Hi, I'm your host, Bryan Stanton, a theater pedagogy and educator in New York City, and my goal is to share stories from around world from 2SLGBTQIA+ educators. I hope you enjoy Teaching While Queer. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Teaching While Queer. Today, I have Lindz Amer wonderful with me. Hi, Lindz, how are you doing?

Lindz: 1:04

Hello, thank you so much for having me. I'm doing well. How are?

Bryan: 1:08

you, I'm doing great. I am so excited that you're here, honestly, because, well one, I read your book. I follow Queer Kids stuff on Instagram, so I'm a huge proponent of the educational work that you're doing, like both in the classroom and out of the classroom.

Lindz: 1:26

So thanks for being here. I appreciate it, Of course. Happy to be here.

Bryan: 1:30

So I know about all the things that you do. Why don't you share a little bit about yourself with my audience?

Lindz: 1:37

Yeah, for sure. So my name is Lens. Yeah, hi, I use favorite pronouns. I am, you know, multi hyphenate creator. I am an author. I write for preschool television animation. I am an educator and an activist and performer. I wear lots and lots of hats. I got a whole hat rack of my own and I'm probably most well known for making queer stuff for kids. That's kind of my jam, that's kind of what I do, and I started doing that in about 2016 when I started my web series, queer Kids Stuff. That a lot of people probably know about who are listening to this podcast but is essentially Mr Rogers Sesame Street meets Queer Theory 101 for preschoolers lots of singing, lots of books and stories, lots of just like educational and entertaining, hopefully videos and resources. We do a lot and yeah, I think that's kind of the basic rundown of me and what I do. I'm sure we'll get into a lot more of it.

Bryan: 2:56

For sure. So let's take a journey back in time, and I would like to learn about what it was like for you, as a queer youth growing up in the society that we have.

Lindz: 3:08

Yeah, this is your society, for sure. I was a pretty happy kid, very, very much a why kid, lots of questions, always wanting to know stuff, why is the sky blue? All of that had a very, very long phase of that, grew up in New York City and had just like, generally a really good childhood and then kind of like you know, expectations of gender and sexuality and all these things kind of hit and I started to really kind of struggle in my life between and especially in my teen years, really not having kind of an understanding of my queerness, not even touching gender at the time, and it caused a lot of mental health problems for me in especially my teen years. And I think the way that I kind of coped with that was through writing, through theater especially. Those were kind of like my main outland singing in performance. Those were kind of my outlets and I kind of took that and wanted to have a creative career and did a theater undergrad degree and took gender studies classes at the same time and was kind of like why can't I do these two things at the same time? And that's kind of what led me to my career. But yeah, I would say my queerness and my identity is just I'm incredibly informative to what I do today. I also work mostly in early childhood and my mom has been an early childhood music educator my entire life. She kind of came up through theater and we've had similar interests through our lives runs in the family, I guess and so I kind of grew up with her teaching music classes and, you know, being the kid who you know hid under the table, and then you know, lo and behold, I'm a professional performer and musician now. So you never know if, even if your kid is, you know, hiding under the table or not paying attention, they might actually be absorbing things in a more profound way than you might know. And yeah, my mom has continued to do that and I think that certainly influenced how and the path that I've taken with my art and my educational practice. Yeah, and I think something that I always say about queer kids stuff is that it's I made it because it's what I wish I had when I was that age right, I hope that kind of like thinking about education as a preventative measure and early intervention, essentially Because I feel like I don't know this is all projection and like I can't gift my younger self queer kids stuff right. So what I try to do is give that to today's young people and hope that the intervention that, like I wished, I had just by, like you know, having the language to describe how I felt about how I wanted to present myself to the world and being able to have tools to combat you know, you have to wear a dress every Friday to school because you're supposed to and me being able to say, like, hey, like actually I don't want to do that because it doesn't make me feel good, like I didn't really have the language to say that. And even through my teen years, right, like you know, when I, my parents wanted me to dress up for a nice dinner, it was always, you know, go downstairs and take the jeans off and even if they were nice jeans right and put on a skirt or a dress. And that I think it took me a really long time to understand how profoundly that hurt me and I think, yeah, I wish I'd had those or learn those tools earlier so that I could not necessarily like defend myself, but like have confidence and stand up for myself right, and like have that sense of independence, because I've always been, like, a very independent and stubborn person and I just wish that I'd have that resource and then kind of with the parenting book that I wrote, which we'll get into, it was interesting because I kind of did that, because I it's the resource that I wish my parents had had to be able to support me in understanding myself right. So I did a lot of reparenting when I wrote that book. But no, my parents are great. We've we've worked on a lot of our stuff and they're really supportive and wonderful about all of it and they read the book and I don't think had too big of an emotional meltdown about it. So, or yeah, but yeah, that's a that's like kind of a run around way of saying that everything has really kind of culminated really organically in this like very strange niche that I've found myself in that I happen to be very good at, I think.

Bryan: 8:19

So yeah, what I think is so interesting about your story is that you were just explaining about the feminine side of things and not wanting to wear the skirt or the dress or whatever the situation is, but then you also had experiences where you misgendered when you were younger to masculinity, like misgendered as a masculine person, or people assumed that you were a boy and that also had a not good effect, and I think it's so lovely that you are a they them person now and that you found this because it really was that you didn't like the feminine pressure that you were receiving and you also didn't like masculine assumption that some people were giving you and you ended up being this place in between or separate from, and I just think that is so cool, because I don't think that's common, I guess.

Lindz: 9:18

Yeah, that's interesting that you pick up on that and I certainly talk to my therapist quite a bit about this. But I also think that when I was misgendered as male, it was always in a negative way, like I tell a couple of stories about this in my book, which I believe what you're referencing, and I talk about a male counselor at day camp taking me to the boys' changing room and going into the boys' changing room and being like, oh no, my body is different than these people's bodies and I need to hide that. I am sneaking into this place that I'm not supposed to be in because I'm an adult in a mistake and not consciously having that internal monologue, but feeling wrong contextually within the situation and that not feeling like, ok, I want to step into the masculine side of who I am and that not being a positive experience in that way or me choosing that, and there are different moments where that certainly happened in my life. I didn't talk, I didn't share the story in the book, but there was a time in summer camp. A lot of this happens at camp for some reason. I don't know what that thematic thread is but we'll go with it. But this was a sleepaway camp and I was closer to 13, 14. And there were these grease suck hops where you would go as either Danny Zukos or Sandys from the movie Grease and I always obviously wanted to dress up as Danny Zuko because why not? And didn't understand my transness at all at the time, but totally chill and very cis of me and I remember my friends wanting to use the fact that I looked like a boy to trick a girl into slow dancing with me and I remember slow dancing with this girl and being like this feels right but this also feels very wrong and weird and that just mixture of emotions feeling extremely confusing. And we can go into the transness and deception and all of that, those terrible tropes and stuff. But for me personally it was just really confusing and I again didn't have the language to be of or understanding of gender and attract. I mean I was in my tween years, that's when hormones start to hit. I didn't have an understanding of sexuality to be able to really parse through what was going on and I can't project my adult consciousness onto my childhood self and the amount of understanding that I could have had. But maybe I could have had some tools to be able to sort through some of those emotions and be able to articulate how I was feeling and articulate what about that was uncomfortable and what about it did actually feel kind of right and aligned. So yeah, I think it just made my childhood and my experience a lot more confusing, more than anything else.

Bryan: 12:50

Fair enough, and I think that's so interesting because it really is contextual. Someone else made an error at summer camp and you or day camp and then you were feeling like the guilt from that error kind of yeah. The same things like was the guilt or the feeling that you had with slow dancing? Was that really just being like the left? Oh, it's because I tricked you. And then you get into that trope of like deception and whatnot. Which I think is so weird when people get angry like you have been lying to me this whole time, like All right, well, calm down. I was just trying to figure things out, you know.

Lindz: 13:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's and I think they're more annoyed about you, like their perception being incorrect, right, oh, and like that's where it can become dangerous, right for, especially for trans women, trans women of color, but it's, uh, yeah, it's this like funky thing of like you can't judge a book by its cover, but then you are, and then you're getting mad about it when you're incorrect about.

Bryan: 13:57

Yeah, I mean, that's just yeah, the other person that it does about you.

Lindz: 14:01

Oh 100.

Bryan: 14:02

Yeah, and so then you've gone on and you created queer kid stuff and this is um Programming that is geared towards uh, pre-k students and and young children. So tell me a little bit about what it is that you might learn Um from queer kid stuff.

Lindz: 14:22

Oh, the things you might learn, um, lots of things, I hope. Uh, we talk about a lot of different stuff. My favorite things to talk about in queer kid stuff are, uh, I mean, gender is certainly kind of like the biggest thing that people ask me about, but also that I really love talking to kids about, um, Talk about kind of like sexuality and the lgbt's and like what different families look like, and all this is done Very much in a way that's like accessible, not just to preschoolers and like even toddlers, but like literally to anybody. I have adults. I know that adults use my work Not just to like communicate these ideas to kids. They use it to, you know, talk to their grandma about what their non-binary identity means. They use it to um like help their cousins, like teach their kids like it's all about, like okay, how can we rewrite how we've learned about gender and about sexuality as well, um, throughout our lives as adults? And like, okay, can we all understand? Like, actually, most of us probably have about a toddler's level of understanding of what gender is at all, and what I'm doing is really just boiling it down to like the simplest building blocks, and then, you know, you can take that and like, start to understand that in more complex ways and build that on top of each other and start to pull in you know different facets of your identity and like I mean we can get to the point where, like I have a video, um, where I talked to my you know stuff, bear teddy right about what intersectionality is, and it makes sense and toddlers and preschoolers can understand it. It's really not that hard and so adults can understand it too, if I'm able to do that. So we talk about a lot of different things sexuality, gender, talk a lot about bodies and like what that looks like. What does like a sex ed for preschoolers look like it's a lot of consent, it's a lot of. This is what our, how we talk about our bodies. This is how we do, and do not talk about other people's bodies. Most of you don't um and mental health and social justice and activism. So we cover a lot of things with always the lgbtq plus like inclusive. How can we use inclusive language to speak about these things? How do we talk about our bodies in that way? How do we talk about activism and people's movement and then coalition with other movements within that as well? And so how do we Look at the world through a lens that is more queer and Trans-centered? Because that's just like, not the world that we live in Today at all and is not the world that children experience right and grow up in, because most people assume that children will grow up to be cisgender and heterosexual, when the statistics tell us that that's just not possible and not true, given the numbers. Um, so I mean there's, I mean that's a big reason why we have these terrible statistics on lgbtq plus youth mental health right. Um, this is that that kind of like misalignment and misunderstanding of like who your child could grow up to be.

Bryan: 17:37

Um, so yeah, I love that. And so, as a as an educator, have you ever had a situation where, um, you had to deal with anti queer behavior, either in the class I'm you're dealing with pre-k, so you might not get it from students, but maybe parents or administration, um, where you've had to kind of address anti queer behavior?

Lindz: 18:00

Yeah, I have never experienced anti queer behavior from a child. I'm like thinking, in the last, how many? Oh gosh, I started queer kids seven, 2016. I've been I mean, I've been doing this works before then, since undergrad, essentially. So since 2013, I've really been doing this work. Have I ever had any kids say, no, that's not true. No, that's not like cool, it's not cool to be gay. I've never heard that from a kid. It is always from the adults. It is always from people on the internet who want to be mad about something it is. You know, I've had, I've never been. I have been heckled in person, maybe once or twice before, but for the most part, it's just like anonymous people on the internet, um, who want to call me names and want to bully me and like want to project their own feelings onto me and, uh, those people suck and that's how I feel about it.

Bryan: 19:05

Um, yeah, it's always anonymous. It's like I don't even have a profile picture. It's my dog, I'm just going to yell at people or whatever, and that drives me crazy? Um, it's, and it's interesting because you talked about the numbers and whatnot and I saw A tick tock, because you know I use the socials and it was about how, how, if you put all of us queer people one spot, we would be the fifth largest state by population in the united states. But there's a whole group of people who want to like Tell us that we're insignificant, that our numbers are so small, it doesn't matter. And then then she said that the number of lesbians in this country, uh, is more than the the population of the state of new mexico, and that the number of gay men in this country Is more than a population of the state of utah. And so that doesn't even conclude like trans people and non-binary people, necessarily, unless they identify within those categories also. But this is just going off of like oh, we have this gay lesbian straight kind of option. It's very 90s, but just taking those numbers and you get this like major breakdown of like what things are actually like. And so it was really interesting because I think when we look at young children, it is so easy for parents nowadays to just be like oh, I can't wait to meet your, your girlfriend, when they're talking to their son or your boyfriend when they're talking to their daughter. And what I love, my husband and I always use, like your person. Um or we'll say like whomever you decide, we leave it very open. Um, yeah, and so I think that that's the route to go and that's a part of the reason that I enjoyed your book. So your book is rainbow parenting and it's really like this guide that goes from like birth, pre birth, like nesting, which I love, yeah, nesting all the way through. You know it's really through high school, but it really is for everyone, um, and so I want to talk a little bit.

Lindz: 21:19

My publishers made me put those recommendations on there. Oh really, I I fought to try and keep them off, but you know you gotta, you gotta give people what they want.

Bryan: 21:27

It's so funny because I shared it as a resource for a class that I was graduate teaching this summer and um, and I mentioned, like, read the nesting chapter and then think about how you decorate your classroom for your students and think about the things that you put into your classroom and I was like here's. The thing is that it's like it really is universal and it's not about the age range and it's not about like Giving, even giving birth to a child, like I had to go through a nesting period with adoption, um, and so like it really is universal topics, and I Just enjoyed it so much, so, um good, I'm so glad parenting is a loose In the title.

Lindz: 22:08

I really, and I and I hope that it doesn't deter people from picking up the book because it's I I'm using the term parenting Really really broadly in like a, are you involved in helping raise children? And that includes parents, but it also includes grandparents, it includes teachers, it includes Pediatricians, it includes anyone who is in relationship with children and that is Like 98% of people probably, and I would say like glow I don't know what the actual there's probably a statistic out there somewhere about that, but that's, that's global too Like children are in our lives. And I think what you were speaking to about, like I had never thought of it in the Context of like, okay, how many people could like fill up queer people could fill up a state right, a state's population right, but I think that you know the the work of white supremacy and patriarchy and all these things like a tactic of it is isolation, right to make us feel alone, and I think that that happens generationally too, and I think I, I hope that, like, thinking about the term parent a bit more broadly will help people understand the importance of of having relationships with children and how you can be Purposable with the young people in your lives and who your life touches, right? And how can you, yeah, take what I'm talking about, about, like you know, painting a gender new quote, unquote, then gender neutral nursery room and Use those skills and those concepts and that philosophy? Right, it's a really it's. It's a parenting book, but like it's really kind of like the easiest, most accessible queer theory 101. Like it's. I would say it's really more of like a philosophical approach to parenting than anything else. And I think that that's beautiful, that you're using that to apply to like how you, in the back-to-school season that we're in right, how you can apply those skill sets to Build in the classroom for a new group of students. And how would you do that differently after you've read the book from, uh, what before you read the book? And so how might this year look different and this year's classroom look different than the year before, right?

Bryan: 24:43

So, as we wind down, I always ask a few questions. Um, the first I want to ask is what advice would you give to someone who's going into academia? They're coming in as a counselor, they're a college professor, they're a high school teacher and they are unsure about being their authentic self in the, in the school environment for this first year. What advice would you give them?

Lindz: 25:05

Yeah, this is a interesting time to be going into the educational profession for many many a reason, especially as a queer trans person. Um, my advice is feel it out, Um and like listen to your body, like listen to you, like how you're feeling in the situation you're in, right, Like trust your gut. Um, and it also I mean it depends on the state you're in and like how I want people to be safe, I want people to protect their peace and their livelihood. Um, this is a. I feel like I've been getting more asks for advice on, like this kind of thing a lot more in the past year than I ever have before, and I'm always a little bit hesitant to give advice because it's a really hard time to be an educator and it's a really hard, really hard time to be a queer trans educator, and, um, I don't want to advise someone to do something that will um endanger them or endanger their employment, but I also like don't want people to be in environments that are unhealthy for them, and I I think like the biggest thing that I could say is like you deserve to be happy and like you deserve to be in a place, in an environment that um is supportive of you and like you should just be able to be a teacher and be yourself. So, um, sounds like something's happening with my dogs. Um, so, yeah, I think, like in my not advice. Advice is like, yeah, listen to your gut, listen to how you're feeling. No job is worth. Your like safety or you know worth. You know having terrible mental health and I think, like so many of us, go into education wanting to, you know, I think, like so many of us go into education wanting to help and wanting to give back and wanting to help raise a new generation, right, but also, like you, deserve nice things. Um, so I think just, you know vibe checking as often as you can, absolutely.

Bryan: 27:30

I think that's my biggest advice as well, and, I think, the one that's repeated the most on this podcast um is just you've got to. You've got to know your environments and do what's going to be safe for you within that environment.

Lindz: 27:42

Yeah, and like all of that goes like you know going into the classroom and like you know learning how to be a good teacher for yourself, and like who you are as an educator and like understand, like you know it, teaching is hard without all of that added to it. So like be a little like with that side of things, like be patient with yourself. Like classroom management does not come in the first year. I have been teaching music for a long, for a while now, and like I I just had my first week back in preschool and it was absolute chaos, herding cats. I was just like I've been doing this for a while now and it's there's still things that I've not, you know, an expert at it. It takes time. So don't expect to like be an absolute expert, incredible teacher off the bat. Like you just need to be you and be there for the kids and that's the best you can be doing, you know.

Bryan: 28:39

Yep, and I would also recommend that like, if you're one who knows that you live by comparison on Instagram, maybe avoid it in August, because there are some people who make some very gorgeous classrooms and whatnot, but that's them and you shouldn't have to compare yourself to those folks, because also like teaching isn't only aesthetics.

Lindz: 29:02

I love, I love a good set, I love a good preschool classroom, but also, like you know, that's not the whole job, right, and like that's not to say that you shouldn't if you enjoy doing that, but, like maybe you're I don't know I've been taking this as coaching stuff and maybe that's not. Maybe that's not your zone of genius, you know, like maybe that's not the thing that, like you're fantastic at. I'm sure there is something that you are incredible at that that person is not good at at all and you're just not seeing it on Instagram.

Bryan: 29:32

Absolutely. I also like want to just be cognizant of, like our students with disabilities, whether in our core classes, in our in our primary classes, who have ADHD or OCD or they've got autism or Asperger's. Like those students are going to struggle in an overly decorated classroom, and so there's some things that you can be cautious of, just like in general, that will be doing what's best for you. Students is kind of like where I land with what are my decorations in my old black box Before I moved across country. In the old black box it was all like student stuff in the sense that, like my black box had for those of you who don't know, because I realized it's not theater podcast, so you're getting a ton of theater this season, sorry about it. Black box is a black room that is used to create various styles of stage inside of a theater space so that you can perform in lots of different ways. My classroom was a black box and I had like the pennants for the colleges that all my seniors went on to go to, and I had the posters from all the productions that we did, and then I had props that they made or decorations that the students made for the class, like that they made for a set. So, like it really was doing what's best for my students. And I think that when you're going into your classroom, you got to do what's best for your students and also for yourself, because, guess what? I didn't have to make. I didn't have to make a ton of classroom decorations because I'm using the stuff that my students were doing and I found stuff that, like, I could just purchase and put up on a wall. So that's, that's a part of it, but really the whole point of that conversation was know yourself and know your environment. Yeah, when it comes to the academic community and this is like parents, this is administration, as well as educators and anybody really involved in the academic community what can we do to make schools more inclusive for LGBTQ plus students?

Lindz: 31:45

Ask for it. Ask the people who can make it happen. Right, like, push for it. Like I think that the thing that people just get so caught up in being scared, like it's, it's a. It is a scary time right now. I'm not going to lie, but like I think that, especially if you're not a part of the LGBTQ plus community and you're an ally, like that is, it is so important that people just ask if they can do it. Push the administration, ask for gender neutral bathrooms. Get my book and pass it on to your school administrator. Get a parent or a teacher book club going to read it and discuss it. Bring people like me into your schools. There are fantastic LGBTQ plus picture books. There's a really robust section of the library of them. Now Bring those authors into your schools. Bring me into your school. Bring queer kid stuff videos into your classrooms to discuss things. Use tentpole dates like LGBTQ plus history. I don't know when this is going to go up, but LGBTQ plus history month is in October. National coming out day. Bisexual awareness week is coming up. There's lots of different days that you can build curriculum around and you can use existing resources. You don't have to come up with all this on your own. There's lots out there right now that you can use. You know, like we were just saying, like you don't have to decorate your classroom all on your own, you don't have to make those lesson plans on your own, especially if you're not an expert. You can go to people like me, go to people who are very smart on the internet, who have their own resources, and I think it's really just about getting out of your own head about it and, you know, I think so much of it is like this hesitation that people aren't going to like it. There's going to be this pushback, but you know there's only we're only going to make progress if people are trying to push forward. And, yes, people might push back at you, but you're also going to see other people gather around you and try to help. That's something that I think is so different. I mean, I've been doing this for a minute now, right, and it's very, it's been very interesting to watch what was happening in my comment section in 2016 become national international discourse, right, and the difference that I'm seeing now between 2016 and 2023 is that I'm seeing so many more people come out of the world to support this work and who are actually understanding and spreading the word about, like, why it's important. I mean, my TED Talk went viral. The Blues Clues in you video that I worked on with a Pride Parade went viral, like all of the like. People are hungry for this stuff, for these resources, for this work, and there are people out there you are not the only one who thinks that it's important and you just got to make your voice heard so that those other people know to come around you and then that's going to the confidence around that is going to spread. And you know, you know the state of queer people. That's the fifth largest state in the country, right, it's like you're going to see that form around you and you know, when we're in coalition with each other, it's so much less scary and it works, right, like. We've come a lot since 1969 and Stonewall. We have come a long freaking way. There is a lot to do. There's still a lot of stuff that we have to move forward, but we've come a long way and a lot has changed. And I mean one in five Gen Z identify as LGBTQ plus now, and that's probably going to rise with Gen Alpha, just based on the amount of resources that we have now for young people, and I just think you got to just try, because the my goal is to get as many people as possible just to the baseline right. That's all I want. We're trying to move the bell curve right and in order to do that, we just got to get everybody, like just on the first step of the staircase, and I don't think that's asking a lot. I really don't. I don't think that that's big. I think that that is essentially the bare minimum of where everybody should be right now. Right, and majority of people just are not there, and it doesn't take much to get people up to that next step. It takes a couple of videos. It takes someone watching my TED Talk. It takes someone's kid coming out as trans. It takes someone whose kid's friend came out as trans. It doesn't take that much, but we just need to get more people there. It's about critical mass, and so that's just about visibility and about getting the message out there and getting the education out there, and I think school administrators and people with power and educational systems are the people who can help move the needle in a really massive way. Even if it feels like small and within, just like one community. It really that's how that bell curve starts to shift right.

Bryan: 37:09

Honestly, if you are out there and you are an ally, please run for office for your school board, because that's where we're going to see your ability to make some change happen, because right now what we're seeing is very conservative groups actively electing people onto school boards so that way they can kind of hijack curriculum. So we see that even it may not even be happening necessarily by vote in Florida, it's just people getting appointed. Right now in Houston, texas, houston ISD, the state has appointed a board of people that they have decided are the people that are running the school district and it is very, very rough out there. So my best advice for those of you who are allies is you do have some power and unfortunately this is so unfortunate to say Sometimes your voice is more important than ours, and it's not because we are not important. It's because people have been hearing us scream for so long that it's not as loud Because we're tired, we're fatigued. We've been doing this for decades. Some people have been doing this since the 60s and 50s, depending on if they were able to survive AIDS in the 80s. So that is my biggest advice is I think that if you are an ally, get out there and find a way that you can support, because there are things you can do. And educators, we're not allowed to be on the school board. It's a weird backward system. We are not allowed to make decisions on how schools are ran. So please go out there and get on a school board and promote some change for where you are, because that's going to make a huge difference.

Lindz: 39:05

Yeah, that's a fantastic call to action. I remember I saw this the other day that I don't remember what state it was, but there were like thousands of book challenges, but they found that they were only written by maybe like three people. All hundreds of thousands of book challenges written by a handful of an angry dad or two. And it really comes down to who can make more noise in the right ways, and conservative folks have unfortunately figured out a couple of ways that work in their favor and we just have to beat them at their own game.

Bryan: 39:44

That's it. It's that the few people are being as loud as they possibly can, and so if we don't have other people to kind of combat that, then it seems like those people are the majority, when there's really just a few people.

Lindz: 39:58

Yeah, exactly.

Bryan: 39:59

Yeah, absolutely. I want to touch one other aspect of your book, if that's OK. So this topic like queer kids stuff and parenting when it comes to queer people and queer ideologies, as people are saying, is very touchy because people think sex and sexual intercourse and you address this very well in your book. And so how do we combat that idea of teaching gender and teaching sexuality is not teaching intercourse.

Lindz: 40:38

Yes. So the short of it is that they're not the same thing. Queerness and sexuality and intercourse are different things entirely. That's not to say that you shouldn't have a conversation about sex with young people, especially when it's relevant, but they're just separate conversations and I think that that's the biggest thing that people need to understand, because equating queerness to queer sex is taking away so much of the experience of being an LGBTQ plus person. That is just one very, very tiny part of the queer experience and what it means to be a queer person that you're boiling down an entire identity to one act and that is honestly disrespectful, and I think that we it's so easy to think that, ok, I have to talk about sexuality. That means if I'm talking about queerness, then I have to talk about sex and I have to talk about queer sex, and I just I explain it better in my book. It's been all day. Just listening to you talk about it makes me uncomfortable.

Bryan: 41:59

You have to talk about sex. You have to like I don't want to talk about sex, yeah.

Lindz: 42:03

And you think honest. Here's the thing is that a preschooler is not interested in intercourse. That is just not something that they're curious about. Ask any toddler if they want to know about sex. I'm sure they'll be like, what's that, I don't care here, I want to go play with my toy. They don't care. That's not what they're asking about, right? When they're asking about like oh, why does that kid have two dads? That doesn't mean you have to talk about anal sex with them, right? Like that's just like, not like that's just such a huge leap, right? Like Jasmine and Aladdin kissing in a Disney movie doesn't mean you have to explain intercourse, right and like, and you know, missionary position, right, no-transcript, like 300 is like how that equation works, right and like. I think that you know, if we were to equate these conversations of, like you know, two men, a question about two men, two dads, you know being a conversation about queer sex, and like Aladdin and Jasmine doing their thing in a Disney movie, you know needing a conversation about intercourse, then what we're talking about are two things where, you know, queer sex is being demonized and being thought of as this evil thing and this thing that, like, we don't want to touch or talk about because of connotations around queer sex, especially related to the AIDS pandemic. I think that that's really made a huge impression on our understanding of what queer sex means and that it's evil and diseased, and that's just not true. That's not what queer sex is. It's just anatomy. That's all we're talking about, and we're just talking about different parts, and we're talking about different parts being used for different things, and that's all that conversation is, because the conversation about what queer sex is and what heterosexual sex is is the same conversation. It's just about body parts and intimacy and consent, right, and that's a separate conversation than that kid has two dads, right. So hopefully that I don't know. I'm a little tired. So that's not my typical way of framing that, but hopefully that's helpful.

Bryan: 44:41

I did some research a while back because I was getting pissed off just about the word, like homosexuality and whatnot, and just the realization that these like straight men, psychiatrists, got to make up the word and then now we're stuck with it you know what I mean, and so it's like of course people have a problem because the people who created the word had a problem and so now, here we are having to deal with it, you know, almost a century later and it's driving me wild.

Lindz: 45:14

Yeah, I mean, I think the same could be said for like transgender affirming healthcare Recommendation here if folks should watch the documentary Framing Agnes and it goes in, it's really fantastically done. Lots of really wonderful trans folks who kind of like reenact interviews with trans people in I don't remember the decades but who were part of like research and human sexuality research and human gender research stuff and how they like got gender affirming surgeries because they were part of these research experiments and stuff. I'm not explaining it very well, but it's a fantastic documentary and it's kind of like the trans version of like thinking in that way.

Bryan: 46:06

I love that. I'll have to check it out. I'm in a gender communications class right now, which I find really interesting because I'm getting my masters and a part of it is a certificate in culturally responsive pedagogy, so like working with diverse groups of students and so I'm taking this class and they had me to take a like a test where I find out whether or not my instinct is in favor of homosexuality or heterosexuality. And what I found frustrating and I had to reflect on this to my instructor was this test really put gay men against straight people. Like it wasn't gay men and lesbians and transgender people. It was gay men and straight people so then, like homosexuality, this cloud has kind of been around for a while where it's like people just automatically think one thing, and that's also the same thing that was demonized in the 80s and has been, and so one of my topics was this trope of like gay men versus everybody else is just it's done Like I know that I already have an inclination, like I'm very pleased I took this test and I am inclined to think that homosexuality is actually more favorable than heterosexuality because that is my lived experience, right Like I wouldn't expect it any other way, but at the same time, like this idea that it's like gay men versus the world is just. It's so played out and there's so much more diversity in the world and I don't think this psychiatric test or whatever this data that they're collecting is even accurate because they're not they're isolating one group versus like what would it be like?

Lindz: 47:59

I think that for some, I've got a bone to pick with a lot of researchers. I gotta say there's a especially I mean in like mainstream children's media. There's a lot of money poured into research, of course, and very little of it is talking to and about like queerness and transness. They don't even account for queer families most of the time, let alone asking kids their pronouns and their gender identity, like it's just completely left out of any kind of research. And I get questions from these people. I talk to them sometimes and they're like, oh, I don't even know how we would put that into the data sets and all these statistical things. And I'm just like, well, you can just like ask them their pronouns and show them a video about what that means and then they'll tell you. Or you can just like ask what their family looks like, and it's they're just not like the lack of understanding of just like what to ask, because they haven't taken the time to understand that like queer people exist and like are a part of your data set, no matter what, and you're just not accounting for it in a way that's making it visible. And yeah, I'd like to see more research on queer families and queer and trans kids.

Bryan: 49:25

Yeah, I'm doing right now research on how queer families represented in theater and it's so wild to me because I have this. I made this database from when I was working in my queer theater class of like different queer tropes and how they play out in theater and there's like 600 plays. So, first of all, there are 600 plays that fall under queer theater. Folks Like we're not small Out of the entire canon. Out of the entire canon, but also it's not 35. You know it's 600. So there's like there's more than I expected, but also not enough compared to what exists in the world. And some of these plays were written in like the 1600s, so also like here we are. We've been here for a while.

Lindz: 50:15

How much Shakespeare is in that one? Yeah, right.

Bryan: 50:19

I did not get to Shakespeare so I bet I can add a crap ton more. So I used like criteria of like queer playwright, queer story, queer plot or queer character, queer plot, and so that doesn't even go into like undertones and a homo eroticism that exists in very like. So much of the canon. But what I found interesting is that like musical theater seems to tackle queer family and like straight plays don't, and so I find that super fascinating and I'm going to dive a little bit into that. When I do like continue my research and my goals, write an article about it. But here's our second call to action If you are in the humanity and you are a queer person, do and publish more research. Include us in your research, because it's needed like there's a chat to me for interviews.

Lindz: 51:25

I don't always answer my emails because I get very overwhelmed by my inbox, but if you catch me at a good day, I love being a part of those things and I will definitely give you quotes for your essays. I mean, I've done tons of podcasts with the things that you can find things that I've said all over the internet, but I love being part of people's research. I think that's so cool the people are using for kids stuff and things that I make and write to like contribute to how we can be more conscious and purposeful about these things and then, like, make better work even beyond what I'm doing, because I think that yeah, I mean all of this is it's a growing field, right, and like we need to set precedent, and I think that's the only way we can move forward in progress and find things that are even better than queer kids stuff, and I'm excited for that time.

Bryan: 52:20

I love it. I love it. So we've reached a point in this interview where the tables get to be turned and you have the option to, or the ability to, ask me a question or a couple, depending on how you feel, and so I am all ears.

Lindz: 52:35

Yeah, okay, cool. So this is great because I'm going to do a little focus group on you, because as a part of queer kids stuff, I've been kind of toying with like the business model and figuring out how we operate in like a sustainable way, and we've been doing this project over the last year or so called Queer Teachers Rock, where we've been trying to create programming for queer and trans educators and we thought we did a kind of virtual conference last year. That went really great, I think, and then we were doing support groups monthly from January-ish through June and that was great and we're trying to kind of figure out what direction we want to take that moving forward. So I want to know what resources you're looking for as a queer and trans educator.

Bryan: 53:27

That's fantastic. I actually, right before this interview, was a part of an LGBTQ teacher cohort that meets once or twice a month and so, like this was our first meeting, we're just getting to know each other, but the overwhelming consensus was community and connection. So I would even be willing to say, because I am a Y2K kid, like I was, you know, in high school, learned in all the technology when it was coming out, and I would be willing to say like a community where and it could be paid, it could be exclusive, whatever, but a login community where it's safe from the outside world yeah, a queer space for that. Like no, this is not to be, you know, discriminatory to our allies, but queer people need queer spaces, yes, and so I think this is one where it would be exceptionally helpful if we had a queer space for teachers to be able to talk amongst themselves, and it could be chat rooms it could be discussion boards. Whatnot like Facebook groups is? Kind of like existing and we get a lot of people like asking questions and trying to get answers and whatnot and it's not my favorite. For community building yeah, no and so, like I even I created equity in the theater classroom Facebook group and so, like, I created chat rooms and whatnot for that, but I see it very stagnant, like it is not the place to go for that. So I think a dedicated space that is for community building and connection, because you are absolutely correct in talking about like capitalism and patriarchy and white supremacy, is all about isolation, and so here's the thing the internet has been created to connect the world, or you know, that's the story that's being told to us, so we should use it that way. As part of the reason I created this podcast was to let people know that they're not alone and that we all have our stories and I get. I get comments from people like it's. It's a small podcast, I love my listeners and I. It's a labor of love and whatnot, and the opportunity to meet so many people is really fantastic, because I'm a people person um, but it's small podcast and when I do get those, those notices that people are like I'm so happy I found this place I was really feeling isolated, like good, that is, that is what I'm here for, and I think that having a space like that, whether it be on the internet or starting a network that starts online and kind of grows to local resources, would be ideal. I used to work for a company that, like, provided music lessons and I was responsible for, like, organizing the live functions within my major cities because, even though the company was really focused on like you go online and you find your teacher and then you meet your teacher in person, or sometimes you just do virtual lessons or whatever the situation is. They did like live concerts and meetups and whatnot, and so I was responsible for organizing those things, and I think that having a space online where there can be continual connection and then this opportunity for physical, like in-person, conversation would be, ideal because, again, if you put us all in one place, it's going to feel overwhelming how many people are there, because the goal is for us to feel isolated yeah, yeah, absolutely cool, that was really helpful that I felt that helps with the market research oh, yeah, for sure.

Lindz: 57:13

Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna noodle on that and, uh, maybe I'll start a discord.

Bryan: 57:18

Awesome so, before we wrap up, I just want to make sure that everybody knows where they can find you and your resources.

Lindz: 57:26

So please take this opportunity to share yeah, um, if you want to check out my work through queer kid stuff, it's just queerkidstuffcom. All of the things are there. It's at queer kid stuff on all the social medias. If you want to find me, I'm lindsamer at lindsamer. I'm mostly on instagram nowadays, but, uh, also enjoying blue sky, which is a fun time. Um, yeah, those are kind of the places you can find me. You can go buy my book. I have a picture book coming out in the February. It's called hooray for she, he's, he and they. What are your pronouns today? So, please, please, please, pre-order that, pre-order for your libraries, pre-order for your classrooms, pre-order for your homes. Um, I think y'all are gonna really like it. And especially if you like the parenting book, it ties just directly into the practice of, you know, putting a daily pronoun practice into your I don't know routine with your kids. Um, yeah, those are the things. Also, you can listen to my podcast, rainbow parenting. It goes along with the book awesome.

Bryan: 58:30

Well, everybody, I hope you enjoyed the episode as much as I did, because I'm kind of like I know, fan personing out um.

Lindz: 58:37

I don't know the right gender neutral phrase for that, so I'm gonna have to think about it, but like fan personing out, because you know, I read your book and I really enjoyed it.

Bryan: 58:45

Um so, thank you all for joining us and I hope you all have a great night.

Lindz: 58:50

Bye yeah, thank you for having me.

Bryan: 58:53

Bye everyone thank you for joining us on this episode of teaching wall queer. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did make sure to subscribe, wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, leave a review, and that would help out tremendously. You can also support the podcast by going to www. teachingwildqueer. com and hit support the show. Thanks so much and have a great day.