(upbeat music)
- Hi, welcome to another edition of In the Studio
with Calamity Jane, my name is Jodi,
also known as Calamity Jane.
Our purpose with this series is to take women
doing amazing things in our community and give them
the spotlight for a moment.
Joining me today is Jane Heenan from Gender Justice Nevada.
Welcome to the show, Jane.
- Thank you so much for having me, Jodi,
and it's a great pleasure to meet you this morning.
- Tell us a little bit about Gender Justice Nevada.
- So the group of us that came together in 2011,
maybe haphazardly and in different ways, kind of
trying to find our way is I think really a fierce
and loving group of folks hoping to cocreate change
in the context of sex gender in Nevada
and I would say maybe in places beyond Nevada,
in areas of public policy and offering direct services.
It's a wonderful kind of combination of public policy
and direct services work.
It's very rare, actually, in the United States
as I am understanding it for a group such as ours
to really exist in that way, in that kind of combined way.
We offer counseling, we offer...
Hotline 24/7, hotline, we offer lots of groups.
We are...
Engaged in school advocacy.
We've played a primary role in supporting Clark County
School District to make a change in the way that they are
taking care of young persons in schools
and also at the state level in the passage of a bill
known as SB225 and 217 which mandates all Nevada
school districts to have policy and training
about sex gender diverse students and...
We do document changes, mostly for free,
we are engaged in grad students organizing,
we have, maybe as one of our primary goals in the 2019
legislature is to end a horrific practice that I call
intersex genital mutilation where babies are subject
to medically unnecessary surgeries because their
genitalia don't fit cultural expectations of what
should look right among other kinds of things that,
I don't know, we're engaged in and hopefully continue
to move towards.
- How did you come to get started
with the sex gender diversity movement?
- Yeah, I love the wonderfully broad question, right?
That's...
I've called myself an accidental activist for a long time.
I self identify as a snowflake, my pronouns are
they, them, their, and actually if I could, like,
kind of sideline for a moment, your introduction,
you were saying, well, oh, this is a show
for spotlighting women in Las Vegas and good for you
to think about those things as you want, I guess,
but I certainly am not self identifying as a woman and...
In my journey in particular in sitting with persons
in counseling, and I've had this privilege over
almost 20 years to sits with thousands of persons
in counseling, the unconscious, sort of like reactionary
belief in the sex gender binary that everybody
is born a boy or a girl, and those labels are, I don't know,
those are just neutral or objective, that they're honest
and loving and that they don't have to do with
sort of like the cultural expectations but rather
having to do with something internal or inherent
in a human being, like those are really hurtful beliefs.
That's a very...
I don't know, I would even call it a lethal narrative
that we're born into and so, like if...
For me...
Even in sitting here it's kind of like challenging
to hear that language.
I tell you that, and in answer, really, to your question
also, like how do I come to these things, like,
I just started asking questions.
I guess I started asking questions about myself,
like who am I in the context of sex gender is not
a question that most people are asking once they're
five or six years old, but I persisted in asking
that kind of question about myself, I continued
to kind of grapple with increasingly complex forms of, like,
how am I in the world and who do I want to be
and these sorts of things, I came to understand,
and I mean, I understand this for myself,
but I think it's true for us all, well, I'm alive
and so I'm growing and changing in all of these ways,
including in the context of sex gender, so, like,
to say that I am a static label
like woman is not really accurate.
I did make changes in my life in the context of sex gender
like 20 some odd years ago and there was a time in my life
when I thought, like, oh, I was born in the wrong body
or I was a woman or these kinds of things
'cause I was labeled a boy at birth,
but again, my experience over time in particular
in learning from others and engaging in the dialog
that emerges in counseling and my practice
that, like, those stories really are hurtful,
that no one can be born in the wrong body.
I am my body, there's no way for me to be otherwise.
And that that's really a consequence of about 100 years
of medical and psychological professionals
requiring me to answer their question about why I exist
and that somehow I have to make myself plain or clear
to those who would otherwise say, well, like,
you don't count and so I have to sort of tell this story
about being in the wrong body, 'cause then people are, like,
well, that's kind of confusing, but I guess that
kind of makes sense, so I'll give you a pass,
you were born in the wrong body, now you're making changes
in your body, doesn't it feel good
to be in the right body now,
but rather, and as that story comes to be,
I take on the weight of the cultural silence
about these things and that kind of violence
that emerges out of that silence becomes mine internally
to have to grapple with and I blame myself for not being
okay enough, like for being a birth defect
or being disordered or there are other words
like dysphoria that are more often being shared these days
and I refuse to submit to that kind of hurtful narrative
and really that's directly connected to the things
that are happening with Gender Justice Nevada.
As I was in grad school at UNLV in the late 1990s,
in marriage and family therapy, I had the privilege
of starting to facilitate group space for what I would call
back then transgender persons.
I learned along the way that, like, my stories,
my experiences of violence, of being violated
were everybody's stories, and while I sort of knew that
intellectually, it was totally different to encounter that
viscerally each week in that group and then in the sessions
that I would sit with individuals and couples and families
and it, like, it...
I was not willing to just sort of, like, say, oh, okay,
we're all sharing these stories, isn't it great
that we can just talk about these stories, I wanted to act.
I believe that I don't know, each of us has power.
I think we all have responsibilities to engage together
in trying to cocreate healthy change and so we started
a little group back then and tried this and that thing
but it was many years later in 2011 when...
When at the state level we got passed protections
that included the language gender identity or expression
in basic civil rights laws,
employment, public accommodations
and housing, that somebody, when I went up
for the bill signing in Carson City and Governor Sandal
was very generous in inviting me and us to come
and share that space that somebody afterwards,
while I was sipping a martini in Carson at a little bar,
that was, like, well, you know, Jane,
that's just words on a page,
you know that we need to do more.
We should start a nonprofit or whatever
and I was, like, eh, okay, I mean, I wasn't intending that.
Actually, I thought that with the passage of these bills,
that over a decade of kind of service or whatever
that I had offered was maybe kind of coming to a close
and my partner and I were going to move out of state
but I knew immediately that something had shifted in me.
And while I had thought about that, I hadn't considered it
in a way that that person was provoking me to reflect on it
and so a few days later, I talked to my partner
and I was like, you know, we're gonna move and all
of that stuff, but can we stick around, I maybe want
to start something in this sort of way,
so again, it's been a long journey from 2011 to now
and I'm really proud of who we are.
I think that the honesty and the integrity
with which we carry ourselves is, I don't know,
is kinda rare, maybe there's some arrogance in that
and excuse me if there is, but I really think that
who we are together is different than maybe many groups
like ours are and I really, my vision or our vision
is not to be exclusionary, is not to sort of say, like,
we serve these kind of people and not those kind of people,
in that the language, sex gender diverse, families
and communities is an outgrowth
of that kind of consciousness
and the dialogs and that phrasing for me is inclusive
of what people would call maybe these days the LGBT
community or if persons are particularly, like,
well informed, they might say LGBTQ or LGBTQ plus
or LGBTQIA to posit if, like, there are a lot of ways
maybe to define that kind of, I don't know,
I don't think it's definable, but to try and define
that group of persons, but that all of us who are in
non dominant positions under the sex gender binary
and that's a larger group, really, that that's really
our mission, so we offer groups for sex workers,
we are consciously inclusive of kinky people
and people in BDSM relationships, of polyamorous persons
and persons in consensual nonmonogamous kinds
of relationships, like, love is okay and healthy
as long as it's consensual and it's beautiful for us
to come together in these kinds of ways
and the energy that is emerging as a result
of this kind of openness and the directions we're sort of
organically moving into really are beautiful.
- What do you feel makes you successful?
- Wow, what a great question, huh?
Like everybody wants to be successful, right?
I've been chewing on that question maybe for a long time.
When I was younger, like, it filled me with fear
because somehow I was supposed to achieve,
somehow I was supposed to make my way
and make a name for myself and, like,
I had no idea what that meant, I was in school
and it seemed like school was supposed to be
the kind of gateway to these things, but...
Like, I would tell you these days in my life
and probably for a long time, maybe even for...
I don't know, over 20 years, like, I'm...
Trying not to be successful, I don't want to achieve
in the ways that, like, I don't know, what I think of
as serve the machine or service the machine.
I want to have honest relationships.
And while maybe some people would say oh,
that's like successful or whatever, it's much different
than, like, making money or,
like, you know, being well known
or doing things that seem to make a difference
in other people's lives, like, I'm kind of selfish,
I want to have in a healthy relationship, like reciprocal
love and trust and respect and...
And honesty and taking good risks together.
And I want to, I guess I also want to unlearn...
I want to remember.
I think for myself a lot of the ways that I was socialized
to understand, I don't know, the so called real world
really are not healthy, I don't...
Really recognize myself
in a lot of the ways that other people
are engaged in their lives, are going about kind of
making their way and I respect that, I'm not trying
to call anybody out, but for me, like, I don't...
I want to remember that Mother Earth is generous
and it's not like a...
Circumstance in which I am, like, in a struggle
for scarce resources and some kind of competition.
I'm really, I don't know.
I hate hierarchies and other forms that sort of privilege
some at the expense of many.
I...
In various ways, maybe, I'm, like, not wanting
to be successful, I have a healthy relationship
that has existed over 27 years with my partner,
which is quite a story in and of itself.
We share space with doggies and in various kinds of
packs over the years.
I'm really grateful to have a practice in psychotherapy
which is central in my life in so many ways,
the amazing privilege it is to sit with people who are
in various ways exploring their experiences
and in the opportunity to be invited into different families
and to meet young people and older people and it's just
really quite extraordinary, but, and you know,
the whole experience of maybe being invited to participate
in cocreating a nonprofit, that's about as close
to sort of, like, trying to be successful
as I've ever gotten
and really, that's really been very scary for me
and I think in the main, honestly, Jodi that my presence
has guided us, 'cause I tend to have some influence
over things for better or worse, but like my influence
had guided us to...
Both be healthier, I was saying maybe some of this earlier,
about I think we do things differently in many ways,
in many ways that have to do with aliveness,
but it's also caused us a lot of troubles in terms of like
fundraising and structure and I don't know, sort of like
following the rules and, we have...
You know, some of these sort of, like, real world problems
that a nonprofit has to deal with because of the law
and other aspects of how we are together
as civilized people, so yeah.
- What one piece of advice would you give to somebody
who is maybe grappling
with issues with sex gender diversity?
- So I would say fundamentally to trust yourself
and to recognize that the stories that are around you
and are by you that maybe invite you into different
possible futures in some or many ways are not so healthy
and to challenge those stories, to come together
with others, to talk about how to challenge those stories,
that for instance, like, you're not bad or broken,
you're not an abomination unto the Lord,
you're not born into the wrong body, you're not disordered,
the power and the pressure of others
to cause us to conform in the context of sex gender
is profound, everybody is struggling with sex gender
identity, so you're not alone, even if most people
don't seem to acknowledge their struggle with it
and they tend to conform more often or more seemingly
more easily than you do.
I would say that you have gifts to offer
and that you are a prophet, it's a word that I offer,
with consciousness and thoughtfulness, that your message
is a message of hope and a challenge to change
so that we can come together in healthier ways
and it is I think maybe eternally true at least
as I understand the ways that we tell history
that prophets are maybe not so well respected
in their time, but are upon reflection maybe recognized
as having the kind of power to lead others
in again, what I would say are healthier directions
and that your presence in the world is indeed
a gift to us all.
- What is your favorite word?
- Fuck. (laughs)
- Just one? - You know,
those people who know me would tell you
that that's the word that more often than any other
is coming out of me.
- What is your least favorite word?
- Can I have three? - Sure.
- So here are three of my least favorite words
or maybe my three least favorite words,
violence, guns, money.
- What turns you on, creatively,
emotionally or spiritually?
- Diversity, difference, like...
I don't know, when I'm listening to music, like,
I can't listen to the same, there are all these genres
of music, right, and you just listen to country
or you listen to this, like, I need that kind of, like,
that playful sort of...
Difference and diversity and challenge.
- What turns you off?
- (laughs) Violence. (laughs)
Violence, violence, which is another way maybe of saying
a lot of things that maybe wouldn't be understood
as violence, labeling babies, forcing people to conform,
judgment, in a way that is meant to control.
Yeah.
There are two good things
or there are two things that maybe for me are meaningful
in terms of sort of guiding my journey,
like violence is bad, love is good, that's, like, it.
- What is your favorite curse word?
- Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!
That's my favorite curse word.
- What sound or noise do you love?
- Many, I don't know that there's a sound
that I don't love, really, and...
What comes to me right now is the sound of
water in motion, maybe people would say waves
but even maybe like the passing of a river
or kind of the trundling of a stream, water in motion.
- What sound or noise do you hate?
- The sound of no.
The sound of...
The judgmental shaming no.
- What profession other than your own would you like
to someday attempt?
- (laughs) That's a curious question for me because, like,
I am trying to unlearn as maybe I was saying earlier
and kind of remember and professions and all of that
other sort of structure for me is not really
what I am seeking, I could answer, oh, you know,
like archeology or maybe, like, theoretical physicist
or something like that or I don't know what philosopher
means, I think we're all philosophers,
but really, like, I want to be a generalist.
I believe that life well lived is in that kind of
jack of all trades or just sort of not knowing
everything as if there was a concrete kind of knowing,
but, like, kind of having a sense of playful confidence
and engaging in everything.
- What profession would you never want to attempt?
- I...
There are a lot, maybe I would not
want to do any profession,
really, like I'm saying, I don't know how come
they gave me a license to practice marriage
and family therapy, I thought a long time ago
that the only way I could do that was to get a license
and to be formally educated, have a degree, pass a test,
all of that stuff, that's not true, people come
and sit with me 'cause they want to come and sit with me.
It has nothing to do with my license.
People come back to sit with me 'cause they want
to come back and sit with me.
And it has nothing to do with me being a professional.
I really want to be the anti professional.
So that's how I would say although there are many kinds
of professions that I think are really, I don't know,
revolting to me and if you want me to say more
about that I will, but, yeah.
- If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say
when you arrive at the pearly gates?
- I hope that whatever that, like...
Would be would sound something like go to hell.
In the end for me, like, if that sort of story
as I understand it, being raised Catholic is true
that, like, heaven is eternal and hell is eternal,
there's no difference 'cause an eternity is an awfully long
time and what seems pleasurable for a while
soon turns to be something that is hellish
and whatever seems painful over time,
there are gifts that are found there
and so it makes no difference to me.
- Thanks for being with us today, Jane.
- You know, I can't thank you enough for this opportunity.
I really appreciate the engaged dialog and I'm very excited
about what may be to come in our relationship.
- Awesome.
And thank you for joining us.
Join us for the next edition of In the Studio
with Calamity Jane, where I'll put another amazing person
from Las Vegas in the spotlight.
(upbeat music)
For more infomation >> Waarom het mooiste al geweest is - RTL Z NIEUWS - Duration: 2:28. 
For more infomation >> Mitt Romney: Russia Probe Is 'Totally Appropriate' | Kasie DC | MSNBC - Duration: 7:45. 
For more infomation >> Rejoice! Sweet corn season is upon us! - Duration: 1:53. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét