June 17, 2025 • 58 mins
In this episode of The Mariah Effect, I'm joined by my best friend Malory for a deeply personal conversation about love, identity, and the beautiful complexity of human connection.
For Pride Month, I wanted to create space for the kind of raw, honest dialogue that this community deserves: one that goes beyond surface-level celebration to explore what it actually means to show up authentically in a world that doesn't always make room for who we are.
Mallory opens up about her journey with asexuality, sharing what it's like to navigate a society that often equates love with romance and connection with physical intimacy. Her perspective challenged me to think differently about the ways we experience and express love, and how those expressions are all equally valid and profound.
We talk about the courage it takes to claim your identity, the exhaustion of constantly having to explain yourself, and the freedom that comes when you finally stop apologizing for who you are.
This conversation reminded me that Pride isn't just about celebration; it's about visibility, understanding, and the radical act of loving ourselves and each other exactly as we are. If you've ever felt like you didn't quite fit into the boxes the world created for you, or if you're still figuring out what love and connection mean for you, this episode is for you.
I hope this conversation gives you permission to embrace your truth and the courage to love yourself and others without limits.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-mariah-effect--5832015/support.
For Pride Month, I wanted to create space for the kind of raw, honest dialogue that this community deserves: one that goes beyond surface-level celebration to explore what it actually means to show up authentically in a world that doesn't always make room for who we are.
Mallory opens up about her journey with asexuality, sharing what it's like to navigate a society that often equates love with romance and connection with physical intimacy. Her perspective challenged me to think differently about the ways we experience and express love, and how those expressions are all equally valid and profound.
We talk about the courage it takes to claim your identity, the exhaustion of constantly having to explain yourself, and the freedom that comes when you finally stop apologizing for who you are.
This conversation reminded me that Pride isn't just about celebration; it's about visibility, understanding, and the radical act of loving ourselves and each other exactly as we are. If you've ever felt like you didn't quite fit into the boxes the world created for you, or if you're still figuring out what love and connection mean for you, this episode is for you.
I hope this conversation gives you permission to embrace your truth and the courage to love yourself and others without limits.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-mariah-effect--5832015/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Hey, everybody, Welcome to the Mariah Effect. I'm Mariah. Let's
dive in. So today we have a special guest, Mallory Say. Hi, Hello.
I've talked a lot about Malory. You guys know Mallori
very well, regardless of me knowing what I've said exactly
about her, but she is my best friend. She is
(00:48):
the reason I know all of the Marrals in the
first place, and she is what do we call it,
platonic soulmate? Yeah, yeah, that's what she is for me.
We have jokingly called each other wives, although it's a
joke most of the time. We've definitely considered it for
insurance purposes easy living. But I wanted to talk today
(01:09):
about identity and I feel like as much as I
have struggled with my identity in different ways, I feel
like Mallory has definitely had a journey with her identity too,
And I think with it being Pride Month, it's a
really important topic to discuss the world as it is
right now, which sucks, and how we're kind of managing
(01:30):
that and being able to give resources to anybody who
needs any help or anything. So that's the stream of
the podcast today. If you don't want to hear about
that stuff, then you don't have to listen to this
podcast or watch my content, because I will talk about
the things I want to talk about over there.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
This is not a safe space for homophobes.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Correct, And I'm okay with that. You're okay with that.
But anyway, that's what we're diving into today. So I
keep wanting to go into segue into things by saying, so.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Strap in, and I don't know why strap on.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
That's a topic for another time.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Is it because it's Pride month?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, but that doesn't have much to say about identity.
We'll talk about sexual desires another time. But anyway, So
the main thing that I want to talk about today
and make very very clear is that I am a
person that has always made very clear and very apparent
to people in my life that I'm a safe space.
(02:26):
I feel very very strongly that I just love people
and it doesn't matter who they want to be or
who they want to identify, as as long as they're
a kind person, I'm on board with being their friend,
being around them, helping them with whatever I can. And
I think I've always made that pretty clear to everybody
(02:47):
in my life. I have had a lot of people
in even recently in the last few years, being able
to come out to me, whatever that meant in the moment,
and I was starting to get the feeling of there
are so many people feeling so comfortable because it's not
even just coming out to me, just in general, it's
like I'm the first person that they're talking to about it.
(03:09):
And I had a lot of different questions. I've asked
some other people in my life about it, and the
main focus of it has been that I've made it
clear that I'm a safe space and that I am
very non junch bental in my life in general. I'm
always there to listen and ask questions if I have them,
(03:30):
and very honest and upfront. And so I think that
our life growing up Mallory has been very on I
don't want to say spectrum, but like sliding scale from
conservative to liberal since we met. And that's for a
lot of different reasons for her, but I have always
just kind of listened and kind of waited for her to.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Figure out that.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah, but anyway, I'll let you talk about that a
little bit. Coming from conservative raising and religious upbringing.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
And yeah, I guess just growing up a lot of
the values inside my household were very conservative, and initially
it didn't feel like that was something hateful. It just
felt like there wasn't room for a different perspective. And
it was strange because like I held those values of
like conservative values, but all of my friends, I feel
(04:25):
were like on the opposite. And Mariah being my best friend,
obviously I don't think you were ever conservative, not a
day in my life. And I was happy about that,
Like there wasn't any contention about that on my end,
Like I was like, okay, like that's fine. We have
different perspectives and that widens, you know, a worldview, Like
the world is better for having multiple perspectives. Yeah. Absolutely,
(04:49):
And the more I accepted and listened to the many
perspectives of my friends and the people who I valued,
including my very conservative family, I think that like a
lot of the values inside my home, while masquerading as conservative,
are like very liberal. Yeah, it's like love everyone, and
then like the Christian aspect, love the love the sinner,
(05:10):
not the sin. But it's like you can just you
can just love people. You don't have to get sin involved.
So upon like accepting that and not allowing the cognitive
dissonance to just be a part of me. Was the
decision to change where I sat on I guess like
a political spectrum. And when that happened, when I stopped
endorsing the cognitive dissonance of I can believe two things
(05:32):
at once, you can't, that opened open gateways for me
to accept more things about myself and the people around me.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And I mean, I have never felt I mean, There's
been a couple of conversations that I've had with Dad
sometimes that made me very uncomfortable, But for the most part,
any time I was here, outside of the trauma of
my childhood being a factor, there were there was never
really a time where I felt super uncomfortable with anything.
Because all of the reasons why your family has been
(06:01):
so religious is about being able to love and care
for everyone and being kind and generous, Like your dad
was so super generous, and that's what I was striving for.
It's just that disconnect of like being that person but
also putting into the ideals that don't actually equate to
the same thing.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I felt that my dad was the influence of like
empathy and charity and warm heartedness, and my mom was
a little bit like firmer like had kind of like
an iron fist thing going on, and not like in
a cruel way, but in a way that was harder
to connect to, and like towards the end of Dad's
life it kind of like went the other way, but
like those values were still really deeply a part of him.
(06:45):
And so like it's it's strange to say, because Mom
is such like a warm, gentle like empathetic person, but
I learned, I learned my empathy, I learned my charity
and my good heartedness from my dad.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
And she, like I think even she made it point.
I think she mentioned this in her her eulogy for Dad,
where she was like talking about how if there's anything
good about me, it came from Roland, which I don't agree,
but like I think she was talking about that, like
the empathy and the caring because she grew up in
a very like strict militant household and Dad grew up
(07:20):
in like not that.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, you know, like between an Asian household because Grandma,
Grandma Obachan tried to like adapt to being an American home,
but like it was a militant American home, and she
still held on too many of her like Japanese core,
like it's part of her identity. So like there's not
a lot of like physicality and like the love of
(07:42):
like traditional Asian homes. And then like definitely not a
lot of physicality of love in a military home. But
I just I doubt there was like a lot of warm, cuddly,
cozy moments for me growing up. Like not that she
was in an abusive home by any means, but.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
But definitely very different from the home you grew up in.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yes, yeah, I don't consider physical touch one of my
love languages, but when I'm at home.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Like, yeah, she grabbed my boob earlier the stop I
love that. That better be in a clip you heard that, Brook,
But yeah, I it definitely was something for me to
get used to too, coming into this family and having
the like touch and like physical attention.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Kylon who I related to. He's my cousin, Like he's
a maryl. He was over one night and I thought
he was Lucas. So I walked up and I was
like and I sat down like next to him. He
was like hey. I was like, oh my god, how
you were my brother? He's like, I mean, it's not
that it wasn't nice. It's just I was like, okay, yeah,
my bad. It's it's just like the comfort, the comfort
(08:44):
of a home is different, like with with who you've
grown up with and who you considered immediate family. I'm
very touchy feely with you and like everyone that I've
grown up with, but like not Kylon, because Kylin and
I haven't been that close for very long. Yeah, and
even so like I don't, I don't think will forget
to that just because like.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
It's something you build on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think
like like Lucas I'm very close with, he'll do that
sometimes with me, like Erica Nay Kyle, I think really
the only people that don't really do that very much
is running out of Meryl's hold on. I don't know
Carly very well, so it would be very very weird
(09:21):
if she was like I would be. Lindsay isn't always
like that.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
She is a direct episode.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Lindsay is sometimes like that, but again, like I'm not
as close with her as I am with everybody else.
So but anyway, the point being that you, like you yourself,
are a very empathetic and caring person, and when we
became friends, even knowing that you were a gun owning
family and very very conservative. I like it didn't really
(09:54):
matter to me because I knew you, like I knew
you like who you were as a person, and I
was able to overlook it. And I was younger too,
And I think if you were still extraordinarily conservative today,
I don't think that we would still be friends.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
I feel honest the way that like the world has gone,
if I was still conservative, it would have taken me
down a specific pipeline where we wouldn't have been compatible.
Like not only would you not want to be friends
with me, but like I probably wouldn't want to be Yeah,
And that's difficult to like say, just because.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Like what a wacky world that would have had.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Because like the dissonance between like who I was and
who I am. I want to believe that, like, even
with conservative values, I could still be a good person.
But like the extremism of the Conservative party right now
just doesn't lend for flexibility in identity or what it
means to love someone, which is crazy. I don't think
(10:50):
politics should dictate who who you decide to love. It decided.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
It's definitely something that like I genuinely don't know if
it's just that we were younger, and so we weren't
as into research and like knowing all the things that
were going on because it's like we couldn't vote anyway,
So like, what was the purpose of learning about all
of that stuff in the first place, or if it
truly is that things have just gotten much more extreme.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I think things have gotten more extreme, But I also
believe that like growing up, I didn't have any reason
to question what makes a good person. My parents, in
my mind were like good people and they and they
were good people, like at that time, the adults in
your life weren't necessarily good people, but took you to
a place much sooner than it did for me to
(11:37):
establishing what you had to come to these decisions which
led you down, Like, Okay, I guess that means that
I'm more Democratic than I am Republican. And for me,
it was my parents are Republican and my parents are
good people, So I am Republican. Which middle schooler a
high schooler like before you're able to vote and able
to understand politics, crazy to identify a.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Party, but I think it happens a lot, Like I
think there's so many people that like don't do any
sort of research, don't look into things, don't actually think
about like what it is that they're subscribing to. It's
just because my family does this. My family is involved
in this. I've grown up like being a person that
believes in these ideals because of my parents. Like I
(12:21):
don't really know what the opposition is, and especially if
it's a family that like is constantly like those damn liberals,
Like you know, like you hear that enough times that
you're you start to say it just because it's what
your family believes.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I'm thankful that, Like, I don't feel like my family
growing up was that way. We were just kind of
like these are what we believe. You can make your decisions,
but like you can't as a kid, you can't really
make those decisions. So like my family wasn't one that
like hated on another group. It was just like this
is what we believe. Yeah, but identity and not politics.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
So anyway, I mean, I feel like politics does have
a lot to do with especially how things are going today,
and that's why I brought it up at all. But
on that note, like the way that I grew up,
I knew that I was I mean, I didn't know
everything that went into being liberal necessarily, but I knew
from the little bit that I did that liberal meant
(13:17):
like forward thinkers is how it was, you know, subscribed
to me when I was younger, and so I was like, yeah,
of course, I want to look to the future, not
to the past. And that's because for me, the past
is slavery and inequality and not women's rights. So for me,
I was like, yes, forward, because I'm a woman, I'm black,
(13:38):
I want to have rights, and so that's like the
momentum for it. But then when I started looking more
into it and reading more and more and more, I
was like, hell, yeah, I'm a liberal, not just like yeah,
I think so. And the other part of that is
figuring out my identity too, because there's a lot of
things that I believed in high school before being surrounded
(14:00):
by people of color, surrounded by people who had different lifestyles.
I guess I should say that I just was like,
I just don't understand it, so I'm not going to
learn anything about it because it doesn't have anything to
do with me. And as time pushed forward, I was like,
I need to be learning more about it because I
want to be able to if somebody's talking to me
(14:22):
and they're like, I don't get it. I want to
be the persons that's like, well, you should do this
research because that's what I did, and this is what
I know if you want that information, That's what it
had to become for me because I didn't want to
be ignorant anymore about it.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
And research really is like eye opening. I understood like
the a lot of the lingo of like what the
LGBTQIA community, like what all of those are on like
a surface level. And it wasn't until like I started
doing a little bit of research that like I even
came to understand that I'm a sexual. I like, as
I like looked into like exactly what it meant, I
(14:56):
was like, oh shit shit. And I remember like after
like it was like the middle of the night, I
was like scrolling on my phone figuring this stuff out.
And the next day like I was like, I have
something crazy to tell you, and you were like you
didn't know this about yourself. I was like, listen, it's
it's a big moment for me.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
And to be fair, like a lot of a lot
of like a lot of your asexuality. I also like
in high school specifically thought to be just like your
religious stuff, because.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Well that's what that's what I assumed. Yeah, but like
that assumption came from the perspective that like my experience
of life and my experience of like emotions in my
body is the baseline. Like I assumed that like when
when we would have those like lave of chastity, like
like lessons at church where they were like, don't have
(15:47):
premarital sex or your good hell, I was like who
would want to do that? Of course? Like why is this?
Like why is this even? Like why are we being
taught this over and over? Like I hear you I
won't have sex like yeah, and so like in my
and like it was just like the craziest like who
puts themselves in situations where it's like, oh, I guess
we gotta have sex now. So like all through high school,
(16:07):
I was like I don't really understand what the big
deal is. I don't get how people are like having
teenage pregnancies or like why why all the Mormons get
married so young? Like why do you want to have
sex so bad? And and when you when you approach
the world in a way that like says my identity
like my self is the baseline of like existence. It's
(16:31):
very narrowing, like you don't recognize like what life and
existence is to other people. And that's why doing the
research and like learning about things outside of yourself is
very eye opening, because when I read about asexuality, I
was like, that's not that's not the baseline. My reality
is not the baseline. This is what my reality is.
(16:51):
And it was. It was It was weirdly liberating because
it changed nothing right, but it added perspective and it
it gave me a sense of community, even though like
I live in Utah and I've never been to Pride
and nobody else in the entire fucking world is a sexual.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Going to Pride this year? Yeah, I bought the tickets.
But anyway, like I have.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
A homophobic dad, So like, what was I supposed to Like,
how am I supposed to? Like? What does this change
for me in my real life? Like at the time,
I was still very very religious, So I was like, Okay,
but that just means like I'm blessed to not be
tempted by premarital sex. I'll find someone and then you know,
we'll have babies. I'll just I'll do the thing, and
I'll have a family.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
I have to.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
There's there's an episode on of Friends, which is a
show that we both really loved and loved and appreciated together,
and there's an episode where two of the characters, Richard
and Monica, are like talking about the future, and Monica
is like, I really want to have kids. I'm sorry,
(17:56):
I need I need that with someone, and Richard's like, well,
I don't want to lose you, so if I have to,
And he says if I have to, like maybe three
or four times, and she's kind of like, Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
If you hadn't said if I have.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
To, then I would be all on board, but you
did so, and they break up.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Because there are things that like you don't want to
compromise about your vision of the future. Like at that time,
my vision of the future was getting married in a
temple with obviously a man, and then like starting a family.
And it wasn't until like I really accepted that, like
that's not something that I actually want and I had
to compromise, like the stability of a future because like
(18:37):
what is my life now, Like that's what I've been
working towards, like building towards my whole life, because like
religious trauma, that's what is your life worth if you're
not building towards a family. So when I like accepted that,
it was it was scary, but in the sense that
like letting go of something heavy allows you that freedom
(19:01):
of movement. It's it's frightening to let go of it,
but it is it is liberating.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
That makes me so happy.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
I feel like with the way that you kind of
came to that realization, it was definitely like little bits
and pieces, like you'd figure it out and then you'd
be like, so I'm a sexual and I was like, oh, okay,
you're like.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yes, absolutely, that tracks of everything. Yeah, the kind.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Of the same way that I was when you were like,
I think I have OCD and I was like, yeah
you do girl.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Okay, well I don't have a diagnosis. You can't say that.
It could just be autism, you don't know.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, we'll have to dive into that on another episode.
But I think that for me, a lot of my
identity figuring out who I was had to do with
growing up in an entirely white family and being black,
and so my journey very different, but I feel like
still ties into this like theme of identity and figuring
(19:57):
out who you are, because there's something that's but he
told me recently about how we're all just souls in
human suits and that like are what we perceive to
be ourselves or not ourselves. Oh, like you're a woman,
you're a man, you're you know, bisexual, you're black, Like
that's not who you are, You're just a soul inside
(20:19):
of that like human suit or whatever. Well, I do
understand that, like what they were trying to tell me
and what they were trying to get at. Yeah, it
just feels.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Disingenuous to insinuate that, like your shell has nothing to
do who you are.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And like I very well could have been not a
black person, like if we if we're talking about reincarnation,
I very well could have not been a black person
in a former life. But that has no bearing on
like my life who I am now.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, Like it's just ingenuous to say, like your soul
is like an is untainted by the realities of this world.
Who we are at our like center. I feel I'm
not gonna like say that like anyone else's worldview is wrong.
Just like take into consideration it might not be the
end all be all, you've faced a lot of pain
because of your shell, like and you've faced a lot
(21:10):
of pain like just based on your circumstances, not necessarily
because you're a black woman, but like a lot of
it does have to do with the fact that you
are a black woman, and that that changes how you
perceive the world and you react to it, and the
level of empathy you can give to the world around you,
Like maybe you wouldn't have been as empathetic a person,
(21:30):
like if you'd been born and white, Like I feel,
I feel it's disingenuous to take something so integral to
like our existence now because whatever comes next, whether we
have like shades where our souls are just like amorphous
energy blobs, like, it's not that that has nothing to
do with now.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, I definitely I want to strive to be more
big picture than you know, what's right in front of me.
But it's a really hard thing for me to adjust
to with my new job and everything. Like I'm trying
very hard to think like a big picture how it's
going to affect the world where I'm going to be
in like ten years. But I've lived a life where
(22:10):
I've had to think about like tomorrow, and that's about
as far as I can go because of you know,
being sick, because of you know, being poor. It's just
this fight for survival and not like longevity necessarily that
I've had to endure. And so like when people talk
(22:31):
big picture like that and saying like we're you know,
we're just souls in human suits, Like I get the
kindness that he was trying to give me in that conversation,
but like I do think that if being black is
not a part of my identity, if being a woman
is not a part of my identity, then I don't
(22:51):
know how I'm supposed to get through adversity against me.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah, it feels like I'm a cop out for like
a white man, because like then then you don't if like,
if being a black woman has nothing to do with
like the content of your soul, then the vitriolic historical
hate that the white man has given to the black
woman has nothing to do with the content of his soul.
(23:18):
And that's not true. Like the hate that you choose
to give like that has everything to do with the
content of your soul, and the love that you choose
to give has everything to do with the content of
your soul and whether or not you're capable of giving
that love, whether we like to admit it or not,
has a lot to do with the circumstances that we're
born into that we have no control over.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah, and I think like it's a it's an effort
to try and make the statement of like kind of
similar to the like love is love. You know, it
comes from a good place of like, we should be
accepting of any kind of love because love is the
most important part of being human, is just being able
to love each other and to be loved. But like,
(24:00):
it does kind of make it hard to be like, Okay,
well love is love, what are we doing about it?
Like what are the next steps? It's kind of the
same vibe of like, well, we're just all souls, Like
it doesn't matter, Like our skin color doesn't matter this,
it doesn't matter that. And it's like, but it does,
it does matter because that's the world that we live in,
(24:21):
and that's how we have to like address it. I
would love for everybody to just be like, you know what,
we're all humans, Like who cares about the outside because
we all are just humans. I would love if everybody
could do that. But the point is that nobody does.
And I'm not going to be not ignorant, but I'm
not going to be complacent in the world that we
live in and be like, oh, why did that person
(24:43):
do that to me? I'm just a soul in the world. Like, No,
I'm going to be like, I know why he did that,
I know what is going through his head, and I
want to make changes to that. So I have to address.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Best of your ability. You've got to take You've got
to take like actionable, real physical steps in this world
to change in the way that people perceive. It's not fair,
but that is what but it is what it is.
You were recently helping me fill out a LinkedIn because
I'm unemployed, not for long, and in my LinkedIn, I
have like the pronoun signifiers of sheet her but you
(25:15):
you know that, like I'm kind of on a journey
of they them, And you were like, do you want
it to stay she her? And I was like, she
her is already rolling the dice with these d I rollbacks.
There are so many things in this life that like, yes,
like love is love, humans are humans, Like I would
love to have the freedom to just like openly explore
my gender identity. I can't afford.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
It, like yep. I found out from person that I
interviewed with that because I asked for feedback. I interviewed
for a job when I was in living in California,
and I interviewed for the job in California, by the way,
which is a very like diverse state. But I interviewed
for the job over the phone, and then we did
a video call as well, and on the video call,
(25:58):
the person that I interviewed with like got on the
video call and they went, HI, like, you sounded surprised
because I sounded white. I so then they were like, oh,
I'm so sorry, like I can't offer you the position, YadA, YadA.
And I was like, oh, can you like give me
some feedback. I'd love to know why. And I knew
(26:18):
that they weren't going to say, oh, because you're black,
But the way that they approached it, I was wearing
I think I was wearing a wig maybe or something.
I don't remember what I was wearing in the in
the interview, No, I had braids, That's what it was.
I had braids. And in the interview they were like,
we just have a certain aesthetic for the office and
we can't have like people. I can see that you're
(26:41):
a very colorful person, and I was like, colorful, Okay,
thanks for that.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
I mean, there are plenty of protections in place for
you to just racistly say we can't afford a di higher. Yeah,
you could just say it. Yeah, like, if you're going
to be racist, like own it.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
And I also like, I really I also realized too
that when I apply for things, my last name, which
is not black but Italian, is.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, it's hard to pronounce, and so you have your
Mariah Kaylin. Both of those sound like relatively white names,
like not necessarily black, like doesn't have to be white,
but like white enough white passing, and you are like
at least half white, like so like on like a
passing glance and like with the right filter on.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah, And if I'm being honest, like I've recently made
changes to my life to try and like make most
of my stuff be Mariah Kaylin. Not for that purpose,
although I'm realizing that that's been more helpful.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Is your last name like publicly known on your podcast?
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (27:41):
I think so okay, because I was gonna say it,
and then I was like, I don't want to, like
dox you. I think it is because I was gonna say,
like Palia Sodi is like, hey, just you it'll be
very easy to find your footprint.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
On the online.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah, and it's hard to pronounce and it's hard to
remember how to spell like I'm sure you've got lots
of flak for it. In like high school were like
the teachers were like, I'm just gonna call you where
I am.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Especially the teachers that were like yeah, the teachers that
were so like strict that they were like, we're going
to go by last names. I was like, good, look,
this is Overland.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
We are very diverse.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
And so they would try and they'd come across my
name and be like, Okay, you're gonna have to explain
this to me, and I gave it. And I remember
in eighth grade I had good scene Tyler, which was
an English teacher for.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I remember him. Everyone hated him. Yeah, I wasn't in
any of his classes because at the time I still
had some difficulties with English. I don't know if you
know this. When I was in like elementary to middle school,
I was actually in not not like the slow kids
like remedial, not in remedial, but like a Title one program,
(28:49):
which isn't very popular across the United States, but it
is something that like exists for like when you're falling behind,
but you don't necessarily have any kind of learning disability.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I was in that for English
for reading, comprehension and writing, which is a really interesting
part of my lore. Yeah. I'm so keyed into like
reading and writing.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Now, Yeah, that is kind of wild. I do remember
you saying something about how you weren't like very good
at reading writing. I didn't know it to that extent.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, No, I was in a I was in a class.
Don't we catch up.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
With my peers?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
So like for most of my elementary slash middle school years,
I was just like in the regular one, like I
think up to fourth grade is when I was in them.
I was at like at the regular level throughout middle school.
But like in elementary school, there was like a time
during like I don't know, like there was like a
reading period like during that I would go to that
(29:42):
Title I program and they would catch me up.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
I'm trying to remember. It was like it was like
a period that was literally just to read.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
It was like sustained silent reading.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yes, sir.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Yeah, yeah, So so by the time like middle school
came around, I was like at the level of my peers,
but I wasn't yet like at the on for anything,
even though like reading and writing is like my one
and only passion. It's the only like interesting thing about.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Me, a big part of your identity.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
I wasn't in any honors classes. Goodstein Tyler wasn't even
in my radar, but most of my friends were like
for English at least like in the advanced classes. So
like I heard all about Goodstein Tyler.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Yeah, you know, And it's it's funny because at the
time I was such a that I really appreciated his
class because I learned so much in his class, and
even when he was being hard, I was actually like
doing the work, which I feel and this feels like
so bold of me to say, but I feel like
a lot of elementary school and middle school, I was
(30:45):
kind of like struggling, not because it was difficult, but
because it was too easy, and I just kind of
was like, this doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
And young minds struggle, like when something seems too easy
to comprehend that like there is a next step that
gets harder, and so they're just like if a young
mind isn't challenged, it's bored and like it wants to occupy.
It wants something a little bit more challenging, like it
wants it even if like the kid is lazy.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, when I when I would write things for his
class and he actually had like workable feedback that I
felt wasn't just like him being an asshole. It was
him like actually challenging me because most of the time
that my feedback was like this isn't exactly what I
asked you to do, and I'm like, okay, but it's
better than what YE do. So I don't know.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Yeah, I remember one of two things was about good
Stein Tyler. It was either like, oh, he's my favorite
teacher because they were suck up, or they were like
he's just so mean.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Yeah, I had that. I had that class with Sam.
That's actually the class I met Sam in. He sat
behind me because it was in alphabetical order, so Palia
Sodi peers and like.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
I just sat in front of you I have, but he.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Sat behind me. And I remember one of the first
days of class or something, he was he had us
like swivel around to the people behind us. To do
a project together. And I remember I swiveled around and
I was like, Hi, I take class very seriously, do you?
And Sam was like yes, And I remember he hated
good Steine Tyler, Like he hated him so much. I'm
(32:15):
so sorry to that man, if you're listening like.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
This, like like he hated you. My favorite teacher was
my fifth grade teacher, and she was she was stern,
but like it was very clear that she cared about
her students. Yeah, like she was stern in the way
that it was like, that's not what we're doing. She wasn't.
I feel like some people might have said she was mean.
(32:38):
Her name was missus Castleberry, but like she was just
like genuinely a good teacher. She like took time to
like explain why this was incorrect, or like if you
went about doing something a different way, you would like
encourage that you did it, like this is good. I
like this, you do need to show your work. Like
she was a really good teacher. Like I was a
(32:58):
little bit afraid of her, but then like because because
in elementary school, like that's your teacher all the time. Yeah,
we warmed up to each other, like and so I
think there's like a difference between being fucking asshole.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah, sorry, you might have to censor that. No, it's okay,
We'll just make this episode explicit.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
And and you know, a stern a strict teacher, like
you can you don't. You can be strict and stern
without being the worst person.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Yeah, And I'm sure that like some people when he
gave that sort of constructive criticism feedback that were like
not happy with hearing that and would kind of talk back.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
And then that's when he'd be like, Okay, well you're ugly,
Like I'm I I don't know if that's true. That's
something that somebody told me one time. Yeah, he does.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yeah, I heard. I heard a lot that he would
like he would snap back. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
So I don't think that he was a good teacher
in that aspect, because you need to be able to
keep your cool regardless of like teenage attitudes, and like, in.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Fairness, we ask a lot of our teachers, so like
we're like, we're shitting all over this man.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
I'm pretty sure he had like a mass majority of
classes because he had like I think he did the
seventh and eighth grade Advanced English classes. He also taught
Latin he also did like a couple.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Of other different Latin.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah. I think he also taught a couple of different
like extra curricular writing classes. So I think he had
a really full schedule too.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
It's probably just to make ends meet.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Yeah, finding the compassion for people is part of the podcast,
so that's that's a good thing to talk about.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
I highly doubt that this man who in his heyday
had like a very full schedule full of shit eating
like teenagers like, is going to take the time to
like I remember, Marian, listen to your podcast where you
just shit all over them.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
But like, I don't think I've spoken to him since
like the ninth grade.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yeah, I it's healthy to be like angry a little
bit on people who like aren't going to feel like
the blowback of that of that hatred. We can recognize,
like teachers don't get enough respect, like, and I'm sure
that it was difficult on him with a very full
class load that he probably had to do just to
like make ends meets that he could get tenure or
(35:12):
some shit like.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Yeah, Plus, Prairie was like jam packed full of kids.
I think in my class alone for a middle school
was like eight hundred kids. Graduating class for eighth grade,
I think was what it was. That's a lot of
kids for just one grade level in a middle school.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Yeah. All I remember about middle school was that the
initials were PMS, and we got a lot of shit
about that. Wellkome to PMS. Here's your first period.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Yeah, your first period.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
That's all I remember. Like you're like, it was a
huge graduating class, and I'm like prairie fairies.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
See, And that's the difference, is what we paid attention to.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Well, I was in the track and field team. That
was the last time I was in sports jocks.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
I don't know that I would have considered myself a drug.
I was still pretty introverted. Like it's when I was
like into my own introbuted nature, and I didn't know
what to do, like with myself during the track meets
because I didn't really have any friends on the track
and field team, I was just like, but like all
the opposing teams would be like pretty fairies, and then
like I'd hear them saying like PMS first period like
that kind of stuff, and I was like, mostly I
(36:15):
didn't know what PMS was, So I was like.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Anyway, danity and I'm just kidding, but.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
I wanted to cut my universe out for a long time.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
With when in middle school, like circling back, kind of
tying in in middle school. In eighth grade, I had
a teacher I cannot, for the life of me remember
her name, but she was like a theater teacher and
for a long time at that.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Was like trans.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
I don't oh, no, she was. She was in that
was in high.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
School, high school, and she was like the piano player.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Yeah, but in middle.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Like my first exposure to like a like a transperson
in real life.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah, in middle school. I remember her first name, which
we won't say, kind of doctor because of some other things.
I remember when I was trying to sign up for
classes and I had done kind of theater outside of
school for a while, not really within school because PERR
didn't really have a theater program before she came into it,
(37:18):
and they were trying to get us to do like
sign up for the extracurriculars. I remember walking to the
guitar table and I was like, I'm gonna sign up
for guitar, and her table was right next to it,
and she was like, do you want to do guitar
or do you want to do theater and I went,
I'm sold. No, that was it, and so I went
to the theater table and we started talking and she
(37:41):
helped me a lot because I was really struggling with
home life. I was struggling with a lot of different things.
That was when everything happened with Frankie, which we'll get
into another podcast episode.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Yeah, that's not a bad identity.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
But I was really struggling, and she helped me with
a lot. She gave me a bunch of books that
I don't know that I still have the actual copy
that she gave me, but one of them was a
book called Mercy that was about mercy killing, which was like,
you gave that book to an eighth grade girl, had
a lot of stuff in it. But she gave me
a book that was about this queer couple and I
(38:17):
remember reading it and I was like, this is the
best book read in my life. And I can't remember
the name of it because I don't have it anymore,
and I have had a lot of things happen that
make my memory really shitty. But it was such a
good book and it opened my eyes to the world
of like books that were about romance. I think she
(38:37):
is the reason that I kind of got launched into
romance a little bit. No, not yet, not yet romance
at the time.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
No, there's a difference.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I can read romance, but I have always found bless you.
I've always found that I find those type of books
more intriguing than a lot of others because I feel
like there's so much more This sounds terrible, but there's
so much more struggle to their relationship and like to
the story. It's not just kind of like oh, like
(39:05):
boy meets girl, boys introduction to like girl, almost like
enemies to lovers, because because like a lot of what
makes a story like enemies still lovers, friends to lovers whatever.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Interesting is the adversity that like they have to overcome
in order to get to that place before before like
the tropification of romance where we have these like terms
for tropes. You just had this queer couple really struggled
to like to have love, Yeah, and that's what you want.
You're like for them to overcome all the odds so
that they can love each other.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yeah, And it really influenced like my every day too,
because like there's stories that like friends of mine who
are who are queer will tell me and I'm like,
go get him, like you got you can do this,
like like nothing can stop you. Who cares?
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Who cares that his family doesn't know he's gay? Do
it anyway? Like I like must kill you that your
best friend doesn't have any romance in her life.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
It's actually really funny you say that because I was
having a conversation with somebody where they kind of asked
me about your love life and I was like, I
was like love life and I was like, I'm just kidding.
I think she's dating this person and I like really
like interested in trying to figure out like, okay, well
does that person not want to have sex? And I
(40:26):
was like I don't know, yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
And neither do I Like I feel like so like
I am, I am seeing someone and we've been seeing
each other for almost a year now, but like there
was that like off period where like dad was dying yea.
I was like I can't, I can't do this, and
he was very patient, like he's a very good guy,
Like I like spending time with him, Yeah, I would
like I would like to see where a future with
him goes. And when we like first met, I tried
(40:49):
to make very clear though, like I'm asexual and I
don't want like even were we to, like if he
wanted to get married in the future, I would never
want to. Like constantly I tried, like without saying those
words to be clear, Like I think what I said was,
it's difficult for me starting new relationships trying to find
someone who's okay with the level of physical intimacy that
(41:11):
like I'm comfortable giving because I am a sexual and
I'm pretty sure I said those words. Yeah, and like
we're still together, yeah, so like I think he's okay
with it. Yeah, but like we haven't had another conversation
about it. Yeah, So there's always that like fear, which
is it's it's very difficult when when you identify as
(41:32):
someone who doesn't want something that like is almost like
base human existence, Like a part of being human and
existing for so many people, for like the majority of
people is hunger, exhaustion, and horniness. It's not that I'm
not human, It's not that I don't you know, occasionally
get horny. But even in those moments, I don't I
(41:53):
don't crave another person's touch, Like I don't want someone
else to touch me. And it's it's scary to think that,
like with romance, people have an expectations towards sexuality. Yeah,
and it makes it it puts a damper on finding
new relationships because there's like even if they are crystal
(42:14):
clear and never want to like take it to that
further step with me, in the back of my mind,
I've got this like trauma of like.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
People like how could they not?
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, it's like that's where that's where my brain goes,
like how can they not? How can they be okay
with just me, with my unwillingness and inability to give
them something that's integral to being human, which like categorizes
me as subhuman And that's not fair to me, and
that's not fair to the people who choose to be
(42:44):
a part of my life in that romantic sense. But
it's something that I have to work through, like yeah
that like okay, we're holding hands, Okay, we're kissing. Do
they want more? Is this okay? That this is all
that I want? It's scary finding finding someone who will
accept your identity not just on a friendship level, but
like more than that, on an intimate level.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
And I think, I mean, I I don't have the
same issues because obviously I'm not asexual, but like for me,
it's hard to see how someone like who is with
you wouldn't be able to like, like you just kind
of figure out your own intimacy, like what intimacy means
for your relationship. And maybe that's me thinking about it
(43:26):
in terms of like, well it's not me, but like
thinking about somebody else, because for me, I definitely do
need that in a relationship.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Which but I feel that we've had we've had this conversation.
It's totally one hundred percent in my mind, even as
like the person who doesn't want it fair to say
this is one of my baseline needs in a relationship,
and it's fair. It's fair for me to say this
is one of my baseline needs, and if those baseline
needs don't align, it is okay for the relationship to end.
(43:56):
I just that makes me sound cold hearted A lot
of times I don't think so to the person who
like wants to try and make it work, they're like,
you're not willing to give a little. It makes me
sound very cold hearted, But I'm like, you know what, No,
I'm not.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
I'm not compromise your body. You can't compromise your comfortable
do you like your level of what is it called ability?
I don't know what to say for that, but you
can't compromise on things that are needs.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Yeah, And that's why I tried to establish it at
the very start of a relationship. It is like in
the past, before I understood this about myself, Like it
wasn't something that I knew to establish going in and
so it like it would we would get to a
point in a relationship where they would want more from me,
not necessarily sex because I was like Mormon, and so
like the people I was dating were Mormon, but like
(44:45):
there was like desire that I was unwilling to like reciprocate,
and so like I think most of the time I'd
get scared and just like push them away and end it.
And I'm sure to them, like it felt like it
was out of nowhere. It probably felt callous, like and
I I recognize like that that is the reality for them,
like that I was heartless in those moments and it's
(45:06):
what I needed. I'm not going to take those actions
back or like look down on myself for that, but
like their reality is that like things were going good
one day and then I ended it.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
That's because you do a lot of your considerations and
thinking internally, and then once you've come to a place,
you've come to a decision, that's like that's the end
of it for you. And like for a lot of
and I don't mean to be like like generalistic, but
for men very specifically, they need a lot more conversation
(45:36):
involved when it's coming to something like that. Otherwise they
feel like it came out of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
And like I knew even like in those moments, like
this probably feels a little like I blindsided you. Yeah,
But in fairness, sometimes I feel that like the cold
shoulder I was giving you, and like the like the
curtness I was giving you, I feel that's a pretty
clear communication that I'm annoyed with you. That's a sorry
for another time.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
But yeah, I feel like for me, the biggest thing
that makes it hard for me to understand people who
are against adverse to entire populations of people, The hardest
thing for me to understand and wrap my brain around
is the why of it, because I feel so strongly
(46:23):
that it's like so simple and has so little to
do with anybody else, Like you don't want to be
with somebody who's asexual. Don't you don't want to go
to a gay club, don't like you know what I mean.
It's hard for me to understand what their point is.
And I saw this video which I'm gonna clip into
the podcast here where this woman she was talking, she's
(46:47):
from she comes from a religious background, and she was
talking about like what this is all about, like what
it is for? Because she said it's evil, it's hatred.
It's not about the kids, because that side that is
saying it's for the kids are also not doing anything
about guns and schools. They're also not doing anything to
(47:09):
actually feed children because they're taking away the programs that
feed children who can't afford to have school lunches. It's
not about our community, because what are they doing for
the community. It's not about keeping the restrooms safe because
straight conservative men are the ones that get arrested for
hurting women in bathrooms more often than any other population
(47:32):
of people demographic demographic of people. Thank you, Like she
goes through it and I'm like, wow, like that so
well put and so well said how she came across it,
because that's really what it is. It's like, it's just
about hatred and coming up with excuses to be hateful.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
Yeah, and I like not to make excuse for the hateful.
I don't think that they recognize that, like what they're
feeling is hatred. Like because having been down that dark
of my past, I used to be fairly transphobic, but
I never would have put that like label on myself.
Like I had a friend like in my first semester
(48:08):
of college that like fantastic tran trans man who asked
me like flat out like, so, like your Mormon because
at the time I was I'm trans. What's your like
bew on that? And like I flat out said, like well,
like I don't agree with your like lifestyle, but like
that's fine.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Yeah what the fuck?
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Like I flashed back to that on the regular, and
I'm like I want to find him and apologize, but
like I also don't want my healing journey to be
their burden.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
So like no, even though like I know I know
like where their Facebook is and stuff, I think we're
Facebook friends, I don't. I don't want to put that
on them, but like I am so sorry that like
that was a part. That's that's a genuine like I
genuinely believed that, yeah, And I never would have attributed
that to hate. If I had been like a voter
(48:55):
at that time, I would have voted against a lot
of gay rights and I never would have attributed that
to hate. But that's what it was. Just because I
can't identify that's what it is, doesn't mean that's what
it wasn't what it was. And I think that like
the majority of people who are like so goddamn hateful
are afraid and unable to coalesce that. Like when I
(49:16):
went through my own cognitive dissonance of like, I love people,
I won't vote for them to be able to love people.
I came out on the other side today of like,
you can't have it both ways. You have to stand
by that love, and that's who I am today. But
some people just don't ever come out the other side
of that, and that's terrible and they can't recognize that
(49:40):
that's it's just hate.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
A lot of people create a reality that they can
live with, and that's not always the reality that is happening.
Everybody does that, I mean even people. There's people in
my life that are addicts that would not classify themselves
as being addicted to anything because to front that they
are an addict would mean that they have to confront
(50:03):
all the terrible things that they do.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
Yeah, Like once, once you acknowledge that, like these two
things can't coexist, you have to do something about it.
So if you just don't acknowledge it, if you don't
acknowledge that it is hate that you are putting out
into the world that is a part of your identity, like,
then it will always be a part of you. If
you don't acknowledge that, you can't overcome it.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
And the hardest thing is that most of the time
for people to recognize the reality that they've built for
themselves is not true. Is either some horrible, awful bottom
event to happen to them speaking towards addiction, Yeah, or
they have to actually wake up with the realization that
that's what is going on. Like, they have to be
(50:46):
the ones that make that choice, make that decision, because
you can't, like, all you can do is control yourself.
You can't control other people at all.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
For me, like this journey on identity, not just like
my sexual identity, but like my gender identity, it's been
it's been exciting and joyous and it's happy. But like
it's painful and heartbreaking and lonely. My dad will never
know who I am, and I even if he were
alive today, I don't think that i'd have the courage
(51:14):
to tell him. Yeah, And a lot of embracing identity
and being someone safe to like identify with is keeping
secrets and being lonely and embracing like the happiness in
the sorrow because like, as lonely as it is to
not tell people because you're afraid, I'm happier, Like I
don't have a solid plan for my future anymore. I'm
(51:36):
not gonna get married and have kids. I don't want kids.
I don't want that marriage anymore. But that's that's my truth. Like, yeah,
I'm me in a way that that other version of
me never would have been. Identity is scary.
Speaker 1 (51:48):
Yeah, it is really scary. I think that for a
lot of people, Like even if the world was open
and loving and accepting, I think finding out who you
are and dealing with that is just baseline painful and scary.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Like I acknowledging these things about myself meant I had
to look at myself and say you were transphobic. That's
a hard thing to admit, especially as someone who is
like a staunch ally even before like going on my
gender identity journey, staunch ally transphobic. Those two things shouldn't
be allowed to coincide. And when I had to pick
a path, it was scary and painful, but good.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
And I think that at the end of the day,
like with all that we're saying about this, like the
point of it is that Mallory is a good person.
She like has always cared about other people, has always
done her best to do what she finds is the
right thing to do. And yet she's gone on this
journey where she didn't always do what was considered the
(52:48):
right thing or what we think to be the right thing.
Now And people are not just black, not just white.
They're a mix, which I get to say because I'm
mixed anyway. I like it's a skin. And just because
somebody does something that doesn't align with your beliefs, doesn't
align with what you think is the right thing, doesn't
mean that they're all together cruel, all together evil. It's
(53:13):
just like maybe they're not educated, maybe they don't know
what they're doing. However, it is hateful acts, it is
causing a lot of a lot of horrible things to
happen THEI going away. I just read yesterday that the
specific hotline that they have for suicide prevention for trans
(53:34):
youth is being taken away. It'll be gone in September.
Things like that happening that are scary and sad and infuriating.
But I also found out through finding that that Canada
has a hotline that they have transitioned to also be
(53:54):
for American people as well to be able to use
because of this happening. So it's a new reality that
we have to adjust to and we have to live
with until we put somebody else up at the top.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
And it's just even in that, like it'll take a while.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
It's going to take a while everything, even if an adjustment.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
Even if the ideal, like even if Jesus Christ himself
came down and became the new head, the new person
at the top, it would take a while.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
And like because and one of the things that I
realized too, with having to talk to people about what's
going on in the government, what's going on in politics
and things like that, is that the assumption is that
what's happening now is because of the president that's at
the top right now, it takes forever for those things
to go into effects. Things that are going down right
now could have lasting effects until twenty thirty two. That's
(54:46):
just the way that it works. And so even with
a new president that we'll have at the top, their
new things won't go into effect until twenty thirty three. Like,
it's just the way that it works. And because people
don't understand that and direct it, ignize that they're blaming
or giving praise to whoever's at the top at the
moment because of things that are happening right now, and
(55:07):
that's just not the way that it works pretty much.
Speaker 2 (55:09):
Ever.
Speaker 1 (55:10):
So it's depressing and it's sad, and it's horrible and
it's awful. But the best thing that we can all
do is stay informed about what's going on, so you
know how to keep yourself safe and keeping yourself up
to date on what you can do for your community
if that's something that you're interested in. And I'm going
to put a bunch of different resources for all the
(55:32):
information that I have, and I'm going to make sure
that it's all on the website, the dash Maria dash
effect dot com. And I really hope that anybody that
listens to this will be able to enjoy the episode
and possibly think about things in a different way than
they did before. That's just always my plan and my hope.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
And if you're just looking like you don't you feel
comfortable in your identity, Like you're not queer at all.
For the best part, mari isn't either, and she is
the safest space that I know. Yeah, And it just
has to do with being open to new information, receiving
it with love and willing to For me, being able
to talk with Mariah about things, even if she doesn't
(56:13):
have the information, I'm confident that like she'll go into
it with an open mind and look into it.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
Yeah. I always do research. I always try and find
resources for people. That's the reason that I do that
for the podcast always, because this is less about me
and it's more about everybody else. And I genuinely love
being able to celebrate the people in my life and
the people who aren't in my life that have had
to struggle the way that people in the LGBTQ plus
(56:41):
community have had to struggle. And I think that celebrating
where we have gotten to and like where we can
still go, Like, that's why I celebrate it and I mean,
I'm on my own journey. Who knows, Like, with some time,
maybe there's something else, a part of my identity that
I haven't fully Cannet did with yet. Who knows. But
(57:02):
as for right now, I am a strong ass. Ally.
Speaker 2 (57:06):
Yeah, i might be asexual, but I'm pretty sure I'm
also biromantic. So there's always more time and cover about yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
Absolutely, So thank you so much for listening you guys,
I really appreciate it. Thank you Mallory for being on
the episode with me.
Speaker 2 (57:18):
Never again, that's funny, She's gonna be on it again.
Speaker 1 (57:21):
I'm also going to list some books that I have
and that Mallory's read about pride and.
Speaker 2 (57:26):
Specifically for a sexuality. If if you're curious about like
learning more about your a sexual friends, or you are
curious about where you might fall on that spectrum, because
it is a spectrum. The book Ace by Angela Chen
is very good, so as come as you are, but
that's not necessarily about a sexuality. That's just about being
comfortable in your body and understanding your own breaks and
(57:47):
guess for sexuality.
Speaker 1 (57:48):
She's so good. I read books and I forget the
name of the book, like two days later, Like that's insane.
That's why I put it at the end of the
episode of like it'll be somewhere, It'll be somewhere there
because I need some time to collect it and put
it together. But this is a really good book too.
I'm trying to figure out Isaac song. I posted about
(58:09):
that on my LinkedIn and I thought that was a
really incredible book as well.
Speaker 2 (58:13):
Yeah, the ones that I listened are just ones that
I was reading at the time that I was coming
to like look into things about myself, so like they
just kind of stuck with me.
Speaker 1 (58:21):
Yeah, thank you so much for listening. Hopefully this won't
be too long of an episode. Bye.
Hey, everybody, Welcome to the Mariah Effect. I'm Mariah. Let's
dive in. So today we have a special guest, Mallory Say. Hi, Hello.
I've talked a lot about Malory. You guys know Mallori
very well, regardless of me knowing what I've said exactly
about her, but she is my best friend. She is
(00:48):
the reason I know all of the Marrals in the
first place, and she is what do we call it,
platonic soulmate? Yeah, yeah, that's what she is for me.
We have jokingly called each other wives, although it's a
joke most of the time. We've definitely considered it for
insurance purposes easy living. But I wanted to talk today
(01:09):
about identity and I feel like as much as I
have struggled with my identity in different ways, I feel
like Mallory has definitely had a journey with her identity too,
And I think with it being Pride Month, it's a
really important topic to discuss the world as it is
right now, which sucks, and how we're kind of managing
(01:30):
that and being able to give resources to anybody who
needs any help or anything. So that's the stream of
the podcast today. If you don't want to hear about
that stuff, then you don't have to listen to this
podcast or watch my content, because I will talk about
the things I want to talk about over there.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
This is not a safe space for homophobes.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Correct, And I'm okay with that. You're okay with that.
But anyway, that's what we're diving into today. So I
keep wanting to go into segue into things by saying, so.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Strap in, and I don't know why strap on.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
That's a topic for another time.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Is it because it's Pride month?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, but that doesn't have much to say about identity.
We'll talk about sexual desires another time. But anyway, So
the main thing that I want to talk about today
and make very very clear is that I am a
person that has always made very clear and very apparent
to people in my life that I'm a safe space.
(02:26):
I feel very very strongly that I just love people
and it doesn't matter who they want to be or
who they want to identify, as as long as they're
a kind person, I'm on board with being their friend,
being around them, helping them with whatever I can. And
I think I've always made that pretty clear to everybody
(02:47):
in my life. I have had a lot of people
in even recently in the last few years, being able
to come out to me, whatever that meant in the moment,
and I was starting to get the feeling of there
are so many people feeling so comfortable because it's not
even just coming out to me, just in general, it's
like I'm the first person that they're talking to about it.
(03:09):
And I had a lot of different questions. I've asked
some other people in my life about it, and the
main focus of it has been that I've made it
clear that I'm a safe space and that I am
very non junch bental in my life in general. I'm
always there to listen and ask questions if I have them,
(03:30):
and very honest and upfront. And so I think that
our life growing up Mallory has been very on I
don't want to say spectrum, but like sliding scale from
conservative to liberal since we met. And that's for a
lot of different reasons for her, but I have always
just kind of listened and kind of waited for her to.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Figure out that.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah, but anyway, I'll let you talk about that a
little bit. Coming from conservative raising and religious upbringing.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
And yeah, I guess just growing up a lot of
the values inside my household were very conservative, and initially
it didn't feel like that was something hateful. It just
felt like there wasn't room for a different perspective. And
it was strange because like I held those values of
like conservative values, but all of my friends, I feel
(04:25):
were like on the opposite. And Mariah being my best friend,
obviously I don't think you were ever conservative, not a
day in my life. And I was happy about that,
Like there wasn't any contention about that on my end,
Like I was like, okay, like that's fine. We have
different perspectives and that widens, you know, a worldview, Like
the world is better for having multiple perspectives. Yeah. Absolutely,
(04:49):
And the more I accepted and listened to the many
perspectives of my friends and the people who I valued,
including my very conservative family, I think that like a
lot of the values inside my home, while masquerading as conservative,
are like very liberal. Yeah, it's like love everyone, and
then like the Christian aspect, love the love the sinner,
(05:10):
not the sin. But it's like you can just you
can just love people. You don't have to get sin involved.
So upon like accepting that and not allowing the cognitive
dissonance to just be a part of me. Was the
decision to change where I sat on I guess like
a political spectrum. And when that happened, when I stopped
endorsing the cognitive dissonance of I can believe two things
(05:32):
at once, you can't, that opened open gateways for me
to accept more things about myself and the people around me.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
And I mean, I have never felt I mean, There's
been a couple of conversations that I've had with Dad
sometimes that made me very uncomfortable, But for the most part,
any time I was here, outside of the trauma of
my childhood being a factor, there were there was never
really a time where I felt super uncomfortable with anything.
Because all of the reasons why your family has been
(06:01):
so religious is about being able to love and care
for everyone and being kind and generous, Like your dad
was so super generous, and that's what I was striving for.
It's just that disconnect of like being that person but
also putting into the ideals that don't actually equate to
the same thing.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I felt that my dad was the influence of like
empathy and charity and warm heartedness, and my mom was
a little bit like firmer like had kind of like
an iron fist thing going on, and not like in
a cruel way, but in a way that was harder
to connect to, and like towards the end of Dad's
life it kind of like went the other way, but
like those values were still really deeply a part of him.
(06:45):
And so like it's it's strange to say, because Mom
is such like a warm, gentle like empathetic person, but
I learned, I learned my empathy, I learned my charity
and my good heartedness from my dad.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
And she, like I think even she made it point.
I think she mentioned this in her her eulogy for Dad,
where she was like talking about how if there's anything
good about me, it came from Roland, which I don't agree,
but like I think she was talking about that, like
the empathy and the caring because she grew up in
a very like strict militant household and Dad grew up
(07:20):
in like not that.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, you know, like between an Asian household because Grandma,
Grandma Obachan tried to like adapt to being an American home,
but like it was a militant American home, and she
still held on too many of her like Japanese core,
like it's part of her identity. So like there's not
a lot of like physicality and like the love of
(07:42):
like traditional Asian homes. And then like definitely not a
lot of physicality of love in a military home. But
I just I doubt there was like a lot of warm, cuddly,
cozy moments for me growing up. Like not that she
was in an abusive home by any means, but.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
But definitely very different from the home you grew up in.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yes, yeah, I don't consider physical touch one of my
love languages, but when I'm at home.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Like, yeah, she grabbed my boob earlier the stop I
love that. That better be in a clip you heard that, Brook,
But yeah, I it definitely was something for me to
get used to too, coming into this family and having
the like touch and like physical attention.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Kylon who I related to. He's my cousin, Like he's
a maryl. He was over one night and I thought
he was Lucas. So I walked up and I was
like and I sat down like next to him. He
was like hey. I was like, oh my god, how
you were my brother? He's like, I mean, it's not
that it wasn't nice. It's just I was like, okay, yeah,
my bad. It's it's just like the comfort, the comfort
(08:44):
of a home is different, like with with who you've
grown up with and who you considered immediate family. I'm
very touchy feely with you and like everyone that I've
grown up with, but like not Kylon, because Kylin and
I haven't been that close for very long. Yeah, and
even so like I don't, I don't think will forget
to that just because like.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
It's something you build on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think
like like Lucas I'm very close with, he'll do that
sometimes with me, like Erica Nay Kyle, I think really
the only people that don't really do that very much
is running out of Meryl's hold on. I don't know
Carly very well, so it would be very very weird
(09:21):
if she was like I would be. Lindsay isn't always
like that.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
She is a direct episode.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Lindsay is sometimes like that, but again, like I'm not
as close with her as I am with everybody else.
So but anyway, the point being that you, like you yourself,
are a very empathetic and caring person, and when we
became friends, even knowing that you were a gun owning
family and very very conservative. I like it didn't really
(09:54):
matter to me because I knew you, like I knew
you like who you were as a person, and I
was able to overlook it. And I was younger too,
And I think if you were still extraordinarily conservative today,
I don't think that we would still be friends.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
I feel honest the way that like the world has gone,
if I was still conservative, it would have taken me
down a specific pipeline where we wouldn't have been compatible.
Like not only would you not want to be friends
with me, but like I probably wouldn't want to be Yeah,
And that's difficult to like say, just because.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Like what a wacky world that would have had.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Because like the dissonance between like who I was and
who I am. I want to believe that, like, even
with conservative values, I could still be a good person.
But like the extremism of the Conservative party right now
just doesn't lend for flexibility in identity or what it
means to love someone, which is crazy. I don't think
(10:50):
politics should dictate who who you decide to love. It decided.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
It's definitely something that like I genuinely don't know if
it's just that we were younger, and so we weren't
as into research and like knowing all the things that
were going on because it's like we couldn't vote anyway,
So like, what was the purpose of learning about all
of that stuff in the first place, or if it
truly is that things have just gotten much more extreme.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
I think things have gotten more extreme, But I also
believe that like growing up, I didn't have any reason
to question what makes a good person. My parents, in
my mind were like good people and they and they
were good people, like at that time, the adults in
your life weren't necessarily good people, but took you to
a place much sooner than it did for me to
(11:37):
establishing what you had to come to these decisions which
led you down, Like, Okay, I guess that means that
I'm more Democratic than I am Republican. And for me,
it was my parents are Republican and my parents are
good people, So I am Republican. Which middle schooler a
high schooler like before you're able to vote and able
to understand politics, crazy to identify a.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Party, but I think it happens a lot, Like I
think there's so many people that like don't do any
sort of research, don't look into things, don't actually think
about like what it is that they're subscribing to. It's
just because my family does this. My family is involved
in this. I've grown up like being a person that
believes in these ideals because of my parents. Like I
(12:21):
don't really know what the opposition is, and especially if
it's a family that like is constantly like those damn liberals,
Like you know, like you hear that enough times that
you're you start to say it just because it's what
your family believes.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I'm thankful that, Like, I don't feel like my family
growing up was that way. We were just kind of
like these are what we believe. You can make your decisions,
but like you can't as a kid, you can't really
make those decisions. So like my family wasn't one that
like hated on another group. It was just like this
is what we believe. Yeah, but identity and not politics.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
So anyway, I mean, I feel like politics does have
a lot to do with especially how things are going today,
and that's why I brought it up at all. But
on that note, like the way that I grew up,
I knew that I was I mean, I didn't know
everything that went into being liberal necessarily, but I knew
from the little bit that I did that liberal meant
(13:17):
like forward thinkers is how it was, you know, subscribed
to me when I was younger, and so I was like, yeah,
of course, I want to look to the future, not
to the past. And that's because for me, the past
is slavery and inequality and not women's rights. So for me,
I was like, yes, forward, because I'm a woman, I'm black,
(13:38):
I want to have rights, and so that's like the
momentum for it. But then when I started looking more
into it and reading more and more and more, I
was like, hell, yeah, I'm a liberal, not just like yeah,
I think so. And the other part of that is
figuring out my identity too, because there's a lot of
things that I believed in high school before being surrounded
(14:00):
by people of color, surrounded by people who had different lifestyles.
I guess I should say that I just was like,
I just don't understand it, so I'm not going to
learn anything about it because it doesn't have anything to
do with me. And as time pushed forward, I was like,
I need to be learning more about it because I
want to be able to if somebody's talking to me
(14:22):
and they're like, I don't get it. I want to
be the persons that's like, well, you should do this
research because that's what I did, and this is what
I know if you want that information, That's what it
had to become for me because I didn't want to
be ignorant anymore about it.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
And research really is like eye opening. I understood like
the a lot of the lingo of like what the
LGBTQIA community, like what all of those are on like
a surface level. And it wasn't until like I started
doing a little bit of research that like I even
came to understand that I'm a sexual. I like, as
I like looked into like exactly what it meant, I
(14:56):
was like, oh shit shit. And I remember like after
like it was like the middle of the night, I
was like scrolling on my phone figuring this stuff out.
And the next day like I was like, I have
something crazy to tell you, and you were like you
didn't know this about yourself. I was like, listen, it's
it's a big moment for me.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
And to be fair, like a lot of a lot
of like a lot of your asexuality. I also like
in high school specifically thought to be just like your
religious stuff, because.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Well that's what that's what I assumed. Yeah, but like
that assumption came from the perspective that like my experience
of life and my experience of like emotions in my
body is the baseline. Like I assumed that like when
when we would have those like lave of chastity, like
like lessons at church where they were like, don't have
(15:47):
premarital sex or your good hell, I was like who
would want to do that? Of course? Like why is this?
Like why is this even? Like why are we being
taught this over and over? Like I hear you I
won't have sex like yeah, and so like in my
and like it was just like the craziest like who
puts themselves in situations where it's like, oh, I guess
we gotta have sex now. So like all through high school,
(16:07):
I was like I don't really understand what the big
deal is. I don't get how people are like having
teenage pregnancies or like why why all the Mormons get
married so young? Like why do you want to have
sex so bad? And and when you when you approach
the world in a way that like says my identity
like my self is the baseline of like existence. It's
(16:31):
very narrowing, like you don't recognize like what life and
existence is to other people. And that's why doing the
research and like learning about things outside of yourself is
very eye opening, because when I read about asexuality, I
was like, that's not that's not the baseline. My reality
is not the baseline. This is what my reality is.
(16:51):
And it was. It was It was weirdly liberating because
it changed nothing right, but it added perspective and it
it gave me a sense of community, even though like
I live in Utah and I've never been to Pride
and nobody else in the entire fucking world is a sexual.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Going to Pride this year? Yeah, I bought the tickets.
But anyway, like I have.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
A homophobic dad, So like, what was I supposed to Like,
how am I supposed to? Like? What does this change
for me in my real life? Like at the time,
I was still very very religious, So I was like, Okay,
but that just means like I'm blessed to not be
tempted by premarital sex. I'll find someone and then you know,
we'll have babies. I'll just I'll do the thing, and
I'll have a family.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
I have to.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
There's there's an episode on of Friends, which is a
show that we both really loved and loved and appreciated together,
and there's an episode where two of the characters, Richard
and Monica, are like talking about the future, and Monica
is like, I really want to have kids. I'm sorry,
(17:56):
I need I need that with someone, and Richard's like, well,
I don't want to lose you, so if I have to,
And he says if I have to, like maybe three
or four times, and she's kind of like, Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
If you hadn't said if I have.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
To, then I would be all on board, but you
did so, and they break up.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Because there are things that like you don't want to
compromise about your vision of the future. Like at that time,
my vision of the future was getting married in a
temple with obviously a man, and then like starting a family.
And it wasn't until like I really accepted that, like
that's not something that I actually want and I had
to compromise, like the stability of a future because like
(18:37):
what is my life now, Like that's what I've been
working towards, like building towards my whole life, because like
religious trauma, that's what is your life worth if you're
not building towards a family. So when I like accepted that,
it was it was scary, but in the sense that
like letting go of something heavy allows you that freedom
(19:01):
of movement. It's it's frightening to let go of it,
but it is it is liberating.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
That makes me so happy.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
I feel like with the way that you kind of
came to that realization, it was definitely like little bits
and pieces, like you'd figure it out and then you'd
be like, so I'm a sexual and I was like, oh, okay,
you're like.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yes, absolutely, that tracks of everything. Yeah, the kind.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Of the same way that I was when you were like,
I think I have OCD and I was like, yeah
you do girl.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Okay, well I don't have a diagnosis. You can't say that.
It could just be autism, you don't know.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Yeah, we'll have to dive into that on another episode.
But I think that for me, a lot of my
identity figuring out who I was had to do with
growing up in an entirely white family and being black,
and so my journey very different, but I feel like
still ties into this like theme of identity and figuring
(19:57):
out who you are, because there's something that's but he
told me recently about how we're all just souls in
human suits and that like are what we perceive to
be ourselves or not ourselves. Oh, like you're a woman,
you're a man, you're you know, bisexual, you're black, Like
that's not who you are, You're just a soul inside
(20:19):
of that like human suit or whatever. Well, I do
understand that, like what they were trying to tell me
and what they were trying to get at. Yeah, it
just feels.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Disingenuous to insinuate that, like your shell has nothing to
do who you are.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
And like I very well could have been not a
black person, like if we if we're talking about reincarnation,
I very well could have not been a black person
in a former life. But that has no bearing on
like my life who I am now.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, Like it's just ingenuous to say, like your soul
is like an is untainted by the realities of this world.
Who we are at our like center. I feel I'm
not gonna like say that like anyone else's worldview is wrong.
Just like take into consideration it might not be the
end all be all, you've faced a lot of pain
because of your shell, like and you've faced a lot
(21:10):
of pain like just based on your circumstances, not necessarily
because you're a black woman, but like a lot of
it does have to do with the fact that you
are a black woman, and that that changes how you
perceive the world and you react to it, and the
level of empathy you can give to the world around you,
Like maybe you wouldn't have been as empathetic a person,
(21:30):
like if you'd been born and white, Like I feel,
I feel it's disingenuous to take something so integral to
like our existence now because whatever comes next, whether we
have like shades where our souls are just like amorphous
energy blobs, like, it's not that that has nothing to
do with now.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, I definitely I want to strive to be more
big picture than you know, what's right in front of me.
But it's a really hard thing for me to adjust
to with my new job and everything. Like I'm trying
very hard to think like a big picture how it's
going to affect the world where I'm going to be
in like ten years. But I've lived a life where
(22:10):
I've had to think about like tomorrow, and that's about
as far as I can go because of you know,
being sick, because of you know, being poor. It's just
this fight for survival and not like longevity necessarily that
I've had to endure. And so like when people talk
(22:31):
big picture like that and saying like we're you know,
we're just souls in human suits, Like I get the
kindness that he was trying to give me in that conversation,
but like I do think that if being black is
not a part of my identity, if being a woman
is not a part of my identity, then I don't
(22:51):
know how I'm supposed to get through adversity against me.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Yeah, it feels like I'm a cop out for like
a white man, because like then then you don't if like,
if being a black woman has nothing to do with
like the content of your soul, then the vitriolic historical
hate that the white man has given to the black
woman has nothing to do with the content of his soul.
(23:18):
And that's not true. Like the hate that you choose
to give like that has everything to do with the
content of your soul, and the love that you choose
to give has everything to do with the content of
your soul and whether or not you're capable of giving
that love, whether we like to admit it or not,
has a lot to do with the circumstances that we're
born into that we have no control over.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah, and I think like it's a it's an effort
to try and make the statement of like kind of
similar to the like love is love. You know, it
comes from a good place of like, we should be
accepting of any kind of love because love is the
most important part of being human, is just being able
to love each other and to be loved. But like,
(24:00):
it does kind of make it hard to be like, Okay,
well love is love, what are we doing about it?
Like what are the next steps? It's kind of the
same vibe of like, well, we're just all souls, Like
it doesn't matter, Like our skin color doesn't matter this,
it doesn't matter that. And it's like, but it does,
it does matter because that's the world that we live in,
(24:21):
and that's how we have to like address it. I
would love for everybody to just be like, you know what,
we're all humans, Like who cares about the outside because
we all are just humans. I would love if everybody
could do that. But the point is that nobody does.
And I'm not going to be not ignorant, but I'm
not going to be complacent in the world that we
live in and be like, oh, why did that person
(24:43):
do that to me? I'm just a soul in the world. Like, No,
I'm going to be like, I know why he did that,
I know what is going through his head, and I
want to make changes to that. So I have to address.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Best of your ability. You've got to take You've got
to take like actionable, real physical steps in this world
to change in the way that people perceive. It's not fair,
but that is what but it is what it is.
You were recently helping me fill out a LinkedIn because
I'm unemployed, not for long, and in my LinkedIn, I
have like the pronoun signifiers of sheet her but you
(25:15):
you know that, like I'm kind of on a journey
of they them, And you were like, do you want
it to stay she her? And I was like, she
her is already rolling the dice with these d I rollbacks.
There are so many things in this life that like, yes,
like love is love, humans are humans, Like I would
love to have the freedom to just like openly explore
my gender identity. I can't afford.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
It, like yep. I found out from person that I
interviewed with that because I asked for feedback. I interviewed
for a job when I was in living in California,
and I interviewed for the job in California, by the way,
which is a very like diverse state. But I interviewed
for the job over the phone, and then we did
a video call as well, and on the video call,
(25:58):
the person that I interviewed with like got on the
video call and they went, HI, like, you sounded surprised
because I sounded white. I so then they were like, oh,
I'm so sorry, like I can't offer you the position, YadA, YadA.
And I was like, oh, can you like give me
some feedback. I'd love to know why. And I knew
(26:18):
that they weren't going to say, oh, because you're black,
But the way that they approached it, I was wearing
I think I was wearing a wig maybe or something.
I don't remember what I was wearing in the in
the interview, No, I had braids, That's what it was.
I had braids. And in the interview they were like,
we just have a certain aesthetic for the office and
we can't have like people. I can see that you're
(26:41):
a very colorful person, and I was like, colorful, Okay,
thanks for that.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
I mean, there are plenty of protections in place for
you to just racistly say we can't afford a di higher. Yeah,
you could just say it. Yeah, like, if you're going
to be racist, like own it.
Speaker 1 (26:56):
And I also like, I really I also realized too
that when I apply for things, my last name, which
is not black but Italian, is.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, it's hard to pronounce, and so you have your
Mariah Kaylin. Both of those sound like relatively white names,
like not necessarily black, like doesn't have to be white,
but like white enough white passing, and you are like
at least half white, like so like on like a
passing glance and like with the right filter on.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Yeah, And if I'm being honest, like I've recently made
changes to my life to try and like make most
of my stuff be Mariah Kaylin. Not for that purpose,
although I'm realizing that that's been more helpful.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Is your last name like publicly known on your podcast?
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (27:41):
I think so okay, because I was gonna say it,
and then I was like, I don't want to, like
dox you. I think it is because I was gonna say,
like Palia Sodi is like, hey, just you it'll be
very easy to find your footprint.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
On the online.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Yeah, and it's hard to pronounce and it's hard to
remember how to spell like I'm sure you've got lots
of flak for it. In like high school were like
the teachers were like, I'm just gonna call you where
I am.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Especially the teachers that were like yeah, the teachers that
were so like strict that they were like, we're going
to go by last names. I was like, good, look,
this is Overland.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
We are very diverse.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
And so they would try and they'd come across my
name and be like, Okay, you're gonna have to explain
this to me, and I gave it. And I remember
in eighth grade I had good scene Tyler, which was
an English teacher for.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I remember him. Everyone hated him. Yeah, I wasn't in
any of his classes because at the time I still
had some difficulties with English. I don't know if you
know this. When I was in like elementary to middle school,
I was actually in not not like the slow kids
like remedial, not in remedial, but like a Title one program,
(28:49):
which isn't very popular across the United States, but it
is something that like exists for like when you're falling behind,
but you don't necessarily have any kind of learning disability.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I was in that for English
for reading, comprehension and writing, which is a really interesting
part of my lore. Yeah. I'm so keyed into like
reading and writing.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Now, Yeah, that is kind of wild. I do remember
you saying something about how you weren't like very good
at reading writing. I didn't know it to that extent.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, No, I was in a I was in a class.
Don't we catch up.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
With my peers?
Speaker 2 (29:21):
So like for most of my elementary slash middle school years,
I was just like in the regular one, like I
think up to fourth grade is when I was in them.
I was at like at the regular level throughout middle school.
But like in elementary school, there was like a time
during like I don't know, like there was like a
reading period like during that I would go to that
(29:42):
Title I program and they would catch me up.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
I'm trying to remember. It was like it was like
a period that was literally just to read.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
It was like sustained silent reading.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
Yes, sir.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
Yeah, yeah, So so by the time like middle school
came around, I was like at the level of my peers,
but I wasn't yet like at the on for anything,
even though like reading and writing is like my one
and only passion. It's the only like interesting thing about.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
Me, a big part of your identity.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
I wasn't in any honors classes. Goodstein Tyler wasn't even
in my radar, but most of my friends were like
for English at least like in the advanced classes. So
like I heard all about Goodstein Tyler.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Yeah, you know, And it's it's funny because at the
time I was such a that I really appreciated his
class because I learned so much in his class, and
even when he was being hard, I was actually like
doing the work, which I feel and this feels like
so bold of me to say, but I feel like
a lot of elementary school and middle school, I was
(30:45):
kind of like struggling, not because it was difficult, but
because it was too easy, and I just kind of
was like, this doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
And young minds struggle, like when something seems too easy
to comprehend that like there is a next step that
gets harder, and so they're just like if a young
mind isn't challenged, it's bored and like it wants to occupy.
It wants something a little bit more challenging, like it
wants it even if like the kid is lazy.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, when I when I would write things for his
class and he actually had like workable feedback that I
felt wasn't just like him being an asshole. It was
him like actually challenging me because most of the time
that my feedback was like this isn't exactly what I
asked you to do, and I'm like, okay, but it's
better than what YE do. So I don't know.
Speaker 2 (31:30):
Yeah, I remember one of two things was about good
Stein Tyler. It was either like, oh, he's my favorite
teacher because they were suck up, or they were like
he's just so mean.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Yeah, I had that. I had that class with Sam.
That's actually the class I met Sam in. He sat
behind me because it was in alphabetical order, so Palia
Sodi peers and like.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
I just sat in front of you I have, but he.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Sat behind me. And I remember one of the first
days of class or something, he was he had us
like swivel around to the people behind us. To do
a project together. And I remember I swiveled around and
I was like, Hi, I take class very seriously, do you?
And Sam was like yes, And I remember he hated
good Steine Tyler, Like he hated him so much. I'm
(32:15):
so sorry to that man, if you're listening like.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
This, like like he hated you. My favorite teacher was
my fifth grade teacher, and she was she was stern,
but like it was very clear that she cared about
her students. Yeah, like she was stern in the way
that it was like, that's not what we're doing. She wasn't.
I feel like some people might have said she was mean.
(32:38):
Her name was missus Castleberry, but like she was just
like genuinely a good teacher. She like took time to
like explain why this was incorrect, or like if you
went about doing something a different way, you would like
encourage that you did it, like this is good. I
like this, you do need to show your work. Like
she was a really good teacher. Like I was a
(32:58):
little bit afraid of her, but then like because because
in elementary school, like that's your teacher all the time. Yeah,
we warmed up to each other, like and so I
think there's like a difference between being fucking asshole.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah, sorry, you might have to censor that. No, it's okay,
We'll just make this episode explicit.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
And and you know, a stern a strict teacher, like
you can you don't. You can be strict and stern
without being the worst person.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Yeah, And I'm sure that like some people when he
gave that sort of constructive criticism feedback that were like
not happy with hearing that and would kind of talk back.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
And then that's when he'd be like, Okay, well you're ugly,
Like I'm I I don't know if that's true. That's
something that somebody told me one time. Yeah, he does.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Yeah, I heard. I heard a lot that he would
like he would snap back. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
So I don't think that he was a good teacher
in that aspect, because you need to be able to
keep your cool regardless of like teenage attitudes, and like, in.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Fairness, we ask a lot of our teachers, so like
we're like, we're shitting all over this man.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
I'm pretty sure he had like a mass majority of
classes because he had like I think he did the
seventh and eighth grade Advanced English classes. He also taught
Latin he also did like a couple.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Of other different Latin.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah. I think he also taught a couple of different
like extra curricular writing classes. So I think he had
a really full schedule too.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
It's probably just to make ends meet.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Yeah, finding the compassion for people is part of the podcast,
so that's that's a good thing to talk about.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
I highly doubt that this man who in his heyday
had like a very full schedule full of shit eating
like teenagers like, is going to take the time to
like I remember, Marian, listen to your podcast where you
just shit all over them.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
But like, I don't think I've spoken to him since
like the ninth grade.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yeah, I it's healthy to be like angry a little
bit on people who like aren't going to feel like
the blowback of that of that hatred. We can recognize,
like teachers don't get enough respect, like, and I'm sure
that it was difficult on him with a very full
class load that he probably had to do just to
like make ends meets that he could get tenure or
(35:12):
some shit like.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
Yeah, Plus, Prairie was like jam packed full of kids.
I think in my class alone for a middle school
was like eight hundred kids. Graduating class for eighth grade,
I think was what it was. That's a lot of
kids for just one grade level in a middle school.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Yeah. All I remember about middle school was that the
initials were PMS, and we got a lot of shit
about that. Wellkome to PMS. Here's your first period.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Yeah, your first period.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
That's all I remember. Like you're like, it was a
huge graduating class, and I'm like prairie fairies.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
See, And that's the difference, is what we paid attention to.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Well, I was in the track and field team. That
was the last time I was in sports jocks.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
I don't know that I would have considered myself a drug.
I was still pretty introverted. Like it's when I was
like into my own introbuted nature, and I didn't know
what to do, like with myself during the track meets
because I didn't really have any friends on the track
and field team, I was just like, but like all
the opposing teams would be like pretty fairies, and then
like I'd hear them saying like PMS first period like
that kind of stuff, and I was like, mostly I
(36:15):
didn't know what PMS was, So I was like.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Anyway, danity and I'm just kidding, but.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
I wanted to cut my universe out for a long time.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
With when in middle school, like circling back, kind of
tying in in middle school. In eighth grade, I had
a teacher I cannot, for the life of me remember
her name, but she was like a theater teacher and
for a long time at that.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Was like trans.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
I don't oh, no, she was. She was in that
was in high.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
School, high school, and she was like the piano player.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Yeah, but in middle.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Like my first exposure to like a like a transperson
in real life.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah, in middle school. I remember her first name, which
we won't say, kind of doctor because of some other things.
I remember when I was trying to sign up for
classes and I had done kind of theater outside of
school for a while, not really within school because PERR
didn't really have a theater program before she came into it,
(37:18):
and they were trying to get us to do like
sign up for the extracurriculars. I remember walking to the
guitar table and I was like, I'm gonna sign up
for guitar, and her table was right next to it,
and she was like, do you want to do guitar
or do you want to do theater and I went,
I'm sold. No, that was it, and so I went
to the theater table and we started talking and she
(37:41):
helped me a lot because I was really struggling with
home life. I was struggling with a lot of different things.
That was when everything happened with Frankie, which we'll get
into another podcast episode.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Yeah, that's not a bad identity.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
But I was really struggling, and she helped me with
a lot. She gave me a bunch of books that
I don't know that I still have the actual copy
that she gave me, but one of them was a
book called Mercy that was about mercy killing, which was like,
you gave that book to an eighth grade girl, had
a lot of stuff in it. But she gave me
a book that was about this queer couple and I
(38:17):
remember reading it and I was like, this is the
best book read in my life. And I can't remember
the name of it because I don't have it anymore,
and I have had a lot of things happen that
make my memory really shitty. But it was such a
good book and it opened my eyes to the world
of like books that were about romance. I think she
(38:37):
is the reason that I kind of got launched into
romance a little bit. No, not yet, not yet romance
at the time.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
No, there's a difference.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I can read romance, but I have always found bless you.
I've always found that I find those type of books
more intriguing than a lot of others because I feel
like there's so much more This sounds terrible, but there's
so much more struggle to their relationship and like to
the story. It's not just kind of like oh, like
(39:05):
boy meets girl, boys introduction to like girl, almost like
enemies to lovers, because because like a lot of what
makes a story like enemies still lovers, friends to lovers whatever.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
Interesting is the adversity that like they have to overcome
in order to get to that place before before like
the tropification of romance where we have these like terms
for tropes. You just had this queer couple really struggled
to like to have love, Yeah, and that's what you want.
You're like for them to overcome all the odds so
that they can love each other.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yeah, And it really influenced like my every day too,
because like there's stories that like friends of mine who
are who are queer will tell me and I'm like,
go get him, like you got you can do this,
like like nothing can stop you. Who cares?
Speaker 2 (39:56):
Who cares that his family doesn't know he's gay? Do
it anyway? Like I like must kill you that your
best friend doesn't have any romance in her life.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
It's actually really funny you say that because I was
having a conversation with somebody where they kind of asked
me about your love life and I was like, I
was like love life and I was like, I'm just kidding.
I think she's dating this person and I like really
like interested in trying to figure out like, okay, well
does that person not want to have sex? And I
(40:26):
was like I don't know, yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
And neither do I Like I feel like so like
I am, I am seeing someone and we've been seeing
each other for almost a year now, but like there
was that like off period where like dad was dying yea.
I was like I can't, I can't do this, and
he was very patient, like he's a very good guy,
Like I like spending time with him, Yeah, I would
like I would like to see where a future with
him goes. And when we like first met, I tried
(40:49):
to make very clear though, like I'm asexual and I
don't want like even were we to, like if he
wanted to get married in the future, I would never
want to. Like constantly I tried, like without saying those
words to be clear, Like I think what I said was,
it's difficult for me starting new relationships trying to find
someone who's okay with the level of physical intimacy that
(41:11):
like I'm comfortable giving because I am a sexual and
I'm pretty sure I said those words. Yeah, and like
we're still together, yeah, so like I think he's okay
with it. Yeah, but like we haven't had another conversation
about it. Yeah, So there's always that like fear, which
is it's it's very difficult when when you identify as
(41:32):
someone who doesn't want something that like is almost like
base human existence, Like a part of being human and
existing for so many people, for like the majority of
people is hunger, exhaustion, and horniness. It's not that I'm
not human, It's not that I don't you know, occasionally
get horny. But even in those moments, I don't I
(41:53):
don't crave another person's touch, Like I don't want someone
else to touch me. And it's it's scary to think that,
like with romance, people have an expectations towards sexuality. Yeah,
and it makes it it puts a damper on finding
new relationships because there's like even if they are crystal
(42:14):
clear and never want to like take it to that
further step with me, in the back of my mind,
I've got this like trauma of like.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
People like how could they not?
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, it's like that's where that's where my brain goes,
like how can they not? How can they be okay
with just me, with my unwillingness and inability to give
them something that's integral to being human, which like categorizes
me as subhuman And that's not fair to me, and
that's not fair to the people who choose to be
(42:44):
a part of my life in that romantic sense. But
it's something that I have to work through, like yeah
that like okay, we're holding hands, Okay, we're kissing. Do
they want more? Is this okay? That this is all
that I want? It's scary finding finding someone who will
accept your identity not just on a friendship level, but
like more than that, on an intimate level.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
And I think, I mean, I I don't have the
same issues because obviously I'm not asexual, but like for me,
it's hard to see how someone like who is with
you wouldn't be able to like, like you just kind
of figure out your own intimacy, like what intimacy means
for your relationship. And maybe that's me thinking about it
(43:26):
in terms of like, well it's not me, but like
thinking about somebody else, because for me, I definitely do
need that in a relationship.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Which but I feel that we've had we've had this conversation.
It's totally one hundred percent in my mind, even as
like the person who doesn't want it fair to say
this is one of my baseline needs in a relationship,
and it's fair. It's fair for me to say this
is one of my baseline needs, and if those baseline
needs don't align, it is okay for the relationship to end.
(43:56):
I just that makes me sound cold hearted A lot
of times I don't think so to the person who
like wants to try and make it work, they're like,
you're not willing to give a little. It makes me
sound very cold hearted, But I'm like, you know what, No,
I'm not.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
I'm not compromise your body. You can't compromise your comfortable
do you like your level of what is it called ability?
I don't know what to say for that, but you
can't compromise on things that are needs.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Yeah, And that's why I tried to establish it at
the very start of a relationship. It is like in
the past, before I understood this about myself, Like it
wasn't something that I knew to establish going in and
so it like it would we would get to a
point in a relationship where they would want more from me,
not necessarily sex because I was like Mormon, and so
like the people I was dating were Mormon, but like
(44:45):
there was like desire that I was unwilling to like reciprocate,
and so like I think most of the time I'd
get scared and just like push them away and end it.
And I'm sure to them, like it felt like it
was out of nowhere. It probably felt callous, like and
I I recognize like that that is the reality for them,
like that I was heartless in those moments and it's
(45:06):
what I needed. I'm not going to take those actions
back or like look down on myself for that, but
like their reality is that like things were going good
one day and then I ended it.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
That's because you do a lot of your considerations and
thinking internally, and then once you've come to a place,
you've come to a decision, that's like that's the end
of it for you. And like for a lot of
and I don't mean to be like like generalistic, but
for men very specifically, they need a lot more conversation
(45:36):
involved when it's coming to something like that. Otherwise they
feel like it came out of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
And like I knew even like in those moments, like
this probably feels a little like I blindsided you. Yeah,
But in fairness, sometimes I feel that like the cold
shoulder I was giving you, and like the like the
curtness I was giving you, I feel that's a pretty
clear communication that I'm annoyed with you. That's a sorry
for another time.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
But yeah, I feel like for me, the biggest thing
that makes it hard for me to understand people who
are against adverse to entire populations of people, The hardest
thing for me to understand and wrap my brain around
is the why of it, because I feel so strongly
(46:23):
that it's like so simple and has so little to
do with anybody else, Like you don't want to be
with somebody who's asexual. Don't you don't want to go
to a gay club, don't like you know what I mean.
It's hard for me to understand what their point is.
And I saw this video which I'm gonna clip into
the podcast here where this woman she was talking, she's
(46:47):
from she comes from a religious background, and she was
talking about like what this is all about, like what
it is for? Because she said it's evil, it's hatred.
It's not about the kids, because that side that is
saying it's for the kids are also not doing anything
about guns and schools. They're also not doing anything to
(47:09):
actually feed children because they're taking away the programs that
feed children who can't afford to have school lunches. It's
not about our community, because what are they doing for
the community. It's not about keeping the restrooms safe because
straight conservative men are the ones that get arrested for
hurting women in bathrooms more often than any other population
(47:32):
of people demographic demographic of people. Thank you, Like she
goes through it and I'm like, wow, like that so
well put and so well said how she came across it,
because that's really what it is. It's like, it's just
about hatred and coming up with excuses to be hateful.
Speaker 2 (47:48):
Yeah, and I like not to make excuse for the hateful.
I don't think that they recognize that, like what they're
feeling is hatred. Like because having been down that dark
of my past, I used to be fairly transphobic, but
I never would have put that like label on myself.
Like I had a friend like in my first semester
(48:08):
of college that like fantastic tran trans man who asked
me like flat out like, so, like your Mormon because
at the time I was I'm trans. What's your like
bew on that? And like I flat out said, like well,
like I don't agree with your like lifestyle, but like
that's fine.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Yeah what the fuck?
Speaker 2 (48:24):
Like I flashed back to that on the regular, and
I'm like I want to find him and apologize, but
like I also don't want my healing journey to be
their burden.
Speaker 1 (48:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
So like no, even though like I know I know
like where their Facebook is and stuff, I think we're
Facebook friends, I don't. I don't want to put that
on them, but like I am so sorry that like
that was a part. That's that's a genuine like I
genuinely believed that, yeah, And I never would have attributed
that to hate. If I had been like a voter
(48:55):
at that time, I would have voted against a lot
of gay rights and I never would have attributed that
to hate. But that's what it was. Just because I
can't identify that's what it is, doesn't mean that's what
it wasn't what it was. And I think that like
the majority of people who are like so goddamn hateful
are afraid and unable to coalesce that. Like when I
(49:16):
went through my own cognitive dissonance of like, I love people,
I won't vote for them to be able to love people.
I came out on the other side today of like,
you can't have it both ways. You have to stand
by that love, and that's who I am today. But
some people just don't ever come out the other side
of that, and that's terrible and they can't recognize that
(49:40):
that's it's just hate.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
A lot of people create a reality that they can
live with, and that's not always the reality that is happening.
Everybody does that, I mean even people. There's people in
my life that are addicts that would not classify themselves
as being addicted to anything because to front that they
are an addict would mean that they have to confront
(50:03):
all the terrible things that they do.
Speaker 2 (50:04):
Yeah, Like once, once you acknowledge that, like these two
things can't coexist, you have to do something about it.
So if you just don't acknowledge it, if you don't
acknowledge that it is hate that you are putting out
into the world that is a part of your identity, like,
then it will always be a part of you. If
you don't acknowledge that, you can't overcome it.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
And the hardest thing is that most of the time
for people to recognize the reality that they've built for
themselves is not true. Is either some horrible, awful bottom
event to happen to them speaking towards addiction, Yeah, or
they have to actually wake up with the realization that
that's what is going on. Like, they have to be
(50:46):
the ones that make that choice, make that decision, because
you can't, like, all you can do is control yourself.
You can't control other people at all.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
For me, like this journey on identity, not just like
my sexual identity, but like my gender identity, it's been
it's been exciting and joyous and it's happy. But like
it's painful and heartbreaking and lonely. My dad will never
know who I am, and I even if he were
alive today, I don't think that i'd have the courage
(51:14):
to tell him. Yeah, And a lot of embracing identity
and being someone safe to like identify with is keeping
secrets and being lonely and embracing like the happiness in
the sorrow because like, as lonely as it is to
not tell people because you're afraid, I'm happier, Like I
don't have a solid plan for my future anymore. I'm
(51:36):
not gonna get married and have kids. I don't want kids.
I don't want that marriage anymore. But that's that's my truth. Like, yeah,
I'm me in a way that that other version of
me never would have been. Identity is scary.
Speaker 1 (51:48):
Yeah, it is really scary. I think that for a
lot of people, Like even if the world was open
and loving and accepting, I think finding out who you
are and dealing with that is just baseline painful and scary.
Speaker 2 (52:04):
Like I acknowledging these things about myself meant I had
to look at myself and say you were transphobic. That's
a hard thing to admit, especially as someone who is
like a staunch ally even before like going on my
gender identity journey, staunch ally transphobic. Those two things shouldn't
be allowed to coincide. And when I had to pick
a path, it was scary and painful, but good.
Speaker 1 (52:26):
And I think that at the end of the day,
like with all that we're saying about this, like the
point of it is that Mallory is a good person.
She like has always cared about other people, has always
done her best to do what she finds is the
right thing to do. And yet she's gone on this
journey where she didn't always do what was considered the
(52:48):
right thing or what we think to be the right thing.
Now And people are not just black, not just white.
They're a mix, which I get to say because I'm
mixed anyway. I like it's a skin. And just because
somebody does something that doesn't align with your beliefs, doesn't
align with what you think is the right thing, doesn't
mean that they're all together cruel, all together evil. It's
(53:13):
just like maybe they're not educated, maybe they don't know
what they're doing. However, it is hateful acts, it is
causing a lot of a lot of horrible things to
happen THEI going away. I just read yesterday that the
specific hotline that they have for suicide prevention for trans
(53:34):
youth is being taken away. It'll be gone in September.
Things like that happening that are scary and sad and infuriating.
But I also found out through finding that that Canada
has a hotline that they have transitioned to also be
(53:54):
for American people as well to be able to use
because of this happening. So it's a new reality that
we have to adjust to and we have to live
with until we put somebody else up at the top.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
And it's just even in that, like it'll take a while.
Speaker 1 (54:10):
It's going to take a while everything, even if an adjustment.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
Even if the ideal, like even if Jesus Christ himself
came down and became the new head, the new person
at the top, it would take a while.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
And like because and one of the things that I
realized too, with having to talk to people about what's
going on in the government, what's going on in politics
and things like that, is that the assumption is that
what's happening now is because of the president that's at
the top right now, it takes forever for those things
to go into effects. Things that are going down right
now could have lasting effects until twenty thirty two. That's
(54:46):
just the way that it works. And so even with
a new president that we'll have at the top, their
new things won't go into effect until twenty thirty three. Like,
it's just the way that it works. And because people
don't understand that and direct it, ignize that they're blaming
or giving praise to whoever's at the top at the
moment because of things that are happening right now, and
(55:07):
that's just not the way that it works pretty much.
Speaker 2 (55:09):
Ever.
Speaker 1 (55:10):
So it's depressing and it's sad, and it's horrible and
it's awful. But the best thing that we can all
do is stay informed about what's going on, so you
know how to keep yourself safe and keeping yourself up
to date on what you can do for your community
if that's something that you're interested in. And I'm going
to put a bunch of different resources for all the
(55:32):
information that I have, and I'm going to make sure
that it's all on the website, the dash Maria dash
effect dot com. And I really hope that anybody that
listens to this will be able to enjoy the episode
and possibly think about things in a different way than
they did before. That's just always my plan and my hope.
Speaker 2 (55:51):
And if you're just looking like you don't you feel
comfortable in your identity, Like you're not queer at all.
For the best part, mari isn't either, and she is
the safest space that I know. Yeah, And it just
has to do with being open to new information, receiving
it with love and willing to For me, being able
to talk with Mariah about things, even if she doesn't
(56:13):
have the information, I'm confident that like she'll go into
it with an open mind and look into it.
Speaker 1 (56:19):
Yeah. I always do research. I always try and find
resources for people. That's the reason that I do that
for the podcast always, because this is less about me
and it's more about everybody else. And I genuinely love
being able to celebrate the people in my life and
the people who aren't in my life that have had
to struggle the way that people in the LGBTQ plus
(56:41):
community have had to struggle. And I think that celebrating
where we have gotten to and like where we can
still go, Like, that's why I celebrate it and I mean,
I'm on my own journey. Who knows, Like, with some time,
maybe there's something else, a part of my identity that
I haven't fully Cannet did with yet. Who knows. But
(57:02):
as for right now, I am a strong ass. Ally.
Speaker 2 (57:06):
Yeah, i might be asexual, but I'm pretty sure I'm
also biromantic. So there's always more time and cover about yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
Absolutely, So thank you so much for listening you guys,
I really appreciate it. Thank you Mallory for being on
the episode with me.
Speaker 2 (57:18):
Never again, that's funny, She's gonna be on it again.
Speaker 1 (57:21):
I'm also going to list some books that I have
and that Mallory's read about pride and.
Speaker 2 (57:26):
Specifically for a sexuality. If if you're curious about like
learning more about your a sexual friends, or you are
curious about where you might fall on that spectrum, because
it is a spectrum. The book Ace by Angela Chen
is very good, so as come as you are, but
that's not necessarily about a sexuality. That's just about being
comfortable in your body and understanding your own breaks and
(57:47):
guess for sexuality.
Speaker 1 (57:48):
She's so good. I read books and I forget the
name of the book, like two days later, Like that's insane.
That's why I put it at the end of the
episode of like it'll be somewhere, It'll be somewhere there
because I need some time to collect it and put
it together. But this is a really good book too.
I'm trying to figure out Isaac song. I posted about
(58:09):
that on my LinkedIn and I thought that was a
really incredible book as well.
Speaker 2 (58:13):
Yeah, the ones that I listened are just ones that
I was reading at the time that I was coming
to like look into things about myself, so like they
just kind of stuck with me.
Speaker 1 (58:21):
Yeah, thank you so much for listening. Hopefully this won't
be too long of an episode. Bye.
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