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Hey there, lovely listeners! It's Jennie here, and I'm beyond excited to dive into a topic that's been on my heart: how to tackle those tough conversations with our kids. Joining me on this enlightening journey are the wonderful Veronique Porter and of course, Papa Rick, as we explore the intricacies of discussing race and gender with our children in today's ever-evolving world.
Veronique, also known as V, is the Founder and Lead Educator at Ampersand Workspace. She works in race and gender, giving organizations, groups, and companies the tools to enact anti-racist and gender-inclusive values within their organizations to create a productive, inclusive culture. Veronique shapes mindsets, builds skills, and creates lasting impact through heritage month and identity holiday workshops, targeted trainings, and consulting.
Her business prompted V to retire from childcare, where she spent more than 20 years as a caregiver of all sorts alongside other professional endeavors. Veronique is still very invested in the lives of all her littles around the world, and she loves them all dearly, especially since she gets to give them back to their parents!
Episode Resources:
Where to find Veronique:
Find V's work and check out the services of Ampersand Workspace by visiting the website at ampersand-workspace.com
Veronique, also known as V, is the Founder and Lead Educator at Ampersand Workspace. She works in race and gender, giving organizations, groups, and companies the tools to enact anti-racist and gender-inclusive values within their organizations to create a productive, inclusive culture. Veronique shapes mindsets, builds skills, and creates lasting impact through heritage month and identity holiday workshops, targeted trainings, and consulting.
Her business prompted V to retire from childcare, where she spent more than 20 years as a caregiver of all sorts alongside other professional endeavors. Veronique is still very invested in the lives of all her littles around the world, and she loves them all dearly, especially since she gets to give them back to their parents!
Episode Resources:
Where to find Veronique:
Find V's work and check out the services of Ampersand Workspace by visiting the website at ampersand-workspace.com
And if you'd like to talk to V directly, write to her at hi@ampersand-workspace.com; she responds to each email herself!
Watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@therelationalparentingpodcast/videos
Email us your parenting questions and stories!: jennie@jenniebee.co.
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Happy Parenting and Good Luck Out There!
Help us do what we do with a small monthly contribution: https://www.patreon.com/TheRelationalParentCoach/membership
Join the WAITLIST for The Relational Parenting Village! - A New Monthly Membership Program where parents gather for community, growth, accountability and support. PLUS ongoing monthly live events, classes and education resources to keep you motivated and growing on your parenting journey. Let's do this!!
Find me or book a free consult:
Website: https://www.jenniebee.co/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therelationalparentingpodcast/
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.hayes.507
TikTok: @therelationalparentcoach.
Sign up for the weekly newsletter here for a weekly parenting tip!
Please leave us a review! Your feedback helps others find us, and helps us grow so we can keep creating content for parents to benefit from.
Happy Parenting and Good Luck Out There!
Creators & Guests
Host
Jennifer Hayes
Host
Rick Hayes
Editor
Natalie Long
Guest
Veronique Porter
Veronique, also known as V, is the Founder and Lead Educator at Ampersand Workspace. She works in race and gender, giving organizations, groups, and companies the tools to enact anti-racist and gender-inclusive values within their organizations to create a productive, inclusive culture. Veronique shapes mindsets, builds skills, and creates lasting impact through heritage month and identity holiday workshops, targeted trainings, and consulting. Her business prompted V to retire from childcare, where she spent more than 20 years as a caregiver of all sorts alongside other professional endeavors. Veronique is still very invested in the lives of all her littles around the world, and she loves them all dearly, especially since she gets to give them back to their parents!
What is The Relational Parenting Podcast?
Welcome to the Relational Parenting Podcast! I’m Jennifer Hayes – a Parent Coach and 20 year Childcare Veteran. Each week I sit down with my own father (and cohost), Rick Hayes, and discuss the complicated issues that parents face today, as well as some of the oldest questions in the book. From the latest research and the framework of my Relational Parenting Method, we offer thought-provoking solutions to your deepest parenting struggles.
Relational Parenting is an evidence and experience based parenting method created by me - Jennie. After 20 years in the child care world, in every scenario you could possibly imagine, I realized one thing: EVERYONE was prioritizing the behavior and performance of a child over their emotional well-being. This frustrated me to no end and when I re-visited the latest research, I realized there was a better way. I started applying the principles I'd been learning in my own self-work, parent-child relationships, and partnerships, and I started gobbling up all the new research and books I could get my hands on. When I saw the results of putting these practices into play with the children I was taking care of - the difference in myself AND the kids I worked with was ASTOUNDING.
I am SO PROUD to be presenting Relational Parenting to the world. I can't wait to hear about your own journey. From Parents-to-be to the seasoned parenting veteran - there's something here for everyone!
Jennie (00:00.046)
Hit record and it starts. All right, record, record. We are on. Welcome back guys to the Relational Parenting Podcast. And welcome back to, yes, chapter two with B.
Papa Rick (00:10.679)
Hey there. Chapter two with V.
Veronique Porter (00:15.044)
Hi! Very grateful to be back.
Jennie (00:19.702)
We're excited to have you back. Welcome. We, so in our last episode together, we dove into the discussion about race and gender and what your company does and also like bringing up kids and you and I have a similar background in the nannying world with over 20 years taking care of other people's babies. And you are now an entrepreneur who
Veronique Porter (00:42.375)
Hehehe
Jennie (00:46.818)
has your own company and you teach other companies how to.
I'm losing my words already. You teach about race and gender and creating an inclusive work environment. Yeah. And I get to blame, well, I won't say that yet on the podcast. I get to blame, I can cut this. I get to blame everything on pregnancy right now. I can't take any of my like brain supplements anymore that I used to take. Like I used to take like alpha brain or whatever that would like.
Veronique Porter (00:58.07)
Hehehe
Veronique Porter (01:01.494)
series.
Papa Rick (01:03.579)
Inclusion, that's the word I had. Yeah.
Veronique Porter (01:04.491)
near
Veronique Porter (01:15.604)
Thank you.
Papa Rick (01:16.644)
Hahaha!
Veronique Porter (01:20.71)
Thank you.
Jennie (01:23.746)
just helped me like focus during a podcast and now I'm just like on my own. But anyway, we, yeah, so we brought, wanted to bring you back because I just felt like we had so much more to talk about. It's so hard to cover any topic in just an hour. And so I wanted to, yeah, I wanted to bring you back and chat more about gender and
Veronique Porter (01:26.063)
Is it a good thing? Yeah. Oh.
Papa Rick (01:29.664)
Oh, not sure all.
Jennie (01:54.818)
the, basically the LGBTQIA plus community and kind of demystify that. I know that my dad is, you know, my dad and his generation are super new, um, or newer to understanding all the different pieces and parts and, um, gender identity versus sexual identity, uh, and all of these things. And so I would just love for this podcast and for you to be able to offer.
parents and grandparents a little more insight and a little bit more confidence in discussing these things with children as well as they're growing up. Yeah.
Veronique Porter (02:35.006)
Yeah. And I just want to start off by saying, and I always try to put this disclaimer out there is that I'm a cisgender straight hetero woman having these conversations. And I know that is not ideal in that I don't want to take away voice from the LGBTQ plus community in any way, shape or form. But also some of the conversations, all the conversations that I have on these topics are like the basics. I'm not going into
what their experiences are or how they might feel or think or anything along those lines, because that's secondhand to me. What I am doing is saying like, you know, this is what this is and this is what this isn't, and that's clear, that's fact, right? So I'm lying more on the facts and less in the experiences and less in, you know, how, you know, that personal lived experience of being a part of those communities. For me, it's more about like, here's the basics, here's like the foundation level.
so that we aren't being offensive to those communities, so that we have a starting point to kind of start off our education and knowledge and just to be able to move in that space a little bit, again, more comfortably, but it's not a no all be all and I'm coming from a very straight cisgender perspective. So I do wanna make that clear and give all honor and respect to the LGBTQ plus folks who are doing this work, even though that is an experience.
Papa Rick (03:34.095)
Sure.
Jennie (03:48.716)
Yes.
Jennie (03:58.358)
Awesome. And yeah, we will.
Papa Rick (03:59.539)
I appreciate that. I appreciate that being, being from the older generation, I feel like I should probably give a disclaimer too. I'm, I'm a, I'm a pragmatist and a, uh, and, and just curious, you know, so when I ask questions or make statements, I'm out to find out, figure out how does it work, what's the, you know, in the workplace or, you know, out in society, what's the, what's the effect? Is it healthy or not?
Veronique Porter (04:28.136)
Mm-hmm.
Papa Rick (04:29.151)
is the question I'm always asking myself. Is this a healthy relationship or unhealthy relationship? Is this a healthy thing to have around your kids? You know, and it's, the particulars don't interest me that much, you know, about other people's genders or incomes or anything, you know, it's about the relationships for me. So, I try, when I stray with my language, correct me, cause I'm learning.
Jennie (04:56.878)
Hehehehe
Veronique Porter (04:56.994)
And I love how you said that because two things really stood out to me. One is the curiosity. I'm always telling people it's about having intellectual curiosity. And not to make people like a project or anything, right? Like something to study. But more so that there's this openness of like, I don't know. And I'm curious to find out. And when you're curious to find out about someone and who they really are, that's how we get to know people. And that's how we get to know about the world. And that's how we get to explore the world, right? Through people and their experiences. So that part was really beautiful.
Papa Rick (05:07.319)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (05:21.119)
Yep.
Jennie (05:22.576)
Uh huh.
Veronique Porter (05:25.554)
And then, yeah, that idea of just being open to understanding how this affects folks, and being open to being corrected, being open to learning, and even just that idea of, like, is this toxic or not? Because I think, you know, and I've talked about this multiple times, and, you know, off podcasts we've talked about this too, this idea of, like, as soon as we want to, you know, make a point about something with kids, it's like, oh, well, this is not good for the kids. And that's the sticking point, right? Because as soon as you
Papa Rick (05:29.964)
Yeah.
Veronique Porter (05:55.798)
We can't say anything about it, it's the kids, we're protecting the kids. But I do think it's important to really dive in and say, is this toxic for kids or not? Is this healthy for kids or not? And is that coming from our place of ignorance or discomfort, or is that truly coming from something that is not good for children, you know?
Papa Rick (06:04.395)
Yeah.
Jennie (06:04.726)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (06:11.018)
So, anyway.
Papa Rick (06:15.155)
Exactly. It's the value of the tribe, the value of the community is, is this, okay, I have this opinion from based on my experience. How does that compare to everybody else's? Do I need to think about something? Am I crazy or, you know, is everybody pretty much on the same page? Is it, to use a horrible word, normal? You know, is it, you know, getting some external validation for
Jennie (06:15.746)
Yes.
Papa Rick (06:43.035)
your thinking is always good. Sometimes we get trapped in our own thinking, our own trauma, and we have to be careful about projecting that on other people.
Veronique Porter (06:46.786)
Absolutely.
Veronique Porter (06:53.046)
Yeah.
Jennie (06:54.078)
And two things just came up for me. One being that the way...
Things are going to just take me longer this time, you guys. My brain is just going to be slower. It was relationship. Daddy, you said something about relationship, and then V, you said a follow up. Oh, in learning, when we approach humans, any human being we come across with curiosity and wanting to get to know them and their experience.
Veronique Porter (07:05.618)
You take your time, no worries.
Papa Rick (07:07.535)
Hahaha!
Veronique Porter (07:28.339)
Mmm.
Jennie (07:32.394)
Like that is the essence of relationship. Without judgment, without criticism, without any of those pieces that come from us and our own ego, just being curious and approaching people and like in their humanness, what has been your experience of the world? What do you feel? And I don't think there's anything toxic about teaching that to children. I think that there's nothing but love and...
Papa Rick (07:38.655)
Exactly.
Veronique Porter (07:57.815)
Hmm
Jennie (08:01.542)
and kindness behind that. And the second thing that popped up for me was the word normal. And we talk a lot about normalizing things for kids. And it can be a loaded term, and, but I think that protecting, I think a lot of times and more and more lately,
Veronique Porter (08:03.596)
No.
Papa Rick (08:12.127)
Yeah, that's a loaded, that's a loaded term, yeah.
Jennie (08:29.73)
There's this level of like shielding children from the real world. The same people who are saying gentle parenting doesn't work are the ones who are shielding their children from real life experiences and realities. And I'm not saying like take your child to...
like, I don't know, a drag show or like where I'm not saying like put your three year old in a dangerous situation. That's like age appropriate. Like, that's not age appropriate. I'm saying like you there are there are age appropriate conversations about the like the way that the world works and that the kinds of humans that exist in the world and to normalize the fact that not everyone fits into this box or that box. There are millions of boxes and people can
Papa Rick (08:58.719)
An unhealthy situation maybe. Yeah.
Jennie (09:20.514)
pick and choose in their own flavor of life to live. And I think normalizing that for kids whenever it begins to become something they're exposed to, or something that's, you know, kids start talking about their body parts when they're little, you know, it's gonna come up. And I don't think that there's anything toxic about telling your children about the world and how it works.
Papa Rick (09:37.955)
We little, yeah.
Papa Rick (09:47.563)
Yeah.
Veronique Porter (09:50.754)
And letting them ask questions, right? Because even when you say like, oh, you know, we don't take our toddlers to drag shows because they can get a little risque. But there are these things that are popping up all over the country about, you know, having drag queens read to kids in libraries. And just the essence of having a drag queen, someone who literally dresses up, plays dress up in another gender as a profession for fun because they love it. And then
Jennie (09:53.228)
Yeah.
Jennie (09:57.506)
Mm-hmm.
Jennie (10:04.undefined)
Mm-hmm.
Jennie (10:15.041)
Yeah.
Veronique Porter (10:15.53)
books to children, the children get to ask questions about this. And to them, that's relational, because they dress up all the time. They literally play pretend all the time and they have fun with it all the time. So there's no gap here, right? Unless we put that gap in there for them, unless we say, oh, these people are X, Y, Z things.
Jennie (10:19.254)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Papa Rick (10:24.983)
Yeah.
Veronique Porter (10:33.77)
For the children, they're approaching this, that intellectual curiosity that I'm always trying to encourage from people all the time, is something that children innately have because that's how they explore the world. That's how they're learning about the world. They're asking questions, they're trying to figure things out and they're the most simple, basic things that we in turn have a lot of baggage around, but the children don't. And so, in the last podcast when I talked about there are age appropriate ways to talk about everything, some of that is removing our baggage, right? And answering that question exactly as
Jennie (10:43.032)
Yes.
Jennie (10:58.732)
Yes.
Veronique Porter (11:03.764)
that child asked it. It's not loaded, right? But we perceive it as loaded because of our experience, because of all of our life lived, but they don't have all of that. So that simple plain question, we can answer that and they'll be like, cool, and then they'll keep moving.
Jennie (11:06.71)
Right. Yep.
Papa Rick (11:09.01)
distance.
Papa Rick (11:17.815)
Yeah. So many things are contextual. They're, you know, it's a situational ethics kind of thing where there's nothing, there's nothing particularly inherently evil about a lot of actions. People like to shoot guns. If you're doing it at a gun range with a group, maybe if you're hunting, depending upon your ethics there, you know, being in a war zone is another thing, you know, you know, children being in certain situations.
with the community. For me, it all kind of goes back to the community. I have a belief that when people talk about facts, usually they're talking about agreements among people. They're not talking about, did the litmus paper turn blue or red? It's not an objective, everybody with color vision can see this. It's about, it's about, it's about.
Veronique Porter (12:01.246)
OOF
Jennie (12:02.242)
Hmm.
Veronique Porter (12:10.731)
Alright.
Papa Rick (12:15.871)
It's about community again. It's about people being able to have a framework around which to talk about things. And, you know, so when you, when you catch people being, you know, this is evil. Just by the fact that it exists, then it's, then there's obviously a lack of consideration of context there. I mean, when my, when I was growing up, my parents would take me down to Ralph Ralph's pub and have dinner, you know? And I remember I re some of my.
Veronique Porter (12:23.437)
Absolutely.
Veronique Porter (12:37.73)
Sorry.
Papa Rick (12:45.567)
early memories are being in a little onesie walking around this bar. You know, nobody was going to give me any alcohol. There were three or four other families there going down and having a hamburger, you know, up until after dinner hour, it was a family hangout, you know, it's, uh, it's context, but if, you know, if I just told people, well, my parents used to take me to the bar with them, well, that's not a complete representation of the situation, you know.
Veronique Porter (12:53.707)
Yeah!
Jennie (12:56.471)
Ha ha ha.
Jennie (13:02.424)
Yeah.
Jennie (13:10.286)
Right.
I'm sorry.
Papa Rick (13:14.707)
And you just trigger people doing that. So it's all about getting along and getting stuff done. And, you know, if my particular prejudice doesn't have anything to do with. The task at hand, being healthy, raising children, getting some work done, building teams, you know, then let's leave that outside. That's not really part of the context here. You know, let's be professional and stuff. So anyway, that's the old farts point of view.
Jennie (13:17.015)
Right.
Veronique Porter (13:37.311)
Yeah.
Jennie (13:43.214)
So I think, V, I think that what could be super helpful at this point would be if you would offer, my dad and I have had several off-camera conversations about definitions of different things, et cetera. And I think that since you are the expert at this point, out of the three of us,
Papa Rick (14:12.439)
Yeah. Yep.
Jennie (14:12.446)
You're the one with a company that teaches others the inclusion. And so I feel like you're the best party here to define a couple of things. So let's see. So I would love it if you could tell us and the audience the difference between biological gender.
Veronique Porter (14:16.046)
Yeah.
Jennie (14:40.342)
Let's see, biological sex, social gender, and sexuality. Yeah.
Veronique Porter (14:47.143)
Yeah, perfect. Okay, yeah, I absolutely can do that. So often talk about what we're assigned at birth. And so literally a baby's born, we look at their genitalia and say, this baby is a boy or girl, right? It's what usually happens. And that is literally what we're talking about is that sex, right? Your genitalia that is related to physical sex, chromosomes, that sort of thing. Right.
Papa Rick (14:51.127)
Lovely.
Jennie (15:00.609)
Mm-hmm.
Jennie (15:06.236)
Mm-hmm.
Papa Rick (15:11.127)
biological sex. Right, like a plant.
Veronique Porter (15:13.558)
But when we talk about gender identity, that has been basically that's shaped up over time and can change. So because we, when the baby's in utero, there are tests that can show if it's a boy or a girl, even before we see that genitalia, again, based on those chromosomes, and we start automatically going along with that assigned gender and what we know of that gender.
So if the baby's a boy, then we might dress them in blues. We might start buying Legos and like sports things because those are the things we associate with boys and then later men. And that's the way society has shaped up what that gender identity looks like. And that does have some variants across various communities, right? Like if boys can like garden or not, right? Like if that was a manly thing to do like that, we have to, right? What was that, Popric?
Jennie (16:00.339)
Mmm.
Papa Rick (16:01.351)
activities linked to gender. Activities linked to gender, what, playing with dolls, gardening? Yeah.
Veronique Porter (16:09.53)
Right, so it's not just about what that looks like, but there's a general consensus about boy things and girl things, and then later man and woman things, right? They go along with this continuum, right? But that is based on what we bring in as society, what we've decided gender looks like as society. And again, over time, that's changed. So like heels, for example, right now we know that women supposedly wear heels, except heels weren't created for women, they were created for men. Same with wigs.
Jennie (16:16.886)
Mm-hmm.
Papa Rick (16:18.701)
Right.
Jennie (16:29.493)
Mm-hmm.
Jennie (16:37.366)
Yep.
Veronique Porter (16:37.866)
Right? So we've seen over time this gender change throughout time and it's literally what we decide And so if we can decide, you know that boys do this and girls do that we can change that decision, right? Uh, and so that's where that gender identity comes in and that's completely and totally different To sexual identity this idea of who i'm attracted to who I want to be with romantically sexually That looks completely has no relation to
Papa Rick (17:04.206)
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (17:08.062)
the actual gender itself. But we attach those things because we consider heterosexuality to be the norm, go back to that word, and that is the basis. And so if, is that as a side, we've decided that that's the norm, then boys automatically like girls and girls automatically like boys. And then as they grow, then women like men and men like women. And we've created this narrative, right? But that's not in relation to how people actually live, how they actually feel and how things manifest.
Jennie (17:14.818)
Mm-hmm.
Jennie (17:25.015)
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (17:37.514)
And so today we're seeing a lot, and it's always been, let me say this, before I started to sing about like, yes, gender's changed over time, but also things outside of this gender binary boy, girl, has also, there'll be people outside of that binary for forever, since the binary's existed. Whatever the binary would be like.
Papa Rick (17:53.079)
forever. Some cultures, some cultures have other categories for that. I think there's a Polynesian culture where it's like, okay, you're not a boy, you're not a girl. And then there's this area that they can live in culturally, you know.
Veronique Porter (17:58.503)
Exactly.
Veronique Porter (18:07.434)
Yeah, there are a lot of indigenous people that embrace what they call two-spirit, and I'm not indigenous, so I'm not gonna go into some detailed explanation of what two-spirit means, but my very basic, very, very basic surface understanding is that it is not anyway related to the binary that we have, and it's way more complicated than that, and they had a whole different place in society that was revered, right, still is. And so there's always been people outside of the binary.
Jennie (18:11.662)
Mmm.
Papa Rick (18:11.683)
Hmm.
Papa Rick (18:29.839)
Mm-hmm.
Papa Rick (18:36.655)
Yeah.
Veronique Porter (18:37.662)
More people say that they can put into words what that looks like and that they feel more comfortable in a society that is more open. We're seeing more and more numbers of folks who identify as trans, meaning that they don't identify with what they were assigned as birth as far as gender goes. Or even non-binary, where that is sort of on the trans spectrum. They're definitely trans, like they're not what they were identified as birth, but they don't identify with anything on the spectrum. They're just them.
Jennie (19:03.758)
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (19:03.858)
no gender thing that exists that they feel like really captures who they are. So they're non-binary. And we're seeing more and more of that because they A have some language terminology to put to those feelings that they're existing in and B we're also crafting a society that's just more open that allows folks to be who they are. Uh, it's not easy. Uh, it's still a very radical decision in that, like they still have to endure a lot of ridiculousness and hate and our society is very much so still binary, but it's more open than it was in the past.
Jennie (19:33.39)
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (19:33.434)
And there were people on earth than there were in the past. So we're seeing more and more of those people embrace who they really are proudly and just be what that looks like and not in the shadows. And I think that part is really beautiful. And my work is really about trying to remove some of that strife, remove some of that oppression, that marginalization so that more people, regardless of how they identify, regardless of what their lived experience is, can just be who they are, including in the workplace. That's really what it comes down to.
Jennie (20:01.046)
When making it safer, in past years, and still there are safety issues for anyone who is anything but a cis heterosexual person, but it's less than it has been historically. It used to literally be a crime to be considered, to be caught in homosexual acts, et cetera.
Veronique Porter (20:09.601)
Oh, yeah.
Veronique Porter (20:16.598)
Hear it.
Jennie (20:30.243)
But I think.
Veronique Porter (20:30.914)
And that's the list.
Papa Rick (20:32.099)
Still is, yeah. In places.
Jennie (20:33.162)
Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think that there's been a level of acknowledgement of an acceptance, um, and, and therefore safety for more people to say, Hey, I've been feeling this way. Hey, I've, you know, I've known in my head that this is who I am, but I have never been able to admit it until now. Um, you know, creating, creating safety specifically in your work, in the workplace where they can.
fully express themselves. They don't have to hide who they are outside of work and to be able to live their whole truth no matter where they are.
Veronique Porter (21:12.114)
And not just for that to be tolerated, right? Because there are some places where it's tolerated, like, well, you know, we'll allow it. But for that to be celebrated and for that to be included, because when we talk about, and this is definitely more work related, but it applies to life. But when we talk about bringing diversity of thought into the workplace, it's all about, you know, increased numbers, increased productivity, increased innovation, right? And in order for you to get there, it can't just be tolerated. It has to be celebrated, it has to be embraced, it has to be encouraged.
Jennie (21:18.254)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Papa Rick (21:32.771)
Yeah.
Jennie (21:37.836)
Yeah.
Veronique Porter (21:40.426)
so that we can get to that diversity of thought that really does push innovation, that really does bring in new fresh ideas, that really does allow us to free up some of our mental brain space and instead of putting on a mask at work, I can just commit myself fully to work and I can just be who I am. So in life, that also applies where, you know, we talk about like folks are going through things and maybe lashing out or maybe having a moment or maybe being slower or all these things. But if they're having to wear a mask to go through the world.
If they're having to wear a mask because they don't feel safe being themselves out in public, that's a whole nother layer of work and repression of yourself in a public space that requires mental space and all of that like other people are doing. And it's hard.
Jennie (22:17.966)
Mm-hmm. An energy.
Yeah.
Papa Rick (22:25.843)
loss of energy for society. It's become clear to me that there are people, the last 10 years or so, that there are people who are more and less comfortable with differences and change. Roughly correlating along the conservative liberal spectrum kind of thing, that seems to me to be more about status quo, familiarity.
Veronique Porter (22:38.978)
Mm.
Papa Rick (22:52.747)
and the safety, I am more and less comfortable with things that are different a lot of times. And for me, in the workplace or around, it goes back to context. It's like, is this something I don't need to worry about someone's gender when we're trying to make software or drugs or other things? I'm worried about productivity and...
Veronique Porter (22:58.443)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (23:20.095)
ability to communicate and be a valuable part of the team or the community. And, you know, it, uh, race and, you know, what, uh, letting things that aren't material to the, uh, task at hand, whether it's building a village, protecting, you know, depending on where you're at on the planet, you know, if it's, if it's not material to the task at hand, if you're keeping people from contributing.
Veronique Porter (23:20.17)
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (23:49.195)
Mm.
Papa Rick (23:50.147)
to the task at hand, then the problem is not the people you're persecuting or, or trying to marginalize. The problem is you trying to cut your kind of dragging the society down a little bit. Here, hey, let's get some work done. You know, take that, do that at the bar, do that at the campfire tonight. Right here, we're trying to dig a hole, you know, or make a well or whatever. You know what I mean? It's all.
Veronique Porter (24:14.602)
Yeah. And just like we talked about earlier, where it's like, if you squish that intellectual curiosity, right, it's really about the baggage we bring to that. And it's similar in our place, right? It's not really about that person and their identity and how they live their life, because really that doesn't affect me at all. If this person is not my area, that means nothing to my life and how I live and how I operate. But I'm letting my discomfort get in the way and I'm prioritizing my discomfort.
Papa Rick (24:26.145)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (24:33.343)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jennie (24:33.87)
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (24:44.05)
over their identity and how they live their life. And that's what we want to come down to.
Papa Rick (24:46.411)
Yep. Yeah.
Jennie (24:46.478)
Mm-hmm. Well, another layer to that is with, and I've heard this in a lot of spaces, another layer to that, because once you become a parent, it's not even about you anymore, right? It's about what is my kid being exposed to? What is the danger of any given situation at all, anywhere, at any given moment to my child? And...
Veronique Porter (25:13.514)
Yeah.
Jennie (25:15.174)
you know, there are a lot of parents who either don't understand, they don't know enough about it. And so it's the fear of the unknown. And so I'm just not going to expose my child to that at all. Or there are people who understand it and disagree with it for any number of reasons. The one I see the most
Papa Rick (25:31.087)
They fear it.
Veronique Porter (25:38.379)
Mm.
Jennie (25:43.734)
typically has to do with religion and the Bible. But there are lots of reasons that people don't agree with it. And so it's interesting, you know, everything's always on a spectrum. It's interesting to me to see.
Papa Rick (25:46.159)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Jennie (26:01.71)
parents feel like the existence of the LGBTQIA identities in the human race as a threat somehow to their child.
Papa Rick (26:19.107)
with fear, yeah. Fear rather than understanding.
Jennie (26:21.374)
You know, and I've heard the argument, the worst one that I have heard, that I feel is just absolutely irrelevant and unfair, is sexual predators. And I'm like, sexual predator is a whole other category of its own. Like that does not have any correlation or anything like that.
Veronique Porter (26:36.822)
Hm.
Jennie (26:49.07)
has nothing to do with one or the other. A sexual predator is a sexual predator. They can be heterosexual, homosexual. They can be, I mean, there are such sexual predators who literally cannot be attracted to adults. They are only attracted to children. Like they're in the, I mean, I don't know what, I'm sure there's a name for that, but that's not hetero or homosexual. That's some other form of sexuality and like pedophilia. And so anyway, the, the
Papa Rick (27:11.049)
pedophilia.
Veronique Porter (27:11.082)
Pediapilia. Yeah.
Veronique Porter (27:19.65)
That's a way of trying to demonize these communities, right? Because at its root, again, at its root, them just existing is fine.
Papa Rick (27:27.087)
using the difference against using the person's difference against them in a social way. I mean, that's junior high school stuff. As soon as kids become able to do that.
Veronique Porter (27:35.298)
Also using that, we talked about that fear of unknown, that fear of difference. And so instead of like, okay, I'm gonna learn and not be ignorant about this. It's like, no, I'm gonna make, it's gotta be bad. And so how can we make this worse? How can we make this bad? Because again, just their existence is not bad, but if they're sexual predators, and with related to the children, nobody can argue with me there. Nobody can say that I'm wrong for trying to protect my child from sexual.
Jennie (27:41.899)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (27:51.519)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (27:55.917)
Yeah.
Jennie (28:03.734)
Right. Well, so let me ask you this. Sorry. Let me ask you this. There's been a lot of questioning and, you know, lash back with this topic being taught or talked about in schools. So by teachers, etc. What is your take on
Veronique Porter (28:05.046)
who go after.
Papa Rick (28:05.451)
That's right. That's been conflated.
Jennie (28:31.85)
that because the argument is that this is a topic that should be only talked about by parents to their children, not through public education.
Veronique Porter (28:39.113)
Mmm.
Veronique Porter (28:43.122)
Yeah, well here's the issue with that is that school in my opinion is meant to shape up little citizens right to become you know active citizens in the world and we're giving them the information that they need in order to thrive in society period that's what it is right we're giving them a basic foundation of how to thrive in society some of that is knowledge based some of
Papa Rick (28:59.087)
preparation.
Veronique Porter (29:12.674)
It's my responsibility as a parent to talk about this and not the schools. Well, here's the issue with that. And it was the same issue and continues to be the same issue with sexual education, right? The issue with that is, is that now this becomes a societal thing that we need to address. And that's what we can't just leave it to parents. Because there are some parents who will talk about it and who will address it. And there are some parents who don't have the tools, who don't have the knowledge, who don't have the words. They're not teachers, right? Like, not in that...
to talk about some of these things. So we just can't leave it in the air, right? Like in the same way that like kids will be figuring out what's going on with their bodies, hormonally as they go through puberty and need to understand what that looks like and how to interact and how to grapple with that and at least have a foundation in which to learn more about. Same thing with gender identity, same thing with pronouns. This is something that they need to decide for themselves at some point and they need to have, again, age appropriate but they need to have information.
Jennie (30:06.103)
Yeah.
Veronique Porter (30:09.918)
about how to do that. And at the end of the day, there always will be people who, for example, hit puberty earlier and maybe start being sexually active earlier. And so we can't just leave it up to the parents to decide if and when they will talk about this, because again, this becomes a public issue where we're not equipping little citizens to be full citizens. And it's the same with gender identity, it's the same with pronouns and anything that falls under that realm, in that they will be grappling with this. They will be trying to figure out, even if they're not trans, even if they're not non-binary,
Jennie (30:25.867)
Yeah.
Veronique Porter (30:39.858)
what kind of girl they want to be. Are they the girl that plays sports? Are they the girl that never wears dresses? Are they the girl that loves pink and like gets their nails done? They're deciding what kind of people they want to be. And that includes gender identity. And so for schools to not equip them with anything related to that, leaves them worse off than better off, period. And if you're a parent that feels like, yes, like this is my responsibility to teach and like, I want to make sure to do that, nobody takes that away if the school does it. In fact,
Jennie (30:42.006)
Yeah.
Jennie (30:58.348)
Yeah.
Veronique Porter (31:08.906)
These kids come home saying, this is what I heard from my teacher and you get a chance to correct that and or you already have told your kid about this and they already have this is in which to contribute to this conversation at school. So if that's how you really as a parent, continue feeling that way, but that role is not taken away from you if that's what you wanna do.
Jennie (31:15.487)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (31:26.551)
Yeah, and there's still the having been on a school board. There are avenues for that. You may be frustrated, but if your kids are learning something. At school that you feel is inappropriate, then you can talk to the teacher. You can talk to the principal, then you can talk to the board. You know, you go up the ladder.
Veronique Porter (31:47.462)
Exactly.
Papa Rick (31:48.431)
And get the, and if there, and you be an activist and you get other parents like feeling and you let the school know what the prevailing attitudes of the community are. The school will try, generally try very hard to reflect the community that it's in. And, and if, and if, yeah. Well, that's.
Veronique Porter (32:07.266)
And that's why we're the fan books, so we see that works. You know?
Papa Rick (32:12.831)
A lot of times it's one parent, it's an imperfect, it's a democracy and it's imperfect. And a lot of times two or three parents will try to skew a school board one way or another and that's an unfortunate feature of the system. But you do as a parent have the ability to have some influence on that. As society changes, we're going to have, there's going to be growing pains as we get these things changed.
Veronique Porter (32:22.658)
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (32:34.859)
And I will.
Papa Rick (32:41.111)
You know, these things don't change in a decade. They take generations. You know, it's unfortunately a bit of a battle. Yeah.
Veronique Porter (32:41.494)
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (32:44.928)
Exactly.
Veronique Porter (32:50.142)
And what I will say too about that is that we as caregivers, and I'm sure parents know this as well, is that children, especially this day and age, where children have free access to the internet and YouTube and phones and computers and all sorts of things, but even before then, kids will tell each other about various things. And so, kids won't learn it if the school doesn't teach it. We know that not to be true. We know.
Papa Rick (33:09.836)
Yeah!
Jennie (33:16.236)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (33:16.76)
That's it.
Veronique Porter (33:17.466)
Kids are freely sharing information with each other. And so again, the parent wants to control what your child is learning. You have to take that active role in telling them what they need to know because they're funny.
Jennie (33:20.418)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (33:27.179)
Yeah, that's probably the, that's probably the big change is it requires a parent. Now used to be when the flow of information was not so free, it was pretty easy to keep track of what your kids were exposed to, and that's just not the case anymore, unless you keep them at home and away from the television and the internet, it requires that you guide.
Jennie (33:27.862)
Yeah.
Jennie (33:47.534)
Well, anybody even then, I mean, I know before the internet was commonplace, like I've, you know, dated guys who would tell me like, oh, my best friend when I was 10 stole his dad's magazine and brought in, we would look at it together during sleepovers, you know, like, like people have always had access to private things.
Veronique Porter (33:58.73)
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (34:07.532)
Exactly. Mm-hmm.
Papa Rick (34:07.903)
Yeah, absolutely.
Jennie (34:17.33)
and kids like V. Yeah, and like V was saying, like kids, kids are gonna share stuff with each other. Like if one kid in the friend group got access to anything, like they're all gonna just swarm be like, Oh my god, what'd you get? What'd you know, and they're gonna look at it and, and it is the only the only, you know, cure or solution.
Papa Rick (34:17.827)
Age inappropriate information.
Papa Rick (34:35.435)
make sure they're cool kid, yeah?
Jennie (34:46.606)
to making sure your kid learns and is prepared for the real world when faced with those situations is that you have to be a proactive parent and discuss it with them at home. And you have to do it more than once. Like the talk, like when people talk about like everyone gets the talk, it's like the talk is a series of many smaller talks over many years.
Papa Rick (35:02.933)
That's right.
Jennie (35:15.982)
talking to your children at different ages about the ins and outs of what sex is and what relationships are and how to find a good partner. Yeah. And what? Yeah. Like not even, not even like intercourse, but just your hormonal like puberty, like what's going to happen inside of your body as you get older and you know, your body's going to change and those things. Like if you want your child to learn
Veronique Porter (35:22.238)
Yeah. And they're back.
Papa Rick (35:36.092)
Mm-hmm.
Jennie (35:42.602)
those things in a specific way, you have to be the teacher, you have to educate yourself and you have to have those talks at home because they're going to get exposed to it, whether it's at school, out at a concert with their friends, at the playground when they're nine years old. They're going to run into human beings who have different experiences than your experience and
Veronique Porter (36:11.62)
you can.
Jennie (36:13.194)
receive information, process information, and come out the other side in a healthy way.
Papa Rick (36:22.411)
Yeah, I hate to put it in a in a judgy kind of way, but it's that is the challenge as we go forward with more information and more exposure to the world, whether it's before you get out of school, like if you want to homeschool or after, you know, you have to exercise your leverage as a parent as being that authority figure from birth, you know, while their friends tell them things, mom and dad have theoretically have more wisdom and more influence.
Veronique Porter (36:22.806)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (36:51.351)
and can counter that, but it's time consuming. You know, it's a lot of work. You gotta be present there for your kids. When the conversation comes up, you just can't say, hey, let's meet at 10 o'clock on Saturday morning and talk about sex for an hour. You know, it happens over the dinner table or whatever. You know, it's...
Veronique Porter (37:06.978)
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
Jennie (37:08.819)
One you've gotta have.
You've got to have the relationship too. If you as a parent, let me just put this in bold, big bold letters. If you as a parent want to create and maintain influence over your children more so than their peers as they get older and have children who trust you and trust your family values. And even though they're gonna, you know, stumble and make mistakes and find their own identity along the way.
Papa Rick (37:16.14)
Yeah.
Jennie (37:40.798)
If you want your children to trust in you and trust in what you're teaching them, you know, as an overall good human being trying to do good in the world, you have to start building that trust and relationship when they are born. You have to listen when your baby says, I want the green cup over the blue cup. You have to listen to them when they come to you with the tiny, the small, tiny and seemingly insignificant things.
Papa Rick (37:50.915)
their interests.
Jennie (38:09.986)
that don't matter to adults because we've outgrown all of that shit. But to them, it's the most important thing in the world in that moment. And if you don't start then, when they're 15, they're not going to want jack shit to do with you or your opinions.
Papa Rick (38:25.095)
Start with the little things. You got to show them, I think, you got to show them how what you're doing is in their best interest. I mean, that's part of a loving relationship is I value you as much or more here than I do myself. And so that's why I'm doing this. And be able to make them take the time to make them understand that. Even if you're wrong, you know, and let them point out by that's not, you know, that ain't working out the way you thought it was, dad.
Veronique Porter (38:52.962)
Hmm.
Papa Rick (38:53.039)
And here's why. And you know, it's the back and forth. It's the relationship. Like you say, you got to you got to do that. And trying to start it when they're 15 or 18 or 26. And that's a tough road to hoe. Much easier to start when they're two. Or before.
Veronique Porter (39:05.419)
Yeah.
Veronique Porter (39:11.882)
And another thing I want to add to this is that like, it's true that there's a lot of pressure to be a parent, right, and a lot of pressure to be the perfect parent. And so many parents are grappling with this idea of like feeling like they're always constantly falling short. Like, hearing conversations like this, it's like, oh, it's another thing now that I have to do, and now.
Papa Rick (39:19.571)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (39:26.563)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (39:32.062)
Yeah
Veronique Porter (39:33.418)
perfect. But what I want to say too is that it's okay when a child asks you a question, a child of any age asks you a question and you don't have the answer to say I don't know. We're required to be perfect, we're required to be all knowing, especially as parents, but in general. And so when your child comes to you and you're like actually I don't know or you know what I don't have a lot of information about that. This is not something that I'm grappled with a lot. Let me look it up and get back to you. Let's look it up together. Let's explore it together.
Papa Rick (39:43.831)
Let me think about that a minute. Yeah.
Jennie (39:44.11)
Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
Papa Rick (40:01.291)
Yeah, yeah, let's talk about it. Yeah.
Jennie (40:02.122)
Yes. Let's look it up together. Huge.
Veronique Porter (40:03.414)
Right?
So you can say, I don't know. And that's OK. You're human. You are not perfect. You are not the no all be all. You don't have an infinite amount of wisdom. You are not Google. You are not Bing, right? But you can go to Google and Bing together. You know?
Jennie (40:18.861)
Yes.
Papa Rick (40:19.24)
Another way you fall short. You're not Google. You're not Bing.
Veronique Porter (40:22.157)
Hahaha!
Jennie (40:22.698)
Well, and your kids, your kids will respect you so much more when you show them your imperfection. When you show them, I don't know everything. Let's go read about it together and have a discussion where you get to have opinions and thoughts and I get to have opinions and thoughts and we come around together and learn it together versus I'm the parent, you're the child. And I can't tell you how many times I've seen parents just shut down a conversation because they don't know the answer.
Veronique Porter (40:30.038)
Absolutely.
Jennie (40:51.478)
So they're so threatened. Yeah, they're so threatened by their own lack of knowledge that, and it is, it's scary because you have this human that you're now responsible for. And there is, there's so much pressure from everywhere to be perfect and to raise your kids right and blah, blah.
Papa Rick (40:51.479)
Yep, because I told you so, or...
Veronique Porter (40:51.634)
Thank you.
Veronique Porter (40:57.826)
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (41:07.455)
Sure.
Yeah.
Jennie (41:13.302)
But the more you show your children your humanness and your imperfection and admit it and own it, and then you're like, let's look at this together, man, that kid is gonna trust you, that kid is gonna respect you, and they are going to feel like that's another mask they don't have to wear either. I can come to you, my parent, with my imperfections and my mistakes.
Papa Rick (41:25.122)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (41:33.101)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (41:37.867)
and get the street poop.
Veronique Porter (41:38.713)
Don't. If you're imperfect, when they're imperfect, they don't feel afraid to come to you.
Papa Rick (41:41.491)
Yeah, that's right. Everybody on social media, all that stuff, everybody's perfect. And when they get an authentic response, you know, about, Hey, there's something we don't know, let's figure it out. Here's what I think, you know, having a few more years experience, but working through it and learning tremendous value, and that's going to be completely threatening to the
autocratic or we had some terms, you had a grid. I need a graphic to throw up here. The authoritarian parent, you know, you got to keep in mind. Progress over perfection. You know, there is nothing perfect in the world. Uh, if you're afraid of having that conversation, try it once and see how it works out. And, uh, if it doesn't work out the first time, try it 12 or 15 more times before you decide.
Jennie (42:17.387)
Authoritarian.
Veronique Porter (42:17.65)
Mm.
Papa Rick (42:38.591)
It's not your approach. One of them will, one of them will take, you know, nobody, if you're switching methods, nobody's going to, your kids aren't going to buy it. They're just going to wonder what's up. Why, why did you respond that way? You know, but if you keep at it, uh, it will change your relationship to be a little more conversational. And it doesn't have to be perfectly conversational. It just, just a little better next week. Next time.
Veronique Porter (43:05.386)
And there was something Jenny said earlier about paying attention to if the kid wants the blue cup or the green cup. And I think that's really important, that idea of listening to kids and what we see is what should be innocuous things that we see as big things, again, because of the baggage we bring in. And I say this in relation to the way kids, again, they're shaping up their own gender identities as they go. Sometimes they decide that the gender identity that they were assigned does not fit.
Papa Rick (43:29.219)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (43:34.751)
I don't fit.
Veronique Porter (43:36.01)
And parents really grapple, like have an issue with grappling with that because two things happen. One, the image of the little boy or the little girl that they have in their head they think is gone. And they don't know how to reconcile that. They want to keep that child within that image. And there's that element of I want to protect my kid from what could come. Like if they're picking, if the boy is picking the pink cup then maybe he's gay and he's going to be persecuted for being gay and this is going to be the first thing ever and I just...
Papa Rick (43:48.878)
Yeah.
Yep.
Papa Rick (44:05.311)
Oh, God, yeah. Protection would be hard to overcome. You know, if you're doing it in the name of protect, you think you're protecting your kid, that's a hard sell to get a parent to change if they think they're what they're doing is protecting their child. Yeah.
Jennie (44:12.866)
Yeah.
Veronique Porter (44:18.994)
Yeah, and what they don't realize is, is by them suppressing those things within their child, it's causing more harm than protection, right? And the people that think that they're, you know, preparing for the world and protecting from the world, they're actually hurting themselves. They're being the first person that hurts that kid themselves because they're repressing him. So the two big things I want to point out about what we see early on with children, even before they hit puberty, around what they want to dress or the way they want to present
Jennie (44:26.41)
Yes.
Jennie (44:37.346)
that rejects them. Yeah.
Veronique Porter (44:48.45)
Could it be related to their sexual identity later? Maybe, but it could just be related to how they wanna express themselves in the moment. Kids say they're dinosaurs all the time and we let them have a Ladino moment and then if they grow out of it, and if they, now they're obsessed with dinosaurs and become some sort of paleontologist, you know? At the end, we have to do the same thing with gender where we embrace and try to learn about as much as possible and try to let them explore the world as much as possible and figure themselves out.
Papa Rick (45:00.471)
That's right.
Papa Rick (45:05.611)
Yeah, yeah. Yes.
Jennie (45:06.175)
Right?
Veronique Porter (45:18.418)
And sometimes it looks like a boy wearing princess dresses. And it's not necessarily because his sisters do it or he's not feeling like there's enough space to be a boy in a household, but because that's how he's exploring the world in that moment. And the same with a girl who, you know, is like, I don't wanna wear pants and I don't feel like I'm a girl and all these other girls, it could be that she just wants to be a tomboy and it could be because she doesn't feel aligned in her body as a girl.
But at the end of the day, we have to let that work itself out and we have to provide a safe space for our kids to figure themselves out and work it out.
Papa Rick (45:49.559)
Yeah. A lot of times too, I think it had, when the kids get a little older, what they're doing is they've fallen in with a group of people they like, you know, they have friends or, or a peer group or something. And so they want to go try that on for a while. And sometimes as a parent, you just got to sit there and go, okay, Billy, yeah, you could play with your, you know, Jennifer's share your Barbies with Billy and just wait for them to, for it to pass.
Veronique Porter (45:58.6)
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (46:04.578)
Absolutely.
Veronique Porter (46:14.37)
Mm-hmm.
Papa Rick (46:19.423)
You know, it's not locking anything in long term.
Veronique Porter (46:19.458)
And that's millennials talk all the time about our email phase. Yeah, exactly. Millennials talk all the time about our email phase. I didn't have one. But a lot of folks around me did. And again, I got out of that and decided to not be email anymore. And sometimes now they embrace the dark side for the rest of their lives. We just have to let them figure it out. We can't. And I will say too that it's really easy for us to be like, oh, it's a phase. It's a phase. You can feel that way in your heart. But I would.
Jennie (46:27.626)
I did.
Papa Rick (46:29.123)
Hahaha
Papa Rick (46:38.156)
Yeah.
Jennie (46:38.722)
Yeah.
Veronique Porter (46:47.762)
Advise against saying to the kid like, yeah, this is just your emo phase. Like you're not. Or yeah, let them embrace. And that includes what their gender identity. Let them play with some, let them embrace the people looking at them crazy. That's the people's problem. That's not your kids. And don't make it right. I'll let your discomfort around what people might say or what people might think again, limit your child and hurt your child because your child.
Papa Rick (46:51.563)
Don't be dismissive. Yeah. That's patronizing. Yeah.
Jennie (46:52.767)
Ugh, yes, dismissing someone's current identity.
Papa Rick (47:05.335)
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Veronique Porter (47:17.684)
Not them.
Papa Rick (47:18.791)
That's another good point is your job is to protect. If you're going to be protective about your kids, it needs to be you protecting your kids, not from the neighbors. You know, it's about, hey, leave my kid alone. He wanted pink hair. Leave him alone. You know, he's figuring things out.
Veronique Porter (47:29.558)
From the next-
Veronique Porter (47:35.734)
Exactly.
Veronique Porter (47:41.646)
Mm-mm. You go man your business. Let my kid be a kid, you know?
Jennie (47:41.847)
Yes.
Papa Rick (47:44.299)
Yeah, that's right. He's a kid when he's 27, then we can figure it's taking, but, you know, up till, up till then they're not fully formed.
Jennie (47:44.778)
Yes. When there's also...
Veronique Porter (47:54.09)
Yeah.
Jennie (47:54.518)
I had a conversation with a really close friend of mine and she, you know, I don't even remember how we got on the topic about the trans community.
Oh, she was, she was, I don't know. I don't know how we got on the topic, but she was talking about how a lot of times, like people get, people get so worried when they're young children, you know, three, four, five, six, seven year olds are wanting and specifically the situation where a boy wants to dress up like a girl.
you know, and just like losing their minds or freaking out and not knowing what to do. And, oh my God, he wants to dress up in the princess dresses. And, and my friend goes, it's not, sometimes it's the dress. I've taken care of young boys before who love the color pink and they would just, and their sister's clothes are all pink. So they want to wear their sister's clothes. If you bought him a pink boy shirt, then he would wear that. Like he wants to wear his sister's clothes because of, he doesn't have anything in that color.
Veronique Porter (48:48.488)
I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to you. Thank you.
Papa Rick (48:56.547)
That's right.
Jennie (49:06.262)
But when the little, yeah, or something someone else has that he doesn't have, why don't I have it? I wanna try that. Like it's just normal human behavior. But the idea that, you know, a boy and he has a sister and she has a friend over and they're playing princess dress up and he says, I wanna play dress up. It could just be that he wants to play dress up, not that he wants to dress like a princess, but.
Papa Rick (49:06.411)
He's seen something that makes him curious. He has to satisfy curiosity.
Papa Rick (49:14.111)
Yeah.
Jennie (49:33.634)
Those are maybe princess clothes or the only dress up clothes in the house. So ask him, do you wanna dress up like a princess? Do you wanna dress up like a cowboy or an astronaut or a doctor? Or like there are so many kinds of kids dress up clothes. And it might be that my sister plays dress up with princesses and I want to be included. So yes, I wanna go dress up like a princess with them or it could be, I wanna go get some dress up clothes to play with too.
Papa Rick (49:37.027)
That's what's handy, yeah.
Jennie (50:03.094)
Everyone makes believe and plays pretend, like...
Veronique Porter (50:03.502)
And also as a person who wears dresses, do you know how freeing it is to wear a dress? And men don't get to do that, boys don't get to do that, unless they're Scottish and they have a kilt thing, but like,
Jennie (50:11.074)
It's terrible.
Papa Rick (50:14.987)
I was going to say, let's say they can be naked while, you know, go commando while they do it.
Veronique Porter (50:18.21)
So do you see what I mean? Like how freeing would that be if we allowed men to do that? Right? It was like, no, you can't be a man. That's certainly not a strength. Right? How freeing is that? So of course this boy wants to put on this dress and like spin around and curl in it because that looks fun. That feels freeing. That feels like fun. And it's still in when you're an adult. You're just told that you're not supposed to do that.
Jennie (50:26.486)
Right.
Jennie (50:31.639)
Right?
Papa Rick (50:35.395)
Yeah.
Jennie (50:40.49)
Yeah. Well, and who decided, like what overarching governing body decided that this piece of cloth means girl and this piece of cloth means boy. Like that's all, it's just, it's just cloth cut into different shapes. I know. And it's so, it's, it's social, it's social acceptance and it's, it's just, it's group think.
Papa Rick (50:57.579)
It's pure cultural. Yeah, it's pure cultural from history.
Veronique Porter (50:59.28)
Mm.
Jennie (51:07.382)
It's group think and acceptance. And if you're outside the norm, then you're to be feared. It's weird. We're misunderstood. Then we're scared of you.
Veronique Porter (51:17.074)
That's what we want for our kids. We want our kids to be normal. We want them to be balanced. We want them to not have the adversity, just ease through the world. And that's unrealistic. We just, no matter how much we are, it's not a thing. It's not a thing. We all have our everything everywhere all at once, if you will, where we have things that we're dealing with, we're sorting through, we're figuring out, and we just cannot literally protect them from everything.
Jennie (51:22.082)
Mm-hmm.
Papa Rick (51:25.432)
Yeah.
Jennie (51:28.686)
It's never gonna happen.
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (51:45.13)
We cannot stop them from experiencing the things. What we can do is prepare them to make the decisions. We can teach them early on to trust themselves, right? And not trust society. Because that's a big piece. If you have a confident child who can make good decisions for themselves, if they can trust themselves, if they know who to listen to and the one who is me, right? And if they
Jennie (52:03.683)
Yes.
Papa Rick (52:03.951)
show them alternatives, you teach them to be coachable, right? Okay, here's, here's something you're doing. I mean, if you're learning a job on the job training or learning a skill, you know, how to build a fire with a couple of sticks, it's like, yeah, I see what you're doing there here, maybe try this, be open to alternatives, be open to another experience here, let you know, if you tie a string here and do this, then that works better and just, it makes life easier, you know, we're not trying to.
We're not trying to indoctrinate you here. We're just trying to show you how things work easier, better for you, you know.
Veronique Porter (52:41.51)
Right. But if we teach kids early on, like girls don't start the fire. Only boys do. Only men can start the fire. Maybe they feel like they're really good at that. Maybe they have a good interest in starting the fire. And now they're suppressed. They don't trust themselves anymore because with what they thought they might be good at, what they wanted to try, girls don't do that. Now you're telling them.
Papa Rick (52:54.655)
Yeah, a lot of times.
Papa Rick (53:01.099)
Yep. Yeah. Not my girl.
Jennie (53:04.263)
Yeah. Hey, hey, sorry, I need to cut in. Dad, you gotta stop saying things while she's talking. Cause every time you do it, it cuts off her sound.
Papa Rick (53:11.566)
I'm sorry.
Veronique Porter (53:12.651)
Hold on, that's my-
Papa Rick (53:15.391)
Okay. I did it come out. Does it not show up on her recording or is it just the, like you're blurry when you, when you start to record, you're blurry because of the decreased bandwidth on your thing. Does it not come out? Yeah.
Jennie (53:28.174)
No, I'm talking about her sound. No, it does. Um, so if, if while we're recording her sound cuts, every time you talk, her mouth is still moving, but her sound is gone. It's not picking up her sound. Cause you're, you're yours and I, and I Mike's, I don't know why, but they're like the dominant ones that are getting picked up. Um, so if she's talking, it doesn't happen with everyone, with everyone. I don't know why it happens with someone. Um,
Papa Rick (53:37.11)
Mm-hmm.
Papa Rick (53:49.417)
Okay, okay.
Papa Rick (53:56.335)
Okay. All right.
Jennie (53:56.994)
But V with your mic, we like we have to be really careful about like laughing while you're talking or saying yes, or yeah, as much as possible, because there's a lag and then we literally cut off parts of your sentences.
Veronique Porter (54:12.208)
Sorry about that.
Papa Rick (54:12.419)
Oh, that's not good. No, that's us, that's us.
Jennie (54:18.222)
It's all good, it's all good. I just wanted to put that out there for me and dad to be conscious of while you're talking.
Veronique Porter (54:25.79)
Is there anything else?
Papa Rick (54:25.963)
All right, so what were we talking about?
Jennie (54:31.158)
Uh, V was pointing out that we, the, the other example is to not assign, like only boys start fires and like maybe girls have an affinity for being really great at managing a fire. And, and now she has to suppress that part of herself and hide it because only boys do that. So she would be weird or feared or made fun of if she wanted to do that.
Papa Rick (54:41.231)
That's right.
Veronique Porter (54:59.41)
And she starts to not trust herself either, right? Like there's that big element of when we start to gender certain things and what that looks like as far as individual expression, then kids very early on start not to trust what they feel or think. And they defer to whatever's considered normal or whatever in their community, in their homes, in their households, they're deferring to external expertise and they're never trusting themselves.
And that even includes their parents, right? Where they're not listening to what their parents are saying because they don't trust that either. Because of conflict.
Jennie (55:33.238)
Yeah. So I have a, dad and I got into, this is a while ago, got into a really great argument about bathrooms. It's a very logistical argument. It was not about, it was not about the like moral, it was about the logistics of how many bathrooms do we need and how...
Veronique Porter (55:48.557)
Mmm.
Papa Rick (55:52.323)
How many genders are there?
Jennie (56:03.326)
economical or can we expect businesses to spend the money to put it to install how many bathrooms are necessary to appease every identity. It was not an argument about the morality of a transgendered woman using the women's bathroom or a transgendered man using the men's bathroom. It wasn't about that. It was more about...
Papa Rick (56:27.703)
It was pragmatic, having done a few capital projects, right? The people build buildings and right now they, there are two built, I'm going to say bathrooms are constructed on the basis of sex, generally, male and female. And then there's this, there's some other category, right? Like some, like some of the societies, but a bathroom is an expensive piece of a building to build. And if there, if we go to gender.
Jennie (56:29.567)
It was, yeah.
Papa Rick (56:56.151)
gendered bathrooms and there are what 62 officially recognized somewhere. I think I saw some, I don't know who was recognizing them. No, no contractor is going to build a, a building with 62 bathrooms on every floor. Right. So where's the, where's the line? Where does, how far does society accommodate this or do they, or do we, I think Jennifer's solution was everything's unisex.
Right. They're just individual ones. But if people are uncomfortable about going into a bathroom labeled other than their gender.
Jennie (57:36.222)
Individual bathrooms was my solution, not big bathrooms with multiple stalls.
Papa Rick (57:36.587)
How does... Yes.
Papa Rick (57:42.581)
Okay.
Veronique Porter (57:43.126)
Oh, my, uh, where I live is unpopular, but I think in this, in general, we should have a big gender neutral bathroom with stalls, no urinals, and then maybe a handful of family bathrooms where you could like change, we have change stations and whatever, but they're all singular bathrooms, if you will. Right. Because at the end of the day, I don't understand.
Papa Rick (57:45.996)
Where's it gonna go?
Papa Rick (58:03.363)
change culture.
Veronique Porter (58:12.99)
Let me add a caveat here. Gender neutral bathroom with the family bathroom with the changing station, but European style stalls. Because I don't understand why American style stalls have the gap where you can like see in there. Like what is that about?
Jennie (58:23.69)
Right? Like fully closing locking stalls.
Papa Rick (58:25.355)
Yeah, big. Well, what's the point? Yeah.
Veronique Porter (58:30.146)
So if we have European style stalls where you go in there and you can't peek in and like, all the way.
Papa Rick (58:35.183)
Hahaha
Veronique Porter (58:38.57)
gender neutral stalls, period. Because when I come to wash my hands, I'm fully clothed, I'm not doing anything crazy. Ministry shouldn't be taboo, so if I need to come out and get a pad, and that should be in the bathroom, even in gender neutral bathrooms, this is just bodily function. And then yeah, we have separate bathrooms for stalls in which maybe you want some privacy, maybe you need to change the baby, or do something as a family, so you have those family stalls that anybody could use, but there's that...
Papa Rick (58:45.965)
Yeah.
Veronique Porter (59:07.578)
Boom! Everybody's catered to. And at the end of the day, get over yourself. Like, I really do feel that way. Like, you're in a clothes stall. What's the problem here? When you go out to wash your hands, everybody's washing their hands fully clothed. What's the problem here?
Jennie (59:22.842)
I could see if this was a non, even in the daytime, I could see the argument being that what if not all bathrooms and all buildings at all times are filled with people where you would feel safe and there's lots of people around. You might be a woman who goes into one of those gender neutral bathrooms, even though it has separate stalls.
Veronique Porter (59:30.112)
Mm.
Papa Rick (59:42.327)
safety here comes in.
Jennie (59:48.414)
and it's you and another man alone in that room, technically that's separated. And I mean, there's, even for me, my thought process in that is that I would leave that bathroom. I would not stay in that bathroom. I don't care who that man is. I would not stay in a bathroom alone in an enclosed space with a strange man alone. Because
obvious reasons.
Papa Rick (01:00:17.507)
Especially if he's dressed differently or something that you're not used to out of your experience. You know, if he's dressed like a princess still, right, from childhood, I think that's the fear is, is he now you associate him with being a sexual predator or somehow off and so you don't feel safe.
Jennie (01:00:34.846)
It would, for me, it wouldn't matter how he's dressed. If he's, if I can tell that is a man with a penis.
Papa Rick (01:00:43.927)
biological male.
Veronique Porter (01:00:45.324)
Or what do you think?
Jennie (01:00:45.802)
You know, as far as I know, right? Yeah, then I'm leaving that bathroom. Someone who is more powerful than me that could harm me in that way, I'm leaving that bathroom.
Papa Rick (01:00:48.907)
Yeah, from appearance.
Veronique Porter (01:00:49.78)
Bye.
Veronique Porter (01:01:00.318)
Well, here's my answer to that, is that like, that could happen. So like the sign on the door that says women is not going to stop a man from going.
Papa Rick (01:01:10.442)
Exactly.
Veronique Porter (01:01:11.842)
So what I'm saying is, is that in this scenario that I'm proposing, where there are these gender neutral bathrooms and then you have these kind of singular, which we see them all sometimes, where you have like a singular stall. Like late at night and you're like, I don't know who's in that bathroom. Then you go in the single stall and you're good. But the sign itself that says woman doesn't stop a man from coming into the bathroom. And if he were to want to do something to you, like that sign is not gonna stop. Well, that says women, now I can't, I can't assault her.
Jennie (01:01:21.791)
Yeah, the fi- Yeah.
Jennie (01:01:39.906)
Right? Especially if there's a predator like watching for a woman going into the bathroom alone.
Papa Rick (01:01:41.039)
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (01:01:46.058)
Yeah, that sign means nothing. And honestly, like at the end of the day, we look at it that way. It's like, well, there's that separation and it's designed that way and everybody's gonna follow that. When we talk about criminals and sexual predators and those sort of folks, like the sign isn't gonna stop them.
Papa Rick (01:01:46.415)
Mm-hmm.
Papa Rick (01:02:00.767)
Yeah. Yeah, that's the reality. I was at a Waffle House just last week and they were, they had two little bathrooms and they were trying to accommodate and they had a little, you know, the little international symbol for a woman, you know, a silhouette with a skirt and a silhouette of pants. And then a third one next to it of it was, it was a skirt on one side and pants on the other, you know, it was, it was a, and it just, and it made me laugh.
Jennie (01:02:01.121)
Yeah.
Jennie (01:02:28.139)
Mm-hmm.
Papa Rick (01:02:30.551)
because they were, I mean, they are doing what they can to accommodate anybody, you know, but it's still biological gender-based, you know, it's still, and so a person that's non-binary, technically there was not, there's not really a thing there for, well, I don't know, it depends on how you interpret that third symbol. It's just gonna be, we started off talking about historical handling of dress.
and gender and what's criminal. And, you know, it's just, we're doing it again in America. It's just, it's gonna take a while. It's fun to have these discussions, not being, you know, it doesn't affect me that much. You know, I understand the suffering of people who are figuring it out or caught in the middle for one reason or another, and how it's so pervasive, it's gotta be a pain in the butt.
navigating the world where you don't fit, you know, into a nice... so you don't have a nice little sign up with identifying you.
Veronique Porter (01:03:39.587)
There's this one comic that I'm thinking of. I wanna say that the artist goes under webcomic. I will follow up and let y'all know so that way you can put in the show notes or something. But I love this one in particular around this conversation because the first image is like a woman in a figure in a dress and a figure in pants. And they're
Jennie (01:03:52.683)
Yeah.
Veronique Porter (01:04:03.518)
Well, let me start off. Webcomics, they start off with this image kind of speaking in with these two figures and they say you must clothe yourself at all times to protect your genitals. The next image in one is in the dress, one is in pants and it's like but you also must wear clothing that signals your genitalia.
Papa Rick (01:04:13.954)
Okay.
Papa Rick (01:04:24.452)
Yeah, see, that's exactly where it goes.
Veronique Porter (01:04:25.902)
And then a third, because at the end of the day, we're literally like, we can't be naked because that's offensive and people can see our genitalia. But again, when we talk about gender clothing, it's really about signaling what? Genitalia.
Jennie (01:04:26.498)
Huh.
Papa Rick (01:04:38.999)
Yeah, yeah. Because we're visual. I remember back in the day thinking everybody needed a sign tattooed on their forehead announcing mental illnesses. You know, any kind of, anyway, anything that's going to affect how some, you want someone to treat you when they walk up to you, well, you just need to wear a sign, you know, that advertises all that stuff. Everybody should have a sign. And that, you know, people don't necessarily want that to.
Jennie (01:04:40.16)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Papa Rick (01:05:09.819)
That's not a comfortable thing for everybody, letting it all hang out. And people hide things, you know, people aren't proud of things. It's tough judging people by appearances, but a lot of times that's all you have at first glance. It's a tough problem.
Veronique Porter (01:05:24.354)
And I think that's a problem, to be honest. Even if we had that sign, right? That's like, oh, I'm this and that. Then it's up to Jenny's interpretation of what, so for example, if I got a sign that says I'm a cis Black woman, it's up to Jenny to find what she feels Blackness is. And she doesn't explore to me what my Blackness is and how it manifests. So it takes away all the fun of getting to know somebody when we come back full stop about
Papa Rick (01:05:39.956)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Papa Rick (01:05:47.574)
That's right.
Jennie (01:05:51.352)
Right.
Veronique Porter (01:05:53.034)
really having this intellectual curiosity about who people are and what their lived experience is and how they move through the world. My bipolar and your bipolar don't look the same. And somebody else's blackness don't look the same, right? My womanness and Jenny's womanness don't look the same. So approaching an individual as an individual and letting them reveal themselves as to who they are and how they operate through the world, that's what we need. Because I can put anything on the sign.
Papa Rick (01:05:56.664)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (01:06:02.423)
That's right. That's right.
Jennie (01:06:02.518)
Yep.
Papa Rick (01:06:11.107)
That's right.
Jennie (01:06:11.118)
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (01:06:21.91)
but getting to know me for who I really am. My fail, my frailties, my pluses, my minuses, my strengths. That's the fun of it. And that's how we have to approach people. Because if we only approach people what we think we know about them, that's what we get in trouble.
Jennie (01:06:24.908)
Yeah.
Papa Rick (01:06:37.399)
We want to know everything about them based upon what stall they walk into as opposed to actually FaceTime getting to know people. It's like, I wonder if that's a social, if that's kind of, uh, you know, people are not as neighborly people are not as, uh, in person as they used to be is the root of all this. And so now we want signs, we want dress, we want to, we want to know at a glance.
Jennie (01:06:38.274)
Snap, snap, snap.
Papa Rick (01:07:05.055)
And it's like, sorry, honey, you just got to get to know people. You got to, you got to.
Jennie (01:07:08.514)
Well, yeah, everyone just wants to be able to judge the book by its cover and move on. They don't want to take the time to actually build a relationship with somebody. Or even just ask a few questions, have a conversation, and then decide if you're going to move forward into relationship or not, you know?
Papa Rick (01:07:12.268)
Yeah, yeah.
Papa Rick (01:07:24.567)
Yeah. Your idea of blackness doesn't match my idea of blackness and furthermore you're black and I'm not, but that's not going to change my mind. And so I'm going to go find a group of people that, you know, I mean, people, people get upset about things they have no knowledge of at all, you know, and without, without an actual relationship with a person that you want to continue, you know, that they don't have to, they can just go back to their cave.
Veronique Porter (01:07:53.386)
Yep.
Jennie (01:07:53.582)
I think, I think V, you said it really beautifully just a second ago. And I think that the simplest summation of this episode is.
Papa Rick (01:07:54.122)
Hmm.
Jennie (01:08:06.758)
to replace judgment with curiosity, just in every way that you can, no matter what situation you're approaching in life, whether it's transgender issues, whether it's how to raise your kid, whether it's what job you wanna do, like whatever life is throwing at you, put aside judgment and replace it with curiosity. What's going on here? How can I look at this?
How can I approach this? What am I missing? And just ask questions instead of passing judgments based on old paradigms or old experiences or things someone told you when you were five. Like just put it down. Put it down and ask questions.
Veronique Porter (01:08:34.007)
Mm-hmm.
Veronique Porter (01:08:49.988)
Mmm.
Papa Rick (01:08:52.047)
Don't worry about being perfect. Just worrying about accomplishing the mission. Task-oriented. Am I preparing them for the world?
Veronique Porter (01:09:03.263)
Yeah.
Jennie (01:09:04.202)
We should have a, it should be the relational peopleing podcast instead of the relational parenting podcast.
Veronique Porter (01:09:07.977)
I'm gonna go.
Papa Rick (01:09:10.859)
If kids are people, then it already is, you know, we just need to change the branding.
Jennie (01:09:13.57)
them.
Right? Relational peopling podcast. There's a mouthful.
Veronique Porter (01:09:16.307)
I'm going to go to bed.
Veronique Porter (01:09:22.407)
Thank you. It was such a wonderful conversation. And I always really enjoy kind of the perspective that you both bring and the way in which conversation just shapes up. So thank you again.
Jennie (01:09:33.546)
Yeah, thank you. We appreciate you coming back for a second round with us.
Papa Rick (01:09:33.815)
You bet. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks for sharing with us. So you have a great perspective.
Jennie (01:09:41.151)
I think...
Jennie (01:09:45.246)
Yeah, I've got to give you props too, because I think I feel like these are two of the most heavily charged social issues today. And so for you to be out there teaching others and changing the culture and bringing inclusivity wherever you go and then to come on here and publicly discuss all of the things takes balls and bravery. And I just really appreciate you. Yeah.
Veronique Porter (01:10:12.286)
Okay.
Papa Rick (01:10:13.727)
out there fighting the good fight, making the world a better place.
Veronique Porter (01:10:16.996)
I'm trying. I really am. Doing my part.
Jennie (01:10:18.528)
Yeah.
Jennie (01:10:22.278)
Awesome. All right, everybody. Well, happy parenting and good luck out there.