Spreading Social-Emotional Awareness While Having Fun with @normalizers

10/05/21 • 53 min

For members of the LGBTQ+ community, finding a safe space where they can be themselves is as fundamental as it is hard to find. The possibility of being comfortable in their surroundings and expressing their thoughts and feelings without fear of being ridiculed or humiliated is often unavailable to underrepresented minorities. This is why the work of our guests, Monica and Ash, is so important! By creating a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community on TikTok, they are literally saving lives.

Monica, a former Sex Ed teacher, and her eldest Ash, a high-schooler who came out as a non-binary lesbian, have a TikTok profile, The Normalizers (@Monicatheteacher), with over 125 thousand followers and 6 million likes on their posts. They talk openly about sexual orientation, gender identity, pronouns, autism bullying, eating disorders, representation, and many other subjects. After starting over a couple of times and repurposing their content, they finally received the surprising yet well-deserved recognition that they now have. Their TikTok profile created a safe space for LGTBQ+ community members and their parents and allies, where everyone is free to express themselves and be who they are without any fear.

In this episode, our conversation revolves around Monica and Ash's evolution as influencers, and their relationship before and after Ash came out to their mom, Monica, first as a lesbian and later as non-binary. We discuss the importance of creating safe spaces at home and normalizing talking about sexual orientation and gender identity. Monica and Ash shared some of their experience with hateful comments online, how they deal with them, and what they believe social media companies could do about it.

Some Questions We Ask:

How did you go from having these conversations within your family and yourself to posting videos and sharing that publicly? (16:08)
What's it like to go upstream and create a safe place in this wild west of social media? How do you navigate that, and what do you think the companies can do better? (24:58)
What is your take on where we're headed as a country? Is this country ever going to be a safe place for queer people? (34:23)

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

About the difference Ash and Monica make with their safe online space (5:07)
Coming out and producing a car crash at the same time (12:33)
About Monica's need to teach Social-Emotional learning to the world (17:26)
How feeling anonymous helped Ash and Monica's community feel safer (42:38)

Resources:

Normalizers TikTok profile
Normalizers podcast
Normalizers Instagram
Normalizers YouTube channel

Connect with Jackie and Bridget:

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Some Questions We Ask:

How did you go from having these conversations within your family and yourself to posting videos and sharing that publicly? (16:08)
What's it like to go upstream and create a safe place in this wild west of social media? How do you navigate that, and what do you think the companies can do better? (24:58)
What is your take on where we're headed as a country? Is this country ever going to be a safe place for queer people? (34:23)

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

About the difference Ash and Monica make with their safe online space (5:07)
Coming out and producing a car crash at the same time (12:33)
About Monica's need to teach Social-Emotional learning to the world (17:26)
How feeling anonymous helped Ash and Monica's community feel safer (42:38)

Resources:

Normalizers TikTok profile
Normalizers podcast
Normalizers Instagram
Normalizers YouTube channel

Connect with Jackie and Bridget:

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Medical Care for Transgender Youth with Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy

For those of us advocating for access to necessary medical care for trans youth, recent legislation seeking to criminalize or prevent this gender-affirming care feels like a huge step back. Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy is working to gain that ground back again, and to promote greater understanding of and support for it.

Visiting us today is Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, who we lovingly call Dr. Jo. She’s the Medical Director of The Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Los Angeles Children's Hospital. She is also an Attending Physician, Investigator of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine and Behavioral Health, and Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics Keck School of Medicine of USC. Dr. Olsen-Kennedy is considered one of the leading experts in gender-affirming care.

With a patient load of over 700 transgender children, teens, and young adults and 16 years of experience in the field of gender-affirming medical care for trans youth, Dr. Olsen-Kennedy has answers to our most pressing questions related to gender dysphoria, treatment options, and much more.

In this episode, we talk about Dr. Jo's work at The Center and how she helps trans kids' parents, caretakers, and trans adults. We also discuss the barriers that prevent trans people from accessing quality medical care services and the effects of the criminalization of gender-affirming care for transgender adolescents on the LGBTQ+ community, their parents, and the professionals involved.

Dr. Jo kindly shares her position on the use of GnRH Analogs, and she invites us to reflect on why we have different responses when it is used on trans youth. We talk about the central role of having key conversations as the foundation of any medical care, and much more.

Some Questions We Ask:

What would you say to young people who cannot access the level of care that you provide? What would you say are the most significant barriers? (7:39)
As someone who's doing this work and watching it become illegal in other states throughout the country, do you feel like you're on a battlefield? (18:56)
What are the big questions people have about hormones, and how do you answer them? (44:44)

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

Dr. Jo talks about the only field of medicine designed to make all the cisgender people around the patient comfortable (14:01)
Gender is a color wheel; male and female are merely reference points (15:52)
The difference between doing the work and defending the work. People deserve authenticity (21:16)
The importance of bilateral information (37:59)
One of Dr. Jo's biggest lessons learned in her profession (1:03:27)

Resources:

Los Angeles Children's Hospital website

Connect with Johanna:

Dr. Jo's profile - Los Angeles Children's Hospital website
Email: [email protected]

Connect with Jackie and Bridget:

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

The Phluid Project with Founder and CEO Rob Smith

After spending over 30 years leading multi-billion-dollar brands in the fashion industry, and despite his tremendous success, Rob Smith felt he wasn't doing what he was supposed to do. During the day, he was a successful designer in corporate America, and at night, he would work with the LGBTQIA+ youth community. Rob found the answer he was looking for after a shamanic experience, an epiphany during a trip to Peru. That day Rob knew he had to create a gender-free, non-binary shopping environment, which would be the first of many steps to creating The Phluid Project.

Rob Smith is a Futurist, Activist, Educator, Retailer, Entrepreneur, Community Builder, Speaker, and the Founder and CEO of The Phluid Project. After his trip to Peru, Rob reconnected with his heritage as a third-generation Native American from the Ojibwa tribe, which inspired him to merge his 30 plus years of experience in fashion with decades of fighting for human rights and social equality.

In this episode, we talk about Rob's extraordinary journey that led to creating The Phluid Project, a space that today is a little about selling shirts and a lot about educating, adding value, and advocating for the LGBTQIA+ community. We explore Rob's vision, ideas for the future, and his view on the best way to be allies of underrepresented communities. We also talk about how interesting it would be to eliminate gender from language, especially in the workplace, where formalities can lead to misgendering gender-nonconforming folks.

Some Questions We Ask:

Could you tell us more about you and about The Phluid Project, please? (6:34)
Can you talk about how the initial vision of creating a physical space collided with COVID and what you had to do to pivot? (11:25)
What is your bigger vision? What world do you see that's possible if we all get to work in human rights and social equality? (18:25)
Your company is an excellent example of prioritizing the mission over the profit. And how do you feel it's best to operate in those spaces? (30:38)

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

Education is a massive part of being an advocate (10:43)
About Rob's experience with Ayahuasca and the revelation that would give new meaning to his life (15:09)
The Phluid Project is more about education than about selling products (29:12)
About Rob's policy of picking The Phluid Project partners based on their social media and vision of the world (33:49)

Resources: