Exploring Diversity

In this week's episode of the Therapy Natters podcast, Richard & Fiona engage in a thought-provoking dialogue with special guest Zayna Brookhouse, a specialist in equality, diversity, and inclusion. 

The conversation spans a wide range of topics from the fluidity of gender and sexuality, the evolution of sociocultural norms, to the importance of open-mindedness and embracing difference.

This episode is an essential listen for anyone interested in broadening their understanding of diversity and the modes of engaging respectfully and empathetically with others in our diverse world.

https://zayna.net

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Transcript

Richard: 0:10

Welcome one and welcome all! This is the Therapy Natters podcast, the podcast series that tries to help everybody make sense of what it is to be human in a complicated world of ups and downs and everything in between. I'm Richard Nicholls and with me, as always, is good old Fiona Biddle, fellow psychotherapist there. Are you up down or in-between today Fiona?

Fiona: 0:33

Up, definitely up. Yes, I've got an exciting weekend coming up and I've had a good week, so yeah, all

Richard: 0:41

Oh okay, without it sounding like a filthy innuendo. What keeps you up, Fiona?

Fiona: 0:47

Well, the up from the other day was I had a really good night of bridge, which is an unusual thing. Usually I come home having to rebuild my ego but that

Richard: 0:58

Oh, okay.

Fiona: 0:59

great. And I've got a certain couple coming to see me this weekend,

Richard: 1:04

Okay? Ohhhh.

Fiona: 1:05

one of whom is our guest today.

Richard: 1:08

Oh wow,

Fiona: 1:10

We have Zayna Brookhouse with us today, who is married to Shaun, who we spoke to a few weeks ago. And it just so happens, coincidentally, that this weekend they're coming to see me and we're going to the theatre together.

Richard: 1:24

what are you going to see?

Fiona: 1:26

Twelve Angry Men with Bobby Ewing,

Richard: 1:28

Bobby Ewing. What's his real

Fiona: 1:31

Patrick

Richard: 1:32

Patrick Duffy, that was his name. He was also Aquaman, I think.

Fiona: 1:35

yes, we've got front row seats, so we're going to be just this far from Bobby Ewing,

Richard: 1:41

Ooh, you'll be able to smell him.

Fiona: 1:42

very exciting. I've seen, I saw him in the theatre in Bath before, but from the Circle and Shaun and I used to watch Dallas together a lot when we were in London, so

Richard: 1:52

Oh,

Fiona: 1:53

it's very exciting.

Richard: 1:54

Okay. Well, I'm up for the theatre and Twelve Angry Men is a classic, so... Oh, you'll enjoy that, of

Fiona: 2:00

yeah. So, Zayna,

Richard: 2:02

we've trampled all over the intro here.

Fiona: 2:04

that's all right, isn't it? So, Zayna. is a specialist in equality, diversity and inclusion. Does lots of corporate gigs. So if anybody out there is looking for somebody who talks about those things in that context, and obviously does face to face work with individuals online and today we're going to be talking about said issue of diversity. And particularly, this is something that I come across quite a lot in talking to people in the world, to put people as in different from clients, but clients as well. That it's a complex world and very often people, and I include myself in this as well, often we don't quite know what to say or how to say it in the world of diversity. So, it seems like a good idea to get an expert, such as Zayna, to help us.

Richard: 2:59

because it's easy for me to think, well, you just ask. But it might be a bit more complicated than that. So, Zayna, help. We're, we're, we're, two old white people who don't know how the world works anymore. Help us.

Zayna: 3:14

suppose, you know, talking about 12 angry men is based on something we call the Abilene Paradox. Okay, so it's where everybody is expected to agree with the whole group and that one juror goes... I don't really believe it. It's also, of course, absolutely full of prejudice and bias. So it's a great play to watch, actually, if you want to be that one juror who goes, Hmm, no, I want to do something a little bit differently. And it's perfectly possible to do so. You're right, Richard. Yeah, ask. So, for instance, around pronouns, if somebody is saying, these are my pronouns, or you aren't sure of somebody's pronouns, then you can ask, what are your pronouns? There's a slight little change in language there, in that some people used to say, what are your preferred pronouns? Now, you are, they are either your pronouns or they're not your pronouns. There's no preference around it, particularly when it comes to identity around gender identification. So, there's a lot of words that are banded around now that make people inherently scared to sit in their uncomfortableness, okay? Words like woke.

Richard: 4:33

Oh.

Zayna: 4:34

Okay, yeah, yeah, it's seen on t shirts, you can buy the mug.

Richard: 4:39

hope, I hope no one minds. I, I couldn't be more awake.

Zayna: 4:44

Precisely. Awake, absolutely fine. We're awake, we're doing things. Whereas woke can sometimes be used as a slur, as an invalidation of people's identity. You know, words like anti, that's a really on trend word right now. Everybody has to be anti. It's quite a violent word, isn't it? Yeah. It's a very binary

Fiona: 5:09

can you, can you give a context for ante?

Zayna: 5:12

Uh, so antisemitism,

Fiona: 5:14

Oh, okay.

Zayna: 5:16

anti-racist.

Richard: 5:18

Anti woke. You'll see all over social media people will put in their, bios that they're anti woke. And, just to, just to mention what, to me, woke means, it means... To be awake to injustice, to be aware of something. To be asleep to that, to be ignorant to that, to me, seems like a bad thing. But to be anti woke, it, to me, that doesn't make any sense. But to those people who think of themselves as anti woke, they mean something else. Maybe they mean pro tradition, or... They mean pro something else, that to them is safer,

Fiona: 5:57

It's a word that's so new and it's evolving day by day and so it's not really a wonder that people will have different interpretations of it and just go down one path.

Richard: 6:11

Well, uh, I described somebody it was a friend of my son's. He started at university, so there's lots of really interesting characters that he's talking about and mentioned, and there's people on social media that pop up. And I mentioned somebody, and described them as queer. And the look on my mother in law's face! You can't call them queer? Where, to me, that's just a catch all for, they're not straight, But I don't know if they're gay, I don't know if they're bi, So they're queer, and they might already have their own label of Gay or bi or whatever. But I don't know, so I just captured it under queer. But that's been reclaimed because there was a time in the 80s, and before, where that was just a slur. And queer people went, well, it sums me up, so let's try and reclaim that if we can. And I'd like to see that happen with woke.

Zayna: 7:04

Absolutely, I think that reclamation of things that would usually have been used as a slur, is really important. So using the term queer because you know that that person is not heterosexual, however you're not entirely sure what they classify themselves. As there are hundreds and hundreds of sexuality and gender terms so that if you say one the chance of hitting upon is very very rare. So when we're trying to explain difference, we're trying to explain diversity, we need to start really, and this is why I say about, you know, everybody's got to be anti everything, when you go back to the word different, different from what? Different from who? Different to who? We're looking at comparatives. And how many times do we tell people, don't compare? Because you are comparing apples and pears. They're both fruit, but they taste completely different. They have a different shape and a different look. So when we're discussing, are we explaining something? Or are we describing something? Can really help us to understand how we're trying to communicate to people. If we are primary caregivers for little people, for children, for young people, the best thing that we can do is acknowledge difference. We're getting in at that point in their psyche of what I call the conditioned psyche. So I say you have an inherited psyche, so that dictates the fact I have textured hair and brown eyes, We then have the conditioned psyche and that's when society gets in, that's when they go to school. They have outside influences, it's not just those primary caregivers. So the earlier that we can get in there and start to acknowledge difference, Asking open ended questions without judgment. You don't need to know everything. If there's something that somebody raises that you don't know about, you can go... Do you know what? I'm not overly familiar with that term. I'm going to go away and I'm going to do some self work. I'm not going to ask you to explain it because then what you're doing is shifting the emotional load of explanation on the person who is in some way minoritised. So, take that time out. What you want to give is a space for people where they feel safer to explore. When we're thinking about binary language and binary thought processes, we're thinking about is something good or bad? Is something black or white? Is something, something that we can talk about or something we can't talk about? Whereas everything in the world is actually nuanced. It's so incredibly uncomfortable for people to think of nuance. And so beginning to explore what we call non binary thought, Something is not one or the other, it's all the way in between. For therapists, they might be familiar with the Kinsey scale. It's not just one or the other, it's everything.

Richard: 10:11

The thing is, a lot of people, through nature or nurture, and maybe just societal nurture, but also maybe some elements of problems when they were growing up, they've got a dichotomous thinking process. They're very black or white. Everything's polarized. You're with me or against me. You're safe or you're not. There is no in between. There is no grey. It's black or white. When actually... For everything, there is grey. There are shades in between all of these experiences. Whether somebody's good or bad or safe or dangerous, there's a middle ground for all of them. But for a lot of people who maybe... were taught at a very young age that the world was chaotic and they needed to try and make sense of it. They needed that black or white attitude to try and keep them safe. That way they knew everything was going to be okay because I've labelled that experience. I've labelled that parent. I've labelled that teacher. So I know who I can and can't trust. And here we are, that could be 40 years later, and they see that there is such a thing as shades of grey, and go, that doesn't fit right for me. That doesn't fit. That person is against me. I just know it. And then so there's an anxiety, and no one's against them. On the whole, I hope.

Zayna: 11:42

So, if we're carrying with us lots of historical experiences and thinking the same thing is going to happen again, then that's when it's going to show up in instinct. And then response. There's a thing in criminology called labelling theory and it's something, if you tell somebody is something enough, they will become it.

Richard: 12:03

Ooh,

Zayna: 12:04

What if... We could use that process for lots of different things. I'm a big fan of the Montessori approach to learning and it's about respect. Just because I'm bigger does not necessarily mean that I should be in charge of everything you do in your life. It's about learning when we have those sensitive periods, those windows of opportunity for learning, and we have them for our entire lives. Everything you've ever learnt about yourself and the world that we live in, you can unlearn

Richard: 12:42

hmm,

Zayna: 12:42

and relearn. And that's the third psyche that I speak to. That's the evolved psyche. We're never the finished product. Because every single day we have to practice that what I call sequence shortened. So on the iPhone adverts, at the bottom, it says when they show you how to do something really complicated in really small steps. Sequence might be shortened.

Richard: 13:08

Yeah,

Zayna: 13:09

I call it My Sequence Shortened, and that's about really calling ourselves into our thoughts. Don't call yourself out, okay, we're practicing self forgiveness. Call yourself into your thoughts, go, okay, so what action can I do here? Can that action be? Adapted. Can it become a habit? And then when we have habits and we continue to practice them, they become behaviors. So that's my, that's my ode to Apple seeing as I have quite a few of their products. But you know, we need to be aware of what we're feeling in those moments. You know, most people aren't even aware that there is a difference between empathy and sympathy, pity and compassion. Empathy is feeling with. Sympathy is feeling for. Pity is a superficial feeling, I'm sorry for you. Okay, almost a passive aggressive, isn't it, sometimes when we see it on the news. And, because it's intended to invalidate or belittle someone, usually. And compassion is feelings... and behaviors. It's the difference between allyship and in solidarity with. Allyship, I'm saying all the right words, maybe I'm potentially being a little bit tokenistic, but I'm saying all the things, I'm ticking all the boxes. Whereas what we want to get to is actually the point where we're having insolidarity with, we are having compassion and feelings with behavior.

Richard: 14:44

What I'm interested in here is the learning that we can do to turn what was an original repetitive thought process that became unconscious and became habit, became instinct, how we override that and create new ones. And to me, that starts with the awareness that there is an alternative way of thinking and feeling. But it has to start there. Until we know it, consciously, intellectually, Oh yes, my instincts are wrong. The things I've been telling myself, about myself and others, for 40 years, were actually wrong. But in order to change, we need to admit to ourselves that they were wrong. And in order to do that, we need to admit to ourselves that being wrong is okay. And for a lot of people, that's the biggest hurdle. To go, oh, I was wrong. Well, yeah, you were wrong, but you didn't know any better. Now you do. Oh, no, I can't admit that I was wrong. Why not? That's part of being human. If you didn't fall over when you were learning to walk, you're still on the ground. Are you still on the ground? No. cos you got up and went, I'll have another go at that.

Zayna: 15:57

Most of us went from learning to walk, to being bipedal, to then learning to ride a bike. the plasticity of our brains means that we can continue to learn throughout our entire lives. So, I would say that awareness is that self acknowledgement to know that we can do things differently. Just because we've always done something one way, mechanisms are put in place and become behaviors because at some point they worked. It doesn't necessarily mean they always will

Fiona: 16:26

like to challenge the use of the word wrong, because it seems just a little bit too harsh for somebody who was doing what they had learnt for the reasons that they had learnt it. I think just, you could take that word away and just say, that's how it was, but now it's going to be different. That might just make it that little bit easier.

Zayna: 16:48

that's why I say that awareness is that, you know, just because you've done something and it's worked and it's not right for you right now, you can be, you can do something different. There is always going to be options to do, feel and think differently than maybe a way that you've done so previously.

Fiona: 17:03

I had a specific instance I've mentioned on this before about having Ukrainian guests living with me and a few weeks ago the parents of the eight year old asked me how do we talk to him, the eight year old, about gender differences, the possibility of trans children in his class, and they were just stuck. They were, we do not know how to talk about it. You know, Ukraine is nowhere near as multi cultured as the UK and these issues hadn't come up and it's been quite a shock, not just on the, the gender sexuality issues, but I think race as well has been an issue since they've, they've come here. They want to evolve, they want to challenge themselves, they want to learn. All I could really say was to encourage him to ask, as we said, to be open and acknowledge, I don't know, so tell me. But what else would you say to them, Zayna?

Zayna: 18:17

There are some great books aimed at younger people and education around... Difference. There are some great shows, you know, for teens, shows like Heartstopper for slightly older people, maybe something like Sex Education everything that we watch on television and you'll find it, you know, you know, kids and they're just scrolling through their phones. Right, they're not paying any attention to what you're doing, even if they find something, encourage them to talk about it. Every single show that comes on, I guess what I get my kids to do, we have a chat about what happened in the show, what are your feelings about this? We like kind of true crime and cop shows and reality shows and shows about relationships, how we relate to each other. And so encouraging children to see things, so we need that reflection in the media here, is getting better, however it's, it's not great. Books, magazines, asking questions. And, being open with that. And that's the uncomfortable bit, you know, silence, when we have that, it creates a vacuum and in that vacuum can pour in some of that, maybe less positive conditioning around the world. There's loads of things going on, you know, in the world and has been for a few years. And being able to have open and frank and honest discussions with people that you live with or that people that you see, those are the important things to be doing. Keep talking. Remember, I suppose, if you've got something wrong, sorry is just a word. It's not an action. So what can you do to change that? Maybe you've seen an advert, anybody that might have seen there was problems last month around the M and S advert when that came out. And you know, you were talking about a hashtag anti woke. Yeah. That appeared on there. Use the media. To be able to provoke and stimulate conversation. If something's there, talk to it, however uncomfortable that might make you feel, and actually admitting that something makes you uncomfortable but you're still willing to talk about it, that's also important.

Richard: 20:41

I'm often reminded of the children's TV presenter that was on CBeebies. Cerrie

20:47

Burnell.

Richard: 20:48

She has one and a half arms. I'm not gonna say she's only got one arm. She doesn't have one arm. She's got... Two arms, but one of them is missing everything else from the elbow down. And when she got the job on CBeebies as a presenter, there was this enormous backlash from parents that says, this is frightening my children. What are you doing putting somebody like that on the television? You're frightening my children. And the question needed to be asked, why would your child find that frightening? Well, it's because it's different. It's unusual, they weren't expecting it, their expectations hadn't been met. And, of course, as we know as therapists, when somebody's expectations aren't met, it creates anxiety. Now, the more times that somebody can see somebody... that is different, the more safe it is, the less anxiety there is. So, there was a backlash that says, well, she only got the job because she's got that deformity, he says in quotes. it's probably not true, but you know what? Even if it was a big factor that helped her. That's a good thing, because where else are those children going to get exposure to the real world, other than through this box we stick in the corner and force them to sit in front of and keep them entertained while we have a bath? So, it's a good thing.

Fiona: 22:19

that shows progress in society. I mean, when I was a kid, I mean, that would never have happened, but also, children with disabilities, physical disabilities, were sent to different schools.

Richard: 22:31

Yeah.

Fiona: 22:31

So we didn't see them at all. There was one person with dwarfism in my school, but otherwise there was no sign of Anything different. And the people who had intellectual disabilities, I don't quite know what the right word for that is right now, Zayna so perhaps you can correct me, but they were put into a class separate with an R attached to the class name.

Richard: 23:00

Oh,

Zayna: 23:01

we're back to the D hats, aren't we there? And kind of what, what, what kind of has happened is actually, I've seen anecdotally people who have been either classified as not obtaining targets, educationally, or Over obtaining targets educationally, and both sets of people seem to have quite a few neurodivergent individuals in such, okay? If you're neurodivergent, you're more likely to obsess about things. You're more likely to be not great with time management. You're more likely to be not so fantastic. I, I saw, saw, saw an eye, then I saw an eye.

Richard: 23:44

Uh, side eye. Yeah, I was thinking about myself for a moment, then.

Zayna: 23:47

You know, you are going to over or underestimate a time a task will take. For instance, you'll have object permanence, where if somebody's not, if you're not seeing somebody, they don't exist. So, both of those groups of children who would be classified as such. are showing as adults that they are both neurodivergent in some way, shape or form. You know, I think representation has very much changed and I had this, I was thinking, do you remember the newsreader Zeinab Badawi?

Fiona: 24:20

Yeah.

Zayna: 24:21

Alright, so recently I was doing some proper adulting stuff around my name. And when I was a, when I was in secondary school, I had to change the spelling of my first name. So I changed it informally from Zeinab to Zayna. One of the reasons I did that was because white people couldn't pronounce my name. I live in a very monocultural area and every time somebody went to pronounce my name they would pause and look and give it a go, okay, and it'd usually be wrong. So I used to say, like Zeinab Badawi, the newsreader. However, I thought, you know, I'm done with this. I'm gonna, I'm going to change my name. So I changed it informally 30 odd years ago and then I changed it legally. 20 odd years ago. So, I go along to this office, and you have to kind of prove who you, that you are, who you say you are. So, it took an hour and a half to convince the person in front of me, who was also white that I had changed my name for a legitimate reason and that I was Who I said I am. Now, I was born in the county I live in. I was also born in the county that I live in, in where the office was located, that I was sat in for an hour and a half proving who I was. Now I changed my name. So white people could pronounce it. And then a white person says to you, I don't believe you are who you say you are. It's a re traumatisation of those initial events. It's an invalidation of actually my human right to be able to change my name. Now, that was the only complication that caused a 15 minute meeting to run into an hour and a half and cost me a fortune in parking. And if you have some sort of difference, then those interactions are frequent. And so what can happen is you code switch. Okay. So you go into a place and you aren't who you are. You play up or play down a facet of your personality to either be quieter or louder, or agree with people that you wouldn't usually agree with, because it's safer that way. Code switching, however, is psychologically damaging. You lose touch with who you are.

Fiona: 26:53

Can we go back to the specific issue of gender and sexuality. This is something that I've witnessed over the years that many people, including students, get confused about the two dimensions and think that somebody who is trans is therefore gay and all sorts of combinations How would you advise people to talk to somebody? Would you? Would you just ignore it? What would you do?

Zayna: 27:25

I suppose if you come across somebody and they say something to you, like they use the word queer to describe themselves, then actually they might be open. If you are curious, and there is a difference between questioning and curious here, you know, questioning is, can be invalidating, it can cause people to be defensive. Whereas curiosity is, I want to know more about you as a person. How do you fit in your world? And then I'm going to share with you how I fit in mine. The, the very, the very simplified difference between sexuality and gender is sexuality is who you go to bed with, and gender is who you go to bed as. It's a massive concept and you're trying to kind of distill all these things down into something that actually somebody can remember really, really quickly. We have those kind of core yearnings of belonging, for instance. So within the Pride Network. So we think we're belonging if we are with other people who are queer. However, there is a difference between belonging and fitting in. Belonging is unconditional. Fitting in is conditional. So if you are having to do something to belong to a group, you're actually fitting in, not belonging in the first place.

Fiona: 28:48

Is there a correlation between gender and sexuality

Zayna: 28:53

Apart from that, we all have one.

Fiona: 28:55

or are they, are they completely separate dimensions?

Zayna: 28:58

Yeah, they are completely separate. You know, you can find people who are going through a gender alignment process, for instance, will start as one sexuality, be another sexuality while they're in that process, and actually end up as a completely different sexuality at the end of it. Both are evolving, just like we are. So, for instance, people who are pansexual. It's based on the person in front of you, not necessarily anything to do with their gender at all.

Fiona: 29:27

And just to say that, that process of, evolution of sexuality is not specifically linked to the fact that they are going through a process of change, but anybody can change their sexuality.

Zayna: 29:43

Absolutely, my sexuality changed throughout my life. And, my sexuality is not invalidated by any relationship you're in either. You know, I'm still as bisexual as I ever was, even though I'm in an outwardly heteronormative relationship. And one of the issues around bisexuality and that is that people go, Oh, so you're heterosexual now? No, no, no, I'm not. Why would, why would I, why would I change for the relationship I'm in?

Richard: 30:15

Mmm. Bisexuality can be quite invisible, because people either think, depending on who they're in a relationship with, they assume they're either gay or they're straight. Actually, no.

Fiona: 30:26

I've heard people say that if somebody is bisexual, they need somebody of both genders. And that to me seems like an excuse, that of somebody who said, well, I'm bisexual, therefore you're a woman, therefore I need a man as well. What's your, what's your

Zayna: 30:46

It's not Pokemon. We haven't got to collect them all, you know. It's, it's not completing my set.

Richard: 30:54

Oh, I've got a shiny one.

Zayna: 30:58

Whether, whether or not your sexuality is what it is, it doesn't necessarily mean that you are polyamorous. So if you're polyamorous or non monogamous, that is a relationship diversity. That's not a sexuality diversity. And you can be monogamous. And bisexual, when you're bringing in things like fray and demisexual. So demisexual is where you don't have a sexual attraction until you have an emotional attraction and fraysexual is the opposite. So you have a sexual attraction and then when the emotional attraction builds, the sexual attraction subsides, then actually if you are, if you have relationship diversity in your life, then that might work. But your relationship and your sexuality, you are always you, and you should always remain you. if you are sacrificing a facet of your true identity for a relationship you're in, then maybe you ought to ask yourself the uncomfortable question of, is it worth it?

Fiona: 32:00

what about the phrase cisgender, cis woman, cis man? It's, it's something that I mean, personally, I don't have a problem, but I've heard people say, I'm not going to use the term that I'm a cis woman because I'm just a woman. what do you feel about that?

Zayna: 32:18

so cis, the prefix cis and trans so trans is to cross over, so transatlantic anything, right? Whereas cis is to stay the same side, so what it is is adding on that prefix at the first of a gender identification term. that kind of thought process comes from people who are territorial, maybe about their own gender. I'm not going to put this. You can either choose to put it or not. You know, there are conscientious terms right now. Terms like female, woman, how do we describe who we are in an elevator speech type way. You are who you are, My name is Zayna I'm female. I live in the middle of nowhere. Whether you choose to add cis or not is very different to you saying, I'm not doing it. It's like, you know, a kid in a supermarket when you went buy them those sweets that they really want and they stand there and they put on a bit of a protest? That.

Richard: 33:28

But obviously it comes, well, not obviously, and what I was going to say was it comes from a place of pain. It comes from a place of wanting to be safe. And I think that's worth looking at. If somebody experiences that pushback when they see that phrase, you know, I'm never gonna think of myself as that. Oh, maybe that's because they don't understand what cis means in the same way they don't understand what trans means. I once heard, oh, this was on Twitter, of course, because it's an absolute poisonous rat's

Zayna: 33:59

Well, isn't it the platform formerly known as Twitter, isn't it, you gotta put?

Richard: 34:02

Still calling it Twitter. Well, somebody was talking about some sort of transvaginal surgery, because they they're having some sort of work done with a gynecologist, and trans, meaning to cross, means it was on both sides of their vagina. It was just all over the place, the work that was having done, and the pushback they got from people who said, Well, you're not a real woman. What? You've just got a transvagina. No, I was born with this vagina. Trans means to cross. What? And it, it was just full of people exclaiming and question marks, and I don't understand, you said you got a trans vagina. No, no, that's not what trans means. And that's I think the same for cis, that people don't like change, because we're humans. We like things to be the same as they were yesterday. It's the dangers of nostalgia. I'm alive today. So yesterday was safe. I want tomorrow to be the same as yesterday and that's fine If it doesn't cause a problem But it can cause a problem if enough time goes by and things change and we learn more. The more we learn, the more we learn that there's more to learn, and we're gonna constantly learn. And when somebody says that they've got a problem with gender neutral bathrooms, I'm not gonna allow any of, anybody, none of my family's gonna use a gender neutral bathroom. What, how many bathrooms have you got in your house? Do you have one for... All the genders? Well, I've got an en suite. Well, is one for boys and one for girls? No, we're all using the same toilet. What's your problem, hmm?

Zayna: 35:46

Ever been to Starbucks?

Richard: 35:48

Yeah,

Zayna: 35:48

Starbucks toilets are gender neutral and always have been Well, quite often they're in small places and of course there's only room for one bathroom.

Richard: 35:57

Yeah, no one questions it. This has been going on for

Fiona: 36:00

mean, I was going to use the example of going to France. I mean, in France, you just go, yeah, most

Zayna: 36:06

you go to the bathroom. You know, bathroom is not a gendered word. the kickback about gender neutral bathrooms is because the gender neutral bit and not because of the bathroom. You know, we all go to the bathroom. And, we just need somewhere to do it.

Richard: 36:27

So if somebody... is genuinely struggling with how the modern world seems to work because they've been living in a particular bubble for 60 years and they just can't think of any other way and they bury their head in the sand and become bigoted instead. How can we help them when they seem like an enemy? When everybody just is trying to do things that they think are for the right reasons, I'm just trying to make the world a better place by reverting back to how things were a hundred years ago. How do we help?

Zayna: 37:02

I guess it's, they need to recognize and acknowledge that they have to help themselves. yes, you can present a perfectly reasonable argument for any side, but also we need to all be able to admit that we can all be right, we can all be wrong, and we can all be everything in the middle. given the kind of tiramisu that make up our psyches, the one thing that we all have in common is we're all different. And once you recognize that we can do things differently and it pulls us closer together with kindness and not further apart with defensiveness, then in the words of the great Shaun Brookhouse, you can't unknow what you know.

Richard: 37:53

He does say that a lot, yeah.

Fiona: 37:58

Thank you so much, Zayna.

Richard: 38:00

yes, thank you for coming on and sharing all your wisdom. And what that does is set the ball rolling and shows us there is more wisdom to gain. Always. There is always more to learn, and that's okay. And that if you don't know, ask the question. It's not hard to watch a YouTube video nowadays about somebody's experiences and learn something. But you've got to be open to learning. We have to be open minded as humans. Otherwise, nothing evolves and we're still ancient creatures living up trees. We have evolved. We have moved on. We invented the wheel and fire and all the things that came before and after. All because we were open minded and went, I wonder if there's a different way of doing this? But we needed a spark to make that happen. We needed the lightning to start the fire to go, Ooh, if I throw this bit of stag on this fire, Ah, it smells amazing and tastes great! And we absorb more calories and our brains grow. And then we go, okay, that fire looks great. How can I make my own? Well, we need to have that attitude everywhere. So that we can be open minded. Anyway, sorry, I said I wasn't going to rant, I ranted. Let's love them and leave them as always. Everybody, there is a link in the description as always. If you want to learn more about Zayna, I'll put a link to her website and some of her details in there too. And there is a link to a submission form on my website to send us some questions, because we're not going anywhere. If you've got a topic idea or some questions you want answering, let us know. We'll do our best to answer Right! Let's go. Speak to you next week folks. Bye now.

Fiona: 39:50

Bye everybody.

Richard: 39:52

Say Bye. Zayna

Zayna: 39:55

Bye.