Discussing gender beyond the binary in the workplace | with lisa luxx

Hi, everybody, and you're so very welcome to this week's edition of Social the Shortlist. My name is Holly Fawcett. I'm the director of content here at Social Talent. And today we're going to be discussing Gender beyond the Binary in the Workplace, which is a really interesting a title, I suppose, certainly for those of us who would think of gender as a reasonably binary option between he, she, et cetera. But now we know there was obviously lots of exploration outside of that, and it's a topic that not many of us are terribly familiar with, but I know a lot of us have questions about it because discussions about gender are everywhere in society. As we continue to make a lot of progress about things, we're building out our understanding about, about how people experience life. It's essential to keep those conversations going, particularly in our workplaces. Gender identity and gender expression form a vital component in how people show up in their lives and, of course, at work. And it's important for companies, for leaders, for organization, for colleagues to be informed if we want to have and create inclusive work environments. But it can be a tricky topic to navigate. So to help us with this, we are delighted to welcome Lisa Lux to this week's episode of the Shortlist. Lisa is a poet and an activist whose work has been broadcast on Channel 4, on BBC radio and with TedX. We're going to be chatting about different forms of gender identity in the context of the workplace. We're going to be examining gendered language, clothing and policies and workplaces as well. Looking forward, looking at expressions of allyship. So, Lisa, you are so very welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. I'm really glad to be here and to be in a space where there is curiosity around this as well, lots.

Of curiosity, of which I am one of those curiosity people. So, Lisa, your pronouns, as you can see on your screen, or she, he, can you explain what those pronouns mean and how you experience your own pronouns?

Absolutely. So it took me a long time to kind of come out as she, he, though I was experiencing it and expressing it in my more intimate circles and my queer kinship, as we call it. But the way in which I experienced that is I like to play within the binary. I like to watch cowboy films as a kid. And I think that's the moment when I first realized that gender was a thing. Being like 7 years old and watching these cowboy movies. And all of a sudden gender became a concept to me that I obviously wouldn't have been able to word then, but I realized that I would Never be the men on the screen. And so thus came this split in me where I was always part cowboy and part not. And it's taken me till later in life and a lot of journeying with that to be able to start to reconcile that divide and be able to be public about using he and she and the fact that I move between them and. And at certain times I feel much more in my masculine, and at other times I like to play within the feminine. Now, you know, there's much to be said about how I am reinforcing a binary here, and I'm doing so as a playground and in a very experiential way. But you would refer to this identity that I'm expressing to you as gender fluid. So it's about that fluidity and moving between pronouns. I often say my gender. It really depends which way the wind blows. You know, some days I wake up and it's like, oh, big man today. You know, and it's all just very playful.

It's very playful. I think everybody wakes up in the morning and on the way the wind blows experiences how they want to express themselves that day. Sometimes we wake up and we feel, you know what? Today is a day we're going to go all out and dress up. I'm really gonna make like an effort today to look done, shall we say, whether you identify as gender fluid, male or female or masculine or feminine, whatever those words mean to you in. In that, you know, sometimes we do have those occasions, or the way the wind blows, sometimes they're like, oh, I'm just gonna be a pajama day today, you know, Is that what you mean? That sometimes it could just feel a little bit more like, this is how I want to express myself today?

Definitely. I would say that it's. That it can be more innate than that because it can be a sensation that I feel in my body. And I talk about this notion of a. Of a phantom body, which is this sensation that there is a. What would be. What would be, you know, considered a. A masculine body. About the way that I move through that day and the way that I feel my body and. And sensation that I have, and I find myself holding myself different on those days. And it can be a very physical experience. But at the same time, I really like that you use this example because it brings us closer to understanding that we all have this nuance in the way that we navigate the world. And sometimes, like you say, sometimes you want to dress up. Now, I'm very aware as that we also, even subconsciously consider this in terms of our safety in the spaces that we go. Like, I have some. Some friends who identify as cisgendered female friends. And we can. We can break down these words after, but let's just say they. They don't identify as queer who will talk about going out late at night if they need to go to the shop or run an errand later in the evening, that they will wear more masculine clothes and square their shoulders. And so we are all, in some way, navigating society through pushing and playing with gender. And that's always been a part of society. We've always played with that. We've always known that gender is this paradigm, this ritual in which we set up as a. As a social organism, and that it's ever changing and that there have always been individuals who play into it, who play against it. I mean, we saw. You know, we saw it right back in Shakespeare. You know, we've got long histories of people navigating the. Yeah. The social constructs through queering, basically.

So you're using the word queer a lot, which is wonderful, because it does have. I do have a question about. About queerness and queer. Queer Fulham and everything else. But this word used to be. Used to be a bad word. It used to be a word that was highly derogatory. And it's almost been. I don't know my right in saying it's almost been recaptured by people in the LGBTQ community who say, no, no, this is actually. This does very much represent who it is that I am. So can you maybe define what you mean by queer today versus maybe queer 40 or 50 years ago, when it was very much considered a bad thing?

I can. And I'm gonna. And I'm gonna respond to this kind of drawing on a lot of queer theory as well. Now, I want to acknowledge the fact that older members of the LGBTQIA community will certainly have their own feelings about this word, and that that's completely valid. However, the way in which I personally write about and theorize and experience queerness is not as a noun. So that is to say, I don't use queer as my identity. If you've picked up on what I've been saying, I've been talking about navigating. Now, to me, queer is a verb. So queer is the way that I orient myself in society. So that is to say there is furniture set up in society, and it is set up. You know, let's say our social world is a room, and somebody has dressed that room and somebody has put the Furniture down and around in that room. And if you flick off the light, if you're very familiar with that furniture in that room, if that furniture was put in place for you and that, and you have had a long standing relationship with the way that room is set up, therefore you are probably cisgendered white and have forms of privilege which that setup has afforded you.

Right.

So you can click off that lie and you can walk through that room probably without tripping up or falling over something. We know this when we've lived in one house for a long time that we, we become very familiar with the, with, with how things are arranged. Some of us that furniture wasn't really set up for us. So we have to reorient ourselves and we have to find new ways to navigate our way around that furniture. And we do this with language, we do this with expression and various other ways. So for me, queerness is part of my politics. It's the way that I move through the social fabric. I move through this, this, this communal space that we have rather than it being a noun. Why is that really important to me? Because queerness is, I like to say, the indefinable. So it ought not have a definition. Why? Because once something has a definition, it can generally be co opted. And if it's co opted, then it becomes finite. And what queerness is about for me and my community is about the infinite. It's about the endless possibilities. And you can't have endlessness, you can't experience endlessness when you have a definition and therefore a box around something. So it's this idea of dis. Identification as well. Which is why I like the slipperiness of she he, you know, kind of consistently evading what you thought you just caught me in. And I, I really like that because it feels very infinite. Yeah.

And unexpected and unpredictable and therefore imaginative. Certainly allows a lot of space for imagination, as you say. It can be. Yeah. Interesting. And, and a space where people can, can draw new conclusions and create new things. And I really like that space that sounds, that sounds interesting to have.

It does. And we all want that, do we not? You know, especially, you know, you work on a project, you work on, you build your own organization, you have hopes, you have aims. Would you not want for the notion of infiniteness to be like, central to that and imagination? Like. Of course we would. We all want that. Like, it's very much core to our, to our life drive. We're so afraid of, of end of the ending. We're so afraid of the finite actually you know, infinite is really part of like what we, what we long for in life. So in queerness, in that we're integrating that into, into our social life and into our professional lives, is, is really about embracing values that we, that we, that we all long for, even if we're not recognizing them in this particular movement, even if people are not quite recognizing it in this. That's one thing that I want people to understand is really central to it, even, even, you know, get past all the obstacles of getting things right and wrong. Central to this is the feeling of openness and infiniteness, you know, so I.

I mean, I like that you're putting that into a work context because that is important, right? Why is this important for us to be or to recognize and understand what gender in the binary form, as well as gender in a very non binary, open, endless form could mean for the workplace and for how we navigate work. Because, you know, sometimes those things are, are in conflict with one another. Also sometimes people think that they're inappropriate to discuss at work. You know, I personally don't agree. I think it is appropriate to discuss things at work because they relate to how we are human and therefore it's a very human endeavor. But can you maybe talk a little bit about how and why organizations really could look at understanding gender a little bit more? Maybe some examples of where organisations are very rigid in their thinking and how that's perhaps not the way they need to go forward?

Yeah, absolutely. And one thing I'll say to speak to the notion of these conversations being inappropriate in the workplace is I think people tether in their mind gender with sex. And I don't just mean with the sexed body as in with male or female, but they tether it to the act of sex for some reason. And that is problematic in the mind, in the fact that they're thinking like that in the first place. Because you are, are being identified as man or woman, if you're consistently being deemed within your kind of the way in which you enact in your intimate, in your intimate moments, in your intimate time, that's. That shouldn't be in the workplace in the first place. You know, that shouldn't be how you're thinking about a cisgendered person in the first place. So why would you do it? To me, you know, it's. My gender is not to do with that. That's not, that's. They're not the same thing. You know that there's, there's people who consider themselves queer, who still maintain relationships that are Inherently look heterosexual. You know, it. That's. It's not what we're talking about. And, you know, we. Gender is already a massive part of the workplace. Just because people aren't talking about it doesn't mean that it's not right at the heart of meeting rooms are right at the heart of policy. So two examples, one being dress code. You know, I mean, not every cisgendered. And. And so by cis, I mean somebody who goes by the gender that they were assigned at birth. This is what cisgendered means. So not every cisgendered person feels comfortable in the gendered office workwear, you know, and that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with gender. It could do with. It could do with physical discomfort. It could do with, you know, your own idea of expressing yourself. Let's consider how much gender is a trend. How long ago was it when it was considered very masculine for women to wear trousers? Not that long. Now that so many women wear trousers, does that mean that all women have become lesbians? Does that mean all women are now identified as men? No, it means that the gender trend changed. So gender trend is consistently. Gender is trend, and it's consistently shifting. It's not fixed, it's social, it's socially constructed, and we are consistently returning to it and playing with it as communally. It just. It just usually happens very subtly, and all of a sudden we're all wearing trousers. It usually happens through advertising. It usually depends on what's. What's profitable. So what we're talking about is taking it back into our own hands and making them decisions for ourselves. So there's dress codes which need addressing, so to speak, and degendering. And there's another example that I want to bring in, or let's say two more. One is the gendered language that's in policy, which doesn't include, you know, the broad spectrum of how we consider, how we consider ourselves. And it also sets up quite a strong power dynamic between men and women in. In the first place. The final one, and I want to put this in a situational one, is how often do we hear about women feeling that they've been spoken over in a meeting room? You know, I mean, this is. This is stand. This is one thing that we consistently hear about gender in the workplace. That's crazy. Said nothing about that. You know, that's.

Oh, no, have we lost Lisa?

That is something that is coming from some. Am I back? Yeah, sorry, you're back.

We missed your last sentence there, Lisa.

I'm about yeah, yeah. I'm just saying that this is something that is coming from. From. From cis. CIS people, cisgendered folk who are experiencing this. This power dynamic. That's gender. That is problematically gender. That's the same conversation that we're having. What we're saying is, all right, imagine that we just. Just take all that gender out of that room and the ideas that each person is putting forward for that project or that meeting have a higher value than whatever organs they have underneath their clothes. Because I don't think that is particularly radical, you know, and I think that we would all argue that that would make for better workplaces. There are some men who may not argue that, but I think the rest of us could strongly outnumber them.

Yeah, definitely. But also, I think, you know, this is why it's so important for us to, you know, when we think about gender as something, everybody. We all have an identity of some kind, I suppose, or whether that identity is in the non binary and the exploratory, the infiniteness, or that we decide to go for a binary identity. And that's, that's how I identify me personally. I identify as a woman, and I was born a woman. And that's, that's just, It's. It's in Asian to me, and in the same way that it's a nation to you, to be. To be queer in she. He. But the, the gender door certainly opens up that I'm understanding that those ideas, those ideas that one has in a meeting or about a project or about a product, for example, the. The innovation that comes with exploring ideas for people who have different experiences of life is where innovation comes from. If we think about like just something as simple as the laptop that you're currently, or the mobile phone that you're currently using, or watching this podcast or listening to this podcast from. The extraordinary majority of the innovations for that particular product that you're currently using to hear our conversation have come through. For example, assistive technology, which is, you know, largely for people who have some form of disability, like text messages, for example, was designed for people who are deaf or hard of hearing and therefore can't take a phone call, but can communicate using text messages. All of the assistive technology we have on our phones, like being able to enlarge the text on our screens. Same reason for people who are visually impaired having things read out to us, for example. Otherwise it could be, you know, speech to text is another example of people who don't have the physical capability to type things. All of those Kinds of innovations come from where we find the differences between the lived experience of the different people who we try to serve. And we realize that those technologies, those innovations actually have much broader appeal. And so, yes, when we take away the lens of where the idea came from, it is still really important to have ideas that come from all of those different places at the same time, because that's where innovation really comes from. Yeah, but you're right, those ideas are what really stand forward. But it's, it's about looking into what is unique about me. That intersection of all the different things that I have, that you have, that we live in, that could therefore open up a different portal to this tiny little nuance of an idea that actually, if we were to go travel down this way, this would be unique and different and therefore interesting and new.

And I really like to, just to interject on that. I really like that you've brought in, you know, disability access and these things that often aren't unmentioned, like you've said. And there's some really good content on social talent that centers these conversations. But let's just think about for a moment about all of the furor that happens around gender neutral toilets. We already have gender neutral toilets. They're called disabled toilets. Yeah, you know, we, we, we, we've had them. There's always been a third option and we're just now naming it something slightly different. And it's the linguistics that are getting people up in arms. But it's been there, so it's always been there. We've had it. You know, and again, it's that thing that's at the, for, that's at the, at the forefront. I also want to pick up on something else you said to slightly contend it, which is you said that you were born a woman and you still identify as a woman. Now what Simone de Beauvoir, the French feminist, would say said one is not born a woman but becomes one. So what she means by that is that we learn how to be the gender that is, that is put on us. So a good example of this is the presence of intersex people. Now, a lot of people don't bring them often into our conversations. If you're an intersex person, you're born with both male reproductive parts or female reproductive parts. There's a mix of bodies that are present in the interex person. Now still a, a, a doctor, the hospital at birth will decide which gender you're going to be and they will assign it to you. Because we're currently And I, and I can't stress that enough, currently living in the two sex model now that only came about in the 1800s. Before that we had the one sex model where men and women weren't considered to be different sexes, that it were they, there was just, it was, it was an inversion of body parts as they called it. They weren't quite what. There was no such thing as a two sex model until after the 1800s. That's quite recent actually. And so there's no reason for us to believe that that's not going to shift again in the next hundred years or so. But I think the point of the, you know, bringing up this notion of the intersex person and how agenda is put upon them, whether or not it is scientifically, let's say, accurate, I really blast this notion of gender and science being one and the same. And this idea that it is very much a learned behavior and it starts with language and then it goes with, you know, film. I talked to you about watching films as a kid. You know, we learn a lot from films, we learn a lot from advertising, we learn a lot from our parents, our family members, where we grew up. I saw a snippet of Travis Alabanza's new book this morning where they say that they don't feel that they were born inherently trans. They believe that the world made them trans because of the options that were given in the world and the world made them choose that that was the only way in which they could live by using that word, by naming themselves through these means in order to be able to lived a life that was authentic to them and real to them. It wasn't something that they were born with. It's something that they became through the obstacle course of life. Yeah.

Or where the, the furniture is positioned in the room, so to speak.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, exactly that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds really interesting and I think you're right. It is very much how we, that societal, not imposition, but certainly that influence is very, very important. And to bring it back to, to, to a workplace kind of topic, like the workplace in itself is another society for the vast majority of, of industrialized time, shall we say. Yeah, just thought of that there. But for the vast majority of that industrialized time and industrialized work, women were not often seen in the workplace. And if they were, it was in a, it was very specific role that they often had. And so I suppose the, the societal behavior and norms that came from that are probably still being felt today. I think we can all agree that Workplaces tend to be a little bit on the more masculine side. You have to be professional and have this particular standing, for example.

And also just to interject there, you know, there's no such thing still as time off for menstruation or rarely starting to come in some countries, I think. But you know, the work, the way in which you're expected to work in that very consistent manner is very akin to the way that the male body biologically works. The way that our workplace, our deadlines, our hours are set up, don't really fit with somebody who menstruates, you know, because we, because we have these ebbs and flows, we, some of us get incredibly fatigued, some of us get really, really ill. And yet there isn't space for that. So you're right, it' say 100% right in that, in that respect. Yeah.

And look, if we're going to talk about making workplaces more, more open in order to, to take, take account for people who have these different experiences and different ways of expressing themselves and make it a little bit more inclusive, a bit more inclusive, I think we can, we can make baby steps across the way. Are there, are there maybe one of them. Like for example, you're just suggesting there in terms of having time off from menstruation or you know, more, more flexible, flexible time around, around that period of life, I suppose. Soft point on it. But like what, what kinds of things would you love to see inside workplaces from a policy perspective or could just be at an individualized workplace level that could make the work more open for all different forms of gender identity?

Yeah, okay, let me talk about policy and then I'll talk about culture about like workplace culture. So first of all, in terms, in terms of policy, you know, we need to see non binary gender, gender queer gender, non conforming protections in discrimination and anti harassment policies. There needs to be a zero, you know, zero tolerance culture on, on, on discrimination of any form. And we'll talk later about what that might look like. I'll talk about it after I go through policy. Employees and including senior members of staff need anti harassment training. And a lot of that comes from education because so much harassment comes from confusion, which is something that we're, that we're kind of addressing here. And you and I spoke about very briefly before we went on air, this idea of allowing for confusion in order to educate through it because so much pain is caused through confusion. Dress codes, I've mentioned that, you know, they really need to perpetuate a freedom of expression. I'm not saying that, you know, you have to welcome people in, in to, to, to dress in radical, in radical ways that my push against the image of a, of a company, not my business to say that about your company. What it is my business to say is that gender dress codes just don't really suit anyone. They're not comfortable. They, they, they, they're, they're not working after you. There's all that, I mean there's also. So you know, pre onboarding, if you think about before the hiring or during the hiring stage, there is the blind cv, right? So that people send in their CV without their, any indicators of their ethnicity or their gender, their orientation or any such things as that. But what often happens is then once you bring them in, you still haven't created a culture on the other side of that that protects these people. So how do we protect gender non conforming people? Okay, one way, give people the opportunity to give employees the opportunity to self identify on human resources platforms and these internal systems. So simple.

Yeah, you're right.

So simple. So simple. Remove gendered specific language from, from policies. Very, very, very simple. Including that, that, that list of pronouns on, on internal systems and on HR platforms also needs to include the opportunity to not say and choose not to say. I don't always want to say. I don't always want to have to come out again to a computer. I don't always have to consider coming out. There has to be the opportunity to evade these things as well, which is, is incredibly nuanced because a lot, a lot, a lot of, a lot of organizations now are encouraging us to have our pronouns on our emails or our Twitter bios. Now I'm someone who belongs to the queer community who didn't do that for the longest amount of time because I couldn't, I couldn't explain my gender in two syllables. It felt something so much bigger to me that I felt I was dumbing it down for the comfort of others. You know, when you go around a room. So this is. Now let's go into culture. When people meet for the first time in a meeting room or in workshops that are held in the, in the workplace training and we go around the room and we say our name and we say our pronoun and that's wonderful, that's a wonderful step forward. That's great. But there also needs to be space for people to choose not to say because. Coming out is a western concept. Okay. And a lot of us don't just come. Well, nobody comes out once in their lifetime. You're asked to come out again and again and again and again and again. And it can be quite exhausting and it can put you back in a box that remember I'm trying to evade or when I'm saying that queer is a verb now allowing for that space for people to feel a conversation is recognized but also ensuring that it's not being done in a tokenistic way like oh, better ask you your pronouns because that's what we do now. But actually understanding that there is a lot of nuance in that and some people won't want to share, they might want to share with a couple of their closest workmates, they might not want to share with everybody. And we can't start outing people at that same time because of the repercussions that could cause them professionally at home, in their social lives, in their family lives and what have you. So holding all of this nuance would have to be part of that training. That makes sense because I tried to say a lot in a very bullet.

Point, but it's, it's, it's, I mean to be fair, it is a weighty thing to try and divide into neat bullet points, but it's a, it's also recognizing, I suppose the, the expression again from, from the disability community is nothing for us, without us. And I think the trainings and, and, and workshops and things like that that have been delivered to date within organizations around how we use gendered pronouns and inclusion of people of different gender expressions as well as removing gender discrimination have largely been developed without that perspective of the bigness of gender identity as being such a massive thing. Because what they've done to my understanding certainly, and please, I would love to people's examples of where gender training has been very much into that bigness of, of how, how nuanced it is, but they've made it really reasonably jigsaw like, you know, it's, it's sort of paint by numbers. It's say this, make sure you, you include this life space for people to say their gender pronouns, for example, and just accept them, don't ask questions, etc, I think devalues the conversation and, and probably is also a little bit misinformed about really the bigness of what gender expression, gender identity really is in the workplace. And I think that's probably because that training was developed without, without people who, who have, who lean into the non binary side of their, of their expression and their lives. What do you think?

I think you're right and I think it comes back to this notion of confusion and fear And a lot of these notions of allyship have come out of fear rather than out of solidarity. And solidarity is not an easy thing, but it's a mandatory thing for us to be able to grow as a community of human beings, building society together and hoping for this living organism that is us to continue developing in, in. In hopeful ways. We need. We need solidarity and allyship. The word often frightens me. If somebody says that they're an ally, I think, oh, all right, you've learned some of the tips and tricks, but you're probably going to say things that are going to really hurt me when I least expect it, you know, performance of allyship, I think we call it formative allyship. Yeah. And I understand that it is a step on our journey. I understand that we're not going to get there miraculously and step through a portal. I do. And I can be very. I can very. Be very forgiving. And sometimes my forgiving nature just comes from being too tired to. To keep arguing and to keep trying to defend. I'm not even going to say, just like my right to exist the way I want to, but also my intellect, you know, I'm not kind of pulling this out of. Out of nowhere, you know, I finally found the language to talk about my experience of being alive and my experience of navigating the world. Because I also research academically and I've learned so much, and there is so much intelligence behind this movement. There is so much futureness behind this movement, and there is so much vision. There's such a visionary nature behind this movement. I'm not referring to myself specifically as a visionary here. I'm saying that, you know, historically, not even historically, let me correct myself. In communities that are still most intact with their traditional ways of living, a lot of indigenous communities, and also historically, within our own. Within our own society, the people who expressed their gender beyond the binary were often the ones who were the visionaries in that culture. So in the. In Hawaii still, the folk who are gender beyond, who identify with their genders being beyond the binary, are the oral storytellers. So they're the key keepers of the old tales of the culture, and they're the ones who pass them on to the next generation. Right. So it is. It has. It has historically and globally been been considered the most visionary position. And I think we have to remember it as a fragment of a future coming towards us. And we. And we move towards it and we meet it.

I completely, completely, completely agree. There's so many examples that I can think of so Straight off the top of my head of people who broke the, broke the boundary of whatever their, their gender role defined them to be. And I mean, that's personally where I probably come from this more often with regards to gender identity, gender expression is again, being a CIS woman is, is, is the fact that I, you know, the, the people that I've looked up to, the people that I was raised by, didn't fit the, the gender role specifically of what was. What was expected of them either. Growing up in a culture where the culture was highly binary. It's actually written into our constitution. The only place that women have a place in our constitution tended to be in a very, very specific role, which is the women's places in the home. And that's actually written in our Constitution Constitution, which we're hopefully will get an opportunity to remove that amendment at some stage. I think it'll overwhelmingly be repealed. But as that certainly is not the place for, for a whole half of our, of our society, it is a place for everybody in our society to have a home certainly, and to be present in their communities. But as you say, there are always those individuals who break those boundaries. And I'm just thinking even in places like, like fashion, as you're saying, about how we express, how we visually express ourselves. In the 1960s, Katharine Hepburn really came out with this very. The style of the time was known as mannish, wearing trousers, but wearing men's trousers that were miles too big for her. The big, you know, they're very, very wide leg trousers that went over her heels and big, big blouses as well that were really men's shirts tucked into those things. A very beautiful, sexy style that was Katharine Hepburn stunning. But, you know, it was the visionary of somebody as visionary as Katharine Hepburn to be able to make that a place to make that a thing. And we will always have those moments in our lives. I think today who I can think of again breaking the boundaries on the men's side, I can think of several examples, but unfortunately I don't have the names of each of them. But I know one which is Jonathan Van Ness, who to me I think would be one very, very clear example of that. But there are several who I can actually visualize in my head, but as I say, I do not know their names, which is shameful, I should know them, but who frequently show up on red carpets in these magnificent ball gowns and really is very unexpected and creative. And I think that's a case where, if we want our workplaces to, to be a source of Innovation. We want them also to be a source of representation in our organizations as well. To have that. Have people in our organizations who feel that they can express themselves like that. That would be incredible. But, yeah, it's always going to be different for everybody to look at that, isn't it?

It is. But I mean, on that note as well, I mean, you know, the generation that are entering the workforce now are so clued up on this and this and this is so much part of their movement. They're teaching us all so much. And so if you're not making space for that, then you are, you know, you're going to be left behind. Really?

Yeah. We thought millennials would be difficult. No, no, no. Have you met Gen X?

We just keep getting harder.

Absolutely. Gen Z are going to be. Teach us so much. Absolutely. I completely agree. I have two questions for you, one of which actually isn't asked by me, it's asked by Victor on our LinkedIn livestream, which is. Hi, Holly and Lisa. Any tips on how to create a support group that caters beyond the binary or at the workplace? How do we solve for it?

Yes. Okay, so to create support groups, cater. So when. When we. When you say support groups, I wonder. Two things. One is, I think these support groups specifically for people experiencing as part of the queer experience who consider themselves part of the gender beyond the binary life and discussions, or is it also opening up to people who are outside that? And I'm gonna answer for you because you're not directly in front of me and consider what if it's for both. So I really like the idea of. And me and Holly, again, I think this has been a really nice conversation, this idea of bridging and bringing in. But it doesn't mean that I can always be around people who don't inherently understand what I'm talking about. So I think queer kinship is one of the most important things in my life that has been able to develop me as a person. And creating that kinship in workplaces is, I can only imagine, incredibly powerful to overcome that isolation. And what I would suggest is you could go through the means of HR or through higher rankings, so to speak, in order to bring that about. But something in me wants to say, create it by yourself. Like, create, like go out there and find the others, so to speak, because this little pocket of people will then be able to decide how they grow together. And from that, and if it's more official, it could put off people who, as I was saying before, can't be as openly out as others So I think keeping it quite gorilla are. Keeping it quite informal allows for people who are either on the edges to feel that they can enter that space or people who, it wouldn't be safe for them to, you know, be registered on any kind of system as attending this thing to be, to be able to be part of that conversation as well, which is obviously super valuable. Now I wonder if that also opens up that group other times to people who want to come in and learn. And maybe, you know, the. What would be really important is telling them that their space is to listen and their space isn't to talk and take, to take up any room, but to actually sit and to listen and to observe. And so these would be the two ways I'd suggest setting that up. And thank you for engaging also, by the way.

Yeah, I think that's a great idea. And you're right, like those kinds of informal groups happen all the time. You know, there's informal five or side soccer teams for formed inside different offices of companies. There's usually a lotto syndicate that goes on that's technically a support group of some kind. There's people who decide, go off to. They go off, meet up on a Saturday morning and go for a cycle or a run or a hike or something like this. All these people who have different interests that form these informal groups all the time, they do just tend to find each other. But you're right, maybe it's not the place of the organization to set up a formal employee resource group, but actually just as you say. Exactly. Allow that space to exist for people to find each other and be supported by the company as and when they need it.

Yeah.

My last question for you before we finish up, as we are just around that time and Simon, our wonderful production manager is going to cut me off, which is something that we ask all of our guests as a very, very last question, which is can you leave our audience with one piece of advice? Can be on the topic itself or it can be something that you've been told that really is. You can take it to heart in your career or whatever, whatever you feel.

Yeah. I wanted to talk about Horizons and I wanted to talk about how we, how we bring Horizons into our, into our lives, into our workplaces, into our experiences. Because this is something in my book, fetch your own mother's Heart. I'm consistently equating the horizon with my masculinity and something that I never quite capture, but I will never stop walking towards. Anyway. Now, through the course of our conversation, I've been Thinking how I can ground that in something for the listeners. And I would suggest this exercise. Talk to your plants. Your plants know something about horizons. They eat it. They're the thing that reaches it. And in the social talent content in the course that you guys might embark on in that journey, I suggest if you're struggling with pronouns and struggling with unfamiliar language, to try and use it on your plants, you know, and it just kind of gets it under wraps, and it kind of like you practice your tongue, you get your head around it without having to harm anybody in that process. But there's also something about that representation of the plant as a fragment of future, because we plant things and they don't exist, and then they appear and they just suddenly fill empty space. And they are these fragments of future and they are our connection to the horizon. So. And. And yeah, my plans give me the best advice. So I'm gonna leave you on that note.

Lisa. That's beautiful. I actually genuinely have the glazed look of my eyes because actually a tear in each eye. Because that is the most beautiful advice. I genuinely. I do, actually. Anybody in social plan can tell you this. I always say, talk to a plants because they don't talk back, but at least they listen. And my God, they talk back by. By blooming, they genuinely will work better. They will. They will grow better because you talk to them every day. But no, that it's. It's bringing in a horizon, and we will always be reaching towards something else, whether it's with regards to our gender identities or innovation. If we're. Again, bring it back to a workplace topic or just genuinely our potential, you know, it's always there. It's always. It's never quite within reach, but at least it's something that we can stretch to. I love that idea.

Speak of potential, the plan. You pour love into it. Water, whatever it needs, it's food. Whatever. You keep going, sometimes it doesn't bloom. Eventually it will bloom. Is that not potential? Pour loving to these people around you. Like, give love. I know that's not something we talk of enough in workplaces, but you boil your love, your care, your generosity in these things, and they will bloom. And you will also benefit from that, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, here, here. Thank you so much. That is a beautiful ending. Yeah. You really are a poet. Thank you. That's absolutely lovely. Lisa. This has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. Certainly been an interesting one in the comments as well. Thank you so much for everybody who's left comments in both on LinkedIn and YouTube as well. Interesting debates going on here, but as I said, this is a, it's an interesting place where we all can learn and there's nothing, nothing binary about it, is there? No right or wrong. But no, it's certainly been extreme. Extreme. Extremely helpful and tremendously insightful. So, Lisa, thank you so much again for, for joining us. And next week we are bringing back the main man himself who will be Johnny Campbell. Johnny is joining us again next week who is going to be welcoming our latest guest who is Kevin Green. Kevin Green, as you may remember, in his past careers and been the head of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation in the UK and is now the chief people Officer at First Bus. And himself and Johnny are going to be talking about lots of new things with regards to talent disruptions etc and talent pipelines. And so please join us Wednesday 3rd August at 4:15pm, which is about 11:15pm I think believe on the east coast of the US etc. So please join us on Jonny's LinkedIn or YouTube or of course follow us on the podcast afterwards. Fascinating conversation. Thank you so much everybody for joining us and we'll see you another week. Bye.