(upbeat music) - [Narrator] "Workin' It Out," a podcast show about diversity, equity, and inclusion in our workplaces, our communities, and our lives.

A show where we put diversity and inclusion to work.

(upbeat music) ♪ Got problems on the job ♪ ♪ We're workin' it out ♪ ♪ Workplace got you stressing ♪ ♪ We're workin' it out ♪ ♪ Yeah, we're workin' it out, workin' it out, workin' it out ♪ ♪ With Dr. V ♪ - Welcome.

I'm Dr. Vanessa Weaver, your host of "Workin' It Out," the show where we put diversity and inclusion to work.

This episode of "Workin' It Out" will feature the hot topic, transgender realities.

And we're gonna have this phenomenal person to talk to us about the show, Monroe Alise.

But before we get into the show, I just want to tell you a little bit about my why.

Because I always ask our guest their why of discussing a particular topic, but my why is this.

I was in a conversation with a very good friend of mine that I respect tremendously in this diversity, equity, and inclusion space.

And as we were talking, she said, "Vanessa, I'm for everything in DEI.

I'm for fighting for DEI, but I just can't go there on this transgender thing.

I just can't go there," and I was shocked.

I was like, "Well, what do you mean you can't go there?

Go where?"

And she wasn't very clear about it.

But more importantly, I don't think my defense of it, of talking about the transgender realities was strong enough.

And I thought, you know what, I got to get better at this.

And we were so fortunate.

We are so fortunate to have Monroe Alise, who is a champion of transgender people's rights and privileges to be a part of the show.

And I know you all know Monroe Alise.

She is the breakout star on "P-Valley."

And she also is on "The Chi."

On "P-Valley," she's Monroe, and on "The Chi," she's Isis Monroe.

And so we thought, my goodness, not only do we have a phenomenal actress to be part of this conversation, but to really take us on this journey to better understand, she's gonna really take us to school to better understand these transgender realities so we can be more knowledgeable and committed to engaging in this conversation.

So I wanna welcome Monroe Alise to our show today.

- Wow, thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me.

That was one introduction.

Thank you.

I'm so grateful to be here.

I appreciate you for opening your space.

- So I'm just looking forward to having more of this conversation and having our audience to become more educated and really connected at the heart in the realities that you and transgender people are dealing with each and every day.

- Absolutely.

- So tell me Monroe, and so not only are you on "The Chi" and you're on "P-Valley," but you have a new movie that's coming out on BET.

- Yes, yes.

- Tell us a little bit about that before we get into the rest of our conversation.

- Yes, absolutely.

So, "Fighting to Be Me: The Dwen Curry Story" is going to be out on BET+ February the 27th.

And it is about the true story of Dwen Curry who now identifies as a transgender person at that time.

You know, a non-binary individual going through their own personal struggles, life, drugs, you know, all of those things and still having to face those difficulties with their self-identity and self-expression.

I'm truly excited for the role that I play on there.

It's a very pivotal role.

You have to see it.

I think that it's going to be relatable, especially to the trans realities, especially with the topic that we're talking about.

But to know this woman is to love her.

She's such an inspiration to us all.

I call her Auntie Dwen and I really, really love her.

And to just know that everything that she's went through and overcame, it is absolutely phenomenal and a journey nonetheless.

- Well, your career continues to expand.

You're so talented and gifted.

So we are blessed to have to be a part of the journey with you.

So let's get back to our topic and I am gonna watch that show, by the way.

- Yes, thank you.

- Let us know.

When we talk about, use the term transgender, what does it mean?

I mean, folks are like a little confused or a little uncertain about that.

Describe, define that for us.

- Yeah, so, you know, transgender, the word itself literally means not the same, right?

Or not identifying the same.

So just like cisgender means the same.

Transgender means not the same, right?

So not the same as assigned at birth.

So I consider myself a woman of the trans experience, meaning I identify in my womanhood first by way of transitioning, right?

And so, for the sake of this conversation, I'll use transgender woman, to say that I am a transgender woman, I do not identify with my assigned sex at birth.

So that's what transgender means.

- All right, okay.

Now, I've often heard many trans people say that being trans is like being born in the wrong body.

Is that part of what you're saying?

And can you help our viewers understand, what does that feel like?

What is that?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely, I'll give you my personal experience.

And I know, and as I've shared this story of mine multiple times, it still saddens me that this is something that is still relevant to this day in regards to bathrooms, right?

When I was a child, like most children, we all used the same bathroom in the house.

My mom used the same bathroom as my dad, my brothers, my sisters, my siblings.

And so I remember going to school as far as pre-K, and being in school, I became friends with a young girl.

And we really clicked in school, having a great time.

It was bathroom time.

And as I followed her into the bathroom, the teacher snatched me out of the bathroom and said, "No, boys don't go in there, girls do."

And that was the first time I identified that something was different with me.

That, now mind you, I was getting reprimanded at home for walking a certain type of way or talking a certain type of way and making sure that I wasn't playing with the Barbies when my girl cousins came over.

But I never identified it as that was something on the inside that didn't match something on the outside.

And that was the first time I was told, or I knew that something was different.

And so, yeah.

- And how did that impact you then?

That's the first time that you were told.

- Mm-hmm.

And of course, as a child, I don't have the language that I have now, but I knew then that survival mode then took over.

I had to start pretending to get along to just survive.

You know, I couldn't like and ask for things that I wanted truly.

You know, I was the child that believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and things like that.

And so when I was told to write my Santa list, I would put on there my Easy-Bake Oven and my Kenya Doll and My Little Pony and things.

And I thought Santa didn't like me because when I would open my gifts, it would not be the things that I asked for, but the things that my parents wanted me to play with in a sense.

And so it was devastating.

It was absolutely devastating.

It was isolating and it was devastating and it forced me into a mode of survival that I now have the language to know but I didn't know that then.

- Well, I'm just curious, I know this is a little bit, we didn't talk about this, but- - Sure.

- You said your parents gave you gifts that you didn't want.

I mean, how did you address this issue with your parents?

- Mm-hmm, so I'm gonna date myself here with this, right?

So I come from the era of the Circulator and Toys "R" Us.

And so my mom, I have an older brother and a younger brother.

I'm the middle child of three.

And so my mom and dad would give us each the Toys "R" Us Circulator and be like, "Circle what you want Santa to bring you for Christmas."

And so I would always, and we weren't supposed to write our names on it because, I mean, we all lived together, so nine times out of 10, we would always play with each other's toys.

But they always knew which one was mine because I circled My Little Pony and Easy-Bake Oven and, you know, the Lite-Brite and the Kenya Doll and the Cabbage Patch.

And every single time, I remember writing Santa a letter asking him, why doesn't he like me?

Like, why do I not get the gifts that I want for Christmas?

I've been a good child, I've been obedient.

I've been, you know, good all year.

What is wrong with my toys?

And that's when I realized kind of like, hmm, let me do my own research with this.

And so I started looking one Christmas and seeing that my parents were wrapping the gifts and, you know, they were doing, and I'm like, oh, this makes sense now.

You know, now this is why.

So that's where that survival mode came from where I ended up having to find and steal and hide my own moments of joy by spending the night over my girl cousin's houses.

And while their parents weren't looking, I was able to brush the doll baby's hair and play with the Easy-Bake Oven and things like that.

- It just took me a moment 'cause I could, you know, I could feel.

I was allowing myself to feel what that must have feel like to feel rejected and having to hide who you are and- - Absolutely.

- And know that your parents, while they love you, it's just something about you that they're not in love with, right, so.

- Yeah.

Yeah, I now know that they didn't have it to give me.

But yeah, it was definitely isolating.

I felt unloved.

- Were you and your parents ever able to talk about it or?

- Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

My mother and I are like best friends today.

I'm the daughter my father always wanted, you know, and so, yeah, we have a really great relationship today.

- Oh, that's so good to hear.

Well, you know, just very recently it's been all of this attention on transgender people, like around competing in sports and also these bathroom breaks.

How do you feel about, it just seems to be a kind of a narrow, negative kind of box.

- I think it's very sad that these are the distraction and the deflection techniques that they use to get people's votes.

You know, we're talking about bathrooms, we're talking about going into the bathroom and using the bathroom, right?

We're talking about things that doesn't necessarily, should, in my opinion, gain this much attention, right?

You know, I think that for people who don't have trans children shouldn't be talking on trans children and their rights.

I think that people who don't know about transgender individuals or understand transgender individuals shouldn't try to make decisions on transgender individuals.

I think it's truly devastating.

I think that we live in a world that we have so much more to focus on, and that these are the things that they use to distract people from the things that matter most.

- Yeah.

Well it's, you know, as we've, you know, just kind of explored this whole, as I've explored this whole transgender realities piece, you know, the violence against transgender people, you know, there's supposed to be some attention to stuff.

That's an area that folks need to really look at.

I mean, we know that 84% of the known victims of crimes against transgender people have been transgender women and women of color in particular.

- Absolutely.

- And in fact, when we say crimes, I mean, almost, I mean, several have been killed.

- Absolutely.

Majority, majority of my black and brown trans women have been murdered, yes.

And I think that we, I'm sorry, go ahead, please.

- [Dr. Vanessa] Go on, no, no, you think?

Go on, please.

- No, and I think that we have been desensitized by using words like unalived or, you know, not necessarily calling a thing a thing.

These are human beings whose lives have been taken due to senseless violence.

My siblings have been murdered for just simply existing.

This sounds like the civil rights movement.

This sounds like black people.

And it saddens me that we don't see the human in others when it comes to my trans siblings.

- And we're not even talk, I mean, that's the murder, jut what about the folks that get beat up and just harassed because they're trans people, you know?

- Absolutely, I myself have been, yeah.

- You're saying you yourself have been?

- Absolutely.

I myself have been a victim of a hate crime.

I was attacked by four guys.

- What happened?

- Yeah, I was attacked.

- [Dr. Vanessa] You were beat up by four guys?

- I was attacked by four men in broad daylight the day before Easter in 2017 for just existing, for walking in a corner store and buying something.

And I think that having had that experience, people don't understand the fear that a trans person has to endure every day knowing that we live in a world that targets us and subliminally gives people permission to hate us and threaten us and attack us, right?

And myself being one of those individuals, that's why I'm a champion for my trans siblings.

It takes a lot of bravery and courage to walk out of your home every day in your authentic skin, in your authentic skin.

I tell all of my trans siblings, you are an advocate your sheer existence walking out of the house every day is an act of bravery and resilience.

- And how has the response from like law enforcement been, and, you know, people that are there to protect all of us?

How does that play out for the trans people?

- Mm-hmm.

I think that especially in the District of Columbia, you know, we've had to come a long way due to, you know, losing some transgender individuals because of EMS not wanting to, you know, service them when finding out they were trans.

And now we have forced, you know, certain public service agencies to take these cultural humility trainings and things.

And so I believe that we have came away, but we have so much more learning to do.

We have so much more teaching to do.

And for this to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, I believe that there should be a representation of everyone displayed and being able to walk and live and love whomever they choose.

- Well, what do you think is the trigger for people?

They see a trans person, I mean, what is the trigger that makes them feel they have the right to beat someone up?

What in the world is that about?

- Honestly, I think that, honestly, I think that a lot of it comes from, they believe, how dare you?

How dare you have the audacity to live in your authentic skin?

How dare you have the audacity to live out loud and be happy?

Because there's nothing else that I could think of that could cause someone to want to put their hands on someone or to cause harm to another individual that has done nothing to them at all.

Nothing to them at all.

And we live in this disclosure politics world where people are talking about how transgender individuals are not telling the people that they are entertaining that they are trans.

Well, I'm confused by that information too, because if you can tell that I'm trans, then why is it now okay that he can't tell that I'm trans when now he has attacked me?

Like we have to be very careful about the way that we're representing this thing.

Like it's extremely dangerous.

- Yeah, I mean it's causing people their lives.

- Absolutely.

- Yeah.

You know, it's interesting, as you know, we're also in this anti-DEI period.

And I know that many companies that are saying they're scaling back their DEI efforts or in fact scaling back their LGBTQ efforts.

Have you heard about that in terms of- - No, absolutely.

Absolutely, and I think that this is just allowing people to finally reveal who they truly were and what their beliefs really are.

I don't think that a lot of people believe in humanity as often as they say that they do.

I think that that's something that is not true.

- Mm-hmm.

So let me ask you, in some of the research that I was doing, not just for our show today, but for another project we were doing, I understand that there's also, even within the LGBTQ community, there's some kind of bias against trans.

- You know.

Yes, yes.

I think that in every community, there is their thing, right?

I think that in the black community, we have colorism.

I think that, you know, there's that light-skinned, dark-skinned thing that has been going on forever.

And I think in our community, it is safe to say that as a black woman of the trans experience that gay men oftentimes are the people who, in my experience, have hindered the growth of trans women the most.

You know, pride celebration started because a black trans woman threw a brick and decided to stand up for the community of people, Marsha P. Johnson.

You know, everything that has been a movement in America has started by a black trans woman, you know, or by a black queer woman.

And so, you know, I think that when it comes to the other letters in the acronym, I think that we have to remember that, you know, we are our siblings' keeper.

You know, we are our siblings' keeper.

And yeah, I think that's one of the biggest things.

I think that we now have to bridge the gap in our communities.

You know, it's one of those things, you know, ain't none of us free.

If one of us ain't free, ain't none of us free.

- Yeah, I'm glad to hear that 'cause our firm Alignment Strategies was doing some work with HRC some years ago and we were going around the country and we were doing focus groups to understand how diversity was playing out in the PTQ community.

And we heard some comments in some of that work around, there should be a separation between LGB, no T, Q, and then the trans community.

And I'm glad that that got worked beyond.

- Yeah.

Well I mean, if you think about it, right?

And I don't wanna get too deep in it because I know that we're talking about the trans realities, but this is one of the things that I really beckon as a question.

You know, every letter of that acronym is a sexuality.

You know, lesbian is women with women, gay is man with man, bi is being attracted and having, you know, sexual attraction to man and woman.

And then you have trans, that's an identity.

- Mm-hmm.

- I am trans.

My transness has nothing to do with whom I am attracted to.

- Okay.

- And so, but we are in a community, you know, we are in a community together and we stand in solidarity for the most part.

- Okay, well that's good to hear.

So let me ask you, 'cause we've been talking about the violence and some of the biases.

What are some of the other, what are a couple of top two issues that are also affecting the trans community?

- Absolutely.

You know, I believe that there are more than, I mean, as we know that there are more than two, but the most for me in this moment, and what I hear the most is, you know, housing.

Housing and healthcare.

You know, housing and healthcare.

You know, we're still fighting for gender-affirming care.

And then the more steps we take forward now with things taking a complete turn, we're completely afraid of what that will look like with gender-affirming care.

You know, every person needs gender-affirming care.

- And is that in fact being denied by hospitals or doctors?

- Absolutely, absolutely.

You have some places in the United States of America that are causing, that are saying that you can be jailed or, you know, giving out jail time for, you know, giving gender-affirming care to a trans individual or a non-binary individual.

- So they put that on the level of this whole abortion.

- Absolutely.

- Oh my goodness, okay.

- Not having autonomy over your own body.

- So we talked, okay, so the gender-affirming care.

What is this about the housing?

Why did you identify that as a problem?

- So for, I mean, well, you know, housing is something that, because there's a lot that goes into that component, right?

We have to look at workforce, we have to look at work opportunities when we're talking about equity, right?

Having to show up in your authentic skin at your workplace and making sure that you are affirmed in your workplace and that there's inclusion in your workplace with gender-affirming bathrooms and things like that.

A lot of my trans siblings are suffering from not having, you know, not having employment to not having housing, right?

Not having those equitable opportunities.

And so I think that when I say housing, I think that there's so many different components and intersections that goes with the housing component.

But I think for the most part, yes, that is one of the biggest things.

I know that 70% of the homeless youth in the District of Columbia are identified as LGBT.

- Mm-hmm.

And you said 70% of the homeless.

- Over 70% of people that are experiencing homelessness identify as LGBT.

- And they're homeless because their parents or families have?

- Well, there's a number of different reasons, but most of those reasons, especially in my work of advocacy and activism in the housing sector, yes, it has came from rejection, abandonment, and/or physical violence being brought on them for wanting to live their authentic lives.

- Oh my goodness.

So let me ask you, Monroe Alise, if, you know, and speaking to this audience here on WHUT PBS, what would be one ask that you would have of them towards having a much more positive, supportive attitude and position towards the trans community?

What would you ask of them?

- Absolutely.

So I want everyone under the sound of my voice to do this exercise with me if you could.

I want you to think about your favorite person in the world, whether that is your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, your niece, your grand baby.

Just think about your favorite person in the world, the one that you love the most, the one that you would do anything for, the one that you would give anything for.

Think about them.

And now think if they were to come to you and transition and say that they wanted to transition and that they wanted to live their authentic lives, would the love that you have for that person change?

With the memories that you have, will the love that you have for that person change?

And I think that that answer, whatever that answer is, that should show you where that love for humanity should go.

- Okay, and so what kind of actions would you want them to take?

I mean, if there's one thing that someone could do that could be a visible demonstration of their support or understanding of the trans community, what would you want that to be?

- Absolutely.

I think that biggest thing is use the correct pronouns and ask people their names.

Use their names, use their pronouns.

You know, stop thinking for people.

Stop thinking because a person identifies or presents one way that based off of your experiences, that should be their pronoun or that should be how they identify.

Ask the person their pronouns and their name if you are uncertain.

- So give me an example, how would they ask that?

- Yeah, so one of the easiest ways to do that is simply by introducing yourself first.

Hi, my name is Monroe Alise.

I use she/her pronouns.

What is your name and pronouns?

- Okay.

All right, well thank you for that.

And I'm proud of you and just what you're doing in terms of advancing your career, but also advocating for those people that you care about.

♪ I know, caught up in the middle, I cry just a little ♪ ♪ When I think of letting go ♪ ♪ Oh no, gave up on the riddle, I cry just a little ♪ ♪ When I think of letting go ♪ ♪ Caught up in the middle ♪ ♪ I cry just a little ♪ ♪ In the middle ♪ ♪ I cry just a little ♪ ♪ In the middle ♪ ♪ I cry just a little ♪ ♪ In the middle ♪ - So I'm gonna close our show today.

I'm Dr. Vanessa Weaver, your host of "Workin' It Out," and I wish all of you to be happy week.

Bye-bye.

♪ Got problems on the job ♪ ♪ We're workin' it out ♪ ♪ Workplace got you stressing ♪ ♪ We're workin' it out ♪ ♪ Yeah, we're workin' it out, workin' it out, workin' it out ♪ ♪ With Dr. V ♪