Grief, Injustice, and Identity: Asking for Understanding and Empathy

[0:02] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values, by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger. Today we talk about grief and how a humanist can deal with the loss of a loved one, their favorite sports team, and even an election. Then we talk about the Christian nationalists in the Ohio Statehouse who passed a bathroom ban against the trans community. And finally, we find out just how simple figuring out biological sex really is. Glass City Humanist is an outreach project of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie, building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow. We’ll be right back.

[0:43] Music.

[0:59] At the time that this is being recorded, we had just completed the 2024 presidential election campaigns, and people voted. And for most of us who are of the humanist persuasion, progressive and our humanist values are inclusive and progressive, we took it on the chin on November the 5th, unfortunately. A majority of voters decided to go a different way. And for a lot of us, it was a loss. I mean, it was a loss that we physically and emotionally felt, and we need to grieve. Even for elections, we need to grieve. My favorite football team, when it loses a close game, I grieve.

[1:56] The other type of grief that humans go through is the loss of loved ones. The loss of an animal, a favorite animal like a cat or a dog. People grieve. It’s a natural part of being human. It’s your emotions. You become attached to something emotionally, and when you lose that attachment for some reason, you can feel it deep inside you, and it breaks your heart. People talk about broken hearts. That’s why it manifests itself as a physical attribute.

[2:34] You actually feel sick.

[2:38] Some people get depressed. They don’t want to get out of bed. Some people eat, you know, they eat comfort foods, ice cream or whatever, you know, to make them feel better. Or maybe they watch a comedy movie, one of their favorite comedy movies. Or I know in one situation when I had a relationship end, I listened to a certain musician. I listened to the group, the Eurythmics, for six months or something like that to try to get over it back in college. And so that’s what people do. People take different paths in dealing with their grief. Now, you need to deal with your grief because there’s no real good reason to

[3:27] keep it in or to keep on it. You want to acknowledge the loss and you want to deal with that loss and you want to move on.

[3:43] It’s not a natural thing to feel crappy all the time. That’s not natural. That’s not human. You want to get to a place where you acknowledge the loss and it’s there with you. Either you remember it, like for a loss of a loved one, you remember them, but it doesn’t turn you into a sobbing sack of flour or something like that. You want to get to that place where you can objectively remember bad things that happened to you and have a retrospective look at it. And in some cases, it helps people. It builds them up. When you lose a relationship, for example, you learn from that loss in hopes that your next relationship will be better and you’ll improve. Because you know what happened when you lost the previous one. Doesn’t always work that way, but, you know, that’s what some people do. The same with losing a loved one. It does get better. Back in many years ago, I lost my sister to cancer. She passed away when she was 40 years old. I believe it was 2003.

[5:03] And it devastated me because, I mean, we weren’t close, close, but, you know, it was my sister. And I was bummed out. I was feeling the grief for quite a while. And then as I progressed, I acknowledged it. I wrote a nice eulogy about her that I said at the funeral. And as we’ve gone on, And, you know, I visit the Find a Grave website, and there’s a memorial for her that I maintain. And so I’m able to acknowledge the loss, but it doesn’t control my life anymore like it did in the immediate aftermath of that. You know, it’s not, I don’t define myself based on that loss anymore.

[5:58] And so, you know, most people, most psychologists and psychiatrists say that there’s a path that you go in a grieving process. You know, you process it, you acknowledge it. Some people deny it and then you get angry. And then what was it? Acceptance, I think, is the next one, whatever. There’s a particular step. I’m not a professional, but there’s a particular step. Now, one of the things that when I’ve gone through periods of grief in my life, one of the things that has helped me is being able to talk to other people.

[6:38] About it, honestly and positively about the loss. Whoever that is, if that’s your loved ones, if that’s your parents, a therapist.

[6:53] I know some religious people talk to their priests or their rabbis. I mean, you can do that. Typically, humanists don’t normally do that. We go for actual professional people, professional therapists, that that’s their job. 100% of the day is therapy. You know, we talk to that. You talk to friends.

[7:20] You know, one of the things that I use on occasion is I write things down. I write stories or essays, or I just write my thoughts It’s like a journal. That’s another thing that helps you deal with the daily thing that we call life is you can do a journal. Jot down how you feel that particular day or what particular thing made you mad. And it helps you work out that situation in your brain. Um, I know many people have trouble when they’ve had a, um, either a grief situation or a tragic situation in their life, they lose sleep. And the reason why you lose sleep is because you’re running it through your head constantly and it’s hard to relax. And so you want to try to find things that help you relax. So you’re not running it through your head constantly. And for me, that’s writing. I write stuff out. Um.

[8:23] I have some people that I trust that I talk to. That’s the other thing is when you talk to people about your grief or some incident in your life that you want to discuss with somebody is do it with somebody that you trust. You know, somebody that’s not going to be judgmental. The worst thing you could do is talk to somebody who decides to say that you’re a bad person or you did something wrong or something like that. Not saying that you didn’t do anything wrong, but usually when you’re trying to work through the process, you don’t want people to be judgmental.

[9:03] You want it to be in a situation where you can work through the grief and come out a whole person, a good person, and not have that as a burden on you for the rest of your life.

[9:20] And so that’s the thing that you have to remember, is if you do talk to somebody, make sure it’s somebody that you trust. So we were talking about the grieving process, and one of the reasons why a lot of people are grieving now is because of the election. The people and the things that we supported, for the most part, at least on the humanist side, we didn’t succeed. There was some bright spots here in the local area, in our area, Toledo area, but the state wasn’t, the stuff that we voted on in the state was not successful.

[9:58] Obviously, the national stuff wasn’t successful, what we wanted. And so, you know, people are like, you know, it’s the bigots, the bigots won.

[10:10] And yeah, I mean, you can say that. You can say that. It appeared to me…

[10:19] That a lot of people voted based on self-interest, you know, how it was going to affect them, what they were going to get out of it. You know, it’s like people were complaining about inflation and grocery prices, and they were blaming President Biden for it, even though logically, And if you look this stuff up and the data shows that it wasn’t the government that drove up the prices, you know, it was the, the, uh, corporations that profited, you know, nobody talked about that. You know, nobody complained, you know, that Kroger made Buku, uh, profits during this time. And there was even a court case because they were attempting to merge with Albertsons, another large grocery chain. And there was an antitrust court case. And one of the people, one of the managers from Kroger Company stated that they did jack up the prices during during the not only during the pandemic, but shortly after after the pandemic for no reason. There was no reason to jack the prices up, and they did, because they could.

[11:38] And that’s one of the things. And you’re like, well, why did people vote for the other side that was all about, well, the inflation? It was Bidenomics is what they called it.

[11:52] Um, that’s the other thing too, is, you know, the economy at this certain point was the envy of the world or is the envy of the world that, uh, the United States did a better job with the economy coming out of the pandemic than some of the countries in Europe. You know, some of the countries in Europe had really bad economies, recessions, uh, Japan, I think had a couple of recessions and the United States did not. And we had low unemployment, and the only negative that we had was the inflation, and not all of that was generated by politics. It was generated by greed, corporate greed.

[12:38] And so, you know, you’re looking back and plus then we had the character issues. You know, time and time again during elections, we’re told that character matters, that if you’re a convicted felon or a terrible person that is a bigot and that you use racist terminology and stuff like that, that you can’t get elected to a public office. Well, this election proved that that is not the case. And it’s distressing for humanists. It’s distressing for progressive people like myself to see that, that in fact we were lied to, that character doesn’t matter, and crime does pay.

[13:27] And then I think back, though, I also remember another time there was another presidential election where we had a candidate that had some legal problems who was even impeached who won re-election, and that was Bill Clinton in the 90s. Of course, his legal trouble was more moral, morality-based than criminal-based. He got in trouble for a sexual relationship outside his marriage, and a majority of Americans didn’t think that that was a problem. And I agree with him then and I agree with him now that that was a private matter between him and his wife Hillary. That wasn’t something to impeach him as a president. Adultery is not something to be impeached on. It has nothing to do with his job. Now, I know some people might disagree, and that’s fine. But that kind of reminds me of what we’re experiencing now. Except in this case, Donald Trump was worse. It wasn’t just a problem with his morality. I mean, he was a convicted felon. He was convicted of 34 felony counts of false business practices in New York State.

[14:51] He paid off an adult film star to keep silent over a tryst that they had. Um, you know, and, and he, and he had been impeached twice while he was president, you know, and then you see, you see the, the political campaign that they ran that, uh, that Donald Trump and his, uh, vice president candidate J.D. Vance ran. And it was all about anti-immigration, anti-trans. During his rallies, he called Kamala Harris trash. He said that illegal immigrants were vermin and poisoning our country. You know, this is not positive, uplifting stuff. This is grievance campaigning. You know, he was running because he didn’t like how he was treated when he was president the first time. And then he also claimed that 2020, oh, and he’s always claimed that the 2020 election was stolen. So that begs the question, well, if the Democrats were able to steal the 2020 election, why didn’t they do it this time? They don’t have an answer for that.

[16:13] So, you know, those are some of the questions that have come up after the election. That voters, I guess, decided that it was more important how what they got out of it than voting to protect their friends and loved ones from losing more of their rights. Because that’s on the table now. A national abortion ban is on the table. The Project 2025 stuff that we talked about in the months leading up to the election, that’s all on the table now. You know, and I think that there’s some people that think that there’s going to be somebody to hold Donald Trump back and his minions back. And it won’t be so bad. It’ll be just like the first time when he was incompetent and he didn’t do the job and they didn’t do anything. You know, I’m not a gambler. That’s why I voted the way I did. I’m not a gambler. I’m not going to gamble, even though I’m a white, cisgendered man.

[17:20] It didn’t matter who was actually elected.

[17:26] I’m the default in this country. I voted because I didn’t want my friends and family and loved ones to be hurt in the future. And now that’s all on the table. And that’s something we have to deal with. So as we move on and we move on from the grief, then we need to get to work. And as I explained to my membership in a video that I did the day after the election, you know, Sholi is still going to be here. Humanists are still needed. Our humanist organizations are still going to be here. And we’re going to have to do the work. We’re going to have to start again and try to make this country a better place for everyone. Who knew that diversity, inclusion, and equality was a bad thing? Who knew that? That just seems insane. It does. And I just don’t throw that terminology around much at all. You know, how could it be using somebody’s preferred pronouns be such a detriment to this country that people vote for the nastiest person that I consider to exist in the world right now?

[18:53] And that’s my personal opinion. That’s not anybody’s consensus or anything, but just based on the evidence, and that’s all we have to go by is evidence, actual concrete evidence, that the person that won is probably the worst human being on the face of the earth right now. And everything, everything that we’ve heard about this person, everything that he’s talked about, about going after the enemy within and getting revenge on his enemies, that’s all on the table. I hope it doesn’t happen. But like I said, I’m not a gambler. I didn’t gamble on this election, but many people did. And we all have to live with that decision right now. For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[20:00] One of the first marginalized groups to be affected by the election that we just had a couple weeks ago is the LGBTQ community, particularly trans people. Ohio had already banned gender-affirming care for minors. They also passed a school sports ban on trans athletes, even though there’s like five or six in the whole state. And now they ended up passing a bathroom ban. And right now, the Ohio legislature is in what’s called a lame duck session. Every General Assembly is two years, and the two years for the current General Assembly is up at the end of 2024.

[21:00] Any bill that has not been passed by the end of the year dies, and they would have to reintroduce it to the next General Assembly. Well, one of those bills that they rushed, they rushed to pass was a bathroom ban. And the cowards did it the way cowards do things. They did it in secret, and they attached it to a bill that had already passed the House and it had bipartisan support because it dealt with school college credits. And they attached an amendment that was the bathroom ban. I think it was 83, House Bill 83 or Senate Bill 83, one of those. And they attached it to a bill that had already been passed in one of the houses, either Senate or the House, because that’s what cowards do. When they do something that they know people don’t like is they’ll do it in secret. They’ll do it all of a sudden and they won’t have any hearings on it or anything because they know it’s unpopular.

[22:12] And why? Why did they do it? There is no valid reason, no secular reason to ban trans women from the bathroom that their gender identity is. Now, they had a few of the people during the debate on the legislative floor talking about how they need to protect girls. And whenever I hear that argument, I go, protect them from what? Because they don’t come right out and say what they’re protecting girls from. But it’s obvious what they’re talking about. They have fallen back into the old, worn-out belief that we often saw during debates over the rights of gay people, that these religious conservatives, and they’re almost all religious conservatives, believe that trans women are child molesters, automatically child molesters. So they’re talking about they don’t want men in women’s bathrooms. Well, if you denigrate a trans woman and think that they’re a man, that’s a problem that you have.

[23:40] And the data shows that most children who are molested are molested by people that they know, it’s not they’re not molested by strangers more often than not they’re molested by a parent they’re molested by a teacher remember back in the old days, uh homosexuals couldn’t be teacher school teachers because they assumed that homosexuals were trying to molest children because that’s how these religious Neanderthals think about gay people in general. So what are they trying to accomplish by banning trans people from the bathrooms of their gender identity? What are they trying to accomplish? They’re trying to punish them for the choices that they made because they have the ick factor. They don’t like their choice.

[24:46] As if it’s just a choice. And for many trans people, it’s not just a choice. Any more than it’s a choice that, like a color or ice cream flavor, it’s not the same thing. You know many of these trans people feel it in their bones that they are the gender identity that they want to express if it’s a trans woman or a trans man they feel it in their their cells, their brain their bones their blood that they have to be that gender that they identify with.

[25:36] And here you have some putzes in the Ohio legislature trying to police you, trying to police them, trying to police bathrooms. Like, how are they going to know? See, they think that a trans woman is easy to spot because they look like a man in a wig. And that’s what they think. They think it’s just a man in a wig wearing a skirt. You know, they’re thinking that it’s going to be some guy with a five o’clock shadow with a really cheesy wig going into a girl’s bathroom to molest them. That’s what they think. And they’re wrong.

[26:20] And it’s just irritating. It’s just irritating that we have to do this all the time. We have to go through this. And it’s just not at the state level. There was a report out this week that a House of Representative, a religious conservative House of Representative person, Nancy Mace, who is big buddies with President Trump, wants to ban the only known out trans woman who was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Delaware, ban her from using the bathroom of her gender identity. And for what? What is the reason?

[27:08] Who is Nancy Mace protecting? This is the same person who is a rape survivor. Nancy Mace is a rape survivor, yet she voted for Trump, and she supports Matt Gaetz as attorney general.

[27:29] That’s what these religious conservative people do.

[27:36] They’re the biggest hypocrites on the face of the earth. And they’re going after a group of people who are powerless to fight back, relatively. You’re not talking about a gigantic voting bloc. You know, you’re not going to see a riot at the Capitol of trans people. You know, it’s only the conservatives that tend to riot and carry around guns and strut around and demand things. The marginalized groups don’t because they’re so used to being marginalized.

[28:18] But why are people hurting them? Why is the government going after them like that? Because they can, because they’ve got nothing else, because they’re stupid, they’re ignorant, they’re morons, they’re bigots, they’re disgusting bigots, that they would attack somebody just trying to be who they want to be. They want to love who they want to love. They just want to get through life, just like all of us. But they constantly have to fight these battles just to be human, just to get their basic worth and dignity that they deserve.

[29:08] And i know some of you don’t support trans rights because of the ick factor you guys don’t like it, get over it these are people they’re not hurting anybody they just want to be who they are they just want to love who they want to love, and we need to have the government get out of the way, You know, these people, they talk about, these religious conservatives talk about religious freedom and coach praying on a football field and having flags up and strutting around saying, hey, I’m Christian. But they want to take away rights from a marginalized group of people like the trans community. And for what? What is the reason they want to do that? Because they’re bigots. Because there is nothing to be corrected by doing that. There’s nothing to be fixed by doing that. You’re not going to force these trans people to go back to the way that they were originally at birth.

[30:34] You know i had a conversation with a friend of mine who is planning on making that journey, and i said look you know it’s just a terrible environment for you to be doing that but it’s something that they have to do and i respect them for it and i’m going to do everything that i can to protect them to make sure that they can do what they want to do, Again, they’re not hurting anybody else. They aren’t. Just like gay people aren’t hurting anybody else by being gay. And then we have these bigots, these moronic bigots in the Ohio House, in the Ohio legislature that passed this bill. How are they going to enforce it? Are they going to require a birth certificate in order to use a bathroom at a public school? Are they going to have, oh, they’re going to have the hallway monitor check genitalia. That’ll be fun. How are they going to enforce it in a public school? How are they going to enforce it in a college? Because the law also applies to colleges.

[31:49] Many colleges have moved towards unisex bathrooms.

[31:57] So what are they going to do? Now they’re going to have to build more bathrooms? Is that what they’re going to do? But the state didn’t give the colleges any extra money to do that. They didn’t give public schools any extra money to do that. But just so that they can wink and nudge and elbow their buddies at the church, hey, look what I did with these trans people. I got them. That’s the whole point.

[32:34] But I know I’ve kind of ranted on about that, about that bill. It’s a bad bill, terrible. And like I said, cowardly. The Ohio legislature acted cowardly in passing that bill attached to a different bill. But, you know, the majority party does that quite often. When they’re trying to pass bills that nobody likes. Like currently we have the House Bill 445 and Senate Bill 293, which I talked about, I think, in the last episode. And they’re having, the day that I am taping this, recording this episode, they are having a hearing in the Senate for it, which would force public school, if it passed into a law, would force public schools to accommodate LifeWise Academy.

[33:29] And so they’re having a hearing today in the Senate for everybody, proponents, opponents, and interested parties. They’ve limited the in-person witness testimony to three minutes per person. When we had the opponent testimony last week for House Bill 445, which is the exact same bill, but only in the House, it was reported to us that there was over 200 opponent testimonies turned in. I counted 167 on the website today. That’s another bill they’re trying to rush through. And for what? What is the purpose? So that some religious multi-million dollar organization, LifeWise Academy, that’s funded by the people that wrote Project 2025, their theology is evangelical extremism in a nutshell. They’re trying to recruit kids and convert them to Christianity. You know, people say that gay people are trying to recruit kids that’s in public school. Here are some Christians that are trying to convert children to Christianity.

[34:53] And so that’s another bill that if it doesn’t pass by the end of the year, that will also die. I’m hoping that bill dies. But the reason why they’re having this hearing is basically to have a token, and they’ll probably vote it out of committee probably the next day, and then it will go for a vote. That’s how it works at the lame duck session. All these bad bills that they couldn’t get support to pass during the regular session, session. They’re trying to cram it until the end of the year, or December 13th, I guess, is supposed to be their last day.

[35:32] And they’re just a bunch of cowards. You know, using secrecy, and chicanery, and they’re just a bunch of cowards, moronic, bigoted cowards.

[35:53] Hello, this is Douglas, host of The Glass City Humanist, inviting you to listen to selected segments of The Glass City Humanist on Toledo community radio station WAKT, 106.1 FM, Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Eastern Time. If you can’t listen to us on the radio, you can live stream us on ToledoRadio.org or visit Visit our On W.A.K.T. Page on our website, glasscityhumanist.show, for past episodes.

[36:26] Music.

[36:35] There was a post on Facebook that I enjoyed, and I shared it on our Facebook page for our group, and I kind of wanted to read it. I wanted to read the whole thing. This was posted by Paul Bannon, and it was a post by Rebecca Helm, who’s a biologist and assistant professor at the University of North Carolina of Asheville. And talking about genetics and gender. Biological sex, identity, gender. And this is what Rebecca Helms wrote.

[37:21] Friendly neighborhood biologist here. I see a lot of people are talking about biological sexes and gender right now. Lots of folks make biological sex seem really simple. Well, it’s so simple, let’s find the biological roots, shall we? Let’s talk about sex. If you know a bit about biology, you will probably say that biological sex is caused by chromosomes. XX and you’re female, XY and you’re male. This is chromosomal sex, but is it biological sex? Well, turns out there is only one gene on the Y chromosome that really matters to sex. It’s called the SRY gene. During human embryonic development, the SRY protein, turns on male-associated genes. Having an SRY gene makes you genetically male. But is this biological sex?

[38:26] Sometimes that SRY gene pops off the Y chromosome and over to an X chromosome. Surprise! So now you’ve got an X with an SRY and a Y without SRY. What does that mean? A Y with no SRY means physically you’re female. Chromasonally, you’re male, X, Y, and genetically, you’re female . An X with an SRY means that you’re physically male, chromosomally female , and genetically male . But biological sex is simple. There must be another answer. Sex-related genes ultimately turn on hormones in specific areas on the body and reception of those hormones by cells throughout the body, is this the root of biological sex?

[39:29] Hormonal male means you produce normal levels of male-associated hormones, except some percentage of females will have higher levels of male hormones than some percentage of males. Ditto female hormones, etc. And if you’re developing, your body may not produce enough hormones for your genetic sex, leading you to be genetically male or female, chromosomally male or female, hormonally non-binary, and physically non-binary. Well, except cells have something to say about this.

[40:10] Maybe cells are the answer to biological sex, right? Cells have receptors that hear the signal from sex hormones. But sometimes those receptors don’t work. Like a mobile phone that’s on, do not disturb. Call and sell, they will not answer. What does this all mean? It means you may be genetically male or female, chromosomally male or female, male, hormonally male-female-nonbinary, with cells that may or may not hear the male-female nonbinary call, and all this leading to a body that can be male-nonbinary-female.

[41:00] Try out some combinations for yourself. Notice how confusing it gets? Can you point to what the absolute cause of biological sex is? Is it fair to judge people by it?

[41:15] Of course, you could try appealing to the numbers. Most people are either male or female, you say. Except that as a biological professor, I will tell you, the reason I don’t have my students look at their own chromosome in class is because people could learn that their chromosomal sex doesn’t match their physical sex. And learning that in the middle of a 10-point assignment is just not the time. Biological sex is complicated. Before you discriminate against someone on the basis of biological sex and identity, ask yourself, have you seen your chromosomes? Do you know the genes of the people you love? The hormones of the people you work with? The state of their cells? Since the answer will obviously be no, please be kind, respect people’s right to tell you who they are. And remember that you don’t have all the answers.

[42:14] Again, biology is complicated. Kindness and respect don’t have to be.

[42:22] Biological classifications exist. XXXY XXY XXYY in all manner of variation, which is why sex isn’t classified as binary. You can’t have a binary classification system with more than two configurations, even if two of those configurations are more common than others. Biology is a shitshow. Be kind to people. And I really like that essay because it gets to the heart of the matter. Is unless you know specifically what the cells say, you don’t have a right to discriminate against people because of your personal preferences. Period. End of sentence.

[43:17] And so the next time that it comes up when people are talking about well there’s only male and female sex biologists don’t believe it scientists don’t believe it it’s not true there is more than one sex just because we have more people expressing male sex and female sex doesn’t mean there’s only two sexes. And I know I had this friend in the early days of the internet when we had a humanist chat area, and she believed that there was at least three sexes, and three genders. You know, gender is a social construct. You know, wearing makeup and skirts for women and suits for men, that’s a social construct. It can be changed. There is no biological reason to wear makeup in a suit. There’s no biological reason why a man has to use a men’s room. There’s no biological reason why a woman has to use a woman’s restroom.

[44:35] I tell this story a lot when I went to college, and we used to go to the bars all the time. And the lineup for the woman’s restroom was large. And a lot of times those women would skip out and go into the men’s room because we had a couple of sit-down toilets and a trough that the men would urinate into. And the women would use the sit-down toilets because the men weren’t using them most of the time. And nobody cared. Nobody cared that there was a woman in the men’s room.

[45:11] And nobody cared if there was a man in the woman’s room unless they were trying to do something. And most of the time, especially with trans women, they just go to the bathroom to go to the bathroom.

[45:26] And like I said, unless you have a biological reason to discriminate against people and you actually have the evidence that it makes sense, or you’re wanting to try to fix something that you think is broken, stay out of it. It’s not your call. Just let people be who they are and love who they want to love and get on with their life with basic humanity and basic dignity that we all expect.

[46:03] Thank you for listening. For more information about the topics in this episode, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show. Glass City Humanist is an outreach of the secular humanists of Western Lake Erie. Sholee can be reached at humanistswle.org. Glass City Humanist is hosted, written, and produced by Douglas Berger, and he’s solely responsible for the content. Our theme music is Glass City Jam, composed using the Amplify Studio. See you next time.

[46:47] Music.