Ep 28: Bridging the Generational Gap feat. A Mom

SARAH: Hey what’s up hello. Welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aro-ace girl (I’m Sarah. That’s me.)

KAYLA: And a demi straight girl (that’s me, Kayla.)

HEATHER: And Heather.

SARAH: Talk about all things to do with love, relationships, sexuality, and pretty much anything else that we just don’t understand.

KAYLA: On today’s episode: Breaching the generational gap.

BOTH: — Sounds fake, but okay.

*Intro music*

SARAH: Welcome back to the pod. 

KAYLA: Finally, after so many technical difficulties, we're here. 

SARAH: We just had a bunch of technical difficulties, it’s fine. But today, Kayla, what are we doing today? 

KAYLA: We're here with our friend's mom, Heather, because Heather recently started listening to the podcast. And she is one of the only adults – 

SARAH: Real adults – 

KAYLA: Real adults that we know of that listens to it, so it's a very exciting time. We’re out here in California visiting our friend, and Heather. It's Miranda, Miranda’s the friend. She is also here. 

MIRANDA: I was like, they’re going to totally know that it's me. 

KAYLA: Surprise, it's Miranda. She was on the last two episodes, and she's back. 

SARAH: Also, we might hear a cat again. Yeah, that would be a good thing. We love Sweet Pea, we stan Sweet Pea.

KAYLA: Sweaty Pea. So we thought we would sit down with Heather and see what questions she had, because she was just introduced to this whole aro-ace situation, and we would see what questions she had and see if we had any questions for Heather, as someone in the generation or two above us. One above us? 

SARAH: It depends on your math. 

HEATHER: I'm not that old. 

KAYLA: Heather is a young lady, just old enough to have Miranda as her child. 

SARAH: All right, so I guess we'll just let you take it away with whatever you have – 

HEATHER: Well, the first question I have is, it just seems very complicated to me that there are so many labels. So growing up, there was very few labels for what we could call people. It seems like they're just getting more and more specific, and they don't actually exactly mean the same thing. So you could be one thing and it can lead down this path, it's just seems like it's just branching out, and it's very confusing. 

KAYLA: Yeah, from someone that's like, more outside the community than Sarah is, I feel like I have that a lot. Because – What we were talking about like, episodes ago, about being like paper, or – 

SARAH: Oh, paper mache.

KAYLA: Yeah, paper mache. That to me felt too specific, even to me. 

SARAH: Yeah, I think that's definitely different than previous – Because you were mentioning earlier how there used to just be the category of straight, and then the category of gay, and then spinsters. 

HEATHER: Or none. So there's people who want to have sex, I guess the way you want to say biologically, then there's people who would like to do it with the opposite sex, and then there's just people who didn't have sex. They're just spinsters or bachelors. Now we break that all down, and even just even people that want to have sex with the same – So that even gets complicated. Because then you can go both ways – 

KAYLA: Because then you have bisexual people.

HEATHER: Yeah, so that just keeps getting, the web just keeps growing. 

SARAH: Right, and I think that is one of the things that's changed has been thinking about it in terms of a spectrum. Even when you think of it with a spectrum, there are things that don't quite fit into the spectrum. So if you're talking about a spectrum of sexual orientation with straight on one side, and gay on another side, you have bi and pan somewhere in between, but then where does ace fall? 

KAYLA: Yes, there's nowhere for ace to go in that spectrum. So then you have to have a separate spectrum for how interested you are in having sex. 

SARAH: Which includes the ace spectrum, but also includes everybody else. Because everybody else has their own – 

KAYLA: But also because it’s a spectrum, then you get into the issue of – So Sarah's identifies, she considers herself aromantic and asexual. Well, one of those aromantic is about her romantic identity, and then the other one's about her sexual identity. So then you have to break it up even further, because there's your four different types of attraction, but you also split things up. So it gets, it is very confusing, because there's so many labels, and then people use the labels in different ways. Like the way Sarah thinks of herself as asexual might be different than how someone else thinks of themselves as asexual, the definitions can vary a little bit by person. 

SARAH: And you can also have overlapping sexualities. So you can have, you know, you can be bisexual, panromantic, but also demi. 

HEATHER: So what would that mean? So explain that. 

SARAH: That basically means that you're – So biromantic means that you are romantically attracted to people from more than one gender. Then pansexual would mean that you're sexually attracted to people from all genders. 

KAYLA: That’s including people that are transgender. 

SARAH: Although don't trans people just count as whatever gender they identify as?

KAYLA: I don't know. From my understanding, I guess maybe that's changed since when I first learned. 

SARAH: I think it's changed.

KAYLA: Because when I first learned what pan was, I think it was like, including transgender, but I think now trans or – Oh my God, now pan more means that it's anyone, they could be – Well, now I just can't think of any different gender identity.

SARAH: When I first learned the term bi – 

MIRANDA: You're just attracted to a human being. 

KAYLA: That makes sense. Pan is like, regardless of your gender identity, it doesn't matter. Gender identity does not matter in attraction. 

SARAH: When I learned what the word bi meant, I understood it as you're attracted to men and women, but that's not quite it. But that's the simplified version of what that means, is that you’re attracted to women and men. 

KAYLA: Because bi could also be like, oh, I'm attracted to boys and demi boys.

SARAH: No, that’s – 

KAYLA: No, it's a different, it's a gender identity. Demi boy and demi girl. 

SARAH: Oh, okay. I didn't know that. 

KAYLA: Yeah, I'm not exactly sure what it means, but I recently learned that that's a gender identity, not just a sexuality.

SARAH: So many words. I understand your confusion, I'm learning new things. 

KAYLA: For me, I think for people on the outside, especially that identify as straight or mostly straight – Stop singing. 

SARAH: It was silent, me and Miranda were singing silently at each other. 

KAYLA: Okay. I think from on the outside of the community, labels are very confusing, because someone can't just tell you about their life or their preferences and you can automatically label them as the label that they want, because maybe they have a completely different idea of the labels that they want. I feel labels are most helpful for the people themselves, because for a lot of people, it feels better knowing. You have explained Sarah, that once you decided what your labels were, that it felt a lot better to you.

SARAH: Yes.

KAYLA: So I feel the reason that there's so many is because a lot of people feel more comfortable having a label, and so they try to find a label that fits them. And if it doesn't fit them, they just come up with a new one, because it makes them feel better and it helps them. 

SARAH: Yeah, and it's not, the way it's – I don't want to say set up. But again, the way it's set up, it is confusing, because there are spectrums, but it's not just one spectrum. It's not that everyone falls on the one spectrum. There's a lot of spectrums, and they do form a weird web, as you were saying. And the real answer is that, I don't know why it's like that. It's just the way it is, and there's only so much that can be explained. There's still some stuff that I don't quite understand, even being within the community. So if you're on the outside of the community, especially if you weren't raised, you know, learning what all of this meant, it's very confusing. 

KAYLA: For me, I think that the reason it's the way that this is set up, is because no one has the same sexuality. Even if you look at two straight people, they're into different things. They might have different sex drives, one might want kids and one might not, even though they're straight, and, you know, have sex or whatever. And so everyone's sexuality is just a little bit different. And so when you start to break that down, you really could give every single person ever their own specific label for how their sexuality works. 

HEATHER: But it makes it so complicated, that's why I just think you're heterosexual. 

KAYLA: Right, and I mean, a lot of people that are heterosexual I think, are just – 

SARAH: They put themselves in that box and call it a day. I just think for a lot of people who don't fit in the heterosexual box, they want to have a community.

KAYLA: They want to have a box.

SARAH: They want to have a box. Some people don't want to have a box, and that's fine. I don't understand it, but that’s fine. 

KAYLA: I struggled with my box. We all went through that together. 

SARAH: Right, well, because people want to put people other people in boxes. And so if you feel like you don't fit in a heterosexual box – I feel like in the past, it was either you're straight, or you're not, and those are the two boxes. But now people are just kind of creating more little boxes to put themselves in. Which, for better or for worse, that's how it is.

HEATHER: I mean, I can comprehend the three categories. I kind of get that. And I get that people want to have kids, or don't want to have kids, in all three of those boxes. But then I get confused when we're getting that third box, the ace. You're aromantic ace, and then you want kids, you don't want kids. Some want relationships, some want sex, some don't, it's very confusing to me. 

(10:00)

SARAH: Right, I guess the only other way I can think to explain It is like, if you think of someone's sexuality as more of a Venn diagram. So you dip into lots of different boxes, and then you know, whatever's in the middle is your own little box, and some people's middle might be the same as a lot of other people. If you're heterosexual, and you do want kids, your center part of the Venn diagram is going to be the same as a lot of other people. But if you have like a “less common sexuality”, it's going to be a lot different, which I guess explains why there are so many different labels. That’s my best explanation.

KAYLA: Yeah, because everyone has their own preferences. So I think the reason there's so many labels is because people are – With the internet now, people are able to find people that are like them more. And so they say, oh hey, I feel this way, I don't feel sexual attraction and you don't either, maybe there's other people like us. So they just find a community, and they're like, hey, we should name ourselves so we can identify each other. But it does get confusing, because you have the ace header, and then you have so many under it, you have your graysexuals, and your – Can't think of any other examples. 

HEATHER: Well it seems to me there should be just three categories. And there's heterosexuals who don't want romantic either, they just purely want to have sex, they're not looking for that. So in my mind, there's three categories, and then whatever you dig, is what happens in those areas, right? 

SARAH: Yeah, and I can understand that, I think the reason that most people, or at least the reason the LGBTQ+ community doesn't think of it like that is because, there are so many people who dip into more than one header. And also just because, you know, there is a spectrum, as confusing as it is, because there are so many different spectrums. But if you're talking about a spectrum, straight on one end, gay on the other, there's a spectrum of people in between, and you can still be straight, but not be complete, you know, far left. 

KAYLA: I would say, for me, from my perspective, the reason it's kind of good to have more particular labels is because if you have your three labels, you know, gay, straight, and ace, well, what happens when you are in maybe the straight box, but you don't feel like you completely belong? So you try to put yourself in the ace box, and you're like, oh, I don't really belong here either. And so you feel kind of like – 

SARAH: You're in this liminal space between the headers.

KAYLA: Yeah, that's where I kind of felt for a long time and still kind of feel that way. Because I'm straight, however, I don't feel sexual attraction to someone unless I know them emotionally. So that's why I consider myself demisexual. So that puts me in this weird in-between place where I'm straight, but I'm not like a lot of straight people. And I'm also ace, but I also am sexually attracted to people. So I'm not – 

SARAH: You’re not like a lot of ace people.

KAYLA: I'm not like a lot of ace people or the traditional asexual label. And so I'm in this in-between space, which makes me feel left out of both boxes simultaneously. And so by giving myself the name demisexual, now I have my own box where I can talk to other people that also feel left out in the same way. So that – Because if you're in two boxes at once, then you're kind of like, well, I don't belong in either place. 

SARAH: Right, and I think there's no harm in necessarily thinking about it as these three boxes or these three headers. Category of straight, gay, and then ace/other. 

KAYLA: And you just have your trickle down. It’s a pyramid.

SARAH: Yeah, but I think, yeah, I think there's no harm in thinking of it that way. It's just trying to understand the fact that the lines aren't, they’re not hard and fast, they blur together. Does that make sense? 

HEATHER: Yeah, I mean, I get that they don't blur together. I guess, it's hard – 

KAYLA: No, they do blur.

HEATHER: I mean, they do blur, you’re right, they do. But here's the thing, I just think that that extra labeling, I guess I don't see the need for it. Because I do know there's heterosexuals that aren't exactly the same. I mean, I understand that, but in my mind, they're still men and women. And there's gay people who will be men and men and women and women, and that's what they like. I guess there would be another one where you're saying they're bi, they kind of fall there. So see, that's where I'm getting complicated, why do we have to just keep labeling it? So even if you're heterosexual, you know, maybe you need romance. Or you don't, maybe you don't want any romance, and you just want to have physical sex, but it still is you’re heterosexual. 

SARAH: Right, and I think a lot of people who are straight, do kind of think of it as like, why is all this necessary? You're absolutely not the only person who thinks that way. And I think part of the reason for that because if you are straight, you're told your whole life that that's “normal.” And so because you feel normal, you don't feel a need to put a bunch of labels on it, because it's just how it is. But if you're a part of a group, or you have, you know, different aspects of your sexuality that aren't “normal,” a lot of people do feel the need to label them, because they want to understand themselves apart from what's considered normal. 

KAYLA: Yeah, I think it's just very hard to understand the need for it, when you personally don't have the need for it. Because to you, it doesn't make any difference what someone labels themselves, other than it's a lot of names for you to remember. Because, you know, you don't need a label for yourself, you feel, because you're just straight and that's like, whatever. So it's hard to see the need for it when it's not affecting you personally. It's just someone else's life that you're just like, alright, call yourself what you want. 

SARAH: And there are also people within the LGBTQA+ community who also don't like using – 

KAYLA: Yeah, there's a lot of people that don't like labels.

SARAH: There are people who just will use the label queer and call it a day, and that's their prerogative. 

KAYLA: Yeah, there's definitely another spectrum of people who just like, don't feel like they need labels or want a very specific label for themselves. And I struggled with having a label for a while, because I was like, I don’t know. 

SARAH: And in a perfect world, there would be no need for labels, because everyone would be, you know, accepted for whatever they are. But unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in.

KAYLA: I also think it’s helpful because the queer community, I guess, just to make it more broad, everyone that's not straight, it feels a lot smaller than it is just because we're not at a point yet – Obviously, you can talk about it a lot more now than you used to, it's a lot more okay, but we're still not at a point where it's super normal and everyone's okay with it. See here, the current legislation for, what is it? Georgia, whatever, and gay people adopting kids? 

SARAH: They just outlawed gay people adopting kids in Georgia. 

KAYLA: So, you know, we're still not all the way there. So it can be nice having a label, so you can identify yourself to other people and find other people like you. So you can be like, oh, hey, my name is Kayla and I'm demisexual. How are you today? What are you?

SARAH: And it’s like a safe little group to be in, where you can feel safe there.

KAYLA: Yeah, so it makes it easy to find other people that are like you, if you can just easily throw out a title and then other people are like, oh, me also not straight. Great, let's have a good time. 

SARAH: Yeah, but if it were just straight people, and not straight people, you wouldn’t be able to.

KAYLA: It’d be easier to relate to the people, I’m feeling.

SARAH: Wait, what?

KAYLA: It'd be harder – 

MIRANDA: It might not be relatable, but then you can also learn something new about it.

KAYLA: Well, yeah, it would be harder to relate to people as quickly without labels. Because then you have to have a whole conversation about, so give me your checklist of things that you like.

SARAH: And also, some people don't necessarily want to go into detail about their sexuality. So, if you can just say like, here's my label – 

KAYLA: Instead of being like, here's what I like in bed. You don't have to get as intimate about it, because it can be awkward sometimes. 

SARAH: I mean, sometimes, especially for people under the ace umbrella, you do have to explain what it means. A lot of people don't know. But you can explain it in broader terms, rather than just like, me personally. 

KAYLA: I got back on Tinder recently. I had demisexual in my Tinder bio, because I was like, let's just see what happens. And to be completely honest, I wanted someone to be disrespectful to me, so I could post a picture of it on our Twitter and be like, guys look it's funny. 

MIRANDA: Wait, but you wrote demigoddess. 

KAYLA: No, I changed it later so it actually said that.

MIRANDA: Because demigod is actually very confusing because people thought you were like half-Greek god. 

KAYLA: People thought I was like a Pacific Islander, it’s very confusing. 

HEATHER: So if you put that in there, that means you're not looking for a hookup. 

KAYLA: That's basically, yes. For me, that's what it means. And so a lot of people did ask me like, hey, what does that mean? And I explained that to a couple people and I thought people were unfortunately very respectful and very nice about it. 

MIRANDA: I’m sorry the world is changing for you. 

KAYLA: I know. One person even was like, oh my God, that's so cool. And I was like, oh, is it? It's just how it is, but okay. I don't know where I was going with this story. Oh, yeah, it made it easier to breach the conversation and be like, I'm not here to hook up with you, when I can just throw out a word that I knew they would ask about. So I could get rid of any awkwardness – 

SARAH: Or they would already know what it meant.

KAYLA: Or they would already know what it meant. To bridge any awkwardness of them being like, hey, let's have sex and I'd be like, no, I don't want to. 

HEATHER: So I guess I get where you could use a label, because honestly I’m going to sound old-fashioned but I really just don't care what people do with their relationships.

KAYLA: Well, great.

HEATHER: You do what you want to do. I mean, I'm just saying it doesn't matter. I don't want anybody putting, let's say, their business in my face. 

MIRANDA: She doesn't want to see PDA from anyone.

SARAH: Same, tag yourself.

HEATHER: Because I just think you know what, what you do, and what you like, what makes you happy, you do it and that should be it. But it shouldn't be something where you have to, I don't know, put it out there, advertise for everyone. It's no one's business but your own. That's kind of how I feel, but I can understand now if you're trying to meet someone that has the same interests. Otherwise, who cares? 

(20:00)

KAYLA: Yeah, I also think what's different about college life versus real adult life is when you're a real adult, you just don't go out in your workplace or in the grocery store and be like, hey, this is my sexuality. But for college, it's just more people talk about it, I guess. It’s more common to talk about.

HEATHER: Or it’s just younger people in general that would actually go on a dating app on their phone. 

KAYLA: Yeah, it's just people talk about it more, and so you have to find good ways of talking about it, if everyone else is going to be talking about it in general. If I was in the workplace, I wouldn't see the need – I don't want to know what people in my workplace are doing.

SARAH: Right, I feel like at work, it's like, either you're married or in a relationship, or you're not, and that's all your co-workers need to know. 

MIRANDA: In real adult life – 

HEATHER: No, they don't need to know what relationship you're even in. They shouldn't even ask. 

KAYLA: Unless you're close friends with them, there's no reason for it.

MIRANDA: Yeah, people might not even know you're in a relationship at work. 

KAYLA: Yeah, but for college life, it's just it comes up a lot; relationship stuff, sex stuff. 

MIRANDA: It's like, 70% social. That’s the problem. 

SARAH: Yeah, and I think a lot of the thing too is it's a bigger thing with younger people. Because when people are, you know, hitting their teenage years, hitting young adulthood, and maybe they're realizing like, hey, I don't fit into this box of “normal.” It's nice to have a label to understand who you are as a person. And even apart from the whole community aspect, it's just because you go from being like, I don't feel like I fit in, so you're out in this liminal space but then for a lot of people, once you have that label, you can feel more comfortable with who you are. And even if after you decide on that label, even if it doesn't matter, even if you never tell anyone that label, even if it's not, you know, publicized – 

KAYLA: You’re not broadcasting it anywhere.

SARAH: It's just also like, understanding yourself and knowing what's going on. 

KAYLA: Yeah, language is very powerful in understanding yourself. With sexuality or diagnoses and understanding, oh, I am depressed? or I do have ADHD? I think language and labeling yourself can just be very powerful in accepting what’s going on.

SARAH: For yourself.

KAYLA: Even if you aren't throwing it out there.

SARAH: Yeah. Okay.

KAYLA: Good talk.

SARAH: Do you have any other things that you feel like you have questions about? 

HEATHER: Well, that was the most complicated thing for me to understand. 

SARAH: It's so complicated. 

MIRANDA: Yeah, I got confused for a minute there. 

KAYLA: For literally anyone, unless you are studying it – And there are people that are studying it, which I think is very interesting. People go to school to study sexuality, so it's really cool. But I think no one knows – 

SARAH: No one is born knowing it. 

KAYLA: And especially – I just taught Sarah a new term. And Sarah is much more knowledgeable than I am.

SARAH: I feel like I've heard it before but didn’t quite know – 

KAYLA: You continue, I'm going to look it up. Okay. But yeah, do you have any other things you want to ask that maybe aren't as complicated, that you're just curious about?

MIRANDA: Or just like, college? 

HEATHER: No, not college. I've been there, done that. That’s nothing I need to ask.

MIRANDA: Things have maybe changed. 

SARAH: That is true.

HEATHER: They probably have changed. But, you know, interesting you say that. In general, history repeats itself and that's been going on since the beginning of mankind, let's just be realistic here. The only thing I don't understand is I guess the leap – And this is not specifically for you, this is just something to think about. The leap from, when did we start the relationships from caveman where it was purely just, it was to reproduce, right? That's the biological reason we have men and women. When did it develop to all this you had to be just heterosexual with one person, where I think probably at the beginning of time, it was one dude doing whoever he could to get as many women pregnant, right?

SARAH: Yeah, and then monogamy. 

HEATHER: Then we jumped up to that monogamy and then you think about history. You know there's been, since the beginning of time, there's been men with men or women with women. 

KAYLA: if you look at the Ancient Greeks – 

MIRANDA: Bathhouses.

HEATHER: Yeah, we've always had this in the background. So I think that in general biologically, we’re meant to reproduce and that's the bottom line. But after millions and millions of genes and genetics, I think things get complicated and confused and that's how we get different types of people, right? So it's interesting to see how that evolves. So for instance, I think maybe a person, and I don't want to offend anybody, but let's say Is there a reason why someone would identify to be queer, because maybe there's something genetically, like the body has said – I mean, I know there's a reason they feel that way. Maybe their body just didn't turn into the right type of sex. 

SARAH: Right, that's the really interesting thing is that we don't know. Science, we're trying to figure it out, but they don’t know. 

KAYLA: Yeah, because I would be really interested in seeing, you know, if there's a certain set of chromosomes or a certain hormone you can have. Because you could look at you know, it's very stereotypical, lesbians maybe stereotypically are more butch or more masculine and maybe they attract lesbians who are more feminine. And so you think, oh, that kind of looks to me like a traditional guy and girl relationship, because there's one more masculine person and one more feminine person. It’d be interesting to know, you know, do those people have some chromosomes or something that are opposite, that are attracting them? But like science, it’s not there.

SARAH: It can’t figure out – 

MIRANDA: The best they've come so far is that there's some sort of chemical structure. I don't think it's actually like chromosomes but I mean, every person has a different chemical makeup. So when it starts getting this many generations, then you're going to see changes, which is how we probably got to this point. And because we’re a more progressive and open community, you see people identifying with that chemical indifference. I wouldn't even call it an indifference, we are all original and unique. So those uniquenesses are becoming – 

HEATHER: Right, but so let's say you identify, you're physically a male but you identify as a female. Maybe you were supposed to be a female and something’s gone wrong, and the same thing with – 

KAYLA: I mean that's an actual thing, like intersex people, that does happen. People are born with the wrong genitals or maybe born with a mix of two genitals. Then the doctor, there's a lot of history on it, but the doctor will ultimately choose what gender you are, based on purely physical, like how big the baby's penis is, or whatever. And the doctor could completely assign the baby the wrong gender or the wrong sex. 

HEATHER: Yeah, with how they feel, right. 

KAYLA: Yeah, so a lot of kids will grow up being intersex. I think – This could be so wrong and bad, but I think I read a statistic that a lot of kids that are intersex do end up being trans, because they were just assigned the wrong gender by the random doctor that they had. So it literally does happen.

MIRANDA: So it’s actually something genetic you learn about if you take like, AP bio or something, that's the one thing we do know quite a bit about is intersex. It’s very chromosomal.

HEATHER: But even maybe so, then as an ace, maybe there's something in the genetic makeup – Because think about millions and millions and millions and millions of births, right, we keep going, we keep going. Maybe something in you is more of something, or less. I’m not a biology major, that's Miranda. 

MIRANDA: I’m not a biology major. 

HEATHER: But you understand it. But what I'm saying is, so sometimes I think it goes down to the basic genetic code or something, but you still have to live. You still have to go. 

SARAH: Yeah, because in my family, a weirdly high amount of non-straight people in my family. It's got to be like, if not genetic, something that can be passed down.

KAYLA: Something social, at least. I think for me, as a psychology major, we learn a lot about evolution. We were just learning – We're doing the romance chapter in my social psych class, a lot of theorists try to draw it back to evolution and what we originally needed as cavemen and women. Because they'll say, if you look at surveys and the statistics, men value looks more in relationships, and women value resources, like money and jobs and stuff. That's just how it falls for people.

HEATHER: That’s very primitive.

KAYLA: Right, so it's very primitive, because all men wanted in the beginning was sex, to spread their genes and have children, but women had to actually carry the child and so all they wanted was resources, because they needed someone to take care of them while they were pregnant, and they couldn't do it.

HEATHER: Makes sense.

KAYLA: So evolutionarily, that's what they needed. And so you see that kind of playing out in traditional gender norms and stuff, but you also have to think, things have changed since then. You know, it's not as hard for women to take care of themselves when they're pregnant anymore. And so you have to think over lots of years, that stuff has to change. 

SARAH: Well, and that's the really interesting thing about being ace is that like, you know, however many thousand years ago, if someone was ace, or just had a low sex drive, natural selection takes you out. Because you don't reproduce. And so I mean, I know that ace people and gay people, whatever, they've always existed, but a lot of the reasons that ace people are a) able to come out of the woodwork now, and b) there seem to be more of them, is because it's like our society has progressed enough, or our species has progressed enough that like, natural selection is not going to take us out. 

(30:00)

HEATHER: But you're not reproducing? 

MIRANDA: Yeah, that's why they're being taken out.

HEATHER: No right now. Am I confused? Because if you're – Are you reproducing? I'm getting confused.

SARAH: No, not necessarily but I mean, some people who are ace do.

KAYLA: And some people who are gay will have – 

HEATHER: Maybe use their egg?

KAYLA: Yeah, they'll use their egg or their sperm. 

HEATHER: But not all, so not many, so still theoretically you still could be, but maybe it's just the numbers of births across the world are so many. 

KAYLA: Because what I think is that humans don't need to reproduce a bunch anymore. 

SARAH: There's too many of us.

HEATHER: Yeah, of course we don’t, but still – 

KAYLA: So our sole purpose for survival anymore isn't reproduction, and so it's not [like] people that don't want kids, or like Sarah, or gay people are stunting humanity anymore because it's like, we don't need anyone else. 

HEATHER: Well, I didn't think she meant they were stunting humanity, I think she was saying that they would end their – What did you say exactly?

SARAH: Natural selection.

MIRANDA: What she is saying is that – So back in the day, you would get married and have a guy who took care of you so that you have all these resources to live a long, healthy life. So let's say if you're asexual and you don't find anyone, you don't have any kids, you might not make it as long living on your own, because you only have one source of income and maybe just die out. 

HEATHER: Die out, but now it’s the same thing, she's not really getting married and having kids, right?

MIRANDA: I'm saying she's going to live longer. 

KAYLA: Yeah, you don't need – You no longer need a heterosexual relationship to survive anymore. Way back when – 

HEATHER: Okay, I get that.

KAYLA: You literally needed to be in a heterosexual relationship, or identify that way, to live. But now with modern technology, and people can live on one wage, you can do whatever you want. And so that might be one reason that we're seeing more ace and gay people come out, is because they're able to.

HEATHER: Because society is accepting and you don't need it to survive. I get it. I was thinking of something else. We got there, sorry.

Here's something I think would be interesting. I think this would be a very interesting experiment. 

KAYLA: Give it to me. 

SARAH: Experiment?

HEATHER: I would – Yes. 

KAYLA: We're sciencing. 

HEATHER: Sciencing. I think it would be interesting to put babies, pictures of them with no clothing or any inclination as to what sex they are, and see if you could guess the sex of it. Because I swear, there's babies, you're like, that's a girl, that's a boy. No doubt in your mind, what sexuality they are, or what they are. But then there's some you're like hmm, could be a boy, could be a girl, right? What happens when they get older? 

KAYLA: It's interesting because again, as a psychology student, they’ve done studies where if they put a parent, an adult with a random baby in a room, and don't tell them what sex they are, they'll play with the baby with the same toys and act with them the same way. But then if you go in and you tell the parent or the adult, oh you're going to go in and play with the baby girl, they'll specifically choose oh, I'm going to play with a baby doll with them. And I'm going to call them words like sweetie, and call them pretty. But if they're put in a room and told you're going to play with this baby boy, they'll choose trucks and they'll talk about how tough the baby is, or how strong it is. So people literally, just by knowing the gender of the baby, do treat them differently. And that's when we see people growing up with such gender differences, because babies are treated differently based on their gender from the very start. And so it's not even inherent that girls might be so girly, it's just that we treat girls more girly.

SARAH: It’s nurture.

KAYLA: We nurture them to be girly from the start. So many of the gender differences could just be because we're placing them on them as babies and – 

HEATHER: But I'm saying I wonder if we were to just look at random pictures, you take a picture, picture, picture, picture, if we would be able to say, that baby is a girl, that baby is a boy, that baby, I don't know. Because, you know, in reality, sometimes if you do look at them, you're like, you can kind of tell maybe their cheeks are different or their eyelash[es], there's something about them that you can kind of tell. Maybe that's where I'm getting it wrong, maybe I do have something in the back that tells me what that baby is, that maybe there's something on them that's giving it [away]. But I'm saying, it’d be interesting to know, with no little thing on the head, no pink clothing, could we tell? Because maybe there's those people, like you said that, maybe the doctor chose the wrong sex. 

SARAH: So you're wondering that, the ones who look more androgenous or more gender neutral, you're wondering if those are the ones who aren't going to end up necessarily cisgender heterosexual?

HEATHER: Yeah, yeah, but then would this lead to can we tell from birth, this is a girl, this is a boy, and this is maybe someone who could be confused or something. I think it’d just be interesting to know, because I do think that I, maybe I'm wrong, but I think maybe I could tell for some of them. 

KAYLA: Yeah, I think it would definitely be interesting, just experiments like that and just seeing the genetic makeup of different people, or their chemical balances, and then seeing how that correlates with someone's –  

SARAH: Seeing if you can predict it?

KAYLA: Yeah, like seeing if I could look at Miranda's chemical balance, and Sarah's and being able to look at them and say, well, that's the chemical balance of an ace person, and that's the chemical balance of a straight person. That'd be super interesting, if science could get to that point. 

MIRANDA: Yeah, I wouldn't be shocked if it was a chemical balance.

KAYLA: However, my only worry for science getting to that point is, once we know what causes it, people will know how to “fix it.” And so then they can start doing procedures to turn people straight. 

MIRANDA: That’s like using chemicals – 

HEATHER: Well, except for why wouldn't you let someone be what they want to be, just like we let people –  

(40:00)

KAYLA: Well hey, I'm glad you think that.

HEATHER: You’re allowing people to choose what they want to be, [to] identify with, and make changes to their body. Why wouldn't you allow them if you could say, hey, this is a chemical change, and boom, that's who you are. 

MIRANDA: There's two sides to every problem. So there's going to be the people who are accepting of the fact that you could find out really early on how you might identify, and then there's going to be those people – 

KAYLA: The Westboro Baptist Church. 

HEATHER: I still wouldn't let them early on. I would not let them make the choice until they were old enough to decide. I wouldn't think that the – You wouldn't want the parent to make the decision too early. I think the child as they grow up – 

MIRANDA: No, we’re just saying there's always going to be those people stuck in the old days. And I mean, those people are kind of dying out, but there's always going to be people – 

SARAH: Who want to “fix” their child before it’s “too late”.

MIRANDA: Yeah, who are going to be stuck in that very bad way of wanting to go to what is considered normal. And then there's people like you who are like, well let the kid be who they want to be. 

SARAH: So Iceland is known to be a super progressive country, they're the closest country in the world to wage equality. But one of the issues in Iceland is – So abortion is legal there, and in most cases, it works just fine but Iceland has one of the lowest ratios of kids who are, I think it was Down’s syndrome, kids with Down’s syndrome. And the reason they have such a low number of kids with Down’s syndrome is not a genetic reason, it's because when women find out that they're pregnant with a kid that has Down’s syndrome, they get an abortion. 

KAYLA: So the problem would be if you could tell since you were pregnant, if the doctor could tell you, hey, based on your baby's chemical balance, I think your baby is going to be gay, what happens when people start saying, well, I don't want a gay baby, and so they abort?

HEATHER: But that's what I just said, I would not make changes until the child –  

KAYLA: I'm glad you wouldn't, but I don't trust most of the population that are bigots – 

MIRANDA: She's saying that people in another country are getting abortions, because they found out their kids going to have Down’s syndrome. 

HEATHER: But you know, in this country, we have that choice too, because we specifically have the test as well and you can choose to do something, because it's early on in the pregnancy. 

KAYLA: Right, and to do that, so what's going to stop someone from aborting a gay baby or trying to change their child's sexuality after they're born, through a scientist? 

MIRANDA: Because what if someone really wants their family line to extend, and they found out that their kid doesn't – They know early on that their kid wouldn't want to have kids? 

KAYLA: So they could, against their child's will, as a baby give that child a procedure, change the chemical imbalance to convert them to be straight. And people have been trying to convert gay people to be straight for centuries, like churches – 

MIRANDA: Could you imagine if there was a scientific thing that they could actually do?

KAYLA: If conversion therapy became real, because current conversion therapy is an absolute joke, what would happen? If that got into the hands of like Mike Pence, what would happen?

SARAH: And regardless of what the laws are, if there's a scientific way to do it, people are going to find a way to do it. 

KAYLA: So that's my one worry about figuring out the cause is that, people are going to then take that and use it to reverse it and then that’s just – 

MIRANDA: There's always going to be bad people on every side. And unfortunately, there are probably people out there that would want to do something like that. 

SARAH: For sure. And even in progressive places, like the situation with Iceland, even with places that are really great on other fronts, people are still, on this front – 

KAYLA: Doing that.

SARAH: Woo.

KAYLA: Science, what a sad – 

SARAH: What an episode. 

KAYLA: What an absolute bummer. 

MIRANDA: That was just something to really talk about. 

SARAH: It was interesting, though. 

KAYLA: It's something I think about often, the science behind it. But it's also hard to find – 

MIRANDA: Science has good things and bad things. 

KAYLA: Yeah, it's hard to bring up though, because it could be offensive to tell someone like, hey, you know why you're gay? Your chemical balances. People, a lot of people don't want to hear that, reasonably so. That's a weird thing to say to someone.

SARAH: Your chemicals are wrong. 

KAYLA: People could take offence to that.

HEATHER: But then you can say, people who are taking it for ADHD, you know why you're doing that? Hey, you know why you're taking this? Because you're psychotic, you got to stay on your meds. I’m not just saying ADHD – 

SARAH: Oh, I know.

HEATHER: There's so many things that we take pills for, so people don't have to struggle and suffer because that does help. I mean, I can't even imagine if I had – What is it? Bipolar. Boy, those people suffer. So the sticky wicket with that is, they take their meds and they're feeling better, then they go off their meds and I know people who have done it. 

SARAH: A lot of people do that. But without their meds then they're suffering, they're in this bad place. Maybe there's a lot of people out there who wish that they weren't the way they are, and they want to be this way. If they could take a pill that would make them, I mean, I think the opportunity for people to make that choice – 

MIRANDA: Well that’s the idea of like someone who's trans, is like they want them to be – 

SARAH: They choose to have, you know, surgery or they take testosterone.

HEATHER: Yeah, because here they are sitting here and thinking this is not – I want to make the change. So I think that if we could, like you said, maybe not, but give them the choice to maybe take a pill or whatever it is, to get them to be where they want to be. Because otherwise they're not happy. 

KAYLA: So yeah, there's definitely upsides and downsides. Because on one hand, yeah, you could finally have people be able to be whatever they want.

HEATHER: At peace.

KAYLA: Yeah, and that would be great. But then you worry about people taking advantage of that. 

SARAH: And also, on the other hand, the reason people might want to make themselves straight is because of society, not because of anything that's – Society is making their life hell, not their chemicals. 

KAYLA: Yeah, you would worry about someone taking a pill to turn themselves straight, not because they want to be straight, but because they feel like they have to be straight to get a job or something. And that's sad. 

SARAH: That is sad. Guess what?

KAYLA: Yeah? 

SARAH: We’re out of time. But it was really interesting, because I feel like a lot of the conversations we had, we wouldn't have had without Heather, our lovely guest. 

KAYLA: It was really good. We were talking about some difficult issues that we probably wouldn’t have talked about. 

SARAH: Hell yeah. Do we have a poll? 

KAYLA: Oh, no. 

HEATHER: Was my mom great or what? No is not an option. 

KAYLA: Was Heather great? Yes; yes with a second option. 

SARAH: It's really hard to have polls for serious episodes. 

KAYLA: Yes, that are sad. 

SARAH: That can be our poll, I think.

HEATHER: I'm fine with that poll. 

KAYLA: So here’s your poll. Was Heather a great guest? Yes. And yes, but the second option. 

SARAH: A very scientific poll. 

KAYLA: Didn't I tell you? We're a science podcast now.

SARAH: Oh, absolutely. You can find that poll on our Twitter @soundsfakepod. You could also – 

KAYLA: Follow us on Tumblr. 

SARAH: Sorry, I had to – Ooh, what? What just happened? Sorry, I had to restart my computer. Alright, guys. We just had a real moment of fear. 

KAYLA: Sarah thought she lost it. 

SARAH: I thought I lost the entire episode. It was good. Anyway, I had to pull up my thing. 

KAYLA: We're done. 

SARAH: Phew. Okay, you can find us on Tumblr, I think Kayla already said but it’s soundsfakepod.tumblr.com. You can email us at soundsfakepod@gmail.com. Kayla, where they can listen? 

KAYLA: You can find us on SoundCloud, iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Castbox, I'm just making things up. Literally anywhere you find your podcasts, you could find us. I'd love it if you gave us a like and a comment and a review. It’d help us out and be super cool. 

SARAH: Hell yeah, we also have a Patreon, patreon.com/soundsfakepod. And guess what? 

KAYLA: What? 

SARAH: We got a new patron within the past 20 minutes. 

KAYLA: Oh, the tea is hot. 

SARAH: The tea. Okay, so I'm just going to go through them. So we have our $5 patrons, we have Sydney Mook, she can be found on her Instagram @sydneymoo. We also have Jennifer Smart, you can find Jennifer Smart by going to YouTube and looking up Lehen Productions. We also have Asritha Vinnakota, she can be found on Instagram @asritha_v. And we have a new $5 patron. 

KAYLA: Who is it? 

SARAH: His name is Austin Le. 

KAYLA: And we kind of bullied him on Twitter. It was a joke, he's our friend in real life, and also we didn't mean it.

SARAH: The thing he wants to promote is a Twitch channel, it is twitch.tv/arris_ tier. Is that how pronounce it? 

KAYLA: I'm currently watching her. Austin is in the chat talking, I don’t think he knows I’m here.

SARAH: What does she do? 

KAYLA: She plays Smash, and (mispronounces) Melee?

SARAH: (correcting) It’s Melee. Melee? It’s Melee.

KAYLA: I’m so dumb. She's currently doing an IRL stream. She looks nice. 

SARAH: All right, so thank you Austin for giving us money. Then we have our $10 patron Emma Fink. She can be found by going to YouTube and looking up Emma T Fink. Thank you for listening – 

KAYLA: Where can they find the Patreon? 

SARAH: I already told them, patreon.com/soundsfakepod. I already told them. Thank you for listening, tune in next Sunday/ Monday, because this is our last pre-recorded one, for more of us in your ears.

KAYLA: Until then, take good care of your cows.