78 - Gender, Bisexuality, and Fairness

Sexual orientation and gender identity are currently hot-button topics. The non-monogamous community attracts many people who are exploring alternative identities, but many of the challenges in dating, acceptance, and personal discovery remain the same. How do you operate with grace and confidence iIn a culture that isn't necessarily fair to everyone?

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Multiamory was created by Dedeker Winston, Jase Lindgren, and Emily Matlack.

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Transcript

If you find any transcription errors, please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Dedeker: Really, the human heart, Jase.

Jase: The human heart. Yeah, the human heart is deep and wide. Deep and wide.

Dedeker: It's got a fountain flowing deep and wide.

Jase: I love that you worked in a Christian song into this intro here. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, we're gonna talk about...

Dedeker: Aim to sprinkle in Christianity into our heathen topic of polyamory.

Jase: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we're gonna be talking about gender, some differences between the experience of people who identify as male or female in terms of their poly journey or just their dating journey in general. Also about sexuality Most specifically talking about bisexuality or polysexuality or pansexuality or omnisexuality or whatever, all these terms that kind of have been created around this not gay, not straight, but something else. And then also talking about fairness, just this idea of this struggle for fairness that a lot of us feel compelled toward and some ways to think about that. And some advice from the Buddha at the end here.

Dedeker: The Buddha himself makes a guest appearance on the Multiamory podcast. Man, that's who we should get, Jase.

Jase: That would be the best guest ever.

Dedeker: Can you imagine if we got the Buddha?

Jase: That would be so good.

Dedeker: And he would like promote us to his followers. Oh man, that would be great.

Jase: Oh man, yeah, I bet he's got a sick Twitter following.

Dedeker: Okay, yeah. Let's see if we can contact the Buddha's people.

Jase: See if we could, okay. We'll get our people on that, have our people talk to his people. That'd be great.

Dedeker: Okay, so this discussion was inspired, oddly enough, by Comic-Con.

Jase: Yeah, yeah, so this last weekend, well, I guess when this episode comes out it will be a week and a half ago, but I was just at Comic-Con this last weekend, and it was great, and...

Dedeker: It's a good story. Yeah.

Jase: No, the reason why... Okay, so you went to Comic-Con, you.

Dedeker: Dressed up as like a super sexy Red Sun Superman.

Jase: Yes, I dressed up as Red Sun Superman.

Dedeker: It's definitely the most important part of the story.

Jase: Yeah, we're gonna post some pictures of that on our Patreon group, for those of you who want to check it out.

Dedeker: Oh, trust me, you want to check it out.

Jase: So the fun thing about Red Sun Superman is that it's an alternate reality version of Superman, where his space pod that lands on Earth when he's a baby lands 12 hours later. So instead of landing in the Midwest, it lands in in Soviet Russia. It actually lands in the Ukraine, which is part of the USSR because it's all like during the Cold War. And he, you know, grows up rather than fighting for truth, justice, and the American way is truth, justice, and the Soviet way. What's cool about it though is that he's still a good guy. He's still the same person. He's still Superman who wants to save everyone and never wants to hurt anybody. But believes in communism instead of believing in capitalism. So it's this really cool alternate version and it's sort of relevant to what we're talking about today in that it's not just the opposite of another thing, it's just different. Like that things can be different and still the same. Like I would have people stop me and say, who didn't know who the character was? And say, oh is this like, you know, Superman gone bad or Evil Superman or something? I'm like, no, he's a communist, he's still a good guy though. And it would leave them just looking confused. Like the idea that a communist could be a good guy.

Dedeker: Well, I mean, we've so been taught to associate the word communism with bad words.

Jase: Yeah, with the enemy. Yeah, that communists are bad. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so it's one of the things that I really appreciate about that graphic novel, and it is kind of related to what we're talking about.

Dedeker: So, yeah, when you're at Comic-Con, you ended up going to a Interesting sounding panel.

Jase: Yeah, so on my last day, on the Sunday at the end, I was looking through, you know, I'd kind of run out of stuff to do. I had bought the things I was gonna buy. And I was looking through the schedule of the panels, and I saw one that was titled Bisexuality and Beyond. And it was about bisexuality in popular media, meaning not only comic books, but also TV shows, movies, Stuff like that. And normal books, not just comic books too. And I was like, man, I didn't expect to see something like that at Comic-Con. I'm gonna go check that out. It also happened to end up being next door to the room that was the panel about Christian comics. Interestingly enough, yes. I didn't go into that one. So I don't know what... Would that.

Dedeker: Be an interesting panel to...

Jase: I saw their booth. There was a booth. About Christian, Christian based comics specifically. But I didn't end up talking to them to find out more about that. And I didn't go to that panel because I was next door at this one about bisexuality. Yeah, so, so the panel was pretty cool and it gave me a lot of stuff to think about. But so, so basically on the panel was interesting because it was kind of a combination of some people that were actively involved in making comic books. One of the guys who was part of the panel was an older guy who has been kind of a big advocate for non-traditional sexuality and specifically bisexuality in comics and has and now runs a publishing company that specifically makes characters that are bisexual or trans or other things like that that makes graphic novels about that, which is very cool. But then there were also some people that were a little more on the political side of it, who did more like lobbying the White House and.

Dedeker: You.

Jase: Know, creating campaigns like Dedeker and I, we were talking about this earlier, that the show Constantine that was on a few years ago is based on a, you know, series of comics and the character of Constantine in the comics is bisexual. Like that is part of the canon of that character. And on the TV show, They just kind of left that part out. They didn't actively deny it, they just didn't address it at all. And what their campaign was, and I thought this was interesting, because a lot of times you hear people complaining about the lack of representation in the media or something like that. It's like, yeah, but what are you doing about it that's constructive and not just complaining? And what they did basically was this campaign to spread awareness online about the fact that the character of Constantine is bisexual. So much so that in press conferences and interviews that the network would have to address that question. You know it's not saying like hey we're gonna boycott this show because they're like no we liked the show. Like we love comic book stuff. Like we loved the show. We weren't trying to hurt the show we didn't have anything against the actors but we just did I didn't want them to be able to ignore this fact. Which kind of ties into our topic for this first section, which is about bi-erasure is the term that's used for this.

Dedeker: Yeah, that's so fascinating to look at it that way. Because I know that, you know, what I've seen, I feel like for a long time, both, you know, in my own like bisexual slash pansexual explorations, as well as, you know, connecting with other people in the bi community, there's just like not, we don't have an actual neutral, tolerant, acceptable space for bisexual people. And what I mean by that is like, like, there's no valid space, you know, like what we've talked about on this podcast before is the fact that with women, with female bisexuality, it's looked at as not serious. It's looked at as maybe playful or fetishistic, experimental. Right. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Jase: Like with the assumption that either the woman is straight and is just having some girlish fun, or that she's gay, and of course she would still sleep with men sometimes, because like who wouldn't?

Dedeker: Like kind of-- who doesn't want a dick?

Jase: Right, it's sort of this discrediting the idea that bisexuals can actually exist.

Dedeker: Mm-, yeah, yeah. And then, and so that's the thing is like within the straight community it's just not taken seriously. Within the lesbian community, I know that like there's a lot of frustration over bisexual women because of those perceptions, like being perceived that oh, you're just coming in here just to like play and then go back to the world of heteronormativity.

Jase: Right.

Dedeker: And then on the side for men, you know that obviously bisexuality in men is considered to be very serious, you know, like it's a big deal if a man comes out as bisexual, but then there's the same issue.

Jase: But the same issue, yeah.

Dedeker: That they don't... Yeah, the straight community sees them, oh, you're just gay, you're not actually straight, and the gay community sees them as like, oh, like maybe you're actually gay, but you don't want to have to give up the privileges.

Jase: Of identifying as straight. Right, like, or you're gay, you just.

Dedeker: Haven'T quite gone there all the way yet. Exactly, like you just haven't committed to it yet.

Jase: And so, like, on both sides... Right, you get pushed toward one or the other. That the lesbian community and the straight community pushes women towards straight, and both the gay community and the straight community push men toward gay if they want to say that they're bisexual.

Dedeker: And so it's so interesting, you know, that you're talking about the fact that this happens so often in the media. Like you mentioned specifically the fact that like no show will actually say the word bisexual.

Jase: Well yeah, that's what I was gonna get to that too, yeah. That's something that we've recently seen a lot of characters which are bisexual on TV. You know, not just Constantine that didn't get addressed, but shows like Orange is the New Black, where Piper is very clearly with men and with women. We have shows like House of Cards, where Frank Underwood is with men and with women multiple times now in the course of the show. You know, there's many, many other examples. Those are just sort of the two, like, really big hot ones right now. But nobody ever says the word bisexual. On any of those shows. Like literally the word never gets uttered. And in this discussion that I was listening to in this panel, they were talking about how, you know, that a lot of times the argument for that is like, well, you know, they just don't want to be labeled by that or, you know, that something, you know, bigger than needing to label it. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good. And I would be fine with a character not wanting to be put into a box or not wanting to be labeled, but someone should at least be able to ask them that question. But like even that, that there's no one on the show who even says like oh so are you bisexual? Like utters the word and for them to say like well I prefer not to be labeled but I'm this, right? Like that it's just you literally can't say the word at all. That it's kind of this taboo word. And it had never really occurred to me, but that that's the issue. And a funny little aside, actually, that one of the women on the panel was talking about is that they have a, like her sort of claim to fame is as a bisexual book critic. So she has a blog.

Dedeker: Like she criticizes bisexual books or she is bisexual and a book critic.

Jase: Both.

Dedeker: Oh, okay, got it.

Jase: Both offers that perspective on mainstream books, but also specifically looks for bisexual books to talk about on her blog. And what she was talking about was this joke that she has with her friends who do the site with her. I think there's three of them that do the site. And it's this game of detective that you play when reading the backs of books, because no book will ever you never say the word bisexual.

Dedeker: Yeah, yeah.

Jase: That it's always gonna be like, you know, an exploration of non-traditional relationships and self-discovery for this young woman on her journey to whatever. Right? It's like this hidden code language.

Dedeker: On her journey to an all-girls university.

Jase: Right, right. That it's all hidden in this code about non-traditional and exotic and unexplored and mysterious and like these code words that are kind of substituted for this. Yeah, it's a really fascinating, really fascinating thing. Yeah, and then the other thing that it brought up for me was they talked a lot about all the different labels. They did a thing at the beginning where they said, you know, everyone who identifies as bisexual, stand up. Everyone who identifies as pansexual, everyone identifies.

Dedeker: As.

Jase: You know, non-binary, everyone who identifies as trans, you know, like whatever. They kind of went through this whole list and they kind of made this sort of short offhand joke about like yeah, there's so many labels but that's the point. Like when people ask us like why are there so many different labels? We're like well yeah, that's the point. That's all we got to do. And it made me kind of wonder about this of like why? Why do we need all of them? And I don't mean that to say that we don't, but just actually the question of why. Because it's something that I get caught up on, and I know that Emily's talked about this, and Dedeker, I think you have too, of the label of bisexual has kind of this connotation, or like it's sort of loaded. I don't want to say a connotation like one specific thing, but it's kind of loaded. And so I don't always love using that term. But then I don't necessarily have another one that I like better in terms of like pansexual or omnisexual or polysexual or whatever.

Dedeker: I find myself just slipping into the same thing that I end up doing with polyamory, which is in like I'll say it but I have to follow it up with an explanation of what it means.

Jase: Sure.

Dedeker: Not as in like you're an idiot you don't know what it means, but.

Jase: As in like this is what it means to me.

Dedeker: Let me clarify. Let me clarify this is what it means in my life, you know? It means me going on to say something like, well, I've dated both men and both women. Like, my preference is for men. I tend to be more demisexual when it comes to my relationships with women, which means I have to go on to explain what demisexual means to me. That it has to become a much bigger conversation rather than just saying, yeah, I'm bi. Because as we've discussed, So just a man standing up and saying yes, I'm bi or a woman standing up and saying yes, I'm bi carries these totally different cultural meanings.

Jase: Yeah.

Dedeker: You know?

Jase: Yeah, that's absolutely true. Yeah. One of the things, another thing on the panel that, because I was asking myself this question about labels and one of the guys on the panel, a different guy who is a comic book artist who has a lot of gay or bisexual characters that he creates And he was saying that for many years when he would be interviewed or would get introduced to different places, it would be as like the first openly gay author to write for whoever. And I forget the company now, but he wrote for like a major comic book publisher. And so, and the characters he wrote weren't always gay or bi or anything like that. But it was known that he was with a man at the time and so was introduced as the openly gay whatever like that was his title in these interviews and he was saying he's like and for so many years. He's like I'm so used to just not giving a fuck about what people think of me that I just let it go and he's like and it wasn't until I hit this point where I was doing an interview and in the interview with them like in the discussion with them talked about how this happened to me, like how this kept happening to me. And that the person interviewing him also shared the fact that that happened to them and then later when introducing him did it.

Dedeker: Interesting.

Jase: Like when they wrote the actual article and when they tweeted about it they did that. They called him the open relationship.

Dedeker: So just to clarify, so he's He's bisexual, yes. I see, but because of it, he was with a man at the time.

Jase: That he was referred to as just gay. They would just call him gay.

Dedeker: They would just call him gay.

Jase: Yeah, yeah. And that he finally kind of had this moment of like, fuck, like these people I talk to, they understand it, I understand it, yet they did it anyway in writing their article. And so he's like, finally was like, I have to address this. And so, you know, started that discussion like in response to them on Twitter and talked about that. And he said that since then it's been something that he's been working on. Finding a way to do it that's not coming across as adversarial, but just not wanting to sort of discredit what they're trying to do, but kind of saying, hey, actually, let me just clarify real quick, because it's that bi-erasure thing. It's that idea that bisexual doesn't exist. We have to call it something else because no one will accept that because it doesn't exist. It's sort of the idea. Cool. So from this, we're gonna move on to talk about dating, some challenges that are different for men and women in terms of dating and OKCupid, and also kind of this ideal of what is the ideal male and the ideal female.

Dedeker: Yeah.

Jase: Let's get back into this.

Dedeker: Okay. What are we jumping back into dating? Yeah.

Jase: Yeah. Let's talk about some differences in dating for men and women.

Dedeker: Okay, so first of all, I mean we can just talk from personal experience here as well. Right. Because I believe you on your dating profile, you identify as heteroflexible.

Jase: Yes, again talking about all the labels. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dedeker: Have you ever identified as like bisexual, pansexual?

Jase: I haven't listed mine as bisexual on OKCupid. No, I don't think I've actually listed it as that.

Dedeker: Yeah. Got it.

Jase: Again, it's one of those things where I'm like, none of, like, they all, all the labels have sort of a connotation with them that's not, like, it's not, like, none of them are adequate, unfortunately, for me. But yes, but since listing that, and I made that change probably Gosh, I don't know, maybe a year ago, maybe a little less than a year ago, actually. And it definitely changed the type of messages and the frequency of messages that I get on mine, with the main thing being that now I get messages from men. And that won't surprise anybody who has used OKCupid. Once it was possible, like once I show up in search results for men, I get I get a lot more messages than I did because men are much more likely to send out initial messages than women are. And so I get more messages, still not a ton, but what was interesting is that I also get more messages, like more unsolicited messages from women or from people who identify as female than I did before as well. Because as a guy on OkCupid, as a hetero guy on OkCupid, you get almost no messages ever. You're the initiator of everything. That maybe I would get a message to me every few months, maybe. And I found that since changing my status to just anything that's not heterosexual, I actually get more messages from women. And part of it is that OkCupid allows you, if you're not heterosexual, allows you to make your profile not viewable by straight people.

Dedeker: Interesting.

Jase: And it's a controversial feature that some people have a big problem with, but it's there for the purpose, well because it allows some discrimination that no one else gets. It's this idea of like, well why can they discriminate against one group and others can't do that? Like someone else couldn't say, so as.

Dedeker: In why can I not say like oh I don't want any gay people to look at my profile.

Jase: But I understand the reasoning behind it. It is just that, yeah, you want to feel like it's a safe place for you to express this and the people that you tend to not be safe from are heterosexual people. Yeah, which is a really sad thing. But it's in making my profile viewable by them because it goes the other way too. If you have yours that straight people can't see me, you can't view them either. So that does at least go both ways. But yeah, I found that I received more messages from women as well, and I don't know this for sure, but probably because they fall in that category where they've blocked these profiles, but because they feel like they're in a safer place maybe, are more likely to write the initial messages themselves.

Dedeker: I see. Got it. Or just 'cause you're super hot.

Jase: Oh, well thanks. But I didn't get them before, so something changed.

Dedeker: Oh, okay.

Jase: Maybe I got hotter, I don't know.

Dedeker: Bingo.

Jase: Thanks.

Dedeker: So, I mean, what are the kind of messages that you get from men?

Jase: Hey, what's up?

Dedeker: Yeah, sounds about right.

Jase: No, it's, you know, yeah, it's that. I've actually gotten some kind of, you know, nice opening messages. They're generally pretty short, pretty simple, shorter than the messages that I normally write if I'm writing the initial message to someone, which has made me think maybe I write too long of messages. But anyway. But usually it's just like, you know, a short, you know, hey, what's up? Hey, cutie, whatever. Which, you know, as most people on OkCupid know, doesn't get a lot of response.

Dedeker: But you mentioned about men kind of seeking to figure out what quote unquote type of heteroflexible you are, or what exactly your motivation is in, Yeah, well so... In choosing that?

Jase: Something that you were talking about earlier Dedeker is how you're, you know, bisexual but with women you're more demisexual.

Dedeker: Yeah, and let's clarify that for our listeners in case they don't know.

Jase: So demisexual? Yeah, go for it, you do it.

Dedeker: Yeah, so people who identify as demisexual, generally they don't feel sexual attraction for someone or they don't feel an impulse to have sex with someone until after they've developed some kind of emotional bond with that person. And that can be different levels of intimacy for each person, but basically there needs to be some kind of closeness or some kind of intimacy that could be romantic, could be a friendship, there needs to be some kind of bond there before they actually experience a sexual attraction to them.

Jase: Yeah, it's kind of an offshoot of asexual, so it's people who tend to gravitate a little more toward asexual, where they might have romantic relationships but don't feel as much of a sexual sexual.

Dedeker: Drive.

Jase: As seems to be the typical norm. So yes, but it's kind of saying like, well, I don't feel no sexual drive, but like you said, it requires some other things first.

Dedeker: Yeah, I've definitely found for me, even just in checking out women on the street, first of all, I'm super, super picky. And if I do see a woman that I am attracted to that I think is attractive, Like my first thought is not like wow it'd be fun to like sleep with her my first thought is like I want to hang out with her and find out what kind of a person she is. Sure, sure youe know which is like different from like if I see an attractive man on the street it might maybe more likely to be like oh like like he seems sexy or you know like that It's more of a physical thing versus like with my attraction to women it kind of requires a little bit more thought process behind it Yeah.

Jase: Well, so yeah, so that's something that and the reason why I brought that up is because I'm similar in terms of how I relate to men is that it is a little bit more of a demisexual sort of a thing as well. Which is interesting because that is the opposite from my understanding of how a lot of men who are heteroflexible or bisexual relate to men. That a lot of times the women are the one that they have romantic relationships with and the men they just hook up with, have sex with just because it's easy and it's fun and it's a way to get off or something like that.

Dedeker: Yeah, I feel like I've heard a lot of like bisexual men expressing this feeling of like sometimes I just want to cock and like but that's it. Like once I'm done with the cock then I'm like done with the guy and that's like that's all I'm interested in.

Jase: Right.

Dedeker: Right, right.

Jase: And so the question that I've gotten sometimes in guys talking to me is this sort of like, oh, so you're heteroflexible? Is that because you actually date guys or because you just want to get your D sucked? That's a quote I'm specifically quoting from a message I got. And I just didn't even respond to it because I was like, I don't even want to have this conversation.

Dedeker: Yeah.

Jase: But it is kind of there is this assumption, and to go back to sort of this gender difference in the way that we treat bisexuals, There's also this idea that for a man to be bisexual it must come from this like intensely sexual very physical place. And for a woman to be bisexual that it is kind of more accepted that it would be more from a romantic standpoint or you know, or more of a playful standpoint rather than like a serious physical sexual attraction. That it's a little more from the fact that it's not threatening or like the camaraderie they have with other women or something like that. That there's kind of this dismissiveness on both sides. So with all this discussion, it's and like what I experienced at this panel at Comic-Con is that it's really easy to get caught up in the frustration with how bisexuality is getting erased in popular culture. Or how one gender or the other is so unfairly treated in one way or another or something like that. And this is something that we won't get into this now, but we were talking about there's some scientific studies showing especially that liberal people weight fairness a lot higher in terms of their value judgments and stuff like that. And that that can lead to a lot of frustration and a lot of not only anger or motivation for changing things, but a lot more often just in terms of being upset a lot of the time, being unhappy. And something that we try to really focus on on this show is understanding that there are challenges and there are difficulties, but not letting that be the force that not letting that be the defining feature of the way that we talk about about our experience as polyamorous people or as non-hetero people or whatever it is, right? And so I wanted to get a little spiritual at the end here and have our...

Dedeker: Okay, yeah, let's bring the boot on. Yeah.

Jase: So something that really struck me in reading about Buddhism a couple of years ago was the idea of fairness, that in Buddhism Fairness is something that's talked about specifically as something that in order to end our suffering, we need to accept the fact that unfairness exists and that it always has and it always will. Like that the universe is not fair. There's not some sort of cosmic justice. And that's sort of a big misunderstanding with things like karma is that that karma is not the universe keeping score. It's not the universe restoring balance to things. It's a much bigger picture thing than that. So each individual, our life is not going to be fair, both in good ways and bad ways. There are ways in all of our lives that we get things that are unfairly good and things that are unfairly bad. Some people will have more one than the other. And that just is. That is life. And that's not something that can be changed as a fact itself. So the question is what do we do with this unfairness? And so this is from an article on the Tiny Buddha or on Just Tiny Buddha, which is a great website for inspiration and things like that. This is about knowing what we can control and doing something about it versus knowing what we can't control and letting go of that. And it says We can't change mistreatment that has happened in the past, but we can address mistreatment that's happening now. We can't change someone else's decision or behavior if they aren't willing to change, but we can change how we respond to them and choose to help educate and positively influence them. We can't change the tragedies that have occurred in our own lives or in places around the globe, but we can support causes that seek to prevent future tragedies or even spearhead our own. And we can't guarantee specific outcomes for our actions, but we can increase our odds of making a difference by being clear-headed, patient, and consistent. What's important is that we try to move beyond them so we don't let the things that we can't control take control of us. And I just really love this because it happens to me a lot. I get caught up in the unfairness of things and I get frustrated about it and it stops me from enjoying the advantages that I do have or it stops me from appreciating the things that I do have or when things do go well because I'm still caught up in this repetitive feedback loop, right, of thinking about unfairness. And I think that's very common within the liberal, you know, non, non, how do I describe it? Like non-status quo communities, right? Like non-hetero or non-gender conforming or, you know, whatever it is. That we can get caught up in these feedback loops of being frustrated.

Dedeker: What I've said to people for a number of years is that, you know, if you are somebody who does identify in a non-status quo community, if you're trans or intersex or bisexual or pansexual or poly or whatever it is, like the best thing you can do to make a change and to change someone's opinion is to just demonstrate your happiness is to be like the best possible version of yourself and be happy. You know, like that's really, you know, outside of like trying to debate with someone, outside of trying to like verbally berate someone into changing their mind, the best thing you can do is just be positive. I'm gonna sprinkle in some more Christianity by saying you can be a light.

Jase: Oh man, see I was gonna go with Michael Jackson and say, I'm starting with the man in the mirror.

Dedeker: Yeah, exactly. Like Michael, some sort of weird Michael Jackson hybrid Christianity monstrosity piece of advice is what we'll leave you with.

Jase: All right, or I guess we could say like be the change you want to see in the world. Throw some Gandhi in there. It's so played out.

Dedeker: It's so cliche. But I know.

Jase: So played out.

Dedeker: That's so 1972.

Jase: Yeah. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that this was fun. I really enjoy this topic. This is something that I could talk about for days.

Dedeker: Seriously.

Jase: As you can tell by how long we talked about this on this episode. But please let us know some things that I would love to hear from you guys on Twitter or in the comments for this or send us an email or in the Patreon group or the Facebook group anywhere is about labels. What's your relationship to labels? This is something that I really do sincerely have a question about in terms.

Dedeker: Of.

Jase: In what ways do you think that labels are important to you? Why is it that you feel like labels are important if they are? And if they're not to you, why not? Are you opposed to them or is it just something that you don't bother with? Are you label agnostic or are you actually anti-labels? I love this. I really want to have a discussion about that because it's something I've been thinking about a lot since going to this panel and talking about all of that. All right.