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Hello, listeners.

Before we jump into today's episode, I wanted to come on and make a quick acknowledgement and apology.

Later in the episode, Ashley and I tackle a letter where someone's transition comes up,

and a friend had pointed out to me after listening to the episode that a couple of

times I used the phrase either your biological sex or being born male or being born female,

both of which are phrases that are inaccurate, lazy, and often utilized in really transphobic

ways to suggest that biological sex is easily

recognizable, legible, immutable, always falls into one of two categories and cannot be changed,

and which is often used to deny trans people basic humanity. So just really wanted to take a minute

and apologize. The language that I ought to have been using, the language that I will use in future

is assigned male or assigned female at birth. It was just a lazy moment of reaching for, you know, language I'd heard a lot

before and that really reinforces a worldview that is not accurate, is not true to our experiences,

and it really harms people. And I just apologize for that. That's so not the kind of way of looking at

the world that I want the show to be about

or that I would want to suggest to anyone.

So there are many ways in which biological sex is as much of a construct as gender can be.

There are elements of, there's a lot of different elements that go into it, and I don't mean in any way to suggest that there is some sort of immutable, unchangeable biological sex while discussing somebody's transition.

So thanks so much for bearing with us.

Back to the show.

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