Speaker 1: Welcome to the Best Ever You Show with Elizabeth Hamilton Garino.
Speaker 1: Here to help you find success in all areas of
Speaker 1: your life. The power is in your hands. Join our
Speaker 1: network for free at bestevere dot com and now here's Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, welcome to the Best Ever You Show. We
Speaker 2: have been notified that blog Talk Radio is closing at
Speaker 2: the end of January, so we have switched over to
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio Speaker and also Riverside FM, so this will be
Speaker 2: one of the last shows we do over here live
Speaker 2: on blog Talk Radio. We are sure going to miss
Speaker 2: being over here for fourteen years now and it has
Speaker 2: been wonderful. But today I have a very special guest
Speaker 2: with me. I have Sean Prue with me. Sean, I
Speaker 2: think I hear you there.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hello, you hear my breathing. Hi, hell you, I
Speaker 3: hear you.
Speaker 2: I'd love to see your beautiful face. But you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, but my hair is a mess.
Speaker 2: So well we're going to sing.
Speaker 4: I thought this is audio only, and then at the
Speaker 4: last minute you sort of said video and I was like, no,
Speaker 4: I've been wearing my winter coat all day along with
Speaker 4: my foot up. My hair is like twenty different directions
Speaker 4: right now, I can't do video.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hear you, Yeah, same thing. My hair's on
Speaker 2: top of my head, my glasses are on and I'm good.
Speaker 2: So but you know you, you're so modest with your bio.
Speaker 2: I'm going to just I'm going to read everybody this
Speaker 2: for a second. It's so you are so talented, So
Speaker 2: I multi talented in the media and entertainment industry, so loved.
Speaker 2: You're a TV personality, a host, a producer, a talk
Speaker 2: show host for a really long time up there on
Speaker 2: Sirius XM and Canada, motivational speaker. You write columns, you
Speaker 2: pet books, also acting, publishing, live event hosts. But anything
Speaker 2: that you can do, you Oh, it's so neat and
Speaker 2: I and one of my favorite things too is here's
Speaker 2: the big one activist for issues of mental health, animal rights,
Speaker 2: and h stigma. I think that's just where I want
Speaker 2: to go right off the bat with you. Tell me,
Speaker 2: tell me what's uh, what's happening in your world these days?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, if you want to talk to animal rights,
Speaker 4: I'm a big proponent of of of treating animals as
Speaker 4: well as we treat ourselves. Really on my lap, right
Speaker 4: now I have a beautiful Cocker Spaniel mixed with I
Speaker 4: think hound dog. He's four and he's a rescue from Turkey.
Speaker 4: He was living on the streets of his den Bull
Speaker 4: for two years.
Speaker 3: As a puppy.
Speaker 4: And I don't know if you know about the situation there,
Speaker 4: but they slaughter dogs there. They round them all up.
Speaker 4: You can see horrible videos of the backs of trucks
Speaker 4: with these garbage bags full of dogs wriggling and trying
Speaker 4: to get out of these bags, and they slaughter them.
Speaker 3: It's a very sad situation over there. So I was lucky.
Speaker 4: I got him just in the nick of time because
Speaker 4: Canada stopped allowing dogs from other countries except for the
Speaker 4: US of Mexico, almost like two days after I got him.
Speaker 4: So I always remind him what a lucky guy he is.
Speaker 3: Turkey. What's his name and layout?
Speaker 2: I didn't know you named it.
Speaker 3: I shouldn't be unlucky, but he.
Speaker 2: Lucky. I wish I was doing videos.
Speaker 4: And I think I think mental health has has got
Speaker 4: a nice spotlight shawn on it right now. We've got
Speaker 4: an initiative up here that certainly has has made it
Speaker 4: normal to talk about mental health issues. I've always been
Speaker 4: open about the fact that I've sought mental health assistant
Speaker 4: since my twenties when I just wasn't feeling myself and
Speaker 4: I couldn't figure out why. So I don't go all
Speaker 4: the time. But over the years, I've certainly gleaned a
Speaker 4: lot of insight and knowledge about myself and tools.
Speaker 3: And I don't think anyone should be ashamed of saying,
Speaker 3: you know, we'll go to the doctor for a cold.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean, We're a bit of a
Speaker 4: flu bug or something, and we'll race off to the
Speaker 4: doctor for some help. But we're feeling anxious, we're feeling depressed.
Speaker 4: We don't know why we don't feel the way we
Speaker 4: like to feel, and we don't do anything about it.
Speaker 4: And so it's good to speak ood about that.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, and rights and things like that. I
Speaker 2: know we're going to talk about a lot of different things,
Speaker 2: but tell me what you mean about HIV stigma as well.
Speaker 2: Go there if you would please.
Speaker 4: Well, that's the last frontier, or the new frontier that
Speaker 4: we face in the HIV AIDS movement now is stigma.
Speaker 4: You know, we're blessed now to have medication you can
Speaker 4: take called prep that stops you, and I think about
Speaker 4: ninety six point nine percent of all cases of acquiring
Speaker 4: the HIV virus, and so we have that, we have
Speaker 4: kind of a morning after pill, and we have pills
Speaker 4: for those who are HIV positive to keep them what's
Speaker 4: known as undetectable, which means that you cannot transmit the
Speaker 4: virus to anybody.
Speaker 3: We live in a blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed.
Speaker 4: World, but people who acquire HIV still these days they're
Speaker 4: ashamed of it, and they're they're marginalized for it, they're
Speaker 4: othered for it. They do that to themselves, and the
Speaker 4: society around us does it to them as well. We
Speaker 4: still live in sadly, in an era that is not
Speaker 4: that far away from the Reagan era when he wouldn't
Speaker 4: even use the word.
Speaker 3: AIDS for eight years after.
Speaker 4: It beginning to become an epidemic. We still have this
Speaker 4: kind of really bad association about HIV. And I think
Speaker 4: it's because it's acquired through sex, and it's acquired through
Speaker 4: intravenous needle use, and.
Speaker 3: So sex and drugs, so those are so taboots still
Speaker 3: in our world.
Speaker 4: And when we think about people who are HIV positive,
Speaker 4: we talk about them being dirty. We do that with
Speaker 4: a lot of medical conditions. You know, your doctor comes
Speaker 4: back and said the test you're clean, Well, you weren't
Speaker 4: dirty if the tests.
Speaker 3: Weren't clean, right y stigmatized. But you know, you use.
Speaker 4: People alcoholics or drug users will say, oh, I haven't
Speaker 4: been using for a while, I'm clean. Well, you weren't
Speaker 4: dirty when you were using. You had an addiction disease.
Speaker 4: And so we have all of the stigma around HIV
Speaker 4: and it's still alive and well. And so I believe
Speaker 4: in talking about it as someone who is HIV positive,
Speaker 4: undetectable and not ashamed of that, and I think others
Speaker 4: should as well. And so I'm big on helping and
Speaker 4: the stigmatization of a disease that we only get from
Speaker 4: being human. Sextis is a human thing.
Speaker 3: Don't you think it's.
Speaker 2: Important to share your stories like you're just doing, to
Speaker 2: be vulnerable about it because it helps. It's like somebody's
Speaker 2: listening right now and they don't feel good. They might
Speaker 2: have just heard your voice and you might have saved
Speaker 2: their life.
Speaker 4: I always say that on my show too with I
Speaker 4: guess they also things that I just know somebody is
Speaker 4: listening and that they've they've been changed from it, whether
Speaker 4: that's not feeling so alone anymore, or whether it's been
Speaker 4: giving information or inspiration.
Speaker 3: So I know exactly what you mean there. I hope
Speaker 3: that's the.
Speaker 2: Case right now, and I hope so too. Tell me
Speaker 2: about you as a kindergartener. Oh yeah, all the way back.
Speaker 2: Take me back to like you know, baby.
Speaker 4: Sean, I was the little boy who would go out
Speaker 4: and play with all the other kids, and the mothers
Speaker 4: would come up to my mother really annoyed at the
Speaker 4: end of the play date because they would be like,
Speaker 4: Sean Prue played the exact same games as all the
Speaker 4: other kids, playing in the dirt, playing in the grass,
Speaker 4: playing rolling around, doing all the things. And his outfit
Speaker 4: is completely clean and perfect, ripped up, soiled, destroyed, and
Speaker 4: here comes show and is the love it? And you
Speaker 4: wouldn't know play the same games. And my mother used
Speaker 4: to laugh. And I think that's still me today. I
Speaker 4: don't like to get dirty, but I'll still play the
Speaker 4: same games as everyone else.
Speaker 2: Were you did you know that you had had young
Speaker 2: talent for TV, radio, acting all that stuff too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, My mom chucked me into bed one night and
Speaker 4: she said, what do you want to be when you
Speaker 4: grew up, and I said, an actress. Boys are actors,
Speaker 4: they're not actresses. And I was like, whatever, that's what
Speaker 4: I want to hear. I knew from a young age
Speaker 4: that I was a creative kid and was leaned heavily
Speaker 4: into my creativity.
Speaker 3: And I think for queer people that.
Speaker 4: We lean into that side of ourselves a little bit
Speaker 4: more readily, because there's an element of escapism as well
Speaker 4: that comes into the lives of young queer people who
Speaker 4: don't feel like they fit in, who feel very different.
Speaker 4: No they're different somehow, don't know why there's they feel
Speaker 4: that way, And so I think escapism for creativity is
Speaker 4: something that's not unique to me. I think a lot
Speaker 4: of little gay boys and queer girls do the same
Speaker 4: thing always, you know.
Speaker 2: I think all of us, no matter who we are,
Speaker 2: we just want to be included. Like that's one of
Speaker 2: the things that I love about you, Like from I've
Speaker 2: known you since I think I started best ever you
Speaker 2: and you were like you go girl, you know. And
Speaker 2: I'm a mom of four sons. They're twenty three, twenty five,
Speaker 2: twenty seven, and twenty nine now, and I've known you
Speaker 2: for a really long time, and I remember thinking, you know,
Speaker 2: we're different, and yet we're not. And I remember thinking
Speaker 2: that for a really long time ago, with you just going.
Speaker 2: You know, you accepted me, and I always love you
Speaker 2: for that.
Speaker 4: Of course, why wouldn't I doing great things? You continue
Speaker 4: to do great things. Of Course I accepted you.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 4: I was inspired by you and me you and in
Speaker 4: awe of you and what you've done.
Speaker 3: And I still am.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me, you too. I've seen us climb and it's
Speaker 2: so much fun. It's it's really cool.
Speaker 3: So welcome to the lot, everybody.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, isn't it fun? This is the way it
Speaker 2: should be. Actually, there's so much hate out there. It's like,
Speaker 2: oh man, enough of the hate already, you know, and
Speaker 2: I get. I know you and I had discussions like
Speaker 2: you were supposed to be on like I don't know
Speaker 2: how long ago, during the you know, like the day
Speaker 2: after the election or something. You are both like I
Speaker 2: don't know, and neither do I, and we were both like.
Speaker 3: Do this the day after the election. I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I couldn't either. We both looked at each other and
Speaker 2: we're like, oh, I.
Speaker 4: Was in shock and such disappointments. I couldn't believe the
Speaker 4: way the election turned out, and to a degree I
Speaker 4: still can't, and I'm even though I live in Canada,
Speaker 4: in Toronto. I watch US politics very closely. I watch
Speaker 4: an MSNBC a couple hours every night almost and to
Speaker 4: stay informed. Because of the things that trickle that happened
Speaker 4: down in the States, they trickle up here. We've got
Speaker 4: a leader of our Conservative party who is very right
Speaker 4: wing and is playing from a Trumpian playbook as well,
Speaker 4: like he wants to the degree that MAGA means make
Speaker 4: America America great again. His slogan has fixed Canada. The
Speaker 4: underlying subtext is that it's broken, which is the same
Speaker 4: story Trump has been running on for however long he's
Speaker 4: been in politics. Now that it's broken and those are
Speaker 4: the beginnings of authoritarianism, and he's playing for the same playbook.
Speaker 4: So I watch US politics a lot, not just out
Speaker 4: of interest, but because I want to see what's going
Speaker 4: to happen up here. We see it all the time,
Speaker 4: and you know, one great example is the the attacks
Speaker 4: on trans people, the attacks on drag queens, the attacks
Speaker 4: on of the queer community, making us into pedophiles and
Speaker 4: all that kind of those tropes that have been going
Speaker 4: on for centuries now, that's all trickled up here. As
Speaker 4: soon as it started in the States, it began up
Speaker 4: here as well. So it's important to keep an eyeball
Speaker 4: on you, guys, because you're the leading indicator of what's happening.
Speaker 2: You know, what do we do when you know entire
Speaker 2: groups of people are friends or potentially having their human
Speaker 2: rights in fear and jeopardy? What do we do?
Speaker 3: Well, if you're talking about a group of people such
Speaker 3: as the queer.
Speaker 4: Community, we need allies more than we've ever needed allies.
Speaker 4: And a lot of people think allyship is just showing
Speaker 4: up at pride and joining in the dancing and the family,
Speaker 4: the parade and all that sort of stuff. And that's important.
Speaker 4: That's important too. But you've got to you've got to
Speaker 4: speak up when you hear nonsense being said about any group,
Speaker 4: whether it's black people, Latinos, queer people, whatever marginalized group
Speaker 4: is being under the attack, it's important that you speak
Speaker 4: up and not allow that to be the conversations that's
Speaker 4: being had, whether it's at the dinner table, is coming Christmas,
Speaker 4: or whether it's just in general. When you hear someone
Speaker 4: on the subway say something. You must speak up because
Speaker 4: you can't just you you stay silent.
Speaker 3: You can flicit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're part of the problem and staying silent. So Allyship,
Speaker 4: I think is needed more than ever there in the
Speaker 4: States where you are and here in Canada. We need
Speaker 4: to stand together as the communities. And we also need
Speaker 4: both people who are this frankly, the straight white people
Speaker 4: to stand up and speak up and speak out and
Speaker 4: say to.
Speaker 2: Gather people, yeah, you know, I want to tell you
Speaker 2: this story and it's going to come out choppy and
Speaker 2: it may not come out right, but just hear me
Speaker 2: out for a second. So our sons both graduated from
Speaker 2: Georgetown University with their master's degrees in twenty twenty four. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 2: really cool, really cool moment. And so the way we
Speaker 2: do little celebrations is we take people out to a steakhouse.
Speaker 2: So me and my husband and kids, and his sister
Speaker 2: and Beyonce's friends, you know, everybody. We all gathered at
Speaker 2: a steakhouse in DC and I made reservations at Annie's
Speaker 2: Paramount Steakhouse. And so I looked at the reservation and
Speaker 2: I'm like, huh, I wonder if we're going to be
Speaker 2: welcome here. So I placed a phone call and I said,
Speaker 2: you know, this is a predominantly you know not I
Speaker 2: don't know, you know how to say it. I'm looking
Speaker 2: for their wording as we're talking. But not a place
Speaker 2: where like we would go all the time for a steakhouse.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's gay couples and get you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's flags everywhere and things like that. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: are we going to be welcome there? You know what?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean, just like the reverse of it, right,
Speaker 2: And so I called and I said, are we okay?
Speaker 2: Can we come in? Because I really want to be
Speaker 2: there all of my friends are you know okay? I
Speaker 2: have drag queen friends, I have every kind of friend
Speaker 2: known to mankind. Are we welcome there? There are twelve
Speaker 2: of us coming in, and he said, bring it on.
Speaker 2: You're going to have the best dinner of your life.
Speaker 2: And I can't tell you the number of people that
Speaker 2: came up to us. We could barely all eat because
Speaker 2: everybody was hugging us and telling us how much they
Speaker 2: loved we were there and telling us what a beautiful
Speaker 2: it makes me cry, what a beautiful family we had,
Speaker 2: and on and on and on. It was I can't
Speaker 2: I might have goosebumps. I love them so much. There
Speaker 2: they made us have the best memory ever. And it
Speaker 2: wasn't intentional and we were kind of scared because we
Speaker 2: didn't fit in at all. But I mean that, and
Speaker 2: then we did.
Speaker 3: They know what it's like to not fit in to you.
Speaker 2: No, it was beautiful. It was I wish like CBS
Speaker 2: Sunday Morning would have followed us in or something to
Speaker 2: show you how the world's supposed to be. You know,
Speaker 2: that's kind of cry Oh god, it was so I love.
Speaker 3: Them this world. Yeah, moments like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And we have a it makes me cry
Speaker 2: and we have a no, And I want to just
Speaker 2: touch people's hearts with this conversation about how hard it
Speaker 2: is when you don't fit in, because it makes people
Speaker 2: so I feel like.
Speaker 3: Related feeling they're wrong? What did they do wrong?
Speaker 4: I find me a queer person, especially someone in my
Speaker 4: age when the times have changed so much now. But
Speaker 4: I can't tell you how much bargaining I did with
Speaker 4: God to make me straight when I was a young boy,
Speaker 4: when I was a teenager, when I was becoming a man,
Speaker 4: I wanted to be straight.
Speaker 3: Because it was just so.
Speaker 4: I was so tired of being othered by schoolmates and
Speaker 4: fellow students and adults around me in my community. I
Speaker 4: was so different than everybody, and that difference has been
Speaker 4: a blessing in my life and has been me unique.
Speaker 4: But at the time when retina support and stuff like that,
Speaker 4: I know so many people who are in my age
Speaker 4: bracket who say the same thing. I used to ask
Speaker 4: God to make me straight and to not make me gay.
Speaker 4: It was just a terrible way to be. But at
Speaker 4: the same time, it's a blessing because I think the
Speaker 4: people who have had the roughest starts in life, whatever
Speaker 4: that may look like for you, they're the ones that
Speaker 4: become the most extraordinary later.
Speaker 3: On in life. That's not the brightest, you know, I
Speaker 3: think you've had nothing that ever happened to them.
Speaker 4: That are that are the dull, boring ones in life
Speaker 4: because nothing is the worst thing that can happen to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know. It's funny. I sometimes say, please,
Speaker 2: I don't want to have food allergies anymore. I've been
Speaker 2: resuscitated twice. I just want to eat something. And that
Speaker 2: was the other thing they took care of me too.
Speaker 2: Because I always feel like a fish out of water
Speaker 2: with the life threatening food allergies that I have. So
Speaker 2: I called them. They're like, well, we are going to give
Speaker 2: you the best dinner you've ever had. You're going to
Speaker 2: live through it. And they oh, they were just so cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, no, is that just like that? They were
Speaker 2: just the coolest people. So anyway, I love Annie's Steakhouse.
Speaker 2: Annie's Paramount Steakhouse in DC is amazing. STA shout out everybody.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I love them. So the other thing I
Speaker 2: think too, is that you know, sometimes without conversations like this,
Speaker 2: we don't understand each other at all.
Speaker 4: And yep, well just you know, we're talking about allyship
Speaker 4: and what can people do and that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: To talk to each other as well and just have
Speaker 4: a conversation doesn't have to be full of threats. It
Speaker 4: doesn't have to start getting violence, you don't have to
Speaker 4: start calling to the names. Just have a conversation, because
Speaker 4: you know what it's like, even though you're a straight
Speaker 4: person to feel different, and you just talked about having
Speaker 4: life threatening allergies that stop you from enjoying your life
Speaker 4: and stuff like that. That's a very unique situation. You
Speaker 4: feel alone and different in that as well, so you
Speaker 4: can relate to me feeling different. We're so much more connected.
Speaker 4: It's such a cliche, but we are. We're so much
Speaker 4: more alike than we are different. And if we just
Speaker 4: take the time to get to know each other a
Speaker 4: little bit more, know your neighbor a little bit more,
Speaker 4: you see that you've got more in common than you
Speaker 4: have the differences. And we've got the likes of Trump.
Speaker 4: And as the guy's name up here is kier palie Eva,
Speaker 4: trying to divide us all and make us all angry
Speaker 4: with each other.
Speaker 3: Don't fall for that trap.
Speaker 4: It's it's classic authoritarianism once again, dividing the people up,
Speaker 4: making them afraid of each other. Don't, don't. Don't fall
Speaker 4: in line with that. Know your people, know your neighbors. Yeah,
Speaker 4: even better, so I don't agree with you.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah true.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So we were this is years ago now, We were
Speaker 2: walking in the mall here in Maine and my husband's like,
Speaker 2: I really need a haircut. I'm just going to get
Speaker 2: a really quick haircut over at Mastercuts, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: you go for it, you know kind of thing. And
Speaker 2: this kid named Nick Irish was like I'll cut your hair.
Speaker 2: I've got you, okay, mister Greeno, I've got you kind
Speaker 2: of thing. You know. It was so cute. And now
Speaker 2: over the years we've gotten to know Nick as family.
Speaker 2: His name is Nick Irish and he is a drag
Speaker 2: queen and he tells he's come over. He comes over
Speaker 2: to our house to cut her hair. He does all
Speaker 2: sorts of amazing things for us. During COVID, he came
Speaker 2: over and cut her hair in the garage, no kind
Speaker 2: of thing, so we could have haircuts. And he's such
Speaker 2: a cool soul. But when he when he when he
Speaker 2: is in drag, he looks like Marilyn Monroe, like it's
Speaker 2: like night and day, Like, oh my god, how do
Speaker 2: you do that kind of thing? He has the best
Speaker 2: blonde hair. He knows my blonde hair so well, oh
Speaker 2: my god. Yeah, so if you get it wrong, you've
Speaker 2: got the wrong color.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I'm fifty five now, so I've got gray coming
Speaker 2: in all the stuff to deal with. So anyway, he
Speaker 2: is the most lovely human being. So when I when
Speaker 2: he's here, when I have conversations with him or I
Speaker 2: talked to him about things, you know, I always want
Speaker 2: to know, like what what's happened, what's happening to you,
Speaker 2: what's going on in your life, what's happened to you?
Speaker 2: You know, because sometimes you'll be like sad and things
Speaker 2: like that, and he will tell me, like some of
Speaker 2: the meanest crap that has happened to him over his life,
Speaker 2: and he's the nicest human being on the planet. Why
Speaker 2: do I want to go there? Because I know we
Speaker 2: were talking about your sub stack and things like that,
Speaker 2: and you said, I'm going to just go why the
Speaker 2: drag hate? Why the drag hate? But I just want
Speaker 2: to I know, I skipped around a little bit and
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: So he's got so everybody listening.
Speaker 2: Sean pro Crue got subs substack dot com. I'm going
Speaker 2: to spy your last name it's p r o U
Speaker 2: l X and I'll put a link up and you
Speaker 2: but you've got topics here and like that one. That
Speaker 2: one stuck out to me because I have a friend,
Speaker 2: you know, a bestie who's a drag queen and it
Speaker 2: hurts my feelings. And I also my dream you know,
Speaker 2: my I love I love you, but you know, I
Speaker 2: want to know who my absolute dream interview is. It's
Speaker 2: never gonna happen. Do you want who it is?
Speaker 3: It's I've interviewed Love I lovel too.
Speaker 2: The best.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, I interviewed him once. Her at the back. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I've interviewed her a couple of times, but the first
Speaker 4: time was at the back of an airport shuttle because
Speaker 4: she was going to a gig and her hair was
Speaker 4: so big it wouldn't fit in a car. Yes, so
Speaker 4: we rode the back of this shuttle together having a
Speaker 4: chin wag for forty minutes going to her gig.
Speaker 3: Her success. Yeah. Oh, so you want to talk about
Speaker 3: why the drag queen hate kind of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I don't understand it.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's about Missagua.
Speaker 4: To me, I think a man in the heels and
Speaker 4: address who's self determined pushes really uncomfortably hard against where
Speaker 4: a lot of society is firmly rooted on the topic
Speaker 4: of women and autonomy, because a woman, to a lot
Speaker 4: of society is less than you know. Madonna's saying about
Speaker 4: that in her two thousand and sung what it feels
Speaker 4: Like for a girl. Girls can wear genes and cut
Speaker 4: their hair, short wear shirts and boots because.
Speaker 3: It's okay to be a boy.
Speaker 4: But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading,
Speaker 4: because you think being a girl is degrading. So what
Speaker 4: kind of man sacrifices massculinity and trade down and find
Speaker 4: personal liberty as a woman in the doing. You know,
Speaker 4: we hate the idea of a powerful woman in our
Speaker 4: patriarchal society, the one that knows their value, that they're
Speaker 4: inconvenient to have around. Women who delight in who they are,
Speaker 4: like drag queens do, who don't need to fix themselves.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of effort to keep up with a
Speaker 4: woman like that, which is why women are suppressed. They're
Speaker 4: held back from thinking about reaching the fullest of who
Speaker 4: they really are as early as childhood. Our society is
Speaker 4: held bent on keeping women in their place insecure. We
Speaker 4: teach them through the media or any shop they go
Speaker 4: into selling all the beauty products so that she can
Speaker 4: use to correct it and prove herself that she will
Speaker 4: never be enough. Constantly women are being told theres something
Speaker 4: wrong with them. We don't want to see autonomous women.
Speaker 4: You know, look at it in your country, the male
Speaker 4: led fight to rest away women from women control over
Speaker 4: their own bodies. You know, it's dystopic and woman should
Speaker 4: be whoever the f she wants to be, and we
Speaker 4: oppress women and we don't like it when a man
Speaker 4: actually chooses to look and act like one in drag.
Speaker 3: That's my theory.
Speaker 2: That's a good theory. It's an interesting theory. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna just leave that. I formulate thoughts sometimes on this topic,
Speaker 2: but I do as a female, fifty five year old female,
Speaker 2: I can't tell you how many times in the workplace.
Speaker 2: I've had uncomfortable encounters with men.
Speaker 3: Oh I'm sure, I'm sure.
Speaker 2: I can't even I could. I could go on and
Speaker 2: on and on. It's a different show. I mean, like,
Speaker 2: right off the bat, I was a news anchor. Made
Speaker 2: me never want to be a news anchor again. Some
Speaker 2: guy hit as the general manager of a news station,
Speaker 2: hitting on me, saying if I did this, I'd be
Speaker 2: the weather girl in Ohio in a shot, you know.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: you know kind of thing. And it's interesting. That's an
Speaker 2: interesting analogy, for sure, But you know how the.
Speaker 4: Wherewithal to say now though, a lot of women don't
Speaker 4: know how to say no to that.
Speaker 2: Hell no, actually, oh hell no, hell no, hell no. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then and then really did a big rethink on
Speaker 2: the news business. It made me go, oh, this is
Speaker 2: the way this is going to be. And then you go,
Speaker 2: as a twenty year old kid, you go, oh shit,
Speaker 2: this is the way this all kind of is right now,
Speaker 2: because remember I'm one hundred and it was like that.
Speaker 2: It was bumpy all over the place, and oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And then and then you'd come across those men gems
Speaker 2: that weren't like that, and you were like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: you're not going to hit on me. You're just gonna
Speaker 2: let me work. Really, Oh this is beautiful. And I've
Speaker 2: had a lot of those two and it's like, thank god, yeah,
Speaker 2: but tell me then this could be. If this is
Speaker 2: a really stupid question, I cannot edit this out. So
Speaker 2: if this is stupid, just laugh at me, right, okay, okay,
Speaker 2: what about like a.
Speaker 3: Movie like Tutsie, what about it?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, what about it? Like that's kind of like
Speaker 2: is that not kind of draggish in a way?
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the top. Everything's dragged. Everything's dragged.
Speaker 4: It's just a decision on how you're presenting yourself at
Speaker 4: any given moment in time. Like we're all born naked
Speaker 4: and the rest is drag, is what she says. And
Speaker 4: my my friend Leo was a he's retired now, but
Speaker 4: he taught grade two for most of his teaching career,
Speaker 4: and so he had his day drag he would call it,
Speaker 4: and then his after work drag, but he always called
Speaker 4: it drag. And his day drag was really just a
Speaker 4: suit and tie for teaching, and then his drag drag
Speaker 4: was jeans and the tea shirt, but he always called
Speaker 4: a drag. And RuPaul calls it all drag. So what
Speaker 4: interesting is a woman or was it?
Speaker 3: However you're presenting yourself, that's your drag.
Speaker 2: Got it? Okay, that's good learning, right there. I'll have
Speaker 2: to look at that a little more. Yeah, yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: What else? What else is on your sub steck that
Speaker 2: you want to talk about? Because there's some really good
Speaker 2: there's really good stuff here.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm really happy with the way it's it's turning out.
Speaker 4: I mean a lot of traffic to it. I'm trying
Speaker 4: to find stories that people don't normally introduce people to,
Speaker 4: people who you don't really.
Speaker 3: Get a chance to meet.
Speaker 4: So my latest post is called what to Do if
Speaker 4: You're kidnapped and it takes you behind the scenes of
Speaker 4: humanitarian aid worker named Kessa. That's not her real name,
Speaker 4: but we use a pseudonym so she could talk more freely.
Speaker 4: She's been to Gaza, Kiev, Somalia, Yemen. She's supposed to
Speaker 4: go to Afghanistan, but that got canceled.
Speaker 3: She's back in Gaza.
Speaker 4: Right now and she sees a lot of incredible things
Speaker 4: and one of the dangers it's always predominant in wherever
Speaker 4: she goes, is the risk of being kidnapped. And so
Speaker 4: she lays out what she knows about kidnappings, and it's
Speaker 4: fascinating because there's three types of kidnappings.
Speaker 3: There's the one.
Speaker 4: That you get held for ransom for, there's the one
Speaker 4: that you get held for as a political statement, and
Speaker 4: there's the one that's where you're kind of a bargaining
Speaker 4: ship get you'll be released at the hostage just the
Speaker 4: other country really, since they're hostage type of thing. And
Speaker 4: the whole object is to stay alive, of course, and
Speaker 4: there's all kinds of ways in which you can try
Speaker 4: and stay alive, unless you're a political statement, because the
Speaker 4: chances are really high that you're going to be killed,
Speaker 4: because that's the point of having kidnapped you to begin with,
Speaker 4: so your chances are really low. But the other ones
Speaker 4: have all these tips and tricks, and she just goes
Speaker 4: into the details of those and it is just fascinating
Speaker 4: to me. She's a fascinating woman, especially because she in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty quit her career to start doing this, and
Speaker 4: now she's sixty years old and going into places like
Speaker 4: Gaza and helping out there, and I find that a fascinating.
Speaker 3: It's never too late story as well. You know, we
Speaker 3: get we age, all of us age. I'm fifty five.
Speaker 4: Fifty six now, and I'm not sure I could contemplate
Speaker 4: beginning a new career again. And yet there was a
Speaker 4: guest on the View today that I overheard saying that
Speaker 4: at fifty five her mother moved to Paris and began
Speaker 4: her life a new way back when and shoes very
Speaker 4: inspired by that. So I'm inspired by stories like that,
Speaker 4: and like test a story and also a store on
Speaker 4: there about my friend Aaron, who became homeless suddenly. I
Speaker 4: watched his homelessness happen. He lost his roommate, he couldn't
Speaker 4: find a new roommate. His landlord blessedly lewed him stay
Speaker 4: there for almost nine months, paying only half of the
Speaker 4: rent and then finally evicted him. And he's a gay guy,
Speaker 4: and gay guys are resourceful, and he had nowhere to go.
Speaker 4: He couched, heurved for a while, but that he's running
Speaker 4: out of you know, couches after a time, so he
Speaker 4: would get on apps like grinder and hook up with
Speaker 4: guys to have a roof overt's head. But the problem
Speaker 4: is is that if you're hooking up with guys, they
Speaker 4: expect you to hook up. And he would be meeting
Speaker 4: guys at like two or three in the morning, and
Speaker 4: the problem with that is that if you're hooking up
Speaker 4: with guys at two or three in the morning, they're
Speaker 4: probably using substances to stay up that late. And so
Speaker 4: Aaron would be up at guy's places using substances like
Speaker 4: crystal math and to stay up and party. So he's
Speaker 4: getting no sleep, who's eating nothing, And when you have
Speaker 4: that combination, it's very dangerous. He started to become develop
Speaker 4: auditory hallucinations and then visual hallucinations and start to almost
Speaker 4: lose his mind. And so it's the story of what
Speaker 4: happened to him all because he'd lost his roommate, and
Speaker 4: we see so much homelessness here in Canada, and especially
Speaker 4: in Toronto. I don't know what it's like where you are,
Speaker 4: but I know that homelessness is a problem in the
Speaker 4: US as well. We have encampments in all.
Speaker 3: Of our parks, people lying on the streets. It's just
Speaker 3: pardon me for a rich nation like we have, like
Speaker 3: you are, it shouldn't be this way.
Speaker 4: And he had no support. He couldn't go to shelters
Speaker 4: because they're violence and dangerous there. It's just the story
Speaker 4: of his spiral downward and me watching it. I tried
Speaker 4: to help him as best I could. He stayed over
Speaker 4: many times. I buy him food and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: But it's a story that's kind of chilling because it
Speaker 4: can happen to you, could happen to me. And I
Speaker 4: talked about the types of homelessness there are. There's people
Speaker 4: get divorced, there relationships end, they've got nowhere to go.
Speaker 4: People leave abusive relationships, they've got nowhere to go. People
Speaker 4: in the pandemic lost their livelihoods, they had nowhere to go.
Speaker 4: And one of the reasons we've got so much of
Speaker 4: a homeless situation here is because of the pandemic, and
Speaker 4: that shouldn't be either. We should be taking care of
Speaker 4: people a pandemic hit.
Speaker 3: It's not their fault they lost their livelihood. So I'm
Speaker 3: ready about subjects like that as well.
Speaker 2: Don't forget that a lot of people, including my parents,
Speaker 2: were like a medical bill away from homelessness. My parents
Speaker 2: would be homeless had we paid your house payment among
Speaker 2: my dad had a stroke in two thousand and four.
Speaker 2: It just completely turned their entire But you know, my
Speaker 2: dad lived from two thousand and four to twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: but it turned their lives completely upside down, Like had
Speaker 2: we not made their house payments and things like that,
Speaker 2: they'd be homeless.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, that's that's all it takes.
Speaker 4: And so we have a we have holes in our
Speaker 4: net and people are falling through those holes, and we've
Speaker 4: got to we've got to tighten it up and repair
Speaker 4: that and make it so that people get the assistance
Speaker 4: and the.
Speaker 3: Help that they need. People aren't choosing to be homeless.
Speaker 4: We have a terrible premiere of Ontario who's kind of
Speaker 4: like the governor, I guess in your system, and he
Speaker 4: said homeless people should go out and get a job,
Speaker 4: and it was such a myopic comment, such an uneducated,
Speaker 4: privileged comment to make that. He disgusted so of humanitarians
Speaker 4: here when he said it, because that's that's a man
Speaker 4: who should be out there helping people who are homeless.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: And I'm so sick and tired of the politicians and
Speaker 4: their photo ops at Thanksgiving and at Christmas time. I'm ranting,
Speaker 4: I know, but they go to the food banks and
Speaker 4: they pose with the workers and say what great work
Speaker 4: there all doing, and how how, how how they are
Speaker 4: saints for doing this work. There shouldn't be there shouldn't
Speaker 4: be food banks. I'm just going to go, you know,
Speaker 4: those very politicians should be making it so that food
Speaker 4: banks are eradicated, not posing for photos in them. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm not but on my high horse right now. But
Speaker 4: those are the such of things that I explore in
Speaker 4: that in that article.
Speaker 2: I think we're going to need to be on our
Speaker 2: high horses a little bit to make sure we take
Speaker 2: care of everybody from a humanitarian standpoint. You know, tell
Speaker 2: me what you think like humanity to be a humanitarian
Speaker 2: like humanity needs right now. I know we I was
Speaker 2: going to go next into you with like food safety
Speaker 2: and food security, but you know it's it's everything from
Speaker 2: you know, rights, food, housing, shelter. I mean just there's
Speaker 2: like so many facets of it that are just falling down,
Speaker 2: and like I get, I get really really sad when
Speaker 2: I see people that don't have food. It really freaks
Speaker 2: me out. Yeah. Absolutely. I was in a Olympia snow
Speaker 2: leadership foundation here in Maine. She's got she's a former senator,
Speaker 2: and she has a foundation that helps people graduate from
Speaker 2: helps women girls graduate from high school who might otherwise
Speaker 2: have something thrown in their path to prevent it, for example,
Speaker 2: you know, a parental circumstance or whatever. And I volunteered
Speaker 2: to be a leader and help these five girls graduate,
Speaker 2: which all of them did. But I cried all the
Speaker 2: way home ninety minutes. My husband had to drive me
Speaker 2: to and from the meeting with them because it made
Speaker 2: me so sad. I just wanted to like adopt all
Speaker 2: of them, and you can't.
Speaker 3: Do that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So what I would do is I would secretly write
Speaker 2: checks to the school so that like the school had
Speaker 2: food and back it. Would they would like that? Well, no,
Speaker 2: not from that standpoint. I just mean, like it's just
Speaker 2: like the conversation of being aware, like scratching below the
Speaker 2: surface to be aware of what's really happening with people,
Speaker 2: because I don't have to know.
Speaker 4: If we go there's an empathy, you know. I had
Speaker 4: to go down to the mall near me and I
Speaker 4: took an uber the other day because it's just too
Speaker 4: cold and gross and wet out and there's too much
Speaker 4: construction by that mall, and so it dropped me off
Speaker 4: about a block or so away, and I was going
Speaker 4: through this kind of you know, construction underpass kind of mess,
Speaker 4: and there was a young black man curled up in
Speaker 4: the fetal position, and people were all stepped stepping over him,
Speaker 4: stepping over him, stepping over him, and he and I
Speaker 4: stepped over him too, and then I looked back and
Speaker 4: he was just looking forward. He wasn't sleeping, he wasn't
Speaker 4: passed out, he was just looking forward in the position.
Speaker 3: I gave him some money and went on my way.
Speaker 3: But it's so heartbreaking to me to see people like this.
Speaker 3: And I live in a community. I live in the
Speaker 3: gay community of Toronto, and.
Speaker 4: So it's a safer area for people to come to
Speaker 4: when they're homeless or hungry or whatever, and they sort
Speaker 4: of it's less violent. I guess and you see so
Speaker 4: many people passed out on the street, Elizabeth, you can't
Speaker 4: imagine or just the mental health spike and mental health
Speaker 4: issues that have gone up since the pandemic. You know
Speaker 4: we've done nothing about that here at all. We've got housing,
Speaker 4: we've got hunger, we've got mental health as primary issues
Speaker 4: around Canada, around the US. I know here in Toronto
Speaker 4: it's really really bad.
Speaker 2: I have a question for you about safety, one of
Speaker 2: my friends, and then we'll go. I kept you on
Speaker 2: and on here, but I love this conversation. So one
Speaker 2: of my friends wrote the book out in the world.
Speaker 2: Her name is Amy Sheer, and it is I'll just
Speaker 2: read the Shift. It's actually a book by Disney. It
Speaker 2: says Meet the first totally inclusive guide for every traveler
Speaker 2: out there. And this inspirational guidebook readers will discover one
Speaker 2: hundred welcoming destinations where lgbtq IA vacationers and their allies
Speaker 2: will feel safe, comfortable, and ready to make the most
Speaker 2: of their experiences. Tell me what you think of something
Speaker 2: aside from her being my friend, Amy, if you know
Speaker 2: it makes me so I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: I can't believe we need a book like this, and
Speaker 2: then I'm like, OK, God, you wrote it. But on
Speaker 2: the same on the same I'm like, oh, that makes
Speaker 2: me so sad that we need a book like this
Speaker 2: tell me about you.
Speaker 4: And it's weird to have a book like this because
Speaker 4: for queer people, you're not welcome in many places in
Speaker 4: the world. There are seventy two countries in the world
Speaker 4: right now where you can be punished for being queer
Speaker 4: by being imprisoned or by being killed. You know, when
Speaker 4: I talk about my friend Tessa, who's a humanitarian aid
Speaker 4: worker and she was in Yemen, she texted me saying,
Speaker 4: don't ever come here. It is not good for gay
Speaker 4: people at all. She saw people being taken away, she
Speaker 4: saw people being beaten all because they were gay, hanged
Speaker 4: from cranes on display if you can imagine seeing a
Speaker 4: crane like a building crane and someone hanging from it
Speaker 4: as a warning to other gays. And so there's seventy
Speaker 4: two countries in the world that you don't want to
Speaker 4: be going to. And one example, it's improved a lot,
Speaker 4: I understand, and friends who are from there say that
Speaker 4: it's improved a lot. But Jamaica was the deadliest place
Speaker 4: on Earth, according to Time magazine, for queer people about
Speaker 4: ten years ago. Again, they've made some yes, and I've
Speaker 4: interviewed people who've sought asylum in Canada, queer people who
Speaker 4: are from Jamaica, and they tell horror stories of what
Speaker 4: it was like there. Again, it's been improving, but you know,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't feel comfortable ever going to Jamaica at this point.
Speaker 4: And it's important for queer people to know where they're
Speaker 4: welcoming when they're not welcome, because where you're not welcome,
Speaker 4: it's not just like nose in the air and ignoring you,
Speaker 4: we're not serving you or something like.
Speaker 3: That, or not letting you in the hotel.
Speaker 4: It's violence, and it's jail and possibly death. So a
Speaker 4: book like your friend's written is very necessary.
Speaker 2: She wrote it with Mark Jason Williams. Together they wrote
Speaker 2: that book.
Speaker 3: Good job guys.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's what I said too, And then I went,
Speaker 2: oh god, I'm so sorry. We need a book like this, everybody,
Speaker 2: you know, I apologize for all of us.
Speaker 4: No, But but going back to what you were talking
Speaker 4: about earlier about allyship and what can people do, just
Speaker 4: knowing that people listening to this right now, just knowing
Speaker 4: that a book like that out there is needed. And
Speaker 4: imagine if there was a book for straight people on
Speaker 4: on where not to go because it's not safe for you.
Speaker 4: Imagine that that's that's part of your experience a little.
Speaker 2: Bit as a woman. I got to tell you that
Speaker 2: it's as a woman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a little bit.
Speaker 2: There's a there's a thing. I was at a conference
Speaker 2: here that did the main conference for women, and and
Speaker 2: one of my books got handed out and everything like that,
Speaker 2: and I was all happy. And then I went into
Speaker 2: one of the presentations. I took a break from signing
Speaker 2: books and went in and listened, and I stumbled upon
Speaker 2: hearing a conversation would you rather be in an alleyway
Speaker 2: with a man or a bear? Almost one hundred percent
Speaker 2: of women will choose a bear.
Speaker 3: So the bear a bear, the bear winds.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And as a mother of four boys, it made my
Speaker 2: skin call. I'm like, oh my god, because you don't
Speaker 2: think about them being perceived that way because they're such
Speaker 2: sweet kids, you know kind of thing that I've got nice,
Speaker 2: really nice boys, you know kind of thing. And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is going to be tough on you.
Speaker 4: The other spoil it for everybody. Others spoiled it for everybody.
Speaker 3: But I think our patriarchal society has changed, you know, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly.
Speaker 4: We see small movements, we see big movements. We see
Speaker 4: me too movements, We see the queer movement. We see
Speaker 4: people you know, fighting back. We saw the Winds march
Speaker 4: on Washington first time.
Speaker 3: Trump got in. You know, there's there's a sension going on.
Speaker 3: It's just taking so damn long.
Speaker 4: Like I don't know where else see it in my
Speaker 4: lifetime or not, But I believe it's happening. And I'm
Speaker 4: an optimist, and I like to think the good things
Speaker 4: are happening in the universe that the universe has are back.
Speaker 2: Yep. I agree. All right, we got to go. We're
Speaker 2: out of time. Where do you want people to go
Speaker 2: to find you and listen to you and love you.
Speaker 4: We'll go to Seanprue dot substack dot com. Go to
Speaker 4: Seris XM channel one sixty seven on weekends to hear
Speaker 4: the Sean Prue Show, and you can find out more
Speaker 4: about me at Seanpru dot com. And Elizabeth, I love you,
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for having me on your show today.
Speaker 2: I love you too, all right, Thanks everybody for listening,
Speaker 2: Take care and have a beautiful day and visit us
Speaker 2: at bestevere dot com. We thank you, Sean, thank you
Speaker 2: for listening.
Speaker 1: We're so glad you tuned in. Be brave, be bold,
Speaker 1: See you, and remember to visit us at besteveru dot com.