Kristen Kish on Uplifting Community By Being Yourself from Who's with Me? with W. Kamau Bell

I do wanna talk a little bit more, 'cause it's not just Pride Month, I think it's also a good time to talk about those letters, and specifically the letter T, T for trans and transgender and the transgender community.

A few years ago, America had a moment where it seemed like we were opening up our cultural imagination and our cultural intelligence towards trans people.

It was around the time that Caitlyn Jenner, uh, announced herself as a transgender woman, and she was on the cover of magazines, and ESPN was giving her awards, and it was a moment where it felt like after we'd had a weird bathroom thing where we were battling over the bathrooms and who could go and who couldn't go, America was like, "We understand that transgender people are people too.

They've lived throughout history.

They've always been here.

This is not new.

It's just maybe new to you." And a lot of us came to a new understanding of the transgender, uh, identity, just like as, as a part of humanity, just like the heterosexual identity and the heteronormative identity.

It's just another way humanity expresses itself, or, or themself, or herself, or herself, or hisself.

But then that stopped, and there's been pushback against trans people, much of it weaponized by comedians of my age, [chuckles] middle-aged male comedians.

So I feel like I have to speak out on the other side of that as often as possible.

And I just wanna be clear that I am 100% down with trans folks.

I've done an episode of United Shades about the trans community in Dallas, Texas, when I had that show.

In a couple episodes, we'll have Nava Mau, the incredible actress, uh, from Baby Reindeer, and we talk about her struggle as a transgender actress in Hollywood and how she has to create her own projects.

But I've gotten some pushback from people who are questioning Why I would have my podcast with Pushkin because Malcolm Gladwell has different feelings about the trans community, uh, specifically around trans people playing sports, specifically around trans women playing sports.

And people are like, "Why would you do that, Kamau? Why would you be there?" And here's the thing.

Uh, first of all, I wanna be clear.

Throughout my career, I've worked with people who thought differently than me.

Hell, I was at CNN.

[laughs] I was surrounded by people who thought differently than me.

And the thing that I always have to ask myself is, do I feel comfortable being my full self in these places where people think differently than me? And right here, on Who's With Me?, the podcast, I feel comfortable being my full self and saying I disagree with Malcolm Gladwell on the way he thinks about trans people in sports, as I disagree with anybody who thinks trans people shouldn't play sports.

I actually talk about this on stage a lot.

Let trans people play sports.

Let trans kids play sports.

And you know why it's okay? 'Cause sports is fake.

Sports is fake.