Bryan Schwartzman:	From the recording studios of Reconstructing Judaism, Welcome to Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations.

[music]

John Backman: I swear if I'm on my death bed and anybody asks me what the secret of life is, I have two things that I want to say. 

Bryan Schwartzman:	I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman and we've got an interview for you today. A real treat, I think. Our guest is the writer John Backman and we'll be discussing her essay "Scenes from the Q of LGBTQ+". In case you thought it was a slip, John's preferred pronouns are she and her. John's essay, more of a series of literary tragic comic vignettes, look at what it's like to live every day outside of the confines of "he" and "she". In this piece and today in this episode, John, who by the way sometimes goes by Janelle, discusses gender identity and its fluidity. We get into some pretty serious stuff and John discusses very personal issues, including a long struggle with depression and a lifelong quest to find true self, and does this in ways that are honest, profoundly articulate and I'll be honest, sometimes pretty funny.

Before I introduce our guest and we get to the interview, a reminder that all the essays on this show are available to read for free -- no paywall here -- on the Evolve website, which is http://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. These essays are not required reading for the show, but we really do recommend checking them out to enhance your listening experience.

All right, let's introduce our guest. First, to get it out of the way, John is our first podcast guest who doesn't identify as Jewish. She attends an Episcopalian church and is a Zen practitioner. Our executive producer, Rabbi Jacob Staub, had read one of John's pieces in a spiritual direction journal, reached out, and voila! We're fortunate to have her writing for Evolve and on as a guest on this show.

John is a spiritual director, nonbinary person and quasi-hermit who writes about spirituality and postmodern life. She is the author of the book 'Why Can't We Talk? Christian Wisdom On Dialogue As A Habit Of The Heart'. Okay, John Backman, welcome to the show. We're so happy to have you on the Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations podcast.

John Backman:	Thank you, Bryan. It's great to be here. 

Bryan Schwartzman:	It's a wonderfully written rich essay and I'm excited to dive into it and the story behind it, so thank you. We could start in so many places. I'm going to start in 2011, which is, it's a year I don't remember particularly well because I had an infant at home. You mentioned it was a plane trip and an encounter with a TSA officer that spurred you after years to publicly change your pronouns and assume a different gender identity than what you had presented publicly. What happened? It sounds like an eventful trip to the airport.

John Backman:	Well, there are two stories here. I probably should tell one of them as background because that's the one where that was the real watershed for me and that's the one that happened in 2011. I have wrestled with mental health issues, especially depression, most of my, pretty much all my adult life. I was having a particularly difficult time around January of 2011 and realized I needed to just bust out of my routine in some way in a way that would resolve the issues at least temporarily. I came up with several options and the best one for reasons that I'm not sure of was to paint my toenails. I went and bought a bottle of navy blue, luscious navy blue nail polish and went up to my bedroom and started painting my toenails. It was like someone had plugged me into an outlet and sent an electric current through my body.

It was the jolt of having not thought about or not repressed or.. I'm sorry, or repressed or fully realized something that was within me that now through the medium of nail polish was coming out in a rush. That's where I realized that I needed to be much more intentional about this, to pay attention to put names to things, to understand it. That's one story. The airport happened a couple of years after that. Someone drove me to the airport. I started to get out of the car, realized I had forgotten to wear socks. This for most people would not be a big deal, but I had these luscious navy-blue toenails and I was going to have to expose them to the TSA and to everybody in the TSA. This was a frightening thought. It was also frightening because I couldn't tell by the location of the airport whether it's going to be safe thing to do. 

That's one of the problems with being either trans or in my case, gender non-binary. You really don't know where you're safe and you don't know where you'll be accepted. I got to the TSA lane. I put my laptop on the conveyor belt, I put my luggage on the conveyor belt and I took off my shoes and something happened. That electric current that I felt in 2011 came back. My head went up, my spine straightened and I just glided forward somehow, the girl that was inside me fully inhabited me. I was proud of who I was. I was walking straight into who I was. It was a moment of tremendous liberation. Just being able to be me in that moment.

Bryan Schwartzman:	We'll get more into spiritual issues throughout this conversation, but we'll sort of plugged your, both a Zen practitioner and practice a progressive brand of Christianity. Was this a spiritual moment for you or was it really more about the self in that time and place?

John Backman:	It was absolutely spiritual moment for me. Just to give a little bit of a teaser for my spirituality: when I think in terms of God, I think in terms of the reality that's behind and permeates the cosmos, everything. I think of that reality more as a Who than as a What, it feels like a personal element, but it is something that is both permeating and also slightly outside of. In both of these instances that electric current felt like it came from somewhere through the deepest part of me. That sounds a little on the mystical side and I suppose it has to be because that's part of my spirituality, but it definitely had that sense of something numinous that was happening to me.

Bryan Schwartzman:	Well, I asked, so thank you for that. Thank you for that powerful answer. You wrote that you always felt some version of gender non-binary and maybe didn't have the language, and you write about wearing dresses when you were four. I mean, can you talk a little bit about the process or the struggle that led up to the electric current moment?

John Backman:	On of the things that interests me about this whole journey is that I engaged so much of it at a time when we had no language for this sort of thing. In fact, we had no language because we didn't even know there was anything to discuss. There was a binary, you are a girl, you are a boy, that's it, end of story. And it was determined purely by your physical appearance. I actually had to go through and then look retrospectively at some of the signs that should have told me that something was different. The brief but ardent phase of wearing dresses at age four was one of them. The fact that all of my close friends from high school on were women was another one. 
There was a time during therapy when I was stripping away layers of psychic dross as we are all wanting to do in therapy and I suddenly came upon the idea that, wow, I really would like to be a woman. I want to be a woman. I could have defined myself as non-binary but again, at that point there was no language. There's also the testimony of my wife who I've now known for 45 years. And as I've grown into this, she often says that she has always known this about me and in fact, it's a very big reason why she married me. She wanted somebody who was more sensitive, somebody who had more of those feminine traits that I possess. We've discussed that. There were all these little pieces of evidence that adding up, you would look at it and say, "Oh, that's a nonbinary person," but I couldn't point to that until the language and the reality of it really came into its own on a cultural level.

Bryan Schwartzman:	Most of the people I've met who identify as gender non-binary prefer to use the pronouns they and them. And you specifically embraced she and her, can you talk a little bit about that and why it's important.

John Backman:	This was another electric current moment, as it were, that came from the depths of within me, but it was triggered by somebody else. I was attending a conference where as conferences do, there were certain workshops to go to and within one of the workshops, which was on gender identity, we broke out into breakout groups, discussion groups. One woman started our discussion group by saying, "Let's go around the group and each of us will say our name and the preferred pronouns that we would like." I hadn't thought all that much about pronouns at that point so I said what I usually said at that time, I said, "Hi, my name is John and everybody pretty much thinks of me as he and him and I kind of sort of look like a he and him so I'm okay with that." One of the young women in the group was having none of that. She looked me right in the eye and said, "But what do you want to be called?" I had never really thought about what I wanted in that situation, but it took me about a second to realize that what I really wanted was "she". I am not purely feminine, but I think "she" was the closest, most apt descriptor of the totality of who I am. 

Bryan Schwartzman:	Just to clarify, you'll use the names John and Janelle interchangeably or  you mostly go by John or?

John Backman:	I mostly go by John because that's the name I have established -- to the extent that I am known in the world, I am known by John, and I am very aware that the world's at a place where this is still a very, very new thing and it's hard for people to glom on to. One thing that I want to try to do is to make it easier for them to understand, and if that involves certain markers, so if I look like a John and calling me John is more comfortable, I'm very happy with that. The name Janelle is something that I tend to reserve. It shows up in my writing. I have told face-to-face a few friends about it, but it is a name that really resonates more with me and within my writing than, than it does on an everyday level. 

Plus I should also mention just in case people don't realize, a lot of people I think hear non-binary and think trans, they're not really the same. They're related, but they're not really the same. If I were a trans woman, I probably would go by Janelle because that would be the expression of me, being non-binary and not identifying exclusively male or exclusively female, I have to come to a place where I can encompass both of those things. And that's why both of those names are still important.

Bryan Schwartzman:	This is one of those questions with a big "but" in there. I don't mean to pry, but you referenced your wife of 45 years, if I got the number right. To the extent you feel comfortable and I really mean that,can you talk about how you adopting a nonbinary gender identity has -- what role that's, or how that's impacted your marriage?

John Backman:	It has been a fascinating journey because I am fortunate enough to be married to a woman who is remarkably accepting of who I am. At the same time, she grew up with a fairly traditional sense of life's journey. It came from her white middle-class, upper-middle-class upbringing where when she was growing up, she understood that the way you live as you go to college and you get out and you build a career and you get married to a person of the opposite sex. This was, after all, the 60s, we didn't know any better, most of us didn't. And you produce two children and you have a really nice house in the suburbs and that's pretty much the way it goes. She has very, very strong family ties. 
Many of her family are more conservative than that. And so she grew up in that milieu, she inhaled that milieu, the way we all do with the environments we grow up in. The process of my, in advancing, so to speak, as a nonbinary person, she had to take that into the advancing and work with the conflict that it's sometimes presented with her upbringing. Like the wider culture, she experienced a lot of what I was trying to say, the way I tried to express my gender, as very new and therefore as difficult. However, she has come to a place where she is largely accepting of a lot of my gender expression. At the same time, I am careful to accommodate her where I can. There are certain aspects of my gender expression that don't bother her at all. There are certain aspects that she has had to learn to live with. There are certain aspects that I might be comfortable in but I don't push it because yes, I'm non-binary and I want to express that, but also part of my identity is that I am in this relationship and I want to maximize that and I want to express that fully as well.

Bryan Schwartzman:	Again, to the extent you feel comfortable, how has it, or has it, impacted your relationship or how you relate to your adult child?

John Backman:	My adult child has been wonderful about this. My adult child is gay. She is currently partnered with a wonderful young woman and she's in her mid-thirties and  being in her mid-thirties, she is light years ahead of my generation on this sort of thing. One of the things that she and I have both talked about is that in 50 years, none of this is going to be a struggle. In fact, in 50 years, perhaps even some of the words I use to describe myself may be obsolete because nobody will care anymore. It's won't be a matter of, "Oh, I'm dating a non-binary person or with a trans woman", it will be "I'm dating Joe or I'm dating Joanne and this is who they are and they're really cool". She envisions that, she's very open in terms of this sort of thing. It's been -- in fact, she has been an encouragement at times when I have needed validation so it's been a blessing to have her around.

Bryan Schwartzman:	Looking forward 50 years, which you mentioned, it's a nice segue for me to ask, what do you hope for from society regarding gender identity?

John Backman:	That's a great question. I don't know that we are ever going to get to a point where we don't need words and signals and markers of our identity, even if it's only to explain to ourselves who we are in the world. If I went through life and I said, oh I'm John, oh, I'm Janelle and I'm a unique person, this is how I'm unique, I think terms like non-binary and gender fluid or for that matter, mystical or Christian or Zen or things like that, help me articulate the richness of what's in me. Because I can't do it without words. I'm a writer by nature so I tend to think I can't do things without words. I think what will happen in 50 years or what I hope will happen is just that there is this vast cornucopia of human experience for which we have words, for which we are free to use those words without judgment and also to lay those words aside when they no longer help us.

That's what I would like to see. Ultimately, I think we will get to a point where we are relating one-on-one to the person as they are in their totality, beyond the words and the signifiers of identity. But that's happening even now. I mean, once you get to know somebody really wel  they don't become that "that non binary person", they become Linda. It's Linda and I know Linda. I think that will be happening, but I would always like to see the option of having those words and those signifiers be available.

Bryan Schwartzman:	There's been a lot written about the narrow gender roles and expectations of males and females and the writer Peggy Orenstein has a new book and Atlantic cover story arguing where maybe a generation ago it was young girls who had very circumscribed cultural expectations of what it meant to be a girl. Today it's actually boys that are really taught a very narrow path of what it means to be male. And I'm wondering if that resonates with you and just to compound the question further, there've been some critics of the push to really identify non cisgender identities in young children, saying this just further erodes or narrows the scope of what it means to be male and female. I know I just threw a whole bunch at you, but I'm wondering if it's something you see as an issue.

John Backman:	I hear two questions in that. Let me--

Bryan Schwartzman:	Yes, it wasn't the most perfectly a phrased question [laughter] but we're all a work in progress. 

John Backman:	Yes, we certainly are. Let me try to take those one at a time. I read Peggy Orenstein's article in the Atlantic, and found it very disturbing. Although I am sure the picture is accurate of the narrow definitions of masculinity that we continue to constrict young boys into, or young boys, older boys, younger men. I would've hoped we would have been farther along the way by now. I look back at my own experience and I wonder if we had had the vocabulary to do this when I was growing up, if there had been a wider spectrum of definitions of masculinity, would I have just said, "Oh, no, I'm a boy because you could be a boy this way. You could be a boy that way." I would say to that, I don't know the answer to that. It's a great question.

I suspect however the answer is no, because there is something in me, in my deepest self, that hears that question and looks at that scenario and just quietly says no, even if that were the case, when I look at all of the things that make up who I am, the word man  still would not fit as an apt descriptor. I think there is room for this, which I guess gets into the second question. People who are concerned about using these labels and acknowledging the existence of these other genders. Especially in young children. This is a very difficult question as far as I can see it. I know parents of trans children, I know the care that they have taken in fostering their child's trans identity. I think it is so important to listen without judgment to the experience of young children and older children as it is with anybody to hear what they're saying. The people that I know who have trans children have been very good at listening and accommodating. If they're young, Joe says, "You know what, I'm a girl, I'm a girl inside." They've been very careful to listen to that and say, "Okay, you're a girl, now let's take this one step at a time and see how it goes."

Bryan Schwartzman:	All right. Time out from this really engaging conversation. Hope you're enjoying this episode.  You want others to experience this kind of conversation, and explore these kinds of issues? Please take a moment to give us a five-star rating or leave a review, especially on Apple Podcasts where it really helps boost rankings and visibility. Okay, while we have just another couple seconds of your time, if you'd like to support these groundbreaking conversations of Evolve on the podcast, on the website, in our web conversations or even the curriculum that we're producing. You can support us. You can make a contribution to http://reconstructingjudaism.org/evolve-donate. There's also a donate link in our show notes. Thanks for listening and thank you for your support. All right, now back to John Beckman.

I want to move into the direction of spirituality. But before I get there you did mention the state of our conversation and uncivil dialogue on a range of issues right now. You're the author of a book: Why Can't We Talk?: Christian Wisdom on Dialogue as a Habit of the Heart. I mean is there one lesson or one thing we can take away to improve the way we as a society, particularly as an American society, address the difficult issues. We just seem like we're really terrible at it right now.

John Backman:	For me, the key is in that subtitle, a dialogue is a habit of the heart. One of my favorite things about the world of faith and spirituality is its goal and its capacity to transform people from the inside out. I've seen this in my own life. I have seen it in the lives of holy people, saints, sages et cetera, who have lived throughout the ages. And when I've read their stories, you can tell that they come out of life different and better people than when they went in. What fueled that in so many cases was this inner transformation that came from God, the ultimate reality, whatever it is. But some sort of deep communion with that. 

I think the challenge of bridging divides and resolving the massive polarization that we are facing in today's society is a problem that requires solutions on many different fronts. I happen to tout the inner transformation bit because that's the part I know. And I have been observing the state of dialogue for many years, have seen many different things tried, some of which are very successful, some of which are not that successful. But it's very difficult for me to see people on a mass level overcoming polarization as a whole, as a habit, unless they are transformed in some way to have new habits.

Bryan Schwartzman:	I found it really interesting how you wrote about your Buddhist and Zen practice and the goal of getting to the place of no permanent self as you are struggling with identifying and expressing your truest self. Can you walk us through that a little bit? 

John Backman:	Sure. I should qualify this at the outset. I'm starting to call myself an amateur Buddhist. [laughter] I don't want to make it sound as though I'm speaking for all Zen people or anything even remotely like that. This is more, my experience is filtered through Zen. But it does throw a bit of a monkey wrench into the whole idea of gender identity or identities of any kind. The way I understand the doctrine of no self,  the idea is that Buddhism does not subscribe to the idea that there is a permanent self or a permanent thing called the soul or in Hinduism the Atman, but rather, what appears to be a self at any time is a totality of all the causes and the conditions and the background of one's life that has brought you to that point. 

As I say in the essay, I say things like I am nonbinary and there's this little inner voice that pops up and says, who is this "I"  you're talking about? There's a story in which the Buddha was asked the question, is there a self or is there a no self? In both questions the Buddha remain silent. My understanding is that he remains silent because it was more that the question wasn't helpful. It didn't get you to the process of an enlightened. He didn't answer whether there's a self or no self, but certainly within Buddhism you can't take the idea of a permanent self very far. If I can't say that I am non-binary, what does that mean? I think to me it means that this gender identity expresses something important about who I am. But like everything else in life, I have to hold it lightly because everything is ultimately impermanent.

Bryan Schwartzman:	Today, do you identify with a particular Christian tradition or denomination or is it more encompassing?

John Backman:	I go to an Episcopal church and there are many, many things I like about the Episcopal church, the liturgy is beautiful. The opportunity to take communion every week is beautiful, is very meaningful to me. Beyond that, I have been actively involved in monasticism and mysticism for quite a while. I also call myself a quasi-hermit. And part of the reason for that is I think the word hermit has accumulated at a whole lot of cultural baggage. People hear hermit and they think some guy who's out in the middle of the desert sitting on a flagpole for 50 years and never getting off. That sort of thing. That is an actual story by the way. But--

Bryan Schwartzman:	I still think of Alec Guinness from the original Star Wars, but -- Obi-wan Kenobi.

John Backman:	Yes, he'd be very good at that. I mean, that's a very good picture of some of that cultural baggage. What it means in my life is that, because I've run a business out of my home, I've always lived on my own for a lot of my time of each day. At this point in my life, I am living much more intentionally into that solitude. I am writing and engaging in spiritual direction and engaging in spiritual practice in the context of being alone and listening to the silence that happens in that solitude and letting it bubble up and see what emerges in terms of wisdom and insight and then communicating that out to the world.

Bryan Schwartzman:	All right, so fair warning, two-part question, but they should be clear. [Laughter] Can you explain a little bit of what spiritual direction is? And I'm wondering if having struggled with both gender identity and depression, if that's made you a more empathetic, perceptive, spiritual director?

John Backman:	Those are great questions. Spiritual direction looks a lot like therapy. If you look at it from the outside, you have -- on an individual level, you have two people sitting in a room and you're talking about one of those people's lives and the issues in their lives. The big difference is in therapy, you are digging through layers of that person's psyche in order to help them gain insight into issues, solve problems, et cetera. In spiritual direction, you are doing similar things, but your goal is to listen with them to where God might be present in their life and to what God might be saying in terms of the direction of their life. 

For example I see as a spiritual directee an evangelical Christian who has had a very, very vibrant sense of the presence of God and a very vibrant sense of God giving her messages. That's not everybody's cup of tea, but this is the way she communicates and it has borne fruit in her life. She's a good person and makes a difference in the world. She came to me because she had reached a point in her life where over the course of the past year, God has, she had stopped hearing these messages. She had stopped understanding any presence of God in her life and she wanted to work on that. We would need and discuss the ways in which God had spoken to her in the past, what might be keeping her from hearing God in the present, what she might do to hear God in the present. Thankfully it actually worked out and that line of communication is much more open now for her. Obviously, listeners may interpret that in any way they want, but that is, within her worldview, within her life that's the way it is worked out. And it has borne fruit as she has moved forward. It's that sort of thing. 

I don't know to what extent my gender identity or my depression have contributed to the spiritual direction. I think maybe some of the things at the root of both have contributed more. One is, I tend to be very, very hypersensitive to people and to what they're trying to communicate and to stimuli in general and whatever's in the air. I can walk into a group of, say, friends or relatives and all of a sudden I realize that I'm getting really depressed and I have no reason why. Then I find out later that there was all kinds of interpersonal tension in that group and I have no filter for that so I'm just sort of sucking it all up. But what that means is it gives me an ability to listen and to listen without preconception to the person in front of me so that I can help ask questions that will help them unlock what might be happening in their lives.

Bryan Schwartzman:	I don't know about you -- my brain always seems to conjure imaginations of offering my younger self advice. I'm wondering, since some of these realizations came to somewhat later in life, I'm wondering if you could go back and talk to your childhood self or young adult self, is there clear advice you wish you could give?

John Backman:	I think of the advice that in my own personal mysterious way, I seem to hear from God or I perceive myself hearing from God. That is: "You're fine, you're just fine." I didn't have any sense of that growing up whatsoever, in any aspect of my life really, for a whole variety of reasons, and there is something so therapeutic about returning to that thought as a touchstone, you're just fine. I think the other thing that I wish I had thought, had known before is the thing that I swear if I'm on my death bed and anybody asked me what the secret of life is, I have two things that I want to say. One is, seek God however you understand God and the other one is pay attention. Because I think especially once we start paying attention so many other things fall into line, because I think we start seeing things the way they are, rather than the way we want them to be, or the way people tell them that we are, they are.

Bryan Schwartzman:	I mean, pay attention to what? Because my sense is you don't mean pay attention to the notifications on my smartphone.

John Backman:	[Laughs] No, I don't. In my mind, that is one of the real benefits of Zen or meditation in general, is that it helps the mind set aside many of the preconceptions, many of the assumptions that we go through, that we live by, that we filter our experience through on a daily basis and it, enables us to see more clearly to be able to accept [inaudible] for what it is and perceive it for what it is - judgment. I think that ability to hear into the core of our experience and  be able to glean from what it is teaching us is just priceless. 

Bryan Schwartzman:	This really struck me, you wrote that, "This essay is about a feeling that's hard to describe. No, feeling's not right, call it a state of being. Maybe by the end I'll have words for it." Do you have words for it now or are you still reaching and struggling for the words for it?

John Backman:	I think to some extent I'm always going to struggle with the words for it. I'm going to come up with a long succession of words that will almost describe it or describe a piece of it, and maybe not quite there. In the essay it was the term state of being, now today I used deeply ingrained sense of self. Those are very close. They get to the depth of what I perceive as gender identity, how close it is to the core of who you are, and then I want to say something about, for some reason, this particular aspect of the core you are of who you are has to be defined in terms of, the only word I can think of is gender so we're back to defining a word by using the word. I think this is going to be a lifelong issue, just trying to continue to describe it, and I suspect it will be pretty much for all of us who define ourselves this way. We're going to continue to develop this vocabulary as time goes on.

Bryan Schwartzman:	This conversation hasn't exactly been a laughathon. [Laughter] It's been for the most part pretty serious. But I can tell from your writing you have a wonderfully developed sense of humor that you deploy really effectively on the page. I'm just wondering what role, A, how you're able to laugh about, because it sounds like you can, about some serious things, depression, gender identity and if humor has played a role as a coping mechanism.

John Backman:	I just can't stop laughing. Everything strikes me as funny. I don't mean that in an irreverent way. I don't mean that I'm making fun of things. It's just that I think it goes back to one of the things that I have drawn from Zen and that is to hold everything lightly because there is so much we don't know about what we're doing. The ability to hold everything lightly means that, at least for me, I can see all of the foibles and contradictions and wrinkles in our thinking and in the way we present ourselves. It's hard not to laugh. I have a story if you'd like.

Bryan Schwartzman:	Sure. Audio is a storytelling format so go ahead.

John Backman:	That's right. One of my closest non-binary friends and colleagues, person that I just adore, has been through quite the odyssey with their gender identity. This person was originally assigned female at birth, born physically female, has never ever felt comfortable as identifying as a female. A few years ago they took steps to move into a more nonbinary gender expression -- among them were they started using pronouns like manufactured pronouns like sie and hier [spelling unclear] because they felt that that was the best expression of their gender at that point, nobody got it, nobody could use it. Everybody screwed them up. They finally decided, never mind, people are using the first person singular "they" now, I'm just going to use they and their, that's fine. I have known this person for probably a good 10 years. We talk on a regular basis and when I talk to them, what pronoun do I use? She, because I'm an idiot. [Laughter.] And because we're all kind of that way. As Firesign Theater wonderfully said, we are all bozos on this bus. 

Oh and by the way, on a regular basis, this person calls me him. And we look at each other and we laugh because what else can we do? I know people get very offended by this sort of thing sometimes, and I understand the sensitivity of it and I want to honor that as much as I can. But I also know that we have been ingrained with several millennia worth of cultural conditioning on this very topic and we're not going to overcome it in a day so might as well laugh at it while it's going on, especially as it applies to myself, because I laugh at myself more than I'd laugh at probably anything else.

Bryan Schwartzman:	John Beckman, this has been a really rich conversation. I know it's been deeply personal at times, but I think your personal experience can shed light for a lot of people, whether they're struggling to find their own gender identity or just seeking to better understand what others are going through and be a more empathetic human. I really appreciate the the conversation and love your writing, so thank you so much for your time. 

John Backman:	Well, thank you Bryan. It has been an absolute pleasure to be here. 

Bryan Schwartzman:	Thanks so much for listening to our interview with John Backman. If you enjoyed this conversation, please be sure to read her essay "Scenes from the Q of LGBTQ+". You might also want to check out her book, "Why Can't We Talk?: Christian Wisdom on Dialogue as a Habit of the Heart".  You can also visit her website at www.dialogueventure.com. What did you think of today's episode? Were there any questions we forgot to ask? Other things you wanted to explore? We want to hear from you. Evolve is about meaningful conversation, and that includes you, our listener. Send us your questions, comments, feedbacks, whatever you got. This is my real actual email. You can reach me directly at bschwartzman@reconstructingjudaism.org we'll be back next month with another terrific episode. Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is executive produced by Rabbi Jacob Staub and edited by Sam Wachs. Our theme song "Ilu Finu" was written by Rabbi Miriam Margles. This show is a production of Reconstructing Judaism. I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman, and we'll see you next time.