 In their late 20s, teenagers, younger kids, they were all saying, oh, well, like, that's episode Steven Universe, and they'd say, tell me about the episode. And they were telling me about this cartoon that they were watching that, uh, encouraged on things like continued consent. Go! Boilies, boilies. There's a cartoon called Street in the Universe. It's a really cool show. It's unique in the sense that the main character becomes more complicated to the point where it's really, really hard to even explain. It's a little boy who's his mom, who's also... I don't know how far in the series you are, but he's also an intergalactic queen who's also a rock, all in the same person. And the show's about relationships, but it's just a question of, like, I've never seen this level of relationships in one show. So, I had all these clients keep telling me about it, keep talking about it. Really? Yeah, I mean, especially people on autism spectrum. People who were having a hard time with social interactions and understanding other people's motivations. And so, people in their late 20s, teenagers, younger kids, they were all saying, oh, well, like, that's episode Steven Universe, and they'd say, tell me about the episode. They were telling me about this cartoon that they were watching that encroached on things like continued consent. Continued consent? Because Steven and his friend, the younger Connie, they go into the bubble together, and the whole time they say, well, I've never done this before. Is it okay with you if we do this? And then while they're doing it, they say, are you still okay? Are you still on board with this? And then after they separate from each other, when they fuse, after they separate from each other, they say, are you okay again? What do you think about that? How do you feel about doing that in the future? There's continued consent throughout the process of them fusing. And so we talk about, I talk about consent. Every time I talk about sex, I don't like what the client, we talk about safety and consent first, and then we can talk about whatever. So bringing up consent with the younger kids, oh yeah, like when Steven and Connie did this thing, they just kept checking, they kept checking on each other. Let me ask you a question then. What do you think is a good time to introduce concepts such as consent to people? And is it to the point where it's too complicated to put into a kid's show? It should only be for, for people who would say that. What do you think? I think consent starts from day one. From birth? From birth. You're talking to your baby, you're holding your baby, you're hugging your baby. Is that it right there? When your baby is screaming and asking for a hug, you hug your baby, if your baby needs to get down, you let your baby down. So you can do those things. But then as we get older, we name body parts. Yes. So you talk about body parts very frankly so that they can talk about their body parts very frankly. So if anything would happen that was not consensual, they can easily talk about what happened. And then, you know, you're putting tickle fights with a toddler, right? Sure, sure, sure. So you tickle, tickle, tickle, and they say, no, and you stop. That's consent. And they say, okay, go. And then you go. Oh, okay, okay, okay. They say no, and you stop. Or, you know, a four-year-old. All right, we'll go hug grandma, grandpa, goodbye. I don't want to. Okay, well, how about we say goodbye in another way? Maybe we should high-five them. What do you think about waving? It's about not forcing someone to do with their body what they don't want to do. And so, you allow your child to have some control over, you know, who I'm hugging. They're intimacy. Yeah, absolutely. I'm not going to tell you, you need to go press your body firmly against another body. If you're not cool with that, I would never do that to an adult. But you would be like, you stink, take a shower. Right. I don't want to take a shower. You're getting naked. Right, right, right. You would be hitting that shower. Right. Or, I will do it to you. It is that good. Yeah. Where do you draw that line? Right. This is like some new parent question. I know I'm more of a jump in the gun here. Yeah. But where do you plan on drawing that line with regard to, like... Right. So we... Yes, no. It's about choices. Have to override that for your own safety purposes. Right. You want people to believe, to feel like we have some control over what happens to us. Right? And so, I can say, I hear you saying that you don't want to take a bath. Uh-huh. That's good. So, here's the deal. Since you have to be clean, you can choose to take a shower. Okay. Or, you can choose to take a bath in the morning. That's up to you. You can either take a bath tonight, take a shower tonight, or you can do something in the morning. But before we go to grandma's house, you have to be clean. You've got to be clean. So, you can choose, but those are your options. Do you ever wonder from a sense of, I also need to make sure this kid's disciplined. And they may hate, they might hate eating their vegetables right now, but they might love vegetables later on. They'll be like, hey, remember when you forced me to eat those vegetables? I'm kind of glad he did, because it worked out pretty well. What choices? You just be like, hey, I understand you don't want to take a shower. Guess what? If you choose not to take a shower, then you're choosing not to go to grandma's house. Hmm. If you choose not to take a shower, then you're choosing not to have dessert. Oh, it looks like you're choosing not to have dessert. That's up to you. That's your choice. Hmm. If you choose to throw the water on the floor, then you're choosing not to play with the water. I get it, but then you're not checking back and by the arm into the shower and force that situation to happen because it could be lung or consequences or something like that. Oh, it's guaranteed there we'll have consequences. They'll be the bathtub serial killer. Yeah. That's how you end up in my office. We're doing EMDR later. Like, extensive trauma therapy for sure. Okay, yeah. It seems like you have to always respect a person's choice with regard to what they do with their body. Is there ever a chance the case I'm sure what's an example I don't know I think I don't know is a totally fine answer but yeah totally yeah so I'm I'm sure when does consent not matter and if there's a time for that like oh well like if you're attacking me so when I am in physical sure danger yes you know I mean yeah I'm gonna do that when it's I wouldn't necessarily like when it's in your best interest but like I said when your well-being is is being hard your physical safety you have the right to protect your well-being right I'm not gonna ask for consent to fight back you say it also applies to like prisoners what do you mean so like a prisoner like we're gonna wash everyone down before they come into this unit you guys have to get naked we're gonna have you guys with this hose and you have to take showers at these specific times we don't care if you don't want to not take a shower you're taking showers at this time right you think you lose those rights if you get put into a situation yeah yeah I mean there is there aren't enough sign there are there's not enough sand in the nation for us to continue down the path of what's wrong with the prison system do you think they should have concern I don't think the prison system should exist the way that it does so we're going this is fun yeah we did start up Steven Universe isn't that weird yeah all right let's see if we can like somehow switch that back and Steven Universe was a prison that's true yeah there was a scene where Steven Universe was trying to meet Ruby and sci-fi right and they were because they had been forcibly split apart with each other without the consent that's absolutely true I never thought of the implications of that aside from just like until this conversation really because before that was just like oh no they'd be powered garnet that's because she's one of my favorite characters but the fact that Steven had like these two people like completely split and put behind bars and yet like fine and when he released them the only thing they cared about was just getting back together again right seemed like is that another analogy for consent and what would be like a good way to contextualize that like don't split people up forcibly or is there something again I mean I feel like that's absolutely relevant to what's going on these days anyway it was ripping apart families and and you know we talked about civil rights today and suddenly assembly yeah and so one and so that plus this plus the prison is you know the greater prison pipeline ripping apart African-American families and pulling fathers out of households I mean continuously on a loop and so I think in the show it's showing children hey when we rip people apart do you remember how unbalanced those two characters are yeah okay I get and how their mental health just like limited when they were thinking about getting back together right because it couldn't they couldn't be apart yeah exactly it couldn't function without each other wow that's really heavy yeah that's really heavy so I kept having these clients talk about this show all right I gotta I gotta just watch the show how far into the seasons are you like what's I watched so far Steven and Peridot have a pretty copacetic copacetic relationship love Peridot she's yeah and where the with the other gems are still trying to fight her and still kind of not trust me if you can help me out from your perspective because sounds like you're pretty far into the show could you explain the dynamics that you think are analogous to like real real life between like Steven and like each of the gems do you think like I'm a business even have like more of a brother sisterly bond oh definitely yeah her to like Pearl who clearly more motherly where's garnet fit into that she's just like the rock star that was at home or is she like more of a parental figure do you I would say if we look at the gender role stereotypes that we keep in our society I would call her the father oh right so she says yeah Pearl's just trying to take care of you that's why she's freaking out right and she says things like well let me teach you how to fight right let me teach you how to protect yourself okay let me be strong and stoic and let some of these women go crazy while I come in here and try to settle things down with logic and ration so really pull out what we say about men and women I wouldn't say she's the dad hmm okay okay I can definitely see that you had mentioned I don't know I know you guys getting ready to go anytime you're ready to go it's totally fine while there are such things as gender stereotypes that exist how do you feel about the enforcement of those stereotypes do you think that it's do you think that people who do to people who say I want to be more monthly therefore I will do these things that we have agreed are monthly or I want to be more fatherly so I'm going to take these things and my husband should have these roles and I should take care of this because we agreed on that implicitly because we know what the stereotypes are I find like personally just saying I feel like that could be sort of detriment I'm sure it can it can function but it could be also detrimental on as far as like so one of the great strengths of feminism is that it aims to unlock men from the limitations that are put on them we aim to say you do not have to not cry right you didn't have to say that you can't feel you do not have to not tell your child that you love them you know or hug your baby or like silly and fun or be like the father that raised you right right you have other options you have you have limitless possibilities of what good looks like to you hmm and so I think that that's one of the real strong benefits of current feminism to men is trying to unlock all of these restrictions that we are putting on them I also think gender stereotypes regardless of what we think about them they're gonna be around and they ball over time to very much slowly right and has a sex and gender therapist I can't say there's no difference between men and women because I am at that point denying the existence of my trans clients right and my trans clients are a different gender than they were assigned at birth right and so by saying there's no difference in the genders I'm saying that's not real whatever you're feeling isn't real so that doesn't make sense for me to to go that far right so I have to say yes there are differences between the gender roles and gender identities and gender expressions I think they'll be there for a long time but what we need to not do is tell people that they have to follow them so just so I can understand you're basically saying yes we have these models and they will change over time but they exist unfortunately they just do but you're not forced to feed in that role right and you're free to pick and choose right we need to tell people that you know regardless of what you see is out there your options are more varied than you think and that's okay okay okay I know we get kicked out of here pretty soon