Language does matter.
With transgender people, people joke a lot.
They're like, oh, they want they want to be
called "them".
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He and she is made up, too, you stupid bitch.
You know what I mean?
But the thing is, words have power-- words
have power.
If you don't believe it, date someone who
calls you dummy.
You know what I mean?
Oh, they're just sounds from a mammal.
No, they're not.
They're spells.
We're casting spells on each other.
I do this on stage as a stand-up sometimes.
I point to someone in the front row, I go,
that's a great shirt.
You made a great choice of that shirt.
And you can see, even though they know I'm
just joking around or making a point, it works.
Why do we say have a great weekend?
That's just a spell.
You're just going-- I have no control over
your weekend.
But words matter.
They change our interior world.
Have a great weekend.
And they're like, oh.
It's not literal.
I'm not like, I'm thinking about your weekend.
You get laid.
Text me the word "finance", that's how I'll
know you had a good weekend.
So I think words do matter.
I think because I'm into-- I like unity of
consciousness, which is not that trippy of
an idea.
Science agrees.
The theory of the big bang is obviously the
singularity.
At one point, all of this was one thing, this
impossibly dense speck of mass, basically,
that contained everything-- contained this
lighting thing and the camera and me and my
hair and my balls.
It was all in there.
The mystic me-- I just think that that singularity
is worthy of a metaphor, it's worthy of a
story or a symbol system, so that I can not
just know it, but feel it and experience it.
Both the mystic and the scientist agree.
Both are just theories, that everything at
one point was one.
So when it comes to being called a pronoun,
sometimes I like to call other people "me".
I go like, oh, these mes voted for Trump,
this me is begging for change, this me is
driving me to the airport.
I find that useful instead of going like--
because it's so pleasant to go, you.
I think it's overwhelming to love.
I don't think hate is actually hate.
I think it's too overwhelming to love.
So we call groups-- it's hard to pick an example
because they all sound so hateful.
But if somebody hates left-handed people,
I think it's because it can be too overwhelming
to love that group that you call left-handed
people.
Because if you love them, now you have to
worry about them and you have to care about
them.
So we get overwhelmed in our heads.
So we go, oh, a group died, but they were
gang members.
OK.
Gang members up here-- I don't love them,
they can die.
So this is what we do.
So it's helpful sometimes in our language
to go like, no, those mes are in a gang.
You know what I mean?
That's a way that language can-- it's very
trippy and I don't expect everybody to sign
on and start doing that.
But I do it privately, especially if anybody's
serving you or helping you or you think you're
like, oh, this is the flight attendant.
No, this me just brought me a Sprite.
Thank you.
That me is doing great.
Looks nice.
It's just a nice way to increase compassion
instead of going, this flight attendant.
Look, that's a label we made so we feel OK
about yelling at them that there should be
more overhead space.
No, that me is doing
my best.
