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[0:09] Ruthie Fierberg: I'm Ruthie Fierberg, and this is Why We Theater.

[0:09] Ruthie Fierberg: The Intersection of Theater and Social Justice.

[0:09] Ruthie Fierberg: This podcast digs into today's most thought-provoking and urgent onstage works with the artists who made them and real-world experts who advise us on how we can create impactful change in our offstage lives.

[0:22] Ruthie Fierberg: After all, that is Why We Theater.

[0:27] Ruthie Fierberg: Today we welcome Ming Peiffer to talk about her astounding play, Usual Girls.

[0:33] Ruthie Fierberg: Marking Ming's professional debut, the play premiered in 2018 at Roundabout Underground for an extended sold-out run.

[0:41] Ruthie Fierberg: The play follows Kiang, a half-white, half-Asian American girl and her white female peers and the experiences marking their sexual maturation as they grow up in a predominantly white neighborhood in Ohio.

[0:54] Ruthie Fierberg: From being blackmailed for a kiss by their male peer on the elementary school playground, after he throws racial slurs at Kiang, to playing boyfriends and humping their stuffed animals, from looking at each other's bodies during a middle school sleepover party to ostracizing Kiang in high school for her quote bad behavior and calling her a slut.

[1:14] Ruthie Fierberg: From feeling strangely turned on by that scene in Disney's Aladdin to being the target of sexual violence, Ming viscerally and emotionally tracks what it means to grow up femme in America.

[1:26] Ruthie Fierberg: This episode focuses on femme sex and sexuality, and we do talk about everything from pleasure and self-discovery to misogyny, rape culture, and recovering from violence.

[1:37] Ruthie Fierberg: If this is the kind of content you find difficult or triggering, I'm taking a page out of Brené Brown's book to say, I hope you'll listen with a friend, or do what you need to do to take care of yourself if you choose to listen.

[1:50] Ruthie Fierberg: And if you choose to listen, I hope this is healing and validating for you.

[1:54] Ruthie Fierberg: And as always, there are resources in the episode description on our website and on social channels at YWEWE.com.

[2:01] Ruthie Fierberg: This is the first of a two-part episode.

[2:09] Ruthie Fierberg: Well, I am just beyond excited that we have Ming Peiffer and an incredible panel of experts today.

[2:17] Ruthie Fierberg: I saw Usual Girls off off-Broadway at Roundabout Underground.

[2:22] Ruthie Fierberg: I couldn't even believe I got a seat because it was completely sold out, but I did.

[2:27] Ruthie Fierberg: And it ended up on my personal top nine list of theater productions that year because I only make a list of the things that I think should be on there, and whatever number it is, it is.

[2:38] Ruthie Fierberg: And Usual Girls was at the top.

[2:41] Ruthie Fierberg: And Ming Peiffer, our playwright, is here today.

[2:44] Ruthie Fierberg: She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for this professional debut.

[2:48] Ruthie Fierberg: Welcome, Ming.

[2:50] Ming Peiffer: Hi, thank you so much for having me. This is such a treat.

[2:54] Ming Peiffer: I'm just, I can't tell you how excited I am.

[2:56] Ming Peiffer: To sit in that theater was an experience unlike anything else I've ever had.

[3:01] Ming Peiffer: And to feel, you know, people talk so often about feeling seen on stage.

[3:07] Ming Peiffer: And again, it's not like I hadn't seen people that looked like me.

[3:11] Ming Peiffer: I am lucky that I had seen that at least, but I had not seen people who had my experiences or who were showing that experience.

[3:21] Ruthie Fierberg: So I want to dig in and I actually want to start with the title. Where did the title Usual Girls come from?

[3:33] Ming Peiffer: Um, well, I think I was just thinking about the way in which girls and women are used in our society and sort of thrown away, but then also the connotation of something that's normal as well, in terms of what the experience is and also the ways in which we're marginalized.

[3:55] Ming Peiffer: So it just felt like that word had a lot to go with it. And people would always say, like mistake it to be unusual girls. And I was like, see, that's actually interesting that you assume it must be that instead of what the title actually is. So even though it tricked some people up, I found that very interesting.

[4:14] Ruthie Fierberg: Right. Wow, that is so fascinating because I remember leaving, going, of course it's called Usual Girls, because now I know that my experience is common.

[4:25] Ruthie Fierberg: I had not unusual.

[4:27] Ming Peiffer: Right.

[4:28] Ruthie Fierberg: I thought it was unusual, but here I am going, oh wait, there's someone else, you know, literally the scene with the stuffed animals and the girls like figuring out what masturbation is essentially on stage, going, oh my god, this now makes so much sense, or the reference to Jasmine in Aladdin and knowing that everyone had that same feeling of like, wait, why do I like that she's like tied up and Jafar is kind of goading her in this way? What's going on?

[5:00] Ming Peiffer: So to find out that other people had that experience, you're like, ah, I'm usual success. That moment was so hilarious in the theater every night because I watched it for previews, so that was, you know, eight shows a week. And every night there would be at least one woman in the audience who would start bursting out laughing, and I was like, Yep, you and I have something in common.

[5:24] Ming Peiffer: Yep. Say you're in the and you're like, same generation, you know this, you know the puffy cover. We're there.

[5:31] Ruthie Fierberg: Um, I want to rewind a little bit before we go too deep into individual scenes. I know that the initial idea for the play was actually a very different play, that it was inspired by allegations against American Apparel's Dov Charney, and that during your process, you then realized that your story about women was centered around a man, so you kind of like scrapped and revised.

[5:57] Ruthie Fierberg: So, but what was it about that particular incident and that particular man? Because unfortunately, there are many men and many high-profile men at that who have been accused of sexual misconduct or violent behavior. But what was it about this one that made you say, it's time to write about this, and it's time to write about specifically female sexuality in the context of this?

[6:22] Ming Peiffer: I think at the time he was one of the more high-profile people who kind of got some sort of oppress around what was going on. And then also I think just, you know, just living in New York and seeing these stores all the time. I did think theatrically it would be interesting to have these kind of bright colors and things like that. And I also knew that a lot of the models that he used were women who worked in the stores that then he would take photographs of sleep with, and so just into then to have those pictures emblazoned on in the actual stores themselves of these women that he abused, I think just sort of everything about that and how visible it was in both what he was doing before he got in trouble and then just, yeah, mixed with this sort of all-American thing, I think was interesting to me.

[7:15] Ming Peiffer: Also, my mom works in corporate fashion, and so I just know that world. Yeah, so that was also part of it. But um, yeah, I was just, I thought theatrically the store could look interesting on stage and these pictures of these women who we then see actually and who they really were. Um but yeah, I just I I was I had an interest in that and had an interest in talking about, you know, what women go through. Um, and so yeah, I I had this sort of revulsion once I realized I was like, why am I writing about this guy? And uh then sort of Usual Girls came out of that.

[7:55] Ruthie Fierberg: Right. And how even if, and I don't, you know, I don't know, I didn't see that play, but even if you were villainizing him, it was still about him and not about the women, is what I realized.

[8:05] Ming Peiffer: Yeah, yeah, because the only thing that really existed in that original play was I had a conversation with the director I was working with at the time where we interjected into scenes, and so that actually ended up being the what the woman was when she actually talks to us. So it was just kind of that was sort of the only thing that stayed. And I I threw away everything else. I just kept the conversations.

[8:27] Ruthie Fierberg: So interesting because I was going to ask you if the woman was always there because she comes in. So so for those of you who haven't seen the show, the our lead character is Kiang, a young Asian American. She begins as a girl and you know, grows into a woman, and we have her older self kind of as a counterpart looking back on this full path of hers. And I was curious because she comes in so late and she is this reflective vision and perspective on the story, if she had been there always.

[9:03] Ming Peiffer: So it's fascinating to learn that she was actually the one thing that was there all along.

[9:08] Ming Peiffer: Yeah, essentially that was just me and my director at the time. We just had a conversation. I just recorded it. We put that in, and that ended up being the only thing that stayed because I had all these scenes about this terrible man, and then I was like, why am I giving him a platform?

[9:21] Ruthie Fierberg: Yeah.

[9:21] Ming Peiffer: So I just had, I just kept that stuff, and uh it morphed because it worked differently in the new piece, but um, but that was really the only thing that stayed.

[9:31] Ruthie Fierberg: Yeah. So what when you decided to flip that script and make it about the girls and put the girls on stage. I believe this story is very personal.

[9:44] Ming Peiffer: Yes.

[9:44] Ruthie Fierberg: And what made you go to the personal place of it?

[9:51] Ming Peiffer: Well, at the time I was at Columbia in my MFA, and I was only one of two POC in the entire 10-person class. And um, I had been writing a lot of plays that I hated, but I felt like I was trying to write for them and for what they were interested in. And at that point in time in my MFA, I was just so angry that I just kind of went, you know what? I'm done trying to please you and trying to perform for you. And so I just went to a really, really personal place because the one thing I could hold on to was I was like, this is real. So that like I don't care if you tell me you don't like this, I don't care if you tell me that this is like too much. This is my life. So I don't care what you think about it.

[10:44] Ruthie Fierberg: Exactly.

[10:50] Ming Peiffer: So you are half Asian American and half white.

[10:56] Ming Peiffer: Yes.

[10:57] Ruthie Fierberg: And I know that the centering of that specifically mixed perspective was crucial to you. Talk to me about how that distinguishes itself both in the play, but then also just in general from things that you had been seeing, even if we got the occasional Asian American story of like Asian parents or something like that.

[11:23] Ming Peiffer: Yeah, so I actually think that the play could be performed with a full-blooded Asian at the center because more I think what the play is interrogating is being otherized in a very and growing up in a white environment. And so we did end up casting a white dad, which I think in performance ends up adding something. When we did it and had a half Asian character, I think perhaps something that could be read into that is that even even a more complicated and fetishization of whiteness and needing to perform as white because you do have kind of when you're when you're mixed race, your identity is kind of you don't dictate it, it's dictated by your surroundings. And so I feel like you know, among white people, I'm Asian, among Asian people, I'm white, and so it's just constantly, um, yeah, your identity is dictated by your surroundings, not by yourself.

[12:26] Ming Peiffer: Well, it's interesting, it reminds me of the soft power episode we did with David Henry Huang, uh, listening to him talk about I'm not too halved, I'm whole. And it's like I'm not just this when I'm here, and I'm not just that when I'm there. So um, but seeing that story come to life here is obviously a fresh perspective. I mean, I know I was actually tripping up earlier when I was saying full Asian. I was like, I was trying to find like a better words for that because I was like, that's like weird to say, because like I'm just as Asian as I am white, and like I don't know, it's just it's so such a mind fuck.

[12:59] Ming Peiffer: Yeah. And I'm not really, I mean, I'm not a person for labels in that way, but I do know that that, you know, that is part of your story, and that's part of this story. And I mean, what I am so interested in, just also as a creator, is you bared your soul in a way in this production, both as a woman having gone through such misogyny, sexism, um, you know, there's violence in this play, as well as some of the racist slurs that were thrown. Talk to me about your process emotionally writing it. How did you muster the courage to be that there?

[13:44] Ming Peiffer: I uh again, it went, I was so angry. So I during the actual writing process of it, it was just spewing. It was like vomiting. Like I was just so I just it it went really fast. Um, I wasn't censoring myself. There were times where I would like cry when I wrote something, and then I was like, all right, I need to like go eat something and drink some water. But like, but in other than that, but then I would just keep going. It was like I got it out, I got the tears out, and then I would just keep kind of going. The more difficult process was watching it.

[14:19] Ming Peiffer: Um, actually watching these things happen. What I'm gonna get um emotional. Uh, watching Midori respond to it and like yeah, essentially be able to see um what happened from a different a different vantage point. Um yeah, and seeing how how she could uh relate and also so beautifully portray the pain um was was really intense, uh especially because yeah, I was watching it eight, eight uh eight times a week.

[14:53] Ming Peiffer: Um that's just in performance, that's not rehearsal. Yes, yes. Um, and then I also think, yeah, a lot of uh all the women who were involved and the men as well, um there were all there were always throughout the whole process, there were moments where people needed to take uh take five.

[15:12] Ruthie Fierberg: Absolutely. And and Midori Francis, who played your uh your evolving Kiang, let's call her. I mean, she was phenomenal. Um decided to structure this kind of it feels almost like episodic in the way that we're watching the coming of age of not just Kiang, but of all of these girls and their one male peer, Rory. What was it about the playground at five, the play date at seven, the sleepover at you know, double digits is what I felt. I was like, this is the double digit sleepover and and high school and college. How did you choose those moments in particular?

[15:57] Ming Peiffer: So I had actually come across an anonymous piece of writing on the internet where it was this woman just charted every kind of formational uh misogynistic uh thing in her life, and it was much more lengthy, it was more like every year sort of thing. And so I read that a while ago, and it always kind of stuck with me. And then once I got back to this, it kind of just I was just thinking, yeah, like in each kind of segment of my life. Um I'm I'm I'm 32 now, but you know, what what felt like because I think, yeah, kind of kindergarten, middle school, high school, and then after, like it just kind of naturally lives are just structured in that way, sort of because of the school system, but then I kind of yeah, it was very easy to just think like what was the thing in elementary school that was the most yeah, fucked up.

[16:56] Ming Peiffer: Or like what was everything that was the most, yeah. Well, I was so surprised, honestly. Like, it's not that it didn't ring true once I saw it, but I don't know, like had I been writing a story of this, or had I been writing a story of my own maturation, I don't know that I would have started that young on the playground, even though it's like very clearly impactful. I don't know that my brain is programmed to think that it starts that young, you know.

[17:24] Ming Peiffer: Well, I think I just experienced like that. Like I was called a chink, and and people were um asking if I had a sideways vagina on the playground. Like that's just that's what happened. So that's why we had started there because that was the first time I realized I was like really different.

[17:43] Ruthie Fierberg: Yeah. And speaking of starting young and watching them evolve, it really was a feat that your entire cast uh completed because they the single actor played the character at all of those ages. I don't know that you could have found someone that young to play a child like that. I don't think that that's feasible in terms of the technical production. But why did you want it emotionally for us to watch the same actors through the full show?

[18:15] Ming Peiffer: Uh one, I just felt like Bador could do it. Um because we had a conversation, you know, do we cast younger actors? Do we have different ages? And I felt uncomfortable uh casting an actor in some of those earlier. I didn't want to essentially do what the play is guarding against to an actor for this thing. Like that seems like that that wasn't kosher in my mind.

[18:40] Ming Peiffer: Um and so yeah, and I just I met Midori at this Asian American Arts Alliance. We were both like, why are we here? Um I remembered noticing her, and uh we yeah, I I cold messaged her on Facebook and I was like, because I saw her, she was in a Liberty Mutual commercial. I'd never seen her act otherwise. I'd met her at this Asian American Arts Lions, and then I was on a treadmill at a gym, and I saw her and I was like, I know that girl.

[19:07] Ming Peiffer: And I just had this feeling. I was like, I just think she can do it. And so I just like cold Facebook DM'd her, and then uh, you know, this is for the Columbia, just like and then we get a drama desk nominated performance.

[19:21] Ruthie Fierberg: Yes, yeah, yeah.

[19:22] Ming Peiffer: Yeah, but but back to your question is I felt, you know, and I don't know that I went into it thinking this, but reflecting back on the play now I think the effect that it has is that like you know that child lives within us all these different selves all these different iterations of our being still live within us. It's like I'm I'm quarantining with my mom right now and I'm like 14 years old again you know like just a serious regression exactly exactly and so I think just like in a moment I think also you know that's how trauma works in some ways too manifests in some ways it's like you go back to that moment when it happened absolutely yeah.

[19:22] Ruthie Fierberg: What was the most revelatory thing to see on stage and what was like the milestone or experience you wish you had been able to get in there but you couldn't if there was one?

[19:22] Ming Peiffer: I mean I think if we ever did it again I would I would make some edits to the woman because there was a lot I was editing up until because because um we debuted the year a year no we went into tech a year after Me Too had happened right Dr. Ford was was testifying during tech so I was rewriting all the time because the conversation around this was changing I wrote the first draft of this in 2016 Einstein didn't happen till 2017.

[20:56] Ming Peiffer: So actually everyone was freaked out by the play they were like what is this and I I had been auditioning the play um at roundabout for I think the process ended up being two or three years before they actually got it because Joe Rapson, who was the literary manager who's now associate artistic director there, she was like, We have to do this play, we have to do this play. But there were a lot of people who were like, Yeah, I don't know.

[21:19] Ming Peiffer: Um and so, but then me too happened, and then they were like, Oh, we have to do this play. And so uh because the conversation around this, like suddenly something that no one was talking about, everyone was talking about. Right. I had to just like kind of go, oh. So I think now I would I would make some bigger, bolder, I think, statements earlier in the play via the woman just to get people talking, maybe because right now we're seeing in the scene such personal experiences, and then she's also talking about personal experiences.

[21:53] Ming Peiffer: I feel like there could be just a little bit more. Um, and then the most revelatory thing. I think seeing because originally people were always wanting to get me to cut the woman. They really were. They were like, why is she here? She comes so late in the play. It feels like weird, like and all this stuff. And originally I didn't have that final scene. They they stayed, they didn't interact other than the shaving scene.

[22:22] Ming Peiffer: Um, and then at the very end, I came in. This was like a couple weeks before we went into tech. I came in with a scene that I didn't know if I felt right because I was like, Do I want to put the reality of a rape in this play? Because before it's been these very amorphous things. It's like you're getting hints of things, you're seeing obvious misogyny, you're seeing obvious sexism and racism, but like, do I want to put the reality of a rape actually occurring?

[22:48] Ming Peiffer: Because do I want to make this a rape play? And uh, and you know, and people were talking about that a lot. You know, people were talking about all the rape scenes on Game of Thrones, like this was a thing, and I was like, Am I re-traumatizing here? But then ultimately, yeah, I brought this scene in, and I said, And the the scene where it's the morning after and Tiang is about to shower, and the older woman knowing, you know, because it's herself, says, Don't, you know, don't do that, don't shower.

[23:19] Ming Peiffer: Yes, and this breakdown that is I mean, it's so powerful and it's so real and it's so true. Yeah, I think it was so revelatory because also because I was because I was like, I don't want to put this on stage, and then and then even though it's not the actual act itself, it is the aftermath. But I was so worried that people would then see it as a quote unquote rape play.

[23:41] Ming Peiffer: And I and then I was like, fuck, fuck them. I was like, if they watch this entire play, and if at the end this thing makes them go, uh-uh- uh, like I lost you already, like, and so and so I just started interrogating my own, my own like not wanting to do it, my own bias about that. And I was like, what actually is that? And I was like, I've been true to myself at every point in time in this play and every scene. Why aren't I doing it now around this one thing?

[24:12] Ming Peiffer: So I challenged myself with that, and then to see Jennifer Lim and Midori actually do this embrace. It was just so incredibly powerful. Yeah, because watching her hug her, it's the thing, like that's how you want to feel after something like that happens. I think what's so amazing about it is like the aftermath is actually the important part anyway. The aftermath is actually the the the effect and the problem.

[24:40] Ruthie Fierberg: But I also think what is so incredible is that you have this whole show of you know five-year-olds on the playground playing lava, and then there's like a little moment of discomfort. And then you have them playing girlfriends, which is so like joyful and funny, and again, like a moment where us as the audience are going, like, oh, not only me. And then you have, you know, that moment where the dad walks in and he goes, What's happening in here? So all of those things are mixing the silliness, the discovery, the joy, and the fact that you were able to have such humor and such substance, and then kind of hit us with this at the end. I mean, I think just speaks to your prowess as a dramatist. And I want to get into all of these things, all of the maturation, all of the issues, the ideas of um, you know, female sexual maturation in particular, because we have this idea of the coming of age play, quote unquote, but I've never seen anything specifically about sexual development. Like I am so about it, and we have an incredible panel of experts who I want to welcome in. So I'm gonna introduce them.

[26:04] Ruthie Fierberg: We have um Celine Parrenas Shimizu, who is the director of the School of Cinema and a full professor of cinema studies and a member of the graduate faculty in sexuality studies at San Francisco State University. She is an author and a filmmaker. Among her books are The Hypersexuality of Race, Performing Asian American Women on Screen and Scene. Definitely applies here, as well as the Feminist porn book and uh films such as The Award Winning, The Fact of Asian Women. Welcome, Celine.

[26:42] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: Hello.

[26:43] Ruthie Fierberg: And then we have uh Lisa Speidel. She is the assistant professor and general faculty in the gender and sexuality department at the University of Virginia. I found her through her book, The Edge of Sex, Navigating a Sexually Confusing Culture from the Margins, which came out this past December. She's also a sex educator and has taught women's self-defense for 26 years. Welcome, Lisa.

[27:09] Lisa Speidel: Thanks for having me.

[27:10] Ruthie Fierberg: So thrilled to have you here. We have Justine Ang Fonte. She is a disruptor in the health education system. She's a director of health and wellness at a K through 12 school here in New York City. Um, she offers uh and currently develops training and programming to help create health ed and sex positive programming. She leads workshops in consent for kids, body positivity, emotional wellness, sex and pleasure, and so much more. Welcome, Justine.

[27:43] Justine Ang Fonte: Thanks, Ruthie. Good to be here.

[27:45] Ruthie Fierberg: And then finally, we have Dr. Tracie Gilbert. Um, she has been an educator, writer, researcher, and consultant for the past 25 years, more than 25 years. And she specifically uh works in black communities, helping members of those communities claim and reclaim sexual wellness as a sex educator. Welcome, Tracy.

[28:08] Dr. Tracie Gilbert: Hello, hello. Thanks for having me. So excited.

[28:12] Ruthie Fierberg: All right. So now that we've got the roster lined up, I actually want to start with something a little personal. And um, and Ming, you can answer as well. I want you to jump in here too. What were you taught about your own body and sexuality at a young age, specifically by adults, parents or teachers that you did not learn from just like your friends on the playground? Who wants to start? Maybe Tracy? You look like you like that question.

[28:49] Dr. Tracie Gilbert: The reality is that there was nothing that I was taught. Um, I think I grew up in a community where um I think it was just assumed that if you don't talk about sex, you don't talk about bodies, people won't do sex and they won't do anything with their bodies. And so um it's silence was literally what I got for most of my upbringing. Um, and I think maybe I was in seventh, eighth grade where I first actually I learned about the menstrual cycle from the Cosby show. Um, because Akeisha Knight Pullium's character, Rudy, and I in the teenage. And so the the episode where she got her menstrual cycle was when I learned, like, oh, okay, you know, this is this is what how you're gonna do that. Right, this is something that's gonna happen, and it's something that you know can be celebrated and all of that.

Um, but yeah, no, conversations just were not, that's just not something that happened. And I think a lot of it, um, a lot of it can be silence, but I think a lot of it was also about class, right? I working uh living in a working class family. You know, people didn't have a lot of leisure time to sit and have conversations. It's like they were at work, they came home and they went to bed. So no one's talking, no one has time to talk. So I think some of that also kind of adds to it as well.

[30:02] Ruthie Fierberg: And there was nothing in your school?

[30:04] Dr. Tracie Gilbert: Uh no, very no. Like I said, um, I think the first time I got a sex ed class was probably actually it was in eighth grade, and that was at the height of the HIV uh scare and people kind of having this hyper. So a lot of it was about um because I came from a community that was uh perceived to be hypersexualized and at risk. And so a lot of what we got were just kind of anti-sex messages about using condoms and things like that. Um we also had high uh teen pregnancy rates. Uh so a lot of it was like, don't do this thing, don't have sex. But developmentally, there was nothing. There was nothing.

[30:41] Ruthie Fierberg: So Ming, I mean, I know that you wrote the story of your life on this stage, but I just see you nodding along so you know, vehemently.

[30:51] Ming Peiffer: Well, yeah, you know, it's um I'm my mom's an immigrant, and not to say that all but I think in like immigrant Chinese families, like you just don't really talk about that. And um the only thing, you know, as in the play was, you know, I found my my dad's pornos, and then he ended up actually looking at them with me, and then I showed it to my mom, and my mom freaked out. So at first it was basically uh, this is good, this is how women should look. Like, you know, one of the images uh that sticks out most in my mind was a penthouse where it's a woman sticking a stiletto into another woman, and like which is a very violent and not comfortable sounding to me, at least, uh situation. Um, but so then I had this very sexualized, very kind of violent thing that I saw, and then I was like enjoying it though, and then my mom sees it, and then she flipped the fuck out, so then it was like a lot of shame then surrounding it.

Um but other than that, in terms of because I went to public school in Ohio, and I actually didn't even realize this until recently. I was like, oh, we were taught abstinence. I didn't like realize that. Like they separated the boys and girls, they just showed us a bunch of scary pictures of STDs, and that was it. Like close-up pictures of STDs. Like that was it.

[32:14] Justine Ang Fonte: I definitely I remember those.

[32:16] Ming Peiffer: I remember those.

[32:16] Justine Ang Fonte: I mean I feel the same almost the same way. Like I don't remember having a conversation with my parents uh or my mother. I remember learning in fifth grade the reproductive system at the end of the other body systems. Like we learned nervous, circulatory, digestive, respiratory, reproductive. And um it was And did you have a mixed class for did you have many?

[32:44] Ming Peiffer: I remember we definitely like we were nine and 10, and we were definitely taught parts together, and then we were shown videos separately. So I actually feel now pretty lucky that like I knew from the age of nine, like that I was gonna grow breasts and uh and hair and have a period, and that in seventh grade, then it became very like you're saying, very STI focused, and it was like and condoms are are 90% effective, and birth control is zero percent effective for STIs, even though they're it's you know, for pregnancy it works. But but again, like this was a conversation about sex in between people, not about sexuality and any expression of it. And I'm wondering, you know, I did just interject my own history, but uh to the other ladies in the room, I ask you the same question of what was your upbringing like.

[33:47] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: I grew up in I grew up in the Philippines, which is a very Catholic country where abortion, divorce, and contraception is illegal. And there's also a colonized standard of beauty, you know, where you're growing up as a girl and you see that there are women who have fallen out of the status of good woman because they've either become you know pregnant at a young age or they've become designated by men as women who are outside of marriage, you know, to be used to be used using Ming's words here, um, to be used by men in a way that really devalues them because they're no longer eligible, you know, for marriage or upward mobility. So even as a young girl, I could see this. I could see this Western standard of beauty that was imposed on the way I understood my own body.

And I also saw, you know, the presence of the white US military GI, you know, and I don't remember how young I was when I learned the term little brown fucking machine powered by rice, which referred to Filipino women in the sex industry. And I remember being in a car and seeing, you know, almost like documentary footage, but I was actually in real life, seeing women outside the bars and seeing men in groups, you know, around those women. And I knew what it was. I didn't have the language for it, but I knew what it was. I knew that they were there for the men. But of course, only later than in life did I realize that this was all arranged, you know, by the government. Right. Between the relationship between the United States and the Philippines.

You know, so I did not have the language for it, whether it was, you know, the state and international relations or the church. But I knew what it meant for my own body. And I knew what it meant for my own mobility, you know, to become a fallen person. Right. And in the terms of how people look at you rather than and how that informs how you look at yourself. It absolutely is intertwined to me because there may be this systematic ways that women are regarded by these structures, but I also recognize it in the gaze of men. I recognized it in the gaze of family members. I recognized it in the gaze of men on the street. I recognized what it meant to be vulnerable as a girl.

[36:08] Dr. Tracie Gilbert: Yes.

[36:09] Justine Ang Fonte: If I could if I could Tracy go ahead, right? Because I think one, I just wanted to say Ming, I think your play was really awesome. I didn't haven't had a chance to see it, but I did get a chance to read it. And very rarely outside of black produced media do I see stories where I'm like, I can see myself. And so there were literal things in there that I was like, the same thing that Ruthie said. I was like, oh my God, yes. Yes. I remember this story, like literal, even up to the very end. I was like, oh my God, that happened. Right. And and what Celine, what you're bringing up for me is is just reminiscent of this idea of um kind of again, this idea of being otherized and being fetishized, and how that allowed how that pushes you to see yourself. Um, for me again, this big piece was about being at risk, right?

[36:57] Justine Ang Fonte: And this was not something I ever saw in myself but because of the body I was in, because of the skin color I was in, because of the environment I grew up in, I grew up accepting that I was at risk of something, not even knowing what it was, but knowing that I was at risk. And because of that, I needed to be groomed in a certain way with regard to sex.

[37:19] Justine Ang Fonte: Even though I had no conceptualization, like I had these experiences, but none of them really led to this perception of like, oh, well, I'm sexually empowered, I'm this, you know, it was just that, oh, I have these curiosities of these things. But the narrative I got was, oh, but we need to protect you, we need to stop you because at some point, like I remember being in high school and a big thing people would say is that I was going to be turned out, that I was going to wild out because this was the assumption that people were making about me, even though I had no concept of it for myself.

[37:57] Justine Ang Fonte: So I just, what you're saying, we're definitely going to get to that, we're gonna get to that too.

[38:02] Justine Ang Fonte: It's just so resonant, yeah, and how it matches up too with not just the male gaze but also the white gaze, right? How that goes together to inform how you see yourself as a young girl of color. Definitely, what about for you, Justine?

[38:18] Justine Ang Fonte: Well, what I appreciate about what Dr. Gilbert brought up is that because we're in like this multiracial conversation, this is Usual Girls. All of us are having our own intersectional experiences, and yet this is a common denominator, the patriarchy, right?

[38:32] Justine Ang Fonte: And so I think that that was so powerful having the title, having that much intent that this is usual. This is not radical, this is not an outlier, no matter what your race is or how you identify, if you are perceived as femme, this is gonna happen to you.

[38:49] Justine Ang Fonte: And what Celine was saying about her upbringing in the Philippines, I have a parallel narrative as a Filipino American born in the US, and that for me going to Catholic school, not necessarily born in the Catholic country of the Philippines, but Catholic school, K through eighth grade, and then going through school where the only time the history books covered someone that maybe resembled me and my identity was the rape of Nanking.

[39:16] Justine Ang Fonte: So right away people are seeing me as, oh, so you're like a comfort woman. That's who you are. And when there was an unplanned pregnancy in my extended family, this was the first time that I heard my parents actually address sex and or sexuality to me.

[39:32] Justine Ang Fonte: With how old were you?

[39:34] Justine Ang Fonte: I was, I think I was maybe like 12 or so.

[39:38] Justine Ang Fonte: Okay. And the comment talking about what had happened with my cousin was, this is not gonna happen to you, okay? That was it. Like it was like if it was out of context, you wouldn't even know what they were referring to, but they were kind of talking about our cousin, and then they turned around in the car to just point to me.

[39:56] Justine Ang Fonte: And I was like, is this the sex ed talk? This is the talk that all my white friends have gotten. This is it. You have a word.

[40:03] Justine Ang Fonte: And then with, you know, what Celine was bringing up about, you know, the GIs are in the country and how, you know, all that, how they are and how the women there are valued, especially by the military, that's me on Tinder.

[40:17] Justine Ang Fonte: Like that is, I'm getting that same thing now through this online platform when I'm seeking out, you know, intimacy, and I'm getting in return this idea of like, oh, subservient, hypersexualized, not able to give consent because she's already, you know, hypersexualized.

[40:34] Justine Ang Fonte: And there's a reason why Asian women are statistically the most right-swiped in the dating apps because they see us as this hypersexualized, subservient mail-order bride who I can use as my comfort woman in 2020.

[40:48] Justine Ang Fonte: So there's just such a parallel. I didn't have to be born in the Philippines to experience the Philippine narrative because it carries and is, you know, epigenetic to like what is happening to me here in the United States.

[41:01] Justine Ang Fonte: I was getting messages all the time in terms of like a hypersexuality. I remember in seventh grade, me and all my white girlfriends all wore eyeliner for like the first time to like go to this choir concert.

[41:11] Justine Ang Fonte: And I remember I was 12, and this mother came up to me and basically called me a slut in front of everyone, but not any of the other girls that were wearing the eyeliner, or because my dad has blonde hair and blue eyes, when we used to go out to dinner together, if it would just be us, the assumption would always be that I was his mail-order bride, and that I was just his young wife.

[41:34] Justine Ang Fonte: And I remember waiters making comments, I remember fellow people around making comments, and actually my father even playing into it because he had carried some sort of social capital, essentially, to have a young Asian, a brown fucking machine powered by rice sitting across from you.

[41:51] Justine Ang Fonte: Yellow fever was the phrase I heard so much in college. It's like, oh, you're into that guy, he must have yellow fever for you.

[41:58] Justine Ang Fonte: Yeah, or just all the con, you know, you just even anatomically the stereotypes that you're tight or like whatever.

[42:05] Justine Ang Fonte: Yep.

[42:06] Justine Ang Fonte: And the exoticism of that.

[42:08] Justine Ang Fonte: Yeah.

[42:09] Ruthie Fierberg: Lisa, what about for you?

[42:11] Lisa Speidel: What was your upbringing like?

[42:13] Lisa Speidel: Well, interestingly, I was born and brought up in Taiwan and lived there till I was 10.

[42:18] Lisa Speidel: Moved to the US when I was 10.

[42:21] Lisa Speidel: So moving to the United States was a shocker in sort of a reverse direction.

[42:30] Lisa Speidel: But fifth grade, I remember we had a nurse come in, and I wasn't very used to this country yet, and they separated us as boys and girls, and she told us that the vagina was like a self-cleaning oven and we didn't eat douche.

[42:50] Lisa Speidel: And we're all, you know, like 10 years old.

[42:54] Lisa Speidel: So we were like, what's a self-cleaning oven?

[43:01] Lisa Speidel: I think we get them at Bed Bath and Beyond, yeah.

[43:05] Lisa Speidel: This makes no sense.

[43:06] Lisa Speidel: So she was trying really hard, and then I have a very clear memory of my mom being like, you've got to watch out for men, you know.

[43:12] Lisa Speidel: They act cool as cucumbers, but they're hard as cucumbers, and I was like, okay, there's cucumbers, you know, like I don't understand what's happening here, you know.

[43:24] Lisa Speidel: They were trying, there was some effort, but I think there was a lot of confusion.

[43:30] Lisa Speidel: So that was the 80s.

[43:32] Lisa Speidel: There is something about the age of 12.

[43:36] Lisa Speidel: There is something.

[43:38] Lisa Speidel: And I mean right before 13, people are freaking the fuck out.

[43:42] Lisa Speidel: Well, Jews definitely, Jews have something about the age of 12 and 13 officially.

[43:47] Lisa Speidel: But I think what I'm hearing in the room is just a lot of, first of all, a lack of knowledge, but then when there was knowledge, a lot of shame and a lot of guilt, the turned out, the idea of like I'm my own father's mail-order bride.

[44:13] Lisa Speidel: I am an object for consumption by the military, by the white military.

[44:22] Lisa Speidel: And I really want to talk about how we as adult women reclaim our sexuality and how we raise female-bodied kids to feel that from the start so that they don't have to unlearn, but they have it from the outset and maintain it.

[44:41] Lisa Speidel: So, like, where can we begin on reclaiming sexuality as a, I don't even want to say a positive, like part of me wants to say a positive, but part of me also wants to say neutral.

[44:53] Lisa Speidel: I'm not sure if I could, yeah, I think because what you also, what I also heard from what everybody was saying is that there was a lot of confusion.

[45:03] Dr. Tracie Gilbert: Yes.

[45:03] Lisa Speidel: There was just a lot of messages that were like, what the fuck does this even mean? What are you even talking about?

[45:09] Lisa Speidel: I always tell the story when I get in front of groups. I talk about the four condoms story, my first HIV class, where I was taught by a teacher that you need to wear four condoms in order to protect yourself from HIV.

[45:22] Lisa Speidel: Well, sidebar, I did learn that only 15 states of the 50 in the US are required to teach medically accurate sexual.

[45:32] Dr. Tracie Gilbert: Oh, yeah.

[45:33] Lisa Speidel: Oh, yeah, they can come up with all types of stuff, right?

[45:35] Lisa Speidel: But again though, this was at the height of HIV.

[45:39] Lisa Speidel: So if I was sexually active, it really would have behooved me to have the right information.

[45:46] Lisa Speidel: Who is saying, no, no, no, girl, you need to have four and showed us how, what it was supposed to look like, and all of these things.

[45:53] Lisa Speidel: Wow.

[45:54] Lisa Speidel: And so for me, I think it is less about, I mean, yes, I think it should be positive, more so, but also it should just be normalizing, right?

[46:04] Lisa Speidel: This idea that sex is a part of you from the moment you are born to the moment you die, sexuality is a part of your world, whether or not you choose to engage with it.

[46:13] Lisa Speidel: And so if you can start there, then having conversations about consent just comes with the territory.

[46:18] Lisa Speidel: Having conversations about, you know, gender diversity and anatomy diversity, all of that just comes with the territory, right?

[46:25] Lisa Speidel: And so, like, the one thing I was gonna say, I'm kind of digressing a little bit, but when you were talking about the use of the rape scene in the play, for me, it was such a moment because I felt like it really brought full circle the ways that rape culture is cultivated throughout the life of a girl.

[46:46] Lisa Speidel: And really, if we understand that sexuality is a part of all this, then that conversation that happened at five, it wouldn't happen.

[46:54] Lisa Speidel: It wouldn't be that a boy is, oh, I'm gonna tell on you if you don't kiss me, right? Because it's normalized that no, this is not how that works, right?

[47:03] Lisa Speidel: And so for me, that is where it begins, really just by normalizing and helping people have the accurate information that allows them to make informed choices about what's happening to them in real time.

[47:15] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: Celine, you have a different perspective, yeah, yeah.

[47:21] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: Um versus, yeah, I really, when you said that you were summarizing, Ruthie, that what we were saying, that there is a lack of knowledge, I actually think it's the opposite.

[47:31] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: I think that there is a very loud knowledge, unspoken maybe, but learned quite early about what is a good sexuality and what is a bad sexuality.

[47:42] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: You know, it's exactly what Tracy just said.

[47:46] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: Rape culture is cultivated in the life of a girl throughout her life.

[47:50] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: Yep.

[47:51] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: Planting the things, yeah, that you don't own your body, that it belongs to others, you know, it belongs to your family and your family's reputation, for example, and you know not to cross that.

[48:03] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: Or go home that uncle.

[48:04] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: Yeah, but your behavior, you know, or what people do to you, you know, it has this place in a larger culture in which you belong, you know.

[48:14] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: So I love what Tracy's saying.

[48:17] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: And I went to a talk last week where this filmmaker, you know, who's in Hollywood was basically saying, you know, as an indigenous Latinx person that it's really important to cultivate an original voice.

[48:29] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: And the way that you do that is to not be afraid of who you are and not be afraid of what you love.

[48:35] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: And I think that really carries over in terms of thinking about sexuality because if we live in a world, and we do live in a world, you know, where women are disciplined to go against themselves in terms of what they like and who they are, then it's really important to claim your sexuality that includes your trauma.

[49:03] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: Yeah, you know, and how your pleasure may stem from that trauma.

[49:09] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: What I meant in terms of lack of knowledge is there is an anatomical lack of knowledge, definitely, but also a lack of self-discovery in sexuality.

[49:26] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: That we have societal perceptions of good sexuality and bad sexuality, that you're right, Celine, are very loud, that we maybe impose upon ourselves or incorporate into ourselves, but that we're not finding it ourselves.

[49:42] Justine Ang Fonte: Absolutely.

[49:43] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: If we think about Ming's play, right? And she's in the playground, Kiyang's in the playground, talking about the slanted vagina. I mean, that's a form of knowledge, right? That has a long history, you know. So I went to the Kinsey Institute to study pornography, specifically of Asian women from the last hundred, thirty years. You know, it's there. The images are there. You know, and it includes this attribution of the slanted vagina. I mean, I think the earliest one I saw was from the 30s, 40s. This beautiful theme of develop sexual development, you know, is something that I'm thinking about a lot because the new book that I'm writing is called The Sex of Racial Childhoods. And it's about the self-sovereignty of children in defining their sexuality because adults so easily impose, you know, their idea of their idea and even practice of genital sex when that may not be the thing that children are curious about, you know, they're curious about the feeling of romance.

We also learn from the culture that's around us and the scripts that we're taking in. Um, and again, I kind of want to want to bring us back a little bit to like how do we make them our own scripts? How do we find the ownership of our body, hence our own self-discovery of sexuality that leads to really pleasure and joy rather than um you know, shame and guilt.

[51:13] Dr. Tracie Gilbert: I was just thinking uh about what Celine was talking about, and and then uh what I was hearing was like sort of the natural discovery of yourself and and your body and how we interrupt it is what I was thinking, like based on you know, different uh religion and cultural background and and all the things you all have been talking about, uh, you know, navigating dominant white culture and and the history of racism, and um I was I was thinking of uh a client that we worked with when I worked at the social assault resource agency here in Charlottesville in Virginia, and uh the girl um kept saying, Well, you know, uh my uncle keeps touching my cookie, and and nobody was taking her seriously because that was the name she was taught for her vagina for her vulva.

And um it was it was just increasing her vulnerability with the lack of proper language or proper is not the right word, but but accurate or or just um you know, and there was like uh just no information. And I uh you know, I teach a human sexualities class in the university at Virginia, and and this next generation, it's like I keep expecting it to change, you know, as far as like, oh wait, the cycle was broken, and now they have uh more agency over their bodies or autonomy, and it's it it just isn't that cycle hasn't isn't breaking. There's still so much shame. And there's the uh Ruthie and I had talked about this on the phone, but there's this book that's uh called Sex is a Funny Word that Corey Silverberg.

I don't know if any of you all have seen that, but I actually have my college students read it. It's for seven to 12 year olds, and they are like, why am I reading this kid's book? And then at the end of it, you know, they've written this whole paper about it, and they're like, oh my gosh, I actually learned about parts of my body. You know, they're 20-year-olds, yeah. And they're sexually active. And just because you're sexually active does not mean you know shit. There's a both and to this, but there is this sense of knowing that is in young people. And I think in the five-year-old scene, it's evidence from Keong's desire to kiss um the uh the jerk. I can't think of his name, but the was it Rory Him.

Yeah, Rory. Um, but the but her, I think there is a certain sense of curiosity and desire that isn't named, but is at least known by uh Ke Young. And I think that is something that should be celebrated, and that should be when we're talking about how to give um young people the space to be able to own their sexuality. I think, especially when we're talking about things like consent, we also have to know we have to recognize that that's partnered with desire. If we're gonna give speak people the space to have consent, we should also give them the space to know what it is they want and have the courage to say, this is what I want and this is what I don't want. Um, and also going, I I absolutely echo what Lisa is saying about just the knowledge of, and I I wouldn't even say right or proper or term, but even just knowing what the dominant yeah, the accurate, but I also want to acknowledge that even that is is imperialistic, right?

Knowing knowing what the dominant terms are that will facilitate your survival in the society that we live in. I mean, a prime example of that that I think about is um I tell this stuff one, two stories actually now at this point. I'm part of several Facebook groups of adult black folks who will say, you know, I was this age old, meaning they were in their 30s today with kids before they realized that the vagina and the vulva were two different things, or that they realized the urethra and the vagina were two different things. Um I worked with and I worked with the ninth grader, a pregnant girl who was asking me how come you can't the baby doesn't get food on it, right? Because she didn't recognize, she didn't know that the uterus and the stomach were the same thing.

So I think it there's empowerment in all of those things, the empowerment of being able to own the the unspoken things that are part of your desire that are part of your sensuality and the sensual the sensuousness that you have both with yourself and others, and also the the power that comes from being able to know this is what happened, this is how it affected, you know, and being able to name those things that will get you access to the supports you need when things go wrong.

[55:35] Justine Ang Fonte: Yeah. That's all I was gonna offer for that.

[55:38] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: Uh I was thinking about, you know, how when we when we were bringing up how rape culture is a very general something happens at throughout all the generations, it starts at a young age. It doesn't even have to be things talking about like, you know, an uncle touching you or you know, hugging uh somebody at you know, Thanksgiving, it can be even like less um less serious on like gender roles, gender roles and perpetuating that that is a part of rape culture. And when young girls are socialized right away to be caretakers, they don't know that they're supposed to also take care of themselves. And so when you don't know how to take care of yourself and you prioritize all of this empathetic, you know, learning that you've gotten to help and cater and service others, you have another gender like males being ex knowing that they're gonna be serviced whenever they want.

And so that's where the objectification starts. It's like, well, no one ever socialized me to take care of anyone. So I should be able to get what I want when I want it. And this starts from the pink and blue from like the baby showers to the toys that they play with. I mean, it's it's it's still the case. It's definitely better than when it was, but still the case. And you know, as they progress in age, I mean, we're seeing that when we actually have an organ in our body of you know, of females that is meant to provide us with just pleasure, we have that physically removed and cut off of our bodies in some villages and communities. And then we also are in that same world that sells Viagra and Cialis. Yeah. So I mean it's just so extreme. Like we have to take away female pleasure, but we're gonna maximize male pleasure.

[57:16] Dr. Tracie Gilbert: Yes. The priorities that give us that pleasure as males.

[57:21] Justine Ang Fonte: I don't know that this was directly told to me. Again, I think it's like we're absorbing the culture and we're absorbing the tropes and we're absorbing the roles. But that if you are a if you are a girl or a woman who likes sex, like you are deviant, right? That like there's something wrong with you if you like it, um, if you want it, if you have desire, you're crazy. Right. That you're crazy. It's supposed to hurt. Yeah, good. Like, but that like set for women, sex is dirty, but for men, sex is fun. And you know who's victimized right now the most with that in the adults like world is Cardi B and Megan the Salient. They are owning and reveling in their sexuality. And to the whole other camp, they're deviant as fuck. I saw this too. I know I saw this tweet where someone was essentially like, I've never seen men come out so quickly to condemn a song about consent and it compared to coming out against real sexual violence and rape.

[58:25] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: Yeah, yeah.

[58:26] Justine Ang Fonte: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It's so funny. I was like, in my head, in the back of my head, I was like, I'm wondering how long it's gonna take us to get to this song. I was I was watching the the country, uh, the country remake of it earlier right before this. But but I think I think um I think what you said is so key. The the big thing that I've been hearing, because we know at the same time, you know, uh Megan has kind of been in the news as well for having um experienced uh violence from a fellow artist, right? And a lot of folks are saying people are more upset about the song than they are about the fact that she has experienced this violence. Right, and so there's this irony of that, and and and it's so funny because you assume that, especially because it comes from a genre that is usually pretty explicit about sex and you know doesn't have any qualms about it, and you assume, oh, this is just like those other songs, and it's like actually, this is one of the first songs I've heard that's on public in the public that is literally women talking about their own bodies and saying, I like this, I'm enjoying this, and my body has power. I'm going to use my power to get what I want. And that's me is is very that's very much a shift from what we usually see.

[59:40] Celine Parrenas Shimizu: Well, I also think that that's the self-discovery piece that we're talking about. But listen, time has flown by. We have just begun to scratch the surface, so we're going to pause here, let all you listeners digest a little, and we'll be back next week for part two of this urgent, challenging yet joyful conversation. All of our experts will be back to continue talking about Ming Peiffer's usual girls.

[1:00:32] Ruthie Fierberg: Why We Theater is recorded in part on the traditional lands of the Wappinger and Lenape peoples. Special thanks to Dory Berenstein, Alan Seals, Lee Silverman, Patrick Taylor, Tony Montaneri, Wesley Birdsall, Elena Mayer, and Suzanne Chipkin. For more resources for change, info about our guests, and more, visit us at WhyWeTheater.com.