I wanted to ask you a question . I just it's fascinating that you when you you talked about gender references and you you you then had to make a you had to kind of . I just wanted to talk about this .
I don't know that recording it is going to be necessary , but you talked about the use like I'm making gendered references and then you kind of apologized for that and talked about when you you know , when when you talk about that in class , do you have to backtrack that when you say , you know , a father and a mother raising a kid in class , do you then say , all right , I'm a biologist . This is why . 121 00:00:43,074 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: I feel a should I really feel I should do
students . 133 00:00:46,314 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Too . So how do students respond ? 140 00:00:47,754 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Like , they appreciate it . 145 00:00:49,164 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: They do . 148 00:00:49,704 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: They appreciate it . No , because the majority of students are also in this binary world . They are living in a male dominated . 171 00:00:59,334 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric:
Whether . 173 00:00:59,664 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Or not binary world . 178 00:01:00,744 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Or not , they are binary . They are living in a binary world yet . 192 00:01:03,684 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: And most of them sort of follow that world . If they're a female , they're going to date a male , and a male is going to date a female , but not all of them .
So more common than non-binary people are people who are gay , who might be a woman dating woman or a man dating a man . And so I have more of those students that I'm going to have someone who is completely non-binary . Mm hmm . So far , I have not had any non-binary people in my class 282 00:00:00,-01 --> 00:01:31,104 , but 283 00:00:00,-01 --> 00:00:00,-01 we're so much more aware of it that students want to hear about
this . 298 00:01:36,294 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: So rather than so soon , what you're saying is it's just out of your mouth comes a mother and a father raising a baby . You don't you haven't been able to change that to two people raising a baby . 338 00:01:46,704 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: It sounds strange as a biologist to talk about . And so I want I want to I want to I want to at least have the students have cognitive
dissonance . 369 00:01:55,214 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: Do you do you think , though , that in 25 years a professor in your position will be saying to people having a baby just completely naturally without feeling that it's . 400 00:02:02,094 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: I don't know about that . We have a lot of cultural baggage that will be with us for a while .
I think that it's necessary to draw attention to the bias in our narratives , and I am telling narratives , and I warn the students from day one , first thing out of my mouth is I will tell you stories . They will sound plausible because they're based on facts , but they are still stories . And I'm choosing the facts to fit my stories . And we have to understand that the male female dynamic , this binary is a narrative and it is not necessary .
It is something that is part of our long term narrative . And we have to realize that this is a form of bias . And so I try to approach it that way . And so I talk about things like , oh , until 2017 , we thought that women had zero percentage of hunting in hunter gatherer societies , and now we're looking back at the same papers and realizing that we just didn't call what women did
hunting . 578 00:03:03,894 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: I just I guess what I was getting at was , was in your mid-fifties , you say , you know , a man and a father and a mother having a baby and then you're like , oh , but like , I understand that not every family is like that . So I just , you know , and you have to backtrack that . Yeah . I'm wondering how the students respond to you rather than coming out with a non gendered sentence that you don't have to then backtrack on .
I'm just wondering what the response to that was . You're saying they appreciate they appreciated who you are . Yeah . The fact that you're acknowledging that . 686 00:03:34,704 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Well , it's more than that because the narratives I tell tend to reinforce cultural stereotypes . And so I really don't want to reinforce the male getting the resources and bringing them back to the female doing
so . 724 00:03:49,374 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: You're saying you don't you're not the purpose of them . The purpose of your narrative is not to reinforce the stereotype in some other purpose , but it sounds like it's exactly so . 757 00:03:58,524 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: I keep reminding the students that there is this problem and it's it's wider than that . So it's exactly what you're talking about .
The very class oriented story I just told where it's all about getting your kids into college . That doesn't apply to everyone all the time . It definitely applies to my students and they they are nodding . But I but I remind them that the world is not like that for everyone . And , you know , many of them are from India . About a third of my class is from India . Wow .
And so they are very aware that there are people who are having large families and those families are not going to college and they are still farmers . 879 00:04:38,244 --> 00:00:00,-01 Eric: And so everything you're saying is wrong . 887 00:04:41,304 --> 00:00:00,-01 Dr. Josh Stout: Yeah , exactly .
So , so so I have to I have to say , look , these are narratives that are for for a particular time and place , and they're they're there because of my particular background and where we're coming from . But that they should be questioning these narratives and that these narratives do tend to reinforce certain biases . So anyway , we can talk about that as our whole thing , but not today . All right .