David Southern

JASMINE: Okay, this is Jasmine Timmester interviewing David Southern. It is November 5th, 2021. Thank you for joining me, David. If we could start off with, you know, I'd like to ask you to share a little bit about, you know, your early life, home life, you know, maybe even how you heard about Antioch, how you chose to come to Antioch?

DAVID: Sure. Early life, oddly enough. I was born in Ohio 00:00:30[chuckles], in Canton. Moved to California in the Bay Area when I was 5 years old. And so I grew up here, went to Menlo-Atherton High School and was sort of enveloped in the culture of, you know, 60s rock and roll and the, you know, San Francisco sounds and did my drugs in high school, and what have you. And then was looking at colleges, and I think at the time there were probably 00:01:00three schools that had reputations as being fairly liberal, being Reed, Goddard and Antioch. And I think I chose Antioch mostly because I like the work-study program or the idea of going on co-op at all. And it was kind of away from home [chuckles], which I thought I needed to get away from home, which was in retrospect, maybe I didn't need to get away from home so far, but that was that. And when I showed up at Antioch, it was interesting. My 00:01:30preceptor group, we had a meeting with the school psychologist, and his observation was that most of the people enrolling at Antioch had really stood out in their high schools. And when they got to Antioch, they didn't feel so special anymore, they sort of had an identity crisis. And for me, I didn't feel like I really stood out in high school so much. I was kind of a regular old student, but I think coming from the Bay Area, with all of the 00:02:00rock and roll culture that I grew up in, you know, I was definitely an East Coast-er or West Coast-er, I was definitely not a Midwesterner, so from that standpoint, it felt very different being back in Ohio, as that went. I think the other thing that drew me to Antioch was, I like the idea that the 00:02:30school treated the students as though they were adults when they got there, as opposed to to feeling like they were, you know, teenagers that had to be watched over until they matured a number of years. So from that standpoint, I think I was ready to be independent, so I was happy to, you know, show up at Antioch and start my education. And I actually showed up the summer of '69, which was Woodstock, which I didn't know anything about, but some of the people who showed up also at the same time had been at Woodstock, and it was 00:03:00also, yeah, the Stonewall riot, which I didn't know anything about at the time either, so.

JASMINE: Interesting time to be arriving on campus! The first main question I have here, actually asks about that, asking, you know, what was it like arriving as a new student. You know, it's interesting that you mentioned that 00:03:30identity crisis, I've heard that from, you know, several other participants. And, interesting, you know, coming from the Bay Area, kind of an, more of a unique experience as well. Were you--how, like, connected I guess, did you feel to the to the Woodstock movement? Was it like, you know, where you quite invested in it, or was it just kind of happening in the background?

DAVID: It kind of happened in the background and I didn't even know about it until I got to Antioch, because I think it was a much bigger East Coast phenomenon, you know, people from New York went, and I didn't know anything about it. For me it was, you know, the Grateful Dead and rock concerts out here. You know, at one point I think I heard Timothy Leary speak at a BnB in Palo Alto [laughs]. So I was, different kind of thing. Just on that thing about showing up, also my roommate was a New York City guy, who kind of shared my interest in the Grateful Dead and psychedelics, but he didn't 00:04:30have a driver's license, as he grew up in New York City, right? So, we were very kind of similar in some ways and very, diametrically opposed in other ways.

JASMINE: Besides, you know, the roommate situation, did you feel any kind of, you know, like, feeling of like, maybe this is where I belong or maybe like, oh, 00:05:00this is not what I was expecting. Any kind of thoughts or feelings about that?

DAVID: No. No, it just was what it was. So I will say, I started in the summer and I got homesick, which I didn't--wasn't actually expecting to have happen. But so I ended up coming back to California to do my first co-op job and, this'll serve as a sign of the times, one of my friends' mothers 00:05:30was working for Stanford University on a study of illegal drugs and drug dealing, and so my co-op job working for them was to basically go back to my old high school and interview all the drug dealers [laughs]. Which made for a very interesting co-op. And then, I think the next time I had a co-op was... I want to say six months later, and I also came back to San Francisco to work at a Community Mental Health Center because I was kind of focused on 00:06:00psychology. And I did that job for room and board for three months and then I ended up working on the Bay Area Rapid Transit System for three months for one of the construction companies. So, it was all very interesting. And when I was doing the room and board, I was up in Ashbury Heights, which is close to where I live now, and I was walking in Buena Vista Park, and the woman--let's see, 00:06:30the wife of the people I was living with said--made some comment about how I should be careful about walking through the park, and I didn't relate that to anything at the time. And then later, I found out that Buena Vista Park was a big cruising area [chuckles]. But it was not in my radar at the time, so. I guess my--I'll also say for my Antioch experience that, the 00:07:00last two years I was Antioch I joined Maples in the fire department, and I was looking--I think one of the things that sort of unsettled me a little bit was switching dorms between divisions and not really feeling, like answering your question about did I feel like I was home or not. I felt I was very unsettled, most of the time. So, being a part of Maples really helped sort of ground me. It was, I mean, it was good training in fire science and you know 00:07:30first aid and things like that; but it also gave me sort of a sense of permanence there that that I found helpful later on.

JASMINE: That's great. Yeah. And, I'd like to come back to the co-ops in the second question, but to talk about the other part of the first question, it says, "Antioch College has a reputation for having one of the most radically progressive campus cultures in the country. Would you agree with that reputation 00:08:00with your experience on campus?"

DAVID: Yes [laughs]. Yes, I, in fact I visited a high school girlfriend when I came back here to go on co-op and she was going to Willamette University. And when I got there, I was kind of thinking I was going to have a place to stay in her dorm and stuff, which would have been perfectly fine at Antioch. But no, no no, no, no, they had, you know, women's dorms and men's dorms and you know, screen you at the front door kind of thing and it would have been a big to-do. So, it really made a contrast to me in terms of how colleges 00:08:30treated their students.

JASMINE: And I guess also along with that, you know, the progressive culture, it was interesting, you know, hearing about the early '70s at Antioch, it sounds like, you know, some students did experience some overt homophobia. And so with regards to your sexuality, did you feel like it was more progressive? 00:09:00You know, you were coming from the Bay Area, so it's a bit different from other people's experiences, but.

DAVID: You know, I did not feel like there was a big gay presence on campus. I mean, it was pretty much invisible to me. There was, well, I'm kind of talking about the whole four years at this point. There was one point where a professor from one of the local colleges tried to pick me up at the 00:09:30library, which was interesting. And we ended up having dinner at the Antioch Inn, but I never pursued that. I wasn't interested, and I wasn't really ready to deal with that part of my sexuality at the time. I think later on, I realized that there was, you know, an office in the Student Union that was a like a gay student office. And I know when one of my fire 00:10:00compatriots and I were doing fire inspections, we somehow studiously avoided that particular room where we probably were in every single nook and cranny of the building otherwise. And I'm not sure what his motivation was, but mine was just, I was just nervous about that kind of thing. The... I 00:10:30think--what can I say? I think in those days, you know, it seemed like sexuality was very binary, as opposed to today. And, you know, we had, well, Peter Ekstrom was a student when I was there, who was doing, like a drag show in Cincinnati or some places. So there wasn't--I didn't really feel a big gay presence 00:11:00other than, you know, maybe Peter Ekstrom doing drag, and I had another friend who would experiment a little bit with cross-dressing, but he hadn't really identified, in terms of his gender at the time, he was still, you know, male-gendered. And the only other place I think I had any exposure was the theater department did Boys In the Band, one of those years that I was 00:11:30there. And there was one or two people that were handing out leaflets sort of you know, what do I want to say? Sort of protesting the depiction of the gay people in the play, I think. But that was my only real exposure, and other than that my Antioch experience was pretty much with women, and even that was--I was pretty shy, so not much was happening on that front, either. I did travel across country after I graduated with a girlfriend. So that, at some 00:12:00point--anyway, that being said, most of my coming out really happened when I came back to San Francisco after I graduated. So, just to give you a sense, there really wasn't much of a gay presence that was obvious when I was there. There was one other person who I was pretty sure was gay, whose name now slips my mind. But he ended up--he was a dancer, so he, you know, he's 00:12:30graceful when he walks kind of like you expect dancers to be. And he ended up going to New York and actually became a fairly well-known choreographer, but you know, I sort of knew he was gay and I sort of, kind of wanted to get to know him better, but somehow that never worked out, so. Ah, John Byrne was his name and he actually rated an obituary in the New York Times, so that tells you he had some notoriety at the time, later on.

JASMINE: [That's really cool]. And yeah, I guess, I mean, 00:13:00that's interesting that there was an office for gay students and it was just, yeah, completely unbeknownst to at least to you. That's very interesting.

DAVID: Well, yeah, I knew the office was there, I didn't know anybody going into the office! [Laughs] Although it turned out, I did meet a couple of my contemporaries later on in San Francisco, who were actually carrying on an affair when they were in Antioch, so. Who knew?

JASMINE: I think that's a good segue into, you know, part of question two, 00:13:30which is asking about the culture of Antioch's campus again, but this time, asking--part of the question is, did, you know, being at Antioch--and even your co-ops, if you want to include those in this question--if it affected 00:14:00your understanding of your own gender and sexuality, or if that was be--you know, totally post-graduation?

DAVID: I don't think I've ever had a question on my gender, or concern about my gender. I've always identified as, you know, basically cis male. Sexuality... you know, at Antioch, I kind of knew I was attracted to boys, but I wasn't--I was too shy to act on it, and I didn't, you 00:14:30know, have anybody that was an obvious target that I could act on it with, other than that professor from the university, which I didn't want to deal with. So it pretty much came afterwards. But I think in terms of trying to trace how Antioch might have affected me, I think there were a couple things, and maybe I'm getting into one of your later questions here. But I think it's--particularly as it relates to co-op, I think eventually, you know, co-op teaches you to be independent, for sure. You know, it 00:15:00basically, I mean, for the first couple co-ops I was really nervous about, you know, being thrown into the middle of New York City on a co-op or something and not having a clue what to do. But once I kind of got past that point, you know, it really does teach you to be on your own and independent. I think the other thing and this is especially, I think affected me later on when I came back to San Francisco, was the whole idea of protests as a mechanism for 00:15:30social change. I mean, that kind of runs through a lot of Antioch and it definitely became relevant to my coming out and my being in San Francisco in the '70s when there was an awful lot of, you know, gay political activity going on. It was the kind of thing where, you know, kissing your boyfriend on a street corner was a political act in those days. And so I got very involved later on, 00:16:00partly through some of the gay groups in the graduate schools that I went to, at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley. That became very connected to protesting various setbacks and gay rights. And what have you.

JASMINE: [Okay!] And still, I guess kind of the last component 00:16:30talking about, you know, this culture on campus, and that--just being in that environment, "How do you think this culture affected you during your time attending the college and your life beyond?" So this is kind of just more general, you know personality or you know, not necessarily related to gender and sexuality

DAVID: I think it, well, 1. supported being independent; 2. I 00:17:00think, you know, tends to be open-minded. And I think, you know, I think about co-op, I think one of the advantages of co-op is you go some--at least in my day--you went someplace for three months and then you go back to school and then you go someplace else for three months, and it was kind of like, you needed to adapt quickly, and maybe you succeeded, you know, at what you were doing, or 00:17:30maybe you didn't. But if you didn't, that was okay, because that was part of the learning experience. It wasn't like, you know, you failed and therefore, you know, it was bad on you kind of thing. And I think that was a really important lesson and I think it was a good thing to learn going forward. So it was kind of like, you know experiment, try new things and if they work out, great, and if they don't work out, okay, so you learn something from it, you go do something else. Um, what else did I think? 00:18:00 Yeah, why don't you go to the next question, I'll come back to this, maybe [laughs].

JASMINE: Yeah no problem! Let's see. "Since graduation, have you built a family and/or career? And if so, do you relate these aspects of your life to 00:18:30your time at Antioch in any ways?"

DAVID: Yes. So, no family. I'm married to a guy, for about three years now, because obviously we couldn't get married a long time ago, but we've been together for about 30 years. That's been a long time. Career-wise, yeah, I can't tie it back to Antioch. So, I was a psychology major at Antioch, and I came out here to go to graduate school at San Francisco State in psychology, but I had taken a computer class, kind of my 00:19:00last year at Antioch. And I really liked that. And I went to San Francisco State for three months in a master's program, and I didn't feel like I was being challenged academically, and so I started looking for a job. It's a very Antioch kind of story. And I found a job downtown working for an engineering company, and so I ended up working full-time and going to school part-time and basically spent four years getting my master's 00:19:30degree, but, since I was interested in computers and I didn't see a real future for where I was going with psychology, I started taking some business classes too. And in the end I transferred--well not transferred, I graduated and then I matriculated at UC Berkeley and got a master's degree in finance. And that took me into my career basically, which was working in a predominantly biotechnology companies in a time when biotechnology was really just 00:20:00a beginning industry. And I got to follow it and watch it grow and to become sort of the behemoth it is now in terms of pharmaceuticals, but that was a really interesting experience. And I think from Antioch, I mean, I had my first computer class, the fact that I switched from psychology and finance and just that I like going to school and it was interesting learning all these different things, I think all of that sort of stems back to, sort of the attitudes that I 00:20:30developed at Antioch. Just as a, kind of an interesting balance, I was at a conf--an American Psychological Association conference and their lead speaker with Studs Terkel who, I don't know if you know, but he was a Chicago columnist and book writer, and he, you know, his--he basically was an interview person and he interviewed a lot of like, working class people and things like that. And so he was on the liberal side here. I went to a biotech finance conference and Alfred Laffer, the economist, was their lead 00:21:00speaker, and he was the one that invented the Laffer Curve that Ronald Reagan kind of liked and his economist said, oh, yeah, we can, you know, basically print money, but just the contrast between those two sort of, you know, from Antioch I can deal without [chuckles].

JASMINE: Interesting. Yeah, and let's see. So, you know, going 00:21:30into grad school and everything, you know, was that, that transition, you know, away from Antioch was that, you know, particularly strange or different or, you know, anything like that? Or was it, you know, at this point, you'd learn to be independent from Antioch, and it was just kind of just another challenge?

DAVID: It was pretty easy. I mean, I think--I mean the whole thing about integrating work and school made, you know, going--working full-time and going to school part-time, you know, I was just like, okay fine, I can do this. No problem. It was interesting in the sense that, San Francisco State I think I had one B so I had A's in every other course; Berkeley, I felt like I was swimming part of the time, because you know, the students I was competing against, many of them were engineering undergraduates, many of them were 00:22:30business undergraduates, I had statistics pretty well nailed, but calculus? No. So it was--it took you about a year to realize at Berkeley that, you know, once you were in, they didn't really want to throw you out. But at the same time, you know, they graded in such a way where, you know, 50% of your grade was on the final that you were kind of nervous for a while that, you know, you were going to not make the grade. So, let me come back to 00:23:00that. So, there was a gay student union at San Francisco State, and there was, I think it was the gay people's union at UC Berkeley, and kind of to tie back to the protest stuff: I got much more active and much more connected to the gay 00:23:30community when I was going to those schools. 1. I think we were a little farther down in history and so, you know, the gay movement was starting to move a little bit faster. And 2. I mean San Francisco was sort of the epicenter for an awful lot of activity. So it was a good chance to kind of get connected and I actually got to meet other gay people, which helps to form a community and even at one point--and this was the early 80s, when I was pretty well-entrenched 00:24:00with some people from UC Berkeley, and it was nice being a student up through about '79 I graduated from Berkeley so I was still pretty close to being a student--we encountered a situation--I was running with a group of mostly gay Asians and Caucasians who liked Asians, and there was a situation where Asians were starting to get discriminated against in the bars because the reputation was, well, they don't drink as much as white people, so therefore, you know, we'd rather like, keep them out of the bar. And there 00:24:30was a lot of prejudice anyway, and so we ended up picketing a couple of the bars in San Francisco here, and took our protest to the Alice B. Toklas Club and made our, you know, whatever. So, that was kind of a continuation, I think, of Antioch and wanting to, you know, protest where there was discrimination and things that we thought shouldn't be going on, so.

JASMINE: [That's really interesting,] and, you know, speaking of 00:25:00the 80s, I think if you'd be--if there's anything you'd like to share or be willing to talk about in regards to the AIDS crisis, maybe you could mention that at this point?

DAVID: Oh, sure! So, I think, I never got very involved in like ACT UP or any of the protests related to the AIDS crisis. And I think part of the 00:25:30reason is, I mean, when I was in school, which was like '73 through '79, you know, it was pretty easy to go out and protest, what, Wichita, Kansas, you know, rescinding their gay rights initiatives and things like that. For a little while we thought, maybe, as you're watching the AIDS 00:26:00statistics, that may be Asians had some kind of genetic predisposition not to catch AIDS because it was very late, getting into, kind of the gay Asian community. I think now that was just obviously a sociological thing in how they tended to be separate from the white gay males that basically got hit first. So I think it was mostly a demographic-sociological thing, rather than a biological thing. And so, I was working full-time and working a lot, and yes, I 00:26:30had a--I could--you know, you were definitely in that period where, if you hadn't talked to somebody in three or four months, you got nervous about calling them, because you didn't know whether, you know, you were going to get a disconnected phone, or somebody not there. And I definitely had two very close friends who died of AIDS and probably know a dozen others, mostly 00:27:00in the Asian community. But not entirely. And actually one of my Antioch friends who was a student when I was there, died--passed away of AIDS, he and his boyfriend. I got a call from one of their neighbors one day, and it was a time when I was going through some really difficult times at work, because we were doing, I was running scenarios of who's going to get laid off and who wasn't going to get laid off and, you know, a bunch of people in my department that I was going to end up having to lay off, and so it was a very 00:27:30stressful period. And I just didn't want to return the phone call because I just had a feeling that it was not good news and I just didn't feel emotionally capable to deal with it. So I didn't. And eventually I, you know, I found their obituaries years later when I was trying to invest--kind of write my memoir and I was trying to put timelines together, but. It was, yeah, it was a very difficult time, and I think now that--I mean, 00:28:00looking back on it, I suppose, if you're a soldier and you go to war, you have kind of the same experience that, you know, you lose people at young ages and, you know, you either learn how to cope with it or you don't. And I just feel like at this point, you know, I've already been through that experience and, you know, if I'm eighty or ninety, and I know people are dying it's going to be like, okay, we're just kind of repeating this process that I had to deal with, you know, long time ago, with 00:28:30people that should still be alive today. So yeah, most of the political activity and stuff we were doing, pretty much the '70s, I would say, it's '75 to '80, '81. And and what I went back to write my memoir, I was actually a little surprised at how much later the AIDS crisis kind of started taking people I knew. It was more like '83, '85, somewhere in that area. But yeah, I mean even today if I see people 00:29:00like my age on the streets that I'm pretty sure are gay, it's kind of nice to see them because there was a time period when most of the people on the street who are roughly my age or slightly older looked really bad, and you kind of knew they were going to last very long.

JASMINE: I'm sorry to hear that, thank you for sharing about that. Yeah, I wanted to make sure I asked about that because, you know, obviously that's 00:29:30a very, you know, important piece of queer history. Let's see. So, I think we can go on to the next question, and this one can be a bit difficult to answer, so if you don't have much of an answer, that's totally fine. It is, "Are there any ways in which you think your life would be 00:30:00different, had you gone to a more typical liberal arts college?"

DAVID: Yeah, [laughs] in a couple ways. 1. I don't think I would have been as independent as I have been. Once I started working I started to travel overseas to Asia mostly, and I would pretty much travel on my own. Grab my Lonely Planet guide books, and, you know, run off to somewhere and stay in hostels or wherever. I think maybe if I had gone to a standard liberal arts 00:30:30college, I probably wouldn't have been--felt that independent or ability to just travel on my own and not worry about stuff much. Mostly since I was going to like gay bars and stuff when I was over in those countries anyway. So that's one. What else? Well, I don't think I would have been as politically active in my later years as I was. From, you know, if I'd gone to a more, a typical liberal arts school. And I think that the whole 00:31:00co-op experience about, you know, continuously learning and not worrying about failure, there was one point where I was unemployed for about eight or nine months, and it was like, I could deal with it. I'd just go run on the beach and just keep trying to do interviews and just kept plugging at it and, you know, eventually I got two offers at the same time, which was kind of ridiculous after eight months, but I just think that those things were the result of 00:31:30 having gone to Antioch as opposed to a, you know, other liberal arts kind of school. Yeah, I I feel more unique now, having gone to Antioch than I think I did attending Antioch in the first place [chuckling]. And as I've gotten involved with the, kind of the Bay Area chapter of Antioch, people here, 00:32:00you see a lot of commonalities that, I think when you just graduate or when you've been away for 20 years and aren't really connected with Antioch people you don't really see, but you come to realize them later.

JASMINE: Gotcha, and you mentioned that you probably wouldn't be as politically active if you went somewhere else. Is there anything specific with your Antioch experience that you would point to, to connect with that as to why you think that?

DAVID: Oh, yeah [laughs]. Oh, yeah. So my first quarter at Antioch, 00:32:30some Antioch students, who were kind of, well anyway, got arrested for picketing the General Electric Plant in Cincinnati, some manufacturing plant, GE hub. And the judge held them over the weekend, I think, while they notified their parents. And you know, we students, or at least the people talking to us students, thought that was 1. kind of, not nice of the judge, but 00:33:00also just seemed like a violation of their rights to, you know, get out of jail kind of thing. And so, you know, they organized a picket line down at the Cincinnati Courthouse, so I joined into that. So that was kind of my first real political thing, and I was carrying a sign that said "GE is imperialist," which I pretty much had no clue what that meant at the time. And we showed up on the local TV station, which is kind of cool [laughs], but it was also 00:33:30starting to snow, and the police who were supposed to be watching us went inside the courthouse so they could watch us where it was warm. It was pretty funny actually. So that was kind of the first thing, and then, I mean this is the whole, you know, Vietnam anti-war era, so, you know, there were, I mean at one point we tried to shut down Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and that's when I was in Maples, and so we went along as sort of the, you know, first-aid people in case something happened that somebody needed, you know, ambulance-work for. And on co-ops and stuff if I was back here, you know, I got involved 00:34:00in some of the marches for anti-war marches. So, I would say that was sort of the beginning for my thinking that protest was actually something that might work and was, at least helped me feel better anyway.

JASMINE: [Very] interesting, yeah, I know plenty of my classmates I know weren't politically active whatsoever before coming to Antioch. So it seems 00:34:30like that might still be a bit of a tradition. Alright. I think, I think we've covered everything up to the last question. And I think it's a good question to close out, so, what we could do is, if there's anything else that you haven't gotten to talk about that you would like to with, you know, any part of your life, then I think, feel free to do so. And 00:35:00then then we can get to the last question, unless you're ready to do the last question now.

DAVID: I think I'm ready to do the last question. But--and I think that also, I want to elaborate on it anyway, so [laughs].

JASMINE: Okay, sounds good. So the last question is, "Is there any message that you would give to the current and future students of Antioch, if you could? And any message for the current and future LGBTQ+ youth in general?"

DAVID: Okay, so let me start with the first one. So I've been 00:35:30doing a lot of kind of research about what the future of work looks like, and what effect that, you know, artificial intelligence and all, as it gets integrated into the workplace, might have on employees, workers, whatever. So I think for advice, for students going forward, I would say, focus on the things that computers aren't going to be able to do, which are areas of 00:36:00like, communication, and you know, work on your communication skills; creativity, because computers have a hard time thinking out of the box, I mean, they can do, they can do amazing things in terms of pattern recognition and things, but they're not really creative [chuckles]; and problem-solving and critical thinking, and I think those are the kind of things that 00:36:30you learn at Antioch, so for me, you know, at least looking forward, the kind of education students get at Antioch is appropriate to the kind of workplace that they can expect to see going forward. So, now on the LGBTQ piece [chuckles]. If I look at my history, I can see that--okay, when I got to Antioch, I 00:37:00knew I was attracted to boys. My history at Antioch was mostly with women. When I got back to San Francisco and I finally kind of managed to work my way out of the closet, I pretty much had about a 20-year period where I was pretty much exclusively attracted to men, and then one time I just met this woman who kind of knocked me over the head sideways. And so it made me really kind 00:37:30of question, and I think, you know, I talked about binary world, I think when I was at Antioch and for many years, people approached sexuality as a binary question. And even in the gay world, it was like, well, you know, you can't be bi because you're just pretending you're not gay, kind of thing. And so people were really slotted into a few categories. So, I am sort of kind of coming out again now, just thinking that, you know, I--it's 00:38:00legitimate to be bisexual, that I'm beginning to see a movement within LBGTQ that is inclusive, that, you know, pretty much opens a range of possibilities to people, which makes a lot more sense than, you know, the kind of binary pieces we were pushed into before. So, my message is more of a, I think, thanks to the current generation who are thinking much more inclusively about how they can approach the world, you know, whether it's 00:38:30gender or whether it's sexuality. And that opens up a lot more possibilities, and to me, that's a good thing to see, and I'm thankful that it's happening. I know it's sort of built on the work that was done before--sure, of course, but at the same time, it's much more expansive and I think it's much more appropriate, and I'm glad to see that--I'm feeling re-included again [laughs].