AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, as we continue with Part 2 of our conversation about a revolutionary new film. It’s called Second Nature. It’s narrated by the Oscar-nominated actor Elliot Page, the author of a memoir, Pageboy, executive produced, as well, and directed by Drew Denny. I want to go to another clip from Second Nature. This is on monkeys.

MARCELA BENITEZ: We’re really focused on studying their cognition.

How’s the view?

One of the studies uses these puzzle boxes. We’re trying to get into the inner minds of these monkeys.

RESEARCH ASSISTANT: Proboscis approaching the platform, plataforma dos, in contact with apparatus. Proboscis reach in with the pull door, reach in and grab the banana. He got his reward.

MARCELA BENITEZ: How does an individual who solves a box really well — how does that translate to the way they move through their social world? Do they make better choices socially? And then, we can maybe get at questions of individual variation in their cognition. Maybe all capuchins are really good at this, but let’s say one individual is a particularly good problem solver amongst subadult males. How does that translate to his natural world? And I think that relates a lot to sexual behavior, as well. Is there variation in how it happens? Do certain individuals engage more in it than others? We know that behavioral flexibility is, like, critical. We need to be able to solve problems in changing environments. That’s hugely adaptive. We know that. And yet sexual flexibility has been seen as something that isn’t, in fact, adaptive. But if you can change your behavior to different environments, if you can make different types of cognitive decisions, why wouldn’t it be adaptive to have a lot of flexibility in your sexual behavior?

AMY GOODMAN: So, there’s a scientist talking about capuchin monkeys. Drew Denny, tell us about Dr. Marcela Benitez.

DREW DENNY: Dr. Marcela Benitez is a fantastic scientist studying capuchins in Costa Rica. And she’s one of the people who’s experiencing the downside of the cuts to sciences in this administration. And her research is truly groundbreaking, and also she’s groundbreaking. As an out queer person and a Latina scientist, she’s one of the few people that her students can see as a mentor if they identify in those ways, as well. And she knows from her experience of working in Ethiopia what it’s like to be studying in a place where you can’t be out or it’s not safe to just live your truth, and how that actually kicks a lot of people out of science, because they feel too afraid to do the field research. There’s actually a scientist who we filmed with, who then pulled out of the movie because she works in a country where it’s illegal to be gay, where it’s punishable by death. And she —

AMY GOODMAN: Might that be Uganda?

DREW DENNY: And she said, “You know, I’m so sorry. I want to be a part of this, but I’m afraid.” And I said, “Well, of course, we’ll pull your footage out.” We were supposed to follow her there. And it’s just terrible to think that this information is being hidden because people are afraid to have their research shut down or to even be harmed or killed simply for being queer.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m fascinated by the beginning of Dr. Marcela Benitez, that we didn’t hear, but I watched in the film, about what she first observed, and what she was told when she observed it.

DREW DENNY: Yes. So, she observed two male geladas engaging in a quite obvious act of same-sex sex. And she was shocked, because she had never been told that that could happen. In fact, she had been taught, like most people, that that couldn’t happen, that it doesn’t happen. And she looked over at her field guide, and he said, “Yes, sometimes this happens.” And she quotes him all the time, because she said, “He didn’t say, 'Oh, don't look at that. That’s weird. That never happens. We shouldn’t — you know, we shouldn’t document that.’ He just said, 'Yeah, that happens.'” And it completely changed her outlook, because she realized that all the things she’d been told couldn’t happen in nature or didn’t happen in nature actually happen around us all the time. They have just been censored and kept from us.

AMY GOODMAN: And again, what — she’s a scientist at Emory. I’m fascinated that so many of these scientists are women, and they are not in the majority of the scientific establishment in this country.

DREW DENNY: It’s true. All the scientists in our movie are women, queer, trans, BIPOC and immigrants. They identify in at least one of those ways. And the first thing I looked for were experts. They are the most credible experts in these fields. They happen to identify in those ways. And I think the reason that they ended up being the people in our movie is because they come from a different perspective. And so, even though they were taught, like Amy was taught, that females could not bond with each other if they weren’t related, she’s a woman and a feminist, and she knows, like, the feminist movement is trying to make unrelated females bond and advocate for each other like sisters. So, when she saw female bonobos engaging in that behavior, she called it what it was, instead of trying to pretend that it’s strategic male deference.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ve got the clip on the bonobos. And again, for people who don’t know what bonobos exactly are, that they’re as close to us as chimps.

DREW DENNY: Yes, bonobos are 98.7% genetically identical to humans, as are chimpanzees.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go.

AMY PARISH: So, this is a group where the alpha female is named Jill. It’s easy to tell who’s in charge, because they will immediately acquire the best food, and other individuals have to make exchanges with that female in order to get the food.

Bonobos aren’t more of a close relative than chimps. Both of them are equally our closest relative.

JOAN ROUGHGARDEN: You think so?

AMY PARISH: Yeah, I do. We last shared a common ancestor about 6 million years ago with both.

Bonobos and chimps are each other’s closest living relative. They last shared a common ancestor 2.5 million years ago. And their next closest cousin is the human being. We’re 98.5% genetically identical to each of them. So, here’s two females engaging in some aggression and sex. So, they’re having a conflict and resolving using sex. That’s called G-G rubbing, or genital-genital rubbing, which is observed ventral-dorsal, so back to front. And now it’s front to front.

AMY GOODMAN: What surprised you most, Elliot? You’re narrating this film. You’re watching all the footage. And what were you most touched by?

ELLIOT PAGE: I guess what surprised me the most was just how much information there is, and evidence that really shows gender and sexual diversity in nature, and how little of it I knew. And I was probably just so — I was so moved by how it shows the expansiveness, the intelligence, and how adaptive nature is, like how exciting the thought of queerness in nature is.

And, you know — and I think I was definitely affected by the backlash that you see these scientists have to deal with and take on, whether it’s just, you know, people coming at them publicly or currently losing grants, or what have you, when they’re doing this, like, groundbreaking, essential work that hardly anyone’s ever done before. And, yeah, that’s — that was, you know, sort of my big takeaways.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to a final clip from Second Nature.

ELLIOT PAGE: There are approximately 8.7 million living animal species on Earth. For centuries, we have been told that when it comes to gender and sexuality, all of these millions of species follow a certain set of rules. We have been told, for example, that they can be divided into two rigid categories: male and female. We have been taught that males are naturally promiscuous, aggressive and dominant, driven by an insatiable urge to compete for the favor of females. Females, on the other hand, are depicted as passive and coy. They are uninterested in sex, but acquiesce to males in order to pass along the best genes to their young. In the story we’ve been told, sexual activity is a strictly heterosexual endeavor. Anything different has been dismissed as maladaptive and unnatural. But what if this narrative fails to capture the full spectrum of life’s diversity? What if the animal world is teeming with variations and adaptations that transcend the stories we’ve been taught?

AMY GOODMAN: That title, Second Nature, Elliot Page, what does that mean to you? That was Elliot, by the way, who is the narrator of the film, Second Nature.

ELLIOT PAGE: I guess when I think of, I don’t know, second nature, I think of, like, our — I think of instinct, and I think of trusting our inner knowing and knowing who we are. And I think of, you know, nature existing in this way that we try to project all our, you know, human baggage on. And that has been, you know, wrong and incorrect and led by oppressive structures that uphold a cruel and violent status quo that serves a very few. And, you know, to me, second nature and leaning into our inner knowing of who we are and how we connect with all living beings on this planet, I think, to me, is my takeaway from it, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Drew Denny, you talk about clownfish changing sex from male to female, what, and back again? What happens?

DREW DENNY: So, clownfish can change sex from male to female. The bluehead wrasse can change sex from female to male. There’s many species who can change sex, sometimes in one direction, sometimes back and forth throughout their lives. It’s pretty incredible, and it’s not at all rare. So, if you’ve been diving on a coral reef, as Dr. Joan Roughgarden says, you’ve seen sex-changing fish.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain. You’ve got to go further.

DREW DENNY: Sure. So, with the bluehead wrasse, for example, if the male of the group dies, then one of the females will spontaneously change sex, so her ovaries become testes, and then he becomes the male of the group, and the females mate with him, or make babies with him. So, it’s a brilliant strategy. And as Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park, you know, “life finds a way.” So, I don’t know why anybody would have thought that that didn’t happen in the real world, because it’s actually happening all around us.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to end, Elliot, by talking about your book, your memoir, which came out a few years ago. I was at Town Hall when you did one of your Q&As, and I gave your book to a dear friend. If you can talk about your growing up, put your interest in this film and narrating this, as you talk about learning about what was considered anomalies in the animal kingdom to just facts of life for animals, what it meant for you to learn this — your memoir is called Pageboy — why you find it so affirming?

ELLIOT PAGE: Yeah, well, thank you, Amy. Yeah, where I — when and where I, you know, grew up, there was no — I wasn’t seeing queerness around me, you know?

AMY GOODMAN: Where did you grow up?

ELLIOT PAGE: I grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the, you know, '90s and early 2000s. And I wasn't seeing examples of queerness, and if it did come up, it was usually coming up in a negative way. And I wasn’t growing up in an, you know, affirming household at the time, you know. And so, I did feel lost and alone or — and conflicted. And it led to a lot of, honestly, negative consequences in my life, you know, that shame and that discomfort.

And a documentary like this, which, as Drew explained, you know, was so much inspired by her experience, where she was younger, when she grew up, was to make something that would allow people to see that we are part of this world. You know, queer and trans people are, have always been here, will continue to be here. There’s nothing wrong with us. And I think, yeah, being a part of this doc feels very healing. And I think it’s for people, I mean, regardless of identity, of course, you know.

AMY GOODMAN: You write in Pageboy, “Something in me knew that I was transgender. It was something I had always known but didn’t have the words for, wouldn’t permit myself to embrace.” You were only 6 when you asked your mother if you could be a boy. What did your mother respond at the time? And talk about what it meant, as you write in your book, that you felt viciously closeted as you grew up.

ELLIOT PAGE: Yeah. My mom said, which I think at the time she had no context for what this — like, she would have never heard the term “transgender,” you know? I think she said, “Oh, hon, you can’t. But, you know, you can grow up to do anything a boy can do,” you know, and like that. And then, later, really, any conversation with my mom in relation to queerness was pretty shut down, and not something she — well, I’ll just say it frankly — wanted her child to be.

She’s completely different now. We actually watched this documentary together when I popped up for Mother’s Day, and that was a really sweet experience to have, and also just like a woman growing up in New Brunswick, born in the '50s, with those strict gender roles, and, you know, all of the things this documentary, I think, goes into that speaks to my mom and her experience on this planet. But, yes, I felt viciously closeted, especially in my early twenties entering sort of the Hollywood world. And it's — you know, it has really incredibly negative impacts on one’s life.

AMY GOODMAN: Did you become an actor because you wanted to be somebody else?

ELLIOT PAGE: You know, I think there’s — I think there was most certainly — like, I kind of became an actor accidentally at, you know, 10 years old. But I think that it was definitely, I would imagine, an escape, a bit, from how I was — how I was feeling. And —

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you aren’t just an actor. You’re an incredibly celebrated, successful actor.

ELLIOT PAGE: Oh, thank you. But, yeah, I think it’s — it probably allowed an escape for me, and then it became something that, you know, really helped and saved me in some ways, and also something that became complicated in my life and my relation to it and how I was presenting myself to the world.

AMY GOODMAN: You write in Pageboy, “The world tells us that we aren’t trans but mentally ill. That I’m too ashamed to be a lesbian, that I mutilated my body, that I will always be a woman, comparing my body to Nazi experiments. It’s not trans people who suffer from a sickness, but the society that fosters such hate.” How do you see this all now? And what do you say to young people who feel the way you do?

ELLIOT PAGE: Yeah, I mean, as we’re seeing this, the attacks against the trans community are getting worse, and that, you know, rhetoric that is spread and lies and awful propaganda about our community, that can be really, really damaging, of course. You know, for me, it’s about really, really holding on to back to like an inner knowing, and not allowing that noise to interfere with this joy I feel connected to in my life.

And I hope for anyone who’s sort of, you know, struggling in this time, and the headlines, and just to know, like, that you’re, you know, not alone, and loved and celebrated by so many, and try and block out the noise from, you know, absolute vile losers, who must just be so profoundly uncomfortable with themselves, they can’t handle that someone could get to a place that, I think, you know — that, you know, trans people do get to, which is a level of self-acceptance and understanding that I think is really beautiful and profound.

AMY GOODMAN: And did you ever think, as we wrap up, that going through the pain that you went through, you could be a role model to so many?

ELLIOT PAGE: Gosh, I mean, I think, you know, people have been such role models to me to get me to this place, so to know if in existing and sharing my story in any way helps people feel less alone, then, you know, that really does mean the world to me.

AMY GOODMAN: Elliot Page, Oscar-nominated actor, also celebrated author for his memoir, Pageboy, also executive produced and narrated the new film Second Nature, which was directed by our other guest today, Drew Denny. It’s going to be at DCTV at the Firehouse Cinema, starting this weekend. And I’ll end with Drew talking about the scientists you’re going to have over the week. I can’t believe I’m going to be away with another film this weekend in Rhode Island, but the minute I come back Sunday night, I’m going to be at our beloved Firehouse Cinema downtown in Chinatown.

DREW DENNY: We’d love to have you at a screening. We’ll have Q&As every single day that we’re there. Elliot’s doing a Q&A. Dr. Marcela Benitez, Dr. Patricia Rodriguez Brennan, Dr. Joan Roughgarden will be there. We’ll have members of our filmmaking team, as well. So, people will be able to ask all the questions they might have.

And I just want to say also that the research in our film has been used and demonstrated to reduce self-harm and suicide among LGBTQ youth. So, though it might seem like a silly subject in the film — it’s very fun and funny — there’s actually a serious mission behind it, because I know what it’s like to be told that there’s something wrong with you and you don’t belong on planet Earth, and it might make you think that you have to look for a way out. But the truth is that we all belong here. And I hope that the more people that know about this, the fewer people feel like they have to look for a way out.

AMY GOODMAN: Opening June 26th at the Firehouse Cinema at Downtown Community Television. Drew Denny, director, and Elliot Page, executive producer and narrator of the new documentary, the revolutionary documentary, Second Nature. To see Part 1 of our discussion, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.