On today’s episode of the Arizona Equals Conversation, we’re joined by Shae from Arizona Trans Together for a wide-ranging discussion about mutual aid and community building, hormone therapy and its gatekeepers, and the overlaps between neurodivergent and trans communities.

Links

* Arizona Equals Celia

* Arizona Equals Jesse & Gabe

* Brick Road Coffee

* AZTYPO

* one-n-ten

* Erin’s Informed Consent HRT Map

Full Transcript

Jeanne

From Equality Arizona, you're listening to the Arizona Equals Conversation. I'm Jeanne Woodbury. I'm the interim executive director at Equality Arizona, and each week on the show I talk with a queer person living in Arizona about their story and their communities. Today's guest, Shae, is a friend of mine and a friend of Equality Arizona. She's also one of the founders, along with Celia, who we spoke to on a previous episode of the podcast, of a group called Arizona Trans Together, which meets at Brick Road Coffee every Friday night. As someone who grew up in Tempe and didn't have the first idea of how to find trans community, I'm constantly amazed at what that community has grown to be in honestly a really short amount of time. Shae dedicates a lot of her time to community building and to mutual aid, and it was really nice to get to know her a little bit better through this conversation. I feel like something I should preface going into this is that at a lot of points it really is a trans conversation for trans people, and we even recognized that at the time, but it was special for me and it's really cool to have that recorded here for people to listen to because it's unique and it's important and poorly understood. Something else really special was getting to reflect on both of our first days on hormones, and something that makes that extra special is, even though we recorded this conversation almost a month ago, we're releasing it on June 1st, which is actually the fifth anniversary of the first day I started taking hormones. And so that's pretty exciting for me, and it's neat how the timing lined up for this. It's also the first day of Pride Month, and that means it's a great time to support organizations like Equality Arizona and organizations like AZTYPO and one-n-ten that Shae mentions later in the interview. And beyond supporting nonprofit organizations like us, it's a time to invest in community, to invest in mutual aid and direct support. We gotta be there for each other. All right, let's roll the tape.

Shae

Hey everyone, my name is Shae. My pronouns are she or they. I don't have an official job, but I do a lot of organizing stuff with EQAZ on occasion and with something that I helped start and I help organize called Arizona Trans Together. It's a nice little community building project we've been doing for going on eight months now. Started with like 10 people and it's blown up to nearly 200. Meet up at Brick Road Coffee every Friday, 6 to 10 p.m. It's been a lot of fun.

Jeanne

Yeah, I noticed that there's been some nights at Brick Road where it's just full to the door and then people are out into the street basically. It's definitely something that has grown a lot in a short amount of time.

Shae

Yeah, it's nuts. I think on Trans Day of Visibility we had 45 people there all at once. And that's like basically at capacity for Brick Road Coffee. It's a really small space.

Jeanne

Yeah, it's a nice sized coffee shop, but it doesn't handle, you know, 100 people.

Shae

It really doesn't. I love the space though, don't get me wrong.

Jeanne

Yeah, I know, I love Brick Road, and that's where the group kind of got started, right?

Shae

Mm-hmm. It started with Celia, who was actually on this podcast a while back, and myself, we started going to the Queerizona meetups on Wednesdays. And then we started meeting other trans people there, and we decided to make a group chat on Discord. And then as soon as we hit the max limit, 10 people, we were like, "Hey, what if we start doing our own thing? And why don't we just meet up on Fridays?" 'Cause trans people desperately need their own community space. It's not that queer people in general are transphobic or anything. However, sometimes as a trans person, you have to deal with cis nonsense. And that's a lot of emotional labor.

Jeanne

Yeah, it is. I think I wanna dive into that a little bit. Not necessarily just like how cis people can be tiring, but just that idea of like where the need comes from and whether it's being served by other groups or if there was just kind of not enough before you put this group together.

Shae

Oh, I mean, I was the person who like approached Celia to like start this whole thing. And the reason I came at it was kind of personal, actually. Like, when I came out, things got extremely difficult for me. And until I met Celia, I didn't really know any other trans people. Like, Celia was the first person I started hanging out with that was trans, and shared a lot of the same experiences as me. So like, I've noticed in the eight months that we've been doing AZTT, that story is very common. A lot of other trans people didn't know any other trans people. They're basically like alone. And like I have people coming up to me even now saying that like, I'm so glad that y'all started doing this. And I try to tell them, it's like all of us doing this, because it's a community, you know?

Jeanne

Yeah, and I think that's actually kind of key that it's not just about being the one person. It's about finally not having to be just one person.

Shae

Yeah.

Jeanne

I definitely had that same experience where coming out was like, okay, well I know things from the internet and now here I am and how do I find anyone? How do I find people? And clearly — I mean there's a lot of trans people, but there also aren't that many of us.

Shae

No I think we're like what, basically 1% of the population? That’s a high estimate and like low estimate is like 0.5% of the population.

Jeanne

Yeah so it's something where there's no real natural community formation, and we have to go out and do that in a proactive way.

Shae

Like I love the community out in Melrose and stuff, but like a lot of things are very cis gay centered and there's nothing out there that's like trans centered out, at least outside of ASU. There's a lovely group called Trans Fam at ASU. I've been talking with some of the people there They have a nice thriving community as well. And actually we're planning on potentially collaborating and stuff in the future because once you graduate from ASU, where do you go?

Jeanne

Yeah, well that's the thing too, is that if you find a support group or you find a group at a school or a university, you typically age out. I remember when I was up at NAU several years ago, like really early in my transition, I joined a trans support group and realized that one of the big problems with support groups is it's people who are one to two years into their transition max, and then by the time they're a little farther into their transition, they don't really feel like they want to be in the support group anymore. So it's a lot of people who are really early on, talking to people who are also really early on, and you don't get that intergenerational aspect of trans community.

Shae

Nah. I won't say that like AZTT doesn't offer support and like one of our like most important values is like building community. And a lot of that of course implies a lot of mutual aid, a lot of building support networks between each other. We've had people that have faced homelessness that have been able to find like places to stay temporarily, sometimes permanently with each other. It's an unfortunate reality for a lot of trans folks like how bad things could be. Like after I started hormones, actually, like, I was living with my best friend while I was going to college in Bakersfield, California and I was immediately kicked out. I was lucky enough that I had a friend who runs a YouTube channel, made a video about my situation and got me out of like the shelter circuit.

Jeanne

This was all in California?

Shae

Yeah. I'm jumping around subject to subject here.

Jeanne

It's okay. I think it's important to bring all that context into one thing, because what I was kind of talking about with support groups is support groups that are like, let's all talk to each other, instead of support networks that are like, let's find ways to actually actively help each other.

Shae

Yeah.

Jeanne

And that's never as simple. It's always responsive and reactive it's hard to centralize it in a real way and still provide the kind of support that we need because for whatever reason people don't really want to help trans people out in those situations.

Shae

Yeah a lot of — there are good resources out there for trans folks but a lot of it cuts off at 25. It's kind of just how fundings work with a lot of like nonprofit organizations. Which makes sense, like trans youth experience like a pretty heavy disproportionate like —

Jeanne

Family rejection is a big problem

Shae

Yes

Jeanne

And youth homelessness is a big problem yeah and so I get why there's going to be big agencies that can support that community. But then if you're a trans adult I think a lot of the time people kind of will look at us and say, “eh, I don't really want to get involved."

Shae

Society kind of like sees these things as individual problems rather than systemic issues, of course, but like the lack of support for trans adults is a systemic issue, a hundred percent.

Jeanne

It is. And in my experience, I think it's these mutual aid networks that really meet the need most of the time. And you had that personally in California to a certain extent and then you're also working on building it here in Arizona.

Shae

I didn't have that in Bakersfield at all. Like in Bakersfield I was on my on my own. I was living with the best friend who I met working at Subway. We'd known each other for years but uh apparently she wasn't as accepting of these things as I thought she was.

Jeanne

I see.

Shae

So, I told her that I was trans. Everything seemed mostly fine but as soon as I started hormones I guess it became real and yeah it was out the door at that moment. I ended up living with my mom for a while. She took me in, but the difference between my mom on the phone versus my mom in person was huge. Over the phone she was like, "Yeah I'm really happy to have another daughter. I'm super happy for you. You're finding yourself,” and all of these things. And as soon as I got to her place it was like, "Why are you dressed like that? You look weird."

Jeanne

Oh, yeah.

Shae

Like, “You'll always be my son. Deadname, deadname." She was also outing me to all of my family and I was in a very vulnerable place at the moment. The only person I thought I can feel safe around was my mom and that didn't work out.

Jeanne

That's really hard.

Shae

Yeah, it was so bad, like I decided to go to a shelter. And that was just as bad, if not worse.

Jeanne

What is the system like in that part of California, in Bakersfield?

Shae

In Bakersfield, Bakersfield's a small town. They did have a nice like queer center there. I actually got clothing swaps, my first like gender affirming clothing from one of those like places. But it was also very young and I was older. So I felt kind of out of place, you know?

Jeanne

Like mostly like younger kids and teenagers?

Shae

Like people who are like under 18.

Jeanne

Okay, yeah.

Shae

So like when I was like figuring myself out, like before I started like hormones, before like I officially came out publicly, I went to one of these like support groups for like trans people and people that were like questioning. Yeah, and I'm not gonna say like the community was bad or anything. I got a lot of like really good help there.

Jeanne

That's good.

Shae

I also just, different lives, different experiences, different generations, you know how it is.

Jeanne

Yeah, it can be hard to find the right fit, I think.

Shae

Plus like, support-oriented groups are a lot different than community-oriented groups. So like, as you were saying earlier, like a lot of these people tend to be like within their first couple of years of transition. And the whole thing with community spaces is there's definitely a support aspect there. But also, you're building a space where people are free to be themselves. They're away from, like I was saying earlier, cis nonsense, as a polite way to put it. You can just be. You don't have to worry about all the bad stuff that's going on in the world. You have a place to escape to for a while. And it's nice.

Jeanne

It's critical, I think. We can't just always try to fit into cis society.

Shae

No.

Jeanne

Right, it's not gonna work. And I really do feel like there's a degree to which people look at trans adults as sort of untouchable, I guess. Like, “let's not actually engage too much here” if we need help. It is frustrating, and I think that the kinds of mutual aid support that we engage in, whether that's like sharing hormones off prescription and things like that, aren't necessarily palatable to the cis population.

Shae

It's definitely not. Like “you're sharing medications?” like “you're supposed to go get that from a doctor.” I'm like, this is life-saving treatment. Right now estradiol cypionate is on a shortage. That stuff isn't gonna be like available for months. So like, who do you go to when you need your medication? Pills aren't working out for you. The patches didn't work for you. There are people that end up like stocking things up. So like, you can get your medication while you're waiting for estradiol cypionate to finally be available in like pharmacies again. I'm also a huge supporter of like DIY HRT as well. That gets… a lot of people have different, I mean, varying opinions on that.

Jeanne

Yeah, and I think there's also different contexts in which to have those opinions, right?

Shae

Exactly, in a lot of places, there's absolutely no informed consent clinics. You have to go through this extremely, what's the word I'm looking for?

Jeanne

It's a lot of gatekeeping.

Shae

Rigorous gatekeeping type things. A lot of it was instilled by WPATH, a lot of it's Blanchardian. You have to live two years as your quote unquote “desired” gender before you they’ll even think about potentially prescribing you hormones.

Jeanne

Yeah, and that was you have to norm until not that long ago

Shae

Yeah, thank God for informed consent clinics. The thing about like, Arizona though, there’s only two cities in the entire state that have informed consent clinics, and that's Phoenix and Tucson

Jeanne

I think the Phoenix area has some. Not, not just in Phoenix proper.

Shae

No, basically just Phoenix. There's something in Tempe, but that's only for ASU students. It's good that they have that but like. There's somebody on Twitter named Erin Reed who built this informed consent clinic map and —

Jeanne

Oh, yeah, that map is out of date.

Shae

Is it?

Jeanne

In Arizona.

Shae

Okay. I'm glad things are better.

Jeanne

Yeah, they are. That that map is out of date. There's quite a few clinics.

Shae

Good, good, yeah. But even if Arizona's getting better, there's still places in the world that are not.

Jeanne

Absolutely, and places in the United States.

Shae

Or in the country. Places in the country that aren't that great either. Like they're banning hormones in like Tennessee, Florida, all these other places. Where do you go to get your life-saving treatment?

Jeanne

Exactly, but I think the problem is people will look at those bills or actions like the Attorney General in Missouri and say, well, this is terrible. But then they still —

Shae

Missouri, thank you. I said Tennessee, I meant Missouri.

Jeanne

Tennessee has its own nonsense happening, so I don't blame you. I think that people will look at that and say, oh boy, this sucks. But then they're still not going to feel comfortable with people who are sharing stockpiled estradiol. It's still something where no matter how much people have a lot of empathy for us, think there's some inherent queasiness around actually engaging in community support networks.

Shae

Yeah, it's, I kind of understand their perspective, but I don't think cis people in general understand like the dire need for like our health treatment. Like, we have one of the highest like suicidality rates of any demographic and a lot of that is brought on by like dysphoria or the treatment that we get by cis society at large. Like hormones, for some of us anyway, because like not every trans person is on hormones and that's like totally fine. I am not a trans med. But for a lot of us like that is enough to make us like feel happy, feel like we're finally like getting the body that we want. We can finally see ourselves in the mirror again, or for the first time.

Jeanne

I think that's a great thing to point out, yeah.

Shae

Yeah, and it sucks when you don't have like the treatment that you like desperately need. And like that's one of the important things again about like building these like, building like these like trans-centric communities that also have some sort of focus on like mutual aid and like community support because when shit gets tough who do you go to? You know like, people are gonna get queasy but the people that understand your struggle aren't.

Jeanne

Yeah and I don't want to come across as some kind of like isolationist, or anything but I think it's just the reality of how things play out for us a lot of the time.

Shae

Yeah.

Jeanne

So when you were in California dealing with a pretty difficult situation of friend rejection, some family rejection, at what point did you decide to move here to Arizona?

Shae

I actually moved to Tucson with my mom. She's lived in Tucson for like years. I actually lived in Tucson for a couple years when I turned 19.

Jeanne

Okay, so the decision to come to Arizona was when you moved in with your mom?

Shae

Yeah. And the decision to move to Phoenix, I was actually given a couple options after my friend made that video. I could have moved in to Washington with somebody that I know, also in the YouTube circuit. I decided not to go there, despite how amazing Washington is in regards to like trans, like everything. But like she was dealing with an abusive situation at home and I don't think I would have been able to manage that. For the record, she's out of that situation now and things are going a lot better.

Jeanne

Okay, good.

Shae

Just to clarify. But another mutual friend of ours ended up messaging me on Discord 'cause everything runs on Discord these days. And was like, "Hey, I live in Phoenix, I’m like an hour and a half from you. I can pick you up this weekend. Do you wanna come stay with us?" And I did. And I was there for eight months, started doing things with Food Not Bombs, I met some other wonderful people and I've been living with them ever since. The situation with the people I moved in with was much better than where I was at in Bakersfield, much better than when I was with my mom in Tucson, but not everybody was okay with the trans thing.

Jeanne

Oh really, even at that point?

Shae

Yeah, it was a much more supportive place, much more supportive than I've ever been, but it wasn't perfect.

Jeanne

Yeah. Moving between states and between cities as a trans person means reestablishing care in each new place. What was that like for you?

Shae

Actually really easy.

Jeanne

Oh really?

Shae

'Cause Erin Reed’s informed consent map.

Jeanne

Oh perfect.

Shae

Yeah, so when I was in Bakersfield and I was like, I had like an extra week to stay in that house before I had to leave. I was lucky enough that they gave me that extra time. I messaged my doctor on the app that we use for medical records, all that kind of junk, told her that, “Hey, I'm gonna be homeless. I'm gonna be moving in with my mom in Tucson, and it would be really awesome if you can give me like an extra like, write me a refill for my hormones so I can have them when I'm moving, 'cause I don't know how long it's gonna be until I can see a doctor again.”

Jeanne

Oh yeah.

Shae

Yeah, and she did that. I was able to pick up a 90 day supply and I was down there for maybe a month and a half. I was still doing good and then I moved to Phoenix and I made sure I got a doctor appointment like as soon as possible.

Jeanne

Oh, nice.

Shae

And was able to continue things.

Jeanne

Yeah, that's pretty seamless then.

Shae

Yeah, no issues. Informed consent is a godsend. It really is.

Jeanne

It really is. No, it's true. Informed consent is so — yeah. I'm just thinking about my experience of trying to find hormones over several years and not really being able to make it work, and then finding a place that did informed consent here in Phoenix. And that was where it was able to actually work out for me. And a lot of the time I would call and they just didn't really do what I thought they did based on their website.

Shae

Yeah, there's definitely places like that.

Jeanne

Yeah.

Shae

Informed consent with conditions.

Jeanne

Yeah, and there's still just a general sense of, hey, if you don't have the perfect trans story, we're gonna throw up some roadblocks. And the place I found that was a real informed consent clinic, that wasn't the situation. That's not really the situation at most informed consent clinics, but it is historically the problem, if you don't have like a clear and consistent narrative going back to when you were five years old or whatever.

Shae

There's definitely still like… even informed consent isn't perfect. Like I said, like, informed consent with conditions. A lot of cis doctors especially don't understand like progesterone for instance is a extremely vital part of like trans like feminine like health care and unfortunately the research on a lot of these things isn't up to par. Funding for it usually cuts off at like two to three years so that's when they say like estradiol like stops working and like with progesterone there's like little to no research at all. However there have been multiple research papers that have been written about like progesterone and its potential and they argue it in a very interesting way because like for cis women like progesterone is a natural part of like their hormone cycles right? And the whole reason HRT works is because we have the exact same receptors in our bodies.

Jeanne

Right. Under-appreciated fact for sure.

Shae

Yeah, like cis women still have testosterone, because they need it. Cis men still have like estrogen in their bodies and progesterone as well, like some natural levels. They're definitely suppressed depending on like if like testosterone or estrogen is dominant in your body.

Jeanne

Yeah, there's different balances but we're all basically working with the same chemistry.

Shae

Exactly so it doesn't make a lick of sense to say progesterone has absolutely no benefits. If we have like the same type of chemistry in our bodies maybe one one hormone is dominant than the other, why would it not make sense for, if you're changing which hormones are dominant in your system than another one, that's also vital not be included in your healthcare?

Jeanne

(laughs) So I think this gets to something that a lot of like cis people listening to this podcast won't necessarily understand or be familiar with,

Shae

Yeah.

Jeanne

Is that for many, many trans people, especially trans people who transition medically, we have to know a lot of things, we have to learn a lot of things because in many cases, doctors have a certain knowledge set that they've gone into it with and we need to make sure that they're up to speed.

Shae

Yeah.

Jeanne

It's not something most people are used to. I think maybe people in like disability communities, but in general, this is not really a well understood experience. So when we talk about this stuff, it comes across like, these people are nerds about transition. And it's just like, no, actually —

Shae

I like to think that I know a lot, but there's definitely people in the community that know this at an endocrinological level, beyond what I thought was even possible.

Jeanne

Yeah. I've been in those conversations, and honestly, I get to a point where I'm like, if my doctor gets it a tiny bit wrong, I'd rather just not put in this level of work and let my doctor get it a tiny bit wrong. I'm fine with that.

Shae

Yeah.

Jeanne

But overall, I think, you know, people make sure to educate themselves so that they know if their doctor is getting it right or if they have to be in a DIY situation that they can be safe and get it right. Where do you learn these things?

Shae

Through community.

Jeanne

Yeah.

Shae

There's a lot of like forums online that talk about all of this stuff and a lot of people that are very well informed on the science behind this. You could read all the research papers. Like, in-person community is vital. Online community itself is vital. I don't think it typically matches up to real-life community. But, yeah, talk to other trans people. They know what they're doing. They've done the research, especially if you're new. Like, your community is here for you. That's the whole point. We help us.

Jeanne

Yeah. The online community, in-person community bridge is interesting. I think Discord is doing a pretty good job of blending those together.

Shae

Yeah, that was like kind of like Celia and I's like whole idea behind like having like the Discord and the in-person group. A lot of people tend to have social anxiety, things like autism or other like neurodivergencies. I myself have autism and there are plenty of people that prefer the online space than prefer the in-person space. Like we were saying earlier, Brick Road is a small place. It can get very loud and overstimulating. So some people will opt in for the online space, but because we're in so close proximity to each other, we can still help each other out. We can still build friendships. We can still build support networks with each other, build relationships, and be there for each other.

Jeanne

I've also seen that there's a pretty great, well, I've seen a lot of people be very open about managing their sensory needs and stimming and things like that in the group. Like it's, to me, very often feels like just as much of like an autism community meetup as a trans community meetup. And I don't mean that in a critical or judgmental way at all. I think it's also rare, just like trans community is rare in person.

Shae

There's actually quite a huge overlap between having autism or just being neurodivergent and also being trans. When it comes to the cis neurotypical, no, actually, yeah, the cis neuro—

Jeanne

I feel like that's the right word.

Shae

Yes, I'm just struggling to put it together. So like 15% of all trans people tend to be like neurodivergent or autistic. I think like it's 15% autistic. And that's not nearly the same for like cis people. I don't know the statistics, but I know it's vastly lower. And that's the important part.

Jeanne

Yeah.

Shae

Yeah. It's probably 'cause — like the reason why like AZTT might be like mostly like neurodivergent folks is because we've done literally everything by word of mouth so far. We're, sure we're on the Brick Road Coffee like…

Jeanne

You're on the calendar.

Shae

Calendar and website, but you have to go into the shop in order to see that. And most people have ended up like bringing friends or bringing partners, or just like talking to people online, like, "Hey, I found this community. It's been really fun. It's been a great help to me. You should go to it too."

Jeanne

Yeah. I find that with that overlap between neurodivergent people and trans people, that's something that gets deployed against us a lot, especially at younger ages, to keep us from being able to transition or express our identities.

Shae

Just like in Missouri, right? Like they're adding on a ton of conditions to gatekeep people away from like HRT, right?

Jeanne

Yeah.

Shae

Like there's still a very small subset of people that can get HRT, but it's like written in a specific way to like make sure you don't get it. Like if you have autism, you don't get HRT. If you have depression, which tends to be a huge factor.

Jeanne

Yeah, it's written that you need to resolve your depression and anxiety before you can transition. Well, how are you supposed to do that?

Shae

No, they fundamentally don't understand what like dysphoria is like. So they're just using this as a way to keep us away from our medication.

Jeanne

Fortunately, that's been held up in court, at least for now. But I wonder, for you, was autism something that you grew up with a diagnosis for?

Shae

I actually got diagnosed with ADHD when I was like three years old, and this was before 2013. In 2013, I mean before 2013, actually, you couldn't get a dual diagnosis of ADHD and autism. So that's a fairly recent thing. When I was in college, I was, like I said, going through those support networks for queer people. I was also getting therapy and seeing a psychiatrist 'cause during that period of my life, I was dealing with a lot of mental health stuff. It's definitely been a lot better now. But through working with my psychiatrist and working through my therapist, they ended up giving me an autism diagnosis as well.

Jeanne

Okay. Very bluntly, did that cause problems when you decided to transition?

Shae

No.

Jeanne

Okay, that's good.

Shae

Yeah. (laughs)

Jeanne

For me, I did get pushback from mental health professionals. Not in a way I expected, and not at a time I expected.

Shae

My very first doctor in Bakersfield was amazing. I only saw her twice, but I told her that like, hey, I'm trans, I'm looking to get HRT. She didn't ask me a bunch of weird questions like they did at a couple of the other doctors offices here, they're like, okay, cool, I want you to sign this paperwork and here let's explain like what HRT does, these are the permanent things, these are the risks. If this is something, what you wanna do, I'll get you your hormones today. It was super easy.

Jeanne

That's great.

Shae

Yeah, and I was already doing the work through like therapy and like the mental health stuff and through like the support group with like the queer center in Bakersfield. I didn't need a doctor to give me a diagnosis to know that I was trans. It took me a while to figure it out myself, even though I probably always knew.

Jeanne

That's the duality, I think. I always knew, but also it took me 25 years to figure it out.

Shae

Trauma keeps you repressed.

Jeanne

Yeah.

Shae

Yeah. (laughing) And when you finally work it out, things start falling together. It was in 2019, October 9th. I remember the exact day. I remember walking to the pharmacy, being extremely excited. Had a water bottle in my backpack pocket and I was like, I'm not even gonna wait 'til at home. (laughing)

Jeanne

Just taking my meds here and now.

Shae

Yes!

Jeanne

Yeah. I had a very exciting first day on hormones also. June 1st, 2018. So it's a month until that'll be five years for me, which is exciting.

Shae

Damn.

Jeanne

But it was the same kind of thing of like, okay, this is it, this is the day. I've got these, I'm going to pick up my prescription right now. It was fun. But yeah, okay, I think I'll ask one thing and then we can wrap up.

Shae

Sure.

Jeanne

You mentioned like with the queer center and in some other places and even here with like non-profits that exist to provide resources, a lot of the time it's to a younger demographic. Do you feel like there's, well I guess for me I feel like sometimes what happens is people infantilize trans people and they really only want to deal with trans people as like kids. So whether it's actual kids or younger people or just kind of seeing us as like, "Ah, it's so cute that you're trying a thing." Do you see that too?

Shae

“I’m so proud of you.” See, I get really complicated feelings about that. Like, there's definitely an issue with infantilizing of like trans people. There's also a duality to that because like at the same time you have all of these conservative talking heads calling us like groomers and pedos.

Jeanne

Right.

Shae

It's ridiculous. I appreciate the help that like trans youth and queer youth are getting, because it is vital. Like you were saying, family rejection is a huge thing. There are people that get kicked out of their homes. There's somebody in our group even that was like kicked out of their home and was in foster care. Luckily they found like a not perfect but pretty good space. And as soon as they turned 18 they've been hanging out with us. But like… I don't really know how to word that.

Jeanne

It's a kind of tangled up idea.

Shae

Yeah, there's just a lot of variables and a lot of different things. And like, it's kind of hard to like abstract the zeitgeist of it all. When I know like different communities, I mean, different demographics, like versus your conservatives and your Democrats, for instance, like think much differently. More liberal minded folks, definitely infantilize not just trans people, but every marginalized group.

Jeanne

Actually, that's a great point.

Shae

Yeah. More leftist folks focus more on solidarity, which is very important, and taking charge of your own shit, which I appreciate a lot.

Jeanne

I think you're also right that this isn't something that can be totally abstracted. It just comes down to actual literal people in specific communities and situations.

Shae

Yeah, the people at Brick Road, the people with some of the other like non-profits and stuff that I worked at, everybody's been super cool. But like in general, there's definitely that like infantilization, but it's not just directed to trans people — all marginalized groups.

Jeanne

Yeah. Do you feel like the kind of support that exists for the trans community is getting more robust over time or that there's still a long way to go?

Shae

Um, both.

Jeanne

Yeah.

Shae

Unironically. I think it's getting better. I think a lot more stuff is like coming out of the woodworks. I still think there needs to be a lot more. A lot of these things are also like charity based, which isn't necessarily bad. They're still helping people and like, people need help. But there's also not enough. You know, like, uh, direct aid is like the most important thing. Housing, jobs, those kinds of stuff. There's lots of housing discrimination, there's a lot of job discrimination, and you add those two things together, you end up with people that become unhoused. And if you're trans and you're unhoused, especially if you're a trans person of color, it's a death sentence and people don't understand that. It's very scary. I do my best to try and help out the people here. I'm thankful that I'm in touch with a lot of non-profits that can help in times of need, especially for the younger folks. But if you're an adult though, it's much harder. And that risk does not go away as an adult. I mean, as an adult, it's still just as dangerous.

Jeanne

What are some of the groups that you've been involved with to help out?

Shae

AZTYPO, one-ten. and that's basically it.

Jeanne

And some of the groups that help out with unhoused people, right?

Shae

Yeah, it's very complicated though, 'cause the shelter circuit is not trans-friendly. A lot of these places are religious. You know, it's not just that they're religious. There's a lot of religious folks that are very queer accepting, but like —

Jeanne

Totally.

Shae

— they segregate by like assigned gender at birth. There's no accommodations for like trans people. They don't care. They think they know what's best for you and that's how they operate. Like sometimes like, you need the help, but it's never enough. It's never like, right. There's definitely places that are better, but most of it's kind of shit. It's good in an emergency, but if you go to a place and like everybody is harassing you because of who you are and the staff there don't do anything to help you in those like times of need, like what would you rather do?

Jeanne

And the shelters are already overtaxed, right? There's a shortage.

Shae

Yeah, there's a whole reason, I mean there's a big reason why there's hundreds of people out in like the zone around CASS, you know?

Jeanne

Yeah.

Shae

Like they're overtaxed, COVID has done a lot of things. Gentrification is running rampant in the Phoenix Metro area. Rent prices are going up. People are losing their homes. People on disability can't afford rent anymore. Marginalized people get fired from their work for being who they are. And unless you're renting a place with like four or five different people and you're all pitching in, it's the only way you could make it work. Or if you're lucky enough to come from economic privilege.

Jeanne

Right. Yeah. But that's not even always a guarantee for trans people if you can't depend on your family of origin. For support.

Shae

Yeah. A lot of this stuff hits really close to home for me. So like, I wanna build a safe, fun place for people. I also wanna give people the resources to build this self-helping community that also self-organizes, that we're encouraged to help each other out. And I'm glad it's going in that direction.

Jeanne

Yeah, I think you're doing great work. Thanks for talking with me for the podcast.

Shae

Yeah, sorry for getting a little, you know.

Jeanne

I'm glad you did.

Shae

Sick. And thanks for having me on. It was a lot of fun.

Jeanne

Totally. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Thanks again to Shae for being my guest on this week's episode of the Arizona Equals Conversation. We're always looking for new people to interview. So if you'd like to be a guest on a future episode of the podcast, just send an email to [email protected]. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you again soon.

On this week’s episode of the Arizona Equals Conversation, we talk with Canella Caro, a student at ASU who plan to be a history teacher, about hope in uncertain times, the process of learning empathy, and the culture of right-wing echo chambers online.

The Arizona Equals Conversation is an interview podcast collecting the stories of LGBTQ+ people living in Arizona. To listen to past episodes of the podcast, or to sign up to be a guest on a future episode of the show, visit equalityarizona.org/stories.

Full Episode Transcript

Jeanne Woodbury

From Equality Arizona, you're listening to the Arizona Equals Conversation, a podcast about queer people and queer communities in Arizona. I'm Jeanne Woodbury. I'm the interim executive director at Equality Arizona, and each week on the show, I talk with a queer person about their story. Today's interview with my guest, Canella Caro, is something really special. Early on when I was planning this series, I kind of made a promise to myself not to ask the really typical coming out questions like, what changed in your relationship to your family? What changed in your relationship to your friends? Things like that, because it falls right into the narrative that I think people project onto queer people. That it's all about this one moment. That it's all about showing the world who you've always known yourself to be and damn the consequences. And it's not to say that that isn't actually a very common part of people's experiences, but there's so much more going on. And that idea of projection is something we actually ended up talking about in a very different way in relation to Canella's experience as an immigrant and the story people expect from them because of that. But even beyond that, this isn't a story that fits an easy narrative. This is a story about radically reevaluating your relationship to queer people and queer community as part of a longer process of radically reevaluating your relationship to yourself. And it was special for me as an interviewer to hear that story because it's something that I share and it's not something I've found that I have in common with a lot of people. It's also really fascinating because we talk a lot about right-wing echo chambers and the effect that alt-right influencers like Ben Shapiro can have on very, very young people using the internet. There's a lot of complexity here, and I'm so appreciative of Canella for sharing all of that so openly on the podcast. I think that you'll all really enjoy this episode, and I want to get right into it. So let's roll the tape.

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[CLICK]

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Canella Caro

Hello, my name is Canella. I go by she/they pronouns. Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

Cool. Thanks for being here. While I was struggling to get this audio set up to work, You mentioned you've worked as an audio engineer before, which made me feel kind of terrible.

Canella Caro

No, don't worry, I suck.

(both laughing)

Jeanne Woodbury

— But —

Canella Caro

There's a reason I don't do sound anymore.

Jeanne Woodbury

Where were you doing that work?

Canella Caro

Oh, it was an internship for this like itty bitty venue down in like downtown Tucson.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, cool.

Canella Caro

Yeah, the venue used to be like this abandoned hotel that this guy turned into like a bunch of shops. They had a bunch of little artisan shops and played a bunch of live music, and I helped out the main sound guy with that.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's really cool.

Canella Caro

Yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Jeanne Woodbury

How long did you work there?

Canella Caro

I started working there in February last year and then stopped in July of the same year.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, okay. Yeah.

Canella Caro

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

And was that to move up here to Tempe?

Canella Caro

Yeah, and also I was not being paid.

Canella Caro

(both laughing) And once I needed the internship for a project I was doing for my high school.

Jeanne Woodbury

I see, okay.

Canella Caro

And once that project period ended, there wasn't really much need to keep doing it if I wasn't getting any sort of reward.

Jeanne Woodbury

That makes sense, yeah. If you can get the credit, then that counts, but otherwise you don't wanna do an unpaid job.

Canella Caro

Yeah, it goes on my resume though, so.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's good, yeah. So did you grow up in Tucson then?

Canella Caro

I was born in Chile. I lived there for like the first three and a half years of my life.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, okay.

Canella Caro

And then I moved to Arizona. So I've been in Arizona all my life basically, but not necessarily in Tucson. I used to live in, over in Graham County. It's like bordering New Mexico. There's this like itty bitty town, very white town that I lived there for like the first, what, until I was about like nine, and then I moved to Tucson.

Jeanne Woodbury

And that, is this like a 1,000 person town kind of thing, or?

Canella Caro

It's, yeah… there were a lot of Mormons.

Jeanne Woodbury

Interesting.

Canella Caro

And I was like the only person of color within like a 500 mile radius. (laughs)

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh wow.

Canella Caro

For a bit. Like, it was me and this other girl who were like the only non-white people around.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh wow.

Canella Caro

So yeah, it was a pretty small town, pretty tight knit, yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, how long were you there?

Canella Caro

Until I was about nine, so for like six-ish years.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, so a lot of formative development.

Canella Caro

Yeah, yeah. So I spent a lot of my childhood there, but a lot of the important parts were here in Tucson.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, that makes sense. So do you have memories from Chile or really…

Canella Caro

Kind of, because I mean, I did go visit every once in a while to see family 'cause all of my extended family's there. I only have my parents and my siblings in the United States. So yeah, I do, I remember little things. Like I remember the fruit magnets on the fridge, the yellow walls, dancing with my dad. Um, that kind of thing. You do always get the occasional random person comes up to you and goes, Hey, I knew you when you were a baby! That kind of thing, that kind of experience

Jeanne Woodbury

But I don't know you, because I was a baby.

Canella Caro

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah infant amnesia kinda hit.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah I was even younger than that when my family moved to Arizona, but all my siblings are older than me. So they have more memories from — Pennsylvania is where we moved from — so they have more memories from there than I do. And it's interesting because there's like that family history in a place that I have no memory of, even though I'm technically from there.

Canella Caro

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

Are your siblings older than you or younger than you?

Canella Caro

Oh, I'm the oldest. Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, okay.

Canella Caro

Both of my siblings were born here too. So, yeah, I'm the first one to leave the nest.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's an interesting position to be in, I think. Do you have like pressure as like an older sibling role model?

Canella Caro

Kind of yeah, I mean not like explicitly. Nobody's like — my parents never like compared me, compared my younger siblings to me or anything because I was kind of the black sheep of the family

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh really?

Canella Caro

For now. But there is that kind of obligation to be a good example, which I haven't really been but… (laughs) but yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

I feel like also for a lot of people who come to the United States as a family, there's extra pressure on the kids to like really take advantage of like going to university here.

Canella Caro

Yeah. Both of my parents, they both went to university. In fact, I think, like, my mom was like one of the first in her family for generations to go to university

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, that's really cool.

Canella Caro

Because we came from like the south of Chile and it's more like countryside, rural kind of area. So yeah, they're very like academic based.

Jeanne Woodbury

Is that why they moved here?

Canella Caro

My dad — we moved here because my father was offered a job here.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, okay.

Canella Caro

Yeah, the company he works for has like a branch, and… is an American company and has a branch in Chile. So he was offered, and he moved.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, that's cool.

Canella Caro

Yeah, yeah. No like… no American dream story.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, just, it's a job and now I'm here.

Canella Caro

Yeah, he just kind of came here.

Jeanne Woodbury

That makes sense.

Canella Caro

Mm-hmm

Jeanne Woodbury

In Arizona?

Canella Caro

Yeah, it was in Arizona.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh nice, okay, that's cool

Canella Caro

Yeah, because copper mining is pretty popular here and in Chile, so.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh that's right. Yeah, that's a that's a link that makes a lot of sense.

Canella Caro

Yeah, yeah, industry.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, I think it's interesting because — my grandma's from Cuba and she moved here not for the reason most people from Cuba have moved here over the past 70 years; she moved here before the revolution to go to college

Canella Caro

Oh, nice.

Jeanne Woodbury

Or around that same time. So she wasn't fleeing the revolution or anything like that. She just moved here and she went to college and she stayed here and got a job at Bell Labs. And it's something where, those stories are always interesting because people project a certain image or story onto your experience and then it's like, well it was exciting and interesting because she was a woman in the 50s getting a graduate degree. But at the same time, it's not the story people think it is.

Canella Caro

Yeah, definitely. I, yeah, people often — when you say like, when I say that I'm an immigrant people often assume that I have an accent or you know, you get the little microaggression of "oh your English is so good."

Jeanne Woodbury

Do you get that a lot?

Canella Caro

When I was a child, yes. Now that I'm older not so much. Or people assume that you had to like translate for your parents. No, my mother Learned English on her on her own. She studied German in college she's really good with languages. Or the idea that we're like really poor and struggling to get by. Or, like, the areas that we live in, because we always lived in the suburbs and, yeah, like white suburbs of the US so you feel that disconnect between other people who do have that story and it's like, damn.

Jeanne Woodbury

Do you feel like that's like a double alienation then, where you have a disconnect from people who have that story and then you're in in these predominantly white areas?

Canella Caro

Yeah, 'cause I don't feel like, it's a difference in, like I know being a person of color here in the US, you have a different experience than people who are white, but there's still layers within that where sometimes you feel it, almost feel like you don't have that joint identity of oppression, if I went to a good school, I had a lot of friends, my parents were well respected in their communities. I guess you could say we assimilated pretty well, while also retaining parts of our culture. Like I never had the experience, at least not that I remember, of getting some random person to be like, "You're in America, speak English."

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, okay, I mean that's good.

Canella Caro

Yeah, I mean it's a positive. I'm never gonna say like, "I wish I had that," but you feel that disconnect from a group that you really wanna connect to.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And Tucson has like a really unique character to it, I think.

Canella Caro

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

Although I'm not as familiar with like Graham County, and so I don't know how distinct the Tucson area is from that, but compared to Phoenix, it's a pretty unique place. When you moved to Tucson and then, growing up in Tucson, what was it like for you?

Canella Caro

I didn't really think much of it. I mean, a lot of the reasons why I moved here is because a lot of our friends were moving here, like family friends, 'cause my parents weren't the only people to move from Chile because of work. We had other friends within the company or other stuff. And they all started moving to Tucson as well, 'cause work. And I guess opportunities were better, so that's why we moved. And I don't know, I didn't really think much of it because again, I was pretty small, like when we moved to Tucson.

Jeanne Woodbury

That makes sense.

Canella Caro

I just kind of thought of it as, oh man, all my friends over here are not gonna be with me, but I'm gonna make new friends here.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

Yeah. But it was, one thing that was interesting though is the diversity. You see different religions, different types of people, different orientations, things that I wouldn't even think were a thing, mainly because I was a child, but also because of the environment I was living in for like the first nine years of my life.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, yeah.

Canella Caro

So yeah, like for once I could go to school and say, "Oh my God," without the entire class getting mad at me for saying the Lord's name in vain.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, right, that's a good point. Even really simple stuff like that.

Canella Caro

Yeah, really simple stuff 'cause we're not, my family's never Mormon, so like I was raised Christian, but there is that disconnect too.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, there is.

Canella Caro

It was easier to kind of settle in Tucson.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, that makes sense. Tucson has, like it's not a huge city, but it's a good sized city for sure. And it's something where I think it has the character of a bigger city in a lot of ways in terms of just, it feels really queer? Like there's something kind of like gay in like the core of Tucson in a really cool way.

Canella Caro

Especially the high school that I went to. It was, so I wasn't in like Tucson, like downtown Tucson. Like you know how here in like Phoenix, we're not in Phoenix right now, we're in Chandler, right?

Jeanne Woodbury

Exactly, yeah.

Canella Caro

Yeah, I lived in like Marana and went to school in Oro Valley, which was around that time, which is pretty, you know, pretty big suburb, pretty like higher income area. But yeah, there was a lot of queerness in the high school that I went to and the environment, it was much easier to be queer where I was living, at least amongst your friends. Like, none of us really got the experience where we'd get bullied for being, bullied for not being straight or anything. There was some transphobia, but —

Jeanne Woodbury

In your high school?

Canella Caro

Yeah, yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

From other students or from an administrative standpoint?

Canella Caro

From other students, from myself, 'cause we didn't know any better.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, yeah.

Canella Caro

And we didn't even know ourselves.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

So, but it's a different experience, I guess.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, no I mean that's a really interesting thing that you're getting at, is sometimes before we really figure things out, we'll contribute to the problem.

Canella Caro

Yeah, I pride myself on how much I've changed, because I really started to be — I feel like when I was more aware of things during the 2016 election. However, I was more on the right back then, so I had a lot of prejudices, I had a lot of things that I didn't understand, a lot of internalized homophobia, all the phobias.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right.

Canella Caro

Yeah, and it wasn't until I got older and stepped out of my shell and spoke to different types of people that I realized that you kind of learn from that. And you try to, like yeah, I can't undo that I was really mean and really not the best person back in middle school, but you just grow up and be better.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, I think that is what growing up is about, is being open to change and acknowledging your mistakes. Also, I have to think, I mean, the 2016 election was almost seven years ago.

Canella Caro

Yeah, yeah, it's been a while.

Jeanne Woodbury

So it's not like you were an adult who had had a lot of time to like settle into your political opinions.

Canella Caro

Yeah, I was 12 with my mom still checking over my private Instagram account. And yeah, being in a conservative family as well, so.

Jeanne Woodbury

Do you think that's where the different phobias, like transphobia and homophobia, that you were feeling and expressing came from? Just the environment you were in?

Canella Caro

The environment, I guess the internet counts as that environment too. It's really easy to fall into echo chambers. I mean, for context, my mom and I would watch debates together, or I started watching a lot of right-wing online content creators. And when you're 12, you don't really know what's — you don't know what is right, what's fair, what's not. You're not really that well-versed in empathy. So when you see Ben Shapiro laughing at, like making fun of this college student for being too emotional or something, you think, you kind of join in on that mob mentality because it's fun to see someone else get roasted or laughed at.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right. I mean, there's a whole comedy genre of a roast, and it's usually in good faith. And then if it's the first time you're coming across it, why are you going to assume something's wrong with it, I guess?

Canella Caro

Yeah. Or also maybe you think, huh, this guy's speaking fast. He seems very factual. He's very logical thinking. And this girl over here, she's very emotional and getting mad and yelling. So your little, little child brain immediately gears toward the logical guy.

Jeanne Woodbury

Where did you find, like, Ben Shapiro?

Canella Caro

Oh, just on YouTube. I grew up with the internet, so it was so easy. And I had a crush on a guy back in like middle school and he was very right-wing and he would like send me links and stuff. And I started watching things and it was — it's so easy to fall into the like anti-SJW rabbit hole that was really popular back in 2016/17.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, it was all over the internet.

Canella Caro

Yeah, and it was all fun and games until you realized that you fit into the category of the people you're making fun of.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. When did you hit that realization?

Canella Caro

Realizing that I was bisexual, and probably just being aware of like intersectionality and, like, yeah sure just because of like the disconnect that I told you before, that I didn't experience certain types of oppression, that doesn't mean that other people didn't experience that. Like I got lucky. That doesn't mean other people of color were as privileged as I was to grow up in this type of environment.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

And also just kind of shedding my like, not-like-the-other-girls internalized misogyny kind of thing and I guess just developing empathy.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, but developing empathy takes work.

Canella Caro

It does.

Jeanne Woodbury

It's not just something that happens naturally. Yeah, it can be easy to just say, but I enjoy the the camaraderie of bullying that like Ben Shapiro creates, right? And then not go any farther than that. Like there's nothing that says you, you have to develop empathy. I think we make choices to develop empathy.

Canella Caro

Yeah, a lot of it was just making different friends at school, from different backgrounds. Like I used to be the token conservative friend for a bit.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh yeah.

Canella Caro

Then I wasn't. (Laughs) It was a very gradual process.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

But, also experiencing like the reaction that I got when I first came out made me realize that, "Oh, these people are not my friends. These people are not supportive of me." I'm more of like a bargaining chip for a movement by being the Hispanic queer who's conservative.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, like you're the token person that they can use.

Canella Caro

Yeah, they can use like, "Hey, we're not hateful. Look at this person, she's one of us."

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

But in reality, no, they're not your friends.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right. Well, and did you expect it to be a problem for that group of people? Or did you expect them to be like, sweet, this is great, now we have this token?

Canella Caro

I expected to be, I expected to be liked and accepted, because I, while I had my prejudices, one thing that I wasn't was homophobic.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

Like I didn't understand any of it. Ever since I was a child. Like my dad would say like, oh yeah, he talked to me 'cause I didn't know who Freddie Mercury was as a child and I started listening to Queen, and my dad was like, yeah, he's a man who likes other men. And I thought, huh. And when gay marriage was legalized, I kinda didn't really think much of it. I was more just repeating what my family was saying, despite being like, I don't really care. (laughs)

Jeanne Woodbury

Right. What's the big deal?

Canella Caro

Yeah, so when I first came out as bisexual, I did not expect to be ostracized by my family or by people that I used to call friends at the time, or by the internet, even.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, how did that play out, online?

Canella Caro

Well, you get the usual. People say it's just a phase, or you're gay, but you're not fully committing, or you're straight, but you wanna experiment. The usual. I'd get, you know, online it's really easy to be called a slur and stuff, even if it doesn't apply to you. I got my fair share of the D slur, even though that's not mine.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, they'll just pick whatever they want.

Canella Caro

Yeah, you'll just… they'll just pick whatever. It wasn't, it wasn't that impactful. It was more what I was seeing in my own home that really affected me. I was able to kind of find my own little space online being, you know, in 2017, being in middle school, the little like baby gay, as you'd call it,

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

Yeah, with your little flower crown and your like pastel aesthetic that you liked online. I was that kid. I was very annoying.

Jeanne Woodbury

No, that's amazing.

Canella Caro

Yeah, you gotta go through that phase before you figure out who you really are.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, I think you know, I mean people will use the word phase especially towards bi people. But like we do go through phases. Yeah, it's not like our identity as a phase, but of course we go through phases. We're people. We're changing.

Canella Caro

Yeah, even what we believe in or how we express ourselves, like online you'll always find people on TikTok being annoying and dressing in all rainbow — or when you think of the… Target like during pride month. They came out with that rainbow suit. You like laugh at it, but then you think well, yeah, there's there's this one like 11 year old who's closeted and thinks, "I'm gay, I want to wear that everywhere. When I come out, I want to wear that everywhere." Cause that was me.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, loudly gay all the time.

Canella Caro

I'd draw like little rainbows, like the little stripes on my fingers in Sharpie with my best friend at the time.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's so fun.

Canella Caro

Yeah, I went to a Panic! at the Disco concert and that's probably the queerest thing you could do back in the late 2010s.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, I think so.

Canella Caro

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

I feel like that's also kind of just a, I don't know, Tucson experience on some level. Like that can happen anywhere, but there's something like extra Tucson about it to me.

Canella Caro

Yeah, like my parents could rip down my bi flag and tell me they wouldn't allow me to bring in a girl ever to their house, but I could leave, go to school, and be with all my friends and we were all like gender fluid and yeah, we'd all be supportive.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

Mm-hmm.

Jeanne Woodbury

You know, I had a similar experience, right — I was conservative for a while and I came out as bi and found out oh, I didn't think they would necessarily have a huge problem with this and they do. Partly because I didn't really ever get the homophobia. I, like I didn't understand where it was coming from, and then later on when I when I figured out some more gender stuff and came out that way I realized like "oh, yeah, no, there's a there's a total disconnect here."

Canella Caro

Mm-hmm

Jeanne Woodbury

But I did have more complicated feelings about gender politically when I was conservative.

Canella Caro

Oh yeah, me too

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, so then it sounds like you also had a process to go through with gender that was… that was maybe different from the process coming out as bi.

Canella Caro

Yeah, no, absolutely. Like again, I didn't understand. Like I was like, hmm, I can see myself dating a girl, and boom, I'm bi

Jeanne Woodbury

Right,

Canella Caro

But you know, you never really understood. You grew up with, "there's only two genders," you grew up with all that sort of thing.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

Even when somebody transitioned you'd be like, you'd think they were weird. Like why are they wanting to be something else? You don't get it.

Jeanne Woodbury

Well, I didn't know anyone who transitioned.

Canella Caro

I didn't either but I, you know had the internet. We had… you'd make fun of people. Like it was particularly trans women. Even to this day they're probably very targeted. But even back then you'd make fun of a, like a trans woman or a, calling them like a bunch of names and a bunch of stuff and that's what I grew up with. Also the like toxic masculinity of "you're girly" if you're a guy, like guys like this, like if a guy acts even remotely different, he's gay, he's a cross-dresser, all these things. So you have these very set… I also have very black and white thinking, and you have these very set perceptions of what a guy is, what a girl is. And well, I thought, yeah, girls can dress differently, but I didn't think that same way for guys, and so —

Jeanne Woodbury

There's different rules.

Canella Caro

Yeah, yeah, so that was one thing and then realizing hmm, I'm a little different too and yeah, so when I had people come out to me as non-binary I was so confused. I admit I wasn't the best. I had in middle school. There was this person he — last time I knew of him, I believe he used he/him pronouns — he transitioned and it was like the first like trans person that I've ever met in my life, and I thought they were just confused, thought he was just trying to be someone else because he took up a name — we were into the same things, and he changed his name to something… like named himself after like a celebrity or something that we both knew, which — totally within his right. But me being a little brat, I was like no they're, he's just looking for attention. And even to this day like I wonder how he's doing because I still really want to apologize for that because I wasn't the only one who was acting that way and I bet his experience at the school that we went to wasn't the best and I kind of wish it was but I hope he's doing well. And realizing last year that oh, hey when I think of myself — like we all have this image of ourselves in our head like how we look like. Like maybe you have long hair, maybe you have a certain piercing that you wanna get: I saw myself with like a guy's body, and I was like, "How do we get here?" And that's something I'm still dealing with.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, I mean, it's so hard, because wherever that comes from, it concentrates on… the type of transphobia that exists on the internet is really separate from what it's like to be trans and what it's like to figure out gender or gender fluidity. It's so different and it focuses on these strict categories and black and white thinking like you were saying, and also totally targets trans women so often as a subject for ridicule. And then when you start to figure things out for yourself, it's so irrelevant to what's real that it can be hard to square the two things. You have this like knee jerk reaction to all of it. And then it's just like, wait, but this is me. And it doesn't feel like the thing that they're making fun of. It's not that.

Canella Caro

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

And then "where do you go from there?" is a really hard thing to figure out.

Canella Caro

And also, even, you even have certain perceptions of what it means to be non-binary, or what it means to be gender fluid, or how you're supposed to act. So even that's difficult to figure out yourself, where it's like, well, I groove with androgyny, but it's not like I feel dysphoria where I feel that certain emotion about my body. It's just, it doesn't feel like me or something like that or however it's described. Or I still like wearing makeup and dresses and heels, and I get my nails done, and if someone says I'm a girl, I'm like fine with it. But at the same time, there's still something else. Like, can I be both? I can't be both. How do you be neither? It's so much.

Jeanne Woodbury

And people figure that out in different ways for themselves all the time. I feel like also a lot of it is about finding people that you can be in community with, who can provide those different templates and give you a map to move through.

Canella Caro

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

Because if it's just like Ben Shapiro making fun of trans women or making fun of people who use different pronouns or whatever, you're not actually seeing a map of what it means to move through the world. It's just a map of different ways to get made fun of. And having people in your life who are trans or gender fluid is a really great opportunity to say, okay, well, I don't even have to be exactly like them, but now I know a version of a way to figure this out and I can diverge in some ways and converge in other ways

Canella Caro

Yeah, definitely. I mean all I knew when I back in my like conservative era was just whiny women with colored hair crying over Trump winning the election. I didn't think why they were upset; I didn't think what their problem was. I didn't think someone could feel so strongly about a political candidate

Jeanne Woodbury

Right.

Canella Caro

I didn't know any of that. I just saw: somebody's crying, somebody's weak. And so, yeah, it's — and it's not like you had a role model, like I, my mom's a feminist, but you can always improve, you can always grow. But I never really had a queer role model. I never had a gender non-conforming role model or a trans role model. The closest I had were dead musicians and online content creators who dyed their hair occasionally. Like even to this day, I don't, you don't really see that much, only just now in media.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

And a lot of places to learn about. Like it's hard to explain like even now I don't have that role model like I am my own role model in a way, And that doesn't feel right. It's weirder because I have younger siblings and they're curious and some ask questions that can't necessarily ask mom and dad, because I'm the cool one who will give them the… who will go straight to brass tacks about it.

Jeanne Woodbury

It's a challenge and it's a challenge figuring things out in your family and defining something new that no one else has done, whether you're an older sibling or a younger sibling, to be honest. But you know, what you were saying about weakness is really interesting because a lot of where that like Ben Shapiro bullying culture comes from, I think is about like showing "I'm not weak" by attacking people who are weak. And actually weakness and vulnerability can be a really good thing and positive thing. I know you had a friend who transitioned; after that, did you have any other friends who came out?

Canella Caro

Yeah, yeah, I had a lot of friends who were non-binary, who were questioning their gender, who, we were the test dummies for whatever new name they were picking out.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

That kind of thing.

Jeanne Woodbury

So then did that help?

Canella Caro

Yeah, you just see how human the experience is. It's not this sensationalized thing that media or other people or even your parents try to tell you. It's not a man wearing a skirt trying to get into the ladies bathroom. It's somebody thinking, "hmm, I think the name Amy sounds good."

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, it's pretty simple.

Canella Caro

Or "hmm, I think…" Even just people's preconceived notions of what transitioning means, like you'll see the news. "Why can't we let, why are we letting kids go through this life-altering surgery" when you know transitioning is so many steps?

Jeanne Woodbury

So many steps.

Canella Caro

And so many people don't even do all those steps. Some even just slap on different pronouns and call it a day. Others change the way they dress and their name. Others go all the way and maybe get surgery or go on hormones.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, and it's all different combinations.

Canella Caro

Yeah, it's very fluid in a way. Like I didn't know that was a thing until I really just started talking to other people. And I hope that as a lot of us are getting older, people like to wave around the percentage of how many trans people or queer people end up taking their own lives as like a badge of victory for bigotry. But I hope that as we all get older, it can be different for maybe younger people. Something as simple as your little sister asking you, hey, I think this video game character is pretty.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

Something that is acceptable.

Jeanne Woodbury

I really hope so. You know, the effect a lot of this can have on our mental health —

Canella Caro

Absolutely.

Jeanne Woodbury

— is something that, you know, we've learned to live with to a certain degree and we found ways to cope with, but is awful to see new generations of young queer people go through the same thing that we had to go through.

Canella Caro

You think the cycle stops with you, but even then, what if there's something that I am prejudiced against that I didn't even know was bad? There's always, yeah, and I don't know. But the cool thing is that there's a lot of media, while there was a lot of right-wing media that's even still popular to this day — and very, very lucrative — there's a lot of left-wing media and a lot more queer films and musicians and content creators that just sit down and talk about things that people didn't wanna hear, or things that I wish I had seen when I was younger. I wish that I had found these creators, I wish they were prominent when I was younger. Like, I think, I wonder how different I would have been if I had come across like certain like Twitch streamers if I was like 12 instead of Ben Shapiro.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, I think it can make a huge difference. And I think, you know, ultimately what you were saying about, what if there's things I'm prejudiced about that I don't even know yet? It sounds like what you've learned, and learned I think a long time ago, is that you might be wrong and so you should listen to people around you who have different experiences.

Canella Caro

Yeah, yeah, like everyone's got their blind spots. But like one thing that's really like a popular discourse is like neopronoun debates among like the queer community.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

Either you love them, you hate them, you use them, you don't — at this point, it's like, whatever. I'm not the one going by those names. Maybe I'm not really used to seeing a pronoun that's not he, she, or they, but at the end of the day, they're words.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, what's so wrong about it?

Canella Caro

Yeah, so yeah, at the end of the day, it is just a word.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, well, so you're an ASU student now, right? So when you moved up here, did you worry about leaving all the friends you had made behind?

Canella Caro

No, not at all. I was excited to meet new people.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's great.

Canella Caro

I, yeah, I didn't, I mean, there's the age of the internet.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's also true, yeah.

Canella Caro

Yeah, I still talk to my ex-roommate and stuff like that, even if we don't live together anymore, that kind of thing.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's a good point.

Canella Caro

You've got friends overseas, you've got friends across state lines.

Jeanne Woodbury

I guess it's pretty easy at this point. I mean, one of the things I think about, ordinarily when I think about my experience of going to college, is like, am I going to be able to find community here at all? Or am I gonna be isolated? And I don't even know if that really applies today… or does it?

Canella Caro

It does, it definitely does. Everyone's got their own different stories, but it's really hard when you deal with your own mental health. Like last semester I didn't really have much of a support system anymore, and so I was practically living like a hermit. I didn't leave the house for like months. I think, yeah, I didn't go to class. Community, even then, community was still something that was really hard to find. The most community-oriented thing I did last semester was I attended a protest. There was, in the design building, back in August, September, there was this gonna be a speaker; I forget what his name was but he was one of those uh… "the white race is getting washed out" he was, oh yeah no, he was mask-off…

Jeanne Woodbury

Like a great replacement theory guy

Canella Caro

Great replacement. That's the thing; he was a very big great replacement theory type guy, yeah no. So I a attended a protest; it wasn't the most, wasn't the best organized and there were a lot of people. There were random old men wearing like confederate flag shirts. But it wasn't even united and it didn't even succeed; the cops were there, it just prevented — we couldn't go in, you couldn't, you couldn't stop the guy from talking. You just had to sit there and watch as within the walls that I had class in the next day, there was this man talking about how the white race is being, is going extinct and being replaced. I — And on my own campus. So that really makes you feel disillusioned with where, where you're putting your money. You know, I'm giving a lot of money to this place for my education, but why is that money going towards allowing these types of people to speak at our place?

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, I think that's a really valid question

Canella Caro

Yeah, like just to think about someone is probably sitting in my seat listening to this man speak

Jeanne Woodbury

Right.

Canella Caro

Yeah, and so that was the most like community oriented thing I did back then. This semester the first thing I did was like go to the drag show, the one run by El Concilio.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

Yeah, that's where I got the flyer for this.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, yeah

Canella Caro

That's where I got the flyer for the podcast

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, you must have met Shelby

Canella Caro

Was that it? Yeah, she walked up to me. She's like, "hmm I don't mean to assume, however…"

Jeanne Woodbury

"You look gay — do you want to be on a podcast?

Canella Caro

Exactly. She saw my tattoos and my like short hair and was like "hmm. I smell a queer."

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. Oh that's funny. I think it's really hard to find, like in a school of 75,000 people it's still hard to find the group that you're gonna fit into.

Canella Caro

Yeah

Jeanne Woodbury

Do you feel like you're moving in that direction after going to that drag show?

Canella Caro

I still have a lot of phobias of being out and about. I hope so, but I don't know. I'm trying to move out of my own shell. I mean, I want to be a teacher someday. So, yeah. So you kind of have to work on your interpersonal skills that way.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, and you're studying history, right? So you want to be a history teacher?

Canella Caro

Yes, I do. I do. Yeah, I always loved the subject ever since I was a child and I want to work with like all ages. I want to I want to be that person, I want to be that role model that I was talking about before. I want to be that teacher in a high school. Because I remember in seventh grade. I had an English teacher — she was bisexual — and I'd never really seen a grown-up bisexual person before because everyone else I thought were just like kids who were going through phases. And I saw that, oh this stuff sticks around. Oh no. (laughs) And I don't know having that, and this teacher was also the leader of like the Gay-Straight Alliance that only lasted for like a year. Yeah, she left. Seeing that or seeing other teachers who were queer, who were different and would show you different types of people. I want to be, I want to kind of alter somebody's life that way and be really meaningful to their like experience.

Jeanne Woodbury

I feel like history is actually a great subject, because if you want to show people different experiences and different lives, that's the subject to do it.

Canella Caro

Exactly. Exactly people like to say that, "oh gay people, that's such a trend nowadays because of the internet and all these blue-hair, pronoun-waving SJWs are just trying to be popular" and then it's like: Oscar Wilde exists. A lot of like authors, a lot of people. In fact, you read biographies of Russian tsars and kings and you see how close they were with their one male best friend and you think —

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. (Laughs)

Canella Caro

Hmm, that's not really much of a trend now, is it? Or you see there was this case, I don't know this person's name, I don't know her name, but there was this — back in like the 50s, there was this trans woman who after fighting the war she transitioned and she was viewed as like a medical miracle. You could see the, you could see like the newspapers being like, "she's a girl now and she's beautiful" And you'd think it was, I don't know her name off the top of my head.

Jeanne Woodbury

I'm gonna find it.

Canella Caro

Yeah, but she transitioned, changed her name, everything. It wasn't just like a, it wasn't just like breaking norms of like dressing differently. It was a full-on transition

Jeanne Woodbury

I think it might have been Christine Jorgensen.

Canella Caro

Was that it? I think so. I think so, but… do you have like a picture cuz I could yeah, I could recognize it,

Jeanne Woodbury

The headline was like GI Joe to GI Jane.

Canella Caro

Yes. That's her. That's her. Yeah, but you see examples like that throughout history that the world was different, that she was like allowed by society to do this and you wonder what went wrong what changed because if that was how life was at least for her, why couldn't it be that way for everyone? Why are these statistics of like trans suicides so high?

Jeanne Woodbury

And you know even looking a little before that a lot of people point to some of the places that existed in Germany for trans community and trans health care and they were pretty much the first to be shut down by the Nazis, so.

Canella Caro

You think in various indigenous communities how they view gender, that is not as black and white and binary as Western society views it and how different cultures were shut down and if they weren't maybe we'd see a lot more, like a different acceptance.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right.

Canella Caro

Yeah, because like for ages, for ages indigenous communities have, certain ones, like the concept of being two-spirit, I believe.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's one version yeah.

Canella Caro

That's one version. But yeah, it's interesting.

Jeanne Woodbury

It is really interesting. I think it's really cool to study. Sometimes, like you mentioned Oscar Wilde; I read the transcripts of the case where he was convicted of being gay basically and, for one, it's Oscar Wilde, so it's incredible to read his comments. But it also just felt so contemporary. And when you get more detail on the past, it's just cool to see like, oh, I would have been friends with that person. It's kind of, it's just fun and it's interesting and I think that as a teacher, you can make that fun and interesting for kids, which is then really rewarding

Canella Caro

Yeah, like it's so weird that I only learned about Alan Turing through a movie with Benedict Cumberbatch in it, and not through history class until like my senior year of high school that somebody mentioned it. And the interesting thing about the internet is you don't even feel like it needs to be taught because you all know — like we've all seen, we've all seen a Beautiful Mind. We don't really need to know that much about, about what's-his-face, John Nash, right? But —

Jeanne Woodbury

But there is more to learn.

Canella Caro

— there is there is more to it. You didn't, you wouldn't think that what happened to Alan Turing after they found out that he was gay was possible. You don't think that's possible.

Jeanne Woodbury

It's remarkable. People will talk about Turing and not even mention that he was basically killed by the state.

Canella Caro

Yes, absolutely. Like yeah, he was a genius and he helped the Allies a lot, but why make no mention of something that's so glaringly there? It's like looking at this wall and not believing that there's blue on it.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right. Well, and it was something that was actually suppressed for decades.

Canella Caro

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

And that's part of the problem, I think. Right now in Arizona and in Arizona's history, there's been a lot of different kinds of policies and legislation to restrict what kinds of histories we can teach, like the Mexican-American Studies ban and anti-CRT stuff which is just a weird label that doesn't make sense but —

Canella Caro

I have many choice words to say about that decision.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah and so all of that sets up a situation in which wanting to become a history teacher is like wading into a whole battle.

Canella Caro

Yeah, because I remember what it was like for my teachers that many of them did want to teach more. Many of them did want to change up their curriculum, but things like the College Board didn't allow it, because these were like AP classes, or the school board didn't allow it, or you'd get an angry parent being like, "How dare you teach this?" Even though their child's like a legal adult and you can't really control that.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, so were you worried or are you worried about what it's going to be like when you eventually become a teacher?

Canella Caro

Oh, absolutely. I, first off, just as a job, I know what it's like. Education in Arizona is not the best, to put it lightly. And many people — I've seen it with my own eyes — many people enter wide-eyed and they leave hating the profession, hating what they're doing. But I, and curriculum-wise, yeah, I see it. How, like, how am I gonna even talk about a book that I like if, what if it's gonna be banned? You know?

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

How am I gonna give assigned readings? How am I gonna give certain pamphlets? Like, how are we gonna let people teach? One thing that I've seen teachers do is, if they can't teach it in their curriculum, they'll have like a final project where we get to choose a topic that kind of pertains to the subject matter and we'll present it. So I've taken this time, I've done it twice now to talk about like what's going, what happened in like Latin America and Chile in particular because it's never taught. I've had other students talk about Argentina or other things and that's — I think that's a wonderful way to to get students to learn and also share parts of their own history. Because —

Jeanne Woodbury

Right. Well, because that's personal for you.

Canella Caro

Yeah, it's personal.And I don't know, everyone leaves smarter.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right.

Canella Caro

So yeah, I think with all this like, ban on curriculum, I think that's the way to go, to let the students create the class.

Jeanne Woodbury

I think that's just a great way to teach a class anyway.

Canella Caro

Yeah, let them know what they want to learn and talk about what they don't often hear. Because there's so many… you have students from the Middle East, you have students from different parts of Asia, not necessarily just like China or Japan. You have people from… you have people from Africa. I had a classmate from Ghana and like, that kind of history, that's the stuff I want to learn about. The most interesting thing is I had a teacher, she — I had a history teacher in like middle school. She was the best and she lived in Zimbabwe for a long time. Yeah, she married a man there, had children. Basically, like she knew a lot about their culture. She would integrate that into her lessons about like fun facts or "yeah back when I was living in Zimbabwe, this is like the, this is what they would do" and I think that sort of thing is amazing. When your curriculum does, when your school or government doesn't let you say certain things.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, and I worry that you know for queer people who want to become teachers,

Canella Caro

(Sighs) Oh boy…

Jeanne Woodbury

The risk is that they're actually going to be required to hide their own personal experience.

Canella Caro

Yeah, I've seen… it's, what's so funny is I've seen straight couples like, get married in their classroom. Like, not like an official wedding, but you know she'll, the teacher will show up in her like little wedding dress and she'll bring the groom and like the kids would get to dress all nice and it's adorable. Yeah, but imagine if a lesbian teacher wanted to do that. They're showing, they're grooming the kids, you know?

Jeanne Woodbury

I know, Ben Shapiro would make a million dollars off of a YouTube video about that.

Canella Caro

Yeah, or having a trans teacher, have, like…

Jeanne Woodbury

It's hard for trans people to be teachers period. It's a lot of scrutiny.

Canella Caro

It's hard for trans people to be.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. That's true.

Canella Caro

Yeah, like, and I hope that — I want to remain hopeful that maybe the profession and education will be more inclusive and more I guess, better, for lack of a better word. But it's hard to remain hopeful when you see those bans on like critical race theory, or in Florida they did something to even ban like Jewish studies?

Jeanne Woodbury

I haven't seen that. Oh my god.

Canella Caro

Take it with a grain of salt because I don't know all the facts about that one, but banning those sorts of things, or how textbooks are written.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Canella Caro

It's really depressing when you want to change someone's perspective on things and then, at risk of being fired, right?

Jeanne Woodbury

But you have the experience of changing your opinion on a lot of different things, so.

Canella Caro

Yeah, that's why I remain hopeful. I mean if — there's a quote from what, like a video game character, like is it better to — I'm paraphrasing it — but like is it better to remain, like be virtuous all your life or to learn from your past evil or something. I don't know. He was a dragon but…

Jeanne Woodbury

I love that.

Canella Caro

I'm not a beacon of morality by any means, but I think the human mind is very moldable for better or for worse, but, I don't know. Society is simultaneously ebbing and flowing both right and left. On one hand, on one hand you can see, you can hold hands with your like partner no matter what their gender or orientation is, in public — depending on where you are.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right.

Canella Caro

Yeah, that is yeah, it's kind of privileged of me to say that you can do it cuz, eh. But we're getting there.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, we're getting there.

Canella Caro

We're getting there.

Jeanne Woodbury

I think there's a reason for hope, in what you're saying.

Canella Caro

Yeah, and I hope that I hope that at least my experience growing up, I hope people live like a more positive version of that. I didn't have the best coming out, but I didn't have the worst. So that's improvement.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. Yeah, I think things can get better.

Canella Caro

Mm-hmm

Jeanne Woodbury

Well, thanks for talking with me today. This was a lot of fun.

Canella Caro

Of course, of course

Jeanne Woodbury

Thanks again to Canella for being my guest on this week's episode of the Arizona Equals Conversation. If you enjoyed the show, please consider leaving a rating or a review in your favorite podcast app. And if you'd like to be a guest on a future episode of the podcast, you can sign up at equalityarizona.org/stories.

With a busy start to the week for anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the legislature, this week’s episode, featuring Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr is coming out a little behind schedule, but it’s well worth the wait. Woven through his story of student organizing is a fascinating conversation about race and gender with a rare pairing of academic depth and personal, emotional relevance.

The Arizona Equals Conversation is an interview podcast collecting the stories of LGBTQ+ people living in Arizona. To listen to past episodes of the podcast, or to sign up to be a guest on a future episode of the show, visit equalityarizona.org/stories.

Full Episode Transcript

Jeanne Woodbury

From Equality Arizona, you're listening to the Arizona Equals Conversation. I'm Jeanne Woodbury. I'm the Interim Executive Director at Equality Arizona, and each week on the show I talk with a queer person living in Arizona about their story and their communities. Today's guest, Samuel, is a student at ASU and a relatively recent transplant to Arizona. And that means, like more than a few people I've spoken to on the podcast, he moved here during a challenging moment in the pandemic. It's something that can make it incredibly difficult to find community, but Samuel really hit the ground running when it came to some of the political organizing that they've been involved with at ASU, and I think that's really remarkable. They also share an experience I've talked about with a lot of college students of coming out during college, away from family, and navigating the tension there. But before I go on, let me take a minute to let Samuel introduce himself.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Hi, this is Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr. My pronouns are he/him and they/them.

Jeanne Woodbury

This was also just an incredibly fun conversation for me because we got to talk about gender in a in a way that I think is really rare, and I'm really excited to share that. I think that there's a chance it gets a little academic at points, but overall it really isn't. Before we start the interview, I should say that we've got some great guests lined up over the next few weeks, but we're always looking for new people to talk to, and you don't need to be in politics, and you don't need to be an academic. That's not what the podcast is about, actually. So if you'd like to share your story on a future episode of the show, just send us an email at [email protected]. Or you can sign up on our website at equalityarizona.org/stories. Alright, let's roll the tape.

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Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

The second she found out that I was like involved in like politics, she's just like, yeah, you should definitely be on the podcast. I was just like, okay, okay.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, that's great.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Like I don't have that much podcast experience, but I'll do my best.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, no, most people I talked to have never been on a podcast before. The idea is just to get people's stories, figure out, you know, what's their experience been in Arizona as a queer person living here. And it's fun because sometimes I get to talk to people and they've lived here their whole lives, and so I get to talk about like, oh, how has this neighborhood changed over the past 20 years or whatever? And sometimes there's people who have moved here, you know, a lot of people moved here during the pandemic actually. And so then that's always really interesting to hear about how that went. You were saying you've lived here for two years, right?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

It’ll be two years by this coming August.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, cool.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, still the new kid on the block.

Jeanne Woodbury

What did you move here for?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

I moved here for school.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, okay, cool. Are you at ASU?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Mm-hmm.

Jeanne Woodbury

Okay, and you said you've done some political organizing. Is that student-led organizing?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, that's student-led organizing, although I've started, I personally started to branch out into more general community organizing off campus as well.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, cool. How did you find your way into that? I think, like, I would imagine moving to a new state, getting started at a school, it could be kind of hard to figure out where to plug in.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

I think I'm actually part of this, not generation, but like cohort of people who, I'm aware that people have been organizing, especially around like Black Lives Matter for like the past almost decade at this point from like Ferguson and then some, but then 2020 really was like a reawakening of that for a lot of politics, like anti-racist politics, feminist politics; a lot of people around my age started to tap more into that, especially with the 2020 election also coinciding with a lot of that. And I personally, however, didn't get that involved in the uprisings, because my family, lots of them are immunocompromised, so I decided it would be best to stay home. But the second I arrived at college, it was then just like, okay, I wanna get involved in explicitly leftist work, so…

Jeanne Woodbury

Okay, that's really cool.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, I started joining like a couple orgs like Young Democratic Socialists of America, MECHA de ASU, Students for Justice in Palestine. So I guess I really did hit the ground running.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, you really did. YDSA — it seems like they have a pretty big presence at ASU.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, we do have a fair size presence, especially amongst like general left-wing activism. And although there have been points where in the past especially it was like a little lower, at least during the, like the height of the pandemic, it was very hard to like facilitate anything. Since like, it was all online, but we're definitely more on that like upward trend of like people like coming to events, of course, like masks required, so that people are safe.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. Did you feel like during that period where everything had to be online, that it got harder because… well, why do you think it got harder for people? Just like not wanting to be on Zoom or wanting something that they couldn't do.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, I think it was harder for a lot of people to be on Zoom because I'm aware that some people have in the past done a lot of organizing work like digitally or online for a variety of reasons. Most of us just generally aren't used to navigating those spaces. So it was a lot harder to… like general like social cues, for example, are a lot hard to read through like a screen versus seeing someone's full body, like, emote and whatever.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, and I feel like it's harder to get to know people. Like, okay, you can have essentially the same meeting on Zoom, but you don't have the coffee chit chat beforehand and the walking out to the door conversations afterward. You miss out on all this like, bigger picture of it.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

I don't know, it was interesting. And I think what you were saying about like, being kind of clued into what was happening for a much longer period of time, going back to like, when was Ferguson, like 2014?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Ferguson was about 2014, yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, so that really is like a decade at this point.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, so lots of people, like I personally wasn't involved in politics at that point 'cause I was 11, but. (both laughing) But especially as I got older, I was like aware, like it was like a lot of like in-person group, like people out, not only in the streets, but in their neighborhoods and wherever, like coming together and then like the pandemic kind of like jostled people in, like lots of people indoors. Like obviously you had like essential workers that still had to like, had their lives on the line. But lots of us for some periods of time were generally isolated from the broader community's like physical presence, so.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. Well, when you were 11, I mean, I figure you weren't involved in politics, but were you paying attention to politics and what was happening in that area?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, I was paying attention. Like obviously it didn't, I didn't have that same level of like explicitly Marxist analysis or whatever because it turns out 10-year-olds aren't exactly reading Kapital before bed.

Jeanne Woodbury

Not so often.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Not so often, especially not in my family. But I was generally, 'cause I remember seeing stuff about the Arab Spring.

Jeanne Woodbury

That was even a few years before that.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

That was even a few years before, but I think that was the first major international thing that made me interested in politics in general, because I had never seen people looking at the leadership of their country and being like, no.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, it was — the Arab Spring was also a really big moment for me in 2011, and I was already starting to get involved in politics at the time. And then I saw that and I was like, oh, there's some really interesting ways to organize that feel new and special. And one of the things I'm really curious about, 'cause you mentioned maybe using the word generation, maybe using the word cohort. Do you think that growing up in that milieu of like, seeing these big protest movements happen from the time you're eight or 11 to now and with the pandemic and everything and the uprisings, do you think that's shaped people of your generation in a unique way compared to other generations?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, I would definitely say so because the big overlying theme in seeing a lot of that is like the proliferation of the internet and all of that. Like obviously at this point like even Millennials kind of like grew into it but like, you weren't seeing like people live tweeting for example about like 9/11 as it was going down. It was still like happening mostly through like the television and radio, but like now like you're getting second by second updates on like various like events and like ideas going on. And there's definitely like good and bad to it, but it's definitely like shaped the way that our generation approaches like political organizing

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. I mean did you basically grow up on the internet? Like when you were hearing stuff about the Arab Spring is that because you were online?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Honestly part of it was online, but since like it — my household was still in that transitory phase of where like I still like watch like the news with my parents, so I would see a lot of that stuff on like CNN, but then I would see like an article about it on like the family computer and be like, oh, this is interesting. But it wasn't like, the internet wasn’t, at least my access to the internet wasn't to the point where I was operating in spaces where like I was having those sorts of conversations.

Jeanne Woodbury

I see. Yeah, it was still within the space of like there's the family computer in the computer room, and here’s the TV, and we're gonna watch the news together.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Just like, you only have an hour on this thing. So my goal was not political education in that one hour. It was playing Papa's Pizzeria within that one hour and that I did.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, well, it sounds like maybe your family was kind of like politically tuned in, if you were watching the news together

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, my family was, well has always been politically in tune however, there is like obvious like ideological variance. Like my parents are definitely a bit more like establishment liberal minded and I'm just over here just like — I might be a little bit of a communist.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, but that's not that's not too far afield. I think you know a lot of people I meet who are more in that communist field grew up with like really conservative parents

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, so like I'm at least my, at least my parents are just like “oh, yeah racism's bad, feminism sounds pretty cool” versus like people… well, I guess my family's not exactly the most queer affirming, but —

Jeanne Woodbury

oh, yeah

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

It's not to the point of where they're like smashing beer cans because they had like a trans person in proximity to the brand or something.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh yeah, that's such a ridiculous situation.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, honestly, I am quite scared about that whole thing cuz I'm just like, they're not gonna stop with just beer cans.

Jeanne Woodbury

Well, it doesn't seem like it, no. I mean, do you run into any of that kind of behavior in your day-to-day life?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

In my day-to-day, it's not necessarily targeted at me since generally I identify somewhat as non-binary but I'm generally like cis-passing, it's whatever. So it's not really targeted at me but on ASU campus there is like a proliferation, especially recently of like preachers and evangelicals like shouting their typical nonsense, and it’s just like — they're just like, "You're going to hell." And I'm just like, "I'm going to an upper division sociology class. You want to come with?" Because I think that's pretty close.

Jeanne Woodbury

These are like the guys who have the big signs that have like a bunch of different things written on them.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, I think the latest one was just like, you can play like a little game which is just like, all right, how many of these labels? Like, you know, fornicator, liar, pothead. I'm just like, oh, damn, I'm checking off all of these. (Both laughing)

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, no, I've done that. I've looked at like a meme of it basically and seen how many I could check off. It's a weird environment at school sometimes.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, and I think that just ultimately speaks to like, and I guess I'm getting to a broader ideological conversation of the role of the university within broader capitalist structures, 'cause you'll see them claim all the time, like, you know, we're a supportive school, or we center minority students, but then they'll hide behind free speech laws, and it's just like, that person's a literal neo-Nazi, or like, they're shouting slurs at people wearing hijabs to class or something.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, which is harassment at that point.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, but you can't do anything, otherwise the school will be punishing you versus the actual person that's spewing a lot of hateful rhetoric.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, and I know there's also been a big controversy — and I don't know how much this controversy is like, manufactured —

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

It's the way I don't know which one you're referring to.

Jeanne Woodbury

Well, yeah, a lot of them are. But at colleges, there's this whole free speech thing with like visiting speakers, where there's one group on campus who wants to bring in some alt-right speaker potentially, and then another group on campus wants to protest that, and then the university gets mixed up in there trying to say, well, we need to protect these speakers or whatever. It seems like it plays out differently on different campuses, but I know it's happened at ASU a few times. And it's a weird situation because for me, I'm on the outside. I haven't been a student for a while. And so I just hear what people who are angry about one person's decision are saying. And I don't know what's really happening in the school. But with this free speech controversy stuff at colleges, it feels like — I don't know. It feels like it could be a big distraction at the least.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, it's definitely like… do you know about the paradox of tolerance thing?

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, so I mean, I guess for whoever listens to this —

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, can you explain it a little?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, it's basically this idea that like tolerating intolerant ideas just eventually leads to like, the people who are purveying those intolerant ideologies ensuring that there's no tolerance in society. So you can only be tolerant of certain ideas and concepts to an extent, however, but if you tolerate hateful ideas, then you end up not getting an overly tolerant society in the long run, so it's impossible to be like 100% across the board tolerant of like every idea in the so-called free marketplace of ideas. And this is really reflected with the, I believe the Jared Taylor situation is like one of the most notable incidents that happened at Arizona State where it was just like, hey, this is a white supremacist. And then every student left the center was just like, hey. (laughs)

Jeanne Woodbury

And what does that hey translate into? Is it like asking the school to not allow that person to speak or?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, it's a lot of asking the school not to speak, or less asking, but like trying to pressure the school. Because when it comes to like a lot of activism on campus, you eventually come to an understanding that you can't really ask nicely. It starts becoming like, we're gonna make it really inconvenient for you to do this. Like we'll like pick it up outside of meetings or whatever. We’ll basically drive the school's name through the mud if necessary, because at the end of the day, these officials care about their bottom line, not the well-being of students. So if you hit them where it hurts, then they'll suddenly start listening.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh yeah. That can be a really effective strategy. I mean it’s, if you're just going to them and saying, oh, could you please not do this? They've already decided, and your voice isn't gonna be the persuading thing. But I don't actually know a lot about that specific situation; was that pretty recent?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

That happened last semester… or early this semester? The timeline’s all jumbled up in my head but, I do, I do remember like it was a whole thing like a couple organizations like YDSA and MECHA put out statements. Another group of people, I believe like a group of anarchists, like held a demonstration right outside the event to basically show how disproving they were, but you know, of course, they didn't listen. So. But it definitely is like a game of like, how much pressure can we put on these people that way they actually do what we need them to do. And it's like, ultimately there are some things that won't work because it's just like the university is just like an extension of like hegemony and capitalism. So like, they're ultimately gonna serve those interests first and foremost, but you can definitely like push them a bit to be less overly harmful.

Jeanne Woodbury

What are some of the conversations that happen inside these groups? Is everyone pretty much on the same page saying, "Hey, this isn't okay." Or are there questions about, what's the right way to respond to this?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

There have been questions about the right way to respond to this. Like some in the past have argued for simply like not engaging, which in my head makes some amount of sense because a lot of us are like minority students. Like lots of us are trans, non-binary, people of color, disabled, like the exact kind of people that like a neo-Nazi bastard would go for. So like we're just…

Jeanne Woodbury

That's a good point. So not engaging just from a standpoint of not overexposing yourself.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, not overexposing yourself, not like exposing like the most vulnerable in your groups to like potential danger, because lots of people have faced some amount of danger and pushback before for activism in a variety of circles. It's just like obviously like if you're in these spaces, there is some amount of risk, but you still have to be pretty calculated about it.

Jeanne Woodbury

That makes sense. Part of the reason I wanted to ask is 'cause I figure these moments of having an actual thing to mobilize about can be really great in terms of building the strength of your organizing group. And I figured, you know, if everyone's pretty much on the same page versus if there's more disagreement about how to do it, it might change the way that that growth happens. Are you seeing that more and more students are getting involved in that kind of organizing work?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

I'm definitely seeing an uptick in the number of students getting involved. Like sometimes it might not even necessarily be like any of the groups I'm involved, but I know there's been a group of high schoolers, I think they're called like Support Equality in Arizona Schools. Like they're a group of high schoolers that have been really on the front lines of fighting in their high schools against like a lot of transphobia and general queerphobia in their schools. And I'm just like, damn, if I was even half that conscious in high school.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, they just did that big walkout like last week, I think.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, I saw it. And I think like lots… it's so, for me, I'm quite happy to see like all this energy in like our age group for like a lot of these issues. Like, I mean, dualistically, I'm also just like, damn, it really sucks that like, we can't like just be kids. like your biggest concern is just like, oh, I have a math assignment due tomorrow, and not like, oh, there's a fascist uprising — general uptick in fascism in this country. We need to do something about it.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, I mean, I think about that a lot with those kids especially, but even people at ASU, like you. There's a lot to do as a student outside of being politically engaged. And I think the kind of engagement that's about your school is fantastic. But like, yeah, it'd be great if you could just be able to focus on school, right? Do you hear a lot of that from other people in that cohort of organizers?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

They’re… within that cohort, and I guess this is specifically like a student issue because not everyone that's an organizer is necessarily trying to be college educated for a variety of reasons. Specifically for students, that is like a whole thing of like us juggling like that, like obligation, like, oh, I, like, sometimes there'll be like events that we can't do or like we have a limited capacity 'cause it's just like this is happening around business hours. So lots of us are in class or lots of us like have work to do. And like part of that is like on purpose 'cause the system relies on us being too exhausted or too occupied to like resist against it.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, I run into that a lot trying to invite younger people who are mostly students to the State Capitol because the education committee, like all committees, meets during business hours, which means actually most people involved in education, whether they're students or teachers, can't be there to weigh in on bills unless they take time off of work or miss class, which, I mean, obviously isn't totally fair or accessible to people. I wanna roll back in time a little bit because we were talking about being a kid, growing up, and you said your family is sort of somewhere on like the middle of the spectrum of queer acceptance.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Not necessarily the middle, but more so they aren't actively making my life more difficult right now because I'm openly queer.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh okay. Okay.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Which at least for now is I think the best of what I'm gonna get.

Jeanne Woodbury

I see. That can be a challenge for college students I've talked to, is going away from home but still having some kind of dependencies and ties to your family and trying to navigate being out. Is that — it sounds like it's not really totally a problem for you, but maybe a source of tension?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

It's not a problem now, like when I first came out it was like the sky was falling, honestly

Jeanne Woodbury

When was that?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

That was last February; I came out as bisexual.

Jeanne Woodbury

So that's still pretty fresh.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah I guess it is, even though I'm just like oh that was forever ago and it's like — I don't know, it was only like a year ago.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, but yeah, the sky is falling moments I think happened for a lot of people. And then it's great when your family calms down a little bit. Have they? Or have they just kind of stopped engaging?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

They've lessened their engagement at least, because I can be quite argumentative about the whole thing. Like I'm just like. (laughing) Like even though I'm learning to start drawing boundaries around that, it's just like I'm not putting my energy into, like, you're not gonna have that come-to-Jesus moment where it's just like, “oh no, it's fine, if you would come home with a guy versus a girl,” or whatever. I don't think I'm gonna get that from this one conversation, so I'm not…

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, sometimes it never happens, I think. And sometimes it's — I mean I don't know any family where it's really happened just through talking about it. Right?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

No, I've yet to meet people like that either. People either just like have very similar stories to me or they're just like, yeah, it was like a two minute conversation and my mom was just like, okay, cool, I love you. And I'm just like, wow.

(both laughing)

Jeanne Woodbury

Lucky for them.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Like honestly, lucky for them. I wish it was like that for more queer and trans kids.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. I feel like a lot of us, when we come out, are not met with that kind of reception from our parents. And then for people like you — and I also came out during college — I think the hope for a lot of us is that we can find other people at school that we can create community with. Is that something that you've found within those organizing spaces?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, that is definitely something I've found and I can like talk forever about how that's honestly the most critical part like trying to formulate any sort of like revolutionary like liberatory politic is just like having like a group of people that you can be in community with.

Jeanne Woodbury

Can you expound on that a little bit?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Like because the way society operates, you know with like capitalism running amok, it's like very easy to like isolate people especially if they're like on the margins of margins like that don't like share in a lot of those same struggles. But being able to like, at least since I have the privilege of being a college student where like there is a lot of people that are openly queer and people that are also explicitly political about the fact that they understand how political queerness is: that has made like the whole deal with me coming out thing and just like general political activism so much easier because it's just like, these are people that will like not only like be with you to like comfort you and whatever, like these are people that like hold you to account when you mess up or …

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh right, yeah.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Cuz like that's also like a big part of it, cuz like people think it's like all like love light and laughter but it’s just like, nah. It is, but there's also like definite moments where you kind of like need to be called in for like a variety of reasons

Jeanne Woodbury

Have you experienced that?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Um in like smaller ways, but I've also been on like more of the like I guess like giving side of that interaction where like, I'm just like, we need to collect ourselves.

Jeanne Woodbury

Has that gone pretty well? I mean that's hard to do right, to call someone in and really not end up with a much bigger conflict.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

I think it's gone well for the most part. I think — like obviously there'll be like moments where it's just like petty squabbling. But it's also just like lots of us are like 18 19 20 years old, grappling with like the general traumas of existing under capitalism. So it's not easy work. I think that's part of like, building that new framework for like justice and whatnot within like your friendship groups and not just imagining on like the macro scale

Jeanne Woodbury

When it goes well, what do you think helps it to go well? Is it that shared sense of struggle?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

It's partly that shared sense of struggle, but like especially if you're dealing with people that might be like a little bit more privileged than you in a couple ways it helps if like everyone — like there isn't like an immediate defensiveness when it's just like hey, there's like a race thing at play here, or like hey there's like a misogyny thing that we need to like address like not only like interpersonally but like as an organization.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah I mean most of the time when I've seen that come up people react really defensively and I mean, honestly if I get criticism, I can also react a little defensively. Like I think most people do, but then the way I've tried to like reframe any kind of criticism is someone is like doing me a favor by giving me like access to something I missed out on. And I don't know if that's something that I was really in tune with when I was in college necessarily, that kind of way to receive criticism. I'm still working on it. And it sounds like a lot of the people that are in the group you're in do have kind of that that attitude of — when I'm giving someone criticism, it's a gift; when I'm receiving criticism, it’s a gift.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, we're all ultimately trying to be better, so it's not like coming from a place of like, I'm antagonizing you I don't like you. (Laughs)

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. That is not easy. Like that's a skill, like resolving conflict, giving criticism in like a peace-oriented way. Where do you feel like you all learned that?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Honestly, I didn't know that much about it first because from personal experience I when it comes like the whole sphere of like constructive criticism, whatever. I think I'm just like you I take things very personally. But I instead of like immediately going to like defend my honor, it just becomes a game of just like oh, well, damn I don't think I'm hot shit. Like let me just let me just retreat real quick because clearly I'm not. But like in terms of learning honestly for me, I don't know about like the general group, but it's come through basically like being exposed to like people, like seeing other people that are engaged in that sort of dynamic and then watching how like, hey this person didn't like immediately just be like well, yeah the clothes you wear suck, so

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh Right. It's just like a personal attack.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, it didn't immediately devolve into like personal attacks. So it's just like, here are some actions that you committed that were harmful or that I didn't really appreciate; can we talk about this? Or like here's like a general trend I might have noticed like as like a broad organization which — and honestly, that's probably the most, that probably helps because like, for better or worse most of the times where I have been in that call-in situation, it’s like I'm being called in like with a group of people. Like I've had people like sit and basically call in the men of an org and be like, hey, like people who aren't men don't really have much of a space to like speak during certain points. Or like voices aren't being heard that much, so.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. And that can be hard criticism to receive. I think also anything that's sort of about like gendered privilege when — I mean you were mentioning you identified to some extent as not binary — getting criticism about gendered privilege when you also are in this space that isn't exactly just —

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Cis men.

Jeanne Woodbury

— Privileged. That can be hard, that can be hard to receive I think. How does that play out for you?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Um for me personally it's kind of with the understanding that I might have a complicated relationship with gender, that definitely also intersects with race because I'm a Black man. So that's a fun spot to be in, but —

Jeanne Woodbury

Can you — I’m cutting you off from the other question.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

(Laughs) That’s fine.

Jeanne Woodbury

But can you explain what you mean in terms of that complicating it? Race complicating gender?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Um in general like since race and gender are like social constructs that like largely inform each other and you can kind of see that in individuals like… (laughs) I’m trying to answer this in such a way where I'm just like, this better not be a whole other podcast episode, cuz I can talk a lot about gender. But understanding like the way that I embody myself like in a sense that like, because gender ultimately the way it works it's like, it is built for by and for like white people. Like Black people aren't allowed to like really explore the way they might relate to gender the same way that like white people can, so it creates an interesting dynamic when you realize you've been socialized a certain way especially when you like learn about concepts like manhood and masculinity a certain way, in the context of how maybe your white peers or non-Black peers learned about those concepts. So it definitely —

Jeanne Woodbury

That's fascinating.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, it's definitely something that, even though I'm not really cis, the concept of being a Black man, at least for me, is just something that'll stay with me because that's the way I just generally move through the world with that intersecting experience.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, and it's the position you're put into to some degree, right?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Mm-hmm.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, no, that's fascinating. And I cut you off, but we were talking about the idea of like responding to criticism about gendered privilege when you're in kind of a different space of relating to gender.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think it's understanding that the way you embody yourself is valid, it's whole, it's you, and that is okay, like, gender's fake.

(both laughing)

Jeanne Woodbury

Gender's fake.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Gender's fake. Put that on something, like a shirt.

Jeanne Woodbury

I’ll put that as a tagline on the podcast.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

(laughing) But it's also understanding that there are different ways that you might embody yourself that aren't completely detached from a lot of those structures that you still have to unlearn. That is not to say that, oh, because I'm — also where the pitfall, people are just like, oh, well, “trans women have like, male socialization, so like.” It's just like, shut the fuck up.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

(laughing) Wait, can I swear?

Jeanne Woodbury

You can swear, yeah, it's fine.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

I've probably done that three times already, but anyways. It's understanding that there are definitely different ways that you — being non-binary or being trans doesn't mean that you've completely immediately divested from patriarchal gender understandings or racist gender understandings. That's still a lot of work you have to do both internally and with your community. So it's just like, I am, of course, valid and understood in my labeling of like a non-binary Black man. But like, I'm also aware of like, due to the way that I navigate the world, I might not be fully aware of like the way that people of marginalized genders have to like confront…

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, no, I like how you keep saying that, that idea of like how you move through the world or how you navigate the world. Because I feel like a lot of the time we focus on, especially with gender, gender as like an internal thing, or gender as like how I relate to myself, but gender is also and maybe more so just about how we relate to each other. And that's where that kind of discrepancy comes in of, yes I'm valid but also there's so much more going on. So it's really, it's really cool to hear you explain that so so clearly. What are you studying?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Oh this will be a big shock. I'm doing a dual degree with sociology in justice studies and then a minor in gender studies.

Jeanne Woodbury

Okay. So do you get to talk about this kind of stuff in class all the time?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, we definitely do get to talk about it, but… I'm trying to pace myself in such a way where I'm just like, I could spend three hours talking about this. But like, there are definitely limits to what the academy has to offer in regards to like a lot of that work. Like, you can obviously take like a wonderful variety of classes that talk about like the social construction of like a lot of these different categories and how that affects how we navigate the world as individuals. And of course like the underlying structures below it. But one thing you have to be wary of is, and I think a lot of academics, both historically and currently, and I definitely see this trend with younger leftists in general, regardless of whether or not they're in college, is that lots of people are really good at reading and articulating very complex theory, but when it comes to practice, you're not gonna find that in the classroom.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh yeah, okay. When I was thinking about some of the limits you might run up against, I was thinking about limits of theory that come up.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

There are some, it definitely also just depends on your department or the individual instructor. Like I'm taking a class right now that explicitly outlines a lot of post-colonial theory from Fanon and Cabral and Patricia Hill Collins, that's very explicitly like these are people that have ardently struggled for liberation, but it's also not lost on me that whenever it becomes a discussion of just like, okay, what do we do with this knowledge, people kind of start to gaff a little bit and it's just like…

Jeanne Woodbury

Well, what do you think some of your fellow students are there for if they aren't necessarily interested in doing something with the knowledge?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

I mean, I did a little bit of research and I figured out that apparently a sociology degree was one way of becoming a cop eventually. I don't know how one would think that's a good idea after even taking an intro class, but that's an option. So I think a lot of people are gaining like a lot of analytical tools and skills, but they don't realize that they're still being educated by an institution that largely relies on the perpetuation of those same systems that you're ironically enough critiquing.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh yeah, okay. No, that makes sense to me. I mean, it can be interesting talking to people who have, people who have read a lot and people who are very good at analyzing and speaking to the texts that they've read and recalling things. It can be interesting to talk to people like that who then don't really connect it to real life necessarily. I mean, even people who actually have real life relevant experience, right? Like sometimes talking to other trans people who are very literate, very scholarly, it can feel kind of detached from, okay, but we're two people who are talking right now. Does this actually line up with how we're talking to each other right now, or is it just like a cool book that you read? Which isn't to like denigrate studying. I mean, I think it's incredible and super useful. And if someone else has already had a really great thought and written it down, you should try not to reinvent the wheel, I guess. But it can be weird. And I think that like straddling the line that you're straddling of like on the ground organizing and then being in these classrooms and being really up in the clouds with theory can be a challenging line to walk sometimes.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, it definitely is because I very recently had this experience where with YDSA we hosted like a Black grieving space where like a lot of like Black people, especially like we were like grieving like a lot of like loss from like state violence or like a lot of issues that arise from like interpersonal relationships with non-Black people and it was very I kind of like laughed at myself a little bit afterwards because like the actual day — because like it was basically my day of like trying to prepare for the event and then go to a seminar on like Black masculinities that was like very grueling and theory heavy and then immediately have to like deal with like organizing that event because it was just like I'm fresh off of this like high-flung like literary and theoretical exploration of like embodying Black manhood and I'm immediately going to a space where I'm just like hey, I have a lot of trauma related to my race: let's discuss. So like just like the jarring experiences just like left me like, I'm exhausted

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. Exhausted from like theorizing and making your own experience academic, and then also having to be really open about it in a personal way?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, so, which I guess also speaks to like how what lots of these institutions… (laughs) I’m, I'm really bashing on this, on this whole like academia thing because I'm just like I am in so much debt…

Jeanne Woodbury

I think I can tell that like you, you're criticizing it from a place of like, respect, I think.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah it’s, it’s coming from a place of like, I know what it could be in an ideal world, detached from like legacies of imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and this, that, and the third. But right now it's an extension of a lot of that.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, well it's fair to criticize it. I don't think a good university would want its students not to criticize it.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

That, that is true, so you know, Michael Crow, hit me up. (Laughs) Actually, please don't, you're a very awkward man.

Jeanne Woodbury

Well, so once you get your degree what are you planning to do after that?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

That is the million dollar question, because as much as I'm lambasting it I have looked more at generally getting more involved with like research and whatnot and I guess like academia but then, then comes the dilemma of just like I want my research to be of benefit to like the people who are just like on the front lines of the struggle or dealing with like the worst impacts of colonialism and capitalism, but also these institutions make it so that you have to write in such a way that only the most like erudite of like scholars can read it and it's just like well this isn't really helping anyone, this is just like a circle jerk of like how many thesaurus words can we stuck, stuck, like just like…

Jeanne Woodbury

It does feel like that sometimes. I wonder if there's like a niche you could carve out, of getting to do that theory and and research and academic study but being much closer to the ground and to the people organizing.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

There is actually some Marxist sociologist, his name's Michael Burawoy, I think. He's actually pioneered what he calls a subfield of sociology called public sociology, which… it's less of a school of thought, oh, this is like feminist sociology, or this is post-colonial sociology of race, but basically a methodology of bringing a lot of that research directly into engaging with social issues and like making it so that it's not just scholars that are involved in the conversation but like everyday people, like in tune with like a lot of these issues.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's really cool

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

So that's definitely something I want to read more upon and then like also like apply it to just like, alright I have to explain symbolic interactionism. Everybody sit down.

Jeanne Woodbury

I think a lot of people would actually really love that kind of thing. I mean, if you can connect those ideas to people in a language that they're going to get into, a lot of people are really curious and want to hear those kinds of ideas.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, and I can definitely understand why so many people are like hesitant. Like a lot of these ideas, like especially like Marxism, like once you start picking up on like a lot of basic principles it becomes like really intuitive, but so many people are just like so weird and complicated in the way they like convey these ideas and I'm just like and it's definitely something I've had to work on before because sometimes I'll be in like I'm gonna info dump about gender and then like even my friends who are also like students are just like, I'm not sure if you're speaking English right now.

Jeanne Woodbury

You know I also sometimes feel like being a little bit above the level of discussion that people are maybe coming in ready for can be great if you can pull people to that level, as long as it's not intentionally trying to be patronizing or whatever.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, it's fine to have different expertise levels. Like even without insert hegemonic systems here, people are just like, there are people who could fix a car. I only know how to turn a key. So they have that level of expertise and they can probably help me figure that out. But I ended up deciding to read about longstanding societal issues for a degree, so…

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah no I think it's great. Would you stay in Arizona to do that kind of work?

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Um I'm definitely… after I graduate I've decided to at least stay for like maybe a year, year and a half, not doing anything related explicitly to like school or like a grad program. That way I can just chill out from like classrooms for a bit.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah that can be nice. I didn't want to jump right into grad school after my undergraduate degree.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Like props to the people who do that, but I'm not. Like, Arizona State, like that institution has put me through a ringer with just everything. So I think taking a break from that and just doing some general community organizing work, like beyond like the halls of academia, I think would be real nice. So at least for a time, I could definitely try seeing how to integrate that public sociology framework.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

I'm not too sure about after, if I'll just go to grad school in another state or somewhere else, but yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

No, that's really cool. Well, thanks for talking with me today. This was a lot of fun. I'm glad you agreed to do this with me.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Yeah, thanks for having me. It was a very random opportunity, but I was just like, you know what?

Jeanne Woodbury

I'll go on a podcast.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

I'll go on a podcast. I've never done it before, but it sounds fun.

Jeanne Woodbury

Well, I hope you did have fun.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

I did.

Jeanne Woodbury

Cool, thank you.

Samuel Ndinjiakat Jr

Of course.

On today’s episode, we’re joined by our friend Matthew Coelho to talk about the joys of family, music, and the Southern Arizona desert. This is the third in a series of three interviews recorded in Matthew’s home in Tucson, following our episodes with Juan McElroy and Matthew’s husband Blake Coelho.

The Arizona Equals Conversation is an interview podcast collecting the stories of LGBTQ+ people living in Arizona. To listen to past episodes of the podcast, or to sign up to be a guest on a future episode of the show, visit equalityarizona.org/stories.

Full Episode Transcript

Jeanne Woodbury

From Equality Arizona, you're listening to the Arizona Equals Conversation, a narrative interview podcast documenting the stories of queer people living in Arizona through the lens of community. I'm Jeanne Woodbury. I'm the interim executive director of Equality Arizona and the host of this podcast. Today I'm speaking with Matthew Coelho for the third of three Tucson-based interviews that Matthew hosted at his home. So when I mention towards the end of the episode that we're running up against a time deadline, it's because actually it was the third of three interviews we had recorded back to back at his kitchen table, and they all had to leave to get to a play, so I'm really grateful to Matthew and Blake for hosting me, and their friend Juan for agreeing to do an interview. I really enjoyed this series, and I'm excited to do more interviews in the future with people living all across the state. Matthew's story is really incredible. We got to talk through a lot of facets of the adoption process and building a family, about personal healing through music and community, and about how electric the desert can feel and how electrifying the local community in Tucson can be. I often get out of an interview and wish I could just record another entire episode with them, and this was one of those cases. so I hope you all enjoy listening to it. And if you haven't already listened to my interviews with Juan and Blake, they're the most recent two episodes in the feed. All right, let's roll the tape.

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Matthew Coelho

My name is Matthew Coelho. My pronouns are he/him/his.

Jeanne Woodbury

Thanks for talking with me today and for setting up your home for me to talk with you and Juan and Blake.

Matthew Coelho

Absolutely.

Jeanne Woodbury

It's been a lot of fun. And I really enjoyed the tour of the new room for the twins.

Matthew Coelho

Thank you.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's exciting. And you said this is something that's pretty new.

Matthew Coelho

Yes.

Jeanne Woodbury

And so just, I don't know, tell me about that. Are you pretty excited?

Matthew Coelho

I'm very excited. We're both very excited. my husband and I, Blake, but yeah, still very new to, the situation is still very new to us and we're still kind of like wrapping our heads around it and really, it feels a little surreal just because we've been on this journey of building our family for, really pursuing it for about a full year now, but we made the decision together to start making a plan to do that about two years ago.

Jeanne Woodbury

I see. Yeah, that's a long time.

Matthew Coelho

Yes, yeah, especially when you're kind of, you know, just doing all the education and building community and finding resources. And it feels like a long time, even more, I mean, two years is a long time, but when you're like kind of going through it, it feels, I don't know.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, when you're in it, I'm sure it feels even longer.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, no, definitely. But it was such a really great experience in terms of just absorbing so much information and getting to connect with people and hear people's stories and learn about how all the different ways that families are built. And yeah, it just like really showed us that like we're making the right choice for us and for our family.

Jeanne Woodbury

I love that.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

Are there good like local resource groups that you were able to find?

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, so there's actually an attorney here locally to Tucson, Arizona, Heather Strickland. She has a really great, she's an adoption attorney.

Jeanne Woodbury

Okay.

Matthew Coelho

So she specializes in family law practice, but then also more of a specialization with LGBTQ families, and has been such an incredible resource with not only providing us with guidance, she's never once charged us for two years of any time we had a question or email back and forth on guidance and pointing us to different organizations and colleagues of hers. She's been a really great resource.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, that's incredible.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, and then there's a lot of online communities as well that have been really, really impactful during our journey.

Jeanne Woodbury

That makes sense.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, providing webinars, so like Gays With Kids has been really wonderful. They're an online community that bridges and connects families to share stories. So that's been pretty awesome to, just to find community there.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, I feel like looking online, sometimes that's a great way. And sometimes it's like, I'm reading the same article over and over again, but I'm not talking to a person. I'm glad that there is like an actual group.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, there's a handful of them, but to your point, yes. Yeah, it's really nice to be able to speak to humans and share real life stories of how families are built or we've been connected with people who, like my friend Juan, obviously who went down the path of surrogacy to build their family and just hearing people's stories of adoption and their journeys and yeah, there's just so many different ways to build a family that has been just rewarding to hear how the struggle that we've experienced kind of like getting up to the point of our current match was just, I don't know, it was a comfortable, there was a layer of comfortability there that, or a comfort, I should say, that was lent to us by hearing people's struggles and knowing that there is like light at the end of the tunnel.

Jeanne Woodbury

Knowing some of the things that are difficult going in, is that what you mean?

Matthew Coelho

Yes. Yeah, both like situational struggles and then also a lot of like the mental wellbeing struggles and just like the emotional aspects of it all, yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, I know that with adoption, it can be kind of a devastating cycle of thinking there's a match that's going to work out and it doesn't work out. And having the expectations set by that community, I think has to help, hopefully.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, yeah, definitely was helpful. And it still is helpful to have, you know, just a supportive community out there having, again, you know, hearing people's stories and how they got through it and the things to kind of like mentally prepare for.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Matthew Coelho

Super helpful. I don't know if you have seen, but my husband and I are pretty vocal about our whole journey on the internet. And so through our social medias, we've been able to kind of like share our ups and downs of our journey. And, you know, something that we shared, just because I feel like it's important that these types of conversations are had, you know, there are people out there that do a lot of like emotional scamming and that did happen to us about a month or two ago where we thought we were being matched. And, you know, we had like a FaceTime conversation with the person and it was like really exciting for an hour and a half, but then like immediately, you know, it's like a wave of confusion and anger and sadness.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Matthew Coelho

But then also you feel, it's like a mixed feeling because you're also feeling for the person as well because you're kind of like trying to put yourself in their shoes and like, what are they going through to like, that like put them on this path of, you know, kind of like catfishing, I guess.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, is that what it is, a scam?

Matthew Coelho

Essentially, yeah. Yeah, it was interesting, but. So that's just like one little element of like the struggle of navigating that path for sure.

Jeanne Woodbury

When you share those kinds of stories, you know, publicly on social media, do you find that that's like an extra emotional burden or that it helps you to process it?

Matthew Coelho

I think it could be both depending on the responses.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh yeah.

Matthew Coelho

I think it's important to share the journey, A, because I, you know, not many people know what it's like to go through a journey like that.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, most people don't.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, so it is nice to kind of like vocalize and share. It does kind of release some of that like anxiety and the fears and the uncertainty of it all. But also, yeah, sometimes there's like some negative response and usually it's people who like don't really, they're like not following me. They'd probably like search certain hashtags and they're maybe like anti-advocates, anti-adoption advocates, but there's never really a dialogue. It's always just kind of like something negative. And then it's kind of just like a, you kind of have to ignore it.

Jeane Woodbury

Just, here’s some hate in the comments.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah

Jeanne Woodbury

That's unfortunate.

Matthew Coelho

But for the most part, I mean, the support has been super helpful.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. Oh I'm glad. Do you feel like, you know, well, I mean, I feel like making the decision to adopt or in general making the decision to start a family is a pretty big thing. And it's not something that a lot of people in the LGBT community are automatically comfortable with. And for some people, it's because we haven't had good family experiences. And that can go either way. Therefore, we want to have a good family and create that for ourselves, or we're just afraid of it. Did you have to go through a long decision process when you were thinking about this?

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, that's a good question. I did not personally have to do a lot of like heavy thinking or soul searching. My family growing up, so my dad moved to the, so he was born here, but moved to India — he's Indian — until he was about 12 years old and then moved back to the States. But he is one of five brothers and a sister. So I grew up with like a huge family surrounding me, like tons of cousins. So family was, my family life was very good. And so I do have, I think, a really good sense of family life. And so that I think helped inform —

Jeanne Woodbury

It's like a big value for you as a person.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I definitely knew that, especially going into my relationship with Blake, we always kind of knew family was something that we both wanted.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, that's wonderful.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, and actually even before, like being in a very serious relationship or even prior to marriage, I think I always knew that like adoption was gonna be the path for me. So I'm bisexual. And I think even then, you know, whether I were in a long-term relationship with a woman or ended up getting married to a woman, I think, again, to my point, like adoption still would have been on the table.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, okay.

Matthew Coelho

So my family actually runs an orphanage in India and I kind of, I went there twice, actually with my dad and his family.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, cool.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, and it was really exciting to kind of just see the groundwork that my family's legacy has built there. And kind of, I think that maybe informed kind of like that thought process of adoption.

Jeanne Woodbury

When did you go? Like as a kid growing up, you would visit?

Matthew Coelho

So actually my first, yeah, so I was a little bit older. I was about 15, I think I was about 15 years old. So I was in high school, I think it was my freshman year. I don't know how old I was, that sounds about right.

Jeanne Woodbury

Okay.

Matthew Coelho

But yeah, that was my first time, but I went with just my cousins and my uncle and my aunt. So they're Christian artists and musicians and they would tour, they still do tour India and like Singapore and like pretty much all over the world. But so they were there performing and doing shows. And so my cousins and I got to go along and during one of the stops we went to our, the main orphanage and then to a couple of different other locations that the, my family ministry supports.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, cool. Okay. Is that something that you're still pretty connected to?

Matthew Coelho

like Christianity and like the church?

Jeanne Woodbury

Or the ministry and the group and everything. The work your family does.

Matthew Coelho

I'm supportive and I'm very, like I help with like advocacy and sharing, you know, that it exists. I'm not so much involved as I used to be with like, you know, hands-on trips and things like that. And it's not just for lack of wanting to, I think it's just with where I'm at in my life. All my family's back home in California and so it's like difficult for me to play an active role. I mean, not so much now that the internet exists and all that. It's just hard to like be there and like feel connected in an impactful way. But again, I still share and like do whatever I can from afar, yes.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, that's cool. That's work that has a lot of emotional labor involved in it, in terms of just being supportive to people, being supportive of families, being supportive to kids. And so I mean, I imagine that that could be something where having a family built up around it, having multiple siblings and having kind of everyone involved probably helps to distribute that a lot. Is that the experience that you've had?

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's just, it's still, I mean, like today, I think it's flourished so well with all of that support, for sure. Like my family's so big and like, yeah, even though I'm not as hands-on as I used to be, I think it's, I mean, it's definitely in great hands.

Jeanne Woodbury

That makes sense. And so you grew up in California?

Matthew Coelho

I did.

Jeanne Woodbury

Okay, like near LA or?

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, so south of LA in Orange County. So it's about 40 minutes or so south.

Jeanne Woodbury

Okay, cool.

Matthew Coelho

But yeah, so I was born and raised there and that's — I spent some time out in Nashville by myself. And then when I came back to California, that's actually when I met my husband, Blake. So we got connected and were working in the music industry for a while and then we spent another stint back in LA. But when we got engaged out — I’m sorry, in Nashville — but when we got engaged out in Nashville, we decided to come back to Tucson. And we thought it was gonna be a stepping stone just to kind of get back to Los Angeles and get back into like the artist world and community. But Southern Arizona just has been so great for us that we were like, I don't know if we should rock the boat. Yeah, we've been here since 2018 and I really feel at home here. There's something really electric and exciting about the desert that I feel like calls me here, so it feels really nice.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh interesting. I mean, I kind of know what you mean. Driving here, 'cause I drove all the way down from Phoenix, and I love that drive despite the fact that I do not enjoy the 10, because I just love seeing so much of the desert. And so I can totally get what you mean. What are some of the other things that have made you feel at home in Tucson?

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, I think what really makes me feel at home here is really just the feeling connected to the earth. A lot of the work I was doing back in California before my time here in Tucson, before my move was involving a lot of community and community building in the wellbeing space. So I helped kind of build a… it was held in a temple, but it was really like a community center. It was in Venice Beach, California. And what that space was, was like a wellbeing center that offered like yoga and meditation and just different wellbeing offerings that really helped the community thrive in LA. There's a lot of different like social, like challenges that are pretty prevalent out in the area, like homelessness and, you know, drug, like heavy drug use and certain, the offerings that we provided were a space for people to find connection and maybe like a, just like a human interaction that normally they wouldn't receive like out on the streets or.

Jeanne Woodbury

And so this was a community space for like people who are unhoused or.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, unhoused. A lot of people who were housed as well. Like, so, you know, just it was for everybody.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, that's really cool.

Matthew Coelho

But specifically for people who were unhoused or maybe going through a lot of challenges to find community and to find like a helping hand, essentially.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's really cool.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

How long were you involved in that?

Matthew Coelho

A little bit over a year. It was called Full Circle. It was really wonderful. We had a lot of really great incredible, like wellness speakers come out, specialists and authors. I don't know if you're familiar with Marianne Williamson, she would come a lot and speak and it was really incredible the type of work that was happening there.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. How did you get into that in the first place?

Matthew Coelho

I think it was my own wellness journey. I think, you know, after high school, I didn't really have a lot of direction. And even kind of like probably even earlier than that, like during high school, it was kind of like a lot of my struggle with my sexuality and coming to terms with who I was, you know, kind of going back to where I shared about my family's background in the church, that was really challenging for me to kind of like wrap my head around just in terms of questioning, you know, my identity and questioning whether I aligned with these like Christian beliefs. And it kind of played a huge role in my like mental instability. And I think, you know, again, navigating high school and not fully, you know, letting myself be who I was. I think there was like a struggle where I was, you know, over drinking, eating like foods that were just terrible for me. And I didn't recognize myself, you know, when I was like 21, 22 years old, I looked, you know, I was really overweight. I was, I looked like I hadn't slept in days. And I realized like, oh my gosh, I don't, again, recognize myself. And so I joined a gym. I started really finding a really great community there, a lot of support. And again, the connection to me was like, oh, I'd never experienced people who supported me for who I was. I was kind of like showing up there as my authentic self in the sense that I knew I wasn't fully who I wanted to be, but I was showing up anyway, and I was giving it my best shot to work out and feel good about myself. And I think seeing and experiencing that support kind of led me into my next step of exploring music, because I loved to songwrite and sing, and I never really pursued that until joining the gym and feeling good and starting losing weight. I took that next step and being like, well, what else can I do? What can I do next? And I started pursuing music, and I started, you know, things started happening for me there and I was getting opportunities to write with artists and different producers and it made me fulfilled, that I was like feeling inspired and like feeling better about myself and like my own self-image and my own identity really. And then it really just got to a point where I was like, I'm feeling so good about myself and in my skin that I wanted to help bring that to other people. And I think that's kind of like how it started. But I found other people similar to me in Los Angeles who wanted those same things. And I think that's kind of like how I got involved with the wellness space for sure.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. And then was it like you and a team of people putting this space together or was it more of like a larger coalition?

Matthew Coelho

It was really collaborative. It was like people from all walks of life. It was already established in the sense that somebody owned the space and they were doing the work in it already. And then it started attracting people with different talents and different support and different networks that kind of, it became a larger collaborative board of directors, I should say, that put a plan together and put all their, again, their talents and skills and created something much bigger than it was initially. But yeah, it kind of took on a life of its own and it was really great for a handful of years and then the space itself was no longer available. It had to be sold, but it was wonderful. It was really great for me. It gave me a lot of fulfillment and a drive to continue that work.

Jeanne Woodbury

Were you able to continue that work as you moved around the country to Nashville and to Arizona?

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, I think I took a lot of that motivation with me. I think I've always tried to use my platform, whether it was through social media or the music that I was writing to tell that story of connection and the importance of showing up for people and empathy and kind of creating a safe space for the people that I came into contact with, whether that was at a show or in the writing room, I think that intention would always end up out to where it was supposed to go.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, that's really interesting. So when you're writing music and performing, do you see that as like creating a space for people?

Matthew Coelho

Absolutely, yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, that's really cool.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, there were a lot of times I would use my music as a way to, like for, there was this really cool event that I participated in with one of my friends, Ben Decker. He is a meditation teacher. And so we did this world peace event out in Los Angeles and I was able to kind of like perform my music and support that mission to provide a safe space for people to let go and to find that community there. And yeah, I've always kind of used it as a way to support that type of work.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's really cool.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

You mentioned getting into music around that time where you were starting to feel healthy in yourself again. Had you been musical before that, and that was the moment where you felt like, now I can really do it and be creative? Or was that like when you first said, let me go out and get into music?

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, no good question, 'cause I didn't provide a lot of context. Yeah, no, music was always very important to me. Again, I did mention my aunt and uncle are musical performers, but I actually did show choir in high school. My brother played lacrosse. And for me, I tried to do the lacrosse thing for a bit. And I was like, "Oh, I'm gonna be like my brother." And he has a bunch of cool friends playing sports. And I was like, after about a year doing that, I was like, "No, this is actually where my heart is." I always loved to sing. I always loved music. And so show choir was like my way to explore that in high school. And we got to travel the country and like do, you know, performances.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, I love that. That's really cool.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, it was really fun. But that I think was really exciting to me because I got to, I think for the first time, experience what it would be like to be around people who were like-minded. But I think after that, it like disappeared for me. And so I didn't know what to do. I think that kind of like had a larger effect on me than I thought at the time.

Jeanne Woodbury

With creativity, like with any kind of creative work, I feel like if you have the space for it, if you have the people and the community and the venue, you can run on that steam for a long time.

Matthew Coelho

Sure.

Jeanne Woodbury

And then when things kind of fall apart and you're on your own, it can be really hard to figure out how to do it. Like, yes, I know how to do this, but also I don't know how to do it anymore.

Matthew Coelho

Sure.

Jeanne Woodbury

And you got to a point where you were able to turn that around. But I imagine that for some period of time in your life, you weren't as connected to music. And it's such a big part of your life now. So is that something that you really missed at that time or that just you had to set aside?

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, no, it was definitely something that I noticed was missing when it was. Because to me, I feel like music and songwriting and that type of release, to me, there's a very spiritual side to that art form. And having that, you know, either the inability to access that, like, inspiration or whatever you want to call it, or even just like not being able, you know, not feeling inspired, I think is a huge detriment to feeling well and balanced. And, you know, there were some times where I was like super depressed. And if I, you know, in that space where when I was super unhealthy and I wasn't inspired, I didn't feel like I could pursue that like art. Yeah, it was really depressing and like, yeah, just a really sad time.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Matthew Coelho

But, you know, to my point of when I got to meet Blake and, you know, we connected through music and through the songwriting community out in Los Angeles and we wrote a lot of music together and we wrote, you know, like a full album at one point and my husband and I, so Blake, we actually wrote a song together for our wedding. Because music is so important to us, we were like, the music at our wedding has got to to be like super, you know, we were just on it with like the playlist and we wanted everybody to like get to know us through — re-get to know us through — our music choices. But as we were like planning, we were like, oh my gosh, there's not a lot of like same sex wedding music.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, that's a good point.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, so we were thinking about that and we wrote one ourselves. So that was really cool to have that be a part of our special day and like with our moms. So it's a song called "Everything." We both wrote it together, but it was really a special song for us that we've received tons of feedback from people and people have reached out on YouTube or like on social media to let us know like they found it and like how meaningful it was for them to find 'cause they would also use it at their weddings and it was really cool.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's what I was just gonna ask. So have other people been using it at their weddings?

Matthew Coelho

Yes, yeah, yeah, it's been really cool. So actually one time we got tagged in a video on Facebook from some random, like, I think it was somebody's mom who was dancing with their son to the song. And it was really special to see that because really it was for us. It was like a very personal song, but it was really cool to see that it resonated.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. And I think just, you know, with any kind of wedding, it's about the couple and then it's about all of the friends and the family who are part of it, who you decide to invite and having something that can facilitate those moments, like the dance between the mother and her son — it's not always a guarantee that our moms are going to be supportive — and I think seeing those moments, and I imagine for you writing the song that enables that moment has to be like, incredibly, incredibly meaningful.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, my mom was a little rattled when I like really came out to her. And it wasn't anything that she was like, you know, against me being, you know, identifying as LGBTQ. She just had different dreams of like, of what my life was. And I recognized it at the time that she was like, you know, grieving a person that didn't exist.

Jeanne Woodbury

Ah, yeah.

Matthew Coelho

So yeah, I think that kind of like helped me; it's like what inspired me to write some of the lyrics of the song for sure, to like address that.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Matthew Coelho

And so yes, to your point, it was really meaningful that she was able to celebrate it and love the song, so.

Jeanne Woodbury

What have you found in terms of, you know, the music scene and your ability to be a musician here in Tucson?

Matthew Coelho

It's a little, it's definitely different. It's not like, you know, a major music city, but I will say that the, that Tucson in general is very creative and artistic and lends itself as a space for collaboration in any industry, I feel like, from what I've experienced and seen out here. It's, I don't know, there's something electric. I said it before and I'll say it again, there is like this inspirational electricity here in Tucson that I think, you know, if the right people are here and, you know, I'm here, so I think it's just a matter of time. I think if I'm extra inspired, you know, in the next year or so, like, I think there's an opportunity here for there to be a pretty cool music scene. And yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, that's great. I, you know, I wonder with Tucson, you've described it as electric, the desert as electric, the city as electric. Are there specific things about Tucson that have been electrifying for you?

Matthew Coelho

I think the surprise of the welcoming, like the, just the nature of the city and its people and the community out here. It's very welcoming and warm and exciting. There's always like really great community events going on. I think initially my thought before moving to Tucson was like, Arizona, red state, I'm scared. Definitely not used to this, you know? But the longer I've been here and the more people I've met in different industries and from different walks of life, it's just like, it has this energy of like growth and potential that I feel like is really exciting.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, that makes sense.

Matthew Coelho

So it's not one thing in particular. I think it's a lot of things. It's like the types of businesses that are opening and they're independent and they're small, but they grow so fast. And I think just how much community support there is and whether, for like whatever causes, yeah. I just like love how the community shows up for itself.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. And I think with a city, it's about how everything works together, right? In a lot of ways, that's what defines the character of it.

Matthew Coelho

Absolutely.

Jeanne Woodbury

When I was talking with Blake, he mentioned that Nashville never clicked. it was a real kind of like cultural disconnect for him. You were saying just now, like moving to a red state was like, I don't know how I feel about this. But Tennessee is also that. And it seems like you lived there a couple of times, right? What was your experience there compared to Arizona?

Matthew Coelho

That's a good question. I did experience similar feelings as Blake. So, I did two stints out there. The first time I was single, I was working in a studio and it was remote work. And I never really left, to be honest, it was kind of just like to go out to eat or if we had friends in town, we would like go meet up downtown. So I wasn't really out in the community much, which sounds interesting, but as, being a writer who, I was full-time music then, and so I like never left, but, and so that was fine. That was about a year, and I came back to California. And then when we came back the second time to Nashville and I lived out there with Blake, it was very different. You know, the time we were there was like just when Trump was elected president, so tensions were super high and yeah, it was just a really confusing time for a lot of people, I think. But yeah, it didn't feel like a very, it was just very tight in terms of the community out there, especially being in the music community. You would think that there would be a lot of support, which there is, but it's also a very like tight knit group of people. So unless you're like in the inner circle, you're not really like taken very seriously until like you get a number one or whatever. But yeah, I feel like the community is just so tight knit out there that like, if you're not in it, then you're kind of just like left behind a little bit. And that's what I kind of experienced.

Jeanne Woodbury

I see.

Matthew Coelho

- Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

And then coming here, you were able to actually enter into communities.

Matthew Coelho

Yes. It was a little bit more welcoming. Yeah. That's definitely what I would say. It was more welcoming and, and it's maybe totally just my perspective, but it seemed to be more receptive to new perspective and new, just new — anything new, ideas, people, and it still is like that. I feel like it's, you know, the community out here is growing so much. It's like spilling into other towns, but it's been great. I love it here.

Jeanne Woodbury

Do you see that the, you know, like you mentioned with small businesses that then grow so quickly, Do you feel that there's anything like that happening in the LGBT community for like community groups or organizations?

Matthew Coelho

I think so, yeah. So I spent about a year on the Tucson LGBT Chamber of Commerce and just the growth that I saw then, about a year ago, was huge. I think they nearly doubled in terms of the businesses that became members, but just the businesses themselves are thriving and I think it created a very safe space for allies to even learn about certain challenges and policies that are super harmful for queer communities. And it really helped build a stronger ally community, which is really great out here. So I feel like there's such a, it appears to be like a hunger for information. And I think it's for the betterment of the community out here that seems to be proving itself because businesses are doing so well. and it feels very inclusive. So yeah, I think that would be kind of my key point, or like a key indicator of that.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, I think that's a great indicator. What kind of businesses are LGBT owned? Is it a lot of like small businesses or?

Matthew Coelho

There's a lot of really great like restaurants and bars. There's a couple of, there's a lot. I mean, you name it. There's a new pet store that just opened up that's like super high end and boutiquey with like a really cool community space, but it's like LGBTQ-friendly and it's -owned. And there's, you know, the first female head brewer at Borderlands is queer and she is doing incredible things. And they just expanded with one of the greatest chefs out here in Tucson, Maria Mazon, and they've expanded and opened up two new restaurants, I believe in town. But yeah, there's also like another really cool company called Southwest Solutions that's queer owned and they do like merch and like printing and they do a lot of really great corporate projects.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, I see, that’s awesome.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, you name it. There's like any industry out here.

Jeanne Woodbury

Well, I think we're running up against a time deadline, but I do wanna ask, you know, Tucson isn't where you grew up, it's not your childhood home. You've lived here for a while now. Do you think this is somewhere that you want to stay for a longer period?

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, I definitely feel that for sure that this is gonna be a place where we're gonna raise our family. And we've been lucky enough to have two homes out here and we've built such a great community of friends who all have young little ones. And I think we've just built such a great community again around us that I don't see us leaving anytime soon for sure. This is, I think, where we're gonna be for a while.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's great.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

All right, well, thanks for talking to me and for hosting all of this.

Matthew Coelho

Yeah, absolutely, such a pleasure.

Jeanne Woodbury

Thanks again to Matthew, and thanks so much to all of you for listening to this episode of the Arizona Equals Conversation. If you'd like to catch up on past episodes of the show or listen to new episodes when they're published, make sure to follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts. We've got some great episodes planned out for the next few weeks, and we're always looking for new people to talk to. So if you'd like to be a guest on a future episode of the podcast, please reach out. You can go to equalityarizona.org/stories to sign up.

On today’s episode of the Arizona Equals Conversation, Blake Coelho shares his experience growing up in Tucson, moving to LA and Nashville for his career in the music industry, and how he eventually found his way back home to Tucson. We cover the joys of collaborative creativity, the contrast between writing and performing, and how working from home has changed during the pandemic.

To listen to past episodes of the podcast, or to sign up to be a guest on a future episode of the show, visit equalityarizona.org/stories.

A full transcript of the episode will be added later. If you’d like to help us make transcripts available for our full archive, please get in touch!

The Arizona Equals Conversation is back, and we’ll be publishing our first three interviews from Tucson over the next few weeks! To kick things off, we have an interview with Juan McElroy, a nurse, father, and longtime Tucson resident.

To listen to past episodes of the podcast, or to sign up to be a guest on a future episode of the show, visit equalityarizona.org/stories.

A full transcript of the episode will be added later. If you’d like to help us make transcripts available for our full archive, please get in touch!

On this week’s episode of the Arizona Equals Conversation, Jeanne interviews Gav Orman about their experience relocating to Arizona in the early months of the pandemic, their career in the environmental sector, and the way they approach disclosure of their identities as a queer, neurodivergent person.

Full Episode Transcript

Jeanne Woodbury

From Equality Arizona, you're listening to the Arizona Equals Conversation, a podcast about queer people and queer communities in Arizona. I'm your host, Jeanne Woodbury, and each week on the show, I talk with a new guest about their story. In today's episode, I interview Gav Orman, who's been an active member of our own volunteer community and who had a lot of really interesting things to say about what it means to be queer and neurodivergent in all the different ways those things can overlap and mirror each other. It's really one of my favorite conversations I've had about those ideas, and I was really excited that we could record it and publish it on the podcast. So I'm going to run through a couple important announcements, and then we'll jump into the interview. First, we're always looking for new guests to interview on the podcast, so if you're interested in sharing your story, get in touch. You can email us directly at [email protected], or you can sign up through the form on equalityarizona.org/stories. I'd love to talk to you. Also tonight, Wednesday, March 22nd, we're having another in-person event for Ask Smart People Smart Questions, where we'll be talking with a panel of experts about LGBTQ+ experiences with criminalization and incarceration in Arizona. If you're interested in attending, we'll be at the Tempe Public Library at 6.30 p.m. You can find more information and sign up in advance at equalityarizona.org/events. All right, now let's roll the tape.

(beep) (film reel clicking) [MUSIC PLAYING]

Jeanne Woodbury

So OK. The other thing I usually forget to do is ask people to introduce themselves. So could I get you to say your name, your pronouns, however else you'd like to introduce yourself?

Gav Orman

Yeah. My name's Gav Orman. I use they/them pronouns. That's it. That's the spiel.

Jeanne Woodbury

Nice. So one of the things that I used to really always start with is just asking people how long they've been in Arizona. Because I think it's interesting to just get a sense of like — you know, for people who grew up in Arizona, how has it changed? For people who have moved to Arizona, why did you make that decision? So how long have you been here?

Gav Orman

Yeah, I moved here in 2020.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh wow.

Gav Orman

In the middle of the pandemic, like I moved in July of 2020. So it was hot and terrifying.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right.

Gav Orman

I moved from Southern California. So I lived in like Orange County area, near Laguna Beach for probably about a decade, ignoring like college years.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh yeah.

Gav Orman

And then before that I was in Dallas, Texas.

Jeanne Woodbury

Okay, so a lot of like the Southwest and everything. Which I guess means like the terrible summer wasn't like totally out of the norm.

Gav Orman

No, it was probably only like 10 degrees worse than normal.

Jeanne Woodbury

Moving during the pandemic, I've actually talked to a bunch of people who have something like that in their story. They get a new job, they move, they graduate from college, and it just seems terrible. I mean, like, I can't imagine. I — and I did have to do a move like a year into the pandemic. And that was a little challenging. But like we kind of understood safety stuff. I feel like in July of 2020, people didn't even understand how COVID really worked yet. So what was that like for you? And did you come here for a job? Or what was the reason for the move?

Gav Orman

Yeah, that's a good question. I moved because I quit a job that I did not like, and my parents had moved out here a few years before. So I was kind of running away from adulthood and going back to family. Moving was kind of terrifying 'cause I had to hire movers to pack the house 'cause I was moving by myself, and I didn't have roommates, I couldn't lift my bed down three flights of stairs. And that was kind of terrifying, like inviting complete strangers into the house to touch my stuff, which I don't like people touching my stuff anyways, packing up a van, having to drive across, you know, having to do pit stops, and everything's shut down… with a cat. That was, it was just really anxiety-inducing, mostly. It was very relieving to be done, though, at the end.

Jeanne Woodbury

Were, like, gas stations shut down on that drive? Like, I'm guessing on the 10?

Gav Orman

Some were, yeah, some were shut down. Most of them would have, like, those, you know, those temporary bathrooms they pull up for like festivals.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh yeah.

Gav Orman

They would have those out front, but they weren't letting you like inside the building still.

Jeanne Woodbury

I think that's something I never really knew because I was living with my parents at the start of the pandemic and I basically just didn't leave the house for a year. And so those questions of like, how did Kingman handle the pandemic, is something I'm still kind of learning. And then, so then you moved here, which feels like a decision a lot of people made. I remember reading a bunch of stories from the beginning of the pandemic where people were living in New York, and they all left New York to go live with their parents in Ohio or something. Arizona, I guess, is like the Ohio of the Southwest on some level.

Gav Orman

I can't disagree, but yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

And then now that it's been like three years, right? What's kept you in Arizona?

Gav Orman

Honestly, my options kind of came down to, I could stay in Arizona or I could go back to California. And one, it's so expensive in California. Not that it's getting cheaper here, but it's more expensive in California. And then I work in the environmental sector. In California, there's not much of a — this is gonna sound a little weird — there's not much of like a fight to be had. Everyone's kind of in agreement.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh yeah, I can see that.

Gav Orman

Yeah, like you're not making any real progress 'cause everyone's just kind of working towards the goal of improving the environment, whereas in Arizona, there's still so much of a fight to be had over protecting the environment versus welcoming in these kind of big polluters to secure our economy.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, that makes sense. I would kind of think, you know, my first instinct would be, okay, California's the place to do that work because you can get a lot done, there is no fight. But I also understand like, well, if you can win that fight that has a big, maybe bigger impact. Now thinking about like polluters, I think the big thing I would think about with environmental stuff in Arizona is water. So is this something that you've been working on for a long time? Is this, what's your focus in that, I guess?

Gav Orman

Yeah, I've been interested in environmental stuff probably since high school, so almost a decade ago. And then in college, I was really focused on water. It's the same issue California has. We don't have enough water, everything's getting polluted, everything's gross and yucky and too expensive. When I moved here, I actually took a job in hazardous waste, which was kind of a whole side sweep of dealing with industries really directly. But I'm starting to get back into water just because we're running out and we don't have any and no one really seems to be making any decisions about it, including the agencies that are in charge of making those decisions. They just seem to be like, oh no, what do we do?

Jeanne Woodbury

Do you work directly with those agencies?

Gav Orman

Yes and no. I work in an adjacent agency, so I talk to a lot of those folks and am in a lot of those meetings, generally.

Jeanne Woodbury

Getting involved in hazardous waste during the pandemic feels, like, extra scary. Although I'm guessing maybe it's not a job where you're like directly interacting with hazardous waste.

Gav Orman

Yeah, luckily I was more talking to the people directly handling the hazardous waste.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's nice, yeah. This is something that feels sort of like an invisible side of policymaking or the economy for a lot of people. I think everyone is aware of like, we've got a water issue or we have a climate crisis. But then they don't know a lot about the agencies that actually exist to handle these things. Whether they're doing a good job or not, we have all this infrastructure. What does it take to really understand that and to learn it? I think, not from an academic standpoint, but to just get a sense of what's the lay of the land here.

Gav Orman

Yeah, that's actually a topic that I kind of have a soapbox about.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, cool.

Gav Orman

Getting involved in the environment and just involved in the actions agencies are making is so inaccessible to the public. A lot of people assume the agencies are taking care of it, they're handling their business, because they're like, "Oh, it's this really complex scientific thing." When in reality, every action that the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality or the Arizona Department of Water Resources, any action that those agencies are taking, they have to have a public comment period. They have to have public meetings. It's just that a lot of people don't feel confident in going there and actually saying anything because they think they have to make a point or they have to make some scientific endeavor.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, I see, like they have to be an expert.

Gav Orman

Exactly. When in reality, what a public comment is really looking for is just people to say their opinion on something. You're worried about the water crisis, or you don't like the way your water tastes, or… you don't have to know why, you just have to show up, basically.

Jeanne Woodbury

Do people show up at all?

Gav Orman

No, we've had public comment periods where no one came.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, wow, okay.

Gav Orman

And I was like, there's this whole industrial facility that's getting a hazardous waste permit to store and treat and move in your neighborhoods right next to it and no one shows up. But if you go and you actually talk to them, they do care about it. They are worried about it. They just weren't given the tools to show up to those meetings.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, and I mean that's something that I have to deal with when when it comes to the legislature or school boards, for example, but those are things people vote for. That there's at least some awareness of like, okay, I don't know who this guy is on my ballot, but it's on my ballot. It's my legislative district, it's my school board, and my kids are in school, or I went to this school. With this, people don't even really know it exists. They don't know there's the same kind of mechanism for interacting with it. Is that something that you got involved with in California also, or that you had to figure out here in Arizona?

Gav Orman

Kind of both. People in California generally are a little more engaged. I think that the governors in California have historically kind of made a point to say like, these are where you go to see where the public meetings are and figure out what's happening. Arizona historically has not done that type of stuff. I think here, there has to be a more conscious effort on the part of the staff members of those agencies to send out the public notices to places people are actually going to read them. And whether that's knocking on doors or posting something up at the local library, I think more of an effort needs to be made in that capacity because we're not on the ballot. We're hired on by an agency who, theoretically, the director is appointed by the governor, but really the only say-so that the people have in that decision was the governor.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right. And people generally don't even know who those agency leads are, right? Once it gets to that point, they just kind of see it as one big mass.

Gav Orman

Exactly.

Jeanne Woodbury

You know, they're not knocking on people's doors, they're not putting stuff up in libraries, it sounds like. Are they just putting information on a website?

Gav Orman

Yeah, so every place has a website. They tend to just post it on their website. If you get on the right mailing list, like if you somehow found where to get on that mailing list, you'll get a copy. But of course, then it's really the Sierra Club and those environmentalist groups that get copies and not the guy that lives around the corner.

Jeanne Woodbury

So is there a community of people engaging in advocacy? Like there's the Sierra Club. Are there, like, a concerned citizens group or anything like that?

Gav Orman

You know, I haven't really seen one. And it could just be because of where I am in the waste world and not the water world. But I think that's one thing that moving from California to Arizona kind of shocked me. In California, we constantly had citizen action groups or advocacy groups or even just one person that really cared about a topic, whether they were just emailing us or on the public comments or in the public meetings, they were always showing up. And here, we don't really seem to have that. It seems to be kind of an odd gap in our advocacy groups.

Jeanne Woodbury

Does it feel different in the agencies also, like from an industry standpoint?

Gav Orman

Yeah. Internally, there's — I mean, to a certain extent, everyone that gets into the environmental field tends to be of a similar liberal-esque mindset. But it is kind of a different — there's more of a defeatist attitude, I think, of, "oh, why even bother? It'll get shot down along the line." "Oh, we want to change this statute, but what's really the point?" Like, "it won't go anywhere."

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, I see, yeah. Well, and they don't necessarily have direct influence over something like statute.

Gav Orman

No, every once in a while, we'll get, like agencies will get brought in for like technical guidance, but that's it. I mean, they could choose to listen to us or not.

Jeanne Woodbury

Well, so that kind of puts you in a difficult position then I guess in like the whole landscape of everything, is that you're taking care of something pretty important but the whole group of people you're working with is sort of powerless despite the responsibility you have. Do you feel like there's any kind of interest from that field of people to move in a different direction or to address challenges in a different way?

Gav Orman

I think that we are starting to see certain cities and counties kind of get to the point where they're like we need to do something about this and the more citizens that engage, the more citizens that are interested in at least you know being a body in a room, the more we're going to move towards you know actually solving the water crisis or actually combating climate change or doing environmental justice type activities. The tides are shifting. There are people having those conversations more and more at least.

Jeanne Woodbury

Okay, yeah. So moving to Arizona in the pandemic, everyone I've talked to who's gone through that kind of move, the hardest thing is finding any kind of community at all. It sounds like there's some professional community that you have, but were you able to find any kind of, just like social community when you moved here?

Gav Orman

Yeah, that was probably the hardest part and it's actually something I've really struggled with for like the past three years that I've been here. You know, I got my professional community and that's fine. There's a few people in there that I socially hang out with as well. It was really this year that I started actually seeking out like queer organization groups and like book clubs and actual social groups to just exist within because it's just so isolating working from home in the middle of a pandemic and then you just kind of get stuck in that groove of, I don't go anywhere I just sit in my house and do nothing.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. Early on in the in that phase of the pandemic I was looking for either, like, support groups or social groups online and I definitely found things. I mean people were really helpful when I said like, "Hey, I need this kind of support group," and they would find something I could call into. But then I think a lot of that kind of tapered off pretty quickly.

Gav Orman

Yeah, it did.

Jeanne Woodbury

Did you have anything that you found early on, at least online, that was helpful?

Gav Orman

Yeah, I had some online like crafting groups and video game groups and just like we would all chit-chat or we would hang out and work together just like online with each other. It very much tapered off once everyone started getting vaccines and could go back into the world, which was really the only time that I was like, man, I really wish I had moved back to California where all of my friends were. But I think those initial social groups where you could just be online and exist in a space with someone, even if it was virtual, were very valuable for those first like six months.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, I think it was great and then I think part of the challenge is that the great thing about it is that it could be people who are anywhere, but then they're not where you are once you can actually go outside again.

Gav Orman

Yeah exactly, I mean there's still people I talk to a little bit but, you know, they're in Wisconsin or North Carolina and it's not like we can just go hang out on a Friday.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah I got really involved on Twitter, that was like a big thing for me. I had been on Twitter just kind of like, reading, and then I was like, "Let me actually make some friends here." And then eventually Twitter just got so toxic that I'm not even there anymore. And so like the long tail of pandemic social interaction is just: whatever connections I made online are almost gone by now. And it really has to just turn back into, where can I go in Phoenix? You know, where can I go close to home? And it sounds like that's what you've been working on. When did you first start to put your mind to that?

Gav Orman

Probably last year. Once we all got vaccinated and everything was going well, then I had a bunch of health issues. It was like this one thing after another. And so I took a lot of time to just really like heal and like make myself better. And then it was probably the middle of last year that I was like, I should go outside. I should go to the museum. I should actually go interact with things that I enjoy doing, I remember that I enjoy doing, to pretty great success. I mean, there's always people to talk to around Phoenix, interesting people to talk to.

Jeanne Woodbury

Did you start by looking for those public institutions? You mentioned museums and going outside. Was it that over, like, finding social groups?

Gav Orman

Yeah, I'm very introverted, very, very shy, very unlikely to just kind of force my way into a social group where I've kind of assumed that everyone already knows each other and likes each other and has all this history. So I basically worked my way up there. I would go to the museum and hang out there and talk to the tour guides and the people that were there and I would go on a consistent basis and actually just make friends to the point that eventually I was like, oh, well I could probably go to this coffee shop and hang out, or I could go to this meetup and be fine. But I very much had to talk myself into it. It wasn't like an easy thing to do.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, and that makes sense. I mean, what I've found with the queer community that I've been able to interact with is that very quickly I'll find out that someone I know knows someone else I know, and it just closes the loop really quickly.

Gav Orman

Exactly.

Jeanne Woodbury

So even when people aren't cliquish, it still becomes really insular, which I think is hard to break into. I know that was your fear. Was that also the reality?

Gav Orman

I think it was one of those things, like I was aware that that was kind of the situation, because I had a huge friend group in California that was all very based around the queer community, the neurodivergent community, everyone knows each other, there's like 20 of you or something on campus. And I think as I started to meet people in the queer community to make those connections. It was one of those of, yeah, everyone kind of knows everybody, but not in like a cliquey way, and kind of a, hey, come meet this person, you would probably like them too.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's actually kind of great.

Gav Orman

Yeah, it was like a very welcoming thing of, we actually have this huge community and you're a part of it now, not like a, oh, I know this person, but we're not gonna talk about that. Like, it was more of a come in type of feeling.

Jeanne Woodbury

So really inviting.

Gaf Orman

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

Is the community you found here similar in terms of having a big overlap with neurodivergence and queerness?

Gav Orman

It has been so far. I don't know if that's just the type of people that I tend to talk to over others or if that's like an actual correlation.

Jeanne Woodbury

I can never tell either. I always end up, I mean, and this is my whole life too, is I always end up realizing all my friends are neurodivergent. And we didn't plan that, right?

Gav Orman

Exactly, like we weren't seeking each other out, it just happened.

Jeanne Woodbury

And I wonder if some of that is just like the openness that can come of like recognizing a like mind and being like, well, you'd also love to talk to this friend who's very into environmental policy or whatever other like crafting interest or whatever. And I also think that maybe there just is a big overlap, like statistically, that's maybe hard to track.

Gav Orman

Yeah, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if someone was looking at that. But it's probably kind of in the way that all countercultures and subcultures kind of co-mingle to a certain extent. You're always going to kind of have the differences that start to come together, because there just is that level of overlap between them.

Jeanne Woodbury

Just the sense of, because these people are all different, they're all alike.

Gav Orman

Yeah, like almost like social cue-wise, there's some sort of underlying thing and that's just like commonality between it where you're like, oh, that's a safe person. I can go talk to that person and they would probably listen.

Jeanne Woodbury

And sometimes it's, at least in my experience, it's a little, it's not at the conscious level. Like I can, okay, like you can definitely clock an autistic person sometimes, like in a good way. But sometimes that's not what happens. And then like a year later, you realize that's a thing you have in common.

Gav Orman

No, I fully agree. I think it's almost just a subliminal instinct type thing and not necessarily a, I clocked this piece of you and I'm gonna make us be friends now because of that.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, and that normally doesn't work out super well.

Gav Orman

No, it rarely does.

Jeanne Woodbury

One of the things that I've found, and I've talked about this with other people, is that despite the fact that there's this big kind of overlap or just a big group of people who are neurodivergent and queer, is that there's plenty of queer groups and advocacy groups in Arizona, but there really aren't a lot of groups or organizations like that for neurodiverse people.

Gav Orman

No, there really isn't. And I've always kind of wondered why. I don't even necessarily think that there are large advocacy groups or even like social gathering type groups for neurodivergencies, even where I lived in California or, I mean, obviously not in Texas. But I never really understood why. And I think a part of it — like, it took me a while to come to terms with my autism, my OCD, my problems. And I almost feel like there is a lack of advocacy groups or a lack of social groups on it, because people are like, well, I don't want to talk about, I don't want to focus on that piece of myself, or I don't really want to come to terms with that yet. And so there's kind of this weird lag or this gap in those groups forming and coming together.

Jeanne Woodbury

Do you think it's a stigma thing or just like a privacy thing?

Gav Orman

It's probably both. I think the stigma is getting better. I think people are starting to talk about it more and more. And so it's becoming less of a secret private thing. So I think the stigma is lessening. I think some people just are more private than others. I think it's almost like a protection thing. Like I'm going to protect myself by keeping my kind of nuances, my fun little quirks to myself.

Jeanne Woodbury

Well, I guess that's just masking.

Gav Orman

Yeah, exactly.

Jeanne Woodbury

But I think sometimes even when I'm not necessarily masking, I won't disclose something.

Gav Orman

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

Although what I've noticed recently is that I'm 100% comfortable telling people I'm autistic. I'm not comfortable telling people, here's the actual accommodations I need as an autistic person. I'm somewhat comfortable talking about having OCD, but I'm 100% not comfortable revealing any triggers related to my OCD, because it feels very vulnerable and kind of unsafe.

Gav Orman

I actually fully agree with that. I have stopped really having a problem saying I have XYZ, mostly because at some point it gets just kind of easy to be like, I have these labels that I've given myself. I think it's a lot harder to actually open the door to this is what my actual problem is, and this is what I have to do to avoid these triggers, these problems, mostly out of a fear that someone would take advantage of that, or poke at it, when really I'm just letting you know this is an issue I have. I think, too, I have always had trouble discussing accommodation needs, because I always feel like someone's going to feel like they need to take that on, to accommodate me, like over the top, and then it becomes all about that part of my identity, which I don't really need every conversation to be about accommodating me in my day-to-day life.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right. (laughing)

Gav Orman

And so I think it's really easy for me to just be like, oh yeah, I'm autistic, and let someone make those assumptions for themselves.

Jeanne Woodbury

Oh, right, yeah

Gav Orman

And like, move on.

Jeanne Woodbury

My feeling is that it becomes an infantilizing situation. If I actually tell people, hey, I need this, or this is a problem for me, I fear that they're gonna stop taking me seriously as a professional. And working in the kind of industry you work in, or the kind of industry I work in, but probably for anyone working and being autistic, it feels like a real compromise to your career, potentially. It won't necessarily be, but it feels like it.

Gav Orman

Yeah. It always kind of feels like you're one step away from telling the wrong person something a little too true, and that they could potentially use that to knock you down a peg, to basically say, like, well, this is why you can't do your job right. And you're like, actually, no, I was doing fine before you knew this about me.

Jeanne Woodbury

Exactly. There's like, well, if I can just manage it on my own without telling anyone, and then if I told someone and I kept managing it on my own, but then they start to discount me, why not just manage it on my own? And I don't think that always pans out super well, but being able to work from home, and this is something that the pandemic, I think, was kind of great for, is: being able to work from home, I can keep a weird schedule and work in weird ways and no one has to know better.

Gav Orman

Exactly. No, exactly. I fully agree with that. And on the other hand, I've had some great success with some fantastic managers who totally didn't use it against me and were able to accommodate me by giving detailed agendas or sending everything via email or whatever I needed without any big issue. But I think, you know, working from home or working with a group of people that are all a little neurodivergent.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah.

Gav Orman

It makes it a little easier where you're like, I'm going to go sit in this dark corner with my headphones on, no one's going to talk to me, I'm going to get so much done in like 30 minutes and then I won't be able to work for four hours and no one's gonna care about that.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah. I'm thinking about that contrast between like these groups of neurodivergent people that coalesce and then the fear of like asking for even a simple accommodation in a workplace. And I wouldn't say that sensory needs and things always mix very well for a group of autistic people, but overall, no one even has to say anything, and it's this universal design of, we'll make it generally comfortable for the average autistic person, I guess. And it just happens naturally. I don't have to ask for something, and people will recognize like, these things might be a problem for someone.

Gav Orman

Yeah, I think to that point, when you have a group of people that are neurodivergent who have probably experienced some level of discomfort in day-to-day life, there's a level of just kind of assumed respect given of like, I'm going to kind of gauge what your needs are because I know that you're gauging what my needs are and we'll probably meet in the middle pretty naturally. Whereas someone that's neurotypical who maybe has never had a problem in their day-to-day life, I don't even think they're considering sensory things, and kind of a, they've never had to.

Jeanne Woodbury

It's just not really on their radar.

Gav Orman

Yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

That's something where you get community though on some level is in the neurodivergent space you can find commonality and even just with like special interests and things like that. With OCD, and you don't have to talk about this if you don't want to, but with OCD, that's something where I think saying that there's potential clashes around autism — with OCD, one of the big reasons I don't like to tell people about anything specific with it is because I know that it actually can just lead to difficulties interacting with people, and I'd rather kind of manage that on my own level without telling them about it, but I've never really found like, oh, here's the community of all the OCD people. Like, that doesn't happen.

Gav Orman

No, it doesn't, and I think the stigma around OCD is different. Like I almost feel embarrassed by a lot of my OCD things and so I don't, I never wanna tell people, one, 'cause I'm embarrassed, but two, I know that even speaking about those triggers makes them worse and so then it's kind of this vicious cycle but then on the other hand, you're almost isolating yourself and handling all of this on your own.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, it's very isolating.

Gav Orman

It's very isolating and there's an anxiety component and all of that kind of compounds into itself and it can be so much worse. And so then there's always going to be that risk of, I have to lean on someone. I have to, someone's going to have to help me at some point even if it's just, like I have some that I didn't even notice I was doing until someone was like, that's probably the OCD. And I was like, probably, but what are we gonna do about it?

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, just kind of throw your hands up at that point. I feel like with the pandemic, it was just hell for a lot of people. Not even necessarily people who have contamination stuff, but just the level of additional isolation and people following a bunch of rules that they don't fully understand. For some reason, I was thinking about this the other day, but at the beginning of the pandemic, it felt like, okay, we're all isolated, but we get to have like a kind of thing that we all care about. And that lasted probably until you moved to Arizona. It was so brief that there was kind of like… Jimmy Fallon's doing the Tonight Show from home and we're all watching it for the first time for some reason. I feel like that same kind of thing could exist around whatever these other isolating things we have are, whether it's being queer in a new place or autism or OCD, and occasionally it kind of flares up into existence, and then it can burn out really easily. Have you found anything that makes it sustainable?

Gav Orman

It almost, I feel like it kinda depends on how structured you want something. You know, like I've had some groups where they exist and maybe I meet like one person that I really click with and I'm still friends with that one person, but the community's kind of fallen apart because really we just kind of all paired off or found the people that we would have naturally been friends with anyways. And I think probably the issue with getting a social group like that for neurodivergencies is largely because you're so much more than them that you naturally kind of will lean towards one or two people in the group. And then the nature of being neurodivergent, you just kind of hone in on that. And so then the group falls apart, which I think to an extent is fine. But I do think there is that gap in advocacy groups of just people who are fighting for them.

Jeanne Woodbury

I know there's like a chapter of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network in California. They don't even have a chapter in Arizona. And that's still very niche. I think autism self-advocacy is just one small portion of it. I think that having those advocacy groups would be great, just like getting more people into these public hearings would be great.

Gav Orman

And I think getting those advocacy groups are good. And I think dismantling any barriers that we would have in getting those advocacy groups into things like public hearings and public meetings and meetings with legislators and whoever is going to be a step in that, 'cause it'll be hard for anyone to get going and get started if they're constantly hitting brick walls and feeling like, what's the point? I can't do this.

Jeanne Woodbury

I think my fear though is that for me, it's just something that can be isolating and maybe advocacy could help break that down a little bit, making it like easier to talk about things and you don't have to educate people from the ground up every single time. But ultimately, I'd love it to just be a little more chill. And maybe I'm thinking about it in terms of a queer politics standpoint, but having to do queer advocacy around something that kind of automatically feels isolating. And now it's like, well, you're definitely not isolated because everyone's yelling about you is not the direction I want to go. And I think it could easily turn into something similar if there were more attention directed at autism. Like if I look at people yelling about like medicalization of ADHD, right, we're kind of lucky that it's not at the level of the way people are yelling about trans care.

Gav Orman

Yeah. I think that's a really good point. I think a lot of people even are scared to look at queer advocacy because it's so terrifying to be in such an angry argument about something that is like your existence as a person, which is the same thing if you're talking about autism or ADHD or other ones, it's your existence as a person. And I think to the point earlier where you were talking about infantilization of people with autism and ADHD, I think that would be a huge problem in starting those conversations of, oh, well, you can't really advocate for yourself, so let us do the talking. And then having to fight, and even start those arguments, those confrontations to get your voice heard is already so much just strife when really we just wanna exist. We just want to live our lives.

Jeanne Woodbury

And those conversations and settings are not accessible. So it's just kind of weighted against you in the first place. But with queer advocacy and that just like awful spotlight, it's a little different California, I think like to say the least. When you moved here, was that a culture shock for you at all? Or just, I assume you knew what you were getting in for.

Gav Orman

Yeah, I knew it would be worse here. I kind of had this weird perspective growing up in Texas until I was like 11-ish, where it was very much not talked about. We lived in the Bible Belt. Like, that was not a conversation people were having at schools. Moving to California, where people were out, like and I was meeting people that were gay or trans and I was like, that's a thing, like that's an option. And those conversations were fine. Like there are parts of California that are very conservative, much like Arizona actually, but where I was living was very just out and open. You didn't really have to question coming out. No one was really going to bully you or isolate you for it. It was just like, oh, that person over there is gay and we don't care about that.

Jeanne Woodbury

Ah yeah.

Gav Orman

And then making the decision to move here, I actually, that was something I kind of weighed, you know, like I was like, am I going to go there? Am I going to feel safe? I wasn't necessarily fully out to like my family at the time, not out of any fear, just I didn't feel the need to like make a whole thing out of it. I was like, they'll find out when they find out. But moving here, it was like, is it going to be a constant battle? Like I had no idea if it was like I would have to hide on the streets or if it was fine-ish.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right.

Gav Orman

And I think it was a bit of a culture shock just in terms of how full of strife the conversation is all the time. You can't really bring it up at all without someone going, "Well, I heard some crazy argument over there." And you just have to sit with that.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right. What do you mean, like in a public setting?

Gav Orman

Yeah, even just in public. I think in California you could have discussions about trans-affirming healthcare, and everyone would just kind of talk about trans-affirming healthcare. It wasn't an argument or a debate. Whereas if you bring up anything here, someone in the vicinity probably has something to say about it.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, I see, yeah.

Gav Orman

So kind of having to come to terms with either having those kinds of arguments and being willing to engage in those, or keeping those conversations private, I think was a decision I had to weigh a lot because I'm not a very confrontational person. And so that was a bit of a culture shock.

Jeanne Woodbury

Do you end up in those situations where you have more confrontational conversations with people?

Gav Orman

Less and less. Mostly it was surrounding when I started using my actual pronouns at work. I was probably like one of the first people in that values, in the management chain that had like ever not used the pronouns that someone would assume for them. And so that had a lot of kind of like politically charged conversations that you're also, you know, trying to be professional 'cause you're at work. And so —

Jeanne Woodbury

It can be especially hard with they/them pronouns.

Gav Orman

Yeah, exactly. A lot of people just don't get them. Like they just don't understand the non-binary space at all. And it's so emotionally exhausting to start from the ground up to explain like, this is he, this is she, this is the binary, and I don't exist in the binary. And starting to just find YouTube videos that you would send to a five year old and be like, here you go, here is what pronouns are. If you have questions, come to me, but I'm not gonna teach you from the ground up.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right.

Gav Orman

I think that was probably the most exhausting part. It was just the constant education on it, on something that really just should be there. People should just know about it.

Jeanne Woodbury

Or there should at least be corporate resources for it, right, so that you don't have to do it.

Gav Orman

Like an infographic that you can just refer to.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, I've found that, 'cause you mentioned having to figure out how safe is it gonna be walking around in public. I found that sometimes it's just not even an issue at all, and then sometimes if I go to like Scottsdale maybe, and especially if I'm with other queer people. It's so fascinating because I can go somewhere very clearly as a trans person and just everyone's friendly to me and it's fine, no one pays any attention. And then if I go somewhere with another trans friend and maybe, I don't know if it's just Scottsdale, but that's where I have a really distinct memory of it. Like a lot of dirty looks all of a sudden. I've had the experience in Tempe also. And frequently I think it's because it's not just me, but it's me and another person. Sometimes it's more directed at my friend than at me. And that's a tricky thing to navigate, I think, because then sometimes when I am on my own and I'm not getting dirty looks, it's like, well, I know that they probably might actually have some thoughts. And I don't know what's happening here.

Gav Orman

Yeah, I agree with that. I've largely not had any issues just in my day-to-day life. Typically, when you're in a group of queer people, that's when issues start to arise, which I find incredibly frustrating because we should be allowed to have friends and hang out in a group of like-minded people. And I almost wonder if it's like if it's just one of us, they're like, "Oh, well, that's just one person and we'll keep it to ourselves." But then once there's multiple of us hanging out, they're like, "eh. I don't like that." And so they become a little bit more outwardly hateful looking. But I have experience, like, I've been kind of surprised at where I've gotten dirty looks versus not.

Jeanne Woodbury

You mean like geographically?

Gav Orman

Yeah, just like I've had no problems over in West Valley in like Buckeye and Goodyear; downtown Phoenix is usually fine. But if you're like in North Phoenix or Scottsdale or some pockets of Mesa, it's weirder, yeah.

Jeanne Woodbury

Mesa is super unpredictable. If I go to like downtown Mesa, it can be fine. It can be nicer than Tempe, to be honest. And it's just like, okay, well, it's kind of a lottery. You just roll the dice and see what you're gonna get.

Gav Orman

You have to make sure you turn the right corner at the right time.

Jeanne Woodbury

Kind of, yeah. But I've never had real violent interactions, I think.

Gav Orman

No, I haven't personally. I know a few people that have been like yelled at and kind of heckled.

Jeanne Woodbury

I've been heckled.

Gav Orman

Yeah, but nothing where I was like, "I'm in danger and I need out immediately." Luckily, that's not really happened here.

Jeanne Woodbury

The worst part of it for me was at the really beginning of my transition. And I was in Flagstaff at the time, which is like a smaller, more rural area. So that was probably the time where I felt like the least safe walking around. And I walked around a lot 'cause it's really walkable.

Gav Orman

Yeah, I think that's fair. I think too, like a lot of people expect when you're transitioning to either be one or the other, like present a certain way that they want you to look. And so when you don't, there's more of that kind of, well, what's going on? Like, what's happening?

Jeanne Woodbury

Explain yourself!

Gav Orman

Yeah, and you're like, whoa, I'm trying to go to the store.

Jeanne Woodbury

Well, sometimes there's people who just have like a curiosity, and that can be really uncomfortable. Do you ever run into that?

Gav Orman

I have, mostly once people know that my pronouns are they/them. Then they get that really, well, what does that mean? Why can't you, why aren't you just girl or boy? I'm like, well, I don't want to be either girl or boy. Neither feels right and they're like well, why? Why are you doing XYZ or like if I wear like a skirt one day? They're like, but I thought you didn't do that. And I'm like, I can do whatever I want. Like so can you. I think the curiosity can be… for me it gets almost worse because I feel like I have to prove myself in some way, like I'm defending myself, versus like someone that's just outwardly hateful. It's a lot easier to just kind of dismiss that. To be like, Oh, well, they just don't like that. They don't like me. That's fine

Jeanne Woodbury

I handle a lot of the things the same way I handle disclosure around autism, where if I don't need to I won't say anything and I'll just kind of wait for it to be an issue, instead of like giving them the opportunity to make it an issue.

Gav Orman

Yeah, yeah, I — very much. I just kind of state things and then and move on with my life. Like it's not my job to justify my existence.

Jeanne Woodbury

Yeah, I think we're running low on time, but something, you know, at the beginning of the interview, I always try to ask people to introduce themselves with their name and their pronouns. But when I'm in a social setting and people ask for introductions, and they say, "Say your name, say your pronouns." I don't say my pronouns because it's uncomfortable. the same way, like, okay, I'll say I'm trans, but I won't necessarily say what my pronouns are. I'll say I'm autistic, but I won't say what my accommodation needs are. Do you think that's a unique thing to me? Or do you ever have that feeling too, in terms of introducing yourself with your pronouns?

Gav Orman

No, I do, and I think it's to the extent that like, it's my business. If they make assumptions about me, that's on them. If they really wanna know, I guess they can ask very directly and I might tell them. It kind of depends on my mood a lot of the time. Like sometimes I'm feeling more like I'm gonna make a stand and this is who I am. And other days I'm like, I exist and that's all I'm doing.

Jeanne Woodbury

Right, I don't wanna explain myself today.

Gav Orman

Exactly.

Jeanne Woodbury

Well, thanks for talking with me. This was a lot of fun.

Gav Orman

Yeah, thank you.

Jeanne Woodbury

Thanks again to Gav for being my guest this week on the podcast. If you'd like to be a guest on a future episode of the show, Remember, all you have to do is send an email to [email protected], or just sign up on our website at equalityarizona.org/stories, where you can find the entire archive of past episodes of the show. As always, thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you again soon.

On this week’s episode of the Arizona Equals Conversation, we’re joined by Elijah Watson, a young gay man who's established himself as a kind of independent lobbyist at the state capitol. He doesn't have a traditional path into advocacy, and he doesn't take a traditional approach, but at the same time, he's able to forge productive relationships with legislators and make a real contribution to the policy making process.

We’re always looking for more guests to interview on the podcast. So if you're queer and you live in Arizona, I wanna talk to you about your communities — how they've changed over time, how you've changed them, and how they've changed you. You can sign up to be a guest on our website, or just send us an email.

One of the big goals of the Arizona Equals Conversation is to learn from our guests how queer communities are built and how they evolve over time, and today’s interview with Celia is a perfect study. Since moving to Arizona, she’s had to build community for herself from the ground up, twice. Now, as a member of AZ Trans Together, she’s at the heart of a vibrant social group based out of Tempe that meets every week at Brick Road Coffee. She’s also a longtime blogger and gaming critic who finds community at fighting game tournaments and online networks hosted on Discord.

As a reminder, we’re always looking for new guests for the show! If you’d like to share your story with the Arizona Equals Conversation, just let us know! You can sign up on our website or email us at [email protected].

A note from Jeanne:

On today’s episode, we’re joined by Don Williams and Jose Ortega, a gay couple living in the east valley. When Don messaged us on Instagram a little over a week ago, I was already familiar with his story. As covered on AZCentral, he and his husband are facing discrimination at their daughter’s school in Queen Creek. After a short chat online, Don invited me to their home to record the conversation you’re about to hear. The couple has only been in Arizona for less than a year, and I was so moved by their hospitality. It’s been a challenge to find queer community in the short time they’ve had to settle in, and now to manage this situation, they’re building community in a way I don’t think either of them ever expected they’d have to. I was also struck by their insistence that the discrimination they’re experiencing isn’t just as simple as a conflict between religious rights and LGBTQ+ rights. At tonight’s live recording of Ask Smart People Smart Questions, we’ll be exploring where that narrative comes from and where it breaks down, so it felt timely to hear from two people at the heart of a real conflict how it feels to them. If you want to attend the panel discussion, head on over to the Tempe Public Library at 6:30 PM.

Thanks so much to Don and Jose for being our guests on the podcast this week!