[“Wrong Number” by The Gays plays]
RICHARD: Hello and welcome back to Me/Us/U, a podcast made by me, well us, about us for you.
KAY: Today we would like to tell you a story about gender, sexuality, and all of the queer little things that pop up in our community.
MIRA: From the early modern history of queer culture…
CESCA: To the future that many queer students face,
RICHARD: We have compiled stories and experiences that may move you, scare you, or at least make you go
MIRA: “Wow, that’s so gay.”
CESCA: Before we start,
KAY: We would like to preface by saying we are a small group of queer people with many opinions,
MIRA: And we would like to let everyone know that these are our opinions and views…
KAY: And some may not be the same views as everyone in the community.
CESCA: So please, let this open a conversation and not an argument.
RICHARD: With that said, let us show you our Gay Gaze.
KAY: Yaaaassss
MIRA: [joking] Ha, gaaaayyy
[“Funk Friend” by The Gays plays]
MIRA: Hey, I’m Mira. I’d like to warn you that sometimes the word ‘queer’ is sometimes used interchangeably with LGBTQ+ within this podcast. We recognize and want to remind listeners that not everyone in the LGBTQ+ community is comfortable with identifying with the word ‘queer.’
So if someone does not want you to apply it to them… don’t.
[“Funk Friend” fades out]
MIRA: Somewhere between two and six percent of Americans are on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. If you’re one of them, then it was impossible to identify yourself as such before the mid-1900’s.
Homosexuality was represented in some way in the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM for short, until its fourth iteration in the 1990s. This is because of the amount of time that the majority of the country spent believing that being gay was a disease, something brought on by potentially having an overbearing mother or a passive father.
Many queer people were shoved into mental asylums. These institutions, already known for their cruelty towards the mentally ill, would perform shock therapy and lobotomies, among other dangerous procedures, on people in hopes of eradicating that which made them gay.
Meanwhile, in places like New York City and Chicago, police would regularly raid gay bars and arrest people on the grounds of ‘sexual perversion’ or ‘cross-dressing.’ Either male or female police officers, depending on which was ‘appropriate’ for them, would make party-goers and even just people on the street who were profiled as cross-dressers show them their genitals.
If they were wearing less than two articles of clothing that ‘matched’ their genitals… they’d be arrested. In many cases, this also meant that they were forced to change, or that they were assaulted by the police.
As you may have guessed, eventually the budding LGBTQ+ community had enough of this awful treatment by the police, and by society. In 1969, police raided a mob-run bar known as the Stonewall Inn. Located in Grenwich Village, in New York City.
[Brief pause]
MIRA: While people were being assaulted, verbally and physically abused, and escorted into police cars, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many present. Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, trans women of colour and widely renowned drag queens, were among those who were at Stonewall and began to throw bricks, bottles, or whatever else they could find at the police. A riot ensued that sparked violent protest and demonstrations for six whole days.
The first ever Pride parade, Christopher Street Liberation, was held a year later, on the anniversary of the first Stonewall riot.
After Stonewall, several groups organized to begin demanding rights for LGBTQ+ individuals. These groups included the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance. Since then the demand for visibility, validation, and personal livelihoods has only increased, and it was in large part thanks to the open defiance sparked by the Stonewall Riots.
[“Funk Friend” fades in then out]
MIRA: Fast-forwarding to the 1980’s, the LGBTQ+ community had been organizing, protesting, and advocating for a few years… while still being ignored by the larger populace of the United States, who began to identify themselves as straight, or heterosexual, to enforce a dichotomy between those who are gay, or homosexual. Being LGBTQ+ still made you an outsider.
[Brief Pause]
MIRA: Then the AIDS crisis began, infecting multitudes of gay people, most commonly gay men. CDC research was slow and unfruitful, and the Regan administration openly didn’t care about the lives, or deaths, of gay people. Regan himself never even acknowledged AIDS until five years into the epidemic. By that time, tens of thousands of gay men were dying of this virus that very little was known about.
Eventually though, something was done, but only in the wake of the deaths of two important people outside the queer community. The first was Ryan White, a child who had contracted AIDS through medically required blood transfusions. The second was Rock Hudson, a famous actor and icon to the heterosexual world at the time.
The spotlight put on AIDS from the combination of these individuals, an innocent child and a well-known actor, prompted the government to take more steps to combat the disease.
As well as this, the NAMES project AIDS memorial quilt was laid down at the National Mall to spread awareness of those who had died from the disease. They had never received a memorial, or even a gravesite, because of the social stigma against the disease in the 80’s and 90’s. The AIDS memorial quilt is still being added to today, and is the largest piece of community-driven folk art in the world, weighing collectively over 54 tons.
With no drugs on the market for gay Americans, they were forced to receive illegal treatments from outside the country, because their choices were to break the law or die. Even then, the drug was not very effective. Eventually an antiretroviral was developed that allowed people living with HIV or AIDS today to live long, happy lives. Nonetheless, we cannot forget the thousands lost because their lives did not matter to the US government enough for them to take action sooner.
As of 2002, the total number of deaths from AIDS in the US… is 501,669… over half a million people.
[“Funk Friend” Fades in then out]
MIRA: Now that I’ve explained some of the long history behind the LGBTQ+ community, I’m visiting local expert, Dr. Paradis, to get some further insight on what all this history means today.
MIRA: First, I ask her to introduce herself for us.
PARADIS: So my name is Christiana Paradis and I’m the program coordinator for the department of justice, office of violence against women grant that Susquehanna University has, and I’m also an adjunct in the Women’s Studies department and one of the courses that I teach is LGBTQ+ Studies.
MIRA: Then, I start asking some deeper questions.
MIRA: So I’d like to start with, um, where did you grow up?
PARADIS: Yeah, so I actually grew up here in Selinsgrove.
MIRA: Oh really?
PARADIS: Yeah, so very small, rural community in central Pennsylvania, so that was interesting but that being said I was always kind of in some ways aware of LGBTQ issues, because my mom had a lot of friends in the LGBTQ+ community, so I always grew up kind of seeing adults within the LGBTQ community.. which I think is super important.
MIRA: Were they around a lot or were they just casual friends that you saw…?
PARADIS: Yeah it was definitely more casual, and it was interesting that I would only see some of her friends every few years because they didn’t live in the state because in part just the issues of visibility in the community, but I at least grew up understanding that there was multiple expressions of the way that people can be partnered, and I think that was really important to see and experience young.
MIRA: Do you feel that the history of our community really matters outside of the community? Like, does things like Stonewall and the results of the AIDS crisis continue to affect the heterosexual community today? Does it affect politicians?
PARADIS: [Thoughtful pause] I think that members of the LGBTQ+ community are significantly more aware of our history, and the rollercoaster that we kind of endured, as you mentioned, for decades. I feel in terms of politicians and people who identify as cis or heterosexual, I think… I hate to say no, because I don’t want to generalize for the entire cis-het community, but I think historically, we’ve only seen people come to understand the issue when they have some type of personal connection to it.
And I feel that way even with, you know, I was a really big supporter of President Obama, but President Obama very similarly ran on a platform not supporting marriage equality early on, and then later was very vocal about his daughters helping him understand but also friends and family, that they had and knew that made the issue real. And so, I think there’s an issue of unless there’s a personal connection to the LGBTQ community, cisgender and heterosexual people just aren’t getting it, and I hate to generalize because I’m sure there are some people who don’t have a personal connection and get it, but I think that until it becomes personal, that’s the only time we see especially politicians take up this issue.
MIRA: Yeah.
PARADIS: And I think even historically, we’ve seen the opposite, where it could be something personal, and they take the opposite stance because of a lot of internalized homophobia and heterosexism, so…
MIRA: Do you believe that any individuals have an impact similar or even differently than history?
PARADIS: I do, I think that, you know, going off of this thing and making it personal, making people recognize the importance of our existence, I think it really speaks to the power of story-telling, and in some ways it can be scary, but sometimes reaching across and having experiences and telling our stories, and meet people, and talk about our lives, and talk about how critical it is to be supported and feel valid in a time where people are actively working to erase that. I think there are things that start to make a difference, and I think historically we’ve seen that. I think that there are tons of examples of historical LGBTQ figures, um, Audre Lorde and Harvey Milk and Baynard Rustin, a huge civil rights leader that was also a member of the queer community, and I think all those people and their stories and having those stories recorded and being able to share those with people, I think that’s really powerful.
MIRA: Yeah.
PARADIS: And I think that’s things that kind of speak to power a bit.
MIRA: Mhmm. The fact that we still… idolize these people today, to some degree?
PARADIS: Yeah, and I think um, there’s so many, and these are just the stories that we know now, and there are so many stories that have been erased – you know, in class we’ve talked about Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, and there’s just hundreds and hundreds of examples of people that we don’t know about that were doing this work for so long, because predominantly it’s who’s been privileged, is who is able to tell stories, and so I think in the era of the internet, it’s getting a bit easier, you know, for marginalized and underrepresented groups of people to share their stories or go viral or you know, try to make those connections, and I think that is really powerful and I hope to see that momentum build as a platform to tell stories that have been erased for so long.
MIRA: So have you ever lived in a more, um, city or suburban area?
PARADIS: I haven’t actually lived… well, I very briefly lived in Towson, which is kind of a suburb of Baltimore, but that was a brief time that I’ve travelled and been in cities a lot, so I can pull from those experiences just within those areas.
MIRA: Yeah, how would you describe the attitude… towards LGBTQ+ individuals today in urban areas as opposed to in rural areas? Because there are so many universities, like Susquehanna, with a great number of LGBTQ+ individuals.
PARADIS: I think overall that we’ve become… there’s a higher level of tolerance, but I always feel I don’t want to be tolerated, I want to be accepted, I want to be comfortable and feel safe. And so, even though that I think we have moved forward in terms of tolerance, I still think that we have a long way to go in terms of acceptance, and I think there are some differences. I mean, just in terms of (and this will a nice segway into the next question), but if you look at the locations of where pride events are happening, are in large cities.
MIRA: Yeah, all the biggest events are still in like, San Francisco and New York City and Chicago.
PARADIS: Absolutely. And I think you’re seeing more rural pride events cropping up, you’re seeing more at Burkes County, which is close to Philly but more in the Redding area, they do a pride event. I know Northeastern PA does a pride event, I know Harrisburg, so still kind of larger centers than rural areas, but still rural when you compare them to large cities. I noticed in terms of attending these pride events, all of them still very much have silent support for people there, but there’s always protestors, there’s always at least one at Harrisburg. Though those numbers have gotten smaller, they’re still there, it’s just a reminder that those people are still out there and still, ya know, being violent and just harassing. I think that in terms of rural versus urban, I think I’m… more concerned about safety in rural areas, you know, in terms of, if I’m in an area, for example, attending the farm show once at Harrisburg and a partner that I was with at the time, we had driven separately, and she was kissing me goodbye and I remember, like, she did that without thinking and I stiffened and immediately felt like this panic and this need to look around, because I didn’t feel safe there for that.
MIRA: So even in a more populated area like Harrisburg, you still don’t feel safe showing affection for a partner.
PARADIS: Yeah, and I’ve even seen that like, not that long ago in Philly there was that really public beating of two gay men by three people, and when I was in Philly last fall, I was actually there for the Trans Wellness Conference that the Mazzoni center organizes, and my partner and I were walking through the gaybourhood, and this woman walked by and said to these… these two men that were literally just smoking on their porch, she said: “are you waiting for a parade?” Which was just like this… and the one guy got very offended and was like, “what’s that supposed to mean” and she was immediately like “ooh, it’s just a joke” but it was…
MIRA: It wasn’t, though.
PARADIS: Exactly.
MIRA: It was only a joke once he stood up for himself.
PARADIS: Exactly, and it was just like this super blatant microaggression, so I think you can be in urban areas and still see and hear those things. I mean, granted, that was more in the scope of a microaggression (in terms of I didn’t feel physically unsafe in that space), but… I think it’s still something you’re still always thinking about, it never goes away.
MIRA: How do you believe that queer youth should go about the next few years, if they want to do something?
PARADIS: I think a lot of it is about paying attention and being active and knowing what’s going on and being involved in that process. Voting, running for office, supporting candidates that have your best interests, there’s so many websites now that really will lay out all the candidates that are running, and you can see ‘okay, is this person supporting LGBTQ rights or issues, are they not?’ And if they’re not, don’t vote for them [both laugh] please.
And I think local elections are critically important; so often we vote in presidential elections but we don’t vote in our local elections, and these have huge effects on the ordinances that are in our area. We still don’t have in PA a statewide non-discrimination ordinance for LGBTQ people, so we’re having to go county to county and municipality to municipality to even get that right, so it’s important to pay attention to what’s happening locally, but I think it’s equally important to take breaks and to know when you need to check out for a little bit and when you need that space, because I mean, the news has just been really… dismal, and dreary, and sad, and frustrating and angering, and I think if we solely are in this issue one-hundred percent of the time, our batteries will be completely drained, so I think it’s incredibly important to be aware and to participate, but also to take the time you need for yourself to recharge because we need it.
MIRA: Yeah… do you believe that what’s going on now is even comparable to queer rights issues we’ve had to deal with in the past?
PARADIS: I think it is. I think it’s… I think it’s kind of in this boat of different and the same at the same time, if that makes sense?
MIRA: Yeah.
PARADIS: I think in some aspects we’re fighting… we’ve been fighting for the same rights for so long, I mean, just employment discrimination and, you know, housing discrimination and hate crime legislation. Those are things the LGBTQ+ community has been fighting for long before Stonewall, and we still don’t have that. In the United States, in lots of other countries around the world, too. But I also think… I think that there are some levels of privilege even within the community.
And I already touched on this a little bit, but I think there are, um… [Dr. Paradis sighs] I think it’s so different where you are and what spaces you’re in, but I do think we have a little more respect when we speak than we used to. I think that just understanding that just to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community doesn’t mean that you have a mental illness.
MIRA: Yeah, that’s a big one.
PARADIS: It’s huge, and so in some ways it is very different, in that we can tell our stories and I think people listen to us more than they used to. I recognize that’s not universal for everybody in the community, but generalizing I think that we have a little bit more respect and autonomy when we’re speaking and when we’re telling our stories, but I absolutely think we still have a long way to go.
MIRA: Before we wrap up, is there anything else you’d wanna touch on or say?
PARADIS: I just think it’s incredibly for everyone to recognize that a lot of what we’ve been taught and what we know about has predominantly come from stories, you know, stories written down by people with privilege, and so a lot of what we know—what we think we know is one sliver of a huge picture, and any time you’re looking at any issue, making sure that you’re looking at multiple perspectives and multiple sides of that issue and that history because it’s very easy to get locked into understanding an issue from your own experience, and thinking about how someone in the LGBTQ, or a person of colour, or a person with a physical disability, or a person with English as a second language may be being affected by this topic, this law, this history in a way that has been erased or previously not elevated.
MIRA: And it’s important to put yourself in other people’s shoes.
PARADIS: Yeah.
…
MIRA: It’s nice to be reminded that the history of people who love differently extends so much further back than what we may think of. A part of this, I think, is related to the visibility of LGBTQ+ people. Before a certain point, the privileged were the ones who told the stories, and they rarely told stories about us.
In the last sixty years, the United States perspective on us has grown slowly into something that Dr. Paradis described as tolerance… as opposed to acceptance. We still have a way to go in that department… but I believe we’ll get there.
…
MIRA: As we move towards acceptance, however, people within the LGBTQ+ community have begun to use (or reject) increasingly accurate labels, much to the irritation of those who had not heard of this developing language of sexual orientation and gender identity. As discourse grows in the LGBTQ+ community surrounding how to identify ourselves, how do we navigate this with the rest of the local community?
[“Pretty Boys Make Me Feel Ugly” by the Gays plays]
KAY (Narrating): Hi, I’m Kay, and Im going to be talking to you about gender.
The LGBTQ+ community has made tremendous strides in the past several decades. WE hav fought long and hard for our rights and just recognition. On of the reasons the LGBTQ+ community has had to fight so hard is because we defy traditional (and oppressive) gender norms. we have fought to break down all the constraints that the past imposed on our genders, and after years of fighting, we are starting to make a change. But how far will that change go? the more we challenge gender boundaries and definitions, the more our perceptions of gender as a concept evolves.
[“Pretty Boys Make Me Feel Ugly” fades out]
KAY: The current definition of gender from the Oxford Dictionary is: either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered in reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female.
So, what does that mean? Let’s break it down. Traditionally, people have believed there were only two genders that were synonymous with the two biological sexes, male and female. Gender referred to the characteristics and personality traits that people of the same sex tended to share. But the definition I just read emphasized the “reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.” That brings us to the modern belief that many people hold: that sex and gender are two different things. There is a large group of people who have rejected the gender binary and instead say that gender is a spectrum. There are those who are transgender, identifying with a gender other than the ones they were assigned by others at birth. There are also those (like myself) who are agender, choosing not to identify with any gender label at all. We are slowly moving away from the idea that gender expression really has anything to do with biological characteristics. but as we move away from that idea, it becomes harder and harder to define gender.
[“Pretty Boys Make Me Feel Ugly” fades in]
KAY: the Oxford Dictionary definition doesn’t really mean anything to me. It seems to be saying “this is about sex, but it’s also not about sex. So I decided to ask my friends if they could define it. What is gender?
[“Pretty Boys Make Me Feel Ugly” stops]
DYLAN: Bullshit. it’s whatever you want it to be. I mean, I know somebody who’s agender—I know several people who are agender! And, uh, it is whatever you want it to be. I mean who cares about the label? We make all these labels within the LGBT community, or even in within regular society, we make all these labels, and then no one uses them anyway.
Why do they matter? Why do, why do we have to put labels—I’m a guy, okay? Cool! I-I like, you know, being outdoors and shooting guns and I also like, I don’t know, shopping or something. I don’t know what stereotypical feminine thi—I like nice smelling hygiene care products. A lot of my shower supplies, I find in the women’s section. I pay a little more for that. And it’s annoying, and it’s stupid that we label something, because of an arbitrary label put on something, we make it a little more expensive, but eh, bullshit, that’s my answer.
VALERIE: Really, it is low-key made up. I mean that could be just something from, you know, people telling me, like, “gender isn’t real.” When you really come down to think about it, “the entirety of this group of people with a certain body part needs to act and be this certain way, and this other group with a different body part has to be completely different,” is such a strange idea, when you really come down to it. So, really for gender, if you’re coming to the terms of like sex and gender are different, gender is just this thing that can’t really be defined, it’s just how people express themselves. And it just comes down to if someone wants feminine pronouns, you know, masculine pronouns. Which even, even then, that binary is just a funny result, the idea of gender in the first place.
MITCH: Gender is a set of social stereotypes that we associate to sex, that we use in an attempt to oppress each other.
ERIN: Gender is a strange thing that . . . everyone is trying to define, but no one can really define it in a clear manner. Partly because, you know society has expectations for what each gender will do, which is hilarious to me because everyone just kind of does their own thing, regardless of their gender. Um, and others, recognizing that the expectations towards gender are useless, say “well there’s—gender’s just what it is, and there’s no reason to put so much emphasis or expectations on someone based on their gender.”
KAY: (Interviewing) Do you believe in the current popular theory that sex and gender are two different things?
ERIN: Yes. Because sex indicates a biological level, while gender is more . . . mental and emotional, than merely—than merely physical, and merely biological—
KAY: Do you think—there is some odd way in that gender is always in some way tied to sex though. Do you think it should be? Do you think we need gender at all?
ERIN: I don’t necessarily think we need gender. I think, as far as our desire to categorize things, it’s helpful to have gender, but it’s not necessarily something that, you know, people need.
KAY: But if gender is just a collection of stereotypes, does it really mean anything?
ERIN: . . . Only as much as we like to give it meaning.
KAY: (Narrating) Everyone I talked to had surprisingly similar ideas about what gender was or what it wasn’t. The idea that gender was this limited and almost unnecessary concept was so prevalent with everyone I spoke to that I knew we couldn’t be the only ones who were thinking this.
I decided to do a little research, and this led me to the discovery of Post-Genderism. Post-Genderism is a social, political, and cultural movement which came from the eroding of the definition of gender. And it’s also an argument for why that erosion of binary gender is actually a good thing and will liberate us. Post-Genderists argue that gender is an arbitrary and unnecessary limitation on human potential, and Post Genderists foresee the elimination of involuntary biological and psychological gendering in the human species as a result of social and cultural evolution, and through the application of modern technology.
Essentially, they believe that we don’t need gender any more. In the past it referred to our reproductive roles, but we as a society are striving to move past seeing people only for what their body does. WE define people now through how they behave, what they like, how they impact the people around them, not by what their body chemistry does. Nowadays when people refer to gender-expression, they’re referring to what you look like, what you wear, how you behave. Do we really need a gender category for that?
MITCH: At some point, we will live in a society where gender as a concept no longer exists. Because all gender is, is the stereotypes surrounding sex, and hopefully we will get to the point where the stereotypes no longer exist. Ergo the need for the social construct that is gender will no longer be needed.
DYLAN: I—I think it’s okay to have a separation between sex and gender, because sex is like, this is what you are assigned at birth, and until you figure otherwise and change that gender is kind of who you choose to be, so you can stay within those parameters if that fits you, or you can leave it, if that so fits you. And I think that one day this argument will be, you know, null and void, but we’re no there yet, and we need the baby steps to get there. And I think that some of those baby steps are having a separation.
KAY: (Narrating) Not everyone is a Post-Genderist. And, as the people I talked to mentioned, gender is a useful tool to explain who we are and how we feel. But they only have as much meaning as we give them, and there may come a day when they don’t mean anything at all.
[“The Community” by The Gays fades in]
KAY: Thank you for listening, up next, Richard is going to be teaching us about the art of gender expression and drag on our campus.
[“The Community” continues to play]
RICHARD: Historically, Drag has been here forever. From the Ancient Greeks to Shakespeare to Ball Culture to Drag Race, drag has been here and drag does not seem like it’s about to go away. But, where is it now? It’s a lot closer than you think it might be. Hi, my name is Richard, I am a Junior at Susquehanna, I am a queer man and I am a Drag Queen.
[“The Community” fades out]
RICHARD: Jasmine Masters, a drag queen that competed on RuPaul’s Drag Race, once said, “Rupaul’s Drag Race done fucked up drag.” When I first heard that phrase, I was a baby queen that started while watching Drag Race. I completely disagreed with that phrase, I thought it discounted the careers of many of the queens that have made it through Drag Race. But, after learning more about drag and the community that surrounds it, I came to agree with that phrase more and more. It was never to discount the performers that went through Drag Race or those that started because of the show, rather it was a way to say that there became a normalization of drag, but in a way that harms many other performers. While Drag Race is great in that Queerness and Queer Culture suddenly became a household concept within heteronormative culture, heteronormative culture in itself ruined drag. Drag Queens, but mostly Fishy Drag, became the face of drag everywhere, which discounts other forms of drag, especially for beginner performers, kings, and performers whose drag does not follow traditional forms of beauty. For those of you who don’t know the term Fishy, it is used among drag queens as a joke to say that a queen is so close to traditional femininity that they can practically smell the fish on them. In my interview with Kelsey Dowling, a Junior here at Susquehanna and one of the only other drag performers on campus, we go in depth on the ways that mainstream drag has affected the smaller drag worlds.
[Pause]
RICHARD: Mainstream drag. So like drag queens, rupaul’s drag race has become very big at the moment. How do you feel that impacts the smaller drag communities?
KELSEY: Well, we already know that the people who are at the top are already the people who, like, a lot of the people who are at the top are people who really don’t need the audience and like I’m talking specifically like your Eureka O’Hara and, like, I hate to call out another O’hara, but Phi Phi O’hara, a lot of people who are at the top of people who don’t really need the audiences and who are spreading incredibly harmful messages. And a lot of these people are also, like, we okay. We know that the drag community has a terrible racism problem. We have known this for a while. We also know it has an incredibly big issue with defab performers, whether they be, um, bio queens or drag kings. And to me that ties back to the gatekeeping in the queer community or LGBTQIA, depending on whoever you ask. But there’s just this growing issue of like, if you are not masc presenting skinny white and like cis passing or like androgynous looking in the fashionable sense, then you aren’t worth listening to. So being someone who is bigger and has a very pronounced feminine figure, being in those spaces is difficult specifically because no one wants to listen to you and so no one wants to listen to the drag that you’ve cultivated because it’s not an experience that they think you shouldn’t be having. And that also goes back to the gatekeeping of non-cis people out of the queer community and like keeping the T in LGBT silent and also not acknowledging that drag was created because of trans women cultivating gender as a performance, like, that the first drag queens were trans women and constantly cis men who are in the queer community who do drag forget this constantly.
RICHARD: Yeah, that’s a big problem, like, queer 101 lesson, please.
KELSEY: Yes. So yeah, just like the antifemme orientation of the queer community, silences a lot of performers, especially when there are… I know so many kings who have auditioned for Rupaul’s drag race because there is no rule that says it has to be Queens. Even like looking in the show, there’s specifically like specific times in which masculinity is performed on stage, like Milk doing the Rupaul in the workroom look, the Lionel Richie from Snatch Game. Like, there are specific references to masculinity in that show. The problem is that once you have someone who’s defab or who is femme, who is presenting these like masculine characters, it’s then invalidated by that person’s original identification as femme.
RICHARD: Yeah.
KELSEY: Yeah, and like it’s also difficult because there’s less visibility for trans men in any trans space. There’s not much visibility for trans men who are non… like, non-binary trans, so like we’re talking like demi-boys, like agender, people who identify as men. There’s not much space for them in conversations and then also in the drag community, if you’re defab and in any of those other subsets of gender identification, you’re not getting anything. And this is coming from, like, identify as a nonbinary person who is trans-masculine. Like there’s very little of us in the drag community because there’s no, like, there’s nothing for us to base that off of other than like if you go way back in history and look at, like, Marlene Dietrich or like any 1920’s to 40’s Vaudeville gender performance in which there is masculinity being shown on stage. You don’t really have much to base your stuff off of unless you want to be mislabeled as a butch lesbian. [Pause] Finding people in smaller communities that you can like find and love and share and support is probably my favorite part. I don’t really like drag in the whole mainstream sense only because like, I don’t know, a lot of the queen seem a little too cookie cutter for my taste. Like, even looking on, like, because we reference drag race a lot because it is like the main form of drag in the mainstream, like it’s basically that, all of my favorite queens are like the weirder ones. So, like my all time favorite is Sasha Velour. But also, my second favorite queen is her daughter, Vander Von Odd. I love her. I’m, I’m obsessed with the way that she presents glamour and femininity in horror and
RICHARD: and like I think one of the great things like now, especially within Dragula and because it’s on youtube, it brings like this entire, like Internet culture and having everyone go to the Internet and looking at performances that people have recorded and like because sometimes it’s harder to get to like uh…
KELSEY: It’s hard to support local queen so…
RICHARD: It’s really hard, especially when like you don’t know if there is a drag culture around you and so like being able to support them online, their instagram, their twitter, their everything and like being able to delve into like drag daughters, drag cousins, drag sons, drag everything and just, like, delving into it and like, learning more about, like, the different kinds of drag.
[Pause]
RICHARD: Drag has many different routes that one can follow.
There are Kings, Queens, and Gender Fucks. And then within their own sections there are other paths to follow like Mainstream, Horror, Club Kid, and Greaser just to name a few. Every person that does drag has their own definition to their own kind of drag. For me, I see my drag as theatrical, as a way to create a character that I like to say is me, but better. Regina Shookspeare is smart and cunning, sexy and sweet, and most of all confident in herself. On a small campus, that is pretty hard to be. With a campus that could be walked at a leisurely pace from one end to the other in half an hour, it can feel claustrophobic at times, especially when you stick out like a wonky eyelash. I remember my friend telling me that I’m very brave for wearing drag to classes every once in a while and I told them that I was actually very afraid and it was my character that made me seem confident. Drag, above everything else, is a performance of sexuality and gender in an extremely visual fashion. While there are straight and bio performers, there are a lot more queer and gender non binary performers. I would like to preface by saying that I don’t want to exclude their narratives, I think they are just as important as all other performers, but I do want to focus more on the Queer aspects of drag more in this segment. So they are here and you should look them up too, they deserve just as much love. In my interview with Kelsey, we talk about the ways that our drag characters have shaped us and how we shape them.
[Pause]
RICHARD: How do you define drag?
KELSEY: I define drag as the personification and performance of gender expression and gender exploration.
RICHARD: How do you express yourself through your drag character?
KELSEY: For me, it’s a lot of blending masculinity into other niche types of style in art and performance. So like exploring what does masculinity mean in this context or what does it mean with this sort of different lens of performativity over it. So I don’t know. I’m just kind of exploring it through that lens and being like, oh, how can I use masculinity as a pop culture reference? Or like what kind of things can I base this? Like what kind of like pop culture references and like music and theming can I use to communicate how I’m viewing masculinity.
[Pause]
RICHARD: Drag on this small campus is almost nonexistent. Like I mentioned earlier, Kelsey and I are only a couple of a few performers on campus. Before starting my research for this episode, I was under the assumption that Kelsey and I were the only performers here. In my research, though, I found out there were a couple others that do drag off campus and bring it with them here. I, of course, was really excited about these findings and I told Kelsey. Here is their reaction and thoughts.
[Pause]
RICHARD: How do you perceive the drag community on this campus currently?
KELSEY: Um, before this interview you told me that there is potentially maybe one to two other people on campus currently who are doing drag, which blows my mind absolutely completely because we just like, I’ve always just kind of accepted that it was just us on campus just like us, two plus like one to maybe like five other people who do it like on Halloween or like during pride. I don’t know. I just, I really didn’t expect there to be that many people on this campus. Considering the conservative nature of it, knowing that there’s more people who do drag on campus is incredibly exciting to me so much because just being able to like talk and share this with other people. Understand and get it. Also love it. It’s like, Ooh, Ooh, it’s going to be so good.
RICHARD: How would you change the current on-campus drag community?
KELSEY: We just need more. We need more people who produce drag art, but also consume drag art. We need more safe places to perform drag art. We need more comfortable venues to be able to express queer art specifically. I guess that would also be changing campus culture itself as well because we do have a very anti-gay presence in this community. In less so in the university sense, but in like the Selinsgrove sense. Very, very red and that’s to be expected in such a small town in rural central Pennsylvania, but like living in the bubble on university, like, campus-wise. There is more of a liberal, like, say in most things and in most mindsets and tolerances.
[Pause]
RICHARD: As you can probably tell, the two of us are really excited for the drag community opening up on this campus especially now that we know our sister city of Sunbury has a poppin drag scene. Susquehanna’s campus is a little blue bubble in the sea of red that is Selinsgrove and it really does act like a tiny haven for queer people. Sunbury, like Selinsgrove, is also a heavy red area, so hearing that the drag scene there is as great as it is is interesting. Kelsey and I and some of our friends are already making plans to go there soon and see where we can fit in.
[Pause]
RICHARD: Many performers have made a career out of drag performance, but many more have a secondary job besides drag. Some work in retail and others work as CEO’s. Drag on a smaller scale is mostly a passion. A lot of the time, Drag is self-funding in that the money made in performance goes back into the drag character, so makeup, costumes, and essentials like duct tape and pantyhose. A second job becomes a necessity. So there is this struggle of being visibly or not so visibly queer in the workplace and in professional settings. This doesn’t only apply to people who do drag but everyone within the queer community. Stay tuned for the next segment in which Cesca explores issues of queerness in the workplace.
[“Our World” by The Gays plays]
CESCA: As Richard said, my name is Cesca, and I don’t know what I’m doing. And I’m a chaotic neutral 2nd level Gay Human. And I’m not ready to think about my future.
I was deep in the closet in high school—in fact, it took me most of high school to realize I was even in a closet. It wasn’t until I started college that I started to feel comfortable. I didn’t just open the closet, I practically dropkicked the door. I was finally someplace where I could feel comfortable with being gay and, eventually, non-binary. But, as I’m starting my senior year of college, I realize that soon I won’t be in this comfortable, gay bubble anymore. I’ll be dropped into the real world, which means I’ll need to get a job. There are so many things that make me anxious about being a real adult, but there’s one that haunts my brain: will I need to cover up my identity for the sake of employment?
[“Our World” Fades out]
CESCA: In May of 2018, a Texas elementary school art teacher, Stacy Bailey, was suspended after she showed students a picture of her and her girlfriend, now wife. In 2013, Aimee Stephens was fired from her job at a funeral home for telling her employer she was a trans woman and was going to start dressing that way. The fact is that there are 28 states that can legally fire people for being gay or trans, not to mention the orientation discrimination that exists in other countries. I could avoid working in those states, but not everyone can, and there is still a risk.
So now I’m worried about my life after college, and for my friends in the LGBT+ community, and all LGBT+ college students who might share my anxieties. Instead of doing my usual, “Oh no, what am I to do? I’ll rewatch The Good Place again and eat pizza—self care” routine, I figured I should do something about it, and I did. I met with someone who helps college students in this situation like it’s her job. Because, it is.
MICHAELINE: Good morning, my name is Michaeline Shuman and on campus I serve as the Director of the Career Development Center.
CESCA: Michaeline is also the advisor to Susquehanna University’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance, so she’s the perfect person to talk to. The first thing I wanted to know was if there have been other LGBT+ students in my situation who have visited the Career Development Center for help.
MICHAELINE: Certainly, and I think one of the…positive aspects of myself serving as the advisor to our Gender and Sexuality Alliance, as well as identifying as a queer woman, is being able to relate to the concerns and anxieties that students have when they’re going into the job market. Particularly in the current political climate and with the news that’s constantly kind of breaking about how…LGBT rights are being eroded under the current administration. We see students who are concerned about not only looking for jobs, but even looking for internships and wondering how an employer might deal with their identity, or their preference for pronouns. So it’s something that we’ve had a lot more experience with in the past few years, and are starting to even work to better educate the employers who visit campus about what’s going on with the students of today’s generation and how can employers best support and prepare for that.
CESCA: Now, I’m a creative writing major, and I may continue writing as my work, but after years of being asked, “But how will you make money?” I have come to admit that I’ll probably need to find at least another job; preferably a job that is LGBT+ friendly. But not every field is friendly. What’s the best thing I could do to find out?
MICHAELINE: Well, I would agree with you that there perhaps are some fields aligned with some majors, like your own, that might be more progressive, right? But I would also imagine that even in the field of writing, or creative writing, there are probably subsets of the industry that might have a more conservative bent, or might have an alignment with a particular belief set that doesn’t really welcome or value the LGBT community.
For any student with any particular identity or concern that they have about their beliefs, or something that they are very passionate about, we advise all students to do their research. Consider the type of industry they are interested in working in and how it might align with acceptance of their identities and any other values that they want to feel welcomed in their place of work—again, for either internship or job. We work with students to help them do that research, to connect them with alums, perhaps, who work in those organizations.
Again, it gets to that research. In terms of—you mentioned, you know, business students or other majors, again I think it really depends on the industry that one wants to work in and whether or not they can find evidence of inclusivity and education, and training for all the staff that work there.
We’ve talked a lot about doing research, about industries and employers and whatnot. The other thing to do is to do some self-reflection and to decide for yourself: at what stage in the search process might you feel safe and comfortable disclosing your identity?
CESCA: In the interview, I bring up the fact that I can easily act less gay, and dress or act more feminine, if there’s a chance I could be fired. But that’s not the same for everyone. According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, more than one in four transgender people have lost a job due to bias.
MICHAELINE: Well I think you raise an important point, because for somebody who is in transition also has to take into account, you know, what are the other things that they might need to do that would impact the work environment? So we work with students here who identify as transgender and are in transition, or want to start to identify as a different gender, particularly around issues like name change, right? We are very fortunate here that our registrar will use a preferred name regardless of what legal name exists, for us. However, if you’re getting closer to graduation and you want to do your job search and use your–your preferred name, or the name that best aligns with how you identify, we tell students it’s also a good time to start that legal process if you want to legally change your name. Because then you don’t even need to have the conversation with anybody until you might be comfortable having it.
CESCA: I also asked Michaeline what her experiences were when looking for jobs in the past, like if she kept certain things quiet and what types of things made it easier for her during the process.
MICHAELINE: I have interviewed and applied to positions both completely out of the closet, and more in the closet. In fact, when I applied to Susquehanna, I remember reading that we were a Lutheran affiliated institution, and I wasn’t really sure where Susquehanna stood. I was doing some research online; wasn’t a lot available that was giving me an indicator. So I scaled back on some of my social media profile, on LinkedIn in particular, and also left indicators on my resume. So, you know, showed past experience with advising a GSA at another institution, but took off some of my personal activities in my personal, kind of, service and volunteer work with different organizations that are LGBT+. And I remember sighing a deep sigh of relief when I came to campus for my on-campus interview, because one of the people on the search committee who they intentionally sat me next to at dinner is a member of the LGBT+ community, and at one point in–in the dinner conversation, we had that sidebar moment and I said, “Oh, are we good here?” And got the, “Yup, this is great and here’s—let me tell you how.” And that’s all I needed.
Now, for some, we might need more, right? In another work environment, outside higher ed—higher ed is pretty progressive and much more liberal minded in terms of LGBT support than other places, other industries.
CESCA: The last thing I asked Michaeline about was if the Career Development Center had any resources for LGBT+ students. The page she mentions will be linked in the description for anyone who is interested.
MICHAELINE: For students and alumni, we developed a resource page, so we have a—and I’ll show you, visually—we have a career resources page that, um, focuses not just on career support, job, and internship resources, but also talks about some scholarships that are available to LGBT students, and then gives an oversight on the back of the, of the one page document about local and regional support groups. So this has been helpful for students who are both looking for career related kinds of avenues, as well as students that just want support in the region. Maybe they need to go talk to somebody about transitioning. You know, our health center is a first step, but then there are organizations and nonprofits—not right in Selinsgrove, but at least nearby—that have served as a resource. And our GSA group is good about also trying to take students to conferences and other events and workshops to connect them to resources, career and non-career related.
CESCA: My meeting with Michaeline really helped me knock down some of the anxieties I have about employment in general. I mean, it’s still something I’m intimidated by, but at least I took the first step towards advancing my life. To some people, this might not seem like a huge deal, but for others, it’s a real problem and fear. I know that what I learned from Michaeline will help me in the next semester as I approach the next stage of adulthood.
[“Our World” fades in]
CESCA: The world is not a super friendly place right now, and we don’t know what’s going to happen next. It feels like something bad happens every day, and that can be a hopeless feeling. But, we as a community have been through so much in the last couple of decades to get to where we are, and I know that we’ll keep fighting to make the world less shitty, even if it could take decades more. I’ve accidentally made this sound a bit dramatic, which is kind of a weird vibe to end a podcast episode on, but it’s been done. Thank you for letting us show you our Gay Gaze.
[“Our World” plays for a bit, then fades out]
[“Wrong Number” fades in and plays]
RICHARD: Y’all, what did we learn this episode?
KAY: That we’re all very gay.
[Agreement from everyone]
RICHARD: Well, yes…
MIRA: And that recent decades show we ain’t done fightin’ Yet for acceptance
KAY: Amen
RICHARD: Yeah, b-
KAY: Oh, oh also, that gender is this weird fluid concept that nobody understands anymore
RICHARD: Of course-
CESCA: Definitely the fact that we can still get jobs while being gay
RICHARD: Absolutely. BUT, y’all are missing one very important thing. It never hurts to ask for music.
ALL: [Says thank you to The Gays]
RICHARD: Yes! Thank you to the band The Gays for allowing us to use their music off their album “The Agenda.” Specifically, Wrong Number, Funk Friend, Pretty Boys Make Me Feel Ugly, The Community, and Our World.
CESCA: And a thank you to everyone for listening.
RICHARD: We hope you came away with something important.
KAY: Or that you at least had fun while listening.
MIRA: And that concludes, Me/Us/U
ALL: Bye everyone!
[“Wrong Number” slowly fades out]
[END]