Episode 4:

About

In this final part of a 3-week conversation, Chris and Soren fully lean into both vulnerability and authenticity as they continue to share their personal stories with listeners. In today’s episode, Chris and Soren wrap up their discussion of travel, education, privilege, and the role their queer identities have played in how they experience the world and how the world experiences them. Episode 4 allows listeners to get to know Chris and Soren better and provides insight into how our co-hosts approach life all around them.

*Please note that this episode contains sensitive behavioral health topics such as suicide and substance use. If you are experiencing a behavioral health crisis, please contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling 988 or visiting www.988lifeline.org.

**This podcast is for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered health advice. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice.

Transcript

Chris: Soren, hi! Welcome back and I also understand how your parents have that mama papa bear perspective too. I mean, that’s another lens that I think it’s important for us to talk about in this conversation about travel and seeing the world because one of the other lenses that you view the world through when you travel is through the lens of a young student, queer individual.

Soren: Being outside of the bubble here in Maine and here in our smaller towns of Maine and being out there and living such an unapologetically authentic life as you do and as you should with that comes a little bit of fear or maybe a lot of fear.

Chris: Well yeah, I honestly I’m not afraid of being like attacked for my identity or the way I express myself in other countries but like my parents feel a lot of fear for that. I feel a lot of fear. We’ve talked about this, right? I feel that fear for you and for others.

Soren: Well, like you’ve traveled internationally on many occasions. What’s your experience with that?

Chris: So, my husband and I both I think would see ourselves as informed consumers of the travel industry. There are places that I don’t even need to mention that are completely not on my list of places to go because of that country’s laws, culture, or perspective on things like gender identity and sexual orientation. They’re not even remotely on the list of places to go. We won’t even consider that because I like you want to be able to show up in the world whether it’s here in Maine or in Portugal or China or the UK as myself with my husband who happens to also be a man obviously.

Soren: Your risk tolerance is probably higher than mine. I’m much more in terms of risk, I see myself a little bit more conservative. I do fear for my safety at times and even just south of our country, going on cruises and being in Mexico. My husband and I got our symbolic wedding, which our seven-year anniversary of that wedding is tomorrow, in Punta Cana, the Dominican. We were told right out of the gate do not wear your wedding rings, do not hold hands, do not show affection by our travel agent outside of that resort. When you’re in the resort, you’re protected. Those walls, both physical and metaphorical, will keep you safe and the hotel staff who are absolutely relying on your tips and your tourism dollars, you’ll be safe. The minute your transportation van leaves, you’re not married.

Chris: That’s really unfortunate. And just like I sit with that and that’s, you know, we talk about privilege, right? Which is a part of what we want to explore over our time together. And I think that’s a privilege that a lot of heterosexual and cisgender folks, friends of mine who we travel with, have not or cannot really truly appreciate.

Soren: Today’s episode has been brought to you by the Inspired Allies certificate course, a module designed to support providers in honing their confidence and competence in better partnering with the LGBTQ+ community. The overlay of these dynamics of self-worth, of oppression, of living a life of not necessarily being able to be authentic or true. When I think back about what we were sharing with the travel pieces, the privilege that my husband and I have of being able to go to places like the Dominican and be a little on the DL while we’re traveling for safety purposes, there’s privilege there too. Many layers of privilege because we always get to come back to a supportive environment and be surrounded by people who love us and care about us.

Chris: That’s true and like I think even in Maine there’s so many children that can’t go back to a supportive environment. Keeping your identity on the down-low and keeping who you are on the down-low is just a constant state of existence. Not even with being queer, although that is a major factor in identity, people are afraid to show who they are because they’re afraid of rejection, so then we homogenize ourselves.

Soren: Which is a hallmark of adolescence, right?

Chris: Hallmark of adolescence, yeah. You know, here’s what I know, Soren, and you shared earlier on in this conversation about how you’ve never really had that fear when you travel of being you and living your life unapologetically. I know your parents have had those considerations though and some of the travel decisions that your family has made, or you’ve made as a family, you might not necessarily in this moment have been aware, but a lot has gone into “Okay, Soren, we love Soren, we want Soren to be Soren, and we’ve got to think about where we’re going to stay, how we’re going to get there, what Soren’s documentation or papers say.” As you’re exploring going away to college, trust me when I say your parents have had considerable conversations with themselves, with me, with others about would we feel any different if Soren had decided to go to college in Mexico?

Soren: Well, I was just about to touch on that exactly, right? I have been allowed to maintain this mindset and be unafraid to be who I am and be unabashed in that even in the school system exclusively because my parents paid so much attention while I was being raised and continue to create an accepting environment for me where I can cultivate myself so that I have a harvest to show those around me. I don’t think that that’s the case with a lot of families. I was wondering if you could share a little bit about your childhood experience growing up as queer and what that looked like for you. Were your parents accepting? What was the situation?

Chris: Buckle up. It was a different time growing up in the 80s, a very different time. I cannot think of one out kid identifying male or female regardless during my high school career. There were kids like myself where there was a lot of talk, a lot of teasing, a lot of bullying. This was long before cell phones, long before the internet, so a lot of very traditional kind of teasing and bullying. Thinking back and having had conversations with some of those kids that I went to school with who are now living a very out authentic life, there was this sense of community that we never cultivated, probably because of being scared of Guilty By Association like we’ve been talking about. I was not out. It was not even an option to be out in the mid to late ’80s and early ’90s. That sense of shame and needing to hide, not calling attention to yourself, not raising your hand in class to talk because your voice was a little bit more feminine or a lot more feminine than the rest of the class, that was your kryptonite. The way that I showed up in school, I wasn’t the picture of masculine athleticism. The way I talked, the way I moved, my friends, my interests were not stereotypical masculine. That’s part of the strength that I see in myself now 40 years later, but back then I did everything I could to hide that, to keep that under wraps, to not draw attention to myself because to be authentic was to risk making yourself a target.

Chris: I remember some of the more painful memories of my childhood, calling other kids gay, calling other kids the F word, calling other kids queer, which back then was not an empowering word, it was an insult. All of those insulting words, I remember targeting other kids to be the bully because I did not want that target on me.

Soren: That’s very unfortunate. I’m sorry that you had to do that, but that is something that kids do a lot. If I have an insecurity, then I don’t want that to be drawn attention to for me. So it’s much easier to attempt to rally other people’s insecurities. It’s like a distraction and it creates negative experiences for others, and I see that today. Even though the students that I engage with are super far more mature in a classroom setting, oftentimes that still is the case. Especially in the academic competitive environment, sometimes kids will intentionally draw attention to the faults of others so that people don’t realize that they’re not performing on par or at the level they think they should be.

Chris: It’s human nature, what you’re talking about, part of the human condition. Here’s the other thing that I know, and I don’t pretend to have the data points from now 30, 40 years ago when I was a kid going through that internalized coming out process and thinking about identity tolerance and acceptance and who were the role models in the mid-80s. AIDS epidemic all over the news, in the early 90s don’t ask, don’t tell, Defense of Marriage Act, so the political environment wasn’t much different than it is today. What I remember is hearing things like one in 10, one in 10 was the common data point that would often be referenced, that one in 10 identify as LGBT. Here’s what we know now, 30 years later, as controversial as some might feel this is, here in our state of Maine the data is now looking at closer to 30% of high school students identifying somewhere on that LGBTQ+ continuum. That is night and day from the way that I grew up because what that also means is not just this idea of community that you were talking about, but when I was in school nobody even talked about having parents or family members, extended family members, siblings that were gay or lesbian or bi or trans. Now with this 30ish percent of kids identifying on that continuum, every kid knows another kid who identifies as LGBT. So, it’s this, there are friendships, relationships that have been cultivated, and it’s still a big deal. We’re in Maine, so we’ve got to honor that we might have some privileges of our state, but there are places in our country where it is absolutely not safe to be out in high school or middle school. There are places in Maine where that might be true, but generally speaking, I am blown away at the courage and bravery that youth of your age group are living their lives. I’m jealous of it, I’m envious of that ability. I often think about what my life might look like today if back in 1987, 1988 I could have been who I knew myself to be, like what might be different.

Soren: I’m just so fascinated because you touched on this, coming out to yourself almost, and I never had that process. I remember fifth grade, I talked to my mom and I was like, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m quite into boys.” She got a little afraid for me, and I remember not talking about it for another year. But I was given an environment in which that was totally okay, I could have that conversation. It didn’t even seem unnatural, it didn’t feel out of the norm because it was so allowed for in my household. But that’s not the case for most kids in this situation. You touched on how throughout human history the amount of queer people has probably been constant, the acceptance of queer people has not been though. You felt isolated and powerless in your situation because queer people were divided and not allowed to exist out in the open. Now, probably the same amount of queer individuals, we are just unified to some extent and allowed to live in the open, so it feels so much more empowering to do this.

Chris: Laverne Cox, who folks might know from Orange is the New Black, a very openly trans actress, in her documentary Disclosure, one of my favorite documentaries tracing Hollywood’s depiction of gender-diverse individuals since the black-and-white films, she says something along the lines of, “We’ve always been here,” and she goes on to talk about how she’s not interested in living a life of being erased. It’s not only about us always being here, it’s making sure you know that we’re here and that we’ve always been here.

Soren: I want to say for folks listening, you’ve referenced the environment that you’re growing up in and your parents. I have to say, my parents never uttered anything about, “You better not be, how dare you.” I grew up very similar to the way you’re growing up now, a very privileged childhood, wanted for nothing, totally committed, unconditionally loved. I often think about why, living in such an affirming household, my mom’s a worrier, sorry Judy if you’re listening. My mom’s a worrier and that may also have been under the surface, not wanting to do anything or be anything that would make somebody else worry about me. But my inability to acknowledge this in myself, or acknowledge it in myself but never say the words out loud, I did not come out to my parents formally until 1999, almost seven years after high school. I was in graduate school when I said those words to my parents. I was out to some groups and not others, and that’s part of what makes this time period so scary, who knows, who doesn’t know. This group knows, I can’t have these groups together because I don’t want this group to know. Trying to control and own the narrative, all the logistics, but not saying those words until I was 25 years old. Part of what drove those words happened to be the murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998, the day after my birthday. One of my defining moments was the news of Matthew Shepard’s death and kicking up two things: the tragedy, the sadness, the anger, and the fear that this is the world we live in where this can happen.

Soren: Like my mom especially, of the people that I know, it scares her, like the shooting in Orlando. Parents are afraid, it’s a scary environment for kids to be living in.

Chris: I want to go back to something you talked about in our first episode about balance. The fear mongering, we can talk about the realities and not use it as a morality tale or as folklore to keep kids in their beds at night. It’s not the boogeyman. We’re talking about real-life things that we’re processing at our different generational and age levels. We’re processing in our own ways, but this is real. We know that trans women of color are at the greatest risk of being murdered in our country and in our world, in some of the places that we’ve referenced already in this podcast, because of their trans identity. For me, and this is a conversation I’ve now had in my adult life with my mom and others who care about me, it’s trying to make space, holding two things at the same time. One of our themes for today, I guess, is I can love you and celebrate you and want you to be you in every sense of that word, and I can be scared for you. I can have both those things exist at the same time and struggle navigating those two things.

Soren: I totally agree, and you brought up higher rates of murder for queer trans women or Black women. We see that throughout the entire LGBTQ+ community. You and I, I think of people in the community, we’re almost at the highest level of privilege. We are white people with penises.

Chris: There’s the awesome podcast, not podcast, I’m sorry, TED Talk, and as we’re talking, I’m like, “Oh, how do we get these resources to people?” There’s an incredible TED Talk called The Aesthetics of Survival, and it’s by Neff. I’m blanking on Neff’s first name, but The Aesthetics of Survival. In this TED Talk, she talks about one’s ability to pass, either as straight or if trans or gender diverse, to be able to pass as a woman or a man in this world that we live in. You and I probably have the ability, if we chose to, to travel anywhere and pass. As white men on the outside, how we express our gender most of the time and how people see us, we’re white men. With that comes that privilege, but some of that privilege is the difference between life and death for so many.

Soren: Every human being code switches to adapt to different environments in which they’re in. But when somebody is expressing themselves, it sort of removes room for code switching. I think a lot of teenagers rely super heavily on code switching to their identity, which is why so many teenagers just become, as far as their expression goes, a gray blob.

Chris: What I know about code switching that is both tragic and fascinating, there’s the motivation behind code switching. Code switching as a social skill, I’m going to become somebody a little bit or a lot different in order to fit in, in order to get you to like me, laugh together, maybe create a friendship. Then there’s code switching for survival, and those for me exist on this spectrum of far left and far right. Code switching as a social skill is thought of as kind of higher-level thinking. Code switching as a survival technique, I don’t know what that feels like.

Soren: For me, at least in my middle school situation, those two things were blended quite closely. I still have residual fear and negative emotions attached to code switching as a result of that. I was on the football team in middle school and I remember being really afraid all the time when engaging with that. At dances and stuff too, when talking to these boys, at the time they were like men, they were scary. I was code switching socially to be accepted in this group, but if I wasn’t accepted, it wasn’t going to be pretty. It didn’t end up being very pretty.

Chris: There’s that survival. For folks listening, let’s talk a little bit about what code switching means because this might be a term that some people don’t necessarily understand yet. When we’re talking about code switching, here’s how I interpret this. Code switching is that need that one has, regardless of motivation, to either suppress a part of their identities or take on some new identities in order to better fit in, however one defines that. This is a very important topic in the DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) world as you think about employees’ experiences in the workplace and their ability to feel like they’re in an inclusive environment where they belong. As a gay man, my ability to hang with the straight men of the office might impact my success in my career or at that particular organization. It might hinge on my ability to bro out, go out for beers, hang out at the clubs, and other stereotypes about the men in the office. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the organization has made that a reality, but in the absence of a truly equitable or inclusive environment, I might need to resort to code switching in order to survive. We’re talking about survival from career advancement to life or death.

Soren: I totally agree. For me, I think of social situations as almost a puzzle, and to code switch is to augment one’s shape in order to fit into that framework. It’s to adjust mannerisms, to adjust the things that you normally talk about in order to more effectively fit in and engage with a certain group of people. Like what you were just saying made me think because it’s a balance between maintaining culture and creating an inclusive environment. Every friend group has its culture, but also reducing the idiosyncrasies of that in order to make it easier to engage with and more inclusive is really important. A lot of people on the right interpret attempting to create more equitable environments as their culture being erased. We’re making other people code switch to make it easier for us to exist. In my eyes, adhering to somebody’s pronouns or whatever is common courtesy. It makes them feel better, so I’m totally willing to do that. But for some people, they think that their worldview is being erased because somebody’s asking them to make them feel better about themselves.

Chris: Which is the height of privilege, I just have to say.

Soren: It’s important to be mindful of that.

Chris: I hope that maybe some of what we’ve been talking about already today is helping to inspire some of those conversations in some of our listeners’ worlds. You referenced dance and I had an immediate reaction to that. I remember in my childhood, the local YMCA, certain times of the month, it was the Y dance and everyone went to the Y dance. My experience in middle school and high school with Y dances is like a novel on this idea of code switching. Who you dance with, who you stand with, what you say, what you wear, who you even come and go with to those dances, what you do before and after, was all about keeping up appearances for me, a very closeted gay kid. I remember gravitating to one particular girl and we became boyfriend-girlfriend as survival, to get by. That individual now I know lives a very authentic queer life as well.

Soren: So hard for both of you. Sadly necessary.

Chris: Sadly necessary. We’re defining terms. Beard is when a queer person is in a relationship with somebody of the opposite sex in order to cover up their sexual orientation.

Soren: Masking, it’s about.

Chris: Sometimes these beards are mutual and sometimes they’re not, and that’s a totally different and interesting circumstance.

Soren: In beards where not both partners don’t know, or one partner doesn’t know.

Chris: Which I certainly have had in my life.

Soren: Who’s morally culpable for that?

Chris: These are conversations, these are some of the sleepless nights I had in my late teens, early 20s. I’m going to use the word regret, and I don’t mean that to imply that I live my life with a lot of regrets. I’m privileged to not have this laundry list of regrets in my life, but in the absence of another word, things I wish I had done differently is some of the harm I brought to people I cared about then and care about now due to my inability, whether internal or external, projected on me to live authentically. People I hurt in my life.

Soren: I think we’ve quite a…

Chris: We’ve met some of the goals of this podcast of sharing some truth from our perspectives, our experiences, hopefully inspiring some conversations, hopefully giving folks some permission to have some of these conversations as much with themselves as with other people. Let’s call it a day.

Soren: Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope that this cultivates an audience and feel free to reach out to me or Chris.

Chris: 100%. Thank you, Soren, for your willingness to have this conversation, for being who you are, and for just sitting in the space with me.

Soren: I wouldn’t have a platform without you, so thank you.

Chris: Happy to give you that platform. Thanks all. This has been the Inspired Insights podcast with Chris McLaughlin and Soren Peterson. We’ll see you next time.

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Inspired Insights Podcast brought to you by Inspired Consulting Group, LLC. Edited and produced by Amanda Sidell. Music by Derek Hurder. Copyright 2024. All rights reserved.