“Queerness is the human ability to grow and to become:” A Pride panel discussion

“You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all.”

That’s what writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin said when asked about the experience of coming out as gay. “Go the way your blood beats” can translate to living authentically, listening to your instincts, and being unapologetic about it.

A lot of people might live with that goal in mind, but society at large bolsters the growth of some people more than others. If you’re from a marginalized group, it’s often lightyears more terrifying to be authentic than it is to do the same if you come from privilege.

For queer people, being “loud and proud” is both the name of the game and one of the most complicated experiences. There are many parts of the world that tell queer people they shouldn’t exist—including many parts of the United States and right here in Colorado. So, how do you find the space and energy to keep existing, keeping up hope and joy and lightness? How do you keep being unapologetic?

For some, it’s the common knowledge that so many others share in your experience—in your struggles, your perseverance, and your joy.

This morning on A Public Affair, KGNU’s Jackie Sedley (they/them) was joined by three queer advocates in Boulder who all work at Rocky Mountain Equality

Mardi Moore (she/her) is the non-profit’s Executive Director, Chris Castaneda (they/them/elle) is their Youth Program Senior Manager, and Lucinnia Majik (she/they) is their Trans and Racial Equity Program Coordinator.

Listen:

Transcript:

Jackie Sedley: This morning on A Public Affair, I’m joined by three queer advocates right here in Boulder and I am just going to allow them to introduce, um, yourselves, starting with you over here.

Mardi Moore: Good morning, Jackie. Thanks for having us here. My name is Mardi Moore. My pronouns are she, and I’m the Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Equality. Happy Pride!

Sedley: Good morning, Mardi.

Chris Castaneda: Hello, my name is Chris. Pronouns they/them/elle for Spanish speakers. I’m the Youth Program Senior Manager for Rocky Mountain Equality.

Sedley: Alright. Thank you for being here, Chris. And last but not least.

Lucinnia Majik: Yes. Hello, I’m Lucinnia Magik, she/they, pronouns, the Trans and Racial Equity Program Coordinator at Rocky Mountain Equality.

Sedley: Great. And once again, thank you all for being here. It’s also, as Marty pointed out when she got here this morning, the anniversary to the day of Obergefell vs. Hodges. So when same sex marriage became legal in the United States, which was only in 2015. That always boggles my mind. I forget how recent that was. But great day to be having this very, very queer, lovely, joyful conversation. I want to remind listeners right at the start that this is a call-in show. If you have any questions or comments for me, for any of our guests about anything that we talk about today, you can call 442-4242. You can also email [email protected].

I want to start this conversation out with the topic of coming out. I think that this is something that a lot of individuals can’t relate to if they haven’t experienced it before and stories are the most impactful way to get insight into that experience.

Mardi, starting with you, would you be able to give us a bit of perspective into your coming out experience?

Moore: Sure. I love telling the story. I was just thinking as you were introducing it, they’re usually not great stories. Like I know a handful of people who, when they came out to their parents, they’re like, “Oh, Oh my god, I knew, I’m so glad, I embrace you, I love you.” I don’t have a lot of people in my life that have had that experience.

Mine is similar. I grew up in rural Colorado. There was the word homosexual, and it had negative connotations. There certainly wasn’t the word transgender growing up. Everything I heard was that it was not good to be homosexual. And as I started developing into my person, I took that to mean that I was flawed, broken.

The internal language that I used on myself was pervert. I just thought something was wrong with me, and I tried to mask it for a long time in a variety of ways. When I got to the University of Denver, I read something in the JMAC News from a friend Kim Kelly, who was an out, black woman from Chicago. She showed up in Denver and somebody had said something homophobic, and she called him out in writingI’m like, “what!?”

And then I met her because she was in my dorm. We’re still friends. I love Kim. And we became friends, and I met this whole network of lesbians, and I’m like, “what!?” I am not a pervert. I am not broken. There are people like me. My mom still thinks the University of Denver made me gay. That’s still to this day.

There’s a snapshot of what it looked like. I left the state of Colorado after I came out to myself and to friends, because I wasn’t ready to tell my family. They weren’t ready to hear it. I was gone 30 years. I’ve only been back 10 years, and I left the state because I was a lesbian.

Some individuals don’t know how to accept or respond, and they have their own biases. So they blame your sexuality on some kind of conversion from external scenarios, which we could talk about forever.

Sedley: I think something else that’s interesting about the way in which you left and then came back is this experience that I think a lot of straight cis people might not understand that coming out isn’t a one-time thing, right? It can happen over and over and over, and it can be scary and terrifying or uplifting each time depending on where you are. When you left Colorado, where did you go and what was the experience? More comfortable for you?

Moore: I moved to Houston, Texas. Then I ended up in Montrose. This was at the beginning of the AIDS pandemic.

I came out in 1981, and people are dropping like flies. So I lived in Montrose, which was the gay section. I’d been to Houston in a long time. It was the gay section of town. I’d spent time at funerals and in hospital rooms where people were dying of AIDS and nobody would remove their food, because they thought they’d catch it, much like what happened during COVID. When I moved there, the mayor at the time was a guy named Louis Welch, and because of AIDS, he made a public statement saying, “shoot ’em all.”

And so the gays all had bumper stickers that said, “shoot ’em all.” It’s Houston…. But there was this great, strong queer community in Houston, Texas. Houston’s so much bigger than Denver. Denver was the biggest city I’d ever been in. And so it was really diverse.

I learned things, so it was better. And then I lived in Seattle for 20 years. And I moved to Seattle partially because I went there on July 5th. And, yes, the sun shines on July 5th in Seattle, Washington. It was a gorgeous day at the Pike Place Market. And I saw two women holding hands walking through the market.

And I thought, “I want to live here.” I moved there within the year, and lived there for 20 years and raised two kids. There was one lesbian couple with kids in the school. And so, you know, coming out over and over again is a real thing. Any of us, like saying “where you work,” you’re out.

Sometimes I’ll avoid where I work. To this day random people will ask me “what do you do?” And I’ll say that I’m executive director of a non profit, because I don’t know if I have the energy to deal with their homophobia or educating them.

Sedley: Chris, do you want to share your coming out, coming into yourself, story a little bit?

Castaneda: Of course. I always like to say that my story kind of predates me. It’s so tied into my family. My family actually immigrated here from Peru to Denver. I’m actually the only person in my entire family, both direct and as well as extended family, to be born in the United States. Growing up in a mixed-status household presented a lot of financial challenges in the late 90s/early 2000s in Denver. We moved around a lot. I was actually very heavily involved with my Catholic church at the time. Moving schools every year or so, you lose a lot of the friends, and so you make spaces.

The church was a really great way for me to stay involved, stay connected with folks. And I really loved it. It wasn’t until I was probably right around fifth grade, middle school age, when I started asking a lot of questions, not even about gayness. I was asking questions about the Bible, wanting to learn more, and I was met with a lot of pushback. I started losing that safe space. I also entered the middle school era of hormones, puberty, stereotypes, all that stuff. It was really difficult, because I noticed I wasn’t like other boys.

Everyone always talked about their crushes, and I was like, “yeah, I have a crush on insert most popular girls name here.” Her name is Mallory. She has gorgeous hair. I had gender envy. It was really difficult to understand that the way that I wanted to hang out with the guys wasn’t necessarily the same way they did. It was very frustrating.

I was very angry for a while. It wasn’t until I ended up moving to a very different high school that I met a very new audience, very new people. A lot of things had changed positively for my family, and so I was able to be like. “new school year, new me.” I decided to come out as what I understood at the time as bisexual. It ended up being a very much more conservative part of Aurora, Colorado.

I grew up all along Denver, and then parts of Aurora. We just moved out, and it was very different. I knew that LGBT wasn’t something I associated with in these different parts. I didn’t expect it. And so as someone who wanted to be a three-season athlete—swimming, football, and wrestling, I immediately chopped football and wrestling, due to the sheer amount of homophobia, and swimming.

I had to give it up. I’d already swam for eight years, but I had to give it up after my freshman year. I was just really homophobic, and it was so funny because so many of them came out after graduating. Just in that container, I guess, it was not okay. And so I was really lucky to find the arts programs.

I was involved in all things artistic: improv, theater, music, music, honor society, choir, dance. I did it all. And I really found my community there and what ended up being a space for out kids. GSA is a school of about 2,800 kids to kind of give you the perspective of how little “out” there was.

I had a boyfriend my freshman year, and we were both new to the area and we did not understand the culture. We would hold hands, and people stopped and stared at us mid conversation like it was like a teen opera, you know, like Days of Our Lives, Degrassi, all these things. I had teachers come up to me that I didn’t even have in class or that my boyfriend didn’t even have.

They were like, “Hey, we support you. Let us know how we can help you.” And I was like, “that’s weird.” Looking back, it’s really amazing to see that they understood the situation in a very different capacity than I did. And so, just reflecting on that makes me really thankful. And so, as I created my crew of friends, I realized that my mom, in particular, was not very supportive.

She’s a very, very Catholic Latina woman. She had a lot of opinions. A lot of them. And so, when she ended up actually finding out that I was not straight, she confronted me. Coincidentally enough, it was on National Coming Out Day, October 11th, for those who don’t know. I ended up coming out to her, and there were lots of tears. I was in the car, and I got out, and I called my dad. I didn’t know at the time that my dad would end up being one of my biggest supporters.

He let me know, “Hey, I think it’s time that you spend some time away from the house for a while.” And that kind of started like a four- or five-month affair of me being essentially homeless in this very wealthy suburb, with no public transportation. There were no resources I could get to. I was just crashing in a lot of friends’ guest houses. Things like that.

And that’s how I was able to stay in school. It was for a lot of my friends, and also the acquaintances in the program that I was able to stay with. And then I made the choice, the safe decision, for me to quit school. Quote, unquote, “to go back in the closet.” We just kind of lived in open denial. That was the stage with my mom up until I graduated high school. Then I decided to go to CU Boulder, because it was really pretty. Really , that was the only deciding factor for me.

It’s gorgeous up here. Even though I was in Denver, I had never really been to Boulder. I had only had been here once or twice before looking at schools. It wasn’t just a place we would go. And so I was like, “Cool, I’m going to come out to my mom right before I leave.”

I came out there. She’s like, great. If that’s the “lifestyle,” quote unquote, you want to choose, then that’s your choice. We will not support you. I said, “Fine. I got it figured out.” You know, the arrogance of an 18 year-old knows no bounds. And so I figured it all out after dealing with a little homophobic roommate.

I did my thing at college, switched my major a million times, and ended up graduating with degrees in ethnic studies and theater. I found my political-activism voice in a lot of different spaces and ended up meeting my now current fiancée. We’ve been together for five years. We met my third year of college, and I just kind of figured out where I wanted to go in my life.

Then COVID happened. I graduated during COVID and immediately started working at Rocky Mountain Equality. Straight out. It was fun being a youth program assistant. I’ve been here several years now, just working my way through the ranks, helping serve LGBTQ youth, not just in Boulder, but also in the surrounding county areas and beyond Boulder County. We see youth from all over: Golden, Fort Collins, Estes Park, Greeley. I have run into youth at Dairy Queen in Westminster. I like just being able to see so many different faces who have interacted with our program, in some way, shape, or form. It has been incredibly uplifting to just be able to be an advocate for them. It’s been really healing to be in the space that I never had.

So that’s my coming out story in a nutshell. Me and my mom are good. We did figure it out at one point. I was able to have my biological family become part of my chosen family.

Sedley: Thank you for sharing that. Lucinnia, if you want to share your story as well? Then we’ll dive into all the sectors of all the things that have been touching on.

Majik: I’ll just start with saying that I grew up in Houston, Texas. I’m originally from the Bay Area of Texas. I also come from a very religious family. I’m what they call a PK, a preacher’s kid. I knew the Bible at the back of my hand, including all the parts that didn’t make sense to me.

That includes the scriptures that talked about how men sleep with men and how that was an abomination. That word haunted me for a really long time. One of my biggest earlier supporters, when I first came out, was my mom. I love telling the cooler story of how I was sitting on a cooler in sixth grade after a choir concert.

And I told my mom, I was like, “you know, I think I’m bisexual.” She was like, “Really? What makes you say that?” And I said, “well, you know, I just feel this type of way when I see boys, and I don’t know what else to feel. I like being around girls, too, but at the time, I don’t know that, I want to be one of the girls, you know? I just know that I like being around them.”

And so my mom was like, “Well, okay.” And she did this whole metaphor with the Bible that was like a whole left turn. And I was like, “Oh god, here we go, the whole Bible thing.” But she told me to feel the cover of the Bible. She said, “Do you know what makes this Bible what it is?” I’m like, “the scriptures?”

She said, “No, the fact that it has thick skin. You can’t penetrate past the book cover. If you’re going to live like this, you’re going to have to have thick skin.” And I didn’t know what that meant until I started growing up and started encountering homophobia.

That didn’t make sense, because then I started questioning my gender, probably later on in middle school when I started getting up to STEM. At that point my mom and I had left the church that I had grown up in, because rampant homophobic rhetoric was unfortunately coming from my own family that was on the pulpit.

I didn’t feel safe in that community, so we left and science was my refuge. When I got into that conversation about chromosomes and sex and all of this. I observed that everything in nature feels so inherently queer. It’s not like animals are concerned about labeling male or female. They’re just living their lives, right?

But when I brought that argument to science, I experienced push back. I heard, “No, there’s this binary. There’s sex—male and female. And that didn’t make sense to me. I was experiencing another layer of this thing. Probably later in high school, I started questioning my gender. I started getting into the arts, with dancing and movement, and this became my way of figuring out how to be in this body.

I realized that I like to move the way that these girls are moving. I like to express myself in a feminine way. It started becoming very clear that that’s why the homophobia didn’t make sense. That’s why transphobia felt really weird, like it’s trying to capture me in a way that felt inauthentic.

That was the period that I came out to my mom. And then, once I got to my dad’s side of the family, it was kind of just taken away from me in that moment. I was outed by my uncle in front of whole family at a reunion. And I was like, “Oh, wow, this is happening.”

It wasn’t until later around my grandmother’s funeral that I had to make up my mind about safety. I said, “You know, I just don’t think that this is the environment that I’m going to end up growing up in.” And so I left Texas, 18 years old, $100 in my account. I had a duffel bag with a laptop and a pillow. That was it.

My mom put me on a plane and said, “Make me proud.” I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know where I was going. But I found myself at Naropa University, and I started figuring out who I wanted to be. I found Kiki Ballroom, thanks to my house mother. She found me, literally, on the side of the road after the quarantine and brought me to a ball.

That’s where I saw my community for the first time. Lily James was the trans woman who brought me out of that dark place. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t have even known what it was possible to be a trans woman in the world. So when I came out to the world as a trans woman, I changed my name publicly and started working at Rocky Mountain Equality, I started off as an intern and slowly became the trans and racial equity program coordinator.

I started realizing this is why I went through all of that. It was to make sure that I’m making room for stories like mine that aren’t being heard. And a lot of them really aren’t heard, I feel like.

Sedley: The visibility of being queer is so important and daunting and can make or break your experience based on how much you’re able to feel that pride. I think a lot about visibility, because depending on how you present, you may be outing yourself immediately.

I think based on how I look, nobody would ever think that I’m straight. And maybe people know that or don’t know that. I remember when I came out to some of my family members and shaved my head. I had the very cliche, like coming out to my straight boyfriend at the time, breaking up, shaving my head, going to Europe, doing the whole thing.

I went to Berlin, of all places. I’m very privileged to have that experience, but I remember talking to family members and generally receiving support. A lot of it was kind of similar to your comment, Lucinnia, about thick skin. A lot of it was, “Well, now that you look this way, you have to be careful where you go.”

Yeah, it was from a place of care, so I didn’t take it personally. But I think that there’s so much discussion within outside of the queer community about queerness, sexuality, gender being a “choice.” Obviously, we know it’s not. And there’s always the conversation that appearance is a choice.

I wanted to start talking about that with regard to visibility, because, yes, how you look is a choice, but it’s also your expression, and your sanity, and your ability to be visible as the person you want to be visible as. Do any of you have any commentary on that kind of experience? Of making those choices that feel like absolutely necessary lifelines in order to be authentic? But knowing that it may lead you to being more visible, and there are consequences to that?

Castaneda: Yeah, I was in high school in that 2016 era of makeup, and I don’t know if y’all know what I’m talking about, but there was a certain brand where, essentially, everybody kind of looked like they were a drag queen. They did harsh contour baking, like big, big, big spots. Block brows so prominent that you’re filling them in, like sharpie-cut creases with glitter. I would attempt to do this in 30 minutes max before school, and I looked a mess, but I couldn’t do it at home, so I had to do it before school in a bathroom leaving a mess on the counter. Then I would walk around campus being like, “Oh it’s just a little bit of mascara,” but I’d have full, strong, bold liner. It’s so comical to think of just being so open about my makeup, or being cheeky about it. “Yeah, I have 18 products on my face right now.”

That has shifted over years to where I do not wake up nearly early enough to do anything besides put on some chapstick. It’s really amazing that I used to have 20-something pairs of heels. I was just thinking about shoes. I would walk in, and my parents would tell me that when I get a job, I would need to be professional. I had thrifted a bunch of suits, suit jackets, blazers, all these things—and heels.

My first few weeks, I would come in wearing a full suit and then like a four-inch heel, like a four-inch boot, storming up our steps of our pride house, which is a historical building. And because it’s historical, the stairs are not the most up to code, and I am sitting there crawling up in four-inch pumps, making sure I do not roll down these stairs in a full blown men’s suit. It was so comical.

“Well, I’m afraid we didn’t have enough insurance for you in there, Sir.” And you just hear me, “klack, klack, klack” up the stairs. It’s one of the biggest life lessons I think you learn as a trans person is how visibility is a double-edged sword, depending on how skilled you are in understanding it.

Skilled or not, it takes a certain type of trial-and-error experience to figure out how visible you’d like to be with your identity. I had many moments similar to Chris. In high school, I would take time at my house, like, before any of my relatives woke up and go through my sister’s makeup kit and stuff. I’d try on something for the day, if it was a lip, if it was a graphic liner I saw online in YouTube era of  all these makeup artists who were doing all this. I felt inspired.

But it wasn’t until I got to school that I felt the pressure of like, “Oh my god, people are about to see me.” This is no longer just a private practice I’m doing for myself. This is something that I’m now gonna give to people. And the minute I had to confront that, I would go and wash off my makeup in the bathroom.

It’s very, weird, because now when I put on makeup, it feels like the normal ritual that I do for myself and for my femininity. Even then I knew the impact of walking down the street and seeing young trans individuals who are not trans. I was exposed to the understanding that there are trans adults and people who are living throughout the world with jobs. It’s like trans youth who are still finding themselves through this makeup, through this clothing. Speaking back to the ballroom experience, it was very important for me to realize through ballroom how appearance, how you put yourself together, makes all the difference for certain containers. I think that’s more of a tool than a negative experience for trans folks. It’s something we learn over time. It is something there to serve us in our gender identity. We’re not there to serve the fashion industry by buying into gender binary and all of that. We have clothing as a way of showing that this is who we are today.

This is who I want to be. And this is who I want the world to see me as, because there’s probably someone else who looks like me, who hasn’t gotten there yet. And so it’s always important to like just think about who all, including trans youth, is taking note of how we’re making ourselves visible.

I think it was Angelica Ross that was talking about how the more visible trans people are, the more potential there is for the target on our backs. I think it’s important to remain vigilant about being visible, regardless of the risk that comes with it, because without that visibility, we’d be erased.

Sedley: In light of the conversation that you just alluded to, Lucinnia , I’m going to play the song that you said reminded you of something about your queer experience, your upbringing. Do you want to introduce what the song is before I play it?

Majik: Yeah, totally. Some context for the song is that I heard this song when I first was discovering gender euphoria. I was like, “Yeah, I think this song describes perfectly what it is that I want to grow up to be.” So it’s “When I Grow Up” by the Pussycat Dolls. Alright, let’s hear it.

Sedley: I’m gonna leave it at that for now so that we continue to have our conversation. I think there’s so much to be said about the media that leads us to realize parts of ourselves, regardless if that’s an inherently queer song or not. There’s so much music and movies and messaging in the world that can show us two parts of ourselves.

I think that thinking about that visibility piece that we were just talking about too. You see that in community, but you also see that in public spaces. If you’re in public, and someone is walking down the street being authentic to themselves, it can make you think about parts of yourselves. And I think that’s part of the dynamic of queerness. You come more into it, there is such a community dynamic to it.

You want to be able to help other people realize themselves, and that leads into some conversations from folks that don’t understand. [People can be] just blatantly homophobic about how this influx of queerness in society is a trend or a fad or something related to conversion and that it will fade away, especially with regard to gender identity. That’s a lot of what I’ve heard.

Obviously, we know sexual orientation is about the people that you’re attracted to, and gender identity is how you relate to your ascribed gender role, and your body, and your identity. These are two very different things, but I think there’s been a lot of conflation, a lack of understanding, and a lack of desire to understand.

With that in mind, I’m curious, based on the work that you all do, or your personal experiences, what are the ways that you’re able to aid people in discovering more about their gender identity and their personhood? [Many people] are living in a world that has not found a way to normalize this in the same way that sexuality has become a bit more of an accepted topic.

Moore: Big question. The first thing I want to say to that is I think that we always do unforced errors. So, part of what our trainings have to do is break up the LGBTQ. People don’t get that. Sexual orientation and gender identity are part of that umbrella. You can blow somebody’s mind by saying a trans person is straight.

Yeah, just blow their mind. People don’t even know what a trans woman is. People are just confused, and they don’t seek out information. They just “other” us. And then don’t take the next step. So I think that’s one of the problems we have.

And then we have to train people around that understanding. But I think Chris running our youth program. What is your response to that really big question?

Castaneda: You know, I always say, “They hate us, because they ain’t us.” And, you know, there’s a lot of merit to that—the sheer liberation that we find through being able to express ourselves through any means, right?

I could just walk around in a suit and look very homo, like heteronormative. Or I could dress in bright colors, right? I have a very vivid memory of my mom making fun of my dad for having bright red shoes. You know, like men aren’t allowed to have color, right? It was such an antiquated form of thinking.

Everything in my closet is very colorful. Being able to be a role model for our youth, being able to talk about gender expression versus, you know, what does it look like versus gender identity? How do we feel on the inside versus sexual orientation? What do we like? How do we like? Who do we like? These are all questions we talk about in our youth spaces. They’re all optional, but people like to share it. And when people say, “I’m questioning,” it’s not met with shame. People cheer, because so many of them are finally in these new spaces where they are allowed to openly question.

It’s not giving. I don’t have anything but an AOL chat room, or a little forum on the internet, talking about gay, nonbinary, gender-fluid, these new “identities.” This is really just language that we’re creating to explore feelings that we have experienced. Right? We have a billion people on the planet, countless other billion people who have existed for millennia.

I promise you, these feelings have been there. Being able to provide these spaces to people, letting people explore, has done wonders for how they are able to perceive themselves, how they’re able to try new things. How often in school, do you just get to try out a new name and pronoun?

It’s a whole process. You have to talk to counselor. You have to make sure, “Hey, are my parents on board with this? Are they not on board with this?” We’re just talking, you know? I have to tell all my teachers that it can get exhausting. You might not even like it, right? Because you’re experimenting.

We provide that liberation of questioning, “How can I dress?” There are many ways I can present, you know, the way I talk about myself. There are lots of different positive ways, and that is a very new experience for a lot of these folks, particularly our youth. You only get to see that via maybe TikTok, but then you get on the same brand of social media—TikTok, Instagram—and you also see a lot of negativity, all these hateful comments, hateful posts, things like that.

So being able to be in in person in spaces where we have that positive reinforcement does wonders.

Sedley: Good morning Nancy. You’re on the air.

Nancy (caller): Thank you. Good morning. I’m appreciating the discussion and just wanted to make a couple of comments/slash questions to hear what y’all think about.

I’m feeling a little anxious about doing a comparison between people of color and gender issues, because I realize this a fraught area. Your discussion made me think about the fact that I don’t think anybody ever tells a person of color, well just lighten your skin, even though that’s historically been something that they’ve done in order to protect themselves from racism.

I think most people think of their skin color as part of who they are, and so no one ever thinks that people of color should lighten their skin in order to make their life easier in society. So, to me, it makes perfect sense that someone who identifies as masculine or feminine in a way that’s different than what their body is usually perceived to be shouldn’t be told to change how they feel about who they are.

Who they are is who they are. It’s not just how they feel, it’s, it’s who they are. So I just thought that was interesting to think about it in terms of a request that’s never made, I don’t think, of people of color to think that they should make everybody else feel better by changing the color of their skin.

And then I also wanted to just comment quickly about what you folks were talking about just recently—gender norms and challenging them versus internalizing them, basically. It sounds like the guest was, especially when they were younger, were feeling the pressure to, or the desire, to adopt traditional female gender norms and gender expression norms.

Aa feminist, or a womanist, I find that a lot of those norms are really harmful to women or people who identify as women or who want to express themselves in a female way. The high heels is terrible for our backs. You could analogize it to foot binding in Japan.

I’d just like to hear your thoughts about how to negotiate that. How to be able to get that validation and feeling like you’re actually expressing who you are, which of course is defined in terms of the gender practices of a society, right? But yet on the other hand, how to do that without embracing really problematic gender expression practices?

Sedley: Thank you for that, Nancy, we appreciate it. Does anybody want to respond to what Nancy had to say?

Castaneda: As someone who’s in a lot of BIPOC spaces, and as one of the only queer people in these people-of-color spaces, particularly during my college years, trying to explain my position was often difficult. It was so interesting how other people in the same diaspora would try to challenge homophobia and transphobia, would in bring the race thing, right?

As a comparison, even though it’s very different struggles, there’s this visible comparison of what race is—what construction of race looks like and how we internalize it. Yet gender identity and sexual orientation can be very challenging in the same way for folks who may not have that same experience. I think seeing it click for our POC communities of like, “Oh, I am perpetuating the same things that I’m at again just in a different way” has been really positive for me, especially when I had allies who I didn’t have to do the work and then those gender norms. I always say that you have to understand the rules in order to break them.

From my perspective working with the youth, they understand what masculinity looks like. They understand what femininity looks like, right? And so they’re often trying to challenge these norms and fighting against a lot of different factors. Their conceptual understanding of the different masculinities they can present is really impressive.

It’s not a one fits all. You can be wearing your Crocs and your Nike knee high socks and your athletic shorts and your T-shirt, right? That’s one way. But they understand it on a much more intrinsic level, fashionable level, that allows them to expresses themselves fully, even if it’s like all black attire.

They have the understanding of these silhouettes that they’re developing to help make them feel more passable, more safe, and they’re feeling that gender euphoria. Thank you again for bringing up those gender norms. I mean, we challenge them consistently. They change so frequently on what is acceptable male attire and what is acceptable female attire.

[We’re all] just trying to navigate these spaces.

Majik: “Norms” is a very interesting word to follow with what we perceive is appropriate on a societal level. I think norms help us with understanding where everyone else is at. But in order to know where we are at, we have to know where those norms might apply to us and where they don’t.

And for BIPOC individuals that then multiplies into multiple layers of race as well. And so when I’ve done work with black and brown communities around how to integrate the queer identity, how to integrate sexualities and gender identities that are not so normative, a lot of it comes with this hot word. {From one perspective] the work I do is the work of decolonizing.

And this doesn’t start with arguing about the norms, but instead [we talk about] opening ourselves up to what the norms could become. I think when we talk about this idea of decolonizing our understanding of gender, it really comes from not putting so much emphasis on the essential functionality of a gender norm. Saying that masculinity has to be “this” implies that [being masculine] means being a provider, or having a job, or just to stay at home all the time, that implies doing all the things that are traditionally masculine, that come from a pretty antiquated view.

But when we see where young masculine-identified individuals are right now, that can’t really work within their life circumstance, or even generational circumstance, if we’re being absolutely realistic. So, I think, like Chris had mentioned, some of the youth are really taking the lead on showing us what the potentials of new norms can look like.

And, really, when it comes to helping ourselves move through that, particularly as melanated people, we have to also come to terms with the fact that some of the older norms and antiquated forms of thinking no longer serve us to survive. We should start developing our own norms as a way of celebrating joy, as opposed to accommodating the fear and pain that comes with that.

Moore: Wow, you two are so great. I’m so glad to be here. As we’re talking, I was thinking about gender norms for lesbians, right? Like in my coming out, people were either butch or femme. I wore my little bow tie. You’ve heard me talk about my little bow tie.

I really couldn’t be a lesbian unless I had a little bow tie and short hair and short nails. And then, I remember in the 90s, in pride parades, seeing lipstick. Lesbians started showing up and had their own float, right? You’re making me invisible because I look more like a woman and I’m embracing what a “woman” looks like.

That binary was very strong. And I think I still can’t find clothes that I want to wear. There’s a few clothing places that make suits for women. They’re expensive. They’re hard to find. If you go into a store, like to Men’s Warehouse in New York City, I could get served men’s.

I went once. I haven’t gone again. I’m not dissing them, but it wasn’t the same experience, if you shop in the men’s section. I remember I was in SoHo and I was down buying a men’s suit, and they wouldn’t let me change in the men’s dressing room, right?

It’s a single stall. It wasn’t like I was in there [with anyone]. In New York City, too! So sexual orientation and the expression of gender continues to be difficult. Because we have these norms, right? The joke for me is that I’m in drag when I’m wearing a dress. I’ll show up, and people will just like blow their minds.

I knew early on that I wasn’t that girl. I dropped out of Brownies, because they’re going to make me wear some little skirt. Like when I was in kindergarten, I’m like, “Are you kidding me?” The fights that I would have early on with my mom about what I was going to be wearing. That continues, and that stuff is hard to break. It’s hard to break.

Sedley: Yeah, absolutely. I really appreciate that perspective. And I think that the norms and the binaries, within even nonbinary identity, still comes up, right? I think about as a nonbinary individual, something that I experienced as I was—and still am—finding my way through that mental processing is that androgyny is very much the norm for non binary individuals from my perspective.

And so as someone that doesn’t necessarily dress in always androgynous ways, whatever that means to you, there was a lot of imposter syndrome in my head for a long time. Thinking about if I’m not subscribing to the appearance of this identity, it’s very black and white. It’s all or nothing. You’re either the quintessential nonbinary human or you’re not.

I’ve heard that reflection a lot with people, especially people who are starting to explore their gender, but they’re not quite sure. And so they want to, they don’t want to express themselves in this loud and proud way until they’re positive, right? You’ve mentioned that a little bit, Chris. I think that’s really interesting, because there are some identities or parts of yourself that you are able to kind of play around with, but when it comes to things like gender and sexuality, it feels like you have to know.

So I’m curious, with regard to trying to find ways to come into yourself—regardless if you have a queer community or not and are able to practice, able to explore and experiment with different identities and sexualities and take the pressure off—what about the feeling like you have to be 100 percent certain before you start to act on those questions? Do you have any input or advice or guidance on that?

Majik: I’m going lean into my little science girly bag here. It’s a part of evolution. Like, every species gets the opportunity to evolve, and queerness is ours. Queerness is the human ability to grow and to become.

So every time you look at yourself in the mirror, every time you find yourself questioning, “Is this the right step to make?” know that there are many species before you that had the same question. “Am I going to make the change, for the sake of myself or all the ones after me? It’s not just cis-normative or heteronormative people who get to have that choice through reproduction.

It’s an everyday choice. It’s who do I choose to be? Who do I choose to show up as for myself and for others? And what evolutionary step do I want to take?

Castaneda: For me, it was really interesting. I didn’t have experience with transness until high school. Even then it was very binary transitions.

I remember seeing Laverne Cox on “Orange is the New Black” as one of the first trans women, openly trans women I saw. And we didn’t have this concept of nonbinary, gender-fluid, things like that. And I remember being in college and learning about these terms. And I had to check myself on what I initially felt like were very white-centric presentations.

Spanish is a very binary language, very gendered. But then also being able to learn that, you know, from my culture, we had third gender. We had shamans who were part masculine, part feminine, who were often leading rituals and medicine in the Andes Mountains, existing to this day. I was able to learn about these multiple “gender identities” that so many cultures globally still have to this day. This has been forcibly erased for a lot of varying different reasons, and it’s just really refreshing to know that I can sit in myself and sit today saying “Yeah, I’m nonbinary right now.” And that could change, right?

I discovered this identity while working at Target and in Zoom rooms. Like it was very, very nontraditional. There was a whole pandemic happening, and I had the opportunity to work. I can take some time for myself in a way that I never had before. And so who knows?

Maybe that’ll happen again? Not the pandemic, but being able to focus on myself and explore what that means.

Sedley: There was a comment that I received that I don’t think we have fully time to get into, but it was about the concept of “I, I.” I’d be curious to hear different perspectives on how people display or introduce themselves and their pronouns in a way that feels less bad than having to say it all the time.

I think about the common experience between queer people and people of marginalized identities of constantly having to explain yourself. Don’t you kind of just wish sometimes that the straight cisgender people could keep the other straight cisgender people in line? You can argue it’s significantly less scary and dangerous for them to do it.

How can you find that line of checking in with yourself when you realize you do maybe have to explain yourself a little bit sometimes and introduce yourself in a way that might be uncomfortable? But also the onus shouldn’t be on you. There’s no straight answer to that question, but there is no straight answer to anything we’ve talked about this morning. Do you have any input on that?

Moore: Yeah, Jackie. I think that’s one of the things that we need to do—not just straight, cis people but within our own community. As an ally to the trans community, it’s my job, um, to handle that. I often now in most settings introduce myself with my pronoun. If somebody else does, great.

If they don’t, whatever, but I am that person who is going to ensure that I see you for who you are. I think it’s pretty simple. And so to anybody who’s listening who’s trying to figure out how to do that. “Hi, I’m Mardi. I use the pronoun she. And then they say, “Hey, I’m Chris. I use the pronoun they.

They know I’m an English speaker, and so they say “they,” and then we’re there. And then when I screw up, because I do, I make mistakes. We all do. Do I make them more frequently than I should? Probably. And then when I refer to somebody, usually when they’re not present by the wrong pronoun, I correct it immediately.

I restate the same thing, the same sentence using the correct one. And that’s all you have to do. Simple respect and dignity is all anybody’s asking for.

Castaneda: As an Aries, I like to be first set the norm in a group space. For Spanish speakers and a little spice in there, right?

Just setting that expectation is really fab. You know, I think it’s really debilitating to try and aim for perfection and all your relationships, and we make mistakes. It’s okay, right? We all do. I’m pretty sure I made a few mistakes driving here, but just being able to take that ownership. “I’m sorry. Let me correct that.” You know, apologies go a long way.

Majik: Practice does not make perfect, but it does make habit. Like, you being able to create a habit out of this. I will often tell people that practicing in the mirror is not as crazy as it sounds. Just make sure that you have the ability to keep an awareness of this happening; that when you make a misstep, correct and going back to the rhythm and the flow of the conversation. Don’t allowing it to take over is one of the biggest things for me.

Like Chris had mentioned, just showing up. Like, I’ll say, “Hi, Lucinnia, she/her, they” on the weekday. If you’re feeling it, like, it just creates an atmosphere of normalizing it. Whereas if somebody is directly antagonistic about it, it’s usually because there is something that’s not being reconciled. At the end of the day, it is up to them to solve that. It can’t be an entire group’s ability; that’s kind of the only situation where I’d say two heads is probably worse than one. I would say it’s an individual journey. You have to kind of find it within yourself to make that shift.

Sedley: And we are out of time, which is very frustrating to me as someone that has many, many more questions. Would any of you like to share any resources or events that you’re hosting? I know that we are at the end of pride month now, but throughout the year that community members could access if they want to learn more and continue this conversation on their own.

Moore: Oh, we’ve got one more pride celebration this Sunday, June 30th, Boulder Central Park Show up at 10:30, 10:45 a.m. Be part of the visibility March, which I hope they’ve asked you, Chris, to lead because every year you lead it. We have that, and then the festival takes off with like 150 different vendors. The headliner this year is Betty.

If you don’t know Betty, make sure you’re there. They did the theme song for the “L Word.” So I’m pretty excited about that.

Majik: Yes, and then we also have a Kiki Ball, the Colorado Pride Kiki Ball happening from 5 to 10 p.m. I believe it is. Yeah, approximately 5 to 10 p. m. Posted by Lele James.

Instagram and social media handles “twirling tech goddess.” And it will be at the Glenn Miller Ballroom on the CU campus. If you’re interested in learning about the BIPOC queer community, it’s a great place to just learn and also observe and also participate if you feel like walking the runways.

Moore: Lily did my makeup once. It was the best makeup job I ever had. I gotta say. Absolutely.

Castaneda: And have resourcing through Rocky Mountain Equality. You’re welcome to go to our website and it check out. Or you’re welcome to reach out to any of us through our website to connect with us over what you might need. Youth programming, always free, always at no cost. We do drop-in. We have multiple groups a week. Virtual spaces, too. Come out, hang out with us, do some crafts. Be gay. Yeah, be an ally.

Sedley: And that brings us to the end of today’s A Public Affair. Once again, I’m Jackie Sedley. Special, special, thank you to Mardi Moore, the Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Equality. Chris Castaneda, the Youth Program Senior Manager at Rocky Mountain Equality, and Lucinnia Majik, the Trans and Racial Equity Program Coordinator also at Rocky Mountain Equality. I appreciate all of your vulnerability so much, and the work that you do for the queer community. Happy Pride!