June 28, 2023 • 38 mins
This week my guest is Forest Brienne Cutrer, A metal musician based out of the Bronx, NY with French Cajun roots. We discuss her Louisiana upbringing, what it was like to return to the South as a trans woman for a family reunion, making metal music as a trans artist, and MORE!
You can find Forest at the Gender Experts open mic event Tuesdays at Metropolitan Bar in Brooklyn. Also listen to Forest's latest release here, a split album with the artist Feminizer.
For more from Carmen and Beauty Translated follow @thecarmenlaurent & @beautytranslatedpod.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
I'm sure a lot of it has to do with
misogyny trans misogyny, but it's like we're not allowed to
be mad, We're not allowed to be pissed off. We're
just expected to roll over and submit. Hello, Beauty Translated listeners,
and welcome to another episode of BOD. This week, I
(00:25):
am talking to a metal musician based out of the Bronx,
New York, but she originally comes from Louisiana and we're
going to be talking about her French Cajun roots, her
growing up in the South, as well as moving to
New York, transitioning and creating metal music, both as a
(00:45):
trans woman and somebody pre transition. So please enjoy my
conversation with the lovely Forest Brian Coutrere. Hello, Beauty Translated listeners.
This week, I'm here with yet another friend I have
made through that wonderful app we call Instagram. She has
(01:08):
been a listener since day one and was an instant
connection for me when she reached out. Please welcome to
the pod the metal musician Forest Brian Cotrere, Hi, Forrest,
how are you today? I'm doing good. Thanks for having me,
Thank you for being here. That's a beautiful name. Forest, Brian.
Thank you well, Forrest. Could you start out with giving
(01:28):
us an introduction to who you are? Yeah? Sure, I'm
thirty seven years old. I am a boring lady who
fixes things for a living. I also happen to make music,
mostly extreme metal. I have been doing that for gosh
fifteen years now, making music, making music, Yeah, making extreme metal.
(01:48):
I used to be in like some pop bands and
stuff back in college. It was fun, and that's pretty
much the entirety of my life. Like that would be
in my obituary. Like she made really loud, aggressive music,
and she rode bicycles and she fixed it up. It's fantastic. Now,
could you give us maybe a little bit of background, Like,
so you live in New York now, but could you
(02:09):
also maybe talk a little bit about where you originally
come from. So I moved here from Arizona. Actually I
lived there for about eighteen years, but before that I
lived in Louisiana. I was born in in Lafayette, Louisiana.
My mom, as far back as it goes, my family's
been from Acadia Parish, so super super Cajun. My mom
(02:31):
has like a really strong accent. I lost my accent
when I was a little kid, but I used to
go back a lot, and like my mom spoke little
Casun French, I've got relatives that only spoke Cajun French
and that was pretty cool. Like I had I don't know,
rain Crawley like little towns along the Een where I
would go and do family stuff. A lot of heavy,
(02:52):
heavy food, a lot of working class mentality which was
really great, a lot of inclusivity which was really fun.
When I was a kid, my mom and I packed
up and moved to Phoenix, Arizona, which is its own unique,
weird little I like to call it a Southern runoff,
like it has its own culture. But it's very much
like if the South really wanted to be like Los
(03:13):
Angeles when it comes to fashion and attitude and stuff
like that. And then I've lived in New York City
for fourteen years. I moved here after college. Fantastic being
a transwoman in New York. I'm sure it's very different
than being a transwoman in Phoenix versus being a transwoman
in Lafayette. You recently went back to Louisiana for a
family reunion. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, what was that like
(03:34):
for you? That was super weird. So my family has
this family reunion, my mom's side of the family. It's
a bunch of people I hadn't seen in about thirty years.
I don't remember any of them. They had a family
reunion in Holly Beach, which is south of Lake Charles
on the Gulf. They call it the Cajun Riviera, And
(03:57):
it was the first time I'd seen my mom and
my sister since starting transition, because before that, the last
time I saw them was February of twenty twenty, not
a good year for traveling. Yeah, so that was really weird.
We got all the weirdness out of the way. My
mom generally was pretty accepting. Yeah, it was super strange
being in this place that I hadn't been in so long,
(04:20):
looking at it through new eyes, like thinking about how
people saw me. Twenty twenty three not the best year
to be a trans person in certain parts of the country.
Not the worst probably, but not the best generally. Not
an issue a lot of stairs, but I'm kind of
used to that in certain places I travel for work
through the Midwest sometimes. Not too strange for that. Everyone
(04:45):
at the family reunion was so rad I was so nervous.
I'm still very much a baby trance. I've only been
doing this for like a year, and so I don't
know that was the thing too. It's like I didn't
know how much of them knew, like remembered me. I
did have someone and mention, oh, yeah, you're Darlene's kid.
Didn't she also have an older son? And then one
(05:05):
of the other cousins was like, nope, she yields fun
and I was like, yes, ali, allies, but yeah, I'll
admit I'm very much a New Yorker like now, like
I've lived here for fourteen years. But it was really
kind of shocking seeing all of these people in real
tree camo and Trump bumper stickers and stuff, all sitting
(05:26):
around at bonfire next to an RV with a huge
pot of gumbo behind us, and me just like sitting
there talking like normal. It was really cool. I couldn't
help but think of like a lot of the political
and social implications of it. It's hard to separate that.
But I also don't want to downplay any experiences that
anyone else has and just the truth of the nature.
But it was really refreshing for me, A refreshing moment
(05:50):
of coming together with people that you normally wouldn't see
yourself sharing community with or sharing dinner with or whatever,
right exactly. We don't get that many people like that
up here. And also it was weird because they didn't
really feel like family, right. I mean, that's kind of
the magic of I think the Cajun experience. They generally
will just make you feel like family, regardless of whether
(06:12):
you're blood or not. I'm really proud to be a
part of that heritage wise, even though I've kind of
disconnected from that a lot, but I'm trying to connect
more with that because it's so valuable to me. I
think that's been going on lately with a lot of
trans women from the South. I've noticed reconnecting with that
complicated history, and I think you and I both bond
(06:34):
over that through like we talked about, like Ethel Kaine's
music and all of that. Oh my God kind of
teaches us in that way. I just want to give people,
like maybe a little bit more of an idea of
what Cajun culture is, like what a Cajun gathering is, like,
paint us a picture. So this is family reunion. It's
actually not super different from a lot of other Cajun gatherings.
A lot of it's based around family and community. Like
(06:56):
I do remember a lot of this from when I
was a little kid eating outside. I cannot think of
a time when I ever ate indoors. It's super hot
down there, it's super swampy, muggy, So like you're always
eating outside, and generally you'll have cinitronella candles all around
for the bugs exactly, so the smell of citronella is
always in the air outdoor kitchens. So this particular event,
(07:17):
there was a huge like I don't even know what
to call it, but it was an outdoor kitchen underneath
like an RV that was elevated thirty feet into the
air on stilts. It was wild, so we all kind
of were underneath it to protect us from the rain.
But you had a huge pot of gumbo that had
been working for a whole day. You had more rice
(07:38):
than you could ever imagine in one setting. And then
there was another huge pot of jumbalaya and banana cream
pie and stuff like various, and like pecan pie and
stuff like various, like super junkie sweets. But yeah, generally
you're looking at gumbo, rice jumbalaya, basically seafood stuff and
then all the parts of the chicken that you wouldn't
(07:59):
think you would want to eat thrown into a pot
with spices and mixed and eaten. And it's just constantly going.
It's like a perpetual stew, like it's just always going.
The entire gathering is based around food. No one shuts
up about food. Everyone's comparing recipes. It's very much family oriented.
There's not the like ribbing or like making fun of people.
(08:19):
It's just like hasimom and m jelly kind of thing,
hanging out, like just shooting the shit, and it's it's
really amazing, and it's really low steaks. I was surprised
at how truly low steaks it was. I thought I
would be hanging out with my sister a lot more.
She's twenty two, she's super young, she lives in Phoenix.
But I ended up hanging out with older cousins, uncles,
(08:42):
older aunts, just as a result of like, those are
the people you were having a really good time with
at the moment. Yeah, that's awesome to hear. It's very welcoming. Well,
I'm really glad to hear that. And I don't know
if I've told you this, but I have some family
from Louisiana. I've never been to louis I didn't know that,
but I've always wanted to go. So now you're making
me hung and you're making me want to go to Louisiana.
(09:03):
It's really pretty I need to visit. We're going to
take a quick break and when we come back, we'll
talk more about your music and your sound and stuff
like that. And we're back, so for us, talk to
(09:29):
us a little bit more about your music and your sound.
How would you describe it or do you have any
influences that you wish to talk about. Yeah, I both
love and hate trying to describe it. It's a branch
of extreme metal. I make black metal and I make
doom metal, both of which for anyone who's listening who
(09:49):
doesn't know what that is, I'm going to try my
hardest to like explain it without making it sound unapproachable.
It's a kind of extreme metal, which is just like
if you can imagine, just very very fast, very loud.
Production quality is like actually really specific to this. It's
very technical when it comes to the production quality, very
fast drums. I don't know, like one hundred and sixty
(10:10):
piets a minute or up for black metal. It's very
shrill guitars. It's from Scandinavia, like Norway and stuff. It
was a reaction to a lot of the very overproduced
and commercialized death metal stuff that was coming out in
the late eighties and early nineties, and they're like, we're
just gonna go and be like more punk about it
and go the other direction. There's also a lot of
Nazi sympathy in that, so there's a lot in the
(10:30):
scene that is trying to disown that actively, which I'm
a part of. So everything's really shrill. There's really wild
experimentation with production values. So a lot of it is
like if you can imagine ambient, lush sounds with really
fast drums and someone just like shrieking over the top
of it, it makes you want to be in the
middle of the woods in the snow in the winter,
(10:53):
screaming at the moon or something. That's what you have
to do. You have to listen to it while you're
screaming at the moon in the middle of the woods
and snow. And then doom metal is slow. It's very slow.
It's just the heaviest, most aggressive, depressing, very slow music.
(11:15):
I can't describe it as anything but just super duper
slow and heavy and more screaming, but like lower screaming.
So I know you said black metal mostly has its
roots in Norway Scandinavia. Is that the same for doom metal?
No doom metal, it actually came from the UK. I'm
sure everyone's heard of Black Sabbath. Oh yeah, of course.
(11:36):
They were the first metal band arguably, and they would
retroactively be called a doom metal band. So it's kind
of had its roots. It's been around forever, and I
think people over the years, especially in the nineties, when
a lot of production values started changing and there's a
big shift in recording technology, they're like, how can we
get this heavier and slower and darker, And so yeah,
(12:03):
that's really good too, because there's so much that you
can incorporate when you have something that's slow and the
goal is really just like, let's do it slow and heavy.
It can be beautiful. It can have a lot of
classical influence, it can have a lot of gothic influence.
You can throw a lot of found noise, ambient, pretty
lush stuff in. It's really amazing. So we actually have
(12:34):
two different tracks that for us to share it with
us for today's episode. The one that you're hearing now
is Bury Them and Keep Quiet, the song cast from
Darkness forst tell us a little bit about this track.
This is actually the most recent track that I've written
and recorded. I think I finally got it hammered out,
maybe like six months ago or less, and it's on
(12:56):
a split that I'm doing with a trends women based
in the Pacific Northwest who has a project called Feminizer.
But our whole goal was to try to incorporate a
little bit of trans stuff into it, so that song
I tried to make it really spooky and echoey. A
lot of it is about just transformation in general and
how nothing stays the same. Everything changes. Being just a
(13:20):
trans person in general, we so like aggressively take like
a crash course in change and impermanence because it eventually
gets to the point where it's like, well, who cares
nothing stays the same? Why is this a big deal?
We just want to live our lives and do our thing.
That's the main point behind it. I also threw in
a lot of Darkness River and imagery and stuff like that,
(13:42):
like decomposing and really cheesy stuff. You could get real
cheesy with it, and it's really fun. Sorry, remind us
who is doing instruments and who's doing vocals on these tracks? Okay,
you're doing the whole Okay, gotcha. Yep. So it's all guitar, keyboard, bass, guitar.
I program all the drums. I do know how to
(14:02):
play drums. I just I live in an apartment. I
don't have a drum kit. But yeah, it's a lot
of fun. It's a lot of work, but it's really
really rewarding. The vocal aspect of it. It's very physical
and it's something I'm actively have to maintain and it
took me several years before I could do it for
a long time without hurting myself. Yeah, I can imagine that.
(14:24):
It's fun. I think that's one of the first things
that people ask when they hear metal music, like how
do they do that with their voice? Yeah, And I
think learning more about like trans voice training and stuff
like that, like I'm able to kind of tap into
a lot of that extreme metal vocal training to dial
that in. It is physical, but yeah, just like with anything,
(14:44):
there's ways to do it for a long time without
hurting yourself. Absolutely, and you have a beautiful voice, by
the way, Thank you, beautiful voice. Let's talk about the
other track you gave us from your other project, Ocean
of Ghost. This is the track Glorious Wrath. Tell us
about that one. This one is just super pissed off.
(15:05):
This is from my most recent album from this project
that came out in twenty twenty two that kind of
made waves. A lot of people really liked it. It
was a departure from what I used to do, Like
I used to do a lot of fuzzier, dronier stuff
with this project. And in this time, I started writing
this album right when I started coming out, and I
was just so pissed about all of the legislation that
(15:26):
was like starting to happen, And there was this huge
sea change in when people talked about like being trans,
especially being a trans woman, like a transfemme person, had
to do with sadness, had to do with the loss
of the childhood and like all this stuff, and like,
I'm not going to knock anyone for having those feelings,
but I felt rage. I was so pissed, and I
(15:51):
feel like anger and revenge and just pure rage is
not something that's talked about and like expressed enough in
the trans femme kind of community. And oh yeah, I'm
sure a lot of it has to do with misogyny
trans misogyny, but it's like we're not allowed to be mad,
We're not allowed to be pissed off. We're just expected
(16:12):
to roll over and submit. Yeah, I mean, for the
same reasons why this woman can be celebrated for being
more a sortive or aggressive or angry, trans women can
be told that they're too masculine for doing those things,
which is like a complete double standard, right when really
(16:33):
it has nothing to do with our gender. I can
relate to feeling like society wants you, as a trans
woman to be as polite and as nice and as
I think palpitable as possible for people exactly. And I'm
glad you brought up how s this women are kind
of lauded for expressing those feelings, because if we act
(16:56):
like that, if we act as sort of we have
to contend with like, Okay, do they think I'm being
too manly? Right? And do they think I'm being too bitch?
Or is are they going to say that that's it's
like we've got both of them. Are they going to
say that that's like my quote unquote my male socialization,
male socialization Like god, yeah, like don't even don't even
you know, right, So yeah, it's frustrating and infuriating, and
(17:20):
it makes me mad thinking about it. And I can
only imagine. You know, I've been transitioning for a long time,
and I have seen that things have gotten worse for
trans people within the last fifteen or plush years that
I've been transitioning, And so I commend you for coming
out in a time of such great uncertainty, turmoil, all
(17:44):
of that, because that couldn't have been easy. You've been
in metal music for fifteen plus years, oh yeah, and
you've been transitioning for about two of those years. What
has it been like being in the metal music scene
as a trans woman. It was a lot weirder at first,
kind of like subtly dropping hints to my fans, like
I stopped signing my name at the end of email
(18:07):
blasts or whatever. I stopped having photographs of myself out there,
and I was so convinced that I was the only one.
With the exception of Margaret Kiljoy Yeah, she's she's an author,
she's awesome. She don't know she made music. Yeah, I
don't think she does anymore, but like that's how I
found out about her. She had a project called Femina's Ghoul,
(18:29):
which is a black metal project. So I was like, okay, cool.
So there's not many people like me, so I just like,
won't really talk about this very much. But then last
year I put up a thing on my Instagram saying like, hey, everyone,
I'm trans. Let's fuck stuff up, I guess. And then
I started connecting with a lot more people, and I
think so many of them are pandemic trans people, and
(18:51):
a lot of it is like trans women too. I
haven't really thought that much into it. I don't know
if it's selection, confirmation bias or whatever, but I'm starting
to connect with a lot more and it's becoming almost
a stereotype, like the trans woman who makes black metal.
There's a lot of punk influence in it, and I
think a lot of the women that I meet in
real life, like out at bars or whatever and on
the internet who make this come from the punk scene,
(19:13):
and I think so much of that is very introspective
and it kind of forces you to redefine where you
fit in society, and with that naturally comes where you
fit your sex and your gender. It's been not as
challenging as I thought. It's actually been really empowering because
it allows me to harness this super powerful energy and
connect with other people who feel the same way. And
(19:37):
I feel like there's a lot of really amazing trans
musicians out there who need to be celebrated more absolutely.
And yeah, I was going to say, I think trans
trans person making X music like it could be metal,
it could be EDM, it could be like trans. I
feel like there's lately more and more trans people breaking
(19:59):
into the music industry because a lot of us are
very musically minded, very musically inclined, and want to express
that part of ourselves. But I do find that fantastic
that you've been able to find all of these other
trans women in metal that I've, like you said, all
been kind of pandemic babies. Yeah, and I've had this
(20:21):
idea where I want to start some sort of official
network or even unofficial network, because, like I said, I'm
working with a trans black metal artist who goes by
the name Feminizer, and like her stuff is phenomenal first
time I heard it, I was blown away and I
hit her up. I'm like, let's do a split together.
And we both happen to be on the same label
that puts our stuff out, so it was a really
(20:41):
good connection there. But I'm meeting all these other trans women,
I'm like, I don't know. I think I'm probably going
to put together some sort of compilation soon, like hit
up a few labels that are very queer friendly, because
people need to be more aggressively open allies like sis,
people who are not trans need to step out and
openly say I will work with trans artists and if
(21:03):
they won't, then we'll just do it ourselves. A lot
of the music like, yeah, sure, we don't have music
about being trans. Not all my stuff is about it.
A lot of my black metal stuff is not explicitly
like I'm trans. Like when you're walking through the woods
at night in the snow, yelling at the moon, there's
only so much gender that comes into play, right, But
just knowing that it is a trans person behind it, yeah,
(21:26):
making that putting themselves out there being vulnerable like that
needs to be expressed more. Absolutely. We don't have to
be talking about our transness in order for our perspective
to be valuable, you know. And yeah, I think in
music and all avenues, trans perspectives are valuable. So I
think we kind of touched already about how transitioning changed
(21:48):
your relationship to the music scene, But how did transitioning
change your relationship to the music that you were producing
and putting out. Definitely changed the way that I think
about making music. Before transitioning, I was afraid of it
not being masculine enough, just like so many of us.
(22:10):
I had this performative masculine shield that I put up,
so I was constantly trying to like, all right, how
deep can I get my voice? Like how low can
I go with this? And how like nasty can I
make these riffs? So now I don't have that anymore.
It sounds really cliched, I guess, but it's like I
can really just kind of do what I want. I
can be myself. I can make stuff. If anything, Now
(22:32):
it feels more of like a fuck you if I
do something super aggressive and louder and more vulgar, which yeah,
most of its very tongue in cheek, and it's hokey,
it's goofy. It's like making a horror movie, like you
want to scare people, but with safety, it gives me
so much more room to express the things that I
(22:54):
think a lot of us feel like. I try to
channel a lot of feminine energy into a really of
space and it's really cool. That's awesome. Why don't we
go on our last break here and when we come back,
we'll get Forrest's closing thoughts and we're back forest before
(23:25):
we close, any final thoughts on what it's been like
transitioning in this phase in your life later in life
and about finding community in all of this. Oh my god,
so many thoughts. It's weird. It's definitely strange because, like
I said, I'm thirty seven. I started transitioning at thirty five,
and I was not part of the queer scene, queer
(23:47):
community whatsoever. And now all of a sudden, I'm like
a tranny dyke and I am like happily and proudly.
It's been strange because there's so many young people of
the social events and stuff. It's like pretty saturated by
young people, which is awesome. Love that. I feel like
a lot of the older people are like still scared
(24:08):
to go out and put themselves out there. And what
I mean, I mean when you get into your thirties
and stuff, so much of it if you're not used
to all the things that the queer community entail. It's
a very social community. A lot of it revolves around bars,
and I think when I first started, I was like
(24:29):
kind of bummed because I'm like, oh, well, what if
I don't want to drink, Like what if it's a bar,
Like I don't go to bars. But then I started
thinking about it and I realized like, well, these are
historically places that it was the only place that people
like us could go and not get the shit beat
out of us, And so there is this kind of
history there, and it's like, well, these are like our churches,
(24:50):
these are our meetinghouses. Is queer bars, and that can
be really intimidating at first. The meaning behind it isn't
apparent immediately, so it does require some like actually going
out and touching grass definitely, and people who aren't in
the community, it's really scary to do that, to go
into a place that you feel like you don't belong
(25:12):
because it's a bar. You're going to a queer bar.
My first time going to a queer bar, I had
to go with people. I couldn't just go by myself
because I'm like, oh my god, I don't belong here,
I don't fit in. They're going to see me as
an interloper, and it's gonna beally horrible. I'm gonna get
chased out down the street by these people with pitchforks.
We have bridesmaids all the time. I don't think they're
worried about the tranny interlopers. We got bridesmaids. But yeah,
(25:35):
so that's something that I feel like a lot of
other people my age, Like I'm not even I'm even old.
I'm thirty seven. I'm still in my thirties, and then
once I get to my forties, it's going to be
even greater. It's gonna be awesome forties thirty. But like,
what else is really strange too, is I didn't start
transitioning until I was financially like stable. I had what
I consider to be a good support network. I live
(25:56):
four thousand miles away from my parents, so like, if
they disown me, tough shit, Like that's hard and all,
but I'm not financially dependent on them. I'm saving for retirement.
I have a job, so like for a one K.
I have such a four to one k it's not
even funny. And that stuff that, Like if I had
transitioned younger when I was twenty two to twenty three,
which is when a lot of these other people are
(26:17):
right now, Like I don't know if I would have
been able to do it. Like I meet women who
are twenty three years old and they are living month
to month in an apartment that takes up all of
their rent and they just lost their job, and I'm like,
I don't know how you do it. I'm so sorry.
So like I'm in a place of privilege and I
can't connect with a lot of younger trans people in
that sense. And yes, I'm older, but I'm also really
(26:38):
young compared to a lot of other people. Like I
meet people who are like twenty five twenty six who've
been transitioning for like seven or eight years, and so
they look up to me for a lot of stuff,
and I look up to them for a lot of stuff.
It's really strange. So it changes that dynamic of time.
We've touched on that a little bit on the show,
but yeah, let's actually like talk about that. So like, yeah,
we have queer age, I guess is like, yeah, you know,
(27:00):
I even though I'm only twenty nine years old, I'll
be thirty next month. People older than me call me
their elder, which is weird because I'm not older than
them that I've been out for longer than they have,
and so you know, they look to me as the elder,
and so we have our queer age, which is how
long you've been out. So you're relatively young, and you're
(27:24):
in your queer youth at the moment second puberty if
we want to infantilize it more absolutely, you're in your
second puberty. So yeah, that is definitely one of those
dynamics that can be an interesting aspect of community because
you know, I relate to a lot of trans women
across the spectrum in ages and queer age and all
(27:45):
of that. It's very rare that I find somebody who
is my actual age and my actual queer age as well.
And so I think in community, we're always meeting people
at different levels I guess of where they're at. It.
It's fun because it can get so dilated too in
a really strange way. I remember when I first started transitioning,
there's one woman, if she's a pretty good friend of
(28:06):
mine now, and she had been transitioning for eight months
or a year or something when I first started, and
so she kind of gave me a lot of advice
about certain things, and I remember looking up to her
and being like, oh my god, she's such a pro.
She's been doing this for so long. And now it's
like we've both been doing it for more or less
two years, and we're both on the same level now.
And she's five or six years younger than me, so
it's like we're more or less the same age. So
(28:28):
it's like we're equals now. But if we meet someone
who's been transitioning for five years, we're like, oh, okay,
this is someone who deserves our deference. Well I'm glad
you say it that way. Yeah, so you're you're just
like such an elder. It's awesome, I know. And you know,
I can also relate to you about, you know, struggling
with finding community within the bars, stuff like that. I
(28:50):
did all of that when I was like sixteen. I
did it when I wasn't supposed to be doing it.
But now you can't get me to go to a bar,
you can't get me to go anywhere because I'm just
not that girl anymore. And in the queer community, we
have introverted people extroverted people, and unfortunately, and we've already
seen back in the to early two thousands and nineties,
(29:13):
there were queer clubs all over the place. Now it's
just little bars, and you know, if we vacate all
of the bars, then there's not going to be any
spaces at all anymore. So it's just an interesting conversation
I think too, about holding those queer spaces sacred. I
feel like it's really important to continue to be seen
(29:35):
and go out. And there is a challenge of visibility
without protection, which I think that discussion seems to come
around every transity of visibility. But we can protect ourselves
and we're just really strong together. And I get so
much power and so much joy out of being around
other people like me, And I think that's something that
(29:56):
I never truly understood until I came out and start transitioning,
and feeling seen is really powerful. It's really really inspirational.
Yeah yeah, and an important part of being here we
are and just taking up space. Damn it, I'm going
to be here whether you like it or not. You know,
any other closing thoughts on trans community, trans discourse. I
(30:22):
love Julius Serrano so much, and I'm so so thrilled
that you were able to actually interview her. Her book
Whipping Girl blew me away when I first read. I
first read it, like we're right when I started transitioning.
I wish I had read it and started transitioning, because
holy shit, Yeah, everyone who comes out as a trans
woman should get a copy of Whipping Girl. What else
(30:42):
would we add to that a copy of Whipping Girl?
I would also throw in dream of a Woman should
be in there too, because that's a big one that
kind of helps conceptualize, like we're turning into like a
little book club, a little literary corner over here. That
would kind of helped me conceptualize where I fit in
the world as a trans woman amongst other trans women
in like these like kind of fantastical situations and stuff.
(31:06):
Oh and also, yes, you are trans enough by a
woman whose name escapes me. Her name is mea Violet
on that one helped. I started reading that one right
when I started transitioning because trans reddit was just too
toxic for me, so I had to quit trans You
want to talk about that first, I hated it absolutely. Okay,
there's a lot of different subreddits, but tell me about
(31:28):
your experience on trans reddit. I hate it. A friend
of mine put it in a really good way, and
if you ever listened to this cast, I'm sorry for
stealing your thunder. But reddit is really good for figuring
out if you're trans, but it's really horrible at telling
you how to be trans. That part and so so
much of it is just like it falls so rapidly
(31:49):
into the same cis white Western standards of beauty and
standards of femininity, and it's really fucking easy for someone
to be unsure of themselves and fall into some really
horrible rabbit holes. People post pictures asking if they pass,
and it's really sad to see these girls get so
(32:11):
wrapped up into that, and they get so wrapped up
into the what if and what if and they never
take that first step of going to the clinic and
getting on and they just never take the first step
of wanting to live socially as a woman exactly. Yeah,
And it's so sad because this is such a beautiful, amazing,
powerful and also terrifying experience, but you don't get out
(32:33):
of that terror without putting yourself out there. And yes
it's dangerous and yes it's scary, but that's life. Coming
out and living as a trans woman fixes exactly one thing.
It fixes not living as a woman, right. All the
other stuff is still life, like you still have to
live in your own head. And so a lot of
these people are just victims of their own insecurities. And
(32:56):
it's really sad because there's people who are perpetuating it.
They don't realize what they're doing, and then some of
them perpetuated and intentionally. I'm not sure which community you're
talking about specifically, but the one that comes to mind
for me is for trans I've never gone on that
because the second I found out of it, it's horrible.
I mean, I've only learked on there just to see,
(33:16):
like what are these girls talking about? And holy shit.
Unfortunately we get like a lot of like community language
from there, but they give each other brainworms, as we say,
and if you don't know what brainworms are, it's just
like insecurities, these like horrible beauty standards, these things that
are telling you that you have to fit X y
Z mold or you are not going to be a woman.
(33:39):
And it keeps you stuck in this place of well,
I'm just not going to do anything. I'm just not
going to make any move right. I mean, we all
have a lot of insecurities when we first start wondering, like, okay,
do we transition? And I'll admit, like on Reddit that
was where I first read like someone linked to me
the gender Nictorio Bible, I think is what it's called,
which is amazing. It's an amazing piece of resource for
(34:01):
people to read. That should also come in the mail,
like a paper copy of it. Yeah. Yeah, the idea
that generally says people don't lay awake at night wondering
if they're SIS or not. That was a huge moment
for me. There's a lot of these good like timeless
adages that are repeated, which I think is really important
for people because I've benefited from that. And another one
was like you don't need to have dysphoria to be
(34:22):
trans which on its surface, like now, in hindsight, I
realized that's bullshit, but at the time, like people need
to hear that because I didn't think I had dysphoria.
I thought I had joy and euphoria. When I would
think about living my life the way I live it now,
and now I'm like, oh fuck, I've had dysphoria my
whole life. I just never realized that's what it was called. Right.
(34:44):
I'm so glad you brought that point up because that
is a very important point, and you know what, people
do need to hear that sometimes because dysphoria presents itself
in lots of different ways, and it evolves and it
changes as we evolve and change and all of that,
and you may be having dysphoria that you're not realizing
as you're saying. I mean, transitioning doesn't fix all of
(35:05):
your dysphoria, is what I say. I still have dysphoria obviously,
because but it's a matter of understanding how to manage it,
I guess, and knowing when to recognize it. But yeah,
I'm glad you brought that point up. Yeah, Like just
to add on to what you're saying, like dysphoria, once
you can put a name to it, it becomes easier
to spot and if anything, it might get worse, like
it got worse for me the first like four or
(35:26):
five months of transitioning medically, I was full of brainworms.
I was like a living mass of brainworm, but it
becomes easier to manage. But yeah, so so those are
really good things from trans reddit. Yeah, but they're paired
with some of the worst most violent like it ever
as we sing, you know, yeah, yeah, like a compish ball,
like a comfish ball. Yeah. Well, basically they keep each
(35:48):
other down. Yeah, like, hey, it's it's low key super
problematic that you're climbing out, So I think you should
just come down here with the rest of them exactly.
That would be more that would be more equitable and
more comfortable, you know, right, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, Well forrest,
tell the listeners where they can find you, where they
can follow you, where they can listen to your sounds,
(36:10):
your music. Yes, you can find my music at Bury
Them and keep Quiet dot bandcamp dot com. So it's
my band camp page. And then my other one is
Ocean of Ghosts, so it's Ocean of Ghosts dot band
camp dot com. Wonderful. I'm also on Instagram at Bury
(36:30):
Them and keep Quiet Forest. Thank you so much for
joining us today. It was lovely chatting with you, and
I will see you on the interwebs. Yeah, thanks for
having me, Carmen. I appreciate it. This was great, all right, listeners.
That brings us to the end of another episode of
Beauty Translated. We're getting closer and closer to the end
(36:53):
of the season. I hope you all have been enjoying
this Pride month and I hope you look forward to
some of the extended Pride programming we have coming out
in the month of July, because we celebrate Pride three
hundred and sixty five days a year, not just during
the month of June. Here, so thank you again for
listening to this lovely episode with the lovely forest Brian Coutrere.
(37:17):
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week
and stay beautiful out there. Beauty Translated is hosted by
me Carmen Laul and produced by Kurt Garin and Jessica Crinchitch,
with production assistance from Jennifer Bassett. Special thanks to Ali
Perry and Ali Canter for their support. Our theme song
(37:38):
is composed by Aaron Kaufman. Beauty Translated is proud to
be part of the Outspoken Network from iHeart Podcasts. For
more iHeart podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm sure a lot of it has to do with
misogyny trans misogyny, but it's like we're not allowed to
be mad, We're not allowed to be pissed off. We're
just expected to roll over and submit. Hello, Beauty Translated listeners,
and welcome to another episode of BOD. This week, I
(00:25):
am talking to a metal musician based out of the Bronx,
New York, but she originally comes from Louisiana and we're
going to be talking about her French Cajun roots, her
growing up in the South, as well as moving to
New York, transitioning and creating metal music, both as a
(00:45):
trans woman and somebody pre transition. So please enjoy my
conversation with the lovely Forest Brian Coutrere. Hello, Beauty Translated listeners.
This week, I'm here with yet another friend I have
made through that wonderful app we call Instagram. She has
(01:08):
been a listener since day one and was an instant
connection for me when she reached out. Please welcome to
the pod the metal musician Forest Brian Cotrere, Hi, Forrest,
how are you today? I'm doing good. Thanks for having me,
Thank you for being here. That's a beautiful name. Forest, Brian.
Thank you well, Forrest. Could you start out with giving
(01:28):
us an introduction to who you are? Yeah? Sure, I'm
thirty seven years old. I am a boring lady who
fixes things for a living. I also happen to make music,
mostly extreme metal. I have been doing that for gosh
fifteen years now, making music, making music, Yeah, making extreme metal.
(01:48):
I used to be in like some pop bands and
stuff back in college. It was fun, and that's pretty
much the entirety of my life. Like that would be
in my obituary. Like she made really loud, aggressive music,
and she rode bicycles and she fixed it up. It's fantastic. Now,
could you give us maybe a little bit of background, Like,
so you live in New York now, but could you
(02:09):
also maybe talk a little bit about where you originally
come from. So I moved here from Arizona. Actually I
lived there for about eighteen years, but before that I
lived in Louisiana. I was born in in Lafayette, Louisiana.
My mom, as far back as it goes, my family's
been from Acadia Parish, so super super Cajun. My mom
(02:31):
has like a really strong accent. I lost my accent
when I was a little kid, but I used to
go back a lot, and like my mom spoke little
Casun French, I've got relatives that only spoke Cajun French
and that was pretty cool. Like I had I don't know,
rain Crawley like little towns along the Een where I
would go and do family stuff. A lot of heavy,
(02:52):
heavy food, a lot of working class mentality which was
really great, a lot of inclusivity which was really fun.
When I was a kid, my mom and I packed
up and moved to Phoenix, Arizona, which is its own unique,
weird little I like to call it a Southern runoff,
like it has its own culture. But it's very much
like if the South really wanted to be like Los
(03:13):
Angeles when it comes to fashion and attitude and stuff
like that. And then I've lived in New York City
for fourteen years. I moved here after college. Fantastic being
a transwoman in New York. I'm sure it's very different
than being a transwoman in Phoenix versus being a transwoman
in Lafayette. You recently went back to Louisiana for a
family reunion. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, what was that like
(03:34):
for you? That was super weird. So my family has
this family reunion, my mom's side of the family. It's
a bunch of people I hadn't seen in about thirty years.
I don't remember any of them. They had a family
reunion in Holly Beach, which is south of Lake Charles
on the Gulf. They call it the Cajun Riviera, And
(03:57):
it was the first time I'd seen my mom and
my sister since starting transition, because before that, the last
time I saw them was February of twenty twenty, not
a good year for traveling. Yeah, so that was really weird.
We got all the weirdness out of the way. My
mom generally was pretty accepting. Yeah, it was super strange
being in this place that I hadn't been in so long,
(04:20):
looking at it through new eyes, like thinking about how
people saw me. Twenty twenty three not the best year
to be a trans person in certain parts of the country.
Not the worst probably, but not the best generally. Not
an issue a lot of stairs, but I'm kind of
used to that in certain places I travel for work
through the Midwest sometimes. Not too strange for that. Everyone
(04:45):
at the family reunion was so rad I was so nervous.
I'm still very much a baby trance. I've only been
doing this for like a year, and so I don't
know that was the thing too. It's like I didn't
know how much of them knew, like remembered me. I
did have someone and mention, oh, yeah, you're Darlene's kid.
Didn't she also have an older son? And then one
(05:05):
of the other cousins was like, nope, she yields fun
and I was like, yes, ali, allies, but yeah, I'll
admit I'm very much a New Yorker like now, like
I've lived here for fourteen years. But it was really
kind of shocking seeing all of these people in real
tree camo and Trump bumper stickers and stuff, all sitting
(05:26):
around at bonfire next to an RV with a huge
pot of gumbo behind us, and me just like sitting
there talking like normal. It was really cool. I couldn't
help but think of like a lot of the political
and social implications of it. It's hard to separate that.
But I also don't want to downplay any experiences that
anyone else has and just the truth of the nature.
But it was really refreshing for me, A refreshing moment
(05:50):
of coming together with people that you normally wouldn't see
yourself sharing community with or sharing dinner with or whatever,
right exactly. We don't get that many people like that
up here. And also it was weird because they didn't
really feel like family, right. I mean, that's kind of
the magic of I think the Cajun experience. They generally
will just make you feel like family, regardless of whether
(06:12):
you're blood or not. I'm really proud to be a
part of that heritage wise, even though I've kind of
disconnected from that a lot, but I'm trying to connect
more with that because it's so valuable to me. I
think that's been going on lately with a lot of
trans women from the South. I've noticed reconnecting with that
complicated history, and I think you and I both bond
(06:34):
over that through like we talked about, like Ethel Kaine's
music and all of that. Oh my God kind of
teaches us in that way. I just want to give people,
like maybe a little bit more of an idea of
what Cajun culture is, like what a Cajun gathering is, like,
paint us a picture. So this is family reunion. It's
actually not super different from a lot of other Cajun gatherings.
A lot of it's based around family and community. Like
(06:56):
I do remember a lot of this from when I
was a little kid eating outside. I cannot think of
a time when I ever ate indoors. It's super hot
down there, it's super swampy, muggy, So like you're always
eating outside, and generally you'll have cinitronella candles all around
for the bugs exactly, so the smell of citronella is
always in the air outdoor kitchens. So this particular event,
(07:17):
there was a huge like I don't even know what
to call it, but it was an outdoor kitchen underneath
like an RV that was elevated thirty feet into the
air on stilts. It was wild, so we all kind
of were underneath it to protect us from the rain.
But you had a huge pot of gumbo that had
been working for a whole day. You had more rice
(07:38):
than you could ever imagine in one setting. And then
there was another huge pot of jumbalaya and banana cream
pie and stuff like various, and like pecan pie and
stuff like various, like super junkie sweets. But yeah, generally
you're looking at gumbo, rice jumbalaya, basically seafood stuff and
then all the parts of the chicken that you wouldn't
(07:59):
think you would want to eat thrown into a pot
with spices and mixed and eaten. And it's just constantly going.
It's like a perpetual stew, like it's just always going.
The entire gathering is based around food. No one shuts
up about food. Everyone's comparing recipes. It's very much family oriented.
There's not the like ribbing or like making fun of people.
(08:19):
It's just like hasimom and m jelly kind of thing,
hanging out, like just shooting the shit, and it's it's
really amazing, and it's really low steaks. I was surprised
at how truly low steaks it was. I thought I
would be hanging out with my sister a lot more.
She's twenty two, she's super young, she lives in Phoenix.
But I ended up hanging out with older cousins, uncles,
(08:42):
older aunts, just as a result of like, those are
the people you were having a really good time with
at the moment. Yeah, that's awesome to hear. It's very welcoming. Well,
I'm really glad to hear that. And I don't know
if I've told you this, but I have some family
from Louisiana. I've never been to louis I didn't know that,
but I've always wanted to go. So now you're making
me hung and you're making me want to go to Louisiana.
(09:03):
It's really pretty I need to visit. We're going to
take a quick break and when we come back, we'll
talk more about your music and your sound and stuff
like that. And we're back, so for us, talk to
(09:29):
us a little bit more about your music and your sound.
How would you describe it or do you have any
influences that you wish to talk about. Yeah, I both
love and hate trying to describe it. It's a branch
of extreme metal. I make black metal and I make
doom metal, both of which for anyone who's listening who
(09:49):
doesn't know what that is, I'm going to try my
hardest to like explain it without making it sound unapproachable.
It's a kind of extreme metal, which is just like
if you can imagine, just very very fast, very loud.
Production quality is like actually really specific to this. It's
very technical when it comes to the production quality, very
fast drums. I don't know, like one hundred and sixty
(10:10):
piets a minute or up for black metal. It's very
shrill guitars. It's from Scandinavia, like Norway and stuff. It
was a reaction to a lot of the very overproduced
and commercialized death metal stuff that was coming out in
the late eighties and early nineties, and they're like, we're
just gonna go and be like more punk about it
and go the other direction. There's also a lot of
Nazi sympathy in that, so there's a lot in the
(10:30):
scene that is trying to disown that actively, which I'm
a part of. So everything's really shrill. There's really wild
experimentation with production values. So a lot of it is
like if you can imagine ambient, lush sounds with really
fast drums and someone just like shrieking over the top
of it, it makes you want to be in the
middle of the woods in the snow in the winter,
(10:53):
screaming at the moon or something. That's what you have
to do. You have to listen to it while you're
screaming at the moon in the middle of the woods
and snow. And then doom metal is slow. It's very slow.
It's just the heaviest, most aggressive, depressing, very slow music.
(11:15):
I can't describe it as anything but just super duper
slow and heavy and more screaming, but like lower screaming.
So I know you said black metal mostly has its
roots in Norway Scandinavia. Is that the same for doom metal?
No doom metal, it actually came from the UK. I'm
sure everyone's heard of Black Sabbath. Oh yeah, of course.
(11:36):
They were the first metal band arguably, and they would
retroactively be called a doom metal band. So it's kind
of had its roots. It's been around forever, and I
think people over the years, especially in the nineties, when
a lot of production values started changing and there's a
big shift in recording technology, they're like, how can we
get this heavier and slower and darker, And so yeah,
(12:03):
that's really good too, because there's so much that you
can incorporate when you have something that's slow and the
goal is really just like, let's do it slow and heavy.
It can be beautiful. It can have a lot of
classical influence, it can have a lot of gothic influence.
You can throw a lot of found noise, ambient, pretty
lush stuff in. It's really amazing. So we actually have
(12:34):
two different tracks that for us to share it with
us for today's episode. The one that you're hearing now
is Bury Them and Keep Quiet, the song cast from
Darkness forst tell us a little bit about this track.
This is actually the most recent track that I've written
and recorded. I think I finally got it hammered out,
maybe like six months ago or less, and it's on
(12:56):
a split that I'm doing with a trends women based
in the Pacific Northwest who has a project called Feminizer.
But our whole goal was to try to incorporate a
little bit of trans stuff into it, so that song
I tried to make it really spooky and echoey. A
lot of it is about just transformation in general and
how nothing stays the same. Everything changes. Being just a
(13:20):
trans person in general, we so like aggressively take like
a crash course in change and impermanence because it eventually
gets to the point where it's like, well, who cares
nothing stays the same? Why is this a big deal?
We just want to live our lives and do our thing.
That's the main point behind it. I also threw in
a lot of Darkness River and imagery and stuff like that,
(13:42):
like decomposing and really cheesy stuff. You could get real
cheesy with it, and it's really fun. Sorry, remind us
who is doing instruments and who's doing vocals on these tracks? Okay,
you're doing the whole Okay, gotcha. Yep. So it's all guitar, keyboard, bass, guitar.
I program all the drums. I do know how to
(14:02):
play drums. I just I live in an apartment. I
don't have a drum kit. But yeah, it's a lot
of fun. It's a lot of work, but it's really
really rewarding. The vocal aspect of it. It's very physical
and it's something I'm actively have to maintain and it
took me several years before I could do it for
a long time without hurting myself. Yeah, I can imagine that.
(14:24):
It's fun. I think that's one of the first things
that people ask when they hear metal music, like how
do they do that with their voice? Yeah, And I
think learning more about like trans voice training and stuff
like that, like I'm able to kind of tap into
a lot of that extreme metal vocal training to dial
that in. It is physical, but yeah, just like with anything,
(14:44):
there's ways to do it for a long time without
hurting yourself. Absolutely, and you have a beautiful voice, by
the way, Thank you, beautiful voice. Let's talk about the
other track you gave us from your other project, Ocean
of Ghost. This is the track Glorious Wrath. Tell us
about that one. This one is just super pissed off.
(15:05):
This is from my most recent album from this project
that came out in twenty twenty two that kind of
made waves. A lot of people really liked it. It
was a departure from what I used to do, Like
I used to do a lot of fuzzier, dronier stuff
with this project. And in this time, I started writing
this album right when I started coming out, and I
was just so pissed about all of the legislation that
(15:26):
was like starting to happen, And there was this huge
sea change in when people talked about like being trans,
especially being a trans woman, like a transfemme person, had
to do with sadness, had to do with the loss
of the childhood and like all this stuff, and like,
I'm not going to knock anyone for having those feelings,
but I felt rage. I was so pissed, and I
(15:51):
feel like anger and revenge and just pure rage is
not something that's talked about and like expressed enough in
the trans femme kind of community. And oh yeah, I'm
sure a lot of it has to do with misogyny
trans misogyny, but it's like we're not allowed to be mad,
We're not allowed to be pissed off. We're just expected
(16:12):
to roll over and submit. Yeah, I mean, for the
same reasons why this woman can be celebrated for being
more a sortive or aggressive or angry, trans women can
be told that they're too masculine for doing those things,
which is like a complete double standard, right when really
(16:33):
it has nothing to do with our gender. I can
relate to feeling like society wants you, as a trans
woman to be as polite and as nice and as
I think palpitable as possible for people exactly. And I'm
glad you brought up how s this women are kind
of lauded for expressing those feelings, because if we act
(16:56):
like that, if we act as sort of we have
to contend with like, Okay, do they think I'm being
too manly? Right? And do they think I'm being too bitch?
Or is are they going to say that that's it's
like we've got both of them. Are they going to
say that that's like my quote unquote my male socialization,
male socialization Like god, yeah, like don't even don't even
you know, right, So yeah, it's frustrating and infuriating, and
(17:20):
it makes me mad thinking about it. And I can
only imagine. You know, I've been transitioning for a long time,
and I have seen that things have gotten worse for
trans people within the last fifteen or plush years that
I've been transitioning, And so I commend you for coming
out in a time of such great uncertainty, turmoil, all
(17:44):
of that, because that couldn't have been easy. You've been
in metal music for fifteen plus years, oh yeah, and
you've been transitioning for about two of those years. What
has it been like being in the metal music scene
as a trans woman. It was a lot weirder at first,
kind of like subtly dropping hints to my fans, like
I stopped signing my name at the end of email
(18:07):
blasts or whatever. I stopped having photographs of myself out there,
and I was so convinced that I was the only one.
With the exception of Margaret Kiljoy Yeah, she's she's an author,
she's awesome. She don't know she made music. Yeah, I
don't think she does anymore, but like that's how I
found out about her. She had a project called Femina's Ghoul,
(18:29):
which is a black metal project. So I was like, okay, cool.
So there's not many people like me, so I just like,
won't really talk about this very much. But then last
year I put up a thing on my Instagram saying like, hey, everyone,
I'm trans. Let's fuck stuff up, I guess. And then
I started connecting with a lot more people, and I
think so many of them are pandemic trans people, and
(18:51):
a lot of it is like trans women too. I
haven't really thought that much into it. I don't know
if it's selection, confirmation bias or whatever, but I'm starting
to connect with a lot more and it's becoming almost
a stereotype, like the trans woman who makes black metal.
There's a lot of punk influence in it, and I
think a lot of the women that I meet in
real life, like out at bars or whatever and on
the internet who make this come from the punk scene,
(19:13):
and I think so much of that is very introspective
and it kind of forces you to redefine where you
fit in society, and with that naturally comes where you
fit your sex and your gender. It's been not as
challenging as I thought. It's actually been really empowering because
it allows me to harness this super powerful energy and
connect with other people who feel the same way. And
(19:37):
I feel like there's a lot of really amazing trans
musicians out there who need to be celebrated more absolutely.
And yeah, I was going to say, I think trans
trans person making X music like it could be metal,
it could be EDM, it could be like trans. I
feel like there's lately more and more trans people breaking
(19:59):
into the music industry because a lot of us are
very musically minded, very musically inclined, and want to express
that part of ourselves. But I do find that fantastic
that you've been able to find all of these other
trans women in metal that I've, like you said, all
been kind of pandemic babies. Yeah, and I've had this
(20:21):
idea where I want to start some sort of official
network or even unofficial network, because, like I said, I'm
working with a trans black metal artist who goes by
the name Feminizer, and like her stuff is phenomenal first
time I heard it, I was blown away and I
hit her up. I'm like, let's do a split together.
And we both happen to be on the same label
that puts our stuff out, so it was a really
(20:41):
good connection there. But I'm meeting all these other trans women,
I'm like, I don't know. I think I'm probably going
to put together some sort of compilation soon, like hit
up a few labels that are very queer friendly, because
people need to be more aggressively open allies like sis,
people who are not trans need to step out and
openly say I will work with trans artists and if
(21:03):
they won't, then we'll just do it ourselves. A lot
of the music like, yeah, sure, we don't have music
about being trans. Not all my stuff is about it.
A lot of my black metal stuff is not explicitly
like I'm trans. Like when you're walking through the woods
at night in the snow, yelling at the moon, there's
only so much gender that comes into play, right, But
just knowing that it is a trans person behind it, yeah,
(21:26):
making that putting themselves out there being vulnerable like that
needs to be expressed more. Absolutely. We don't have to
be talking about our transness in order for our perspective
to be valuable, you know. And yeah, I think in
music and all avenues, trans perspectives are valuable. So I
think we kind of touched already about how transitioning changed
(21:48):
your relationship to the music scene, But how did transitioning
change your relationship to the music that you were producing
and putting out. Definitely changed the way that I think
about making music. Before transitioning, I was afraid of it
not being masculine enough, just like so many of us.
(22:10):
I had this performative masculine shield that I put up,
so I was constantly trying to like, all right, how
deep can I get my voice? Like how low can
I go with this? And how like nasty can I
make these riffs? So now I don't have that anymore.
It sounds really cliched, I guess, but it's like I
can really just kind of do what I want. I
can be myself. I can make stuff. If anything, Now
(22:32):
it feels more of like a fuck you if I
do something super aggressive and louder and more vulgar, which yeah,
most of its very tongue in cheek, and it's hokey,
it's goofy. It's like making a horror movie, like you
want to scare people, but with safety, it gives me
so much more room to express the things that I
(22:54):
think a lot of us feel like. I try to
channel a lot of feminine energy into a really of
space and it's really cool. That's awesome. Why don't we
go on our last break here and when we come back,
we'll get Forrest's closing thoughts and we're back forest before
(23:25):
we close, any final thoughts on what it's been like
transitioning in this phase in your life later in life
and about finding community in all of this. Oh my god,
so many thoughts. It's weird. It's definitely strange because, like
I said, I'm thirty seven. I started transitioning at thirty five,
and I was not part of the queer scene, queer
(23:47):
community whatsoever. And now all of a sudden, I'm like
a tranny dyke and I am like happily and proudly.
It's been strange because there's so many young people of
the social events and stuff. It's like pretty saturated by
young people, which is awesome. Love that. I feel like
a lot of the older people are like still scared
(24:08):
to go out and put themselves out there. And what
I mean, I mean when you get into your thirties
and stuff, so much of it if you're not used
to all the things that the queer community entail. It's
a very social community. A lot of it revolves around bars,
and I think when I first started, I was like
(24:29):
kind of bummed because I'm like, oh, well, what if
I don't want to drink, Like what if it's a bar,
Like I don't go to bars. But then I started
thinking about it and I realized like, well, these are
historically places that it was the only place that people
like us could go and not get the shit beat
out of us, And so there is this kind of
history there, and it's like, well, these are like our churches,
(24:50):
these are our meetinghouses. Is queer bars, and that can
be really intimidating at first. The meaning behind it isn't
apparent immediately, so it does require some like actually going
out and touching grass definitely, and people who aren't in
the community, it's really scary to do that, to go
into a place that you feel like you don't belong
(25:12):
because it's a bar. You're going to a queer bar.
My first time going to a queer bar, I had
to go with people. I couldn't just go by myself
because I'm like, oh my god, I don't belong here,
I don't fit in. They're going to see me as
an interloper, and it's gonna beally horrible. I'm gonna get
chased out down the street by these people with pitchforks.
We have bridesmaids all the time. I don't think they're
worried about the tranny interlopers. We got bridesmaids. But yeah,
(25:35):
so that's something that I feel like a lot of
other people my age, Like I'm not even I'm even old.
I'm thirty seven. I'm still in my thirties, and then
once I get to my forties, it's going to be
even greater. It's gonna be awesome forties thirty. But like,
what else is really strange too, is I didn't start
transitioning until I was financially like stable. I had what
I consider to be a good support network. I live
(25:56):
four thousand miles away from my parents, so like, if
they disown me, tough shit, Like that's hard and all,
but I'm not financially dependent on them. I'm saving for retirement.
I have a job, so like for a one K.
I have such a four to one k it's not
even funny. And that stuff that, Like if I had
transitioned younger when I was twenty two to twenty three,
which is when a lot of these other people are
(26:17):
right now, Like I don't know if I would have
been able to do it. Like I meet women who
are twenty three years old and they are living month
to month in an apartment that takes up all of
their rent and they just lost their job, and I'm like,
I don't know how you do it. I'm so sorry.
So like I'm in a place of privilege and I
can't connect with a lot of younger trans people in
that sense. And yes, I'm older, but I'm also really
(26:38):
young compared to a lot of other people. Like I
meet people who are like twenty five twenty six who've
been transitioning for like seven or eight years, and so
they look up to me for a lot of stuff,
and I look up to them for a lot of stuff.
It's really strange. So it changes that dynamic of time.
We've touched on that a little bit on the show,
but yeah, let's actually like talk about that. So like, yeah,
we have queer age, I guess is like, yeah, you know,
(27:00):
I even though I'm only twenty nine years old, I'll
be thirty next month. People older than me call me
their elder, which is weird because I'm not older than
them that I've been out for longer than they have,
and so you know, they look to me as the elder,
and so we have our queer age, which is how
long you've been out. So you're relatively young, and you're
(27:24):
in your queer youth at the moment second puberty if
we want to infantilize it more absolutely, you're in your
second puberty. So yeah, that is definitely one of those
dynamics that can be an interesting aspect of community because
you know, I relate to a lot of trans women
across the spectrum in ages and queer age and all
(27:45):
of that. It's very rare that I find somebody who
is my actual age and my actual queer age as well.
And so I think in community, we're always meeting people
at different levels I guess of where they're at. It.
It's fun because it can get so dilated too in
a really strange way. I remember when I first started transitioning,
there's one woman, if she's a pretty good friend of
(28:06):
mine now, and she had been transitioning for eight months
or a year or something when I first started, and
so she kind of gave me a lot of advice
about certain things, and I remember looking up to her
and being like, oh my god, she's such a pro.
She's been doing this for so long. And now it's
like we've both been doing it for more or less
two years, and we're both on the same level now.
And she's five or six years younger than me, so
it's like we're more or less the same age. So
(28:28):
it's like we're equals now. But if we meet someone
who's been transitioning for five years, we're like, oh, okay,
this is someone who deserves our deference. Well I'm glad
you say it that way. Yeah, so you're you're just
like such an elder. It's awesome, I know. And you know,
I can also relate to you about, you know, struggling
with finding community within the bars, stuff like that. I
(28:50):
did all of that when I was like sixteen. I
did it when I wasn't supposed to be doing it.
But now you can't get me to go to a bar,
you can't get me to go anywhere because I'm just
not that girl anymore. And in the queer community, we
have introverted people extroverted people, and unfortunately, and we've already
seen back in the to early two thousands and nineties,
(29:13):
there were queer clubs all over the place. Now it's
just little bars, and you know, if we vacate all
of the bars, then there's not going to be any
spaces at all anymore. So it's just an interesting conversation
I think too, about holding those queer spaces sacred. I
feel like it's really important to continue to be seen
(29:35):
and go out. And there is a challenge of visibility
without protection, which I think that discussion seems to come
around every transity of visibility. But we can protect ourselves
and we're just really strong together. And I get so
much power and so much joy out of being around
other people like me, And I think that's something that
(29:56):
I never truly understood until I came out and start transitioning,
and feeling seen is really powerful. It's really really inspirational.
Yeah yeah, and an important part of being here we
are and just taking up space. Damn it, I'm going
to be here whether you like it or not. You know,
any other closing thoughts on trans community, trans discourse. I
(30:22):
love Julius Serrano so much, and I'm so so thrilled
that you were able to actually interview her. Her book
Whipping Girl blew me away when I first read. I
first read it, like we're right when I started transitioning.
I wish I had read it and started transitioning, because
holy shit, Yeah, everyone who comes out as a trans
woman should get a copy of Whipping Girl. What else
(30:42):
would we add to that a copy of Whipping Girl?
I would also throw in dream of a Woman should
be in there too, because that's a big one that
kind of helps conceptualize, like we're turning into like a
little book club, a little literary corner over here. That
would kind of helped me conceptualize where I fit in
the world as a trans woman amongst other trans women
in like these like kind of fantastical situations and stuff.
(31:06):
Oh and also, yes, you are trans enough by a
woman whose name escapes me. Her name is mea Violet
on that one helped. I started reading that one right
when I started transitioning because trans reddit was just too
toxic for me, so I had to quit trans You
want to talk about that first, I hated it absolutely. Okay,
there's a lot of different subreddits, but tell me about
(31:28):
your experience on trans reddit. I hate it. A friend
of mine put it in a really good way, and
if you ever listened to this cast, I'm sorry for
stealing your thunder. But reddit is really good for figuring
out if you're trans, but it's really horrible at telling
you how to be trans. That part and so so
much of it is just like it falls so rapidly
(31:49):
into the same cis white Western standards of beauty and
standards of femininity, and it's really fucking easy for someone
to be unsure of themselves and fall into some really
horrible rabbit holes. People post pictures asking if they pass,
and it's really sad to see these girls get so
(32:11):
wrapped up into that, and they get so wrapped up
into the what if and what if and they never
take that first step of going to the clinic and
getting on and they just never take the first step
of wanting to live socially as a woman exactly. Yeah,
And it's so sad because this is such a beautiful, amazing,
powerful and also terrifying experience, but you don't get out
(32:33):
of that terror without putting yourself out there. And yes
it's dangerous and yes it's scary, but that's life. Coming
out and living as a trans woman fixes exactly one thing.
It fixes not living as a woman, right. All the
other stuff is still life, like you still have to
live in your own head. And so a lot of
these people are just victims of their own insecurities. And
(32:56):
it's really sad because there's people who are perpetuating it.
They don't realize what they're doing, and then some of
them perpetuated and intentionally. I'm not sure which community you're
talking about specifically, but the one that comes to mind
for me is for trans I've never gone on that
because the second I found out of it, it's horrible.
I mean, I've only learked on there just to see,
(33:16):
like what are these girls talking about? And holy shit.
Unfortunately we get like a lot of like community language
from there, but they give each other brainworms, as we say,
and if you don't know what brainworms are, it's just
like insecurities, these like horrible beauty standards, these things that
are telling you that you have to fit X y
Z mold or you are not going to be a woman.
(33:39):
And it keeps you stuck in this place of well,
I'm just not going to do anything. I'm just not
going to make any move right. I mean, we all
have a lot of insecurities when we first start wondering, like, okay,
do we transition? And I'll admit, like on Reddit that
was where I first read like someone linked to me
the gender Nictorio Bible, I think is what it's called,
which is amazing. It's an amazing piece of resource for
(34:01):
people to read. That should also come in the mail,
like a paper copy of it. Yeah. Yeah, the idea
that generally says people don't lay awake at night wondering
if they're SIS or not. That was a huge moment
for me. There's a lot of these good like timeless
adages that are repeated, which I think is really important
for people because I've benefited from that. And another one
was like you don't need to have dysphoria to be
(34:22):
trans which on its surface, like now, in hindsight, I
realized that's bullshit, but at the time, like people need
to hear that because I didn't think I had dysphoria.
I thought I had joy and euphoria. When I would
think about living my life the way I live it now,
and now I'm like, oh fuck, I've had dysphoria my
whole life. I just never realized that's what it was called. Right.
(34:44):
I'm so glad you brought that point up because that
is a very important point, and you know what, people
do need to hear that sometimes because dysphoria presents itself
in lots of different ways, and it evolves and it
changes as we evolve and change and all of that,
and you may be having dysphoria that you're not realizing
as you're saying. I mean, transitioning doesn't fix all of
(35:05):
your dysphoria, is what I say. I still have dysphoria obviously,
because but it's a matter of understanding how to manage it,
I guess, and knowing when to recognize it. But yeah,
I'm glad you brought that point up. Yeah, Like just
to add on to what you're saying, like dysphoria, once
you can put a name to it, it becomes easier
to spot and if anything, it might get worse, like
it got worse for me the first like four or
(35:26):
five months of transitioning medically, I was full of brainworms.
I was like a living mass of brainworm, but it
becomes easier to manage. But yeah, so so those are
really good things from trans reddit. Yeah, but they're paired
with some of the worst most violent like it ever
as we sing, you know, yeah, yeah, like a compish ball,
like a comfish ball. Yeah. Well, basically they keep each
(35:48):
other down. Yeah, like, hey, it's it's low key super
problematic that you're climbing out, So I think you should
just come down here with the rest of them exactly.
That would be more that would be more equitable and
more comfortable, you know, right, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, Well forrest,
tell the listeners where they can find you, where they
can follow you, where they can listen to your sounds,
(36:10):
your music. Yes, you can find my music at Bury
Them and keep Quiet dot bandcamp dot com. So it's
my band camp page. And then my other one is
Ocean of Ghosts, so it's Ocean of Ghosts dot band
camp dot com. Wonderful. I'm also on Instagram at Bury
(36:30):
Them and keep Quiet Forest. Thank you so much for
joining us today. It was lovely chatting with you, and
I will see you on the interwebs. Yeah, thanks for
having me, Carmen. I appreciate it. This was great, all right, listeners.
That brings us to the end of another episode of
Beauty Translated. We're getting closer and closer to the end
(36:53):
of the season. I hope you all have been enjoying
this Pride month and I hope you look forward to
some of the extended Pride programming we have coming out
in the month of July, because we celebrate Pride three
hundred and sixty five days a year, not just during
the month of June. Here, so thank you again for
listening to this lovely episode with the lovely forest Brian Coutrere.
(37:17):
I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week
and stay beautiful out there. Beauty Translated is hosted by
me Carmen Laul and produced by Kurt Garin and Jessica Crinchitch,
with production assistance from Jennifer Bassett. Special thanks to Ali
Perry and Ali Canter for their support. Our theme song
(37:38):
is composed by Aaron Kaufman. Beauty Translated is proud to
be part of the Outspoken Network from iHeart Podcasts. For
more iHeart podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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