June 16, 2025 • 55 mins
In this episode, Ashlyn sits down with poet, comedian, and inspiring public speaker, Alok Vaid-Menon. Ashlyn and Alok jump straight into a complex discussion about what it’s like to exist as a queer person in the present cultural and political climate. From Alok’s experience growing up queer in Texas, to finding heaven in queer spaces, to performing their work in places not considered queer friendly, the conversation leads the two to discover that queer people aren’t actually the “different” ones, despite what society may tell us.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Heads up.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
We'll be talking about mental health challenges and suicidal ideation
in today's episode.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome back to another episode of Wide Open with Ashland Harris.
I am so excited for this week. Alok, Welcome to
the podcast. It's so wonderful to have you. I find
you so deeply insightful, creative. I mean, you're a fashion icon, clearly,
every room you walk into you turn heads. But you're
(00:40):
so articulate when it comes to your activism, your performance,
like everything you do and who you are and how
you show up is very very inspiring to me.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to
be here.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
And there's so much to talk about.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
There's so much to unpack, but I do think it's
important to really start from the beginning.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
And you know, a lot of us queer folks, we have.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Interesting stories on how everything came to light. And I
would love to really dive into your becoming in a
lot of ways because I've I did such a deep
dive into your work and some of the things that
you stand for, and you say, hit me so deep
(01:28):
and it's so beautiful, and I really want to unpack that. However,
I don't think we can really unpack it until we
talk about your upbringing in Texas and what was that
like for you, growing up in a place that maybe
didn't have much representation.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
I would say being Texan is my most exotic identity.
Every time I fly back home, it's like am I
entering a foreign country. It's just totally different vibes than
New York, you know. And I feel like being Texan
is responsible for so many of the things I believe
today because growing up where I did, I didn't have
(02:04):
the luxury of having many LGBTQ plus people around me.
So it's the kind of place where if you knew
one gay person, that's your community and you just had
to make that work. So we needed each other in
this fundamental way. There was one gay bar and the
periphery of our town, and I went there every single
Friday after I turned eighteen, and I'd run into a
(02:25):
substitute teacher from second grade, someone who I was cleaning
the park with. The other day, people would drive in
from two or three hours, and that idea of a
small town gay bar is still so central to who
I am as a person today. We have to love
each other. We have no other choice but to love
each other. We might not have anything in common, but
we have to be there for each other. And there's
(02:46):
this kind of neighborliness that I bring into everything that
I do that I learned there, which is how to
get along with people, even if you might not believe
in the same visions of the world, even if you
might not share the same politics, still share space with
people and build a community.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
I love that. And you know, I heard you say
something very interesting that.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
So often as a you know, queer person, we're always
asked like when did you know? Like when did you
know you were different? And I'm I love I think
you stopped at some point and said, but like, what
is different? We are not different. I think when we
become you know, you get to a certain age. In
(03:31):
this Western society, there's just this huge following in line
and conforming. We move so freely in the world that
that makes people uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I don't find us to be different at all.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Here's what I believe. I believe each person is our
own cosmos, and we're all different. And what people do
is they look at LGBTQ people and they're like, oh,
these people are more peculiar, more strange, but actually, to
be humanist, to be strange. Everybody has their own idiosyncrasies,
(04:09):
their own kind of dance routine, and I was just
being free as a kid. I wore what I wanted
to wear. I danced like I wanted to dance. I
used to do a lot of interpretive dance. I just
felt called to do it. So I would put on
the latest Bollywood track and then dance for all the
Indian uncles and aunties and put on a show in
my living room. I didn't have any shame or embarrassment.
(04:31):
I just wanted to express myself, and that's what I
was doing. I was just expressing myself. And then people
would punish me for that. They'd be like, why are
you acting this way? Boys don't act like this? Could
it be that you're gay? Before I even had any
sense of myself, people felt the need to police my
joy and my creative self expression. So what I believe
(04:53):
is that actually everyone begins joy forward, everyone begins free,
and then shame enters the and sculpts people into this
homogeneity like it's some mass production factory. And so then
what happens is if if you maintain some sense of
your soul, of your verve, people look at you like
you're different, but actually it's like you are too. We're
(05:16):
all different, you know. And so I read a lot
of the bullying that I experienced when I was younger
as people who were really threatened by my freedom because
they had lost touch with it. And and I feel
like a lot of the work I do as an
adult today is to remember how to rekindle When I
used to just act in the way that I wanted
to act, I was so uninhibited. I look back at
(05:39):
the outfits that I used to concoct when I was
like five, and I'm like, goals, Honestly, it's still just
like that. Like I just didn't give a flying fuck
what anyone thought I was expressing myself. I felt a
certain way, I liked a certain color. I would put
it on. I didn't have any of these ideas of
gender norms or you're going to formal events, you wear this.
I just was dressing in a way that brought me joy.
(06:00):
And so I genuinely feel like when I was younger,
I was so joyful and that's what was being punished,
Like it wasn't just my gender, my race, all those things.
It was actually my joy, my possibility, my commitment to
self expression. Those were so threatening to people. And I
think that's because in the places that we grew up in,
(06:21):
so much of the way that belonging works is like
you have to hide the closets, not just for gay people.
Where I grew up, everybody's lyne m hmm. Like everybody's saying, oh,
you know, I've got these religious beliefs, and then you
look at their actual practices and there's a major discrepancy there.
You get all these people who are on moral high
horses but actually are not living those lives whatsoever. But
(06:43):
no one's being truthful with each other. And so I
think that when they saw me express myself, they saw truth.
And that's really threatening to an entire society that's held
together with lying.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
And that's where you think the hate stems from. What
has to you know, the freedom to be exactly who
you want to be and choose to be is really
fucking painful for people who comply and live in this
Western culture where you have to act a certain way.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
And that's why I have sympathy. I have so much
sympathy because I don't actually believe that LGBTQ people are oppressed.
I think we are free, and I think the reason
we are being discriminated against structurally is because people are
envious of our freedom. I believe homophobia and transphobia are
(07:35):
just envy projects that people use prejudice like homophobia as
a way to escape from having to confront their own pain.
So it's easier to judge me to look at my life,
to be obsessed with what I'm wearing, because that's all
a distraction from having to take inventory of the fact
that you're unhappy with your family, unhappy and your relationship.
(07:56):
Because if you were really satisfied with your life, you
would not get care about what I was doing at all,
you know. And so I think what I had to
wake up to is when I was younger, I had
a lot of resentment and bitterness because I was getting
discriminated against, and I always felt like I wanted to
have power, like those people who bullied me had power.
And then I realized that's not power, no way. Power
(08:19):
isn't that insecure. Power doesn't feel the need to bully
other people. Leadership and power is the quiet genius and
strength of just showing up as you are. And I
already had that. I had everything that I was seeking,
and in fact, the reason I was being punished was
because I was powerful. So the shift I've made in
my life is I think when I was younger, I
(08:39):
thought I had to get access to something, I had
to be legitimized, I had to be seen. But really
all of what I was looking for was to see
myself and to accept myself. And I think I had
that when I was younger. I had so much fundamental
self acceptance, and that was threatening to people. They were like, wait,
what do you mean you don't need me? What do
you mean you don't need my validation? And I was
(09:00):
just dancingly beading my own drum. And so what I'm
trying to do now is just to self validate the
fuck out of my life.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
I think that really scares people, and specifically scares men,
because they've been trained to think that their authority and
their legitimization is our prerequisite to exist on earth. It's
really irrelevant. I have so many other things do they like?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
But you say it so beautifully, and it's just it's
really interesting. When I think about something you said and
I quoted it. You said, you've spoken about giving birth
to yourself in the absence of representation, especially in Texas.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
How has that process shaped you?
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Well, my mom did a great job, but it wasn't enough.
Like my parents tried their best, and I'm so happy
that they gave me this body, in this form, but
they were ill equipped to raise me as a queer person.
Because because that was something I had to learn how
to do myself. I had to learn how to practice
self respect and a world that was degrading me. I
(10:08):
had to actually say I choose this. For so long,
I wanted to be straight. I wanted to be white,
I wanted to be sis, I wanted to fit in,
and then I got to a place where I was like, no,
that's all loneliness. Actually, I want to be me. And
that's what giving birth to yourself is is choosing this
form and choosing to be alive. Because I think a
(10:30):
lot of people are just on autopilot. Yes you know,
they're playing dead while alive. They're just trying to hide
and keep it very simple, and that's what I was
trying to do. I thought safety came from camouflaging and
that was so much of my life in Texas as
trying to shape shift and become what other people wanted
me to be, to pretend to be all these things
that I used to pretend to, like bands I didn't like,
(10:52):
and like I like wore Hollister and stuff like. I
don't know what I was doing, really, but I was
just trying to belong. And then eventually with the selfrid
process was like, none of that matters. What matters is
I like me and I'm gonna choose me. And I
think that's the greatest romance of my life. You know,
partners will come and go, but what will be there
(11:13):
forever is my relationship with myself. And I think that's
what's most malnourished in this culture is people are so
seeking external validation continually. And what self birth was for me,
which was actually a privilege because I couldn't rely on
the validation for my family, I couldn't rely on the
validation from society. I had to learn how to reroute
(11:35):
all of those requests for validation to myself. And so,
you know, in one framework, you could say I was
closet in Texas, but I prefer to describe it as
an artist residency where I was learning how to love myself.
I was spending time in my mind being afraid, going
through all those terrible thoughts. What if I'm abandoned by
(11:55):
my family, what if I get kicked out of home?
What if no one loves me? And what? The answer
that came from that process was I'm gonna be okay
because I have me and finding myself in that is
something that no one can ever take away from me.
And I think really scares people, Yeah, because so often
when I look at my comment sections, people like, oh,
(12:15):
why would you dress like that? Why would you look
at that? I'm like, Oh, as we say in Texas,
bless your heart, you're living your life caring what other
people think. Yeah, that's hardly living.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
No.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
I did that for eighteen years in Texas, and I
was so depressed. The reason I was suicidal growing up
was not just because I was bullied for being gay,
but because I was bullying myself for being me. And
that's a deeper kind of pain. Pain, you know, because
other people can torment you, but who's the last person
to abuse you? Before you go to sleep? Your own
(12:46):
thoughts and the tyranny in there, and I was so
cruel to me. I would say, I would go through
my day and nitpick every single thing I let slip.
Oh your lisp was right here. Oh you were too effeminate.
Right here. I was self monitoring and self scrutinizing all
the time, and there was no room for any grace.
And that is the opposite of the energy I try
(13:09):
to bring in now. The energy I try to bring
in now is Wow, I'm so grateful to be me.
I feel so lucky, I feel so blessed. I feel
so happy because what I am is truth. And so
when I think about this process of self birth is like,
once again in one paradigm, you could say it's inconvenient
and unfortunate that I didn't have representation, and that's true.
(13:29):
But what I also want to hold is that it
gave me an opportunity I think a lot of people
don't have, which is to learn how to love me
first and to not wait to be validated by other people.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
That's really beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Look, it makes me think about the other part that
you spoke about, and you said you describe home as
an internal sense of security rather than a physical place.
How do you cultivate that internal home? Especially when you
(14:01):
feel the world is so fucking judgmental and so harsh
and so fragmented. It's like, how do you go through
this process of becoming at such a young age while
feeling safe.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Well, I think you know this when you were traveling
around playing games. The nature of my job is that
I am in hotel rooms across the world all the time.
I'm constantly in flex I never really unpack my suitcase.
There's like this in between the stage of like basics here,
And at first, you know, that was really tumultuous, But
(14:38):
then I actually started to realize, like this is an
opportunity to reinvent home. When people ask me, like, when
are you coming home, I'm like, already there, Because home
is when I'm doing what I'm doing right now, which
is saying the truth out loud. That's where home is.
When I'm not home is when I'm shape shifting, It's
when i'm fawning. It's when I'm lying to myself. That's
(15:00):
not being home. Home is truth, and when home is truth,
I can bring that everywhere that I go. And I
learn that from being on the road all the time.
Is I really had to learn how to build home
out of leftovers in a fridge and out of new
friends you just met one night and you're like, Okay,
I guess you're my community. We're just together the next
(15:21):
three days. And I learned that the way that you
build community and the way that you build home is
by being vulnerable, because the minute you even say things
like I'm missing people, then people will tell you about
the people they're missing, and then you can become that
thing for each other, and that's truth. And I think
growing up in Texas, one of the things that I
was really taught was that sharing pain is weakness, and
(15:42):
the way to be strong is to be covert about
your pain. And what I've had to learn as an
adult is that actually, the more honest and the more
in touch I am with my pain and with my truth,
the more community, home and security that I experience. And
I think also, I don't want to run the risk
of romanticizing, because what I went through is like brutal,
like I wouldn't wish it on anyone. And I think
(16:05):
it frustrates me that the only narratives that people have
about people like me in popular culture is one of suffering,
when in fact, alongside that suffering, we live extremely expansive lives,
and I think it's like the inside out, outside out perspective.
When you just look at queer life from the outside,
you're like, oh, this is so sad. But when you're
(16:27):
in this life and you've chosen this life, and you
look at your friends and you look at your lovers,
and you look at yourself, and you're like, I'm so lucky.
You know, I'm so lucky because for the first time,
I'm not lying, and that authenticity is a sanctuary. It
is the greatest gift. And so I guess what I'm
(16:48):
trying to say is like, yes, it was difficult for
me as a young transkitt of color in Texas wamp
wamp and it taught me strategies that allow me to
actualize heaven on Earth. I'm having the absolute time of
my life. I am so grateful and so gracious, Like
I'm even thinking about just meeting you our first time.
(17:11):
The conversations we have are not surface because we all know, oh,
we've been through a lot of pain, a lot of
people have invalidated us. We carry battle scars, and so
we begin from that place, which is the truthful place.
And so when I meet other queer people. We're not
beginning at this shallow We're like beginning at two point
oh three point out four point zero. And so the
(17:32):
types of relationships and conversations we have are so enriching
and powerful. And I think that's what I wish I
could have communicated to my younger self, is like, you're
getting a lot of negative pr that like if you
be yourself, you're gonna lose everyone and lose everything. But
I'm here to let you know, actually, you're gonna get
rid of that stagnant energy to create space for the
people you've needed to meet your entire life.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
And I will say that because we met, you know,
in Europe doing like a activist like activism queer type
of summit education, and you felt like, you know when
you talk about home and safety, You felt like that
to me. And I remember we sat at dinner next
(18:18):
to each other and we were so close, and I
just you were so cold, and I took my coat
off and I gave it to you, and you were
so surprised by it, and you were like, oh my god,
that's just so sweet. And I just really felt that
sense of safety with you, and that boils down to
community like it is such a beautiful thing and we
(18:42):
are so lucky to have experienced. And I say this
in a really I don't wish the pain on anyone
that we've all gone through, but I'm lucky I have
gone through it and been on this side and say,
I learned so much about who I am, where I
(19:02):
want to be, how I want to show up, how
I want to navigate, how I want to advocate, how
I want to hold space with the people I care
about the most, whether it's meeting someone for thirty seconds,
thirty minutes, or thirty years. And there's just something so
special about that type of community. And this is going
(19:24):
to be air during Pride, and it is such a
beautiful moment for us to really see and share the
pain but celebrate it because we are in such a
unique place where, yeah, the fucking world's a dumpster fire,
but we have a real opportunity here to really show
(19:44):
and bring people in and no one does that better
than you.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Well, as you're speaking, the word sacred came to mind,
Like what we experience together is so sacred. We've known
the opposite of sacredness. We have been baptized by people
spitting us on the street. We have had people judge
everything about us. We have felt jealousy and close us,
(20:11):
And the opposite of that is the kind of openness, expansiveness, curiosity.
That's what I experienced when I'm around other queer people.
And it's ironic because growing up in Texas, so many
people were trying to evangelize me this idea that you've
got to die in order to experience what is sacred.
And what I found in queer life is heaven on earth.
(20:35):
I think being queer is heaven practice. Actually making every
conversation powerful and anointed is seeing the sacredness in one
another and finding the godliness and so many things we've
been thought are disgusting and awful and taught to judge.
There's something so powerful when you look at the parts
(20:56):
of yourself and the parts of other people you've been
taught to judge as retrogade and and say, oh, this
is godly. And once you accept that godliness, it brings
me so much hope. So, yeah, there's so much wrong
in the world, But I want us to be as
fluent in what's wrong in the world as how right
we are. And I want us to develop the language
(21:17):
to actually articulate how precious we are to one another.
You know, in one story, I could say like, oh,
we just met, we had a night together. But another
what I could say is you brought me hope in
a desolate world, and that gesture, that small gesture of
keeping me warm made me feel like, oh, there are
people in the world who have my back in a
(21:38):
really felt way. And we have to start articulating that.
Because the way that despair works is it becomes an
author of our life story. We begin to filter everything
through this prism of calamity. Things are all falling apart,
and things are bad, and alongside the things falling apart,
we have the capacity to be even kinder to each other,
(21:58):
even more gentle to each other, even offering more grace,
more community, more extension of arms. And what that's actually
going to do is buffer us. And I guess I've
been feeling called in this moment as things get more serious,
to get more silly and to get more kind because
those are two things that I can control. I can't
(22:19):
really control whatever is going on over there, but I
can control Can I come to every interaction with the
kindest version of myself to leave people with proof that
hope exists.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
This is wide open and I'm your host, Ashlyn Harris.
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
You know, the interesting part is, for me, at least,
what I've experienced through one of the hardest seasons of
my life was going through, you know, a divorce it
became public, starting a reallylationship with Sophia that became even
more public. You know, the interesting part is the people
(23:05):
that punched me the most were people in our community,
which I found so much hate come my way from
my own people who I thought would hold me in
a way and see me in a way to say
it's okay. It's still super painful for me, and I
(23:28):
love our community so much, and I do. It's important
that you say that, because I do think we project
our pain and we were so harsh on each other,
and we're so critical of each other even in our
own community, and I'm curious if you experience.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
That at all.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Absolutely, what I've really had to learn. I've been through
similar trials by fire, where I thought, oh, because we
shared this identity and had the shared experience, we would
of course be soft to each other. But it's actually
the inverse. I think what happens for a lot of
people is the versions of love that they've been taught
are I'm going to bully you so to protect you.
(24:10):
Like I remember when I was younger, my grandparents would
say to me sometimes like, Okay, you just need to
act in dress like this to stay safe. But they
didn't realize that them doing that was actually me bullying me.
So even though the motivation was alleged kindness and alleged protection,
the execution was actually just bullying. And so I think
(24:33):
what happens a lot of times in the LGBTQ plus
community is people have a good intention, but the exercise
of it actually is mean and cool spirited. So what
we have to actually do is we have to go
to the next level, which is to say, because I've
been discriminated against, because I've been shown such malevolence, I
(24:56):
am at risk for doing the same thing to other
people around me, and I'm going to heal so that
I can interrupt that cycle of trauma. I have had
meanness in me, I have had judgment in me. I
have been cruel, I have condemned. I have looked at
other people and said I am better. And I realize
all that came from my lack of self acceptance. All
(25:17):
that came from my insecurity. All that came because I
was trying to run away from my own problems. And
so when I experience that vitual, I have grace because
I've been there. It's so much easier to dwell in
me than it is to look at yourself. I've been back.
But also this is not my responsibility that part, and
to say, what I'm responsible for is living the most
truthful version of my life and not having to shape
(25:40):
shift to please other people exactly. And I think once again,
it's like the transition from the kind of trauma we
grow up with and the places we grew up with
to creating this new world is not going to be seamless.
We're going to come with a lot of that toxicity.
One of the things that I was taught in my
family is the way that you belong to a unit
is you shame each other. You shame each other into
(26:00):
control and into shape. I don't know if you experienced
this on a team, but so many team formations are
often brought together through shame, when I actually think the
way that we bring a true team together is through vulnerability,
through sharing, like a different way. So what I'm always
trying to ask myself is like, Okay, I was taught
(26:21):
belonging came from exile to finding who's on the inside,
who's on the outside, creating an other that's not true belonging.
True belonging is a place where each person can come
with their fullest version of themselves.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
And that is something you live every day. And I
want to hit on that because I mean, the way
you dress, the way you I'm so inspired by your
creativity and by like you are so put together. I'm like,
I love it, Like I want to know because you
(26:55):
push up against this, you talk about it the gender
binary through fect performance, How have you really where did
that come from? To really push up against what beauty
looks like in this Western culture?
Speaker 3 (27:09):
To be honest, like, I'm just being myself. You know,
there's a lot of like fancy words you could describe
to do what I'm doing, but it's very simple. I
just kind of wake up and I'm like, what makes
me feel pretty? What makes me feel good? And then
I get dressed and I look like what makes me
feel good? And people have issues with that, I guess
(27:30):
because they feel bad. I feel bad for that, yeah,
but has really nothing to do with me. Yeah, because
my body belongs to me. So I think once I
began to realize that this is mine mm hmm, then
other people's appraisal of that, it's kind of it's irrelevant
to me. But I just genuinely I think people kind
of forgot that, Like, they don't own me. People are
(27:53):
constantly trying to pretend like they owe me, they own me.
There's these politicians you might have heard of him, They
like keep on trying to pass laws, and there's these
like you know, basic trolls online just telling me to change.
I'm just stupefied because I'm like, y'all really think that
you own me?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Like, no, you don't.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
It's so ridiculous. So what they think is ridiculous is
what I look like. But what's actually ridiculous is the
fiction that they think that they own me. They don't.
This is twenty twenty five. I belong to myself exactly.
So once you realize that you've no choice but to
be free because you belong to you, And I just
genuinely think autonomy is so scary to people because they've
(28:34):
been taught oh no, no, no, I have to look like
this for other people. I don't dress for other people.
I don't, so people always like, get a stylist, you
look ridiculous. Level up, and I'm literally like, why I'm happy.
I'm gonna always wear what I always want to wear
because I'm not playing for ten. So some people might
not like what I'm wearing. That's cool. I don't care.
(28:56):
I'm not going to change. And so that's what I
think is so interesting is that people cantinually be like change, change, change, change, change,
and I'm like, what's going on with you? Because I've
been doing this for a while now, so it's not
like one day that one comment is going to hit
me and I'd be like, you're so right, Yeah, thank
you so much for that feedback. I look ridiculous for
your dress. I had no idea. I appreciate that so much.
(29:19):
Go to Men's Warehouse absolutely not mental us if you're
listening that we can fix men's fashion again anyways.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
We really can.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
So it's just it's wild to me because I just
really want to show how how farcical and ridiculous it
is that we judge and comment on other people's appearance.
To begin with. That is literally so absurd, Like you
are making decisions about your own body every day and
that is so cool and gnarly, and that's the world
(29:47):
that we want. So if you want to make the
decision to dress in a way that I don't like, okay, cool.
You know, how did I get there? I guess like
I guess like I found my purpose on Earth, oh
you know. And to find my purpose on Earth, I
started writing. Writing for me was the first place that
(30:09):
I began to see glimpses and glimmers of who I
was outside of what society was conditioning to me to be.
It's why I saw my intuition come out. And what
my intuition was telling me is like a look, you're
an entertainer, you're a performer, you're a poet. You're meant
to express yourself. And at first, like early on, when
I was like eighteen nineteen, I was like, no, no, no,
(30:30):
stop it. I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready
for my own power. I just want to hide. I
want to be like other people. I want to camouflage.
But then the voice got louder and louder and louder
and was like, your purpose on Earth is to feel
and is to feel freedom and is to be. And
as I started to write and make more art, I
(30:50):
became the art. The art wasn't just something that I
was making, And then going back to being normy if
something I was living, poetry is not something I was writing,
it was something I was being. And so now I
see every day of getting dressed as an opportunity to
make art.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
So what we do when we make art is you say, like,
what do I feel? And I think that's scary for
a lot of people because they're so dissociated they don't
know what they feel that part. So when you actually
are in touch with your feeling, you're just expressing what
you're feeling.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, And I.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Love I love that you say that because it is
fashion is like, especially in queer fashion, it is a liberation,
like it is literally non conforming, and it's every time
I see queer people dress, I'm like, oh, this is like,
this is it. It moves me in a really weird
way that I have a hard time even putting a
(31:42):
name to it.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
But I love the sense of freedom.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I love the sense of I'm going to do me
and I'm going to move in this world freely and
I hope that inspires you to do the same. And
you've said a few things about creating new worlds. What
kind of world are are you trying to build through
your like creative practice, your fashion, your art, your poetry.
(32:07):
There's just so much of who you are that bleeds
into your work that is so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Well, first, I just want to say thank you for
these really great questions, because what we're actually modeling here
is exactly what I was talking about. We don't have
to skirt around the most important, beautiful things. So often
in interviews like this, people will be like, so when
did you first know that you were a trans? Can
you please define what is non binary? And then I
(32:34):
just say, well, you know, prenatal, I was playing with dolls. Really,
I knew from negative five. Really, And it's just so
boring because we have to began at square one. And
I think it actually dehumanized us because it sees us
as just a terminology, like all we are is an identity,
when in fact we're humans with vibrancies and frequencies that
(32:55):
are fun. Yes, and I appreciate that intention. I want
to say thank you. And then second, I wanted to
say something before I forgot to say, which is about
creative self expression? What's the alternative? Okay, So let's say
if I really subscribe to the advice that people told me.
The advice that people tell me is that I should
look like everyone else and that I should be a
(33:17):
straight man. Let's say if I was to do that,
I would die. I'm not being hyperbolic, I'm not being dramatic.
I'm being honest. I would die. You want to know why,
because I've tasted freedom and now going back into a
closet sounds like the most miserable thing in the world.
(33:38):
What I'm saying is I would sign up for all
the scrutiny, the judgment and the vitriol because that is
less painful to me than self betrayal. So the advice
that's being given to me is die. So that's why
I have so much clarity, is because I know that
the quicksand of all of this advice that's like fit
(33:59):
in and fit in, Where that ultimately lands is me dying.
Where this lands is I might be killed. But that's
a higher probability chance that I'm going to be alive
than if I follow the other advice. Yeah, and in fact,
if I listen to my intuition and express myself. Not
only am I going to be alive in the physical sense,
I'm going to be alive in the spiritual sense. I'm
(34:21):
going to be present. I'm going to be able to
have conversations with you that are meaningful and true and resonant.
I'm not going to have to live a hapless and
boring life. Ew. So, the stakes of fashion and self
expression are not superficial. And I think that's why queer
fashion is so powerful is that you're actually seeing the
soul at play. You're seeing people really do this vulnerable
(34:43):
work of showing out loud what a smile looks like
when you've been degraded, and there's something so hopeful about that. Okay, now,
creating new worlds. The reason I talk about new worlds
all the time is this one is so boring. It's
just like it was a bad idea. It really was
a bad idea because I look at everything that's happening
(35:03):
right now and I'm like, ew, get me out of here.
I'm so over this. And I'm over this because it's
a world that was made for a small minority of
rich white men to hoard all of their wealth and resources,
and so they've kept us constantly judging and fighting one
another as they cash a check at the bank. That's
(35:26):
what this world was created for them and their image
because they were too afraid to look at themselves in
the mirror. They just wanted to create it into entire society.
They didn't allow them to look at themselves in a mirror.
That's not a world I'm really interested in. The world
I'm interested in is a world where we have no
small talk, where we just go up to people, because
people are all extensions of ourselves. They're no strangers, they're
(35:47):
just different versions of ourselves. We're like, hey, how are
you doing And then someone will be like, hey, I'm
not really doing that well, and they'd be like, I'm
not doing that well either, and then we'll talk about
what we're not doing well, and then we'll both realize, oh,
we're unhappy, and then we'll decide to do something about it.
We'll realize that like sadness is not our individual responsibility,
it's an imprint of what's happening in the collective. And
then we'll come together to create something better. And then
(36:09):
we'll try to end loneliness like that's the kind of
world that I want, is a world in which there
are no strangers, a world in which there is no loneliness.
Because when I grew up, a Fantasy was my favorite
children's book series, like Wheel of Time is my favorite
series in the world. I've read it maybe like six times.
I stood reading when I was eleven, And the reason
it spoke to me so much is the idea that
(36:31):
there are other worlds besides this one. And when I
was a young kid, I was looking around being like this, Yeah,
this is life, Are you kidding me? It's just a
bunch of people lying and like eating really boring food,
and ew. I don't want to be a part of that.
And so I wanted something else. And so what Fantasy
really taught me is that there are other worlds that
are possible besides this one. And so central to my
work is not a critique of this world, but an
(36:53):
insistence that we can transcend it and we can create
something fundamentally different. And so I see every show that
I create as world making, and this tour that I'm
doing during Pride, I'm going to a lot of places
where people are like, what are you doing in Jacksonville? Florida.
Why are you going to Tampa? Come on, You're doing
Kansas City. And I'm literally saying to them, that's exactly
(37:13):
the kind of thinking that we need to stop, because
this world is possible everywhere, just like home is possible everywhere.
It's possible when people come together and decide to be
and do something different, and that's happening everywhere. And so
the reason I love being a performer is because in
each of these places, I get to world make with
other people. And the show that's being created is not
(37:36):
just me performing from the audiences, all of us showing
up and creating humor that allows us to stand up
in a world that degrades us. It's not just jokes
for escapism. It's a survival strategy of I'm going to
fight for my joy amidst all of this despair. The
world I want is where joy is not a luxury,
it's our birthright. I genuinely believe that joy is our birthright.
(37:59):
I didn't believe that for a long time, and I
believe it now. And the way that I've come to
believe that is by touring in places. You know, I
was in Uganda and twenty eighteen we put together one
of the first transprides in Kampala, and so many people
in my life were like, look, what are you doing
in Uganda. That's one of the most unsafe places in
the world for queer people. And I said, Okay, they're
(38:20):
queer people there, so I'm gonna go ye. And we
had one of the funnest nights of my life. Genuinely,
I look back at those photos and I'm like, well,
I ever have this one fun again. It was so
much fun because we understood the stakes of what it
meant to be together, and we understood that this was
so precious and so meaningful and so magnificent. We were
(38:43):
lapping up every single second of it and we created
a different world that night. And so how can I
feel despair when I can look back at my journal
and see all of these nights where we took impossible
conditions and we created beauty. And That's how I'm getting
through these times. I'm not trying to. There's a lot
of horrible things. There's a lot of really bad, vile things,
(39:06):
and I believe in us so hard to not just
get through this, but to continue to level up. Yes,
but the way that we have to do it is
we have to say what is non negotiable, and what
is non negotiable for me is joy. And to your
point earlier, I feel often very judged for that. I
feel like the only way that you're allowed to show
up is by performing misery, is by saying, oh, you know,
(39:29):
it's just so horrible. It's so horrible, And I'm sitting
here like if I did that my entire life, why
would I want to be here. I'll just be out
of here.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
You know.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
The reason I'm still here is because I want to
have fun. Yes, and fun is a non negotiable for me.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Stay tuned.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
I'll be back in just a moment after this brief
message from our sponsors. First off, I want you to
be my life coach. You're younger than me, but honestly,
or was, and your insight are so infectious. Thank you.
I have to ask this question because you emphasize so
(40:06):
much about emotional honesty and vulnerability, which I love, and
on the show, I asked one question to every person
who is sitting here, and it's based on the title
of the show, Wide Open. What was the one moment
in your life that really broke you wide open? That
(40:30):
changed it all? For you, where it could be work related,
it could be personal. Was there that one defining moment
that changed it all?
Speaker 3 (40:44):
I would say when I was a teenager and I
had my first suicide of town and I lived and
I decided to live. That was a huge moment for
me because I really started to ask myself, what is
it going to take for me to stay? I want
to live on this planet and what it's going to
take I don't know yet. I don't know what I like,
(41:05):
I don't know who I am, And so I committed
myself to living that question. And I am the answer here.
I am at thirty three, the answer to my suicidal
ideation when I was eighteen. And how cool is that
I didn't know what I needed? But I found what
I needed And the way that I found it was
(41:26):
being honest and vulnerable and saying I want to die
dot dot dot, So what's going to make me want
to live? And I got curious about what's going to
make me want to live? And that was my compass
for so many years in my life. Does this situation
make me want to live or die? Does this situation
make me want to live or die? And then I
started to filter out. Certain people, certain dynamics, certain experiences
(41:49):
brought me back to a dark place. Other things brought
me to an expansive, liberatory space. And so once again,
gratitude that little bitch just comes in all the time.
I feel so grateful even for that one of the
darkest thing that happened to me, because there's a moment
of confrontation that required me to not just choose my
identity or my gender, but to choose this life. And
(42:13):
if I could be honest, my diagnosis of everything that's
wrong in the world is people have opted into life,
not chosen it. Because if you choose your life, if
you're very intentional about it, hatred makes no sense because
hatred has a corrosive quality on you. The more that
(42:34):
you hate, the more resentment and judgment you hold for
other people, the less quality of a life that you're
going to have. If you're genuinely concerned with living a
good life, hatred is one of the biggest obstacles to it.
So what I read a lot of the hatred in
the world as is like, oh, these are all kind
of miserable people who are opting into life, not choosing it.
(42:55):
And the leadership I want to have in the world
is not just about gender, but it's about saying you
get to live a good life. There's a lot of
lessons that are telling you all over the place that
you don't that this is inaccessible to you, that suffering
is your assignment on earth, that misery is your personality.
But I genuinely believe that if I from like a
(43:17):
small town in Texas could give birth to this, a
lot of things can happen. Yeah, a lot of mischievous
and magical things can happen, and that's where the hope is. Yeah,
you know, James Baldenwand said I can't be a pessimist
because I'm alive, and that really hits for me as
a survivor of a suicide at down Is. I look
(43:37):
at everyone as miraculous. I look at everything as miraculous.
You and I were not supposed to meet, and we did.
You and I were not supposed to have this conversation,
and we are miraculous. Things happen every single day. There
is a magic that's an undercurrent to all of this.
All we have to do is show up and trust it.
(43:58):
So that was a really defining moment for me, and
I think it's important because I've been thinking about it
a lot. Now. You know, so many people in my
life are struggling. There's so much despair, and in some
ways it feels like we've been like we've been time
traveled back to the early offs. Like I just I'm like,
am I back in college Station Texas? Is it two
(44:19):
thousand and six? What is going on? I thought we're
making progress, and so I think a lot of us
are being triggered back into past versions of ourselves, versions
of ourselves that felt like there was despair. But what
I feel really called in this moment to say is
that this is a beautiful invitation and opening for those
of us who want to do something different to say no,
(44:40):
not today. I'm not going to give up my joy today.
So ask yourself, what are practices I can put into
place today to preserve my joy? And how can I
challenge a culture that sees my joy as a luxury.
It's not, it's a necessity.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
It's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
You are magic, honestly, and thank you for sharing that
and feeling safe enough to share that with me. With
this knowing and becoming, what would you whisper to your
younger self as this person who stands here at thirty three,
who has gone through so much and you see the
(45:18):
world so beautifully and so colorful, and you live your truth,
what would you whisper so that young kid being here
today and what you've learned, I.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
Would say the best is yet to come. The way
that fear authors our lives as we look at the
forbidden terrain of the unknown and we say it's just
going to be collapse, it's just going to be scary.
But in my life, the unknown has actually given birth
to some of the best experiences of my life. So
rather than looking an unknown future and being like, it's
(45:52):
all going to be headed to the worst, what if
we were to look at an unknown future and be like,
this might be the time of my life.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
And I want to ask you because I think that
this is another conversation we've had in the past, is
the spirituality of being an athlete because there's so much pressure,
so many stakes. And similarly with my job when I'm
coming on stage, if I'm like, well, I have to
really do a good job, I always do a bad job.
Like I always inevitably if I'm like, oh, they're very
important people in the crowds to night. I have to
(46:19):
be really funny and really on. Then I'm so in
my head that I'm not able to be present. So
what I found as a performer, I have to do
is to surrender to a greater unknown and be a
vessel to it. And I feel like I see that
in so many athletes is like part of the preparation
is not just physical, it's psychological. And I think that
(46:39):
there's a way in which athletes and artists are uniquely
positioned in this time yes, to actually teach the world
a method that we know, which is there's a lot
of high stakes, but the more that you're concerned with
the high stakes, the less you're gonna be able to
show up correct. It might sound counterintuitive, but you have
to calm yourself in order to proceed that part.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
I worked with a ton of sports psychologists. I worked
on breathing experts, because when we do get worked up
and we kind of take on that pressure, it changes
the way we move, It changes the way we breathe,
which changes our decision making execution. Right, So for me,
(47:20):
it's really There was this incredible sports psychologist, Colleen Hacker,
who very early on in my career said learn your
ideal performance zone, your IPZ, the way I move in
preparation for Because I'm an entertainer, you know, we're all
just entertaining. I'm not curing cancer. You hold a lot
(47:42):
more weight to influence people rather than me playing a
sport kicking a ball around. So I always told myself,
if you make a mistake, have short term memory. I
think that's the best performers and the best athletes in
the world have short term memory, because if you make
one mistake and you carry it through, your performance is
(48:03):
fucking nightmare. Right, we keep making bad mistake, you know.
I always just sat in this performance mode where I
didn't take myself so seriously.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
And you're right.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
We wear a vessel for others. People like I'm the entertainment.
I'm here to bring joy, and I'm here. My mentality was,
I swear on my life I would look at the
clock and it would be you know, there's two halves
in soccer, and I'd be like forty five minutes. I
(48:35):
wanted to be over. It was the weirdest thing because
my biggest breakthrough was the interaction after the game with
the people I waited for who waited for me to
sign autographs and have intimate moments of real connection and storytelling.
And I felt like that was the real breakthrough.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
I mean, it's just so pertinent to what we're going
through right now. I think we need athletes right now
because we're up against a really difficult game and there's
a really strong, strong opposition. Yes, and we need to
get information as a team. H And I'm a poet,
so I do this really dangerous thing of dabbling and
(49:15):
metaphors around subjects I really have no expertise about, but
I feel called for them. And I really feel like
sports right now is like a really great metaphor for
what we need that sports psychology is another way to
describe like how to show up right now? Yes, because
I think a lot of people are being psyched out
and then it's going to be a self fulfilling prophecy
because they're coming in with nervousness, they're coming in with skittishness,
(49:37):
they're not offering themselves grace. They are really being self
debasing and self abusing. And what we actually need right
now is a different way of showing up and showing
up for each other. So I'm going to ask this
is so camp. I'm going to ask you another sports question,
like when you see a teammate faltering on the field
(49:58):
and you can sense, oh, this person is not doing
well right now, how do you show up with a
strength that allows the other person to know that they're
held by you and they can trust you in that interaction.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
That's a great question.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
And there's eleven players on the field and we are
not always going to have a perfect day. I think
the benefit of what we do is how do you
become an asset even on your off days?
Speaker 1 (50:25):
How do you show up in the moments where you're
not at your best?
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Because that is life, But how do you become an
asset in those moments and not hinder the people around
you or the team's performance. That's where the breakthrough lies.
And again that applies to life. Yeah, life is fucking
hard right now. For us, it's really toxic, but we
(50:53):
choose joy. How do we show up for each other
in a world that feels hopeless? How do we come hopeful?
What are our actions?
Speaker 3 (51:02):
And how do we win?
Speaker 1 (51:03):
And how do we win?
Speaker 3 (51:05):
Because that's another thing I think sports just really taught me.
It's like, I want to win. I don't want to
keep on having a tie over and over and over
and over. I want to win, and I want LGBT
rights to win. I want queer entrance people to win
and to be free and happy. And so we've got
to get it. We've got to get our team together.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
We do, we really do.
Speaker 3 (51:28):
We got to start normalizing and believing and staying out loud.
We are going to win. We might have to keep
coming back for the tournament over and over again. We
might have to keep training, keep on training, but we
got to keep bouncing back and keep coming back.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
Well, any athlete will tell you you learn more from
your failures than you do your wins. Right, So when
we're failing, we have to figure out we still show up,
we still coming, we still come back, and we want more.
Speaker 3 (51:55):
Right.
Speaker 2 (51:56):
I think with all of this stuff going on in
terms of the noise, it is to silence us, to
send us back into the closet. And you're right, how
do we collectively as a team, even when it feels
like okay, these are maybe we didn't we tied that
game or loss. We have to keep coming back to
(52:17):
win and that will take all of us. And I
appreciate you showing up constantly to advocate for your truth
and your joy. A. Look, you are an incredible human
that is such a light. You are an absolute unicorn
in every sense of the word. You are magic, and
(52:40):
I want everyone to come out and see you perform
because you are a light in this world and you
are meant to be here in this moment to guide us,
you know, during Pride month, I want us to feel
this sense of joy you talk about. And please tell
(53:00):
everyone who's watching, who's listening, where they can come see you,
because you are about to leave. You said tomorrow to
go back on this tour. It's it's called Biology.
Speaker 3 (53:10):
This one's called Harry's Situation.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
Yeah, so you just finished Biology. New show here, new show?
Speaker 2 (53:16):
Yes, tell me more. Where can we find you? Where
can we watch you? Where can we keep up with you?
Speaker 3 (53:22):
Yeah? So in June, because of Pride, I'm doing twenty
cities across the US and Canada, and my main goal
was where places that people are like, why would you
go there? I'm there, so I love that and it's
always growing and my agents always like, girls, you need
a break, and I'm like, but I love greup people
and I'm having so much fun, so let's keep going.
So there's going to be more dates to add, but
(53:43):
I genuinely feel like, yes, I love doing podcasts, I
love speaking, I love all of this. But where I
am the truest version of myself is on the stage,
because there's something sacred to use that work before about
coming together and laughing right now. Fear contru ricks our
bodies makes us small, Laughter expands us, makes us bigger,
(54:05):
makes us take up space. And so when I am
up there cracking jokes that are so inappropriate in grass,
it's actually out of a deep and sincere belief that
laughter is what we need right now to get bigger
and to get stronger.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
M Well, thank you for being Wide Open, and thank
you for being here, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (54:24):
All right, We'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 (54:28):
Wide Open with Ashlin Harris is an iHeart women's sports production.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
You can find us on.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Our producers are Carmen Borca Correo, Emily Maronov, and Lucy Jones.
Production assistants from Malia Aguidello. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz,
Jenny Kaplan, and Emily Rudder. Our editors are Jenny Kaplan
(54:56):
and Emily Rudder and I'm your Host, Ashlan Harris and
Speaker 1 (55:07):
M
Heads up.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
We'll be talking about mental health challenges and suicidal ideation
in today's episode.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Welcome back to another episode of Wide Open with Ashland Harris.
I am so excited for this week. Alok, Welcome to
the podcast. It's so wonderful to have you. I find
you so deeply insightful, creative. I mean, you're a fashion icon, clearly,
every room you walk into you turn heads. But you're
(00:40):
so articulate when it comes to your activism, your performance,
like everything you do and who you are and how
you show up is very very inspiring to me.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to
be here.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
And there's so much to talk about.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
There's so much to unpack, but I do think it's
important to really start from the beginning.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
And you know, a lot of us queer folks, we have.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Interesting stories on how everything came to light. And I
would love to really dive into your becoming in a
lot of ways because I've I did such a deep
dive into your work and some of the things that
you stand for, and you say, hit me so deep
(01:28):
and it's so beautiful, and I really want to unpack that. However,
I don't think we can really unpack it until we
talk about your upbringing in Texas and what was that
like for you, growing up in a place that maybe
didn't have much representation.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
I would say being Texan is my most exotic identity.
Every time I fly back home, it's like am I
entering a foreign country. It's just totally different vibes than
New York, you know. And I feel like being Texan
is responsible for so many of the things I believe
today because growing up where I did, I didn't have
(02:04):
the luxury of having many LGBTQ plus people around me.
So it's the kind of place where if you knew
one gay person, that's your community and you just had
to make that work. So we needed each other in
this fundamental way. There was one gay bar and the
periphery of our town, and I went there every single
Friday after I turned eighteen, and I'd run into a
(02:25):
substitute teacher from second grade, someone who I was cleaning
the park with. The other day, people would drive in
from two or three hours, and that idea of a
small town gay bar is still so central to who
I am as a person today. We have to love
each other. We have no other choice but to love
each other. We might not have anything in common, but
we have to be there for each other. And there's
(02:46):
this kind of neighborliness that I bring into everything that
I do that I learned there, which is how to
get along with people, even if you might not believe
in the same visions of the world, even if you
might not share the same politics, still share space with
people and build a community.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
I love that. And you know, I heard you say
something very interesting that.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
So often as a you know, queer person, we're always
asked like when did you know? Like when did you
know you were different? And I'm I love I think
you stopped at some point and said, but like, what
is different? We are not different. I think when we
become you know, you get to a certain age. In
(03:31):
this Western society, there's just this huge following in line
and conforming. We move so freely in the world that
that makes people uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I don't find us to be different at all.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
Here's what I believe. I believe each person is our
own cosmos, and we're all different. And what people do
is they look at LGBTQ people and they're like, oh,
these people are more peculiar, more strange, but actually, to
be humanist, to be strange. Everybody has their own idiosyncrasies,
(04:09):
their own kind of dance routine, and I was just
being free as a kid. I wore what I wanted
to wear. I danced like I wanted to dance. I
used to do a lot of interpretive dance. I just
felt called to do it. So I would put on
the latest Bollywood track and then dance for all the
Indian uncles and aunties and put on a show in
my living room. I didn't have any shame or embarrassment.
(04:31):
I just wanted to express myself, and that's what I
was doing. I was just expressing myself. And then people
would punish me for that. They'd be like, why are
you acting this way? Boys don't act like this? Could
it be that you're gay? Before I even had any
sense of myself, people felt the need to police my
joy and my creative self expression. So what I believe
(04:53):
is that actually everyone begins joy forward, everyone begins free,
and then shame enters the and sculpts people into this
homogeneity like it's some mass production factory. And so then
what happens is if if you maintain some sense of
your soul, of your verve, people look at you like
you're different, but actually it's like you are too. We're
(05:16):
all different, you know. And so I read a lot
of the bullying that I experienced when I was younger
as people who were really threatened by my freedom because
they had lost touch with it. And and I feel
like a lot of the work I do as an
adult today is to remember how to rekindle When I
used to just act in the way that I wanted
to act, I was so uninhibited. I look back at
(05:39):
the outfits that I used to concoct when I was
like five, and I'm like, goals, Honestly, it's still just
like that. Like I just didn't give a flying fuck
what anyone thought I was expressing myself. I felt a
certain way, I liked a certain color. I would put
it on. I didn't have any of these ideas of
gender norms or you're going to formal events, you wear this.
I just was dressing in a way that brought me joy.
(06:00):
And so I genuinely feel like when I was younger,
I was so joyful and that's what was being punished,
Like it wasn't just my gender, my race, all those things.
It was actually my joy, my possibility, my commitment to
self expression. Those were so threatening to people. And I
think that's because in the places that we grew up in,
(06:21):
so much of the way that belonging works is like
you have to hide the closets, not just for gay people.
Where I grew up, everybody's lyne m hmm. Like everybody's saying, oh,
you know, I've got these religious beliefs, and then you
look at their actual practices and there's a major discrepancy there.
You get all these people who are on moral high
horses but actually are not living those lives whatsoever. But
(06:43):
no one's being truthful with each other. And so I
think that when they saw me express myself, they saw truth.
And that's really threatening to an entire society that's held
together with lying.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
And that's where you think the hate stems from. What
has to you know, the freedom to be exactly who
you want to be and choose to be is really
fucking painful for people who comply and live in this
Western culture where you have to act a certain way.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
And that's why I have sympathy. I have so much
sympathy because I don't actually believe that LGBTQ people are oppressed.
I think we are free, and I think the reason
we are being discriminated against structurally is because people are
envious of our freedom. I believe homophobia and transphobia are
(07:35):
just envy projects that people use prejudice like homophobia as
a way to escape from having to confront their own pain.
So it's easier to judge me to look at my life,
to be obsessed with what I'm wearing, because that's all
a distraction from having to take inventory of the fact
that you're unhappy with your family, unhappy and your relationship.
(07:56):
Because if you were really satisfied with your life, you
would not get care about what I was doing at all,
you know. And so I think what I had to
wake up to is when I was younger, I had
a lot of resentment and bitterness because I was getting
discriminated against, and I always felt like I wanted to
have power, like those people who bullied me had power.
And then I realized that's not power, no way. Power
(08:19):
isn't that insecure. Power doesn't feel the need to bully
other people. Leadership and power is the quiet genius and
strength of just showing up as you are. And I
already had that. I had everything that I was seeking,
and in fact, the reason I was being punished was
because I was powerful. So the shift I've made in
my life is I think when I was younger, I
(08:39):
thought I had to get access to something, I had
to be legitimized, I had to be seen. But really
all of what I was looking for was to see
myself and to accept myself. And I think I had
that when I was younger. I had so much fundamental
self acceptance, and that was threatening to people. They were like, wait,
what do you mean you don't need me? What do
you mean you don't need my validation? And I was
(09:00):
just dancingly beading my own drum. And so what I'm
trying to do now is just to self validate the
fuck out of my life.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
I think that really scares people, and specifically scares men,
because they've been trained to think that their authority and
their legitimization is our prerequisite to exist on earth. It's
really irrelevant. I have so many other things do they like?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
But you say it so beautifully, and it's just it's
really interesting. When I think about something you said and
I quoted it. You said, you've spoken about giving birth
to yourself in the absence of representation, especially in Texas.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
How has that process shaped you?
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Well, my mom did a great job, but it wasn't enough.
Like my parents tried their best, and I'm so happy
that they gave me this body, in this form, but
they were ill equipped to raise me as a queer person.
Because because that was something I had to learn how
to do myself. I had to learn how to practice
self respect and a world that was degrading me. I
(10:08):
had to actually say I choose this. For so long,
I wanted to be straight. I wanted to be white,
I wanted to be sis, I wanted to fit in,
and then I got to a place where I was like, no,
that's all loneliness. Actually, I want to be me. And
that's what giving birth to yourself is is choosing this
form and choosing to be alive. Because I think a
(10:30):
lot of people are just on autopilot. Yes you know,
they're playing dead while alive. They're just trying to hide
and keep it very simple, and that's what I was
trying to do. I thought safety came from camouflaging and
that was so much of my life in Texas as
trying to shape shift and become what other people wanted
me to be, to pretend to be all these things
that I used to pretend to, like bands I didn't like,
(10:52):
and like I like wore Hollister and stuff like. I
don't know what I was doing, really, but I was
just trying to belong. And then eventually with the selfrid
process was like, none of that matters. What matters is
I like me and I'm gonna choose me. And I
think that's the greatest romance of my life. You know,
partners will come and go, but what will be there
(11:13):
forever is my relationship with myself. And I think that's
what's most malnourished in this culture is people are so
seeking external validation continually. And what self birth was for me,
which was actually a privilege because I couldn't rely on
the validation for my family, I couldn't rely on the
validation from society. I had to learn how to reroute
(11:35):
all of those requests for validation to myself. And so,
you know, in one framework, you could say I was
closet in Texas, but I prefer to describe it as
an artist residency where I was learning how to love myself.
I was spending time in my mind being afraid, going
through all those terrible thoughts. What if I'm abandoned by
(11:55):
my family, what if I get kicked out of home?
What if no one loves me? And what? The answer
that came from that process was I'm gonna be okay
because I have me and finding myself in that is
something that no one can ever take away from me.
And I think really scares people, Yeah, because so often
when I look at my comment sections, people like, oh,
(12:15):
why would you dress like that? Why would you look
at that? I'm like, Oh, as we say in Texas,
bless your heart, you're living your life caring what other
people think. Yeah, that's hardly living.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
No.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
I did that for eighteen years in Texas, and I
was so depressed. The reason I was suicidal growing up
was not just because I was bullied for being gay,
but because I was bullying myself for being me. And
that's a deeper kind of pain. Pain, you know, because
other people can torment you, but who's the last person
to abuse you? Before you go to sleep? Your own
(12:46):
thoughts and the tyranny in there, and I was so
cruel to me. I would say, I would go through
my day and nitpick every single thing I let slip.
Oh your lisp was right here. Oh you were too effeminate.
Right here. I was self monitoring and self scrutinizing all
the time, and there was no room for any grace.
And that is the opposite of the energy I try
(13:09):
to bring in now. The energy I try to bring
in now is Wow, I'm so grateful to be me.
I feel so lucky, I feel so blessed. I feel
so happy because what I am is truth. And so
when I think about this process of self birth is like,
once again in one paradigm, you could say it's inconvenient
and unfortunate that I didn't have representation, and that's true.
(13:29):
But what I also want to hold is that it
gave me an opportunity I think a lot of people
don't have, which is to learn how to love me
first and to not wait to be validated by other people.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
That's really beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Look, it makes me think about the other part that
you spoke about, and you said you describe home as
an internal sense of security rather than a physical place.
How do you cultivate that internal home? Especially when you
(14:01):
feel the world is so fucking judgmental and so harsh
and so fragmented. It's like, how do you go through
this process of becoming at such a young age while
feeling safe.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Well, I think you know this when you were traveling
around playing games. The nature of my job is that
I am in hotel rooms across the world all the time.
I'm constantly in flex I never really unpack my suitcase.
There's like this in between the stage of like basics here,
And at first, you know, that was really tumultuous, But
(14:38):
then I actually started to realize, like this is an
opportunity to reinvent home. When people ask me, like, when
are you coming home, I'm like, already there, Because home
is when I'm doing what I'm doing right now, which
is saying the truth out loud. That's where home is.
When I'm not home is when I'm shape shifting, It's
when i'm fawning. It's when I'm lying to myself. That's
(15:00):
not being home. Home is truth, and when home is truth,
I can bring that everywhere that I go. And I
learn that from being on the road all the time.
Is I really had to learn how to build home
out of leftovers in a fridge and out of new
friends you just met one night and you're like, Okay,
I guess you're my community. We're just together the next
(15:21):
three days. And I learned that the way that you
build community and the way that you build home is
by being vulnerable, because the minute you even say things
like I'm missing people, then people will tell you about
the people they're missing, and then you can become that
thing for each other, and that's truth. And I think
growing up in Texas, one of the things that I
was really taught was that sharing pain is weakness, and
(15:42):
the way to be strong is to be covert about
your pain. And what I've had to learn as an
adult is that actually, the more honest and the more
in touch I am with my pain and with my truth,
the more community, home and security that I experience. And
I think also, I don't want to run the risk
of romanticizing, because what I went through is like brutal,
like I wouldn't wish it on anyone. And I think
(16:05):
it frustrates me that the only narratives that people have
about people like me in popular culture is one of suffering,
when in fact, alongside that suffering, we live extremely expansive lives,
and I think it's like the inside out, outside out perspective.
When you just look at queer life from the outside,
you're like, oh, this is so sad. But when you're
(16:27):
in this life and you've chosen this life, and you
look at your friends and you look at your lovers,
and you look at yourself, and you're like, I'm so lucky.
You know, I'm so lucky because for the first time,
I'm not lying, and that authenticity is a sanctuary. It
is the greatest gift. And so I guess what I'm
(16:48):
trying to say is like, yes, it was difficult for
me as a young transkitt of color in Texas wamp
wamp and it taught me strategies that allow me to
actualize heaven on Earth. I'm having the absolute time of
my life. I am so grateful and so gracious, Like
I'm even thinking about just meeting you our first time.
(17:11):
The conversations we have are not surface because we all know, oh,
we've been through a lot of pain, a lot of
people have invalidated us. We carry battle scars, and so
we begin from that place, which is the truthful place.
And so when I meet other queer people. We're not
beginning at this shallow We're like beginning at two point
oh three point out four point zero. And so the
(17:32):
types of relationships and conversations we have are so enriching
and powerful. And I think that's what I wish I
could have communicated to my younger self, is like, you're
getting a lot of negative pr that like if you
be yourself, you're gonna lose everyone and lose everything. But
I'm here to let you know, actually, you're gonna get
rid of that stagnant energy to create space for the
people you've needed to meet your entire life.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
And I will say that because we met, you know,
in Europe doing like a activist like activism queer type
of summit education, and you felt like, you know when
you talk about home and safety, You felt like that
to me. And I remember we sat at dinner next
(18:18):
to each other and we were so close, and I
just you were so cold, and I took my coat
off and I gave it to you, and you were
so surprised by it, and you were like, oh my god,
that's just so sweet. And I just really felt that
sense of safety with you, and that boils down to
community like it is such a beautiful thing and we
(18:42):
are so lucky to have experienced. And I say this
in a really I don't wish the pain on anyone
that we've all gone through, but I'm lucky I have
gone through it and been on this side and say,
I learned so much about who I am, where I
(19:02):
want to be, how I want to show up, how
I want to navigate, how I want to advocate, how
I want to hold space with the people I care
about the most, whether it's meeting someone for thirty seconds,
thirty minutes, or thirty years. And there's just something so
special about that type of community. And this is going
(19:24):
to be air during Pride, and it is such a
beautiful moment for us to really see and share the
pain but celebrate it because we are in such a
unique place where, yeah, the fucking world's a dumpster fire,
but we have a real opportunity here to really show
(19:44):
and bring people in and no one does that better
than you.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Well, as you're speaking, the word sacred came to mind,
Like what we experience together is so sacred. We've known
the opposite of sacredness. We have been baptized by people
spitting us on the street. We have had people judge
everything about us. We have felt jealousy and close us,
(20:11):
And the opposite of that is the kind of openness, expansiveness, curiosity.
That's what I experienced when I'm around other queer people.
And it's ironic because growing up in Texas, so many
people were trying to evangelize me this idea that you've
got to die in order to experience what is sacred.
And what I found in queer life is heaven on earth.
(20:35):
I think being queer is heaven practice. Actually making every
conversation powerful and anointed is seeing the sacredness in one
another and finding the godliness and so many things we've
been thought are disgusting and awful and taught to judge.
There's something so powerful when you look at the parts
(20:56):
of yourself and the parts of other people you've been
taught to judge as retrogade and and say, oh, this
is godly. And once you accept that godliness, it brings
me so much hope. So, yeah, there's so much wrong
in the world, But I want us to be as
fluent in what's wrong in the world as how right
we are. And I want us to develop the language
(21:17):
to actually articulate how precious we are to one another.
You know, in one story, I could say like, oh,
we just met, we had a night together. But another
what I could say is you brought me hope in
a desolate world, and that gesture, that small gesture of
keeping me warm made me feel like, oh, there are
people in the world who have my back in a
(21:38):
really felt way. And we have to start articulating that.
Because the way that despair works is it becomes an
author of our life story. We begin to filter everything
through this prism of calamity. Things are all falling apart,
and things are bad, and alongside the things falling apart,
we have the capacity to be even kinder to each other,
(21:58):
even more gentle to each other, even offering more grace,
more community, more extension of arms. And what that's actually
going to do is buffer us. And I guess I've
been feeling called in this moment as things get more serious,
to get more silly and to get more kind because
those are two things that I can control. I can't
(22:19):
really control whatever is going on over there, but I
can control Can I come to every interaction with the
kindest version of myself to leave people with proof that
hope exists.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
This is wide open and I'm your host, Ashlyn Harris.
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
You know, the interesting part is, for me, at least,
what I've experienced through one of the hardest seasons of
my life was going through, you know, a divorce it
became public, starting a reallylationship with Sophia that became even
more public. You know, the interesting part is the people
(23:05):
that punched me the most were people in our community,
which I found so much hate come my way from
my own people who I thought would hold me in
a way and see me in a way to say
it's okay. It's still super painful for me, and I
(23:28):
love our community so much, and I do. It's important
that you say that, because I do think we project
our pain and we were so harsh on each other,
and we're so critical of each other even in our
own community, and I'm curious if you experience.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
That at all.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Absolutely, what I've really had to learn. I've been through
similar trials by fire, where I thought, oh, because we
shared this identity and had the shared experience, we would
of course be soft to each other. But it's actually
the inverse. I think what happens for a lot of
people is the versions of love that they've been taught
are I'm going to bully you so to protect you.
(24:10):
Like I remember when I was younger, my grandparents would
say to me sometimes like, Okay, you just need to
act in dress like this to stay safe. But they
didn't realize that them doing that was actually me bullying me.
So even though the motivation was alleged kindness and alleged protection,
the execution was actually just bullying. And so I think
(24:33):
what happens a lot of times in the LGBTQ plus
community is people have a good intention, but the exercise
of it actually is mean and cool spirited. So what
we have to actually do is we have to go
to the next level, which is to say, because I've
been discriminated against, because I've been shown such malevolence, I
(24:56):
am at risk for doing the same thing to other
people around me, and I'm going to heal so that
I can interrupt that cycle of trauma. I have had
meanness in me, I have had judgment in me. I
have been cruel, I have condemned. I have looked at
other people and said I am better. And I realize
all that came from my lack of self acceptance. All
(25:17):
that came from my insecurity. All that came because I
was trying to run away from my own problems. And
so when I experience that vitual, I have grace because
I've been there. It's so much easier to dwell in
me than it is to look at yourself. I've been back.
But also this is not my responsibility that part, and
to say, what I'm responsible for is living the most
truthful version of my life and not having to shape
(25:40):
shift to please other people exactly. And I think once again,
it's like the transition from the kind of trauma we
grow up with and the places we grew up with
to creating this new world is not going to be seamless.
We're going to come with a lot of that toxicity.
One of the things that I was taught in my
family is the way that you belong to a unit
is you shame each other. You shame each other into
(26:00):
control and into shape. I don't know if you experienced
this on a team, but so many team formations are
often brought together through shame, when I actually think the
way that we bring a true team together is through vulnerability,
through sharing, like a different way. So what I'm always
trying to ask myself is like, Okay, I was taught
(26:21):
belonging came from exile to finding who's on the inside,
who's on the outside, creating an other that's not true belonging.
True belonging is a place where each person can come
with their fullest version of themselves.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
And that is something you live every day. And I
want to hit on that because I mean, the way
you dress, the way you I'm so inspired by your
creativity and by like you are so put together. I'm like,
I love it, Like I want to know because you
(26:55):
push up against this, you talk about it the gender
binary through fect performance, How have you really where did
that come from? To really push up against what beauty
looks like in this Western culture?
Speaker 3 (27:09):
To be honest, like, I'm just being myself. You know,
there's a lot of like fancy words you could describe
to do what I'm doing, but it's very simple. I
just kind of wake up and I'm like, what makes
me feel pretty? What makes me feel good? And then
I get dressed and I look like what makes me
feel good? And people have issues with that, I guess
(27:30):
because they feel bad. I feel bad for that, yeah,
but has really nothing to do with me. Yeah, because
my body belongs to me. So I think once I
began to realize that this is mine mm hmm, then
other people's appraisal of that, it's kind of it's irrelevant
to me. But I just genuinely I think people kind
of forgot that, Like, they don't own me. People are
(27:53):
constantly trying to pretend like they owe me, they own me.
There's these politicians you might have heard of him, They
like keep on trying to pass laws, and there's these
like you know, basic trolls online just telling me to change.
I'm just stupefied because I'm like, y'all really think that
you own me?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Like, no, you don't.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
It's so ridiculous. So what they think is ridiculous is
what I look like. But what's actually ridiculous is the
fiction that they think that they own me. They don't.
This is twenty twenty five. I belong to myself exactly.
So once you realize that you've no choice but to
be free because you belong to you, And I just
genuinely think autonomy is so scary to people because they've
(28:34):
been taught oh no, no, no, I have to look like
this for other people. I don't dress for other people.
I don't, so people always like, get a stylist, you
look ridiculous. Level up, and I'm literally like, why I'm happy.
I'm gonna always wear what I always want to wear
because I'm not playing for ten. So some people might
not like what I'm wearing. That's cool. I don't care.
(28:56):
I'm not going to change. And so that's what I
think is so interesting is that people cantinually be like change, change, change, change, change,
and I'm like, what's going on with you? Because I've
been doing this for a while now, so it's not
like one day that one comment is going to hit
me and I'd be like, you're so right, Yeah, thank
you so much for that feedback. I look ridiculous for
your dress. I had no idea. I appreciate that so much.
(29:19):
Go to Men's Warehouse absolutely not mental us if you're
listening that we can fix men's fashion again anyways.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
We really can.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
So it's just it's wild to me because I just
really want to show how how farcical and ridiculous it
is that we judge and comment on other people's appearance.
To begin with. That is literally so absurd, Like you
are making decisions about your own body every day and
that is so cool and gnarly, and that's the world
(29:47):
that we want. So if you want to make the
decision to dress in a way that I don't like, okay, cool.
You know, how did I get there? I guess like
I guess like I found my purpose on Earth, oh
you know. And to find my purpose on Earth, I
started writing. Writing for me was the first place that
(30:09):
I began to see glimpses and glimmers of who I
was outside of what society was conditioning to me to be.
It's why I saw my intuition come out. And what
my intuition was telling me is like a look, you're
an entertainer, you're a performer, you're a poet. You're meant
to express yourself. And at first, like early on, when
I was like eighteen nineteen, I was like, no, no, no,
(30:30):
stop it. I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready
for my own power. I just want to hide. I
want to be like other people. I want to camouflage.
But then the voice got louder and louder and louder
and was like, your purpose on Earth is to feel
and is to feel freedom and is to be. And
as I started to write and make more art, I
(30:50):
became the art. The art wasn't just something that I
was making, And then going back to being normy if
something I was living, poetry is not something I was writing,
it was something I was being. And so now I
see every day of getting dressed as an opportunity to
make art.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
So what we do when we make art is you say, like,
what do I feel? And I think that's scary for
a lot of people because they're so dissociated they don't
know what they feel that part. So when you actually
are in touch with your feeling, you're just expressing what
you're feeling.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, And I.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Love I love that you say that because it is
fashion is like, especially in queer fashion, it is a liberation,
like it is literally non conforming, and it's every time
I see queer people dress, I'm like, oh, this is like,
this is it. It moves me in a really weird
way that I have a hard time even putting a
(31:42):
name to it.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
But I love the sense of freedom.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I love the sense of I'm going to do me
and I'm going to move in this world freely and
I hope that inspires you to do the same. And
you've said a few things about creating new worlds. What
kind of world are are you trying to build through
your like creative practice, your fashion, your art, your poetry.
(32:07):
There's just so much of who you are that bleeds
into your work that is so beautiful.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Well, first, I just want to say thank you for
these really great questions, because what we're actually modeling here
is exactly what I was talking about. We don't have
to skirt around the most important, beautiful things. So often
in interviews like this, people will be like, so when
did you first know that you were a trans? Can
you please define what is non binary? And then I
(32:34):
just say, well, you know, prenatal, I was playing with dolls. Really,
I knew from negative five. Really, And it's just so
boring because we have to began at square one. And
I think it actually dehumanized us because it sees us
as just a terminology, like all we are is an identity,
when in fact we're humans with vibrancies and frequencies that
(32:55):
are fun. Yes, and I appreciate that intention. I want
to say thank you. And then second, I wanted to
say something before I forgot to say, which is about
creative self expression? What's the alternative? Okay, So let's say
if I really subscribe to the advice that people told me.
The advice that people tell me is that I should
look like everyone else and that I should be a
(33:17):
straight man. Let's say if I was to do that,
I would die. I'm not being hyperbolic, I'm not being dramatic.
I'm being honest. I would die. You want to know why,
because I've tasted freedom and now going back into a
closet sounds like the most miserable thing in the world.
(33:38):
What I'm saying is I would sign up for all
the scrutiny, the judgment and the vitriol because that is
less painful to me than self betrayal. So the advice
that's being given to me is die. So that's why
I have so much clarity, is because I know that
the quicksand of all of this advice that's like fit
(33:59):
in and fit in, Where that ultimately lands is me dying.
Where this lands is I might be killed. But that's
a higher probability chance that I'm going to be alive
than if I follow the other advice. Yeah, and in fact,
if I listen to my intuition and express myself. Not
only am I going to be alive in the physical sense,
I'm going to be alive in the spiritual sense. I'm
(34:21):
going to be present. I'm going to be able to
have conversations with you that are meaningful and true and resonant.
I'm not going to have to live a hapless and
boring life. Ew. So, the stakes of fashion and self
expression are not superficial. And I think that's why queer
fashion is so powerful is that you're actually seeing the
soul at play. You're seeing people really do this vulnerable
(34:43):
work of showing out loud what a smile looks like
when you've been degraded, and there's something so hopeful about that. Okay, now,
creating new worlds. The reason I talk about new worlds
all the time is this one is so boring. It's
just like it was a bad idea. It really was
a bad idea because I look at everything that's happening
(35:03):
right now and I'm like, ew, get me out of here.
I'm so over this. And I'm over this because it's
a world that was made for a small minority of
rich white men to hoard all of their wealth and resources,
and so they've kept us constantly judging and fighting one
another as they cash a check at the bank. That's
(35:26):
what this world was created for them and their image
because they were too afraid to look at themselves in
the mirror. They just wanted to create it into entire society.
They didn't allow them to look at themselves in a mirror.
That's not a world I'm really interested in. The world
I'm interested in is a world where we have no
small talk, where we just go up to people, because
people are all extensions of ourselves. They're no strangers, they're
(35:47):
just different versions of ourselves. We're like, hey, how are
you doing And then someone will be like, hey, I'm
not really doing that well, and they'd be like, I'm
not doing that well either, and then we'll talk about
what we're not doing well, and then we'll both realize, oh,
we're unhappy, and then we'll decide to do something about it.
We'll realize that like sadness is not our individual responsibility,
it's an imprint of what's happening in the collective. And
then we'll come together to create something better. And then
(36:09):
we'll try to end loneliness like that's the kind of
world that I want, is a world in which there
are no strangers, a world in which there is no loneliness.
Because when I grew up, a Fantasy was my favorite
children's book series, like Wheel of Time is my favorite
series in the world. I've read it maybe like six times.
I stood reading when I was eleven, And the reason
it spoke to me so much is the idea that
(36:31):
there are other worlds besides this one. And when I
was a young kid, I was looking around being like this, Yeah,
this is life, Are you kidding me? It's just a
bunch of people lying and like eating really boring food,
and ew. I don't want to be a part of that.
And so I wanted something else. And so what Fantasy
really taught me is that there are other worlds that
are possible besides this one. And so central to my
work is not a critique of this world, but an
(36:53):
insistence that we can transcend it and we can create
something fundamentally different. And so I see every show that
I create as world making, and this tour that I'm
doing during Pride, I'm going to a lot of places
where people are like, what are you doing in Jacksonville? Florida.
Why are you going to Tampa? Come on, You're doing
Kansas City. And I'm literally saying to them, that's exactly
(37:13):
the kind of thinking that we need to stop, because
this world is possible everywhere, just like home is possible everywhere.
It's possible when people come together and decide to be
and do something different, and that's happening everywhere. And so
the reason I love being a performer is because in
each of these places, I get to world make with
other people. And the show that's being created is not
(37:36):
just me performing from the audiences, all of us showing
up and creating humor that allows us to stand up
in a world that degrades us. It's not just jokes
for escapism. It's a survival strategy of I'm going to
fight for my joy amidst all of this despair. The
world I want is where joy is not a luxury,
it's our birthright. I genuinely believe that joy is our birthright.
(37:59):
I didn't believe that for a long time, and I
believe it now. And the way that I've come to
believe that is by touring in places. You know, I
was in Uganda and twenty eighteen we put together one
of the first transprides in Kampala, and so many people
in my life were like, look, what are you doing
in Uganda. That's one of the most unsafe places in
the world for queer people. And I said, Okay, they're
(38:20):
queer people there, so I'm gonna go ye. And we
had one of the funnest nights of my life. Genuinely,
I look back at those photos and I'm like, well,
I ever have this one fun again. It was so
much fun because we understood the stakes of what it
meant to be together, and we understood that this was
so precious and so meaningful and so magnificent. We were
(38:43):
lapping up every single second of it and we created
a different world that night. And so how can I
feel despair when I can look back at my journal
and see all of these nights where we took impossible
conditions and we created beauty. And That's how I'm getting
through these times. I'm not trying to. There's a lot
of horrible things. There's a lot of really bad, vile things,
(39:06):
and I believe in us so hard to not just
get through this, but to continue to level up. Yes,
but the way that we have to do it is
we have to say what is non negotiable, and what
is non negotiable for me is joy. And to your
point earlier, I feel often very judged for that. I
feel like the only way that you're allowed to show
up is by performing misery, is by saying, oh, you know,
(39:29):
it's just so horrible. It's so horrible, And I'm sitting
here like if I did that my entire life, why
would I want to be here. I'll just be out
of here.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
You know.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
The reason I'm still here is because I want to
have fun. Yes, and fun is a non negotiable for me.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Stay tuned.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
I'll be back in just a moment after this brief
message from our sponsors. First off, I want you to
be my life coach. You're younger than me, but honestly,
or was, and your insight are so infectious. Thank you.
I have to ask this question because you emphasize so
(40:06):
much about emotional honesty and vulnerability, which I love, and
on the show, I asked one question to every person
who is sitting here, and it's based on the title
of the show, Wide Open. What was the one moment
in your life that really broke you wide open? That
(40:30):
changed it all? For you, where it could be work related,
it could be personal. Was there that one defining moment
that changed it all?
Speaker 3 (40:44):
I would say when I was a teenager and I
had my first suicide of town and I lived and
I decided to live. That was a huge moment for
me because I really started to ask myself, what is
it going to take for me to stay? I want
to live on this planet and what it's going to
take I don't know yet. I don't know what I like,
(41:05):
I don't know who I am, And so I committed
myself to living that question. And I am the answer here.
I am at thirty three, the answer to my suicidal
ideation when I was eighteen. And how cool is that
I didn't know what I needed? But I found what
I needed And the way that I found it was
(41:26):
being honest and vulnerable and saying I want to die
dot dot dot, So what's going to make me want
to live? And I got curious about what's going to
make me want to live? And that was my compass
for so many years in my life. Does this situation
make me want to live or die? Does this situation
make me want to live or die? And then I
started to filter out. Certain people, certain dynamics, certain experiences
(41:49):
brought me back to a dark place. Other things brought
me to an expansive, liberatory space. And so once again,
gratitude that little bitch just comes in all the time.
I feel so grateful even for that one of the
darkest thing that happened to me, because there's a moment
of confrontation that required me to not just choose my
identity or my gender, but to choose this life. And
(42:13):
if I could be honest, my diagnosis of everything that's
wrong in the world is people have opted into life,
not chosen it. Because if you choose your life, if
you're very intentional about it, hatred makes no sense because
hatred has a corrosive quality on you. The more that
(42:34):
you hate, the more resentment and judgment you hold for
other people, the less quality of a life that you're
going to have. If you're genuinely concerned with living a
good life, hatred is one of the biggest obstacles to it.
So what I read a lot of the hatred in
the world as is like, oh, these are all kind
of miserable people who are opting into life, not choosing it.
(42:55):
And the leadership I want to have in the world
is not just about gender, but it's about saying you
get to live a good life. There's a lot of
lessons that are telling you all over the place that
you don't that this is inaccessible to you, that suffering
is your assignment on earth, that misery is your personality.
But I genuinely believe that if I from like a
(43:17):
small town in Texas could give birth to this, a
lot of things can happen. Yeah, a lot of mischievous
and magical things can happen, and that's where the hope is. Yeah,
you know, James Baldenwand said I can't be a pessimist
because I'm alive, and that really hits for me as
a survivor of a suicide at down Is. I look
(43:37):
at everyone as miraculous. I look at everything as miraculous.
You and I were not supposed to meet, and we did.
You and I were not supposed to have this conversation,
and we are miraculous. Things happen every single day. There
is a magic that's an undercurrent to all of this.
All we have to do is show up and trust it.
(43:58):
So that was a really defining moment for me, and
I think it's important because I've been thinking about it
a lot. Now. You know, so many people in my
life are struggling. There's so much despair, and in some
ways it feels like we've been like we've been time
traveled back to the early offs. Like I just I'm like,
am I back in college Station Texas? Is it two
(44:19):
thousand and six? What is going on? I thought we're
making progress, and so I think a lot of us
are being triggered back into past versions of ourselves, versions
of ourselves that felt like there was despair. But what
I feel really called in this moment to say is
that this is a beautiful invitation and opening for those
of us who want to do something different to say no,
(44:40):
not today. I'm not going to give up my joy today.
So ask yourself, what are practices I can put into
place today to preserve my joy? And how can I
challenge a culture that sees my joy as a luxury.
It's not, it's a necessity.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
It's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
You are magic, honestly, and thank you for sharing that
and feeling safe enough to share that with me. With
this knowing and becoming, what would you whisper to your
younger self as this person who stands here at thirty three,
who has gone through so much and you see the
(45:18):
world so beautifully and so colorful, and you live your truth,
what would you whisper so that young kid being here
today and what you've learned, I.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
Would say the best is yet to come. The way
that fear authors our lives as we look at the
forbidden terrain of the unknown and we say it's just
going to be collapse, it's just going to be scary.
But in my life, the unknown has actually given birth
to some of the best experiences of my life. So
rather than looking an unknown future and being like, it's
(45:52):
all going to be headed to the worst, what if
we were to look at an unknown future and be like,
this might be the time of my life.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
And I want to ask you because I think that
this is another conversation we've had in the past, is
the spirituality of being an athlete because there's so much pressure,
so many stakes. And similarly with my job when I'm
coming on stage, if I'm like, well, I have to
really do a good job, I always do a bad job.
Like I always inevitably if I'm like, oh, they're very
important people in the crowds to night. I have to
(46:19):
be really funny and really on. Then I'm so in
my head that I'm not able to be present. So
what I found as a performer, I have to do
is to surrender to a greater unknown and be a
vessel to it. And I feel like I see that
in so many athletes is like part of the preparation
is not just physical, it's psychological. And I think that
(46:39):
there's a way in which athletes and artists are uniquely
positioned in this time yes, to actually teach the world
a method that we know, which is there's a lot
of high stakes, but the more that you're concerned with
the high stakes, the less you're gonna be able to
show up correct. It might sound counterintuitive, but you have
to calm yourself in order to proceed that part.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
I worked with a ton of sports psychologists. I worked
on breathing experts, because when we do get worked up
and we kind of take on that pressure, it changes
the way we move, It changes the way we breathe,
which changes our decision making execution. Right, So for me,
(47:20):
it's really There was this incredible sports psychologist, Colleen Hacker,
who very early on in my career said learn your
ideal performance zone, your IPZ, the way I move in
preparation for Because I'm an entertainer, you know, we're all
just entertaining. I'm not curing cancer. You hold a lot
(47:42):
more weight to influence people rather than me playing a
sport kicking a ball around. So I always told myself,
if you make a mistake, have short term memory. I
think that's the best performers and the best athletes in
the world have short term memory, because if you make
one mistake and you carry it through, your performance is
(48:03):
fucking nightmare. Right, we keep making bad mistake, you know.
I always just sat in this performance mode where I
didn't take myself so seriously.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
And you're right.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
We wear a vessel for others. People like I'm the entertainment.
I'm here to bring joy, and I'm here. My mentality was,
I swear on my life I would look at the
clock and it would be you know, there's two halves
in soccer, and I'd be like forty five minutes. I
(48:35):
wanted to be over. It was the weirdest thing because
my biggest breakthrough was the interaction after the game with
the people I waited for who waited for me to
sign autographs and have intimate moments of real connection and storytelling.
And I felt like that was the real breakthrough.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
I mean, it's just so pertinent to what we're going
through right now. I think we need athletes right now
because we're up against a really difficult game and there's
a really strong, strong opposition. Yes, and we need to
get information as a team. H And I'm a poet,
so I do this really dangerous thing of dabbling and
(49:15):
metaphors around subjects I really have no expertise about, but
I feel called for them. And I really feel like
sports right now is like a really great metaphor for
what we need that sports psychology is another way to
describe like how to show up right now? Yes, because
I think a lot of people are being psyched out
and then it's going to be a self fulfilling prophecy
because they're coming in with nervousness, they're coming in with skittishness,
(49:37):
they're not offering themselves grace. They are really being self
debasing and self abusing. And what we actually need right
now is a different way of showing up and showing
up for each other. So I'm going to ask this
is so camp. I'm going to ask you another sports question,
like when you see a teammate faltering on the field
(49:58):
and you can sense, oh, this person is not doing
well right now, how do you show up with a
strength that allows the other person to know that they're
held by you and they can trust you in that interaction.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
That's a great question.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
And there's eleven players on the field and we are
not always going to have a perfect day. I think
the benefit of what we do is how do you
become an asset even on your off days?
Speaker 1 (50:25):
How do you show up in the moments where you're
not at your best?
Speaker 2 (50:29):
Because that is life, But how do you become an
asset in those moments and not hinder the people around
you or the team's performance. That's where the breakthrough lies.
And again that applies to life. Yeah, life is fucking
hard right now. For us, it's really toxic, but we
(50:53):
choose joy. How do we show up for each other
in a world that feels hopeless? How do we come hopeful?
What are our actions?
Speaker 3 (51:02):
And how do we win?
Speaker 1 (51:03):
And how do we win?
Speaker 3 (51:05):
Because that's another thing I think sports just really taught me.
It's like, I want to win. I don't want to
keep on having a tie over and over and over
and over. I want to win, and I want LGBT
rights to win. I want queer entrance people to win
and to be free and happy. And so we've got
to get it. We've got to get our team together.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
We do, we really do.
Speaker 3 (51:28):
We got to start normalizing and believing and staying out loud.
We are going to win. We might have to keep
coming back for the tournament over and over again. We
might have to keep training, keep on training, but we
got to keep bouncing back and keep coming back.
Speaker 2 (51:42):
Well, any athlete will tell you you learn more from
your failures than you do your wins. Right, So when
we're failing, we have to figure out we still show up,
we still coming, we still come back, and we want more.
Speaker 3 (51:55):
Right.
Speaker 2 (51:56):
I think with all of this stuff going on in
terms of the noise, it is to silence us, to
send us back into the closet. And you're right, how
do we collectively as a team, even when it feels
like okay, these are maybe we didn't we tied that
game or loss. We have to keep coming back to
(52:17):
win and that will take all of us. And I
appreciate you showing up constantly to advocate for your truth
and your joy. A. Look, you are an incredible human
that is such a light. You are an absolute unicorn
in every sense of the word. You are magic, and
(52:40):
I want everyone to come out and see you perform
because you are a light in this world and you
are meant to be here in this moment to guide us,
you know, during Pride month, I want us to feel
this sense of joy you talk about. And please tell
(53:00):
everyone who's watching, who's listening, where they can come see you,
because you are about to leave. You said tomorrow to
go back on this tour. It's it's called Biology.
Speaker 3 (53:10):
This one's called Harry's Situation.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
Yeah, so you just finished Biology. New show here, new show?
Speaker 2 (53:16):
Yes, tell me more. Where can we find you? Where
can we watch you? Where can we keep up with you?
Speaker 3 (53:22):
Yeah? So in June, because of Pride, I'm doing twenty
cities across the US and Canada, and my main goal
was where places that people are like, why would you
go there? I'm there, so I love that and it's
always growing and my agents always like, girls, you need
a break, and I'm like, but I love greup people
and I'm having so much fun, so let's keep going.
So there's going to be more dates to add, but
(53:43):
I genuinely feel like, yes, I love doing podcasts, I
love speaking, I love all of this. But where I
am the truest version of myself is on the stage,
because there's something sacred to use that work before about
coming together and laughing right now. Fear contru ricks our
bodies makes us small, Laughter expands us, makes us bigger,
(54:05):
makes us take up space. And so when I am
up there cracking jokes that are so inappropriate in grass,
it's actually out of a deep and sincere belief that
laughter is what we need right now to get bigger
and to get stronger.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
M Well, thank you for being Wide Open, and thank
you for being here, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (54:24):
All right, We'll see you next week.
Speaker 2 (54:28):
Wide Open with Ashlin Harris is an iHeart women's sports production.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
You can find us on.
Speaker 2 (54:34):
The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Our producers are Carmen Borca Correo, Emily Maronov, and Lucy Jones.
Production assistants from Malia Aguidello. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz,
Jenny Kaplan, and Emily Rudder. Our editors are Jenny Kaplan
(54:56):
and Emily Rudder and I'm your Host, Ashlan Harris and
Speaker 1 (55:07):
M
Host
Ashlyn Harris
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