Rosie Sandri : Recovery, Inclusive Education, & Queer Digital Storytelling

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Well, hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Trans
Narrative Podcast. I'm Caroline, and today I have
the pleasure of being here with Athena.
Oh my God. Hi, Athena.
It's good to be. Back, yeah.
Yes, it's good to have you. Thanks for being here and
returning again. It's AJ Evergreen.
Oh, my God. Hi.
Hello the the the orcas have released me once again.

(00:22):
Sorry Roslyn, old running joke. We appreciate the orcas very
much. Thank you, Orcas.
Sorry. And today we have the pleasure
of meeting Rosalind Sandry. Hello, Rosalind.
Welcome. Hi.
Everybody, it's so good to have all you here.
Thank you so much for taking thetime out of your day and being
here with me. So before we get started, a

(00:43):
little bit about Rosalind. Rosalind is a transgender
educator, content creator, and advocate for various inclusive
classrooms and authentic visibility.
A former high school English teacher at Red Oak High School
in Texas, Rosalind began publicly sharing her transition
journey on TikTok, where she reflects on her gender euphoria,
language and teaching resonated,and and how her teaching

(01:06):
resonated widely. Her honest storytelling garnered
national attention both in celebration and backlash that
after far right outlets targetedher content in the face of
harassment and threats, Rosalindmade the difficult decision to
resign for her safety and well-being for her students.
Despite this, Rosalind continuesto lead with grace and

(01:27):
resilience, using her platform to uplift, transjoy, challenge
injustice and speak truth to power.
Outside her advocacy work, Rosalyn is a poet at heart who
finds solace under trees, thrives in the pit at punk shows
in delights in late night horrorfilms.
Her story is a testament to courage, creativity and the
enduring power of self destination, self definition.

(01:49):
Hi, Rosalyn, welcome. Hey, it's good to be here.
Kind of kind of new for me, but it's good to be here.
So beautiful. Hello everyone, welcome back to
the Trans Narrative podcast. It's so good to be joined by my
lovely Co hosts always Athena and Caroline and Rosalyn.

(02:14):
It's so it's such a pleasure to get to meet you.
I've been I've seen you on the news, but it's nice to like
actually have you here with us. Yeah, the cameras don't do me
justice. Oh, Rosalynn, Aria, Athena, it's
so good to have you all here. Thank you for being here.
So, Rosalynn, take us back to the beginning to to your

(02:37):
childhood, to the, you know, what was your childhood like
growing up? How did that influence your your
journey? Well, the first, I would say
decade of my childhood was relatively uneventful.
Like they're really good memories because for the 1st 10
years of my life, I lived in Philadelphia.
That's where I was born. I was born in Bethlehem, PA,
just outside of Philadelphia. And I remember a lot of happy

(03:00):
times because it was there. And then we moved to Utica, NY
for a little while and that's where my younger brother was
born about two years after me. And I was born in 1991.
And my mom was a stay at home mom, so I spent a lot of time
with her because my dad travelled a lot for work.
So he was gone probably, I mean at that time it was really bad.
He was probably gone for like 3 weeks out of a month and only

(03:24):
back for like a weekend here andthere.
And I spent a lot of time with my mom and I have a lot of
memories of like my mom really hated the kitchen.
So she always needed somebody tolike, be there to help keep her,
I don't know, focused or from being sad in the kitchen.
So I would like sit up at the kitchen island and just talk to
my mom. And I kind of fell in love with

(03:44):
cooking because I ended up taking the cooking over from her
and like going into the kitchen and being like, if you don't
like to be out here, I do. So you can just leave.
But she got like guilty. She would be like, oh, you're my
kid. I don't want you to have to make
dinner for me. So I would still sit at the
kitchen island and just talk to her all the time.
And it was, those are some of mybest memories.
But then it was 10 years and my sister was born in 2001.

(04:05):
So me and my brother are only two years apart.
And then I have a sister who's 10 years younger than me.
And when she was born, my we couldn't find a house in Philly
because housing there was expensive.
So we ended up moving to Texas. My dad's job relocated us down
here. And that is the first time I
remember struggle. I didn't have a lot of struggle

(04:27):
when I was living up north. I wasn't like I was kind of an
effeminate kid. I made friends with a lot of
girls, but like, it wasn't really noticeable or something
that I ever realized about myself because I didn't have to
like those first ten years. It was just easy.
Then we moved here and for my entire life I've gone to private
schools. I grew up Irish Catholic, which

(04:51):
again, also was not a problem when I was living in
Philadelphia. Like I went to private schools
in Philadelphia, but I don't unless I'm blocking it out.
I don't remember it being that bad, but I remember when we
first moved here and I got set to a private school here for the
first time. It was a living hell.
I could not make a friend to save my life.

(05:11):
Neither could my mother. Like both of us just got pretty
much depressed at the same time because neither one of us could
make friends, find anybody to talk to.
I got bullied a lot at school for the way I was.
I wasn't interested in a lot of mainstream things.
So like the stuff that I didn't know about got me bullied.
I don't know if that makes sense, but I also got bullied
for just being a little queer and effeminate.

(05:33):
Like I went to a Catholic schooland I was flirting with boys
like they didn't like that. And I think I kind of grew out
of my boy phase, but I was very much in my boy phase in
elementary school. Like that school went from
preschool all the way to like 8th grade.
And I stayed there until at least 6th grade.

(05:55):
And there was some good stuff, like I made a couple of friends
because I joined like the speechand debate team, which they had
for elementary schoolers as in like 4th or 5th grade when I
first started doing that. I did like poetry and prose
readings, which were really fun.I loved like acting stuff out.
I found a little niche in like the theatre department and doing
some of the productions there and I found my people.

(06:18):
But the vast majority of people there were very macho.
And I tried on my parents recommendation to balance out
some of the artier stuff that I was doing with sports and it
never worked out. I tried basketball and all I
could do was chase after the ball while it rolled away from
me. I tried baseball and I think I

(06:39):
only wound up with a bruise fromgetting hit by one.
Like none of it worked out. The only sport that I've ever
been halfway decent at is hockey, but that's just because
I liked checking with people andstuff.
Like it's fun. I remember like always having to
be at those sports kinds of things growing up and I never
really liked it all that much. And like since transitioning I

(07:00):
picked up a basketball and I waslike this feels so familiar.
Oh wait, I had to do this a lot and I thought what if sports but
girl. Yeah, I mean, kind of I tried
because like, I I watched the people who were good at sports,
like have people to talk to. So I was like, oh, if I can
bounce this ball and put it in that hoop, maybe I can make some

(07:21):
friends. But it didn't work out because I
couldn't take the ball and put it in the hoop.
But yeah, I got beat up a lot. 1of my formative memories, I
think from elementary school. I don't know if this is too
heavy, but the worst moment, andthe moment that made my parents
be like, we got to get her out of here was when I was in 5th or

(07:42):
6th grade. I can't remember this point.
I kissed a boy because we had hung out a lot and we were like
alone on that recess, like hanging around outside.
And I know it seemed right. We stared at each other for a
while. There was a lull in the
conversation. I was 12, so I just.
I thought it was a good idea. So I leaned in and I kissed him
and he flipped of. Course.

(08:06):
Oh my God, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.
You're running around telling everybody.
And the next day, they cornered me in the gym locker room and, I
mean, beat the crap out of me and started, like, grabbing at
me. I'm like, oh, if you're yeah, I
bet you like this and all kinds of crap.
They went on like that for two days until I finally had to tell
my parents. It'd be like, I think I need to

(08:27):
get out of here because I don't think this is the place for me.
And I was lucky because it was around the time that my mom and
dad were both, like, losing their faith, not really into the
whole Catholic thing anymore. And it took being around, like,
Texas Catholics. But that's finally happened.
Very apropos now that I am an adult and I am around Baptists
and Catholics myself. Totally get it.

(08:48):
Totally get it and it was so always surprising to me, or at
least it's surprising to me looking back now because I mean
they have been lifelong churchgoers, hardcore Irish
Catholic. My dad is full blooded Italian
and my mom is full blooded Irish.
Both of them have heavy Catholicbackgrounds and we came here and
it took like 2 years for them togive it up.

(09:10):
We weren't going to church anymore, none of that.
But unfortunately the damage hadalready been done.
I was an altar server, which wasnot fun.
I was getting beat up by all these kids and all this.
There's not fun and or there's alot of trauma from that place.
Oh, they still pass. It's still getting really close
to where I live. So like when I'm driving around
or I go to a concert or something, it's still a place
that I have to regularly pass and it's not fun.

(09:33):
I don't like it. So I'm curious, it's kind of a a
side note, how do your how does your family or like family
friends, how do they feel about getting to progressive popes in
a row that both hate JD bands? Have they said anything?
I love it because I still followthat stuff, but my father
completely refuses to follow thenews.

(09:57):
Like he would be perfectly happyliving under a rock somewhere.
I think like he, he is more intothe news and stuff now that I've
transitioned because he's being like supportive.
So he listens a little bit more and talks to people a little bit
more about it now. But for a while they're like, he
didn't care. And I, I know he doesn't care
about the Catholic Church. Goodness gracious he wasn't into

(10:18):
it. My favorite story from him is
when my, when my parents got married.
Apparently when you're in the Catholic Church, there's this
thing where you have to speak tothe priests that have marriage
canceling through the church before you are allowed to get
married in the Catholic Church. But they make you pay for it.
Like it's not free, it's required or you can't get
married in the church and you have to pay like $500 to do it

(10:41):
or something like that. So my dad was pissed.
Like, he was really mad. And there's a moment,
apparently, where they talk to you as a couple, and then they
break you apart and talk to you individually, I guess trying to
break you down the way cops do. I don't know.
And when they took my dad to theside, apparently the walls
between them were so thin. And my mom was like, all I could
hear was your father in there ranting and raving and, like,

(11:01):
talking about Catholic Incorporated and how all of this
was such BS because he shouldn'thave to pay money to go to this.
So he just wants to marry the birds that he loves and blah,
blah, blah. And I was like, yeah, that
sounds about right. So I'm surprised that's not
where he lost his faith. But now it took our experiences
at the school for everyone to lose their faith collectively in

(11:22):
my family. But they moved me to a a public
school when I was 13. I got to start junior high in a
public school. And that was better.
As she found friends, I discovered theater.
I was a theater nerd for like myentire junior high and high
school career. And I became the flamboyant one,

(11:43):
like if there was even a relatively like queer ish role
in the play yours truly or a dadrole because I was one of the
only people who could grow a full beard in 7th grade.
So like if they ever needed likethe dad role I ended up with
that too. So it was either dad or gay.
Those were like my 2 niches. So when the gay dad role popped

(12:05):
up. Yeah, What's that show?
Is it cabaret or what am I thinking of?
No Lacaja fall. Lacaja fall is what I'm thinking
of. Yeah, but yeah, that that's
really interesting. And yeah, I I like to tell
people that I I defy trans and stereotypes by being bad at

(12:26):
literally every sport. So I can I can empathize.
But yeah. So you had this formative
experience coming into your teenyears and then you found a
better place at this new school.What?
What happened next? OK so public schools where I
finally got to start figuring myself out.

(12:48):
So from 7th grade until my senior year of high school, I
finally found people who helped me try, like start to understand
myself a little bit. Like I started to realize that I
was queer. Around that time, I still didn't
realize I was trans because I didn't know what that was like.
There wasn't enough information about that out there.

(13:09):
In my mind, there was you're gay, bisexual, or lesbian.
Those are the three options. You got 1.
So I was trying to figure that out.
I knew that I was queer. I didn't know exactly what it
was. I came out as bisexual to a few
friends and that was disastrous.All my guy friends were just
like, you know, if you're bisexual, that means that you

(13:30):
have to have sex with guys. You don't really want to do
that, do you? And it's like, that was kind of
the idea, but OK, sure, no, I don't want to do that.
So they, they were like, I know you better than that.
Like, no, you're, you're not oneof those people.
Like you're just pretending or whatever.
So whatever. That's when I started
gravitating and hanging out withgirls more because when you told
girls that they, they either could not care less or they were

(13:52):
curious to know more. So they were more fun to hang
out with because like you're notto tell them you can just hang
out with them and be a little bit queer.
And they were just like, oh, we're going to keep inviting you
places because you're like us. So that was cool to me.
And then I got to like put on makeup and stuff like that was
one of the great things about being in theatre in high school
was I could sneak all of the things that I wanted to do, like

(14:13):
putting on dresses and makeup and all that kind of stuff.
Because we had a black box and in the back of the black box,
they let us set up a hangout area.
They have to take this huge mural on the wall.
We got to put in like first store furniture in the back with
a bunch of like curtains and stuff.
And then girls and boys dressingrooms were, I mean, full of
clothes, like all kinds of things that I can experiment

(14:34):
with, like suit jackets and skirts or full on dresses or
Oxford button ups and tights. Like I could do the whole night.
I could experiment with whateverI wanted.
I learned how to do my makeup better because if I was doing my
makeup in front of my friends, it was like, oh, I got to
practice before the show or my director is going to kill me,
you know, like, oh, I got to be able to put on my own eyeliner.
Because the thing that I'll say for my theatre teacher is she

(14:58):
made it a rule that whether you were a guy or a girl, you needed
to know how to put your own makeup on for a scene.
Like the girls weren't just going to line up and do makeup
for everybody. You had to figure out how to do
your own eyeliner. You had to figure out how to do
your own foundation and stuff because nobody was going to wait
on you. Like the show had to happen when
the show had to happen. And we couldn't be waiting
around for you to wait for a girl to do your makeup for you.

(15:19):
You had to be able to do your makeup.
So bless her for that because I think that's the only way that I
learned how to put eyeliner on. My God, I'd still be learning it
now. So theatre was a safe space, I
would say. And I was figuring myself out
and high school was going prettysmoothly and I was making
friends. And then I would say right when

(15:43):
I was on the plus figuring this out and being like, hey, I might
be a woman. My mom died my senior year of
high school, April. It was a, it was a month before
I graduated from high school. My mom died of liver cirrhosis.
My mom was a really heavy drinker and that only became
heavier when we moved to Texas because she was miserable.
She was a stay at home mom with no friends, locked in the house

(16:05):
all the time because she did notwant to go outside and talk to
these people because they were me and she didn't want to be
around them. She started drinking more and
more and more. And my senior year, I mean, it
started like at the beginning ofmy senior year that she got
really sick and then they put her in the hospital and they cut
out her gallbladder and all thisother stuff.
And yeah, another time that justwas not fun.

(16:28):
I remember being in the room because my dad was like, you
know, you're the oldest. If something's going to happen,
you need to stay. So I stayed in there with the
doctor when they talked to my mom about how she needed a liver
transplant or she was going to die, and I guess they just
didn't get it in time or they did too many surgeries or
something like that. And yeah, she ended up dying a
month before I graduated my senior year.

(16:50):
And any work that I was doing tofigure myself out was over
because my sister was 8 when that happened.
My brother was, I was 17, that would have made him about 15.
And then I was like 1718. So we were all pretty young, but
my sister was extremely young. And my dad was still on a

(17:14):
schedule where he was travelling3 weeks out of the month.
And you can't just drop that. Like my mom died pretty
suddenly. He can't just be like, oh, I'm
going to go find the new job. Like that's not how things work.
So it fell to me and my brother to take care of the house, take
my sister to school, help her with her homework, cook dinner.
Just truly, that's how I learnedhow to be a really good kid.

(17:34):
And any effort that I had put into figuring myself out go on
by the wayside because I literally had to step up and be
mom with my brother and that. Was great.
Interesting you put it that way though.
It's not just be a caretaker to step up and be mom.
Did you feel that way at the time?
Regardless of how you might haveput it.

(17:55):
I mean, a little bit, Yeah. Because when I would be alone
with my sister and my brother trying to figure things out, I
mean, in my mind, it was what would mom do?
Yeah, She left me. She left me a journal because my
mom liked to write too. And she left me her journal and
had this cute little, like, dog on the front of it.
It was a really nice looking thing.
And it was full of like quotes she had written down and it was

(18:19):
full of poetry and journal entries.
And inside she had stuck a little.
I don't know if she had done this when she got sick or if
this was just always her plan, but she left a little index card
in there with a note for me thatwas just like, you know, I love
you. I'm watching over you.
Take care of your brother and sister.
So I took that as like a mission, you know, like I, I had
been given a mission. Take care of your brother and

(18:40):
sister. That is my mission.
That is what I have to do. So I didn't matter as much in
that scenario. Like I needed to take care of
the things around me. And I said I don't think I did a
very good job. I really think my brother did a
better job of keeping things together than I did because I've
never been good at keeping things together.
That's not me. Like I'm the crazy, chaotic,
unhinged person. Like I can't handle pressure.

(19:04):
Like I think that helped me handle pressure better, but
like, I wasn't, I wasn't set up to be a parent.
I'm not set up to be a parent now.
I don't know if right now in my life I don't want kids because
I've already raised one or if I don't never wanted kids and I
had to raise 1. So I don't know.
All of that was very weird. And we didn't deal with my mom's

(19:25):
death. I went back to school the day
after she died. Like all of my teachers were
looking at me like, what the hell are you doing back here?
And I was like, well, you know, my dad basically told me he was
like, it's either go to school or sit around the house.
And I was like, I couldn't just sit around the house doing
nothing. I had to cut back.
But in the process, like, we didn't go to therapy, family

(19:45):
therapy, individual therapy, nothing.
It was years and years and yearsof nothing.
So I turned to alcohol instead. And when I graduated high
school, it was Boo. I delivered pieces for Domino's.
My brother and I moved out and got an apartment.
And we started working at a Domino's, delivering pizzas.

(20:06):
And Domino's is open until what,like one 2:00 in the morning.
So we would always take that late shift and then we would
wake up the next morning and we would go to school and we went
to school about 45 minutes away from where we live.
So it would be 8:00 AM class after working until 2:00 in the
morning, school until 3:00 and then back for another shift

(20:27):
until 2:00 in the morning. And in between all of that, I
was founding Steel Reserve and four locos like mad.
Like I I was blackout almost every night and then I would
have to wake up, take a couple of aspirin, slug a case of Red
Bulls, and then start the day again.
And there were a lot of times where I literally made myself

(20:47):
sick. I was in the hospital with
rhabdomyelosis because I tried to start working out again, but
I wasn't drinking water. I was literally drinking 28 oz
Red Bulls in the morning and then a cup of coffee on the way
to school, and then a 12 ounce Red Bull on the way back, and
then maybe two more 8 oz while Iwas at work and then coffee to
go to sleep with the booze. I ended up in the hospital.

(21:07):
So my kidneys almost shut down because I wasn't drinking water.
I was drinking booze and caffeine and that was it.
So my person. In the high school.
This was, yeah, this was my freshman year of college.
OK, that's OK. And I was like deep in the
throes of grief. I was failing all of my classes.
By the time I was in my sophomore year of college, I was
on academic probation. I had like a 1.5 GPA.

(21:29):
I think they almost kicked me out of school, you guys.
I wasn't shoving up to class. I was.
A hell of a place to start. Give yourself some 35 beer.
So, so in the midst of that, what, what you know, you, you go
into freshman year of college, what were your intentions with,
do you have an idea of what you were studying, what you wanted

(21:51):
to go for or was it just generalacademics?
Oh yes, no, I have. OK, so my students have made fun
of me for this before, but I have wanted to be a teacher
since I was five years old. My mom's mom was a librarian.
My mom was very heavy on the education.
She was reading to me for as long as I had ears to listen.
She would read to me when I mean, she would tell me stories

(22:13):
about reading to me when I was still in the book.
Like she was one of those like Mozart on her belly.
And then like books from whatever at night, like whatever
she was reading, she would read out loud so I could hear it
right. So she was big into that.
And when I was a kid, like, I wasn't playing cops and robbers,
I was playing teacher. Oh my gosh.
The same thing I pretend I had, I turned my whole bedroom into a
classroom. Like I had the wall.

(22:34):
I had my stepfather got a dry erase board, a big classroom
size class board. So I would get home from school,
I'd get my homework out. I'd do like today we're doing
prepositions and I have a song, even though it was a song that
my teacher made and I would, andI had a pianist.
So sometimes I teach choir. Like I just, I would just, and
it would just, Oh my God, it wassorry.
I know that so well. I stopped doing that.

(22:56):
I think when I hit freshman yearof high school, I think that was
the last year that I turned my bedroom into a classroom because
I just kind of felt the classes.It wasn't like that in high
school, you know, it wasn't likehow the classrooms were in
elementary. So like I kind of just was like,
I don't know. So anyway, sorry.
That is just. I thought I was the only nerd
who would, like, hang out and like, I would make my friends do

(23:19):
it. They would be like, oh, what do
you want to play that? I'd be like, oh, I'm going to be
the teacher and you're my students.
Like OK fine. I turned my whole bedroom to her
desk. I like have all this stuff.
I, I, I had my teacher bring me.She gave me at the end of 7th
grade year, she gave me the literature book.
He's like, here's an extra copy that I kept in the closet.
She's like, you can have it because I know you're deep at
home. And I was like, Oh my God,
having that dry erase board. The biggest thing I regret in my

(23:41):
life is when we moved in 2011, Idid not take that dry erase
board with me because I thought,well, I'm, I'm old enough now, I
don't need that thing. What I'd give to have that dry
race board back. I'm sorry.
No, you're good. You're like speaking to my soul
right now. I love that.
Kindred spirits. It's cool.

(24:01):
That's great. So you how did you bridge the
gap between being in that situation that you were, where
you're almost failing college tobecoming a teacher yourself?
Just a lot of work. By the time I was in my mid 20s,
I didn't sober up, but I wasn't drinking quite as heavily.

(24:23):
And because it was making, it was making me really sick.
Like it would make me really sick on a regular basis.
I wouldn't be able to function. So I got to the point that I
needed to be a functioning alcoholic instead of an
alcoholic alcoholic. So I started cutting back just
enough that I would be able to function during the day and not
flunk out of school. So I was spending way too much
money. I was taking out thousands and
thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of
dollars in loans. And then four years at school

(24:46):
turned into six years in school.Like it wasn't good.
So I was blowing all this money and I decided I needed to buckle
down a little bit because I wanted to teach and I knew I
wasn't going to be able to do that screwing up.
So I buckled down and I finally passed.
Finally passed the math class that I had to take.
I had to take the same stats class for 8 semesters before I
finally passed it. Oh I feel like I I'm in.

(25:08):
I'm in college presently and Yep, the the stats classes my
the bane of my existence. It took so many times, and then
what really, really ticked me off was the last time that I
took her flight because I had the same teacher for every
semester that I had to retake it.
So after semester #7 I think I took the test and I got AD on it
or I got an F on it again when Ineeded, ADI was only like 2

(25:30):
points away from passing like every single time.
And that final time she was justlike, look, I'm pretty sure this
is the best that you can do, so I'm just going to bump you to
two points. And I was like, you couldn't
have decided that like 5 tests ago because I'm another $1000 in
debt to you because of this. Like you could have just decided
whatever. I think that was the big hurdle.
I finally passed my stats class.I got to take some of my upper

(25:51):
level English classes. And when I finally got into
those upper level English classes where we were like
discussing theory and reading and discussing literature.
And I can pinpoint the turning point because I got to take my
senior seminar, which I don't know why they called it a senior
seminar, whatever, but I took mysenior seminar and it was about
detective fiction. It was an entire class just

(26:11):
dedicated to detective fiction and I fell in love and I was
like, Oh my God, if this is whatcollege is going to be like from
now on, I can start taking it seriously.
This is great. So yeah, it was cool.
And I don't know, all the drinking I was doing, it kind of
felt like a kindred spirit with all those Philip Marlowe
characters. So I think that was the time
that I, I finally, it finally started to shift.

(26:33):
I started to wake up a little bit more.
And that was also around the time that I met my ex-wife.
So I was dating her, I had less opportunities to sit around and
drink all the time because we were like going on dates and
hanging out and she wasn't as big a drinker so it made more
sense. That was also around the time,

(26:53):
though, that the question of my gender started popping back up
because, and I swear I only remember this the other day, my
ex-wife started to make friends with a trans man and a trans
woman who were in one of her history classes.
And I would meet up with them every day to talk.
And as I started hanging out with them, I was like, these are

(27:14):
the coolest people I've ever met.
Like, why can't I be like them? And ever occurred to me that I
couldn't be like them. I was just like, I wish I could
see all that. That's so common.
But they would have all kinds offunny stories tell.
It was hilarious. Like there was the one one of
them was a trans man who had just had top surgery and they

(27:34):
had replaced his nipples. But she, like you, wouldn't stop
smoking. What's the problem?
Like her, the doctor had told her, stop smoking because we're
trying to graft. Your.
Nipples back on and you're goingto have a problem.
And I remember one day in class he comes out laughing and runs
up to my ex-wife and goes oh, mynipples just fell off in the

(27:58):
middle. And she's like what happened?
And he was like, I want to stop smoking.
Like my doctor keeps telling me to stop smoking but like I can't
quit smoking. And yeah, my nipple just fell
off in the middle of class and Ihad to dig it out.
I'm like, and even in that scenario, I was like, this is so
cool. This is the world that I need to
inhabit these. I'm I'm glad that was a selling

(28:18):
point for you. Because I was like, these are
such like, complex, cool lives. Like, who the heck has that
problem? I don't know.
There was something strangely romantic about the whole thing
because it was so different. And I mean, I know now that I
found the romance in it because I was yearning for it so much

(28:40):
because it seemed like a community that might finally
accept me for who I was. And that was exciting to me.
So even at the time, I wasn't like, I am a woman.
I was like, man, I, I like, I would love to be there with
them, like be around these people who just all seem to love
each other so much. I don't know.
There was always the queer community in general, though,

(29:01):
something very romantic to me about it because I've always
been a big on a sewer of documentaries.
So I would watch, I would watch A10 and I remember watching
things like How to Survive a Plague, even, which is like a
really depressing documentary about the AIDS crisis.
But I would watch it and be like, like those people are so
close and stand in such solidarity with each other and
believe so hard in what they're fighting for.

(29:22):
Like I wish I believed in something that intensely that I
could fight for it like that. And I never knew.
Like, I look back on it now and of course I'm like, it's because
it was like in there trying to get out.
Like that was Rosie screaming inside of you to let her out.
But at the time, it was just like, especially because I'm in
college, you know, and I'm not like, talking to people.

(29:44):
I'm literally just like, work, school, home, work, school,
home. I'm not getting involved in
activism. I'm not hanging out with people.
I'm watching everything happen from the outside.
So what year is this? What year?
So what year? I'm just, I love the, I love the
context behind. So what year are we in at this
point? OK so I graduated high school in
2010 so my college career went from like 2010 to 2016.

(30:08):
So it took me 6 years to graduate college, partially
because I wasn't taking full class loads because I also had
to work and partially because I was not taking it seriously for
the first two years. It it took me, I when I met my
ex-wife, she ended up transferring to the same college
that I was going to because she had just gotten out of the
military and it was one of the easiest places, I guess for her

(30:30):
benefits to transfer or something.
So yeah, I was working at Domino's.
I was. And when I was working at
Domino's, I actually found some friends, some friends that I
still have to this day. When I found out that I was
trans, they were some of the first people to find me on
Facebook and be like, Oh my God,congratulations.
I used to work here at Domino's.Could have seen this coming from
a mile away, which is probably the most fun part of my coming

(30:51):
out journey is everybody lookingat me and being like, well, glad
you finally figured it out. You got it.
So, yeah, I mean, college was kind of a blur.
Like, I don't remember my early to mid 20s very much because
there was a lot of alcohol and Ikilled a lot of brain cells.
You know, it is kind of a blur. And part of the reason that it's

(31:13):
a blur is because I wanted it tobe like, I never let myself
grieve over my mom. I thought that if I just didn't
think about her, if I just pushed her memory away, forgot
what she looked like, what she sounded like, that it wouldn't
hurt because if she never existed, then there's nobody
there to grieve. And obviously, that did not

(31:35):
work. That did not work at all.
And yeah, so I spent six years in a wilderness.
I don't even know if I have a lot to say about those six years
because they are a blur. I went to college, I almost
flunked out. I didn't, but my GPA had gotten
bad enough that my senior year in 2016 when I finally

(31:57):
graduated, I couldn't take my education classes through the
school. My GPA was still too low.
They required you to have like a3.2 GPA.
I graduated with 2.8 GPA. So I was left in a position
where I couldn't go back for my master's immediately like I
wanted to because my GPA was toolow.
Still a problem and I couldn't go right into my education
classes, so I had to start an alternative certification

(32:19):
program. So that meant another two years
in the service industry before Iwas able to become a teacher
because I had to take an alt cert program, which is probably
the most annoying thing that I've ever done because they
already like my very first teaching job.
I was in an on an intern certificate so this was
20/16/2017. I'm finally not delivering pizza

(32:41):
or sandwiches anymore. They hire me at my first school.
It's like an hour and a half drive from where I live.
So I'm commuting an hour and a half there and an hour and a
half back every single day to goto the middle of podunk nowhere
and have people stare at me. And they hired me two weeks late
in the school year and tossed meinto a classroom in the back of

(33:02):
the school and just went. Good luck.
I had taken one of my alt cert classes until that point I had
been delivering sandwiches and then I went from sandwiches to
in a classroom with a bunch of 15 year olds just like that and
it was nightmarish the stupid mistakes that I made at the
beginning of my teaching career.I still have stories to tell the

(33:24):
kids to this day. My favorite of which.
So I am in my first year of teaching and I have a really
hard to handle fourth period class because they know that
it's my first year teaching, so they're taking advantage of it.
And I put together a sort of syllabus that I stole from my
mentor teacher. But she had all kinds of rules
in there about what the kids could and could not eat in her

(33:46):
classroom. She'd almost banned eating in
her classroom. And I was like, well, we don't
need to do that. Sometimes kids get hungry.
What if their blood sugar gets low now?
Not me. I'm going to be a cool teacher
and I'm going to let them bring whatever they want.
So I do. I announce in front of the whole
class, hey, I'm not going to have any food rules, you bring
whatever you want. Because in my mind I'm thinking
they're going to bring a bag of chips at worst and I have to

(34:06):
clean up crumbs off my floor. No big deal, nae nae.
Instead, one day during my fourth period, I think it was
like a Thursday, I stuck my headout the door waiting for them,
inviting kids into the room, whatever.
And from up the hallway, I see four of the kids from my fourth
period coming up the hall. Each of them is carrying a
different foil tray. And they come into my classroom
and they push my desks together without saying a word to me and

(34:28):
set out all of these foil trays.They open them up and it is
refried beans, rice, chicken, and tortillas.
They have all the fixings for like fajitas laid out, right?
They don't care. I'm like, it smells good.
They have it set up in an organized manner.
Forget it. I'm just going to try to teach.
So I do, I'm teaching. All of a sudden I hear them
giggling in the corner and I turn around and I find the same

(34:50):
group before that brought the trees in to begin with are
taking tortillas, slathering them in rice and beans, sticking
them to the wall, and then timing them because the first
persons to fall off was the person that lost.
And then instead of being like, clean that crap off my wall or
you're not leaving my classroom,I go over there and I'm like,

(35:12):
oh, I'm so sorry. We don't really need to be doing
that. I probably shouldn't have let
you drink so much food into the classroom.
Why don't you just go to your next class and I'll clean this
up for you? Like I'm a preschool teacher or
something. So it's a adjustment for me to
find my voice as a teacher for sure, because, well, I was still
in the closet. When I was in the closet, I was
a completely different person. I was extremely standoffish.

(35:34):
I did not like confrontation. I did not talk to people.
I don't think I made a single friend at my first job because I
don't think I ever unlocked my classroom door.
When the kids left my door shut.I was at my desk.
I shut off all my lights, pulleddrapes, didn't let anybody in.
So it took a lot like I made friends with my mentor teacher
and one of the other people in the English department only
because they were literally required to come and see me and

(35:56):
talk. But aside from that, no one
because, yeah, I was like keeping to myself.
And as a result, that kind of made me a crappy teacher.
Because if you're not relativelyassertive, I'm not saying that
an introvert can't be a teacher,but if you can't be kind of an
assertive presence in the classroom, you're you're done.

(36:17):
So those first two years were tough, mostly because, yeah, I
came in two weeks late. They that very first year that I
was teaching, they gave me a class of seniors, one class of
seniors, but they were the most impossible to handle because I
had just graduated from college.I was 25 years old and the
oldest kid that I had was in 19.They weren't taking me
seriously, right? I was like one of them.

(36:40):
So those first two years kind ofcrappy.
And then right when I'm on the cusp of getting certified, I had
taken my last Test, they were about to give me my
certification. That's when they called me into
the front office and they were like, we're not going to renew
your contract for next year. Like we're not going to say
anything bad about you. It's not going to affect your
career at all. We just don't want you this
year. So I had to leave and I ended up

(37:03):
in a charter school in Oak Cliff.
Oak Cliff is South Dallas and there's a school in South Dallas
that I started working and it was a charter school.
And that's when things really started to take off.
I slowed my drinking down a little bit more.
I'm still drinking a lot, don't misunderstand.
But I was married. So again, being around my wife

(37:26):
and everybody, it was different.You know, I wasn't alone all the
time. And at the time my living
situation was, it was me, my ex-wife and my younger brother.
All three of us lived together for pretty much the entirety of
my marriage to her and those whoworked from home.
I worked at the school and that school in South Dallas was the

(37:47):
1st place that I finally startedto actually find myself.
I did start painting my nails. They didn't care as much.
This was 2019. I finally made it to a school
that like seemed OK with me and I still wasn't transitioned.
I was wearing, I took the wearing a lot of Hawaiian
shirts, stuff of floral prints on them, because I was like, as

(38:08):
long as it's got tolerance, feminine kind of thing.
Yeah. Made me feel better though.
Like if I gotta wear a button up, let's at least make sure
it's silk and covered in flowers, you know?
Men's fashion is an open grave upon which the Hawaiian shirt
rests gracefully like funerary flowers.
I love Hawaiian shirts. I swear that's all I wore when I
was younger. I also had a Hawaiian shirt

(38:29):
face. When you're when it's male
clothing and you tell people that you like floral print,
there is no other option. Every single male floral print
shirt, even if it's not, looks like a Tommy Bahama shirt.
Every single one of them, even if it's like wildflowers.
Like I wore shirts with wildflowers and stuff on them

(38:51):
before and I was like, even thislooks strangely Hawaiian.
So just getting in the groove ofthings, finally getting your
rhythm a little bit. And then what do you know, COVID
hits and everything changes. Take us into, take us into that,
you know, into, into to how thatbegan to influence your gender.
Because there you are getting inthe groove of things.

(39:12):
You're, you're, you're starting to understand a little bit more
about yourself. You're you're, you're, you're
testing the waters, you know, getting your nails painted,
seeing how that feels, you know,the Hawaiian shirts.
And then COVID hits and it's like, whoa, this is a global
thing. Did that stop you?
Did that allow you space to findyourself?
Tell us about that. That is a big old cliche because

(39:35):
I know that there are a lot of trans people who found
themselves during COVID, and I am proud to count myself among
that number because I had a lot of time to think.
I had a lot of time to sit at home because when COVID first
happened, we weren't doing hybrid learning.
We were literally just, I would sit at home and I would check
Zoom maybe twice a day to see ifany of the kids were on there.
But aside from that, it was postthe lesson on canvas at the

(39:58):
beginning of the day, check it at the end of the day to see if
anybody did it, nothing in between.
So that left me a lot of time during the day to just sit.
And my ex-wife and my brother also worked from home, but they
worked from home. It wasn't like what I was doing.
I was spending most of my days sitting around not doing
anything and periodically checking to see if my students
were even bothering to do the work that I was posting.

(40:19):
And. It was around that time that I
started reading a lot of gender theory books.
I don't even remember why. If it was like a catalyst like I
I found 1 and I looked at it andI was like this looks
interesting. Or if it was just like kismet I
have no idea. But I remember the first one
that I read was whipping girl Julie Serrano.

(40:42):
Pretty sure that's her name. Julie Serrano and changed my
life. I got only about halfway through
that book before I was like, this is me.
I think I have finally figured it out.
Transgender lesbian, this is it like this is the identity.
I I finally figured it out. I finally found it.
So I think I read that book like3 times highlighting the crop
out of it, marking it in different places.
And that's how I spent a lot of my pandemic was with a bunch of

(41:04):
different like exploring the gender binary books like there
was one. I can't even remember what it
was called, but it had like, little tests on the inside of it
to see where on, like, the gender spectrum you fell.
And I remember, like, just desperately doing stuff like
that just to figure it out. Like, is this just a feeling
that I'm having? Is this real?

(41:27):
Is it fake? Whatever.
Like, maybe the Internet can tell me if I take enough of
these quizzes, maybe like, they'll just come back with,
yes, OK, you've taken 15 of themalready.
I think that you have your answer.
But I mean, that doesn't help. You got to do the work yourself.
But I thought maybe I could findan easy way.
And it was also around COVID that I started wearing more
feminine clothing and I came outto my brother and my ex-wife.

(41:48):
And I told that because I, so I come out to my ex-wife like a
week before our marriage becausewe got married right before I
got my first teaching job in 2016 or 2017.
And it was like a day before thewedding that I was like, I have
something to tell you. I'm bisexual.
And she was like, why are you even telling me that?
Like I know, but that was that was where I was at that time, I

(42:10):
was only bisexual. I didn't know anything else.
So that's what I told her at thetime.
She was like, whatever. Then after that, me and my
brother smoked cigars and we would sit out in the garage at
the house that we were renting every night and smoke cigars.
And I remember that was the first time that I told him, Hey,
I think I might be a woman. And I just remember he kind of

(42:32):
looked at me and he's like, really?
And I was like, yeah. And he's like, I guess that kind
of makes sense. He's like, he just kind of
giggles it. He looks at me.
He's like, you know, I always just kind of thought you were
gay. And I was like, yeah, I wish it
was that simple. But now we're a little more
complicated than that, unfortunately.
The next layer down. Yeah, and I mean, he was
immediately like, you know, that's fine.
He's like, whatever, like whatever you think.

(42:53):
He's like, I've never really thought about gender at all
before. But like, if that's your thing,
that's your thing. Like, fine.
So he was cool with it. He changed my pronouns
immediately. I started off non binary.
So it's like, just say that me because I don't know what I am
right now or I don't want to admit that I was a woman.
I, I am half Italian and half Irish and the Italian half of me

(43:14):
has at least looks twice has always kicked the Irish half's
ass. Like I was extremely, extremely
hairy. Like I couldn't even see my skin
for the amount of body hair thatI had.
I had a huge beard and I found some of the tutoring videos that
I made during COVID in my GoogleDrive the other day when I was

(43:34):
at my like most I don't give a crap about my beard.
And it's like down here. And Oh my God, they gave me a
panic attack. I was like, I really used to
look like that. Like, is that for real?
I showed some of my friends and they were like, no, that's not
you. Like you got to be punkin us.
That's got to be fit. But yeah, like, I, I remember
feeling that way, but I remembernot wanting to admit that I
thought that I was a woman because of the way I look.

(43:56):
Like the imposter syndrome has always been really strong with
me. And I felt like if I wasn't
shaving off my beard, if I wasn't actively pursuing it, I
didn't deserve a moniker. You know, I couldn't call myself
a trans woman if I wasn't makingthe effort to be a trans woman.
That was just disrespectful to the people who were really
fighting for it or whatever. Which now that I think about it,

(44:18):
is kind of silly. And I try to encourage people
not to think that way, but I wasin the throes of it during that
time because, yeah, when I looked in the mirror, I saw a
big hairy bearded dude, a big hairy bearded dude who was
stressing so much that you're getting bigger, bigger.
Like my beard belly would get bigger and bigger and bigger.
And my ex-wife always pointed out to me and be like, oh,

(44:40):
you're getting that cute dad bod.
And I'd just be like, oh, kill me.
So years of that, like I came out to both of them and I told
them I'm pretty sure I'm non binary.
I'm pretty sure I don't identifyas either gender.
They were like, OK, my ex-wife was like, So what is what
exactly does that mean for us? Like I, I married him.

(45:04):
So I kind of need to know what'sgoing on here, you know?
And so that was tough. And that was part of the reason
I think, that I hit it for so long, too, because I thought the
marriage was more important thanmyself.
Like, I entered into this contract with this person.
I need to hold up my end of the bargain.
We loved each other. I still love her.

(45:24):
But yeah, like, it wasn't good for me.
We weren't a fit. We weren't a fit.
I was trying to cut corners off of myself to make myself fit
into that puzzle. And I just didn't, you know, And
it took, I mean, again, it took years and years and years.
I was 27 when we got married. And that was when I figured out

(45:44):
that I was at least non binary. And I started reading all the
gender study books on my own to figure things out.
And I started wearing my nail Polish and I started practicing
with makeup. And it got to the point where
every weekend I would want to bein the kitchen cooking because
it's one of the things that I love to do.
And every time that I would do that, I would put on a skirt,

(46:07):
cute top, and I'd do my makeup, hang out of my kitchen, and I
would do all the things that I wanted to do.
And I would sit out front and smoke a cigar looking all pretty
and feminine. And it just got harder and
harder to keep it to only weekends like I was.
I was hiding myself because I didn't want anybody else to
know. And it felt really good.

(46:28):
And then Sunday would roll around and I would know the next
day. I have to go back to school and
be professional and all of the girly clothes would get folded
up and put in the back of closetfor another week and I would
have to pull out the slacks and the button ups and basically
give up my for a week while I taught.
So that was tough. I think it was almost harder to

(46:50):
be in that inbetweenie stage than to be in my clueless stage
because at least when you're clueless, you don't really know
what you're missing out on. There's some like vague yearning
inside of you, but since you can't place it, it's like, oh,
it's just my anxiety. Oh, it's just my depression.
No, I just have some mental health problems, no big deal.
But once you know what it is andyou can't do anything about it,

(47:11):
it's torture. It's torture.
That's where the actual pain of it started.
I wasn't in pain before because I didn't know what the other
option was. I wasn't in pain because I
figured there's a history of mental illness in my family.
I'm probably just one of those, chalk it up, whatever.
But when I knew what it was, when I was like, I think that
you are trans and you might be awoman, When I knew what it was

(47:33):
and I couldn't explore it, it hurt.
Like it started to actually physically hurt.
And that's when my mental healthstarted to completely
deteriorate because it was there, I had identified it, I
knew what it was and I couldn't have it.
I couldn't, I haven't, I, I couldn't even see if it's what I
wanted. I couldn't experiment with it.
I couldn't touch it. It was, it was there and I could

(47:54):
look at it and I could see otherpeople who were brave enough to
step up and take hold of it. And I just couldn't have it.
And it hurt every day that I thought about it.
And I started to drink more again because that was my
solution for everything. Like I had learned, drinking
numbs the pain. No pain, no problem.
Awesome. But unfortunately during this

(48:15):
time, so that's after I'm, I'm in the middle of teaching at
this school in South Dallas. I spent about three years there
the entirety of the pandemic, like 2019 to 2021.
That was my job. And around that time I started
drinking more heavily and I started self harming because

(48:35):
again, it hurt. I, I couldn't figure out what to
do with the internal pain. So I started turning into
external pain because it seemed appropriate.
Even when I was in high school, I never really self harm, but
during this time it felt necessary.
So I always thought that was kind of strange, but I didn't
like grow up with it. It wasn't something that was
always there for me. It was something that I started

(48:57):
doing because I was like, well, if it works for those people,
maybe it'll work for me too. Of course it didn't.
All it did was make me spiral even more.
Stress eating, lots of drinking,self harming, bad couple of
years. And then I ended up having to
leave my job at that school because Lord, it was a mess.

(49:20):
They were catching kids, having sex and all these different
rooms. And probably the defining moment
of that one was there was one day I was in my classroom
teaching. The classroom next door to me
was senior English. The a group of junior English
kids had just come back from some kind of field trip and they

(49:40):
had all come back inside. And then apparently two of the
senior boys who were sitting by the window in the classroom next
door to me looked out the windowand I saw the bus rocking.
And they went to their teacher and they were like, hey, isn't
that bus supposed to be empty? Why is that bus rocking?
Well, apparently two of the kidshad stayed behind to get
intimate in the back of the bus.But it got worse because one of
the girls who was in that classroom next door to me was

(50:02):
the girl who was in the bus getting busy's sister.
And apparently the younger sister thought that the older
sister had stolen her boyfriend.So she was out in that bus
getting intimate with this boy and videotaping it and sending
it to her sister to be like, see, I can do things you can't.
So I hear this girl shriek and go running out of the classroom.

(50:24):
And I kind of stick my head out to talk to the teacher next door
to be like, what the hell just happened?
And I mean, there was like, I'llI'll tell you later.
I'll tell you later. It's really not worth getting
into right now. But that was about the moment
where I was like, this school might be a little bit too
chaotic for me. I might want to get out of here
and go to like a regular public school.
It's not a charter school because this this seems to be
falling apart as I look at it right now.
So it was the end of that year that I left that school and that

(50:48):
was when I went back to Red Oak and Red Oak High School.
Is my alma mater. I graduated from there in 2010.
So when I wanted to leave this place in South Dallas, I started
filling out applications and I sent one to Red Oak High School
just as a laugh. I did not think I was going to
end up back there. I sent it there as a laugh and

(51:11):
my old English teacher, my old honors English teacher
recognized my name on the application, called me
immediately and said come in tomorrow for an interview.
I'm pretty sure the job is yoursbecause like, I remember you
from school and she was like, you were quiet, but as long as
you've gotten over that, I'm sure you're a great teacher.
And I was like, OK, cool. So I showed up and yeah, they
interviewed me for like, I thinkI talked to them for like 3

(51:33):
hours that day, the principal and her and they were really
cool people. And I had an affirming moment
with them because I, I came withmy nails painted and I told the
principal there I was like, look, I like to paint my nails.
And it's been a problem for me at some of the schools that I've
worked at before. Is it gonna be a problem for
you? And this was like a big burly
dude who had been in the Marines.
Like he would tell stories aboutbeing in Fallujah and like all

(51:55):
these insane things. So like, this is like man's man,
you know, And he just kind of laughed and he's just like, oh,
no, everybody does that now. He's like, I'm in this Brazilian
Jiu Jitsu class. And you'd be surprised how many
of those big manly men, as soon as they take off their shoes,
their toes are like pedicured and painted all over.
So he's like, it's not a big deal.
We can make that work. So I was like, oh, OK, cool.
Like not only is this a place where I'm probably going to have

(52:17):
a better job, I'm going to know people have a little bit of
history, but apparently they're going to accept me for who I am.
So I was really excited by that opportunity.
And sure enough, that was the place that I.
Blossomed. And it was because.
Of the people that I met, the English department at Red Oak
High School are some of the mostspecial people that I have ever
met in my life. And all of the positive memories
that I have of the past few years are because of them.

(52:39):
Because I started to come out tothat entire team and there are
there are like 8 people on that team and every single one of
them had my back. They weren't pressuring me to
make things happen. But every time I would change
something, every time I would try something, every time I
would play with my gender, they were right there to cheer me on

(53:00):
every single one of them. And it was incredibly special
experience. Like I, I want to shout them out
majorly because if it wasn't forthose people.
I probably never. Would have come out.
I would probably not even be alive right now, truthfully.
So that was really special. I I started making friends for

(53:21):
the first time in my life and like real friends.
Not friends that I had to pretend around, not friends who
didn't know anything about me, friends who like really seemed
interested and actually. Wanted to know something about
me. And that.
Was when? Did I start working at Red Oak
probably around 2022, 2021-2022.So it was like this, I think the
summer of 2021, that I started working there and it was really

(53:43):
special and I met two of my bestfriends.
Ever. I still talk to them every.
Day they they help me a lot whenI was nervous about coming on to
this podcast I was able to text one of them and she was able to
talk me down and be like get over yourself people want to
hear what you have to say Nah true well again.
Like it's something that I can'taccept, like.

(54:06):
I've spent the last 33 years of my life self deprecating and
hating myself. It's kind of hard to go from
that to, Oh my God, I have a voice that everybody wants to
hear what I have to say. Let's talk like that's.
That's a really difficult jump to make.
Oh yeah, absolutely. I feel that for sure.
And like, I'm making the jump, don't get me wrong, but yeah.
And yeah. I'm, I, I saw the news stories

(54:26):
about you and I, I saw you on I,I think it might have been CBS,
if I remember correctly, or NBC,one of those two.
And yeah, I, I heard your story and I knew immediately that I
wanted you to be on here so we could hear your perspective.
Because I feel like this is kindof a microcosm of what's going
on to a lot of trans educators and queer educators more broadly

(54:50):
across the country and especially in red States and
getting to. I wanted to ask, so you're,
you're a teacher at Red Oak HighSchool.
Things are going well. You said that the the students
there were receptive to you and they were very kind about your
transition. What was the experience like for

(55:11):
you when the the Libs of TikTok thing happened?
Very. Surprising so I.
I made the TikTok account. Because I was being.
Encouraged by a couple of people, they were like, because
it used to be I, I have a private Facebook account and I
used to just use it as like A blog and do all of my like deep

(55:32):
thinking and pontificating on there throughout my entire
transition process. And I would post these like
ridiculous diatribes that I don't think anybody could get
through reading like the longestFacebook posts that you can
imagine, just ranting. And a couple of friends were
like, why don't you take that and do it on TikTok?
And I was like, because Tik Tok's lame in mainstream and I
don't want to do that. Like that was.

(55:55):
My thought process I was like, no, it's too popular.
It's too corporate, like I'm notgoing to be able to get on there
and do anything. And they were like, no,
sometimes things are popular fora reason.
You should probably start a TikTok and start talking to
people because how else do you expect to have a voice?
And I was like, OK, fine. So I started 1 and I posted a
few videos. And yeah, I remember the one
that got posted up there was I got excited because it was only

(56:18):
the last year that I worked in Reddock that I started to
transition. Because July of last year, I
came back from Europe where I decided that I, I needed to
start actually transitioning andgetting on HRT.
And that's when I finally, it was going down the Venice canals
in Italy in July of last year where I looked around and I was

(56:42):
just like, I'm a woman. There was no more handing and
hawing. There was no more oh, but maybe
I'm just not binary, maybe this isn't my identity, blah blah
blah. No, I sat there in the sun.
I was floating down the canals and I finally was just like, I'm
a woman, it's time. And when I get back home, no
more waiting around. It needs to happen.

(57:03):
So I came back and before I evenhad an opportunity to sit my
ex-wife down and be like, hey, this is what's going to happen.
She asked for a divorce and I was like, you know what?
That makes sense. We, we don't need to be
together. So we separated in July.
We signed the divorce papers in September of 2024, and it was

(57:25):
right after that that I started HRT.
It was like divorce papers were signed beginning of September.
I started my HRTI, got my first dose of estrogen and my first
dose of spironolactone and I started taking it.
And right around the time that Istarted my medication, I went to
admin at the school and I told them, look, we had a brand new
principal. Like our principal had just quit
the year before. We had a brand new principal,
brand new admin team. So I went to them and I told

(57:47):
them look I'm taking meds I am going to need.
To come out at school. This is not gay by lesbian where
I could maybe hide it if I wanted to.
Like I'm literally going to start growing breasts.
I'm going to have to start changing the way I dress soon,
otherwise I'm not going to fit into anything.
So you need to understand this is what's going to happen.
They didn't think much of it. They were just like, do whatever

(58:11):
you want to do and it's not a problem until it's a problem.
That is what they told me. And I was like, OK, well, should
I talk to the kids about it? Maybe like tell them no, no, no,
no, no, no, don't talk to the kids about it.
Okay, Should I send an e-mail around to parents and let them
know what's going on so maybe they're prepared?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't tell anybody

(58:31):
anything about anything. Just change.
And I was like, that seems insane, frankly, but sure, we'll
go with that. Let's do that.
So that's what I did that first semester of 2024.
I was dude, clothes and beard. And then December rolled around.
I was on Christmas break. I went to a friend to get hair

(58:51):
extensions put in. I bought a bunch of new school
clothing from like TJ Maxx and Ross that would make me look
pretty in professional skirts and tops and dresses.
And when we came back to school in January of 2025, I was a
girl. I came in as a woman, and I took
the school's advice and I did not say anything to any of the

(59:12):
kids. I just showed up and I was a
woman and they were hella confused, but they were really
sweet about it. And a lot of them would just
pull me to the side and be like,So what do I call you now?
Because like, I wasn't expectingall of this and they were easy
conversations. Call me whatever the hell you
want. I really don't care.
I know who I am. You don't have to know who I am.
Like it's whatever. So I handled it, I thought

(59:32):
pretty diplomatically, but then I made a TikTok account.
My fatal error and I started talking publicly about it and I
posted a video on there about how freaking wonderful it was to
be called ma'am because that morning I stopped for my morning
energy drink and the gas stationup the street from my house.
Every single person in there called me ma'am from cashier on

(59:53):
down and it felt really good. And then I got to the school and
as I was walking into my classroom, all the teachers, hey
Rosie, hey Miss Sandry, hey it felt really good.
And then the kids too, all man'sand misses and miss sandry's all
day long and it felt good. So I posted a video where I was
like it feels really good to be called ma'am, especially when my
students do whatever lips of TikTok didn't like it.

(01:00:15):
They posted it to the top of their.
X page. And I think over the course of
the three weeks that it was on there, it got like 6.5 million
views or something like that. And it was a nightmare because I
in public, I had. Never gotten that much.
Direct hate because people don'thave the guts to actually say
that stuff to your face. I think it looks people who will

(01:00:38):
look at you and be like, oh, what is that or whatever, like
under their breath or to their friends.
But I never had any direct experience of anybody like
stopping me and like spewing hate at me on the street.
So this was very weird because all of a sudden hate was all I
saw. It was in my school e-mail
account. It was in all of my social media
mail accounts. It was right there on the Libs

(01:00:59):
of TikTok page underneath the post, like it was everywhere I
looked for the longest time. And I just kept having to relive
it over and over and over and over again because people wanted
to interview me about it and allthat kind of stuff.
And obviously I am more than happy to share my story like
it's whatever, but I don't thinka lot of them understood that it

(01:01:21):
was literally ripping open a wound every time I had to talk
about it. Like you're not just asking me
simple questions that I've giventhe answer to 1000 times.
You're asking me about somebody taking the time to write a
message and send it to my schoole-mail account telling me to eat
a bullet. And I am a person who has indeed
tried to do that exact thing at least twice in my life.

(01:01:42):
So it wasn't an easy thing to gothrough because, you know,
they're bigots, right? In my brain, I'm like, I know
they're idiots and I know I shouldn't take what they are
saying seriously. But at the same time, when it's
all you see day in and day out for a month, it's kind of hard
not to let it get to you. So that was my experience with

(01:02:03):
it. I remember it first starting out
at me being like, oh, well, thisis kind of funny.
And then about a month into it being like, I wish that I could
crawl into a very deep, dark hole somewhere and never ever,
ever, ever, ever come out again.And that's what I remember
about. It I remember a.
Lot of hate. Some of it not particularly.
Creative like putting Sir at theend of everything they say.

(01:02:24):
Like, some of them are very boring.
Even the ones who tell me to like on alive myself are pretty
boring, frankly. Once you've told yourself that,
like once I in my own mind have told myself I don't deserve to
be alive anymore, somebody telling me that from the outside
doesn't really hold any power anymore.

(01:02:47):
I don't know. That makes sense.
But get get better material. Yeah.
Like there's nothing you could do.
To me that I haven't. Already done to myself and they
don't engage critically with youthe way.
That you engage. Critically.
With yourself already, Yeah. And I can mute you.
Like I can't mute myself. When I was living with that in

(01:03:08):
my head, I couldn't just like block and mute myself.
I had to sit there and live withit.
So like, I don't know, in one way, it was the worst experience
of my life, and in one way, it was the best experience of my
life because I guess I wouldn't be getting all these
opportunities if not for this moment.
Like, it gave me visibility. It gave me a platform.
It gave me an opportunity to finally be like those activists
that I had always admired and looked up to.

(01:03:29):
It gave me a moment to speak outand say something, but it also
made me kind of sad. I can't even think of a better
way to put it. It made me really, really sad.
Yeah, I don't. I don't.
Blame you in the least. I I can't imagine having that
kind of scrutiny placed on me, especially when like
representatives are coming out of the woodworks, like I know

(01:03:53):
Texas Representative Brian Thompson or sorry, no, no, Brian
Harrison rather Brian Harrison had some some words about you.
What? What was that like for you?
Well, he was the reason that I had to resign from that job.
I. Don't know that they would have
made me resign if it was just a bunch of like, faceless trolls
on the Internet. But I'm pretty sure that he got

(01:04:14):
involved and threatened to pull funding from the school or
threatened to find a way to pullfunding from the school.
I don't know if he has that kindof power.
But yeah, that was the worst part of it to me, where it was
like as if I wasn't radicalized.Enough already by.
That time from COVID, from a Trump presidency, from literal
genocide going on, like as if I wasn't radicalized enough to

(01:04:36):
that point, now a government official was stepping in and
interfering with my life and my job for no reason.
So it, it drove me crazy. And I was like, this should not,
this should not be allowed to happen.
And then it was double frustrating because I would, I
would talk to people and of course I had students who would

(01:04:56):
message me and be like, how is it illegal to be a trans
teacher? And I had I have to like gently
explain to them like, no, it shouldn't be.
But here's the issue. Not technically.
Yeah, but my problem was the adults.
Who would come to me and be like, oh, I had no idea things
have gotten that bad. And I was like, yeah, kind of
not so nice when you're not in your little ivory tower, isn't

(01:05:17):
it? So I don't know.
I'm I'm happy to a point. I guess that my experience can
make people realize that it's not all like roses and champagne
for people. I I I I thought that the trans.
Community had been so vilified over the last however many years

(01:05:38):
that it was like common knowledge that people just
understood that we were being attacked.
Like I I took it for granted that people didn't know.
I took it for granted that people don't pay attention to
things like that. And it was a big wake up call
when this happened that people started messaging me because
bless them, like, I, I love the love.
Like, they came to me with love first more than anything else.

(01:06:01):
But it also dawned on me that like, nobody understood what was
going on. And that was scary to me because
I was like, they're literally trying to legislate me and other
trans people out of existence. And nobody even knows that
that's what they're trying to do.
So I I found that. Scary enough that it made me.
Want to stay on TikTok and. Make more videos because I was

(01:06:23):
like, if I'm going to have people follow me, like if none
of them know what's going on, they need to know what the
Hell's going on, right? Exactly.
So how does? This impact your current search
for you know a new home for education how is how has being
in the spotlight impacted that I'm sure is that come up in

(01:06:44):
interviews does I'm sure it would if people.
Would interview me. So that's not.
So OK, I have. A problem.
Right now, because apparently inthe aftermath of all of this, TA
saw fit to put a a Ding on my teaching certificate.
So now if you pull up my teaching certificate, at the
bottom of it, it says that I have complaints of misconduct.

(01:07:09):
That are being investigated. My misconduct being wearing a
dress to school I guess. So it's making it really hard to
find a job because. Who the hell is going to hire a
teacher where on their certificate it says this person
is being investigated for misconduct?
So I've had I've sent out. Probably I've lost count of how

(01:07:30):
many. Times I've sent my resume out.
To schools and I've gotten all rejections except.
For one interview. That I had last week and I
haven't heard back from them in like 2 weeks so I don't.
Know I don't know how it's affecting my.
Search for a job because nobody talks to me.
I send out an application or a resume and at best I get one of

(01:07:51):
the like, like generic loaders. We're going in a different
direction, emails or whatever. Like I don't get talked to.
Basically. So I don't know.
I don't know if it's my social media presence.
I don't know if. It's what happened.
I don't know if it's I can't possibly be my qualifications.

(01:08:12):
I've taught for 10 years at three different schools.
I've taught different grade levels my entire career.
I've taught English 2 and English 2 in Texas is the level
of English that's tested. That's one of the star tests
that you have to take to be ableto graduate high school.
And my numbers have always been flippin fabulous, Flippin
fabulous. When I worked at that place in

(01:08:32):
South South Dallas, I brought their passing scores up from
like only 58% of kids passing to72 in one year.
So like I knew I. Knew what I was doing and it's
all. On my resume and applications.
So looking at that, the only thing that you could possibly
have a problem with is me, so I don't know how it's affecting.

(01:08:55):
My look for work like. I'm, I'm literally still picking
up the pieces from this. I think the hardest part of this
entire situation and the thing that a lot of people might
forget is this is the first yearthat I am transitioning.
I have only been on HRT for ninemonths.
I have only been on HRT for ninemonths.
I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder around the time that I
started my HRT because I startedgoing to therapy again.

(01:09:18):
So like I am readjusting to an antidepressant, a mood
suppressant, estrogen and spironolactone, messing with my
hormones, messing with my nerves, trying to fix my mental
health, quitting drinking, whichholy crap.
And in the midst of all of this,I have this, which thank God, if
this had happened last year, I never would have made it because

(01:09:39):
last year was. One of my last.
Suicide attempts and like if this had happened March of last
year, I would have been dunzo like that would have been the
end. So I'm I'm glad that it waited
to happen until now, but that's a whole lot like this has only
been a year of my life, but it feels like several lifetimes.
Like sometimes I I forget about the fact that it's only been a
few months since this has happened because it feels like I

(01:10:01):
have lived several lifetimes between when this happened and
now. I can imagine we're we're.
And we're so glad you're. Here, by the way, absolute.
Yeah, and. So I I did have a question.
I know this is definitely far, far easier said than done.
Is is teaching outside of Texas and a possible option?

(01:10:25):
Yeah, I'm looking into it now. I have applied.
For there are a ton of places now that are doing like charity
work to like rehouse people in places that aren't Texas.
So I'm looking into that. I'm looking into Canada has a
fast tracked visa program now for teachers because they need
teachers. So I'm thinking about that.
I still have family who live in the Northeast because that's

(01:10:47):
where I'm from. So I could always move back to
Philly if I've got somebody who can help me out.
And my bestest, best friend in the entire world has family in
Rhode Island that keep offering me a room and a place.
So I have other options. I don't I I literally.
Just moved like I literally. I maxed out a credit card after

(01:11:08):
my divorce moving where I am now.
So like, thinking about packing up and moving again when my
finances are the way they are right now is intense.
Because yeah, I don't know. I'm terrible with money to begin
with. And after I got divorced, my

(01:11:30):
credit had been. Helped massively.
By the fact that my ex-wife was much much much much much better
with money than I am. So she put my name on a couple
of her credit cards that had been paid down nicely and helped
me consolidate my student loans and cosigned on them.
So my credit score went from like a 550 to a 720 in like 2
years. And I was like oh cool.

(01:11:50):
And now I'm watching it just again now that I am divorced and
none of that is the case anymore.
So. I'm becoming less.
Valuable to the capitalistic collective, apparently.
Aren't we all? Aren't we all?
You know, I, I've really enjoyedour conversation today.

(01:12:12):
I think it's been, I've really enjoyed hearing your story and,
and just learning all about you.I want to take this moment
before we wrap up just to thank everyone for being here.
Aria, thank you for being here. I really appreciate your
presence. Thank you for having me as
always. Absolutely.
Do you have any final questions you'd.
Like to ask Rosie before we go. I think I'm good.

(01:12:35):
I hope that. I don't know.
Represented myself well. I don't know, it was fun
rambling like I appreciated. The opportunity.
To just talk unfettered. So thanks for that.
Oh yeah, of course I didn't wantto ask too.
Do you have anything you want toplug?
I know you are trying to. I don't know if this is still
going on. You were trying to take some
legal action against the lips ofTikTok.
Is there like any anything you can direct our audience to?

(01:13:01):
Not at all. So the legal thing kind of fell.
Through right now the I mean, ifpeople want to help me, I could
use the help my there's a link to my cash app on my TikTok.
I have a GoFundMe out there for me right now if anybody wants to
try to help me maybe get out of the state or pay off my student
loans or something so I can actually do something with my
life. That would all be awesome.

(01:13:21):
But yeah, like, aside from following me on TikTok, like
I'll plug my tech talk all day long.
Absolutely fantastic. If anybody wants to.
Hear some trans girl joy and. Hear me ramble at them like I
did here for a couple of days a week.
Yeah, absolutely, Athena. Athena, thank you for being here
with me. I really appreciate your time.
You have any kind of questions? You'd like to ask.

(01:13:44):
Possibly before. We go.
Well, I was just going to say, it really does.
Stand out to me that through allof this adversity that your joy
really does stand out and it seems like you're following your
joy through your transition. Do you have any words of advice
for people who are just startingto find that spark in their life
whose egg is just starting to cracker however you'd like to

(01:14:05):
word it? Ignore the imposter syndrome.
You are. Who you think you are don't like
don't fall at the first hurdle just because like you can't
accept it. It's going to be hard enough
getting other people to accept it.
So embrace the hell out of yourself because if you lead
with joy and you believe you arewho you feel like you are and
you don't question yourself likedon't let outside forces

(01:14:28):
convince you you're not who you think you are find the people
who will affirm you and I guarantee you your life's going
to get better. That's right, Speaking of
Speaking of your life getting. Better if you take the time to
e-mail us at transnarrativepodcast@gmail.com.
Life will get better for you, I promise.
So please e-mail at transnarrativepodcast@gmail.com

(01:14:50):
to get your voice heard here with us as we have done today.
AJ Evergreen, Athena, Rosalind, thank you all so much for being
here on the Trans Narrative. I really appreciate all of your
time. Thank you for having me.
Yes, absolutely. So before.
As we begin to wrap up, I'd liketo ask what's the message you'd

(01:15:11):
like to leave our audience with to carry on to this week?
What would you like to leave us with?
In times of greatest hardship, joy is our.
Greatest act of resistance? So if you are in the queer
community, if you can't show up to protest, if you can't
transition, come out. Be public because of who you
are. Your joy is your greatest act of

(01:15:32):
resistance. Never, ever, ever let anybody in
power get you down, because the best way to stick your thumb in
their eye is to smile at them with a mouth full of blood.
Make it real. Bad every conversation within.
Every day, all our voices composing us in the name,

(01:15:53):
opening up your heart and you are free to be so beautiful.
Ourselves, in our community, youand me.
We can accomplish anything we set our minds to.
Our souls will shine through with our light.

(01:16:13):
We will fight for each other. I'll always stand beside you
through the storm and through any weather.
We go stronger when we stand together.
Live our truth. We no longer fake it.
Moving towards our liberation dreams we're chasing.
We can make it through. We'll be just fine, every

(01:16:37):
conversation and everything, allour voices composing and simply
open up your heart and you are free to be so beautiful.

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