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Bisexual Married Men: Timothy
3.1k Plays1 year ago
Welcome back to this special series on bisexual men who are married to women! This week I interviewed Timothy Babulski, one of the subjects in my new oral history book, Bisexual Married Men: Stories of Relationships, Acceptance, and Authenticity – out November 30 and currently available to pre-order. Timothy's story is unique and layered, but it also features common threads that many Bi+ men have experienced – though we often feel like we’re alone.
There are 18 minutes of bonus content with Timothy exclusively on Patreon, as well as FULL LENGTH VIDEO of this entire interview, so you can see us as well as hear us! Subscribe below – and thanks for your support! www.Patreon.com/RobertBrooksCohen
Stay tuned for more interviews with Bi+ married men, weekly throughout November and December! Thanks for listening and supporting my work.
To find out more about NOCD, visit nocd.com to book a free 15-minute call.
Preorder “Bisexual Married Men”: https://www.routledge.com/Bisexual-Married-Men-Stories-of-Relationships-Acceptance-and-Authenticity/Cohen/p/book/9781032473260
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
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Speaker
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Interview with Timothy Babulski
00:01:10
Speaker
you
00:01:15
Speaker
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Two Bye Guys. Welcome back to this mini-series about bisexual married men. I am interviewing men who are in my book, also titled Bisexual Married Men. And I am very excited to be here today with Timothy Babulski in the book. His name is Jeremy. Welcome to Two Bye Guys. Timothy, nice to see you. Thank you. Nice to see you too. Thank you for having me.
00:01:43
Speaker
Yeah, so every story in the book is fascinating. Yours is really unique and there's some really interesting stories in there. We'll get to some of it today, but there's obviously going to be more in the book. And I think a lot of people will connect with many of the things you talked about, especially
00:02:03
Speaker
we'll get to it, but lots of homophobia in the early days. But before we get into the actual story, I interviewed you about a year ago. You were in the second wave of interviews in 2022. Why did you decide to participate in this project?
Closeted Teaching in North Carolina
00:02:24
Speaker
I decided to participate because I had been a public school teacher
00:02:29
Speaker
in Charlotte, North Carolina. And one of the conditions of teaching in North Carolina for lots of different identities, particularly for queer identities, was you had to be as closeted as possible. Now, if you were a cis white man, particularly a Republican, it was all fine. You could shout your identity from the rooftops. But everybody else was expected to be quiet. And laboring under that for so long,
00:02:58
Speaker
when I went into higher ed to discover that I actually had queer students. And, you know, coming out as always an individual thing, or at least it had been for my generation, you know, you find people that you can trust. But moving from coming out to being out was hugely important part of my personal journey. And so this was a very good opportunity to make sure
00:03:24
Speaker
that people knew that bi men exist, that we're out there, and that they just can't assume we don't exist. They can't wipe us away as a fantasy.
00:03:37
Speaker
Yeah, I love it. And I'm so glad you decided to participate. And it's true in general, we need more biodiversity, but your story really highlights how important a school environment can be and having mentors or role models or teachers as an example of this stuff, how important that can be.
Discovering Bisexuality in School
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And that's something I didn't have either growing up.
00:04:02
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Okay, so obviously all the details will be in the book. There will be more there. But tell us sort of the Cliff Notes version of when did you kind of realize you might not be straight and what was that development process like toward eventually coming out as bisexual? I think I knew and I've been thinking about this more since we interviewed because that's one of the other things. Just talking about this always makes us think back
00:04:32
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on what our experiences actually were and the parts that we maybe forgot or neglected. So I knew something wasn't normal, and I hate to use that word, but that's the way that we grew up with it, in elementary school. And it really wasn't until middle school that it really started to crystallize and the first
00:05:01
Speaker
real crush I had on a guy who was eighth grade, but realizing that that had not been the first crush. So the capacity to be attracted to people regardless of gender, I didn't even have language for it at that point. But then I happened to go to school in the South. It was very, very tricky to be out in that environment at all.
00:05:31
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And it wasn't until college that I could find at least a little bit of acceptance and at least come out to a relatively small, close circle of friends.
Influences from College and Literature
00:05:40
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Cool. And were you aware by that time in college when you came out of bisexuality? Is that how you came out? Yeah, yeah. So I was definitely using that label. And I had read, of all things, Robert Heinlein's science fiction early in adolescence. And, you know, he had put that
00:06:00
Speaker
label to it in the in the 70s and 80s. But it didn't even though I knew something wasn't wasn't the way everyone was saying it was supposed to be. It didn't seem like a personal label at that point. Well, tell me more about that book. I'm not aware of it. Like what what about it did you connect with? Oh, well, so I don't know that I connected with it. It was just there. So Heinlein was himself a little bit of a free love libertarian sort of guy.
00:06:29
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There's a lot of misogyny in his stuff, so I'm not going to recommend it as an avenue to personal journey. But he acknowledged in his books that capacity to be attracted to multiple genders. I think he was pretty strict in the male-female binary, but it just, it created the possibility that other sexualities existed.
00:06:57
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Cool. So it just kind of clued you in that that's a possibility. Before you got to college and connected the dots, what was it like to have some awareness of this but not be out and also be in a relatively homophobic environment?
High School Challenges and Objectification
00:07:18
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It was actually really tricky. And one of the events that I remember very distinctly was that
00:07:24
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There were people who did come out as bi, but it was principally women who did. So 16, 17 year old high school. And I remember a particular young woman who had come out as bi. She had apparently dated around a little bit and she got attached to some jock for whatever reason. And the way that
00:07:54
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it got talked about was sort of the unicorn hunter idea. And that her purpose in that relationship was to perform her sexuality for him and for his entertainment and all. I remember walking down the hallway and listening to the other jocks just bragging on him about, you know, has she made out with a girl for you? Has she done this for you? Has she done that for you?
00:08:21
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On the one hand, being absolutely horrified that somebody could be objectified in that way. And it was in what I would consider an abusive relationship. I mean, that's so possessive and strange. But then also to be very weirdly jealous. Because even though it wasn't great, it wasn't even remotely good, she could exist.
00:08:49
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Yeah, that's powerful to have that example. And yeah, that's so funny. I mean, not funny, it's terrible, but has she made it with a girl for you? It's all for the guy's benefit that a woman might be bisexual.
00:09:07
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So once you did sort of connect this to yourself and call yourself bisexual in college, how did that affect you personally and how did it affect your dating or relationships moving forward?
First Relationship and Biphobia
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Initially, it seemed really, really positive. The friend groups that I had were actually really accepting. There were
00:09:34
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There were a bunch of people who were like by when drunk. And, you know, so so being by all the time wasn't wasn't as big of a stretch. But in terms of relationships, the first real big relationship I got into was actually really deeply problematic because part of the reason that I thought it was it was something worth pursuing
00:10:04
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was because the woman in question had actually at least been initially seemingly very accepting, didn't have a problem with it at all. And what I didn't know was that in her background was a lot of abuse or witnessing abuse. And that what she was actually looking for was an excuse to have a fairly open non-monogamous relationship.
00:10:35
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And while I don't have a problem with non-monogamy at all, that's not what I was interested in, and that's not what I was getting into the relationship for. But she was convinced, and I found this attitude along a lot of other people in this same age group, that because of the perception of bisexual men in particular, as, you know, even at the party scene, it was like, you know, by slots.
00:11:03
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but then in relationships, you're destined to be unfaithful. And there's this weird elevation of homosexuality where no white guy would ever stay with you because they would constantly need what you couldn't give them. And so there was this deep insecurity also built into the relationship.
00:11:26
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And so what was initially very lovely in being able to actually be out and honest in a relationship was the first time that that had happened, then very quickly became deeply toxic and quite troubling.
00:11:44
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I mean, I know so many people are sort of afraid of that kind of biphobia, especially if they're not out to a partner and they're worried that will happen. How did you sort out what was going on and figure out that like, how did you not internalize the biphobia that was coming from her? And how did you eventually realize that was not a good relationship? I didn't.
00:12:10
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That's the thing, I didn't figure it out. It took far too long. You know, it's always tricky when we see people who are in abusive relationships, sometimes from the outside, it's very easy to say, you know, this looks toxic, this feels toxic, why don't you leave? But when you're actually in that relationship, one is you're invested in it, you want to make it work, or at least I wanted to make it work. And she may have wanted to make it work too.
00:12:40
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but on very different terms from what I was interested in. And I didn't realize it until things started to fall apart. And so one was that she actively, you know, for all that there's this fear that bi guys are gonna sleep around, she's the one who wanted to make the relationship more open. But actually when I really realized what was going on was when she got me fired.
00:13:08
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So I was working in a touristy shop and she outed me to the boss. Within just a day or two, I was gone. So I figured out that she had done it. There was no other way. Again, this is the difference between coming out and being out.
00:13:36
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I was out to her. I was out to a friend group. I was not out in general. And certainly not at work. I hadn't said anything. So somebody had to. And I had figured out that it was her, but then the next move that she made was to say, oh, well, while you're unemployed, you're just going to have to rely on me.
00:14:02
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And it very quickly clicked in my brain that my God, she's trying to trap me in this. And at that point I started looking for the exit.
00:14:13
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Yeah, it is very hard to realize this stuff from the inside and you want to make it work and you love someone and want to rationalize and justify. It makes sense. So eventually you got out of that relationship. How did you then meet your now wife and what's the story of that relationship?
Meeting and Marrying Sam
00:14:34
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Yeah. And this complicates it a little bit because I met my spouse actually through my ex.
00:14:42
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She had stayed over. My spouse had stayed over as a friend, just needed a couch to crash on for a couple of nights. And that was the initial introduction. My ex at that point, because she was trying to open up the relationship, had said, well, if I'm looking, you need to look. At least she was trying to make it fair for all the other things that were quite toxic in that.
00:15:08
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But part of her way of coping with it was she wanted to seem like it was fair but not make it fair. So she would say, why not that person? Why not this person? And if I ever showed an ounce of interest in anybody else, she would set out to try and sabotage that potential. And so that's actually what happened with my future spouse. She set out to sabotage it.
00:15:39
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My spouse is Sam. When Sam started to be interested, my ex went up to her and said, hey, he's bi, right? And in a way where it was designed to make her pull back, to feed those phobias, to make her not want to be involved, and to keep the cycle of abuse going so that I would continue to be dependent. And Sam's reaction was so beautiful.
00:16:09
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Turner said, so? And there is something really delightful about going from false acceptance, this appearance of being accepted, to actually being accepted.
00:16:29
Speaker
Yeah, and what a wild version of the coming out story where you didn't even do it. It was done to you, you were outed, and yet the desired outcome of your ex didn't happen and you found this acceptance. When you look back at that, how do you feel about that? And also, do you think you would have come out to your now wife so quickly if your ex hadn't done it without your consent?
00:17:00
Speaker
Certainly not so quickly, right? I mean, there's all kinds of feelers that you put out there, little subtle comments might slip in to see if somebody is a little bit more accepting or if there are any triggers that just prompt a really bigoted reaction to pull back from somebody. So no, it certainly wouldn't have been as quickly or right away. Because again, growing up in the 80s and 90s,
00:17:29
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The strategy was always to be as closeted as possible, but only be out to people you knew you could trust. And so you had to get that trust first. For it to happen the other way was the happiest little mistake.
00:17:48
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Yeah, I think even today, many people really need to feel that safety and put the feelers out before. I mean, not everyone and certainly things are becoming more open-minded and accepting, but for many people, that hasn't changed, I don't think. And they're not going to leap unless they know the net is there, especially within a marriage.
00:18:14
Speaker
Tell me then a little bit about how your relationship progressed, how did you decide to get married, and how is your bisexuality part of this relationship today? Yeah, so the relationship itself was also a little bit of a happy accident, although on purpose. I have so many times where people have reacted with really good intent to say, you know,
00:18:42
Speaker
Maybe you're not comfortable being out. We're all comfortable. So we're going to we're going to push you into this situation. And I had taken a trip up to Atlanta. With Sam and a whole group of friends, and we had to figure out where to bunk down for the night. One of our friends in the group was moving to a new place, and so they had this apartment open, but there was no furniture.
00:19:11
Speaker
I don't even think the electricity was all turned on, because I remember it being very cold. But we all needed places to crash, and there were only so many couches. So amongst the six or seven of us, they had devised, amongst themselves, without telling Samurai, they had devised this plan to get the two of us together in this not yet furnished, just rented apartment.
00:19:41
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while everybody else went somewhere else. Just give us time alone together and maybe they'll figure it out. And we figured it out. You did, yeah. It's almost ludicrously cinematic to think that we were on the floor with,
00:20:10
Speaker
maybe had one blanket and were cuddled up against each other, trying to stay warm on this uncomfortable floor because our friend group has decided that we should be a couple. But it worked out. But it worked out, it worked beautifully. And you kept dating, and then when did you get married? Yeah, we got married a little over a year after that. So, you know, part of
00:20:40
Speaker
And I would suspect of myself if I could think back in time that that would never happen. I would never get married after after a year. It'd take years and years. But part of the reason that it went so quickly was because she already knew. You know, I didn't have to have this long period of trying to figure out, could this work? Could this be stable? She already knew she had already seen the worst that could happen. And, you know, the way
00:21:08
Speaker
the former relationship had exploded. It was not an amicable end to that relationship. And she stood with me the entire time. And I don't know, I would just tell any young person watching or listening that if you find someone who's willing to stand with you through the worst moments, that's someone you want to stay with. Maybe not romantically, but that is someone you want in your life.
00:21:38
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Yeah, that makes sense. And yeah, she had basically completely accepted this part of you that you had taken a long time to recognize, accept, get comfortable with, and she accepted it even before you started dating really. Very different from what you'd experienced and a nice start.
00:22:08
Speaker
So you mentioned when you got to college that it was a much more accepting environment.
Artistic Acceptance and Expression
00:22:13
Speaker
And I know from your story that you talked a lot about being in artistic communities and artistic environments. I think I'm remembering correctly. Why do you think that those environments were more accepting and how did being an artist and being in that world sort of influence your queerness over time? This is actually something that I think is intrinsic in the arts.
00:22:39
Speaker
in all of the arts, actually. One, there's just a natural impulse of introverted people to get involved with the arts. And I've always seen it as a way of being psychologically complete. If you have difficulty processing around other people, then
00:23:01
Speaker
you know, artistic production, one, it can stand in between you and other people. So it can act as a little bit of a shield, but then it's also a window into things that you want to share. It's control about what and how you want to share, how you want to present. So whether you're a storyteller or a dancer, you're on the stage, you know, I don't want to say all podcasters have a little bit of introversion built in, but that may be true too. But the arts allow
00:23:30
Speaker
for this expressiveness that for a lot of people is fraught with difficulty. And I have known more queer people in the arts than in any other arena of life simply because it is a place where we have the tools, we have the skill set, and we can express what we need to.
00:24:00
Speaker
work and be and act the way we need to, and it just becomes part of our complete identity. It's a really interesting answer to me. I mean, I've seen this correlation too, but I don't know if I really thought about how the arts is about expressing something inside you in a creative way. And so you learn to do that and you
00:24:28
Speaker
must have a value on expressing parts of yourself and ideas that you have. And if that's a value, you may notice your queerness and at some point want to express that also either as part of the art or just as part of your life. That's really interesting. It's a little silly, but it's also
00:24:55
Speaker
There's more acceptance of us as human beings, as actual physical bodies. And so one of the ways that you could tell the queer kids, so I didn't just take art classes, I actually went to the Savannah College of Art and Design. So this was a full liberal arts, art focused institution to get a Bachelor of Fine Arts. And one of the,
00:25:22
Speaker
I know I will say anyone who writes dirty stories or films porn or whatever, they always get it wrong when it comes to life drawing classes. It's not as period as people think, but you can absolutely tell who the queer folk are and who the straight folk are based on who's comfortable around the human body.
00:25:48
Speaker
because there is such a huge degree of internalized homophobia, particularly among cis straight men, that if a male model disrobes in front of you, there's almost like this performative ick you have to do, or you have to laugh, or you have to joke, you have to do something to perform your masculinity and your straightness all in one go.
00:26:16
Speaker
And then the queer kids in the class are all just like, yeah, yeah, that's nice. Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. I mean, I have not drawn nude models lately, but I've seen that performative ick in other contexts. That's absolutely.
00:26:36
Speaker
absolutely accurate and it's interesting. Okay, I have so many things I want
Adopting a Non-Binary Identity
00:26:43
Speaker
to talk about. Actually, your story is very rich and there's lots of different aspects, but I want to ask about gender because I know when we talked last year, you had recently adopted a non-binary identity and are identifying as non-binary. I also apologize, I forgot to ask you what pronouns you're using at the beginning and I may have made an assumption.
00:27:06
Speaker
What pronouns do you use and also just like how did coming out affect your conception of gender and what's your gender identity at the moment? Yeah, non-binary seems to be a good word for it. Generally, because I'm in a classroom and I teach, there's the layer of professionalism that has to happen. Of course, we've got pronouns in the bio.
00:27:35
Speaker
pronouns in the email signature. But most people do just make assumptions. And so even when I'm not presenting terribly masculine, you know, I have a big bushy facial hair, they're going to make assumptions. And I'm fine with that. And I've actually noticed from among a number of my students that also identify as non-binary that there is
00:28:06
Speaker
uh, at least one flavor of non binary. There seems to be quite a number, uh, where the gender perception is negotiable. Use, use, use a pronoun that you feel comfortable. So, um, if you want to refer to me as he, that is fine. They, that is fine. And if you don't know, then my advice to anybody would be, if you don't know, just use my name. That's perfectly fine. Yeah.
00:28:34
Speaker
Cool. And how did you come to that identity? Was it related to coming out as bi or was it a separate thing later? I think it was a separate thing later. I had always had an understanding, and I think a lot of queer people do, of trying to figure out exactly how masculine or how feminine they want to be. And I know there is, in a lot of the anti-trans
00:29:05
Speaker
discourse now, this idea that we're no longer allowing for femme gay men. And I just don't think that's true. But I was definitely trying to figure that stuff out when I was growing up. I don't know if I mentioned this in our first interview. I have sisters and there had been a tradition in my family
00:29:32
Speaker
going back at least a couple of generations, that when the daughters, and I only had aunts on one side, so it was like five girls from my grandmother, that each one of them, when they turned, I think it was 10 years old, they got a porcelain doll. And so I watched as my sisters, they're four years and 10 years older than I am, when they got their porcelain dolls, I was old enough to notice, hey, they got their porcelain dolls. And when I turned 10, I remember asking my mom, where's mine?
00:30:02
Speaker
Why am I being left out of this? And my mother was lovely about it and says, you're fine. Well, let's just look through the catalogs. Let's find one you like, you know, and made it a thing. But again, at that point, I certainly didn't have the vocabulary to even think about what I was trying to negotiate. You know, there was nothing but the gender binary. I know sometimes we try to make the
00:30:31
Speaker
the history of bisexuality more inclusive. But at least in Georgia in the 80s and 90s, there was only men and women. It just was not understood that there could be any other gender expressions. After I got my master's degree, though, I basically decided things needed to change. And even then, rolling into the doctoral programs,
00:31:01
Speaker
There's a huge period of adjustment. Any time there's a new environment, this is always one of the dangers of queerness, is unless you are always out to the point where every time somebody encounters you, they know exactly who you are, what they're dealing with, and if they're gonna be a bigot, if they're gonna be violent towards you, you're gonna see it right in that moment. But if you don't wanna have that encounter, there is this moment of retreating into the closet every time.
00:31:30
Speaker
you know, go into a new space. So when I went off to get my doctorate, there absolutely was that just like retreat back into the closet, wait until, wait until I know there's some security. And it was actually my students who really triggered it. Because how do you explain to students? How do you explain to students and you know, I teach education, so how do you explain to people that are going to be teaching children
00:32:00
Speaker
teenagers how to be more accepted, how to be more open, how to be empathetic, how to understand their own students' journeys towards understanding themselves if all their teachers are locked in the closet. The other factor there, my life seems to ping pong back and forth between overwhelming acceptance and then just some really toxic environments.
00:32:29
Speaker
there were colleagues that I worked with who were quite biphobic. And I made the decision in a different way than I ever had before. So in the past, encountering that, that's when I would have retreated even further back into the closet, just out of self-protectiveness. But at that point, it was, no, why am I doing this? Why am I performing this way for a bigot?
00:32:58
Speaker
And so it became very necessary to reclaim my identity at that point and say, I am just done with this. I am not going to allow you to be abusive towards students, even if they don't know that it's happening, because some of this was happening behind closed doors when students weren't in the room. But how am I going to allow that to happen? And if the only way that I can do it
00:33:23
Speaker
is by putting myself in front of you fully, completely, honestly, then that's what I'm going to do. Yeah, beautiful. I want to talk more about school in a moment, but I also, I noticed your nails, lovely color. I'm not wearing anything at the moment, but I usually do, but I love that color. Thank you. How do you express your gender these days in non-conforming ways? And why? What do you get out of doing that?
00:33:52
Speaker
It's comfort. I don't know any other way to describe it. It's what feels comfortable. It's what feels right. So it may not be visible behind the headphones, but I have quite long hair. And in different places, that's always been a signal. It's perceived very differently. So when I was teaching in North Carolina, I was routinely called ma'am.
00:34:19
Speaker
even with facial hair I was routinely called ma'am just because they would look at long hair as a signal and Even and you know people would always apologize like I'm so sorry that they wouldn't use misgendered But like oh come on, you know, can't you see? But it never really bothered to me right because that's actually the dance that I was trying to do hmm
00:34:44
Speaker
It's like if I if I'm if I'm making question a little bit, if I'm making you rethink your assumptions, then I'm doing something right. Hmm. In classrooms, you know, I was in observing a student teacher in Minneapolis and had a Somali student ask me and in the Somali culture, of course, it is very highly gendered. You know, binary is really tightly enforced. So men do not have long hair.
00:35:11
Speaker
at all. It is kept very short, but women do have long hair. Most of the Somali students were wearing key jobs. And I had a young Somali girl ask me, are you a boy or a girl? And my answer to her was, why does it matter? Could answer. Why does it matter? Is it going to change how you how you think of me? And if it does, do I care what you think of
00:35:39
Speaker
Interesting. So for me, it's just about mixing the masculine and the feminine a little bit. I sometimes refer to it with my students as tweaking heteronormativity. And so dress, nails, hair, I'm just going to be comfortable.
00:36:05
Speaker
cool. I love that. I like the tweaking heteronormativity, which is what I like to try to do too is push even a little bit, sometimes a lot, but even a little bit, just push the boundaries of what an identity means or what is possible for other people. And I also identify with what you said, actually liking when somebody misgendered you because it's showing that you're fucking with gender in ways and
00:36:34
Speaker
I get that with being bisexual. I actually kind of like, in a weird way sometimes, when people assume I'm straight in certain spaces or assume I'm gay in a gay space, and I get to say, nope, actually I'm bisexual.
00:36:50
Speaker
I get on the one hand, you don't want to have to do that all the time, but I actually kind of like subverting their expectations and surprising them in that way. And then sometimes they're like, really? And I am now confident enough in my identity that that doesn't throw me for a loop. And I'm like, yeah, really? What do you want to know? And I kind of like doing that. It's kind of fun.
00:37:21
Speaker
Stay tuned, there's a little bit more of this episode with Timothy coming up, but there's even more on Patreon! 18 more minutes with Timothy. We had a really fascinating discussion, you won't want to miss it. We talked more about school and how that can be so formative and how queerness can show up in school or not and the effects that can have and how Timothy has navigated both being a queer student and being a queer teacher.
00:37:44
Speaker
so head to patreon.com slash robert brooks cohen to listen and to see full video of this entire interview with timothy you can watch him talk and also watch my reactions which is fun it's only five dollars a month to subscribe thank you so much to everyone who has subscribed there already it helps me keep this going i appreciate it and now here's a little bit more with timothy
00:38:11
Speaker
Okay, last couple questions. What do you hope that other people will get out of reading your story in the book?
Challenging Heteronormativity
00:38:20
Speaker
I think the biggest thing that I want them to realize is that we have such a variety of experiences of sexuality and gender that a lot of the assumptions that they have been asked to make are inherently false.
00:38:40
Speaker
I've known so many people that if they were open-minded enough might accept a by label or a pan or even just questioning, but are so embedded in this heteronormative ideals, particularly when it comes also to gender, right? They need to be a man's man. They need to be a woman's woman.
00:39:11
Speaker
that they reject that part of themselves. They completely silence that part of themselves. And I don't know what it would be like to live that incompletely and that inauthentically, but I can only assume that it's unfulfilling. But I also want them to know, because some of these experiences that I had is as frustrating as it is to look back at the AIDS crisis and the
00:39:39
Speaker
reaction that the government had to it, the reaction that students had, that teachers had, the way that we internalized homophobia even within the community. It's still happening. When I look at what Moms for Liberty is doing, when I look at what these groups, all of these states that are trying to exclude trans kids, if we can't see the parallels
00:40:06
Speaker
between all of the anti-trans stuff that's happening now and the anti-gay stuff that was happening 40 years ago, we're missing something huge. All of the excuses, all of the stories that they are saying about trans people being groomers and whatnot is exactly what they were saying about gay people in the 80s. And to a certain extent is what they're still saying now.
00:40:36
Speaker
You know, the myths of bisexuality, again, it's just a phase or that, you know, the men are all gonna cheat or I don't really even wanna go through them because they're all so destructive or that we just don't exist. Right? We need to consciously and continuously confront these. And so getting stories out there, this is the only way I as a teacher know how to do it, is to make sure that our stories are told,
00:41:06
Speaker
try and get our stories heard. And even people who right now might not be willing to listen in one year or 10 years or 20 years might have something happen to them where they will. And I want those stories to be there when they're ready.
00:41:23
Speaker
Yeah, that makes so much sense to me because it is very similar to my intentions with the book and my intention to not just sort of talk about the identity and explain why it's normal and everything, but really focus on these 13 unique stories. And there's through lines in them, but they're all very different and there's a lot of
00:41:51
Speaker
know, diversity in them. But when you read the story, it humanizes this and you don't even always need an argument after it's humanized and you really just connect with a story. And so I do think that's a big thing that we need more of. And I thank you for sharing your story in the book. Last question.
00:42:18
Speaker
How does your sexuality, gender, how does your queerness bring you joy?
Authenticity and Supporting Others
00:42:25
Speaker
I've actually been trying to think this through because it's been so tricky sometimes politically. I will go back to one, the idea of comfort. It is where I am comfortable. If I can throw on a rugby shirt and a miniskirt, that's just a place of comfort. It just feels right.
00:42:49
Speaker
you know, to be able to, you know, watch a movie with my spouse and to be able to say, you know, who's attractive, who's hot and who's not. You know, there's something really delightful about that. So for be part of queer joy is actually in outness itself. I don't know that I had a lot of queer joy when I had to be more closeted.
00:43:19
Speaker
But the more willing I have been to be open, the more I have been able to find accepting people. The campuses that I work on are full of wonderful accepting people. And if they're not, they stay away. I kind of like that. But I also had, and I'm hesitating to tell anyone else's story, but it's sort of part of my story now. I had a student who was an out lesbian
00:43:49
Speaker
go through the program and think that she was gonna have to drop out, think that there was gonna be no place. She's in a committed relationship, she has a kid, but that in a small state like Maine, there's no way that she could be a teacher. There's no way that she could be out and be a teacher. And she came up to me just a couple of weeks ago and said, because I have been so out,
00:44:19
Speaker
she stayed in and in another year or two, we'll be able to teach kids on her own. I don't know anything more joyful than that. It's making me tear up. Yeah.
00:44:36
Speaker
Yeah, I'm having a reaction to that. I just think those are the things that make me cry is when the example of someone helps someone else be out there, be themselves, live the life they want to.
00:44:52
Speaker
That's beautiful. I'm glad you got to experience that joy a few weeks ago and all the time now in your life with this more being out versus coming out. It's lovely to see. I have to thank you for the opportunity. We need people who aren't just willing to tell stories. We need people who are willing to share them and people who are willing to listen.
00:45:21
Speaker
When I saw the notice posted on Twitter, it lit a fire.
00:45:28
Speaker
I'm glad. You're welcome. I'm so glad you participated in it and I can't wait for everyone to read the rest of the story. There's so many details in your chapter that we didn't get to today. There's a lot of little anecdotes from back when you were in school and growing up that are
00:45:51
Speaker
Some of them are kind of heavy, but they're all really fascinating and show you what the time was like and how hard it is to do what you've done. And it shows all the work that you've done to be in the place that you are today and paying it forward in the many ways you are. So thank you so much again for being here and doing this interview and being in the book. I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me.
00:46:23
Speaker
Two Bye Guys is produced and edited by me, Rob Cohen, and it was created by me and Alex Boyd. Our logo art is by Caitlin Weinman. Our music is by Ross Pincer. We are supported by the Gotham, and we are part of the Zencaster Creator Network. Visit Patreon.com slash Robert Brooks Cohen for bonus content, early access, exclusive videos, and behind-the-scenes outtakes. Thanks so much for your support, and thanks for listening to Two Bye Guys.