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History, Pride, and Queer Possibility with Hugh Ryan #65
32 Plays7 days ago
Description:
What happens when a community loses touch with its own history? Hugh Ryan joins Mattie and Kenyon for a thoughtful and often hilarious conversation about queer memory, resistance, and the ways history continues to shape LGBTQ+ life today. From the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History to his upcoming memoir, Hugh shares personal stories and big ideas about archives, identity, activism, and the changes he has witnessed across generations. He challenges the idea that the past can simply be recreated and explains why queer people must continue documenting, supporting, and preserving their own stories. The episode is both a history lesson and a reminder that change has happened before—and that queer communities have always found ways to create possibility.
Guest descriptors:
Historian
Curator
Writer
Episode Tags:
#QueerHistory #LGBTQIA+History #QueerArchives #TransHistory #QueerActivism #QueerCulture #LGBTQIA+Community #QueerMemoir #Pride #communityorganizing
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Transcript
Introduction and Hosts' Backgrounds
00:00:00
Speaker
It's impossible to recreate history. It's impossible and to turn and back. And I think that's the the lie, the right cells, right? Is that if we attack the right people, ban the right things, we will turn time backwards. That's just, it's not going to happen. The internet has changed how we lived in an entirely new way. It's connected new communities that couldn't talk in the same way previously.
00:00:21
Speaker
They're fighting a war that they don't even understand what they're fighting against. Those of us who are alive right now are going to experience the death throes of the old world for a while longer. Life has changed. Queer people have changed. There is no turning that back.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Power Beyond Pride, a weekly queer change-making podcast bringing you voices and ideas from across our fierce and fabulous spectrum to transform our world.
00:00:47
Speaker
I'm Kenyon Farrell and i am a writer, activist, communications and media strategist in my social justice work life. And each week we sit down with an activist or change maker across the LGBTQIA plus community who are fighting for equality on every level.
00:01:07
Speaker
And I am Maddie Bynum, your hostess with the mostest. I am normally, typically, always, I like how i use all those different adjectives at the same time, but I'm always the loudest person in the room. So I love getting the party started, being an actress, comedian, and singer and dancer, and a Jacqueline of all trades. Why not?
Hugh Ryan Joins and Shares Anecdotes
00:01:25
Speaker
Let's just have fun.
00:01:26
Speaker
And today's guest is bringing brilliance, history, and a little bit of new York intellectual spice. We're joined by writer, historian, curator, and co-host of Queer History 101, the incredible Hugh Ryan. Hugh, welcome to Power Beyond Pride.
00:01:43
Speaker
ah Thank you so much for having me. And a fun fact, I actually was the missing Spice Girl, New York intellectual Spice, but Posh and I just didn't get along. So anyway, that's a story that's not in the book. Let's just say that.
00:01:57
Speaker
Well, she's always spoken so highly of you. but Yeah. Water under the bridge now. Right, right. Thank you so much for having me. I'm
New York City's Pride and Community Dynamics
00:02:07
Speaker
really excited to talk with you both. it's a It's a really great opportunity. One of my favorite things about being a writer is that I get to talk to amazing and brilliant people all around the country and it makes it really special. So thank you.
00:02:18
Speaker
Thank you. We're very glad to have you. And I've been a fan of your work kind of from afar for a while. And so we're very glad to have you here with Power Beyond Pride. So first things first, like just how are you doing? but You're in New York City.
00:02:33
Speaker
We're obviously dealing with a fascist takeover of the federal government. Yeah. But we also, New York has been the sort of bright spot for lots of us around the country, kind of close as Donnie went. And so I just want to hear from you. What's what's what's the energy like kind of as we're coming up on summer and whatnot? So what what's happening in New York right now? What's the What's the vibe was the energy? I am. I'm feeling a lot of people who are very excited for the summer, very excited for pride, very afraid for a pride that is not corporate pride, for some pride in resistance, pride in rebellion. i think that people are scared. Absolutely. But I am seeing so many people turn out in ways that they have never taken to the streets before. People who have gone to protests but are now deeply engaged in community organizing, who are doing ice walks and ice trainings and talking to their neighbors in ways they have not before.
00:03:27
Speaker
And also a lot of people who are ready for summer to get out to re-speech, to relax, to have some fun, to breathe a little bit. I mean, I think we are in and awful time and there's no getting around that. And I think that all of us are anxious and frightened, but I am seeing people really both take care of themselves, take care of each other. And that is exciting.
00:03:50
Speaker
Well, that's beautiful. And
Debunking Queer History Myths
00:03:51
Speaker
I definitely agree. New York is one of those things. I currently live in the South, but I do visit New York quite often. And in the summertime, you just want to be outside. So I definitely, I like the fact that you're saying that people are enjoying and ready for summertime and the springtime. Because with everything politically that is going on and just culturally in our world right now, I think just being outside and getting fresh vitamin D is a wonderful thing.
00:04:18
Speaker
Yes. I agree. i agree. and vitamin D is a great way to put going to the rambles, getting fresh vitamin D. Wherever you go, however you enjoy the outside, it really is healing. You can get a double dose, for perhaps. I'm going to leave that right there because I could go further with how it could be healing in so many ways. But, Hugh, what do you think people get wrong about queer history when they talk about today's struggles?
00:04:51
Speaker
A couple of big things come to mind. I think that is a great question. One right away is, and this is more for people outside the community, not as much people inside the community, but this idea that kind of Stonewall is the start of queer history in America, that that there was nothing before that or what there was wasn't recorded or was just like pure sadness. Or I think that's just not the case. And we're discovering more and more every day how much richness there is in queer history, how much depth there is, how much actually has been saved. So that's one big method.
00:05:21
Speaker
Another one that I think is a little more complicated that I i see a lot is this approach to people in queer history who we love for their activism, for the changes that they made.
00:05:34
Speaker
And then we want to historically almost like stand down their rougher edges and we don't let them be angry or hurt or experiencing mental health crises. And then because we don't let people in the past do that, it gets so much harder to look at the people making change today.
00:05:50
Speaker
and not dismiss them because they're angry or
Importance of Understanding Queer History
00:05:53
Speaker
they're not saying it the right way or they don't look the right way. And so for me, that one is, it's almost like we think we're doing something kind. We're sort of like hiding the dirty laundry.
00:06:02
Speaker
But in the end, it's making it harder for us to see the present as well as the past. and And I love the past for lots of reasons. But I think for me, the the most important reason is how it lets us see the present, how it lets us understand where we are right now and where we are headed. And so that's another one that I think is like a big myth And I think the third one that I would say that I see a ah lot in television and in movies and in books is this idea that gay identity, it's kind of the reverse of the we didn't exist before 1969.
00:06:30
Speaker
It's gay identity has never changed. And it is exactly what it has always been. And we don't think about it differently. We don't experience it differently. i i love me some Julian Fellows and I love Downton Abbey and I love the Gilded Age. But like, all it is is... a white guy today worrying about marriage in an outfit from 1890. And that's just not real. That's just not it. And it's sad because everything else in his shows is all about modernity and change and and the gay people are kind of stuck.
00:07:00
Speaker
So
Are Current Events Repeating History?
00:07:01
Speaker
those are, I think, three big myths that come to mind for me. Well, since you brought that up, so let me ask this question. Do you think that we are in a situation where we're about to start repeating history or currently repeating history? Or do you think we're going into a new territory and creating history currently?
00:07:20
Speaker
It's ah interesting. I think that it's almost... It's impossible to recreate history. It's impossible and to turn back. And I think that's the the lie, the right cells, right? Is that if we attack the right people, ban the right things, we will turn time backwards. And that's just... That's literally not possible. It's like watching Superman 2 and expecting him to push the Earth backwards and time to travel back. That's just... It's not going to happen.
00:07:42
Speaker
But I do think we can... I look to the past for echoes of what's happening right now, both in good and bad ways. i i find this, I tend to bring every conversation back to the 19th century at some point. I apologize. I'm going to try to keep it really brief. But when I think about this present moment,
00:07:59
Speaker
I think about in the the late 19th century, America urbanizes, right? And how we think about everything changes. And we especially change what it means to be queer. The system of what we think of today as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender really emerges in this moment from an earlier time where There was, everything was seen through gender. So even people like Karl Ulrich, who's often called the first homosexual in history, when he wrote about himself, he said, I'm a female spirit trapped in a man's body, right? That's not, that's not how we think of gay identity, even though when we look at him, he seems like a gay individual because it's something totally different. So 19th century, that model changes. LGBT appears because of urbanization. Gender normative homosexuals, they're able to find each other everywhere around the cities. And then people write about them and then doctors classify them. And we get this sort of modern idea. But it takes... the modern idea being spread around the world for it to really come in. And that's a time of like great chaos and change. And you get this simultaneous rise in eugenics movements here in the US, s all around the country. The Nazis are, of course, the most famous, but every president of every yet university in America was on a eugenics board somewhere. And there was all this anti-immigrant sentiment and there was all this anti-urban sentiment.
00:09:11
Speaker
it was because how we lived had changed. And just like today, they didn't want to go backwards. They didn't want to get rid of cities. They promised they would turn the clock back, but they didn't and they couldn't. And that is happening again right now in America and around the world.
00:09:25
Speaker
The internet has changed how we lived in an entirely new way. It's connected new communities that couldn't talk in the same way previously. Particularly young queer people are able to access ideas about gender and sexuality and to talk to them with each other in new ways that we have never experienced. And we're seeing this huge identification among Gen Z and Gen Alpha people in queer ideas, queer identities, trans identities in particular, non-binary identities. And it's very similar to me to what happened at the end of the 19th century.
00:09:55
Speaker
We change how we live and queer people change as well. We change along with it. And the people who are against us think that they can turn that around by criminalizing us. yeah By the nineteen twenty s all these laws pop up criminalizing homosexuality in America that did not exist before because they're responding to this change. Of course, we're seeing that now around trans issues, around gay issues, saying gay in schools down in Florida.
00:10:19
Speaker
They're fighting a war that they don't even understand what they're fighting against and they're aiming at the wrong things. And they have in some, I think, real significant way already lost. But unfortunately, those of us who are alive right now are going to like experience the death throes of the old world for a while longer. So when I
Origins of the Podcast and Balancing Content
00:10:35
Speaker
think about the echoes of yesteryear, I think life has changed. Queer people have changed. There is no turning that back. But also it's going to be really awful for a bit more.
00:10:45
Speaker
Yeah, so thank you for that answer. And I think thinking about yourself as both a writer and who's in a historian who's really interested in queer history, you also are a host of a podcast, Queer History 101, with the gorgeous, i I sometimes just drool as a thought, peppermint. she's She's so, God, that woman is gorgeous. That is amazing.
00:11:10
Speaker
I don't know how would sit in a room with her recording a podcast. But in any case, but y'all work together on a podcast and if folks know Peppermint is a RuPaul's Drag Race kind of icon as well.
00:11:24
Speaker
She's the Grand Marshal of New York City Pride this summer. Oh, word. Okay, right. So shout out, congratulations, Pepper, on that. and So one question is just, one, just kind of interested in the the working dynamic of that podcast, like how y'all kind of like work together.
00:11:41
Speaker
And then also, how do you balance doing ah podcast that's about history, which we often don't think of as as sort of fun or comedic? And how do you do that in a way that's entertaining and engaging for our audiences today?
00:11:55
Speaker
Absolutely. it's It's interesting. Pep and I really get along super well. i I think that we think about things really similarly in a lot of ways, even though we approach them differently and we might have different things that we emphasize. The podcast came about because we were running a book club and we just found that we had the same opinions on these books over and over again. And we really were coming at them from very different places, picking up on different things, but we vibed on what we felt overall about them and where we thought they were interesting.
00:12:24
Speaker
and we did these interviews together, and the podcast kind of grew and grew out of that. The book club sort of spawned a more weekly podcast where we talked about all different things. Particularly in this last year, we've really made a pivot to talking about a lot of the current issues, a lot of what's happening legally, socially in this country, the rise of fascism, the clampdown on trans lives.
00:12:44
Speaker
That's become a big focus for us in thinking about it both currently and historically, how it mirrors practices that we've seen before or the books. that we're reading that inspire us to resist what's happening right now. We're all across the board. We're about to do Transcendent, Laverne Cox's memoir, which comes out in June, which I'm really excited for.
00:13:02
Speaker
And in terms of the balance and the keeping it fun, boom That's hard. Like I think Pep and I are both really fun people, but there are days where the podcast gets pretty angry and pretty spicy because it is not easy or possible or maybe even healthy to keep it light sometimes. So we we really try to let bring in all of the different energies to acknowledge how we are feeling in
Founding the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History
00:13:23
Speaker
any particular day. And when we have a guest to try to make them as welcome and happy as possible.
00:13:28
Speaker
But if we're in like a terrible mood and like a whole bunch of shit just went down, like right after the, was it Kansas, the first state that made the trans licenses ah illegal when those were invalidated, like that podcast was pretty hot.
00:13:41
Speaker
I'll say that. I definitely gottanna understand that. I see that. And my sentiments too about Peppermint. She is gorgeous and beautiful and I love it. Yes. It is. And she's so talented. I mean, working with her has honestly been a dream. And I will say this back in, let's just say the 20th century. I remember seeing Peppermint performing in clubs that I was going out to and thinking she was a star back then. and So to fast forward years to be working with her is so exciting.
00:14:08
Speaker
That's always a beautiful thing when everything comes full circle. Now, you did talk about the book club, which started your podcast. So I want to pivot to the book club for a second because I think, aren't you currently reading the Harriet Tubman live in concert? Is that the current book?
00:14:22
Speaker
We just finished Eli Elric's Before Gender, which was a fascinating and incredible look at trans history and gender history. And we're about to do my memoir, My Bad, A Personal History of the Queer 90s and Beyond, which comes out at the end of this month on May 26th.
00:14:39
Speaker
So yeah, we do all kinds of books and I just love it. I love getting to share queer books. I love getting talk to queer authors. i just, it's a real gift. So I was going ask you because I'm an avid reader myself. So what do y'all, what what are your, I guess, your looks or what do you go for when you're picking out a book for the the book club?
00:14:58
Speaker
We really like to switch it up. So if we've done a memoir last month, maybe we're going to do a more research piece of nonfiction this month. And then we're going to do novel that's historically set next. It's all really trying to so show people. When we started, it was all pretty dense nonfiction. And we were like, that's not all that there is to queer history. There are so many ways in. And so we want the book club. to provide all different modes. And maybe because you read a novel that you really loved last month, you're going to trust us when we tell you that this nonfiction book, this history that you wouldn't normally pick up is also really great.
00:15:30
Speaker
Okay. Well, that sounds fun. I got to join your book club. I have to get all the information. Please Yes. And so before we abandon our own podcast and join your book club, we will take a short break and we'll be right back with you Ryan.
00:15:52
Speaker
And welcome back to Power Beyond Pride, a queer change-making podcast. I am one of your hosts, Maddie Bynum, sitting here looking all sexy and dapper. Well, I'm not really dapper. I would say that's the two men that I'm sitting with today, Mr. Kenyon and Hugh, are very dapper individuals. And if you are just now joining in, you have missed a lot in the first segment, but come on and join us. We are about to start talking about museums and history and art in New York.
00:16:20
Speaker
So, Hugh, you founded the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History. What inspired that? It's actually an interesting story. About, gosh, 16 years ago now, the Smithsonian Museum had their first ever explicitly queer show on a queer topic. It was called Hide-Seek, Difference and Desire in American Portraiture. It was a beautiful show.
00:16:42
Speaker
And a couple months after it opened, this right-wing Christian web website published a hit piece against the show, claiming it was a sacrilegious Christmas show. Very strange. And they particularly went after a video work by David Warnarowicz, an artist that I absolutely love, a real inspiration for me.
00:17:00
Speaker
And all of these people protested. And it was an incredible story because the museum had taken the piece down 24 hours after the article went up. They never even consulted the curators. Protests emerged all around the country. It was really beautiful. And I thought, maybe I'll go down there. I'll join the protests and maybe try to write about it. I was doing a lot of journalism.
00:17:19
Speaker
And then I had this moment where I was like, wait, why am I going to D.C. to protest this one piece being removed from a show that I'm never going to see? Because no museum here in New York is going to take it. And I can't go see a queer exhibit like that here. A few years before, this woman named Weema Perry had put out a report that showed that the major museums in New York City barely ever talked about LGBT topics in the last decade, right? And I was so
Why Queer History Matters
00:17:42
Speaker
annoyed. And I had this moment where I was like, well, what if instead of going down to protest that exhibit in that museum, which is it necessary. And I'm so glad so many people were doing it. And I was like, what if I didn't do that? And instead, I held a museum of my own.
00:17:57
Speaker
And I lived in a big collective house in Bushwick. And there was a group called Quorum who were organizing all of these events, ah a week of sort of queer teach-ins, where queer people taught other queer people inside queer homes and private spaces. And they were looking for something for their opening night.
00:18:11
Speaker
We had this big loft space and we'd done events in the queer community before. And so they asked us and we decided, my roommates generously, they were like, we're old and we don't want to do this. And I was like, I will clean up if you'll let me throw a museum instead of a party.
00:18:25
Speaker
And everybody said yes, even though I could not explain exactly what it was. But I was like, I just feel this thing that I, and and access to creating space and making our own history and sharing what we each already know.
00:18:37
Speaker
And luckily, a person named Buzz Slutsky reached out and wanted to help curate. They were a curator and a gallerist and artist. I had never curated anything, did not know how to hang a painting, basically.
00:18:48
Speaker
and They came along and we gathered up, put out a call for proposals and exhibits, and 30 people showed up with exhibits that they made. 300 people showed up over the course of the night at my apartment. It was just this huge party because people were hungry for this history, I realized.
00:19:05
Speaker
And then at midnight, ah a bunch of cops showed up to shut us down. And so the party ended before we got to show all the exhibits. And people asked, when's the next one?
00:19:16
Speaker
And I had had no plans for a next one. It was not an organization. It was a a party. And instead, but people just wanted to do it. And this other person reached out, Graham Bridgman. He was a theology student, and he raised money for queer causes. He was a development worker, and he said, I'll raise the money if you teach me the queer history. And Buzz was in to do it again. the Leslie Lohman Museum in New York City lent us space when they were normally closed back then in August when they were more of a gallery.
00:19:41
Speaker
And suddenly we were putting on shows around the country. It really spiraled from there. love that. Yeah, I think one of the things we all kind of witnessed recently was the Trump administration doing things like taking down markers for kind of historical landmarks that were marking largely Black, some Indigenous historical sites and and and LGBTQ ones, which the federal government had only recently started to really engage in any real way. And so we saw in New York then try to do so at Stonewall or in front of the the historical landmark that marks the that sort of square in between where where Stonewall Bar is.
00:20:23
Speaker
So my question to you is, why do you think it's important to kind of preserve queer history now especially when so much of it has been erased. And also as a historian and looking at the ways that queer people preserved history, even but when there were no official channels that were willing to do so anyway, what lessons can we learn from the past under different sort of eras of of repression and oppression in terms of preserving our actual history?
00:20:54
Speaker
yeah Two great questions. Okay, I'll start with the first one. Why is it important? I think it is important for so many reasons. But the ones that I will highlight here is that as a young person, when I was growing up in the 80s and the 90s, I had no sense of queer history. I had no sense of queer possibility because of that. It felt like if
Hugh's Memoir and 90s Queer Culture
00:21:12
Speaker
there were... no people before me and no culture before me and no anything, then what could I be? I had no role models in that sense, no understanding of anything other than homosexuals dying of AIDS on the television screen, right? When you don't have a past, it's hard to imagine that you have a future and it's hard to let go of or resist lies people are going to tell you about yourself, about your community, about what it means, the kind of different that you are, whatever that difference is, right? So I think for all of those reasons, like community reasons, we need to recognize our past and to grapple with it, the good and the bad. It helps us to understand where we're at now. And once we understand that, it can help us understand where we're going, right? I see some of these people
00:21:59
Speaker
mostly online, I've never met a real person like this, but the ones who are like, oh, the transgender movement hijacked the gay movement and they're totally separate things. And and I'm like, you just literally have no history.
00:22:10
Speaker
And that's part of your ignorance is so vast, you mistake it for knowledge. And and that is it's It's many things. I think in some cases, it's willful misreading of history. It's it's not just ignorance, it's the evil, and I think it's manipulative. But I think in some cases, it really truly is that a lack of knowledge has kept these people so blessedly ignorant that they can be manipulated and made angry and distracted in ways that are deadly and pernicious for them and for the rest of the community. So...
00:22:41
Speaker
I think those are the reasons why we need this history. Also, without it, the rest of the world doesn't make sense, right? You try to remove one piece of history and you will never understand the other pressures that are functioning around it because we need to understand the full picture to understand how we as historical actors move in the world.
00:22:59
Speaker
The other question you asked, I've forgotten already, though. It's okay. Yeah, follow-up was, what can we learn about the preserv preservation of queer history from history itself when we've lived through other eras of various kinds of repression or where the idea of even an institution like the Smithsonian collecting or doing a queer-specific exhibit wasn't even possible? So what what can we learn from, you know, folks who were able to preserve history even under more repressive times?
00:23:28
Speaker
I mean, I think the the message really is we have to do it for ourselves. And I've heard that not just historically, but today people like Invisible Histories who collect the queer histories of the South saw them in a meeting right before Trump got elected the second time. And they were like, it used to be that we said the gold standard, we help people get collections into universities. And now we are seeing universities get rid of those collections.
00:23:51
Speaker
or strip all the queer metadata out so you can never find them again. And they realized that what they needed to be doing was creating their own institution to protect their own documents, their own things in the South so that they don't have to send them to the institutions that already do exist, like the Lesbian Herstory Archives here in New York, which is amazing, but should not be the only repository, right? We need to fund and invest in these institutions that are in some ways separatist. In the 90s and the early 2000s, think separatism had a really bad rap. It was seen as backward, as ignorant, as unwilling to participate in the world. you got jokes made about
00:24:30
Speaker
women's separatist movements and lesbian separatists and the radical fairies and places like the LGBT Center in Manhattan were no longer centers of culture in the way that they used to be. But those organizations are there exactly for times like this. And I think we are seeing in the same way that people have come to realize that losing gay bars has real consequences even if you feel like you can go out to a bar that's not gay and bring your partner, right? That having our own space means something. Losing the gay bookstores means something. Not having the queer papers anymore, it means something.
00:25:03
Speaker
And I think that that is a lesson that we really need to pick up on. We need to be saving our own materials, saving them for each other, learning how to archive our things, supporting archivists and those people who are getting information out there the way you guys are doing.
00:25:17
Speaker
and And also, I just want to make the case that it's incredibly beautiful and wonderful to encounter these objects of the past. So a few months ago, i had the opportunity. I saw this thing, a scrapbook posted on eBay that I was like, I think this is gay.
00:25:33
Speaker
I just have a nose for it at this point. It was a guy from the born nineteen thirty s in Brooklyn, a black gay guy. And I couldn't afford what this guy wanted who was selling it on eBay.
00:25:44
Speaker
And I reached out to him. It didn't sell. wanted hundreds upon hundreds of dollars. And I said to him, look, I'm a historian. I see that you are a person who sells ephemera. And that this is just a random thing to you. But like this is a pretty critical thing that we don't have much.
00:25:57
Speaker
of. This is a scrapbook of a black gay man in Brooklyn in the military in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, right? In the 60s. This is special. And can i can I get it from you? And i I said, I can't afford what you want, and I'll give you this much. And he was really cool about it. And he said, yeah, sure, let's do it.
00:26:16
Speaker
And so now I have this document, which i'm going to show you in a second, and I have to get it safekeeping somewhere. But it is this beautiful, just and unreal collection of photographs of this man ah in the military and his life.
00:26:31
Speaker
And my favorite article or piece of ephemera in this whole thing is at the very start, there's a photo of him and his roommate, who are the only two men to graduate out of a class of 200 at the Apex School of Hair Design in Harlem.
00:26:47
Speaker
it's It's amazing. It's so cool. And I love it. And i think when we don't have access to our history, when we don't get to see things like this, it's not good for us.
00:26:59
Speaker
It doesn't spark joy. you don't get a sense of historical possibility or who you could be. So that's why I think it's really important. It very is very important. I think history itself in in itself is very important, but to keep our history alive and keep it growing and and and building and nurturing the next generations to come. because like you said, these are the things that they need to know. They need to understand where they come from.
00:27:22
Speaker
who they come from, and what we do. I do want to jump on to our next question because it's something very interesting, and I'm actually excited for May 26th coming right around the corner. I'm going to say that again. May right around the corner. New book coming out entitled My Bad, A Personal History of the Queer 90s and Beyond. Yes, I see you holding it up.
00:27:48
Speaker
what I learned to Vanna White in the 90s. Yes, Vanna White. ah all all Right here, we're Kiki Shepherd. So I know you watch the Apollo today, so I'm gonna need you to do your best Kiki Shepherd.
00:28:02
Speaker
But what inspired book? Like, where did it come from? Oh, a lot of things. But the biggest one actually is what we were just talking about, my work with queer history. I love history. And so much of what I do depends on people in the past writing down their stories, preserving their histories. And I realized at some point that I was not doing that part of the work, that I think I have...
00:28:24
Speaker
long been uncomfortable with parts of my own history, haven't known how to talk about them, experienced a lot of queer-phobic moments of people in the 90s and and that became, think, eager to talk to people, outgoing in my own way, but always a bit of a loner, and I didn't really talk about the 90s. And so this was my
Generational Lessons from Queer History
00:28:44
Speaker
opportunity, I realized, to reinsert myself into the historical record and and reckon with exactly what we're talking about at the top of this,
00:28:51
Speaker
how queer community and life is changing and how I lived those changes right up close and how I can understand where we are right now because of my experiences going all the way back in 1990, the moment that kicks off the book when I'm 12 years old in Spanish class. and a bunch of kids are making gay jokes at me, and my teacher doesn't understand what's happening, and she thinks she'll just do a really fun lesson on slang, how to speak Spanish around the world, and she spends the next class period teaching us how to say faggot in Spanish in every country in the world.
00:29:23
Speaker
That's what came off the book. Wow. It's a crazy moment that's hard to imagine today. You cannot imagine that happening. But that was... Oh, that would not happen today. No, that would not fly today.
00:29:35
Speaker
Would not fly today. But those moments made me. And when I think back on how I now see all of these depictions of 90s things and everyone looks back on this perfect time,
00:29:45
Speaker
And you see movies set in the 90s and the gay people are happy and they know themselves and they know each other and they're out to their family and no one is mean to them except for the bully who's a bad person. Or maybe they have a change of heart by the end of the episode. And I'm like, no, that is just not it. And I i felt...
00:30:01
Speaker
A need to kind of correct that history, but also show the ways in which like living through it was toxic. And I did stupid, awful shit and i hurt people and I myself screwed up and was unclear. And so telling it through my body and my experiences, not through this kind of removed third person, the way all my other histories have been felt really important.
00:30:23
Speaker
That's great. And I will talk a little bit more about this and we have some, another kind of exciting segment after we come back from the break. I'm super excited about this portion of the conversation as another gay who was sort of coming of age in the think the 90s was what? 15 to 25 between 1990 2000. So this my era. I was 12 to 22. was 5 to 15 from 90 to 2000. Good you. I so this is my twelve to twenty two album is five to fifteen from nineteen two thousand good for you so Right, a bad child. Okay, we will take a great break and we'll come back here at Power Beyond Press.
00:31:08
Speaker
Welcome back to Power Beyond Pride. I'm Kenyon. I'm here with my co-host, Maddie, and we are having a very fun conversation with Hugh Ryan. So first, we just left you talking about your upcoming memoir.
00:31:20
Speaker
And I'm curious to know, as ah gay of a certain age... but that it sounds like this. this no I'm 51. It's totally fine. i alan i This book is really, i think, kind of speaking to particular era that you and I remember, right, as folks kind of coming of age in the 90s.
00:31:41
Speaker
And so what is the, what are you hoping that older generations of queer folks or gay men specifically will feel when they read it? And put and and also what younger folks you you want to take away from I hope for people our age and people who were there and who experienced it along with me, there is a sense of recognition and perhaps also a sense of bringing back up things we haven't thought about in a minute. One of the themes in my book is really about
Documenting Trans Culture and Artistry
00:32:09
Speaker
family coming back together and love and forgiveness. Cheesy as that can sound, I think it is a necessary part of healing and growing up, learning how to forgive and how to be forgiven, how to ask for forgiveness.
00:32:22
Speaker
And I think that for me, a large part of moving away from the 90s was forgetting a lot of pain in in ways that I think you need to to heal. that Sometimes you need to put it aside, but I don't think it helps us to forget that too much, right? We need to remember what did happen, not just sort of like hazily clouded over with sort of like cotton candy floss and that Vaseline lens that RuPaul used in the first season of Drag Race. but We want to look at it clearly and and actually think critically about what was good and what was bad. And that is so much of what I want us to remember right now when things have changed so much. And sometimes it can be hard to remember that those things are within our our living lifetime, right? I talk a lot in the book about how ideas about what it means to be trans, for instance, have vastly changed in just our living lives.
00:33:12
Speaker
memory. When I read the first book of trans history by a trans author that I had ever encountered, Transgender Warriors by Leslie Feinberg, incredible book. The subtitle was From Joan of Arc to RuPaul.
00:33:26
Speaker
And it's not because Leslie didn't know what a trans person was, right? It's the idea has shifted and changed. And I think those of us who were there can sometimes forget that we have seen so much change already and that should open us to the possibility of change in the future. That this is not just what it is, that we could be different people and we can define things differently moving forward because we've seen it happen already.
00:33:48
Speaker
And for those people who weren't there, especially the young folks right now who are being persecuted by the Trump administration and more broadly by the like fascist, white nationalist, transphobic right wing in this country.
00:34:00
Speaker
I want to say to them, it was pretty bad. And yeah, It was hard, but we have ideas about how to get through this. And a lot of it is about coming together and working with each other and taking care of each other and hashing out strategies in the room. Everything from ACT UP to The Daughters of Belitis. the This organizing has been done before. And yes, it is a terrifying time right now. But God, the 80s for gay men were particularly terrifying. and when And people made it through. And it will continue to be scary. And that won't stop. But that's what I hope young people can see in this. The world was different and change happened. And that means maybe maybe we can make change again. Awesome. So before we go to our our next segment, just one quick follow up. If you could name one specific thing right now that you think this is the thing that I want us to capture for as as a piece of history for the future to remember as it pertains to queer life or politics or art.
00:35:00
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think this flourishing of absolute trans brilliance that we are seeing right now, like trans artists, writers, filmmakers, politicians, lawyers, it, to me, the the unfortunate parallel that I think about is the Weimar Republic, where we do have this incredible trans flourishing happening right before World War II. And we've had that erased and taken from us and it's taken so many decades to even recover our knowledge of it, right? And so that's what I don't want us to forget from this moment, regardless of what happened from here.
00:35:29
Speaker
There has been so much beauty created, so much art, so much life, so much culture, and that is incredible. And I i like the people who are documenting it right now, The New York City Trans Oral History Project, the Digital Transgender Archives, MAFA, the Museum of Transgender History
Rapid-Fire Questions and Personal Insights
00:35:46
Speaker
and Art. like These people are doing incredibly important work.
00:35:50
Speaker
That's beautiful. And like like you said, we must always keep this alive because no matter how far we go in the future, we got to know where we came from. we we got to have some sense of of belonging. So I love that. I love that. all right, now, Hugh, this is one of my favorite parts of the show because this is where we get to be fun on purpose. So now there's a little inky way that we'll make in in the midst of the show. But this is when we can kind of be just a little bit crash, a little bit brash, a little bit uncouth, and we can have fun. It is our speed round time, okay?
00:36:23
Speaker
The only rule during speed round is do not think. Answer with the first thing that pops in your head, even if it is. I am so good at not thinking.
00:36:35
Speaker
smooth brain in there most of the time. Well, this is to be fun. Well, can you ask the first question? going to go ahead and get started. All right. So first question, a word that describes your younger self.
00:36:50
Speaker
o Kittenish. now yeah Okay, well, what's a word that describes who you are now? Oh, puppy-like. I think I've really i've really transitioned to animals.
00:37:02
Speaker
Okay. So, favorite queer icon of all time? Yoshi Kurimiya. Civil rights activist, AIDS activist, and the person who brought the first named case to the Supreme Court to try to legalize medical marijuana. All right, all right. And what is a book that has changed your life?
00:37:22
Speaker
book that has changed in my life. The Trouble with Normal by Michael Warner, which I read in 1999 and just really was full of political ideas that i had not thought about or encountered anywhere else.
00:37:36
Speaker
huh Your go-to comfort show. Survivor. I've watched every season in America. Now I've branched out to Australia and New Zealand. i will watch Survivor in any language, any, any place.
00:37:49
Speaker
Okay, so I have a question because I'm not a survivor watcher. Which country has the best survival? Australia, hands down. Australia actually has all of the best reality television because there's basically two populations in Australia. You have the people who were so criminal, England kicked them out. And then you have resistance survivors of the indigenous population. And and that is two groups who make for incredible reality television.
00:38:16
Speaker
Also, like all of the men are like amoral bisexuals wearing the smallest speedos you've ever seen in your life. it's It's so delightful. I cannot get enough of it. Australians, I'm sorry if any Australians are listening and you are offended. I apologize. I just really appreciate you as a people. Well, I mean, there's nothing wrong with going down under du a couple of times and having a good time. so i mean So. Okay. So what word sticks to you more love or legacy?
00:38:45
Speaker
Love. Okay. What does freedom feel like to you? Oh, being outside and being able to move around and and do what I want, wear what I want, and not have eyes on me. It's funny. I think freedom often to me feels somewhat similar to loneliness, if I'm going to tell the truth, that being free i I think of it in nature. i think of it in the wind. i think of it as an experience of not being seen, oddly enough. ah That often is what freedom feels like to me.
00:39:21
Speaker
They say that to be one with ourself is to be alone. So I can see how freedom and loneliness can go hand in hand. What's a song that defines your spirit? Oh my gosh, that's a song a question I have never even thought thought about. A song?
00:39:37
Speaker
Okay. Simone's feeling good. i think that's a maybe a little bit of an obvious answer in some senses because there is so much bombast to it and I feel like I've seen so many strip routines to it over the last decade and yet it's just like, I don't know, it it has that that bigness, that fullness and that range in emotion that I want my my spirit to have. Okay.
00:40:02
Speaker
What's a smell that brings back a memory instantly? coffee. i I love the smell of coffee and I find it to smell like waking up first thing in the morning and being just ready to leap out of bed. There is something about the smell of coffee that will always make me feel energized even when I'm not drinking it. just, I don't know. I don't that's a specific enough memory, but that's the first thing that came to mind.
00:40:29
Speaker
and Me too. I i would say i I love the smell of coffee as a child. And my parents didn't drink coffee, but both my grandmothers did. And i I used to love to just go smell coffee when they made in the morning. When they had the calculator or the French press. Oh, my God. Yes. I love it.
00:40:48
Speaker
Yes. Okay. So this is another great question that we love here. What does power beyond pride mean to you? How are beyond pride? What does that mean to me? Well, I think that when I think about beyond pride, I think about the space that is actually through pride, right? That where does pride bring us? and We often get told that pride is such a bad thing. And I think that's the reason queer people picked it up. When you're told you're irrespectable, you're sinful, then you might as well embrace it. But I do think that having pride in ourselves and our community and our work not
00:41:20
Speaker
overdo pride, not too much pride, but a recognition of your self-worth is important. And I think power is what you find on the other side of that, right? That when you respect yourself, say, in a relationship and feel like you are good enough, then you're not going to put up with bullshit.
00:41:37
Speaker
When you have pride in your work, you know what it's worth. And yeah, if you're a writer or an artist, you might accept way less than it's worth quite often, but at least on some level, you know what it is worth and you know when to bargain. And I think that we find So much power when we're able to accept and love ourselves.
00:41:55
Speaker
Awesome. And the
Accessibility of Queer Literature and Wrap-Up
00:41:57
Speaker
last and maybe most important question of the night is. Where can people find your work if they're looking to follow you or have access to your books or any of your articles?
00:42:10
Speaker
but You can find me online. I'm on Instagram. I'm on Blue Sky. Hugh Ryan, I'm pretty easy to find everywhere. In terms of finding my books, I love it if folks buy them from a local indie that you love, a place that you have a relationship with, particularly if it's a queer bookstore.
00:42:24
Speaker
If there isn't one in your area or you don't have a relationship with one, bookshop.org will connect you to indie books, but also buy it wherever you need to, however is best to you. The one thing I really ask people, like the thing that really matters to me,
00:42:37
Speaker
The first queer books i ever encountered were in libraries. And when I couldn't talk to anyone, when I had no access to ideas anywhere else, the library was the place where I found so much possibility. So that more than anything else is what I hope for my book. If you are listening to this and you feel moved, ask your library to stock it.
00:42:56
Speaker
Lots of times libraries want to hear from their patrons. They want to carry the books people want, whether it's a university library, a school library, a community library, a public library. That's where I would love to see my book more than anything else.
00:43:09
Speaker
I love that response. When I was 18 years old and looking for books for Zora Neale Hurston for a book projects for project in my African American history class in high school, I was in the library and found ah Joseph Beams in the life and Brother the President. And I checked them out that day and it made me a homosexual.
00:43:30
Speaker
Okay, so thank you so much. That is
00:43:37
Speaker
Oh, you both. This was so much fun. Really just delightful. y'all are great hosts. Thank you. know We're super happy to have you and so glad that you do the work that you do Just reminding people that our stories matter, that our histories matter, and and the way we tell it matters too. So again, we're out of time for this podcast, but hope that you will join us again and we would love to have you back. at some I would love that. Have a great evening, y'all.
00:44:01
Speaker
Great, great. Well, so look here. So to all our listeners and our people who will be viewing this on YouTube, make sure you go check out My Bad, A Personal History of the Queer 90s and the Beyond. It does drop May 26. We will tell you right now, it is going to be a great book for everything from the very first line and learning how to say faggot in Spanish. All right. So it's going to be a great book.
00:44:27
Speaker
Also, keep loving boldly. Keep living beyond pride. Keep listening to everyone and know that hope is still alive and we will spread it worldwide. I am your co-host, Maddie Bynum. You can follow me on Instagram at maddiesimone737 or Facebook at Maddie Bynum.
00:44:45
Speaker
And I'm your other co-host, Kenyon Farrow. And you can find me at everything. I'm really boring. All of my handles are just at Kenyon Farrow. So you can find me there.
00:44:55
Speaker
But remember also to subscribe and get your friends to subscribe to Power Beyond Pride on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And you can also check out our web website at powerbeyondpride.com.
00:45:10
Speaker
m Empower or Beyond Pride is a project from A Great Idea, a queer-owned design and content agency. Learn more about them at agreatidea.com. This episode is produced by Shane Lucas.
00:45:22
Speaker
Maddie Bynum, who you just heard from, is the project developer. Our editor is Jared Redding, with support from Ian Wilson. And we are both, me and Kenyon, are just a part of the podcast. Awesome host team here, seven of us all together. We invite you send in your questions yet again and comments to Power Beyond Pride because we love to stay connected to our listeners and we will answer anything we can.
00:45:46
Speaker
Check out our new episodes each week and we look forward to queer change making with you next time. So thank you from all of us at Power Beyond Pride.