Oral History Program Evie Thomas Interviewed by Faith Christiansen 2 August 2022 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Evie Thomas Interviewed by Faith Christiansen 2 August 2022 Copyright © 2023 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Queering the Archives oral history project is a series of oral histories from the LGBTQ+ communities of Weber, Davis and Morgan Counties of Northern Utah. Each interview is a life interview, documenting the interviewee’s unique experiences growing up queer. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Thomas, Evie, an oral history by Faith Christiansen, 2 August 2022, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections & University Archives (SCUA), Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Evie Thomas on August 2, 2022 in the Stewart Library with Faith Christiansen. Evie talks about growing up in an always changing family dynamic, and how she came to discover and accept her own sexuality. She shares about her experiences with bullying and how that affected her physically and mentally through her school years. Evie also talks about her work with Davis Pride. Also present in the interview is Ian Orme. FC: It is August 2, 2022, at 12:35. I'm Faith Christiansen. I'm the one doing the interview right now, and my pronouns are she/her. On camera, we have Ian. IO: Ian Orme, pronouns he/him. FC: Then if you'll introduce yourself and give me pronouns? ET: Yeah, I'm Evie, she/her. Although I probably am non-binary, I don't understand gender. FC: We’ll just start at the very beginning. When and where were you born? ET: I was born in Layton, Utah, on May 9, 2002. FC: What was it like, your family dynamic growing up? ET: Oh, it was weird. I mean, my dad had an ex-wife before he met my mom, and they had a child together. So I have a half-sister, Angelica. She's two years older than me. I only got to see her once every other weekend, so we had a really good relationship when we were together because scarcity and whatnot. But she was always kind of the favorite because her mom was an evil, evil, evil lady. Very abusive. My mom and dad loved each other for the first two or so years of my life. But then after that, they kind of resented each other. Didn't stop them from having another child though. So I also had a younger sister named Maddie, but she now goes by Leo and we have a weird dynamic. I don't interact with my dad much as of now, but me and my mom are really close. I love both my sisters and my older sister's husband. 1 FC: Did growing up in that environment impact you? ET: Absolutely. Every time I'd go to school and all that, I would tell my friends about Angelica and all that, they’d be like, “Then how come we never see her anywhere?” I would have to explain the whole story to them, and they would get confused because that's confusing for small children to understand. They don't understand family dynamics in that way unless they are living it, so they didn't understand how she could be my sister, and they always insisted that I call her my half-sister. “No, she's my sister.” “She's not.” “Maybe by blood, she's half, but she's whole enough to me.” So it was a little bit weird. FC: Has that relationship continued? Are you still pretty close? ET: Oh, yeah. We kind of separated for a little bit because her mom didn't want her to be around me because I was, you know, gay. She said that I was also the Antichrist because she hated my dad so much, and I mean fair, but she thought my mom was some evil temptress witch lady, and then he was the devil. So obviously, I'm the Antichrist. She did everything to stop us from connecting. She reduced weekends. She just told her, “She's evil, she's hiding things from me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” and all, because my dad let it slip, he outed me. FC: Sorry. ET: It is what it is. He outed me a few times, so it happened like three or four times total, and I had to stop him from doing it again. So I just came all the way out at that point because it wasn't worth the hassle of him continuously outing me. He was gonna do it forever. FC: Let's go back just a little bit. ET: Yes. 2 FC: While you were growing up, what played a big part in how you were raised? Gender roles, religion, anything like that? ET: Well, it was more the absence of religion that played a role. I wasn't religious, but everybody around my family was. Nina, my older sister’s mom, she was super religious, crazy-nut religious. My grandparents were, so were all my friends and all my neighbors. Living in Utah means you're surrounded by LDS folk. My mom, she had left the church as she didn't believe in their stance against homosexuality. She left when she was like 20. My dad got excommunicated, so we weren't religious. They didn't make me. Once I was six, they said, “You don't have to do anything like that. It's your choice now.” I said, “Why would I want to go sit in a boring room with old people that smells like old people for three hours and listen to them talk about nothing and cry?” FC: So even having the choice to be able to... ET: Yes, I always had that choice, which was really good. That's one of the few things that I really do look back upon on my growth and the raising of me that I think of fondly. FC: Yeah. Were there any examples of gender roles, or something like that? ET: Oh yeah. Well, I mean, my mom was a stay at home mom for quite a while. She wanted to be a lawyer. She went to school to be a lawyer. My dad didn't want her to be a lawyer. I don't know why. He says it wasn't gender role related. He just wanted somebody to take care of the kids, but he wouldn't do it himself. He was a marketing person and she would have made way more. I don't understand, but I have a feeling the real reason is he didn't want to be alone with us. So that was kind of a thing. 3 But also my extended family put a lot of gender roles on me. I was super weird as a kid. My grandparents would say, “One day you're going to find a prince or whatever,” because I love princesses and all that, “and he’ll whisk you away.” I was like, “Eww.” They all thought, “Oh, she'll grow out of that and all that.” Or I was like, “Yeah, one day I'll marry a princess,” and whatnot, and they're all just like her.” Several times, they had walked in on me kissing dolls, just being like, “You're so pretty.” They were just like, “Okay.” I don't know how they didn't know I was gay, I'm not going to lie, but that was a thing. Once I was about ten, my extended family started being like, “You're really weird,” because I was pretty tomboyish. I didn't do any sports or anything, but I liked scary movies and all that, and I didn't like playing with normal dolls. I played with little animal toys, Littlest Pet Shops pretty much, because I didn't like people that much. But they would start buying me things that were traditionally feminine, like makeup, pretty girl things and whatnot, and just being like, “Look, now you have it.” Because for some reason my extended family thought, “Oh, she's like this because her parents didn't give her a choice.” Because my dad is absentee, they just assumed I was fulfilling the man of the house. No, no, I just didn't want make-up. Makes me feel itchy. That was the real reason, but they read too much into it. Also, I have always been really lazy so I'm like, “I don't want to do that.” But they started trying to push me into that, pushing me further and further into the box. But I never really let myself be pushed in there. Even as a small child, as if I didn't want to wear it, I would try to purposely destroy the outfit that they would get me. I would have been like, “Sorry, it's like ripped. It's torn. I can't wear it again. Sorry, guys.” 4 FC: You kind of talked about your family and surrounding community trying to push you into certain boxes. When did you know or first feel that you were different? ET: I've always known I was different. I always thought that I was isolated, which I now know wasn't because I'm gay, but because I'm autistic. But the combination definitely made me feel super isolated. I would watch a lot of movies and TV, like tons and tons and tons of cartoons. I would just sit there and I would use those cartoons and modify my personality around them. So I'd be like, “Oh, well, the girl from this TV show liked a guy,” so I would just pick some dude that looked the most like the one in the cartoon or show and be like, “Okay, I'm in love with you,” even though I literally couldn't even remember their name. It was pretty embarrassing, but I thought I had to do that because the other girls around me were always just like, “Yeah, this guy's cute. I'm gonna kiss him.” I was just like, “Why do you want to do that? I’ve seen that guy picking his nose.” But I decided it would be better to fit in. I still didn't fit in because I was really bad at this, but I did try. They didn't like me because they could tell it was kind of fake and they thought I was being fake or toxic or just not real, when in reality I was just trying to modify my personality around what they would like. So I would be alone. It didn't work. But I did try to do that. So I always felt different because I was always alone and people kind of avoided me because they would see me act one way with one person and act a completely different way with another. Because I had to, I call it being a chameleon, the masking. I will always change to wherever I am. I've gotten better at not doing it as much and trying to just do what I want to, but it still comes out sometimes. FC: You talked about TV shows growing up that you watched a lot of, and then you talked about having examples of neurotypicals and straight relationships. Did you see any representation of queerness growing up? 5 ET: No. The first thing that even got close was when I watched Scott Pilgrim at the age of nine, which I know isn't a nine-year-old movie, but my family did not care. Once I was about ten, they said, “If it's rated R and we approve of it, we don't care.” Once I was 12, they fully just stopped monitoring completely, but no queerness was ever seen. FC: So what was your first exposure to queerness, if that makes sense? ET: Okay. It wasn't on any TV, but my mom had a friend whose name was Odum. Really cool dude. FC: Can you spell Odum? ET: O-D-U-M. She explained to me that he's married to a man, and I went, “Okay.” That was it. She expected this to be a deeper conversation, but that was it. I was like six at the time. I mean, I didn't understand the logistics, but I didn't understand the logistics of how any relationship worked, friendship or otherwise. I didn't understand any of that. But the first talk about lesbianism was different. I had seen a Simpsons episode that had mentioned it. Yes, The Simpsons was the first time I saw anything even close to that, which feels a little bit ridiculous, but it's true. I said, “What's that?” She went, “That's a lesbian.” I went, “Okay.” As that was happening, I was like, “Oh, that's a thing, but oh, no, that's not me. Nah,” because I was in like 12 different layers of not understanding myself or my emotions. It was a Sunday night, because that was when the new episodes aired, on Sunday nights. I went to school in the morning on Monday and said, “Have you guys heard of lesbians?” I was like eight or nine. All the kids were like, “Yeah, they're bad.” I went, “Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it couldn't be me. It's not me, guys. Don't even worry about it, but I just heard about it, and I just wanted to see 6 what the room thought, you know? I just wanted to get your opinion on this.” After hearing negative reception, I didn't think about it again for three years. FC: Do you think your sense of community and people around you had a large effect on your identity? ET: Oh, definitely. I mean, it was one of those things where I grew up in Layton. It's kind of like we just don't talk about it. We don't do anything about it. If you mention it, we're kind of looking at you, side-eyeing and thinking, “That's a little fruity.” But I definitely know that the community around me, if I had known, if I had had any form of representation, I probably would have known before I was 13. Somebody yelled at me saying, “You're gay, Eve, stop.” FC: You talked about perhaps being non-binary. ET: Yeah. FC: What was your first exposure to non-binary? ET: It was when I was 12 and I was in the Girl Scouts and somebody said, “I'm nonbinary” I went, “What does that mean?” Because that's my first reaction to everything. “What does that mean? I'm interested.” I will listen to it, and I will nod eagerly, saying, “That sounds familiar, but no, couldn't be me.” It also was a thing in the cosplay groups. I noticed a lot of people that I was in Girl Scouts with, they were either some form of queer or cosplayer, usually both. So I kind of grouped in with them because I understood them. I related to them more and then realized, “Oh, you can dress up as a guy or something.” But then they said, “No, it's not really dressing up as a guy, it's just dressing up as a character. We kind of dress up as guys sometimes, and there's nothing wrong with that, I'm still me.” 7 I'm like, “Oh.” So my first exposure to nonbinary had nothing to do with media. There is nothing. There still is pretty much nothing. FC: We talked about gender roles. ET: Yes. FC: On a different note, what were you taught about sexuality growing up? ET: Nothing. Literally nothing, because my family, my mom and dad, they took a handsoff approach. By hands off, I mean, ‘Throw her in a different room and just kind of peek in occasionally,’ approach. So I didn't know anything about anything until… this gets a little bit weird. Just two seconds while I compose how to say this. FC: Take as much time as you need. ET: It wasn't until I got my first Facebook account and I was just going through family photos. I was looking for one to post of my family and be like, “Look, it's my family,” to all my elementary school friends. Just turned ten. Fourth grade had just ended. I was super excited. Then one of the worst days of my life happened because I just picked a random photo and posted it because it was in the family photos. I thought, “It's got to be good.” Yeah, it was a picture of my dad's dick. I hate Facebook. I can't go on it anymore. I can't do Facebook or really most social media. I say it's because it makes me feel bad, but the real reason is because I'm afraid I'll do something like that again. Even though I was ten and that was a family computer, I was being supervised, and I didn't know how to delete it and it just wouldn't go away. So there I stood, just staring at my dad's penis, just like, “Huh?” Then my dad said, “Okay, I'm sorry.” My mom said, “Don't do the sex talk with her now. You don't get to do that now.” Especially since I revealed that in the background of the photo was a different woman that was definitely not my mom. My mom knew about this affair. He had plenty of affairs. She knew about it. She just didn't care at this time. She felt horrible 8 about it, but she just was trying to hold it together for the family. Then I found a picture of him and some random woman naked, posted it online for everybody to see. Luckily, she was able to delete it, but I mean, the image still haunts me. It was really bad the first little bit because somehow my mom had told my grandma. Normal thing to do, tell your parents or in-laws what happens when something crazy like this happens. But my grandma is a gossiper, so she told everybody she knew. That included my entire extended family, her neighbors, my neighbors, everyone she knew, even the grocery store. People had to know about this scandal, so she told everybody. We went on a family vacation with all them. We did this yearly trip to Lake Powell. They were all just looking at me in pity, just like, “I'm sorry.” They would all, each through this one-week period, pull me to the side and be like, “I'm sorry that happened to you. Let me know if you want to talk to anybody.” I'm just sitting there like, “Everybody here knows what happened. This is literally the worst.” But the night that happened, that I posted that picture, my dad did the opposite of what my mom said about getting the sex talk. He just went for it anyway. He's like, “I know she said not to do it, but I'm going to do it anyway.” He did it very poorly, as I know now. He also tried to explain periods, but he didn't know anything. He was saying something about moon cycles and I'm like, “What? Yeah, those are different.” Then he's like, “Your mom approved this conversation. She said I should do this. Ask her if you have any more questions.” For the next year, I didn't want to even talk to my dad because I just knew that he was a scumbag who took pictures of himself naked and posted them on the family computer that everybody used. 9 When you're ten, you kind of can lose respect for somebody pretty quick, especially when something like that happens. FC: So how did that impact not only your concept of sexuality, but your sexuality? ET: I was basically afraid of men. It was genuine fear. I don't know why it was a fear, but it just was. I said to myself, “Yeah, I never want to be with a guy, but that's fine.” I thought, “Okay, maybe I'll grow out of it in a few years. But I also didn't want to be with women either. At that time, I didn't want to be near anybody. I was afraid of the concept of nakedness, let alone sexuality. It was mortifying to me. FC: Was it just relationships in general? ET: A lot of my relationships with my family deteriorated because they went and told everybody about everything, so everybody knew. It was a community event. Like with my grandmother especially deteriorating because I knew it was her who told people. My mom had blamed me at the time, saying, “You shouldn't have just posted a random picture in the family folder without looking at it first.” I kind of felt bad about that, so our relationship deteriorated too. I was really just isolated. I didn't tell anybody, any of my friends or anything about what had happened. I was embarrassed. I knew it was my fault, and I was afraid that they had already seen it and that they wouldn't be allowed to get near me or hang out with me. So I just kind of isolated and stuck to myself that entire summer. I didn't interact with any of my friends. It wasn't until two years later I told anybody. FC: That must have been rough. ET: Yeah, it was. I mean, I had already been isolating before that, but that was just kind of like the cherry on top. FC: I'm sorry to take a little step to the side, but were there any outside factors that helped to express your identity or even come to know your identity? 10 ET: Oh, well, I mean, coming to know my identity, I briefly mentioned this just a little bit, but when I was 13, I was talking about how a girl's ass was looking good to my best friend. She looked at me, and she just squinted, and she's like, “You keep saying this.” I'm like, “Yeah, well, it's true.” She's just like, “You say you have a crush on this guy named Spencer, but I don't think that's true because I have only heard you talk about him three times total. That's because he likes the same TV show as you. So, is this…?” I was like, “No, no, no. I was just normal. Don't worry about it. I'm always like this.” She's like, “Always? Eve, you're fucking gay. You like women? No girl who isn't into women talks about women’s ass and boobs that much.” I just sat there and I was like, “No, no, no, no, no.” She's like, “Yes. Go home and think about it. Do some research and Google what a lesbian is.” I was like, “I know what a lesbian is and I'm not.” I had some internalized homophobia there. I was just like, “Well, I mean, I don't mind them, but they can do their own thing away from me,” because I was in gay panic. I didn't want women to be near me because I wanted to kiss them. That night I was like, “Fine, I guess I better do it so I can prove that I'm not.” Then the next day I came and was like, “Yeah, you're right, you're right.” She's like, “I know I'm right. You're just a dumbass.” So I was literally diagnosed as gay. That's what I say. “Diagnosed as gay,” which I think is funny. A couple of other things, I realized I was in love with one of the Girl Scouts I was with all the time, which was definitely uncovered. She was queer too, so I was just like, “Oh my gosh, there's two queer people in the same eight mile radius. Wow.” But 11 she was already in a relationship, so it didn't matter. It happens to the best of us, unrequited love. I've watched a lot of shows and thought, “You know, wouldn't this be better if there was queer characters?” At that time, I thought, “How about I fix this?” and there I was, writing fanfiction. It started out with small little things, like Welcome to Nightvale, characters that were queer, just established characters. But then it got worse. Now on the internet, somewhere it exists, the weirdest Zosan fic. Zora and Sanji from One Piece. It exists out there. I really said, “If they're not going to make gay characters, I'm going to make them gay.” FC: So you paved the way. ET: I paved the way. Yeah, I was like, “If they're not going to give me something, I'm going to make them give me something by reading too much into things.” But I wasn't into a lot of the stereotypical ones like Johnlock or anything like that. I was into the more obscure ones that had no content. At the time, it was like, “You know, I can do this.” It was really poorly written, but they actually paved the way to me eventually finding out that I enjoy writing more than anything. I enjoy drawing and cartoons because I would make myself little comics, because written content isn't enough. It took a little while, and I didn't realize I could do it professionally. But now, a few years ago, as recently as when I turned 17 or 18, I realized, “I want to be an artist or an animator.” Like a webcomic artist. I'm going to make the gay content that is the way I want it to be. That isn't just plastering it in for, “Oh, we're doing it for Pride Month.” There's a queer character. It's like, “That's not going to work.” FC: Rainbow washing. ET: Yep, yep. Rainbow capitalism. We gotta love it. We're just somebody who was clearly written to be straight, but then somebody just, “Oh, well, I choose this because…” It’s like, “I've already been doing that for so long.” They have millions of 12 dollars to make that content and they still made it very poorly. Somehow my Zosan fic was better than theirs. They were being paid. So I had made that decision along with that. Not a lot; diagnosed gay. FC: You talked about a lot of different community groups. The Girl Scouts, school, family. How was that impacted by your queerness, or vice versa, how did that impact you and your queerness? ET: My family was kind of weird. My older sister, Angelica, at first didn't understand what that meant because she was living with her evil mother who had said, “That's the Antichrist. Sucks, you have to share the same blood as the Antichrist, doesn't it, Angelica?” Which is just like, “Okay.” But I decided when it came out to her, it was going to be somewhere secluded so I could just let it happen. I didn't want this to be a public ordeal because my dad had made it public four times now. I said, “Okay, we are not doing that anymore. We're not going to do that whole publicity thing. We're just going to have me and her go on a walk in the mountains while we were at the cabin.” So we did that and she just looked and she's like, “Okay, I just don't understand.” I'm like, “Yeah, that's fine.” She was a little bit salty about it. Then when I got my first relationship at 14, which was a long-distance Tumblr relationship, and I told her about it, she just kind of went, “Oh, you didn't want to tell me about it before I was the last to know?” I was like, “Yeah, I didn't want you to be upset or anything.” At that point I think something clicked in her. She's like, “My sister doesn't feel comfortable enough to tell me about these things.” So she started trying to make an effort at that point, after she realized that I wasn't going to talk to her about 13 any of that. She was very, very LDS; the rest of my family, not as much, but she was. “If I can't go to church on a Sunday, then I will be smited.” FC: So has your relationship with your family changed? ET: Yeah. I mean, my grandpa ignored me for three weeks after my dad just announced it to everybody. My grandma tried to say, “Oh, she'll just change her mind. Don't worry about it.” A lot of my family just don't care that much. They're not saying anything either way. They won't come to support me at Davis Pride, but they'll send me a message that says “Happy Pride Month,” June 1st, which is kind of funny, but it didn't really impact that much. My mom was actually relieved when she heard I was gay. She's like, “I'll never have to worry about unwanted pregnancies.” I'm like, “Yeah, you are right,” although I don't even go out of the house that much, so I don't know why she was concerned about that in the first place. But yeah, it didn't change too much in my family. It didn't impact much, although my uncle did say he knew it because he walked in on me kissing Barbie dolls. He's like, “I've been telling you all for years, and you all ignored me saying, ‘No, no, no, no.’” IO: What was coming out to your parents like? ET: Oh, yeah, that's the question, I guess. Well, with my mom, I didn't even come out to her, really. That's the funny thing. I had a screensaver on my phone that was a pride flag and somebody logged into my phone to fix it. The Apple employee, they just looked at her like, “Huh, your kid's gay?” It's just, “I don't care,” and she really couldn't care less. She's like, “I don't want grandkids, this sucks,” which honestly is kind of a mood. My dad, I had to take him to a restaurant to talk about it, and he was just like, “Are you sure you're not bisexual? You'll like men one day.” He tried to do that. Maybe it's because I learned later that he fetishizes lesbians, so he didn't want me to be a part of that group. It was kind of uncomfortable when I realized that, like, 14 “Oh, that's why he insisted so much.” But it was fine, although he laughed when I told him. He's like, “Of course you are.” Although, he did try to convince me otherwise a few separate times, saying, “I want grandkids.” My mom's like, “We can't let this bloodline continue.” But it was pretty much uneventful for those two. Then my dad, after he heard after I came out to him, he just assumed he was the last to hear, which he should have been. He immediately just yelled to the heavens, dumb crap that no one wants to hear. It was kind of funny. It was a little bit frustrating at the time, but I'm not angry about that. I'm angry at the other stuff he does. That's the least of my problems. FC: Did it impact any of your other community spaces, like friends or the Girl Scouts? ET: Yeah. My friends were just like, “Yeah, we know,” because again, they diagnosed me. My best friend at the time was just like, “We've been telling you this for years and you just barely are listening.” Girl Scouts, they didn't care because they were all queer, too, pretty much. I was worried about the Girl Scout leader, though, because she was very stoutly LDS. We were talking and all that, and I know she overheard it. I know she did. Ever since that day, any time we were in a car together and she was talking to another adult, she would talk about her daughter, who ‘used to be her son’ and all that, and how she loves her dearly. It doesn't matter what choices she makes like that; she'll still love her no matter what, and how she wishes she would just talk to her more about any of her struggles. It was just so sweet and all that. Sandy Hunsaker was the nicest, nicest woman. FC: Can you spell that? ET: Yes. S-A-N-D-Y H-U-N-S-A-K-E-R. She has been the person who's most positively impacted everything for me. She is one of the greatest people I've had the pleasure of meeting. She took care of me when we went on a cruise as Girl Scouts. We saved up enough money, which we get $0.40 a box. I don't know how the hell we 15 did it, but somehow, we managed to go and do that. I was struggling a lot mentally and she basically said, “Yeah, I'm your second mom now. You have two, and that's me, I'm your second mom.” She really took initiative and checked in on me. She took care of me and all that, and we comforted each other because she missed her family. She was just with her other daughter, her youngest. We all had a lot of good times. Sandy, she has been the most supportive outside adult role that isn't in my family. FC: So what type of community spaces do you usually find yourself feeling safe in, besides company with Sandy? ET: What type of communities do I find myself in? Well, I'm in all sorts of online spaces. I do commission work sometimes. I'll draw things for people who also are trying to force gay content together. I love doing it except for when it's really weird. I'm like, “Oh,” but I'll still do it if they'll pay enough. There's nothing I won't draw for money. They just have to name the price. I find myself in a lot of online queer communities as well, but I'm not in a ton of communities at this time. I am just kind of living my best life. Just watching shows and drawing. Doing work here and there, making money. Surviving with my cat. FC: What's the name of your cat? ET: Tuna. FC: Oh, cute. ET: She's so funny. FC: That's super cute. Have you ever encountered discrimination based on your identity? I know we talked about some good things, but, sorry to ask. ET: Definitely. Oh, definitely. Here's the story of the one that I tell people the most. The thing that has impacted me the most, being a queer person in Utah, my high school education; all queers in Utah got one. I was in ninth grade. I was outed in a girl's 16 gym locker room by a girl who said, “Well, I might be queer too, so it's okay that I did that.” I'm like, “Uh huh.” They were all looking at me, and I was just getting ready, just changing, minding my own business. Then they were all accusing me of spying on them and all that. I'm like, “You're not even my type, but okay, go off.” News spread in 30 minutes around the entire school that I was gay. I wanted to keep my head down low for high school. I didn't want to deal with that. I had heard stories about some of the things that happened to queer people. I didn't want to be one of those stories, but I didn't have a choice after that. I went to the school counselor, trying to be like, “Hey, she did this thing that was really, really shitty of her to do.” She told me to just deny it and that she wasn't going to do anything, and that if I tried to persist in trying to get her to stop, that I would be punished for bullying. We went on a band trip later; we were going to Disneyland as the band. Was super fun. Shared a room with three girls. I was in love with one of them. It's fine. That same girl who outed me had the balls to say, “Hey, I want to share a room with you guys.” When we said no, we all got reported for bullying, even though she outed us and bullied us repeatedly. The school counselor and all that, they're just like, “Just be nice to her. Why don't you like her?” “She outed me. You were here for that. I was talking to you about that.” She just went, “Well, I mean, you could have just said it's not true.” Like that would have worked in middle school, because I was in ninth grade. Next year, I go to Davis High. Oh, my God, Davis High. Some of the kids who had been to Farmington Junior, they went to Davis High. They spread the word 17 once they got there; couldn't catch a break. But I mean, they had a good community there. They called it the TEA Club. They protected me a lot. FC: Could you tell us more about the TEA Club? ET: Yeah, the TEA Club was so fun. We would meet every Wednesday during lunch. Sometimes we'd order a pizza or something and we would just hang out there. One of my friends, she was a senior and she was taking care of me, sophomore and all that. She'd drive me to school because I couldn't go on the buses anymore. It was too bad. I didn't want my things thrown out the window, so she would drive me to school ‘cause she lives kind of close by. She was always so kind and all that. People would just be cruel and unusual to her, like destroying her locker, just ruining her day, throwing things at her. She would just take it and be like, “One day they'll realize that they're going to be working at 7-11 in a couple of years from now, and then what are they going to do?” Which is probably true, and I don't doubt that. She had so much restraint that I could never. She was the president of the TEA Club, and that's when I met a few other queer people in high school. We were all hiding from bullies together in the sign language room. We had lots of fun when we were there, but then I had to leave because I got transferred to Farmington High when it opened their first year. It was the worst people from Davis and the worst people from Viewmont combined. You're never going to guess who showed up again at that time? No, it wasn't the girl that outed me. It was the school counselor. She transferred to the high school and she was now my counselor again, this time for two more years. Davis High was weird. People threatened to shoot you there, and the school administration would just be like, “Whatever.” “You know there's been school shootings happening everywhere, right?” 18 They went, “Yeah, but it's not us. Not our little community.” Every day during school, I was terrified that one day, one of those kids was actually gonna go for it. There was one in particular that I knew one day was definitely going to get in trouble with the law at some point for a hate crime of some kind. FC: There's a large bullying issue within the whole school. ET: Oh, yeah, definitely. Davis High was a cesspool. Farmington High was bad, but Davis was infinitely worse. FC: I know you kind of talked about how unsupportive the counselors were. Were there similar or different experiences with admin or teachers? How were teachers? ET: Yep. None of them cared. They all turned a blind eye to it because it's not a ‘them’ problem. Or they would actively talk about the LDS Church during class, even though I'm pretty sure that's against the rules, unless you're mentioning it in a historical sense. I mean, there were a couple of teachers who were nice. Their psychology teacher was really good, so was their ASL. That's two out of the 100, but the rest of them were just turning a blind eye. FC: I know you talked about teachers talking a lot about the LDS culture and growing up around it. How did the LDS culture impact you? ET: Yes. I mean, they had a lot of ingroups. Even at a young age, they just kind of were told, “Hey, don't go near that family. Her father got excommunicated for having prostitutes, so you can't go near her because she's tainted or dirty in some way.” So I had a hard time, even when I did good at masking, making friends because of that. They just didn't want to be near me. Their parents said, “No, she can't come over. We know who her dad is. We have seen him too many times.” That was a big thing. A lot of ingroups. Also, one experience when I was at a grocery store, when I was like 13 or 14, really does make me feel weird sometimes. We had just moved to Farmington a 19 few years back, and we saw our neighbor over at the store, and she's like, “Well, what are you doing here?” We're just there, just talking, and she's like, “I never see you at church. What ward are you in?” She's like, “Oh, I don't go to church,” my mom just says offhandedly. She just looks at her in pure shock and just says, “But I thought you were a nice person.” My mother's the sweetest woman. I just don't understand how she can just say something so blunt. My mom cried afterwards because she thought she'd made a couple of friends, but the few people she had made friends with in the neighborhood ditched now because they learned the truth, because she told everybody too. Lots of gossiping is something I've noticed. I don't know what that's about. Sometimes they say that’s probably just what the Relief Society actually does. I don't really know what they did. Nobody knows what they do unless they're there. I have a theory that it's like a secret community cult thing where all they do is make sacrifices for their casseroles to taste good. I don't know. I have to tell myself something to make myself laugh. You laugh so you don't cry. FC: Yeah, I get that. Is there anything else you wanted to add about your childhood or school experiences? ET: Yeah. Farmington High was bad. It was really bad. I almost didn't graduate because I went through a really bad depression after one particular thing happened. I will warn you, it's a little bit intense. One of my friends in middle school, we had been good friends. I won't say his name because I don't want repercussions on this because he's already tried to make my life hell before. He blackmailed me for nudes at the age of 15. I did it because I didn't think I had another choice. He was going to out me to even more people, and I didn't need that, so he blackmailed me and I just took the bait. I did what I thought I had to. Later, he tried to be like, “Oh, no, those are my cousin’s,” which is the lamest excuse I've ever heard. “It wasn't me 20 blackmailing you. It was my cousins.” They were like six and seven, and I had met them. We were in a weird, codependent friendship where I needed somebody to talk to because I was really in bad mental shape, and he just took advantage of that. I stayed in a friendship with him for a little bit, but then I completely cut him off. I said, “No more, can't do this,” because he was making comments about my body that I just couldn't take, especially after what he'd seen. I just couldn't handle that, so I cut it off completely, just completely ghosted. He didn't understand why it was out of nowhere. It kind of was, but with the history, it made sense. I told my mom and she cried for me. She said that if she ever sees him again, he's not having children, that's for sure, or she will hit him with her car, which I fully understand. I told the school about it because they're supposed to help me during those things. They did not. They said, “Well, have you tried not being a slut?” FC: They said that to you? ET: One of them did, and I went, “Okay, all right. I didn't even do anything, but right.” I've come to terms with that. I blamed myself for years, but now I've just kind of like, “Whatever. He's just a sack of dicks, that's all.” He got a full ride to University of Utah. It turned out he assaulted six or seven other women who all had come to the administration and told them. We all became friends because we were all like, “Hey, the same dude did the same thing to us.” He got different people in different ways. Mine was probably the most tame, because he did eventually actually rape somebody. I felt so bad, but I found a sense of community in those girls. He would all trash talk us to each other and all that. He told us, “Oh, well, that girl's crazy. She's just lying to get attention, blah, blah, blah.” 21 I'd just say, “Oh, it's not actually like that. He did that to all of us with each other.” But then when we eventually talked and we realized, “Oh, he said the same thing to all of us. We're all just crazy.” We called ourselves the Crazy Bitch Club. We did make his life hell, though. In high school, we made sure he didn't get a single date for anything. We said, “Nope, we're done,” because we knew he would. He had date raped a girl. We knew he would. We had to stop it. We told everybody who thought, “Oh, he's cute.” We're like, “Hey, be careful. You can do it, but we're going to warn you. If you do, you have to text every 30 minutes to make sure you're okay, because no. Not again. Never again.” Seven of us had. Seven too many, but the school did nothing. He got a full ride to University of Utah, despite them knowing that he had done that. Also, the FBI had a watch list on him because he may or may not know how to build bombs. There is a lot of crazy stuff. FC: How do you think the school could have done better? I mean, in many ways, but? ET: Not putting me in classes with him would have been a start. The easiest thing they could have done was just, don't put me in a class with him. FC: Reasonable thing to ask. ET: Yep. They said, “Sorry, we can't change the schedule after this deadline for any reason. Sucks to suck. You're just going to have to work it out with him later. Just talk about it as friends again.” I'm like, “Oh, yeah. Hell, that's my high school experience. War zone. I thought I was going to be shot, killed, exploded, any number of things, but I survived it. I'll tell you what, the only reason I graduated was pure spite. I almost completely failed because I was miserable. But I said, “If I fail and let him have that control over me anymore, I'm never going to forgive myself for letting him own another piece, because he does have a piece of me that I'm not going to get back. I 22 have to survive and graduate, make it through so I can change this shit. If I'm ever in any form of education, or if I have any authority any time in my life, I will do everything in anything to make sure that will never happen again.” So when Genevera approached me about Davis Pride, I obviously said, “Oh, yes, I'm going to do that.” IO: Could you spell that, please? ET: Davis pride? IO: Genevera. ET: G-E-N-E-V-E-R-A. FC: That's a very unique name. IO: Thank you. ET: Yeah, she is actually the founder of Davis Pride. She's super cool. It's funny. She also likes One Piece, and she thinks Zosan is funny, which is a weird connection. When she approached me, I told her a little bit about it. I didn't tell her everything I've told you, but I told her a little bit about this. She said, “No, no, no, no, no.” She's a really good friend of mine despite being in her fifties. We still hang out all the time, despite me being 20. But she's really supportive and all that. She really said, “I've seen how people get treated. I'm not going to let that happen again. That's the thing I stand for. If it happens once, shame on the person who did. It happens twice, shame on me for not fixing it.” We both had the stance of ‘never again.’ She had seen how trans kids especially get bullied. The trans flag wasn't allowed in the schools and neither was the LGBT flag. None of it was allowed. So we said, “Okay, fine, we're going to make our own community for these kids if they're not allowed to have one there.” So obviously, I volunteered to go to the high schools for the LGBT clubs. None of them have called me back as of yet, but 23 they're pretty busy, from what I can hear. They got lots of stuff going on for them. Lots of good progress and I'm happy to hear it. FC: Did your schools have GSAs? ET: All of them. All the high schools I’ve been to, except for Farmington High: had them for one year, then they had to get security guards to watch the doors because people would come and take pictures, write names. Then there were threats, so we had to shut it down. It's no longer allowed at Farmington High. They've tried to reinstate it a couple of times, but they couldn't have the security guards waiting at the door. It was intimidating. People were getting outed. Even people who were just allies who would come in, they were ridiculed and all that. I did everything I could as the Vice President at Farmington when I was there. But there was only so much one can do to make sure that the kids in there are safe. After somebody tried to hit me with a truck, after I started the club, I thought, “Okay, this is how it is. This is how it's going to be.” He had a Confederate flag on the back of this truck. I don't know what it is, of course he did. I was just like, “Okay.” My family, when I tell them that, they're just like, “Why didn't you do anything? Why didn't you tell us?” I'm like, “It's not like you could have done anything. What are you going to do? Stand in front of his car, yelling, ‘Stop being a bigot,’ as he hits you and mows you over?” There's nothing anybody could do really, except for the administration, who has the power to say, “Hey, hitting kids with cars and driving on the curb to hit them isn't good. You don't have a parking spot anymore. Also, you're suspended.” Would have worked. They could have done anything to fix it, but they didn't do it. Not because they couldn't, but because they didn't want to. Either they agreed with it, or they just didn't care. Either way, negligence or just pure evil, ‘cause it's just as bad either way. 24 But yeah, the GSA, I loved it when it was working, like at Davis High, the TEA Club. It's still there; it's still functioning. They have one at Viewmont. They don't have one in Farmington though; it's the only school in the district that doesn't have one, because they can't. The worst kids go there. They go and there are spies. They post about it to their friends and all that, take pictures, out people, ruin their lives, show their parents, do anything and everything they can to make their lives hell. I thought Farmington High would be a fresh start to not do that, but it wasn't. If anything, it was just as bad. Since I became an adult, I have become a lot happier because I wasn't in hell. I was in a war zone. FC: Right? Definitely a change of environment. ET: I was in a war zone for three years, really four, counting ninth grade. But I was in a war zone and I left. I will never forget that time I was at war, where I thought I was going to get shot in the eighth period biology class, or being hit with a truck, all those times I'd have to stop kids from bullying other kids who couldn't help it. I tried to protect. I tried to be as good of a mother hen as I could to all my little queer ducklings, but I could only do so much. I only have two hands, as a wise woman once said. FC: Has your queerness changed the way that you interact with people in the world around you? ET: Oh, definitely. I have a few. I can tell who's queer and who isn't. Usually I can just spot them, although I think most queer people can. We can just feel each other. We're just like, “Hmm…” It makes it so I interact with people differently. I don't try to impress anybody anymore because I don't need to. I've given up on trying to blend in because it doesn't matter anymore. I interact with people differently because I'm queer, because I'm not going to interact with a guy the same way I do a pretty girl. That's just how it is. I mean, guys don't interact with their guy friends the same way 25 they interact with a girl they're interested in. So of course I act a little bit different, because I'm trying to impress women. I do interact with things different, but it doesn't seem different to me. But to people around me, it does. They're like, “Whoa, what?” Interacting with a queer person is completely different from a straight person because I have to tone myself down, usually because we’re in Utah, even though it's gotten better. I graduated high school two years ago. It's not that long, and yet I was being threatened at that time. That's when it was supposedly a better time, where people were ‘woke’ and whatnot. It's not a better time until that doesn't happen. FC: Do you think that kind of plays into the northern Utah experience? ET: Oh, definitely. FC: Have you ever lived anywhere other than Utah? ET: No, I've been in Northern Utah. I've lived in Salt Lake a little bit; Salt Lake was different, but it was just louder. It was the same thing, just louder and less passiveaggressive and just regular aggressive. FC: Do you feel that difference of cultures from Salt Lake City versus, where else did you live? ET: Yes, yes. I live in Layton now. I've lived in Layton, Farmington, Layton again, and I guess Salt Lake. FC: So how did Layton, Farmington and Salt Lake City differ culturally from each other? ET: Farmington is what I call Karen Central. There's a minivan at every house, all full of kids. So many, they all have six or seven, and they want to pay you $10 for babysitting their seven kids. It's like, “No.” They're like, “Well, they are easy.” They're never easy. They all act like they're on cocaine, but whatever, we get in our exercise. FC: I know, every now and again we have to stretch. 26 ET: But yeah, it's very passive-aggressive, a lot of gossiping in Farmington. Layton, there's more variety because the Air Force base is right there. Sometimes you'll get some people who are like, “Huh, what's going on? Why is this happening?” mixed in with the passive-aggressiveness. It is becoming less and less LDS in Layton; it's something I've noticed over the years, which makes it easier for me to live there. But, for them, it means they become more aggressive, usually. In my experience towards queer people, they become more polarized as they think that they're having their territory encroached on. At least in my experience, that's what I've seen. That does not say that all LDS people are like that. I have met, again, Sandy Hunsaker. She was LDS, and yet she treated me with the utmost kindness without ever saying anything about my queerness. Yet there are some people who think that their religion is a right to critique everybody else's. FC: How do you think the Utah culture, or Northern Utah specifically, is different to other states or other parts of Utah? ET: Well, I know that Utah is already the odd one out when it comes to states. Its rules are a little bit outdated in a lot of ways. Alcohol is the one that most people think of. You can't get alcohol really anywhere, except for a liquor store, unless you're getting beer, so that's very polarizing on its own if you live anywhere else. Anyone from Utah, they go on a vacation to California or Nevada, they'll pass through Las Vegas. They'll go to a gas station and then see in the gas station, there's a bottle of wine. I've seen it several times. It's very funny watching them gasp, like, “What's this doing here?” I made jokes about how if our liquor laws changed a little bit, we could have McWine. I like joking about that type of thing because it keeps me going. Utah has always been the odd one out. They were offered to be a state much earlier, but they refused to do it because they refused to assimilate with everybody. They were always odd. Even when they decided to change their rules to 27 fit in with us, compared to every other state, they're just outdated. Even though it looks and it has the technology of now, culture-wise, it is stuck in the sixties. That's my experience at least. That makes it very hard for queer people, people of color, trans people. It's hard for everybody who isn't LDS and white, usually. That's a very important component because even people of color who are LDS, they get a lot of crap. I know this from my sister being Hispanic, but we're different races, which also is a weird thing with us. Everybody's like, “That's not your sibling.” I'm just like, “Oh, I'm sorry, but she is, whether you say so or not.” “Oh, she adopted then?” It's like, “She wishes, but no.” IO: Okay, I would like a quick break. ET: Yeah, yeah. Take a break. Of course. IO: Ending recording now. [Recording ends for break.] [Recording begins again.] FC: So I think the last question that we were on, until we move to your work at Davis Pride, was what resources for LGBTQ+ individuals do you think Northern Utah needs more of, or just outright needs in general? ET: Oh, there's so much that it needs. FC: Go off, list them all. ET: It needs schools to have better administrators who don't insult children and don't say, “Well, it doesn't matter,” because it does. That impacts the kid's life from that point on forward. It just does, whether they like it or not. Coming out is an experience that people have now that I wish it wasn't. I wish we could all just be like, “Oh yeah, this is my partner,” and that's it; we didn't have to do the show of coming out. That would be great. I personally would have loved that. But until that time comes, where we can all do that safely, we have to come out and all that. So 28 they need better school administrators, people who are prepared to deal with that, people who are prepared to put their foot down and say, “Hey, this no tolerance policy means no tolerance, not just no tolerance for the person who finally fights back after being bullied for months on end.” They need a Planned Parenthood. We need more of that. We need a lot of Planned Parenthoods. We need people who will advocate for children who are queer. We need people who will help, because a lot of the homeless children that are in Davis County, which has one of the highest homeless populations of children in the state, a lot of them are trans. We need people who are going to step in, protect those kids and advocate for them, and get them to a place where they can get the medical treatment and the housing they need along with education. They need that more than anything. Those are the things they need before they can do anything else, in my opinion. We don't need all these new highways. We need this. Everybody's lives depend on that. The future depends on that. I'm very firm on this needs to happen. If there's anything I could do to make this happen, I would. I would go up and talk to Congress, even if it means meeting Rob Bishop again. I have met him a couple of times. He has said slurs every time I have met him. All of them, every one you can think of. The one slur that no one should say, especially an old white man. IO: What are the situations that this is happening in? ET: Well, I've met him once, when we were taking a tour of the Capitol as AP Gov students. He then called Native Americans ‘those orange people’ in front of elementary students. He was retiring, so he thought he could get away with anything. There were literally just small children surrounding us, and a lot of us were adults there, but we were the only adult group. They were all just like elementary students, like, “We're going to learn the legislative process.” Then they 29 just have to listen to him ramble about how he's trying to do what's best for them. He's looking out for their interests, and he's scummy. You can't call Native Americans ‘those orange people’ in front of children, let alone ever. All the teachers were looking at him because he had never done this. He's giving tours every year and this has never happened. But since he was finally stepping away, he wasn't going to do Congress anymore; he's going to finally retire. He had his book out and he was selling it to children who did not have money on them, and he was upset that nobody was buying his new autobiography. It was pretty funny, actually. My entire group from school, we were all queer in the AP Gov because of course we were. We all just mocked him relentlessly in the Q&A. It was one of the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had the pleasure of doing, anything gov or debate related. We just asked questions that passive-aggressively revealed more about him, more like we should have been reporters. We should have had cameras. It was an experience. But I've also met him another time because him and my grandfather are friends after he ran against him. They are not friends. They both hate each other. But they put on the face of, “See, we get along.” Yeah, they don't. They both hate each other, and it's kind of funny. They will both mock each other. I went into that AP Gov meeting with him anonymous basically, I didn't tell that I know who he is. I didn't tell him who my grandfather was, until my teacher ruined it and said, “That's Dave Thomas's granddaughter.” He looked at me just like, “Oh, she heard.” It didn't matter who I was. It's not like I have any authority to do anything. I'm just a civilian in reality; just because my grandfather ran, that doesn't impact me or anybody else at all. But yet he felt like some dirty secret was revealed that he was saying slurs in front of ten-year-olds, so he should have been more worried about that, but 30 whatever. What a guy. So I have met him twice, and he is not a pleasant person, and he has no one's best interests at heart. I'll tell you that much. FC: We're going to do another roundabout. You said you work for Davis Pride. Tell us about that. ET: Yes, Davis Pride Community. I first heard about it on a Facebook event. I don't use Facebook, as I discussed before, but I was just chillin’, hanging out, and then my mom saw it on her Facebook, because she uses Facebook, as every parent does. She saw it and was like, “Oh, my gosh, Eve, they're doing a gay event.” I was like, “What gay event?” She's like, “I mean Pride,” and then she just excitedly shows me. She's like, “There's finally going to be one close to us!” I was living with her and I just moved to Layton. She said, “You should do this, you'd have fun. You need to make friends. This is the easiest way for you to do that. There's other people like you,” and she was just so excited. I'm like, “Okay, send me a link.” I wasn't really thinking anything was going to come of it. Sent me a link. I signed the Google form saying, “Yeah, sure, I'll help.” We met at Layton Park about a few weeks later and I met everybody. I met Dena, Dez, Ever, I met them all. They were all so nice. They all heard my story. They all looked at me like I had been through war, which I know now is because I have. They were so supportive and kind that I had never experienced that level of, “Oh my God, you survived?” It was just so nice. I really connected with them quick. I, at the time, was working for Bank of America at a call center. I took calls for them and all that. Super not fun. Wouldn't recommend it, but I got to work from home and I did it. I like to stay home with my cat. I had a lot of banking skills and insider knowledge, so I offered to help with finances because I also had a lot of other tools. Having been a Girl Scout, I'm really, really good with finances now. I 31 was taking some accounting courses a few years back, so I'm really good at numbers. I don't like it, but I'm good at it. Everybody's telling me, “You should be an accountant or something,” but I'm like, “I know! I'm going to do something that makes no money instead.” So I offered. Genevera said, “I can help you take care of finances, and we can work on getting things like fundraisers, pricing, go through the books, getting us nonprofit status.” Because we were not nonprofit, we couldn't say ‘donate.’ We can't use the word ‘donate’ unless we were a nonprofit, which I think is a weird stipulation. When my mom gives me money, I call it her ‘donating’ to me. Everything's a donation if you call it a donation. We just had to say ‘contribution,’ but we're really close to nonprofit now. We're getting it done these last couple of months, so that's good news. I helped save her money. I helped to run booths. We worked through plans of getting everything done. Davis Pride was really hard to pull off. It was our first year, and it went so well. It went way better than I thought it would. I thought it was going to be a dumpster fire. But actually, a lot of people showed up, and a lot of people came and were happy and were having fun. We had those drag shows that were really fun. We had food trucks. A lot of local businesses came, which was really nice to see the community coming together. My signs weren't done in time; I was trying to make everything also in Spanish because I also speak some Spanish. Not very well, my accent is kind of bad, apparently. Who would've guessed? Living in Farmington, Utah, for as long as I have means that when you speak Spanish, you sound like, [American accent] “Hola, quesadilla.” But I was trying to make signs that looked good in Spanish as well, so I could have both, because in Layton especially, there's a really big 32 Hispanic community that never gets catered to. I was thinking, “Why don't we invite our Hispanic brothers and sisters as well?” Of course, they were all just like, “Whoa, you can do that? Oh, my gosh.” I'm like, “Yeah. I thought everybody thought of this.” I guess a lot of people don't think about catering, but the thing is, queer comes in all shapes, sizes, colors; comes in every variety, so collecting them all is impossible, unlike most Pokemon cards. I mean, you probably couldn't collect most Pokemon cards either, but it's the same deal. There's just too much variety there. So we were trying to get that done, but it didn't get finished in time to implement it. But next year we will be having that 100%, I’m excited. We worked very hard to get that done. Genevera probably spent hundreds of hours making it, easily. I spent maybe 30 or 40. Very light work, compared to her at least. FC: We talked about Davis Pride working its way towards becoming a nonprofit. Are there any contributions that you've made or you hope to make for the LGBT community, or even just goals that Davis Pride has to accomplish? ET: Yeah. Our goal as Davis Pride is to give Davis County, which is arguably the worst off for LGBT people as far as we know. I'm thinking that southern Utah, around Richfield, is also probably really bad. There's nothing going on down there. I know because I have family there. My goal is, of course, I want no one to go through what I did. That's why I joined Davis Pride. I want that to never happen again. My goal is to make it so one queer person, just one, can go through high school completely unscathed. Just one, at least. If I can do that, the rest of life will be easy, but we just have to make one child's life bearable. Because kids kill themselves over this. I've seen it. I've had it happen in my schools. I can't do that. I can't leave Utah, even though I oh-so dearly want to. I don't like living here, but I can't leave until my job is done. 33 I don't believe in anything like God, but I know that this is definitely what I was called upon this cursed planet to do. I was called here to make sure that my suffering helps one person, and I hope it does. It doesn't matter who it is, as long as it's somebody. I want one child to grow up without going through all the hassles I did, without being told, “Oh, you got to wear makeup,” without being told, “Oh, you got to do this or that,” or “You got to become an accountant because you're good at math.” I want one person to grow up and think, “Yeah, my childhood is good. Yeah, I'm queer. My parents didn't care about that. It was a good experience. I didn't even have to come out to them. I just showed them my partner. They went, ‘Very cool, treat them right.’” That's all I want, for the kid to not be bullied for something they can't control. But even for things they can control. Even if kids are cringy, sometimes don't bully them for Fortnite dancing online. They did what they did. They were nine years old. Leave them alone. That's my personal goal. Davis Pride's goal is to make it so kids in Davis County have a more livable life. Genevera's kids go to school. One of them just graduated. None of them are at school anymore, but her goal was to make it so they could grow up knowing that it would be okay, no matter what they chose in life. Ultimately, we want to reduce the number of homeless kids. That's what I think our main goal is. As for financial goals, we don't really have anything right now set. But in the future, I would like to start something where we can get things set up for them, because homelessness is hard enough, but when you're a kid, no! ‘Homeless kids,” is a phrase that should never be said in a realistic context. FC: I know there's a couple organizations in Utah that do have shelters specific for homeless kids, but there is definitely a lack of support for LGBTQ, especially trans kids, that are living on the street. ET: Absolutely. 34 FC: That is definitely something that needs improvement. ET: Yes. Even if it means hand-making binders for kids, or getting clothes for them so they can dress the way they want to without looking oversized and baggy, and just be the way they want to be. Those are all goals that I know Davis Pride wants to do. We want to make sure that everybody is happy, feel safe in their schools. That's our number one. We tried to go to legislation. Genevera has spoken to the Utah government multiple times trying to get something done. She's made a lot of good points, and she has talked to a lot of people. We've done a lot of work trying to get pride flags allowed back into schools, and they keep on agreeing to it, but then going back on it, because they agree to make her go away. But that woman is a hurricane. She will destroy them before she goes away. That's one thing I do know about her: she is determined. She's not going to stop because some dude said he'll do it. She's going to check in on him and haunt him until it is done, so I'm not too worried about that. She's an unstoppable force of nature. I trust that if anybody can do it, it would be her. She pulled off the first Davis Pride. Everybody thought it was going to be shit. “It's the first time, we're going to give it a pass.” But it wasn't. It was surprisingly good. Next year, it's going to be even better. FC: I'm excited for next year. ET: I am, too. FC: I think a lot of us are. Is there anything else that you wanted to add to the Davis Pride section of your story? ET: Not really. Davis Pride has been actually one of the few really good things that's happened. We've had lots of fun. FC: Anything else you'd like to add to your story in total before I start some wrap up questions? ET: I think I got all of it. 35 FC: Think you got all of it. Okay. So these questions hit hard. ET: Okay, I'm ready, I'll buckle up my seatbelt. FC: They are my favorite for sure. So what would you say to your younger self? ET: You're gay. Stop telling people that you like them. You are gay. You don't like them. You are just lonely and want friends. Knock it off. FC: Is there anything you want to say to others going through a similar situation that you went through? ET: It'll get easier, not because of time or because it will inherently get better, but because you'll learn how to let it slide off of you. It's unfortunate that you'll have to do that, but for now, that is what you will likely have to do. If you were going through what I did, you'll have to let it slide and just know that it will eventually become easier and easier to just let go. Also, you should probably seek some help if you're going through what I was going through, and I hope that that person would have somebody to talk to. FC: Just to make sure, is there anything else you'd like to add or share to your story? Still good? ET: Other than an ad for a woman who wants to go on a date. [Laughs] That's a joke. IO: We talked about sharing anything you want to promote on social media, like your animation artwork. ET: Yeah, that would be like, “Here's my Tumblr account for all of my horrible…” FC: Honestly, get it. Seriously though. ET: Connect with me on Tumblr. We can become besties. FC: Do it, girl. ET” See all of my horrible posts that nobody likes. I just shoot things into the void, basically, and nobody ever responds. It's for the best. 36 FC: We also take artifacts, so if you ever wanted to submit artwork or cartoons or anything like that, we can photocopy them and then put them with your story. ET: If you want, I will do that for you. FC: You can email any of the things that you'd like to add to your story, and we will put it in there. ET: Sounds great. I will send you one of the first drawings I have for my webcomic, along with what it will be. If they're interested in satyrs and demon girls kissing, then they can have it. FC: You can submit all of that. The last question is, we don't know if we'll have the funding, but if we do, are you willing to be re-interviewed in 5 to 10 years? ET: Oh, absolutely. If I'm still in Utah, then yeah. But if things aren't going to be fixed in Utah, I have to be here to fix it, so we'll see. I can't leave until things are at least slightly better. IO: I think we are good. FC: Yes, all right. Thank you. 37