Oral History Program Nute Rands Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman September 20-October 11, 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Nute Rands Interviewed by Alyssa Kammerman September 20-October 11, 2021 Copyright © 2021 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: Rands, Nute, an oral history by Alyssa Kammerman, September 20-October 11, 2021, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Nute Rands conducted on September 20, and finished on October 11, 2021, in the Stewart Library by Alyssa Kammerman. Nute discusses growing up with a father in the Utah Air National Guard in Layton, coming to terms with his sexuality and ultimately coming out as transgender in his twenties. Also present is Michael Thompson. AK: Today is September 20, 2021, we are here with Nute Rands talking about the LGBTQ project. My name is Alyssa Kammerman and I'm conducting the interview and with me on the camera is Michael Thompson. Just starting out, so we just kind of like to have everyone just identify their gender and sexual orientation. So I identify as straight and my pronouns are she and her MT: I'm Bi-sexual, my pronouns are he/him. NR: I'm demi-sexual and I'm he/him. AK: Perfect. OK, well let's just start out with where and when you were born? NR: I was born here in Utah. 1998 in November, yee. There was something else significant, but that's beside the point. Not long after my dad was restationed to Mississippi, so I really didn't spend long in Utah, I almost immediately got moved over. AK: Do you remember how old you are were when you went to Mississippi? NR: I was about three months old. Like I said, not long. I was teeny. We were only there for about ten months. So we were back pretty chill very early on and we bounced around a bunch until we ended up at the house that my dad lives at now. So I moved five times before I was two and then I did not move again until I was 19. AK: So, you obviously don't remember anything about Mississippi. NR: No, I've heard stories, of course, but nothing like that. I mean, I can't even go visit it anymore because Katrina destroyed it. AK: I didn't realize that the whole base is gone. 1 NR: Well, so it's not gone, but there's a significant portion of it that had to be rebuilt. MT: Is this in Biloxi? NR: Yeah, Keesler Air Force Base. That's where we were for the ten months. AK: Perfect. Thanks for clarifying that. I just interviewed your mom, so I was glad that you had that on record, the name of the base. NR: You know, I remember weird things. AK: No, that's impressive. So I know that September 11th happened when you were what? NR: Almost three. AK: Almost three years old. Do you remember anything about September 11th at all? NR: Vaguely. Like the most prominent memory I have from that day is just sitting on the couch with my mom watching the news. I couldn't comprehend, obviously, what was really happening. The thing that stood out to me the most is that I'm asking my mom what's going on? Why is this? This isn't a movie, but it looks like a movie and her saying “everything's OK,” but knowing that she doesn't look OK, like the words are not matching the vibe she's giving off. So that is by far my strongest thing. Of that particular event, my strongest memories from that point on was probably the first time I remember my dad deploying. That's the most significant event memory that I have related to 9/11. AK: How soon after 9/11 did your dad deploy? NR: About a year. He deployed three times up until I was five. The last one was when I was five. I vaguely remember the first time. I definitely remember the second time and the third. That one was the roughest because it was the first time I really understood that when he left, he might not come home and I might be without a dad. Then I'd have to take care of Ryan and my mom. I was only five. Like, that's a 2 lot for the five-year-old to understand. That one was rough. When he came back, that was when I ran over the red line. AK: Oh yeah. Would you tell that story? I think it's so cute, I want to get it on camera. NR: I don't know if you know how an air base is set up, but you have the parking lot on the tarmac and unlike an airport they’re the same thing, like there's no giant wall separating the two. So the red line isn't necessarily a physical barrier it's more of a theoretical barrier that sometimes could have the cement barriers there, but generally it's just guards standing. Well, we come in and we're kept on the parking lot side with the cars. We have my grandmother with us and my brother's only like two, three, so my mom's holding him. She has me by the hand and I have giant balloons and we see his plane land; we see it taxi and all that stuff and we see it open. I knew, and my mom still has no idea how I knew, but I knew that he was one of the first people off the plane, and that's all the incentive I needed. I was gone. My mom, I vaguely remember hearing her behind me, losing her crap like, “No, no, there's my child's running away.” I run right past the guards with the machine guns. I didn't even think twice about the fact that they were standing guard. I mean, all I could think about was “He's home.” I mean, he came back alive and I didn't care. Like, I found out later that I had, like, a picture in the newspaper and I was on the news. I didn't care. The fact was that he was home and that was all that mattered. AK: I'm curious, you mention that even though you're five, you realize that there's a possibility your dad might not come home? Did someone say something to you or how did you find that out? NR: It was things that I put together like an accumulation, a combination of hearing conversations that my mom would have with her siblings or my dad siblings, sometimes talking to my grandparents, their friends, just little snippets here and there. And then why is everyone apologizing for him being deployed? Why is 3 everyone so sad? Like what? What is so significant about this instead of it being an actual trip? Like what is so different? I thought about it more, put more thought into it, and the more I thought about it, it was like, “Oh so he might not…” So it wasn't like someone flat out told me. My parents never promised he was going to come home. It's like a doctor's never going to tell you that you're going to live. You don't do that. You can't promise something that you don't know. But they would say he's scheduled to come back this day or his trip is supposed to be this long. I would take all these pieces and it finally came together. We had like the unspoken rule of the military brats is the hope is they come back by two but they could come back by six and they could come back not at all. Weirdly, even the six is better because at least then you have an answer, and unfortunately there's a lot that don't get an answer. So especially being in Layton, there are a lot of military brats in the area. So once I figured it out, everybody else seemed to know that I figured it out. You could just tell I mean, I knew that I was a very antisocial kid because my person was gone, nothing about that was happy. So, yeah, for the most part, it was me. AK: That kind of goes into another question I had, which was, if you remember if you felt proud that your dad was gone or if you felt kind of abandoned? NR: Oh, I felt very proud. Like I always thought it was the coolest thing, because the way he put it, the way we always rationalized it was he was leaving because he was protecting us. He was leaving because he was doing what he could to keep us from harm, but not just us, but everybody else. It wasn't just us. He also did it for the people who were rude, the people who were asses. We were just the privilege. They had the right. That's kind of the way he described it. Even with how I feel about him now, I'm always going to be proud of his service. I mean, he did a lot way more than he should have. 28 years. He was my hero as a kid. He was my everything. So yeah, I was very proud 4 AK: I have two questions off of that. Do you feel like the way he talked about the service kind of helped you to, what's the word, maybe be a little more patient with people as far as like you're saying he was even fighting for the people who were rude or whatever, like even the people who don't deserve it. Did that change how you looked at people at all? NR: Yes and no. Because of how proud I was, I will admit there were a lot of times that I wasn't particularly nice, back at people who just didn't understand. To be fair, I was young and so it wasn't like I understood that difference of just a lack of understanding means that you're just not going to get it. When it came to the people who were rude or who saw my dad’s service as like he was doing it for some amount of power or strength or something, it helped me see the helping people, it doesn't matter what you get. It doesn't matter who it's for. It doesn't matter if you get anything in return. The fact of the matter is that you help someone even if they didn't want it, which that is a reality of being in a military family. I mean, the dependent, the unspoken people who are serving too because we don't especially considering... I'm going to be twenty-three, I don't matter anymore when it comes to the military. When we bent over backwards, we help people all the time we gave more than we took. We didn't have a lot to give, but we tried. We definitely learned that people are going to be asses, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve to be protected. It doesn't mean they don't deserve to be respected and given that piece of freedom, because that's not a privilege. That's a right. AK: Do you feel like that's something that has carried into your adult life? NR: Oh, yeah, it definitely did. Funnily enough, that caused a rift between my dad and I created this sense of justice and honor based on that, but not just from him. I also got it from my grandmother too, because she was ultra-selfless to the point that I'm genuinely certain that she worked herself to death. That's why she died. I wouldn't 5 say 70 is early. But it's early for my family, we generally live a long time. From her I learned service and kindness, they're not IOUs, they're not favors, they are gifts that you give without there being some kind of obligation. It's just you were doing something nice. That was the piece my dad seemed to forget. There was always IOUs or favors with him? I guess with his military service, he did get some like, “I'm going to do this for you. Like, I'll scratch your back. You'll scratch mine kind of a thing.” I think that, level of just helping people kind of got lost in translation, so over the years, we definitely got it. That was one of the pieces where our relationship really struggled, was that lack of understanding on something that was almost the same. AK: Interesting. This might be a little redundant question, but I was kind of interested in how you mentioned that when your dad was gone, you felt like you became a little antisocial just because you missed him so much. Do you feel like those frequent deployments, maybe, made you more of an introvert going forward as well? Or was it just when he was gone? NR: I think I was always really introverted, but it certainly didn't help. I think the thing that it definitely did, the biggest thing is I felt the need to take care of Ryan and my mom, and so I didn't give myself a lot of time for other people, for friends, which that got rectified fairly quickly. Once I got to junior high, to an extent, I still felt this need to make sure they were OK, especially after my mom's stroke. But I felt like how could I possibly talk with people or be happy with people, when the person who I told everything wasn't there, the person who I wanted to tell everything wasn't there. That's definitely had an impact all the way to today, because now when I'm really close with someone, I have a hard time with when they don't talk to me for large amounts of time, even if there's a legit reason, because I'm used to when they don't 6 talk for a long amount of time, that something can be really bad because that's how I was raised. You just smile and grin and bear it. AK: Did your parents do anything to try to help you to feel like you are a part of your dad's service? NR: Again, that was kind of a yes and no. There were a lot of times where they actually promised to try to push us away from the military, like my mom tried to here, “Let's go and do stuff with my family,” that has literally no understanding of military except for my mom's grandfather, who served as a Marine. Besides that, almost had no military understanding. She'd push us more over there. She'd try and push me towards my friends things that like she knew that we were going to have that extreme military influence on our upbringing. But she wanted us to have, at least to the best of her ability, a normal childhood, which obviously that was never really going to happen. But the fact that she tried, I think that was what was really cool. That helped us in a way. The way I define it made us into like bridges where we can understand both that extreme military sarcasm and extreme military verbiage, but we also understand like for lack of a better term, normal people sarcasm. We understand both because my mom pushed so heavily for us to also have friends outside of that and without realizing it, she actually did something that most departments are only just figuring out that they need to start doing. You can't just have all of your friends and family inside of the service because then you lose perspective. AK: Interesting, makes sense. Do you have any questions yet? MT: With your dad's deployments where they all to Afghanistan or was he ever in Iraq? NR: No, he was only in a war zone once. He was at, I can do this, Azores, Crete and Cyprus, I believe it was Azores that was the war zone. So it's a bad standing joke in the Rands side. The Rands side has a lot of military that, yes, he was on 7 deployments, but he didn't really get a full, like, serious deployment until he joined the team because that was when he really did like the serious stuff. But those ones, for the most part, they were either training or I mean, he was a comms guy, communications and networks. So, his job was wiring. He was basically a military electrician for airplanes. That's what he did. I mean, I know when my mom found out she was pregnant with me my dad was sent to Peru. So, I mean, he'd been sent to other places. But after those specific ones where he was activated, none of the typical ones that you'd expect. MT: Okay, so seeing news stories of people dying in Afghanistan or Iraq while they were serving were you able to connect with those stories? NR: To an extent, because my dad never left for years. Those three deployments were a couple of months each. On the team, he was gone every couple of weeks, like this on and off thing constant for those 10 years. It was a pain in the ass, I was the most able to understand is the fear, and knowing that you have no power, you have no say. Your job is to stay at home, smile, and when they come home, “OK, I'm here for you. We're going to do our best we can.” That's pretty much what we did. When we saw the Afghanistan stuff, it didn't have that same like connotation of “Oh our dad’s there.” But we had the concept of like when Katrina happened, that's when we learned to stop watching the news because they'd show this panning angle of the carnage of Louisiana, and that's where my dad was sent. It's just this horrible, I mean, it was bad. Then you see my dad's truck and my brother and I are like, “Hold on, he's there, is dad there?” We lost our shit. I was like seven, Ryan was like four. It took my mom hours to calm us back down. We learned from that point on, no, we don't watch the news like ever. If he's gone, the news is on strictly, you know, happy things or we just don't watch the news. We can read it, maybe, but we do not watch 8 the news. It's a standard that I still do today. So it's definitely had an impact, like, I guess, to answer your question, yes and no. AK: When you say joined the team, which team? NR: The 85 CST WMD, AK: What does that stand for? NR: CST is Civil Support Team, WMD, weapons of mass destruction. Every state was given one including protectorits. That's why there's more than 50, because you know why not? Some states did have more than one like New York and California. I do know that those two because of just how many people and how big the state was, they had more than one. But there's only like three million people here, so the one team was adequate. Their job essentially is where the firefighters abilities stopped theirs started. So when monoxide and fire was clearly not the answer, it was, “OK call the team.” Like some weird powder that you put in the thing. And it doesn't come up with something call the team like extreme natural disasters, they tend to be there. So like Katrina and Ike, if a state declares national emergency, a lot of the teams from across the nation will be like, “Hey, we're not doing our own things. We're not dealing with our own trainings. We can send our people. We can come help you,” because these teams were created because of 9/11. So that's why for me, this team, in a sense, was my dad's direct activation because of 9/11, because this team was created so that if something like 9/11 did happen again, there was a team dedicated in every state to handling situations just like that. The teams across the nation would be able to help each other because before 9/11, departments and things didn't talk to each other I mean that's the reason why, you know, serial killers and whatnot we're able to get away with it for so long is because they just jumped jurisdiction and they'll be fine. But after 9/11, it was like, shit, we have to talk because in Manhattan, the five boroughs, they had no 9 way of communicating between each other because it's never been an issue. We're talking about something that devastated a huge amount of area, and there was no way for these departments to talk to each other. They had to use like ship radios and trucking radios because it was the only ones that were interconnected. After that, it was like, “OK, we have to do this better. We have to communicate,’ which is why you have stuff like APHIS and all those other programs which are not just jurisdiction wide, they are federally wide. So that there's the reason why I got threatened with like 12 years of jail time in the police if I messed with that program is because you have access to every single person that has their fingerprints in the system. You have access to everyone's files in the entire United States and protectorates. That's because of 9/11. This team was just like that, built off that same concept of “We have to do better, we have to be prepared for next time.” They brought together a bunch of people where they considered to be, I don't know, heads of their area. So my dad being communications, he was made the second in communications in that team. That's what he did for ten years, I mean, five years in he was made the lead. But I mean, everyone in that group had a, this is what they are good at. You had five or six, for lack of a better term, grunts where their whole job is, “We protect the team. That's our job.” But there were people on that team whose abilities and degrees were honestly terrifying, like there was this one Captain Gaylee, we called him Dr. Evil. He had three doctorates. He said his least favorite one was public safety. He said it was so boring. I think one of them was like disease…either microbiology or like something like that, something focused on like disease in microbiology that was his favorite. It's like, OK, you were crazy, man, but he was so cool. Like one time, because the team was also really interconnected, they have a great FRG, family 10 readiness group. We had this one get together and he made liquid nitrogen ice cream because he knew how to do it and he happened to have access to these chemicals, and it was like, “This is really cool.” NR: Yeah, because that's the team. AK: How long was your dad on that team? NR: Ten years. So when I was five, until I was 15, so literally the same year my mom had a stroke, he left the team. AK: Oh wow. Was that why he left the team? NR: No, actually, he left in December of that year and my mom had a stroke in July. He was already planning on leaving the team when everything started to go down, mostly because he's the dumb ass that kept failing PT tests. He kept saying it was because he couldn't progress, which technically was true, he had specialized so severely into that area. But honestly, if he hadn't kept failing his PT test, that's probably where he would have stayed until he retired. AK: So where your dad was National Guard, I'm curious how active was the Family Readiness Group for his team unit? NR: Oh, crazy, active. So after 9/11, he was actually made, it's called AGR. Air Guard Reserve. So he was both Active Reserve and National Guard. He got the benefits of all of them and then didn't get any of the negatives. So we got the really great Tricare, but he didn't have to go to drill. He we got the bonus of he kind of works when he works, but you don't have that your long training. You have all these crap ton of training stuff that has to do with your specializations with the team. So it was like we got tradeoffs in it. But he got the bonus. Like AGR is what everyone tries to get when they join the military and it's almost impossible to get. But he got it because of 9/11. So honestly, the FRG within that, in any of the other units he had we never had one that was this tight, like we knew a lot of those members by name. 11 We were in that team for ten years. I practically grew up on that team and there are several members that I knew, not just by rank and last name, but by first name. I knew their kids like we were around them all the time. I actually had a lot of significant experiences around that team, you know, ten years and our life revolved around that unit. Everything we did was around that. AK: That's really cool. I know you didn't live on base, they all live pretty close around you guys then? NR: They live within 50 miles of the base. Not Hill Air Force Base. Fifty miles of the armory. So originally that was in Lehi, but they moved it to Salt Lake because they had an armory built just for the CST in Salt Lake. But before that it was at the armory in Lehi that everyone had to be within 50 miles of that. So if there was a call out they could be there within an hour, roughly. AK: OK, really cool. So I want to go back a little bit to your time as a kid. I want to know, so where did you go to elementary school? NR: I went to Layton elementary school exactly a mile away from my house. My mom was so proud of the fact that she measured that right, it was a whole thing. The place was pretty chill, really didn't have a huge social interaction in the place until I was about fourth grade. I had friends, but like I said, really antisocial, did everything I could. Like, I get close to someone, but it was very kind of leave you over there. Everything's kind of minimal. But in fourth grade there was this this girl, Harley, she pretty much didn't give me a choice. She was like, “We're friends now.” It's like, “But I don't want to.” She's like, “Yea, no suck it up. We're friends now.” And we were friends until she moved away. just before the end of sixth grade, she moved to like Las Vegas or something. I can't remember, it was in Nevada, but, yeah, that was the whole focus. I mean, it was because of her that I came out of my shell and started to develop my social personality, like who I was to other people. That person 12 was still heavily influenced by like specifically my dad's side of the family, because that's the one we spent most of our time around. I felt this need to be very, very, extremely girly girl and feminine because of the influence. My dad's family is very conservative, very conservative, and so I was born female. So it was the dresses, “You better look nice. We're going to give you the hand me downs, which means all the pink stuff you need to wear pink. You look good in the pink.” All of those daddy girl shirts, oh those are necessity. That was the start of like who I was socially was this aspect. It wasn't until probably seventh or eighth grade, I was like, “No, this sucks. This is lame as fuck.” AK: Do you feel like you didn't like even as a little kid, did that feel uncomfortable to you to wear super girly girl outfits? NR: Oh, it really did. I hated it. I always did. I never really understood what it was like talking with the other girls. It was like, “I don't even speak the same language as you. What is this I do not understand,” or they'd be super, “Oh my God. This guy like I like this guy or that guy.” I literally don't have any shits to give at all about any of this or the “Oh what are you going to wear?” Does it really matter, it's a piece of clothing. By the time I got to sixth grade that was when the first group of guys really started to ask me out and stuff. Which was, exhausting because I always wanted to be one of the guys like I always wanted, it's where I wanted to be. I saw it with my dad and his friends. I saw with Ryan and his friends. I was like, “That's where I want to be. I want to have that same, like, super close relationship,” and the girls that wasn't happening. That is not how female relationships work like at all. So I try and be really close with the guys, which all they saw was, “Oh, we're getting friend zoned by you.” I was like, “No I just saw you as a friend. I'm seeing you as someone who I can be close with as a friend. Why are you so butt hurt about the idea of me just being close with you?” I had probably three or four of my close guy friends 13 either asked me out or full on just stopped talking to me because they weren't getting what they wanted. I was like this is bullshit, but whatever some of them were not subtle at all. One of them went so far as to try to pick on Ryan because he thought that was going to get them the bonus. That did not go well for them because, you know, I picked on Ryan. So they're like, “Oh, this would be fine. I can do that, too.” “No. No, don't touch my little brother.” AK: I'm the only one who gets to do this. NR: Pretty much. I earned this right. He's annoying. AK: Did you see? So I grew up with a really conservative grandpa, and I remember any time I would be interested in guy stuff, he’d be like, “Oh, you need to be a little lady.” Did you ever see that kind of little lady syndrome? NR: Oh hard core. I mean, definitely my mom's side, like, extremely like her dad. I hadn't figured it out at this point. I didn't learn a lot of stuff when it came to my mom and her dad until I was closer to 14, 15. But he had this very like, “Oh, I want to join the military. I want to be a soldier just like my dad,” and he’d be “Why would you do that?” And my grandmother would always back him up. Then on my dad's side of the family, like there'd be times that Ryan, who hates getting dirt on his fingernails, hates getting dirty, doesn't like working on things; he knows how to, because, you know, Rands mentality, the guys need to you how to do all that stuff. We'd go over to my grandparent’s house, my grandfather would be giving Ryan all these tasks, and Ryan would just be like, “I don't want to.” Then I'd be there like, “OK, I want to learn, put me in front of a saw, give me a drill. I don't care. Show me.” He'd be, “Go water the grass?” “Really? I'm allergic to it. Like you're going to give me the grass.” Then I'd always get handed off my grandmother. I mean, I loved my grandmother, but it was almost like a kick in the junk. I wanted to learn how to build all these things that I heard Ryan talking about. I learned how to cut paper. Oh, I'm giving a 14 thing of stencils, go stencil. Thank you. No. I want to go learn how to pipe an entire house to be able to use compressed air from anywhere in the house. I want to go learn how to wire a model to fly that it wasn't designed to do when you bought it. Like, that's what I want to learn how to do. But I was. “Oh, go scrapbook.” No, I appreciated the time with her. I really did, especially now, but. AK: Is that your grandma Rands? Not on your mom's side then? NR: Yeah, my mom side, I almost never did anything with her parents. I mean, it was like talking to statues, especially when I started to figure stuff out. I mean, by the time I was nine or 10, I realized fairly quickly, “Your parents don't like people.” I realized that my mom didn't like them, and so I found a game, if you said something about me, she gets mad. Then once I figured out why she was mad, then it went from this fun game to he hurt my mom. My brother and I finally had to sit my mom down like a year ago, and she's like, “You need to learn to treat my dad better. You need to try to be nice to him.” I’m like, he's done horrible things to you.” And Ryan and I we're not upset at him because of what he's done to us, I can give two shits because I don't really have a relationship with him. It's because of what he did to you. It finally dawned on her that this isn't about us. Yeah the roles were definitely very, extremely forced. The worst one was my dad. He taught my brother how to blacksmith, and I asked him if he could do the same for me. He told me, “No, it's a father son thing.” The engine I helped him take apart, I was a backup because Ryan didn't want to. The thing that literally led to what I am doing with my career. I was a backup because he wanted to show his son and I was just not the right thing. I mean any project. He would allow Ryan to kind of do his own thing, but he had to babysit me the whole time. It's like, Ryan showed no interest and I was the one bringing my car over to change my brakes, to do my struts to help me build my computer. Ryan, he didn't want anything to do with it. I've learned I essentially ask 15 him for an extra set of hands, not for the technical know-how, but for that extra set of hands, because I built all sorts of random crap and but my dad I was, “Well if I can't teach him.” I think that was by far the thing that I didn't realize when I was younger, but the older I got, it was like, “Why am I different than Ryan? Why are you putting me in a different category?” AK: Do you were remember how old you were when you started kind of processing those questions? NR: It had to be probably junior high because that's when puberty hit. I started to get treated very differently because before then it was oh we're both just kids. But then junior high happened and it was, “You're a young woman now.” I hate that phrase. I hate it so much. It's like, “You're a young woman now you need to sit right, you need to dress right, you need to have the right posture. You need to talk right. You can't say those things anymore. You need to do womanly things.” I mean I was raised in Utah and so my best chance for friends were wards and stuff. I wasn't Mormon. I never have been. But I did young women's and I went to the girls camps because that was really the only access to friends you had when you grow up in a neighborhood like mine. I mean, I found some good ones in there, but not many. I had so many bad stories in those. It was right around then and watching as Ryan started to go through stuff as his voice was starting to change and as he was starting to grow his beard and all that stuff. “Why am I not treated like that? Why do I have to? I don't like this, I don't like the fact that when I talk to other guys, all they can see is my chest. I hate the fact that what I try and have an actual relationship with a guy like a friendship, all they can think about is getting in my pants.” I'm genuinely trying to learn something and I get that, “So darling, let a man do it.” “Honey, I know how to do it better than you do. I've been doing this since I was a 16 kid. You can shut up now.” I had to prove myself at every turn twice as much, even though I had the same know-how as everyone in the class. NR: I think the first time that I actually felt like I was seen not my gender, but for my know-how was shop class in junior high. I get in there and he asked straight up, “Do any of you have any, like, experience with power tools?” I'm like, “Ya I do.” He says, “OK.” I'm like, “Do I really have to go through all the training videos? I've been using these power tools since I was a kid.” Like, I'm talking I used my first Miter saw when I was five and he's, “I usually don't do this,” but he brought the whole class into the shop and he's like “Cut this for me,” and I take it and I do it. “Okay.” He takes me to the band saw, “Cut this for me, OK?” After two or three more, because obviously, like stuff like the tables saw was the strict, no. And I had never used a planer. So that one did require a couple of minutes to show me how to use that. Once I'd been shown it was fine. But everything else, sanders, all of it I used at least once before. He was just like, “OK, the shop's yours. I'm comfortable with you going. you give me your designs, you tell me what you're going to do with it. You check in with me, we're good.” Immediately, one of the guys is like, “What the hell? Why is she getting special treatment?” He's OK, “You can't even tell the right end of a hammer. She knows what she's doing and it's obvious she knows what she's doing. She knew how to do all the safety procedures without being told, I am comfortable with this, and if the school is going to fight me, then they'll kind of fight me like.” From that point on, every class, because I took every shop class I was able to. I mean, every time I'd get in there he’d be like, “All right, what are you doing this time?” Like, I'm going to build this and he's “Alright let's do it. You need any help let 17 me know. If there's any pieces that you need help on, cool, let's do this.” That was probably, like in school that was by far the most significant. My gender doesn't matter. I know how to build this, and that's all that matters. I'm a set of hands. AK: What was the name of that teacher? NR: Mr. Toone. He ended up dying in a car accident or a motorcycle accident about two years after I left junior high. It was kind of lame. AK: So you obviously did learn some of those, quote unquote, kind of like Guy Things, according to your dad, of like working with power tools and that kind of stuff. Was that just because you had asked him so often? Or where did you learn that? NR: It was partially that, partially Ryan didn't want to. Also, my grandmother, his mom, she was one of five daughters and her father wanted to pass on his trade but had no sons. So he taught his daughters and in turn she taught her daughters. It passed down this thought process of at least teaching basic stuff to even the daughters. It was the specialized stuff that it got, well, I can't think of a person in the entire Rands family that doesn't know how to use a basic power tool. I can't think of a single one of us that doesn't know how to find a level on a wall, find a stud, knows how to lay grout. I mean, most of us have this basic idea, like we all just know and it's if you don't know, you'll learn or you'll learn fast because you help on projects. Go do this.” “I don't know how.” Then you're gonna learn real fast and then I'm gonna hand it off to you. I was using the tile saw by myself when I was 12 because it was, “We need a set of hands and I can't babysit you. So you better figure this out now, and if you lose fingers, then I'm going to cuss you out the entire time on the way to the E.R. because you're the dumb ass. Just figure this out because I need an extra set of hands.” That's just how it worked. It was like, “Cool, I can handle that. I can be an extra set of hands.” I always like the shop mentality. I love it because I get in there 18 and it doesn't matter what I'm wearing or what I identify as, the fact is I need an extra set of hands. You can hold tools. Let's do this. AK: That's super cool. So it sounds like your dad was trying to kind of reinforce those conservative gender roles. Did your mom, how'd she teach you about gender roles and everything growing up? NR: Not like, as heavily as some of my friends and whatnot. She was very, she grew up very tomboy, so she liked to be independent and she wanted Ryan and I, both of us, to be independent, be able to take care of ourselves. So while she didn't have the know-how necessarily to take care of some of these things she wanted us to, and so she made sure that not only did we know how to cook, we also knew how to change our own tire. We knew how to do our own laundry. We were doing our laundry when each of us turned 12. At the same time, we also knew how to balance a checkbook. Like she made sure we knew how to do all of these things because she didn't see it as, you're man or woman, you need to know how to do this. No, you're going to be an adult. You are going to be a member of society. I don't care if you end up being a stay at home mom when she was talking to me. You need to know in case something goes down how to do these things. We learned real fast that Ryan can barely boil water, and I can't load a dishwasher. Like I can organize just about anything. But you hand me a dishwasher and it's like kryptonite. Like I can make twenty dishes, make it look full. My mom or brother walks up and goes, “Wow,” and fits another hundred dishes in there. I tried, man, they're just like, “We know.” Ryan's like “I made mac and cheese,” and I'm like, “Good job man.” I'm like, “I made a creme brulee that's Oreo flavored,” and my mom's like, “Awesome.” Ryan's just, "Okay." AK: Fantastic. What's the age difference between you and Ryan, by the way? 19 NR: Almost three years. Like he's born July of 2001 and I'm November of 1998. So it's technically two years and nine months, but it's essentially three years because we have two school years between us. So, well, one school year between us, so when he was a sophomore in high school, I was a senior. Yeah, that makes sense somewhere. He was a really, really young senior and I was a really old senior. Because he turned 18 after his senior year. I turned 18 at the beginning of my senior year. It was very weird. AK: So you're a November birthday. That makes sense that would be kinda hard. I feel like you have a question about school? MT: Was elementary school K through 6th? NR: Yeah. MT: OK, and then junior high was 7th, 8th, 9th? NR: Yeah. MT: What junior high did you attend? NR: Fairfield Junior High, one of the oldest ones in Davis County. It's a shithole. It's so bad. They renovated as if that was going to make it better. It did not make it any better. The air conditioning never worked in the heat, it worked hopefully, like it was so bad. I called it the dead zone because you had the cafeteria, like you had this hallway, right? You had the cafeteria and the gym and the doors were parallel to each other. It was a dead zone because literally the bell would ring and no one could get through because they decided to put the doors right across from each other and the hall was only like, as wide as this room. So it's like you have 900 kids and you have half the school on one side of this hallway and the other half on the... How exactly do you expect this to work? But I actually I learned a lot in junior high, like both about myself and about others. I definitely learned a lot like in junior high. In elementary school, it was like 20 keep quiet and gradually start to learn socially. But in junior high almost immediately, right off the bat, I got to this level of, you know, my basic characteristic of my personality is anger. That just became my main, this is how I handle everything. About four months into my seventh grade year, I had one point where I got so mad that I like, blacked out. From that point on, I was like, “No, no, I need to find a way to calm down. I need to find a way.” So gradually, through junior high, it wasn't great. I had more mess ups through junior high. By the time I got to high school, I found this somewhere between laid back “I don't give a shit” and anger. I just sat right there because the anger wasn't going anywhere. But if I just gave it this laid back, “OK,” it made it so that I didn't get explosive on things that didn't need that. I could be outwardly angry without being inwardly angry, which ended up working in a weird sort of way. Like that apparently had more of an impact than I thought it did because, thinking back on it now, I wasn't really picked on it at all, I wasn't in elementary school, it was kind of like I was just there. In junior high I can count the amount of times I was picked on one hand. Ryan can count it on one finger. It wasn't until he was in ninth grade that they were talking about a legend of Fairfield called the She-Demon, and they were talking about how, “Oh, don't mess up, don't lie, because the She-Demon will get you.” Ryan's like, "I have no idea what the hell you're talking about." They start describing it. Ryan is like, "That's my sister. Like that is to the T my sister. Like, you're describing blond hair, taller. That's my sister." And they're just. "What?" He talked to me about it and we put two and two together. It was like by the time he got to junior high, I was in my last year and one person picked on him, and at that point it was, “oh, no, no, you can't pick on him because she'll kill you.” That was the standard, like he wasn't touched through junior high. If nothing else, I made sure he was good. So, I mean, I guess I did my job in a way that also made people... I talked to several people after junior high who 21 were like "Yeah, I was too terrified to talk to you." What did I do? Like what? But yeah, junior high was definitely a big cornerstone of my personality. That realization of I can be angry, angry doesn't have to be just something that I do sometimes. It doesn't mean it's bad. I just find a way to make it good. I can do this. I definitely started taking on more of those masculine attributes. I took care of myself. I got in my fair share of fights, most of them verbal, but a couple of them, I totally didn't hit someone. And I sort of take on more of those aspects. But at the same time, I was also taking on more of those female characteristics physically. I literally was throwing people for a loop. I've been told on several occasions where I got told by teachers to "Act like a lady." “No, that's boring. Why the fuck would I do that?” I was told I didn't sit right. Or they pushed me, “You need to get all dressed up.” I’d get dressed up and it'd be covered in the skulls and they'd be, "I'm not sure whether to be happy that you chose to dress up at all or chastise you because you chose to do it in the most snarky, smart ass way you could find." I did skulls, I wore six inch heels because, “You want me to wear heels? Ok, cool, then I'll wear the tallest heels I can find and I won't just learn how to walk in them, no, I'll learn how to run in them because I won't get slowed down.” I hate being incapacitated by what I'm wearing, which is a huge aspect of female clothing. It's a pain in my ass, really I have to wear a piece of clothing that I can't bend in. If I lean forward the whole world can see everything, like this is bullshit. It was like a struggle between how do I appease the people around me who seem to feel the need to control what I look like because of my gender, and how do I satisfy that piece in my head that's “I just want to build shit. I just want to have guy friends that I can sit here and talk shit with. I don't care who's going to prom with who. I don't care if you're dating that. Good for you. I'll support you.” You have polka dots, yay? Is this a good thing? I've gotten to the point where I ask, this happened, are we happy? Are we sad? Like, I need to 22 know how to react in this situation. Then I get the "Why you gotta be so mean." “I'm not I just, I don't know what you want me to do with this information.” So there was always that struggle of “How I do both?” High school was, oof. That one was even more because while I was like just starting to take on the female aspects, it was, “You're a woman now. You need to think about dating now, like you really need to start thinking about dating now.” I have no interest in guys, not a single iota of interest in guys. I mean, I've had semblances upon them, that's where the demi-sexual comes in, which is a pain in my ass. But 90 percent of the time, it's like, I see no appeal whatsoever, like. Cool. I think he has a nice shirt, he styles his hair well, I guess. I think the first time that I realized that I wasn't straight and, I guess this is kind of important. It was my summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school. I had this friend. I was super close with them, we went from like zero to 60 almost immediately. We went from just standard acquaintances to just full on, like, best friends, inseparable. She was a junior at NUAMES and I was a sophomore, because she came in her second year instead of starting in her sophomore year, from Northridge. We were super tight and the more time I spent with her, I'd had this happen a couple other times when I had really close female friends, where the closer I got with them, the more I felt, almost like a pain of jealousy when they would have really close other relationships. I didn't understand why. But with guys, it didn't matter like, “Oh, you have other guy friends, okay cool, like whatever.” But with girls it was... “But what about me, am I important? Like I'm dedicating all this time to you, why do I feel like I need more? Like I don't understand.” And with her, the time where it went the most like the highest level if that makes sense, where she was actively pining for a guy, and I mean, I was being supportive because if nothing else, I'm supportive. Just the whole time it was like it 23 hurt because I'm like, “I really want her to be happy, I really want her to do well, how do I tell her that I don't want her to do that? How do I tell her no, please?” I never found a way. We ended up going to prom, but with two separate people. I didn't want to go at all. But we were supposed to meet up before and like, get like our hair and stuff done and she totally bailed, like essentially stood me up, didn't even text me, nothing, just totally abandoned the concept. Then between my sophomore and junior year, she just stopped talking to me completely, completely ghosted me. That essentially, for lack of a better term, it was my first real heartbreak, because and I didn't even understand that it was that. So I'm trying to struggle through the fact of, “Why do I feel this intensely about someone who was my friend?” And also, “What did I do wrong? Did I do something?” It was in my junior year because I was very, very closed off my junior, I barely had any friends. I didn't really start having friends until close to the end of it because I was just “I don't know how to handle people right now. I don't know how to socialize with people that I have a semblance of... Maybe I like women.” I came out to my mom as bi, like I think this is what I am. I think this is where I fit. We had a bunch of talks about it and it seemed to fit. It seemed to be appropriate. So I had this, “Did I scare her away? Like, did I make her uncomfortable?” I found out almost a year later, my Mom thought I knew, I did not, but my dad had grabbed her ass, and I had no idea, like she had stayed over the night several times and I had never known. So it could have been that. I mean, it could have been a number of things, it sucks. But you know it's whatever. At the end of my junior year, we have GSA, but I wasn't even allowed to join because the girls who ran it, they're a set of twins. They're assholes. They were super just no. I also met, at the time they went by Kali, but now I refer to them as Scar because they're non-binary. But I met them then too and I got really close with 24 them. The twins hated it because, "Oh, no no, Kali's our friend." But now Kali has more in common with me because we both have this love for metal. We both had this love for what I call the hyping each other up. Like you either piss off or excite one of us. We are literally, it’s like we energize each other. So whatever energy one of us gives, we take it and fight and give it back and this just goes back and forth until you have this like just rage of energy within these two people. That's how we did everything. Like once we found out that we had that same taste in music, like the twins had no chance. I managed to go to one get together in GSA. That was by far the funniest thing ever, because I get there and we went to like the park or something and I show up and I'm, of course, I'm wearing my cloak and I have like five people come up to me and go, "I was too scared to ever come up to you, but I love your aesthetic. I love your vibe. I love your whole thing." And it's like, “cool like whatever.” The twins hated it. They hated it so much that I never even heard a whisper about GSA again. “Wow, you are petty bitches.” I wasn't too hurt about it at the time, but I talked to Scar about it now. And they're like, "Oh yeah. I was a part of that, like I was a huge part of GSA. If I'd known that you were kept out purposefully, I'd have to fought it tooth and nail." Honestly at the time I was still struggling on what it meant to be, I was struggling on who I was. So the idea of forcing myself into something like that I was still struggling with that. I was raised in a super Mormon neighborhood. I never was Mormon, but everyone around me is, "You are female, you like men," and now I have this voice that's, "But do you?" But I wasn't ready to completely cut off the idea of men at that point. I wasn't ready to do that. I dated a couple of guys in High School, but, never lasted more than a couple dates. AK: So I wanted to clarify, real quick, what is GSA? 25 NR: Oh, Gay Straight Alliance. Most high schools nowadays usually have one and junior highs actually for that matter. Elementary schools usually a little too early for most kids to know that or fight for it. MT: I feel like it's probably more parents and teachers don't want to. NR: Yeah, that's fair. Whereas in junior high, the kids, whether the teachers and parents want them to or not, they're gonna fight for it. And then high school. Yeah, at that point, the kids are just like, “Fuck you, like we're going to do our own thing.” It's not called the GSA in universities, but it’s the same basic concept. It's like the LGBTQ center and stuff like that. MT: Can you describe what demi-sexual is? NR: Oh yeah, totally. So demi-sexual means essentially I'm more attracted to personalities than I am physical characteristics. The flag is almost identical to the asexual flag because it's easy to mix up the two because generally demi-sexuals don't have an attraction to someone just meeting them on the street. Like hookups. They don't work because there's nothing there. Generally I only develop feelings for people who I've known for a long time. At least more than a couple of months, someone who I've had time to get to know, essentially get to know their personality. Online dating is pretty much impossible. I can count on one hand the close friends that I have that I haven't developed feelings for. It's very frustrating. It has its bonuses, but at the same time it's a pain in the ass because essentially by the time I do have feelings for them, I know most of their ups and downs sides because I've known them for so long. But at the same time, it's “But you're my closest friend. No? Can we not do this?” AK: Does it apply only to women or to men sometimes too? 26 NR: It's definitely female leaning, but when I have like a really strong connection with a guy, it can happen too, if that makes sense. I mean, it has to be like super, super tight, like Twin, for instance. But that's later in the story. AK: Okay, that's the name, Twin? NR: No, twin is what we're referred to as in the server because we're so similar. His name, well, I call him Ghost, but he likes to go by Lee. His legal name is Bradley, but he's not a Bradley. So I call him Ghost because Lee's my Dad's name. So we kind of have this understanding that I call him Ghost because that's his great name. So he's a Ghost or Twin or Dorkface Number Three. AK: Do you want to talk about that now? Or do you want to wait till later? NR: I kind of want to finish up the story I was starting because impressively, I actually remember, I'm honestly impressed that I remember where I was at. So I was finishing with high school. So just after high school, that's when I started college. Of course in college, it's like you really don't meet friends not like the same way you do in high school, especially considering I was computer engineering to start, and I was there for not even the full semester. I switched immediately to computer science and then switched immediately the next semester into Psych because I took one programing course. I fell asleep and didn't wake up for any classes. MT: And to clarify, you went to NUAMES for high school, correct? NR: Yes I did. I was the 13th graduating class. I thought that was really cool. MT: That is cool. NR: But yeah, we were the seventh that had graduated at Weber-Davis, because before that they were like a satellite thing. It was weird. At that same time, just as I had left high school, I was still working at Burger King. I hate that fucking store. But I had met this guy named Reyes, and I met him in passing, I'd known him, we had worked in the same building for over a year at that point. But then I got switched to nights 27 because I'm like, well I have morning classes, I need to make this work. So I switched to nights and gradually we got closer and closer and I pushed to become a manager. Then we were both the same pay grade and he pushed it first. But I genuinely thought that he was a good guy, that fit really well and whatnot, and so at first it was... he was definitely a forced kind of attraction, if that makes sense. Like, I forced myself at first to like him. But then I had forced it, it was there. And as awful as he was, I learned so much. For one, like I said, severely leaning toward women. After that, I actually came out as lesbian. Three months after breaking up with him, four months? Roughly. He was another shit show. I also learned more about my worth. I learned how toxic a strictly Catholic Hispanic family can be on someone who is clearly gay. The best way I can put it without making anything weird is... let's just say it was really obvious. Really, really obvious. We'll just leave it at that. Point being essentially we were each other's beards. Do you get the term? MT: Yes. AK: No. NR: OK, so in the LGBTQ community, when somebody is your beard, they are your way of protecting yourself socially. For instance, it'd be me dating a guy because socially, visibly, I still look female. They're protecting me because I'm Transgender, protecting my social image. It happens a lot more than people like to admit. A lot of times sometimes the beards are not known or they're subconscious, not on purpose. Like for instance I think we were each other's. Neither one of us were willing to admit that this wasn't right. Like, there were pieces that just didn't fit. He was raised Hispanic Catholic, and I was raised, not Mormon, but in this very Mormon area with a very conservative family. So it just had a very resounding impact. 28 By the time that one ended, I'd love to say that was a loving relationship, but it really wasn't. Of all the things I did learn, the biggest one was that I learned my worth through the worst way I could think of. In that time period, about a year after breaking up with him, which is actually when I started working with you, I essentially had to rebuild who I was because he had destroyed it. The coming out as lesbian was that first step of “Fuck you society, I don't fit, this isn't where I belong.” That was the biggest one, and then further furthering my knowledge in psychology. I actually had a falling out with Scar, Kali at that time, roughly. We're actually really good friends now but both of us, I don't think either one of us were ready to have that really close, like sibling-like relationship at the time. Both of us were recovering from serious emotional trauma and we were trying to laugh it off as being whatever. We didn't talk for a year and a half, because, to be fair, they were the one that did have the biggest fuckup, but it really could have been either one of us with how much we were trying to force things to be OK. They just happened to be the one that had the fuck up. So I came out as lesbian and I did date a little bit. There was Annie there for a minute, which was that I was allergic to tree nuts. She was celiac, that didn't go well. Essentially to even kiss her, I had to brush my teeth because the main alternative for celiac is tree nuts, and the main alternate for tree nuts is gluten. So, that didn't work at all. She is how I figured out I was demi-sexual because I met her online and a great person had a lot of potential there. I love how she said that she'd had a rough life growing up in Park City. That was honestly adorable. It was like, "Oh, I know what it's like to struggle." Your grandparents paid for a four story house that you've lived in most of your life. Really? I was raised a military brat who like was raised on ramen, mac and cheese, and Hamburger Helper. Like, “I really don't want to hear… like, wow.” So there was, that was a whole thing. But it was 29 afterwards that it had dawned on me that, romantically speaking, I could do all the steps right. Like I'm down to be the good partner. But when it came to actually like being physically intimate, there was nothing there. Once I actually got to know her personality, because the inklings had started like the attraction was there, and then I found out she was anti-gun and anti-marriage and not particularly loving of the military. I was joining the police at the time, and it was just “This isn't going to work. I like my guns, like a lot, and I do want to get married at some point.” I think the coup de grace was when her dad at a restaurant did this *snaps fingers*. It was like, “No, you did not just do that in front of someone who’s been working on the customer service side for like six years.” He was like, "Oh, but he's a family friend. It's fine." No! And when I called him out on it, he was just, "Oh, well, we have an agreement." Yeah, if I go to a place that my friend works, everything I can to be the kindest table, not the asshole. She was defending him "Oh, he was a waiter." Bullshit. No, he wasn't. Not with that. There was no way he was a waiter. So that pretty much killed it. That was how I, like, I started to put all the pieces together of, “Maybe I'm not just straight up lesbian, maybe there's another component here that I'm missing.” Obviously, the demi-sexual was still just a step in the right direction. I was starting to join the police, so I was terrified to express who I was as a part of the alphabet mafia. I was terrified to allow them to see who I was because I was so worried, especially being raised military. You were not a part of that community in the military. You just don't. I mean, I watched my dad pretty much suppress this entire piece of who he was because you just don't. “You're not gay. You're not lesbian. You’re not bi-sexual. You are not a part of the community. You are straight and you will marry a woman or a man.” The gender roles in the military are so rigid and it's not all that different with the police. It's actually really similar in 30 that concept of “No, you are this.” I mean I was terrified and they are like, "Oh, are you dating a guy?" And it’s like "No, I'm not dating a guy." Just keeping it like, answer the questions with just this low level no, no, no. I ended up asking someone, “What's Ogden PD's opinion on the LGBTQ community?” He's, "We don't give two shits!" And about five minutes he's, "Your Lesbian, aren't you?" I think this is what I get for telling a police officer even an inkling of something, when their job is to investigate. It was so funny because after that, he kept showing me pictures of women on his phone, like, how does she look. Does she look cute? And it's like, oh, my God. I'm glad you're supportive, but could you like stop? But it was refreshing to know that they didn't care. But obviously, the LGBTQness had nothing to do with why I left, but I am certain that if I had stayed in the police, I never would have come out as trans. That community is not conducive of that. Maybe if I'd come out before, maybe, but not while I was there. I mean, all I was ever seen as was "Oh, you're the female officer. Oh, we have to treat you differently. We have to be delicate. When we measure you for your vest, it has to be like this. When we hand you a gun, it's like this. When we hand you the badge, its, are you sure?" I mean, everything was, it was like they were treating me like a child. Then I get to the academy and it's even worse because the men and women are told to run together. Because of all my sinus issues, Shit, I cannot, I can't run. I mean, I'm barely learning how to run with my mouth closed because I couldn't before my surgery. This idea of running with my mouth closed was like... It was like the epiphany of the year, because, I'd never been able to do it. So I'd learned how to run with my mouth open. I was always in the back, on everything, all of the exercises, I was always in the back, even though it was this "Oh, we're going to be support, we're going to support each other." I'm not dumb. I could hear every single one of those guys, "Ugh. God damn it, we have 31 to keep up with Rands, we have to keep going because of Rands, we have to slow down because of Rands," and it's just... thanks. It's not like I'm not trying. It was, "Ugh, the female officers we have to slow down for them, we have to be careful around them, like we have to change our searching procedure because of them," “Are you done? Like, can we be done now? This is just bullshit.” Then we start doing the search and seizures, and that's where it got funny, because they were, "Oh, this is how to search a bra." I've always hated the center bras type, and so even when I did wear like a really hardcore structured bra, I wore the razorback ones, not the ones with the proper straps across the shoulder. So they went to go do the search, and the way you're supposed to do it is they will follow the strap all the way back, go down to the band, across the band. But they're just like they feel the strap all the way up the shoulder and then they lose it and they're just like, "Where'd it go?" “It's just, it's in the center of my back.” They're, "They do that?" I'm like. "Sir, you're married. Like, how do you not know this. Your wife has never worn a razor, like a sports bra. Like nothing?” MT: "You've never gone bra shopping with your wife?". NR: Like, nothing? I'm just like, “How do you not know this?” One of the other days, one of the girls she was wearing two sports bras because she was heavier in the chest, and she's all, "Oh, you have to check really hard in the band." He's like, "Why?" She's like, "Oh, because I'm wearing two of them." "...why?" Oh, you poor child. So I ended up creating a document for them that had the main types of bras, and how to search them. Like what a bralet was versus like a bodice or the different types of normal wear, because you have multi ways. You have your standard bra, you have your razor back, your sports bras which can have multiple layers. Then don't forget your strapless, which are still going to have, you know, like one of the thickest bands, but no straps up here. You can hide so much shit in here if you can manage 32 to keep it to stay. Then you have like full on, corsets and then don't forget to mention like, the stick ones. You might want to just call for a female officer on those because essentially you're just. Yeah. It was so funny for all of them. They would have us like hide weapons on us and have each of us find them. I hid a full fucking knife, a full, this long of a knife in the back of my band. They never found it. I hid a pair of scissors here, never found it. I hid so much shit all over. I even one time put it like up here, never found it. It's like, okay, you actually have to, like, it isn't just this. When they search they have to go hard. I'm not going to lie, but when I was doing the men, I was like, “OK, how do I do?” Like when they were going like the crotch search, he's like, "You have to go hard." I'm like, OK, and so I went hard. I'm just, “I have to check and make sure there's nothing down there like what do you want me to do?” The best part of that one is I was doing it for one of the guys. We were only doing a terry search, which is the minimal version versus like the hard core search. He's like, "I bet you're enjoying this. You know, searching a bunch of guys." I'm like. "Uh, sir, I'm gay." He didn't talk for like twenty minutes, like, just didn't say a word. It was like, “OK, you just stew on that one. Like, I'm sure you think you're real smart right now.” After that point he was just, "I'm sorry Rands." It's like, “It's all good.” And he's. "I'm still really sorry." I'm like, "It's fine." "I, I assumed... I'm really sorry." I was like, "OK, stop, like you're making it weird now. Like, once would have been just fine but you keep apologizing.” No one knows how to handle the LGBTQ community, especially in Utah. They feel this need that if they do... they're trying to be good. They're trying to be understanding, but they don't actually understand anything. They're apologize central. All they do is they sit and apologize for 12 years and it's like, “OK, for the love of all that is holy. Can you stop, please? You're making it very weird now. Please, just stop.” What was cool, though, after I did, in a weird way, 33 come out to them, it didn't matter to anybody at the academy. That part was cool. It mattered at the department a little bit, but not at the academy. I left for completely unrelated reasons, go officer deaths. Afterwards I ended up dating one more guy who was actually a really close family friend, childhood friend, like I'd known him for years. I knew he liked me. His name is Brooklyn, and part of me was wondering, "Do I really not like guys, or was Reyes just that bad." I even told Brooklyn straight up. "This is kind of what I'm doing here." It lasted like a month and a half, and then I wanted to stab him in the face with whatever I could find in the room near me because he kept doing... I don't know-how much you subscribe to astrology but he's a Capricorn. He had to be the savior in every situation. He had to solve everything. It's like, "I fix things, that's literally my degree” Stop. You're not going to get the last word, because I'm going to sit here and debate with you and I'm going to tell you that you're wrong." I broke up with him right around the same time that I came out as Norse Pagan. That was actually a huge step in the right direction, because Norse Paganism is actually hyper supportive of the LGBTQ community. Most of the pagan religions are actually because, in the Hellenistic or the Greek side, you have Zeus who pretty much did everything possible to get in women's pants, regardless of who he looked like. He was even a bison at one point, he didn't care as long as he got in their pants. In the Norse side, you've got Loki, who's the definition of gender fluid. He was everything. You had men dating men, women dating women, things dating things. It's so just open. I think that was like, “So this is OK. This is good.” And that level of like ancestral worship is a part of it. So I felt like I got my grandmother back in a weird sort of way, like I was able to, like, really communicate with her again. Shortly after that, I joined the server, which is where I met Twin. Essentially, I met a group of people that for the first time in my life, I was truly me, I was one of the guys 34 right off the bat because, I mean, we knew each other online purely. We'd never met in person. And that didn't matter. So I joined the server in November. I was made an admin almost immediately after, I'm almost certain that was because I was female, but let's, just going to sidestep that. I met Twin in December. At the time, he was engaged to a girl named Becca, and he ended up going away for I don't know, two, three weeks, between the end of December to the beginning of January. After he came back it was as if no time had passed and we became super close, like almost immediately. We were telling each other things that each of us had almost never told anyone. I mean, he came out to me as Bi-sexual. He'd never told anyone. He's one of the only people I've told anything that had to do with Reyes. And he was the first one that I told that I was trans. He was the first one that I expressed a lot of my concerns and whatnot when it came to where I fit in a social group, a lot of my triggers, when it came to the police, he was one of the first one that I actually explained the story to. I mean, I still haven't told my mom everything, and I don't know if I ever will. I couldn't do that to her. But with him, I mean, he's my brother. Whereas Ryan and I were, we have that, we'll always be super tight, right. We went through hell together, but we never actually had a lot in common. Sure. We have video games to an extent, but Ryan and I are so different. But Twin and I, we have the same style of music, we have the same aesthetic. Both of us had a trauma that drastically shifted where we went in life. We both had an extremely toxic relationship that forced us to perceive the world in a different way. And even though he was, the hockey jock and I was the hardcore aggressive nerd, both of us were outcasts in our own social group. It didn't fit, neither of us were truly quite 100 percent in our group. We have the same way of thinking about things. But at the 35 same time, we don't. Like I'm as he put it, I'm a spitfire. He is cool as ice, so we level each other out, whereas Scar and I, we hype each other up. We find a balance, everything kind of fits in like, “OK, cool. This makes sense.” There are times when he needed to be more aggressive, where it was like, "OK, dude, I'll bring the cheerleaders, like, let's go. Like you have got to get shit moving." And the times that I literally was ready to rip someone's head off, he's like, "OK, let's just turn back like twelve hundred notches, let's just calm down and think about this for a minute." It was a joke at first, but then he was also made an admin and then it was "Oo, look, the twins are together." There were a couple on the server, like one in particular. His name is Angelas. He was super butt hurt by the fact that Ghost and I were close because he was "Oh no. You and I are really close and that's where it ends." “No, that's, that's not how this is.” He’s like "Well, I want to meet you in person so I can have as close relationship with you as you have with Ghost." And I'm thinking, "Ghost and I met online. And we have this close relationship. What makes you think in person is going to change? Like, that's adorable.” I mean, the main premise was that Ghost and I, we got very, very close, very fast. I'd been talking to a therapist since like November right, because I realized how badly the police messed me up. So I was like, I need help. And I think it was like Julyish that Scar pointed out, and I finally took it to my therapist like, "I think I like Ghost." And my therapist is, "You don't fucking say." And it's like, "I'm sorry. Like I thought it was a secret." He's like, "Are you dumb?" And it's like, "I, okay. All right." We talked through it a bunch, I talked with Ghost about it a bunch. And it was like, “No, you're my Twin.” I was able to figure all that out. That was like that last little piece I needed to understand the demi-sexual thing. It can be guys, but... Not, not usually. But to be fair, like I said, Ghost and I are very, very close, like we went 36 from talking every day and then he got his new job in his career field, which, super fucking proud. But now we usually text every day for the most part, but we only VC once a week now. And that sucks ass. I know that things will change and adapt over time, but I think the best thing about it is regardless of how much time in between... He's my brother and I have that relationship I always wanted as a kid, one where, because I was Ryan's older brother. I was never, we were never particularly close. It was like, “I tolerate you,” and as we got older, it was like, “OK, I can actually appreciate you now,” But, I mean Ghost is about six months older, he's somewhere in my head, I put him in this category of, being both a big brother and twin all wrapped up into one. Like he's the older twin. We rationalized it and we work it through and the funny part, thing that also made the whole twin thing even funnier. He also has a younger brother named Ryan, who was born in July 2001. AK: Wow. That is interesting. NR: Two days apart. It is insane, though the Ryan’s are total polar opposite. His Ryan can bench press four hundred pounds and Ryan can type on a keyboard. So it's like polar freaking opposites. Like, his brother did hockey. Ryan... did not. He barely managed to survive three months in martial arts, like, he is, strictly computer. "Oh, no, I got winded by walking halfway up the campus." Oh, my God, Ryan, you're a wimp. I love you, but like. Oh, my God, I literally cannot breathe through my nose and I'm fine.” But Twin’s been a huge like, especially considering he's been figuring out his sexuality roughly around the time that I've been figuring out my transgenderness. So it's been fascinating. AK: I hate when that happens. Is the light messed up, do we need to stand up? NR: Oh no, I remember, like, I could be working at the office and I'd just be sitting at the desk inputting shit, and it would just... okay, it's really dark in here now because this 37 is the reading room and there's no light because everything's like boarded up. So that way you don't damage the books. AK: Like, kind of creepy because there's like the pictures of old people. NR: Then you have like these random books, like there's a book in the collection that is from 1840 or something that has cotton in it. AK: Cotton? What do you mean? NR: Yeah. Like freshly picked cotton in the cover and it's like from 1840. Oh that's terrifying. AK: Oh, interesting. Interesting, that is creepy. NR: Regan and I, “We're going to get haunted to death by the people who picked this cotton, because now it's in a book in a white library, like we're going to die.” AK: I love it. Okay, I was going to ask you, explain to me what the server is exactly. NR: Discord. It's like, do you know what Twitch is? AK: No, sorry. NR: OK, so Twitch is the console version. So Discord is, like Skype or Zoom in the sense that it's allowing people who are part of like video gaming and that particular group of people to communicate. VC, texting, that kind of thing. It's moved beyond just video gaming. It also includes pretty much everything. It's become a far more inclusive, just social server rather than just a video gaming server. I actually found the group through TikTok, strangely enough. I figured I was Norse, and so I started liking more of the Norse stuff, and I found one who was like, "Hey, I have this server." I was like, “OK. This shit never works out, but we can try this anyway. I join and like within four days I was an admin and it was, "What the hell?" Then I find my Twin and I have all these extra siblings now. I'm literally going to pretty much my sister's wedding at the end of October. I visited one individual twice now in Oregon. 38 I have siblings in Denmark. I feel like I have this whole, like, essentially I found the family that likes me for me and I found it through TikTok and being Norse pagan. Most of the people there are also Norse pagan somewhat, or pagan in some way. So we have all that same mindset of fate and shit and like, we were always destined to know each other. But the way in which we met each other was the important part. The server in general was the people I came out to first, even before my mom, my brother. Ghost was first. I was talking with him, and in the same conversation, because he had told me on multiple occasions that by helping other people, with their problems, it helps him focus on them for a minute when he's having a hard time. He's sitting here telling me about how his fiancee just broke up with him, like out of nowhere. No context, just “I don't want you to move in with me. I don't want you to come down when you graduate. I'm done.” Essentially his whole world just like shatters all at once. Well, “He needs something,” so I'm like, “I think I'm trans.” He just stops dead in his tracks. "OK, I need explanations here." So for the next two hours, I actually got him to think about something other than how horrible he felt, and afterwards, like about two months afterwards I'm like. "So have you figured it out yet?" And he's, "What?" I'm like, "Think about the day that I told you I was trans? It was the day she broke up with you." And he's , "Oh, my gods." I'm like, "I did it on purpose." And he's, "You were the only one that remembered.” I'm like, "Well, I'm your twin like, why wouldn't I remember?" Like, I was the first one to tell him happy birthday. And he's like, "Thank you, man." I'm like, "It's no problem." He's like, "No, thank you." I'm like, "Okay, dude, it's really no problem. Like, it's my job. You're my brother. I'm going to remember your birthday." He's like, "My parents haven’t even told me happy birthday yet. Thank you." “Your Twin. It's really important to me that you feel appreciated.” 39 I forced him to accept gifts because he's like, "I don't like gifts," and I'm like, "Well, suck it up bitch. Like you're getting gifts." He's like, "Well, you’re not going to send them to me." I'm like, "Fine. You know what we're going to do then? We're going to buy you Hot Topic t-shirts, and they're going to send it to a store near you, so you can go and fucking pick them up, because I swear to the Gods, you're getting a fucking gift." "Fine." Because he also graduated with his Bachelors, I got him two shirts and he's just, "No!" And I'm like, "Yeah, like this is happening." It took him two months to finally accept and it's like, “Suck it up bitch. You're going to take this and you're going to like it.” AK: I have two questions, actually. I'm curious about. You talked about your belief in fate and everything. And then you said that you found out that you were a Norse pagan. What do you mean by, or did you mean that you just found that religion and it resonated with you more? NR: The second one, it wasn't like I, it's not like the same with being Transgender where I was like, “Oh, I've been Norse pagan this whole time and didn't know.” No, it's more, that was the one that fit. It fell into place and it actually was because of the police that it all fell into that place. And what was the first question? AK: You're answering it basically. Like, I just wanted to know your process to when did you find that religion, and how you decided to join it basically. NR: So I think the first, inkling towards it was actually the funeral. Lyday's funeral. Because I was at the funeral because, I was a police officer at the time. Even though I wasn't allowed to go in uniform because we weren't certified, we were pretty much told you'll be there. As if we weren't going to go? Like, that whole thing was brutal. But there were three particular times, direct connection to the gods specifically. The one was in the procession, because I was in one of the unmarked detective vehicles in the Ogden PD section of the procession but further back, 40 because there's a lot of patrol vehicles already. As we were riding up that last piece, there's a biker gang who's, their whole thing is to support police families when one of them passes away. But, because of Covid, they weren't allowed to do what they usually do. They weren't allowed to escort the family. They weren't allowed to do any of that. So they stood guard outside of the cemetery. As we were riding up that last bit, they were all standing in like parade rest, you know, their hands behind their back, heads bowed with their bikes kind of behind them. That's how almost all of them were as we were riding around. One of them looked up and caught my eye for just a second and, not sadness, not pity, just “I know.” My mom's sister's the one that went with me to the funeral. I wasn't about to take my mom like that've went over horribly, and Ryan's, he's more like, it's my job to protect him. There's no way I was going to take him. The one I would have wanted to take with me was my dad. And he didn't even ask to see if I was alive the day he died. So why would I even bother? But all I wanted that entire time was for him to just because I knew he understood, maybe not losing a brother, but he understood what it was like to be a part of that community. All I wanted was for him to be there and just say, “I know.” That's all I wanted and he wasn't there, and for me, that was Odin. My main patron, the one that I'm the most connected with, and the reason I'm so strong with him is he's the father I always deserved. The one that wasn't there for me, partially because 9/11 took him away, like I wasn't able to have that. So in a way, I wouldn't say Odin's replacing him. I'd say Odin is... doing his best to be supportive for me, like a father, knowing that he cannot replace the gap that my dad has left. But he's thereish. The second one was my mentor's wife. Sweet-ass lady, considering her husband was an ass. I actually reported him to the captain like, “Dude, this guy, he's my mentor, and he literally talked about how he hates the mentor program and 41 thinks it's a piece of shit.” But his wife at the funeral I mean, she was super attentive. She was super kind, on top of things and was constantly asking me, “Are you OK? Is there anything I can do for you?” And all the time, because I completely disassociated from the funeral until after I left the police. Like, “Why wouldn't I be OK? I wasn't there.” I'm realizing now I really wasn't OK. And the fact that I wasn't there didn't matter. But I mean it did but it didn't. But she was so attentive, and for me, that was. Frigga, the mother goddess, who, in my mind is the best representation of my grandmother, like my grandmother's way of communicating to me. Then the last one, this by far was the most aggressively loud. So I'm for certain if I had stood in the back of the cemetery, it wouldn't have hit me the same way. I probably would still be there, it wouldn't be the same. But as we're getting there, the wind and the rain, were really heavy that day, like really heavy. I mean shit was getting blown over. When you watch the video and half of it doesn't even come through because they couldn't keep the signal going because it kept being blown over. For me, that's Thor. Thor doesn't exactly have a gentle touch, and all of the other gods watching over me knew that if I had stayed in the back, I'd have stayed. I'm for certain that if I stayed, I would have died. I would have ended up just like Lyday. So he's like, "OK. Then I need to make sure you see. I know you. I'll give you just enough strength to handle what you're about to see, but not so much that you can actually process it." My mentor went running off, because he saw the flowers falling over and so he went to go catch them and I’m like “My ride is running away.” So I'm following after him and I get over there and he's holding up the flowers that are parallel to the wife. And it's like "Shit, I'm here. I might as well hold some." So I'm literally holding the flowers around the honor flag, which is the flag that was actually flown over 9/11 and has not been unfolded since and has been in 42 every police funeral since. I felt very honored, very, very, honored. But that's beside the point. So I'm sitting here and I'm able to see everything. I watch as she gets handed the flag. I watch as she gets saluted by his entire unit. I watch as the entire department drops their gloves on top of his coffin. I watch the EOW. I watch everything. And like I said, I know if I was in the back, it wouldn't have hit me the same way, but I saw all of it and it was, for me, it was Thor being like, "You need to see this. You're too stubborn to leave on your own. And this will be enough." And after I left the police, I'm thinking on all of that, processing, all of it, I end up getting a TikTok because Scar was like, "Hey I think some mind-numbingness might actually be good for you with everything you've gone through." I get on there and I start seeing some of the Norse stuff and it's like, “Hold on, people practice this?” I do some research and yeah people still practice this. Started up again around 1970. There's something called the Asatru, which is equivalent to white supremacy, which we don't align ourselves with at all, because they took what Hitler did with the runes and they built their religion on top of it. It's like they use Odin AllFather and they just circle their entire religion just around him. But there's like so many other gods and Jotunn, and there's a lot of other parts. Those symbols that you're using as white supremacy, like the three triangles. Yeah. That's the symbol of Odin and the fallen dead. That has nothing to do with white supremacy. Or the two S's for the Reich. Yeah, that's for prosperity. So it's like where a lot of us Norse pagans are scared to depict some of our runes because we're afraid that people are going to be, "Oh, you're a white supremacist, you know, Hitler, Nazi assholes." “No, no, no, no. I promise I'm not, like I'm just, Norse pagan." So it was there and I started looking through it. The more I thought about it, I was like, “Holy shit, this fits and the warrior aspect of, fighting and losing things, that's what I just did. That's what I just went 43 through.” I did more research. I fell in love with it and that's led into the server. I did a lot more research, and it was like, “Yeah, this really fits.” Can I just say how awesome my mom is for a second? I say I'm Norse pagan and it takes her a little bit and she even expresses the thought with me that she had that inkling of a thought of, "But why don't they believe that I believe," and then told herself she was a dumb ass. It's the fact that they found something that spiritually helps them, that's important, and I'll support them with that. I asked if I could cleanse our house once I eventually figure out how to do it. She's, “OK.” When I have my holidays, when we do shots. I hail to the Asirand the Vanir, and I say skol, which, it means cheers, essentially, or yes, or I agree, kind of like amen. She's been super supportive and, “OK, this is your event, what do we do?” I'm like, “Okay.” Like you're crazy supportive, and my aunt was too, like, I don't think I'll ever be able to forget, like, thank her enough for being there on that day, but like the Norse stuff, that honestly was another part of the reason why it was easier. I wouldn't say easy, but easier to come out as trans because the whole community is so open, so accepting. Norse paganism has three rules, just three; don't fuck with children, don't break an oath and don't kill anyone without purpose. Obviously, that one's changed ever so slightly, you know, modern times. But those main three, it holds true. The biggest thing is, Norse, a lot of Norse pagans hate Christians because of what they did to the Norse religion, because of the fact you can almost find nothing on the Norse religion because of what Christians did to the Norse. I mean it was a word of mouth religion for the most part. The only book you have left is the Poetic Edda, really. I mean, that's all. And then, what you find in archeological sites. It's really up to opinion what you actually think, how things went or how some of the stories went, because the Christians wipe it off the map. They got rid of all of it. So there are a lot of Norse pagans that cannot stand Christians because, like, you are the reason I 44 can't do my research. Obviously not modern Christians because this is like two thousand years ago like that. But a hallmark of the Norse religion because of this hatred, because you have Christianity like, "Oh, we're good. We're going to support, we're going to be there, we're going to care for all." But then not. Norse paganisms like, "Oh, yeah, you're going to go back on your word? Yeah, we're not going to. We're going to be all inclusive. We're going to go to France. We're going to find some black individuals and they are going to be part of our religion it's going be fine. We're going to go find some people who are loving of men, like men loving men and we're going to love it. We're going be fine. We're going to women who fight with us and it's going to be fine because you don't accept it and we don't like you. So we do." Another piece of this Norse paganism that's become really prominent today is, if you wear a Mjolnir, you're a Norse Pagan. It doesn't matter who you are, what you've been through, it doesn't matter as long as you uphold those three main things, we don't care. You are one of us. You are one of our brothers and sisters, and that's where it stops. If anyone else tries to tell you that you aren't worthy of your Mjolnir or your like, for instance, the Ásatrú, that main organization. Think like the Pope for like Catholic. They're like, white supremacy, you know, you can't have LGBTQ. They would never accept me as a part of it because of the fact that I'm Transgender and the majority, like the Norse paganism outside of that is like, “You uphold the values, OK, you're one of us. That's all that matters.” That was huge. And telling Ghost was good because I got my binder, like, "I have my binder dude", and he's like "I don't get it, but I'm here for you. Like I am supportive, I don't understand." Like first time I said binder he's "Why are you excited about a binder?" I'm like, you know, "Around your chest?" He's like, "Ah, oh." MT: Not gonna lie, my mind went to paper binders. 45 NR: And he's like, "So you don't mean that like." "No." He's like, "So, okay. I have a new word for them." I'm like, "Yeah what's that?" And he's, "Titty squisher." So now every time I talk about it, he's like, "Heehee, titty squisher." I'm like "Oh my God." Like, at least you remember and I know you're supportive so I mean whatever. I'll be like "Dude I'm trying testosterone." He's like, "Go all!" I don't understand this, you know, like most of the processes you're going through, but I'm here for you. “He even asked me about a month after I came out as trans, like, "A lot of these physical processes are irreversible. Are you sure you want to do this? Like, I need a definite yes." And I'm like, "Yes." And he's like, "All right, then I'm at your back. I'm behind you a thousand percent. You will always have my support." It's like "I have Twin." And he's been there every step of the way. Like they put me on Prozac, like dumb shits. That was horrible. Like that is the worst I've ever been mentally, like ever. My body dysmorphia got really bad in that time to the point where I couldn't even. Ghost has really bad triggers when it comes to suicide. And I was, it was bad-bad, mentally. I was talking to him at one point, and I was expressing how horrible I felt and all the other shit and he's, "Clearly, you need to hear this even though I thought it was obvious. You were always a guy. You have always been a man, and you are my brother, you always were. And you're going to be one of the best men I know, because if you aren't, I'm going to kick your ass. You have nothing to prove to anyone. You have nothing to change. If that makes you feel better than I will support it. But you've always been a guy, so just keep being you, there's nothing wrong with you." That was huge. Because, all the time I get people who "You need to butch up because your voice is too weird, you still sound so feminine." Or, "Man bun, you're going to wear a man bun or braids?" Okay, don’t touch my braids, I'm Norse pagan, don't touch my braids. Or just all these things of, "Since you're a man now you do this, since you're 46 a man are you doing you do this?" Then there's Ghost just, "You always were. I mean, you always were one of the guys. I mean, I met you and you didn't fit into that category of woman. You never did." I even said that I overdid it on the femininity because in my head, somehow, if I make myself more feminine, that it would make the pain in my head go away, that it would somehow right, that tiny inkling of wrong in my head. Obviously didn't work. That's why with the really extreme forties dress. That's why with the heels and the really long earrings, because those are exceptionally feminine qualities, and if I do that, then maybe, maybe, the voice in my head will right itself. Like I said, it obviously didn't. And so when I came out as Transgender, there are a lot of people like, "But, but you do all these things." And it's like, "Did you ever think about why? Did you ever think why I pushed it so hard? Because I'm not normally feminine. I'm not feminine.” I have feminine aspects, sure, but I'm not very feminine. I never was. When I wore dresses it was, “I want to go running down the hallway beating people with sticks. I don't want to stand around and look pretty.” Like, "Oh yay, I look nice, thank you." Like, I don't care. Well, I do care a little bit. But not like a lot. That thing that he said, it meant more than... because it was one of the only times since I came out Transgender that someone was, "You are, and you always have been." And when I promised him and a couple of the others that I mean, I made a decision of, “I'm going to be a better man than the men who failed me.” They're just, "Okay." Then there were a couple like, "I mean you already are." And I'm like, "Okay, shush." Ghost, he's like, "Oh, I messed up on pronouns." He's messed up once. In the months he's messed up once. Even though it sucks that I had to wait until I was twenty-two to meet him, I couldn't have asked for a better twin. Ryan and my Mom have to like, Ryan, it was so funny. "So I'm Transgender." He's like, "OK?" I'm like, "Are you OK with using he/him?" He's like, "Sure." I'm like, 47 "Do you care?" "No." I'm like, "Like at all?" He's like, "Are you happy?" I'm like, "Yeah." And he's, "OK, All right then.” Like my Mom has had way more questions than Ryan, like way more. I think the coolest thing with her is, sure she's had a lot and she's even been like, “This might sound really bad,’ And she asked the question and I'll explain it to her, and she's like, "But other women feel that, too, all the time." I'm like, "Mom, you're not understanding. It's like depression. People are sad all the time. People who are depressive, it's consistently body dysmorphia.” It's like, OK, there are definitely women who hate their boobs." Like, I'm not going to deny that. Yeah. I've hated them since I got them. There has never been a moment in my life that I was like, “Yes, boobs,” unless they were on somebody else. But on myself, it was just I never liked them ever. My Mom's just, "Okay that's not like most women,” even if they do have a consistent like, hatred for them, especially if they're bigger, they can at least think of one positive, one thing that makes them feel more feminine or makes them feel, good, every woman I've talked to has that one thing. I don't have that one thing because I don't have a one thing to be happy about it. MT: That actually just leads perfectly into my question. Because I was curious about how your family has been with your decision, well, I don't know if that's the right word for it. But as you've come out as Transgender kind of like what the support from your family has looked like and kind of, how they've processed it and everything. NR: Yeah. So like I said, Mom and Ryan, super great. My mom's had her, her ups and downs. I think the two like, most prominent points to express just how much she's trying is, I was sitting in the living room, sitting with like just dealing with her at one point watching something on TV. She just kind of stops and is like, "Do you want me to take any of them down? The pictures on the walls? Is there any of them you want me to take down?" I never thought about it, and she's "Well, then maybe you should 48 think about it." A couple of months later, I was, "There is one." And she's like, "Which one?" I'm like, "The big one you're the most proud of." And she's like, "Why?" I'm like, "Well, because no one in that picture is being honest." And she's "Explain." I'm like, "Well, you are a part of a relationship that you thought was good. You were changing yourself and altering yourself to be what Dad wanted you to be. I was a guy trapped in a girl's body trying to be a daddy's girl,” Literally the shirt said daddy's girl in the photo. I had this super curly hair, the like lip gloss and everything. Like, I'm definitely not being honest. Ryan, he saw how many arguments I got in with Dad and so he purposely suppressed his personality so that he didn't have the same issue." My Mom was just, "All right, you've essentially ruined that picture for me." So actually in that place now, there's a painting that I made of how I saw each of us about a year ago. Ryan and I are dragons, and she's an adult priestess with the two of us, like circling around her.". MT: How cool. NR: Mines a fire dragon, Ryan's is a mecha. So it's kind of cool. Honestly, I don't think my dad knows what to do with me. I've seen him a handful of times since I came out, and it's very kind of just like stand offish. Like, to be fair, there's a lot more history than just me being Transgender. Like I haven't actually had a full conversation with him in quite a while. We haven't talked about anything. But my mom's family was easy. My Mom's like, "I don't want to like out you. But at the same time, I already told my sister." And I'm like, "Okay," I'm not surprised, your sister is by far your best friend. I get it. You wanted to tell your sister, and like, have that with her,” and I came out to them and it was super cool. They do their darndest with the pronouns. And switching over to Nute was, literally they were already starting to call me Nute, so it was no problem. The difficult side is the Rands side. I told Jeremy first, my dad's nephew, he's almost ten years older than I am. The reason why I've 49 been so terrified to tell any of the Rands is about two months before I joined or so, roughly six months prior to coming out as Transgender, I was just having a random conversation with them and my friend Ness had just come out as Transgender, and I had just in passing had been like, "Oh yeah, my friend came out as trans," and just was continuing on with the conversation because the fact they were trans wasn't the main point that I was trying to make with that sentence. They cut me off and just start screaming about how much they hate Transgender and how much they despise it. At one point they said what they would do if they saw someone who was a part of the wrong gender going to the inappropriate bathroom, that they beat them to death. It's like, "Oh, you're really instilling this like positivity here." I was terrified to tell Jeremy because he's their older brother, but he's also active military and weirdly, their conservative is different than civilians conservative. It's so different and so I'm like maybe? Like, there's this chance. So I reached out to him and I'm like, "I'm Transgender. I've been out for a couple of months" and he's "OK. You said a couple months? Were you terrified that if you told me you were Transgender that I wouldn't talk to you anymore?" I was like, "Yeah." And he's, "I am really sorry that I gave you the thought that I would do that." And... God damn it, man. And we talked about it a bunch, and I expressed what his sisters had said and he's like, "I'm so sorry, I'm so, so sorry. I wish I could change that. I wish I could make that better." We talked about, because I was, terrified of telling the cousin's, terrified because those four have tormented me for years. Close but not close all at the same time. It's like, they still see me as that little girl, which I haven't been in years, and they're unwilling to change. Like I've been going by Nute since I was 17, they still refuse to call me that. I ended up coming out as Transgender to them, had to be in... Julyish, roughly. I get this whole "Oh we're supportive of you, you don't need to cut us off," 50 because I hadn't spoken to them in six months. It's like, “You didn't reach out either.” Hmm, and it's, like, I love your support now because it's someone that you care about your answer is different, but I'm still scared about going around them as I start progressing more physically. It's one thing to be supportive it's a word, it's another to be supportive when it's an actual... I know it's only been a month, but my voice is already changing. Some of my physical aspects are already starting to change. I'm hungry all the time. It's so weird, like even more than before. But now I'm like, food, it's crazy. I kind of still have them at like, a distance. I knew that by telling them, that most the rest of Rands family would know. It's not exactly a very private family. Once one person knows the rest do. I know that even though it's a really big no-no in the community to out someone, they don't care because it's not their community. Legitly, when I came out as Lesbian to them, it's like, well, I don't get it and I'm not entirely supportive, but I support you. It's like that's not exactly a congruent statement right there. How could you be supportive of me while not being supportive of this complete piece of who I am? So, they've become even more at arm's length since I came out as trans. My mom's side of the family and the server, those are the two families that have been the best amount of support. My close friends, they've, they've been there. They've been super supportive and it's been great. Like I came out as trans to my friend Jason, and he's like, "Were you expecting me to be mad?" I'm like, "No" And he's like, “Well, good, because I'm fucking proud of you, brother." It's like, thanks Steve. Yeah, so that's, that's my support structure. AK: Okay. And that's cool that your mom's side is so supportive because I haven't heard her whole story yet. But I know that, you know, obviously her and her family had a rough time when she was growing up and so it's cool to see that that is becoming more unified. 51 NR: Ironically, I have a cousin who came out as Transgender about five years ago, roughly. Female to male, too. But they live in California. That was a huge shock for the family so, in a way, the family was already primed and ready for it. They already kind of had that, like, precursor into how to handle that. My grandmother, I was honestly impressed. Last night she actually referred to me as her grandson, even though two or three months prior she was talking to her sister and was like "Lorrie and Tracy's daughters, why can't they just be happy?" So, I can tell she's trying, but still just like, mm. But, yeah, they've been really great and super supportive and a lot have even pointed out, like, you seem more happy and more at peace now. It's like, “Well no duh Sherlock. I don't have to force this stupid facade that I've never liked.” I can see how much it hurts my mom when I'm like, I don't like my body, I have this huge body dysmorphia and I can see how much it hurts her, so I try not to tell her as much. I usually refer to it more as I don't like my gender. I don't like the sex that I was given. I'm changing things. I'm going to get top surgery. I'm taking testosterone now and it seems to soften the blow a little bit. But I can still see sometimes that it's like, this whole, "But I gave that to you." It's like, “I appreciate it, Mom, I really do. I'm happy that I have you know, bones, like, thanks for the bones, like I appreciate those.” I can tell she's trying and I think like the one that most recently hit her really hard is she had done an interview of a transgender individual, and she came back and she was talking about how they had had a particularly really rough time growing up and how they'd had a lot of body shaming hardcore. And I'm like, "I understand." And she's like. "You do?" I'm like, "Yes, Mom, I do." And she's, "Who?" I'm like, "My cousins." And she's, "The four?" I'm like, "Uh-huh." And so I told her two stories, just two. I have many, many, many, many. They were so aggressively feminine that they expected me to be just like them. I wasn't feminine enough, so they had things to say all the time. Two of them were severely 52 overweight, and I have a fast metabolism. Their favorite phrase was, “You're going to lose it, you're fast metabolism, you're going to lose it. So you better get used to the idea of being fat.” And it's like, why would you say this to an eight year old? Or a kid going through puberty? Or a teenager? Like, what the hell makes you think this was OK? But the two worst, one of them, I was at my grandparent’s house and I actually felt comfortable. I was wearing like cargo pants, like camo cargo pants, like the lame camo where it was like you could tell was more like the feminized version, but it was still boyish and like a T-shirt. I was having fun, I was climbing trees and the pants ripped in such a way that I was not going to be able to keep wearing them, like it was bad. My aunt was like, "Oh, I went to Kohl's and I got some clothes, you can wear some of them." The piece of clothing that she had was a dress. You know, those like, super stretchy, like what they make leggings out of? It was that kind of dress, it was like a tank top but long. I hated it so much because I've never liked my figure at all, and this accentuated all of it. I go up to my cousins trying to act as if nothing's different, like I'm not wearing anything different because I'm trying to make it seem like that in my head, because I can't stand the way I look at this point. The first thing out of my cousin's mouth is, "You're wearing the wrong underwear." "What?" She's like, "Oh, you should have worn like something with like a thinner band or something because we can just totally see your underwear and it's ruining the whole image like, oh my God, it's ruining your figure." Really? Like I'm trying everything to forget the fact that I'm wearing a dress and all you can focus on is I'm wearing the wrong, like I came in with pants. Like, what the hell is wrong with you? And that went on for like ten minutes. They just kept going and going. Finally I was like, "You guys know I didn't wear this here right?" And they're just, "Oh, we know. But women are supposed to be prepared." Prepared for their pants 53 ripping? Like, who's prepared for that?! Like I cut it on a tree, like on a limb, whatever. That hurt a lot. And that's putting it mildly. The other one, Cousin three is by far the worst of the four. She's one of the most toxic and spoiled, bratty, egotistical individuals I've ever met. They literally have a term for when she gets told no, because she's that much of a brat. But that's beside the point. I had like, I was just getting to that point in puberty where my body was starting to look far more feminine, like, I didn't have a super flat stomach anymore because, you know, weird concept I had a uterus. I was already uncomfortable with how I looked. I hated it so much. I was doing everything I could, baggier t-shirts, trying everything I could to just no. She comes up and she pokes my stomach and it's like, "Look who's getting pudgy." I freak out at her and she's like, "It's not my fault that you're starting to get fat. You should get used to being a fat ass like me." “What the hell? Like how does that make any sense?” All of them were just, "Oh, wait till your boobs grow in because then you'll be a real woman. Wait until you actually get your real breasts because then you'll actually get noticed by men. So then you'll be worth something." Tons and tons of examples. Just the two that I told my Mom when she was sitting there like, "I... I had this idea. That, like, when I, when I hear other Transgender individuals talk about this and it's not really related to you, it's just, oh it sucks. But when it's your kid," "I.... I'm so sorry. I want to go beat them up." I'm like, "OK, let's not. Like let's not go kill people, especially considering these are years in the past." I mean, they still twinge, but nowhere like they used to. And she's just, "But I'm sorry." I'm like, "But it's not your fault." You can tell there are a lot of pieces of this that she struggled with, like my name change. I actually started that before I came out as Transgender, which is kind of funny. I was talking to her about wanting to do it. And she said, "I really wish you wouldn't get rid of what your middle name is because I fought so hard for you to 54 get that because it's a family name." I'm like "Mom. I hate it. I hate it so much." It's more than just the fact that that name is her mother's name. It's more than just that. It's also the fact that it's, my given name is Natalie Edith Rands. I cannot stand it. It's so feminine. It literally means Christmas Girl. I was born a month exactly before Christmas. It's like, yay, oh and flower. My mom was like, "Can you make me a compromise?" I'm like, "Well, that depends on the compromise." She's like, "Can you please just keep a middle name? I fought so hard for you to just have a middle name. Can you please just, I don't care what it is, can you just have three names?" And it's like, “I can do that like I can. That seems reasonable.” We thought about it for a minute. We knew that Nute was going to be my new first name. Like that was a given. I was going to keep Rands because as much as I don't like the Rands at this particular moment, I love their history and I love the name, I love the story behind the name, like I love it. What about the middle name? What do I do with, like, how to what do I do with this? So I thought about for a while and I was like, well my first instinct is to make it what my grandmother's name, which is Geneel, which I think is a beautiful female name. But I'm like, that's still a little on the nose with a female thing. So I'm like, I don't know. Her maiden name was Olson. I'm just like, that's not so bad. And so I was like, "How about this Mom? Nute Olson Rands?" And she's, "I like it." I'm like, "Oh, my God, you're... OK." So I'm still in that process. I finally got the paperwork from the sex offender registry. That took so long! You have to go and get them to sign off on it that you're not on the registry. You wouldn't think that was something you’d have to do because they have to prove that you're not a sex offender, that's not the reason you're changing your name. When I tell people that, it's like, "You're on the registry?!" "No! Like not even a little bit! Like I am... No!" But I have to prove that I'm not. So now that I have it back, I have to get all copies and notarized and take it to 55 court and go, "Please.” Also, here’s three hundred dollars and my soul and my firstborn child.". AK: Dang. 300 dollars? NR: Yeah. Actually 360, but you know, whatever. Tiny question. Was it that much change your last name? AK: No. NR: That is bull shit. AK: Yeah. Funny story. My sister got married last year and so she messaged me, she's like, "It's going to be three hundred dollars to change your last name?" I was like, "What, that's not what it was for me." We looked into it and that's when I found out, that in order to change your full name, it's three hundred dollars. But to change your last name, I think it was like twenty-five. I don't know why... NR: That is so bullshit. MT: I don't remember my wife paying that much. AK: Yeah. NR: So sexist. AK: Isn't that interesting. NR: Yeah. It's so very Mormon centric. MT: Oh we considered me taking on my wife's name when I got married so I would have had to pay that. AK: Twenty five dollars. MT: But she's like, I don't know what your family would say if we did that. I still am like, "Can we please change?" She's like, "No, I've been in Thompson long enough. We're not switching." But the DeLora is such a fun last name! It makes me more unique. AK: I do have a lot more questions, so are you OK if we schedule another one and... 56 October 11, 2021 Part Two AK: Today is October 11, 2021. We are meeting with Nute Rands for part two of his interview. So I kind of wanted to go back a little bit and ask a little bit about NUAMES. So why did you choose to go to NUAMES for high school? Because I know that's usually like more STEM focused, right? NR: Yeah. Originally that was what I wanted to go do was STEM-centered education, especially because my dad was very pushy on the idea. I mean, he really severely pushed me to science and math. But what really did it is I had a counselor when I was in eighth grade, who had mentioned in passing about the school that was starting to do really well, that was having really good grades and shit. I was like, "Well, all I ever do is the honor crap. So like, why not? Let's do this." It was a weird process because I ended up on the waiting list to start off with and I was like devastated because I thought that I wasn't going to get in. But then I did because so many people dropped off the waiting list. It was like a hundred something on the waiting list and still made it into the two hundred. Yeah, there were so many people that left for whatever reason. The main reason was because I thought engineering is what I was going to do. I thought that was where my focus was going to be. I had this like ideal that I was going like follow my dad, except I was going to go like the step above. So instead of going into like just communications I was going to do computer engineering and I wasn't just going to be an enlisted in the Air Force, I was going to be an officer. I was just going to be like the next step up. But obviously, several things changed along the way. AK: Yeah. Did you start ROTC when you were at NUAMES? Or is that a college thing? NR: It's JROTC in high school and then ROTC in college. I did do ROTC in college, 57 which is weird because they don't have Air Force here at Weber. That was exhausting. I went to the U specifically just for that. So once a week, I had the class, but three times a week I had to go down at five o'clock in the morning for PT. It was exhausting. They always expected more time and it's like, "Dude, you want me to do well in school. But I go to school almost an hour away, like, you need to make up your mind." That was a woo experience. I got medically disqualified because of allergies. That sucked. But you know, it worked out. AK: I'm curious, why did you, let's see how I can word this. I'm curious about like what prompted you to kind of start going towards that military route? Because I remember you saying on the last interview that you had felt like military kind of taking your dad away. So I was wondering what kind of drew you to it? If that makes sense. NR: Oh yeah, no, I got you. Even though I knew that, I also knew... It was a family that I was raised in and so I was used to it. So part of it was trying to keep the only world I knew. I mean, I didn't even go to my first Wal-Mart until I was 13. We didn't have the money to go to a place like Wal-Mart, so we always just went to the commissary. Wal-Mart was weird when I first went. Like it was such a culture shock because on base, there's this level of like respect that everyone has and like, you leave and it's like, no. But it's the world I wanted to stay in. I knew what I would be giving up, and yet that's where I wanted to be. At least that's where I thought I wanted to be. Don't get me wrong, it sucks that I'm not going to be able to have like a super close relationship with the military anymore. Like, even though I was military brat for 20 years, they don't care anymore because I turned 23. I'm just, not really important to their list of keeping up anymore, which sucks, but it's eh. But I realized part of the way through ROTC, the only reason I was pushing so hard to get in was because I was trying to follow my dad. I was trying to live up to the image that he built, 58 because the only image that ever had like significance, especially the way that he played everything out, was him. So to follow him was like to follow in the footsteps of some great epics. Obviously, that's not true. But at the time, that was exactly what I thought was going to happen by following in the military. AK: Because you admired your dad so much for being a member of the military? NR: And it wasn't until roughly three-fourths of the way through ROTC and then after being disqualified that, it's like the rose colored glasses, how I saw my dad finally shattered, especially with how he handled me getting disqualified. He did not handle that well. He kept saying, I needed to push for it and all this other stuff and I was like, "Maybe if I had a civilian doctor, but see, the military has all my records. They're the ones that did all of my allergy work for years. They know everything. There's no skirting around or not telling them something." And an allergy where I have an epipen is not exactly something that you want to keep in like a, “Oh, I totally don't have an issue.” No. So, I mean, he kept pushing for something that had been gone for months, the point that he kept trying to push. So it was really not chill. AK: Another question that is hard for me to know how to ask, realize that as you're growing up, you're really close with your dad. But I feel like now you're really close with your mom. Do you feel like that was kind of the point where you and your mom started getting a little closer? NR: The blood clot was that biggest shift. It really was, because it was that, like, reality check of, "Oh by the way, look at how much your mom did. Look at how little your dad does." It also forced my mom to actually live rather than just survive. I mean, before this, the stroke, honestly, I didn't really have a close relationship with her. Like it was, well, I loved her because she was my mom. But beyond that, it just was. I lived for my dad, but my mom was just mom. And then after the stroke, it was, "Oh shit, I almost didn't have a mom." It's like a huge reality check of, "Well, maybe we 59 should like, pay attention a little bit more," and especially with how everything went down, I mean. I was pretty much running the house and going to school at the same time, and my dad convinced my mom that he was the one doing it all. Every time I tried to look for even a shred of recognition it was always dropped down as, "Oh, you're not really doing that much." It was like, and yet I am, like, uh, tiny thing. So it was like, well... AK: Yeah. It's really hard. What are some other ways that your mom's stroke kind of affected your life, if you don't mind me asking? NR: No, you're good. Well, it completely shifted my perspective on things because she had her stroke literally between junior high and high school for me. So all of junior high had this like, jovial, OK, the world's real, but like, eh. But then I get to high school and my grandmother just died, my mother almost died, I just lost our family dog... my level of innocence was like, “I wish I could just be so jovial as I was literally six months ago.” And then my dad left the unit, and he was home all the time, which was not good. We were so not used to having him around that much. So it threw everyone, the entire dynamic into like a flux. At the same time as me figuring out that, "Oh, maybe you like women," I'm also dealing with, "Oh, by the way. You almost lost the parent that you didn't think you were going to lose." Like, you always prepared for your dad, but hold, on your mum's mortal, like that can happen. The beacon of epicness that you thought was always going to be there to solve all your problems passes away, and the only person you know that you're always going to depend on is you. So I became very isolated afterwards. Like, I stopped relying on my parents as much. I tried to solve everything I could without them because it's like the realization of they're not always going to be around, on top of why would I want to burden my mom with something when she can barely 60 walk? Why would I trust my dad when he's dropping everything on me? So I tried to do everything on my own, which obviously did not go over super well. I decided to take AP Euro my first semester at NUAMES. The amount of times I emotionally broke down because of that class. AK: A hard class? NR: Oh gods, it was so bad. But essentially it literally threw my entire, what I understood about who I was and what I saw the world as, it pretty much threw it all out the window and I had to completely rewrite it because I had been living through this ideal that the person I was becoming was like a better version of my dad. But after everything that happened, it was like, the last thing I want to be is him. I want to help people because it's right, not because I get something cool out of it. As I watched my mom go through the stroke and recovering, she became the strongest person I know. One of my favorite things is like right out of the gate, like two or three months after the stroke happens, I had asked for years, "Please let me dye my hair. Please let me dye my hair, like please let me do this." And it was always, "No, no, no. When you're 18, you can make your own decisions. You could do that." And it's like, "Well, fine." I had been pushing for piercings, anything I could do to make my body mine and it was always, "No, no, no." But then, like two or three months afterwards, she comes to me and goes, "OK. Think up some colors, we're going to dye our hair." I was like, "Wait, hold on. Explain?" She's like, "Well, I don't know if I'm going to be alive tomorrow, but I want to have this experience with you. So we're going to do it right now." So we went and we got it professionally done. I loved everything about it, and I honestly very rarely have had a natural hair color since. It was really refreshing to like, actually get to experience things with my mom. There are things that I'm never going to be able to do again with her. That sucks ass. Like, she took me to my first rock concert and she's never going to be able to 61 take me to one again. She took me to Warped Tour. That was really cool. But I don't think I'm ever going to be able to get to do that again. We ran races together, that won't happen again. Just little things here and there that were significant. But honestly, yeah, those things suck. But I gained a lot. At least the three of us did. In the long run. It didn't seem like it at first. AK: Do you feel like that independence and need to find yourself that you gained during that time, did that affect your coming out at all or at least your self-discovery in that regard? NR: A little bit. I mean, especially when I start to become more independent and relying less on, especially my parents. Coming out to them, while that was significant, it wasn't as huge as like coming out to my friends or the people who I actually held in high regard. Like, it took me a while for my mom to be in that high regard again, because she never really was as a kid. But like, at the time, my cousins who I'm learning, not great, but they were people who it was a big deal. I needed them to know. I need my friends to know. I needed the people who I knew were there. It didn't seem like my parents were, and so... Important? Sure. Not world ending, oh my God, if it doesn't happen. So it definitely impacted that hardcore because I was literally, like, rebuilding the image of who I was. It almost seemed.... I would say easier, but like it fell into step a little bit better. Like, as I'm relearning, "What's responsibility," the added piece of "Do I actually like men? Like, is that actually something I like or is that not a thing?” So I was able to, like, process that a little bit, but at the same time, the level of it all being at once wasn't cool, but it did make it so that it was like, everything was in flux. So having one more thing in flux wasn't, you know, horrible. But yeah, that really shifted how things were going to go. AK: I can't remember if I ask you this last time, but did your parents ever talk to you about like sex and sexuality and that kind of stuff? 62 NR: Sexuality, not so much, but sex? Yeah. Too much. Way, way too much. Literally, I had a sex talk when I was 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and finally, after 16, I was like, "If I need something, I'll ask. Like, if I have a question, I'll bring it to you. Like, I will totally do, can we just not, please, this like schedule? Please don't." Like, it was so often like, everyone's all like, "Oh, my parents never." And I'm like, "No, I knew way too much." I had details about my parents sex life that I didn't need. Like, flat out. I had a good understanding. In some cases way too much, but I had a good understanding by the time I got the stuff. I wish there was a more elaborate explanation of beyond heterosexual. But we're talking about two people who were raised in severely Mormon areas, one of which is severely closeted because he was in a very... Gender-rigid career. So I know that they did the best they could, though they were definitely shooting for honor points, in excessive ways. They definitely covered that stuff, and when I had questions, they didn't care about like the implications. They were right there to answer them, so, I mean, I've never gone to my dad with questions. Never. MT: Was he there for most of the talks, or... NR: Up until I was 16, he was there for every talk. But after that, I specifically only went to my mom. One, it was easier to talk to her about it. And then, on top of that, my dad made it weird, very, very weird, especially when I came out as bisexual. He was like, "Oh, isn't it better to shoot for both teams," as if he's advertising for bisexuality and it's like, "I'm not talking to you about this. Like, this is not happening. Like, we're not going to sit here and have a heart to heart on bisexuality. You're not going to get a detailed explanation on how I figured this, no, no. That's what you do with friends. You're my parent." Not saying your parent can't be your friend, but not that kind of friend. It got even worse when I came out as Lesbian, because then it was, "Oh, let me teach you how to have sex with women." OK, no. Definitely not. 63 He was way too open, to an extreme point. Like, my senior trip to New York. There's a sex museum in New York City, by the way. Yeah, I was 17 and he was like, "Oh, let's go to this." I'm like, "Dad, I really don't want to go to this." He's like "Well, I'm your parent, if I want you to go in there, I'll force them to let you go in there." And I'm like, "Dude, I don't want to go in there! Like, I'll stand outside." He's like, "In Manhattan? You're just going to stand on the corner?" I'm like, "Than go in there with you? Yep. Like, I don't want to do anything about that." It took my mom literally sitting him down and being like, "You're their father. No." He was bitter the whole time, like, "Why didn't we do anything I wanted to do?" "You travel all the time through the military! This is my senior trip, bitch. Like I paid for half of it." Like, really? But yeah, no, he, yeah. AK: I don't know if you've had a chance to, like, talk to other friends about this, but have you seen, like, whether the level of comfortable, that's the word, over talking about sex and sexuality in the home? If that affects how comfortable maybe you or your friends were in coming out to your parents? Like if they were more open, was it more comfortable to say that? NR: I wouldn't say it was more or less open, depending on what I talked to them about. Like for me, when I came out, my mom cried because she was happy that I was willing to tell her and then my dad was oversharing like crazy. But essentially I didn't have to explain anything for the most part. My mom had some questions, but for the most part, I didn't have to explain anything. I was able to just say like, "Hey, I think I'm Bi-sexual," and that was literally the end of the conversation. Whereas my friends, they would talk to their parents and depending and that, I had friends from all different sides of the spectrum of their parents. They never told their parents because they knew that they'd end up on the streets if they did, to the other end of super, like, chill and down with it, but didn't know shit about it. So it was really just 64 all over the place. I really think the only reason that the bi-sexuality was something that my parents knew about was because my dad identified as that too. So I had that, like, level of understanding already. I don't know, I don't think it made a huge amount of difference because the only parts they were really open about was the heteronormative. Even with other parents, even if they weren't open about the heteronormative- as a standard in Utah people are not open about the not heteronormative. It had a similar, like script to it, usually. Obviously, I had that precursor because my dad was, but like when I came out as lesbian, oh, that was a conversation with my mom. Trying to explain it to her and have her understand it. Long, long conversation. But, no, I think it really just, it depended on way more than just how open they were. It had a lot to do with the value they put into who they thought their child needed to be. Because if they had this like rigid, strict, fuge, like a full on like schedule on how their kid's life was going to go, they did not handle it well. It was horrible. But if they were just like, "Here, I'm going to follow you, we're going to do this together." It went over better. Then the ones that didn't get any support from their parents, the parents didn't care because they didn't care about anything else, why would they care about this? So I think really the attachment was more important than the communication. MT: Looking back at wanting to be, like, following your dad's footsteps. Do you feel like that might have been, if you had known what that was, it might have been a sign that you were Transgender? NR: Possibly, yeah. I mean, I definitely hardcore, especially with how rigid the gender roles were in the military. I preferred the way the men were treated. As much as I wanted to fight for the women to be treated equally, I preferred the... I usually refer to it as like shop mentality. You see it in shops, you see it in the military, you see it in the police. You see it in any place where essentially no shits are given and 65 there's no time for shits to be cared. So you were just really, really open and honest, and when you pick on each other, that's how you know they like you. It's so weird and not, there's a lot of people that really struggle with it. I saw that so many times in the police, like we had one of the new hires with us did not handle that well. So I think if I had an understanding of like what Transgender was, and had more of an environment where it was easier to question, if there was even the possibility of questioning something like that, something that was literally laid out in front of me and told, “This is what you are.” If I had given that little like side note of, but you have freedom. There's a level of freedom that you have that you're not actually being told, because the state you live in doesn't want you to know about it. The religion of your state doesn't want you to know about it. I think that having a better understanding, definitely would. I think I would have seen it differently. I don't think my perspective on the military would be different. But I think the view on my dad would and definitely Ryan, a little bit too. Like, I always knew that it was my job to protect him, and then everyone would talk about, "Oh, their big brother, their big brother, their big brother, they do this, they do that, they do this," and I'm like, "But honestly, everyone talks about their big sisters, and I don't fit that role. I fit the big brother role." I fit that, “You touch my brother and I'll kill you,” Like, I will stand there, I will fight for him. I'm damn well ready to beat his ass if he fucks up. Like it's chill and then you have the big sister mentality which is more of the “Let me educate you.” Eh. If you have questions, you'll ask. Other than that, cool, my job is to protect, not to educate. That was always a mystery to me, hardcore for a loop. So that'd be another one that was like, if I had known there were so many little pieces here and there would have been like, Well, hey, this'd make a little more sense. I definitely think it would change my perspective hardcore when it came to my dad. 66 AK: I'm curious, so you mentioned in the last interview several times that you grew up in a neighborhood that had a lot of Mormons in it, but that you yourself were never a Mormon. Did you, two questions about that, actually. One is, did you grow up with any kind of like religion or spirituality in your home at all? NR: Sort of, because of the level of Mormonism in the neighborhood. We had tons of people coming around all the time, and so I actually went to church from about six to eight. So literally right up until you were supposed to get like baptized. That's when I finally like, really evaluated. My mom was the one who actually was like, "Do you really want to? Think about it for me?" And after that, it was like, "Oh, no." It wasn't like I had like this structure in the home of like, "This is what we are." It was more, this is what you're surrounded by. This is the environment you were raised in. So it was easier to fall into line with that than to like, look at other things when I was six to eight, that was by far when I had the easiest time making friends in that neighborhood. As soon as I made the decision of no. That went over like a lead balloon. Sadly. AK: When you told them no, you don't want to get involved in? NR: The parents were OK. To an extent. They got really good at those customer service smiles where they tolerated me because they loved my mom. Because even though she doesn't generally put the name to it, she essentially does practice Mormonism. She actually talked to me recently about, you know, "Would you care if I went back into an organized religion?" It's like, "No, do you need my permission? I don't care as long as you don't force it on me, I'm chill.” Like, whatever. I do my thing, you do yours. We're happy. That's whatever. The issue was the kids. They hadn't quite learned that, you know, customer service, at least be nice to the heathens, at least be nice to the ones that don't fit in. So they were rather cruel. And because I went to a school that was in that area, it was the same people I lived with, lived around. I 67 went from having tons of friends to no friends overnight. No one would want to do anything with me. I was always secluded in the corner. I found that the only friends I actually had were the other people that weren't Mormon. I had friends that we would actually be like really close with, like they just got transferred from a different class or something. So they didn't, you know, have the precursor of living in the same neighborhood. Didn't know anything. You get really close, really, really tight. And then I would mention in passing or whatever that I wasn't Mormon. And one of two things would happen, at least when we were younger. A third came into play as we got older. The first was, "Oh, you're not Mormon. My parents don't want me playing with someone that's not Mormon." And the other one was, it went on OK for a little bit. But then they came and they were like, "So my parents talked to me and they told me not to talk to you anymore." The third being, "I don't give a shit what my parents think. We're going to do this anyway." But that didn't come around really into like late junior high/high school, to the point where you really start to see the personality develop. But, it sucked. I'm glad I defined that earlier instead of following it down the road, like, I'm glad my mom sat me down and was like, "Hey, this really what you want, or is it easier to do this because of where you live?" What finally sold me on it is, very analytical person, and I like having explanations for things. So one of the times in like the Sunday class or whatever, I had asked a question and she kept giving the same answer of "Well because." No that's not good enough for me. No, I want an actual reason. Like, why? And she kept saying, "Well, because," or "You just need to believe, you need to have faith." "I have faith in tangibility. I have faith that my dad is going to continue to serve in the military. Like that is what I have faith in. I have faith in the fact that my mom will be there when I get home. In my mind, I cannot think of a reason why I would have faith in something I cannot see and 68 shoot." You could tell she was exasperated, whatever. She was really not happy about the fact that I was pushing so hard and it was the dumbest little thing. It was like the veil or whatever. Like when you die and you pass, or when you come to Earth and you pass through the veils you forget, like everything from before. I was simply asking her why the veil? And she couldn't give me an answer. I've had people afterwards, like years later, be like, "Well, she was dumb. Let me explain that to you." And it was like, "OK, cool." If she explained that to me back then, honestly, I might have stuck around a little longer, but she couldn't give me an answer or wouldn't give me an answer. One of the two and it totally just, “No, I want to have a reason. I like my reasons. They make me feel better.” And so I just like ended up not in the Mormon round. I do my best to respect that religion and whatnot, because if I didn't try and respect it, I'd be surrounded by a lot of people I didn't get along with. It's not worth being angry and hateful against people when 90 percent of the time you don't even know them. So what does that even get you? The only standard I have in place is, I'm going to be honest and true about who I am. The second they have an issue with that, cool, I get it, pull out all the stops that I have to when it comes to your religion. Because if you're going to push on me, then, cool, I get to push on you. But before that, we're just people having a conversation. That is all it should be. If we want to talk about religion in a civil manner, cool, I'd love to learn about it and see it from your perspective. That does not mean I'm converting. I don't know why people have such a big issue with this. I can have an interest and want to learn without converting. It was, yeah, it's not that I was trying to become Jewish. It's like, "No! Really not. I'm just curious." AK: And that kind of answers my second question, which was just how growing up in a 69 neighborhood with a lot of Latter-Day Saints, a lot of Latter-Day Saint influence impacted your growing up years, but it sounds like it gave you that opportunity to learn more about yourself and find out who your real friends were, kind of. NR: Essentially, hardcore, yeah. I mean, there were a handful of them that I actually had that were pretty LDS that I actually was pretty close with. That also helped me see the religion definitely. It's like in Word, you can either use a blank document or you can use a format, like a pre-laid out design. I found that people who were like base level LDS, it's like they were raised with one of the templates. But just because they were raised with one of the templates does not mean they didn't change a couple of things along the way. So you had the hardcore ones that were like template is all. But then there were some that were, "Yeah, we have the template but we're wishy washy, like we're in and out of what we want to do," and then you have the people that built their own that also were great because they ended up doing something that was like less functional than a normal Word document, somehow. I did have some friends that were Mormon, my mom and I both are, sort of kind of still close with some of the families in that neighborhood because our religion didn't matter to them. And honestly, it shouldn't. It really helped me see the perspective of it's not the religion, it's the people. It's the person, it's their choice on whether or not they're going to use their religion to subjugate and discriminate against people who aren't what they see as good, as proper, or whatever they decide to hold it as. They use it as an excuse. Whereas the person who's actually dictating things is them. They're the ones who are deciding to be discriminatory. They're the ones deciding to be cruel and heartless. AK: Yeah, that makes sense. OK, I'm curious about, I know that you go out to Oregon often to meet with people from your religion. Is that Oregon, or is it Washington? I can't remember. 70 NR: It was Oregon, and I'm actually going to Missouri to meet up with another one from the same... well, they're more just overall Pagan. More down like a Wiccan side, so rather than just Norse, but they definitely have a hand in that. I have visited two of the people within my religion, and I know like one or two in Utah. They're really secluded. I've seen them, but it's like, this is going to sound really bad. It's like seeing someone who's POC here in Utah. AK: OK, from, remind me what POC is? NR: Person of color. It's like seeing one of them. It's like seeing another one of the heathens. This is how you know, because Norse pagans have a Mjolnir, usually. Different in their own little ways, but that's usually how you identify a Norse pagan. It's just like a nod of, "OK, I see you, like, we're good." What was your actual question? AK: Oh, you're good, actually. I'll reask it in a second, because I'm curious what else is on your necklace? What are the symbols? NR: The tree, I can do this... My brain broke. So in Norse paganism, it's called Yggdrasil. I'm so sorry for who has to transcribe that. It starts with a Y. MT: It's the world tree, right? NR: Yeah, the tree of life. Several religions use and see it as a piece of their religion. Obviously, within Norse paganism, it's a little different than the standard. It's, the world tree holds the nine realms. It connects everything. That's part of the reason I love it is that there's a balance amongst everything. So as things flow, what you decide, things you do, even though you don't see a reflection of that difference in front of you doesn't mean it didn't have an impact somewhere. Also, there's a possibility of actually being able to see people or things that you thought you lost because it's a fluid system. Trees move up and down. So there's a theoretical possibility. So that's why I like my tree. 71 Then this one, it's called Odin's horns. They're the horns that he will sound when Ragnarok begins, when he needs his Einherjar to come and fight alongside him. The Einherjar are the dead that have been brought to Valhalla that were fallen warriors, or at least half of them. The other half went to Freya because of a dispute between the gods, they made a deal that she would get the first step. She would decide which half she wanted and then Odin would end up with the rest. Hers was more of like a, "You did good. You can rest now." His was a "You did good. Now keep doing better." And so sounding the horns is the "All right. This is what you prepared for. Let's do this. Let's win." Odin is my, my main patron. So it's, unlike in monotheistic religions, most polytheistic religions, “Yes, I'm going to recognize all of them or at least a majority.” I'm still learning. Norse paganism is like literally the religion of homework because there isn't much left to research. But generally, people don't dedicate all of their time to all of them. They dedicate their time to a couple. For me, it's Odin, Tyr, Freya, and Freyr. And in a sense, I work with them not because I was like, "They look cool, let's work with these guys." I felt pulled to these ones and little pieces here and there. I know they sound weird to a lot of other people because, my 16 year old employees love to point out, "You chose Odin because you draw left eyes." AK: Because you draw left eyes? AK: He doesn't have a left eye. Odin. He gave his left eye to Mimir to understand Ragnarok, to understand what to do with Fenrir. And so essentially, he lost his ability to see. It was super fascinating. But yeah, he doesn't have a left eye. So it's like the fact that I always, every time I draw eyes, I always start with the left one. Or when I doodle, it's usually a left eye. Stuff like that. I know it's weird, but then I think about some of the stuff other religions do, and I realize it's really not all that weird. Like, everyone has their little things that don't make sense to anybody else. So it's 72 like, whatever. It'll work. But yeah, I like each of them, each of them fit, and honestly, the police for me was really that big push towards Norse paganism. AK: Yeah. OK. I think we've already talked about this a little bit, but just in case we haven't, as you've traveled, what have you seen? What differences have you seen about, kind of like how the LGBTQ community is maybe perceived or welcomed in other states versus Utah? Is there a difference with northern Utah versus like other parts of Utah? I'm just curious if you've noticed anything like that. NR: I definitely have. So when I go to states that are in the north, generally, emphasis on the generally, it goes over well. Like if you're LGBTQ, cool, either we just don't care or we have a huge, strong community. Like in Oregon. I could have come out as a Bi-sexual penguin and they wouldn't have given a shit. In fact, they would have been so high, I don't think they would have cared. You have places like New York where it's like, "We're too busy dealing with our stupid shit to care about your stupid shit. You do you man. And we've had too many fights about this whole LGBTQ thing to even care anymore, like, you do you. We don't care." But then if you go to the south. Mmm. Like I've gone to Louisiana a handful of times and, oh, you do not advertise that kind of information because, while there are a lot of places, in like New Orleans as an example, there are places that are LGBTQ friendly that have, like, bars that are specific to that or have like shops that are centered around LGBTQ centric stuff. As a standard, you never really know when it comes to the people. Literally, one day I had one person that was like, "Woo, yes, gay pride. Awesome." And then like, not ten minutes later, I had, "Yeah, those… stupid pigs need to get their crap together and realize they're just fucking human, they need to do things right." And it was like, "OK, we're just going to leave you right there and you do whatever that is, and I will not do that. OK." The South, I don't think they know how to do people well. They've never known how to do people 73 well. It's like, just, no. And then, like Midwest, it's a toss up. Like you have Colorado that's like, "We love you for whatever you are," and then you have like Nebraska, it's like, "We hate you for whatever you are." Then, like Utah, specifically, as a standard, I haven't really seen a huge difference between southern and northern Utah, but I have noticed a difference between significant cities. So like Ogden, for instance, is by far one of the most accepting cities in Utah. By far. Like, I refer to it as the Florida of Utah because it doesn't fit in with the rest of them. Like at all. Like it just doesn't. But you have the rest of these cities that are like, "Oh my gosh, we have like Mormon shit fucking everywhere. Like, it's like plastered everywhere." Yes, Ogden has like a temple, but generally, unless you're standing right in front of the temple, you're looking everywhere else, and it's like all I see is like crazy old buildings. It's not like a giant thing is standing in front of your face. And then like, the churches, they're actually fairly... I wouldn't say hidden, but they're put in such ways that you can get around Ogden, pretty well. It's not like a in your face, “oh, by the way, we live in Utah, guys.” No, it's just there. And it's like, OK. I feel more comfortable being open about who I am in Ogden than I do in a lot of the other cities. Like, for instance, I have a friend who lives in Salt Lake, like downtown Salt Lake. When everything went down around the election, they were terrified to leave their home because they are non-binary and now married to a woman. So they did not, even the slightest bit feel safe. Like, they purposefully didn't come out to their employers, or a lot of the people around because they were worried, like they took their pride flags down. They're terrified. Logan's a lot like that too. Layton, Bountiful…OK, let's be real, Riverdale, Roy and all the Ogden-esque, they're all fucking Ogden. It's the same damn city. 74 They pretty much have the same mentality of Ogden that's like, "Cool. Like, you do you." The best example about how weird different Ogden is, around the election you had a car with Trump on the side and a car with Biden on the other side and they didn't kill each other. They just kept doing their thing. It was like, "Can't we just do this all the time, OK? Can we not shoot at each other just because whatever?" So, yeah, I wouldn't say so much a difference amongst halves of Utah than specific areas. AK: Specific cities in particular, OK, that is super interesting. I hadn't observed that, but I think that makes a whole lot of sense. So you had covered last time a little bit about choosing your name and you went into how you chose your middle name, but you didn't actually go into your first name. So I wanted to know the story behind Nute and why you chose that. NR: Cool. So it's really funny considering my interesting relationship with my dad now, but he's actually the one that gave me the name. So, I was never told the exact date, but pretty, like right around when I was born, my dad, right off the bat, I was blond and I was born female and it was like, "OK, my Nute." Like, from that day, I was his Nute, and that comes from the movie Aliens, the 1986 second installation of the Alien by Geiger. He created the whole crazy ass universe of Xenomorphs. But in the second movie, there was a little girl. She was like 10, and she was the only survivor on this entire, like, asteroid outpost or whatever, and she survived all of these aliens by herself for a week. Just figuring stuff out. Her legal name was Rebecca, but she, at one point in the movie was like, "They call me Newt." That was the only thing that she would respond to, like she, she hated her given name. And that's just what she preferred. When she was asked why it was just, "My brother called me that. And it just stuck." 75 As I was a kid, it was really only my dad that called me that. It was a nickname that he just kind of kept it going. And everyone around me was like, "This is weird." But the older and older I got, at first it was like I had someone else use the name in passing, and I was like, "I don't know. That's weird." Then I got to high school and I was like, “I've always hated my first name. But I like Nute.” I actually found the perfect way of describing the difference in my own head to someone. The name Natalie for me represents a little girl who is still used to following everything their dad says, that's used to being trampled on and put down because it was how they were raised. Whereas Nute is the one that finally turned around and said, “No, I'm done, I'm sick and tired of following you because you say so or whatever your reason." It was almost like a freedom to be able to, when I was in class in high school to be like, "Hey, can you refer to me as Nute instead? Like, I know what my paper says, but can I go by Nute please?" And the teachers, like, 90% of the time were just, "I don't care. Like, sure, we can call you Nute." It got to the point that by the time I graduated high school, no one called me by my birth name. Like everyone knew me as Nute. All the places that I worked I was Nute. I've set up the systems at Noodle so well in the preferred name, that I had people who didn't even realize that it wasn't my given name. It was like, "Ha ha. I'm doing well." It only started to come into question when I actually talked to my dad's family and went like, "Hey, I'd really like it if you refer to me this instead of my given name." And they were, "I'm not calling you that." It's like, "OK? Like that seems really aggressive." Like my mom's family. Super understanding. They were like, "Sure, we can call you this. I mean, nicknames are nicknames, like whatever, if you'd like to go by it, then so be it." But my dad's family was always, "No!" Like, I mean Cousin One, she actually really tried a little bit to call me by Nute. But Cousin Two at one point was just, "No. No. It just sounds so childish,” At the time it wasn't 76 super bothering, but the further and further I got into the LGBTQ community, the further I started to figure out who I was, the more not being referred to as Nute stung. It was the beginning of this year that I was finally, like, "Yeah, I'm going to go for it, I'm going to push for it." I mentioned to my cousins that that's what I was going to do, I was going to legally change my name to Nute, and they all looked at me, "Why?" "Because I prefer it, because this name fits me better. Like, I feel like this name represents me far more than my given name did." And they just, "I'm not calling you that. I'll call you Nat." It's like, "Yeah, I'm not going to respond to that. Like, I'm so glad that you think that I'm just going to forever respond to a name that was never me." Like, that's not how this works. There's only one other name that I'll keep responding to, and that's what my brother calls me, and that's Nad, because poor dude had a speech impediment as a kid. Couldn't say L's. So when he got to the end of my given name, he couldn't say it. So instead of saying the full name and because we live in Utah, he called me Nad, and it just stuck. He's called me Nad since he was like five. And when I came out of Transgender he's like "Do you want me to change this?" I'm like, "Fuck no. Like, are you kidding me? I am your older brother Nad, and that's not going to change." He was just, "Thank you." I'm like "Dude, I'm never going to take that from you. Why would I do that? That's literally the name you created because really, you didn't have a choice. It's not like you could literally sit there and be like, All right, mouth, get your shit together. Didn't work like that." So that one is by far, and my mom tried to use it once and it was like, "No, no, that's Ryan's, no." It kind of like grew in significance and as I was talking to both like my therapist and my Transgender doctor, I mentioned how far back like I've been going by Nute regularly since about junior of high school. They were like, “Do you realize that means that's roughly when your transition started." And it's like, weird. Like I 77 didn’t come out as Transgender, I've only been out as transgender for like roughly six months like, that's weird. They're like, "But think about it, you were already starting to push against what had been decided for you was a kid. You were already starting to push against that, that norm. So yes, though it is when your transition started, that is when you started to realize who you were, not who you were supposed to be." It's like, kind of refreshing to be like, "OK, this isn't a new thing.” I knew that, but it's nice to have that, like, recognition from someone else to be like, "Hey, this isn't, it's not a phase." Like, so many people like to call it, like, it's not. This isn't something that was like, "I feel like being male today." No, it's not how that works. Unless you're gender fluid, and that is literally how it works. So I don't entirely understand, but I don't need to, because that's not me. Just respect. AK: So that probably answers another question that I had, and I apologize, I probably sound so ignorant. But I was curious, here you're talking about when you were a girl, how you felt really discriminated against, right? People made you feel like you weren't good enough as a girl. And I wondered if that influenced your transition versus just being lesbian, just because I don't know how it works. NR: My mom has literally asked the same question like nine times. Because I'll express like things that would drive me nuts, and she's like, "Well, every woman has issues with that." And the best way I've been able to describe it is, and, this is going to be weird. So think about the diagnosis like depression, right? Everyone has sad times. Everyone has depressive episodes. Everyone has that, right? But to be diagnosed with depression, it has to be at least six months long and have, I believe, five of the eight parameters. So it's kind of like that. Yeah, I'm aware of the fact that a lot of women hate their uterus. I'm aware of the fact that a lot of women hate their boobs. However, one, they have good things to think about them usually. And two, mine isn't an occasional hatred. Mine's constant. All the time. And I expressed that to my 78 Mom, she was like, "OK, that makes a little bit more sense." Like gender dysphoria, it's not all that different than another mental disorder. So thinking about the concept of, in moderation things are normal. It's natural that you're going to have body image issues stemming from, you know, going through your own puberty and stuff like that because it sucks. Everyone's going to have issues and no one's going to be 100% happy about who they are, what they look like. Who they are because, reality check, we're human. But to hit the body dysmorphia and gender dysmorphia, they're different but the same at the same time, gender dysmorphia is specifically like being referred to as female or dressing female or stuff like that. Body dysmorphia is strictly the physical stuff, even though the gender stuff feeds into the body dysmorphia and the body dysmorphia feeds into the gender dysphoria. One's purely the physical form, it's like the literal definition of like your sex, whereas gender is what society has decided for you. Does that make sense? AK: I think so. So one has to do with the way you look on the outside versus how you look on the inside? Is that kind of what you're saying? NR: Kind of. Yeah, or at least how society perceives you. So I guess how society perceives you is gender and how you perceive yourself is body. And so not everyone who is transgender, non-binary has both. I can explain this in a way that makes sense. One, I'm purposely changing physical things about my body because I'm not happy or I don't feel secure in the body I was born into. That's body dysmorphia. And the gender dysmorphia is "Please don't use the she/her pronouns. Please don't, like, refer to me in this way or talk to me about it this way," or shit like that. Honestly, I haven't changed how much I dress. That should give you an indication of how hard clothing was for me to switch over. But like not going to wear dresses anymore, I'm not going to wear heels anymore. Going to keep the earrings to a reasonable within 79 my mind. And I'm not going to wear like makeup unless it's for cosplay or within my religion. So, essentially just kind of fitting into all that. The biggest one I push is hair, which my mom even straight up was like, "I was raised in a culture where guys had short hair. So sometimes it's hard for me," and I'm like, "You realize that's not going to change my mind. I'm going to have long hair." And she's like, "I know, I know. I'm just, I'm expressing to you why it's hard for me sometimes." And like I get it. I understand that a lot of people are going to have that same hang up. But I find it ironic that I kept my hair short when I was identifying female. And now that I identify as male, my hair's long. But I've always loved long hair because I got to braid it and I love braiding hair. It's a great fidget, in the middle of tests I'll like braid and unbraid my hair over and over again. Gives my hands something to do. And when it's short, it's like, "Wow, I can twist my hair. Yay. I have nothing to do with this." AK: OK, so some people who identify as transgender, don't feel the need to change their bodies. But whereas some people do, it's kind of what you were trying to say. NR: Yeah, there are some that all they need is the recognition of, "Oh, I'm not what I was born as, this is what I am. And if you can't handle that with the way I look, that's your problem, not mine. Because I like the way I look. I just don't like the way society perceives me." And that's pretty much where it sits. And then you have people where, and I guess this one's going to be far more often, but body dysmorphia is not strictly just for transgender. That's by far the one that's the most common. But women that get breast augmentation, people who have face, plastic surgery, that's body dysmorphia, but you don't have issues with the gender you were assigned at birth, so you don't need both. Just because you have both or one or the other doesn't mean that necessarily your transgender. And just because you don't have the other doesn't mean you're not transgender. It's, it's more 80 individualistic than, I think, a lot of society, especially the ones that are either refusing to understand or are running on a lack of education on the subject don't see. AK: OK, that makes sense. It's interesting that you bring up that you can have body dysmorphia without gender dysmorphia. It's like a lightbulb in my head. You mentioned that you purposely chose to keep Rands as your last name because you loved the history behind it. So what is that history, I want to hear a little about that. NR: OK, so this is one of the few benefits I can think of, of my grandparents, both my grandmothers’, on both sides of the family being LDS they were really into genealogy. I will never understand why Mormons are so hardcore into that. But like, yes, in this case, because my grandmother, she took it all the way back. As far as she could find of the name Rands, which it was originally just Rand, which has many derivatives. You have like Randall, Randy, Rands in my case. Rands is by far one of the least common, but it's still obviously a derivative off of the original just Rand. But I am descended from royalty and assassins. AK: That's sweet. NR: Oh yeah, like Marie Antoinette's executioner? That was one of mine. AK: Oh my gosh. Sorry, I'm like, what?! I'll be professional again. OK. NR: You're good. AK: That's super cool, though! MT: Most of the time you hear people excited to say "I'm related to Marie Antoinette." AK: I know. MT: You're excited that you're related to her executioner. That's really cool. NR: When I say executioner, I mean the one that worked for her, not the one that killed her. The one that decapitated all the people because she said so? AK: Interesting. 81 MT: Oh my gosh, that's a really cool still. AK: That's not a side of history you hear a ton about either, interesting. NR: Yeah, she went hardcore like way back. She traced all the way back to its Nordic roots, which, from what I've finagled is, a group of Vikings by the name of Rand, a Rand clan, came to England doing what Vikings do, raping and pillaging, doing other fun stuff. The Nords did pretty OK there for a while, but over some time, the English figured shit out and they in the long run either forcibly converted or killed a lot of the Nords and destroyed so much of their culture. They essentially forced the Rand Clan to become the Rand House and the land that they already had was just made into their little area. And so, like how there's like a shit ton of different like Duchys and whatever in England, that's kind of what the Rand was, that rand concept. Obviously it's not one that's around anymore. It split up and fell apart everywhere. They actually think that the term Rands comes from the Rand's, the Randses are coming, and it kind of just got like broken into people misunderstanding or whatnot, it became Rands. That's just how it fell, and then like, I don't know if I mentioned, but like there was a huge falling out between two brothers, one went to Africa, one went to America. The African one found a diamond mine and the one here worked their way across the plains and actually had land here in Ogden, like good land here in Ogden. They didn't take care of it. Got bankrupt and sold it. I have family heirlooms in the Union Station Museum. Yeah. The Wiggle family was married into the Rands family. Yeah, that's great I have ancestors that... Wiggle... Yeah. So that was really cool to be like, I loved the culture behind it, and for me it was like that, I was raised with the Rands family, and as much as I don't get along with them now, I hold onto the concept that my grandmother held that name. That was her married name, and if I can hold that little piece, I will. Then adding on the Olson being my middle name, it was like, he-he, 82 which is also Norse as fuck. Turns out I'm Norse on my mom's side of the family too. My Italian heritage came from France, and the France heritage came from the Nords that invaded France. AK: That is really cool. Thank you for sharing that. OK, I only I have three more questions. I thought I was down to just like a couple. So I want to learn a little bit about kind of your transition process and kind of your experience with it, your thoughts so far. I know you're still in the middle of it. NR: Oh yeah, hardcore. AK: Anything you want to share with, kind of, what that's been like for you, and whatnot, so. MT: I was going to, I had a similar question. You mentioned transgender doctor. Like you have a specific, so, you want to talk about that as well? NR: Yeah. So like right off the bat, like, I had no idea what the fuck I was doing, no idea where to start and what actually worked for me was the server that I put so much time into, my Norse server. There was someone on there that was non-binary and they were like, "OK." This is when I was still like, “I don't know, maybe I am, maybe I'm not.” They're like, "OK, well, then, let's, let's baseline it here. Transgender as in he/him?" And I'm like, "Yeah," and they're like, "OK, then how about this? For the rest of the conversation tonight, we'll use the he/him pronouns for you, and we'll see how that feels for you. Like, we'll baseline it and start it small and see if, how that makes you feel." And they did that and I was like, "OK, I really like that." They asked another question, they were like, "OK, when you envision yourself as male what do you see?" And I was like, "Well, I see freedom and strength and the ability to just breathe," and when they ask, "OK, what do you see when you see yourself as female," I'm like, "I feel trapped. Like I was forced into a part of a play that I never wanted and I never got a choice. It was just, oh here, by the way, you're going to be 83 a tree. You don't a get choice. You get to be a tree. Like I don't even want to be in the play, like, I don't even want to be on the same side of that coin at all." They were like, "That should be your answer right there. That right there should be all you need to focus on, whether or not this is right for you. Obviously I'm not telling you what your decision is, but just keep that in mind." It took me a good couple of days before I was like, "Yes, I am transgender." I told my employees and my boss like, "Hey, I'm coming out as transgender. These are my pronouns." They're like "We're going to try our hardest and our darndest to use the right pronouns. But you know, we're going to struggle." And I'm like, "Totally understand. I totally get it. I will be completely understanding." And she was just like, "Cool." I came out on the server and they were really cool and came out to my mom and my friend Scar. They actually came out like, I texted them like, "Hey, I want you know to know, I came out as transgender." And they're like, "Shut up." And I'm like, "Excuse me?" They're like, "Dude I just came out as non-binary." I was like, oh. That's a little funny. Like coincides a little too well. Essentially, we've kind of been going through the transition alongside each other, like figuring out things, seeing and discussing things. So we have always had that like step by step support of like, "How, does this bother you? Did this bother you?" As I came out, more people on the servers started talking to me like, "OK, well, I'm Transgender too, is there any, do you have any questions or stuff like that." I was talking with one of them and like they had mentioned in passing some things about their body that make them uncomfortable and, they had huge body dysmorphia. And I'm like, "Hold everything, just stop. These, these are body dysmorphia?" "Yeah." I'm like, "Oh." Like that makes so much more sense, like, just like the level of how much I've always hated my boobs and I always thought that it was like, eh, you know, maybe it's just me, no, it's not just me. That's most F to M cannot stand they're boobs. And 84 so it's like, OK, that, that makes me feel better, that helps. And like when I was like, "Oh yeah, I don't like my waist," and they're just like, "Same," I'm like, "Oh, that's normal? OK, OK." After I was like, working on like accepting it mentally, my first step was, I'm going to take all of my female centric clothes, and I'm going to put them in the back of my closet. I'm going to put them in garbage bags and just throw them in the back so I can't see them. So my closet is just male and, had more than I thought, and I reduced it down and I was like, "Oh, look, this is literally all the clothes that I wear, and everything else was the stuff that was in the corner that I only wear when I was told to." Kind of like that. I pulled all my earrings off the wall, I took all the makeup out of its place except for like the base level stuff that I'd use for cosplay. I took it all and I pushed it to the back of the closet and I was like, "OK." I went and I purchased more clothing because I was like, "I don't want to use the push up bra anymore." It's like, you know, that just doesn't sit well anymore. So I had like quite a shit ton of like sports bras and, pretty much all I wear now. That, or, I acquired a binder and I have transtape. Binders, not super epic. It's a, I wear it when I need a fast fix to feel some level of body euphoria just for a moment. But if you wear it for more than eight hours, you can actually cause really bad damage to your ribs. There have been cases of people having their ribs crack and break because essentially you're shoving your boobs backwards into your rib cage so that they don't look like they're there. Not good for your ribs and not really good for breathing, either. You're told no hard physical exercise because the harder you breathe, the harder it is on the ribs and shit like that. I think the coolest thing is like, my twin Ghost, right off the bat, the second I got my binder, the second he found out there was a time limit on the binder he's like, "If I find out that you've been keeping it on longer than eight hours, 85 I'll just get off call. You want to talk? I'm going to go, I'm going, I'm going to call you out on it." I love how he was like, "I'm going to try so hard on pronouns, I'm going to say so hard, I'm going to make mistakes." How many times he's messed up my pronouns? Once, and it was because he was having a hard time how to decide how to handle like, stuff before the transition, like how he would refer to me before the transition, which to be fair, I still have problems with that on occasion where it's like, I usually go with they. It's easier with they. So I mean, he's been a huge support all the way through, he was the first one I told. Like going throughout the entire transition and putting all the clothes in the back was like step one. And it was like, "OK, cool. We're doing well. We got this," and I told my therapist and his first thing was like, "All right. Before we do anything else, we want to focus on, one, are you OK with coming out socially?" And I'm like, "Yes. Yeah, I'm OK with coming out socially, like I'm pretty much a all or nothing kind of person. So I really don't have a middle ground with anything. So we're just going to do it all at once." He's, "OK, in that case, we're going to work you through little, little things here and there to kind of like help you find your normal. Like what is male to you? Because honestly, mentally speaking, it's not going to change. It's how you view yourself and how you want to be viewed by other people that's important." And so that was like a whole, "OK, how do we do this?" One of the best moments for me was, I was talking to Aria, that's the one I'm visiting here at the end of the month, they mentioned how they're mom has that thing where you lose all your hair? AK: Oh, alopecia? NR: Yes, thank you. I always forget the name. They mention that her mom has alopecia and wears like super long earrings, it's like, you know, this is my hair, kind of thing, right? I was like, "I have a shit ton of long earrings that I'm not wearing, they're just 86 sitting in the back of my closet,” I mean to be fair I haven't actually worn a lot of them in over a year. Because, I think since I got out of the police and whatnot it was, it was kind of just like, these just don't feel right anymore, so they just got used less and less. She was like, "Dude, I will buy the earrings off of you," I'm like, "Are you... Serious?" "Yeah. You have a massive collection." And I'm like, "That's fair," because, I mean, I put a lot of work into building this collection up, and we're talking easily seven years of collecting earrings and putting this whole thing together. They're like, "OK, well, they're cool. Then we'll buy them off of you," and I'm like, "Awesome, cool." I show them, and my longest one was this long. And most of the average were about that long. I start showing them and Aria got like a good, like two-thirds of the stuff that I had. I sent them over, and now Ari's my mom loves me. We did like a whole thing on VC where they like, opened it in front of me and Aria's mom was like, "This is my new favorite. Oh no, this is my new favorite. Oh, this is my new favorite. Oh, these are the ones I'm going to wear to the wedding." Aria's mom was like, "Oh, by the way, I've adopted you. You're another one of my sons. Like it's just happening." And it's like, "OK, OK, OK, I can work with that." So that was a huge step because I wanted those to go to someone who was actually gonna take care of them, because I did put a lot of effort into that. A lot of my female clothing, I ended up giving it to the one in Oregon, which is ironic now because I'm not super tight with them at the exact moment, but, you know, baby steps. But gradually, as I felt comfortable with things, I would pull things out of the closet or I would separate things here and there, or just baby steps gradually. When I got my binder, that was really awesome and I actually got transtape for cosplay. So I should explain what that one is, too. So transtape, it's essentially like medicalgrade adhesive, like hardcore-level adhesive. You can wear it for like two or three days kind of adhesive. Essentially, what you do is literally tape down and like it 87 traps around about here. It flattens your chest, essentially. You have to saturate it in oil because if you don't, it'll rip your skin off. So yeah, really, really strong adhesive. And so once it's covered in the oil, it's really just like taking a normal medical bandage off. Kind of just sucks, but as soon as it's off, you're like, "Oof, cool, sweet." I usually try to give myself like a week between uses, at least so that my skin has a chance to like, breathe. But I by far prefer the transtape because it's more comfortable and I can breathe. AK: It's safer? NR: Yes. Like sure, it's not great for the skin, but skin's a lot easier to heal than bones. The longer I wear a binder, the more damage it does to the ribs and the less likely top surgery is possible because you need to have a solid base to work on, and if you don't, it causes complications and there are doctors that just won't touch you if you have too bad of damage from binding. AK: Oh wow, even if your ribs have healed correctly? NR: Yes the scar tissue that is caused by binding can be so severe that they don't think it will, they don't see it medically safe to do that procedure anymore. They have to go about it in a very unique sort of way. That's why one of the first things when you get involved in like talking with the therapist or my transgender doctor was, "OK, do you want to have top surgery?" "Yeah." "OK, keep this to a minimum." Like, then you need to do this right because if you do too much, you're going to hinder yourself. That was a big thing. Originally I was going to wait a year before I did hormones, but I was watching like TikToks and I was seeing those videos of like one week on T or two months on T, and gradually seeing the changes. I'm like, "I don't want to wait. I want to start that now." So I talked with my therapist, my therapist is like, "I'm behind you 100%. Like right behind you. If you need anything for me to write, if you need any, we're right there." I was like, "Cool." 88 That took forever because I was dealing with, when you turn 23, military's like, "We don't want you anymore." I'm not even fucking twenty three yet, and yet my dad retired, that was the other reason that it was like, all crazy as fuck. It's because it was, well, "I have insurance for two months." It's like, "Thanks. You're awesome." And so, getting that set up was like, you know, fuck. But once it all was, it was like, yay. It was super affirming, like, to go to the U to get all that stuff done because they were, they're so awesome. Like, you walk in and they have a preferred name and they have your legal name on the document, in the records, because they have to. But the one that's at the top of the page, the one that's the big one is your preferred name and they have pronouns right below it. And then your legal name is like three rows down. And so it was like, "OK, cool." And so walking in there, it was, "Oh, Nute." And then any new nurse? It was, "Hi, my name is this. These are my pronouns. What are yours?" It's so much to the point that it's pretty much become my standard. Like when I get new employees or whatnot that I'm actually, "Hi, my name is this." I really need to start saying my pronouns more often. I usually ask their name and then ask their pronouns, which I get a lot of people who are like, "Pronouns?" It's like, "Do you live under a rock? Like, this is kind of been a huge thing in the news for like a while, but if you don't, I mean, I'll explain it to you. No problem." But yeah, so that was, that was really cool. It took forever to get that set up because they're super, super careful. Testosterone has a lot of, I mean, obviously so does estrogen, but testosterone has so many side effects especially because I'm doing full replacement therapy. So I'm not like micro dosing like my friend's doing where it's just enough to like balance it out and give you like an average of both. I'm essentially doing enough that it, like completely offsets the estrogen, essentially giving me at least 89 hormone make up of a guy rather than a nothing or an it or a they. A lot of people use some interesting pronouns. But that's pretty much what it's been so far. Obviously the social aspect has been weird, like coming out to the pieces of the Rands family that I have was nerve wracking, especially knowing that they are as conservative as all get out. I didn't really have to come out to my mom siblings because she's like, literally the day after I told her, she was like, "OK, please don't hate me, but my sister is my go to for emotional stuff. So she knows and because she knows your uncle knows. I know you're going to tell him anyway. I know you're going to tell your aunt anyway, but they know." I'm like, "OK, cool." Like, I knew that that's how it worked. Especially like when you have your person, you tell them all that stuff. And I knew that they were going to be better about it because I'm actually the second transgender in the Hill side of the family, not the first. They went through hell. So I was a little easier. They came out like five years ago. So for me, it was just like, "Yep, this is me," and everyone's just, "Oh, we've done this before." OK. We can do this." Yeah, that's where we're at so far. Baby steps. The physical changes are, so far, interesting. Obviously, it's only been like almost two months, so baby steps, severe baby steps, but yeah, so far, so good. AK: I know one other Transgender person they had interviewed years ago said that when he transitioned to testosterone it made him feel kind of awful for a while. How has that been for you? NR: So usually the second day. So I took my shot today, right? So tomorrow I'm probably not going to feel super great. It's like it makes my allergy symptoms worse. It like piggybacks off that and it's like, thanks, and like, it makes my leg really sore for two or three days, which at this point I'm kind of getting used to. MT: It makes sense, though. 90 NR: Yeah, right. It's going right into your muscle and so it kind of makes sense. And gradually those symptoms have gotten a little better, each time. By far, the one that's sucking most, though, is literally the day after I started it forced my cycle to start. Wherever it was at, it forced it to start. It was excruciating, I've had cramps. They got better each week. But there for the first couple of weeks, I expected on Tuesday to want to curl up and die for a couple of minutes, and just out of nowhere. It wasn't like a constant thing, but every now and then I'd want to curl up into a ball and just not exist for a minute. And like I said, that one's pretty well tapered off. Which I'm OK with. It wasn't fun. AK: It's going to stop your cycle, right, the testosterone? NR: I haven't had one since. Which I'm OK with. Very, very OK. MT: Did they say how quickly the testosterone would stop your cycle? Like, is there still a chance you might have one? NR: It's super subjective to each person. They were like, "So here's what can happen. Here is nine pages of what can happen. The reality is, outside of the main side effects, you know like your voice lowering and body hair and all other shit, we know that's going to happen. But when it comes to side effects, yeah, we don't know. It's a process for the both of us, we'll learn together." AK: Is that because the research on it is so new or does it just depend on the person? NR: It all depends on the person. It's so unique. Like, there are some people where, like me, the cycle just stops, and there's some that it takes six months to a year, and there's some people it never stops until they get their bottom surgery. So it's like super subjective to the person. And then there's other side effects like male pattern baldness, obviously don't want to jinx myself, but I think it will be OK so far with my nine pounds of hair. So like stuff like that, or it can increase chances of like diabetes or high blood pressure or high heart rate, which works out ironically, because I've 91 always had a really low heart rate and blood pressure. Like I've had doctors almost recommend me to get those cards that say don't give morphine, like a resting heart rate between 50 and 60. AK: Wow. NR: Yeah. I had a teacher, my health teacher was like, "Are you alive? Are you OK?" Like when they tested me to see if I could go on Adderall, like testing all that stuff, they were like, "Usually we say we're concerned about heart rate, but I'm not worried. Like, I feel like this can actually be a good thing for your heart rate to increase." Like, I'm not even that super active, and the part that drives everyone nuts is when I'm actually active, low hundreds, if not in the 90s and everyone's like, "You can't breathe. How is your heart working this well?" I have no idea. AK: So it sounds like when you start transition, a lot of your information comes from peers. Are there like resources out there that you can look into? What's the research and support on stuff like that on transitioning? NR: It's very sparsely located, very, very scattered. Unfortunately, being a part of the alphabet mafia, it's easier to say. Until you find more people, gradually, you are alone. There are support groups, but generally, to find the support groups, you need to know people. Like I just got involved into a transgender support group. And the reason I know about that is because my friend Scar, whose wife worked at the Pride Center in Salt Lake. And that's like who hosts this. Of course, if you do your research, you'll find stuff like pride centers or you'll find groups on Facebook and stuff like that. But until you find a group that actually resonates with you, it's going to take time. And you're alone and it's scary and it sucks because you have all these people around you that are like, "Oh yeah, well, I can just follow my parents footsteps when it comes to relationships because, you know, they're heteronormative and I'm heteronormative, so yay." I literally had to talk it through 92 with Ghost to be like, "Dude. Those times those guys that were hitting on you in school? I promise you the reason they went so severe, the reason they pushed so much is because they didn't have anyone to tell them, hey, ease up a bit. Or there isn't a difference between loving someone of the same gender versus the opposing gender. Love is love. It doesn't matter.” When it comes to a relationship, some things are going to change, especially when it comes to gender norms and stuff like that and how you fit into society. But as a standard, the same issues that you have in a heterosexual relationship you're going to have as an issue in a homosexual relationship. You're going to have communications issues, you're going to have issues on who makes more money, like that, they're always going to be there. I think that's the biggest misconception across the board is it's not a different kind of love. It's not a different kind of relationship. The only thing different is how you perceive it. That's it. What makes you happy should be the only thing that matters. I didn't figure that out until way, way after I should have, like when I was around 20, where it finally clicked. It doesn't matter. But especially kids in school, because I remember there wasn't anyone there to be like, "This is how you pick up a girl." Because what a guy does to pick up a girl is not the same thing that a girl would do to pick up a girl. Little different. There was certain body parts to flex. So the lack of support is definitely something that is a huge hindrance. While there is support groups, there are resources, it's like Fight Club, either you know about it or you don't. Getting into it is tricky because not only do you have to find them, the groups are typically very cautious about who they let it in, because of the community, because there unfortunately are people who will come out as Transgender purely for the social benefit. I can't think of a social benefit, because honestly, if I had a choice, I'd have stayed female. That was easier. Not what I 93 need, but it was definitely easier. So I don't understand why people would do this if it's not actually how they feel like. It makes no sense to me, nor do I understand why someone would want to be female. But that's, that's just me. AK: That answered my question, unless you had more to add just about kind of where you would start, what resources you have and if it's just completely like you find everything out from your peers or if there are resources out there. NR: Yeah, I wish it was easier. Honestly, we've all known that the sex education needed reform like nine thousand years ago, but there needs to be a part in that on the LGBTQ community. There needs to be a section in there as much as I know that hardcore Mormons are going to lose their shit over it. The reality is the Alphabet Mafia is not going anywhere. It's not like it's just going to be eradicated. Like, if you pray to Jesus it'll just go away. Like, it's not how this works. There's even people who are LDS that are gay. So it's like, I don't see how that's going to help y'all, like, you do you, man. As more laws are put in place to protect them as society becomes more accepting, it's going to become easier. They're, the resources are going to become more available and obviously there are way more resources than there were even just 10 years ago. There's way more acceptance of said resources than there was 10 years ago, and I'm sure the people who, way back in the 70s would look at now and they would lose their shit on how easy it is for us compared to that, how it was for them. We're probably going to think the same thing looking 20, 30 years down the line. But unfortunately, something like this, so many people are so vehemently against. It's hard. It's just, baby steps, little baby steps. AK: Do you have any other questions, I only have a couple of more left. MT: How did you find your Transgender doctor with resources being scarce? Like are they an endocrinologist? NR: They're endocrinologists and a primary care. Like, that's their thing. But honestly, I 94 literally went to the military was like, "Hey, I want to do this" and they're like "Cool." I'm like, "I want to be in the U." I wanted to be in the U because of Sarah. Sarah was one of the first people I told, it was like, "Sarah, what do we do? How do I do this?" They were like, "Well, whatever makes you happy. And like, when you start doing the stuff go for the U, like they have one of the best gender clinics. Push for the U." It was, "OK, I'm so not there yet, but like, OK." So the military pretty much kind of just assigned me that one. And so I just kind of stuck with her and she's really cool. There's a website that my doctor showed me because I'm trying to figure out the top surgery thing, because top surgery is not cheap and insurance is weird. Because technically it is medically necessary because I'm gender dysphoric and have depression. So literally I have all the markers, I have a therapist that's signed off on a sheet that says, "Yes, this is medically necessary." Bottom surgery, however, that'll be the, yeah. For transwomen, it's one surgery. For trans-males, it's at least two. It's far more extensive on the F to M side than the M to F. MT: Because they have to remove, and then... build. NR: Yeah, essentially. The removing isn't the hard part. But between those two surgeries, it's the way the, like everyone refers to it as, one of the surgeries gives you plumbing and electricity, and the other surgery gives you show. I think this is so funny. My twin, he was like "When you have bottom surgery. I don't want to know how big it is." And then I started doing research and I was like, "Oh shit, he is going to know how big it is." Because the most common place that they pull skin from is your forearm. And it will leave a scar. And so everyone will know. I thought about getting a tattoo on my arm, it's a to do list and have random shit like, you know, turn the oven off or stuff like that. Well see when they graft the skin, if it'll take the tattoo to. MT: Get the list after, and then it'll look like it's the list has been crossed off. 95 NR: That is true and I don't know about it. It's like, for whatever inclinations, I thought that I wanted a tattoo on my dick, I could get it on my arm first, because that would be less painful. And then just have them graft it over. MT: Oh, that's hilarious. NR: But yeah, so… MT: Do you have to wait a certain amount of time being on the hormones before you can do surgery? NR: Two years. For a bottom surgery, yeah, it has to be two years. MT: Top surgery? Is there a limit? NR: Nope. The top surgery is literally like, "Oh, you're transgender, let's get you signed up." Like, there's no waiting period, no nothing. The military and some insurances have standards, but when it comes to the medical need, no, there's no need for any changes. Essentially, it's just go in and remove all the boob. AK: Just out of curiosity, how much of it is covered by insurance, typically? I know like insurance is different, of course, but… NR: It's so dependent on the insurance. Like TRICARE. If you waited over a year on hormones, and you were working with the therapist and you were open as transgender for over a year. I believe they cover it all. There are some that only cover like three-fourths of it, or some only cover half of it. Some only cover part of the surgery, but don't cover the recovery. So it's really super specific. The standard I do know is it's several thousand dollars, easy. Because it is a fairly invasive surgery, when you think about it, not only do they have to remove all the breast tissue, it's a lot of excess skin, as well as reshaping stuff like, some people choose to like, completely get rid of their nipple and everything. A lot of nonbinary do that, but like in my case, just like resizing it, because, you know, men's are little smaller. Stuff like that and especially getting a plastic surgeon that's good. That way you 96 have a clean and healing incision and what not because for the most part, I mean, literally I'm going to have an incision that goes from there till about there on both sides. It might go down here a little more, and then I'm going to take my chest piece that I've already started, and as soon as my scars are healed, we're going to use that to cover the scars, we'll finish the tattoo. My, my tattoo artist was, he's super down with this, yep. AK: He's like, it'll be a challenge? NR: Oh yeah, and he's like, "You realize scar tissue is really painful to tattoo?" I'm like, "I'm aware. Cool. Like, dude, I've had a sternum tattoo, a spine tattoo. We got this, and I've already done the painful part here. So like, let's do this." AK: Awesome. Well, anymore? MT: No. AK: Okay, I just have two last questions to wrap it up. The first is, I'm curious what piece of advice you would give to a younger you? NR: Probably two things. One is, and this is both in a sense on religion and as a part of the Alphabet Mafia is. Whatever you decide, make sure that it does not hinder you, hinder your safety, your well-being, or get in the way of you having a place to live, because unfortunately that is something that is a problem for a lot of people. That would be the first one, is always make sure that you think about that. Secondly, excluding those specifications, the only person you need to satisfy is you, the only person you need to live up to or make happy, is you. No one has to live your life but you. So you might as well make it enjoyable. Stop trying to play someone you're not. Because everybody knows you're miserable. AK: And then my other question kind of goes off of that, which is, what advice would you give to other people who are going through, I guess, similar experiences, similar transitions, in the alphabet mafia? 97 NR: Definitely the same first. That's always one of the first things I cover is, if by coming out to your family or the people you care about will hinder any of those things, then for safety reasons, you need to keep it to yourself until you know that you will be safe. Like their safety is by far the most important thing. Unfortunately that's in question a lot being a part of the alphabet mafia. That's something that's, regrettably, a huge factor. But beyond that, stop waiting. And like it's your life, not theirs. So live it the way that makes you happy. Not the way that society is telling you is better because I mean, if people throughout our civil rights activism did that, you wouldn't be working here and, well actually, neither would you. Neither would I. So, people need to stand up and be loud, and if you're uncomfortable with that, if you're worried about your safety, of course, then like I said, that is the most important thing. But calling it gay pride or Alphabet Mafia pride is by far the best explanation I can come up with it because you should be proud. You should be proud to be able to stand up in front of people and be like, "Yeah, I'm Transgender. I have no problem with that. This is who I am. And if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself because that's who I am. And this is what makes me happy." I would do whatever it would take to make sure that the younger generation, any of the kids going through school, that're struggling with all this, know that there is someone a little older. I would have loved that, to have someone who's a little older to stand by them and just, or stand beside, behind them, and be that backing force that I didn't have, that a lot of my generation didn't have. But now a lot of the alpha generation do have now because a lot of the millennials and Gen Zs are coming up and being, they're more open about their sexuality. They're standing up for the younger generation. They're standing behind them. When people are losing their shit on them, it's "No you won't be mad. Be mad at the adults. Don't hurt the children. It's not OK. They need to be spoken for. Not spoken against." So, yeah. 98 AK: To go along with your advice, do you feel like your transition has helped you feel more or less safe from discrimination, from anything, whatever safety issues you've seen? NR: Probably less safe by far. There are several times when, especially when, like missionaries or religious groups come into the store where I have pins on my hat and what not that I will just, hiding in the kitchen because, well, I, I'm OK with dealing with horrible people. You work in the customer service industry long enough, it doesn't really mean much anymore. But if I can avoid it, I will. There's a lot of places that I'm genuinely worried. And it is scary, hardcore, like there's a lot of places like stores and whatnot that I'll go and visit where I'm genuinely scared to come out. Like it took me until a month ago to come out to my massage therapist. And really, to be honest, the only reason that I decided this point was because I was on T and they were going to notice. But before I started the physical changes, yeah, I usually kept it to myself unless it was important or it came up in passing. Now that it's more noticeable, and as it gets more noticeable, I'm expecting there to be some not fun times, and I know that I'm probably going to deal with a lot of shit. It's going to suck hardcore. But I will put up with it, and I will do my best to help the Alphabet Mafia have a good image because that's what's going to help the kids who are coming up now the most. Being an ass and losing my shit on every person that gets my pronouns wrong or discriminates against me, unless I am actually in physical harm, probably not going to do too much to defend myself because, unfortunately, that's not going to help them. So I'd rather do everything I can to make the ones who are actually at fault actually be the ones who are the problem. Because they are. But they've spent so long making us into the enemy that it's like walking on eggshells. It's scary. 99 AK: So along with that, what can we do as a society, do you think, to start making more safe spaces or just make society safe in general for everyone? NR: I think one of the things that will help the most is, obviously you can't control what happens in the home, but really, that's where it's going to change the most is at home, people changing that. It shouldn't be a subject that's completely ignored in school. It needs to be spoken about. There needs to be advocacy in schools. I know a lot of teachers won't like it, but then, "OK, go homeschool your kid if you care that much about kids being fucking safe, about kids being able to be spoken for." But there needs to be more. Just because there's a GSA club at a high school does not mean there's actual support for the kids, and because usually that's other kids supporting other kids. That's not what they need. That's a baseline of what they need, but that's not what they need. They need a group of adults that can speak for them. They need someone who's on the board of education to speak loud and be heard. They need people even in the universities. They need groups that are fighting for them. They need people who are standing up and being loud because the longer you're in the mafia, you learn that being loud is dangerous. I do it all the time. I like being loud, loud is how I do everything, it's scary to be loud. Generally it's easier for the Cis Straight to fight for it because they don't have that backing of, "Well, what if?" There needs to be more education and there needs to be a way for the kids to learn. Like if you're going to teach the kids about the bad sides, which they need to learn more about like slavery and shit like that. You need to teach them the horror stories of the LGBTQ community, too, because those are just as important, knowing how bad it's been, knowing how dangerous it's been, and explaining why the Equality Act was such a big deal, why gay marriage was such a big deal, why all of these things had such an impact on the community. Because generally I've found 100 90% of the people who actually have an issue with the Alphabet Mafia, it's literally because of a lack of understanding. They just don't know. My twin even acknowledges the fact that he was in that group until he dated someone who was a part of the group and then had his literal head beaten in on. No, that's not how this works. It needs to stop being a "Oh, well, we need to protect the children." From what? Themselves? It's not going anywhere and it's going to keep happening. It's like trying to say, "Oh, celibacy is the best thing for pregnancy." Yeah, why do you think we have one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the United States? It's not how that works. Ignoring the issue does not solve the problem. AK: Thank you so much for letting us ask you so many personal questions and for being so candid. I really appreciate you. 101