Oral History Program Colette Beesley Interviewed by Jim Miles 3 November 2022 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Colette Beesley Interviewed by Jim Miles 3 November 2022 Copyright © 2025 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: Beesley, Colette, an oral history by Jim Miles, 3 November 2022, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections & University Archives (SCUA), Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Colette Beesley. It was conducted on November 3, 2022 in the Stewart Library, by Jim Miles. Colette discusses her experiences growing up queer within an LDS family and the process of her coming out as transgender and bisexual. Also present is Raegan Baird. This interview contains discussion of suicidal ideation. JM: The date is November 3; it is approximately 2 p.m. We are located in the Stewart Library Room 333. I will be conducting your interview today. My name is Jim Miles. My pronouns are he/him, and I identify as the general umbrella term of queer. Behind the camera with me is… RB: I am Reagan and she/her and straight. JM: And then we are interviewing: CB: Colette, pronouns she/her. I am a transgender woman and I'm also bi/pan. Either one really works for me. JM: Fantastic. We have already gone over the boundaries and topic sensitivity with Colette, the interviewee, and she has agreed to continue the interview. We will jump into it, if that's okay; we'll start with the general ones. When and where were you born? CB: I do believe it might have been North Ogden, but I was born in Ogden, and I've lived here most of my life. I was born in 1998; September 21,1998. That puts me at 24 years old. JM: Okay, perfect, saves us doing our math too. If there is anyone who is below the age of 18, we immediately have to stop the interview. It's a good way to check for that as well. You said you were born in North Ogden and grew up in North Ogden? CB: I think I was born in North Ogden. I'm the oldest child. When I was born, my parents were still college students, figuring stuff out. But pretty quickly they 1 moved into a home in Ogden, right by Wasatch Elementary, if you know where that is, and that's where I was for most of my childhood. JM: Okay. Most of your childhood? Can you give us, like… CB: Yes, so I lived in that home for all of my childhood with the asterisk that when I was about 13, my parents got divorced, and so my dad moved out of that home. That's still where my mom lives. But I lived like 50% of my life in that home from that point on. JM: Okay, fantastic. I guess rather than continue on forward, we should maybe cover your childhood. You're born and raised in Ogden. You stick around here and you mention that your parents split about the age of 13. But growing up, you have kind of that traditional nuclear family? CB: Traditional nuclear family. I was born and raised Mormon. All of my extended family was either Mormon or presented as Mormon. Religion was a very big thing in my family, and growing up as a child, like up to the age of 12, I was pretty… I don't know. I've always been treated like I was a good student, and so that was one place where I put a lot of my effort, and I was also pretty into religion. I'm not sure exactly why, but I definitely was very invested in it from a young age. I've had various memories come to me of things that happened; for example, when I was probably around 10, I remember googling on my mother's computer when no one else was home: “How does a boy become a girl?” There are small things like that were present for most of my childhood. If they ever bubbled up into something bigger, it would get shoved down. These are things that I mostly forgot about or kind of kept in the back of my mind, like, “Oh yeah, every boy wants to be a girl.” But of course, that's not necessarily the case. JM: So at age 10, you were aware enough of these feelings to be googling it on the computer. When's the earliest that you can pin those spots back? 2 CB: Now, 10 is a guess. It could have been seven. Could have been just some time in my early childhood. But the thoughts of being queer, of being feminine, are things that I think have been with me for most of my childhood. It's hard to think that far back, but I do remember things like, I got told by my mother that I wasn't supposed to cry because I was a boy, and my father took all of my stuffed animals and gave them to the DI because stuffed animals are feminine. Right? These were things that were very, very upsetting to me as a young child. Both of those probably happened when I was like third or fourth grade, however old that puts me. JM: Ten-ish? CB: Ten-ish, yeah, and so I didn't like the male role, but I wasn't really familiar with what a transgender person was. I mean, I barely knew what a gay person was, right? I didn't have the language or the ability to articulate this sort of thing. I had those beginning inclinations, but the earliest that I would have consciously started calling myself, “Yes, I'm probably some kind of queer,” was 15 or 16. JM: Interesting. We will double back to that, again. Just curious, it gives kind of a timeframe of when to start asking those kinds of questions. CB: Yeah, sure. JM: But I should cover my bases first and establish what your family dynamic was. You said you're the oldest? CB: I'm the oldest. We're all spaced about three years apart. It's me, then three younger sisters: Celeste, Corinne, Brielle. We are and always have been the four sisters. Extremely close. We are very, very close. I love them so much. I would kill for them. Not literally, but maybe, and my parents have always been a little bit more, rough on that sort of thing. Right now, it's a sort of situation where all four of us are either openly out of the church or quietly out of the church because they still live with my 3 parents; my parents are both very strong believers, and that affects our dynamic, but I don't know. I've seen progress in my mom, not so much with my dad. JM: I keep saying let's jump back, but let's go early life. What was kind of that family dynamic? You've always been close to your sisters. Was your family in general close? You mentioned there's some space between parents now. CB: Yeah, it was close. There was distance for sure, times when I would want to spend time with my father or my mom and they just wouldn't be available. We played video games. We played a lot of Wii, that sort of thing. My dad got me into board games as well, which I liked. I liked to play with him and with my sisters as well, but we still play board games to this day, together; it's very nice. I don't know. We did the traditional family home evening on Monday nights occasionally, that sort of thing that you do in a Mormon-coded household. I did T-ball as a seven- or eight-yearold. I did that sort of thing, but I was never super athletic. I think that my parents found that perhaps a bit disappointing because I was the only boy, and so I should be more masculine or whatever. But I'm not a very outdoorsy person, not a very sporty person. The only sport thing that I ever really took to was track and crosscountry in middle school, and I kept up with that until 10th grade. JM: Okay, awesome. You have mentioned multiple times that you were kind of raised strong Mormon, LDS, and you grew up in the church. They are very much known to have some very strong gender roles built into that. Let's start with the gender roles aspect of your life. What were you taught while growing up? We'll talk elementary school days, those really developmental years. What were you taught about gender roles? CB: I definitely was taught that men aren't supposed to cry. That was a big one that I did not like. That was very strongly negative for me. Things that feel like they were taught to me at that age was like, “Women are meant to raise children.” These are 4 not things I necessarily agree with now, but this is what I was taught: Women are meant to raise children and women are meant to be the housekeeper; Men do the primary work. I remember them giving us the whole, “in God's eye they're two separate colonies, but they're equal.” Separate but equal, literally, which obviously I don't agree with, but this is how I was raised. I remember the priesthood, obviously, is an important part of that. As I got a little bit older, I got a little bit more like, “Why is a 12-year-old boy above a grown adult woman in the hierarchy of God's?” But that was definitely something that was taught to me, that women are basically subservient to men who are subservient to God. That's like the basic hierarchy. JM: Okay, fantastic. What, on kind of the other side of that coin, were you taught about sexuality growing up? CB: Not much, to be honest with you. A lot of the stuff that I learned about sex and sexuality, I learned either through school—but not much through school because I was kind of bullied in elementary school age—or through porn. I had like two chats with my dad about sex, and we did the maturation thing at my elementary school. In middle school, I got a concussion in eighth grade because I did wrestling because I liked a boy, and I got that concussion and then I got pneumonia and the flu. For eighth grade, I was basically completely out for about half of the year, and they waved my classes. But eighth grade is the year that you're taught sex ed, and so I just never got a formal sex education class until high school, and by high school, I already knew, so I didn't really get a perfectly good, like that sort of thing. Then as far as with like queer sexuality, I had to Google it myself, trying to figure it out. Definitely the first exposure to queer sexuality was like the push for gay marriage. My cousin's uncle was married to a man. They were pretty openly homophobic towards him. They called him, whichever way around it was, their aunt and uncle, even though it was two men. I'm pretty sure my first exposure to a trans 5 person would have been when Caitlyn Jenner came out publicly, and all of the spike in, like attack helicopter jokes that came as a result [laughs]. JM: That does track for being generally the same age [laughs]. We spent a lot of time talking about your understanding of sexuality, which is completely normal. Let's go all the way back. I want to kind of touch on just kind of elementary school for a little bit. You said you moved to a house by Wasatch Elementary. Did you go to Wasatch Elementary? CB: Yes, I did go to Wasatch. JM: So you went to Wasatch Elementary, and you mentioned you were kind of bullied there. What was your experience like in elementary school? CB: Yeah. Growing up from an early age, I had one friend that was very, very close, and I had other friends as well, but one specific friend from elementary school through to high school, we were very, very close. During the elementary school years, we would walk to school together. We both lived on the same block as Wasatch, and so I'd walk over to his house and then we would go across his backyard, over the fence, and walk to school. I don't know, it wasn't too bad. I read a lot. The Magic Treehouse was my favorite series; I've read every single one. At least, I read the ones that were out when I was in elementary school. But I also really liked reading Harry Potter, Percy Jackson. I really liked these series, especially Percy Jackson. I was a very big Percy Jackson fan. When I got a little bit older, like third or fourth grade, I remember it was very, very, very common to call things gay, to call each other faggots. I guess that maybe content warning for that one, but I didn't know what that word even meant. I just thought, like it meant, like, jerk or dork, and so we would call each other that on the playground. I was like a third or fourth grader—starting then, and then progressing 6 to sixth grade, that died down pretty quickly, from what I remember of my personal experience. I don't remember that being all that common by like ninth grade. Other things in elementary school: I liked most of my teachers a lot, my thirdgrade teacher especially. In fourth grade I got picked on a lot, but I don't know if I was really conscious of the fact that I was being picked on. What would happen is people would tease me and make me laugh and I would spit out my milk. This became something that happened almost every day. I think other things happened as well. I remember my fourth-grade teacher had a whole speech about not bullying people, and I felt very called out as the victim of all that. I don't know. I did very well in school for most of school; in elementary they did those DIBELS tests, the reading speed test. I didn't do very well on those. I'm a slow reader, but other than that… JM: Okay. I guess we should clear this up because you said content warning: use whatever language you're comfortable using. Please don't feel limited to swear. This is your life story, so please just feel comfortable saying whatever you want to say. I had a question. Being a member of the Mormon Church and growing up in Utah, were you involved in the Boy Scouts during this period of time? CB: Elementary school, I think, is a little too young for Boy Scouts. When do you start Boy Scouts? It's like… JM: You can do Cub Scouts starting at 8. CB: Oh, yes. I literally forgot that Cub Scouts existed. Yeah, I did that as Scouts. I was Mormon, and my family was pretty active, and so if I didn't go to the weekly Wednesday night thing, my mom would bother me about it. I did go to Cub Scouts, I did go to Boy Scouts. I wasn't a huge fan. Like I said, I'm not very outdoorsy. I guess here are more gender roles for you as well, because I often found that I was the pansy of the group. I didn't like swimming, I didn't know how to swim, and we would go swimming often and I would stay in the shallow end. We would go to 7 those day camps that they have where you do a whole bunch of activities, and I guess on those active ones, I would have fun, but I don't know. There was this general attitude of talking about sports and being a man and all this sort of thing that I just was not interested in at all. I just didn't, I had no interest in it, and I felt a little bit alienated at those sorts of things for that reason. I mean, even down to like the basic structure of Boy Scouts. At least in my ward, I would show up to the ward, and if the people weren't there yet or whatever, you play basketball for however long it took for the adults to be like, “Okay, now we're going to go do this,” and I was not good at basketball, nor did I enjoy it. But either you did the basketball or you were the weird kid in the corner. JM: Yeah. You kind of ran us all up to fourth grade in your elementary school experience. That would be generally about the time you mentioned that maybe those first inklings of being queer in some way shape or form were dawning on you. Did you talk to anyone about that, with your friends, family, sisters? CB: Not really. I didn't talk to anyone about those. I remember my mom once caught me in my sister's dress-ups, just kind of experimenting with gender. She got very, very mad at me, and I was like, “Okay, this is not okay,” at least according to my mom. I think I was familiar enough with the cultural perspective, the religious perspective on queer people, on gender and that sort of thing, at least with the very basics of ‘boys are boys and girls are girls’ idea that I was too scared to talk about it with anyone, including my sisters. I didn't talk to them about this, and I don't even know if I thought about it on a conscious level, like “How does a boy become a girl?” When I was Googling that I didn't really even… I don't know how to describe it, but I wasn't like trying to be trans. I had the desire, but it was almost subconscious, right? I don't know if that makes any sense. 8 JM: It makes perfect sense. A common theme throughout this will be a lot of members of the queer community being able to look back at their life and go, “Oh, I can recognize that's kind of where it started, but wasn't conscious about it.” CB: At the time, exactly. JM: The “I want to be best friends with them” is kind of the common one that comes up. Sexuality is coming into question, so yes, that makes perfect sense. It's kind of a pivotal moment, though, with your mom. Do you think that kind of led you to closet yourself in a way? CB: I mean, definitely, right? I didn't know what a trans person was. I may have known what a gay person was, I don’t know. So to the extent that I could closet myself at the time, and definitely later down the road when I started having queer thoughts, I thought back to those kinds of experiences, and I was like, “No, no, no, no. Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. This is not okay,” right? I don't know. Now, this is a little bit—I don’t know, adult,” but I also remember I was caught with pornography with men in it and I got in trouble for that as well. My mom was, “Do you like this?” She was upset with me over that one as well, and that's when I kind of just swapped. I was like, “Okay, because I'm bi.” I was like, “Okay, I guess I can't do that, but I can just be attracted to women, whatever. It’s fine.” But I also learned that was not okay, and I was relatively young as well. I don't remember exactly how old I was. JM: Give us a ballpark. CB: 10 to 13, somewhere in there. JM: Somewhere in there. You got caught with it on your phone, you said? CB: On my father's computer. I didn't have a phone yet. I got my first push phone with the little button when I was 13. 9 JM: Kind of one of those pivotal moments, “This isn’t okay.” Out of curiosity, you mentioned that there was some confusion. Realizing that it wasn’t okay for the feminine, female-oriented pornography. CB: Yeah, that was also not okay. I felt that was, or you might feel, oriented as in like with men, so I got in trouble for watching porn with people of both genders, and both were bad because I was raised Mormon, right? I felt like there was more concern in my parent’s eyes—I picked up on more, like they were fearing for my life, almost, when we were talking about the men rather than the women. JM: Okay, yeah. You just alluded to that, but hadn't quite gotten specific about doing so; just trying to figure out what that you had alluded to. Thank you. CB: Definitely. JM: You took us up to fourth grade. You have mentioned you've got this one friend. You didn't name them, and that's okay if you don't want to. You're being a little bit bullied, but not necessarily. CB: Not like cruelly bullied. Right? I wouldn't say that I was like the most bullied kid on the playground, but just a little bit. JM: Okay, does that continue through the rest of elementary school? CB: Yeah. JM: That's pretty standard. Any developments, gender, sexuality-wise during that period? CB: I don't think so. I don't think there were any major... You're really trying my memory. I kept journals; I should have busted those out before I came. Jot something down. JM: Well, like we mentioned before, you can always add that to the transcript as you feel. Okay, let’s kind of just jump into middle school. How do things change in middle school, do they stay the same? 10 CB: I guess I should clarify. I had a junior high, so middle school/junior high is the same thing. In elementary school, I was known as a generally very happy person, very cheerful. In middle school is when like things like my struggle with depression, anxiety, and even suicidal ideation, that all started in middle school. Seventh grade, I started cross-country, I started track; I enjoyed that. Although, the people that I ran with, I didn't really enjoy. I don't know, they were a different cut of people than myself. I didn't really like spending time with them. I also did band, I played the saxophone three years in a row. I really liked that. But after middle school, I didn't want to do bands anymore, and I didn't go any further. I was okay, I was not the best in the world. Let's see what else? Like I said, in eighth grade, I got the concussion, I got pneumonia, and the flu. I was hospitalized for a week, and then I couldn't leave the house for two weeks after because my immune system was just gone. That was a very tough time for me because of the concussion. I developed a traumatic brain injury, and so I wasn't allowed to watch TV, I wasn't allowed to read; I wasn't allowed to do basically anything that would be mentally taxing, for three weeks. Then for a significant chunk of time after, because I only went to half my classes after, like the core classes, math, English, science, that sort of thing. I just couldn't do anything, and it was just awful. I hated it so much. I don't really remember much of any individual events that happened in that phase just because it was just so, so awful all the time. What else happened in junior high? I found the friend group that I would be with in high school in ninth grade. I found them and they kind of took me in and we hung out a lot. It was a lot of people at first and over the course of high school, it would kind of splinter off. In ninth grade I found some people, but in eighth grade, I really felt completely alone. I felt abandoned. I ate my lunch alone. I didn't feel like 11 anyone really was there for me, and the one friend that I did have, the same guy from elementary school, we had two lunches. I never got to see him because I didn't have classes with him and I didn't have lunch with him. It was just tough luck for me. It was very isolating and I did not enjoy it. JM: Did you spend time with this friend outside of school? CB: Outside of school? A little less than I did in elementary, though. It was hard for me to figure out how, because when I was in elementary school, if I wanted to hang out with my friend or any friend, I would just call their house on the home line. They pick up, and their parent would ask them if they did their chores or whatever, and then we go and we play with sticks and pretend we were wizards or whatever it was, and that was super fun. But in junior high, there became this sort of thing where people would communicate with each other on their phones or Snapchat. I didn't have a phone for a good chunk of junior high, and even after I got a phone, it was too old to have Snapchat on it. I didn't have an iPod, so I just was completely socially isolated in that sort of way. It was very difficult for me to ask people to hang out or to get invited to parties, this sort of thing, until about ninth grade. I think I got a touch phone in ninth grade. I remember I got an iPod Nano, like one of the fit ones, and my younger sister got an iPod Touch, and I was just livid because I think my parents didn't understand the difference. But my sister now had access to a whole social world that I still didn't have access to because you couldn't do anything on an iPod Nano except for listening to music. It was Christmas one year and I was so mad. My parents were like, “You should be grateful for what you got.” I was like, “I'm going to kill you.” JM: Christmas to go down in the… CB: The memory. Yeah, for sure. 12 JM: I did forget to ask, what is the middle school you were attending at this time? CB: Mount Ogden Junior High. JM: Okay, you're at Mount Ogden Junior High. You've covered the middle school years very well. We'll ask some short follow-up questions. I did forget to ask, we do have a couple current event things that we like to ask. Do you recall 9/11 at all? That would have been back in elementary school years? CB: I do not. JM: You don't recall, okay. CB: I remember. I mean, that sort of thing was talked about around me. JM: But not in a strong interaction, makes sense. That's 50/50 with younger generations on how they remembered that one. CB: The earliest political memories I have are the teacher pulling out the TV to watch Barack Obama be inaugurated. I remember thinking, “Oh, that's cool, but my mom doesn't like him.” JM: You mentioned suicide and depression start up here, and you have the traumatic brain injury that comes as a result with the concussion. That can be quite a lot to deal with. Were you seeing some help with all that at this point in time? CB: My mom took me to the U to see a doctor. No, I was not. I’m not sure exactly what was happening because I was both less cognizant, like less aware of my surroundings, and also, I was an eighth grader, so I'm not exactly 100% sure what was happening. I spent a lot of time with my mom taking me to the U—there were these little tests of brain responsiveness time, I think, was what they were supposed to be measuring. They were the type of things where it says green, but it's in yellow ink, and you're supposed to hit which button is correct and just test my reaction time. I think they got me on some medication. When I started showing symptoms of depression and anxiety, I did go to a therapist for a couple sessions, but my parents 13 came into the sessions with me, and that was not what I needed. I couldn't talk about what was making me depressed or anxious or anything like that because I was too afraid of making my parents upset, or very often, they were part of the problem. So I got that experience. I've had a couple experiences with therapy over my life, and that experience with therapy was not very good. JM: At this point in time, you did mention that you were very religious until about age 12. Would you consider yourself a member of the church; are you waning? CB: Strong atheist, I am very now. I don't hold that against other people; if they feel that there is something valuable in religion, they can have that. But in this current moment in time today, right now in 2022, I'm an atheist, and I've held that belief since I was about 16. Middle school-age, I start having questions. I still am pretty active, especially since my parents are. I continue to be an active member of the church until after I leave the church mentally. But it starts probably around when I was 13, and by the time I was 16, I was like, “This is not for me.” JM: You mentioned starting to question. What does that questioning process look like? CB: A lot of it was… You are really testing me, I appreciate it. JM: If you don't have answers, that's okay. CB: No, it's okay. There was a lot of moments. I remember when I was like 16—I'm kind of jumping around quite a lot chronologically because these are just the nuggets that I have. But when I was like 16, I remember there was a moment where I went to like mormon.com/homosexualattraction or whatever the website was, and I read the church's official stance on religion, and I did the stereotypical thing where I sat down and I asked God to pray to get the gay out of me, and it didn't work. There was that. From an early age, I was treated as a pretty intelligent person. Critical thinking and history as well have always been two things that are very important to 14 me, and so as it was both playing off of each other as I got older, I didn't like that you weren't allowed to look at other perspectives on the church. I was taught in school that if you're writing a paper, you should have more than one perspective. But the church says explicitly, “Don't look at the other perspective,” and I was thinking, like, “What do they say on the other side?” I had various forays into that where I would go, I would look, and I would go right back. But over time, I was like, “Well, if what I believe is right? If Mormonism is the one true church, it shouldn't be, it should withstand scrutiny.” From my perspective, when I did my research on it, it did not, and so that was the history stuff. The logic bro stuff and the me-being-gay stuff kind of played off of each other, where one would provide a motive to look at the other. Because if, I mean, ultimately, if I can find a way that it's fine to be gay, that is scary. But at least it's not eternal damnation, right? JM: So that starts broadly starts around age 13. That kind of culminates at 16, and then we'll get to that as we get to the next portion. We're going to continue with doing this chronologically. What is your experience with gender and sexuality during these middle school years? CB: I remember—and this goes into a little bit of like sixth grade as well, maybe into the fifth grade because I got a very early puberty. Not like medically precocious, but I hit puberty before most of my peers did. I hated it so much. I remember I was teased on the playground in like fifth or sixth grade, I can’t remember which, for having a little bit of peach fuzz. I went to my dad, I asked him to show me how to shave because I didn't like it, and he laughed at me. I guess from his perspective, I kind of understand. Your ten-year-old child comes to you and it's like, “It's time for me to shave,” but also it was very upsetting and my mom got pissed at him. My mom was the one that showed me how to shave with, I believe it was a pink razor and her leg shaving cream. There was that, and then my voice dropped. I didn't like that, and all 15 these sorts of things with the physical aspect of going through male puberty, it was very not at all what I wanted. I hated it. As I go through puberty, I obviously develop a sex drive, and that was something that started. I wasn't disgusted; I've heard tales of some trans women being disgusted with the idea of sex and this sort of thing. That was not my experience. I was fine with it. I liked the idea, but yeah, I don't know. Other than that, I guess there was like basic stratification that might not have been as present in elementary school. I joined the boys’ track team and I joined the boys’ crosscountry team. I remember we would play things like soccer on the elementary school fields, and I'm pretty sure that was just like whoever on whichever team. I know it was like that for kickball, but in middle school you have to be on the boys’ team, so that's something. Not a whole lot of other stuff, I don't think. I guess actually at the same time, that same experience is happening for me in church as well, because I go from primary where it's mixed-gender to Young Men and Young Women where we're now segregated by gender. I went to Young Men when I was 12 because that's kind of just what you do, and it was fine. The same stuff that I said about Boy Scouts before applies here again. I don't know, it wasn't an environment that resonated with me, and it was fine, though. I made friends. I guess none that I still talk to, but it was fine. JM: Thank you for that. Now, can you think of anything else? I think we've pretty well covered middle school. I think we're naturally leading into you talking about leaving the church or leaving to high school. Let me cover my bases this time. Where did you go to high school? CB: Ogden High School. JM: Let me read through my notes again. You have Ogden High ninth through 12th. CB: Yes. 16 JM: Then you find this group of high school friends in ninth grade, you said early on? CB: Oh sorry, Ogden High is not a ninth through 12th, it's a 10th through 12th. Three years of Ogden High. I don't know why I agreed with you. JM: Okay, math is not a lot of the strong points in the room. CB: I found the friends in ninth grade, OMJH, and then became closer with them. It was more firm, 10th through 12th at Ogden High. JM: You're heading into the 10th grade. You have this group of friends you collect in ninth grade. What does 10th grade look like socially for you? CB: 10th grade. Lots and lots of people. Lots of drama as well. Very much a lot of different interests in that friend group, and that's why it would ultimately—more in 11th grade—end up splintering off because we just didn't really all resonate with each other. There were lots of going to parties or that sort of thing, like Mormon parties, right? I wasn't like getting drunk or anything, but going to people's houses late at night, that sort of thing. Also, I got my first serious relationship in 10th grade with a woman. It was probably not good for me. She kind of—I don't know, the word abuse is so strong. She definitely was telling me not to spend time with one of my best friends, definitely trying to turn me against my family. This is when I start to have serious recurrent suicidal ideation, very often when I am in this relationship. Also, this is the first time that I start to struggle in my life with self-harm, which is good and great and good. Sarcasm, obviously. But yeah, there was that. Not fun. We ended up breaking up, which was good, and that happened late 10th grade, maybe early 11th grade. I went from that relationship straight into another one, also with a woman; it was a more healthy relationship. It didn't end up lasting, but I don't have any strong negative feelings for her. 17 In 10th grade I developed a friendship with a girl named Mattise who I am still friends with to this day. I love her so much. She's fantastic; I knew her in ninth grade, but we got closer in 10th grade. We were part of the same friend group and we kind of clung together. That guy from elementary school was also in this friend group, so I saw him more often than I did in junior high. It was generally an upswing in social interaction for me. Less loneliness, but not necessarily all for the positive because of the relationship I was in. Then I did cross-country and track, I think just 10th grade, maybe 11th grade. But I transitioned from cross-country/track to theater because of Mattise. She was in Much Ado About Nothing, I think. No, it was Midsummer Night's Dream. JM: Much Ado About Nothing is my favorite Shakespeare play. CB: I did that, and I did that in junior high ninth grade. I did Much Ado About Nothing, and in 12th grade, I did it again. Oh, it was a fun one. Midsummer Night's Dream, though, I was Theseus, and she asked me to apply because their Theseus had just dropped out of nowhere. She was like, “Hey, you should come do this,” and so I did, and it's fun. I enjoyed it, and that's where I got close with the small group of like five or six people that I would be with for the rest of high school. I liked theater. I joke with my friends that I went to the one homophobic theater department in the entire world. It still was not an okay place to be gay, but other than that, it was better, and I liked the people better than I did the cross-country people. It was definitely a place that I really enjoyed. I'm glad that I spent my time with theater. It didn't ever become like a career for me or anything, but I'm glad I did it. When I did, it was good. There's other stuff. Tenth grade, also took a history class, really liked it. Eleventh grade, took a history class from a different teacher; really, really liked it, and history ultimately ends up becoming what I am majoring in now and what I want to do with my life. I want to be a history teacher/maybe and perhaps eventually a 18 professor. It's something that I'm very passionate about. I have memories; I got a book of FDR when I was a fifth grader that I never read, but I thought it was cool. It really gets firm; history was, like, temperate. JM: Do my math. You mentioned age 16 when you start leaving the church, towards the end of sophomore year, traditionally. CB: Well, I was a little bit older than the rest, so I turned 16 in September, so beginning of sophomore year. But I don't know exactly when in sophomore year I was questioning the church. So I guess not really a functional correction there. But yeah, I was pretty much out of the church. It was online content that gave me the final push I needed. I cannot stress enough, the Internet is awful and I hate it. But also, I cannot stress enough how much the Internet has played a large role in my life. Without the Internet, I don't know if I would have figured out what a trans person was. Because when you go on to the Internet, you can leave the Mormon bubble, and that was what I needed to be able to look at things from an outside perspective and be like, “I really just don't believe in this church.” I still went to seminary. I went to seminary all four years, but I stopped liking it in 10th grade. I went like half the time, and when I did go, it was because my mom was pounding down my door. My dad didn't force me to go, which was kind because I didn't want to. But then again, I drove from my mom's house, but I walked to the seminary from my dad's house. So it could have been that my dad just didn't know that I wasn't at the seminary building. But yeah, I left it mentally. I started being very sick all the time so that I wouldn't have to go to church, because once you're out of the church mentally, but you're not, but you still have to go, it is not fun. I don't know if you guys have experience with that, but you have to put up this face of pretending to believe in something that you don't believe in, and I just really didn't like it. I really didn't, like I 19 would get quiet; I got a lot quieter when I was at church than at theater, for example. JM: Let's kind of tie that into us, because you mentioned that part of why you're leaving the church was relying on learning about their thoughts on queerness. Early high school, how are things looking on that aspect of gender and sexuality? CB: Early high school, even like 10th grade—so I guess maybe some of the time when I'm 15, I'm not even sure, but definitely in 10th grade I start thinking, “Okay, I might be bi.” I figured this out first. I was having dreams; I was being attracted to people in the theater department that were men. I was definitely like, “I think I'm probably bi.” I brought it up with the toxic girlfriend and she told me that it was disgusting and she was very not happy with that, and so I learned from that, “Okay, I shouldn't do that.” Later in high school, it kind of just simmers under the surface, right? I do the praying to God to make me be straight, doesn't work, and then later in high school, I start questioning, “Am I gay? Am I bi? Am I gay? Am I bi?” I don't know. By this point in time, I'm familiar with the perception that gay men are feminine. I knew that I wanted to be perceived as feminine. I didn't know that I was trans, but I knew that I wanted to be perceived as a feminine person, and so I was like, “Well, I think I'm bi. I think I'm attracted to both genders. But also I want people to think of me as feminine, so maybe I'm gay. Am I gay? I don't know,” and I didn't really have a solid answer to that. I'm going to go a little bit past high school just because it works better as a story like that. I decided on bi. I came out to Matisse privately. This is the summer after senior year, and she was like, “Oh, that's cool. Good for you,” and then she also told me, “Hey, you are set to go on a mission. Maybe don't do that if you don't believe in the church.” This was like a week or two before I was supposed to go to the MTC. We can talk about that in a second. I'm putting that aside so that I can 20 continue the queer thing. But Matisse convinced me not to go. What I told my parents is that I was suicidal, which was true, and that I just wouldn't go. My mom was like, “Okay, you don't have to go, but you have to go to therapy if you're suicidal,” which is fair. JM: She makes the point, really. CB: Strong point. What, I'm 18? I was like, “Okay, I'll go,” and I went to this therapist that I picked out, and he was really weird. I think my mom thinks that I was gay because I was molested by my theater teacher. However, this is not something that happened. She's made comments to me that she thinks that this happened. I was never molested by my theater teacher. But I think my mom thinks that I was, and that's what turned me gay. Part of that is because the therapist was treating me for PTSD when I didn't have PTSD. I had problems with anxiety, I had problems with depression, but I didn't have PTSD. This therapist, what he told me is that bisexual people don't exist. You're either gay or straight, and so he pressured me into coming out as gay and not bi. So I did that, and it was bad for me, and I used it for about three years. Then I figured out that I was trans, and I was like, “Well, I'm just going to kill two birds with one stone,” so I came out as trans and bi at the same time. I fixed that little problem because nobody was thinking about my sexuality because they were too worried about my gender. But yeah, that's the timeline, and I came out publicly as trans and bi March of 2021. Relatively recently. JM: I guess we are at the end of 2022, so maybe not as recently, but yes. CB: Yeah, it was a little bit over a year and a half ago. JM: Great information to have, and we're going to tackle all of that in just a minute. CB: Yes, we go back to high school. JM: Walk that back just a little bit. So you start to question sexuality and maybe gender a little bit, but primarily sexuality during these early years of high school. Are you 21 talking about it with your friends? You mentioned you brought it up with a partner who was toxic. Did you talk to anyone else about it? CB: Brought it up with her, no. Then not really until late senior year and the summer after senior year. I started planting the idea. “How crazy would it be if I was gay? That would be so funny. How are you going to react to this joke?” That sort of thing. I did that relatively frequently with my small group of friends. Some of them reacted positively, some of them not. Just living a lie is not fun, as I'm sure some of you are aware of, and so I ultimately started coming out to people after Matisse. I came out to a couple of my friends, and one of them was very positive and like, “You do you, Colette, I'm so happy for you.” Another one less so, and another, my girlfriend at the time—I told her I was gay, and so we broke up. But she was nice. There was one friend who was not happy with it at all and outed me to the rest of our peers at the time. This was summer after senior year, so I guess it’s not high school. That pressured me into coming out and it was not good. Other than that, though, I wasn't really talking about it with anyone for the duration of my time in high school. I was thinking about it and I was paying attention when things like gender or sexuality came up. I was definitely paying attention. I was trying to figure out the sexuality stuff, those trans thoughts. I had shoved them so far under my mind that I don't know if I would have remembered that they happened at that point of time because I just couldn't handle it. JM: I would like to note, don't feel like you can't go past high school just because it helps us chronologically, just make sure we're covering everything. We're going to walk it back, but as these events bleed past, these are arbitrary boundaries and feel free to pass them. 2015 would've been your junior year? CB: 2015 was sophomore year; I graduated in 2017. So 2014-15 would have been sophomore year and 15-16 would have been junior year. 22 JM: Gay marriage debate was when? CB: ‘15 was when it was legalized. History major. JM: You know what I’m trying to ask. Let's just talk about... CB: Gay marriage. I thought it was bad when I was in elementary school. But when it was being talked about leading up to 2015, I was very much struggling because at the same time, I was questioning my faith, but I just couldn't figure out why it was such a big deal. I tried to keep going back to like, “I'll have faith in God that it's okay, whatever He does. God works in mysterious ways,” or whatever. But I just couldn't figure out what was wrong with being gay. I couldn't figure it out, and it was something that even for a large amount of the time that I identified as a Mormon, I was like, “I just don't think it's really that big of a deal,” and obviously, the part of me figuring out my own sexuality influenced that for sure. But even before I had thoughts of figuring that out, I didn't really care. This perspective of mine probably started around 12 or 13. That's a strong guess. But when it was legalized in 2015, I remember I watched it on our giant cubic TV. It wasn't like giant as in big screen, but yeah, and I watched it on the news just for some reason. I don't even remember why, when my parents weren't home and I was happy and I felt very rebellious for being happy, but I was like, “Ha, take that,” and I was very happy that gay marriage was legalized. JM: Okay, you’re kind of questioning at this point. When does it dawn on you, “I can get married to someone of the same sex?” CB: Interesting. I'm not sure. I think me thinking of myself as being married to someone of the same gender would have been closer to when I was getting ready to come out to Matisse, just for a number of reasons. It was all kind of subconscious. That would have been, if I guess, junior year. So if it is junior year, then that's not very 23 long after, probably within a year. Not immediately, I don't think, but within a year I was having like, “Oh, yeah.” JM: [How is your] relationship with your parents during this time? CB: Relationship with my parents? JM: They're now divorced; they're divorced back at the end of elementary? CB: Divorced, and yeah, end of elementary. It was the summer in between elementary and junior high. The divorce didn't traumatize me at all; I had the perspective that I think we were a lot better apart than together. In elementary school, I remember writing in my journal about how I was afraid that my parents were going to get divorced, like this was something that was going to happen. I'm glad that it did, but they definitely had different parenting styles. My mother, definitely a helicopter parent, overprotective. She only got worse after I left the house. My mom's a good parent, I like her, but she definitely is not a very easy person to live with. My dad was very good, except for his political beliefs. My dad was easygoing to live with, but definitely very clear that if I ever came out as gay, it would be a problem. I actually ended up moving in with my dad a few months before I was planning on coming out. I moved out of my mom's house because Matisse and I had kind of thought that maybe my dad would be more accepting for some reason. I don't remember why we thought this, but that is what we thought, and so I would be more secure if I was just living in my dad's house. Then I came out to him because Rachel outed me to our friends, and I was nervous. I wanted it to come from me, and he kicked me out, so I was clearly wrong. But that is what I thought. Yeah, they were fine, but there was definitely a lot of resentment towards them for placing me in this predicament where I was having to choose between faith and living in a society that wanted me to be a way that I'm not, and that sort of thing. Definitely a lot of that honestly carried over past high school. But I've been trying to 24 reach out a little bit more recently, and I've seen a lot of progress from then on, like I said earlier. JM: That seems to have been difficult to share, do you want to take a break for a minute? CB: It's good. Actually, can I get some water? I've been talking so much. [Recording pauses for break] [Recording resumes] JM: Okay, took a brief break there for a minute, and we've talked about relationship with your parents, your ongoing experience with discovering your sexuality, and in part, gender identity throughout high school. We talked about your experience with your friends. Let's wrap up your high school career. You kind of have to support your dream theater crew in 11th grade. You were not molested by your… CB: I was not molested by my theater teacher. JM: But do you have a good time in theater? You mentioned you have a group of friends there. What does rounding out high school look like with that as your extracurricular? CB: Yeah, I think I covered 10th grade pretty well. Eleventh grade I did theater. It was great, it was super fun. It was a lot of time, which was stressful at times because I was also in IB. It stands for International Baccalaureate. It's an upper-level division. Like I said, I did well in school, but between those two and also being Mormon, I was very strapped for time to do anything ever. I was pretty sleep-deprived through most of high school. But yeah, the theater was fun. I really enjoyed it. We did a whole bunch of different plays, a whole bunch of different musicals. I was Captain Von Trapp at one point; I really enjoyed that in Sound of Music. We did Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I was one of the brothers; that was fun. We did Much Ado About Nothing; I was Benedick, that was fun. I think even to this day, I never really 25 had any gender problems with theater, which was interesting to me. I'm fine playing a male role because I guess it's not me on the stage, I think is why, if I had to psychoanalyze myself. But yeah, theater was fun. I.B. was really, really hard work, but I did get the degree and so it was definitely worth it for me. It was 30 credits for Weber, so it was really, really nice to have that going straight in. Really influential teachers at this point in time. My history teacher I already mentioned; I also had Theory of Knowledge—basically a philosophy class teacher who helps me think about things logically, I guess basically avoiding logical fallacies and this type of thing. That was a big part of helping myself think through, “I might be gay, let's think about it logically. I might be not Mormon, let’s think about it logically.” I have both of those classes for 11th and 12th grade. What else… I'm not really sure. That's high school. JM: Any other stories from high school you'd like to share? CB: No, I don’t think so. JM: Graduation. Excited to graduate? CB: Oh, yeah. I was excited, very nervous as well. I didn't really know where I was going. I guess I should mention—I can't remember if it started while I was still going to high school, or I think it was shortly after I graduated high school, the process of getting me on a mission started. I hated every second of it because it was something I absolutely did not want to do. But I had been trained from an early age just to go along with that sort of thing. Still to this day, I'm very conflict-averse, and so I didn't speak up for myself until a third party was like, “Hey, don't do that.” Thanks Matisse, saved my life, but it was not fun. I did the whole go-try-on-suits and stuff, and I got a bunch of things bought for me for my 18th birthday. I do believe I got luggage, I think, was my birthday present for the mission I didn't want to go on. That was fun, but I mean, they were 26 being thoughtful. Their intentions were good, right? I was raised in a lower middleclass family, not a super wealthy family, so I get what they were going for. After high school, I kind of already went over it, but I guess I didn't talk about work. Shortly after high school, a few months after I graduated, I started working at Down East, which is a clothing/furniture company local in Utah, but not super local. They're like a local corporation. I was fine; I didn't really like it there, but it was one thing that was consistent in my life. I found value in that consistency over time. I would get friends there and then I would like it there more, and then the friends would leave and I would like it there less, that sort of thing. Spent three years at Down East; it is a horrible company, I hate that company, but I liked the people at my store. At the beginning, I was like, “Eh,” but over time I got pride. I liked the people that were with me at my store, except for my boss. Ultimately, through 2020, I had to work, and I was like, “How is this an essential service? How is furniture an essential service?” They told me I was going to work or I was losing my job, and so I went to work. During 2020, there was a whole bunch of stuff going on, right, and the election in 2020 was one of my major moments of, “I should be more politically aware. I have found out who I am as a person, sexually and religiously, but I do not know who I am as a political person. Let's get involved here.” I technically could have voted in the 2016 election, but I didn't, and I wasn't really politically conscious then. In 2020, I started moving further and further to the left, and part of that process was dismantling some latent transphobia that I had not. My perspective going into that was like, “Trans people are fine, they can do what they want. Who cares? Why do you care?” But also, I didn't think they were right. I didn't think that a trans woman was actually a woman, but I thought that we should leave them alone, 27 because who cares? Part of me moving to the left politically was figuring out that's wrong, and by figuring out that, “Oh no, trans women are women,” I was like, “Well, what if I was? What if I was to allow myself to finally reconcile with these thoughts that I've been having since I was an elementary school student?” So 2020 was when I figured it out for myself, and 2021 is when I came out. JM: I do want to backtrack just a little bit. Did you leave the church, or did you tell your family you're leaving the church, or did you come out first? In what order did that happen? CB: It was simultaneous, and actually it was very messy because my friend outed me, right, and so I was panicking. I came out to my dad about me being gay; I wasn't actually, but we went over that, right? He kicked me out, and because he kicked me out, I was pretty much very low-contact. Not no-contact, but very low-contact with my family, including my sisters, for about a year or so. I never officially came out to my mother or to anyone else as gay or as leaving the church, I just stopped going. People found out, and I was just like, “Well, at this point in time, I don't want to have that conversation because it feels like it's too late. Also, she already knows,” and all this kind of stuff. So I just kind of resigned. The two years or so after my dad kicked me out were a pretty dark time for me. I was not in a good spot. I did kind of speed through this, yeah, that's true, but there was a lot going on. I had a friend from work. Her name is Mariah and she was very, very good. I spent a lot of time with her as I was dealing with all of this, and shortly before I ended up coming out to my dad, I was spending a lot of time with her. I ended up moving in with her after Matisse, because Matisse moved to California. I moved in with Mariah for a few years, but I was very depressed and felt completely alone because I didn't know at this point in time that my sisters were really all that 28 supportive or that they had left the church. We just didn't talk about that sort of thing, and so I felt very, very alone. I guess I didn't talk about this earlier. While I was still in high school—senior year, roughly about the same time I came out to Matisse—I came out to my sister, Celeste, who was the second-oldest and probably the one that I'm a little bit closer [to]. I'm close to all of them, but I came out to her and it was funny. I was like, “Celeste, I'm gay.” Celeste was like, “Yeah, I know. You shave your legs.” It was cute. She was the only person that had clocked that I was queer before I had figured it out, and I felt like that was a good thing. I'd come to find out later on, of course, that me shaving my legs had nothing to do with me being gay and in fact had to do with me being trans, but it’s the thought that counts. JM: Yeah. So your dad kicks you out; did you say you moved in with Mariah? CB: I moved in with Matisse for three months, and then she moved to California and I moved in with Mariah. JM: Okay, so you're not living with your family? CB: Not with my family. JM: You mentioned you didn’t have a whole lot of contact with your mom. Do you interact with her during this point in time at all? CB: Occasionally. Same with my dad, I saw them. Sometimes they would invite me to things occasionally, and I would go to them occasionally. I mean, probably like four or five times a year. I felt abandoned by them because they were so obviously against it. All this time I had spent building up who I am, and they just flatly rejected it, and they wanted me to be this person that I wasn't. I carried a lot of resentment towards them, and I didn't want to be with them. Because my sisters were with them, that ultimately ended up meaning that I didn't see my sisters that much either. 29 They came over to my house a couple of times, so then it wasn't as little, but it was definitely like I was doing my own thing, being my own person. I wasn't going to college yet either, and so a lot of the time it was just the time that I spent hanging out with Mariah and then being at work, and that was it. It was a pretty lonely time, but I had Mariah and Mariah's friends. But I think I was kind of a heavy friendship to have for her because she was the only person that I had. I think that became pretty difficult for her sometimes, which I can understand, but I still am very grateful for her being there because I don't know what would have happened otherwise. I didn't live with Mariah the whole time. Her friend, Paige—who I was also kind of close with, just in the way that you're close with your friend’s best friend— she lived with us for a summer, and then I lived with Mariah for a year. I did start college that spring, and that was good for me. It's always a lot to do for full-time school, full-time work. But I only did 26 to 30 hours back then, so it wasn't completely overwhelming. That was good. I started, I made a new friend from work because we had all four of our classes together by sheer coincidence. I worked with her and [we] had all four of the classes together, and so we got close because we just saw each other all the time. Chloe is her name, and we got close, and I started to be so dark all the time, all, “Everything is awful.” I was doing okay in my classes, but this is a point in my life where I was just so depressed—and not in a good way—that I failed a class or two. Not because I wasn't capable of passing it, but because I just wouldn't show up to class or be too sad to do the assignments, that sort of thing. Very uncharacteristic for me and I just felt very alone. JM: Do you keep in contact with Matisse? 30 CB: I do. I saw her on Saturday. She moved to California for a period of time and she moved back since, so she lives in Utah now. JM: During this rougher period of time when you're texting her, your sister, are you keeping communication that way? CB: Texting occasionally. Matisse is not very good at responding to texts, though. JM: I'll make sure you show her this. CB: Texting my sisters? Yeah. Not as much as I do now, though. Depression, it eats away at you, and you think that you're going to be… At least I thought that I was going to be a burden on anyone I reached out to for help, and so I didn't do it probably as much as I should have. JM: I had a question. If it comes back to me, I'll ask it later. You started college; are you studying history, then? CB: Yes, I started as a history teaching major. JM: Okay. Sorry, I remembered it. We're going to switch tracks just a little bit. Are you getting professional mental health [treatment]? CB: No, not getting professional mental health, not getting health care of any kind, because I was afraid that if I asked for it or something, that my parents would kick me off the health insurance. So I just didn't. If I was sick, I would just suck it up. No mental health care. Nothing of that kind. JM: Save it for emergencies, essentially. Okay. What year do you go to college officially? CB: I started spring of 2018, I believe. I'm pretty sure. JM: It's two years after [you] graduated high school? CB: One year. I graduated high school in spring of 2017. JM: I think I did my math wrong then. That's okay. One year after high school. So you take a gap year, essentially? 31 CB: A gap semester. JM: A typical gap semester. You’re studying history. You're living with Mariah. You mentioned you had this two-year period… CB: I'm sorry, I'm interrupting you. I think I took a gap year-and-a-half, so it would have been spring of 2019, is my final answer, if that matters. JM: I'm just trying to get [a] timeline of where we're at because when you said a year, I was like, “Well, you said it was a two-year rough period, so does that extend into college?” You're in college and say things start getting better. How? CB: Because being in college gives me something to do and it gives me something in some of the classes I was just not invested in. Those are the ones that I would end up failing because I just didn't care about them because they were too easy. I didn't care about them. But the history classes especially gave me something to do. Give my brain something to think about that wasn't like, “Woe is me,” or, “How am I going to handle being queer in this world?” and all this kind of stuff. Being in school gave me something to do, something to work towards, and something to be proud of. It's an environment that I do well in, so it was good for me to be in school. It gave me something. In this period of time, I also start having regrets that I came out as gay. I start figuring out, “Oh fuck, I was bi the whole time,” and also I started thinking about the gender stuff as well. It starts popping in my head, and I'm thinking about it and then shoving it back down and thinking about it and shoving it back down. I don't want to come out twice. I don't want to do it. I just want to suck it up and carry on, so lots of resentment towards that therapist building up and all that kind of thing. JM: So you're recognizing these things, and stuffing down. Are you talking to anyone about them? CB: No. 32 JM: No, it's just all internal? CB: Completely, 100% internal. Even with my roommate Mariah, who is a bisexual woman; it would have totally been extremely helpful to have talked to her. But I was too afraid. JM: When did things change? We're just getting in this period where I can see this becoming a pattern. When does it break? When do you start being more open? CB: Being more open about? JM: Anything. Being open to yourself, being open to people? CB: I was open to other people about my emotions and thoughts and opinions for most of my life. Quiet while in church, but other than that, pretty open about most things. The exception to that rule is the sexuality stuff. I didn't talk about that stuff with anyone at all. Hardly, except these few exceptions that I've outlined to you, and when I start talking about my gender and stuff again, that doesn't pop back up until August, September of 2020. So I think it's about three years. Yeah, from 2017, when I got kicked out, to the fall of 2020, when I figure out the gender stuff for myself, this is completely internal. Nothing with sexuality or gender I'd even dare mention to anyone else because I'm just too ashamed of the idea of coming out twice, even to myself. JM: So it's a pretty immediate thing, you coming out to yourself and being like, “I'm going to come out?” CB: Well, I come out to friends and family and make the process because I come out. I'll do that timeline real quick. I come out to myself. I figure it out for myself, like, “Oh fuck, I'm trans.” That is in August of 2020. About a month or so later, I come out, and during this time I took out a piece of paper and I wrote it down. I called it the “Mistress Plan” because it's not the master plan. I'm stupid and I like to make dumb puns. I just, line by line, “These are the things that I need to do in this order,” 33 because if I hadn't done that, I would have completely just imploded. I was so panicked at the idea of being a transgender person. I was like, “God dammit, this is the one.” The fact that I'm cis was like the thing holding me on to any semblance of privilege. But unfortunately, it is not the case. I came out to Celeste in September, and then I came out to Mariah and Paige and Matisse in some kind of order, I think. I came out to Matisse before Celeste because Matisse was in California, and so if she rejected me, then she's in California. Who cares? Matisse, then Celeste, then Mariah, Paige, and Chloe is the other one. These six people straight-up—this is very grim and dark, but to myself I was like, “If none of these people accept me, I'm going to kill myself.” I don't know if it actually would have happened, but I had to have something, someone to accept me or there wasn't a point to me. Luckily, that didn't happen. After Matisse, Mariah, and Paige, I came out to my two youngest sisters, Corinne and Brielle. We're probably in January, February time now. Now I'm looking; I need to find another job, because Down East would not have been a good place to work as a trans person. I found a job as a barista at Beans and Brews. I set that up and I put my two weeks in at Down East, still presenting male, but going to the Beans and Brews training presenting fem and taking the train because I didn't have a car at the time. There were some almost comical moments of going into a gender-neutral bathroom and changing all my stuff because I had to be where I work on time. Changing clothes, shoving them in my backpack, this sort of thing. It was a very comedy-movie-inspiring two weeks. But then the same day that I started at Beans and Brews was the day that I made a public post. I forgot to mention that about a week before, I wrote handwritten letters to both of my parents explaining my entire thought process—why I needed to come out again, how I felt—and I did it all very purposeful and thoughtful because the first 34 time I had to come out was awful. Then I made a public post on Instagram and Facebook and everywhere else, and then I just left it. I didn't think about it. I just was spending time at Beans and Brews, but also, like, “Now I can be with my sisters.” My father and mother were both very hostile to the idea at first, but Mom quickly softened on it. She's not supportive, but like she bought me a pride-flavored ice cream for my birthday like two months ago. JM: I forgot Walmart did that. CB: It was cute for my Mormon mother to buy me pride-flavored ice cream. Honestly, it was a very big moment. It was dumb and it didn't taste very good. It was just plain vanilla. We're in 2020 now? I've lost my train of thought. JM: I believe we're in January of 2021. CB: Yeah, January ‘21, and I came out publicly in March of 2021, and then I'm done with coming out as things. I feel quite comfortable that I won't have to come out as any more things. JM: Fingers crossed. CB: Fingers crossed, so I don’t have to do a round three. JM: Feel like you've had most of it. You were very in-depth, talking about who was supportive, who wasn't, and how that has changed. How about how you felt about that? Very grateful that those four people were very supportive, and you are here to tell your story today. [To Raegan] Do you have any questions about that period? RB: How did the pandemic affect your… I don't want to say ‘coming out’ because you came out again in 2021, but like, figuring out who you are. CB: It definitely did. All I was doing was going to work at Down East and then being at home at this point in time. Mariah had moved out, so I was living alone. It was very isolating, and I spent a lot of my time in politics because of the election year, and I also had a lot of time to self-reflect. I definitely think that being alone for so much 35 time kind of forced me to deal with the gender stuff that I had been putting off before, because I didn't want to. I didn't want to deal with that. I was putting it down while I didn't have… I was just alone with my thoughts, and so I had to confront it. I think it was good for me overall, although I wish that it didn't happen, obviously. I wish that a million people didn't die, but that isolation specifically was good for me— in the coming out sense, perhaps not in the mental health sense. JM: I was going to ask you how that played in. CB: I mean, it's isolating. It's not good. I still don't know that I fully recovered from that. Before the pandemic, I would see friends at least twice a month. I would just find a day in the week to go see friends and not anymore. I still find it hard. It is hard to figure out how to ask your friends to hang out. I've been getting better at that recently, but it's hard to be like, “Oh, we can do things again, but I forgot how.” JM: Unless you have anything else about the COVID life, I think you've done a good job at every level. Roe v. Wade was this summer? CB: Roe v. Wade was this summer. JM: That’s the next landmark we have to hit, and from here at college, it's one of those periods where we do [it] like high school. Is there anything unique that happens post-coming out during these college years? CB: College years, oh, not really. I haven't dated at all, so there's nothing really there. It's scary, dating as a trans person. With Roe v. Wade, I was fucking pissed. I was so upset, and I'm still fucking pissed. I cannot even begin to describe to you how mad I am. I would hope, at least, that you share these emotions. I was so fucking upset and I didn't end up going to any protests because I'm a… I don't know, I was a busy person. I fucking should have, but I didn't, and I don't know. I donated $40 to a thing, and I got mad, and that's all that I did, and maybe I should have done more about it. There was a lot of talking with friends about how angry we were, 36 sisters about how angry we were. It's also scary just considering where we are with if they're willing to overturn that precedent, how far are they willing to go? I don't know the answer to that question, but I think it's not the end of the very bad backlash that we're experiencing, and I hope that I'm wrong. JM: Okay, I feel like we've hit all the way to post-Roe. Anything of note that you'd like to talk about before we get some more broad questions? CB: I guess. There has been one recent development. I've been going to see a therapist. I developed a bipolar personality disorder, type two apparently, so I guess that might be of note. Very unfortunate, but whatever. JM: Okay, unless you want to talk about that more? CB: I don't really care. JM: There's just some kind of high-level, broad questions we like to ask as we kind of a wrap-up. You have lived in Northern Utah for a majority of your life. How do you think that differs? Have you seen any ways it differs from other places in the state, in the country? CB: It definitely is a lot different from most other places in the world, to be honest, as far as the religious dynamic. Everyone that lives in Northern Utah is obviously… either you have some relationship with the church, pretty much everyone, so you are an ex-Mormon, you're a Mormon, or you're never been Mormon. You are aware of the church and you are aware of its influence on politics, on daily life, on the perceptions of the people around you. It's very oppressive. I don't really like living in Utah for that reason. There's definitely a conservative strand in our politics here. Obviously, there's a strong counterculture, which I like. There's lots of cool people in Utah, especially Ogden, Salt Lake. There's lots of cool people. There's just more uncool people than cool people. JM: Fair enough. Who were your queer icons growing up? 37 CB: Oh, I'm not sure I had any, to be honest right now. JM: Do you have any currently, sexual or genderqueer? CB: This is going to sound dumb, I guess, but there's a YouTuber called ContraPoints. She's cool. I look up to her a lot, but I don't know other than that. JM: Okay, I do not know about ContraPoints. Who are they? CB: She's a trans woman. She does video essays on politics and gender. Very interesting stuff. JM: Awesome. Let's jump to the final question then, unless you have anything else you'd like to... CB: Nope. JM: Is there anything that you would want to say to your younger self or young queer people going through the process of questioning, coming out, and all of that? You can answer both, one, either. CB: Yeah. “It'll be okay,” I guess, to both of those demographics. “It'll be okay. It's hard, It's really hard, and it's worth it.” I would say as well that those were the two things that I was most concerned with, like, “Is it worth all this process? Is it worth all this pain, and is everything going to be okay?” Yes to both. I've been talking a lot about pain, and I wish that wasn't the case, because being queer doesn't mean being in pain. It's just kind of part of who you are. It doesn't really matter. It shouldn't mean pain, and for me, coming out as trans was a happy thing. For me, it was good. I've been more happy and funny and spent more time with my friends and family and loved ones than I did before, and it's good. I don't know. I'm kind of rambling, but that's the idea. JM: Very nice, very well-put. Thank you for sharing your story. CB: Thank you, guys. 38