Oral History Program Jane Cooper Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 28 February 2025 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jane Cooper Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 28 February 2025 Copyright © 2026 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: Cooper, Jane, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 28 February 2025, 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 Jane Cooper conducted on February 28, 2025 in the Stewart Library with Lorrie Rands. Jane shares her experiences growing up asexual and aromantic in Utah and the unique challenges it brought. She also talks about learning to accept being under the queer umbrella and still finding acceptance in her faith. Also present is Raegan Baird on the camera. Note: Active listening, transitions in dialogue (such as “um,” “so,” “you know,” etc.), and false starts in conversations are not included in transcription for ease of reading. All additions to transcript noted with brackets. LR: Today is February 28, 2025. We are in the Stewart Library doing an oral history interview for Queering the Archives with Jane Cooper. My name is Lorrie Rands conducting and... RB: Raegan Baird. LR: —Is sitting over there on the camera. That being said, thank you very much for your willingness to share your story. Let's start this interview as we always do with how we identify within the community and our pronouns. I will start. My pronouns are she/her and I identify as a lesbian. RB: I am straight and I am she/her. JC: I use she/her pronouns, and if we want to be technical, am aromantic and asexual, but I identify a lot more strongly with aromantic, so I usually just say aromantic. LR: Thank you all very much. You know it's really funny because I really struggle every time I say I'm a lesbian. It's like, "Can I say that? Can I say that?" Yes, I 1 can. All right, as I said before we turned on the camera, if I ask a question you aren't comfortable answering, let me know. Again, thank you for your willingness, as I think I've said twice now. Let's start with when and where you were born? JC: I was born in the 2000s, and my early childhood home was in Tooele County, but then later when I was about 10, we moved into Salt Lake County with my grandparents while we were looking for a different house, and then we found another house in Salt Lake County and moved there. LR: Did you grow up there in Salt Lake County then? JC: It's where I went to middle and high school, so like yes, most of elementary school was in Tooele County though. LR: Okay, and you said that, I just for some reason didn't catch that. You said most of elementary, did you do any elementary in Salt Lake County? JC: I did. My fifth-grade year was while I was living with my grandparents and my sixth-grade year was in our house after that, but it was like only sixth grade. LR: All right. Let's kind of talk a little bit about, you know, kind of growing up. I'm going to kind of not talk about family dynamic, if that's okay with you? JC: Right. LR: I think that is okay with you. JC: Yeah. LR: Let's talk about what were you taught about gender roles growing up? JC: Well, my family and I are active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, so the family proclamation to the world that the Church has was basically the standard of what I was taught. I'm pretty sure that falls into very 2 traditional values of all of those things. Both of my parents worked though, so I also saw ways those values had to be adjusted for our situation. LR: Okay, and then what were you taught about sexuality growing up? JC: Nothing. I didn't even have a concept of what the word sex meant until I was in my eighth-grade health class and we talked about it. LR: Okay, and that's pretty standard for traditional LDS families, if I'm not mistaken. As you're growing up, you're going to elementary school, what are some of your memories of that experience? JC: Elementary school was kind of weird for me. I, throughout a lot of my childhood, was always kind of told I was very mature for my age. In young elementary school, like as early as kindergarten, my peers knew me as the smart kid, and my peers knew me as a well-behaved kid. That was not fun, because it meant that my peers saw me as different from them, and it led to me not having very many friends. It slowly got worse as time went on, specifically while I was still living in Tooele County. By fourth grade I was very well known as the goody two shoes, and that year I had the teacher who was notorious throughout the entire school as the worst, most strictest teacher. That, paired with the way that my peers already saw me and the fact that I didn't want to get in trouble, didn't want to make trouble, just wanted to do well in school, all just kind of meant the problem got worse, so I was very glad we moved after that year. LR: Okay, so is it fair to say that in elementary school you had a sense of isolation? JC: Yeah. I had one friend that I knew from home, like he was in my church ward and we would hang out after school. But there was this really funny little dynamic 3 where there was another kid—we were never in the same class at school, but there was a kid that he was always in the same class with at school that he was really good friends with, and he wanted, you know, opportunities to hang out with him. He and I made this little deal that school was his time to hang out with that friend and home was his time to hang out with me. I was not even 10 years old, and I was like, “Oh yeah, that's reasonable. You want to hang out with your friends, sure.” Didn't question it at all, so I just ended up alone at school. LR: I didn't write the question down. Give me a second. As you're going through this, experiencing this, you're already feeling different. Was there ever a point when you started to actually feel different? Not just "I'm isolated," but "I feel different" from everyone else? If that question makes sense. JC: Are you asking, like, specifically in the queer side? LR: Yes. JC: No, not at that time. One thing about being A-spec, which is like, aromantic or asexual—I think also agender is sometimes included in that—is throughout childhood and puberty, you don't have those feelings. They never start showing up. You never realize they were supposed to show up. It's really easy to just assume, “Oh, I have this experience. Everyone else must also feel the same way I do.” You don't realize that the way that you do is nothing, until you have to face it. So, like, I didn't start processing that I could be queer in any way until I was like 18. 4 LR: So, just to clarify for me, as your peers are getting into these like little relationships, which is weird to say for elementary school, but it happens, did it ever occur to you that “I don't get it”? JC: Yeah, I've had moments that I've realized in hindsight, where like, “Oh.” The kid I was just talking about who I was friends with, when my family was getting ready to move, he was really sad about it because he did still consider me his friend. He liked hanging out. I heard somewhere through the grapevine from someone else that he liked me, and my thought process as a 10-year-old was, “Bro, we're 10. What do you mean you like me?” Because especially in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at that time, there was a very clear standard that you don't start dating until you're 16, and I was like, “What do you mean you like me? We're 10. Dating isn't like six years down the line. Like, what?” I had no concept that those feelings, even that young, could be real. LR: Okay. When you moved to Salt Lake County, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm curious if there was a sense of, “I get to start over”? A fresh start? JC: That's absolutely what it was. I noticed this of myself after getting there, was I still, for myself, tried to do well in school and do my best. I still, for myself, was well-behaved, but I stopped raising my hand in school, and I stopped trying in that way. I stopped participating, because if I participated then my peers would see it, and they would see that I was a smart kid, and they would see that I was the obedient kid, and they would see all these things, and then I'd be back where I was before. LR: So, in essence, you became a different person, kind of? 5 JC: Only outwardly, only performative-wise. I still, like of myself, had my standards for myself. Those never changed. It was just I closed in more. LR: What you will let other people see became different? JC: Yeah. LR: Okay, that makes sense. As you went into junior high, what are some of your memories of that? JC: Funnily enough, still very few friends. In sixth grade, my one year in sixth grade in our house that my family still lives in now, I had kind of managed to make a couple—friends is what I called them, and still call them. They were my closest friends, but they weren't all that close. At school was where I made those friends. Moving into middle school, seventh grade, the easy way for me to judge who my friends are is who I sit with at lunch, and for seventh grade, I had one girl that I would sit with at lunch. Somewhere along the line, in the middle of seventh grade, or between the end of seventh grade and eighth grade, she talked to me once and went, "Hey, I have these other friends I wanna go start sitting with at lunch. I'm gonna go sit with them," and it did not come with an invitation for me to join her. So, I didn't ask, and I didn't join her, and I didn't try to find her, and I sat alone. I did have like one acquaintance from sixth grade who started sitting with me then, but I was just kind of like, “This just feels…” I was still just lonely and isolated. I never—it took a while. I'm friends with him now, but it took a while for me to actually open up and become friends with him, ’cause I was just like, “This is stupid.” 6 LR: Okay. Obviously, this is something that is—I say obvious because, sitting here, you're doing a really good job of keeping your emotions in check. As someone's transcribing this, they're not gonna know that you're on the verge of tears. I'm really sorry, I'm going to kind of go there, so if you're not comfortable let me know. As you looked back in hindsight, was there ever a time when you thought that your spectrum in the queer community really had a correlation to the isolation you felt as a kid? Because you didn't have those, like, feelings of connectedness? I don't know if that's the right way of putting it, and most people, I'm going to assume, don't understand what it's like to not have that sense of connection. Because I'm wondering if it's even—this is a long question, I apologize. You say aromantic and asexual, but does it also correlate into just relationships? I'm just curious. JC: I'm not sure, is the short answer. Generally, my impression of that time has been that my isolation was a lot more because of the well-behaved and smart than because of the aromantic that I hadn't processed. I do think there's that classic story I hear in a-spec circles, I don't know if it happens in allo circles, but it's that idea of, you know, you've got the girls on the playground, and they're huddled in a little circle, and they're giggling and laughing and they're talking about their crushes. Since I didn't have friends, I didn't have that experience. I think that could be part of why it took me so long to realize that I was aromantic, ‘cause I didn't have friends consistently asking me those questions of like, "Who's your crush?" So, I never processed that I was different until much later. 7 LR: Have you ever thought back and wondered—gosh, I'm realizing my questions are like, they're just kind of deep, and so I'm apologizing beforehand, but I'm also realizing this sense of isolation, through no fault of your own, just because you want to be good and you want to be, you know, you're smart. I lost my question ‘cause I'm so worried about asking it. I'm going to have to come back to that. JC: All right. LR: Was there ever any place, as you're going through junior high, where you felt like it was okay to just be you? You could be smart and no one was gonna judge you? You could be your good self and no one's gonna judge you? JC: I think the fact that I'm almost in tears about this sort of implies my answer that's about to come: I'm still processing those feelings. I'm still, even here in college, like, I have my friends, and I have closer friends now than I had back then, and I'm very, very grateful for them. I feel very welcome with them and all those things, but just the feelings for myself of, “If I make myself too different, I won't be welcome anymore,” I'm still processing and still trying to overcome. LR: The one thing that is very fascinating, as I'm listening to you talk, is even though you don't identify as, you know, gay, lesbian, any of those, your childhood mirrors almost perfectly those who do. JC: Really? LR: That's why I'm asking those questions about is there a correlation, because we've seen it so many times. JC: That's so interesting. 8 LR: So, this is just another fascinating aspect that I'm trying to understand. That's why the questions. JC: That makes sense. LR: It's just, wow. As you go into high school, is there any like program, academic thing that you are drawn to that you're like, "Okay, I can get into this. This is where I belong, this is kind of where I can have a little bit of community"? JC: For myself, like elective-wise, I took so many English electives. English and writing and stories and all of those things are absolutely my jam, which is why I'm a creative writing major now. But the community I found and the friends I ended up eventually getting were not through that, necessarily. I mean, sort of in a part they were. In middle school, in the little eighth grade part where like, I had a friend sitting with me who I wasn't quite friends with yet, I met someone else. She was drawing dragons from a book that I had read, and I was like, “Hey I know those dragons.” She went, “Oh, you know these dragons?” Then I was able to start becoming friends with her, and she had a whole friend group that she sat with, and eventually I was like, “Hey, could I sit with you guys?” and I invited the one friend to also come, so I started sitting with them and started slowly joining that friend group. Then, throughout middle and high school, my perception of the friend group was that it just kind of got like bigger and bigger and it ballooned into a really big group of people who all sort of knew each other. It sort of got big enough that it sort of like mitosis split into smaller friend groups again, but with 9 that process I managed to get in a friend group where I felt close with a lot of the people. I felt like I had fun with a lot of the people. They're still my friend group to this day at home, that like sort of smaller friend group within the larger group of people who knew each other that I ended up with. LR: Let's take a break for a second. [Recording stops] [Recording resumes] LR: This friend group started in junior high and continued into high school? JC: Yeah. LR: Okay. You're having these experiences with friends that you haven't had before. Is that when you started to notice some of those differences? JC: Yes, is the short answer. But there was one moment even, I can't remember if it was before, or like right during that time. This is another thing that I only noticed in hindsight about my experience and the way my brain worked throughout it. When I was like 14 or 15—I already mentioned the dating age being 16—I was at a young women's activity and the young women's leaders were getting us into the cars to drive us home at the end of it. Somewhere during the activity, one of the young women's leaders had mentioned that she had dated before she was 16 and she kind of regretted it and, you know, suggested to us to follow the standard. I was sitting there, and I was about 15, and I was like, “You know, if people struggle with the 16 dating line, that implies that people like each other before the 16 dating line, which means I should probably have a crush by now. Who is it?” I like literally basically fabricated that I had a crush for myself to feel 10 normal, ‘cause it was like, you know, checking the box. “I've done the thing. I've had a crush. I'm following the normal path that everyone follows.” My one friend that was the one I had sat with that I invited to join—I have a fake name for him; his fake name is Nate. It's just easier to use names to tell stories. I chose Nate as my fake crush, and Nate and I had a gym class together that semester. He was like the only person I actually knew in the gym class. So, during the before/after class while things were setting up and stuff, him and I would just like stand together and talk. There was one day when another girl I kind of knew in that class pulled me aside and she was like, “Hey, I think Nate has a crush on you.” I was still in this "Oh yes, I absolutely have a crush on Nate" attitude as well, and I went, “Oh, well that's cool, I like him too.” She went, “Oh, I ship it.” I went, “What are you talking about? What does that word mean?" LR: What? I what it? JC: Ship it. LR: Ship it. JC: It's a thing—I see it most often in like fandoms and stuff. It's short for relationship. It basically means, "I think that relationship would be cute." She went, “Oh, I ship it.” I went, “Cool?” I asked her to explain it, and I went, “Great.” Then I continued to treat Nate like a friend because I didn't actually have romantic feelings for him. 11 LR: Okay, so there's Nate, you're creating something where there's nothing. JC: Yes. LR: Did that ever happen again? JC: Kind of. A little bit later in high school, when I was in like my friend group that I still have. As that friend group was kind of forming, there was one guy, what's my fake name for him? I know I wrote it down. Victor. My fake name for him is Victor. He sort of joined the group because he knew a girl that was in the group. I didn't know him very well, but I thought he was cool, and in my head, that meant I had a crush on him, just ‘cause I was curious about him as a person. I wanted to be better friends with him, and this is me speaking, knowing what I was actually feeling. LR: Right. JC: I thought I had a crush on him. What it actually was, I just wanted to be better friends with him. In the a-spec community, that's called a squish. It's like a platonic crush where you want to be friends with someone, sometimes even like really close best friends with someone. I'm sure there's like different understandings of it. That's my understanding of what a squish is though. So, I had a squish on him; I thought I had a crush on him, and I was again checking boxes in my head. Like, I was sitting at home in my room and I went, "Oh, I thought about Victor. Check. That's what you do when you have a crush is you think about your crush.” Then there was another time I was like hanging out alone with one of my other friends, and I told her that I had a crush on him, and I 12 went, "Check. Telling my friends that I have a crush." I was following what I thought was the normal path. Then what happened was, a little bit later in that school year, I saw Victor and the girl he knew walking in the hall like, holding hands, and holding hands with their fingers interlaced between each other, which I knew was like, that means they're a thing. I went, "Oh, if they're a thing, me having a crush on him is not fair to them. Crush gone." I was just like, “Okay, well, I don't need a crush anymore.” I just decided crush was not appropriate, and then crush was gone. LR: So, there was no, like, hurt feelings, it just— JC: Nope! LR: It's gone. Okay. JC: ‘Cause again, the feelings I had for him was just friendship. My understanding of when someone is at least alloromantic, is when you have a crush on someone, you imagine going on dates with them, you imagine romantic things. I had none of that. Literally, it was just a box. Who is your crush? Victor. There was no imagining dating, there was no imagining romantic moments, there was no imagining going any further than friendship. It was just a label that I put on it so I thought I was normal. LR: That makes sense. During this time, did you ever feel like you could talk to anyone? Or did you ever want to talk with someone about, “Hey, all these other people are having crushes, and I'm…” I think I know the answer, because you've basically said you're checking these boxes off to feel normal, so why would you 13 need to talk to somebody, ‘cause you're normal. But the question still is, did you ever have the opportunity to talk to someone about what you were experiencing? JC: I think until I got to the point where I was actually processing like, “Oh, I might not be straight,” the only time I got even close to that was with one of my friends. She's the one friend that's the one I told I had the crush and all. I was talking with her, and I was still—I need to preface this with, I have not always been very educated on the queer community and what's respectful and what's not. So, before I was educated, I was like, sitting there and I was thinking and I was like, “Okay, serious conversation as friends: how the heck does being lesbian work? Like, how does having attraction to someone's own gender work?” ‘Cause I couldn't conceptualize that. She went, "Well, I'm bi, so I don't know." I went, "Oh, I'm sorry if that was offensive." But also, and this was before I had processed anything, just as a sort of little side remark before we moved on, I went, “I also don't know if I understand how having attraction to guys works either,” and then we moved on. So, I had subconsciously started realizing it, and that was the closest I ever got to having a conversation about it at that point. Later though, that same friend was the one I talked to when I started seriously questioning if I wasn’t straight. LR: Was that in high school? JC: That was in high school, yeah. 14 LR: I'm gonna kind of backtrack a little bit, ‘cause I'm curious. You talk about you're the smartest kid in the room or, you know, you're really intelligent. Does that mean as you were going through school that it was easy for you? JC: Yeah. The only reason I didn't get a 4.0 in high school is because of COVID. It was because of a single assignment that I forgot to turn in for my sign language class. It was an expressive assignment, which was like, you know, I'm showing that I know how to use sign language, which was weighted more heavily in the grade. So, that was the only A-minus I got, was because of that one assignment I didn't turn in. LR: As you progress through your education as a kid, did it ever get hard? JC: Yes. Part of why physics is my favorite science is because in the physics class I took, it was the first time I really had the experience of having to really work to understand a concept and how to apply it and how to do the math. It was like really cool to do that work and feel the light go off and go, "Oh, I get it now!" I just loved physics after that, and I loved the concepts, and I loved all those things. LR: Physics! That was in high school? JC: That was in high school, yeah. LR: Okay, as you're trying to relate to your peers, who I'm sure a lot of ‘em, it didn't come easy. They struggled. Was it hard to connect with them? JC: Most of where our connection came from didn't necessarily come from shared experience of, “Oh, school is hard.” I did still have like, school was stressful. I had to get projects done. I had to manage my schedule, all those things, especially after COVID. COVID sucked. I hated going to school after COVID. Most of it was 15 just like, we had lots of shared interests. We had the same senses of humor. We actually, this was a sort of funny thing we did. During senior year when it was post-COVID, we started realizing that we had just really fun conversations at the lunch table, so we started just setting out someone's phone in the middle of the table with the voice recorder going so we could like record our conversations, and we pretended we had a little podcast where we were messing around and having fun, and it was great. LR: Okay. Let's talk about COVID for a minute. What grade were you in when it started? JC: I have a very specific memory of this. I was in junior year, it was March, and it was specifically Friday, March 13, when they first sent the like, “Okay, for the next two weeks, we're not having school.” It was like, “What the heck is going on? This is weird.” Two weeks became the rest of the month, which became the rest of the school year, but that was my junior year. My whole senior year was also post-COVID, where by that time, we were able to come to school if we were wearing a mask, but also every teacher had the blended learning option where everything was also online, and if you wanted to just do school online, you could just do school online. I had learned for myself from the like last quarter of school that was online, that I despise online school and it did not work for me. It was impossible to do homework. So, I went to school in person the entire time I could. LR: Were you supported by your parents in that decision? 16 JC: Yeah. LR: Okay. So, all of a sudden, there's no friend groups, now you're isolated at home. How did you make that transition, or did you? What was that like for you? JC: It was hard. Especially for the first good few weeks, I was actively trying to find ways to still communicate with my friends that wasn't just texting. Like there was this one app, it's Marco Polo, where basically you're just sending little videos back and forth in a conversation. I like downloaded that and was like trying to send Marco Polos back and forth to my friends. Because then, even though it was still delayed and it was still online, it was also still our faces and our voices. Besides my friend group at school, I did also have two friends that I made at church that lived in my same neighborhood, and I was super, super close with them. We probably shouldn't have, but we did—especially because all of us were struggling really hard—sometimes still hang out in person just the three of us, because we were like, “It's just the three of us. None of us are going anywhere.” None of us got sick from it. Like, it ended up fine. I recognize now we shouldn't have done that, but we did because we were struggling and we needed each other. LR: Were you sneaking out? JC: No, it was like, we told our parents, we made sure they knew, and that they were okay with it. LR: I don't know what I was thinking, “Were you sneaking out?” JC: [Laughs] Have you heard everything I just said? 17 LR: Yes, I know, that's why I was like, “That doesn’t sound like Jane.” Okay, when your senior year starts, you're given the option to either do online or go to school. You choose to go to school. Were there are a lot of students who went to school as well? JC: Yeah, there was a good few. It definitely felt a lot more empty, like a lot of my classrooms there was a handful of students as opposed to being full of students. But like, all of my friends in high school all also came in person, so we were still able to sit together at lunch. It was funny, my school, our cafeteria generally was indoors, but there were a couple tables outdoors as well that we could sit at. All of the indoor tables had these sheets of plexiglass that they put up in the middle of the tables so that when you were eating and didn't have a mask on, you weren't breathing on the person across from you, even though there's people sitting on either side of you, right? It made having conversations indoors when you're eating lunch really hard, ‘cause you couldn't hear the person on the other side of the plexiglass. My friends and I, we sat outside pretty much the entire year except if it was snowing, ‘cause it was easier, and we had already been sitting outside anyways. We had our table outside that we sat at. But it was just interesting, like indoors, the few times where we had to go indoors, it was like, “I can't talk to you, person sitting across from me.” But someone did have the great idea of bringing expo markers, and we drew on the plexiglass. We drew and played tic-tac-toe, and that was a way to have fun with it. So, we made it work. LR: They didn't think that through very well, did they? 18 JC: No. LR: Were you able to actually have a graduation then, a walk and all of that? JC: It was just at the football field at the high school, but yeah, we did walk. I don't remember, I don't think we even had to wear masks to the graduation. I think it was like far enough into 2021 that—or no, it would have been—yeah, ‘21 was when I graduated. It was far enough into it that we didn't have to wear a mask at graduation, but it was still at the football field instead of like some other venue. LR: During your academic time, were you encouraged to pursue a higher education? JC: I don't remember there ever being any specific like, "Hey, you should go to college." But obviously, at high school and stuff, it's like, “Keep college in mind,” and all those things. I think the main thing that made the decision for me was there was one time I was in the car with my dad and we were talking. I don't remember exactly the context that led to us having this conversation, but my dad only has an associate's degree and my mom doesn't have a degree. He kind of expressed to me this, like, little wonder if maybe he had a bachelor's or if she had a bachelor's, if it would have been easier for them to find jobs. Even if it's not in the particular field that they were in, because it would be that, "Oh, I have this qualification of I have done school." I was like, that's good to know. That was the main thing, that getting a college education can be useful even if it's not necessarily in the specific field I end up working in, ‘cause it is that just extra qualification on a resume. Also, again, I did well enough in school, I've got a scholarship, which makes it a lot 19 easier to make the decision to come to college, because I'm not going to be tons of student debt afterwards. LR: Were you applying to multiple colleges? JC: I did apply to multiple colleges. I applied here at Weber and then I think at Utah State and I think there was one other, I don't remember which one. But I do remember specifically I didn't apply to BYU just ‘cause I didn't want to do the essay question. LR: Fair enough. Where did you get scholarships to? JC: I got a scholarship here at Weber, which I accepted, and I'm here, obviously. I think I also got a scholarship at Utah State. I don't remember the third college, so I couldn't tell you. But I think the scholarship I got here at Weber was better than the one at Utah State. Also, here at Weber had the programs I actually wanted to do, Utah State did not. So, I'm here at Weber. LR: Fair enough. Okay, you mentioned earlier that it wasn't until you were about 18 that you started to really have an inkling of understanding of where you fit in the… I don't even know what the correct terminology is, but how you identify with—I don't even, what is the correct term? ‘Cause it seems weird to say how you identify sexually. It just sounds wrong somehow. JC: You could do orientation. LR: Yeah, okay. JC: What your orientation is. LR: Okay, that works. What your orientation is. Thank you. That was just weird. Did that happen before you started coming to college, or was that after? 20 JC: It was before. It was while I was in high school. It was actually a very long series of events that just kind of took it to a head where I couldn't ignore it anymore. With my friend group that I sat with outside at the table, we let anyone who wanted to sit with us, which was great. It was really fun to get to meet new people that way. There was one guy who started sitting with us. What's my fake name for him? His fake name is Jake. I started like, just paying attention to the way he talked to me and the way he sat next to me and all these things. I started getting the vibe that he probably liked me. There was one day he was casually sort of trying to talk about, like, "Oh, there's this swing dance thing on Wednesday, would you be interested in going?" I was not. He was nice, but just like, there was just something that wasn't clicking for me even for like being close friends with him. So, I was just like, "Yeah, no." I kind of found a way to politely sort of say no. But I was like, “Okay, I think he likes me, whatever.” At the time I also had an online friend group that I was part of. Friends are really important in my life. Who'da thunk? The way things worked out, I found out that not one, but two of them liked me in my online friend group. One of them being a guy, one of them being a girl. The girl knew I was a member of the church and that I wasn't going to date her anyways, so she was just like, “I'll deal with these feelings.” But the guy was like, “Yeah, I like you,” and I was sitting there, and I had a similar sort of thought process to what I did way back when I was 10, where I was like, “We're online friends. You've never met me in person. You've heard my voice on phone calls. I don't think I've ever shown you my face. 21 Maybe I have. What do you mean you like me? How the heck?” Like, I had not processed that romantic feelings could even go that far and to those lengths, when again, I had never even met this guy in person. It was one after the other, three people, that was just like, “Yeah, I have a crush on you,” or I figured they had a crush on me. I was like, “Frick, wait,” ‘cause that's three people who have had crushes on me. I'm sitting here like, “I don't know if any of the crushes I've had up to this point were actual crushes.” I, with my two really close friends that I met at church, we had a little chat where it was just the vent chat where if we had big feelings that we needed to articulate, we could put it in there and then we could be there to support each other if we needed it. I just put it all in there. I was like, “I don't know what's going on. I don't know what any of this is.” At that point, years and years before that, one of those two friends was a lot more educated in the queer community than I was. I had been like, “Yo, what are all these terms? Can you explain these terms to me?” During the explanation of those terms, he had brought up aromantic and asexual. I had forgotten aromantic was a thing until I got to this point where I was like, “What the heck is going on. Something is different. I'm not having these feelings that other people are having. Am I asexual? Am I aromantic?” I can remember before that, because that happened like near the end of January of ‘21. I can remember very starkly, there was a night in December of 2020 where I had sort of been noticing these things, sort of thinking about it, and there was a night where I was laying in bed in the dark, in the night, and I was 22 just like, it briefly crossed my mind like, “Am I asexual?” And I shut it down. I was like, I don't want to deal with that, ‘cause I also had the general perception that I think a lot of people do, that faith and being queer is incompatible. My faith is really important to me. It was, still is, and always has been really important to me, and I didn't want that battle. I didn't want to have to think about, "If I'm not straight, what does that mean for my faith?" So, I shut it down. I didn't think about it until things came to a head and I was like, “I can't deny that I'm different now. What does this mean?” For the next like, week-ish, especially in the three days immediately after the, like, finally vocalizing, “Am I aromantic? Am I asexual?” it was just a storm in my head, and I didn't know what to do about it. I was googling everything. I was googling, what's the difference between aromantic and asexual? What is sexual attraction? What is romantic attraction? No one knows how to explain romantic attraction, it's really stupid! Especially when I don't know what it feels like, it's always just a, "Oh you know what it is. If you haven't felt it... you'll do it eventually, you'll know it when you feel it." It's like, I haven't. I'm 18, I haven't. I need to know the answer to what romantic attraction feels like so I can know if I haven't had it. There's no good answer, but I know I haven't had any desire to kiss anyone, to actually go on dates with anyone, any of these things. Everything I want with my relationships is friendship. When I actually get down to the actual definitions of what I'm imagining, when I'm imagining a close relationship, it's 23 friendship. I finally settled on, “Okay, I am aromantic,” and then I had to process that. LR: I know you mentioned in the beginning that you identify more as aromantic than asexual, but is that more of a way to just—how am I trying to say this? Understanding how important your faith is to you, is it easier to say you're aromantic and still have this like, feel like you're a part and can be a part of your faith and feel like everything's good? But if you throw in asexual, then that makes things worse? Does that question make sense? JC: Yes. Where I think this question is coming from is the like, “I don't want to have that battle” thing, right? LR: Right. JC: The reason that I told the story the way I did with the words I used is ‘cause at that time I had forgot aromantic was a term. It was less that I didn't want to have the battle about asexual and more just that I didn't want to have the battle about not straight. The reason I identify a lot more strongly with aromantic than asexual is ‘cause all of the experiences I've been explaining so far have all been a lot more focused on the ways I'm different as an aromantic person than necessarily the ways I'm different as an asexual person. The conclusion of, “Oh, I'm probably also asexual,” was genuinely just like, after finally managing to process aromantic, I was like, “Oh, I don't know what sexual attraction feels like either. I guess probably also asexual.” That was never something I’d needed to question, because the other standard that the church has is no sex before marriage, and I knew I wasn't 24 gonna have sex before marriage. I wasn't thinking about sex, and I wasn't thinking about the fact that I wasn't thinking about sex. But I was thinking about the fact that I don't have romantic attraction, and I'm not having these crushes that are the classic story in middle and high school is the romantic subplot. It's just because I have stronger experiences with aromantic. LR: That makes sense. As you're finishing up high school, going into college, during that time, did you ever feel like, “I need to share these with anyone,” like come out to your parents? Or did you ever feel that need? I mean, you're obviously talking with your friends, so you're already like, “This is where I'm falling,” but did you feel that need? JC: For a little bit of context, I did go on a mission between high school and college. But it was about a week after I accepted being aromantic that I was like, “Okay, I don't want to keep this from my parents,” so I told them pretty quickly, actually. Honestly, maybe a little bit too quickly, ‘cause I hadn't fully processed it enough. Honestly, I told them very explicitly, like, “I am aromantic. I don't have romantic attraction to anyone.” But I kind of think sometimes that they've forgot, ‘cause it's not a very well-known orientation. It's also a very invisible orientation, ‘cause it's not like I'm like, “Hey, I might bring a girl home.” It's just, “Hey, I'm not dating anyone,” which is exactly the same situation I was in before. It's a very invisible orientation, and also when people talk about LGBT, the letters stop there, or add a Q, and A is not usually part of it. It's in the plus. LR: That's true. You're not wrong. Out of curiosity, what prompted you to go on a mission? 25 JC: It was my plan since the beginning of everything. Even in primary, ‘cause—that's the children's class in church—there's a little song that you would sing that's like, “I hope they call me on a mission when I've grown a foot or two.” When I was in primary, younger than 10, I sang that song and I meant it. In fact, throughout high school, I had a much more solid plan of go on a mission than I even had a plan of go to college. Like, my high school plan was, “Okay, now go on a mission. I'll figure out college after.” Except I did do the college applications before I went on a mission and then just deferred the scholarship for after. But like, mission was the plan, college was the second thought. It was just something I always wanted to do. LR” Okay, and most everyone asks, where did you go? JC: I went to Alabama. LR: Well, let me ask you this. Culturally speaking, as you go to Alabama, what were some of the differences? JC: Well, it was kind of funny, because when I got my call to Alabama, right, I heard this comment. I can't remember who said it to me, but someone said like, “Oh, that's the most foreign mission you can go to while staying in the States. The culture shock is gonna be wild.” I got there and I went, “These are just people. What are you talking about?” That might have partially been because my first area was in, not like a big, big city, but in a city. It was suburbs was most of what I was in, and there was a fair number of members of the church there. Like there was a couple wards as opposed to just like a tiny branch. But just like in general it was like, 26 “No, these are just people,” so one-on-one interaction wise, generally, it was a lot of just like, “These are people. Yes, we have some different religious views. Yes, sometimes people are rude because I'm wearing a black name tag,” but in general it was pretty much the same. The main difference I noticed was just that people were more willing to be open about their faith in Alabama. In Utah, especially having come back from it, I've started to realize it's sort of like this thing that you keep private and don't talk about as much. Where in Alabama, one of the areas I was in, it was a little country area, and there was this family diner that had scriptures on the napkin boxes and on the walls. It was just the thing, like everyone knows, like there's no problems with being Christian. Everyone's all in on it. The classic little farewell that we would say was “Have a blessed day.” So, there was a lot more of an open spiritual life in Alabama, where there isn't quite as much in Utah. LR: What about the diversity? JC: It was a lot more diverse. I probably talked to more Black people there than I've ever talked to in Utah. There was one time, sort of late in my mission, I was training a new missionary, and we went and visited this one Black man who's always sitting out on his porch and will talk to us. I was talking to him, and you know, he has his accent and whatnot, and he's a kind of older man so he mumbled a little. We walked away from that interaction, and my new missionary that I was training went, “I have no idea what he said that entire time.” I was like, “Oh. I guess I've gotten used to old Black man accents and can understand them now.” 27 LR: Okay, that's interesting. I can appreciate that. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time there. JC: Part of the reason why I brought it up in connection to your question was, like, did you ever feel like you needed to come out? I came out to most of my companions. I think the only one I didn't come out to was my trainer, but that was not because I didn't like her and not because I didn't trust her. It was just because I was a deer in headlights, new to the mission, terrified, still getting used to it. LR: I appreciate that, yeah. For a little context, I served a mission as well. JC: Oh, okay. LR: So, I understand. JC: Right. LR: But that's irrelevant to this. Okay, so you come back, you're gonna start college. Nothing's really changed, right? You're still aromantic. JC: Yep. LR: You're still you. Did you ever feel this like… Because within the church there's this culture of as a female, you need to get married. I don't think that's changed since when I was little, you need to get married, you need to start having a family. Did you feel that push from anyone before you started going to college? JC: Yeah, my experience with that sort of push is a little bit less female-focused and more just kind of everyone-focused, where it's just like, that's the crowning step of life, is getting married, getting sealed in the temple, that sort of thing. At the end of my mission, talking to the mission president, there was, you know, the brief like, “Just remember your next step in life is getting married.” Just in 28 general, I think the church is like, “Hey, by the way, young adults, you're getting married a lot later. Keep in mind that this needs to be a priority.” But that's a from way high up thing, not necessarily an interpersonal thing. I've never felt like particularly strong pressure. Like, there's never been a conversation with my parents like, "Hey, why aren't you dating? Why aren't you getting married?" I think the closest I've ever gotten to that was when I first moved into my dorm up here. My mom just had this sort of like offhand little remark when she noticed that there was like not just a girl's building and a guy's building. There's like each room has either guys or girls, not mixed, but like this room can be guys, this room can be girls, etcetera, etcetera. She went—I don't remember exactly the words, but it was some sort of joke like, “Oh, you'll be meeting people you can date.” Which again, I think they've forgotten. But the other thing is like, this is something that's very specific to me and my experience, I do still want to get married. But it's weird as an aromantic person, right? Because there is still like, I am far from the only aromantic person who could want a relationship that's close and committed. There's an entire microlabel in the aromantic spectrum for aromantic but still wants a romantic relationship. Like, that's a thing. It isn't necessarily just having the attraction that creates the desire for a close, committed relationship. Again, my faith is important to me, so I do still know that getting married is important. But I also, especially throughout my mission, as I was like, still finishing processing the aromantic and my faith sort of stuff, I also am very well aware of the fact that, in my beliefs, God loves me. God doesn't want to keep any 29 blessings from me. So, if I don't get married in this life, especially for the reason that I don't have romantic attraction, He understands. He's not gonna keep me from anything in the next life because of something I couldn't control. But there is still that like, I still want active faith. If I have the opportunity during this life, I do still want to, but I'm also being very careful about what that means for me, because I am not going to marry a boy and not tell him I'm aromantic. I want him to be entirely informed that I will not have romantic or sexual feelings for him the entire time we're married, and he needs to be okay with that, so I don't know if that's very likely for me to find. LR: That's really… I'm speechless, ‘cause I don't quite… It's hard for, if you've never experienced... JC: Romantic feelings, yeah. LR: No, what you're talking about. JC: Oh, what I'm talking about. LR: Yeah, if you've never, like, I have no idea what that's like, to not have romantic feelings, to not have any sort of attraction. I don't know what that's like. So, to try to put myself in your shoes, it's not possible. It's just kind of mind-blowing in a way, to sit and listen to this. Okay, so I'm kind of going to keep going. When did you start here at Weber? JC: Oh, when did I start? It was after I got home from my mission. I got home May ‘23, so it would have been fall of ‘23 that I started here at Weber. I think that's when I got hired, so it was right in that time. 30 LR: Oh, okay. That's fascinating. You were—jump on, let's get a job. You know, it's ironic ‘cause I don't really have any questions, because you've kind of talked about it all. [To Raegan] Do you have any questions? RB: No, you asked all the ones I have. LR: Okay. You mentioned that you have a friend group here at Weber, but you're only here at Weber during the school year. So, spring and fall. You don't stay here for summer; you go back home. My question is, and you obviously must, but you have a friend group here at Weber when you're here and then you have your friend group at home? JC: Yeah, so my friend group at home was my friends in high school. It was actually funny I was, (a) the only girl in my friend group that went on a mission, and (b) the first person in my friend group to go on a mission. So, for the past good few years, our friend group has been like spread out across the country because we've all been on missions. But slowly we've all been trickling back in, and just this last December the last guy got home. Now we're all home, but yeah, I still text them. One of them is my roommate here up at Weber as well. So, she's also here at Weber. But then just like during spring break and summer and stuff, we'll hang out. Up here at Weber, I think it was actually my first semester here I was like, “I want to have more than one friend here,” so I actively looked for a place where I would be able to make friends. I started going to board game club, and then I've made some friends at board game club and I have a group of friends that I play like Dungeons and Dragons with every Saturday, and I socialize with them. 31 LR: Recognizing that you're still really young, and I don't mean that in a bad way. JC: Right. LR: You mentioned that, you know, it's important to you, if you have the opportunity, you do want to get married. Not something I normally ask but, what are some of your goals and plans for the future beyond that? JC: Most of it is just that I want to be able to live my life comfortably. Hence, again, college. Especially, I'm very aware of the fact that a single income is okay for a single person to be able to survive, right? So, I just want, especially because I don't know how likely it is I will get married, to be able to provide for myself. But also, actually last semester I took a class with the honors program that was about the meaning of life in the ancient and medieval West. We talked about a bunch of different like civilizations and read things from them and talked about what their civilizations' meaning of life was. At the end of the class, it was like, “Okay, what do you think the meaning of life is?” I came to the conclusion that for me, I just want to make my life worth living. I want to have friends that I have fun with. I want to not be stressed about where food is gonna come from. I want to enjoy my life in the way that I enjoy life. If marriage is part of that picture, perfect. If marriage is not part of that picture, I wanna be prepared. I don't have very concrete, crystallized goals beyond just like, graduate college, make sure I get a job. That's about it. LR: Some of these questions here really don't apply to you, you know, but let me ask you this: do you feel like there's a place for you within the LGBTQ+ community? 32 JC: If we're just talking about aromantic and asexual, yes and no, because a lot, especially when we talk about the LGB, a lot of those orientations are very, very focused on, "I have feelings, and they're not necessarily for the normal person you have feelings for.” Like, the pride slogan is "love is love," and I'm sitting here like, “Great for you; I don't have romantic attraction. What kind of love is that?” It's like, I participate very much in the a-spec community—well, I don't know if I'd say very much. I participate in the a-spec community. I'll scroll through the aromantic reddit looking for memes, ‘cause I think it's fun. The aromantic reddit is sort of dead; there’s not a lot on there. I like, know the terms, all those things. Being a-spec is a big part of at least my internal life, but being queer is not. ‘Cause like, I don't know, to me it feels like there's a little bit of a difference there. The a-spec community could be under the umbrella of any queer community, or just the fact that there is a queer community and then, you know, I'm sure there's a lesbian community and a trans community and whatnot. Like, a-spec would be one of those, but it's a unique one within the broader spectrum. The other thing is, as an active member of the church, I am very aware that, especially here in Utah, many queer people have very negative experiences with the church. I don't want to, like—I mean, my faith and my orientation, I have like reconciled together, I'm fine, but I understand how my faith could make other queer people uncomfortable. I don't really largely participate in the broader queer community slightly also for that reason, but more just because I don't relate to most of the queer community. ‘Cause most of the queer community is about, "I have feelings." 33 LR: You're not wrong. Have you ever felt comfortable being open with individuals within your faith about where you fit within the community? JC: Not as of yet. I'm hoping eventually maybe I'll get to a point where maybe I am, but the thing is, again, I'm aware that many queer people have had negative experiences with people in the church. That's more because of the way people in the church treat them. Especially because in all the church things I go to, queer stuff is never brought up, I have no way to judge what people's feelings are, or what their reactions will be, even though mine is a "I'm not dating anyone" orientation. Also, it's an orientation no one's heard of, so I would need to like explain it and educate and it's just a lot of effort. I'm, just for myself in general, not very like, signaling my orientation. I think the closest I get is this CTR ring, actually, ‘cause in the a-spec community there's a little practice where if you're asexual, you wear a black ring on the middle finger of your right hand, and if you're aromantic, you wear a white ring on the middle finger of your left hand. LR: Oh, okay. JC: It's just a little way to secretly signal to other a-spec people like, “Hey, I'm like you.” It's a little secret, little signal, and I wear specifically a white CTR ring because my faith is so intermingled with my experience, with my aromanticism, which makes it very less obvious. It's not recognizable as “Oh, that's an aromantic ring.” It's recognizable as, “Oh, that's a CTR ring.” But that's the closest I get. 34 LR: Fair enough. Is there any other story you want to share before I ask the final question? JC: I have a list of stories I had, let's see. I think one story… Well, it's more of just an experience that I've had that I know other a-spec people have had that I think can add even a little more ability to maybe put yourself in my shoes. Even before I knew I was aromantic, when it comes to imagining dating someone, the closest I'm able to get is imagining a nameless, faceless silhouette that is basically the definition of nobody if nobody was a person. That's like literally the closest I'm able to get, and I've seen in online posts and stuff other aromantic and asexual people have had the same experience. That was part of why I was like, “Oh, I'm able to imagine dating someone. That someone is the definition of nobody, but it's someone.” It's really interesting, because every once in a while, this has happened literally twice in my life, where it's like I'll have a friend who I think might have a crush on me, and then I'll go, “Okay, can they replace that silhouette?” While the answer is yes, they can replace that silhouette, the imagining dating is still just the picture of standing next to them. There is no going to dinner, there is no specific romantic actions, there is none of that. It's like, literally how much of a lack there is of a romantic attraction and even just like instinctual desire for anything like that. It's so gone—or not gone, ‘cause it was never there. It's so not there that when I try to conceptualize dating someone it's nobody. I don't hear love songs and think of someone specific. I hear the melody and the story and the poetry. 35 LR: Okay. It's really fascinating, and just like, mind-blowingly so for me. I'm just grateful for your willingness to just share, because you're right, this is something that literally in the over 40 interviews we've done, you're the third person who identifies asexual, aromantic. It's quite fascinating; the stories are fascinating. Okay, my question is, if you had an opportunity to talk with your younger self, or to talk with younger aromantic, asexual individuals, what advice would you give them? JC: I think the first thing is just, you know yourself better than other people do. You know what your feelings are and what feelings you are and are not feeling better than other people do. Society is full of expectations. There's the expectation to be straight, then on top of that, there's the expectation to have any sort of attraction at all, and then on top of that there's also the expectation to be dating to be married, that if someone is single into their 30s there must be something wrong. It's important to be intentional with yourself and what you actually want. Especially like, you know, thinking about me in my instance, like I do still want to get married, but it's not because of some societal expectation. It's because it's what I actually want, and there's a difference there. LR: Yeah, there is. You’re absolutely right. JC: There's a big difference there. There's a difference between thinking, “Oh I should have a crush by now,” make up a crush, and, “Oh, well, I'm just gonna keep living my life, who cares?” Whatever someone ends up wanting in their life, I would hope that it's something that they actually want and not something they feel pressured into. 36 LR: Again, thank you. I know I've said it like a million times, but I'm just grateful for your willingness to share. 37