1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,960 The Inspired Insights podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only and should 2 00:00:04,960 --> 00:00:06,940 not be considered health advice. 3 00:00:06,940 --> 00:00:10,860 This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice. 4 00:00:10,860 --> 00:00:15,120 Please note that this podcast may contain discussions on sensitive topics such as mental 5 00:00:15,120 --> 00:00:17,360 illness, suicide, and substance use. 6 00:00:17,360 --> 00:00:21,440 If you are experiencing a behavioral health crisis or need support, please contact the 7 00:00:21,440 --> 00:00:30,120 9-8-8 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling 9-8-8 or visiting www.988lifeline.org. 8 00:00:52,160 --> 00:00:54,360 Welcome to the Inspired Insights podcast. 9 00:00:54,360 --> 00:00:55,680 I'm Chris McLaughlin. 10 00:00:55,680 --> 00:00:57,120 I'm Sorin Peterson. 11 00:00:57,120 --> 00:00:59,960 We are not in the studio right now. 12 00:00:59,960 --> 00:01:01,680 Something a little different and new for us. 13 00:01:01,680 --> 00:01:03,640 At Chris's lovely abode. 14 00:01:03,640 --> 00:01:08,240 And we've got some guests, so I want to take a few minutes and introduce our guests. 15 00:01:08,240 --> 00:01:10,760 And then we're going to get started with some conversation. 16 00:01:10,760 --> 00:01:14,560 So to my right, I have Paul Berube. 17 00:01:14,560 --> 00:01:15,560 Welcome Paul. 18 00:01:15,560 --> 00:01:16,560 Thank you. 19 00:01:16,560 --> 00:01:17,560 Tell us about Paul. 20 00:01:17,560 --> 00:01:19,880 Well, I work in finance. 21 00:01:19,880 --> 00:01:23,960 I think that's my day job most of the time. 22 00:01:23,960 --> 00:01:30,160 But that other than doing that and spending time trying to figure out how to live my best 23 00:01:30,160 --> 00:01:34,720 life in every aspect of that, that's pretty much what I do most of my day is finding the 24 00:01:34,720 --> 00:01:36,280 joy in the moments in between. 25 00:01:36,280 --> 00:01:39,400 Oh, Sorin and I love conversations about joy. 26 00:01:39,400 --> 00:01:40,400 I love it. 27 00:01:40,400 --> 00:01:41,400 And full of it. 28 00:01:41,400 --> 00:01:42,400 We love it. 29 00:01:42,400 --> 00:01:46,260 And to my left, my friend and mentor, Frank Brooks. 30 00:01:46,260 --> 00:01:48,200 And thank you so much for having me here. 31 00:01:48,200 --> 00:01:49,200 Thanks for being here. 32 00:01:49,200 --> 00:01:51,360 I'm so happy to be here. 33 00:01:51,360 --> 00:01:57,600 I am a social worker and I'm retired from paid work right now, but I continue on with 34 00:01:57,600 --> 00:02:02,920 volunteer, community volunteer activities. 35 00:02:02,920 --> 00:02:09,880 And right now, my project is I just joined the board of the Maine Council on Aging. 36 00:02:09,880 --> 00:02:11,020 Awesome. 37 00:02:11,020 --> 00:02:17,440 And so that's my major project this year in retirement. 38 00:02:17,440 --> 00:02:18,440 So-called retirement. 39 00:02:18,440 --> 00:02:20,720 Yeah, you're not retiring very well. 40 00:02:20,720 --> 00:02:21,720 No. 41 00:02:21,720 --> 00:02:25,240 And I worry about that for myself too, to be quite honest. 42 00:02:25,240 --> 00:02:26,240 It's you. 43 00:02:26,240 --> 00:02:30,400 Frank, you are a superstar in the social work world and here in the state of Maine. 44 00:02:30,400 --> 00:02:34,360 And I'm so thankful that you are spending your morning with us today. 45 00:02:34,360 --> 00:02:35,640 Well, thank you. 46 00:02:35,640 --> 00:02:42,880 And I don't know about superstar, but I feel so grateful to have found social work as a 47 00:02:42,880 --> 00:02:50,920 profession way back in my undergraduate program and it's been an incredible experience, life 48 00:02:50,920 --> 00:02:51,920 experience. 49 00:02:51,920 --> 00:02:53,360 Well, you are a rock star. 50 00:02:53,360 --> 00:02:55,480 I can tell you that. 51 00:02:55,480 --> 00:03:03,840 So for today's episode, Sorin and I had thought it would be really interesting to bring different 52 00:03:03,840 --> 00:03:09,840 perspectives, different voices and different ways of looking at things into the conversation. 53 00:03:09,840 --> 00:03:13,400 And we started thinking about this idea of generations. 54 00:03:13,400 --> 00:03:20,360 And one of the themes of the Inspired Insights podcast is bridging generations to bring conversation 55 00:03:20,360 --> 00:03:30,240 out to kind of model the importance of listening and honoring youth voice and recognizing there 56 00:03:30,240 --> 00:03:35,280 are some older lived experiences that also are still really relevant. 57 00:03:35,280 --> 00:03:40,160 And what Sorin and I have also found and talked about is that in the queer community, there's 58 00:03:40,160 --> 00:03:47,720 such a stigma around age and there's such a stigma around youth and... 59 00:03:47,720 --> 00:03:51,120 Totally beauty and body. 60 00:03:51,120 --> 00:03:53,360 Yeah, beauty and body. 61 00:03:53,360 --> 00:04:03,880 And at what age do we as queer individuals of older ages kind of be expected to wander 62 00:04:03,880 --> 00:04:07,760 off into the sunset and make room for new generations? 63 00:04:07,760 --> 00:04:13,120 And Sorin and I both believe that there is so much value in bringing all voices together 64 00:04:13,120 --> 00:04:19,280 and learning from the different generations that as a young person, there's so much I 65 00:04:19,280 --> 00:04:24,360 learned from Sorin every single time we sit down and chat. 66 00:04:24,360 --> 00:04:29,240 And so just being open and receptive to those different voices and those different perspectives. 67 00:04:29,240 --> 00:04:35,040 So we thought it'd be really cool to bring four different generations together and just 68 00:04:35,040 --> 00:04:39,160 chat and see what comes from the conversation. 69 00:04:39,160 --> 00:04:41,800 Yeah, I totally agree. 70 00:04:41,800 --> 00:04:47,080 I think there's so much value that we can yield from increasing our demographic size 71 00:04:47,080 --> 00:04:48,800 as far as perspective. 72 00:04:48,800 --> 00:04:58,560 I don't think I've ever heard someone's perspective and then gone away from it with nothing. 73 00:04:58,560 --> 00:05:06,480 And I'm super excited for the opportunity to have some older and younger gentlemen on 74 00:05:06,480 --> 00:05:07,720 the podcast. 75 00:05:07,720 --> 00:05:14,840 So as y'all may know, we do something called Inspired Insights for the Week, which is just 76 00:05:14,840 --> 00:05:19,880 basically a tidbit of knowledge, something that we learned maybe, a little bit of wisdom 77 00:05:19,880 --> 00:05:22,000 to start off the podcast. 78 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:31,040 Of late, I've been reading a lot on late antiquity. 79 00:05:31,040 --> 00:05:34,480 This does not surprise me at all. 80 00:05:34,480 --> 00:05:41,620 I've yielded an insight that I think is super important and still holds true today. 81 00:05:41,620 --> 00:05:46,920 And that is how easily instability translates to hate. 82 00:05:46,920 --> 00:05:55,200 Especially in late antiquity, there was a lot of instability, especially with the Christian 83 00:05:55,200 --> 00:06:00,480 persecutions of Deccius during the crisis of the third century, Diocletian's Christian 84 00:06:00,480 --> 00:06:09,040 persecutions, Nero's Christian persecutions after the great fire in 64. 85 00:06:09,040 --> 00:06:18,920 In all of these examples, we see a tenuous time resulting directly in the people in power 86 00:06:18,920 --> 00:06:30,300 suppressing and abusing minorities in order to create a fall man, a scapegoat for the 87 00:06:30,300 --> 00:06:35,880 less than ideal geopolitical conditions that were happening in the Mediterranean during 88 00:06:35,880 --> 00:06:36,880 that time. 89 00:06:36,880 --> 00:06:39,160 I was reading on your school break. 90 00:06:39,160 --> 00:06:40,160 River for bed. 91 00:06:40,160 --> 00:06:45,760 Well, I was just reading Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 92 00:06:45,760 --> 00:06:49,960 But we see that today, the global economy is a little weaker than it has been in the 93 00:06:49,960 --> 00:06:51,260 past. 94 00:06:51,260 --> 00:06:56,040 We're seeing more political instability and less trust in our systems in the United States. 95 00:06:56,040 --> 00:07:03,300 And as a result, that instability is directly translating into fear, which we know how easily 96 00:07:03,300 --> 00:07:06,760 fear converts to hate. 97 00:07:06,760 --> 00:07:15,920 And I think it's something very pertinent to keep in mind how the situations around us 98 00:07:15,920 --> 00:07:24,680 can affect the population's mindset, thusly resulting in more hateful policy and such. 99 00:07:24,680 --> 00:07:31,200 And you and I have talked in the past about how fear is a tactic that folks sometimes 100 00:07:31,200 --> 00:07:33,360 use to create fear. 101 00:07:33,360 --> 00:07:36,880 It's a very deliberate act as well. 102 00:07:36,880 --> 00:07:39,320 Light reading from Soren Peterson. 103 00:07:39,320 --> 00:07:40,640 Bright. 104 00:07:40,640 --> 00:07:42,800 Inspired insight of the week. 105 00:07:42,800 --> 00:07:44,440 Well, it's deepened. 106 00:07:44,440 --> 00:07:54,520 I have a deepened insight that across the lifespan, all groups are affected by ageism. 107 00:07:54,520 --> 00:08:00,960 And that it's just not older people who are affected by ageism, but younger folks too, 108 00:08:00,960 --> 00:08:09,960 who are often discounted and what, perspectives are minimized or not paid attention to. 109 00:08:09,960 --> 00:08:18,240 So of course, I've been working on at the MCOA, main council on ageism is to eliminate 110 00:08:18,240 --> 00:08:20,480 ageism by 2032. 111 00:08:20,480 --> 00:08:27,680 So part of my inspired inspiration now will be to make sure that we're talking about ageism 112 00:08:27,680 --> 00:08:28,920 across the generations. 113 00:08:28,920 --> 00:08:29,920 Right. 114 00:08:29,920 --> 00:08:33,760 And not just one particular generation, but that it insists everywhere. 115 00:08:33,760 --> 00:08:34,760 Yes. 116 00:08:34,760 --> 00:08:37,920 And I'm so grateful for this conversation because it's intergenerational. 117 00:08:37,920 --> 00:08:38,920 Yeah. 118 00:08:38,920 --> 00:08:39,920 Yeah. 119 00:08:39,920 --> 00:08:40,920 Yeah. 120 00:08:40,920 --> 00:08:42,120 Paul, inspired insight. 121 00:08:42,120 --> 00:08:45,320 I actually was having this conversation this week. 122 00:08:45,320 --> 00:08:51,120 I went on a walk with my best friend and we were just chatting through the day and what 123 00:08:51,120 --> 00:08:52,720 had happened. 124 00:08:52,720 --> 00:08:56,720 Somebody had made a decision that we were talking about it and I could not wrap my head 125 00:08:56,720 --> 00:09:00,480 around how they got to where they were going. 126 00:09:00,480 --> 00:09:03,740 And we were just volleyballing that back and forth with each other. 127 00:09:03,740 --> 00:09:08,100 And finally I said to him, I think people can make whatever decision they want. 128 00:09:08,100 --> 00:09:11,260 What they're not free of is the consequence of that choice. 129 00:09:11,260 --> 00:09:15,060 And that has kind of stuck with me all week. 130 00:09:15,060 --> 00:09:18,760 And I think that we do that every day, whether it's a good decision that we make and the 131 00:09:18,760 --> 00:09:23,760 consequence helps us or helps other people, or we choose to bring ourselves or other people 132 00:09:23,760 --> 00:09:27,320 down and the ripple effect of whatever that's going to be. 133 00:09:27,320 --> 00:09:29,960 I guess that's really brought insight to me this week. 134 00:09:29,960 --> 00:09:30,960 Yeah. 135 00:09:30,960 --> 00:09:31,960 That would be mine. 136 00:09:31,960 --> 00:09:32,960 Awesome. 137 00:09:32,960 --> 00:09:33,960 Awesome. 138 00:09:33,960 --> 00:09:37,960 My inspired insight, I think maybe has a little bit of play actually on maybe all of yours, 139 00:09:37,960 --> 00:09:46,560 but I was thinking about stuff going on in the world around us and thinking about politics 140 00:09:46,560 --> 00:09:48,800 and elections. 141 00:09:48,800 --> 00:09:59,360 And I was thinking about how easily folks take something from our past or even maybe 142 00:09:59,360 --> 00:10:05,840 a mistake that we made and how it's twisted and used to create a completely different 143 00:10:05,840 --> 00:10:11,820 narrative, which then might force us to play all defense. 144 00:10:11,820 --> 00:10:17,020 And so I've been thinking about what is my responsibility or ownership of somebody's 145 00:10:17,020 --> 00:10:19,360 misperceptions about me? 146 00:10:19,360 --> 00:10:27,040 Am I responsible that somebody has taken a different approach of how they view me? 147 00:10:27,040 --> 00:10:28,780 A misperception about me? 148 00:10:28,780 --> 00:10:31,360 Is that my responsibility? 149 00:10:31,360 --> 00:10:37,520 And I feel this weight come off my shoulders when I realize, no, that's not my responsibility. 150 00:10:37,520 --> 00:10:38,740 That's not my job. 151 00:10:38,740 --> 00:10:44,560 If I have done, I think to your point, Paul, if I have done something deliberately to hurt 152 00:10:44,560 --> 00:10:50,880 somebody or to do something malicious, then yeah, there are consequences that are probably 153 00:10:50,880 --> 00:10:52,840 going to ripple back towards me. 154 00:10:52,840 --> 00:10:57,040 But if somebody is waiting for me to screw up so they can use that against me, that's 155 00:10:57,040 --> 00:10:58,280 not on me. 156 00:10:58,280 --> 00:11:02,040 And that says more about that person than it does me. 157 00:11:02,040 --> 00:11:10,080 So a little bit of fear, hate, stigma, stereotype, and consequence in action and behavior. 158 00:11:10,080 --> 00:11:11,080 Yeah. 159 00:11:11,080 --> 00:11:15,080 I think that a lot of people, too, to speak to that, they hear different things about 160 00:11:15,080 --> 00:11:16,360 you without actually knowing you. 161 00:11:16,360 --> 00:11:21,320 And a lot of times the story they've made up about you is not actually who you are. 162 00:11:21,320 --> 00:11:24,200 And it's not your responsibility to go back and fix that. 163 00:11:24,200 --> 00:11:28,200 Whatever somebody else thinks, says, or does about you is their business. 164 00:11:28,200 --> 00:11:29,680 It has nothing to do with you. 165 00:11:29,680 --> 00:11:30,680 Yeah. 166 00:11:30,680 --> 00:11:33,120 Soren and I talk a lot about how criticism impacts us. 167 00:11:33,120 --> 00:11:39,280 And Soren has some really incredible views on what we can learn from hate and what we 168 00:11:39,280 --> 00:11:45,000 can take from somebody spewing terrible things. 169 00:11:45,000 --> 00:11:48,200 Whereas my style is a little bit like, I'm not going to care. 170 00:11:48,200 --> 00:11:49,200 I tune it out. 171 00:11:49,200 --> 00:11:55,520 Yeah, latent disregard, which I think is likely far more productive emotionally, depending 172 00:11:55,520 --> 00:12:02,160 on whether or not you can really separate yourself from the emotional impact of criticism 173 00:12:02,160 --> 00:12:05,800 and analyze and dissect it more effectively. 174 00:12:05,800 --> 00:12:08,800 But I would say that that's a fairly advanced technique. 175 00:12:08,800 --> 00:12:09,800 It's hard. 176 00:12:09,800 --> 00:12:11,160 Yeah, it's difficult. 177 00:12:11,160 --> 00:12:17,320 But actually, I have a question about ageism in the queer community. 178 00:12:17,320 --> 00:12:23,280 Do you feel like for everybody around here, because I'm sort of in the vibrant period 179 00:12:23,280 --> 00:12:26,280 of my life, the pinnacle, as it were. 180 00:12:26,280 --> 00:12:33,560 But do you feel like you've sort of been ostracized by the queer community as you grow older or 181 00:12:33,560 --> 00:12:41,360 your experience of it has just transitioned and you've found a older queer culture? 182 00:12:41,360 --> 00:12:42,800 Like great question. 183 00:12:42,800 --> 00:12:47,080 Do you think you've been ejected or is it more just a transition in the way that you 184 00:12:47,080 --> 00:12:51,720 interact with other queer folks? 185 00:12:51,720 --> 00:12:55,840 That's a great question. 186 00:12:55,840 --> 00:13:06,240 For me, I've been very fortunate because I've been interested in the whole field of anti-ageism 187 00:13:06,240 --> 00:13:07,240 for a long time. 188 00:13:07,240 --> 00:13:12,680 And I had mentors, social work mentors in my undergraduate and graduate work that were 189 00:13:12,680 --> 00:13:14,000 gerontological social workers. 190 00:13:14,000 --> 00:13:15,280 They study aging. 191 00:13:15,280 --> 00:13:20,240 And so I was in on that from early on. 192 00:13:20,240 --> 00:13:24,400 And not all social workers get that in their training. 193 00:13:24,400 --> 00:13:25,960 It's much better now. 194 00:13:25,960 --> 00:13:26,960 So I was fortunate. 195 00:13:26,960 --> 00:13:33,480 So I started to scope out what was going on in the queer community with regard to ageism 196 00:13:33,480 --> 00:13:43,000 and was able to figure out how was I going to take care of myself and parts of my community 197 00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:50,480 that I care about and provide social opportunities, intergenerational opportunities as much as 198 00:13:50,480 --> 00:13:51,480 possible. 199 00:13:51,480 --> 00:13:57,440 So that's really challenging because we've been also separated by age. 200 00:13:57,440 --> 00:14:04,400 And so for me, the answer is to counter the ageism that's there. 201 00:14:04,400 --> 00:14:16,360 I wouldn't think of going to a gay bar or probably a youth-oriented queer event unless 202 00:14:16,360 --> 00:14:26,880 I knew there would be a lot of age diversity because I have felt invisible in some ways. 203 00:14:26,880 --> 00:14:37,280 But I also have to say that for me, in the kind of white, cisgender, gay male scene where 204 00:14:37,280 --> 00:14:45,200 that sexual commoditization and all of those things can be so prevalent in the bar scene 205 00:14:45,200 --> 00:14:53,680 and the party scene, which I'm not really that up on anymore, that was hard to take 206 00:14:53,680 --> 00:14:59,440 oneself out of because it was my people in a certain way. 207 00:14:59,440 --> 00:15:09,800 So to break away from that and forge ahead with a different kind of social life and social 208 00:15:09,800 --> 00:15:15,000 structure was hard because I wanted to belong. 209 00:15:15,000 --> 00:15:19,520 After I came out in the late 70s, I wanted to belong and I thought I had found my way. 210 00:15:19,520 --> 00:15:26,160 But there were a lot of things there in that kind of gay male subculture that were not 211 00:15:26,160 --> 00:15:28,440 helpful. 212 00:15:28,440 --> 00:15:43,360 And so I stay connected through organizations that support older queer people. 213 00:15:43,360 --> 00:15:47,200 And I do everything I can to try to support those groups. 214 00:15:47,200 --> 00:15:49,040 But I feel like I'm fortunate. 215 00:15:49,040 --> 00:15:54,440 So part of my work is to advertise that and get people more involved because people are 216 00:15:54,440 --> 00:16:01,760 very isolated and living by themselves and not plugged into those groups. 217 00:16:01,760 --> 00:16:02,760 Yeah. 218 00:16:02,760 --> 00:16:06,640 That idea of invisibility resonates with me a lot. 219 00:16:06,640 --> 00:16:18,120 I feel like as somebody approaching my 50s, I feel like in gay culture, I'm an old guy 220 00:16:18,120 --> 00:16:26,640 now, even though I feel like from a lifestyle perspective, we still like to do stuff and 221 00:16:26,640 --> 00:16:28,120 go out there. 222 00:16:28,120 --> 00:16:36,600 But I don't necessarily know that I feel like I fit in with the younger crowd as much as 223 00:16:36,600 --> 00:16:40,840 I at one point thought I did. 224 00:16:40,840 --> 00:16:45,480 That idea of invisibility is really one that I've experienced as well. 225 00:16:45,480 --> 00:16:48,280 Do you still desire to fit in with the younger crowd? 226 00:16:48,280 --> 00:16:50,480 Is that something that you aspire to? 227 00:16:50,480 --> 00:16:53,480 That's a really good question. 228 00:16:53,480 --> 00:16:54,480 Yeah. 229 00:16:54,480 --> 00:16:59,480 You know, Sorin knows this about, well, probably the three of you know about me. 230 00:16:59,480 --> 00:17:03,560 I identify as a very proud Swifty. 231 00:17:03,560 --> 00:17:08,040 And so I think about the Taylor Swift stuff. 232 00:17:08,040 --> 00:17:18,760 So when my husband and I went to see the Heiress tour last summer in person, we were some of 233 00:17:18,760 --> 00:17:21,980 the older folks in that crowd. 234 00:17:21,980 --> 00:17:27,000 When we went to the movie theater to see the movie, we were absolutely some of the oldest 235 00:17:27,000 --> 00:17:28,360 people in that theater. 236 00:17:28,360 --> 00:17:34,200 So I definitely associate with things that probably have a younger crowd. 237 00:17:34,200 --> 00:17:41,160 There's also an older Swifty community out there as well that I feel like I can have 238 00:17:41,160 --> 00:17:43,280 a foot in both places. 239 00:17:43,280 --> 00:17:46,200 But Sorin, for your question, I don't know. 240 00:17:46,200 --> 00:17:53,320 Like Frank said, I don't have any interest in hanging out at any bar, let alone a gay 241 00:17:53,320 --> 00:17:54,320 bar. 242 00:17:54,320 --> 00:17:59,920 Like I don't have any interest in being part of that scene. 243 00:17:59,920 --> 00:18:08,360 Because to your point, Frank, when I was doing those things, there are elements of that scene 244 00:18:08,360 --> 00:18:10,600 that aren't helpful or aren't healthy. 245 00:18:10,600 --> 00:18:19,160 And I see myself as one who needs to keep myself away from that stuff. 246 00:18:19,160 --> 00:18:23,920 I don't know that that is something I care to do now. 247 00:18:23,920 --> 00:18:25,280 What about you, Paul? 248 00:18:25,280 --> 00:18:29,600 I'm right in between the two of these. 249 00:18:29,600 --> 00:18:34,160 What I know for sure is that everybody wants to feel seen, heard, and that they matter. 250 00:18:34,160 --> 00:18:36,280 I'm moving towards 40. 251 00:18:36,280 --> 00:18:43,120 I'm at the point where I can start to feel the shift between young 20 and what that looks 252 00:18:43,120 --> 00:18:49,200 like in a bar and in a club and on a beach to what it looks like as you approach 40 and 253 00:18:49,200 --> 00:18:56,200 as you start to actually fade back into the background. 254 00:18:56,200 --> 00:19:01,520 So I spend my time here, which is very rural, but then I also have a camp right in the center 255 00:19:01,520 --> 00:19:04,600 of Agunquit, which is like the gay mecca. 256 00:19:04,600 --> 00:19:11,600 And the thing about Agunquit is there is such an age variety there. 257 00:19:11,600 --> 00:19:16,980 So around me, I have 12 neighbors that all of us are gay, we're all in a big circle. 258 00:19:16,980 --> 00:19:22,360 And some of them are retiring and buying houses in Agunquit and Palm Springs. 259 00:19:22,360 --> 00:19:26,680 And that is because they're looking for a sense of community and a sense of connection. 260 00:19:26,680 --> 00:19:28,840 I still like to go out. 261 00:19:28,840 --> 00:19:30,680 I still like to go to the bar. 262 00:19:30,680 --> 00:19:35,000 I don't like how it makes me feel sometimes when I'm there. 263 00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:44,360 But I'm scared to feel that invisibility because it changes the identity of who you are and 264 00:19:44,360 --> 00:19:48,760 unless you're grounded to who you are by the time you get there, you can take a horrible 265 00:19:48,760 --> 00:19:49,760 path. 266 00:19:49,760 --> 00:19:57,680 And I love your point around as humans, we all have a need to feel seen and feel a sense 267 00:19:57,680 --> 00:20:01,240 of community, a feel a sense of belonging. 268 00:20:01,240 --> 00:20:05,720 So what about you, Sorin, as you're hearing the three of us kind of talk about the decades 269 00:20:05,720 --> 00:20:06,720 ahead? 270 00:20:06,720 --> 00:20:09,800 Well, okay. 271 00:20:09,800 --> 00:20:12,080 I would say I'm still in my early youth. 272 00:20:12,080 --> 00:20:18,360 I don't think I've reached the, well, I know I haven't reached the, like, I would say heart 273 00:20:18,360 --> 00:20:25,000 of queer culture, which is to some extent like the early 20s bar scene and such. 274 00:20:25,000 --> 00:20:34,880 I'm still in my youth and I would say my social group is fairly isolated relative to perhaps 275 00:20:34,880 --> 00:20:41,320 some of the other social situations that queer men find themselves in the early years of 276 00:20:41,320 --> 00:20:45,280 their life. 277 00:20:45,280 --> 00:20:52,960 But I wouldn't say that I feel like ostracized, but I am not really a part of a large overarching 278 00:20:52,960 --> 00:20:55,360 queer community. 279 00:20:55,360 --> 00:20:59,480 And that's simply because there's just not as many queer youth in the area. 280 00:20:59,480 --> 00:21:05,320 Like I go to a relatively small school in a quite rural area. 281 00:21:05,320 --> 00:21:15,120 And I'm, as far as I'm aware, the only like fully gay senior. 282 00:21:15,120 --> 00:21:20,760 It's not that I am necessarily desirous of speeding up my high school career and joining 283 00:21:20,760 --> 00:21:26,400 a larger queer community, but I think that it will be really fun and exciting because 284 00:21:26,400 --> 00:21:30,280 I've never had the opportunity to interact with somebody of that scale. 285 00:21:30,280 --> 00:21:31,280 Yeah. 286 00:21:31,280 --> 00:21:42,360 And something you and I have talked about off and on over the last season was the differences 287 00:21:42,360 --> 00:21:50,720 of when I was in school and deeply closeted and your current experience. 288 00:21:50,720 --> 00:21:56,800 And there are that term queer encompasses a whole lot of identities. 289 00:21:56,800 --> 00:22:07,320 And so you have some friends at school who identify under that umbrella term of queer. 290 00:22:07,320 --> 00:22:15,480 There was not one, not one out person, regardless of whether you're talking sexual orientation 291 00:22:15,480 --> 00:22:23,680 or gender identity, not one out person, publicly out person for the entire three years of middle 292 00:22:23,680 --> 00:22:26,240 school, four years of high school. 293 00:22:26,240 --> 00:22:34,160 So you've heard me say to you, like, I am just so, there's a sense of awe and wonder 294 00:22:34,160 --> 00:22:38,260 and envy when I think about your experience. 295 00:22:38,260 --> 00:22:46,480 And so I'm sitting here though, inspired insight light bulb over my head to hear you say, despite 296 00:22:46,480 --> 00:22:52,840 having this umbrella community of other youth, other high school students that might identify 297 00:22:52,840 --> 00:23:00,960 as queer, you're the only male bodied out gay person. 298 00:23:00,960 --> 00:23:01,960 In my grade. 299 00:23:01,960 --> 00:23:02,960 Yeah. 300 00:23:02,960 --> 00:23:09,520 So that's like, because we use that term queer, I think so loosely now, which I think for 301 00:23:09,520 --> 00:23:12,120 maybe three of the four of us at this fire. 302 00:23:12,120 --> 00:23:13,520 It used to be fired. 303 00:23:13,520 --> 00:23:14,520 Yeah. 304 00:23:14,520 --> 00:23:15,520 This fire pit. 305 00:23:15,520 --> 00:23:16,520 Yeah. 306 00:23:16,520 --> 00:23:17,520 Fire table chat. 307 00:23:17,520 --> 00:23:18,520 This language, right? 308 00:23:18,520 --> 00:23:23,200 This idea of how communities change and language changes. 309 00:23:23,200 --> 00:23:26,240 And it becomes a chicken and egg thing for me too. 310 00:23:26,240 --> 00:23:33,040 As the language changes, does the community then follow suit? 311 00:23:33,040 --> 00:23:34,040 Yeah. 312 00:23:34,040 --> 00:23:43,720 I think as we've developed more nomenclature to describe different facets of awareness, 313 00:23:43,720 --> 00:23:51,320 I think there's certainly been more cultural speciation among queer communities in high 314 00:23:51,320 --> 00:23:53,720 school, in my high school. 315 00:23:53,720 --> 00:24:02,160 And I think because there's less persecution and criticism, it has resulted in less of 316 00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:08,080 a tight knit in group of queer people because we don't have to sit there and band together 317 00:24:08,080 --> 00:24:09,680 and defend ourselves anymore. 318 00:24:09,680 --> 00:24:10,680 Right. 319 00:24:10,680 --> 00:24:15,200 Although there is still a fair amount of bullying. 320 00:24:15,200 --> 00:24:22,480 It's no longer like a life or death thing where we feel that it's necessary to really 321 00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:27,880 be in a tight packed group and support each other. 322 00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:32,400 So it's less of like a tight knit queer community at my school. 323 00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:37,400 And instead just there's a number of queer individuals that go to my high school. 324 00:24:37,400 --> 00:24:42,880 What's interesting about that as I was listening to you talk, I've been out of high school 325 00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:45,120 for a minute, like a minute. 326 00:24:45,120 --> 00:24:49,120 I just had my 20th high school reunion, which I didn't go to. 327 00:24:49,120 --> 00:24:51,160 I thought I would you. 328 00:24:51,160 --> 00:24:55,600 But I was out in high school. 329 00:24:55,600 --> 00:24:57,400 But as you were talking, I was thinking about this. 330 00:24:57,400 --> 00:24:59,600 I don't really have a coming out story. 331 00:24:59,600 --> 00:25:01,320 I've never actually come out. 332 00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:03,360 My mother is gay and my father is gay. 333 00:25:03,360 --> 00:25:06,640 So my existence was just my existence. 334 00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:12,520 So in high school, I could probably count on one hand the amount of queer people that 335 00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:16,360 existed either on whatever side of that spectrum they were on. 336 00:25:16,360 --> 00:25:22,720 But I kind of feel the same way where at the time queer was a bad word and it was used 337 00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:27,400 to hurt you, not to define who you are. 338 00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:34,680 But it's amazing to see how in high school you thought about safety and walking home 339 00:25:34,680 --> 00:25:40,040 alone and changing in the locker room and what that looked like to just now being in 340 00:25:40,040 --> 00:25:45,120 a watching a generation that can just live authentically who they are without the consequence 341 00:25:45,120 --> 00:25:46,120 of that. 342 00:25:46,120 --> 00:25:48,680 Yeah, it's wonderful. 343 00:25:48,680 --> 00:25:49,680 What about you, Frank? 344 00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:51,840 Did you come out in school? 345 00:25:51,840 --> 00:25:55,240 No, no, no. 346 00:25:55,240 --> 00:26:02,360 Fag, queer, all those pejoratives. 347 00:26:02,360 --> 00:26:08,400 All I wanted to do was stay away from that and keep away from that and not have not be 348 00:26:08,400 --> 00:26:11,440 labeled that even though I was gay. 349 00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:14,480 I was a gay boy. 350 00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:15,920 And everybody knew it. 351 00:26:15,920 --> 00:26:20,280 I was the last one to know when I came out in 78. 352 00:26:20,280 --> 00:26:25,520 But high school, junior high and high school were nightmarish. 353 00:26:25,520 --> 00:26:31,200 And I smoked a lot of pot, drank a lot of beef, did everything to escape that and try 354 00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:38,960 to conform and fit in at a terrible price. 355 00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:44,040 And so when I came out in 78, I was liberated. 356 00:26:44,040 --> 00:26:50,620 And it was a good time in the sense that there was a nascent queer civil rights movement 357 00:26:50,620 --> 00:26:52,680 and things were happening. 358 00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:58,000 But the same year that I came out, Harvey Milk and George Moscone were assassinated 359 00:26:58,000 --> 00:26:59,520 in San Francisco. 360 00:26:59,520 --> 00:27:04,200 So there was all this violence right there too. 361 00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:05,640 And that went on. 362 00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:11,840 And then in the early 80s, of course, HIV AIDS, which affected all of us. 363 00:27:11,840 --> 00:27:13,600 What was that like though? 364 00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:14,600 What was it like? 365 00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:15,800 It was another nerdy there. 366 00:27:15,800 --> 00:27:16,800 It was horrifying. 367 00:27:16,800 --> 00:27:23,640 Because I can imagine that that would place a spotlight on you, whether or not you had 368 00:27:23,640 --> 00:27:25,360 it or whatever. 369 00:27:25,360 --> 00:27:26,360 But I just... 370 00:27:26,360 --> 00:27:27,860 It was horrible. 371 00:27:27,860 --> 00:27:33,920 When I was younger, very young, because I was born in the middle of the 80s, but my 372 00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:38,000 mother's partner at the time had a brother who was living with us and he had AIDS and 373 00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:40,760 I didn't understand what it was at the time. 374 00:27:40,760 --> 00:27:48,880 But I'm fortunate in the fact in my generation that when I was growing up, it wasn't something 375 00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:52,760 that you dealt with like you would if you had come up in the 80s and 90s. 376 00:27:52,760 --> 00:27:53,760 Yes. 377 00:27:53,760 --> 00:28:01,080 And I came out in Portland and Portland was not an epicenter of the epidemic, but it was 378 00:28:01,080 --> 00:28:03,040 the epicenter in Maine. 379 00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:08,800 And so I lost many friends to HIV AIDS and people who I knew. 380 00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:16,520 The only good thing that came out of that was activism and organizing and filling all 381 00:28:16,520 --> 00:28:22,880 the gaps that were there because the government and state and even local officials would do 382 00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:23,880 nothing. 383 00:28:23,880 --> 00:28:28,280 So we had to do it. 384 00:28:28,280 --> 00:28:35,060 And also at the same time, the Maine Lesbian Gay Political Alliance was formed in 84, 85 385 00:28:35,060 --> 00:28:39,080 after the murder of Charlie Howard here in Bangor. 386 00:28:39,080 --> 00:28:47,280 And so the movement started coalescing in Maine and that was exciting and good and was 387 00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:51,520 a counterweight to the nightmare of HIV AIDS. 388 00:28:51,520 --> 00:29:00,120 The other thing I wanted to say was for most of us, I think the emotional response to all 389 00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:03,360 of this persecution and mistreatment was shame. 390 00:29:03,360 --> 00:29:05,040 And so how do you deal with shame? 391 00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:11,120 I mean, as human beings, shame is one of the most difficult emotions to deal with. 392 00:29:11,120 --> 00:29:16,600 And so people do a lot to avoid shame. 393 00:29:16,600 --> 00:29:24,640 And there are lots of great sociological research studies done on the lengths that people will 394 00:29:24,640 --> 00:29:33,120 go to reduce shame like passing and covering and trying to reduce the effects of the stigmatized 395 00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:36,560 identity that is so shameful. 396 00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:44,960 And I was thinking of gay male culture, not all queer culture, but not associating with 397 00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:51,560 men who behaved in feminine identified ways and stratifying that way, all of those things. 398 00:29:51,560 --> 00:29:52,860 I think that's changed. 399 00:29:52,860 --> 00:29:53,860 I really do. 400 00:29:53,860 --> 00:29:59,800 I've seen progress because I think shame has been reduced about being queer somewhat. 401 00:29:59,800 --> 00:30:04,880 It's still externally, the shame from a judgment from others. 402 00:30:04,880 --> 00:30:08,040 Yeah, projected onto the individual. 403 00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:13,520 That's one of the most powerful ways that minorities are separated from the majority 404 00:30:13,520 --> 00:30:14,520 culture. 405 00:30:14,520 --> 00:30:18,040 You bring up such a good point about that. 406 00:30:18,040 --> 00:30:22,240 Even when you, okay, so if you step inside, and my perspective is obviously from a gay 407 00:30:22,240 --> 00:30:27,600 man's perspective, but once you get into the gay community, it's not like we're all friends 408 00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:28,920 and we're all hugging each other. 409 00:30:28,920 --> 00:30:34,200 There are so many subsets of the gay community and then we're mean to each other in so many 410 00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:35,200 ways. 411 00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:36,640 Then it's about how old are you? 412 00:30:36,640 --> 00:30:37,640 What do you look like? 413 00:30:37,640 --> 00:30:38,640 What do you drive? 414 00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:39,640 How much money do you have? 415 00:30:39,640 --> 00:30:40,640 What do you do for work? 416 00:30:40,640 --> 00:30:41,640 Who are you connected to? 417 00:30:41,640 --> 00:30:47,000 And all of those things put you in different categories of gay men and what you have access 418 00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:51,560 to and who you have access to, what parties you're invited to, who your friends are. 419 00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:56,600 So I think that for a long time, it was a fight out and it was a fight in. 420 00:30:56,600 --> 00:30:57,600 Yeah. 421 00:30:57,600 --> 00:30:58,600 Yeah. 422 00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:07,560 I think, you know, also in my social work world and clinical work, shame is always in 423 00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:09,160 that treatment space. 424 00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:11,400 It's always present. 425 00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:20,360 And I do reflect often about, I did not, as Zorin has heard me talk about, I did not come 426 00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:32,320 out until formally to my family, like, okay, this is, everyone knows now until 99, a year 427 00:31:32,320 --> 00:31:40,960 almost to the date after Matt Shepard's death in Wyoming, had a very similar impact on me 428 00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:47,480 that his murder plays very heavily in my coming out story. 429 00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:54,040 And at almost 50 years old though, living the first 25 years of my life, like coming 430 00:31:54,040 --> 00:31:59,960 up to my 50th year, half of my life was closeted. 431 00:31:59,960 --> 00:32:09,600 And so as confident as I sometimes feel coming into my 50th year, that shame stuff catches 432 00:32:09,600 --> 00:32:12,520 me when I least expect it. 433 00:32:12,520 --> 00:32:18,560 And as even producing this podcast and part of what Zorin and I often have to do is go 434 00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:21,720 back and listen to episodes and re-listen to episodes. 435 00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:25,520 I have heard both of us say, I hate how I sound. 436 00:32:25,520 --> 00:32:27,240 I hate listening to my own voice. 437 00:32:27,240 --> 00:32:28,240 Yeah. 438 00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:34,560 And for me, 95% of that is, I sound gay. 439 00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:39,460 Five percent of that is, I'm a pretentious knucklehead sometimes. 440 00:32:39,460 --> 00:32:44,800 That 95% of that is, am I sounding too gay? 441 00:32:44,800 --> 00:32:46,640 That is like false shame. 442 00:32:46,640 --> 00:32:55,160 Actually I think what's super interesting now is yes, we've seen a lot of shame reduction 443 00:32:55,160 --> 00:33:03,640 in the public space, but obviously I'm still in high school and I was recently in middle 444 00:33:03,640 --> 00:33:06,120 school. 445 00:33:06,120 --> 00:33:12,760 And I think that those are two of the most shame-driven culture that one can witness 446 00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:14,240 in modern America. 447 00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:20,480 I would say likely that and the only right. 448 00:33:20,480 --> 00:33:29,840 And what I've noticed is that yes, a lot of early high school and middle school, essentially 449 00:33:29,840 --> 00:33:37,120 it's a social stratification through shame and it creates like social adherence and coherence 450 00:33:37,120 --> 00:33:38,840 through shame. 451 00:33:38,840 --> 00:33:45,880 But now as I'm about to enter my senior year and junior year, I noticed a market shift 452 00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:53,480 in the way that the school's population views themselves and how they interact with the 453 00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:54,600 school body. 454 00:33:54,600 --> 00:34:01,120 People don't care about popularity, at least of what I've seen anecdotally, as much as 455 00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:03,400 they used to. 456 00:34:03,400 --> 00:34:10,000 And there's less hierarchy to the social setting in high school. 457 00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:19,760 And I think that that allows for kids to express themselves far more openly, whereas previously 458 00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:26,240 that was not really an opportunity presented or at least without backlash. 459 00:34:26,240 --> 00:34:36,520 And even in middle school and still now, I do feel like a lot of the times I'm like, 460 00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:39,720 wow, I'm acting far too gay right now. 461 00:34:39,720 --> 00:34:45,560 And a lot of the outfits I'll wear, I'll be like, I'm not fitting in with a group. 462 00:34:45,560 --> 00:34:50,560 And in a lot of the social situations that I find myself in, I am interacting with a 463 00:34:50,560 --> 00:34:54,400 lot of just straight men that are just regular straight men. 464 00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:59,200 And in those situations, I definitely tone down my personality a lot. 465 00:34:59,200 --> 00:35:02,360 I dress and act in different ways. 466 00:35:02,360 --> 00:35:07,960 And I remember in middle school, I used to, over one of the summers, I was only hanging 467 00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:14,040 out with these two other boys and I would cry about how I'm not like them at all because 468 00:35:14,040 --> 00:35:20,920 they were two straight jocular men and I'm me. 469 00:35:20,920 --> 00:35:27,080 And although we've made a lot of progress, shame, I feel like, is a lot of very internal 470 00:35:27,080 --> 00:35:30,000 experience and self-driven. 471 00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:37,960 And we've talked about this concept of how we sometimes dull our own shine in order to 472 00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:39,840 not bring attention, to fit in. 473 00:35:39,840 --> 00:35:45,480 And sometimes we are our own worst critics or we're our first bullies. 474 00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:48,920 That voice in our head that tells us, knock it off. 475 00:35:48,920 --> 00:35:52,480 Can't you just walk like a normal teenage boy? 476 00:35:52,480 --> 00:35:54,300 Can't you just dress like a normal teen? 477 00:35:54,300 --> 00:35:57,360 Why can't you throw a football? 478 00:35:57,360 --> 00:35:58,640 Those voices. 479 00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:04,580 And I think to your point, Sorin, for many of us, especially many of us in the LGBTQ 480 00:36:04,580 --> 00:36:12,380 community, our formative middle school and high school years continue to shape us in 481 00:36:12,380 --> 00:36:15,880 not so great ways decades later. 482 00:36:15,880 --> 00:36:22,220 Everything about, like you said, middle school and high school can be rooted in shame. 483 00:36:22,220 --> 00:36:29,280 And I still, again, at almost 50 years old, walking into a public restroom, walking into 484 00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:32,280 a locker room. 485 00:36:32,280 --> 00:36:38,440 All of that feeling comes back the minute that door opens and closes. 486 00:36:38,440 --> 00:36:40,560 And we have to work at it every single day. 487 00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:41,800 We're works in progress, right? 488 00:36:41,800 --> 00:36:44,160 Another theme of our podcast. 489 00:36:44,160 --> 00:36:45,800 We are all works in progress. 490 00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:54,040 And as confident as I know the four of us present professionally, that stuff is in the 491 00:36:54,040 --> 00:36:57,200 back of our head all the time. 492 00:36:57,200 --> 00:37:00,680 And I think for me, very important. 493 00:37:00,680 --> 00:37:07,960 I think the most important thing for me is to make sure that I realize that that shame 494 00:37:07,960 --> 00:37:10,840 was projected onto me. 495 00:37:10,840 --> 00:37:20,960 That none of the things that come up as triggers or those indicators of internal shame, like 496 00:37:20,960 --> 00:37:25,740 being hesitant to do something because of that, like you say, go into a locker room 497 00:37:25,740 --> 00:37:33,720 or be with straight identified men comfortably. 498 00:37:33,720 --> 00:37:37,760 It was projected onto me from a very young age. 499 00:37:37,760 --> 00:37:42,240 As soon as I became aware, way before middle school, as soon as I became aware that I was 500 00:37:42,240 --> 00:37:47,100 different, no one helped me struggle with that. 501 00:37:47,100 --> 00:37:49,960 We were on our own, or at least I was. 502 00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:50,960 No, 100%. 503 00:37:50,960 --> 00:37:53,020 And other gay boys. 504 00:37:53,020 --> 00:38:01,080 And the only way we could identify, because I connected with several gay boys in schools, 505 00:38:01,080 --> 00:38:03,700 but we didn't talk about it. 506 00:38:03,700 --> 00:38:08,960 We did certain things together, but not others. 507 00:38:08,960 --> 00:38:12,740 I was in a theater group with one. 508 00:38:12,740 --> 00:38:17,620 But with my straight friends, I didn't talk about that. 509 00:38:17,620 --> 00:38:22,400 So we were trying to manage, I was trying to manage all of this shamed identity, all 510 00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:23,400 on my own. 511 00:38:23,400 --> 00:38:24,400 It's really amazing. 512 00:38:24,400 --> 00:38:32,040 I mean, that brings a lot of resilience into it to survive, to survive something like that. 513 00:38:32,040 --> 00:38:41,120 And the other thing I want to say about the shame is that being connected to the community 514 00:38:41,120 --> 00:38:44,920 that I choose is shame reducing. 515 00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:46,960 And just where I can be myself. 516 00:38:46,960 --> 00:38:51,200 And we have to create that ourselves. 517 00:38:51,200 --> 00:38:55,160 We really do. 518 00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:57,320 But we're on our own with it. 519 00:38:57,320 --> 00:38:58,320 And that's not fair. 520 00:38:58,320 --> 00:38:59,320 Right. 521 00:38:59,320 --> 00:39:00,320 It's not fair. 522 00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:04,680 And then you talked about this too, sorry, Frank, we've talked about this too, about 523 00:39:04,680 --> 00:39:18,720 how the humans we are today, for many of us, are scars, whether physical or emotional, 524 00:39:18,720 --> 00:39:20,680 have made us who we are. 525 00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:27,440 And as the four of us sitting around the fire table chatting and knowing, you know, I think 526 00:39:27,440 --> 00:39:32,760 I have the privilege of knowing each of you individually better than you all know each 527 00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:35,560 other collectively. 528 00:39:35,560 --> 00:39:45,780 Your skills, your reputations, your accomplishments, your decency as humans is perhaps also due 529 00:39:45,780 --> 00:39:50,080 in part to the bullshit that we all went through. 530 00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:57,200 And because of that bullshit, that we are the incredible humans that we all are today. 531 00:39:57,200 --> 00:40:00,920 Well, that's why I found my home in social work. 532 00:40:00,920 --> 00:40:01,920 Yeah. 533 00:40:01,920 --> 00:40:07,320 I know all the values and principles of social work practice and also working with folks 534 00:40:07,320 --> 00:40:09,120 who have been marginalized. 535 00:40:09,120 --> 00:40:10,120 Yeah. 536 00:40:10,120 --> 00:40:11,120 That's right. 537 00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:13,880 And helping them find their voice. 538 00:40:13,880 --> 00:40:21,840 I have never been a bully and I feel fortunate because not everybody who's been bullied has 539 00:40:21,840 --> 00:40:24,360 that passion. 540 00:40:24,360 --> 00:40:29,200 Because I think what you were describing, Paul, about how people get categorized and 541 00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:33,480 then get judged and bullied because of those differences. 542 00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:36,520 That sometimes people who are bullied do bully. 543 00:40:36,520 --> 00:40:39,480 And I'm grateful for that. 544 00:40:39,480 --> 00:40:42,080 Doesn't mean I can't be judgmental, but... 545 00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:43,080 Comes with the territory. 546 00:40:43,080 --> 00:40:44,080 Yeah. 547 00:40:44,080 --> 00:40:48,600 And I'm grateful for that gift, wherever I'm from. 548 00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:57,440 I actually wanted to talk a little bit more about the in-group pressure that the queer 549 00:40:57,440 --> 00:41:10,280 community presents and some of the difficulties of being immersed in gay culture and the social 550 00:41:10,280 --> 00:41:14,280 pressure that that puts on you and judgment from other queer people. 551 00:41:14,280 --> 00:41:22,400 Because I think that we see a lot of minorities, instead of pushing outward, they push inward 552 00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:26,720 and put more pressure on their own in-group to succeed and fit in. 553 00:41:26,720 --> 00:41:27,720 That's right. 554 00:41:27,720 --> 00:41:34,440 Or better model what they think the people within the in-group should be. 555 00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:42,240 So I haven't had a lot of that stress simply as a result of not interacting with a ton 556 00:41:42,240 --> 00:41:43,800 of other queer youth. 557 00:41:43,800 --> 00:41:52,040 But I have had friends who, especially older friends, interacting with more college queer 558 00:41:52,040 --> 00:41:53,040 culture. 559 00:41:53,040 --> 00:42:01,040 There's a lot of pressure to fit into a certain body type and a lot of judgment around appearance, 560 00:42:01,040 --> 00:42:04,520 sexual promiscuity and a number of things such as that. 561 00:42:04,520 --> 00:42:11,680 So I was curious to hear you guys' experience on if you've experienced pressure from other 562 00:42:11,680 --> 00:42:17,680 queer members of the community and what difficulties you face around that. 563 00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:19,800 And I think that that was a really good point, Paul. 564 00:42:19,800 --> 00:42:21,600 I really like that. 565 00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:24,320 So I'll answer that because I can answer that really quickly. 566 00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:33,240 I think part of my journey and part of that shame that was put on me that I still to this 567 00:42:33,240 --> 00:42:40,200 day work to push back or put into a different place, I didn't even when I, certainly not 568 00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:51,040 in school days, but even when I publicly came out in the late 90s, I chose to not associate 569 00:42:51,040 --> 00:42:54,160 a whole lot with other members of the LGBTQ plus community. 570 00:42:54,160 --> 00:42:58,800 I still rejected that. 571 00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:01,760 And some of that rejection was that pressure. 572 00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:06,320 I didn't even feel like I always fit there either. 573 00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:15,000 And so I have just been aware of the ageism within our community, of some of the stereotypes, 574 00:43:15,000 --> 00:43:17,880 some of the stratification that you're talking about. 575 00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:19,060 Was I this? 576 00:43:19,060 --> 00:43:20,060 Was I that? 577 00:43:20,060 --> 00:43:27,960 You know, and all of these subcultures within gay male culture and never felt like I fit 578 00:43:27,960 --> 00:43:30,080 in there either. 579 00:43:30,080 --> 00:43:37,640 So it's probably because of some of that pressure, whether external or internal, I pushed that 580 00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:39,000 community away. 581 00:43:39,000 --> 00:43:48,760 And it wasn't until I got into my thirties that I started embracing my LGBTQ plus friends. 582 00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:50,240 That's where it starts to get good. 583 00:43:50,240 --> 00:43:51,240 Yeah, it did. 584 00:43:51,240 --> 00:43:53,640 It started to get really good in my thirties. 585 00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:59,440 And I met my husband in my thirties and developed our life together in my thirties. 586 00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:08,200 And so, yeah, I think that was where my shine really started to burst through. 587 00:44:08,200 --> 00:44:14,360 And you know, there are lots of different coming out models, you know, stage models 588 00:44:14,360 --> 00:44:15,360 and all of that stuff. 589 00:44:15,360 --> 00:44:22,840 And part of one that I find interesting is that the models I find interesting are that 590 00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:28,660 process that you're describing, that you come to terms with your own sexual identity or 591 00:44:28,660 --> 00:44:37,040 sexual orientation, gender identity, and then you make forays outside yourself into the 592 00:44:37,040 --> 00:44:38,040 communities. 593 00:44:38,040 --> 00:44:42,640 And then at the end, you embrace it. 594 00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:44,620 And what a process that is. 595 00:44:44,620 --> 00:44:50,880 And I was thinking about how at every stage we have to reduce that shame and move forward. 596 00:44:50,880 --> 00:44:53,920 And it's really tough, again, on your own. 597 00:44:53,920 --> 00:44:58,920 And then you get the community support later when you've plugged in, you know, and people 598 00:44:58,920 --> 00:45:00,700 will affirm you. 599 00:45:00,700 --> 00:45:05,040 Like this conversation right today is very affirming and interesting. 600 00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:08,920 And I know I'll bring a lot from it. 601 00:45:08,920 --> 00:45:11,520 But until that happens, you know, we're on our own. 602 00:45:11,520 --> 00:45:17,720 I keep going back to that, which is really when you think about the systems that we operate 603 00:45:17,720 --> 00:45:31,160 in, it's a very effective technique to keep people isolated by themselves, not organized, 604 00:45:31,160 --> 00:45:40,520 and feeling not just badly about oneself, but also badly about others who are like you. 605 00:45:40,520 --> 00:45:41,520 That's right. 606 00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:42,520 Yeah, that's right. 607 00:45:42,520 --> 00:45:44,920 It's a very, very effective strategy. 608 00:45:44,920 --> 00:45:51,560 And I was trying to think about hierarchies, too, you know, and, oh, you know, we as human 609 00:45:51,560 --> 00:45:55,400 beings, we have to fight against not putting things into hierarchies. 610 00:45:55,400 --> 00:46:03,380 But we also live in a capitalist society that is very stratified by income. 611 00:46:03,380 --> 00:46:06,320 Look at how all the different ways income stratifies us. 612 00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:07,320 100%. 613 00:46:07,320 --> 00:46:08,320 Yeah. 614 00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:14,160 We're headed to higher education and advanced degrees and all of those things. 615 00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:15,160 That's all good. 616 00:46:15,160 --> 00:46:19,600 And it's all wonderful for our development, but it also stratifies us. 617 00:46:19,600 --> 00:46:23,640 Something that I'd like to loop back to is advocacy. 618 00:46:23,640 --> 00:46:30,700 When you were talking about sort of the flashpoints in the early queer liberation movement that 619 00:46:30,700 --> 00:46:38,440 resulted in organization and members of the community coming together, it was all very 620 00:46:38,440 --> 00:46:42,680 poignant, negative events that resulted directly in change. 621 00:46:42,680 --> 00:46:55,840 How can we make it so the movement is not reactive, but instead continuous? 622 00:46:55,840 --> 00:46:56,880 I think that's a great point. 623 00:46:56,880 --> 00:47:01,880 I want to point out that there are a lot of very proactive things that are happening because 624 00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:05,520 of that foundation that was placed because of that reactivity. 625 00:47:05,520 --> 00:47:12,880 We'll always have to be reactive, I think, after the fact because of acts of violence. 626 00:47:12,880 --> 00:47:16,560 As long as there's movements going on, we have the anti-trans legislation across the 627 00:47:16,560 --> 00:47:17,640 country. 628 00:47:17,640 --> 00:47:18,640 It's absurd. 629 00:47:18,640 --> 00:47:20,780 I understand. 630 00:47:20,780 --> 00:47:28,840 I understand the utility of attacking such a small and already marginalized group, but 631 00:47:28,840 --> 00:47:34,160 I would say the trans community is small enough that it has functionally no major bearing 632 00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:35,160 on anything. 633 00:47:35,160 --> 00:47:36,160 It's all money. 634 00:47:36,160 --> 00:47:37,160 Literally just... 635 00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:38,160 We were marginalized. 636 00:47:38,160 --> 00:47:44,960 Gay, bi, queer folks were attacked in the exact same way. 637 00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:45,960 Yeah. 638 00:47:45,960 --> 00:47:46,960 30, 40 years. 639 00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:51,560 Well, you saw this across your career, right? 640 00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:58,800 In the 80s, it was AIDS and the stigma around promiscuous gay men. 641 00:47:58,800 --> 00:48:03,240 In the 90s, it was leading into some of the marriage stuff. 642 00:48:03,240 --> 00:48:06,840 Then all through the 2000s, you were on the front lines here in the state of Maine around 643 00:48:06,840 --> 00:48:08,960 marriage equality. 644 00:48:08,960 --> 00:48:19,800 Now, the big money donors, the talking points against trans youth, and whether it's sports, 645 00:48:19,800 --> 00:48:28,840 use of restrooms, healthcare, that conversation drives big dollar donors into that party who 646 00:48:28,840 --> 00:48:31,240 chooses to use those talking points. 647 00:48:31,240 --> 00:48:38,520 The trans community was vulnerable. 648 00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:53,080 It has an interesting history, the whole LGBT addition of transgender to LGB politics. 649 00:48:53,080 --> 00:48:56,920 The were vulnerable, we weren't ready for that, right? 650 00:48:56,920 --> 00:49:00,280 They are paying the price for that. 651 00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:01,280 100%. 652 00:49:01,280 --> 00:49:09,840 One quick thing I want to say is that talk about invisibility, where are women and lesbians 653 00:49:09,840 --> 00:49:11,840 and people of color in this conversation? 654 00:49:11,840 --> 00:49:18,620 Those folks are all marginalized and stratified within our communities too. 655 00:49:18,620 --> 00:49:25,560 You can always follow the money, but trans folks were much more vulnerable, especially 656 00:49:25,560 --> 00:49:26,560 trans youth. 657 00:49:26,560 --> 00:49:27,560 Easy target. 658 00:49:27,560 --> 00:49:34,680 Because you say they're a smaller minority than folks who are identified in other ways, 659 00:49:34,680 --> 00:49:35,680 that's for sure. 660 00:49:35,680 --> 00:49:38,280 But look at trans youth. 661 00:49:38,280 --> 00:49:43,280 Their parents had to try to come in, some of them supportive, some of them not supportive, 662 00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:46,240 to try to advocate for their children to get medical care. 663 00:49:46,240 --> 00:49:53,440 That's where this anti-trans movement started was with healthcare, medical care. 664 00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:58,320 I think I talked to you about this one day too, but to think about the infighting between 665 00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:05,960 all the different groups internally, there is a segment of the LGB community that wants 666 00:50:05,960 --> 00:50:08,880 the T removed. 667 00:50:08,880 --> 00:50:10,280 That is shocking to me. 668 00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:13,240 If you come for one, you come for all. 669 00:50:13,240 --> 00:50:17,960 That is just another subset of what I was talking about, where once you get into the 670 00:50:17,960 --> 00:50:23,760 community, it goes by body type, it goes by activity, it goes by what you do and how you 671 00:50:23,760 --> 00:50:25,200 do it. 672 00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:31,720 I think that the shame comes in not only externally there from people projecting it to us, but 673 00:50:31,720 --> 00:50:35,520 then us projecting it to each other on the right-hand side out. 674 00:50:35,520 --> 00:50:39,480 I think that it just rolls. 675 00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:43,320 What I thought was interesting about shame, I read a lot of Brene Brown. 676 00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:47,800 I try to stay in the arena, not always the easiest thing to do. 677 00:50:47,800 --> 00:50:53,240 But what is interesting about the shame is, I talked about earlier, one of the things 678 00:50:53,240 --> 00:50:57,600 that I worried about when I was in high school is going into the locker room and changing. 679 00:50:57,600 --> 00:51:02,480 Then I was at the gym and I walked into the locker room and it just hits you like a wave, 680 00:51:02,480 --> 00:51:03,960 but you don't see it coming. 681 00:51:03,960 --> 00:51:09,520 Then you have to process back through something that you didn't think about for a while. 682 00:51:09,520 --> 00:51:10,520 That's right. 683 00:51:10,520 --> 00:51:12,000 I don't really go into locker rooms. 684 00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:13,000 Yeah, right. 685 00:51:13,000 --> 00:51:14,000 We've talked about it. 686 00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:15,480 We were forced into it. 687 00:51:15,480 --> 00:51:16,600 I was forced into it. 688 00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:20,320 I don't know about you two, but we didn't have any choice. 689 00:51:20,320 --> 00:51:26,400 You were forced through this agony of having to try to be part of something that you wanted 690 00:51:26,400 --> 00:51:27,400 nothing to do with. 691 00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:28,560 It was horrible. 692 00:51:28,560 --> 00:51:32,040 It was horrible. 693 00:51:32,040 --> 00:51:33,920 There was nothing wrong with us. 694 00:51:33,920 --> 00:51:34,920 Right. 695 00:51:34,920 --> 00:51:40,960 Again, that is the punchline for us today. 696 00:51:40,960 --> 00:51:47,560 I was inadvertently thinking about one of the inspired insights I shared that other 697 00:51:47,560 --> 00:51:53,680 people's perception of us is about them, not us, and there was nothing wrong with us. 698 00:51:53,680 --> 00:51:54,680 No. 699 00:51:54,680 --> 00:51:55,680 Yeah. 700 00:51:55,680 --> 00:51:56,680 No. 701 00:51:56,680 --> 00:52:00,480 Friends, I could sit here all day and continue this conversation. 702 00:52:00,480 --> 00:52:02,840 I know we're at a point where we need to wrap up. 703 00:52:02,840 --> 00:52:07,080 I want to do maybe some final thoughts, final points. 704 00:52:07,080 --> 00:52:10,680 Paul, I'm going to put you on the spot to go first. 705 00:52:10,680 --> 00:52:11,680 Okay. 706 00:52:11,680 --> 00:52:18,240 I think that the conversation today enlightened, obviously, because there's four generations 707 00:52:18,240 --> 00:52:20,960 of people here. 708 00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:25,560 I think the message that I'm going to walk away with and be more cognizant of is that 709 00:52:25,560 --> 00:52:27,600 we're all in it together. 710 00:52:27,600 --> 00:52:31,640 Regardless of how we try to pull each other down or pull each other apart, we're only 711 00:52:31,640 --> 00:52:33,400 going to succeed if we all do it together. 712 00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:34,400 That's right. 713 00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:36,320 Frank, final point, final thought. 714 00:52:36,320 --> 00:52:39,040 I agree with Paul that we're all in this together. 715 00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:40,040 We always have been. 716 00:52:40,040 --> 00:52:45,080 It's so wonderful to come together and be part of this because we are. 717 00:52:45,080 --> 00:52:47,040 This is doing it together. 718 00:52:47,040 --> 00:52:48,680 I really appreciate that. 719 00:52:48,680 --> 00:52:54,640 We can't leave out the political, social, cultural, economic factors that we've got 720 00:52:54,640 --> 00:52:59,280 to touch on, but we could do an hour on those. 721 00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:00,600 Well, hours. 722 00:53:00,600 --> 00:53:03,760 I got you both on speed dial. 723 00:53:03,760 --> 00:53:05,800 Final point, final thought. 724 00:53:05,800 --> 00:53:15,320 Yeah, I think to echo these two lovely gentlemen's point, let's not throw people off the life 725 00:53:15,320 --> 00:53:16,840 raft so it stays afloat. 726 00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:21,640 Let's expand it. 727 00:53:21,640 --> 00:53:28,840 I'm so pleased that we had the opportunity to bring you guys on because I think it did 728 00:53:28,840 --> 00:53:33,880 diversify our perspectives and I really enjoyed hearing what you guys had to say. 729 00:53:33,880 --> 00:53:35,400 I would just like to thank you two. 730 00:53:35,400 --> 00:53:37,000 Yeah, and that's my final thought. 731 00:53:37,000 --> 00:53:38,000 That's what I'm taking away. 732 00:53:38,000 --> 00:53:40,600 In addition to what you all said is gratitude. 733 00:53:40,600 --> 00:53:46,960 This conversation has been inspiring and enlightening and I just feel so thankful that you both 734 00:53:46,960 --> 00:53:53,240 got up super early on a dead morning to share your time, but Soren and I, and who knows, 735 00:53:53,240 --> 00:53:55,440 this might be a to be continued. 736 00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:56,480 So thank you all. 737 00:53:56,480 --> 00:53:59,400 This has been an episode of the Inspired Insights podcast. 738 00:53:59,400 --> 00:54:00,720 I've been Chris McLaughlin. 739 00:54:00,720 --> 00:54:01,720 I've been Soren Peterson. 740 00:54:01,720 --> 00:54:04,360 We'll see you next time for another episode. 741 00:54:04,360 --> 00:54:05,360 Thanks so much. 742 00:54:05,360 --> 00:54:06,360 Bye. 743 00:54:06,360 --> 00:54:07,360 Thank you. 744 00:54:07,360 --> 00:54:13,080 The Inspired Insights podcast has been brought to you by Inspired Consulting Group, LLC. 745 00:54:13,080 --> 00:54:16,640 Edited and produced by Amanda Seidel and Derek Herter. 746 00:54:16,640 --> 00:54:20,160 Marketing support for the Inspired Insights podcast by Elizabeth Keenan. 747 00:54:20,160 --> 00:54:21,680 Music by Derek Herter. 748 00:54:21,680 --> 00:54:26,520 Please visit www.inspiredcg.com to learn more. 749 00:54:26,520 --> 00:54:28,440 Copyright 2024. 750 00:54:28,440 --> 00:54:35,640 All rights reserved.