Hey just a disclaimer some of the topics I discussed in this episode today may be triggering to some people and include talk about depression suicide and suicidal ideation we are going to include links Below on resources to find support if you or a loved one need it
The lesson that was taught was one day as a woman you’re gonna grow up meet a man serve the man provide him with children and babies and that was their intro to the University was to teach women how to serve men and I was like hi everyone welcome back to closet talk
For these first six episodes or chapters I’ve been thinking about my queer identity Journey from elementary school all the way up to present day and today we are getting into the college episode and there is a lot to cover I’m going to be talking about the beginning steps of
Exploring my gender feeling the pressure to conform and discovering social media for the very first time but first I’m here to intro the new addition to the queer Hall of Fame and that is Miss Marie into the queer Hall of Fame for multiple reasons and I think we all know
The main reason is because back in I would say 2020 is the first time that I heard about asking somebody if they listened to girl in red and I think I was introd to that because there was this one song of hers that went super
Viral and it was we fell in love in October and it’s a song about just a girl falling in love with a girl in October and it’s still every single year becomes a thing that every single like queer woman who’s not in a relationship posts
A video to this song and it’s like if I don’t fall in love in October everyone is going to feel my wrath because I won’t be able to use this song and I think that was my first experience like with a queer artist that it was so commonly referenced to being a question
About if you listen to them like I had never heard of somebody being like Oh do you listen to Haley Kyoko that was more of like a Monumental moment for like visual effects on YouTube just like that that music video but this was the first time I’d ever heard of an artist being
Like do you listen to Girl in red and personally I always got way too afraid to ask that question but I do remember there was this one time and this is why this artist is so important to me because I did listen to her music like back in the day before I really
Understood the queer reference and I was hanging out with my friend who was a straight person and knew the trend better than I did at that point and I was like okay this is impressive the fact that you know this reference and I don’t and we were just going through our
Spotify and I was really anxious because anyone who looks at my Spotify should be like put down or something because it is just like old Justin Bieber and Pitbull my music taste back then was really interesting and I remember I had a few girl in red songs saved and I was like
Oh my gosh finally maybe an artist this person doesn’t know and so I go oh my gosh do you listen to Girl in red and like they completely like stopped what they were doing looked at me and was like Maddie like I liked men and I was like oh
I don’t but like what do you mean and they were like are you asking if I’m gay I was like no I’m asking if you listen to Girl in red and they were like yeah that’s like it’s like a gay question I was like what do you mean and so they
Had to explain to me that it was a queer Trend and so after that it was kind of our inside joke like do you listen to Girl in red and they did actually for the record listen to Girl in red but I think that moment for me was like oh
This is so cool this is like music I love music obviously I think a lot of people do but this was the first experience I was like oh my gosh I can reference like an artist and have it be a queer reference and also I got to see
Her at Coachella so that was really exciting but yeah 10 out of 10 girl in red you’re in the queer Hall of Fame because you’re the first queer artist I ever heard of as people’s coming out stories I think like do you listen to Girl in red became just the opener to
The are you gay question in a very subtle way that I had never heard before 10 out of 10 by the way music is fantastic congratulations on your name being Marie I had no idea it was that if you don’t know the backstory of girl in
Red girl in red is a queer artist named Marie ovin I hope I’m saying that right she is from Norway and started publishing music on SoundCloud in 2015 related to queer romance and mental health when I first heard of girl in red I was already out there was no questions
About that but it was when I was first going back and looking at like queer history overall it felt like I was sitting myself down and like teaching myself the lessons of like watching the YouTube coming out stories that happened before L Mills and like the first ones
And then I had never really listened to gay music before besides like Mary Lambert and the like she keeps me warm that was my only experience with game music and I remember that song being on the radio and my mom making us like change it she was like what is this I
Was like I don’t know but I’m digging it so that was like the only thing that I heard before girl in red oh and Haley Kyoko those are it and then it was girl in red but that was so much more impactful in terms of just the question
I’d never heard of an artist having a question like that before so Marie AKA girl in red you have made it into the queer Hall of Fame because of the forever iconic question of do you listen to Girl in red as an inquisitive way of questioning somebody’s identity
And last episode ended on my high school experience and leaving High School in my first successful queer relationship I would call it in terms of my family knowing my peers knowing you know being in like a good environment to leave and go to college with this relationship in
Hand but my experience in college was actually the first time in my life I was able to experience the world period I did not get a phone until the summer going into college that had like full access to the internet I had one before but it didn’t have Safari or YouTube I
Wasn’t allowed to have Instagram or SnapChat any of that so I spent the summer going into my college experience actually working at Target and Snapchatting people and I remember the first like concept I had of Snapchat was that it was so weird I didn’t like it at
All it was like why do I need to send you a picture of my face it really does not make sense to me and then I started like figuring now you can put the text on the screen because my girlfriend was like why don’t you like I don’t know
Send me cute messages I didn’t figure out until this year like two months ago that you could save things in the chat by the way like on Snapchat somebody did it to me and I was like what is this Wizardry but anyway that was my first experience like having social media I
Posted on Instagram I think five times in one day because I didn’t know that was not normal because I got it and I was like well I went to a baseball game and I went to like out to Taco Bell and I took a picture of my tacos and like I
Was just really learning how to use social media and so when I went to college I had already made like a few connections with people through social media because there was this one page on Instagram that had like if you’re going to this University in 2020 I think it
Was yeah 2018 2019 follow this so I met a bunch of people through there but when I got to college and my like my parents left I had this moment with myself it was like I thought I was going to be so much more sad than I was not to say that
I like didn’t miss my parents or anything but they moved me in and I went to this like early orientation Excursion I would call it we did like community service for four days before going into school and it was just like an earlier way to meet people and during that time
I realized I could kind of say and be whoever I wanted to be without judgment from my family or the conservative peers that I went to high school with and it really felt like a safe environment for me to First be able to come out and I
Think I always say that my coming out experience was kind of taken away from me and I mean that in the very first stages of telling people that you’re gay but I still looked very feminine I still presented very feminine and so I had my very first opportunity to come out to
People in college when I first started like coming out to people in college it was that first little group that I went to this little I think it was called the service plunge it was like this little orientation group or pre-orientation group that I went and did community
Service with for like four days before actually moving into the dorm and when I moved into the dorm I realized my college was going to be a little bit different because I was moving in and I remember carrying like my little shower caddy up the stairs and like walking by
A full priest like in full priest uniform and I was like oh like they’re scattered everywhere because it was a private Catholic University I remember we actually had this one brother who would like rollerblade around campus and like just be doing like crazy rollerblading parkour around campus in
His like clergy uniform yeah he was he was pretty cool though he was a pretty cool one but I realized like I wasn’t going to have a pretty normal college experience there were no fraternities no sororities and it was every class was kind of Catholic coded like there was
The Jesus in every single room the mass Hall and every single dorm and just lessons that were kind of taught in these undertones that had these Catholic upbringing surroundings I guess and I knew I probably wasn’t in the right place prior to day one of school because
We went to mass it was like something that you had to do as a family to intro you to the school it was like this huge gathering on Sunday in the schools actually like basketball Auditorium I don’t know if that was basketball I don’t know it’s where the basketball
Courts were I’m not really a sports person but it was filled to the brim with like families and students and teachers and everyone and the lesson that was taught in that mass was that one day as a woman you’re gonna grow up you’re gonna meet a man you’re gonna
Serve the man provide him with children and babies and you’re going to clean the house and then that man is going to provide for the family and have a job and that’s what like their goal was that was their intro to the University was to
Teach women how to serve men and I was like I don’t think this is for me but it was like the number three I think in nursing school in the west coast so I was like I have to be here like they have an incredible nursing program I’m
Just gonna like ignore all of this and let it let it slide you know what I mean so I move into the dorm and I had this moment after my parents left where I was sitting on my phone and my mom I remember before she dropped me off she
Took my phone and kind of unlocked it like took off all the parental restraints I think I was 17 at the time and I was laying in bed like wide awake I just started to like Google questions that I had always had about life like really existential questions and I
Realized I was getting all these like Reddit thread answers and I was like oh my gosh the internet is a very massive place and you can look up anything you wanted to and I think that very first night triggered something in me that was like made me realize that I had the entire
World at my fingertips and then I went to school on the first day my classes were normal but I just always had this itch to like get back on my phone and just keep asking questions and then I got used to Snapchat after the first like few days of like really
Snapchatting people for no reason and I did this thing where my brain I think after suppressing all this hyper masculinity throughout my entire life it just exploded within days of finally being on my own and able to express my way myself in ways I had never been able
To before like I decided on day two I’m gonna cut my hair I decided on day three I’m gonna go out and buy a suit I’m gonna order myself like a tie off Amazon I’m gonna change my name entirely and experiment with they them and he him
Pronouns and I was so excited too I was like I’m finally becoming who I’ve always wanted to become this is so exciting and then I get everything kind of situated to cut my hair and I remember I think it was three days before my 18th birthday I had
My first encounter with alcohol it was the first week of being at school and I had already had such a good week of like coming out to people who were generally supportive like really like quote unquote close friends that I met like within the first week I actually think
It was just one person or two people but they were really supportive of me and I was like this is so exciting they had this like on-campus party that every like freshman went to it was like the Freshman thing and I didn’t really want
To go for some reason I don’t know I was kind of feeling anti-social that day and so one friend that I met during that pre-orientation retreat was like let’s go to a party and I was like sure let’s go to a party and nobody had ever prompted me about alcohol I had zero
Experience drinking before and so I went into this dorm room and I remember walking in and drinking vodka out of like a Gatorade water bottle and was like this is horrible it tastes bad I feel weird but people kind of kept handing me alcohol and I was like all
Right this is just what you do in college this is just what happens and then I got so drunk these two poor girls had to physically carry me across campus and like put me to bed like I had to walk by my Ras and my hall director
Fully looking like a corpse in these girls arms and they put me in bed and I remember I had like my first ever experience just feeling like the entire world was spinning around me and my roommate walks in right after that I just start talking to her about
Everything that I was holding inside because I had never like drank before I didn’t know I was going to be like let me tell you my deepest darkest Secrets because apparently I’m an emotional drunk and so I start telling this girl about how I don’t feel a certain way
About my body and my gender and my identity and you could tell that she was not into this conversation she was like you need to go to bed I need to go to bed we need to go to bed so I was like I’m so glad I have a roommate who
Understands and I think the very next day I got an email from my hall director and this was before I cut my hair this is before I looked any certain kind of way and she goes hey your roommate brought something up that needs immediate attention when can you meet
And I was like well I don’t know because like tomorrow is my birthday I kind of wanted to celebrate my birthday with my friends that I met a week and a half ago that’d be lovely and so the anxiety kind of got the best of me because I started
To think that my roommate like reported me for drinking because they taught us like day one like if your roommate drinks tell on them which is lovely and so I thought I was I was gonna get busted so I was fully prepared to like express my sorrows and apologize but I
Go in to my hall director’s office on my 18th birthday and I sit down and I’m like ready for the drunk conversation and she just goes so your roommate who was sitting like right across from me by the way looking like the most sad person you’ve ever
Seen in your life I was like girl it’s really not that deep but she goes so your roommate has expressed to us that you’re using a boy name and plural pronouns and I think I immediately started crying but I don’t really remember I just remember like the entire
World caving in and me being like uh oh I’m like busted I thought they were gonna like call my mom like they do in middle school when you do something wrong except they could just call her extension they didn’t have to call her number and so we had this conversation where my
Hall director told me that she did not feel comfortable living with me and that gender was binary like full-on starts preaching like Catholic views in terms of gender and I just kind of sat through that conversation like slow tears streaming by my face and I remember the
First words I said where my parents don’t even know like this is something I’m going through on my own right now I have no idea how I really feel and I just need an environment where I can experiment and figure out who I am because I’ve been suppressing that my entire life and
She was like well I don’t feel comfortable living with somebody who uses those terms and I was like word so on my 18th birthday I moved out of my dorm and I moved in with somebody who kind of constantly smelled like weed and at the time I definitely thought weed
Was the equivalent of like black star heroin I was like this is not good I’m living with a drug addict really I think now we’d like get it wrong along really well we’ve like dm’d a couple times since like hey remember when we lived together that was crazy so she’s cool
Now but yeah after I moved out on my 18th birthday three days later I cut off my hair and the craziest thing about this is it was by a priest in one of my friends dorms and he learned how to cut hair while he was also learning how to
Become a priest which is like I enjoy The Duality of that but it turns out last year he was actually fired from the University I think they’re getting a little bit better but for homophobic tweets at around the time he was like cutting my hair like during that era and
So he like buzzed the sides of my head I finally looked like myself and I remember remember having this moment where I walked from the dorm and like there were so many people there to like support me through that but it was I think everybody that I met on that
Pre-orientation Retreat and I remember walking from the first dorm where I cut my hair over to my dorm and looking at myself in the mirror and just breaking down because that was the first time I had ever really like looked at myself and saw a reflection that I
Somewhat recognized and I think that’s like kind of the weight of the importance of being able to express yourself like it didn’t really matter at the time how I felt like when I dressed because I had worn suits and ties before and like stolen my dad’s tie and like he
Taught me how to tie it and stuff but that haircut genuinely changed the entire trajectory of my entire life because at 15 I told myself you know what I want short hair and my mom said no for three years and so this was something that I had been building up
Inside of me for so long and as I looked at myself in the mirror all I could think about was that kid that would go into their room and like put all their hair up in a hat and like pretend like they looked this way and I just had I
Just stopped having to pretend and I was finally like comfortable and it was crazy because I probably looked ridiculous I actually do have a picture of like what I looked like when I first cut my hair it was horrible it was terrible but it taught me so much about
Gender that was the defining moment in realizing like I was not a cisgendered person before even knowing the term cisgender I went throughout my college experience kind of expressing all of the masculinity I had ever wanted to express through my clothes through my hair through my name through my pronouns so I
Kind of let myself go into this person that I always felt like on the inside I was finally able to express on the outside and then as time went on I started to realize the difference between me and the university I was attending like the overall population
And you know every single Monday through Wednesday I’d be like what are you doing at this time my friends would be like we’re going to mass we’re going to church I thought I could teach myself how to kind of get out because at the same time I was expressing everything
I’d always desired I wasn’t happy about it because I was comfortable I had always felt the safest and uncomfortability for some reason is that even a word uncomfortability yeah I’d always felt the safest when I was questioning everything and I got really scared out of nowhere that I stopped questioning
And so one day I just decided to go to church and for some reason the church in general there’s a really good job of making you feel extremely welcomed right away they kind of suck you in with all these like hugs and prayers for you and
That’s what they did for me they were like we have a new guest today and it’s Maddie and that wasn’t the name I was going by at the time but I was like okay that’s fine and they were like we’re gonna pray for them didn’t you say them
Pronouns but we’re like we’re gonna pray for Maddie and the struggles that she’s going through and it kind of made me think about maybe this could change Me Maybe This could make me feel normal in the sense of fitting in and I kind of hated how intensely I stuck out because
Walking around campus I was kind of the only person that looked like me I was the only person that used different pronouns and the ones they were born with I was the only one that went by a different name than the one they were born with because it was a pretty small
Universe it was like 4 600 kids and I started to try and convert myself because I think within a month actually I was attending church four times a week I was asking for prayers to kind of change who I was and I don’t even want to say change because they instated this
Thing in my brain they put it in my brain that that’s always who I was meant to be the person I was before I came to college I would say I always wear dresses I always painted my nails I never brought up the fact that every
Time before homecoming or prom and I was in a dress and I was in full makeup and I had my nails done I had to like lean over my sink and just cry because of how terrible it made me feel about myself and so I went into this phase of
Disassociation from The Real World after I think the first month of being there because we were all standing outside of church one day I remember hearing somebody say are you going to the protest I was like what protest and they were like they hired somebody who funds electroconversion shock therapy for gay
People to speak at the annual red Mass which by the way red Mass sounds like something straight out of the handmaid’s tail or Black Mirror like that does not sound like a normal thing what they were doing was hiring somebody to come kind of preach traditional catholic values
And it’s something that I was used to because at the end of every single Mass they would have this like pro-life meeting where they would talk about how important like babies and like continuing to live are I guess like the importance of pro-life in like your action like donate to these foundations
That promote pro-life virtues I remember saying like I think I might go to the protest because I’m a gay person and that’s somebody who doesn’t support gay people it just makes sense and I remember the teachers threatening us to not go like if you leave because it was
During class they were like if you go to this protest and it had to be a silent protest even if you stepped on the sidewalk it could be considered violent and you could get like arrested um for like blocking the way of this person but the teachers would say if you
Go to this protest you’re gonna like get a zero for the day and so they really didn’t want us to support this one thing and after that moment I completely fell into trying to change everything about myself and by going to church by trying to preach these traditional catholic
Values onto myself and I fell in to that depressive cycle again of feeling nothing and like not letting myself feel anything so by the time my first year wrapped up I was somebody I did not even recognize I still looked a certain way I still had the short hair I still you
Know was funny I’m hilarious but there was something like this Essence about myself I did not recognize as I got into my sophomore year I started to realize like I liked nothing about myself because I was just plopped into this environment where I thought I’m finally experiencing the world for the first
Time I’m finally able to go on walks by myself for the first time I would just go on walks and like look at nature and take pictures and I was able to focus on everything besides what I was there to do and that was school because I didn’t
Have access to the world before that point and it was kind of like taking somebody in a cult and just putting them like in a Walmart how are they supposed to know what to do I also am super into like documentaries and stuff so that’s like actually something that happens but
I felt like after finally gaining access to the world I wanted to hone in and figure out who I was after a year of just suffering going to church not questioning anything and like going up to priests and asking them to pray for me because I was so lost and confused
And then I finally went home and that was a a rain check like that was a massive like slap back to reality because I was like looking at myself for the first time in a way I didn’t recognize ever I still looked a certain way but that Essence that I had on the
Outside was just so dark and so I went back to school and realized my grades the first few semesters were so bad like I had no idea what I was doing I was barely attending class because I would rather like sleep because I was depressed I would rather like spend my
Time I would go and sit in an empty church and just like pray and I don’t even know for what like I just be like something about me needs to change let me just dear God right and so going into my sophomore year of college I finally
Was like done with it I start school and could not focus and I know I’ve always had ADHD my entire life but that was the first year I had a really self-regulate in terms of medication I realized what Adderall does to a person with the same brain chemistry as I do because it
Affects everyone differently but I realized it helps me like stay up focus and get my work done and it would distract me from the outside and external pressures of figuring out who I was and I would like stay in the library all night and just study and not pay
Attention to what was going on around me emotionally at all and the more that I did that the more that I became numb the number I got the more I realized like I had no desire to kind of be here anymore and after the pressures of my Mom
Calling me every day telling me yo you have to get your grades in check you have to do this you have to do that there was more emptiness it started to fill like every single crevice of who I was and so I think in October there was
Somebody on campus who ended their life and I would see him around in church and we were pretty cordial towards one another but what I didn’t realize was that Catholics don’t believe in suicide and so when we had this school funeral for this boy they were like what an
Unfortunate circumstance and I was like no that’s not what happened like everybody knows he took his own life then I started to get to thinking and I started thinking to myself well if that happens to me then everybody’s just gonna think it was like this one big
Mistake like it never really was suicide and so I decided at like I think I was 19 at the time that I just did not want to be here anymore there was nothing in my brain that had the desire to continue to move forward and so one day I’m walking around campus
And I left all the notes that I wanted to on my desk in my dorm I start like walking off campus and I got stopped by campus police and they were like are you Madeline and I was like probably I think so and they were like come with me and
My friend who had access to my room I texted her something weird found my notes and called the campus police and they stopped me they flew my parents out the next day but what the university also decided to take into their hands was emailing my parents after they had
Called them like by the way your child is also using like these pronouns going by this name doing this and that and like completely outed every single thing about me that I felt like I had left to tell them and so my parents come to retrieve Little Maddie and we’re sitting
In the office and I’ll never forget this feeling of those muffled voices outside of a door it felt like a movie where like the muffled voices like come into focus and audio becomes really clear I remember my mom saying to like the director of the School of Nursing I
Don’t recognize that person like that’s not my child I was like whoa she sees it too for some reason my mom is always right like there’s something about me that’s just off and wrong and I need to go home and heal and figure it out and
The second that I went home my mom sat me down and was like okay I want my Maddie back like I want that fun loving person back what can we do and so I went to intensive outpatient therapy for three months and I told her I was like I
Think it’s because I’ve never felt loved in this world but anybody but you and Dad and obviously my siblings and I was like why is it that every environment that I step into some part of me is immediately rejected and I started to post on social media publicly at this
Time I had no more like private accounts and right as I had this conversation with my mom about like I just want to feel accepted and loved by people around me and I don’t understand why that’s so hard I posted a video on Tick Tock and
It was me physically coming out of the closet to a panic at the disco song and all the comments and were like okay I say all is in there were like a thousand there were 40 comments and it was all like this is so funny this is so silly
This is like relatable and I was like whoa there are also people like me out there that exist and feel this way because it was about like finally coming out of the closet finally doing this and I remember clicking on every single one of the profiles and they had like a
Little rainbow flag or like a little hashtag like WLW in their bio and after having the conversation with my mom where I was like hey I want to feel loved and supported I was immediately given social media in the foundations of being supported and I think that’s what’s so interesting about
Like the internet because I hear all these negative things because so many people like older people when I go back home they’re like aren’t you aware of like the dangers of the internet I’m like yeah but I also can understand how it can save a person who feels so
Violently alone and I can understand where like the dangers come in but I also had never felt more accepted or loved in my entire life than I did when I posted for the first time and all I got in response was just love and positivity it felt like finally being
Able to take a deep breath and that’s when I really started to experiment with the way that I expressed myself and stopped questioning getting into social media I always say that it saved my life but it like actually did I don’t think there was like a will or a reason
For me to continue being here until I posted that video it was met with such open-mindedness and that’s a conversation that I have with my family all the time about like when did I get my spark back like after I came home from school and they were
Like when you started to post literally nine times every day on tick tock and I think that part of my life will always be so fundamental in like letting go of the inability to fully question because I think questioning now is a good thing if there’s something about myself that I
Don’t understand I kind of disregard the past habits that I had of like all right we’re not going to think about it we’re not going to explore it this is scary we’re gonna sit down we’re gonna figure it out and we’re gonna talk about it because of social media and that’s also
Where I heard hey do you listen to Girl in red like everywhere that’s literally when it started to happen was when I was like scrolling on my for you page I got on the gay algorithm I got on like the queer algorithm and I started seeing all these things about style cuffed jeans
And like wearing I don’t know button-down shirts and like cuffing your sleeves and everything that had to do with expressing yourself as a queer person and then I was finally able to express myself like the way that I had always loved and desired and I know that
A lot of you guys also have questions about your own queer identity and you might be pretty confused when you look in the mirror and it’s okay because I sometimes still am so I would love to answer some of your questions so this person said I’m questioning my gender it’s okay me too
When I read stories about trans people coming out they almost always talk about how they’ve always known I’ve recently started to wonder if I’m non-binary but I definitely haven’t always known it makes me doubt that my questions are genuine because I am non-binary why have I only started to
Question it now I’ve been perceived as a woman my entire life and have never seemed to have any issue with it until a couple years ago it makes me wonder if maybe I’m just trying to fit in with my trans and non-binary friends yeah so that’s like exactly my life because I
Never questioned anything until recently and always suppressed in the past those questions that I had and I think it also depends on the environment that you’re questioning it in because you say you have a lot of trans and non-binary Friends your queer experience is just are valid in general
Like everybody takes everything at their own pace and no matter how recently you’ve started to ask questions I think it’s important that you’re asking questions in general and I was perceived as a woman for the first 18 years of my life and then only very very recently
Like within the past six months I’m 22. have I started to have fully like identify as like a non-binary person I don’t think all trans people have always known I had no idea like there was never something in me that told me that I was someone or something else until probably
Like 20 years old that I really started to understand the terminology and the expression of gender and what that means for different people those terms just weren’t available available for me to understand but I think it’s lovely that you have like trans and non-binary friends that you can probably ask
Questions to I’m sure you’re in an environment where you have these people that you can go to when you are starting to question a certain part of yourself I don’t think it’s a problem that you’ve just started to question it now at all I think it’s lovely that you’re being
Honest with yourself and you’re letting yourself question because I don’t think everybody always known has known I’ve met people in La that came out as gay as at like literally 64. age is just a social construct this person said hey y’all just a quick question about being non-binary to make
Sure this is my community so I’m working on figuring out my gender right now and I’ve settled on being gender fluid with my gender mainly being on the masculine side and very rarely being non-binary I’m a bit nervous about trying to be active in this community because I feel masculine so often that
I’m worried I would be intruding by joining y’all here but then I heard that any gender fluidity is Under the non-binary Umbrella is that true I don’t know I’m just like super confused right now and worried about intruding that last sentence is the most alignable sentence
I’ve ever read in my life coming from a non-binary person of course you’re welcome here um but yeah if you’ve just started figuring out your gender and send it settled on gender fluidity I think it’s important to remember that I think human gender is always going to be fluid you
Are probably never going to always feel a certain way about yourself like my gender was Super Hyper feminine and Super Hyper masculine and now and then it was I moved to LA and started like experimenting with the way that I express myself and now I’m still on that
Track of like dressing a certain way one day versus another day I think it’s important to remember that it is fluid for a reason and it’s all it’s probably always going to go back and forth and if it’s mainly on the masculine side and being very rarely non-binary is
Something I struggle with as well it’s like presenting on the pretty masculine side of things but I don’t think you should feel nervous about being active in the community I think the thing about the queer Community is that there’s like space for everyone like there’s never
Ever going to be a point where a certain Community doesn’t accept you because of the way that you look I think gender has so much to do with how you feel on the inside versus the way that you express yourself on the outside I know so many feminine presenting people who use they
Them pronouns I know so many masculine presenting people who use she her pronouns I mean it really does depend I think gender has so much to do with internal emotion and expression and I’m still educating myself and I’m still learning I really only like the term non-binary for myself because it’s like
Non it’s like not something it’s not very feminine it’s not very masculine it’s somewhere in the middle so I’m still kind of mentally defining the difference between gender fluidity and non-binary so I think it’s all under a pretty lenient umbrella depending on how a term
Makes you feel and I also think this is something very interesting in terms of labels because I didn’t have this many labels like I didn’t have access to this much terminology growing up and figuring out my gender and so I know all these labels can kind of overlap like pansexuality versus bisexuality what
That means to different people I think your label should just feel the most comfortable to you and I think it should make the most sense to you and that is it like it doesn’t have to make sense to anybody else it just depends on how you feel
I promise next episode has so much of a happier ending with so much love for you guys and thank you so much for tuning in to this very special episode and if you are interested in finding me absolutely anywhere under the surface of the Sun you can find me anywhere at Maddie
Westbrook at Westbrook come back next week for a brand new episode where I’ll talk about moving to LA and how I finally came to embrace my identity today don’t forget to follow rate and review closet talk wherever you get your podcast there are new episodes of closet
Talk every single Friday and I will see you next week bye
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